Terroir (2 page)

– Gaultier tells me you're one of the best. Up and coming. I'll add twenty
-
five per cent to your current salary and five per cent of our annual profits over fifty thousand after we've settled overheads. I won't interfere with what you do, if you stick to the job. But I want to retain Gaultier as a consultant. That'll give us both back
-
up.

That was sensible. More than sensible; it was a no
-
brainer. Stay where he was making a mediocre Pomerol with a vineyard that was owned by a multi
-
national through several subsidiaries. Or be his own man, start something new. His father always said that you couldn't grow wine in a test tube. You had to put your hands into the soil. That's where
terroir
began, that was how to understand it. With the hands. Soil was like sex Gaultier had said in one lecture – it was everything you needed to know and never could.

– Ok, it's a deal. But I'll need to start work soon.

– Move into the annexe as soon as you're ready. Ghislaine will be here in the week to help out. We can hire labour in the village when we need it. Old Raymond'll help out. He worked for the last owner and knows the ropes. I'll be busy in Tours for a few months yet, but back some weekends. We'll harvest in October?

– October, or even early November if we can wait that long. It depends.

André looked up at the sky.

– Timing is everything with wine.

A platitude, but one Gaspard would grasp.

– Cool. Can't wait. Look after the grapes and I'll look after you.

And they had clinked bottles to clinch it. André knew that Gaspard liked him because he was a peasant at heart, just like himself. Despite the bullshit and fancy car and the bling, he'd always be more at home with his own sort.

Early July and the grapes were already hanging on the vines. André borrowed the old Peugeot and moved his things into the annexe. Like the house, it was plainly furnished but had its own shower and kitchen area. Apart from tending the vines and cleaning and testing the equipment in the winery, his main job was to watch over the construction of the new oak barrels. The staves had to be toasted to perfection – a light shade of chestnut that would add smoke and complexity to the brambly wine he imagined. That meant hurtling backwards and forwards on the bike to the cooper, leaving the two lads he'd engaged from the village with Raymond, who'd grumble at them when necessary. Eric and Paul. Brothers. Both with bleached hair and gold earrings and wide brown eyes. They'd proved to be decent lads, hard working if you watched them, and willing to learn.

Each day they'd work their way down the vines, weeding, removing leaves to allow air to circulate. Later they'd take out excess fruit. To make a new
-
style wine it was necessary to return to some – not all – of the old methods. That was the irony. At the cooperative he'd watched his father fume as tractors drew up, unable to unload the fruit that was already badly bruised, watching it stew in the sun. Picking was by machine and machines detached the fruit from the stems, but a lot of that went into the must. Quality control was scant when production was on such a vast scale. They produced five wines from a
vin de pays
to an
appellation contrôlée
, but they had no pride in it any more. And the label meant nothing.

The only real way to harvest was by tasting the fruit, then picking, then sorting by hand. It was painstaking and time consuming. To make wine, Gaultier had taught him, it was necessary to become intimate with the fruit. That's where hygiene started, by rooting out the spoiled grapes and treating the rest as precious. You had to love the vines. You had to immerse yourself in the soil and its history, every stone, every drop of sweat and blood it had soaked up. That was to understand
terroir
, what it had meant to families before mechanisation. It wasn't just land and weather and minerals, but everything that had happened on the land and to it. It was history and future together. When you drank wine, Gaultier had said, you're sipping time and weather, the rising and setting sun, even tasting your own mortality. That had taken a long time to understand. That's what the cult of Dionysus had been about. Gaultier had taught them about that too, how a libation of blood had blessed the new wine.

Each day André rose at six
-
thirty, showered, then went into the main house for breakfast. He'd sit down at the kitchen table where Ghislaine had made coffee and laid out bread, croissants and jam. On the first day she'd been wearing jeans and a pale green tee shirt. He couldn't help noticing that her breasts were small and pointed. Neat, like everything about her. He'd stood awkwardly in the doorway.

–
Bonjour, Madame.

She'd smiled then.

–
Bonjour André!
But
Madame
? Ghislaine, please.

– OK. Sorry … I…

– No need to be sorry, but no need to be formal, either. Now:
à table
…

She ate with deft and refined movements. Breaking the croissants in slender fingers, buttering slices of bread delicately. He eyes caught the light, intensely green under dark hair that was shoulder length. Glossy with health or wealth, or both.

– What?

She'd caught him watching her. He smiled.

– If it's to be informal, may I?

He broke off a hunk of bread and dunked it into the bowl of coffee.

– That's how we had breakfast on my father's vineyard when I was a kid. Me, my mother and brother.

–
Touché
!

She tried the same trick, but dribbled coffee down her tee shirt. When she laughed her eyebrows tilted and her mouth showed rounded teeth that crossed over slightly at the front. Her face lost all severity and her tongue moistened her lips quickly, like a cat's.

All day he was busy with the vineyard. He ate with Ghislaine each evening, then went into the village for a drink, or took the bike for a spin, or called his father, or chilled out in his room listening to rock music on his iPod. Otherwise, there was a TV and a satellite dish, but he used it only for the news. Days at Place de L'autel passed comfortably enough: little by little the grapes swelled and the vineyard came back under control.

Each day brought another flawless sky. A fortnight passed. A month. One evening Ghislaine appeared with her hair cut short. The next morning she was wearing shorts and a man's check shirt tied at the waist. Her belly button was decorated with a silver ring piercing. André must have looked surprised.

– I'm going mad around the house, I want to help.

He poured a bowl of coffee and went stupid. Like his father used to say:
act numb
.

– With?

– With the vineyard. I'll do anything. I need a change from playing mum.

– You sure? It can be tough if you're not used to it.

There was a flash of thunder across the eyebrows.

– You think I don't know what work is?

– I didn't say that.

– You thought it.

– Maybe.
You're the boss's wife. What would Gaspard think?

– Nothing, probably. Like he does.

André took that one in silence. She dunked her croissant and gave him a grin, quick and impish. It was decided.

He put her to cleaning out the winery, first with a yard brush, then scrubbing the sorting tables. It was heart
-
breaking stuff, but she didn't complain, humming as she worked in a pair of yellow rubber gloves. By dinnertime she had showered and changed back into a long skirt and tie
-
dye top and had omelettes ready on the table. As they ate, he sensed her watching him.

– How was your day?

He'd been back to the coopers, checking the barrels. They'd looked – and smelled – gorgeous. He'd run his fingers over the new oak, savouring the smoked vanilla they'd impart to the wine.

– Good. The barrels are nearly ready. They're the best I've seen.

– That's good.

– And your day?

He gave a wry grin, sorry he'd tried to punish her.

– Good, actually. Did you check?

– Of course.

– And?

– Spotless. You can come to work again.

They clinked glasses and he watched a tiny green lizard flicker away from the open kitchen door where the rays of evening sun were lingering to tempt it.

The next day, they all worked together, tending the vines. Spoiling them,
like fucking orphans,
as Raymond put it. André had fitted a new battery to the tractor and he cranked the engine to life. It caught in a puff of black smoke, a sweet rumble. Now he and Raymond were clearing out a ditch, hoiking out dead leaves and tangles of convolvulus and piling them into the trailer. Raymond paused to lean on his hoe, watching Ghislaine carry a basket of weeds on her hip.

– Well, she can work, I'll say that. Who'd have thought it?

There was sweat in the cleft of her breasts as she brushed past. He pale skin was taking on the sun. In a few days she'd be burnt brown like the rest of them. Raymond spat in the dust.

– When will we see that fucker of a husband?

André was surprised at the venom. He let it pass. He didn't fancy playing the boss's man with Raymond. That wouldn't wash.

– Gaspard? Oh, he's busy in Tours. Lots of business meetings right now, I guess.

Raymond laughed, then sucked in his cheeks and hooded his eyes.

– You mean the five 'til seven kind?

It had never occurred to André that Gaspard would have a mistress. But it didn't surprise him either. Gaspard wasn't handsome. He was even grotesque – fleshy, corporeal. You could imagine him taking a shit or fucking a woman, but not making love. But he had the energy that made money. Success. And, of course, he
had
money, the oldest hard
-
on of them all.

Ghislaine leaned back to scratch the back of her leg. André watched the white mark fade. She brushed past again and he watched the subtle movement of her hips, her slender legs and neat feet. Even in hiking boots she went down the slope with a kind of elegance. Understated, like her bracelet, the sparsely furnished house. Raymond was smiling, showing the gaps where his eyeteeth should have been.

– You think she's nice, so that'd stop him going for other women? Just because he's an ugly little bastard? He can buy them like that!

Raymond snapped his fingers theatrically.

– Then he's a fool.

Raymond grimaced.

– He's a fool all right, of a kind. But then he's no one's fool. Never cross him, son, he's not the kind to mess with.

– Why would I?

– Why wouldn't you? Reasons are like fish in the sea.

The hoe sliced away a dandelion so that the yellow head fell to the soil. He looked up again as if through afterthought.

– We had a sergeant like him in Algiers. Thebeau. Short
-
arse. Dead eyes. One day we caught an Arab kid in the
souk
with three rifle rounds in his turban. Thebeau drove him back to the barracks.

Raymond leaned on the hoe and stared across the valley. The veins on his hand were silted rivers.

– He was a beautiful kid. And he was frightened. It took courage to do what they did. They found him the next day by the roadside. We were hardened to it by then. But what that bastard had done to him made us all sick. Hubert's out of the same mould, believe me.

– What happened to him afterwards? Was he punished?

Raymond gave his cracked laugh.

–
Thebeau? He was always too clever for that. He got an alibi all worked out in advance. Not that anyone gave a shit about a rag
-
head kid.

– So? What then? Nothing?

Raymond smiled and spat beneath the vines.

– My unit was there for two years. He had an unfortunate accident. Never made it home.

André dropped his shoulders into the silence, letting his eye drift to a hawk above the church, ascending in slow spirals, an angel of light. He started the tractor and they moved on.

After that, André watched Gaspard carefully. He came home every other weekend, always relaxed, always affable. When things went wrong he stayed cool and sorted them out. On those weekends, André dined in the bar or cooked for himself in the small kitchen. Ghislaine seemed to adapt easily to his coming and going and Gaspard had no objection to her working in the vineyard.

One day, when they were checking equipment in the winery, Gaspard put the pen behind his ear so that his sleeve fell back. André wanted to ask him how he got the scars on his arms, but he has the sense to let it lie. It was now late August and he had the feeling that things were finally under control. Gaspard trusted him to do things properly. The small team they had recruited was working well and most of the crap from the past had been cleared away. He was looking forward to the harvest. In the mornings there was dew on the vines and the air was sharp, drawing mist across the valley. Martins flickered from the eaves of the house to feed, their white rumps semaphoring the long flight ahead.