Vintage (26 page)

Marie-Paule Balard sat in Doctor Hébèque’s
waiting-room
waiting for her name to be called. It was Harry, who had accompanied her to the Cours de Tournon and who sat in the chair next to her reading a motor magazine, who had persuaded her to make an appointment with the doctor for the malaise, the precise nature of which she was unable to put her finger on, which had been making inroads into her life for some time and which had finally overtaken her.

The crux had come at a soirée given by the Balards in honour of Mr Timo Toivonen and Mr Kari Mkila, two important wine merchants from Finland, a country that was just beginning to find its feet as far as French wine was concerned. During dinner, Marie-Paule had retreated into a world of her own. She had addressed not one word to the guests, whom her husband was hoping to entice to the cellars of Balard et Fils. When Balard reprimanded his wife publicly for her lack of enthusiasm about Finnish life (the second highest suicide rate in Europe) and customs (a liking for a jolly session in the sauna, followed by a roll in the snow before dinner), Marie-Paule had burst into tears and left the salle-à-manger, leaving them all to get on with it.

It came as no surprise when, angrier than she had ever seen him, Balard reported that as a direct result of her behaviour, which had left a cloud over the Provençal table – which was not all that dazzling at the best of times – Mr Toivonen and Mr Mkila had taken the business of Alko, the state-owned alcohol company (the Finns were
renowned for excessive drinking, and in view of their long dark winters who could blame them?) to the rival Gastinet Frères.

The row that followed went on all night. It was
overheard
by Christiane and Harry, who could not help but be a party to it, as well as by those passing along the
tree-lined
Cours Xavier-Arnozan beneath the open shutters. The aftermath of the débâcle chez Balard was a series of repercussions which were as carefully orchestrated as the movements of a symphony.

The overture covered the old ground of Marie-Paule’s lack of co-operation as far as her husband’s business endeavours were concerned. To this hurtful accusation – was not her entire life devoted to supporting both Balard and his endeavours? – she did not at first deign to reply. Finally goaded, not only by the most recent charge, but by a catalogue of long-standing grievances dredged unjustly from the past, the confrontation deteriorated into a slanging match which took place in the master bedroom, during the course of which voices were raised, copious tears shed, and even objets thrown.

This cacophonous prelude was followed by a week of monosyllabic silence, as the master of the house made his displeasure felt. His wrath was exacerbated by a visit to Château de Cluzac – which according to Harry had something to do with the de Cluzac wine contract – after which his face, which was seldom very agreeable, was terrible to behold.

The silence was broken by a flurry of activity on Balard’s part, comings and goings punctuated by a series of urgent telephone calls, which culminated in the negociant’s returning home in the small hours of the morning, his handkerchief bound round a bleeding cut on his finger, and his leather jacket streaked with acrylic yellow paint.

Whatever it was he had been up to seemed to cheer him up considerably. The negociant’s silence gave way to malicious laughter, although his wife, for the life of her, could not see the joke.

This apparent amusement, hard on the heels of the yellow paint (which the dry-cleaner had been unable to remove from Balard’s jacket), heralded a return to the more or less untroubled waters as the household relaxed and its bourgeois routine was resumed.

That her husband’s unpredictable behaviour was due to his disappointment over losing Château de Cluzac, coupled with the serious drop in income he expected as a result of no longer being its negociant, Marie-Paule was well aware. That her own indisposition derived from the same source, she had absolutely no idea.

All she knew was that she no longer wanted to get up in the mornings. Getting out of her bed at noon, she could not wait to return to it, and she retired for the night, often before Balard had left for l’Union, increasingly early. Like a preremptorily deflated balloon, the bounce that once had sustained a daily round of unremitting activity, had gone out of her. She stood mesmerised before the counter in the boucherie, vexing the other customers as she vacillated between the entrecôte and the faux filet (as likely as not changing her mind again once she had decided); sat silent and withdrawn at committee meetings convinced that she, who had never been short of an opinion, had nothing useful to contribute; let the dust gather, and the mattresses
remain unaired; let slip the role of maîtresse de maison she had previously carried out so diligently, and neglected her appearance in which – the unsatisfactory result notwithstanding – she had previously taken pride.

All these changes in his wife’s demeanour went unremarked by the doltish Claude Balard, who had other things on his mind. Not least of these were the changes at Château de Cluzac, which had spiked his guns in more than one respect.

His feelings about the appropriation of the estate by the Baron’s daughter were dumped on to the accommodating bosom of Beatrice Biancarelli, who had her own reasons for wishing Clare de Cluzac had stayed at home.

In view of the unexpected reverses in Balard’s fortunes, the villa in Arcachon on which Biancarelli had set her heart, and which she had mentally furnished, would no longer materialise. Even more than she missed the promised villa, however, plans for which were temporarily given up rather than abandoned (there were bigger fish in the Garonne than Claude Balard), Biancarelli missed Charles-Louis.

Deprived, after twenty-six years, of the Baron’s daily visits, and unaware how much she had depended on them, she was dumbfounded to discover that, for the second time in her life, she was in love.

Like Charles-Louis’ wife Viola, whom Biancarelli had never met (even in her Bordeaux days, the young Baronne de Cluzac had been uninterested in clothes), the boutique owner had not the least illusion about her former lunchtime lover. Like Viola she had made the paradoxical, if not exactly earth-shattering, discovery, that, despite his often outrageous behaviour, the Baron was possessed of a considerable amount of charm.

She did not delude herself. Charles-Louis was a
playboy
and a wastrel. He had fallen out with his mother, squandered his resources, deceived his wife, cheated on his mistresses. Having bootlegged funds out of the country and in so doing dispossessed his sister and his daughter of what was rightfully theirs, he was also a criminal. When it came to the irrationality of the human heart, none of these acts, each one in itself despicable, and some of which were punishable by law, counted for anything. Il a rendu fades tous les hommes. He had made all other men seem dull.

Before he had left for Florida and its oranges, with the painted ringmaster, Laura Spray, who could make the present Baron de Cluzac stand on his hind legs at the flick of her Bryn Mawr whip, Charles-Louis had taken his Rolls-Royce Phantom II Continental out of the garage and, in a rare act of folly, driven Biancarelli into the country for dinner.

The Baron’s presence at La Belle Epoque, a restaurant not only well worth a detour both for its idyllic setting and its food, but the possessor of three Michelin rosettes, was greeted with much bowing and scraping. This deference was due not only to his haughty demeanour, but to the fact that although the table had been booked by Petronella under his alias, Monsieur Rougemont, the Baron’s face was well known.

Sitting opposite him at the most coveted table, her hair piled high and her dress cut low, Biancarelli, suddenly, and utterly without warning, was struck by a sensation of happiness such as she had not experienced for a great many years.

This rapture had nothing to do either with the Baron’s pre-prandial conversation, which centred largely and obsessively on his daughter’s outrageous behaviour and was neither amorous nor scintillating, or with the
manner in which he addressed his food, which was, as far as Biancarelli was concerned, an infallible barometer of the esteem in which a woman was held.

A good trencherman, reared on the offerings of Sidonie, whose culinary skills had been passed down from her mother and her grandmother, Charles-Louis bestowed on his food the seriousness and attention he felt it deserved.

While Biancarelli chattered away like a mynah bird between the premier plat and the entrée, between the cheese and the dessert, and afterwards over the coffee, the Baron’s meal was despatched in virtual silence. There was, as far as Charles-Louis was concerned, no solicitous enquiry as to his companion’s preferences, no participation in her selection from the menu, no concern lest her choice turn out not to her liking, and certainly no intimate exchange of food.

Their table was hedged about, at a respectful distance, by a veritable battalion of waiters responsive to the Baron’s every move – although the large and elegantly furnished room was full to capacity – but Biancarelli might well, for all the attention she was getting, be dining at La Belle Epoque femme seule.

They were waiting for the bill, which Biancarelli would settle – the Baron had never come to terms with credit cards and did not carry any cash – and
Charles-Louis
was trying to explain to her the delights of Real Tennis, played, as far as she could make out, with wooden balls and a lop-sided racquet on a court with sloping roofs, wooden boards and a cowbell. Her companion was explaining that his weekly game was one of the things he was going to miss most in Florida, when taking a minuscule tartelette, from the plate of petits fours on the table, he put the pastry case, which was filled with glazed raspberries, reflectively into his mouth.

‘I used to gather raspberries in the woods with my father.’ The Baron, his eyes far away, spoke softly, almost as if he were talking to himself. ‘I was only six years old…’

It was at that moment, moved perhaps by the gentleness of Charles-Louis’ voice and by the unguarded expression on his normally controlled face, that Biancarelli felt the unaccustomed stirrings of desire.

Back in her appartement, while he sat on the bed and waited for her to disappear into her little
dressing-room
, no bigger than a cupboard, and don the guêpière her lover liked her to wear for his visits, she removed all her clothes and stood naked before him. When he demanded a glass of champagne, she walked naked to the fridge.

Serving him, like an acolyte, she waited for him to assuage his thirst, then removed his clothes, her eyes taking in, as if for the first time, the shape of the body that in the years in which she had known him had grown from youth to maturity: his still athletic shoulders, his loins, his thick penis, the slight hollow which followed the inner curve of the thigh up to the groin.

If Charles-Louis noticed a difference in the activities that followed, Biancarelli was unaware of it. He did not ask for the guêpière but neither did he need it. Drunk with passion, Beatrice acknowledged her Dante. Bathed in perspiration, her soaked hair clinging in red strands to her tanned shoulders, she begged him to stay the night. In an unprecedented gesture, Charles-Louis kissed his mistress on the mouth, before leaving her bed.

When he had gone, back to Laura Spray, back to Florida where he would no doubt forget all about her, Biancarelli, shaking with the force of her discovery, slipped a CD into the hi-fi. Eyes closed, lips pursed, wearing her satin wrapper, she swayed round
the room to Sylvie Vartan singing ‘…C’est fatal, animal’, as if she was the first woman in the world to feel that way.

Obsessed with thoughts of Charles-Louis, distracting her from her business, which demanded total commitment to her clientele, Biancarelli had little time for either Claude Balard or his vendetta against Clare de Cluzac.

Humiliating and degrading Biancarelli during the course of his daily visits – for which privilege he undertook the rent of both boutique and appartement – his paranoid and highly embroidered narrative of cancelled contracts and wine sales to the public, advertised by means of a blatant and offensive display, fell on indifferent ears. Preoccupied as usual with his own feelings, Claude Balard was as oblivious of the lack of interest with which Biancarelli greeted his saga of treachery and betrayal, as was Baron de Cluzac to the fact that his mistress was in love with him.

While Claude Balard was able to act out the anger he felt at losing Château de Cluzac in Biancarelli’s boudoir, Marie-Paule, for whom no such outlet was available, turned her rage at being cheated of the estate upon herself and slid into an unfamiliar depression. It was Harry, whose motives were, as always, self-serving, who had made her go to the doctor. His mother’s indisposition was interfering with his life.

When Marie-Paule had observed, two years ago, that some of the housekeeping money Balard gave her was missing from her purse, her suspicions had fallen upon the Balards’ long-suffering maid. When an affronted Martine, whom she had challenged with the theft, had packed her bags and left the Cours Xavier-Arnozan for her home in Alsace, and the pilfering went on,
Marie-Paule 
was at a loss. That she did not mention the theft to Balard was due partly to the fact that she harboured a suspicion she was unwilling to confront, and partly to a symptom of the lack of communication between herself and her husband.

When she caught Harry, red-handed, going through her bag when he thought she was in the salle de bain, her misgivings were confirmed. Confident that his mother, with whom since his birth he had an unwritten alliance, would not shop him to his father, Harry, who had allowed the innocent Martine to be dismissed without saying a word in her defence, came clean.

Playing to the gallery of Marie-Paule’s vicarious aspirations for him – the marriage of her adored son would, she hoped, do much to compensate for the failure of her own – Harry Balard made his confession. While the salary for which he worked extremely hard at Balard et Fils went a long way to supporting his lifestyle (Marie-Paule had never seen a young man with so many electronic ‘toys’ and so many pairs of cufflinks), it did not stretch to the courtship of his latest girl.