35
Lansquenet, April 1999
HE SAW HER AGAIN THE NEXT DAY. AS APRIL RIPENED TOWARDS May the vines had grown taller, and Jay occasionally saw her at work amongst the plants, dusting with fungicides, inspecting the shoots, the soil. She would not speak to him. She seemed enclosed in a capsule of isolation, profile turned towards the earth. He saw her in a succession of overalls, bulky jumpers, men’s shirts, jeans, boots, her bright hair pulled back severely under her beret. Difficult to make out her shape beneath them. Even her hands were cartoonish in overlarge gloves. Jay tried to talk to her several times with no success. Once he called at her farm, but there was no answer to his knock, though he was sure he could hear someone behind the door.
‘I’d have nothing to do with her,’ said Caro Clairmont when he mentioned the incident. ‘She never talks to anyone in the village. She knows what we all think of her.’
They were on the terrasse of the Café des Marauds. Caro had taken to joining him there after church while her husband collected cakes from Poitou’s. In spite of her exaggerated friendliness, there was something unpleasant about Caro which Jay could not quite analyse. Perhaps her willingness to speak ill of others. When Caro was there Joséphine kept her distance and Narcisse scrutinized his seed catalogue with studied indifference. But she remained one of the few people from the village who seemed happy to answer questions. And she knew all the gossip.
‘You should talk to Mireille,’ she advised, sugaring her coffee extravagantly. ‘One of my dearest friends. Another generation, of course. The things she’s had to bear from that woman. You can’t imagine.’ She blotted her lipstick carefully on a napkin before taking the first sip. ‘I’ll have to introduce you one day,’ she said.
As it happened, no introduction was necessary. Mireille Faizande sought him out herself a few days later, taking him completely by surprise. It was warm. Jay had begun work on his vegetable garden some days earlier, and now that the major repairs to the house were completed, he was spending a few hours a day in the garden. He hoped somehow that physical exertion might give him the insight he needed to finish his book. The radio was hanging from a nail sticking out of the side of the house, and the oldies station was playing. He had brought out a couple of bottles of beer from the kitchen, which he had left in a bucket of water to cool. Stripped to the waist, with an old straw hat he had found in the house to keep the sun from his eyes, he hadn’t anticipated visitors.
He was hacking at a stubborn root when he noticed her standing there. She must have been waiting for him to look up.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Jay straightened up, surprised. ‘I didn’t see you.’
She was a large shapeless woman, who should have looked motherly but did not. Huge breasts rolling, hips like boulders, she looked curiously solid, the comfortable wadding of fat petrified into something harder than flesh. Beneath the brim of her straw hat her mouth turned downwards, as if in perpetual grief.
‘It’s a long way out,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten how long.’ Her local accent was very pronounced, and for a moment Jay barely understood what she was saying. Behind him the radio was playing ‘Here Comes the Sun’, and he could see Joe’s shadow just behind her, the light gleaming off the bald patch at his crown.
‘Madame Faizande—’
‘Let’s not be formal, please. Call me Mireille. I’m not disturbing you, héh?’
‘No. Of course not. I was just about to call it a day, anyhow.’
‘Oh.’ Her eyes flicked briefly over the half-finished vegetable patch. ‘I didn’t realize you were a gardener.’
Jay laughed.
‘I’m not. Just an enthusiastic amateur.’
‘You’re not planning on maintaining the vineyard, héh?’ Her voice was sharp. He shook his head.
‘I’m afraid that’s probably beyond me.’
‘Selling it, then?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Mireille nodded.
‘Héh, I thought you might have come to some agreement,’ she said. ‘With her.’ The words were almost toneless. Against the dark fabric of her skirt her arthritic hands twisted and moved.
‘With your daughter-in-law?’
Mireille nodded.
‘She’s always had her eye on this land,’ she said. ‘It’s higher above the marshes than her place. It’s better drained. It never floods in winter or dries up in summer. It’s good land.’
Jay looked at her uncertainly.
‘I know there was a … misunderstanding,’ he said carefully. ‘I know Marise expected … perhaps if she spoke to me we could arrange—’
‘I will top any price she offers you for the land,’ said Mireille abruptly. ‘It’s bad enough that she has my son’s farm, héh, without having my father’s land, too. My father’s farm,’ she repeated in a louder voice, ‘which should have been my son’s, where he should have raised his children. If it hadn’t been for her.’
Jay switched the radio off and reached for his shirt.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize there was a family connection.’
Mireille’s eyes went almost tenderly to the façade of the house.
‘Don’t apologize,’ she said. ‘It looks better now than it has in years. New paintwork, new windows, new shutters. After my mother died my father let it all go to ruin. Everything but the land. The wine. And when my poor Tony—’ She broke off abruptly, her hands twisting. ‘She wouldn’t live in the family house, héh, no. Madame wanted her own house, down by the river. Tony converted one of the barns for her. Madame wanted her flower garden, her patio, her sewing room. Every time it seemed as if the house was finished, Madame would think of something else. As if she was stalling for time. And then, at last, he brought her home.’
Mireille’s face twisted. ‘Home to me.’
‘She’s not from Lansquenet?’ That would explain the physical differences. The light eyes, small features, exotic colouring and her accented but accurate English.
‘She is from Paris.’ Mireille’s tone conveyed all her mistrust and resentment of the capital. ‘Tony met her there on holiday. He was nineteen.’ She must not have been more than a few years older, thought Jay. Twenty-three, maybe twenty-four. Why had she married him? This farmer’s boy from the country? Mireille must have read the question in his face.
‘He looked older than that, Monsieur Jay. And he was handsome, héh oui. Too much for his own good. An only son. He could have had the farm, the land, everything. His father never refused him a thing. Any girl from the village would have thought herself lucky. But my Tony wanted better. Deserved better.’ She broke off with a shake of the head.
‘Enough, héh. I didn’t come here to talk about Tony. I wanted to know if you were planning to sell the land.’
‘I’m not,’ he told her. ‘I like owning the land, even if I don’t have any serious plans for the vineyard. For a start, I enjoy the privacy.’
Mireille seemed satisfied.
‘You would tell me if you changed your mind, héh?’
‘Of course. Look, you must be hot.’ Now that she was here Jay didn’t want her to go without knowing more about Tony and Marise. ‘I have some wine in the cellar. Perhaps you’d like to take a glass with me?’
Mireille looked at him for a moment and nodded.
‘Perhaps a small glass,’ she said. ‘If only to be back in my father’s house again.’
‘I hope you’ll approve,’ said Jay, leading her through the doorway.
THERE WAS NOTHING OF WHICH TO DISAPPROVE. JAY HAD LEFT the house much as it was, substituting modern plumbing for the ancient waterworks, but keeping the porcelain sinks, the woodstove, the pine cupboards, the scarred old kitchen table as they were. He liked the feeling of age in these things, the way each mark and scar told a story. He liked the worn-shiny flagstones on the floor, which he swept but did not attempt to cover with rugs, and though he oiled and cleaned the wood, he made no attempt to sand away the damage of years.
&
nbsp; Mireille looked at everything with a critical eye.
‘Well?’ asked Jay, smiling.
‘Héh,’ replied Mireille. ‘It could have been worse. I expected plastic cupboards and a dishwasher.’
‘I’ll get the wine.’
The cellar was dark. The new electrics had not yet been fitted, and the only lighting was a dim bulb on the end of a bitten flex. Jay reached for a bottle from the short rack by the stairs.
There were only five bottles left in the rack. In his haste to offer hospitality he had forgotten this; a bottle of sweet Sauternes was the last, finished the previous night as he typed far into the early hours. But his mind was on other things. He was thinking about Marise and Tony, and of how he could ask Mireille for the conclusion of her tale. His fingers tightened around my neck for a moment, then moved on. He must have forgotten about the Specials. He was certain there was another bottle of Sauternes in there somewhere, maybe an extra he had overlooked. Beside me the Specials moved imperceptibly, shifting, snugging, rubbing up against each other like sleeping cats, purring. The bottle next to me – its label read ‘Rosehip ’74’ – began to rattle. A rich golden scent of hot sugar and syrup reached his nostrils. Inside the bottle I could hear soft laughter. Jay could not hear it, of course. All the same his hand stopped on the bottle’s neck. I could hear it beneath his fingers, whispering, cajoling, shifting its shape and turning its label slyly downwards as it released that secret scent. Sauternes, it whispered seductively, lovely yellow Sauternes from the other side of the river. Wine to loosen an old woman’s tongue, wine to cool a dry throat, wine mellow aaaaall the way down. Jay picked up the bottle with a small sound of satisfaction.
‘I knew I had one left.’
The label was smeared, and in the dimness he did not try to read it. He carried it up the stairs and into the kitchen, opened, poured. A tiny chuckle emerged from the bottle’s throat as the wine filled the glass.
36
‘MY FATHER USED TO MAKE THE BEST WINE IN THE REGION,’ SAID Mireille. ‘When he died his brother Emile took over the land. After that it should have been Tony’s.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
She shrugged.
‘At least when he died it passed back to the male line,’ she said. ‘I would have hated to think it went to her, héh?’
Jay smiled, embarrassed. There seemed to be something in her which went far beyond grief. Her eyes were flaming with it. Her face was stone. He tried to imagine what it must be like to lose an only son.
‘I’m surprised she stayed,’ he told her. ‘Afterwards.’
Mireille gave a short laugh.
‘Of course she stayed,’ she said harshly. ‘You don’t know her, héh? Stayed out of sheer spite and stubbornness. Knew it was only a matter of time till my uncle died, then she’d have the estate to herself, just as she’d always wanted. But he knew what he was doing, héh. Kept her hanging on, the old dog. Made her think she could have it cheap.’ She laughed again.
‘But why should she want it? Why not leave the farm and move back to Paris?’
Mireille shrugged.
‘Who knows, héh? Maybe to spite me.’ She sipped curiously at her wine.
‘What is this?’
‘Sauternes. Oh. Damn!’
Jay couldn’t understand how he had mistaken it. The smudgy handwritten label. The yellow cord tied round the neck. Rosehip, ’74.
‘Oh damn. I’m sorry. I must have picked up the wrong bottle.’
He tried his own glass. The taste was incredibly sweet, the texture syrupy and flecked with particles of sediment. He turned to Mireille in dismay.
‘I’ll open another. I do apologize. I never meant to give you this. I don’t know how I could have mistaken the bottles—’
‘It’s quite all right.’ Mireille held on to her glass. ‘I like it. It reminds me of something. I’m not sure what. A medicine Tony had as a child, perhaps.’ She drank again, and he caught the honeyed scent of the wine from her glass.
‘Please, madame. I really—’
Firmly: ‘I like it.’
Behind her, through the window, he could still see Joe under the apple trees, the sun bright on his orange overalls. Joe waved as he saw him watching and gave him the thumbs up. Jay corked the bottle of rosehip wine again and took another mouthful from his glass, reluctant somehow to throw it away. It still tasted terrible, but the scent was pungent and wonderful – waxy red berries bursting with seeds, splitting their sides with juice into the pan by the bucketful and Joe in his kitchen with the radio playing full volume – ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ at Number One all that month – pausing occasionally to demonstrate some specious atemi learned on his travels through the Orient, and the October sunlight dazzling through the cracked panes …
It seemed to have a similar effect on Mireille, though her palate was clearly more receptive to the wine’s peculiar flavour. She took the drink in small, curious sips, each time pausing to savour the taste.
Dreamily: ‘Héh, it tastes like … rosewater. No, roses. Red roses.’
So he was not the only one to experience the special effect of Joe’s home-brewed wine. Jay watched the old woman closely as she finished the glass, anxiously scanning her expression for possible ill effects. There were none. On the contrary, her face seemed to lose some of its habitual fixed look, and she smiled.
‘Héh, fancy that. Roses. I had my own rose garden once, you know. Down there by the apple orchard. Don’t know what happened to it. Everything went to ruin when my father died. Red roses, they were, with a scent, héh! I left when I married Hugues, but I used to go there and pick my roses every Sunday while they were in bloom. Then Hugues and my father died in the same year – but that was the year my Tony was born. A terrible year. But for my dear Tony. The best summer for roses I ever remember. The house was filled with them. Right to the eaves. Héh, but this is strong wine. Makes me feel quite dizzy.’
Jay looked at her, concerned.
‘I’ll drive you home. You mustn’t walk back all that way. Not in this sun.’ Mireille shook her head.
‘I want to walk. I’m not so old that I’m afraid of a few kilometres of road. Besides’ – she jerked her head in the direction of the other farm – ‘I like to see my son’s house across the river. If I’m lucky I might catch sight of his daughter. From a distance.’
Of course. Jay had almost forgotten there was a child. Certainly he had never seen her, either in the fields or on the way to school.
‘My little Rosa. Seven years old. Haven’t been close to her since my son died. Not once.’ Her mouth was beginning to regain its customary sour tuck. Against her skirt her big misshapen hands moved furiously. ‘She knows what that’s done to me. She knows. I’d have done anything for my son’s child. I could have bought back the farm, héh, I could have given them money – God knows I’ve no-one else to give it to.’ She struggled to stand up, using her hands on the table top to hoist her bulk upwards.
‘But she knows that for that she’d have to let me see the child,’ continued Mireille. ‘I’d find out what’s happening. If they knew how she treated my Rosa; if I could only prove what she’s doing—’
‘Please.’ Jay steadied her with a hand under her elbow. ‘Don’t upset yourself. I’m sure Marise looks after Rosa as well as she can.’
Mireille snapped him a contemptuous look. ‘What do you know about it, héh? Were you there? Were you perhaps hiding behind the barn door when my son died?’ Her voice was brittle. Her arm felt like hot brick beneath his fingers.
‘I’m sorry. I was only—’
Mireille shook her head effortfully. ‘No, it is I who should apologize. The sun and the strong wine, héh? It makes my tongue run wild. And when I think of her my blood boils – héh!’ She smiled suddenly, and Jay caught an unexpected glimpse of the charm and intelligence beneath the rough exterior. ‘Forget what I said, Monsieur Jay. And let me invite you next time. Anyone can point you to my house.’
Her tone allowed n
o refusal.