Authors: Walter J. Boyne
Poor Monique, and poor Maman. She was more religious than
ever, praying every day in the chapel for her live children as well as her dead. He wished he could tell her about the baby—it would give
her a happy heart attack. She had not yet accepted that he was marrying a non-Catholic, and all but ignored the fact that Patty had taken instructions, been baptized, and genuinely intended to raise their children as Catholics. Perhaps his mother sensed that the whole process was done not for Stephan, nor for principle, but simply as a means of getting along, of being accepted.
But his mother was strong-willed and capable. He knew that when the wedding had been announced, she had managed a frenzy of activity, keeping Pierre and Monique hopping with the arrangements.
Stephan rose and stood by the window. Was it all the war? Would their lives have been so turbulent if his brothers were still alive, still working the estate? He saw his father enter the courtyard, then go to
the arched doorway that led down to his cellar, walking with the
rolling gait his war wounds had imparted. He had gone into the war with the face and chest of a bulldog; he had emerged with a walk to
match. What a drinker he was! Never drunk, never sober, he maintained an alcoholic equilibrium so exact that he might have had some sort of brandy thermostat inside him. He made no secret of his drinking, and brooked no criticism of it either.
Appearances were deceiving. Stephan's father for once was definitely not taking everything with equanimity, nor tempering his usual carefully monitored intake. Now he ran his hands along the
top shelf, searching not for a bottle but for a book. He did not find it
at once, and he panicked, afraid that his wife had somehow located it.
The book was his own shorthand accounting of their finances.
The wedding was going to be the last straw. When it was over, he
would have to sell everything, and move into a smaller place in town. Monique would have to find quarters of her own.
He opened the book. It had its formal counterpart in Paris, where Henri Troyse-Rozier, the senior partner of the bank the family once
had had an interest in, tried his best to help them. Everything that could be sold had been sold. Henri had gone past both the bounds of friendship and the rules of his firm to provide the bulk of the
money to prepare the house for the wedding. Now the villa was
mortgaged beyond redemption, as was the country house at Saint-Jean-le-Thomas. The only unencumbered property was the warehouse and wharf tucked away in the corner of the harbor at Marseilles. Vacant now, it had once been the heart of his father's
business, bringing in dirt-cheap wine from Italy and Spain to blend
with the worst pressings of his own vineyard. He sold the resulting
mixture at cut-rate prices to the bureaucrats of the French army
around the world. It had been a totally secret process, for the idea of
French soldiers drinking
pinard
of foreign origin would have been
intolerable to the press and to Frenchmen alike.
The Hafners' generosity in providing such a bounty of funds for the wedding had only underlined how far the estate had fallen into
disrepair. In the six weeks since Stephan had said he was going to be
married, all the mortgage money had gone for roof repairs and
plumbing and for gardeners to cut back the overgrown grounds. He
had opened rooms long closed, the ballroom, the library, the large dining room, and the money had poured away in an endless stream to make them usable. The chapel had been the most expensive. He looked in the book and winced: more than 14,000 francs, just to make it suitable for a wedding that would take no more than an hour, be celebrated for a day, and last perhaps what—five years? These American girls put husbands on and off as a French girl did hats.
Except poor Monique. She did with lovers what French girls did
with hats—or perhaps, more appropriately, with loaves of bread,
consuming them.
He put the book back, and drew down a bottle so old that the
encrusted dust was as hard as the handblown glass itself. It was an
Armagnac from 1813. There was no label. It came from their own family distillery, and to him and the fortunate few he had shared a
few scarce bottles with, it was the best in the world. There were five
bottles left. Three of them had been intended for his sons, one for his daughter, one for the first grandchild. Now he had two spares.
He sat down and poured a splash of the golden, syrupy brandy
into the thin-walled bulbous glass he had carefully washed and brought with him. He sat, warming the amber liquor with his hands, thinking that in the end it didn't matter. One had to keep
everything relative to the events of the war. He had been a reservist
in 1914, one of the thousands who had actually ridden to the battle of the Marne in taxis, a distinction millions now seemed to claim. He'd ridden back in a creaking hospital cart, unsprung and horse-drawn, with shrapnel in his back and legs.
There was no Edith Cavell or Florence Nightingale in the miserable little hovel where he was operated on, nor any anesthetic either. When the butchers they'd recruited for doctors were
finished, his legs were permanently damaged, great collops of flesh
cut away with the metal shards of shrapnel. He had recovered to
serve the rest of the war in the gigantic Schneider munitions plant in
Paris, a reserve major pushing papers. He reached up and touched the scar concealed beneath his still-dark mat of hair. A German trenching tool had put it there, a slash with a spade that had almost scalped him. Somehow the doctors had left that wound alone, and it had healed very well.
After the war there had still been very little money, and the land had gone, properties and acreage, year by year. Now they were down to the house and the land immediately around it. The family
distillery, which had been only a diversion for his grandfather when
the family owned thousands of hectares of rich farmland, was now
the principal source of income, selling sound workingman's marc, and running a few bottles of Special Reserve which he kept for trading. He had only one acknowledged hobby, collecting fine cognac, Armagnac, calvados, and marc. He was widely recognized as a connoisseur, but in recent years could only trade to get the particular bottles he wanted.
His other, but unacknowledged, hobby managed the best local
auberge,
Le Montespan, with her husband. In his youth, Elisabeth and he had been tempestuous lovers; now they were very good friends who sometimes still managed a loving hour together.
He rubbed the back of his legs. The wounds that truly pained him
were not from German shrapnel, but from the German machine guns that had killed his oldest son, Alexandre. The second son,
Robert, had died in a stupid accident, crushed when a farm wagon
turned over on him. It had nothing to do with the Germans, except
that if there had been no war, no invasion, Robert would have been away at school and not working in the fields like a navvy, available
for the accident, and things would be different now.
There was a knock at the door. He quickly checked to make sure
the book was back in its hiding place, then let Stephan in.
He poured his son a drink from a less precious bottle. Stephan didn't want it, but knew better than to refuse.
"Papa, we have rooms for everyone, except the one American, Mr. Roehlk. Can we put him up at the inn?"
"But of course. But why not the same with this Rhoades fellow? Is
he a member of the family?"
"No, but he is apparently Captain Hafner's confidant; Mrs. Hafner requested that he stay with us if at all possible."
"Let's put the Boche in the inn as well. He can stink up their
bedrooms instead of ours. I never believed I would see the day when
a live German would be in my house." He paused for a moment, nose deep in the glass, pulling the soul of the Armagnac deep into his lungs. You could get drunk just smelling this, he thought. He
looked up in horror. "I never believed that I would be related to one,
even by marriage."
"Papa!" Stephan's tone was sharp. "You only have to put up with
him for a few days. Do it for my sake, for Patty's sake."
Pierre Dompnier drank the Armagnac, and poured himself another from the lesser bottle. He offered the bottle to Stephan, who shook his head.
"And what dowry does the Boche bring? Has he any money?"
Stephan laughed. "He has plenty of money, but no one has ever
discussed a dowry. I think they feel Patty and I must marry, as we
have . . ;" He paused, trying to soften the idea. "As we have spent so
much time together."
"Probably linens and some furniture. The rich don't get rich by giving it away." He looked sharply at Stephan. "And how do you feel about this man? He may have killed your comrades!"
Stephan shrugged. "Yes, he may even have killed Patty's father. But he was just doing a job, as I was. Somewhere in Germany there
are eight families whose sons I killed. I'm not proud of it, I would not want to see them, but I would not wish them to hate me, either."
They walked together down the cool hallways, so familiar to him,
unchanged since his youth. Papa was the easy one, going off to lie down and burn away the Armagnac. Now he had to talk to his mother.
She was sitting in her bedroom, the wooden shutters closed, a
shawl over her head, crying softly. He looked at her before he spoke.
She was totally in black, her dress relieved not even by a nun's white
collar. Her face seemed to sink within the folds of her shawl, from which, like a child in a Munch painting, some terrible silent cry of pain, inaudible but palpable, eternally screamed.
"Maman, you must pull yourself together. You must be able to
greet Patty and her family, and be gracious to her. If not, I'll leave
tonight, and we'll have only a civil ceremony in Paris."
It was necessarily cruel. The thought of marriage outside the church—marriage in which they might lose control of any grandchildren—was unthinkable.
"They'll be here this afternoon. No more of this nonsense. Get
yourself dressed, get out of those mourning clothes, have your hair
fixed, do whatever you have to do. But be gracious!"
She sobbed and nodded, her hands flying around the rosary.
When Stephan left, Antoinette Dompnier pulled a tablet out from the drawer in her table. On the top page was a numbered list, in her precise handwriting, of all that had to be done, running from "(1) Contact Father Closterman" to "(27) Arrange with Sassard for the cake." On the following pages, in the same sequence, she had
listed the status of each project. Most had check marks on the front
page, signifying that they were completed. The only major things
that remained were the final fittings of the dresses for Monique and
herself and confirming the entertainment. Stephan had said something about this Hafner fellow, this German, helping with the entertainment. She muttered to herself, "Perhaps his wife will dance."
She was glad that Stephan had been completely open. The bride's
mother had been married to an American flyer, apparently, and
before that had been a chorus girl! And the stepfather, a Boche flyer
himself! A fine combination for in-laws, wealthy or not.
She returned to the list, pleased that enough was finished that she
would have time to pray, to strengthen herself to endure what must be done.
They had so little money, and so much to do. She had driven Monique unmercifully, somehow forced Pierre to help, and then enlisted the aid of old Debre in the distillery to do the rest.
Now she was content. It would be a perfect wedding, befitting
their family and the house. And then, she knew, it would be time to
move. That old rogue Pierre thought he had fooled her all these years with his fumbling with Elisabeth down at the inn, with his mortgages, with his drinking. They were now hopelessly in debt, but their son would have married. Poor Monique; she was un-marriageable, and she would have to survive on her own.
Back in his room, Stephan took a tumbler of cognac and two
tablets, and threw himself on his bed. It was stupid to have returned,
to think that he could add anything to their lives. They should have
had a civil marriage in Paris, and let it go at that. Now they had to endure God knew what. Patty was worth it all, he told himself. She
was worth it all. And perhaps she was pregnant!
The last thirty minutes of the train ride had not been pleasant for anyone. Patty had asked all four of them—Bruno, Charlotte, Dusty, and Murray—to sit in her compartment while she lectured them.
"Bruno, the French are not like the Americans. They will not be delighted that you dined with the Kaiser and were an ace. So don't talk about that. And don't talk about how smart you were about the stock market. Just say pleasant things about the house and the weather."