The French House Read online

  Nicole hesitated, but his ‘something news’ were always irresistible. She took off her dress and turned to face him, her body a shadow under her muslin slip. He touched her shoulder. A breeze shuffled the oaks. A new hunger engulfed her and he kissed her. When he let her go, she felt as dizzy as she had when he had spun her down from the barouche.

  ‘Now!’ he yelled and pushed her in, stripping his shirt off and jumping in after her. The water screamed cold, her blood rushed and tingled and when she came up, he kissed her again, the water muddy and sweet and slippery between them. They laughed at the shock and kissed more deeply this time, hands in places they shouldn’t be, couldn’t stop until she broke away, afraid of the intensity.

  He took her hand and they floated on their backs, aching, watching the swallows turn pale green as they darted over the water. Iridescent dragonflies clouded amongst the lilies.

  The hour was over too soon. The sun dried her before she dressed, but she was still cool from the water and they held hands as far along the path as they dared. As they passed the derelict house, Nicole spotted a well. She delved into her pocket for a coin.

  ‘Make a wish,’ she said and closed her eyes, ready to throw. Freedom, she thought as she threw the coin. She found another in her pocket and handed it to François. ‘Your turn.’

  He recoiled. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

  She laughed. ‘Then I’ll throw it for you.’

  She closed her eyes and smiled. Happiness for François, she thought, and the coin plunked into the water, far below.

  When she opened her eyes, François was gone. If this was a joke, she wasn’t going to laugh. She stood for a while, waiting for him to return, scanned the woods while pretending not to in case he was watching her. He didn’t come back. She had forgotten her pocket watch, but at least half an hour must have passed as she waited, and the sun lost a little of its brightness.

  Antoine and Claudine arrived, and still no François. Anger and hurt mixed in a confusion of feelings. How dare he? And at the same time she longed for his warm arms around her. She wanted to cry and she wanted to rail at him for his thoughtlessness, if only he’d appear.

  ‘Where is your young poet-vintner?’ Claudine smiled.

  ‘I-I don’t know. I closed my eyes to make a wish in that well and he disappeared.’

  They waited as long as they could. Antoine scoured the woods and came back shrugging his shoulders. Nothing.

  She kept half expecting him to appear, laughing on the side of the road. It was something to do with the coin that she threw. He had the look of a wild animal, oscillating between fight or flight, and he had clearly chosen to fly. She could cry and shout and blast him for his selfishness, while wishing she could throw her arms around him and understand.

  Claudine put her arm around her and said nothing, leaving her to her pain.

  Nicole ran through the moment over and over again that night. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

  A slow week dragged by. She went obsessively every day to the place in the stables where they swapped hidden letters, and each day the empty space was like a kick in the stomach. She had only known him four weeks, but François filled her life with new vitality and, until now, not a day went by when he hadn’t left her a hidden message or poem. Had she just imagined everything that passed between them? Was she just another stupid girl who’d been bowled over by a handsome liar? Was he hurt somewhere, crying out for her help, or was he with another girl, taking her to his vineyards and waxing lyrical about the vines? Still, she was too proud to ask Antoine and Claudine where he was.

  After seven days, three hours and thirty minutes, she knew what she had to do. The shop would be closed now, but Natasha would give her an answer. She rushed to the boulangerie and banged on the door.

  Nicole told her everything, and Natasha gave her a little bag of salt.

  ‘You’re sure you want to do this? It doesn’t always tell you what you want to hear, milaya.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Nothing could be worse than the torment of not knowing.

  Natasha clicked her amber beads, whispering oaths Nicole didn’t understand. ‘Throw!’

  Nicole threw the salt. It scattered over the tiles of the boulangerie.

  Natasha scrutinised the shapes.

  ‘Caution.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  Natasha swept the salt into a pile in front of her. ‘That’s it. Caution, my little whirlwind. Take time to measure, to think. You are disappointed?’

  ‘A little. I thought…’

  ‘It would tell you that the course of true love never did run smooth, but all would be right in the end?’

  Nicole flushed.

  ‘Caution is all it says. I saw what was going to happen to Daniel using the old ways. It’s never wrong, even when it tells you what you don’t want to hear.’

  There were times when Natasha could be so pessimistic.

  ‘Yes, I’m a dour old woman, but I’m wiser than you. Only you know the answer.’ She opened the door and hugged Nicole tight. ‘Go now, take the night to think. You know your own head.’

  Too much time had passed for forgiveness. The moment she got home, Nicole picked up a quill.

  Cher Jean-Rémy Moët,

  I am delighted to accept…

  She sealed the letter and, as an afterthought, sprayed it with a careless squirt of lavender water. She gave the note to Josette to deliver post-haste, made her swear not to tell her parents.

  This small town loved nothing more than to gossip, and François would hear of her betrothal to Moët and be sorry and be insanely jealous, understand how it felt to be abandoned without warning. She couldn’t just passively wait, she had to do something.

  Five minutes after the letter had left her hands, she knew it was a mistake.

  It was already dark outside, but she flew out of the door to try to stop the letter. Josette was nowhere to be seen. At the rue de Vergeur, the blue lantern of the poste was already out and the door bolted. So this is what Natasha had read from the scattered salt, she realised with a horrible foreboding – but too late and goodness knew what she had set in motion with her rash behaviour. Please God, just let François come back.

  At the stables, her new foal, Pinot, stamped at her arrival. She nuzzled him.

  ‘Why did I write to Jean-Rémy?’ she whispered.

  Pinot had no answer, but her heart jumped. A letter was poking out in the secret hiding place by his feed. She brushed away the straw with trembling hands.

  Forgive me, Babouchette. I only wanted to release you to know your own mind, but I didn’t know how to do it and I was cruel and I am deeply sorry.

  Moët’s offer on the face of it is a better one than mine. He is solid and stable. I am prone to mood swings and excess and you should know this. The last week has shown you what I am. Sometimes I am deeply afraid of my own happiness. But I also have the capacity to love so deeply and I have never loved anyone like I love you. I love your wit, the way your boots are too big for your tiny body, the way you flit around in them like there’s never enough time, the way you taste the land and all its colours, the way your hair is highlighted red in the sun, the shadow of you in your muslin slip. So marry me. We’ll run a vineyard, taste the land together.

  And then she understood. All she wanted to do was forgive him completely and just love him. She knew instinctively that life with François would be full of bumps and twists, but between them a taste so sweet, so intense, she could never forgive herself for going through life without experiencing it.

  She wrote back, Yes, yes, yes! and put it in the place beneath the straw.

  The yes was the easy part, but now everything was a mess. She had accepted Monsieur Moët out of spite. She went to Papa’s dark, panelled office and sat in the high-backed chair, sitting up as tall as she could. On the other side of his ordered leathered desk, he looked forbidding and official, seeming to represent everything she wanted to fight. Nevertheless, she begged him to help he
r, told him she would marry François and he knew her well enough to know she would not be persuaded otherwise.

  Papa was severely vexed that she had played such a girlish game with her eminent suitor and she berated herself for her bad judgement in the matter, but only in the moments she could stop thinking about François.

  The next day, exactly one month after Moët’s proposal, and a glorious lifetime with François, Papa took her to his own vineyard at Rilly to meet old Philippe Clicquot, François’ father, to make final arrangements for her marriage.

  The day was glorious, and the vine leaves were autumn russet and gold. As they strolled to the vines, Nicole made the assessments which were almost second nature to her now after spending so much time with François in the vineyards – orientation, incline, the surrounding vineyards, the shape of the leaves to indicate the varietal, tick, tick, tick.

  Papa bent to check the last roses of the season, planted at the end of each row to indicate infestations and counted on his fingers. ‘The roses are clean… my prediction is, harvest on the fifteenth of September next year and it’ll be a bumper crop.’ He held out his hand. ‘Bet on it?’

  ‘It’s not fair to make bets I know I’ll win. It’s obviously going to be the first of October and it will be the best ever. This crop will belong to François and me, and it will be our first Clicquot vintage.’

  ‘I hope that’s not the only thing you’ll make. I want to see my grandchildren enjoying these vines before I die. You’ve made a mess of everything with Monsieur Moët, but I do believe François will make you happy.’

  ‘Stop it!’ She blushed. ‘But we do want children. A bohemian boy like François who’ll play gypsy violin and a little girl we’ll teach to blend the best vintages on the Montagne. I wish Maman would understand.’

  ‘Your mother does want you to be happy, Babouchette. She just thinks Monsieur Moët is a better prospect for you. We’ll bring her round. If François can charm my little girl into marrying him, he shouldn’t have any problem with your mother. Monsieur Moët is Mayor of Reims, though, and she’s got stars in her eyes.’

  ‘She’s not the one marrying him and I’d make a terrible mayor’s wife.’

  Papa looked at his watch. ‘Maman will be here soon. I told her to meet us here to discuss your marriage. Why on earth did you send that letter to Moët in the first place? You’re supposed to be the canny one of my girls and now he’s told your mother it constitutes an official agreement. I’ve always helped you out of your scrapes, but I’m not sure how I’m going to extricate you from this one honourably.’

  Why was Natasha always right? Caution, she’d said.

  ‘Who cares about Monsieur Moët’s version of honour when all he thinks about is money? He just wants his imagined version of me, not the real one.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why anyone would want to take on the real Nicole,’ he teased. ‘Especially the one that’s made such a hash of things. But it won’t be as easy as you think. Monsieur Moët is creative in revenge, and he’s a great politician. Cross him and his retaliation will be subtle and untraceable.’

  ‘He’s just used to everyone saying yes. He’s not that clever and I refuse to be afraid.’

  ‘You’ve never been scared of anyone and that is why you are always in trouble,’ he said proudly. ‘But this is a small town, ma petite, we all need to live together, and like it or not, he is a powerful opponent.’ He handed her an old enamel tape measure. ‘On with you, and make sure you keep it taut.’

  Nicole unwound the slippery silk tape and paced along a row of vines to the edge of the vineyard until her father was out of sight.

  ‘Ready!’ she called.

  ‘Hold it there, keep it nice and tight and make sure you check the figure twice!’

  She trapped the tape under her thumb and committed the measurement to memory – 204 pieds du Roi, king’s feet. Since the revolution, they were supposed to use metres and kilometres, but all the country people still measured à l’ancienne, the old way.

  ‘Hold it there a second!’ shouted Papa.

  Nicole waved an acknowledgement, felt in her pocket for François’ note and ran her fingers over the embossed letters, François-Marie Clicquot. She whispered the words ‘Nicole Clicquot’.

  Three sharp tugs were her signal to start winding in the tape. She turned the little crank, careful to keep it smooth, but the tape stuck and she dropped it. When she stood up, the figure holding the other end was close enough to make her heart leap.

  ‘Keep winding,’ said François.

  The last time she’d seen him, he’d left her alone by the well and she’d imagined their reunion in a million different colours, he contrite, she gracious. But he was here now, and that was all that mattered.

  ‘I shouldn’t have left you, ma sauvage,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t understand.’

  ‘It hurts to love you so much,’ said François quietly. ‘I have moments where I need time for myself. I know you will understand.’

  ‘Just kiss me,’ she said.

  François trembled as he held her, resonating with the breeze. The warm autumn air smelt of woodsmoke and the heady perfume of grape harvest still lingered.

  ‘Grow vines with me,’ he whispered.

  ‘I already said yes.’ She smiled.

  ‘I’ll love you more than anyone else could, but you have to be brave. You know that?’

  ‘I’m marrying the cleverest, most handsome man in Champagne, that’s all I need to know.’

  He swung her round until she was dizzy. ‘Here we are, being bought and sold like a couple of prize heifers,’ he laughed. ‘I wouldn’t have accepted you if this vineyard wasn’t part of the deal.’

  ‘I want wild strawberries every day, even in the winter.’ She pushed him away. ‘And no touching the goods until it’s all signed and sealed.’

  She ran to her father, who was bent over a trestle table at the vineyard entrance with Philippe, François’ father. Both were noting down vineyard measurements like generals strategising for battle. Just a few papers signed, money and lands exchanged between the families to secure their children’s future, and no one could stop her marrying, not even Maman.

  It had to be a fait accompli well before Maman’s planned arrival at midday and Papa had chosen the location carefully, here in her parents’ favourite vineyard, on the very spot he proposed twenty years ago. Perhaps here, remembering that day, her mother would relent.

  She hugged her papa. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘Slow down, Babouchette, you’ll smudge the ink! Philippe, you remember my daughter?’

  ‘So this is little the thing that’s captivated my François, eh?’ said Philippe. Grey curls framed a kind, anxious face. ‘Bright and quick as a firefly, I see, as he described you. There’s a fire in those pale grey eyes that is more than a match for him. And hair the colour of a pale sunset, just before it turns red, I think were his words. Well, well, such is the poetry of young love, but I see in this case there is no exaggeration.’ He smiled at the pair.

  ‘Flattery will get you everywhere, Monsieur Clicquot,’ Nicole replied, glowing.

  He kissed her on both cheeks.

  When the church bell struck the first chime of midday, Maman’s barouche turned the corner, scattering chalky white dust. As it settled, the driver jumped out, helped her down, and paced towards them so fast she had to run to keep up with him.

  Nicole stopped short. Maman had brought Monsieur Moët with her! He was dressed even more formally than usual, in a high collar and dark suit which looked far too hot for the weather. He walked stiffly across to the two men bent over the table between the vines, and nodded an aloof greeting, manoeuvring himself to get a good view of the papers.

  ‘Mon Dieu, what’s this? Signing over your vineyards to the Clicquots? I trust you intended to pass this in front of the town council? All transfer of vineyards is null and void unless approved by the committee. Our Champagne region has a reputation to maintain, gentlemen
, so I’m afraid this won’t be binding.’

  ‘Marriage makes it binding,’ said François.

  ‘Ah, then it all makes sense. But that is another contract that cannot be fulfilled, as she’s not yours to take,’ said Monsieur Moët.

  ‘I am not anyone’s to buy and sell. He is my choice,’ said Nicole.

  ‘Nonsense, Nicole. Girls don’t choose,’ interrupted Maman, flicking her fan in annoyance, the feathers wilting in the late-autumn sun. ‘We are very fortunate that Monsieur Moët has agreed to overlook any indiscretions and take you anyway. Just think, Babouchette, you could be married here next week, on your parents’ wedding anniversary. Everyone says the weather’s going to be fine, it always is on that day, n’est-ce pas, Nicolas?’

  Papa was outmanoeuvred.

  Monsieur Moët jumped in. ‘Your mother has persuaded me that the stress of our upcoming nuptials has perhaps caused you to behave out of character and so we agreed, out of respect to our joint arrangement, to bring the date forward.’

  ‘Chéri, isn’t that testament to Monsieur Moët’s generosity and affection, which deserves our utmost respect?’ Maman said to Papa.

  ‘As does Nicole,’ said François. ‘I left her alone and this misunderstanding is my fault.’

  ‘I have no doubt this mess is your fault,’ Moët replied, flushing with anger. ‘Unfortunately, Mademoiselle Ponsardin and her family cannot have the full picture of what it means to marry a Clicquot. In addition to all this money, and the prized grand cru vineyards they’re signing over, there’s a less palatable inheritance. Philippe, tell them. The bad blood that’s run through the Clicquot family ever since anyone can remember. And in the countryside, we remember a long way back.’

  Philippe blanched visibly and Nicole could have struck Moët for his casual slanders.

  ‘We’d still be ducking witches if we took notice of old vineyard gossip. The only truth in all this is that I have more feeling in my little finger than you do in your whole bitter, greedy old corpse,’ snapped François.