Chapter Four #2
‘I’m not an expert but it tastes pretty good to me,’ Mathilde replied.
The wine was sharp and fruity on her tongue, a taste of the summer to come, and she was already thinking that working at Domaine Piquemal would be a worthwhile way of spending her time.
‘I’d love to know more about the wine trade, Monsieur. ’
‘Splendid.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Well, to start with, our accounts need some attention. My wife has been in charge of that department and it’s all got too much for her, which is why I’ve decided to look for an assistant.
’ He reached under the table and brought out a wine crate stacked with files spilling paper. ‘Think you could sort out the books?’
‘I’ll have a go,’ Mathilde said.
‘Marvellous. We’ve recently had a telephone installed and Madame Piquemal hasn’t taken to that, so I’d like you to answer any calls, if you wouldn’t mind. We don’t get many. Now drink up and I’ll take you round the premises. There’s a lot to learn but Pierre tells me you’re a clever girl.’
Winemaking was clearly where his passion lay, rather than paperwork.
A variety of bottles, corkscrews, carafes, silver tastevin cups and spittoons were neatly arranged on the tasting-room shelves, along with framed certificates and awards, and all the equipment in the various outbuildings – the de-stemmers, grape presses, fermenting tanks, oak barrels and bottling machines – was spotlessly maintained.
‘My grandfather planted the vines,’ Piquemal said, looking through the window at the fields beyond, ‘and my father developed the winery. We press our own grapes and those of our neighbours with smaller vineyards, and it’s a system that’s worked well for years.
We used to make your uncle Bouchon’s wine for him, you know. ’
He led the way down a short flight of steps to a cellar with a low, curved ceiling and a floor made of the same rosy terracotta bricks.
The room was dimly lit by a couple of bare light bulbs and smelt of wood and damp earth, like an age-old forest floor.
They walked down a central path between two rows of iron-hooped oak barrels, their footsteps echoing.
‘This is where the red wine is ageing,’ Piquemal said, his voice hushed. ‘The same barrels my grandfather used, though of course we’ve added a few more. The grapes are pressed, the juice ferments with the help of some yeast, and then it sleeps for a year or so in oak so the flavour develops.’
Mathilde ran her hand along one of the cask’s smooth sides. ‘When will it be ready?’
‘Another month or so, maybe?’ Piquemal replied.
‘I shall keep tasting to see how it’s progressing, and then comes the most important part of all: the assemblage, when we blend wines from the various grapes into our final product.
Although last year’s harvest was so poor, no amount of tinkering will make it drinkable. ’
The rear half of the cellar was lined with racks holding row upon row of bottles. ‘And this is the wine we made two years ago,’ he said. ‘I’d normally be selling our share to a wholesaler in Marseille, but the Germans have bought up most of the vintage.’
‘How do you feel about that?’ Mathilde asked.
Piquemal shrugged. ‘I wish they were giving me a better price but there’s not much I can do about it.’
Mathilde couldn’t restrain herself. ‘It must make you angry, going to so much trouble for the Nazis’ benefit.’
Piquemal glanced at her. ‘Well, I can’t do much about it,’ he said, after a few seconds’ pause.
He didn’t trust her, Mathilde realised; she might have been Pierre’s cousin but she was still a stranger in these parts. And then it occurred to her that maybe she couldn’t trust Monsieur Piquemal either, and that perhaps she should have kept her opinions to herself.
Outside, a small orchard and a kitchen garden lay behind the house, along with a paddock and stable for the horse, Belle, who ploughed the vineyard.
‘We used to have two horses,’ Piquemal told her, stroking Belle’s white nose, ‘but the Boche came and told us we had to hand them over. Luckily my wife heard the commotion and managed to turn Belle loose just in time, but they took old Gaspard, and we miss him dearly. They said he’d be transported north to haul weapons at the front but he wouldn’t have lasted the journey. He’s probably horse meat by now.’
‘How can you bear it?’ Mathilde asked.
‘Because we have to,’ Piquemal replied tersely. ‘But there’ll come a reckoning, sooner or later. Now let’s take a look at the vineyard.’
To the right and left of the house, rows of gnarled waist-high vines supported by wires stretched in serried ranks to the edge of the fields, marked by hedgerows and a few bare trees. A series of gently rolling hills lay beyond, and further still, the massive peak of Mont Ventoux, wreathed in mist.
‘Did you know the Greeks planted vines in Provence, over two thousand years ago?’ Piquemal asked. ‘We’re part of an ancient tradition.’
Mathilde breathed in the cold, flinty air, wrapping her coat tighter around her. ‘This is a beautiful place.’
‘It is indeed,’ Piquemal replied. ‘I’ve never been to Paris and I’m not sorry. Marseille is city enough for me.’ He smiled at her. ‘I think we’d get along very well. I could offer you two hundred francs a week, if that’s acceptable?’
‘Perfectly,’ Mathilde replied as they shook hands, thinking she’d have worked at the vineyard for nothing.
Over the next few weeks, Mathilde immersed herself in the business of growing grapes and making wine, soaking up information like a sponge.
Keeping her mind busy stopped her worrying quite so much about Jacques, and Monsieur Piquemal was happy to pass on a fraction of what he knew.
As Pierre had warned, Emile Rambert was taciturn and unhelpful, but she managed to keep out of his way and ignored his hostile glances.
She enjoyed answering the telephone on her desk in a corner of the tasting room and organising files so that information was readily to hand, but she was particularly fascinated by the practicalities of winemaking: the skill involved in blending grape juices, adding the precise amount of yeast to achieve fermentation, fining and filtering the wine to remove impurities and judging when to bottle the vintage – not to mention cultivating the vines.
One afternoon, Piquemal told her to leave book-keeping for a moment, put on her coat and come out with him to the vineyard.
‘You might think winter is a dead time, but this is when we prepare for the harvest to come. Emile and I are in the middle of pruning,’ he said, grasping a handful of canes and beckoning her to come closer.
‘What we must do is remove all this dead wood, do you see? Grapes will only grow on shoots that are a year old – like this one, here – while these older branches will stop the light getting through and air circulating, and that’s when fungus can attack. Constant vigilance, that’s the answer.’
‘As with so many things,’ Mathilde commented.
Piquemal smiled as he produced a pair of secateurs from his pocket and made a few swift cuts with a practised flick of his wrist, humming under his breath.
‘Getting the balance right, that’s vital too,’ he said.
‘We don’t want too many grapes to grow on each vine, or they won’t get the nutrients they need to ripen properly. ’
Mathilde pushed her hands deep in her coat pockets as she gazed at the rows of bare vines, soon to bud, and the leafless trees beyond, sketchy outlines against the iron-grey sky.
In a few months, the fields for miles around would be bursting with life: glowing yellow with sunflowers and purple with lavender, the vines green and heavy with clusters of fruit.
The seasons would follow their inevitable rhythm while mankind devised ways of destroying itself.
She imagined Jacques coming to join her and the two of them raising a family here in some forgotten corner, far away from the madness of the world.
They wouldn’t need much money, living close to nature.
He could find some sort of work and she’d carry on at the vineyard, and their children would grow healthy and strong in the sunshine.
She’d always assumed she’d have an academic career, either in research or teaching, but she loved being in touch with the land and following rural traditions.
She looked forward to cycling to work each morning, and to eating lunch with Piquemal and his wife.
(Rambert never joined them, to her relief, returning to his house for a couple of hours at midday.)
It was also a relief to be spending time away from the Bouchons’ apartment.
The atmosphere at home was becoming more fraught by the day, for reasons she didn’t entirely understand.
Renée and Pierre often argued at night in tense, angry voices, and then she would hear Pierre leave, closing the front door softly behind him.
Yet their lives were much easier materially, thanks to her wages and the increasing number of gifts Pierre was receiving from grateful customers.
She came back from work one day to find a whole wheel of Brie in the larder, which made even the horrid grey bread palatable.
Renée’s lips only tightened when she looked at the cheese and she refused to eat any.
‘I heard there was a raid on a goods train heading for Paris a couple of days ago,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you know anything about that?’
‘Was there?’ Pierre replied. ‘News to me.’
‘And Madeleine Thonat found a ham on her doorstep this morning,’ Renée went on.
‘Well, I’m sure she’ll make good use of it,’ he said mildly. Madeleine’s husband had been killed in a tractor accident the year before, leaving her with four children to support.
Renée opened her mouth as if to speak, then glanced at Mathilde and turned away.
Mathilde might have paid more attention to the quarrel had her head not been so taken up with worries at work.
Over the past couple of days, she’d become aware of irregularities in the winery accounts.
Most of the Piquemals’ wine had been sold to a wholesaler in previous years, with around a quarter of some particularly choice vintages kept back for local consumption.
According to the invoices and sales records, there should have been twice as many bottles left in the cellar as those she’d counted.
She’d double-checked the paperwork with both Monsieur and Madame Piquemal, and they were certain no other sales had gone unrecorded, yet there was still a discrepancy of several cases from the vintage of two years ago, and the same the year before that.
She had to tell Emile Rambert what she’d discovered, although she knew he wouldn’t take it well.
Sure enough, he was immediately defensive, muttering that Madame Piquemal was getting forgetful in her old age and the figures were bound to be inaccurate; looking into them was a waste of time.
He’d stood a little too close to her as he’d added that they’d managed perfectly well without an assistant until now and she’d better not start causing trouble because she didn’t understand how things worked.
‘Oh, I understand, all right,’ she said.
As far as she could see, Rambert was the only person with the opportunity and motive to be stealing wine from the cellar, but he’d been working at the vineyard for years while she had only just arrived; Monsieur Piquemal would take a great deal of convincing to accept her word over that of his trusted manager.
For the moment, she would lie low, keep her eyes open and her mouth shut.
Avignon was beautiful, she liked Monsieur Piquemal and she was learning every day, but there were tensions at work and at home, and she was essentially alone. She’d have to tread carefully.