Lace Page 24

  From just below the forest on the flat hill summit, vine-covered slopes stretched down to the yellow haze of corn on the plains below. The Mercedes turned off the dusty country road through a pair of rusting, wrought-iron gates, one of them sagging from its hinges, and drove for half a kilometer up a neglected, weedy drive, past overgrown flower beds. Etched against the lavender sky was the dark, turreted silhouette of a splendid chateau. When they came closer they could see that it, too, was shuttered and forlorn. Several smashed tiles from the roof lay in the courtyard, Maxine noticed, as she and her aunt stepped up the chipped stone steps to the front door and pulled the rusting iron bell handle. Surprisingly they heard it clang down some distant corridor.

  The door was opened by a tall, thin young man, wearing an old brown sweater. His fine-boned face was small and lean and his gray eyes had laughter lines at the corners. He looked surprised and pleased, as if someone had just given him an unexpected present. He bowed, kissed their hands and invited them inside. “Everything is dusty, which is why I keep sneezing, but I’ve cleared a space in one of the salons and a village woman comes up to clean it. The place is in a terrible state.”

  The shuttered hall was depressingly dark and bare. The filthy paint was peeling and cobwebs laced across the corners. One of the dividing doors had been smashed and was lying on the floor. German soldiers had been billeted at the chateau; the other beautiful carved doors had been chipped and broken, initials had been hacked in the antique panelling and obscene messages scrawled on the walls. Most of the furniture had been used for firewood except for a few pieces bricked up in the attics by the Kommandant, who had hoped to liberate them for himself at a later date.

  “Apart from this, there are only four other good chateaus still standing in this area. Montmort is first class, so’s Brugny, but Mareuil is less impressive and I don’t personally care for the design of Louvrois.” The Count had a slight stoop and a long neck. Occasionally, furtively, he looked toward Maxine. She thought to herself, He expected me to be older—he doesn’t want to trust the job to someone so young—so look efficient. She started to make copious notes on the large pad of her clipboard.

  Diffident and modest, Charles de Chazalle was attractive in his sheer helplessness. Whereas a more aggressive man might have considered Maxine too bossy, she was exactly what he needed and he admired her increasingly as the day progressed. Maxine scribbled nonstop, and at the end of the afternoon she suggested a simple, but efficient, system for dealing with the chaos in which Charles had so suddenly found himself.

  Not surprisingly, she got the job.

  After that, almost every afternoon she would bump up the drive in her little white Renault van, a different Parisian expert at her side. First a surveyor and an architect, a roof expert, a drains expert, a furniture restorer and a picture valuer. Finally, an auctioneer.

  In due course all the experts made their reports, and every Friday night Maxine and Charles discussed the project over dinner in an eighteenth-century post inn at Epernay. As summer faded, there was local venison and wild boar and always the soft, white, tangy Boursault cheese; and of course they drank the local white wine, naturally dry and delicate with a slight taste of hazelnut.

  Maxine might as well have been eating dry bread and water. Despite a great deal of discussion before giving their order, she was hardly ever aware of what she ate; she thought only of how she longed for him to like her.

  Charles always enjoyed every mouthful of the meal. He didn’t eat out much. He liked his quiet life in the country and didn’t want to sparkle around Paris, prattling at smart dinner parties. During the day he worked hard, tending his neglected vineyards. On the whole he preferred to spend his evenings alone by the fire, stretching out his long, thin legs, reading or listening to music. Maxine amused and intrigued him, partly because she was une sérieuse.

  “There’s such a lot to be done,” he sighed, one Friday evening as they finished their meal. “For a start, we aren’t producing nearly enough wine at the moment. The average yield from each hectare should be about 5,600 liters of champagne.” He signalled for coffee. “How do I know? Well, it’s not surprising that I know a lot about the theory of the champagne business. After all, my family has lived here for centuries. But I’ve only been able to put my theories into practice since my father died.”

  He paused as the waiter poured his glass of brandy, then laid the snifter sideways on the table to check the measure; it should almost spill, but not quite. “Most Frenchmen want their sons to join the family firm, but my father was so anxious to demonstrate his independence that he didn’t let me take any real part in the business. On the other hand, he wouldn’t let me work for any other firm. This was very frustrating, because he was resolutely opposed to using new methods. I knew he couldn’t live for long—he’d been badly tortured by the Gestapo in the war—so I never went against his wishes.”

  Country restaurants closed early, and the Royale Champagne was emptying, but Charles continued to turn the empty brandy glass in both hands. “I suppose it’s natural that he should have felt nostalgic for the prewar days. He liked to pretend that he hadn’t changed, that nothing had changed.” The bill was brought on a plate. He glanced at it (He can’t have added it that fast, thought Maxine), signed it and continued. “Unfortunately, his business methods were also old-fashioned. When I tried to discuss work with him, I was put firmly in my place. ‘There is plenty of time for you to alter things when I’m dead,’ my father used to say. Those were his wishes and I respected them, but now I intend to work as hard as possible to restore the de Chazalle firm.”

  He hesitated, looked at Maxine and then said, “Our champagne is no longer considered one of the very best, but I’m determined to change that.” As if expecting to be contradicted, he continued, speaking fast and rather defensively. “It’s not such an insane ambition; the Lansons were originally a tiny firm and their premises were virtually destroyed during the First World War, but the two sons—Victor and Henry—travelled all over the world in pursuit of orders and their success has been amazing.”

  The waiter started to switch off the lights. Charles took the hint.

  “Shall we go?” With concealed reluctance Maxine nodded, stood up and another waiter leaped to pull back her chair. Charles nodded good-night and followed her toward the door, saying, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t try what the Lansons did. They made their champagne world-famous in half a century that included two World Wars—and a long period of depression.”

  They both secretly looked forward to Friday evenings and Maxine’s return trips to Paris got later and later. She found it hard to leave Charles, who started gently to tease her about her efficiency, and who could make her laugh at herself or at nothing at all. Charles could make her giggle as she had not done since she left finishing school.

  To other people he appeared quiet, reserved and almost dull, but not to Maxine. The power to make a woman laugh is a strong aphrodisiac, and she couldn’t wait for Friday nights. She always felt excitement in the air as she dressed that morning; she always changed her mind at least three times and left her bedroom untidily strewn with clothes. Her mother cheered up wonderfully at these unusual signs. Indecision in one’s wardrobe always meant a man.

  On the following Friday, as they sat over coffee and brandy at the Royale Champagne, Maxine longed for Charles to touch her. But he didn’t. There seemed to be a barrier of embarrassment between them. Maxine was acutely aware that, to her, Charles was no longer just a client, and she felt very self-conscious whatever she was doing, whether scratching her head with a pencil (a habit much deplored by her family) or eating and drinking with suddenly noisy swallows.

  By the end of the following week, Maxine felt so agitated that she could hardly bear to stand next to Charles. That evening she had shown him a group of battered oil paintings, horse portraits that she had collected from different areas of the house and stacked in a corridor, they were very similar to the ones that Jack Reffold had
started to sell to America. They were late for their dinner reservation at the hotel, but she had particularly wanted him to see them, as she wondered whether it was worth sending a couple over to Jack for appraisal.

  “Why don’t you come back after dinner?” Charles asked. “We can decide then which ones to send to London.”

  “I’ll be too tired and I’ll get back to Paris much too late and the van will probably weave all over the road on the return journey.”

  “I’ll drive you back,” Charles offered.

  “It’s too far, you won’t get back to Epernay until dawn.” Privately, she thought he might never get back—the only thing she disliked about Charles was his reckless driving.

  They continued their meal. Then, after the waiter poured their coffee, Charles leaned across the table and slowly, deliberately stroked her thick, newly corn-coloured hair. Maxine felt the shock waves on her scalp, in her breasts, in her groin. She couldn’t breathe properly, she was panting as if at a high altitude. Charles let the strand of hair drop back into place, and a little moan left her lips. Charles noticed. “These late journeys are too much of a strain for you,” he said. “Why don’t you simply move in with me?”

  “Because my parents would have a fit!”

  “They wouldn’t if we were married,” Charles said, not taking his eyes off her face but lifting her left wrist to his mouth and, very softly, kissing the pale blue veins that led to her palm.

  Maxine, who was always in command of a situation, who always knew exactly what she wanted to do, was speechless. She felt short of breath. She didn’t dare move. She felt so weak that she didn’t know whether she’d be able to walk out of the restaurant. She couldn’t take her eyes off his face. He was not smiling for once; instead, he seemed oddly impassive.

  After they left the restaurant, Charles drove back to the chateau at breakneck speed without saying a word. He grabbed Maxine’s hand and—still without a word—tugged her after him as he leaped up the steps toward the main entrance, oblivious of nocturnal scents of warm earth and hot grass. He was conscious only of the tense, expectant, determined passion that passed like an electric current through their clasped hands.

  Once inside the front door, Charles pulled Maxine to him and kissed her hard on the mouth, as with one hand he held her to him and with his other explored her body. Gently he traced the outline of her spine down to its base, then softly felt the shape of her buttocks. Crushing her against his body so that she could feel his mounting excitement, he slowly pulled up her skirt and she felt his hand on the naked flesh below her panties, then he slid his hand under the delicate lace. Maxine was shaking. She wanted him as she had never wanted anyone before, her knees were trembling and she didn’t think that she could stand much longer. She felt him hard against her stomach as his fingers caressed her quivering white buttocks and firmly pulled her against his body.

  With an effort, Charles pulled himself away, gave a great sigh of anticipation, heaved Maxine into his arms (she would never be as light as thistledown) and carried her up the curved staircase to the dusty, but magnificent, blue-brocaded state bedroom. Moonlight fell in silver shafts across the room as he gently laid her on the antique, silk bedcover, then fiercely tore his clothes off and fell upon her.

  Maxine gasped with surprise. She had not expected the gentle, amiable, amusing Charles to be so masterful, so passionate, so skillful.

  For the next four hours Maxine felt her body move and respond as she had never known it could. Afterward, she didn’t want to leave him. Naked, she clung to him, her tangled, damp yellow hair falling over her full, milky breasts. “I don’t want to go,” she whispered, with tears in her eyes, resisting as he gently, insistently tugged her off the bed and helped her to dress in the moonlight.

  “Your parents will be concerned,” he said. “I’m driving you back to Paris now, but I shall speak to your father in the morning.”

  Stopping only in the hall to pick up the torn, white wisp of lace, they drove to Paris, speeding through the air in Charles’s open, dark green Lagonda. They both exulted as the vintage sports car leaped through the mysterious night landscape. It seemed oddly silent, theirs alone. Clouds swept across the moon, then the night was velvet-black again, except for the golden track forged ahead of them by the headlights.

  As they tore past black poplar trees, through dark tunnels of green gloom, they heard the odd, harsh animal noises of the night, so similar to the inarticulate, helpless sounds that had just been heard in the moonlit sheen of the blue brocade bedroom.

  17

  PAGAN COULDN’T COME to the wedding, because she was in Egypt, but nothing could have kept Judy and Kate away. Kate’s gift was a hunk of amethyst as a paperweight for Maxine’s desk, and Judy brought a charming Steinberg etching of a nervous, blank-eyed bride clutching her gawky groom. Pagan sent a beautiful antique Damascan chest inlaid with a mother-of-pearl design.

  Maxine and Charles were married at the mairie in Epernay almost a year after they had met. Maxine wore a pale-pink silk dress with a skirt that was layered like rose petals, and a large cream straw hat. She and Charles sat in two hard little chairs while the brief marriage ceremony was performed by the mayor, who wore his ceremonial red, white and blue sash. Then they signed the civil register, the French equivalent of signing a marriage contract. They were now officially married, and with their whole family swept off to the Royale Champagne for a lunch that lasted until six in the evening, when Maxine returned to Paris with her parents, as was the custom.

  The church ceremony was held on the following day in the mellow, stone church at Epernay. A French bride normally has no matron-of-honour and no bridesmaids, but Maxine’s two small girl cousins were to be enfants d’honneur, following her over the ancient stones.

  Maxine had asked Kate to help her dress. In the hotel bedroom Kate laughed as she looked at Maxine, who was wearing only a froth of diaphanous veiling and skimpy, white satin underwear. Her clothes had been laid out on the bed. “Really, Maxine, even your wedding dress is practical!” Kate picked up the cream silk calf-length coat. Designed by Raphael, it was tight-waisted, with a row of seed-pearl buttons stretching from the demure mandarin collar to the hem of the lavishly full skirt. For the wedding, the coat was worn over a strapless cream tulle ball gown, but later it could be worn by itself—as a coat or dress—to the races at Chantilly or almost any formal indoor occasion.

  “Well, it’s the prettiest dress I’ve ever had,” Maxine reasoned, “so I don’t want to wear it only once.”

  For once Maxine didn’t look efficient; in fact, she looked ethereal as she floated down the aisle between solemn stone columns. Beneath the hem of the long, full cream coat billowed a froth of cream tulle, and on her head Maxine wore a simple coronet of starlike flowers. As she passed Kate, the demure Maxine gave her a quick lascivious wink.

  As soon as they returned from their honeymoon, Maxine was introduced to all the notable families of the district. Christina continued to run the day-to-day affairs of Paradis while Maxine made these important new contacts. Most of all, she enjoyed her visit to the house of Moet & Chandon, whose tradition of hospitality dated back to the Napoleonic era. Like Empress Joséphine, the Czar of Russia, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia before her, Maxine was shown around the long, subterranean cellars to watch the making of champagne. They moved through dark vaults, gray and green with age, smelling of damp chalk, mold and sour wine. “There are eighty miles of these cellars carved from the chalk soil under Epernay,” said Charles. He took Maxine’s hand and scraped her nails on the crumbly surface of the cellar wall. “You see? The whole of the champagne district is composed of this special chalk; it’s only on this ground that the vines produce grapes with the unique champagne flavour. There’s nowhere else in the world like it.”

  By the end of the visit, Maxine thought that she’d heard quite enough about champagne for a bit, although she knew it might have been worse. She might have married a sheep farmer or a canning
industry king or a railway coupling manufacturer, after all. As if reading her thoughts, Charles said, “You needn’t worry. I don’t intend to become just another champagne bore. My business is part of my life and my heritage—in other words, it’s my responsibility—but I’m not a city businessman. I’m a countryman. I like looking after my land and walking across it with my dogs, then in the evenings I like to read or listen to music—a quiet life.”

  “And then at night,” said Maxine, “you like to make love.”

  “All the time I like to make love,” said Charles firmly.

  The next day Charles suggested that Maxine should pay a visit to his headquarters and learn a little about champagne production. “As the wife of the owner, you have to know these things,” he said, “so now for a little homework. I’ll try not to make it too dull, my darling.”

  We’re in for a boring morning, thought Maxine as, in her bedroom, she stepped into her Christian Dior going-away suit of primrose linen. It had a full, knife-pleated skirt and a little, tight-waisted jacket that buttoned down the front and she looked charmingly demure in it. “You look prim and proper, very ladylike,” said Charles approvingly, as he helped her into the Lagonda.

  They screamed to a stop just outside Epernay in a stone courtyard and entered the ancient building that now served as an office. In the dim, empty entrance hall, as they climbed the worn stone steps to the laboratory, Charles explained, “What a champagne house tries to do is to produce a wine that is always the same taste and quality. As the weather is always different and each harvest is different, one can only achieve this consistency by blending.” He paused to open a plain, white-painted door. “You are now going to meet the most important person in any champagne manufacturer’s firm: my blender.” He beckoned her in. “You can’t blend champagne by machine. A good house must have a good blender: the reputation of the entire firm depends upon his palate, eyes and nose.”