Vintage (18 page)

It was with some trepidation that, following the showdown with her father, Clare drove to Toulouse to visit Tante Bernadette.

As a decidedly lapsed Catholic, she had not for a long time communicated with either God or his earthly representatives, with whom she was not only out of sympathy but out of touch; a long time since, as one of the 900 million other Catholics across the world, she had dutifully repeated the decades of the rosary or told her beads in the hope of promoting spiritual growth through contemplation.

The only rosary she saw these days was the silver one her grandmother kept on the table beside her chair. It brought back the ivory rosary of her childhood, and the black beads of her schooldays which, in moments of boredom, she had transposed in her imagination into a musical instrument on which every Hail Mary was a tune.

Forsaken but not forgotten. The words of the credo were still lodged firmly on some back burner in her head. ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Amen O God come to our aid O Lord make haste to help us I believe in God the Father almighty creator of heaven and earth I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary He suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified died and was buried He descended to the dead On the third day he rose again He ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of the Father…’

As faith had given way to the reservations of
adolescence
, to be rapidly followed by the certainties of maturity, she remembered her confrontations with the patient sisters at St Mary’s. The main sticking-point had been venial sin, a grave violation of the law of God committed deliberately, knowing it to be wrong. OK. Fair enough. Although it was hard to get through the day without committing one. Why must we confess every mortal sin to a priest? Because every mortal sin offends God and wounds his church, and he imparts his forgiveness by means of the Church and through the ministry of the priests. How come the priests have the power to forgive sins? Christ breathed on his apostles who possessed the fullness of the priesthood and said ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any they are retained.’ How do the priests forgive? By listening to a person’s confession, giving him a penance and absolving him in the Name of the Trinity.

She recalled the solemn words of the absolution. ‘God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’

She had frequent discussions with Grandmaman about the Church’s attitude towards women, which was rooted
in fear. Like most men who thought themselves infallible, the Pope – Vicar of Christ, the Successor of the Apostles, Pontifex Maximus of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Province of Rome, State Sovereign of the Vatican of God’s City, Servant of Servants – wanted to keep women in a subordinate capacity, wanted them only to say ‘yes’ and ‘amen’.

Although Grandmaman, who regularly attended mass at Brompton Oratory, where she took Holy Communion, claimed that Christ had allowed both married men and women to come with him and form a Church, she argued more out of habit than from belief in the absolute truths of the last great absolute monarch. At the age of
eighty-five
, she was too old to change, now that the words of the rosary had become part of her. Using the beads like a mantra, not so much to ask the blessed Virgin’s intercession as to set her mind free for contemplation, she practised cafeteria Christianity, picking and choosing to suit herself.

Following a long telephone conversation, during which she had brought her grandmother up to date with recent events at Château de Cluzac, Clare had called the Convent of Notre Dame de Consolation to ask permission to visit her aunt. She had been taken aback when the Reverend Mother herself had answered the telephone.

‘This is Clare de Cluzac, daughter of Charles-Louis…’

Clare thought she heard a chuckle.

‘I know perfectly well who you are.’

‘There is something I would like to discuss with you, Tante Bernadette.’

‘La semaine prochaine, peut-être…’

‘It is rather urgent.’

‘Tomorrow I shall be at my restaurant in the Rue Valade, La Couronne d’Epines…’

‘Restaurant?’

‘For the homeless. Come at one o’clock and be prepared to roll up your sleeves.’

Leaving Jamie to browse in Baron Thibault’s library, she had driven to the pink-brick city of Toulouse, which she hadn’t visited since her childhood. Negotiating the narrow streets with difficulty, she found the Rue Valade and parked on the pavement outside the Couronne d’Epines.

Entering an inconspicuous doorway, set deep into the wall, above which a porcelain Jesus Christ wore a chipped crown of thorns, she gingerly descended a steep flight of dark steps. They led into a noisy cellar in which a rag-bag of misfits sat shoulder to shoulder at
oilcloth-covered
tables on which were baskets of bread and steaming tureens of soup.

‘So this is Charles-Louis’ daughter!’

The voice came from a grey-clad figure bearing aloft a tray perilously loaded with steaming plates.

The first thing Clare thought of was that they could have been mother and daughter. Beneath the coif, the contours of the flushed face, moist with perspiration, were those which Clare regarded in the mirror each morning. The same aquiline nose, identical hooded eyes.

‘Une carafe d’eau, ici,’ Tante Bernadette shouted over the hubbub. ‘Il faut du vin a cette table!’

Among the many part-time jobs she had taken after leaving school, Clare had been a waitress. The Couronne d’Epines was a far cry from the Hammersmith pub with its lecherous manager. As she followed Bernadette and her team of sisters, squeezing her way between the benches, answering requests for water or for bread, she became so involved with removing the deep white plates wiped clean of every vestige of navarin of lamb, with
serving the cheese and the thick wedges of tarte aux abricots of which Sidonie would not have been ashamed, that she almost forgot why she had come.

It was after four o’clock by the time the last of the homeless had made their reluctant way up the steep steps and out into the afternoon sunlight.

The dishes were washed in what had once been a dungeon, in a stone sink with a single cold tap. Rolling up the sleeves of her grey habit, Bernadette handed Clare a pristine linen tea-towel, brought from the convent and embroidered with a cross, and plunged her arms up to the elbows in the greasy water.

‘Je peux faire ça!’ Clare protested, wondering irreverently if Tante Bernadette shaved her head beneath its serre-tête.

‘I’m used to it, child. A little prayer…’ She scrubbed at a plate. ‘Our Lord’s detergent. It does wonders with the grease. Now, while we have a quiet moment, tell me why you came to La Couronne d’Epines.’

‘It’s about my father.’ Clare picked up a dripping plate.

Tante Bernadette worked away with a brush with clogged bristles as if she were actually enjoying it. She smiled into the grey sludge of the washing-up water.

‘What else could it be?’

Maître Long was already ensconced amid a sea of
documents
at the head of the table when Clare – summoned by an agitated Petronella who had hammered on the door of the bedroom where she and Jamie were still in bed – presented herself, still only half awake, in the Baron’s office.

‘I gather, Mademoiselle, that you are acquainted with the facts,’ he said, when the introduction had been effected. ‘Your father, Monsieur le Baron, is selling
Château de Cluzac to Mr Philip Van Gelder, from South Africa, for a sum of…’

Pacing the room, Charles-Louis cut the notary short.

‘What we need, Clare, before you go back to London, is for you to sign your pouvoir.’

‘Making over…’ Maître Long, stick thin, with a sharp nose, receding hair, and a powdering of dandruff on the shoulders of his shiny suit, took it upon himself to complete the Baron’s sentence. ‘Making over the
twenty-four
per cent of Château de Cluzac which belongs to you, to your father.’

Clare sat down, facing the lawyer at the far end of the table, although no one had invited her to do so.

Maître Long searched among his papers.

‘We shan’t keep you more than a few moments,
Mademoiselle
. Alors!’ He located what he had been looking for and marked some crosses in pencil upon several sheets of printed paper. ‘We require your signature here…and here…and here…et, encore une fois…’ he turned over a leaf, ‘here. Clare Gertrude Sophie Elinore de Cluzac.’ Taking the lid off his fountain pen, he took the papers courteously to the other end of the table. Indicating the first cross he had marked, he proffered the pen to Clare.

Ignoring him, Clare, now wide awake, turned to her father, who was tapping the window pane impatiently as if trying to attract someone’s attention, which she knew he was not.

‘Suppose I refuse to sign?’

The tapping stopped.

‘What do you mean “refuse”?’

‘Suppose I do not give you my pouvoir.’

‘Don’t be childish, Clare. Château de Cluzac is being sold to Philip Van Gelder. The terms of sale have been agreed. What remains are the formalities. Under the
terms of your grandfather’s will we need your signature. That is all there is to it. You have nothing to say.’

‘On the contrary, Papa, I have plenty to say. For starters, how it is that Château de Cluzac has shown no profits? How is it that I have been living on a shoestring? Why have I seen nothing whatsoever by way of dividends for several years?’

Charles-Louis breathed a sigh of relief. Pulling up a chair next to Clare, he switched on the charm. She could understand why women were drawn to him. Once, she had asked her mother why on earth (apart from the fact that she had been pregnant at the time) she had married such a complete con, to which Viola had replied, a trifle wistfully, that ‘even shits have charm’. Now her father was directing the full force of his magnetism – the winning smile, the seductive eyes beneath their straight dark lashes – in her direction.

‘You are quite right to be concerned about the château. There is a very good reason, as Maître Long will confirm, why you have received nothing. There has been nothing to receive.’

Unable to remain in one place for very long, the Baron got to his feet and put his hands in the pockets of his English worsted trousers.

‘Times, you see, Clare,’ he went on reasonably, ‘have changed, I’m afraid. In common with the rest of France, indeed with the whole of Europe, Bordeaux has a serious economic crisis on its hands. Our claret, against which all other red wines were once measured, now has to compete with the very real challenge of the New World.’

‘I think you are forgetting,’ Clare said, ‘that I have seen the Mémo de Chasse.’

Maître Long raised his eyebrows. He was getting lost.

‘The Mémo de Chasse is neither here nor there,’ the Baron said, the veneer of charm slipping. ‘Let me
explain. A situation has arisen whereby I owe several million francs in back-taxes to the French government. For reasons of which you are now aware, I am unable to bring back into the country any money which… I may have elsewhere. In short I am in trouble with the fisc. I cannot afford to turn down Van Gelder’s offer.’

‘And I can’t afford to throw away my inheritance. You know perfectly well that Château de Cluzac is grossly undervalued. Why should I hand over my twenty-four per cent, so that you can scarper off to Florida on the proceeds?’

Ignoring her question, Charles-Louis exchanged
confidential
words with the lawyer before moving to the door.

‘Your signature would have made things very much simpler, Clare. We can, however, proceed without your consent. Bernadette has already agreed.’

‘I went to see Tante Bernadette. She has changed her mind about giving you her pouvoir…’

Charles-Louis’ hand gripped the brass door-knob, assiduously polished by Sidonie. The lawyer held open the lid of his briefcase. She had their full attention.

‘I told her about the Mémo de Chasse. She wasn’t too impressed with the fact that you have been ripping off Notre Dame de Consolation. She requires half a million francs to repair the roof of the chapel, which is in danger of collapsing.’

‘The roof of the convent chapel is not high on my agenda.’

‘I have also discussed the matter with Grandmaman. She is absolutely appalled at the thought of the château being sold.’

‘Your grandmother has nothing to say in the matter.’

‘Grandpapa left her four per cent of Château de Cluzac because he wished it to remain in the family. Have you no feelings?’

‘Feelings do not come into it.’ The Baron looked at his watch. ‘You’re wasting everybody’s time.’

‘Then let it be wasted.’

‘Have you come into a fortune by any chance? Are you thinking of buying me out?’

‘That was not what I had in mind, Papa. I was born at Cluzac, I grew up here…’

‘I must say you’ve taken very little interest in it.’

‘I refuse to let you get away with throwing away my patrimoine, for which Grandpapa worked so hard. I want you to withdraw Château de Cluzac from sale.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Impossible?’

‘If you insist on making trouble Clare, the château will be sold over your head. I shall take the matter to a tribunal.’

‘If you go to a tribunal I will inform them about your account in the Banque de Genève…’

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Try me. The French government takes an extremely serious view of these things. If you attempt to get the money out of Switzerland the police will stop you at the border. The account will be frozen. Forget Laura Spray. Forget Florida. You will go to jail.’

‘You really are a monster, Clare.’