Vintage (32 page)

With his Australian bush hat pushed to the back of his head, Halliday Baines squatted on the parched earth of Château de Cluzac. He was measuring the maturation of the grapes, now bunched so tightly that there were no air spaces between them.

‘How are they doing?’ Clare watched the progress of his hydrometer.

‘Should be OK.’

‘Not long to go now.’

‘Not long.’

‘Albert says it could be the best year since sixty-one.’

‘What’s left of it!’

‘The hail wasn’t my fault…’

‘And the green harvest?’

‘Everyone else was doing it.’

‘Everyone else could afford to. You should have left it to Albert.’

‘He says it should be all right.’

‘If it doesn’t rain.’

‘Albert says the conditions are perfect…’

Halliday straightened up and walked on along the rows ahead of Clare.

‘The trick is knowing when to pick,’ he said. ‘Pick too soon and your wine won’t be fruity; wait too long, the balance and development is affected. Quality comes from concentration. Each of these old vines yields one bottle of wine. That’s your château wine. Your money in the bank. You wait until there’s a good balance, then start picking while the weather holds. Twenty vats of wine and the livelihoods of twenty families will depend on your
decision. You need strong nerves.’ Halliday glanced at his watch. ‘I’m due at Estaminet.’

‘We were expecting you for lunch. Sidonie made your favourite…’

‘Some other time.’

Clare was disappointed.

‘Haven’t seen much of you recently.’

‘No.’

‘Where have you been?’

‘Around.’

‘Have you heard from Billy?’

‘Billy’s in good shape.’

‘Look, Halliday, it was hardly my fault it chose to hail on my vineyards…’

‘Did I say it was?’

‘Then what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.’

Walking him to the courtyard, Clare was discomfited by the oenologist’s uncharacteristic silence. He jumped lightly into the jeep.

‘See you!’ His voice was flat.

‘Are you ill or something?’

‘Nope.’ Reaching for the seat-belt, he looked at her for the first time. ‘If you really want to know, Clare, I saw you coming out of Assurance Mondiale…’

‘So?’

He switched on the ignition.

‘It was two o’clock in the morning.’

After leaving Waterperry, Clare could not even
remember
how she had got back to Bordeaux. The shock of discovering that Miranda was shacked up with Jamie, coming hard on the heels of the gloomy conversation with Grandmaman, had completely thrown her. Downing two straight vodkas at the airport bar, she had presumably
boarded the plane, where they were followed by two more.

What prompted her to drive to the Rue Vauban rather than branching off at Blanquefort on to the Route des Châteaux, she could only guess.

To her relief, Alain Lamotte was still working. He opened the door to her himself. Switching off the computer in his office, he motioned her to a seat on the sofa as he collected up his papers and put them into his briefcase.

‘Lucky you caught me. I was just going home. What brings you here so late? Problems?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Messieurs Huchez and Combe been bothering you?’

‘Donne moi un cigarette, Alain!’

He looked up sharply.

‘You don’t smoke.’

‘Donne quand même…’

Alain picked up the pack from his desk and proffered them, lighting her cigarette for her.

‘It’s not the fisc.’ Clare inhaled deeply. Jamie would kill her. ‘It has nothing to do with the château.’

Lighting his own cigarette, Alain came to sit beside her, his hands between his knees.

‘Want to talk?’

Outside it was still warm. Clare was surprised to find that she was cold and that her hands were shaking.

Getting up from the sofa, Alain stubbed out his
cigarette
, lowered the blind on the door and picked up the telephone.

‘Qu’est ce que tu fais?’

‘I am calling Delphine. She worries if I am late.’

While Alain told Delphine that she was not to delay dinner, that some urgent business had cropped up, Clare took the bottle of Château de Cluzac she had brought for
Jamie from her duffle bag and put it on the table in front of the sofa.

‘You don’t happen to have a corkscrew?’

Alain brought a corkscrew and two glasses and sat down beside her. As he opened the bottle, she noticed for the first time that his eyes were green and that there were yellow flecks in them.

‘Jamie’s fucking Miranda.’

‘Who’s Miranda?’ Alain handed her a glass of wine.

‘Does it matter?’

By the time she had recounted her story, by the time she had given Alain a blow-by-blow account of her day, forgetting neither the rose petals nor the tell-tale red hairs in the brush, the ashtray was full, the Château de Cluzac empty, and they had made inroads into the cognac, which was kept for the Assurance Mondiale clients.

Sitting so close to Alain that she could feel the warmth of his body, Clare put her head on his shoulder.

‘It’s so nice to have friends.’

The room was revolving.

‘Maybe you have made a mistake.’

‘I’m not s-s-stupid.’

Alain touched her hair, breathing the scent of it.

‘Hold me tight, Alain.’

He could hardly believe he held Clare de Cluzac in his arms.

‘Tighter.’ Clare fastened her mouth over his.

Alain thought of Delphine, then, dismissing her image from his mind, removed his ‘Galleon’ tie.

Clare closed her eyes. She did not want to look at him, did not want him to speak.

‘Que je t’aime…’

She did not want to be loved. She wanted to be ravaged, annihilated, brutalised, until the image of Jamie and
Miranda Pugh was expunged from her head. She tore at Alain’s shirt.

‘Fuck me, Alain. Fuck me!’

Sobbing, she let go of her anger, channelling it into her pelvis until it flowed out between her legs.

There was no more conversation. Rolling off the sofa, scattering the papers from Alain’s briefcase, biting and scratching at each other, they made love until they were exhausted.

‘Mon Dieu, Clare…’

She stopped his lips with her finger, as he covered her body with kisses before taking her tenderly in his arms. When he felt the slow drops damp on his skin, he imagined that her tears were for him.

Clare awoke with her head on Alain’s knees. Trying not to disturb him – he was sleeping like a baby – she disentangled herself. Picking up her clothes, and taking the key to the washroom from his desk, she slipped out of the office.

When she returned, Alain was dressed. He was picking up his papers from the floor, trying to collate them.

She let him hold her but turned her head when he attempted to kiss her.

‘Qu’est ce que ne va pas?’

‘Nothing’s the matter. I’m hungry.’ She had eaten nothing since lunch.

Alain reached for his jacket.

‘I’ll take you for dinner…’

‘Non.’

Clare extricated Sidonie’s tarte tatin and the over-ripe cheese from her duffle bag and set them on the table.

‘You are a strange girl!’

It was two o’clock by the time they left Assurance Mondiale. Going down in the lift, Alain pressed her to the wall with his body and kissed her gently.

‘When will I see you?’

‘See me?’

In the mirror she noticed the dark circles that ringed her eyes.

‘I’ll call you.’ She meant about château business.

‘Soon?’

She was tired and needed to sleep.

‘Soon.’

She slept for two days. Viola thought that she was ill. Petronella, who was coping with the visites, needed some time off; the paperwork was piling up on the desk of the Bureau d’Acceuil; Monsieur Boniface wanted an urgent meeting.

‘Jamie’s rung twice,’ Viola said, when Clare finally appeared for breakfast. ‘I told him you were exhausted…’

Clare looked up sharply as if her one-night stand with Alain were written on her face.

‘He was worried about you.’

‘If he calls again I’m out.’

‘Out…?’

‘I’d rather not discuss it.’

‘Suit yourself.’

Taking several bulky manilla envelopes from the chair beside her, Viola handed them to Clare.

‘This is for you.’

‘What is it?’

‘Open it, you’ll find out.’

Opening one of the envelopes, Clare removed a bundle of 500-franc notes. She stared at Viola.

‘It’s for your barrels.’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘From Charles-Louis.’

‘Papa giving me money to buy new oak!’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘Mother! What exactly have you been up to?’

‘Give me another cup of coffee and I’ll tell you.’

Smiling broadly, for it was the best thing that had happened to her in years, Viola repeated the story – now heavily embroidered – of what had passed between herself and Charles-Louis and how she had held him to ransom over the divorce.

When Clare had stopped laughing, her own troubles temporarily forgotten, she said, ‘This money belongs to you.’

‘I don’t need it. The Fitzpatrick Equine Centre is turning over nicely. I don’t owe anything on the house. I rarely move from the place. I’ve got Declan. What more do I want?’

‘I can’t take it.’

‘You’ve no choice. There’s one condition. Don’t tell your father. He’d kill me!’

By the time Clare called unannounced on Halliday, Jamie had rung a dozen times, and there was a stack of unanswered faxes from the John Radcliffe on her desk.

Wearing shorts and trainers – he had just returned from his marathon training – Halliday seemed neither pleased nor displeased to see her.

Wandering round his apartment while he was in the shower, Clare looked at the framed photographs on the buffet. She picked one up to examine it more closely.

‘Is this your wife?’

Halliday, his long hair still wet, had changed into a bush shirt and clean jeans.

‘That’s Maureen.’

‘She’s pretty.’

He nodded.

‘You miss her.’

‘What do you think? You didn’t come here to talk about Maureen.’

‘You said you’d help me with new barrels.’

‘I said you need a million francs…’

‘I’ve got a million francs.’

‘Where from?’

‘Is that any of your business?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I can take a pretty shrewd guess.’

‘Look, Halliday, I’ve had enough of your innuendoes. I welcome your opinion as an oenologist; I’m willing to take your advice about my grapes. Keep out of my private life! It has nothing whatever to do with you.’

‘Sit down, I’ll show you a card trick.’

Apologising in the only way he knew, Halliday took a deck of cards from the buffet and, laying them on the coffee table, deftly sorted out the four aces, four kings, four queens and four knaves, which he removed from the pack.

‘There were once four queens, whose countries bordered upon each other. The four countries met at a point marked by a dense forest where the four kings – their husbands – hunted deer. One day, these four royal ladies’ – he laid the four queens side by side – ‘decided to take a country ramble without guards or attendants. They hadn’t gone very far when a great storm arose. Convinced that the weather would soon clear, each queen hurried as fast as possible to the shelter of the forest where they found a woodcutter’s cottage. The good woman who owned the cottage, who was much flattered by the royal favour, ushered each queen into one of her four rooms. Then she went into the kitchen to brew them some tea…’

He slid the four queens across the coffee table into four imaginary rooms.

‘Now it so happened that the four kings missed their wives and went out looking for them. They were also caught in the storm and went to the woodcutter’s hut, where the old woman begged them to make themselves at home under her poor roof. One by one the kings found their wives and joined them, while they waited for more favourable weather…’

As Clare watched, fascinated, Halliday placed the kings, according to suit, beside their queens in the four imaginary rooms.

‘Scarcely were the kings settled, than four young officers arrived at the cottage demanding shelter. “Please accommodate yourselves where you can, your excellencies,” said the old woman, and the four young officers each went to a different room…’

He placed the knaves, indiscriminately, together with the matched kings and queens in each of the four rooms.

‘The quiet of the cottage was disturbed once more by the arrival of four Secret Service agents who believed that the young officers were spies. Ordering the old woman aside, they marched into the four rooms…’

Without regard to suit, he put the aces one in each room.

‘Finding that their suspicions were groundless, the Secret Service agents grew restless. They wandered around from room to room, as did the rest of the party, all of whom were getting bored with waiting for the storm to end…’

Halliday mixed up the occupants of the various rooms thoroughly, before gathering up all sixteen of the cards.

‘After a while, the four young officers thought they would like to join forces again; the four kings and queens got fed up with each other – as husbands and wives do…’

Glancing at Clare he dealt the cards one by one – one card into each room and then another card into each room – into four packs of four, as if for a rubber of whist.

‘When the old woman, bearing her best tray filled with cups of tea, knocked on the doors of the rooms later on, what do you think she found? In one room she found the four queens discussing the latest court scandal…’

He turned up the four queens.

‘In another room the four kings were playing piquet…’

He turned up the four kings.

‘In the third room the four young officers were boasting about their conquests…’

He turned up the four knaves.

‘And in the last the Secret Service officers were discussing the latest bugging devices…’

Beating him to it, Clare turned up the four aces.

‘Brilliant!’

‘Billy used to like that one.’