A Good Year (8 page)

They reached the car. Max stopped, putting his hand on his heart and what he hoped was a winning expression on his face. “Nathalie,” he said, “can I suggest the perfect way to end a lovely afternoon?”

She had turned her head away, and looked back at him with a sideways, wary glance. He had so far behaved like a civilized man, but one could never tell. The English were not always what they seemed. Her eyebrows went up.

“Let me drive.”

Nine

This was Mr. Chen’s third visit to Bordeaux, a city he found increasingly agreeable. As on his previous visits, he was particularly taken by the elegance and human scale of the eighteenth-century buildings, which made a refreshing change from the glass and steel towers of his native Hong Kong. He admired the architectural set pieces—the Place de la Bourse, the Esplanade des Quinconces, the Grand Théâtre, the fountains and statues—and he delighted in the tranquil surface of the broad, slow-flowing Garonne. And, telling himself that there should always be a place in a man’s life for recreation, Chen had begun to appreciate some of Bordeaux’s less publicized attractions, the exotically dressed young ladies who patrolled the back streets of the old town. In fact, he was thinking of increasing his visits to two a year.

It was in his nature to make himself well informed, and in the course of doing his homework he had discovered, among many other things, that Bordeaux was the first place in France where tennis had been played; that the novelist François Mauriac had invented “the aristocracy of the cork” to describe the multinational mix of French, English, Irish, German, and Swiss wine grandees; and that their original cellars had been built next to the river, on the quai des Chartrons.

And it was here, where the rue Ramonet joined the quai des Chartrons, that Mr. Chen told the driver of his taxi to drop him off. A stroll, and a breath of cool river air, would clear his head before he tackled the business of the day. He had made his arrangements with the bank. He had dropped a few discreet hints to his clients. All that remained was to hope that this year’s price wouldn’t be too exorbitant.

He turned off the
quai
and into the cours Xavier Arnozan, a broad street of trees and graceful houses, and saw that the others were arriving. He quickened his pace to join them as they made their way through an unmarked front door.

In the sober gloom of the entrance hall, a small party of businessmen, all of them Asian, conservatively dressed in the dark suits and quiet ties of their trade, were exchanging bows and business cards and handshakes with their host, a tall Frenchman in well-cut tweeds that could only have come from a London tailor. Their common language was English, spoken in a variety of accents. Their common interest was wine.

“This is not an ordinary tasting,” the Frenchman was saying. “In fact, you will already have noticed something unusual.” He paused to brush back a wing of graying hair that had fallen over his forehead after one bow too many. “Normally, with the great wines of Bordeaux, tastings are held
sur place,
where the grapes are grown. In this case—this unique case, if I may say so—the vineyard is too small to offer comfortable facilities, or indeed any facilities at all. Except for the grapes, of course.” He looked at the attentive faces around him, and shook his head. “We cannot offer even a miniature chateau, and there are no plans to build one. The land is far too precious to waste on bricks and mortar. That is why the tasting is being held here in Bordeaux.”

The businessmen nodded, their dark heads bobbing as one.

“Now, gentlemen, if you’d like to follow me.” He led the way down a narrow corridor lined with portraits of stern-faced men, their features partly obscured by the luxuriant facial hair popular in the nineteenth century. The Frenchman waved a manicured hand at the paintings. “Honorable ancestors,” he said, with a smile that was echoed by the group.

They reached the tasting room, small and dim, dominated by a long mahogany table. Arranged along its polished length were shining rows of glasses, silver candlesticks with lighted candles, and a trio of open, unlabeled bottles, each identified by a hieroglyphic scrawled in white chalk. Ornate copper
crachoirs
had been placed at either end of the table in readiness for the ceremonial spitting that would take place later on, in the course of the tasting.

The Frenchman adjusted his already perfectly displayed shirt cuffs and clasped his hands in front of his chest, a slight frown on his face to indicate the importance of what he was about to say. “As you all know, this is a tasting by invitation only, restricted to the highest level of international buyers, the crème de la crème.” Around the room, heads were inclined in recognition of the compliment. “In other words, those who can appreciate the extraordinary qualities of this remarkable wine.”

As if programmed, the eyes of the buyers turned to look at the three bottles on the table while the Frenchman continued. “Our vineyard is tiny, and we can produce only six hundred cases of wine a year. Six hundred cases, my friends.” He took from his pocket a newspaper clipping. “Less wine than the Gallo brothers can produce in California in a morning. And now that they have acquired the Martini winery”—he held up the clipping—“it’s probably less wine than they can produce before breakfast. What we are offering here is a mere drop in the wine ocean. You can understand why we can’t afford to waste it on amateurs and thirsty journalists.”

The buyers smiled and nodded again, flattered to be included in such elite company. One of them raised a hand. “What is current Gallo production? Do you have a figure?”

The Frenchman consulted his clipping. “About six million cases a year.”

“Ah so.”

The Frenchman continued. “We have two problems. The first is that, as I have explained, we don’t possess a chateau, and so our wine cannot claim an illustrious name. We call it Le Coin Perdu, the godforsaken spot, because that is the old local name for the vineyard my family took over and rescued from neglect more than a generation ago. Their faith in the land, those years of work nursing the vines, have now been justified. The wine is exceptional. But that brings us to the second problem.”

He spread his hands wide and raised his tweed-clad shoulders in a slow-motion shrug. “There is not enough of it. In a good year, six hundred cases. And when you have quality combined with scarcity, it is a sad fact that prices rise. Fortunately, we have not yet reached the six figures—in dollars, mind you—that were paid some years ago for a single bottle of 1787 Chateau Margaux, but the price of this year’s wine will be—how can I put it?—
impressionnant:
around forty thousand dollars a case.” He shrugged again, the picture of a man overtaken by sad but uncontrollable events. “However, as we say in France, only the first bottle is expensive.”

There was an audible intake of breath. His attempt at humor was lost on the buyers, who, to a man, produced pocket calculators.

“While you do your sums, my friends, think of Petrus. Think of Latour, of Lafite Rothschild. These wines can outperform the stock market, particularly today. They are not mere bottles of liquid, however glorious. They are
investments.
”

At the mention of that thrilling word, the mood of the room lightened, and the buyers watched as the Frenchman went to the table, adjusted the set of his cuffs once again, and picked up one of the bottles. He poured no more than a mouthful into a glass and inspected its color against the flame of a candle. He gave a slow nod of satisfaction, then lowered his head, swirled the glass, and brought it to his nose, closing his eyes as he inhaled.
“Quel bouquet,”
he murmured, just loud enough to be heard. The buyers maintained an appropriately reverent silence; they might have been observing a man lost in prayer.

“Bon.”
The spell was broken as the Frenchman began to pour the wine, mouthful by mouthful, into the other glasses as he resumed his sermon.

“This is our first series of tastings for this vintage, and you, our friends from Asia, are the first to taste. Next week, our friends from America will be here, and then our friends from Germany.” He gave a sigh. “Let us hope there will be enough for everyone. I hate to disappoint true connoisseurs.”

Unnoticed by the group, another figure had slipped quietly into the tasting room: a svelte, young blond woman dressed in a tailored gray suit that was saved from severity by a breathtakingly short skirt.

“Ah,” said the Frenchman, looking up from his pouring, “allow me to present my assistant, Mademoiselle de Salis.” Heads turned briefly, then returned for a second look at the legs. “Perhaps, my dear, you would help me distribute the glasses.”

Each of the buyers clustered around the table took his glass, careful to adopt the taster’s grip, with the thumb and the first two fingers holding the base. Like a synchronized team, well rehearsed in the movements of the ritual, they swirled their wine, raised their glasses to the candlelight, and peered respectfully at the color.

“A darker robe than usual Bordeaux,” pronounced one of the buyers.

The Frenchman smiled. “What an eye you have, Monsieur Chen. It is altogether richer, an oxblood ruby. Velvet rather than wool.”

Monsieur Chen filed the comparison away in his memory, to be used later. His less sophisticated clients were always impressed by this kind of language, the more gnomic the better.

“Time to put your noses to work, gentlemen.” The Frenchman led by example, bowing his head over his glass, and the room was silent except for the sound of wine-scented fumes being funneled up into twenty receptive nostrils. And then, tentatively at first but with increasing confidence, came the verdicts, delivered in accents that had their origins in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, and Shanghai. Violets were mentioned, and vanilla. One outspoken soul, more imaginative than the rest, was heard to murmur “wet dog,” causing a momentary elevation of the Frenchman’s eyebrows.

But this was little more than a prelude to the verbal acrobatics that followed once the wine had been taken into the mouth, chewed, rolled around the tongue, allowed to irrigate the back teeth and infiltrate the palate before being consigned to the
crachoirs,
with Mademoiselle de Salis waiting behind the table armed with a supply of linen napkins for the less accomplished spitters.

How does one describe the indescribable? The buyers, now that they had tasted, did their best with evocations of leather and chocolate, pencil shavings and raspberries, of complexity and depth, of backbone and muscularity and hawthorn blossom—of almost anything, in fact, except grapes. Notepads were produced, and scribbled on. The buyer from Shanghai, evidently a gentleman with dynastic interests, offered the opinion that the wine was undoubtedly more Tang than Ming. And through it all, the Frenchman nodded and smiled, complimenting his guests on the perspicacity of their palates and the felicity of their comments.

Some time later, when he judged the moment to be ripe, when the gargling and spitting seemed to have run its course, he directed a discreet flutter of his fingers at Mademoiselle de Salis.

Putting aside her napkins, she picked up an oversized Hermès notebook, bound in black crocodile, and a Montblanc pen of the kind normally used to sign international treaties, and began to make her rounds. Like a perfectly trained sheepdog, she separated the buyers from the flock, one by one, taking them in turn away from the table so that their orders could be noted down in as much privacy as the size of the room allowed.

The capping of the pen and the closing of the notebook acted as a signal to the Frenchman. With many a pat on the shoulder and squeeze of the arm, he shepherded the group out of the room and down the corridor before giving his farewell address in the hall.

“I must congratulate you on the wisdom of your decisions,” he said, “decisions I know you won’t regret. Your orders will be dispatched very shortly.” He raised a hand and tapped his nose. “Perhaps I could offer you a little advice. First, that you restrict this wine to your most trusted clients, those who prefer to keep their drinking habits to themselves. Publicity would inevitably spoil the intimacy of the relationship that we have built up. And second, I would suggest that you keep a few of your cases in reserve.” He smiled at his partners in future prosperity. “Prices have a habit of going up.” On that reassuring note, with the bowing and shaking of hands completed, the group filed through the front door and into the bright sunlight of the street.

Hurrying back to the tasting room, the Frenchman found Mademoiselle de Salis seated at the table, her blond head lowered over her notebook and a calculator. He came up and stood behind her, and began to massage her shoulders. “
Alors, chouchou?
What’s the score?”

“Chen took six cases, Shimizu took a dozen, Deng took four, Ikumi eight, Watanabe and Yun Fat . . .”

“The total?”

Mademoiselle de Salis gave the calculator a final stab with a crimson-tipped finger. “Altogether, forty-one cases. Just over one and a half million dollars.”

The Frenchman smiled and looked at his watch. “Not too bad for a morning’s work. I think we’ve earned our lunch.”

Ten

This sunny morning, Madame Passepartout had chosen to attack the sitting room, in particular the cobwebs that festooned the lofty vaulted ceiling. A fear of heights ruled out the use of a stepladder, but to compensate for this she had added to her armory a new, improved feather duster with a telescopic handle. She was using it like a lance, bringing down great swags of dusty gray filament, when she heard the sound of a car pulling up outside the house. Pausing in mid-thrust, she cocked her head.

“Monsieur Max! Monsieur Max!” Her screech echoed through the room and out into the hallway.

In response there was a muffled reply, and then the sound of hurried footsteps on the stairs. Max appeared in the doorway, one side of his face covered with shaving cream. “Are you all right, madame? Is something wrong?”

She pointed the feather duster in the general direction of the outdoors. “There is a person.”

“A person?”

The duster pointed again. “Outside. I heard a car.”

Max nodded. From the panic-stricken sound of her voice, he had thought that she had met with a terminal domestic accident, or at least been menaced by a mouse. But, as he was beginning to find out, every aspect of life for Madame Passepartout was steeped in drama. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll go and see who it is.”

The car was small and nondescript and unoccupied. Max walked through the courtyard, reached the end of the house, turned the corner, and bumped into something soft and surprised. A girl.

“Oh!” she said, stepping backwards. And then, “Hi.” She was in her midtwenties, sweet-faced, blue-eyed, golden-haired, and golden-skinned. And when she smiled, she revealed her nationality. The only country where they issued teeth like that—so regular, so blindingly white—was America. Max stared at her, his mouth open.

“Do . . . you . . . speak . . . English?” She asked the question with the slow, exaggerated clarity that is often used with children and foreigners.

Max pulled himself together. “Absolutely,” he said. “Like a native.”

The girl was visibly relieved. “Great. My French is about that much?” She held up one hand, the thumb and index finger curled to make a zero. “Maybe you can help me? I’m looking for the owner of the property? Mr. Skinner?” The American intonation turned every sentence into a question.

“That’s me.”

The girl laughed and shook her head. “You’re kidding. You can’t be.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think you’re old enough to qualify.”

Max rubbed his chin and found his fingers coated with foam. “Ah. I was shaving.” He wiped his hand on the back of his shorts. “Old enough to qualify for what?”

“Mr. Skinner’s my dad.”

“Henry Skinner?”

The girl nodded. “You missed a bit.” She tapped her cheek. “Right there.”

They looked at one another in silence while Max wiped his face. “Better?”

The girl was shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “Look, this is kind of embarrassing, but it’s been a long drive and I really need a bathroom. Can I . . .”

“Right. Of course. A bathroom.” He led the girl into the house, and pointed up the stairs. “Second on the left. The door’s open.”

Madame Passepartout emerged from the sitting room, her face a question mark as she watched the girl take the stairs two at a time. She turned to Max.
“Eh alors?”

“Coffee,” said Max. “That’s what we need.”

Madame Passepartout, feeling that this could provide a fascinating break from the cobwebs, led the way into the kitchen and started to fuss with the kettle and the
cafetière,
laying out three cups and saucers on the table. “An unexpected friend,” she said, and gave Max an arch look. “Perhaps a
copine
?”

“Never met her in my life.”

Madame Passepartout sniffed. In her experience, young women never turned up at the homes of young men by accident. There was always
une histoire.
She poured boiling water over the ground coffee, impatient for the return of the stranger. She sensed the prospect of revelations.

Which there were, but unfortunately for Madame Passepartout they were in English, a language that she found almost completely impenetrable. Nevertheless, she sat at the table as the two began to talk, her head swiveling from one to the other like a spectator at a tennis match.

“Right,” said Max, “first things first. This is Madame Passepartout. And my name’s Max.”

The girl stretched across the table to shake hands. “Christie Roberts. From St. Helena, California.”

That would explain the teeth and the tan, thought Max. “You’re a long way from home. Is this a holiday for you?”

“A vacation? Not exactly. Well, it’s kind of a long story.” She dropped two sugar lumps into her cup and stirred her coffee while she collected her thoughts. “I was raised by my mother. She never talked much about my dad, but she did tell me he died in a car crash when I was a baby. Then a couple of years ago, she got sick, and last year she died. A stroke.” Christie shook her head. “Does it bother you if I have a cigarette?”

“Go ahead. You’re in France, smoker’s heaven.” Max fetched an old Suze ashtray and pushed it across the table while Christie took a pack of cigarettes from her bag and lit one. “Dumb habit. I’ve got to be the only person in California who does nicotine instead of dope.” She blew a plume of smoke up at the ceiling. “So. After the funeral, I had to go through all my mom’s papers—bank statements, insurance policies, the usual stuff. Anyway, I found this letter, really old, from some guy called Henry, saying he missed her and wanted her to come out to be with him in France. And in the same envelope was a fuzzy photograph of him—well, I guess it was him—sitting outside a bar in the sun.”

“Really? Do you have it with you?”

“It’s in my bag in the car. But it got me curious, and I started asking around in St. Helena, people who’d known my mom when she was young. Well, it turns out that this Henry had spent some time in California, and he and mom were, you know, seeing each other.” She finished her coffee, smiling her thanks when Madame Passepartout refilled her cup. “That made me even more curious, so the next thing I did was get a copy of my birth certificate from Sacramento. And there was my father’s name.”

“Henry Skinner?”

She nodded. “That’s why I’m here. I thought it was about time I met my dad.” Stubbing out her half-smoked cigarette, she shrugged. “But I guess I’m too late.”

Max shook his head. “Afraid so. I’m very sorry. He died last month. Tell me, how did you know where to come?”

“An old friend of my mom’s works in Washington, for the State Department. It took a few weeks, but those guys can find out anything.”

Max stood up, still shaking his head. “Let me show you something.” He went to the sitting room, and came back with a silver photograph frame. Removing the back, he took out the concealed second photograph, brown and cracked with age, and placed it on the table in front of Christie.

She studied it for a long moment. “Wow. This is really weird.” She looked up at him, and back at the photograph. “That’s my mother. And I guess that’s my father.”

“My uncle,” said Max.

Madame Passepartout used the pretext of clearing away the coffee cups to lean over and peer at the photograph, which only added to her frustration. “Monsieur Max,” she said,
“qu’est-ce que se passe?”

Max scratched his head. “I’m not sure.” Turning to Christie, he began to tell her his side of the story—his boyhood visits to the house, the death of his uncle, the will. And as he mentioned the will, something that Nathalie Auzet had told him came into his head.

He picked up the old photograph and stared at it. “My God, I’d forgotten all about that. I wonder . . .” He looked at Christie. “Listen, I have to make a phone call.”

Christie smiled. “Go ahead.”

Max got through to the
notaire
’s office, only to be told by the secretary that Maître Auzet was in Paris for a few days. He put down the phone and slumped back in his chair. “The thing is,” he said to Christie, “there’s this inheritance law in France. When you die, your property has to go to your next of kin—your husband, your wife, your children. You have no choice. Now, when Uncle Henry made his will, he thought that I was his only surviving relative. He didn’t know about you.” Max frowned. “That’s strange, isn’t it? Why didn’t he know about you?”

“Mom married—a guy called Steve Roberts—but it didn’t work out. After that, I guess she felt she couldn’t . . . you know, come back to your uncle with a surprise package. Or maybe she didn’t love him. Who knows?”

Max looked at his watch—the Englishman’s inevitable reflex before the first drink of the day—and got up to fetch glasses and a bottle of rosé from the refrigerator. “You see what I’m getting at, don’t you? If you’re Uncle Henry’s daughter, it might make his will invalid.” He poured the wine and gave Christie a glass. “Which would mean that the property would legally have to go to you.”

“That’s crazy.” Christie laughed. “Just crazy.” She took a sip from her glass, holding the wine in her mouth before swallowing. “Hey, this is good. Nice and dry. What’s the mix? Grenache and Syrah?” She reached for the bottle and looked at the label. “Makes our Zinfandel taste like cough syrup.”

“You know a bit about wine?”

“Sure. I grew up in the Napa Valley, and I work in a winery. Public relations. I do the winery tours.”

Max nodded, his thoughts elsewhere. It was dawning on him that what he had just said to the girl—even if she didn’t believe it—was more than likely true. According to the serpentine dictates of French law, an illegitimate daughter would quite possibly take precedence over a legitimate nephew. All at once, just as he was beginning to ease into the life of gentleman
vigneron,
his future began to look uncertain. Extremely uncertain. And it was a fundamental uncertainty. He couldn’t ignore it, and it wouldn’t go away. Did he have a future here, or didn’t he?

“Look,” he said, “we’re going to have to sort this out.” He got up, went to a drawer of the dresser, pulled out a phone directory, and started leafing through the Yellow Pages. “Better to do it now, before things get any more complicated.”

Christie watched, a puzzled half smile on her face. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

“I think we should get a legal opinion.” Max found what he was looking for, and reached for his phone.

“Oh, come on. Do you really think . . .”

“I’m serious. Do you have anything against lawyers?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

As Max tapped in the number, Madame Passepartout, saucer-eyed and bursting with frustrated incomprehension, looked at Christie and shrugged. Christie could do nothing but shrug back. They waited for Max to finish his call.

“OK. We’ve got an appointment in Aix at two o’clock.”

Lunch was a swift, informal affair of bread and cheese and salad in the kitchen. Max was preoccupied, his head filled with depressing possibilities: losing the house, having to go back to London and find a job, scraping together the money to pay back Charlie. Christie was thoughtful, a little bewildered, and saddened by the realization that she never would meet her father. Madame Passepartout had given up the linguistic struggle and had gone home, promising to return to do battle with the cobwebs in the afternoon.

They were about to get into the car when Christie paused as she was opening the door. “Max? Do we really need to do this?”

Max looked at her across the roof of the car. “I do. I couldn’t stay not knowing if the house were mine or yours. Suppose you did something silly, like marry a Frenchman? You might want to come and live here.”

She shook her head. “Not on my agenda.”

“You never know. Agendas have a habit of changing.”

The drive down to Aix was marked by the kind of safe, impersonal conversation two people resort to when they don’t want to discuss what is really on their minds. They compared jobs: Max’s time in the City, Christie’s in the winery. They shared an admiration for the spectacular countryside they were driving through—like Napa, but greener and somehow older-looking—and by the time they had found a parking spot in Aix they were starting to feel as comfortable with one another as they could under the curious circumstances.

One of the most attractive corners of Aix is the Place d’Albertas, a miniature eighteenth-century cobbled square built around a fountain. Once an architectural prelude to the palace behind it, the square is now largely taken over by discreet offices filled with more or less discreet members of the legal profession. Maître Bosc, the lawyer Max had chosen at random from the extensive selection in the Yellow Pages, occupied the ground floor of one of the best-kept buildings, his brass plaque twinkling in the sun.

The secretary placed Christie and Max on two hard chairs while she disappeared to announce their arrival. Five minutes passed, then ten. Finally, when enough time had passed to establish that the
maître
was a busy and important man, the secretary reappeared and ushered them into his office.

It was a large, beautifully proportioned room—a high ceiling, tall windows, and delicately molded cornices—desecrated by the kind of modern office furniture one finds in catalogs that offer a discount for buying in bulk. Maître Bosc stood up behind his faux-rosewood desk and gestured at them to sit down. He was a thickset, rumpled man, shirtsleeves pushed up above his elbows, hair awry, his reading glasses dangling from a cord around his neck, a cigar smoldering between his fingers. He looked at them with a pleasant smile. “
Alors?
What can I do for you?”

Max described the odd situation in which he and Christie found themselves while Bosc made notes, interrupting from time to time with a murmured question. Christie’s exposure to lawyers had been limited to the California variety, sharply dressed and aggressive. Bosc, although she couldn’t understand him, seemed cozy and sympathetic. But he had a lawyer’s instinct for a lengthy and lucrative assignment, something that was apparent from his first words after Max had finished speaking.

He let his glasses drop from his nose, and began to swivel his chair slowly from side to side. “It’s a gray area,” he said.