Celebration

Bell began to feel dizzy, with surprise as well as with champagne. She had been so utterly sure that she never wanted to fall in love again.

She had torn herself away from Edward, and dammed up the flood of fear that had threatened to engulf her. Bell nodded, dreamily, her head safely on Charles’s shoulder. She had been right to be afraid. Edward had been the wrong man. Now she had stumbled miraculously, thrillingly – into the arms of the right one.

There were no doubts this time, and no fears. So she could use all her strength, her certainty, to help Charles.

The waltz rippled on and they clung together, oblivious of Hélène’s stare and the smiles of the other dancers.

‘There’s only one thing,’ she whispered to Charles, ‘to spoil it. Having to leave you tomorrow. There’s still so much I want to know about you.’

He answered, fiercely, ‘As soon as the vintage is over, we will be together again. Somehow. I promise.’

Later, on Charles’s arm, Bell found herself in the supper room. There was a group of people sitting at a round table. Afterwards Bell remembered the playboy and his wife, Hélène and Juliette, a red-faced jolly man who was introduced as a Bordeaux négociant, and Jacopin leaning over to fill glasses with yet more champagne.

‘Tell me, Miss Farrer,’ said the jolly man, ‘after you have summed up Château Reynard, where do your travels take you next?’

So Bell, with everyone’s eyes on her, was saying It’s very exciting. I’m going to California, to the Napa Valley. To stay with Valentine Gordon, of Dry Stone Wineries.

After a tiny, horrified gasp from Juliette a frozen silence seemed to radiate outwards from Bell to seize the whole room. It stretched on and on. Bewildered, Bell glanced from face to face and they all seemed to stare straight back with hostile eyes.

Then she turned helplessly to Charles but he wouldn’t even look at her. Instead he stood up stiffly and walked away.

A second later Juliette and the playboy started talking, both at once and too loudly.

Bell couldn’t speak. She pushed her chair back with a clatter, excused herself and began to look wildly around for Charles. He had gone, but another hand caught her arm. It was Juliette.

‘Leave him, Bell.’ She was pulling Bell away, away from the stares and whispers.

‘Come with me. There’s something I have to tell you.’

Bell followed her upstairs with leaden feet. They sat down facing each other in the spoon-backed armchairs. Juliette wrenched the cork out of a cognac bottle and slopped the brandy into two glasses. Her speech was already slurred and she was frowning to keep the room in focus, but she said defiantly, ‘I’ve got to have a drink before I can face talking about it all again.’

Bell sat frozen in her chair, unable to imagine what horrible story she could be about to hear. Dimly, as if from another life, she heard the music stop abruptly as the party came to an end downstairs. She closed her eyes but her head swam sickeningly and she opened them again to see Juliette’s white face.

What had happened?

‘Charles and Catherine had a child,’ she said abruptly, not looking at Bell.

‘A boy, Christophe. He was perfect and we – all of us – adored him.’

Bell waited, her heart thumping, dreading what Juliette was going to say. She was horrified to see that huge tears were pouring down her friend’s face and splashing down on to her fingers clasped around the brandy glass.

‘He died. Just after his second birthday. Oh, Bell, he was so innocent – to have died like that. He was blond, you know, just like us. His head was covered with little flat gold curls like … like wedding rings.’ She was sobbing now, her shoulders heaving. Bell knelt beside her and took her in her arms.

‘Juliette, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she whispered helplessly into the mass of blonde waves. Juliette took a deep breath, blinked, then rubbed at her face with a screwed-up handkerchief.

‘I won’t cry any more. Now I’ve said it. It was meningitis, you see, and he was just too small to fight it.’ She took a huge gulp of her drink and managed to smile into Bell’s worried face.

‘What I’m going to tell you doesn’t reflect well on Charles, but I think it will help you to understand him better. Because of … what is happening between you it’s important that you should know, and he will never tell you himself. So here goes.’

Bell slipped back to her chair and waited.

‘I told you that they were never really happy together, right from the beginning. But they tried hard, to start with, and although there were terrible arguments, there were reconciliations too. A pattern was established. Charles managed to live even more inside his own head – and he’s always been good at that – and Catherine involved herself with the domestic life. She and Mama became very close, and of course the baby was on the way. Then, when he was born, the delight of having a son and heir transformed them both. They took such pleasure in him, it formed a real bond between them. I think, then, I started to believe that it might all work. I wasn’t living here, but I stayed often and they seemed to have come to terms with their differences and to be living amicably side by side. Not together, exactly, but at least in partnership. There were two happy years. Then – so suddenly, he died.

‘Catherine’s grief was terrible, paralysing, but it was immediate. She abandoned herself to it, which was exactly what she should have done. Mama helped her, I did what I could, and her own family too. Her sister’s child, Laure – the child of your sculpture – was born at almost exactly the same time as Christophe and her sister understood better than any of us what she was going through. But there was none of that with Charles.

‘Of course Christophe was his child too, the same loss, but he seemed to draw back from Catherine’s grief as if it disgusted him. And she needed him to help her, to share the sorrow but he wouldn’t – as if he couldn’t – have anything to do with her. For what seemed like months he went on, mechanically doing his work, not speaking, barely eating, recoiling from us all as if we were contagious. I think it was the way that he removed himself during those weeks that killed Catherine’s feeling for him. Slowly, she began to get over Christophe’s death, to be almost her old self again, but I knew that their marriage was over.’

Juliette poured herself another drink but Bell shook her head when she waved the bottle in her direction. It all fitted in. She could imagine how Charles would withdraw, sealing his own misery up inside him and hating the show of it in others.

‘And Charles, all this time, was grieving in his own way?’ she asked gently. Juliette nodded. ‘In his own silent, self-punishing way, yes. I’m sure that there was blame in Charles’s heart, to be doled out as he sat there on his own, brooding. To all of us, probably, but most of all, most bitterly, to himself. And to God, I think, which must have hit him hardest of all. He couldn’t explain to himself why God should have taken such an innocent, blameless little thing, let him die so painfully, unless it was as a punishment. And punishment for who else but he and Catherine? Either there is no God and his son’s death was tragic chance, or it was … divine retribution, I suppose?’

Bell understood. So, by seeing the tragedy of his son’s death as punishment, for whatever sins he and Catherine were guilty of, Charles kept the fact of his faith alive. Yet he lost his wife, and at the same time locked himself in a marriage that denied him the chance of future happiness. With another woman, and another woman’s children, thought Bell bitterly.

Juliette was staring down into her glass, wrapped up in her own memories.

‘So Catherine left him?’ she prompted, with a trace of impatience, not understanding how the sad story had any bearing on the frozen ending of her birthday party three years later.

‘Oh no,’ said Juliette at once. ‘Not then. Something else was happening. You know that Château Larue-Grise once belonged to my mother’s family?’

Bell shook her head, surprised by the abrupt change of subject. Larue-Grise was a once-prestigious property a few kilometres from Reynard. It had been going downhill for fifteen years, but had changed hands a few seasons ago, and now there were excellent reports of it.

‘No,’ she answered, ‘I didn’t. I do know that it’s owned now by an American consortium who are investing large amounts of money, replanting and putting right the neglect … I’m sorry, that doesn’t sound very polite to your mother’s family.’

‘It doesn’t matter. There was no money and – well, the family sold out, as you rightly say, nominally to an American consortium.’

‘Nominally?’

Juliette smiled without any trace of amusement.

‘Oh yes. The real power behind the paper tide is your new friend Valentine Gordon.’ She held up her hand. ‘Don’t protest yet. There’s no doubt that he will be a new friend. He’s very charming. Very attractive. We all liked him, except for Charles who would have nothing to do with him from the very beginning. Too different, you see, too radically opposed on every possible point. Well, Valentine came from California to live at Larue-Grise, supervising the facelift. He was admirably thorough – not only must the vineyards be restocked, the chais kitted out with all the latest technology, but the château itself must be restored to its former glory. Naturally, he came to see Hélène to find out what he could about the old ways. We all became friends – at least, we women did. This was a little while before Christophe died.’

Juliette was looking at Bell now, candid and direct, her forehead wrinkled with the concentration needed to tell her story clearly against the effects of what she had drunk.

‘I liked him especially,’ she said, after a second’s hesitation. ‘He’s very powerful, very good at getting what he wants, but it’s all done with a … recklessness that makes you feel he doesn’t really care about anything. It’s a fatally appealing combination.’

Bell raised her eyebrows, not needing to put the question into words.

‘No,’ responded Juliette, ‘although I would have, with pleasure, if I hadn’t been occupied with someone else during those months.’

Bell was beginning to see.

‘Then there was Christophe’s illness. Afterwards, for a time, Valentine proved himself to be a real friend. He wasn’t part of it, not family, but he was always there when one of us needed to get away from this. I cried in his arms enough times, and Catherine did too.’

Bell’s suspicion became an unpleasant conviction.

‘He seduced her?’

‘Yes. He wanted her, and he saw his chance. He didn’t intend to take her away from Charles. He didn’t want to be responsible for her, or help her recover, or anything noble like that. He just wanted to put her notch on his belt.’ There was a dark red flush of anger over Juliette’s face and neck now, and her fists were clenched.