Kitabı oku: «Celebration», sayfa 2

Bell knew that she was in a mess. It would have amused her if she could have known that anyone envied her at that moment.

The evening came to an end at last. They all stood outside the door of the club, hugging each other affectionately. The two women and Marcus wished her bon voyage.

‘If we don’t see you before, send us a postcard from San Francisco,’ said Elspeth. ‘Have a wonderful time.’

‘Give my love to Valentine,’ Marcus called. ‘’Byeeee.’

Edward slammed the door of his battered car and reversed recklessly down the street before glancing at Bell.

‘Cheer up,’ he advised her. ‘You are quite lucky, you know.’ She bit her lip. Guilty of self-pity, as well.

He left her at the door of her flat and drove away with a cheerful wave and his habitual three toots on the horn.

Bell let herself in and wandered into her bedroom. Her packing was done, and she wasn’t sleepy yet. A nightcap, perhaps. She sloshed a measure of brandy into Edward’s empty wine glass that was still standing on the coffee table, then went over to her dressing-table to look at the open diary.

The square for the next day read ‘10 a.m. Wigmore & Welch. Plane 12.30’. That meant a wine-tasting first at an old-established firm of merchants, always worth a visit, and straight from there to the airport. The next three days were crossed through with neat diagonals and the words ‘Ch. Reynard’. The second of those days was to be her twenty-eighth birthday.

The realization made Bell smile ruefully and she sat down to examine her face in the mirror. Not too many lines, yet, and the ones that she could see were all laughter lines. Automatically she picked up her hairbrush and began to stroke rhythmically at her hair. The one hundred nightly strokes was a habit left over from childhood and she clung to it obstinately, as a link with her dead mother.

In one of Bell’s last memories of her she was standing at her side with the identical blue-green eyes fixed on her own in the mirror.

‘A hundred times, Bell,’ she was saying, ‘and your hair will shine like silk.’

That was it, of course.

The thing she was really frightened of, and the thing she wouldn’t let herself think about. Except at times like now, when she was alone with a brandy glass in her hand and the memories were too vivid to suppress. She had seen it all through the agonizingly clear eyes of childhood. Her mother had died, and she had watched her father disintegrate. Day after day, year after year, defencelessly turning into a wreck of what he had once been.

Bell didn’t think she was remembering her very early years with any particular romantic distortion. Her parents had very obviously been deeply in love. They had been quite satisfied with their single child. Bell had the impression that her father didn’t want her mother to share out her love any further. He wanted the lion’s share of it for himself.

Selfish of him, probably, but he had suffered enough for that.

There had been very good times, early on. Her father was a successful stockbroker in those days, comfortably off. There had been a pretty house in Sussex, French holidays, birthday parties for Bell and the company of her witty, beautiful mother.

Joy Farrer had probably never been very strong. Bell remembered the thinness of her arms when they hugged her, and the bony ridges of her chest when she laid her head against it. Sometimes she had been mysteriously ill, but Bell remembered those days only as brief shadows.

Then, with brutal suddenness, she was gone.

One night when Bell went to bed she was there, reminding her not to skimp on the one hundred strokes with the hairbrush. In the morning she had disappeared. The house was full of whispers and strange, serious faces. Her father’s study door was locked.

It was several days before they told her she was dead, but she had really known it from the moment when she woke up on the first morning. The house had smelled dead. Something in it had shrivelled up and vanished overnight. A housekeeper arrived, but Bell did her crying alone. The sense of loss suffocated her, and at night she would try to stifle herself with her pillow to shut out the misery. She was convinced, in her logical, childish mind, that her mother’s death was her own, Bell’s, fault.

She had rarely seen her father in those first months. She learned from an aunt, years later, that he had taken to going out all night and driving his car round the Sussex lanes. Round and round, going nowhere. With a bottle of whisky on the seat beside him. By the time he was convicted of drunken driving Bell was away at boarding school and knew nothing about it. He simply stopped coming to pick her up from school at half-terms and holidays, and she travelled on the little local train instead. All she did know was that he was getting thinner, and an unfamiliar smell emanated from the well-cut grey suits that were now too large, creased, and slightly stained.

Her once-handsome, assured father was turning into a grey-haired stranger who behaved peculiarly.

It was in the middle of the summer holidays when she was fourteen that Bell realized that her father was an alcoholic. She found the plastic sack of empty whisky bottles in the garage when she was looking for the turpentine. She had been trying to brighten up the dingy kitchen with a coat of white paint.

That was the day Bell grew up.

She understood, in a single flash, how badly he had crumbled after the death of his wife. At the same moment she accepted another weight on to her burden of guilt. If only she could have compensated him in some way. If only she had been older, or more interesting to him. If only her mother and father hadn’t loved each other quite so much, and she herself had been more lovable. If only.

Her father had died when she was seventeen. Cirrhosis of the liver, of course. Bell looked down at her empty glass. It was ironic that she should be making her living now by writing about drink. She toyed with the idea of pouring herself another brandy, but it was easy to decide not to do it. No. Whatever else might happen to her, she didn’t think that was going to be her particular problem. It was enough to have watched it happen to her father.

‘Well now.’ Bell looked at her white face in the mirror. ‘While you are thinking about this, why not try to be totally honest?

‘Is it that you are scared of Edward being hurt like that one day if you disappear? You’re trying to protect him, in your heavy-handed way?

‘Well, yes …

‘Or are you really much more frightened of it happening to you? No commitment, therefore no risk?

‘Yes.’

Bell folded her arms on the dressing-table in front of her, laid her head on them and cried.

If someone else had told her her own story she would have dismissed it as too neat and pat. Incapable of loving, of marrying, because of her parents’ tragedy? Cool and collected outside in self-protection, but a guilty mess inside? Surely human beings were more complex than that?

‘This one isn’t,’ said Bell, through the sobs.

At last the storm subsided. She snatched up a handful of tissues from the box in front of her and blew her nose. A red-eyed spectre confronted her in the mirror.

‘What you really need,’ she addressed herself again, ‘is to look a complete fright tomorrow. That will give just the important, extra edge of confidence. Come on, Bell. What’s past is past, and the only thing that you can do now is carry on. At least you seem to understand yourself quite well.’

She put her tongue out at herself and caught the answering grin. That’s better.

She leant over and stuffed her passport and tickets into one of the pockets of her squashy leather handbag. Then she zipped and buckled the canvas holdall and stood the two bags side by side next to the door.

Notebooks, traveller’s cheques, file, tape recorder … she counted off in her head. All there.

She was ready to go, whatever might lie ahead.

TWO

‘Hello, gorgeous.’ The voice had an unmistakable Aussie twang. ‘All dressed up and somewhere to go? Not with me, as per usual.’

Without looking round, Bell knew that it was Max Morgan, wine correspondent of one of the local radio stations. She always felt that he only refrained from pinching her bottom because she was big enough to pinch him back. Still, she turned and smiled at him. His aggressiveness was redeemed by his raffish cowboy good looks, and she liked him well enough to ignore the challenge he invariably dangled at her. It was just a little harder to take than usual at five to ten on a Monday morning.

‘Hello, Max. Thank you for noticing the extra polish on my turnout this morning. As a matter of fact I am winging my way direct from here to Château Reynard itself.’

Max rolled his eyes and pursed his lips in a silent whistle of mock amazement.

‘Comment? Ze baron opens sa coeur to ze jolie Eenglish scribblaire?’ The parody French accent overlying the rich Australian vowels made Bell dissolve into laughter.

‘Something like that. It should be interesting.’

‘Too right. See if you can sweet talk him into getting out a bottle of the ’61. Haven’t tasted it myself, but I hear …’ He bunched his fingertips and kissed them extravagantly.

‘Mmmm. Shall we get on?’

They were standing at one end of a long, narrow room in the rear of Wigmore & Welch’s St James’s Street shop. The summer light was bright, and reflected off the white cloths spread over two long trestle tables down either side of the room. Along the length of the table, open bottles and rows of glasses were lined up. Down the centre of the room stood four waist-high metal cylinders; spittoons. Wigmore & Welch, wine merchants, were holding a press tasting for the publication of their latest list. Bell picked up a tasting sheet. Each wine was listed with blank spaces next to it for her comments.

‘Forty-seven wines,’ she remarked to Max. ‘Too many for me this morning. I’m just going to look at the clarets.’

‘Attagirl,’ he responded with his Wild West smile. ‘See what they’ve got that beats de Gillesmont.’

She walked the length of the room to where the line of high-shouldered bottles glowed against the white cloth. Wigmore & Welch prided themselves on their clarets, and today they were offering for comment a dozen fine wines from the sixties and seventies. Several of them would still be too young for drinking, but Bell was eager to see how they were developing, quietly sitting in their bottles. Her eyes flicked along the row of labels, then she picked up a bottle and poured an inch of wine into a glass. Quickly she held the glass up against the white cloth background to see the colour, then bent her head over the rim of the glass and sniffed sharply. Only then did she take a mouthful of wine, rolling it gently on her tongue and staring absently into the middle distance as she did so. Finally she twisted round and spat the mouthful into one of the tall metal spittoons.

Frowning with concentration now she scribbled on her tasting sheet ‘Good colour. Still closed in on the nose, but developing. Plenty of fruit and some oak.’ It was a special vocabulary, almost shorthand, but when Bell came back to her notes in a year, or two years, or whenever she tasted that particular wine again, it would be enough to trigger her memory.

Slowly she moved along the line of twelve bottles, tasting and spitting out a mouthful of each, writing quickly on her tasting sheet, talking to no one. Then she went back and tasted from three of the bottles again.

At last she pushed her hair back from her face and folded up her notes. The fine concentration needed was tiring, even after only twelve wines, and all round her people were working their way through forty-odd.

Across the room Max caught her eye and winked. Bell blew him a kiss, spoke briefly and in a low voice to two or three of the other tasters and turned to go. She would have to move quickly to get to Heathrow in time for her plane. At the door she met Simon Wigmore, scion of the family and latest recruit to the company of pinstriped well-bred young men who staffed the shop and the offices. His pink face brightened when he saw her.

‘Bell! Not going already?’

‘Yes, Simon, I’m sorry. I’ve got a plane to catch so I only had time to look at the clarets. The La Lagune is spectacular, isn’t it? Thank you for the tasting – I must dash.’

Simon Wigmore turned round to watch the tall, slim figure taking the steps two at a time. He sighed. Somehow he never seemed to be able to pin Bell Farrer down for long enough to … well, long enough for anything.

Out on the pavement Bell spotted the yellow light of a taxi and waved energetically.

‘Heathrow, please,’ she said and slammed the door behind her.

‘Right you are, duck,’ responded the driver, pleased. Bell stared out at the West End traffic and sighed with relief. At least she was on her way.

Three hours later Bell was ensconced in her window seat aboard the Air France 707, staring out at the curve of the French Atlantic coast as the plane dipped to meet it. At the same moment Baron Charles de Gillesmont sat facing his mother down the length of highly polished walnut dining table. He was peeling a peach, using a tiny mother-of-pearl handled knife to make a little unbroken whorl of golden skin. Hélène de Gillesmont’s mouth tightened with irritation as she watched him.

‘Charles,’ she said sharply, unable to bear the tense silence any longer, ‘you do not even do me the courtesy of listening to what I have to say.’ The baron looked up, laying down the peach and his knife as he did so with a gesture of infinite weariness.

‘I am so sorry that I can’t make you understand. I can’t bear to see you go on hurting yourself, and us, like this. God knows we have talked about it enough. There is no possibility, I tell you, none whatsoever, that Catherine and I can be together again. Too much has happened for us to be able to go back and take up the same old reins. And, as you know perfectly well, she is happy in Paris. And I … I am busy with what I have to do here. I don’t wish to change things, Hélène.’

The baronne clicked her tongue sharply. ‘I can understand that you are still grieved, shocked even, but defeated? My son? If only you would bring Catherine back here, make her stop all this Paris nonsense. You are her husband, after all. Then give her another child, and …’

Charles pushed back his chair with a savage jolt, knocking the table so hard that his glass fell over. A few drops of pale gold wine ran out on to the polished wood.

‘Why can’t you be quiet?’ His voice was barely more than a whisper and his face was dead white. Hélène faltered for a moment and put up a hand to adjust the smooth coil of grey-blonde hair. Her eyes avoided her son’s face until he spoke again, in a normal voice now.

‘Will you excuse me? I have to go and check whether Jacopin has left for the airport.’

‘And why,’ his mother called at his departing back, ‘must we have some foreign girl that none of us know in the house, now, of all times?’

In the doorway Charles looked back, a tired smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

‘Mama, this time is no different from any other. This is what our life is like, now. Nothing is going to change so you had better accustom yourself to it. You still have me, and Juliette, after all.’

This time the click of Hélène’s tongue was even sharper.

‘And a fine pair you are. My beautiful children, the envy of everyone, and what have you grown up into? One stubborn, cold, living like a monk, and the other no better than a hippy.’

But Charles was gone. He walked briskly down a flagged corridor to a heavy oak door. Inside, the little room was a comfortable clutter of papers, dusty bottles with torn labels, maps and rows of books. In the middle of the room, on a square of threadbare carpet, was an elegant little desk that might have been Louis XVI with an ancient black telephone perched on the top. Charles dialled a number and spoke at once.

‘Pierre? Has Jacopin taken the car to meet the young lady?’ Evidently satisfied with the reply he replaced the receiver and briskly took up a pen and a sheaf of account sheets. For a moment or two he stared intently at his work, then shrugged and leaned back in his swivel chair. From his window, at the extreme corner of the front façade of the château, he could see a sweep of manicured lawn and the curve of the gravel drive. Uncomfortable memories tugged at his consciousness as he stared unseeingly out, but he refused to admit them. Not worth starting work now, he told himself. Miss Farrer will be here within the hour, and the rest of the afternoon must be devoted to her.

He picked up a copy of La Revue de France Vinicole, tilted his chair so that he had a clear view of the driveway, and settled down to read.

Bell passed the trio of smiling hostesses at the aircraft door and stood at the top of the steel steps. Somewhere out there, underlying the airport smells of oil and rubber, she could detect the real smell of the country. It was earthy and sensuous, but clean and natural too, made up of damp leaves and rich food and woodsmoke. Even here in the airport chaos there was a feeling of calm, fertile prosperity. It was good to be back.

‘S’il vous plaît, madame,’ murmured a portly French businessman behind her, nudging her slightly with his briefcase. Bell started and hurried down the steps. She was waved through customs and her canvas bag rolled out on to the carousel within minutes. An excellent omen for the visit, she told herself, as she made for the barrier. As soon as she was through into the crowd of waiting faces, a hand touched her arm.

‘Mees Farraire?’ She turned to see, at shoulder height, the wrinkled, nut-brown Bordelais face of a little man in blue overalls and a round blue hat. She smiled down at him, feeling like a giantess.

‘That’s me.’

‘Not too flattering a photograph, if I may say so, but good enough for this purpose.’ His French was heavily accented to Bell’s Paris-educated ear, and she looked down half-bewildered at the magazine he was brandishing. It was a piece she had contributed to Decanter, decorated with a large snapshot of herself smiling rather toothily into the camera. It amused her to see it in such incongruous surroundings.

‘Where on earth did you get that?’

‘Oh, monsieur thinks of everything. You’ll see. This way to the car, madame. My name is Jacopin, by the way. Welcome to Bordeaux.’

Baron Charles’s car was a capacious brand-new grey Mercedes, veiled with a thick layer of whitish dust. Jacopin tossed her case into the boot and she sank into the passenger seat with a sigh of pleasure. The car swept along with the tiny man craning disconcertingly to see over the top of the long bonnet. Bell glimpsed the ugly, modern outskirts of the old grey town and then they were purring north-westwards into the fabulous country of the Haut-Médoc.

Under her breath, like a litany, Bell found that she was repeating the sonorous Château names as they passed. From here, from vines growing in this flat, undistinguished countryside, came the most famous, elegant wines in the world. To the right and left of the road stretched the green sea of vines, all carrying their precious bunches of grapes peacefully ripening in the August sun. Occasionally she glimpsed the bulk of a Château behind its wrought-iron gates, or screened by a protective belt of trees. Sometimes the flat gleam of the River Gironde appeared to their right, reflecting the hard blue of the summer sky. It was a peaceful, unspectacular, almost deserted landscape at this time of year, turning inwards to soak up the sun before the feverish bustle of the vintage when the grapes would be picked.

Jacopin shot a glance at Bell.

‘You know our country well?’ he asked, conversationally. Bell wrenched her attention from the clustering châteaux around the town of Margaux to answer him.

‘Not well. I’ve been a visitor three or four times, but always in a party of other journalists. This is my first visit to Château Reynard, and my first chance to spend a little time looking closely at the workings of a single château. I’m looking forward to it enormously,’ she added, truthfully. Jacopin nodded sagely.

‘Of course,’ he murmured, as if he could imagine no better place for her to be.

They drove on. Past the villages of St Julien (‘Ducru-Beaucaillou, Léoville-Barton, Léoville-Poyferré …’ murmured Bell), the landscape began to swell a little, rising to rolling mounds that were the closest that this open countryside came to hills. At last they were driving through the commune of Pauillac towards the little hill where Château Reynard dominated the surrounding acres of vines. Bell, still counting off the names, knew that they were almost there. She craned forward to catch her first glimpse of the buildings, and was rewarded by a flash of sun reflected from the rows of windows. The wrought-iron gates were open and the car shot straight through into the driveway, slowed between the expanse of lawn, and drew up at the château steps.

Bell opened her door, slowly, and tilted her head to look up at Château Reynard. It was classic late-eighteenth-century perfection, from the steeply-pitched slate roof pierced with the discreet row of dormer windows, down through the two rows of tall windows framed in their wooden shutters, to the double flight of stone-balustraded steps running up to the heavy double front doors. Two wings at either side, each with its own narrow-pitched roof, framed the symmetry of the main façade. Bell had seen it in pictures many times, but she was unprepared for its exact simplicity, and its air of authority.

As she stood with Jacopin waiting patiently at her side, her bag in his hand, one half of the massive double doors swung open.

Bell saw a tall man, dressed in a formal, dark suit. For a second or two he stood staring expressionlessly down at her from the height of the terrace. Then he walked slowly down the right-hand flight of steps and came towards her. Bell’s heart sank.

The baron looked even more formidable than she had expected. He was younger than she had imagined, only in his mid to late thirties. He had an aristocratic face with a high-bridged nose, the face of a man who was used to deference. His sun-bleached fair hair was brushed smooth to his head and his eyes were slightly hooded.

The complete autocrat, thought Bell.

There was only the ghost of a smile around his mouth, and none at all in his eyes. He held out his hand and she shook it firmly, putting all the warmth she could muster into her smile.

She wouldn’t be here, after all, if he hadn’t invited her.

‘Welcome to Château Reynard, Miss Farrer,’ he said. ‘I am Charles de Gillesmont.’ Yes. I don’t think I would have mistaken you for the butler.

‘Will you come this way? Jacopin, I will take the luggage in for Miss Farrer. I am sure that you have other things to do. Jacopin is our maître de chais,’ he told Bell. She looked back at the little man with new respect. As cellar-master, his responsibility for what appeared in the bottles labelled Château Reynard would be almost as great as the baron’s. Jacopin winked at her and settled himself back into the big car. Regretfully Bell watched the car disappear round the corner of the house in a spurt of gravel.

Then, feeling just as if she was tiptoeing into the lion’s den, she followed Charles de Gillesmont into his château.

When they stood side by side in the stone-flagged hallway, Bell saw that he was much taller than her. His eyes were very dark blue with darker rims to the irises, almost navy in the dim light.

Before he spoke again she noticed that his mouth was full, the top lip deeply curved.

‘Marianne will take you up to your room,’ he said. A thin dark girl in a maid’s uniform came out of the shadows towards them. ‘I am sure you will need an hour’s peace and quiet after your journey. Do come down when you are ready.’ He nodded, formally, and strode away.

Bell obediently followed Marianne. A huge stone staircase edged with intricately wrought iron curved upwards, and as Bell’s eyes followed it she caught the gleam of a gilt and crystal chandelier hanging over the stairwell.

‘This way, madame,’ the girl prompted and turned to the right at the top of the stairs. The wide corridor was lit at either end by tall, narrow windows. Heavy oak chests stood at intervals with high-backed chairs in dark, carved wood between them. It was very sombre and completely silent except for the sound of their footsteps on the thin matting.

‘Here we are,’ said Marianne, opening a door at the end of the corridor. The big room was in one of the narrow wings at the side of the house and it had windows in three walls. It was very sunny, clean and bare. Marianne pushed open another door and gestured inside.

‘Your bathroom, madame. Is there anything else you need?’

‘No, this is perfect, thank you.’

As soon as she was alone, Bell crossed to the end of the room and stood looking out of the middle window. From the first floor, and with the height of the little hill beneath her, the view was commanding. She could see the river, with the town of Pauillac and the huge oil refinery on the near bank. In the distance the scene was built up, almost industrial, but in the foreground were rolling masses of vineyards, bisected by tracks and the white, dusty road.

The right-hand window looked across the golden stone face of the Château to the identical opposite wing. A slight woman in a navy blue pleated dress with a bow at the neck strolled across the lawn from the front steps. A fat dachshund waddled at her heels.

‘Now that,’ thought Bell, ‘must be the baroness dowager. I wonder where the young baroness is?’ Still musing, she turned to the left-hand window and immediately forgot the mysteries of Charles’s family. Below her were the working buildings of the Château, the long, low chais with tiled roofs and limewashed walls grouped around a cobbled yard. Blue-overalled men were crossing the yard and Bell could see Jacopin standing in the open doorway of a barn, deep in conversation with a fat woman in a white apron. The sight reminded her that she was there to explore a living vineyard and make a story out of it, and she felt an immediate surge of energy.

Abandoning the view she made a quick survey of the room. It was almost bare except for a high brass bed with a well laundered plain white cotton coverlet and the traditional long, hard French bolster. There was a pretty chest of drawers, a tall mirror in a gilt frame, the glass flecked with dim spots, a pair of spoon-backed armchairs upholstered in pale blue moiré silk, and a tiny pale blue rug with a faded pattern of rosebuds beside the bed. The rest of the floor was bare, highly polished, dark boards.

‘The baron is evidently not investing his profits in domestic comforts,’ Bell murmured to herself, but a glance into the bathroom surprised her again. It was the last word in luxury, with a deep bath and a separate shower, a thick carpet and a cane armchair piled with fluffy white towels. A long white robe hung from a hook and a case of heated rollers stood on a glass shelf next to an enticing row of crystal jars. The gentle smell of expensive French soap filled the room.

The contrast between the stark bedroom and the sybaritic bathroom pleased and intrigued Bell, and she found herself wondering if Charles was responsible for it.

Oh God, Baron Charles. She must think about getting down to work, however much the chilly Frenchman disconcerted her. She went into the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water, combed her hair and then went to unpack her tape recorder.

Here goes.

Charles was sitting in an armchair in the dim hall, reading. He stood up as she wound down the grand staircase and watched her impassively. There was still no smile, but Bell thought that the lines of his face looked less taut.

‘If it suits you, Miss Farrer, I thought we might have a talk now about the Château and the way we run it. Then perhaps you would like to spend tomorrow seeing it all from the practical point of view.’ Bell nodded, and as she moved her head she thought she saw Charles looking coolly at the curve of her cheek. Then their eyes met, and there was a second’s silence.

‘That sounds fine,’ she said quietly. ‘And won’t you call me Bell?’ They were speaking French, as they had done ever since she arrived, and the crisp English monosyllable sounded suddenly incongruous.

‘Bell?’ The blue eyes met hers again, and she suddenly heard her own voice and knew that she was talking too quickly.

‘I was christened Annabel but somehow it doesn’t suit …’

‘No,’ he said. She noticed with astonishment that his eyes were crinkled with amusement. He went on in English. ‘Bell it shall be. I am just plain Charles.’ The way he pronounced it, with the soft ch and the rolling r, it sounded anything but plain to Bell. She laughed back at him and held out her hand. He shook it gravely, then seemed to remember something and withdrew his hand.

‘Won’t you come this way? In my study we won’t be disturbed.’ He led the way to the little, untidy room and closed the oak door firmly behind them.

It wasn’t exactly an easy interview.

Charles de Gillesmont answered her questions about grape varieties, hectares and mechanization punctiliously. He could quote the recent figures fluently and he was careful to explain to her the particular problems and advantages he faced at Reynard.

It was all information that she could have found herself in the reference books. Most of it was in her notes already.