House of Peine Read online

  Sophie could not hide her shock. Tears filled her eyes and wobbled above her lower lashes. In the evening light of the bedroom they looked like lavender-coloured lakes, which made La Petite smile. Actually, it seemed more to Sophie like a severe case of indigestion (especially as there was definitely a burp involved) yet she was immediately flooded with a warm rush of emotion. In an instant she trusted the old woman with all the aforementioned heart.

  “I don’t know anything,” she told her, the words tripping over themselves in their hurry to get out. “About any of them. Not a thing. My grandmother? I’ve never heard a word about her. Nor really about Olivier. Nothing nice, anyway. I mean what was he like? Was he always so … complicated? That’s what everyone tells me but I’m not sure I even understand what that means. Am I like him at all? Even in the slightest?”

  La Petite waved her little bird hand to slow Sophie down. “Hush, hush,” she said. “All in good time.” She hauled herself up in the bed, eliciting a series of trumpeting sounds from beneath the covers. She laughed, delightedly. “Beans!” she cried, then pulled the covers up to her chest and wriggled back into the pillows. “I was sorry to hear that your father had passed,” she told Sophie. “Truly I was. But not sorry for him. No, not at all. Was he like you? Well, once, I think, he also had your heart, Little One. Just not the armour for it. And one’s no good without the other, heh? When Mary-France went … pouf, so did he. It’s a shame, no? But sometimes with great love that’s just the way it is. He saw something in the middle one’s mother that might have saved him but I think the damage had already been done. And your maman probably brought him his last bit of happiness but she had troubles of her own and that’s a while ago now, heh? It’s a long time to be unhappy and he never wore it well or kindly. It’s been hard, I think, for the fat one, especially.”

  Sophie sniffed away her tears. “She’s not really that fat,” she pointed out loyally. “She just dresses funny.”

  There was a muffled snort from outside the bedroom door where Clementine had been hiding and listening, Mathilde — just then poking her in the ribs — right behind her. At the sound of their scuffling La Petite laughed uproariously, which sounded a lot like a very old boiler finally giving up the ghost.

  “That always gets them!” she cackled in a spirited aside as though she were constantly catching out corpulent siblings. “Come in, ’Mentine, let me look at you.”

  There was no point pretending she wasn’t there, so Clementine slunk into the room, head down, her face beetroot red.

  “Hello, La Petite,” she mumbled, giving Cochon her own version of the evil eye when she saw his head on the pillow. But when she shifted her look instead to the old woman, she forgot about the horse. She had always been ancient, La Petite, but now she appeared to have moved on to a whole different level. She was so tiny in that bed, in her skin. It was as though she had somehow abandoned herself. “Are you all right?” Clementine asked with genuine concern.

  “It depends what you would call all right,” La Petite answered wheezily but cheerfully.

  “But the vendange …” Clementine’s concern was first and foremost for the harvest.

  “I’m sorry, ’Mentine, I have picked my last grape,” the old woman said mournfully. “I knew it was a bad sign when I looked at a beautiful vine heaving with petit verdot down in the Medoc and all I could think of was sitting down with a pipeful of tobacco and a cup of elderflower tea. Don’t worry,” she said, seeing the woeful look on Clementine’s face, “I won’t be leaving you in the lurch. The gang will be here in time. I just came on ahead because I need a comfortable spot to stop for a while and I like this one. These sheets are so soft. And maybe where I’m going there’ll be more of this perfume, hm?”

  There was another muffled sound from outside the bedroom.

  “Yes?” Called La Petite, winking at Clementine and Sophie. “Can I help you?”

  Mathilde strode through the doorway again, glaring at her sisters. “You’re falling for this crock? You two really are stupid!” She turned to La Petite. “Get up and get out.”

  La Petite fixed her with a stare that instantly stripped away her anger, leaving only the vaguely unfamiliar sensation of fear. It was a while since she’d had a drink and her bravado was diluted. She recalled what the old woman had said to her earlier and regretted coming into the room.

  “You are right to be fearful, Mother dearest, it’s the only way forward,” La Petite said with a hint of wickedness.

  “You see!” Mathilde, cheeks burning, heart hammering, turned to Clementine. “She is mad. We should call the police and have her thrown out before she says another word. Get the gendarmes!”

  “Scared of what a sick old woman has to say, heh, Mathilde?” La Petite suggested slyly. “Afraid that I’ll remind you once more of the daughter who pines for you at home?”

  Clementine and Sophie both turned around, openmouthed, to stare at their sister.

  “You have a daughter at home?” Clementine asked, feeling sick.

  “What would you know?” Mathilde spat at the old lady. “And anyway, she won’t be pining for me.”

  Sophie looked at Clementine and read her fear. “How old is she?” she asked but Mathilde didn’t hear her, her face was pinched and she was pointing her finger at La Petite.

  “You’d listen to the mad ramblings of this old crone? You’re both as crazy as she is!”

  La Petite made a big drama of counting on her bent old fingers. “She must be what, 10, by now?”

  Clementine and Sophie shared a look of great relief. At least this meant Benoît was not the father. Clementine felt almost giddy. For a moment. Then incredulity crept in. “You’ve been here all this time and you have a 10-year-old daughter at home?”

  “Edie, yes. And a husband,” La Petite pointed out helpfully. “George. Olivier told me all about them.”

  This stopped them all in their tracks. “Olivier?” All three women asked at once.

  “Your father,” La Petite agreed, nonplussed. “You do remember him, don’t you? Good-looking. Red hair. Liked a drink.”

  The Peine sisters swapped astonished looks. This didn’t happen that often and felt quite strange. Mathilde noticed for the first time that Clementine actually looked younger than her age. Clementine noticed that Mathilde’s eyes were a pale yellowy green, the exact colour of ripened chardonnay, just like her own. Sophie noticed that if you took away Clementine’s redness and plumpness and Mathilde’s blondness and tightness, the sisters were actually quite alike.

  “I certainly wouldn’t call Olivier good-looking,” Mathilde said eventually, which was somewhat beside the point.

  “He talked to you about Mathilde?” Clementine asked La Petite. How could he keep hurting her like this, that wicked old man?

  “Of course,” said La Petite. “And her daughter. And you,” she added coolly, after a dramatic pause. “And your daughter.” After another one.

  Sophie’s hand flew out and clutched Clementine’s arm just as her eldest sister started to sway.

  “Your daughter?” It was Mathilde’s turn to be incredulous. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Leave her alone,” Sophie warned.

  “How the hell would you ever have a daughter? I mean who —”

  “Don’t you dare!” shouted Clementine. “Don’t you dare. La-a-a-a! La-a-a-a! Don’t you dare. I won’t have it. La-a-a-a!” She was quite hysterical, slapping away at Sophie’s soothing hands as though she were a gnat, her eyes unfocussed and crazed.

  Mathilde started babbling at her just as Sophie started babbling at Mathilde, while Clementine just kept madly trilling. La Petite witnessed the whole ridiculous scenario as though it were the funniest part of her favourite TV sitcom.

  Then into this uproarious cacophony walked quite the best-looking specimen any of the Peines had ever clapped eyes on.

  They fell silent in an instant.

  He had smooth dairy-milk-chocolate skin and shiny dark hair that fe
ll in delectable waves around his ears and halfway down his neck. He was tall with broad shoulders but slim hips and when he smiled he had the most beautiful mouth full of straight white teeth and lively brown eyes that twinkled like disco balls.

  The three healthy hearts in that room (not counting Cochon’s) all stopped beating while they drank him in. La Petite (whose heart had indeed seen better days) saw this and felt supremely content.

  “Hello,” the best-looking specimen said, lavishing them all with a separate somehow secret look. “I’m Hector, La Petite’s great-grandson — or something like it.” He turned to the grinning imp in the bed. “Can I get you anything, La Petite?”

  The Peine sisters, in their hurry to keep this gorgeous object in their sight, to feast on him some more, all turned around at the same time but in different directions, banging into each other and getting in a clumsy tangle that required the eldest to stand on the middle one’s toes and the middle one to reciprocate with a well-placed pinch on that plump rump.

  Sophie simply stood in the midst of this tussle totally goggle-eyed. She could imagine herself in this dark one’s arms so vividly that it felt embarrassing to have anyone else in the room. It would happen, she just knew that. She always knew it. It would happen and it would be lovely and then it would end. He would take a little piece of her away with him and leave her with nothing. And she would settle for that. Happily.

  Clementine too felt a strange squirmishness in her groin just looking at Hector but it turned almost immediately to resentment that no one like him would ever give her the time of day, let alone throw his toned brown arm over her naked skin in the warmth of her bed down the hallway. She would never get within coo-ee of that delightful flesh. She was too plump. Not pretty enough. Sophie was right, she dressed funny. She didn’t dare even dream that the likes of Hector would curl up and spoon her. There was no point.

  Mathilde, on the other hand, had great faith in her ability to take that lithe muscular body, wrap her thighs around it, do whatever she felt like, then send it packing. She licked her lips and turned slightly side on to the young Adonis so that the bone of her hip jutted out and accentuated the length of her legs. She could teach him a thing or two, she thought to herself, and it had been a while, so she might even bother. If there was one thing Mathilde liked it was a well-built ship in the night. She would happily cut a slice or two off young Hector and send him sailing. It was just the way she liked it.

  La Petite watched all this on the faces of the Peine sisters and smiled to herself. He was a good boy, Hector. Strong but sweet and obliging. He would help her do what Olivier had asked of her. She’d waited, as she’d promised, until he himself was gone and his daughters were together and there was now much to be done. But right now she was hungry.

  “Who can cook in this place?” she asked. “Hector loves magret of duck, with gratin dauphinois, don’t you, Hector?”

  Automne

  La vendange

  By the first day of October the vendange was in full swing. La Petite’s flock had descended, as promised, and the whole of the Marne Valley rattled and hummed with the happy sounds of a bumper crop about to start its magical transformation into the sparkling drink of kings and queens and anyone else with a lick of taste.

  In the vineyard, the pickers, sun-ripened like berries themselves, deftly snipped off the bunches and put them in their hand baskets, while the carriers collected the baskets and emptied them into bigger stampes or crates at the end of the rows.

  Clementine then drove the stampes to the winery in the cranky old tractor and watched with a careful eye as the berries were tipped into the wooden press. Every stage in the champagne journey was a crucial one but arguably none more so than this: the pressing of the must, the juice that would go on to be wine. There were many strict regulations to satisfy before the berries even got to that point, of course. These prompted many a vigneron to complain until their ears bled, which had once been the case with Renaud de Vallois over in Fontaine-sur-Aÿ, but the regulations were also what protected the reputation of champagne — what stopped any other bubbly wine from being able to call itself that.

  For a start, La Petite’s bevy of dark-skinned chatterboxes could not just go out there among the vines and pick as much as they wanted: there was a limit to how many grapes could be harvested per hectare. This quantity was decided every year by the Champagne authorities and woe betide anyone who tried to pick more. They would be tattled on by a worker or a neighbour — remember, the plots were all out there right next to each other, it didn’t take a mathematical genius to work out who was cheating — and there would be trouble for sure.

  Once this preordained quantity of grapes had been picked, there was no chance for the pickers to sit down and enjoy a baguette stuffed full of spicy sausage or a glass of non-vintage brut either. If the fruits of their labours didn’t make it to the winery within a few short hours, the grapes were deemed unusable and dumped, something no grape grower ever wanted to see. Arnaud d’Ablois in Champillon had seen it twice in one harvest a few years back when half his pickers had come down with a stomach bug. After witnessing such traumatic waste, the poor vigneron quite lost his senses, disappeared for three days, then came back wearing a purple suit three sizes too small for him and smelling strongly of aviation gas. He had not been quite the same ever since and it had been a lesson to all Champenois to steer clear of Madame d’Ablois’s fish soup.

  Once the grapes were deposited safely in the press, the regulations still did not ease up. The berries were squeezed just twice, with only the clear juice of the first delicate pressure actually being used for wine as it was highest in sugar and acidity (the two ingredients most prized in champagne). This pressing had to be done very gently in order to extract a clear juice from the two dark-skinned pinot grapes. No winemaker wanted to see the slightest suggestion of pink, unless it was some months later and she was tinkering with a rosé!

  At the House of Peine the juice, once pressed, gurgled down through a pipe in the floor to the cellar below and straight into a vat that was marked with the name of the plot from whence those particular berries had come. All plots were pressed separately, all musts kept in different vats to protect their characters — that was essential for the blending process. “La-a-a-a!” trilled Clementine when she thought of the blend. “La-a-a-a!”

  She had little time for eccentricity, mind you, because the juice was only a day in the vat before it was racked off, clear now of any unwanted debris. Then she added her special yeast and sugar concoction to hurry along the juice’s transformation into alcohol — its first fermentation. Yet another crucial stage.

  Actually, anyone who knew Clementine well (so small a group as to barely exist) might have picked up something of a transformation in her.

  The vendange was always an exciting time for a committed winemaker such as Clementine: there was always the hint of a glint in her otherwise dim demeanour during the harvest, but this year she almost sparkled. Those mad wiry ringlets looked positively glossy and had loosened into an almost relaxed curl, the faded red tones revived to a glorious copper. Her skin, too, seemed more lively somehow: it shone with a glow she didn’t usually possess and she had on several occasions been heard whistling as she worked. In a light-hearted fashion. She looked for all the world like someone who was in the advanced stages of, if not happiness, then something mightily close.

  Unfortunately, the only person who might have noticed this, the chairperson of that almost non-existent group of people who knew Clementine well, was too preoccupied to give it much thought. Sophie too was revelling in what the vendange had delivered. It turned out she had an indispensable part to play in the process. And she was unfamiliar enough with being indispensable to feel highly impressed with this state of affairs. She was not such a good picker, the movements up and down and along the vines being a little too focussed for her, but she was an excellent carrier and the grape-pickers warmed to her as their leader in a way they might have once t
o Olivier but, sadly, never could to Clementine. This had a remarkable knock-on effect because dealing with the pickers could be time consuming if they were in a churlish state of mind and the clock was ticking.

  With Sophie in charge, though, the valley rang with the sound of their laughter, the click of their cutters and the tumble of grapes from their baskets. They picked quickly and happily and the whole operation ran more smoothly as a result. There would be no skintight purple suit and aviation gas for the Peines this vendange.

  Under such conditions Sophie, too, continued to thrive. Her hair had grown longer and was curling prettily around her slender neck, the harsh jet black faded, a rich burgundy emerging at the roots. There was a happy flush to her honeyed cheeks and her violet eyes sparkled. Certainly the hours were long and the work exhausting, but still she flourished. The Guerlain counter at Le Bon Marché seemed a long, long way away. This was truly belonging.

  Mathilde had not once been sighted in the vineyard — she just didn’t have the clothes for that sort of work — but to everyone’s astonishment she had appeared in the cave on the first day of the vendange, holding a clipboard and a Montblanc pen, and proved to be extremely organised in the recording of what was going where and for how long.

  Clementine, distracted by everything else that was going on, had ignored her at first — their relationship worked better that way — but after a couple of days had to admit (although never out loud) that Mathilde was actually helping: quite a lot. Not only was she recording which musts were where but she had reorganised the cave in a more logical fashion so that the bottled wine still resting on its lees was well out of the way, the oak barrels for the new wine were close at hand and the riddled stock ready for dégorgement was somewhere in the middle where it would be easy to get to once the harvest was over.

  If Mathilde was enjoying this work, however, it did not show. In contrast to her blossoming sisters, she looked as though every bit of enjoyment had been thoroughly wrung out of her on some earlier occasion, leaving her a desiccated shell of her former self. Her hair was limp, there were bruised bags beneath her eyes, her dull skin was drawn tight over her sharp cheekbones. If Clementine and Sophie appeared full of the joys of life, Mathilde looked like she had been emptied.