House of Peine (13 page)

“What have you been snivelling about?” Mathilde accosted Sophie as she sneaked back into the house some time later. “Don’t tell me the little mouse and the big ox have fallen out. I heard Clementine blubbering her way up the stairs just before. What’s going on?”

“Sophie!” La Petite’s voice was not strong but it had a strange way of carrying itself, sort of in a waft, like smoke. Sophie and Mathilde both looked up the stairs as if they could see it snaking its way towards them. “Sophie!” the old woman called again. Mathilde physically recoiled.

“Now you’ve gone and woken Yoda,” she hissed. “So get up there and see what she wants before she starts making a nuisance of herself.”

Actually, La Petite had hardly made a nuisance of herself at all since the vendange began, although it was true that before that she had appeared a little on the demanding side, sending Sophie to the butcher for a particular slice of
charcuterie
or asking Clementine to mend a tear in her ancient bloomers, for example. Mathilde’s sisters had been most obliging, they were
women starved of their mothers, after all, so they were lured in by La Petite’s matriarchal leanings. Mathilde, however, avoided her like the plague. So desperate was she to avoid detection by the old woman she even slipped her heels off and tip-toed past her room. She never did hear that scratchy old voice call her name, but she could feel her pull nonetheless. Instead of letting it reel her in the way her sisters did, though, she pulled against it, leaned further and further away, still furious that La Petite had exposed her one real weakness, Edie.

The subject of her 10-year-old daughter had been robbing Mathilde of sleep ever since the child’s existence had been revealed in that smelly little room. She had her reasons for leaving Edie behind, she just didn’t want to have to justify them to anyone, especially her two dim-witted sisters and some half-deranged, wizened-up old raisin. She knew how it looked to them, how it would look to everybody — she was in PR after all — but it was nobody’s business but her own; her own and George’s and perhaps that of the highly strung little madam they had brought into the world all those years ago and who had spent every minute of her life screwing up Mathilde’s.

She’d been cursing La Petite for exhuming her buried family, so invasive was she finding her thoughts of them. In fact, her entire body had revolted, breaking out in an unsightly rash that she had kept hidden for the first few days but which was now spreading up her neck towards her face. She could read the questions in her sisters’ eyes every time they looked at her, felt her skin crawl with every obvious thought. “You’ve been here all this time and you have a 10-year old daughter at home?” She kept hearing that sow Clementine’s disbelieving voice ringing in her ears. So strong were the images of Edie, her impossible child, crowding her head she had barely given a thought to that other daughter La Petite had unveiled.

“For God’s sake, Edie, will you just go,” she shouted at
Sophie as La Petite called her name again. Sophie looked more bewildered than usual and, realising her slip-up, Mathilde felt her cheeks burning but hid her embarrassment by slapping at her sister to get her moving.

“All right, all right, I’m going,” Sophie said, and it truly could have been Edie. So that is why I find you so annoying, Mathilde thought, watching Sophie walk heavily up the stairs. They were so alike. Not to look at, not at all. But that neediness, that pathetic vulnerability. How could she not have noticed it before?

“Come in,” croaked La Petite and Sophie dragged her
for-lorn
little body into the room and perched on the end of the bed.

“So, you know about Hector then, heh?” the old woman asked. “The cat is out of the bag.”

“Yes, well, the problem is that there are two bags,” Sophie said, “but only one cat.”

La Petite laughed so hard she started to choke, clutching at her scrawny chest and hooting hilariously.

“It’s not funny,” Sophie insisted. “It’s awful.”

“Maybe a little bit of both, heh?” La Petite suggested. “And anyway it’s nothing you can’t handle.”

Sophie opened her mouth to protest but stopped to think about this a moment and found it to be true. She could handle it, she could handle just about anything. And while she couldn’t quite see the humour in it just yet she admitted that maybe one day in the not-too-distant future she would. She looked at La Petite and managed a half-hearted smile.

“Oh, Sophie, my Little One,” La Petite said in a voice so gentle it seemed to belong to a much less phlegmy person. “You must look after these sisters of yours. They need you. Desperately. Both of them. You fill all the gaps.”

“The gaps?” Sophie was flabbergasted. “But I am nothing but a gap myself. I’m the biggest gap of them all. I’m useless.
I can’t even read.”

“What does reading have to do with it?” La Petite asked dismissively. “And you’re far from useless. You just need to realise that no one has everything. We all have bits and pieces that on their own might make us feel like there is nothing to us, but in the right combination they have their perfect place. Just look at pinot meunier: too fruity by itself to make a drinkable wine but combined with chardonnay and pinot noir,
voilà
! It makes champagne.”

Sophie had her doubts. “That may well be but what if the chardonnay is combining with the pinot noir on the side without mentioning it to the pinot meunier? Does that still make champagne? Or does that make something you would spit out rather than drink?”

“That’s entirely up to you,” La Petite said.

“You’re right, I can handle it,” Sophie sighed. “The Hectors of this world are nothing new for me, I find them and lose them all the time, but poor Clementine, La Petite. He has broken her heart. Combining with the two of us, like that. What is he up to?”

There was the sound of someone being extremely furious outside the door. La Petite did not look at all surprised.

“You filthy little tart!” Mathilde burst in, her face screwed up into an angry twist. “Sleeping with the help? A gypsy? Well, I can see why he would ‘combine’ with you but that great fat heap down the hall? It’s disgusting, that’s what it is. We should throw him in the loony bin, along with Old Nut or Little Nut or whatever the hell she is called, before his pecker falls off or his brain turns to mush — although clearly if he’s screwing Clementine we are already too late for that.”

La Petite laughed, knowing full well that a bitter angry person hates nothing more than being mocked. “Such concern, Mathilde. I’m touched.”

“Touched is right,” snapped Mathilde. “They don’t come more touched than you.”

Clementine appeared in the room then, her face blotchy from crying. “What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s all the yelling about?”

Mathilde turned on her. “Just because you managed to trick some poor blind stupid man into impregnating you a hundred years ago, Clementine, does not mean you have to offer your repulsive self up to —”

“Don’t you dare talk to her like that,” shouted Sophie, entering the fray, her own golden cheeks now rosy with anger. “She’s your sister!”

“I don’t need you,” Clementine hissed at her. “I can speak for myself. Don’t you dare talk to me like that, Mathilde. This has nothing to do with you.” She stopped, a look of horror spreading across her face. “Unless? Oh, no, not you too? I couldn’t bear it.”

“Couldn’t bear what?” Hector asked, appearing with a tray of bread and honey for La Petite. “Or have I come at a bad time?”

“Oh, I love it when this happens,” cried his great-grandmother, clapping her little curled hands in front of her. “Encore! Encore!”

“Please tell me you didn’t sleep with Mathilde,” Clementine pleaded.

“Okay,” Hector shrugged as he put the tray down. “I didn’t sleep with her.”

“But did you?” asked Sophie.

“Clementine asked me to say I didn’t,” Hector said, sitting on the bed.

“You are good,” La Petite cackled. “You are very good.”

“But did you?” Clementine shouted. “You can say you did if you did, just not if you didn’t, that’s not what I meant 
by telling you not to tell me.”

“I’m a bit confused now,” Hector said cheerfully. “But the truth of the matter is that I did sleep with you and Sophie, which was very nice thank you very much, but not with Mathilde. She wanted me to but she’s really not my type.”

“Why, you slimy little shit,” spat Mathilde. “I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last man on earth.”

“That’s not what you said when you sneaked into my room and whispered in my ear about blow jobs,” Hector rebutted, at which La Petite laughed fit to die.

In fact, she made such a long drawn-out gagging noise that ended so suddenly in dead silence everyone in the room stopped their arguing and stared at her in horror.

“Not yet,” she said eventually, eyes still closed. “Don’t worry, I’ll give you plenty of warning.”

Clementine and Sophie breathed a sigh of relief, Hector just smiled. Mathilde shrivelled further with rage.

“You’ll be sorry,” she said, pointing a slightly scabby finger at Hector before turning her disdainful gaze on her sisters. “And so will you two pathetic creatures.” And out the door she stalked.

“I already am sorry,” Sophie said, looking at Clementine. “Really sorry.”

“I trusted you,” Clementine replied. “I thought you were my friend.” She whispered the last word, so precious and unfamiliar was it to her.

“But ’Mentine, I am your friend,” Sophie protested hotly. “I didn’t know. Hector, you have to tell her. I had no idea. I would never, ever, ever do anything to hurt you. You’re all I have. Please don’t be angry with me, ’Mentine. I’ll do anything as long as you’re not angry with me. And anyway, when you think about it, if you are going to be angry with anyone, shouldn’t it be Hector? And shouldn’t I be, too?”

They looked at him spreading honey on a slice of
pain au levain
for his great-grandmother and in all honesty, even for Clementine, it was extremely difficult to feel anger.

“I’m not Mathilde,” Sophie said softly into the lull that followed. “I did not take Hector to hurt you, ’Mentine. It’s not like it was with Benoît. I would never do that to anyone but I would especially never do that to you.”

Clementine realised with a jolt that Sophie was right: it was not like it had been with Benoît. Her feelings for him were quite different to what she felt for Hector, which was really mostly about the feel of his skin, the smell of his hair, the angle of his collarbones. Truthfully, she did not mind so much about Hector as she did about Sophie betraying her. But if there had been no betrayal?

“It’s just what we do,” Hector assured them with his charming smile. “We share.”

“Well, I don’t know if we’re a sharing sort of family,” Clementine said bluntly.

“Not that sort of sharing, anyway,” Sophie agreed.

“Okay, then I choose you, Clementine,” Hector said, taking a bite out of the bread himself. “If that’s all right.”

Clementine opened her mouth to say that it certainly was not all right, that she was not some piece of meat to be haggled over like ham hock in a common
boucherie
, but then she thought of snuggling up against all that taut brown muscle and found her tongue unwilling to waggle.

Sophie took this as a yes and clapped her hands with glee. “That’s settled then!” she announced delightedly and shared a special triumphant look with La Petite, who had deigned to open one eye to take in the proceedings.

“Settled, my foot,” grumbled Clementine but it was without rancour. It was nice, after all, to be chosen.

The next couple of days were odd ones at the House of Peine, which is saying something because the days there were odd to begin with.

Mathilde avoided everybody and everybody avoided her, but then Clementine was avoiding Sophie too. The bond between them had actually been strengthened by the business with Hector, yet in a way Clementine was so grateful she felt suffocated by it. She just kept busy, delivering the stampes to the winery, supervising the pressing, counting the moments until she could sneak between the sheets and be the person she had always dreamed she wasn’t with a man she’d never dared to imagine.

Her path barely crossed Hector’s during the day, but when it did Clementine felt as though the sun moved its beam and shone only on the two of them. It was not as though he lavished her with affection in public or anything like that. He never would, and she would die of mortification anyway, but just the way he stood so close that their arm hairs stuck out and nearly touched each other sent a thrill rippling across her skin
that made her feel more alive than she had ever felt before. A few days after the business with Sophie was “settled”, as she was driving a tractor-load of grapes to the winery, she came upon him at the end of a row. He put down the basket he was carrying, glanced around casually to see if any of his pickers were watching, then jumped up onto the tractor, sitting
backwards
on the rusty hood so he was facing her.

Now, watching Hector jump onto a tractor was not like watching anyone else jump on a tractor. He moved with a natural grace that pretty much only panthers possessed and it was transfixing, especially to someone like her. She could throw one supple leg over a bicycle saddle if no one was looking but in company she always moved jerkily, woodenly, like a badly operated marionette. Worse, this awkwardness of hers was often catchy. Others who were normally quite fleet of foot suddenly moved stodgily in her company, tripping over things they would usually have side-stepped, catching their hips on corners they had avoided for years. She sucked the natural grace right out of some people, Clementine. But here was the thing: in Hector’s presence, it was different. He didn’t collect her self-conscious clumsiness; she collected his effortless ease and found herself moving in ways that a woman totally confident in herself and her body might move.

On the occasion of Hector jumping on the tractor, even before she stopped to think about it she stood up and leaned forward, tucking a dark curl that had escaped from his bandanna behind his ear. He grinned at her and she returned the grin, settling back lightly into the uncomfortable tractor seat — not in that way of many overweight women, where the relief of getting off their feet shines in every pore of their faces, but in an almost dainty fashion. Her wraparound skirt came away just then, part of one muscly thigh exposing itself to the sun, prompting a lascivious glance and an even bigger grin
from Hector. Clementine basked in it. Basked. He jumped down — it really should not have been an aaahhhh moment but it was — and she watched him as he headed back to work, eyeing the easy swing of his hips, the square cut of his
shoulders
. She threw her head back, closed her eyes and felt the autumn sun tickle her eyelids, massage her smile. When she opened her eyes again, Benoît was there, not a hundred metres away, sitting on his tractor, a trailerful of berries loaded up in his stampes behind him.

For the first time in 18 years, they looked at each other. It wasn’t for long yet it felt like a lifetime. Clementine could see the space between them packed with words, all jumbled up, separated, spelled out and stretching in different fonts and sizes so that any meaning was lost, confused, pointless. How can you think so much in such a short time and say none of it, she asked herself? How can we have done what we did all those years ago and never speak of it? How can there be a person out there whom we brought into the world that we have never even seen? That I can’t even think about? That you don’t even know about?

How did this happen to us?

If Benoît got any of this, if he saw those words and put them in order, she couldn’t tell. But there was a twitch in his cheek, perhaps the beginnings of a timid smile on his lips. It could have been going to say “hello”, that smile, or “
congratulations
”, or “how did this happen to us?”.

There is something between us, I know there is, Clementine thought to herself. After all this time, she could still feel it, recognised it more clearly than ever before, in a way. But what was the use? She held his gaze a second longer, then put the tractor into gear and in a cloud of fumes drove away.

She passed Sophie on the road near the house and caught
her eye, too. Sophie never bothered with the beginnings of a smile — hers was as big as a slice of watermelon. La Petite was spot on when it came to the littlest Peine’s heart: Sophie might not have been able to comprehend the written word with much clarity but she sure as heck got what Clementine was feeling, right down to the smallest convoluted globule of gratitude mixed with resentment and dotted with confusion. Because of this she was happy to keep her distance for a while, but she hugged closely to her narrow chest the fact that her eldest sister was still her friend.

After delivering her grapes to the winery, Clementine watched as the meunier cascaded into the press, listened to the almost imperceptible burble of the juice escaping, collecting, pouring down to the floor below. At that moment, she was standing directly above Mathilde, who continued to grow blacker and smaller as the vendange progressed. The clipboard was still there, the Montblanc pen still scratching away at it. But that phone up in her room taunted her now and her dreams of Edie and George had become nightmares. Her empty pastis collection was growing, the Xanax supplies dwindling. She had picked the cursed phone up the previous night, unable to sleep, and had started to punch in the apartment phone number, but fear stopped her. Fear! Fear of what? She couldn’t answer that, all she could do was despise herself for feeling it, drink more, wait for sleep to put her out of her misery.

La Petite knew all this, could feel it from her bed where she was cheerfully examining her slow descent towards the next phase of her life (or afterlife). It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling in the least: rather a cross between relief and striking just the right combination of cheeses. Anyway, she had other things to think about. Her descent was slow because clearly she still had her work cut out. Olivier had been right to feel concern for Clementine and Sophie but those two were as transparent as
water. One had been starved of love and affection, so had never known what to do with it; the other gave it away without ever expecting it back. But Mathilde, what a complicated kettle of
cabillaud
she was. She knew what love was all right and didn’t want a bar of it, ran from it with all her might (which was considerable). Hers was a situation a little harder to broach, a little more challenging to reverse. Hector could not help Mathilde, he would only be more of the same. What Mathilde needed was her family. All of them.

“I think we need to write a letter, Hector,” La Petite told her great-grandson later that night. He was stretched out on the bed next to her, hands behind his head.

“The Americans?” he asked her.

“Of course. There’s not much time, either, is there?”

“For me? We’ll be finished tomorrow.”

“Does the fat one know?”

“She’s not really that fat, you know, Petite.”

“Yes, yes, but does she know you are going?”

“I suppose. All the grapes are nearly picked and she certainly knows all there is to know about them. And what about you, Petite? How much time before you go?”

La Petite smiled. “Truthfully, I am ready now. But these Peines are a bigger job than I expected. We need to write this letter, Hector. There’s no twiddly-deeing in the world that will help Mathilde. We need the other two — the sisters — and then the other other two. Do you know what I am saying?”

“About everything but the twiddly-deeing, Petite. We haven’t called it that for centuries.”

As usual the last day of the vendange was celebrated with a party, known by the pickers as
le cochelet.
With every grape plucked off every vine, the juice wrung out of each one, La Petite’s gang gathered in the courtyard between the house and the winery around makeshift tables laden with bottles of brut,
loaves of bread and steaming bowls of
potée champenoise
, a traditional dish of meat, cabbage and other rich pickings from the Peine vegetable garden.

Usually, Clementine hated le cochelet. In previous years she’d begrudgingly made the stew but had then hidden in her room while the pickers helped themselves to the Peine
champagne
and ignored Olivier as he drank himself slowly under the table.

This year was different. Clementine sat next to Hector at the main table, a becoming flush on her cheeks as
self-consciously
she urged the pickers to try the bottles of vintage champagne she’d brought up from the cave.

Sophie sat at the next table, between a dark-eyed young Hector-lookalike and a grizzled old rumpelstiltskin of a man whose eyebrows were so long they grew straight upwards and met with the hair on his head. This was Sophie’s first harvest party and she was loving it, the atmosphere buzzing with the sound of the pickers’ chatter and the clinking of glasses and plates. La Petite, not wanting to miss out, had let Hector carry her downstairs and prop her up with some of her flock. She held court at the far table, huddled inside a swathe of blankets, her claw of a hand poking out, always with a glass in it.

Only Mathilde shunned the celebrations, staying in her room with a head full of dark thoughts and a heart full of turmoil.

When the music started — there were at least three fiddlers among the pickers — La Petite smiled her toothless smile as Hector pulled Clementine to her feet and whirled her around the cobbled courtyard.

“Look at what a little bit of twiddly-dee can do for a woman!” she cackled in her native tongue to the great-
great-nephew
sitting next to her.

“She certainly doesn’t look like the bitter old prune we
normally see this time of year,” he chirruped back, his eyes on the shapely teenage second cousin whose bare belly button was diverting his attention.

“The prune is gone,” La Petite sighed happily. “Gone.”

But the prune came back briefly later that night when Hector, having wined and dined her then made love to her until every bone in her body hummed, slipped out of her bed and told her he would see her the following year.

“Next year!” Clementine cried, sitting up, one round naked shoulder glimmering in the moonlight. “But …”

“But what did you think?” Hector asked her gently, sitting back down and tracing a line from her ear down to the spongy valley between her breasts. “I’m the head of the pack now. We’re due elsewhere.”

“There’s more sharing to be done, I suppose?” she asked, already moved on from angry to wistful.

“It’s what we do, ’Mentine,” he said, and proceeded to kiss his way up her neck, then whisper in her ear. “And doesn’t it feel good? Like
sabayon
.”

He’d strolled into Clementine’s life, this perfect specimen, and laughingly thrown all her dismal expectations up, up, up into the air, never to fall back to earth in quite the same spot. And now it was over. She knew that. But she could no longer honestly reclaim her best friend, bitterness, because she also knew that she was better off being loved by Hector for a short time than for no time at all.

She had sadness, and plenty of it, but she had joy, too: the sort of joy she didn’t know she could have until Hector came along. There was nothing for it but to pull him back for one last round of twiddly-deeing. And then she let him go.