The dark vineyard b,op-2 Read online

  “Does he take volunteers?” She spoke in correct and fluent French but with an unmistakable Quebecois accent that derived from the eighteenth-century Bretons and Gascons who had planted the fleur-de-lys in the New World. “I’d love to take part in a French wine harvest. It would be a first for me.”

  She was better like this, Bruno thought. For the first time since he’d met her she seemed genuine, with all the eagerness of youth. It made her easier to like. He smiled at her. “There’s always room for one more. Come and have a coffee so I can explain what you’re getting yourself into.” As they walked the few steps to Fauquet’s, Bruno asked, “Have you picked grapes before?”

  “Often, back in the States. And in Australia, where I studied winemaking.” She was wearing jeans tucked into tall boots, and carrying what looked like an army surplus shoulder bag.

  “Okay, Jacqueline. I could come back and pick you up here in the cafe at about eleven, but you might want to change into working clothes. Or I could entrust you to my Communist friend, council member Jules Montsouris, whom we’ll find in the bar. He’s a fierce revolutionary who wishes Stalin were still alive. He’ll probably be heading to Joe’s before me, and I’m sure he’d be delighted to escort you.”

  Fauquet’s was already filled with the usual market crowd. Fauquet himself, brisk and dapper in his white chef’s jacket and little white cap, came from behind the zinc counter to shake Bruno’s hand and inform him that the latest batch of croissants was still piping hot from the oven.

  “Not today, mon vieux. Just a quick coffee. I know what’s coming at Joe’s feast.” Bruno passed along the counter shaking hands with the usual crowd, introducing Jacqueline as the new stagiaire from Hubert’s wine shop. The men greeted her with ponderous gallantry, bowing over her hand as they shook it. Pierrot instantly ordered a petit blanc for the new arrival and Pascal from the insurance office offered her a cafe creme. Fauquet swept off his chef’s hat, and Montsouris used a paper napkin to wipe the seat of a bar stool for the young woman to perch on amid the circling admirers.

  Laughing, she took her place on the stool and chatted agreeably. But Bruno noticed that she kept glancing out the window. Following her gaze he saw Max appear at Alphonse’s stall. Jacqueline began to step off her stool as if to leave. Then Bruno saw Dominique walk across from her father’s stall to embrace Max and steer him off behind one of the columns that supported the mairie for what looked like a private and urgent conversation. Probably talking about the fire, thought Bruno, or perhaps the demonstration, wishing he could overhear them. Jacqueline had sat down again. A lovers’ tiff seemed to be brewing. Bruno watched the assured way that Jacqueline drew the men at the bar back into her orbit.

  “I gather this is the day Joe picks his grapes and makes his cassoulet,” she said.

  “The day we pick his grapes, you mean,” grumbled Pierrot. “Joe’s pretty clever, getting everybody else to pick his grapes while he just stays at home and cooks.”

  “You can’t complain, Pierrot,” said Fauquet, with a wink at Jacqueline. “You drink Joe’s wine, which is more than most of us can say.”

  “Be fair,” said Bruno. “We all use Joe’s wine for the vin de noix , and for the eau-de-vie. Where would we be without him?”

  Bruno was accustomed to the chorus of amiable jeers that met his defense of Joe, his predecessor as police chief of Saint-Denis. Joe’s vineyard, tucked between the town’s rugby field and its tennis club, was small and poorly drained. But it was the first piece of land that Joe had ever owned, and his wine was no worse than the pinard Bruno had been given to drink as a young recruit in the French army, the daily liter of rough red wine that had sustained the tricolor throughout the ups and downs of French history.

  “Don’t be naive, Bruno,” said Montsouris, a big and burly railway man. “Joe’s just hanging on to that plot of land to force the rugby club to pay more to get the second pitch. He knows he can force a higher price so long as he claims it’s a vineyard, whatever crap he makes.”

  “And here’s another North American who’s visiting our town, Monsieur Bondino,” Bruno said as the American walked into the bar, loaded down with shopping bags. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Jacqueline. She gave him a cool appraising look, and then her face broke into a broad smile, almost as if she recognized him. They shook hands and exchanged bursts of English too fast for Bruno’s limited command of the language, though he heard the words “wine” and “Bondino,” so she evidently knew the family name and business.

  From the doorway, Bruno smiled his farewells, his smile becoming all the broader as he saw Montsouris’s wife heading with her usual determined stride through the market toward the cafe, where her husband was paying court to Jacqueline. Madame Montsouris, far more rigid in her Communist ideology than her husband, held equally strict views on marital fidelity. Bachelor though he was, Bruno could not help smiling to himself as he ran up the stairs to look at his e-mail and to check for the third time that his phone was on and its battery charged. But there was still no message from Isabelle.

  16

  Joe was not particular about the grapes that went into the ancient wooden vat for the pressing. So as well as the bunches from the forty rows of vines in his own vineyard, he welcomed grapes from the shady terraces and hedges of his neighbors. To Joe, grapes were grapes. Nor was he averse to the occasional handful of black currants mixed in.

  “Mainly cabernet sauvignon, a couple of rows of merlot, which is about what I’d expect around here, along with the odd foot of cabernet franc,” said Jacqueline, casting what was evidently an expert eye over Joe’s pride and joy, where men and women of all ages and several children were dragging blue plastic boxes between the rows of vines and yelling greetings at Bruno as they carried the full boxes to the trailer behind Joe’s ancient tractor.

  Bondino, who had been sitting with Jacqueline when Bruno returned to Fauquet’s to pick her up and had asked to come along, stared bemusedly at the scene. “It’s like history, like the nineteenth century,” he said. “No machines.” He bent to look at some of Joe’s undistinguished bunches of grapes and shook his head.

  Bruno shouted out a brief introduction of Jacqueline and Bondino as new volunteers.

  Jacqueline waved cheerfully, then turned to examine the rows of vines. “There’s a couple of feet of mourvedre and cinsaut and even a petit verdot, but it’s really too soon to pick that,” she said. “And Lord bless my soul but I think that’s a carignan, although I’ve never actually seen one before. Where on earth did Joe get this job lot of vines? This isn’t a vineyard, it’s a vine museum.”

  Jacqueline had changed into sneakers and a baggy cotton shirt that was emblazoned with the letters UCD. Her abundant hair was swept back into a loose bun. The tight jeans she’d worn in the cafe had been replaced with some loose cargo pants that seemed to have pockets everywhere. From one she took some very fine latex gloves and from another a pair of curiously curved scissors that were evidently designed to cut the bunches of grapes. Bruno was always eager to observe a real expert, an expert in anything, so he listened carefully.

  “The soil is terrible for wine,” she said. “No drainage, a lot of clay, not enough pebbles, too much water too close to the surface-and the soil nutrients are probably too good for vines. There are weeds everywhere, and I’m not sure that Joe has ever heard about pruning. The foliage is far too thick for the sun to get to the grapes.”

  She then spoke in a burst of English to Bondino, too fast for Bruno to follow, but since she was pointing at the various vines it seemed to be a translation of what she had told Bruno. Bondino nodded appreciatively.

  “You can identify all those different varieties of grape by sight?” Bruno asked.

  “Well, I cheated on the carignan. Back in the hotel I checked my reference books for the kinds of grapes that are grown in southwest France. But I can tell most of the varieties. I grew up on vineyards and then did four years at UC Davis.”

  “UC?” Bruno asked.
>
  “University of California. There’s a branch in the town of Davis, where they have a famous wine program. Then I took a year in Adelaide, the best place in the southern hemisphere to study wine. My family takes wine very seriously, and if you want to make it in the family business, you have to know your stuff. By the way, Bruno, I wanted to ask you something, since you evidently know everything that happens in Saint-Denis. I really don’t want to stay at the hotel too long. It costs more than I should be spending. If you hear of any rooms for rent or a small, cheap apartment, could you let me know? As long as it’s not too far from town. That nice man at the bicycle shop let me have a cheap beat-up bike so I can travel a bit.”

  Her voice trailed off as she looked over his shoulder. Turning, Bruno saw Max and Alphonse arrive, greeting the other grape pickers. Max was heading toward them, waving at Jacqueline, but she turned her back and bent over a row of vines with Bondino.

  Bruno went off to get a blue plastic basket for each of them and a pair of Joe’s rusty wine scissors for himself and Bondino. As he approached the truck, Max brushed past him, barely grasping his hand with a quick “Bonjour.” Bruno assumed he was still nervous about being under suspicion until Max moved on quickly to Jacqueline, only to be taken aback by her frosty response. Max looked hesitant, furious and baffled, all at the same time. He had a lot to learn about women, Bruno thought. But then so do I, Bruno told himself as he checked his phone yet again and wondered if Isabelle was ever going to call. And how would he respond if she did appear? Could he possibly assume that all would be as it was, that they would fall into bed and make passionate love? More likely he’d be tongue-tied and nervous but would try to conceal it with some light bravado. And what of Isabelle? Would she too be uncertain at meeting again, a little reserved, suggesting that she was not prepared to jump into bed at the sight of him?

  Time would tell. She had made the approach, saying she was coming again to Saint-Denis, to Bruno’s turf. She would decide the way things would develop. He would have to take his cue from her, and try to fathom Isabelle’s intentions behind whatever mask she’d be wearing for the delicate moment of reunion. Snipping away at Joe’s grapes, Bruno wondered whether it was the policeman in him that made him so interested in how other people presented themselves to others. In his experience, and indeed in his own case, what the public saw was often very different from the real person, but it was full of useful clues about the way the person would truly like to be. Bruno would love to be as calm and self-confident as he had taught himself to seem, and to be even a fraction as wise and patient as he sought to appear.

  The reality, Bruno knew, was that he tended to be lazy and self-indulgent and required the imposition of a clear routine and self-discipline to function even tolerably well. He assumed that it was the same with others, and that one’s own faults loomed much larger than they usually appeared to the outside world. The superficially poised and self-assured Jacqueline was probably far less sure of herself than she appeared as she played off her two admirers against each other. Bruno watched as she chatted happily to Bondino in English, and gave curt replies in French to the crestfallen Max.

  Jacqueline lifted some vine leaves and peered through at Bruno. “Does your friend ever trim these vines? I can’t imagine what kind of wine he produces.”

  “It’s an acquired taste,” Bruno said. “But I doubt that you’ll acquire it. I never have.”

  “Nor I,” said Max, working alongside Bondino at the next row of vines. “It’s probably the worst wine I’ve ever tasted.” He looked sourly at Bondino. “Except for some of that mass-produced merde from the New World, sugary grape juice with added alcohol.”

  Aha, thought Bruno. The young bulls are starting to face off.

  “So why do you all do this? He pays you?” asked Bondino. Bruno wasn’t sure whether he was ignoring Max’s last comment or simply didn’t understand.

  “Not in money, but in food and fellowship,” Bruno replied. “Joe has been a good friend to me. He did my job for years before I came to Saint-Denis, and he’s helped me enormously. All the people here are his friends and family, and they come every year for the vendange.”

  “But why bother when he takes no care of his vines and the wine is no good? I don’t get it,” asked Jacqueline.

  “You missed that bunch,” Bruno said, thinking it was rather the point that she was missing. “And that one back there.”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said primly. “I left them on purpose. Some of them were already rotten.”

  “So cut those off the bunch and put the good ones in the plastic bin with the rest. Joe is not particular.”

  She shook her head, ignoring him. Bruno went back and cut the bunches she had left. A few of the grapes had burst, and some were shriveled. Bruno shrugged, cut off the worst and tossed the bunch into the bin.

  “If we were in California, I’d fire you,” she said when he returned, her voice rising in pitch at the end of the phrase. That was often the case with her, Bruno noted.

  “If we were in California she’d probably shoot you,” said Max, grinning.

  “If we were in California I would not be working in a vineyard,” Bruno said. “Unless a friend asked me to help. And then I would follow his rules, or hers, for cutting the grapes. Here, I follow Joe’s rules. So should we all.”

  17

  Still conscious of Joe’s cassoulet lying comfortably under his belt, Bruno waited in front of the mairie. With a wedding scheduled at 3 p.m., the mayor had agreed to fit in the formal attestation of adoption at 2:45 as a favor to a fellow member of the town council. Never having bothered to register Max’s status, beyond agreeing to be listed as next of kin on the boy’s identity card and on his university application, Alphonse had been enthusiastic about Cresseil’s plan the moment he heard it.

  “Can you think of a better way to keep Max here than by giving him some land of his own?” he’d asked Bruno. “I always thought that once he had his university diploma, he’d be off to Paris or California or somewhere like so many of the kids.”

  The guests for the wedding were already gathering in the parking area beside the mairie when Alphonse’s car pulled up. This was not a marriage of local people that Bruno felt he should attend. Two of the temporary workers from the Royal Hotel had decided to marry after a summer of passion and hard work, and one of them had been kept on as the barman. Bruno shook hands with some members of the wedding party he knew, and then stopped as he recognized Pamela in a wide straw hat with a red satin scarf tied around the brim.

  “You look magnificent, as always-almost regal,” he said, kissing her on each cheek, and taking care with his enunciation. He had perhaps taken one glass more than was wise at Joe’s lunch. “But then you English have a special affinity for royalty.”

  “Bruno, you have evidently lunched extremely well,” she replied in her excellent French. “I presume you were at Joe’s vendange?”

  “And like all the men of the village, disappointed not to see you there.”

  “That’s the wine speaking, Bruno. Marie stayed with me overnight before going off tonight to her husband’s bed.”

  “Marie the bride? I didn’t know she was a friend of yours.”

  “She helped me out a bit in the summer when things got hectic, so I’ve known about this romance from the beginning. And that meant I had to help dress the bride, so I sent Joe my apologies.”

  “Too bad you’ll have to miss the pressing of the grapes this evening, too. Now I have to run, but there’s one thing I wanted to ask you. There’s a Canadian girl working at Hubert’s cave and she’s looking for a place to rent. I thought one of your gites might be free. Let me know, or call her at the cave; her name’s Jacqueline. See you soon, I hope.” He turned to run up the stairs and arrived at the council chamber just as Cresseil was limping slowly from the elevator. The mayor, wearing his tricolor sash and his Legion d’Honneur button in his lapel, came forward to greet them.

  “We need another witness, B
runo,” the mayor began. “Alphonse won’t do. He’s listed as next of kin.”

  “Does it have to be a French citizen?”

  “No; anyone with an address in the department will do.”

  Bruno nodded, went back down the stairs to find Pamela and hastily explained why her presence was needed as he took her by the hand to steer her upstairs. He said it would take only a few minutes, so it wouldn’t interfere with the wedding. His request seemed to fluster her, but she quickly recovered her poise and politely shook hands with everyone in the group. She knew Alphonse and Max from the market, but not Cresseil.

  “Francois Pontillon Cresseil,” the mayor began once they were all gathered in his office, “do you formally adopt this young man present, Maximilien Alphonse Vannes, as your son and inheritor, taking upon yourself all paternal responsibilities under the code civil of the Republic?”

  “I do, freely and willingly, as a citizen of the Republic,” said the old man. Bruno noticed the pride in Cresseil’s eyes as he watched Max make the ritual replies, and pondered again his suspicions about the fire. Max had shown no sign of hatred for the genetic crops at the demonstration; he had simply been there taking care of Jacqueline. Perhaps Bruno’s suspicions were misplaced. But if he was right, this touching scene was just the prelude to Max’s arrest and Cresseil’s heartbreak.

  “Then please come forward and sign in turn,” said the mayor, “and then Bruno and you, madame, in the space below for the witnesses.”

  Alphonse took photos of the signing, and the mayor brought out a bottle of his own vin de noix and began filling the small glasses that stood waiting on a tray.

  “We still have a few moments before the marriage,” the mayor said. “In the name of the commune of Saint-Denis and of the Republic, let me be the first to acknowledge this new family. The adoption will not, of course, be wholly legal until it is ratified and registered by the court in Sarlat, a formality that should be completed next week.”