The Rainbow Bridge (14 page)

Louise could only look at him in puzzlement; to her these vines appeared particularly healthy and lush. ‘Look, woman,’ he said impatiently, ‘that’s second year growth; these vines have not been pruned! Mon Dieu, is it all like this?’ Now he was urging his horse on down, slipping on the gravelly soil. Louise looked ahead to where even worse disaster seemed to have struck, with the vines having been cut to the ground, but Gaston turned, relieved. ‘Thank God, at least a part of the vineyard has been saved.’ She gazed in wonder at the close-cropped stubs while Gaston absently pointed out the green shoots bursting from knobbly bases. ‘This is how they should look. This is the home vineyard,
so, whatever else, Father was alive at pruning time… I know his work. Excuse me Louise, I must go.’ Without further explanation he spurred his mare down the slope, leaving Louise in a scatter of fine stones.

Louise did her utmost to keep up, feeling that Gaston was still holding her in his mind, as if in this moment of crisis he needed her support. Eventually she arrived in a wide cobbled yard where lean-to sheds housed unfamiliar agricultural instruments. An ancient labourer, his face as dark and as wizened as a walnut, was leading Gaston’s horse away. Through open doors she glimpsed dark interiors with huge vats and barrels, and something that might be a winepress. There was a feeling of suspended activity. The whole yard had the air of a place that should be full of men, and of comings and goings.

A door into the house stood open. Louise could hear voices within. A short passage opened out into a vast kitchen, divided by a table that Louise was sure could seat twenty men. The voices came from a small group of people clustered near the fireplace where copper pots gleamed and flickered in the firelight. Gaston, his back to her, had his arms around a tall, distinguished-looking woman, his mother surely. And the man in stockinged feet who was watching them fondly must be his father. A girl stood in the shadows, observing the reunion. A kitchen wench perhaps? No, Louise decided, this girl was here of right. The girl waited until Gaston had greeted both his parents and then stepped forward.

‘Welcome home, Gaston,’ she said. Gaston turned and saw her for the first time. Louise could feel his thrill of recognition, like the electric crackle you get when you run your hand over silk. Where had she seen that profile before? It looked as if Gaston was going to give her a hug,
but then he changed his mind.

‘Mademoiselle Colette,’ he said with a little bow.

‘Well, don’t I get a kiss too?’ she asked, holding up a cheek. ‘And why didn’t you answer any of my letters?’ she queried when he had bent and kissed her.

‘Oh, but I have received none,’ he said defensively. ‘We were never in one place long enough for them to find us.’

‘And your right hand … has it been cut off?’ Gaston looked at his hand. Then he blushed brick red. ‘Or did you just forget, like the day you forgot to wave to me under the mulberry tree?’

‘I … I did write…’

‘Twice.’

‘Yes, just twice,’ he said lamely. Louise was watching, trying hard not to feel jealous, envious of this girl’s easy familiarity. ‘Are you still helping Papa in the vineyards?’ Gaston asked. The girl was smiling now; she had had her say. It was Madame Morteau who said acidly:

‘And ruining her complexion in the process. If her poor mother …’

‘Now, now, my dear,’ said her husband. ‘We’ve been into all that.’ The girl … Colette… came up to Gaston, and took his hands briefly. An apology, perhaps, for her attack about his letters. Then she dropped her head, and in that movement Louise recognised the girl that Gaston had shown her, sitting under a gnarled old tree. So, that was what had happened: he had forgotten to wave and felt guilty about it.

The full extent of the disaster in the vineyards only emerged after hours of discussion. Gaston and his father talked and argued while his mother supervised the cooking and the
household chores, joining them from time to time to correct something that had been said. Colette was included, but was mostly silent. Pierre came in with Louise’s portrait. He put it up at one end of the kitchen, where the light was poor, but it was out of the way. No one paid any attention to it, except Colette, who wandered over and looked at it for a while. Papers were brought out and parchments flattened with work-hardened hands. Spectacles were taken on and off, gold coins were produced, counted, and declared too few. Colette offered her few jewels, but Madame refused to even contemplate such a breach of trust with Colette’s ‘poor mother’. And all the time, one single letter, whiter than the rest, lay conspicuously in the middle of the table.
Darkness fell. All but Gaston had retired to bed. He sat slumped at the end of the table. Louise emerged and sat in silence. Then, in a low voice, she said:

‘What’s happened, Gaston?’

‘It’s the Count, damn him … Remember I told you how he owns our vineyards? When the Revolution took place, rather than fleeing the country like most of the aristocracy, he decided to stay and embrace the people’s cause. I respected him when he appeared sensibly dressed, with just a cockade in his buttonhole, at the grape harvest, but now it seems that he has been selling us out, just to save his skin. I never thought that the Terror, which was just beginning, might be a danger to us, but apparently the Count did, and has been working very hard to keep his head at any price.

‘Well, the Count has kept his head, but it’s we who’ve paid the price. Since I left he has been busying himself among the shopkeepers and lawyers and doctors and blacksmiths that make up the region’s commune, and they
now accept him as one of their own. Apparently one of his ways of showing solidarity with the cause has been to “donate” the wine that gave us our income to the “citizens” of the Revolutionary Council of the region. No sales means no income for us. Now the vineyards have begun to disappear, acre by acre, finding their way into the hands of these influential bourgeois – the people who might otherwise demand our dear cousin’s head at the guillotine. As a reward for his citizenship, he has now been appointed the caretaker of his own chateau. Plus ça change … nothing changes, does it?’

‘What about your mother’s entitlement?’ Louise asked. ‘You said that there’d be a letter waiting for you here.’

‘Yes, there it is,’ he indicated the envelope on the table. ‘After half a page of compliments and salutations and expressions of his great love and esteem, he regrets however that, since the time of Mother’s settlement, the price of the land has doubled.’

‘Has it?’

‘Not at all. I think he doubled it to make his gifts seem bigger. But if he lets us have it at its real value, the very people he wants to impress will say he has cheated them.’

‘Well then, pay the price, whatever it is, otherwise you are slaves!’ Louise felt her hopes slipping away. She could grow to love this old farmhouse, she liked the look of Colette, and she wanted them all to be happy here together. Above all, she wanted Gaston to be out of the army and away from war.

‘It’s no use, Louise,’ Gaston waved wearily at the strewn table. ‘We’ve been through our books and checked everything. You see, as tenants we own nothing, and our savings are running out. Father is not good at accounts. The long and the short of it is that the Count sees our house and
acres as a last desperate card for him to play. If, by some change in fortune, he finds himself facing the guillotine, the whole house of cards will collapse, and we are at the bottom of the pack. The winery will be finished because the new owners all think that they can make wine themselves.

‘I will ride out tomorrow and tell him that we refuse to pay. I’ll give him a piece of my mind too while I am at it. Now for bed. All this discussion has exhausted me.’

Gaston did visit the Count, but he refused to tell Louise anything about it. She guessed that he had scorned the Count’s demands, and had given him an earful at the same time. Later that day the papers were cleared away and the family took their places around the end of the huge table for the serious matter of a late dinner. Louise had noticed how, even yesterday at the height of the crisis, all discussion was suspended when food was brought to the table, and conversation subsided to a murmur as they addressed their meals. The fare was simple but ample: soup, bread, a steaming stew, and wine poured from a jug – sipped, rolled in the mouth, and then swallowed – often with a low word of comment or appreciation.
Two weeks passed and the household fell into what Louise imagined was its regular routine. Gaston spent time out in the vineyards with his father and with Colette, who seemed to have a role in the winery. But all was not well. Though Louise was not invited on his daily round, Gaston had not forgotten her. In the evening he would sit hunched and tense at the table, nursing one glass of wine too many, until Louise would relent and take her place opposite to him. Eventually she decided to address the topic that had been on her mind.

‘Tell me about Colette, Gaston,’ she said. He reached to top up his glass, but put the bottle down again.

‘She’s an orphan, you know …’ he began, and then told Louise about the girl’s background and how they had taken her into their family. ‘When I left to join the hussars she was a pale little creature hardly looking her fourteen years. A year later, when I got home on leave she had changed into the beauty you see today.’ Gaston was staring into the distance. Then he smiled, ‘I was bowled over, Louise, intoxicated, we both were. For the whole month of the grape harvest we snatched every moment we could get together. It was an enchantment. But when I set out after the holiday, I would soon be a sub-lieutenant on active service, so I put her from my mind.’

But not completely, thought Louise.

‘Then, two weeks ago, you and I rode in together. I was seriously considering buying myself out of the army, to help at home. I had come to hate civil war and it seemed a nice idea to settle down here with my family, including my pretty little ‘cousin’ Colette. What I did not expect was that I would walk into this kitchen and that Colette would walk out of the shadows and I would know then, and with absolute certainty, that this was the woman that I wanted to be my wife.’

Louise hoped her face did not betray her pain. She hadn’t wanted even to share Gaston, now it seemed as though she would have no part in his love. How could she bear to be a bystander to his happiness?

Gaston sat silently, then he stood up and started walking about the kitchen. ‘And then came the second surprise … that letter … the Count, my real cousin, dashing the cup from my grasp as I was lifting it my lips.’ His voice rose bitterly. ‘Damn the Count, damn and blast him forever.
Father says that we are all part of the one vine, with the roots in the chateau and the fruit out here in the sun. Maybe… but that vine is coiling itself about our necks, it is strangling us, Louise. We must cut it through!’ Gaston slashed down with an imaginary sabre as he spoke.

‘I can’t tie Colette to me with no prospect that I can support her, and soldiers aren’t exactly bankable commodities.’ He sat down again, his shoulders slumped. ‘I have orders to return by the end of the week … the usual spy scares. It will be you and me again, Louise, we must take to the road and make what we can of life.’ Then, abruptly, he changed the subject. ‘Oh, by the way, the boys have asked if they can have your portrait to show to the men in the bunkhouse. Most of them have joined us since the Dutch campaign. Is that all right?’

It wasn’t all right. Louise felt battered and emotionally bruised. One minute her place was being usurped by Colette, the next she had Gaston to herself again; she didn’t know what to feel. And now she was to be ‘loaned out’ for the men’s entertainment. She didn’t like the way Marcel looked at her, but she couldn’t really object; the cadets had guarded her faithfully all the way from Holland, so perhaps they had a right to show her off if they wanted to. And just now she needed to get away from Gaston to think.