Celebration

It was very late when Bell stretched and turned to smile at him.

‘That’s all. I know where I am, now. At least, I think I do.’

‘You think you do,’ he agreed, smiling back at her.

They stood up and with his hand on her arm he guided her across the dark hallway to the curving stone stairway.

‘Goodnight,’ said Bell. She wanted to tell him that it was all right, that she would forget what she had heard tonight, but she couldn’t find the words. ‘Thank you for asking me to Château Reynard,’ she said, simply.

The baron made a quick movement in the dimness and for an electric moment Bell thought he was going to kiss her.

No, she thought. Not yet. Then he took her hand. The blond head bent over it and he kissed her knuckles. When he looked up again their eyes met and laughter bubbled between them.

‘If one is going to be a French baron,’ he murmured, ‘one might as well behave like one. You would have been disappointed if I hadn’t kissed your hand.’

‘Bitterly disappointed,’ said Bell.

He let go of her fingers and she turned to climb the shallow stairs. When she reached the top and looked down he was still standing there, watching her.

Bell woke up to a morning that was all brilliant light and dancing shadows. From her three commanding windows she could see that the blue sky was dotted with fast-moving puffs of cloud and a strong breeze was rustling the leaves of the elm trees that fringed the château lawns. The vague feeling of apprehensiveness that had weighed on her when she opened her eyes was dispelled by the beauty of the day. It was impossible to feel anything but lighthearted.

Bell hummed softly as she showered and dressed. Jeans and a T-shirt were the best clothes for touring cellars and vineyards, and she topped them off with a brilliant blue ciré jacket that made her eyes look more blue than green.

Marianne tapped on her door.

‘Monsieur le baron asks if you will join him for breakfast?’

‘Right away,’ said Bell, and ran lightly down the stairs to find him.

In the early sunshine reflecting off the length of the polished table and without Hélène’s chilly presence, the dining-room seemed smaller and more inviting.

Charles was standing between the long windows, a dark figure between the shafts of light, waiting for her.

‘Good morning. You slept well, I hope?’ Calm, polite and self-assured again. Very much the baron in his château, conventionally concerned for his guest’s comfort.

‘Very well, thank you.’

‘Excellent. Marianne, we are ready for our coffee now.’

As soon as she was gone, Charles smiled his rare smile and pulled out a chair for her.

‘Today will be our day for business. If it suits you, I will take you round the chais this morning. Unfortunately I have to do some other business at lunch and for a while this afternoon, so I will leave you in Jacopin’s care.’

‘That will be fine.’

‘Then, this evening, perhaps you would like to meet my sister, Juliette?’

‘Very much.’

Marianne brought in the coffee, and he poured Bell’s himself into a deep porcelain bowl decorated with harebells. As he handed it to her he said, ‘You will see that life at Reynard is not all unhappiness.’

Bell opened her mouth to say she hadn’t imagined it was, but a glance from Charles told her that she should leave the topic closed.

Over their croissants and coffee they talked about the hopes for the vintage. The summer had been long and hot, and all over Bordeaux men were praying now for a few days of gentle rain to swell the grapes before the picking in October. With a little rain and then a few days more sunshine it could be a magnificent year.

Later Charles and Bell walked together towards the chais. The gravel crunched underfoot as they skirted the end gable of the house and followed the sweep of the driveway towards a stone arch. The archway framed a cobbled yard and the barn-like doors beyond like a picture and Bell paused to admire the view.

Jacopin popped up beside them like a rabbit.

‘Bonjour,’ he said, the brown skin wrinkling all over his face.

‘Jacopin,’ Charles told him, ‘Miss Farrer will want to see everything.’

‘Of course,’ the little man responded, beaming at her with pleasure.

Together they walked over to one of the long, low buildings and Bell lost herself at once in the heart of the Château. Hélène’s frigid domain with its gilt chairs and silk cushions, on the other side of the wall, was forgotten. This was the real Reynard, where Charles was the king of these rows of barrels, fermenting vats and massed ranks of bottles.

The tour of the chais with Charles at her side did remind Bell of a royal progress. Blue-overalled men straightened up from their work when they saw him and waited for him to speak. Bell saw that his cool glance missed nothing. It was plain that he ran his cellars with old-fashioned discipline. Charles’s men were hard at work scrubbing out the great fermenting vats ready to receive the new vintage. As soon as the grapes were ripe, some time over the next few weeks, they would be picked and brought by the lorry-load to be crushed in the huge, old-fashioned mechanical crusher. Then they would be allowed to ferment, at carefully controlled temperatures, into wine. All had to be spotlessly clean before the harvest, the focus of the year. Bell noted the clean bare walls and well-swept floors, and the men with their steaming buckets, with approval.

But one thing she saw even more clearly. The primitive machinery was beautifully, lovingly maintained, but it was antiquated. Charles was making no effort to bring in the technological advances that were slowly creeping into the cellars of the greatest Châteaux. For a little while yet, Bell thought, he would be able to hold his own. But, in the end, his refusal to march with the times would tell against him. Already, Bell knew, there were whispers in the trade that Château Reynard would not hold its top position for ever. She remembered quite clearly what he had said last night. Here, at least, there is some permanence. Bell understood, but she knew that he was wrong. If Charles clung for too long to the old, slow ways he would destroy Reynard.

How could anyone tell that to a man like Charles de Gillesmont? Bell glanced at the beaked profile beside her, remembered the arrogant set of his mouth, and shuddered at the thought.

Jacopin was ushering them into the next section. Along the shadowed walls, reaching up to the low arched roof, were rows of stacked-up oak hogsheads. Each one had a loose glass plug in the top and a primitive spigot in the side. They contained last year’s wine, soon to be pumped into barrels to make room for the new vintage.

Jacopin produced a candle, lit it, then stuck it into a little clawed holder on the front of one of the hogsheads. He watched with Bell as Charles bent over the nearest dark wooden shape and ran some of the wine off into a little shallow silver cup. He handed it to her and she held it to the candlelight. The wine was inky-dark with the bright silver barely gleaming through it. Bell sniffed and then took a mouthful on to her tongue, sucking air over it through her clenched teeth. The new wine was cold and bitter, dumb and full of tannin, but somewhere lurking beyond the immediate unpleasantness was the sinewy promise of a great claret.

Bell rolled the wine around her mouth once more to detect the last nuances and then spat it out on to the sawdust covered floor. Charles’s face was in deep shadow but she knew that he was waiting. She gave him a quick, confirming nod but there was admiration in her eyes. Château Reynard was still, just, one of the greatest of the great. Satisfied, Charles led her on down the length of the chais.

At midday they came out into the cobbled yard again, blinking in the light. Charles consigned her formally to Jacopin’s care and strode away. At her side the little man blew out his cheeks in a sigh of relief and winked at her again.

‘Come with me,’ he invited, all smiles.

For lunch she shared a coarse cassoulet with Jacopin and his gang of broken-toothed and Gauloise-redolent workmen. They sat in the richly-smelling kitchen that linked the chais with the main house, hung with shiny copper pans and strings of hams and onions. The château’s chef, Madame Robert, ladled the steamingly fragrant stew out on to thick white plates and put a basket of roughly chopped French bread in front of each person. The conversation, not always intelligible to Bell, eddied round the scrubbed oak table and was punctuated with roars of laughter. Jacopin obligingly repeated some of the politer phrases for her, and she joked back in her educated Parisian French which made them laugh even louder.

As they ate, the men gulped down tumblers full of coarse new wine as if it was water. This was the thin everyday drink made specially each year for the grape pickers and the workmen, and it was as different from the nectar in Charles’s cobwebbed bottles across the yard as lemonade is from vintage champagne.

Bell enjoyed her lunch enormously, particularly when she remembered the stilted formality of dinner the night before with its clink of fine china and the patball of polite conversation. She was just reflecting, as she failed to catch the punchline of a joke that sent everyone else off into gusts of laughter, that she definitely belonged to what Hélène probably called the common herd when Jacopin tugged her sleeve.

His eyes were still streaming with tears of laughter, and his little hat was pushed right to the back of his head.

‘You enjoy yourself with us?’ She smiled her answer. ‘Good, good. Mademoiselle Juliette, too, often comes to have her meal in here. Then you should hear the jokes!’ Bell began to look forward to meeting Charles’s sister. Jacopin lifted up his half-full glass and drained it, then mopped up the last of the juice on his plate with a ragged hunk of bread.

‘Now,’ he went on, ‘are you ready for a long walk? We will look at the vineyards.’

The afternoon, spent walking between the rows of rustling vines and breathing in the clear air, was as enjoyable for Bell as the morning had been but she was heavy-footed with tiredness when at last Jacopin led her back towards the château. As they rounded the corner of the house Bell saw a girl running down the steps from the front door. She saw a mass of blonde hair exactly the same colour as Charles’s and heard the little man exclaim with pleasure at her side.

‘Mademoiselle Juliette is back!’ A moment later Juliette was standing in front of them, a huge smile showing her even white teeth. Bell thought that Charles had inherited most of the beauty in the family, but his sister radiated more than her share of warmth and good nature. Dark blue eyes the same colour as Charles’s met Bell’s, with a long, clear-sighted stare.