The Champagne Queen (The Century Trilogy Book 2) (37 page)

“Yes, that’s right!” Isabelle cut her off. “You are
just
a doctor’s wife, so what do you know? Coming in here and scaring me; that’s so terribly
mean
!” Suddenly filled with loathing, she glared at her friend. “What can I do if your Matthias screamed the roof off day and night when he was a baby? I remember perfectly well how desperate you were back then. You couldn’t calm him down with anything. Some days, his screaming was so bad that you had to take him to your mother because you couldn’t put up with it anymore. Is that what’s causing your envy? My Marguerite is just a good child, especially good. And she’s beautiful, besides. Don’t talk to me about wide-set eyes and small nose—do you think she’d look better with a hooked nose and beady little witch eyes?” Trembling from head to foot, Isabelle rose to her feet. “You come here, a guest in my house, and you push a dagger into my heart? If that’s what you call friendship, then no thank you!” Sobbing, she turned away and went into the next room. She picked up Marguerite from her cradle and, without another word, ran upstairs to her bedroom.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The days until Clara’s departure were intolerable. The two friends said barely a word to one another and avoided each other as much as they possibly could. Isabelle made sure that Clara did not set eyes on her daughter again. She could have forgiven Clara almost anything, but not the words she had spoken that evening.

When the fifth of March arrived, the day that Clara was to leave, both were more than relieved. Choking on her tears, Clara whispered an apology, but Isabelle didn’t want to hear it.

Clara’s coach had just turned onto the main road when Isabelle called Claude to her.

“Hitch up the horses, please. I need to visit the hospital in Épernay,” she said.

“Madame, I hope you have not come down with something? Or little Marguerite?”

Faced with Claude’s concern, Isabelle’s stony expression softened momentarily.

“I’m sure everything is all right,” she answered quietly. It irritated her to realize that she did not sound as convincing as she would have wanted.

“I’m not a specialist in children of this kind,” said the doctor, when he and Isabelle were sitting opposite each other in his office. “But with your daughter, a developmental delay might very well exist.”

“And what does that mean?” Isabelle said, a crease appearing between her eyes. Children of this kind?

The doctor had spent more than an hour examining her daughter. He had checked her reflexes and her eyes. He had measured the circumference of her head, and he had pinched her arm until she cried.

“Strange. She barely whimpers,” he had said.

“She’s a good baby! She’s just tolerating this,” Isabelle had replied, upset, and she had hurriedly taken the child back from the nurse who held her while she was being examined.

Now she asked, “What, in your opinion, is wrong with my daughter?”

The doctor raised his shoulders. “At this stage, all I can give you is a provisional diagnosis, madame. I advise you to seek out a specialist I know, a man more thoroughly versed in Down syndrome.”

“Down syndrome?” The crease between Isabelle’s eyes deepened. “You don’t know what Marguerite has, but you have a name for this mystery illness? How am I supposed to understand that?”

“It is not unequivocally clear that your daughter suffers from this syndrome,” the doctor said, trying to sound appeasing. “There are certain signs, no more.” He took a sheet of letter paper and dipped his quill in an open inkpot. “I’ll write down the address of the specialist. With a referral from me, I’m sure you’ll be able to get an appointment soon. I’ll just slip my bill for today’s visit into the same envelope.”

The specialist was in Reims. Isabelle and Marguerite went there the next day. Appointment or not, she would not leave the old-fashioned practice before the doctor had seen her child. They had to wait three hours, and people came and went the whole time. Isabelle sat as if in a trance, rocking Marguerite in her arms, and was only vaguely aware of mothers with their children entering the waiting room and leaving again. A boy of about three had a large misshapen head and sobbed the whole time. A girl about the same age rocked back and forth constantly and made terrible noises. Another woman carried an infant in her arms. She looked over again and again at Isabelle, and it was clear she wanted to talk. But Isabelle purposefully looked out the window. None of this had anything to do with her.

“Marguerite’s heart seems to be fine,” said Dr. Rainier Martin after listening through a stethoscope.

Isabelle pressed her lips together tightly. She had not come to have Marguerite’s heart checked. She watched every part of the doctor’s examination with an eagle eye. Some of what he did merely repeated what the doctor in Épernay had done, but Dr. Martin also listened to her heart, poked at her head for what seemed like an eternity, and measured her limbs. To Isabelle’s horror, he then placed the little finger of his right hand in Marguerite’s mouth to test her sucking reflex. The child immediately began to cough and wheeze and then to cry. How could she do anything else?

When he was finished with his examination, Dr. Martin asked Isabelle to sit with him at his desk.

“About thirty years ago, an English doctor by the name of John Langdon Down first recorded the symptoms of Down syndrome. It’s a hereditary disease. Now that I’ve examined her, I can make a tentative diagnosis, at least, that Marguerite suffers from the syndrome. Scientific research in this area is still in its proverbial infancy, but we do have a number of very reliable indicators,” the doctor said.

Isabelle flushed hot and cold. She hugged her daughter even more tightly. This was the second time that she had heard the name. Down syndrome.

“Inherited? But I’m perfectly healthy! So was my husband.”

The doctor ignored her objection. “Little Marguerite shows some of the typical signs, with the emphasis on
some
. The flat, broad face and the somewhat smaller eyes—”

“So my child could also be healthy?” said Isabelle urgently. Marguerite was so pretty. How could the doctor see anything wrong with her?

“Well, I wouldn’t call her healthy. There is, for example, the unusually large gap between her big toe and second toe.” He looked toward Marguerite’s feet, which were once again wrapped up warmly. “A typical characteristic of children suffering from Down syndrome. There is also clear hypotonia of the palatal region, from which her sucking difficulties stem.”

“But isn’t it the case that some children are simply better at suckling than others?”

Tentative diagnosis? Separated toes? Isabelle’s mind was reeling.

“Of course,” the doctor replied patiently. “But you would not be here if that were her only problem.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper. “If you doubt my diagnosis, you are naturally welcome to seek out another specialist. I recommend Charles Fraudand in Paris, a student of John Langdon Down’s.” On a second piece of paper, he added together a few numbers. “That comes to eighty-seven francs, madame.”

Feeling numb, Isabelle drove back to Hautvillers with her sleeping child. She had insisted on a more thorough explanation, and the doctor had responded with more technical terminology about the condition, but Isabelle still didn’t feel well informed. How Marguerite would develop, what effects the syndrome would have on her life—to these questions she had received only vague answers.

“Generally speaking, in their first five years, children with Down syndrome show only half the development of a normal child. But many of them catch up with a large part of their development later on,” the doctor had said, and Isabelle’s relief had been great. But her happiness at that news was short-lived.

“Others, however, remain underdeveloped throughout their lives. On top of the mental difficulties they face, there are also health problems . . . respiratory infections, for example, and leukemia.”

Leukemia. Isabelle suddenly had the feeling that she was about to step through a door and fall and fall and . . . But her daughter was healthy!

“Madame, there is no need to be excessively alarmed. There are now exceptionally good curative establishments for serious cases,” the doctor said.

That had been enough for Isabelle. Without another word, she paid the man, and just as silently she climbed into the waiting coach, ignoring Claude Bertrand’s inquiring look. She didn’t want to talk about any of it, because if she did, she would transform it into a fact.

In Hautvillers, she had Claude drive her straight to Le Grand Cerf. Ghislaine was sitting behind the counter, reading a book; there were no customers at all, and Isabelle breathed a little easier. With the last of her self-control, she forced herself to make a little innocuous conversation, talking about the unusually mild start to March, about the work to be done soon in the vineyards, and about how glad she was to have Daniel working for her that year. She drank a Marc de Champagne brandy. The strong spirits, however, could not rinse the bitter taste from her mouth. Somehow, Ghislaine had heard that Isabelle had been to see a doctor with Marguerite. Of course, she wanted to know how it had gone and what the result was. But Isabelle waved it off.

“Nothing certain, not yet,” she said, her voice unsteady.

Ghislaine embraced her warmly. “Forget the doctors and enjoy your child. Marguerite is the sweetest, loveliest child in all Hautvillers!”

Isabelle gave her a pained smile. “I know that you’re about to have a child of your own, but I must ask if you would be able to take Marguerite overnight, just this once. I need a little time for myself.”

“Say no more,” said Ghislaine, and laid one hand reassuringly on Isabelle’s arm. “It’s so quiet here in the restaurant that I’m going to close early tonight. Marguerite will be fine with me. And if I really do go into labor tonight, Daniel can still look after your daughter.”

Lethargic as an old woman, Isabelle unlocked her front door. Micheline, just then stepping out of her house next door, waved, but Isabelle pretended she did not see her elderly friend. Don’t speak. Not with anyone. Be alone. Die, or act as if you had.

Inside, it smelled as it always did. Of the work boots in the closet, to which a little soil always seemed to cling. Of the preserved sauerkraut, apples, and old potatoes in the pantry. From the kitchen came the smell of coffee and baked white bread. The plate and cup from her breakfast still stood on the table, unwashed. Everything was as it always was. And nothing would ever be the same again.

Isabelle put her bag down in the hall and hung her coat on one of the coat hooks. It was Daniel’s day off, which was good, because it meant she could open the door to the cellar unnoticed and descend the narrow stairs. She didn’t want champagne, not then and perhaps never again. As if in a trance, she went to a wooden cupboard where Jacques kept his wine collection. Without looking at the label, she grabbed the closest bottle. Red wine. Then she took a second. Back in the kitchen, she found a corkscrew and a glass. She had not eaten anything the entire day. Her stomach was filled with sorrow and fear.

With the bottles jammed under her arm, she climbed the stairs to the second floor. In her bedroom, she unlaced her boots and tossed them across the room. Then she lay back against the pillows.

The wine tasted sour and bitter. She emptied the first glass in a single draught, then poured herself a second and stared off into space.

“A typical characteristic of children suffering from Down syndrome.”

“If you doubt my diagnosis, you are naturally welcome to seek out another specialist. I recommend Charles Fraudand in Paris.”

“There is something not right about your daughter. You should take her to a doctor as soon as you can.”

“When God created the grapevines, he didn’t make them all the same. Each one, in its own way, is unique and beautiful.”

Everybody had known it. Micheline, with her tormented eyes every time she looked at Marguerite. Daniel, with his comparison to the vines. And probably Ghislaine and Claude, too. Clara had simply been the first to call it by name.

Only she, the mother, had been blind.

Down syndrome. A name for something she did not understand, could not understand, did not want to understand.

“Isabelle, please don’t think ill of me, but I can’t take your child. I would do any other favor for you, but bringing that child to
me
, of all people . . . no, I’m sorry.”
In one of their first conversations, Micheline had told her about the misfortune that her brother and his wife had suffered.

Isabelle simply had not been listening closely enough. Too many new impressions had been raining down on her. A disabled child; she did not doubt that it was a sad affair. But that had all happened so many years earlier, long before she had met Marie.
What did it matter to her?
she thought, but realized she was being unfair.

Without warning, she felt nauseous, so nauseous that she thought she would throw up. She put the wine glass down and forced herself to swallow; too much spittle was in her mouth. She felt dizzy. She leaned back on the pillows, then raised the glass to her lips and drank again. The nausea gave way to a burning sensation in her gullet.

“On top of the mental difficulties they face, there are also health problems . . . respiratory infections, for example, and leukemia.”

A choking sob escaped Isabelle’s throat. Would her child ever even be able to speak? Tears flowed down her face but she made no effort to wipe them away. Nothing mattered anymore.

“There are now exceptionally good curative establishments for serious cases . . .”

Isabelle’s heart felt clenched. Never,
never
, would she give Marguerite up. It would be like cutting off her right arm. Or her leg. Or as if someone tried to cut Leon out of her heart. Marguerite was his bequest to her, just as the estate itself was.

The estate. Everything had been going so well. She had found new hope. Things were looking up! And now . . .

Another struggle.

And, once again, she was alone. Would she have the strength to get through everything still ahead?

Dear God above, please make it all just a bad dream. Why are you doing this to me? Why me? What law did I break to make you punish me so severely? What law did Marguerite break? She’s still so small, an angel.

All the hard work last fall! Isabelle put down her glass on the marble top of the nightstand so hard that a small piece of glass splintered off the base.

Her big belly had gotten in her way the entire time, and she still remembered the sharp, stabbing pains in her back. But she had gritted her teeth and gone on with the work. Everyone had told her to take better care of herself. But she didn’t want to hear a word of it. Let them give their good advice to someone else—the business came first!

And now? What would become of the business now? Would she have any time left at all for anything that didn’t have to do with looking after Marguerite?

Maybe if someone had done something earlier? Shortly after the birth? What was the name of that specialist in Paris? Fraudand. She had to visit him. The doctors in Reims and Épernay were useless.