Vintage (37 page)
Authors: Rosemary Friedman
‘Now!’
Halliday nodded.
‘What does she want?’
‘Search me. She says it’s urgent.’
Disengaging her arms from the cellarmaster and the chef de culture and imagining some domestic disaster, Clare made her way through the chains of swaying bodies to the kitchens, where Sidonie, surrounded by a mountain of empty pots and dirty dishes, was cradling the telephone receiver.
‘C’est Monsieur Jamie…’
‘Jamie? At this hour!’
Jamie should have been at the party, but the flights had all been fully booked. Clare took the receiver from Sidonie.
‘Jamie?’
‘Sorry to drag you away from the celebrations…’
Clare was overtaken by a giant hiccup.
‘Whoops! I’m afraid I’ve had too much to drink.’
‘Look, I do not really quite know how to put this…’
In a moment of drunken clarity, and feeling her heart sink, Clare said, ‘It’s Grandmaman, isn’t it?’
‘How did you know?’
‘We’re very close. I’ll come at once.’
‘There’s no need. Baronne Gertrude died at ten o’clock this evening. Louise rang me. It was very peaceful. Father Aloysius was there.’
‘Poor Grandmaman. I’ve been so busy… I’ve been meaning to call her.’
‘Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. It was what Baronne Gertrude wanted. I’ll speak to you tomorrow, darling. Try to get some sleep.’
As she replaced the receiver, suddenly grown heavy, an Australian voice broke into her thoughts.
‘Thought you might want these…’
Halliday gave her the gerbaude, long roses and Arum lilies.
‘My grandmother is dead.’
‘I’m so sorry. Anything I can do?’
Clare shook her head.
The flowers were trembling.
Taking the bouquet from her, and putting his arms round her, Halliday kissed her on the lips. His mouth was warm and concerned. She drew away from him reluctantly.
‘I’d better tell Papa.’
The funeral service of Baronne Gertrude de Cluzac was the first of the family funerals to be held in the chapel of Château de Cluzac since that of Baron Thibault,
twenty-six
years previously. Although it was to be a private affair, a few of the Bordelais closely aligned to the estate had come along to pay their respects to Baron de Cluzac and his daughter.
Entering the little chapel behind Charles-Louis and Tante Bernadette, who had returned to Château de Cluzac for the first time since she had fled from it to Notre Dame de Consolation, Clare had noticed, through the gloom of the traditional black veil Sidonie had insisted she wear, Jean Boyer with a red-eyed Sidonie, an
ill-at
-ease Albert Rochas and his family, Claude Balard with his wife Marie-Paule, the notary Maître Long, Halliday Baines, whom she scarcely recognised constrained in a suit, Alain Lamotte paying exaggerated court to Delphine in designer black, which was sculpted to reveal her early pregnancy, and, to her surprise, a heavily veiled Biancarelli.
Settling into the front pew, together with Jamie, who had come to Bordeaux for the day, Viola, who had been fond of Grandmaman, and Nicola and Hannah, who had insisted on accompanying Jamie, Clare thought that, although it was some time since she had been in a church, a funeral, like a wedding or a baptism, was one of the few occasions when the Christianity in which she had been raised came bobbing, uninvited, to the surface. It was as if what was happening to Grandmaman today was what the Church had been banging on about ever since she had been little.
It had been a week of turmoil. Grandmaman, who had been growing increasingly weak, had finally and uncomplainingly succumbed to acute intestinal obstruction. Only Louise, who had spent a night-long vigil on her knees, had been by her bedside together with the priest and the doctor who, unable to talk his patient into any treatment, had at least ensured that her exit from the world was painless.
Charles-Louis, who had not spoken more than a few words to his mother in twenty-five years, had travelled to London to collect her body (managing at the same time to fit in a visit to his tailor), and, while Clare was busy overseeing her new vintage in the cellars, had dealt with the formalities and made the arrangements for the funeral.
In the little room off the chapel in which Grandmaman’s coffin lay surrounded by flowers, the estate workers and the neighbouring château owners – including the old Comtesse de Ribagnac, who had had to be assisted from the room – had come to pay their respects. By the light of the guttering candles, Clare had read the letter which Baronne Gertrude had left for her.
Ma chère petite Clare,
That ‘machine for living’, my tired old body, has finally given up. You thought that I was sanguine about what I knew very well to be the gravity of my condition. Like any human being, I was apprehensive at times, but I learned as a child how to control my thoughts in the face of danger.
Since I have been going downhill, unable to play bridge any more, or even to go out, I have had plenty of time to think. Life, Clare, is very much like the Cours Albert le Grand. You are sent to school at an early age without being consulted. You get a great deal of work assigned to you (which helps you to
grow) and are tested on it at frequent intervals. At the end of it all is the final examination, at which it will be decided whether you graduate or fail. This pattern is reflected everywhere, not just in life but in literature, from the Bible to the Odyssey of Homer, through Hindu and Buddhist scriptures to the Koran.
From the Church’s point of view, the journey, through life is governed by God’s plan of creation, sanctification, and salvation: birth, sin, reconciliation death, judgement, and verdict, the so-called ‘cycle of redemption’. Christ went through it all himself and took his mother through it, so we know about it ahead of time and there is no need to be afraid.
As I write this, my sins have been forgiven and my atonement made, and I look forward to going straight to Heaven to enjoy for ever the presence of God. Put flowers on my grave for a while if you will, but from my point of view, outside of time, my body, the temple of the Holy Spirit at baptism destined for everlasting life, has already risen, and here I am.
I am so sad not to be here to witness your marriage. Jamie has been a rock. He never misses a Tuesday. It’s a long way for him to come, although I believe that he has friends in Holland Park. The more I talk to Jamie, the more I care for him. He reminds me so much of your grandfather, and not only in build. Jamie is as strong-minded as Thibault. He knows exactly where he is going. Thibault and I were always a team, but there was never any doubt who was team leader. Jamie has shown me nothing but kindness and respect and I
know that, given his head, he will make a princely husband.
Though you will lay me to rest in the chapel at Cluzac where my coffin will be placed beside that of my beloved Thibault, you and I will not be parted (remember the resurrection of the dead). A person does not cease to exist or lose identity (immortality of the soul), death will never break the bonds that exist between us (communion of the saints), and the living Church will be there to comfort and embrace you (unity of the faithful). If bodily death separates us, then Christianity makes no sense at all.
As I enter into everlasting life, I pray that yours on earth will be as blessed as the happiness you have given to your Grandmaman. Je pense à toi.
Gertrude (Baronne de Cluzac).
As the funeral liturgy was completed – by the order of the Baron they would not celebrate the Mass – the young priest from Pauillac, who had not known Grandmaman, adjusted his cassock and took his place at the lectern to deliver his homily. There would be no eulogy, no dwelling on past glories or on achievements in the face of the great equaliser, death.
‘“Men fear Death, as children fear to go in the dark: and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly the contemplation of Death as the wages of sin and passage to another world is Holy and religious: but the fear of it, as a tribute unto nature, is weak…”’
‘Francis Bacon,’ Jamie whispered.
As the young priest went on to speak, in suitably muted tones, of God’s compassion and love and of his promise of resurrection and of everlasting life, Clare looked at the coffin girded by the book of Gospels, a few fresh flowers, and a cross, which lay before the altar.
The white pall beneath it, like the square of starched linen used at Mass to cover the paten and chalice – the Body and the Blood of Christ – was a sign of life; an echo of the mantle worn by the French monarchs which demonstrated that the office did not die with the incumbent.
On occasions such as this, she wished she could go along with it all. It would be nice to believe that she and Grandmaman would not be parted, and that when she went back to London, everything would be as it had been; that they would sit over a gigot and a bottle of Château de Cluzac in the Hyde Park flat, while Grandmaman and Jamie pitted their literary wits against each other.
Glancing at Viola, wearing a skirt rather than her habitual jodhpurs, who had done her limited best as far as Clare was concerned, she thought that it was Grandmaman who had been her real mother and that, notwithstanding all the crap about everlasting life, Grandmaman was now dead.
Looking round the congregation, Tante Bernadette in her grey coif praying silently, Charles-Louis
stony-faced
, she realised that she was the only one weeping.
Picking up a worn, gold-embossed book for his final recitation, the young priest at the lectern removed a leather marker from it and lowered both his eyes and his voice:
‘“The world was all before them, where to choose their place of rest, and Providence their guide: they hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, through Eden took their solitary way…”’
‘Paradise Lost,’ Jamie whispered.
Baronne Gertrude had stipulated the readings, as she had the ‘March of the Hebrew Slaves’, which would accompany her to her last resting place.
Sprinkling the coffin with holy water in a final commendation, the priest bade farewell to the deceased. With a nod to her only son, Charles-Louis Eugène Bertrand, he signalled the mourners to escort the body to the private cemetery behind the chapel, the last resting place of the de Cluzacs.
Thinking afterwards about the rite of committal, the sight of the coffin being lowered into the chasm, which she had found especially distressing, Clare wondered about the two black-clad figures she had noticed as she had laid her tribute of miniature roses – ‘to Grandmaman from her Petite Clare’ – on the grave. They had stood, their hats in their hands, at a respectful distance at the edge of the cemetery. She wondered what business Monsieur Huchez and Monsieur Combe had at her
grandmother
’s funeral.
Caught up with the cold collation, which Sidonie had laid out in the salle-à-manger for the mourners, she had thought no more about the fisc. After exchanging a few words with the Baron, they had disappeared as silently as they had come.
After lunch she took Hannah and Nicola, stumbling in their city shoes, for a tour of the denuded vineyards. As she related to them the near disaster of her vendange verte, she saw them exchange glances.
‘Zoffany’s getting on my nerves,’ Nicola said. ‘And I’m missing Portobello. When are you coming home?’
‘When I’ve made my wine.’
Nicola took her arm, hardly glancing at the vines. ‘We’ll have a big rave-up.’
‘We’re having one,’ Clare said. ‘It’s called a wedding.’
‘I’ve got the consultant job at the John Radcliffe.’ Jamie was exultant. ‘From next week I’ll be flying solo.’
‘Félicitations… I mean congratulations! That’s terrific. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I waited until after the funeral.’
He spread some architectural drawings out on the floor of the library.
‘That means we’ll be staying in Waterperry. I brought the preliminary plans. What the architect wants to do is to extend the cottage at the side and back and add an extra floor over what is now the sitting-room but which, rather cleverly I think, he is turning into the kitchen… Clare, you’re not listening!’
‘I’m listening.’
Rolling up the drawings, Jamie thrust them into their cardboard tube. ‘I think we need to talk.’
‘I thought that’s what we were doing.’
‘There are things we have to discuss, arrangements for the wedding. Sebastian’s agreed to be my best man, and I’ve made a list of the ushers…’
‘It won’t be the same without Grandmaman.’
‘I get the impression you’re not interested in the wedding…’
‘I’ve got so much on my mind.’
‘I’m sorry, darling.’ Jamie put his arm round her and drew her to him. ‘You’re upset about Grandmaman. This wasn’t the day to talk about Waterperry. Cheer up. I love you. Grandmaman wouldn’t have wanted you to be sad…’
Nicola’s voice, preceded by a discreet cough, came from the corridor.
‘Jamie! We’re going to miss the plane!’
Petronella took them to the airport. Waving to the back window of the station wagon as it left the yard, Clare made disconsolately for the obscurity of the chais. Bereft of Grandmaman, bereft of Jamie who had solicitously put her reluctance to discuss the wedding down to her grief, bereft of her friends, bereft of the
funeral guests, bereft even of Rougemont who had now deserted her for the Baron, the cellars suited her dark mood.
‘Are you going to show me the “divorce” barrels, Clare?’
Viola’s voice in the courtyard broke into her gloomy thoughts. Slipping her hand into Clare’s in an unfamiliar gesture, Viola accompanied her daughter into the
first-year
cellars in which the aroma of the new oak was coupled with the aroma of the newly fermented wine.
‘Grandmaman would have been so happy to see you actually making wine. What was it she used to say? Toot passe…’
‘Tout passe, tout lasse, tout casse.’ Shivering, Clare took her mother’s arm. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
Alone in the château – Viola was visiting Kilmartin and the Baron had gone out – Clare sat in the solitary salle-
à-manger
, where a disapproving Sidonie removed her untouched dinner plate.
Wishing that Grandmaman were not lying silent and unreachable in the dank vault, trying to make sense of death and of non-being, never mind all that life eternal, she drifted disconsolately out into the grounds.
Pulling her black cardigan around her – the nights were drawing in – she leaned against the parapet of the moat in a halo of evening midges, and stared unseeingly at the trout making small ripples in the murky water. Noticing a few drops of water fall on to the stone of the balustrade, she thought that it was raining. Realising that her face too was wet, she wiped away her tears on her sleeve.
‘Want to see the ace of diamonds vanish?’ a gentle voice asked as a pack of cards appeared before her on the parapet.
‘Halliday!’
Holding the three cards like a small fan, Halliday showed Clare the ace of spades, the ace of clubs, and the ace of diamonds. Closing the fan, he placed the three cards in different parts of the pack.
‘OK, here we go.’ He handed the cards to Clare. ‘Find the ace of diamonds.’
Clare sifted unenthusiastically through the pack.
‘It isn’t here.’
‘You saw me put it back.’
‘Where is it then?’
‘How about in that urn?’ Halliday indicated the
moss-covered
urn several yards away at the edge of the parapet.
Putting her hand into its cobwebbed cavity, Clare removed the ace of diamonds.
‘Why did you come?’
‘I thought you might be lonely. I thought I’d drive you back to Bordeaux. I’ve been saving a bottle of champagne. One of the last of Krug’s private cuvée…’
While Halliday was in the kitchenette, Clare, unable to settle after her traumatic day, wandered round the sitting-room. On the buffet, next to the photograph of Billy, was a neatly ironed woman’s handkerchief embroidered with an ornate ‘C’.
