Judith Krantz

by Till We Meet Again

  Hospitality, which had always been a part of the life of Champagne, was now more than just a tradition, it was their most potent selling tool, and Eve was the leading practitioner of the art. In 1949 the growers of Champagne had sold as many bottles as they had sold annually during the first decade of the century, which had been their most successful period in history, and now, in 1950, they clearly were going to break that record.

  “Girls, please come on in now,” Eve called, and two young English university students appeared from the doorway where they’d been waiting for her to finish placing the guests. They were both living at the château for an entire growing season in order to be introduced to the lore of viniculture, and they helped her as well with the flowers for the château. As always, when she had finished with the place cards, they brought her trays of small vases filled with flowers, their stems cut as short as possible, which she had taught them how to arrange. Eve could never understand why so many hostesses used tall flowers in the middle of a table, preventing people from seeing each other clearly, and impeding the flow of conversation. She dotted the center of the table with small bouquets until it looked like a lilliputian flower bed around which the taller glasses bloomed in their waiting pride, four at each place.

  In less than an hour, a group of strangers would meet over her table, and with only champagne as their mutual interest, they would have as lively an interchange as if she’d planned the guest list for weeks. Perhaps it was the pre-lunch tour that put them in such a cordial mood; first the ritual trip to the church at Hautvillers where Dom Perignon was buried, and then, after their return to Valmont, the tour of the press-house and a glimpse of the cellars while Paul answered their questions. In the anteroom of the cellar, he would open a bottle and fill their glasses himself, to sip from as they strolled back to the château on the paths above the vines, which now, in May, were covered with embryo bunches of grapes, growing bigger each day.

  Her table ready, Eve went to her dressing room to change for lunch. She retouched her makeup expertly, without thought, seated in front of her dressing table, until something, some fugitive scent of spring in the air, made her pause and look at herself in the mirror. Had she really become la Vicomtesse de Lancel, châtelaine of the Château de Valmont, she inquired of her reflection, tilting her chin in a way that concealed the faint lines on her neck. She remembered a night in another May, a night in 1917, when she had been twenty-one, not fifty-four as she was now. She had taken off all her makeup at another dressing table, backstage at the Casino de Paris, and a gallant officer had come a-calling on a girl with strawberry blond hair parted in the middle and coiled over her ears, an impetuous, free-spirited girl, a girl who called herself Maddy and who had many secrets, none of which included a knowledge of the disposition of place cards, or the way to make a table of strangers feel like friends, or how to run a château with twelve servants and many guest rooms, which sheltered buyers from all over the world for seven months of the year.

  Eve sighed philosophically, recalling the panic of her well-meaning aunt, Marie-France, who had been convinced that she would never make a respectable marriage because she sang in a music hall. She was far more than merely respectable now; “distinguished,” the wine writers always called her when they wrote about their visits to Valmont. Her brows still slanted wildly upward as they always had, her eyes were no less gray, no less quick to kindle, she still hummed bits of all the tunes she’d ever heard as she walked about the château, she still chaffed at the conventions of life when they restricted her impulses—but she had to admit that the face she saw in the mirror was more suited to a château than to a stage. Would she have it otherwise? No, never. In thirty-three years of marriage she had not once regretted her choice, for longer than those normal periods of questioning the very existence of the matrimonial condition that every woman must expect to go through, given the essential nature of the male animal.

  From Dijon to Paris, then Canberra, Cape Town, Los Angeles, London—and now Epernay. She had almost traveled in a perfect circle. Doctor Coudert’s naughty runaway daughter had ended up within a hundred miles of her birthplace. As Vivianne de Biron, now nearing eighty, and as tart as ever, had remarked when she paid them a visit last year, what luck that her Madeleine had not married a mustard prince and settled in Dijon, although she still had not brought herself to approve entirely of the way in which her protégée had thrown away a great career.

  Eve put on one of her Balenciaga suits, a thin wool in his most Spanish mood, as black as a mother superior’s habit and twice as chic as all of next year’s Dior collection. She thought of them as her “suits of lights,” as chosen for effect as the theatrical vestments of the great toreros. If she was to be considered distinguished instead of bewitching, she’d give them their money’s worth.

  With only five minutes until her guests arrived, she gazed out the window at the vivid promise of the vines, and she gave thanks for the amazing recovery of the House of Lancel. When Paul had told her that nothing remained in Le Trésor, that Bruno had sold it all on the black market, and that all that was left in the cellars were the vintages of the war years, still aging “on the yeast,” her heart had plunged in pain for him in his humiliation and shame.

  Survival seemed impossible, not just at Valmont, but throughout Champagne. But she hadn’t appreciated the dedication of the people of Champagne, nor had she realized that the war vintages, although small in quantity, were, as if to compensate, superlative in quality. By 1945 all the prisoners of war had returned home, and the workers in the vineyards, most of whom owned their own tiny patches of grapes, had rallied around the new proprietor and sold him whatever remained of their small reserves of wine, much of it successfully squirreled away in hard-learned Champenois manner, throughout the Occupation.

  Nevertheless, the past years had been a time of greater struggle than they had ever lived through, as every centime they made was put back into the land, replanting the oldest vines, restoring and rebuilding. Until last year there had been no new clothes, no trips to Alexandre in Paris to get her hair done. In fact, not a single worn-out casserole in the château had been replaced, but she had managed to entertain as soon as the first buyers returned. They were still deeply in debt to the banks at Rheims—perhaps they would never be out of debt—but the House of Lancel, like the other Grands Marques, had triumphed.

  The postwar years had taken a heavy toll. Paul had aged more rapidly during the first years of his sixties than she would ever have expected. He worked in a demonic, exhausting way, and when he sat down for a rare minute after spending hours over the accounts, she’d often looked up to see his face wracked with bitterness and sadness, yet he never mentioned Bruno’s name again.

  Eve looked at her watch. Time to go downstairs. She left Freddy’s letter—a disappointingly thin one—on her dressing table, and found no time to open it until after dinner, when she and Paul had finally been able to bid their houseguests good night and retire to their own part of the château.

  Paul was getting into his pajamas in his dressing room when she appeared in the doorway, holding the sheets of paper in her hand.

  “Freddy and Tony are getting divorced,” Eve cried out in disbelief, tears standing in her eyes.

  “Let me see that,” Paul said, reaching for the letter. He read it and reached out and held her close to him and kissed her hair. “Darling, don’t cry, I know how you feel, but it’s not the worst thing that could happen,” he said.

  “But I simply don’t understand! What can she mean—that it’s nobody’s fault? That’s ridiculous! You know that can’t be true.”

  “Of course it isn’t. And I do understand,” Paul said slowly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Last winter, when we went to California to see our buyers, I spent a lot of time with Tony. He was more than a heavy drinker, he had become an alcoholic. The signs were clear to me, although he hid them well. I imagine that it started during the war—the British have always
been able to consume staggering amounts of whiskey and still fight like madmen the next day. Unlike us, they must possess livers of solid copper. I didn’t say anything to you because you weren’t aware of it and Freddy was so anxious for me not to notice. I prayed that he’d pull himself out of it, but I honestly didn’t have too much hope. Obviously his drinking got to the point where she had to make this decision. I don’t expect her ever to tell us about it, but it’s clear to me that she had to leave him, for Annie’s sake as much as her own.”

  “My sweet Freddy,” Eve murmured, almost to herself.

  “Yes, but it’s better that she pull herself out of an impossible situation than let it degenerate totally. She’ll survive, darling, I promise you. Freddy’s so strong. I pity Tony. To have fought so heroically, to have survived … and now, to end as a rejected husband.”

  22

  “BETWEEN the two of us, Swede, don’t you think that we’ve got to know damn near everything there is to know about women?” Jock Hampton asked, as the two men ate lunch together in February of 1951. “Wouldn’t you bet that there aren’t any odds on broads that we couldn’t handicap if we put our heads together?”

  “Remind me never to go to the track with you,” Swede grunted.

  “How many girls have you had? Dozens? Hundreds?”

  “Too many to even remember how many.”

  “Me too. But you’re older, more experienced, and you’ve known her longer. So you tell me, what the hell is wrong with Freddy?”

  “I thought you were talking broads in general. Broads in general I know a thing or two about. Freddy—I wouldn’t want to try to figure.”

  “Look, I know she’s special, I’m not a total lout, give me credit for knowing the difference between broads and Freddy, but she’s still a woman, a female, a girl. So she’s got to be more like other women than she’s different from other women. Right?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “You know, Castelli, I’m really glad I brought this up. You’re a hell of a lot of help. For Christ’s sake, she isn’t the Holy Grail, she’s flesh and blood and I miss her! I want Freddy back, the way she used to be before the divorce. Remember?”

  “You better believe it.”

  “She always left us gasping didn’t she? Shit, Swede, didn’t we have fun with her nipping at our heels, keeping us off balance, strutting her stuff, surprising us, always ahead of the pack, making us hustle to keep up? And laughing at us while we tried? She made every day seem like the Fourth of July. One gorgeous burst of fireworks after another. God, but I like a difficult bitch. Every great broad I’ve ever met was a difficult bitch—and Freddy made them all look like they were bucking for sainthood. What happened to her, Swede?”

  “She got—ladylike. That’s about as close as I can put a name to it.”

  “I’ve known a lot of divorced women, and going all over ladylike isn’t the normal drill. Usually they bust out, start to date, buy sexy new clothes, get their friends to introduce them to guys—maybe not right away, but eventually. Freddy and Tony broke up a year ago, her divorce is practically final, and she’s still sitting at home in that big house every night, having dinner with Annie. Helping an eight-year-old with her homework is the high point of Freddy’s social life. I happen to know because I drop in now and then, just to see my goddaughter, and it’s always like that. Don’t tell me that’s normal.”

  “That’s the way she wants to conduct her private life, Jock. It’s not any of our business.”

  “Agreed. No argument. But she also happens to be our partner. We’ve got a bunch of money to lose if Freddy doesn’t get her ass back in gear pretty soon. When’s the last time she dragged in a fat new account, kicking and screaming a little bit maybe, but unable to resist her? I haven’t got what it takes to melt hearts, neither do you, and we’re losing business to the Flying Tigers because she’s so screaming ladylike she won’t even bat her eyelashes anymore. She doesn’t even walk the way she used to! When’s the last time she had one of her bossy fits, and vamped and needled us into doing something we had no intention of doing, and we ended up making buckets of money out of it? Sure, she shows up at the office and sits in it all day and she puts in a full day’s work, but she’s not giving us her old stuff. She doesn’t even go flying anymore, and that’s when she gets her best ideas. It’s as if we’d bought a big, fancy, bright roller coaster and it turned into a little dinky kiddie-cart when we got it home. It’s not fair to us, and I think you should talk to her seriously about it.”

  “How did I get elected?”

  “Because you knew her when she was a kid. She’ll listen to you. She’ll just tell me to stick it.”

  “No, thanks. If you want a job done, do it yourself, Jock.”

  “You chicken?”

  “You bet.”

  “Well, I’m not. I think it’d be more appropriate coming from you, Swede, but since you have such dainty ways, I’ll tackle it myself. What’s the worst that can happen? So she tells me to stick it? At least I’ll get her thinking along the right lines. Nobody has to go into mourning for a divorce for the rest of her life.”

  “Gonna put it that way?”

  “Nope, I’ll be more tactful. First thing is to get her out of the house and away from the office.”

  “Go with her when she gets her hair done. That’s the only time she isn’t at one place or the other,” Swede Castelli grinned. The day he poked his nose into Freddy’s personal life would never dawn. He knew her too well. Who else knew about the rotten luck she’d had with the only two men who’d meant anything to her? If she wanted to shield herself from the world, who could blame her? Anyway, Jock Hampton was the one who was all hot and bothered. As far as he was concerned, and he should know if anyone did, their business was going just fine.

  “I’m going to invite her to come to the reunion of the Eagle Squadron. Yeah, that’s it. She can’t refuse—she’ll be the only girl there who’ll know what it’s all about, the only one who deserves to be there.”

  “Think she’ll come?”

  “If she doesn’t come willingly, I’ll tie her up and throw her in the back of my car. I’ll kidnap her.”

  “You sure you wouldn’t prefer it that way?”

  “You’re a pervert, Swede. A disgusting, filthy old man. I’m going to make you pay for lunch.”

  Freddy frowned at herself, irritated beyond measure that she’d been forced to go to this evening’s party. From the moment that Jock mentioned the Eagle Squadron reunion, she’d known that if ever there was one event at which she would be a no-show, this was it.

  Of all of Jock’s ideas, this was the worst. It was so utterly insensitive, so incredibly tactless, that she just hadn’t believed it when he’d proposed that she go with him. How had he even dared to ask? Didn’t he have enough basic empathy to realize that the men of the Eagle Squadron would remind her inescapably of everything that had been so high-hearted and was now so lost? The glory days, Tony had called them in his last, terrible speech, of which she had not forgotten a word. The days when she’d been in love with her job and in love with Tony, until the two loves had somehow seemed like one. Shed been filled with a sense of mission that had lifted her to heights she could now remember only with sick envy of her own former self. Jock had asked her to go, with such utter incomprehension of why there could be no question of her walking into a room full of people who were a part of her dead happiness, that he left her speechless with her mouth all but hanging open, while he spilled out his pathetic little story.

  “I just can’t hack it unless you come with me,” he’d said, absolutely abject. “Every one of those guys has a wife and two and a half kids, and at the last reunion you wouldn’t believe what they were saying—poor old Jock, how come you haven’t found a single woman who would put up with you, there has to be something basically wrong with you, maybe you’re too attached to your mother, I bet you’ll never get married, you’ll end up a lonely old bachelor trying to fill your empty life, and, wor
st of all, have I got a girl for you! Every one of them tried to fix me up with his sister. I love those guys, Freddy, but I won’t go to the reunion again without some sort of a female companion, and I can’t take any of the girls I know, they’ll stand out like sore thumbs and have a terrible time. How could it hurt you to just spend one evening helping me out? You could just stick around, protecting me, like a wingman, and when they start attacking me—especially the wives—change the conversation, get them off my tail. It seems to be a crime against the American way of life to be an unmarried thirty-one-year-old man in this country. I’d do the same for you anytime you had to have an escort for something, you know you could count on me.” And on and on, practically whimpering.

  She’d run out of excuses quickly, since the one reason that would have shut him up was the one she’d never admit to: that since Tony had fled, his only salvation lying in getting far away from her as quickly as possible, she’d been paralyzingly at war with herself, unable to move in any direction. On the one hand, she was utterly shamed by the words Tony had said, infinitely mortified by his accusations, which she accepted as a true picture of the way she’d been to him. Her self-reproach crushed her. On the other hand, she was angrier than she’d ever been in her life. What kind of spineless man would dump the whole burden of his decline onto his wife? Yet no sooner did rage come to her rescue than memory insisted that he was right, that back in England he’d been content, that he hadn’t started to go downhill until they’d moved to California.