Vintage (17 page)

Jamie twirled the wine in his glass.

‘Now hold it to your nose.’

Halliday watched as Jamie did so.

‘What you’re getting there is the “bouquet”. Not to be confused with aroma. Aroma refers to young wine. OK. Now, whistle the wine in and let it fan out over your tongue…’

Jamie, who was beginning to enjoy himself, did as he was bidden.

‘Keep it there, ten or twelve seconds, long enough to allow it to express itself, establish its personality. Wine’s not like lemonade. It’s not for quenching your thirst. As the first sensations diminish, other flavours reveal themselves. If these remain in the mouth for some time after the wine has been swallowed or spat out, we say that it has ‘body’. What remains after you’ve swallowed is called the persistence. A pleasant aftertaste is good. If it’s bitter or acid the wine’s not well balanced. Some wines leave nothing. They may be good but they won’t be great…’

‘So the longer the aftertaste the better the wine?’

‘Right! And when you’re all done…’ Halliday pointed to an urn in the corner filled with wood shavings. ‘When you’re all done, mate, you spit the stuff out!’

‘Three cheers for Crocodile Dundee!’ Harry Balard led a round of applause as Balard senior approached Clare.

‘Et bien, Mademoiselle, vous êtes prête?’

‘Quite ready.’ Clare’s voice was equable.

Clare, accompanied by Jamie and Halliday Baines and a few curious onlookers, followed the negociant into the adjoining cellar where a table on which several
half-filled
glasses, two notebooks and two pencils had been set up for the blind tasting. With an exaggerated bow of politeness, Claude Balard handed Clare the first glass of unlabelled wine.

Clare tapped on the door of Laura Spray’s bedroom.

‘Who is this?’

Clare entered the room. She had a letter in her hand.

Laura was sitting in front of the mahogany toilet mirror, with a crepe bandage round her hair, rubbing something into her face with the tips of her fingers.

‘I’m looking for my father’

‘You’ll find him in the office with Monsieur Boniface. A couple of guys from the tax office stopped by.’

‘The fisc? What are they doing here?’

‘I really don’t know. Can I help?’

Clare looked at the letter.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You know, this light is driving me crazy. And the size of this looking-glass! Everything about this chat-oh. It gives me the creeps. I shall be glad to get back to Florida. My vanity unit runs the entire length of the bathroom. I mean bathroom. Not this antiquated number across the hall with a tub that takes for ever to fill. Did this cream hit the UK yet? Glycolic acid? Dead cells beneath the skin are bound together by a kind of cement which holds back the growth of new cells. What you get is a traffic
pile-up
…’

‘Believe that you’ll believe anything.’

‘Glycolic acid dissolves the cement, the dead cells come to the surface, slough away, and the skin is left smooth. It slows the ageing process.’

Clare thought that they could have used Laura Spray in the cosmetics hall at Harrods.

‘It’s made from naturally occurring fruit acids…’

‘Cleopatra used asses’ milk. It didn’t do her any good.’

Ignoring the remark, Laura held out the jar to Clare.

‘Care to try some?’

‘How long do you think my father will be?’

‘Not too long, I guess. We’re going to the opera.’

‘I’ll come back later’

‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Clare, it wouldn’t cost you to be polite to me. Your father and I are getting married.’

‘My father is already married.’

The glycolic acid was returned to the dressing-table.

‘Am I hearing you correctly?’

‘My father is already married. To my mother’

‘They were divorced years ago.’

‘Fine.’

‘Weren’t they?’

‘Why don’t you ask him.’

Leaving Laura to her rejuvenation, Clare climbed the stairs to her old bedroom. Propping the letter, addressed to her father, beneath a Zurich postmark, on the chimney-piece next to the chiming clock, she lay down on the bed where only a few days ago she had made love to Jamie.

The blind tasting at Balard et Fils had gone better than expected. Putting her trust in her first impressions, eliminating the impossible, and working her way through the wines from the Loire to Savoie, she had brought into play not only her three senses but all the summers she had spent at Cluzac in the company of Jean Boyer, all the holidays she had spent with Grandmaman, who had introduced her to a wide variety of wines from the caveau she had brought with her from France and kept in a store-room beneath the building. Over the years Clare had built up her repertoire. Once tasted, never forgotten. It was not difficult.

A small crowd had gathered to watch the contest between Clare de Cluzac and Claude Balard. Picking up a glass, observing – the more violet a red wine and the more green a white, the younger it was – then smelling (a brief sniff could put you on the track of the grape variety) before swirling the wine unhurriedly round her mouth, Clare was immediately able to place many of the samples. Among the reds she identified a minor château from the Graves, and – crafty touch this – a 1989 claret from her father’s château; among the whites, a crisp Pouilly Fumé made from Sauvignon grapes, a generous Pouilly Fuissé from Chardonnay, and a maverick hock from the Rheingau.

She stuck on only two, and, when the papers were handed to Paulette Pauling for assessment, she had scored twenty-one points over Balard’s eighteen. Big Mick Bly, who had arrived wearing cowboy boots and a stetson, had – only half joking – offered her job on Wine Watch. Harry Balard, siding with his father, had turned his back on her. When she looked round for Halliday Baines, for his approval, he had gone.

‘You did great.’ Jamie hugged her.

‘I wasn’t going to let that shit get the better of me.’

‘Wait till he knows he’s not getting Cluzac. He’ll really have egg on his face.’

At the mention of the Château, Clare’s eyes grew thoughtful. She had not discussed the Mémo de Chasse with Jamie. Not out of any feelings of loyalty to her father, but because she needed time to work out for
herself the significance of what she had found in the mechanical table.

After lunch in Bordeaux, she left Jamie to find his way to the Musée des Beaux-Arts and arranged to pick him up later at le Régent, where it was fashionable to hang-out, for the drive back to St Julien.

Setting off along the Rue Charles Bonnier, down the Vital Carles, across the wide Cours de l’Intendance (so named after the architect responsible for the remodelling of Bordeaux), dodging the traffic that raced round the Place de la Comédie, she made her way to the the Allées de Tourny.

By the time she got to Biancarelli’s – where she had the distinct impression that she saw Claude Balard leave the boutique and disappear into the crowd – she had bought a selection of silver wine labels in various shapes and sizes, an only slightly broken nineteenth-century child’s pull-along horse, and a wine-taster the antiquaire had tried to kid her was Louis XVI, all of which would go down nicely in Portobello Road.

‘I hear you’re getting married,’ Biancarelli said, as Clare tried on the ‘smoking’ she had altered.

‘Who told you that?’ Clare’s voice came from behind the curtain.

Lulled out of her usual reticence, Beatrice realised that it was Charles-Louis who had let slip the news about his daughter’s forthcoming wedding.

‘One hears things.’ Beatrice perceived she must watch her tongue. She sighed nostalgically. ‘It’s a long time since a man has swept me off my feet.’

‘Jamie and I have been going out for some time.’ Clare emerged from the cubicle. ‘I’m hardly swept off my feet.’

Biancarelli looked at herself in the mirror.

‘Je ne suis plus mariable. No one will marry me now…’

‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Biancarelli.’

‘Je sais. It’s men that are the problem.

‘Not Jamie.’

‘Even the “new” one. They go to the supermarché, they make the dinner, they change the diaper… Pfui! Underneath nothing is changed. Turn round, please. I check the trouser. Are you in love with Jamie?’

‘Of course I love him.’

‘J’ai dit “in love”?’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘C’est comme une maladie.’

Clare laughed. ‘An illness!’

The trouser-suit was perfect.

While Clare put on her own clothes, Beatrice Biancarelli, her glasses on the end of her nose, made out the Baron’s bill at her large, untidy desk. Painstakingly folding the black trouser-suit in sheets of pristine tissue paper, she went to the back of the shop to look for a carrier bag large enough to hold it.

Coming out of the cubicle, Clare, staring idly at the desk and the amount of her father’s bill, caught sight of an unopened letter addressed – quite clearly – to Baron de Cluzac, care of Biancarelli. Before she had time to think, and acting on impulse, she picked it up and slid it into the deep pocket of her skirt.

Looking at the envelope now, with its Swiss postmark, propped up on the chimney-piece in her old room at Cluzac, she wondered what had possessed her to
appropriate
it, what flash of intuition had prompted her, uncharacteristically, to steal.

According to the time on the gilt clock, she had been lying on the bed for over half an hour. With a bit of luck
her father would by now have returned from the chai. It was time to find out.

Picking up the letter, she ran downstairs to knock once more on Laura Spray’s door. Rougement lay across the threshold. Terrified of germs, Laura Spray would not permit him inside the room.

‘Just a minute!’

Rougemont looked at Clare dolefully.

‘Come in!’

Laura had insinuated herself into an electric-blue dress with a ridiculously short skirt which her father, still in his sports clothes, was zipping up.

‘Can I have a word.’ Clare addressed her father.

Laura glanced irritably at her watch.

‘What is it?’ Charles-Louis said.

‘In private.’

‘We’re due at the theatre, Charles…’

‘You can speak in front of Laura.’

‘Have it your own way.’ Clare took the letter from her pocket. ‘I see you’ve been using a poste restante…’

Charles-Louis was all attention.

‘Where did you get that?’

Clare looked at Laura.

‘Where do you think?’

‘Well kindly hand it over’ The Baron held out his hand.

‘Not until I know what’s in it.’

‘Aren’t you being a little impertinent?’

‘Is that letter addressed to your father?’

‘You keep out of this!’

‘If you’re going to be insulting to Laura, kindly leave the room. That letter is not your property.’

‘How can I be sure?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning there is something fishy going on round here.’

‘We’re going to be late, Charles. Can’t this discussion wait?’

‘I’d like to know exactly what is in it.’

‘Give it to me…’

‘When you tell me…’

‘It’s no concern of yours.’

‘I want to know why it was posted in Switzerland. Why it is addressed to…’

‘That’s enough!’

Clare recognised the flashing eyes, the thin lips, the mounting colour in the cheeks. She stood her ground.

‘If I give it to you will you let me see what’s in it?’

‘Absolument pas!’

‘Then I shall open it.’

‘Clare…!’ Laura was horrified. She looked at
Charles-Louis
, who was now extremely angry.

‘Tu n’as pas le droit. Je te le défends!’

At the sound of the raised voices, Rougemont became restless. He scratched at the door, his howl adding to the cacophony.

‘Trop tard!’ Clare tore open the envelope.

The Baron let the dog into the room.

‘Charles!’ Laura was distraught.

Coming up behind Clare, Charles-Louis tried to snatch the letter but Clare, who had already removed a folded sheet of paper from the envelope, was too quick for him.

‘It’s a bank statement! The Banque de Gènve.’

‘Then it can’t be for me.’

‘It has your name on it, Father’

‘Ce n’est pas possible!’ The Baron was pacifying Rougemont, while Laura looked as if she was about to be sick.

‘On the envelope.’

‘Exactement! There is a mistake.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘If my name is not on the statement, then it is not for me.’

‘There is a name on the statement. I presume it is a code name. You know as well as I do, Papa, that Swiss bank accounts are numbered. They never disclose the identities of their clients.’

‘What your father says is right. Anyone can make up a code.’

Clare shook her head.

‘Not this one.’

At the dressing-table Laura fastened a lapis-studded bracelet over her wrist. ‘What is it?’ she said curiously.

Charles-Louis, followed by Rougemont, made for the door. ‘I think we had better continue this discussion downstairs.’

‘Too late. The code name is “Rougemont”, and the statement…’ Clare cast her eye over the telephone numbers in the right-hand column of the account, over the millions and millions of francs.

‘No wonder you’ve been buying orange groves…’

Charles-Louis and Laura exchanged glances.

‘No wonder Cluzac hasn’t been showing a profit.’ Clare’s voice rose. ‘No wonder I’ve had nothing in the way of dividends except for a few lousy cases of wine. You’ve been ripping me off for years!’

‘Can we postpone this little discussion until later?’ Laura picked up her wrap.

‘This is not a “little discussion”, Mrs Spray, and the answer is no, we cannot.’ She faced her father ‘You have been lying to me, Papa.’

‘Everything is in order.’ Having recovered from the shock the Baron had regained his cool. ‘Maître Long, the notaire, will be here in the morning. He will explain everything…’

Clare played her trump card.

‘Even the Mémo de Chasse?’

A silence, which lasted for several seconds, was palpable in the room. It was Clare versus her father. Laura Spray had disappeared.

‘Who told you about the Mémo de Chasse?’ The voice was crisp, businesslike.

‘How long has it been going on?’

‘I told you. Everything can be explained. Van Gelder is waiting. Tomorrow you will sign the pouvoir. You will get your share of Château de Cluzac. You will get your twenty-four per cent.’

‘Twenty-four per cent of what? I’m not exactly stupid, Papa. I know it pleases you to call me a brocanteuse – yes I do like selling junk – but I also run a serious business in London, a fact which you conveniently ignore. Twenty-four per cent of what you say Château de Cluzac is worth, or twenty-four per cent of what, according to the Mémo de Chasse, it is really worth? And there is someone else to consider. What about Tante Bernadette and her homeless? You have been robbing both of us.’

Taking Rougemont by the collar, Charles-Louis walked to the door of the bedroom. His voice was icy.

‘Your Aunt Bernadette has agreed to the sale. Papers have been drawn up. Your signature is a formality. There is nothing you can do.’

At every attempt of her father’s to intimidate her, Clare’s courage always rose. She thrust the incriminating letter into her pocket.

‘On verra!’

We shall see.