Come The Vintage

The station wagon roared into the yard about five minutes later, and Alain came in bringing a breath of cold frosty air with him. In his absence she had forgotten the overwhelming domination of his presence, and the penetration of those tawny cat’s eyes. He greeted the priest warmly, exchanged a glance with Ryan, and then bent to the cat who had leapt from her perch to rub herself lovingly against his booted legs.

‘Hey, Tabithe!’ he chided gently, his deep voice acquiring a disturbing tenderness Ryan had never heard before. ‘So you came back, did you? Have you been keeping our mistress company?’

Ryan lifted the potatoes into a serving dish, her hands trembling slightly. She was tempted to tell him exactly what kind of company the beastly creature had provided, but to do so would embarrass the Abbé, and she had no quarrel with him. All the same, she felt a faint resentment that her overtures towards the animal had been ignored, while Alain had only to appear for her to be caressing his legs with her sinuous body. But of course, she thought impatiently, the cat was a female, and had all the usual attraction towards the male. Obviously the creature did not regard the Abbé Maurice in his flowing robes in quite the same light.

The steak looked reassuringly good when it was served with sprigs of parsley, and Alain, who had been down to the cellar below the storeroom to fetch a bottle of wine for their delectation, stopped what he was doing to compliment her on its presentation. After a moment’s hesitation, she had decided to serve the meal in the kitchen, and obviously she had done the right thing. Had she not felt so unwell, she would have been almost satisfied with her morning’s work. However, the wine which Alain had uncorked and poured into her glass served to revive her.

‘Ah, but this is good,’ essayed the priest, nodding as he inhaled its bouquet. ‘What is it, Alain? Not the ‘68 or the ‘69? It cannot be the ‘66. No, I think perhaps it is a Beaujolais …’

Alain smiled, taking his seat at the head of the table, his fingers hiding the label on the bottle in his hand. ‘How astute, Father,’ he murmured humorously. He partially withdrew his fingers. ‘See – I will not tease you. It is from the Vosne-Romanée. But can you guess which it is?’

Abbé Maurice picked up the glass and inhaled again, his brows drawing together in perplexity. ‘You know I am no expert, Alain. A Burgundy is a Burgundy. I know what I like, and that is about all.’

Alain set the bottle down. ‘It is the Richebourg, see? The ‘61. A very special case which Ryan’s father had laid down for very special occasions.’

The priest surveyed them both expectantly. ‘And this is such an occasion, Alain?’

Alain’s eyes sought Ryan’s, but she looked away, unable to contemplate what he was about to say. ‘It is a special occasion, Father,’ he agreed. ‘Ryan and I are to be married, as soon as it can be arranged. Is that not so, Ryan?’

He was challenging her now. It was the moment of truth, and she was not prepared for it. ‘I – yes. Yes, I suppose so.’

The old Abbé beamed. ‘I could not be more pleased.’ He pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. ‘This calls for a toast, in this most excellent wine of the Côte de Nuits. I wish you every happiness, my children, and I drink to your future together.’

The priest insisted that they join in the toast, and he patted Alain on the shoulder and told Ryan that her father would have been so happy had he been alive to see this day. Alain had been like a son to him, he said, and it was always her father’s dearest wish that his two loved ones should meet.

Ryan couldn’t help thinking that had her father still been alive, this day would not have occurred. She wondered how much the priest had known of her father’s affairs, of the terms of his will, and decided he had probably been a witness to it. He obviously shared her father’s and Alain’s belief that marriage should first and foremost be treated as a business arrangement, but the cold-bloodedness of it, the calculating method of its inception, filled Ryan with despair.

Custom satisfied, they turned to the meal. Alain served the priest first, then Ryan, and finally himself. If he was surprised that Ryan would accept nothing more than a small steak and half a tomato, he made no comment, and for this she was thankful. But when she cut into the meat she found to her horror that although the outer casing was brown and smelt appetizing, inside the core was still hard and frozen.

She looked up aghast to find Alain and the priest eating silently, apparently unperturbed at the rawness of the meat, but her stomach revolted. What must they be thinking of her? she thought desperately. Were neither of them going to say anything? They must know she had not thawed it before cooking. They would think her an absolute idiot!

She pushed her plate aside, and waited for one of them to speak. But they said nothing, and she suddenly felt furiously angry. She didn’t want their pity, she didn’t want them to pretend to enjoy something so as not to hurt her feelings. It was too galling to contemplate!

Taking a deep breath, she burst out: ‘Don’t eat it! It’s horrible! It’s raw! The cat ate the meat I thawed, and I didn’t have time to thaw any more.’

Abbé Maurice lifted his head in an embarrassed way, and Alain regarded her steadily. ‘Don’t be silly, Ryan. I prefer my steak rare.’

‘There’s a difference between rare and raw!’ declared Ryan vehemently.

‘I tell you, it’s all right.’ Alain’s eyes had hardened slightly.

Ryan’s lips moved tremulously. ‘Well, I’m not going to eat it,’ she retorted, pushing back her chair and getting to her feet.

‘Where do you think you are going?’ demanded Alain, half rising also, but she didn’t reply, she merely shook her head and walked unsteadily to the door.

Somehow she made it to her room, closing the door and sinking down on the bed, tears probing hotly at her eyes. Her first meal and it was a disaster! She would never learned to cope as efficiently as Berthe.

The door opened on her misery and she looked up in amazement to see Alain de Beaunes blocking the doorway with his bulk. His eyes were dark and angry, and his mouth was a thin line in his tanned features. He came into the room and stood looking down at her coldly.

‘What do you think you are doing?’ he inquired tautly. ‘Is it your practice to abandon your guest half-way through the meal?’

‘He’s not my guest, he’s yours,’ she managed, biting her lips to stop them from trembling.

‘He is our guest,’ Alain corrected her shortly. ‘Stop behaving so childishly. So – the meat is not thoroughly cooked! No one expects you to produce a perfect meal at the first attempt.’

‘Oh, thank you. That’s very reassuring to know!’ she exclaimed with heavy sarcasm.

He thrust his hands into the hip pockets of his trousers, tautening the cloth across his thighs. ‘I make allowances for your immaturity, little cat. Be thankful that I do.’

Ryan turned her head away, her eyes smarting from tears suppressed. ‘I don’t remember inviting you into my room, monsieur. Aren’t you supposed to knock before entering a lady’s bedroom?’

The exclamation he made was half anger, half amusement. ‘You are determined to challenge me, are you not, little one?’ he commented quietly. Then he turned towards the door. ‘Very well. You have five minutes to tidy yourself, and then you will join the good Abbé and me for dessert. Do I make myself clear?’

Ryan turned to face him protestingly. ‘I don’t want anything else.’

‘Maybe not.’ His eyes assessed her in a way that caused the blood to quicken in her veins. ‘You had no breakfast, did you? In spite of what I said. Your colour is high at the moment, but underneath you are pale. It is food you require, little one. Perhaps not the steak, I admit, but maybe some soup would not come amiss, eh?’

Ryan’s stomach heaved restlessly. ‘There is no soup.’

‘There are tins. Even I am proficient with a tin opener.’ He paused in the doorway and looked back at her. ‘You are all right now?’

Ryan hesitated, and then she nodded. And she was. It was true. Although he had not sympathized with her, his quiet words had restored a little of her confidence. The knowledge surprised her.

CHAPTER THREE (#u3fafcaf3-ff75-5518-a693-f8b40293c51a)

RYAN and Alain de Beaunes were married three weeks later in the small church of St. Augustine in the village of Bellaise. The service was conducted by the Abbé himself, and as neither Ryan nor Alain had any close family present it was a very quiet affair.

During those weeks preceding the wedding, Ryan felt herself to be living in a vacuum. The whole structure of her life had changed drastically and become slightly unreal, so that she found it hard to absorb what was going on around her. Most particularly her relationship with her future husband.

It was the time of year after the excitement of the grape harvest when a certain amount of anti-climax crept into the production of the year’s vintage. The initial pressing of the grapes had been achieved, and the juice transferred to casks for fermentation. Only time would tell whether the matured wine would measure up to their expectations, and consequently Alain was often at home, working in his study, and Ryan could never completely relax when he was in the house.

He had taken her, as her father had done, down to the winery, and she had descended with him into the massive stone cellars where there were casks of wine which had been maturing for a number of years. He had seemed determined that she should learn the basic fundamentals of the business, and had spent some time explaining the various difficulties they could encounter. She had met the elderly Breton again who had worked for her father, and his father before him, and shivered in the vaultlike caverns between the rows of vats.

The Ferrier vineyards bottled their own wine, and Alain showed her the small plant. He explained how later in the process the wine would be put into bottles and corked, and then inverted in racks to collect impurities on the cork. Afterwards, he said, these corks would be removed and the bottles recorked. In making a good red wine a certain amount of the crushed flesh of the grape was left in the juice during the initial stages of fermentation, but the finished product was required to have a clarity free of all sediment.

During these almost educational tours of inspection, Ryan could almost forget the improbability of their relationship. It was only when one or other of their employees congratulated Alain on his good fortune that the truth possessed her in all its terrifying reality. During the long nights when sleep was often elusive, she lay imagining the frightening possibilities of what she was about to do. What did she really know of this man who was to be her husband? The fact that her father had cared for him and depended upon him meant little to her. The relationship between two men was vastly different from the relationship between a man and his wife. The power over her which this marriage would give Alain de Beaunes was not to be considered lightly, and she had no sure way of knowing that he would keep his word about anything.

Her only companions during those weeks before the wedding were the old priest, and Marie, the girl from the village whom Alain had employed to help her. Marie was a year older than Ryan, and her initial shyness gave way to a genuine affection for the younger girl. In her way, she understood Ryan’s doubts about the marriage, although her reasons for so doing differed from Ryan’s own.

To Marie, it was all so simple. Alain de Beaunes was very much a man, all the women in the village thought so, whereas Ryan was little more than a child. Naturally she was anxious that he should not be disappointed in her, self-conscious about the physical aspects of the marriage. But that was nothing to worry about. The monsieur was no amateur, she had heard, and she would without doubt find experience something infinitely pleasurable to gain.

Ryan supposed that compared to Marie she was child-like. Her knowledge of the opposite sex was limited to several furtive embraces on the doorstep of her aunt’s house after youth club socials and the like. She had never had a steady boy-friend, preferring her own company to that of some youth who seemed to think he owed it to himself to attempt to paw her about, and whose conversation was confined to television and the latest group on the pop music scene. Her upbringing had been rather old-fashioned, but through choice rather than direction.

And Marie could not have been further from the truth with regard to her coming marriage. The physical side of that relationship was something she did not hope to gain any experience of.

Marie on the other hand had had two lovers already, and had lost count of the number of boys she had known. She found Ryan’s innocence rather touching, and tried, in her friendly way, to reassure her. From time to time Ryan had seen Marie’s eyes resting rather enviously on the broad shoulders and lean face of the master of the house, and had realized that a man like Alain de Beaunes would have no difficulty in finding a woman to satisfy his male appetites. The knowledge disturbed her somewhat, though she didn’t know why it should. It was of no interest to her how many women he chose to make love to, and no doubt, after they were married, she would feel grateful to those other women for diverting his attention from her.

After the wedding ceremony Ryan and Alain and the priest drove back to the house.