The French House Read online

  ‘Merci, Natasha, bonne journée.’ She hesitated.

  ‘Qu’est-ce qui va pas, ma petite?’

  Yes, something was very wrong. She wished she could ask Natasha’s advice about Monsieur Moët, but if she was going to refuse him, it wouldn’t be fair if others knew, even if he was arrogant enough to think he could mould her into his imaginary perfect wife.

  ‘Non, tout va bien. A demain!’

  ‘Tell me when you’re ready!’ Natasha called after her. Sometimes Nicole thought Natasha really could see right into people’s minds.

  Down rue de l’Etape, along rue de Cordelliers, left at the rusty tap that had dripped as long as she could remember, along the alley and through the fence to the barrel yard where Xavier had hidden her the day of the revolution. The entrance to the other world of wine and cellars, of industry. She felt the same excitement when she went to her father’s wool mills. The looms clicking, the clerks with their piles of parchment, the women whose fingers threaded the machines so confidently. The fine cloth that emerged at the other end, giving a shape to the day, a useful outcome.

  She knocked on the door to the house that overlooked the yard.

  ‘Claudine, Antoine, c’est moi!’

  ‘Ah, la petite sauvage. Monte, come up!’

  She took the steps two at a time, her boots clattering on the old stairs. No need to be ladylike here.

  ‘I claim sanctuary from matrimony and slow death!’ she shouted, then stopped short.

  Antoine and Claudine were in their usual spots by the fire, but there was a third person sitting in her chair. A man with a violin in his lap, looking very much at home. He waved his bow at her in greeting.

  ‘Granted, but it’s a terrible waste,’ he said, leaning back and crossing his long legs. He didn’t look like he belonged in Reims, neither like a hunting country squire type, nor a farmer. His dark hair was shoulder-length and his angular face was unusually expressive when he smiled. His embroidered jacket gave him a bohemian air, like a Hungarian poet.

  ‘Approches-toi au feu, il fait froid aujourd’hui. Sit by the fire.’ Antoine beckoned to Nicole. ‘And hush, marriage isn’t so bad, even for a determined tomboy.’

  There was nowhere left to sit, and the man didn’t get up.

  Claudine bustled over and took the religieuses. ‘Merci, I’ll make coffee and bring plates.’

  Claudine gave Antoine a wink and he disappeared into the kitchen with her to help, leaving the two of them alone, with no introductions.

  ‘There are only three… I’m sorry,’ Nicole said, shooting a glance at the man.

  ‘François Clicquot. Enchanté.’ He jumped up and kissed her on each cheek, holding onto his violin. ‘Have you ever considered how such a chastely named pastry could be so evil and delicious?’

  ‘A nun needs evil to fight, or what would be the point? Though all the religieuses I’ve known made a religion of whacking my knuckles with a ruler.’

  He smiled. ‘An unwilling scholar?’

  His dark, blue-green eyes were a startling contrast to his pale skin and dark eyebrows.

  ‘I was always escaping.’

  ‘You prefer liberty with danger rather than peace with slavery?’

  In quoting her favourite author, he had summed up her feelings about pretty much everything, including Monsieur Moët. She blushed.

  He rummaged around in his violin case and brought out a battered copy of Rousseau’s The Social Contract. ‘I never leave it behind.’

  ‘Come and sit down, sauvage,’ said Antoine, bringing in the tray of coffee.

  The corners of the man’s mouth twitched into a grin and she cursed them for using her nickname in front of him. She remembered François Clicquot now. Her father was friendly with his family. In fact, they lived close by, but he had been away at boarding school.

  Claudine served the religieuses. François took one, tore it in half and offered a piece to Nicole, which she refused.

  Claudine and Antoine didn’t ever feel the need to fill a silence, so no one spoke. Compared to home, this was a plain place, bare floorboards scrubbed clean, worn wooden chairs and a rag rug by the hearth that Nicole had helped Claudine make as a child. No servants, no fuss. This simple easiness was what she came here for and François seemed to sense that, so he kept the silence, too. She stared into the fire, felt him looking at her. The coffee was warm and nutty, but his curiosity unnerved her. She drained the cup.

  ‘I should be getting back,’ said Nicole.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Antoine looked at her with an unreadable expression. ‘We’re going to Verzenay with François to oversee the harvest. Join us? Our picnic can easily stretch to four. Please come, see what happens before the grapes get to the cellars. It will take your mind off your demise-by-matrimony,’ he smiled.

  ‘Have my share of the picnic. Come on, it’s a glorious day!’ said François.

  ‘My parents will worry,’ she said.

  It would be the second time she’d slipped out alone today and they would miss her and fret. But watching Xavier and the others leave for the vineyards a few hours ago from the square, she had longed to be with them. Now here was an offer to do exactly that. Antoine was one of the most respected cellarmen in Reims and knew everything there was to know about wine production. She would be able to actually join the harvest instead of just read about it. Papa never allowed her to go with him to the vineyards. It was a man’s world unless you were working, and not for ladies, he told her. She hated that word, lady. It just meant being shut away in a gilded cage with invisible boundaries you couldn’t cross or question.

  ‘I can send a boy,’ said François. ‘I owe you now that I have eaten your evil nun cake.’

  ‘The Réseau Matu authorised the harvest just this morning. Everyone will be in the fields,’ Claudine encouraged.

  ‘It won’t be the usual carriage ride to observe from afar that you’re used to. You have to get in amongst the vines, join the pickers and feel the sweetness on your fingers – the smell is intoxicating,’ said François.

  ‘But the pickers hate owners getting in the way, don’t they? I’ve heard them scoffing at the “gentleman farmers” and muttering about hobbies.’

  François laughed an easy, warm glow her way. ‘You’re observant for an untutored truant! We’re going to my father’s vineyards, and I work hard, have done since I can remember. It’s not a hobby for me, it’s my life. When I was sent away to boarding school, I even missed the stripped black vines in winter. And summer in a classroom was torture when I knew the vines were flowering, followed by budburst, then working into the night by a bright June moon. If you’re happy to put in a bit of hard graft, you’ll be hooked, I promise.’

  Back to the house for embroidery and marriage wrangles, or bouncing down the baked roads to the vineyards to be amongst the workers with this intriguing man? It was impossible to resist.

  The clock struck twelve in the old church when they arrived at Verzenay. The vineyards stretched away in every direction, blue shadows pooled under the vines in the bright sun. Families and farm workers gossiped along the vines, muzzled donkeys stamped, ready to take their wooden cartloads of grapes to the press. Children cut bunches of grapes next to their mothers. Grandmothers picked out bad grapes, everyone working to bring in the harvest before the heat of the afternoon. These were the families of the revolution and they were better fed than they had once been under the old regime, but this was still back-breaking work: the men bent under the weight of the heavy baskets, and women pulled their headscarves across their faces against the sun.

  François offered her a hand down from the barouche and he spun her to the ground in a carousel of sky and vines.

  ‘Grey and blue,’ he said. ‘Like the sea at Calais. The colour of clouds.’

  She blinked, not understanding.

  ‘Your eyes,’ he said.

  ‘See you back here in an hour,’ Antoine said, jumping down and linking arms with Claudine. ‘We need to check in at th
e press.’ They were off before she could reply.

  ‘Come with me, there’s something in the vineyard up on the Montagne you should see,’ François said to Nicole. ‘It’s quite a walk though.’

  She lifted her skirt and scuffed the dirt with her sturdy boot. ‘Napoléon’s army could march to Austria in these.’

  ‘I remember you as a child, you could outrun most of the boys. Come on then.’

  They climbed a hill towards the forest, throwing up clouds of chalk as they walked, dusty butterflies skimming the poppies and cornflowers, larks buzzing.

  When they reached a remote patch of vines, François pointed.

  ‘There, see the yellow rose? Exactly there.’

  At the rose, François counted three vines along and peered at the foliage. Lifting up the dark leaves, he revealed a bunch of crimson grapes. Not purple, or white, or anything in between, but ripe grapes the colour of holly berries. She’d never seen any like it.

  ‘I thought you’d be impressed,’ he smiled.

  ‘You hardly know me.’

  ‘But I remember you.’ He picked two grapes.

  ‘Don’t! They’re the only ones!’

  ‘They’ll die and wither and no one will ever have tasted them. Isn’t that sadder?’ He popped one in his mouth. ‘Aniseed, almond…’ He savoured it. ‘Then clover. Try it.’

  He handed her the second grape. Nicole hesitated. It was a lurid red.

  ‘Go on, we will be the only two people ever to taste them. They’re delicious.’

  She took it and popped it into her mouth.

  ‘Sour!’ she spluttered, spitting it out.

  ‘You might have pretended!’ he laughed.

  ‘I can’t pretend, I have to say what I think.’

  ‘You’ve passed the first test of wine tasting,’ said François, ‘Be honest, don’t humour the grower, act for the buyer and you’ll never go far wrong. Come on, I’ll find you some sweet ones.’

  They walked back to the busy vineyards and François gave her a flat basket for collecting.

  ‘Pick the best first, along the entire row. This is a grand cru vineyard, so be careful. These beauties have worked the entire summer, quietly growing sweeter.’

  ‘Like my perfect sister. Personally, I’d rather be the picker than the picked. What happens after this?’

  She saw how ripe fruit hung heavy on the vines, felt the stickiness on her hands, breathed in the pungent scent. Actually being there was nothing like the dry manuals she’d squinted at by moonlight.

  ‘It’s a beautiful process, sauvage,’ François replied. ‘The whole thing, from picking to pressing and tending the vines. The blend, the bottles in the cellars, slowly turned. It’s what I love. The terroir here in Verzenay produces the best grapes for champagne. You are picking the finest Pinot Noir. They will be blended with the Pinot Meunier over there. The black grapes grow best here on the Montagne. And the third grape for my champagne is the Chardonnay. We have another vineyard on the other side, on the Côte des Blancs. That’s where we grow our Morillon Blanc. This is my place, where I’m happiest.’

  Nicole nodded, remembering the first time she’d arrived in the cellar on the day of the revolution, the deep green bottles so neat, so safe and enchanting in the candlelight. This was where those bottles began their journey, with picking in the maturing sunlight.

  ‘Mademoiselle Ponsardin!’

  It was Monsieur Moët striding towards her in a big hurry, smoothing down his sideswept grey locks in eager anticipation of reaching her. She wished him a million miles away.

  ‘You’ll wake up sunburnt tomorrow without a parasol, and vineyards are for workers! And I had thought you might want to be at home with your parents, in discussion. My carriage is nearby. Come.’

  ‘I think you’ve met Monsieur Clicquot?’ Nicole replied coolly, determined not to respond to his comments.

  The men shook hands frostily.

  ‘Are you accompanied?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur Moët. With Claudine the couturière, so don’t fret. I’m not a wilting flower you need to protect.’

  ‘Where is she now? It would be remiss of me to leave you alone…’

  She could barely breathe for the sense of claustrophobia he brought with him, like a windowless room closing in around her.

  François interjected with a smile. ‘Monsieur Moët, she is well looked after with me. I know her family well. Our fathers are good friends.’

  Monsieur Moët appraised François and clearly didn’t like what he saw.

  ‘Your poor mother would be frantic if she thought Claudine had been so neglectful. I’ll find her for you.’ Monsieur Moët buttoned his jacket and took the path to the press, careful to ignore the workers who greeted him along the way.

  ‘In discussion,’ François mocked behind his back. ‘About what? One of those men who thinks he owns the whole of France, including you.’ He picked a grape. ‘This one is perfect.’

  She bit through the skin, immediately forgetting about Moët as a burst of sweetness was released – a kaleidoscope of soft rain, mellow sun, a year’s worth of dusks and dawns, frosts and summer breezes, the taste of the terroir, right there on her tongue.

  Chapter 3

  Truth and Dare

  Late October 1797

  Republican date: Brumaire, year VI

  Antoine and Claudine had saved her from death-by-marriage. François had been their doing, a carefully planned campaign, given an early start the day that Nicole clattered up their stairs unexpectedly after Monsieur Moët’s proposal.

  But of course they’d noticed how unhappy she was, Antoine and Claudine told her. They’d known her all her life and they could see she was fighting a losing battle against the growing pressure to marry. Any day her papa could agree to an unsuitable match, with her best interests at heart of course, but she’d be trapped forever against her will. When François had visited Antoine to consult him on the acquisition of his latest grand cru vineyards, he was like a breath of fresh air compared to the small-town rigid traditionalists who would be deemed a match for Nicole. François was well-travelled, open-minded, cultured and a dreamer. The way he spoke so poetically about the vines beguiled everyone he met, and his quick wit and intelligence would be more than a match for their restless, rebellious Nicole.

  A firefly, he called her. Quick and sharp and charged.

  ‘Chérie, the carriage!’

  Nicole checked herself in the mirror before running down to take it. Why had she asked for a whole month to consider Moët’s proposal? Because she didn’t know how to say no, and it seemed a decent amount of time to give him as her father had advised, unfair to dismiss his proposal in a shorter time span. Still a week to go before she could get it over with, but it was an eternity now there was François.

  Every minute without him was dull. She found an excuse to bump into him every day, touring the Ponsardin family vineyards. If she was to consider Monsieur Moët’s proposal, she argued, she should spend time in his milieu of winemaking. François was always working at the Clicquot vineyards nearby, with a new thing to show her every day, he promised – a blend to taste, a delicious pinot to try, an undiscovered place where the poppies edged the cornfields, catching the sun in flames.

  Sometimes at dusk, the time of day when the sky turned translucent blue like Chinese lacquer, they watched the clouds turn with the sunset, making out shapes.

  ‘A bottle of champagne,’ said Nicole.

  ‘Wrong shape, it’s clearly a bottle of Gamay.’ François concentrated hard, eyeing her sideways. In the dying rays of the sun, his skin glowed in the rosy light.

  ‘How on earth do you know?’

  ‘I don’t,’ he laughed, hugging her close.

  The shapes didn’t matter, but staying a little bit longer was everything and they would linger until the last fine thread of light on the horizon would send her parents searching for her in the dark.

  As the month had mellowed and the days grew shorter, they’d f
ed each other blackberries from the hedgerows, and they had never tasted so dark or sweet to Nicole. When they could escape for long enough, François laid his jacket under the twisted beech trees in the forest of Verzy and they read together, from Rousseau, or Voltaire. Neither of them could concentrate long enough to read anything of note. It was a game of chicken to see who could last the longest before meeting eyes and stealing blackberry-streaked kisses.

  On the day the ripe October sun had shone through swollen raindrops and lit them in a thousand spheres of warm rain, they were caught at the walled vineyard at Villers-Allerand. They polkaed up and down the rows at the sheer joy of it all, soaked and laughing, François singing to the sky at the top of his voice, whirling her skilfully through the vines.

  Now, with a week to go before she could release herself from Monsieur Moët’s proposal, she stood in the vast hallway of her family home and saluted herself in Maman’s prized Venetian mirror for her good fortune.

  ‘Vite, chérie, Claudine est arrivée!’ shouted Maman.

  Her mother kissed her on both cheeks, delighted to see her in her new silk dress, hair brushed into a chignon.

  ‘You’re growing up, Babouchette. About time.’ She winked.

  Whatever guilt Nicole felt was swept away by the thought of François, the daily poems and letters he slipped into her pocket, and today’s invitation to meet him at the lake. Nothing else mattered.

  The lake was green, like the Vesle River, translucent and made pale by the chalk banks. François threw a stone and the October sun picked out ripples in silver.

  ‘Not bad,’ said Nicole.

  ‘What does it take to impress you?’ laughed François.

  ‘I don’t know. A dragon? Wine from water?’

  ‘We’re going for a swim. I promised you, something new every time we meet. Turn around.’

  He undid the laces at the back of her dress, loose enough to take off.

  ‘You do it,’ he said.