Vintage (29 page)

“I wish I could take more comfort from that.”

“Indulging in
schadenfreude
is not such a good trait. Leave that nasty habit to me.”

“What else do I have?”

“What else do you have?” Marisa parroted, sarcastically. “You know, you’re never going to be destitute, you silly girl. In real terms, you’ve got plenty of money in the bank. And when you get something approaching boobs
again, I’ll be happy to keep sending you out on modeling jobs for as long as they come in. Which will be for years,” she added. “And after that? Bill’s pretty much agreed you can have this place, right?”

Christina nodded. Bill had been remarkably conciliatory in an effort to keep down his legal costs.

“Well, I think it’s a pretty wonderful spot to hole up in while you’re deciding your next move.” Marisa took a thoughtful sip from her glass. “You could even become a winemaker for real. You like wine, don’t you? You’ve got a great palate. I think you’d be a natural.”

“Well, yes, but … so I know a bit about the finished product. I don’t know anything much about making the stuff.”

“You’re living in Carneros, darling. This is great land. You can’t go wrong. Get involved. Throw yourself into learning about viticulture. It will take your mind off things.”

Christina automatically shook her head. “What’s the point?”

Marisa leaned forward and took her former star model by the shoulders.

“It’s time to get a grip, Christina. Of all the models I have ever represented, you were always the most driven. No one works like you did; no one takes more care of his or her image. And now you’re really going to let it go because your sham of a marriage didn’t work out? Yes, you’re getting older. Everybody does. But you’re not over yet. You will turn this terrible time to your advantage. One of the biggest difficulties some advertisers had with your image is that you were always too perfect. You had that wall of glitter around you at all times. The tide always turns in the media. Bill’s little-boy-lost act will get old and then people will want to know what’s happening with you. If you just get on with your life, quietly and with dignity, it
will stand you in good stead for when that moment comes. Show people the humility and humanity I know you have inside.”

Christina sniffed.

“There’s a market for real,” said Marisa with a wry smile. “I could get loads of work for an ice queen turned nice.”

“Do you think I’m a nice person?” Christina asked Marisa suddenly.

“I know you are. Come here, you idiot.”

And Christina practically threw herself into her agent’s arms.

By the time Marisa left, Christina had to admit that she was feeling better than she had in a while.

During the time that she’d been living like an exile in the Villa Bacchante, life had been going on. The world had continued to turn. June became July became August. The grapevines didn’t know that Villa Bacchante was a house in mourning for a shattered image. An hour after Marisa got in her hired car for the drive back to San Francisco, Christina finally took off the dressing gown, put on her boots and took a walk to the vineyard.

If the vineyard was all that she had, then Christina was going to make the most of it. She remembered her maternal grandmother uttering that famous saying “If God gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Well, God had given Christina something better than lemons to play with at the Villa Bacchante.

She held a bunch of pinot noir grapes in her hand and marveled at their ripeness. She pulled off a single berry and crushed it, letting the juice ooze between her fingers. She licked them clean.

“Enrique!” she called to her vineyard manager, who
was tinkering with the irrigation system. “Will you come over here and explain to me exactly what needs to be done to turn these grapes into wine?”

M
adeleine’s dear girlfriends, Lizzy, Jane and Helena, arrived in Champagne two days before the official start of the
vendange.
They drove down from London together in Jane’s enormous Porsche Cayenne.

And so the all-female team to pick Clos Des Larmes was assembled. Not widows this time, but certainly all heartbroken. Lizzy was still pining for the physics teacher; Jane was desperate for something to do while her ex-husband took their children to Tuscany with his new girlfriend—“She’s just two years older than our daughter!” Jane wailed; Helena was also in the throes of a horrible separation. From a divorce lawyer.

“Why the hell did I marry a divorce lawyer? I am stuffed,” she admitted as she considered the fight to come.

“Do you think our bitterness will affect the taste of the grapes?” Lizzy asked, remembering Madeleine’s father’s theory that the 1914 Clos Des Larmes was magnificent because every grape was harvested with love and pride for the men who couldn’t be there.

“In that case it’s a shame you’re not making vinegar,” said Jane.

“Girls,” said Madeleine, brushing aside their fears.
“Let’s put some happy faces on. I promise this is going to be fun.”

To be honest, it wasn’t that much fun at all for the first two days that the women were holed up in Madeleine’s house. There was nothing to do but wait for the CIVC’s chosen date, smoke cigarettes and moan. Madeleine, meanwhile, spent all her time dashing in and out to the vines with Henri, taking measurements of the sugar levels in her grapes like a nurse tending her patients in intensive care.

“This must be what it’s like waiting for a baby to be born,” said Lizzy as she watched Madeleine take yet another reading. “Are we nearly there yet?”

Madeleine frowned as she read the meter. “I think we are.”

Henri looked at the reading and nodded. The vines on the hill were already being picked. Only the Clos remained.

“We’re off,” said Madeleine at last.

There was something soothing about such heavy manual work; Madeleine had come to know that well. When you were moving through the Clos, concentrating on removing the bunches of grapes from the vine without damaging them, there was no time to think about hopeless boyfriends or ex-husbands and their new women. After a while Lizzy, whose misery didn’t seem to have abated one bit since she was last in Champagne, actually started to sing. Even if it was “I Will Survive” rather than one of the traditional French songs that had filled the air during the harvests of her childhood, Madeleine was glad to hear it. She joined in on the chorus, laughing when Lizzy stopped harvesting for a moment to sing into the handles of her secateurs.

Gradually, the baskets filled with grapes. Madeleine
and Henri loaded them into the back of the Twingo and drove them down to the winery. There, the officials from the CIVC watched as the grapes were poured—whole bunches—into the press. The first pressing was carefully measured out according to the strict guidelines set by the board.

As the juice ran into the tank, Henri used a wine thief to draw some of it out for the women to taste. He poured each of the women a glass.

“A vous,”
said Madeleine, toasting her friends.

“To a vintage year for all of us,” said Lizzy.

Each pressing took four hours. The presses at Champagne Arsenault were running all night.

Eventually, four days later, all the grapes from the Clos Des Larmes were safely pressed and in the barrel. The juice that was left over after the carefully measured CIVC limits per kilo had been used was sent away to the distillery, as local law required. There it would be distilled into Marc De Champagne or Ratafia.

High on the excitement of having brought in the harvest (and possibly a little delirious from exhaustion), the girls hit the town in Reims, which was full of local vignerons in liberation mood.

The population of the relatively sedate town exploded during the harvest. The bars were suddenly as busy as the nightclub in Nicosia during high season, and just as rowdy. The air was full of laughter and chatter in accents from every corner of the world, adding to the holiday atmosphere.

Madeleine’s picking crew hesitated at the door to one of the bars on the main street, the Place Drouet D’Erlon.

“Wow,” said Lizzy, looking at the crowd that spilled out onto the pavement. “There is so much talent in here.”

“Terrifying!” said Jane. “I need a drink!”

Inside the bar the jukebox, which lay silent most of the year, played non-stop. Unfortunately, the discs within it hadn’t been changed for the past twenty years, so the music was a medley of the cheesy Europop that Lizzy had mocked so mercilessly when she and Madeleine shared a room in boarding school. That and the perennial Johnny Hallyday. Still, old as the music was, it was perfect to dance to. A couple of glasses of wine and Lizzy was on her feet, bumping hips with a blond guy from Brisbane. Soon she had dragged Madeleine and the others up to join her.

Madeleine gave a small squeak of protest as blondie from Brisbane’s mate wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. With his pelvis pressed against her buttocks, the Australian guy moved to the rhythm of the music. Madeleine was mortified to be dancing that way with a complete stranger but at the same time she felt excited. It was as though the sun in the vineyard had made her skin more sensitive. As the Australian leaned forward to shout his name—Dave—into Madeleine’s ear, the feel of his breath on her skin made her shiver. In a good way.

“Want to get out of here?” he asked after a couple of dances.

“What?”

“Come on.” Dave took Madeleine by the hand and led her out onto the street. They walked a little while and then found a dark shop doorway. Dave pulled Madeleine into the shadows and fastened his lips upon hers before she could protest. But why protest? she asked herself. As they’d danced in the bar, Madeleine had tried to guess Dave’s age and put him in his early twenties, probably a decade her junior. But it didn’t seem to bother him and she couldn’t help but be thrilled by the firmness of his young body. Giving in to the moment, she let her hands
stray beneath the hem of his T-shirt and up to his firm high pecs.

Meanwhile, Dave’s tongue flickered inside Madeleine’s mouth. There was no standing on ceremony with this guy. His hands roamed her body freely, squeezing her buttocks and then seeking out her breasts. He pushed her bra out of the way to better get at her nipples. Opening her shirt, he fell upon her nipples hungrily, using his tongue to great effect, then sucking hard until Madeleine moaned with desire. She pressed herself against him, loving the feeling of power she got from knowing that the erection in his pants was all because of her.

Who knew what might have happened had another student picker not interrupted them, lurching into their hideaway to vomit.

“Jeez, Pete. Your timing sucks, mate.”

While Dave attended to his friend, Madeleine slipped away. The moment was definitely lost. But she returned to her friends in the bar with an unmistakable glow about her face. Her friends raised a bawdy toast.

“Where’s Lizzy?” Madeleine asked.

Jane and Helena both looked in the direction of the jukebox. Lizzy leaned upon it, engaged in some tonsil hockey of her own.

Lizzy stayed out all night. When she rolled in as the others were having breakfast the following morning, her cheeks were pink with happiness.

“I broke my man drought,” she said. The girls gave her a round of applause.

That evening, their last evening together, the women fell into a stupor around the dining table. Eventually Helena put her head on her folded arms and actually fell asleep
with her half-eaten meal still in front of her. Madeleine raised a toast to her two conscious friends.

“Thank you. Thank you so much for being here for my first harvest. I’m so grateful you’re all here today. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Truly I am the luckiest woman in the world to have such wonderful friends.”

“Oh, stop it,” said Jane. “We only came to get a look at the Australian students with their tops off.”

Lizzy dabbed at her eyes. “I came because I love you, Mads,” she sniffed.

Madeleine gave her dearest friend a hug.

“Over-tired,” Madeleine mouthed at Jane over the top of Lizzy’s head.