The Splendour Falls (12 page)

‘Yes. I knew his wife.’

I bent my head hurriedly. ‘Oh, I see.’ So much for neutral, I told myself.

‘Brigitte, her name was,’ he went on, in a mild tone. ‘We had mutual friends in Vienna. I knew both the sisters, Brigitte and Martine.’

Curiosity pricked me then, and against my better judgement I asked: ‘And were they very much alike?’

I felt the glancing touch of his eyes on my downturned face. ‘That’s right, you’ve met Martine, haven’t you? Yes, Brigitte was very like her to look at, but as far as personality …’ He smiled a little, thinking back. ‘Brigitte was wild. Unpredictable. She met Armand and married him, all in one weekend. Destiny, she called it. She believed in destiny.’ He spoke the word almost as if he believed it, too. He cast a quick glance up the ridge towards the white house, remembering. ‘She used to hold these huge dinner parties,’ he told me, ‘all artists and writers and poor musicians like myself, and she’d fill us full of food and wine and set us talking. Bright minds and brilliant conversation, that’s what Brigitte wanted. Like Madame Pompadour.’

Still looking down at the path, I stole a sideways look at the denim-clad legs striding evenly beside mine, and the beautiful, long-fingered hands, and I thought I knew exactly what Brigitte Valcourt had wanted from Neil Grantham. The sudden stab of feeling rather shocked me. I hadn’t felt jealous in years. Aloud I said: ‘It must have been fun.’

‘It was. Brigitte brought us all together, Christian and myself and … oh, there was a gang of us, in those days. I don’t know what happened to most of them. When Brigitte died the group just fell apart, stopped meeting.’

I kicked a pebble on the dirt path. ‘How did she die?’

‘Heart failure.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘It happens. She’d been in and out of hospital since giving birth to Lucie – she used to make a new will nearly every week, I think,’ he said, with a brief smile. ‘I don’t think any of us was particularly surprised.’

Armand was still walking briskly alongside the wall, several paces ahead of us. He turned his head to say something to Simon, and glanced idly back at Neil and me, his expression unreadable.

The corners of Neil’s mouth tugged upwards. ‘We never did get on, Armand and I. It’s not your fault.’

I flashed a quick look up at him. ‘I don’t see that I have anything to do with it.’

‘Don’t you?’ He slanted a kind smile down at me. I struggled for a response, but before I could collect my thoughts, the others ahead of us stopped walking, and I had to step smartly to avoid running over Paul. The vineyard tour was about to begin.

Armand had led us to a spot halfway along the imposing wall, where the rows of stunted vines began their orderly climb to the crest of the hill. The noise of the passing traffic was muted here, a muffled humming on the far side of the wall, and nothing more. There was only the deep green hill, and the great sundrenched sky with its speckling of cotton wool clouds, and at our backs, the ever-watchful presence of Château Chinon. The modern world seemed but a distant dream.

‘Of course,’ Armand was saying to Simon, ‘you know that it was an American, like yourself, who nearly ruined the wine-making in France?’

‘We’re Canadians.’

‘But that is the same thing, surely?’

Paul stepped in once again to keep the peace, his calm voice riding smoothly over Simon’s ruffled feathers. ‘What did the American do?’

‘He ate our vines,’ Armand replied, then to our puzzled faces he explained how the tiny phylloxera beetle, nearly a century and a half ago, had crossed the wide Atlantic aboard the newly-invented steamship, and landed like a conqueror upon the shores of France. In the 1860s, Armand told us, that one microscopic pest, undetected, had ravaged vineyard after vineyard, bringing the noblest of estates near to ruin. The French wine industry had very nearly collapsed, until it was discovered that by grafting French vine stalks onto American roots – immune by nature to phylloxera – the devastator could be held at bay.

‘It is a truce only,’ Armand admitted, fingering a broad leaf. ‘We must still graft, and spray, and be on guard. The danger, it has not entirely disappeared.’

Paul peered closely at the base of one of the gnarled vines. ‘These have American roots, then?’ he asked. ‘All of them?’

Armand nodded. ‘Yes. In my father’s time, such grafting was done by hand, but now we have a machine to do the work.’

‘Wouldn’t it be simpler,’ I put in, ‘just to grow American vines?’

Armand grinned at that. ‘The native vines of North America, Mademoiselle, produce the wine like vinegar. Even the roots, they change somewhat the character of our grafted vines, but,’ he added, philosophically, ‘we must make sacrifices sometimes, to preserve a way of life. And what lies beneath the surface, no one sees.’

Still conscious of Neil standing close behind me, I took the opportunity to move away a few steps, venturing into
the row of vines. ‘What kind of grapes are these?’

‘They are the Cabernet Franc,’ Armand said. ‘That is the grape of Chinon’s wines, the red wines.’

‘But there aren’t any grapes,’ Simon complained, as though he’d been somehow cheated.

‘No, we have already harvested, last week. I had a … how do you say it … a hunch that there would be rain, and at this time the rain can be most harmful to the grapes. The water rises through the roots, you understand, and swells the grapes, and so the wine it has no colour, no substance – it is spoiled.’

Simon, who had only come to see the cellar anyway, lost interest quickly after that. When Armand led us in between the vines, Simon wandered after us, hands in his pockets, his mind on other things.

The vines stood chest-high on the men and reached very nearly to my shoulders, their spreading branches trained around strong wires strung between short posts. Trained, I thought, was the operative word, for despite the twisting tangle there was pristine order here. The rows climbed the sloping hill like soldiers, each vine pruned with such precision that when I looked out across the field of fluttering green I might have been looking out across a level,
square-clipped
hedge.

Neil walked behind me, silently, and seemed content to listen while Armand explained the workings of the vineyard. Paul was the only one of us who truly paid attention. His intelligent questions pleased Armand, who took his time in answering them, his technical language punctuated by beautifully expressive gestures.

I had thought Armand Valcourt in his element when I’d seen him in his home last night, but here in the fragrant hush of the vineyard another aspect of his being came quietly to the surface, surprising me with its intensity. He spoke proudly of the superior qualities of the
Clos des Cloches
– the south-facing slopes that captured each ray of the summer sun, the limestone soil that kept those slopes well-drained, the age of the vines themselves … ‘The
appellation contrôlée
requires that a vine be four years old before wine can be made from it, but we wait until our vines have eight years.’

‘What is the
appellation contrôlée
?
’ Paul wanted to know, and Neil’s voice drifted lazily over my head.

‘A kind of committee that sets the standards for the making of French wine.’

Armand accepted the definition, adding only that the rules were very strict. ‘We must not harvest before a certain date, nor after a certain date. We must grow a certain variety of grape, and then we may call our wines Chinon. If not, if we choose to break these rules, the penalties are hard. There are heavy fines, and they will come and uproot our vines.’ He shrugged. ‘It is truly the end of the world, I think.’

That was the farmer talking, not the aristocrat, just as it was the farmer who knelt now among the vines to demonstrate to Paul how each gnarled branch was pruned by hand to catch the sunlight.

‘I am sorry,’ he was saying, to Paul, ‘that I cannot spare the time today to show you how our wine is made, but I can at least show you the result. It is the most important
thing, I think. The process of wine-making, the machines we use, these are things you can learn from a book, but the wine …’ He gave a pointed shrug. ‘The wine, it is like life itself. It must be tasted at the source.’

Simon perked up behind us. ‘So we’re going to see the cellar now?’

‘Yes. I have set out a few good vintages for you to taste.’

‘Terrific.’ The bounce was back in Simon’s step. Moving past us, he assumed the lead, his eyes fixed with a hunter’s single-mindedness upon the huge white house.

I wished I could share his enthusiasm. Wine cellars might be interesting places, and impressive, but underground was underground no matter how one viewed it, and the French didn’t call their cellars ‘
caves
’ for nothing. The only thing that cheered me was that Harry wasn’t here to announce to everyone that I was phobic. ‘She has a thing,’ he would have told them, ‘about going underground.’ He always said it just like that, as if it were some random illness, inexplicable, and though I sometimes did remind him of the day he’d locked me in the neighbour’s bomb shelter, Harry never would admit he was to blame. ‘I shot an arrow at you, too,’ he’d once retorted, ‘and you didn’t develop a phobia about
that
.’

He had a point, I thought. Given the choice between facing a field of archers or spending an hour in someone’s basement, I’d pick the archers every time. But now, without a single bowman in sight, I found myself with no real option but to take a deep breath and follow along with the tour.

The cellars of the
Clos des Cloches
lay deep within the cliffs beneath the house. They were enormous,
high-arche
d
and spacious like the soaring nave of some fantastic cathedral. The ghostly limestone caught the light and cast it back upon us, and when I let my breath go I inhaled the sweeter scent of oak and wine above the dank aroma of the stone. Along one curving wall the bottles ran in ranks, neatly stacked, awaiting labels, their glass dark green beneath the thickly sifted dust. But the barrels dwarfed them easily.

They were everywhere, those barrels – great monstrous ones that might have served Gargantua himself, and row on row of smaller ones that seemed to stretch for ever, an aisle of darkened oak illumined softly on all sides by countless burning candles whiter than the walls. The candles, set with care upon the rim of every barrel, seemed to be the main source of light in this medieval hall of wonder. Beyond their reach the shadows crept, to claim the farther corners and the dimly rising stacks of bottled wine.

In the middle of it all stood François, tall and grey and elegant, arranging polished glasses on a small table that already groaned beneath the weight of several vintages. He looked round as we came in, his inscrutable face relaxing as he noticed me beside Armand. Only a statue could have failed to be flattered by his smile. ‘Mademoiselle,’ he greeted me, in French, ‘it is indeed a pleasure to see you again.’

To my surprise he welcomed Neil with similar warmth, framing his words in halting English. There was no hint of the bitterness, the tension, that had marked Neil’s conversation with Armand. In fact, I thought, they spoke like friends.

Paul, at my shoulder, waited patiently to be introduced, gazing at the arching dome of the
cave’s
ceiling with eyes
half-closed in rapt appreciation. I’d only known him two days, but I fancied that I recognised that look already.

‘Go on, then,’ I teased him, with a nudge. ‘Shatter me. What’s the word for this place?’

He smiled. ‘That obvious, eh?’

Armand looked sideways at the two of us. ‘The word …?’

‘Oh,’ said Simon, ‘it’s just this kind of game Paul plays, trying to find the perfect word to describe a place. He’s pretty good, most of the time, except he hasn’t got the word for Château Chinon, yet.’

‘Yes he does,’ I said. ‘It’s “tragic”.’

Armand studied Paul’s face closely, as though he hadn’t seen him properly, before. ‘That is indeed the perfect word. Tragic …’ He tasted the feel of it, on his tongue. ‘And my
caves
?’ he asked. ‘How would you call them?’

Paul looked a shade embarrassed, but he met the challenge squarely. ‘Clandestine,’ he said, in his quiet voice.

‘So,’ Armand said, softly. ‘So … a place for intrigue, yes? Or secret lovers.’ His eyes slid past me, smiling, and came to rest on François. ‘Well, who can say you are not right? There is much history here, and in my family there are many secrets.’ François glanced up, and Armand looked away again. ‘The making of wine,’ he said to Paul, ‘it is an art wrapped well in secrets. As in your game of words, one tries to find the essence of each vintage, removing that which complicates. Come, I will show you.’

It was more work than I’d imagined, tasting wine. With François guiding me, I sampled the estate’s great vintages, trying to follow each instruction – how to hold the glass,
how to inhale the wine’s ‘nose’ – there were so many things a true wine-lover ought to notice.

And I did try, really I did. I swirled and sniffed and scrutinised, and in truth I very nearly saw the purple edge that Armand said was such a telling characteristic of his clear red wine. But when he spoke of complex structure and of ‘legs’, and breathed the scents of strawberries and vanillan oak, I had to admit my own deficiencies. It was a lovely wine, I thought, a great one even, but to my untutored palate it tasted … well, like
wine
. And the more I drank the more like wine it tasted.

Neil knew. His eyes touched mine and held, smiling, and the faintest shiver crawled between my shoulders.

‘Cold?’ Paul checked, missing nothing. He was well into the fourth vintage. Paul, I felt sure, could see with ease the violet edge, and catch the scent of strawberries. I shook my head, and shrugged to clear the shiver.

‘No, not really.’

Simon looked at Armand, his expression casual. ‘How old,’ he asked him, ‘would your cellars be?’

Armand shrugged. ‘Older than the house. Our
cave
, our cellar, it was once used by the kings who stayed at the château.’

Paul eyed his brother warningly over the rim of his wine glass, but Simon had already seized the opening. ‘Really? So this was connected to the château, somehow?’

I might have imagined the flickering glance François sent his employer, and the careful pause before Armand replied. ‘Yes. The kings built many
souterrains
, or tunnels, as you call them. Ours is among the oldest, I believe.’

‘It still exists?’ Simon feigned surprise. ‘You mean you have a tunnel that goes straight to the château?’

Before Armand could answer that, Neil set his own glass on the table. ‘I haven’t seen the
souterrain
in years,’ he said. ‘Perhaps, Simon, if you ask him very nicely, Monsieur Valcourt will show it to us.’ There was a sort of challenge in his voice, and in the way his level eyes met those of our host.

‘It is kept locked,’ Armand said, finally.

Neil smiled his quiet smile, and the challenge became a dare. ‘Surely, just this once.’

There was a moment’s silence, then Armand’s mouth hardened and he picked the gauntlet up. ‘Why not?’ He turned to François. ‘Do you have the keys?’

I would have preferred not to go with them. The
cave
, at least, was brightly lit and full of air, and I could half convince myself I wasn’t underground. But once again, I didn’t have much choice. The others swept me with them, through the
cave
and past a small group of incurious workmen, to a darker narrow passageway behind.

Above our heads the pallid rock, its surface scarred and pitted by the chisels of ancient craftsmen, closed round us like a tomb. The smell of damp was stronger here, and Neil was forced to duck his head. There were at least a dozen doorways bolted shut on either side of the passage.

Simon stopped, excited, at the first one. ‘Is this the entrance to a tunnel?’

‘No.’ Armand laughed, and shook his head, it is a … how do you call it? A broom cupboard. This,’ he told us, walking a few steps on and fitting his key into a lock, ‘
this
is the door you want.’

The tunnel was just that – a tunnel, hung with cobwebs, strewn with dirt, and smelling of decay. I took one look and stepped back hastily, bumping into Neil. He kindly took no notice.

‘But it’s stone,’ said Simon. He sounded disappointed, and I realised he’d expected to see walls of earth or clay. One didn’t, as a rule, dig holes in solid rock to bury treasure. ‘Is it stone all the way through?’

Armand assured him that it was.