The Wine Widow Read online

  ‘Philippe! We have a lot to do!’

  ‘You’d better go,’ Nicole said, turning away. ‘You are summoned!’

  Before he could detain her she had melted in among the passers-by in the market. Intrigued at the thought of a peasant girl who could use a phrase such as ‘you are summoned’ and speak it like a lady of Paris, Philippe went to join his mother.

  ‘You needn’t have been so short-tempered, Mama. That girl saved your glove from being trampled underfoot.’

  ‘Oh, did she indeed. And asked five sous as a reward, I daresay.’

  ‘Mama, you got out of bed the wrong side this morning. Come along.’ He offered his arm. ‘Let’s get on with the business of the day.’ But as he escorted her along the pavement of the great square he was keeping watch for the thick brown hair in its cobwebby cap and the glimpse of a cinnamon-coloured skirt.

  For her part, Nicole put them out of her mind. What good did it do to let insults rankle? The gentry, it was well known, had a high opinion of themselves and consequently misjudged others. And the lady who had called to the young gentleman was the most gentrified that Nicole had so far seen ‒ tall, imposing, clad in a crinoline of dark brown grosgrain with a fur-trimmed mantle and topped with a very elegant capote hat.

  Nicole’s sister Paulette would have told her that the style was a little dated, that the fur on the mantle had been removed from some other garment to grace its present collar. In other words, either Madame de Tramont chose not to spend too much on fashion or she was not as rich as she liked to pretend.

  The de Tramonts were, in fact, quite hard pushed for money. That was one of the reasons they had come to Rheims today. As everyone knew, the best way to bring money into a noble family was to marry well. Pourdume, the de Tramonts’ lawyer, had been delicately negotiating with the parents of a young lady who wished to achieve a title.

  The problem was, the de Tramonts didn’t quite have a title.

  Auguste de Tramont, eighth marquis of that line, had supported the Royalist cause wholeheartedly in 1789. The result was that he had to run for his life at the beginning of the Terror. His titles and his lands were swept away while he plotted in exile. When things began to cool down in France, Auguste returned with his son, but alas involved himself in Royalist plots against Napoleon, who wasn’t inclined to treat such behaviour lightly. Auguste and Claude de Tramont were exiled once more.

  When the monarchy was restored to France, the de Tramonts looked hopefully towards their homeland. Auguste had died, but Claude, now married, hoped to regain his estates and bring his young bride home in triumph. But endless legal wrangles ensued. Meanwhile Clothilde languished in London, growing more frustrated and embittered every day.

  In 1820 Claude regained possession of the manor of Tramont, the country house on the lesser estate from which the family originally drew its name. The great estates in the south were lost forever. And most of the land around Tramont was gone too, snapped up by clever bourgeois and even some of the peasants who had enough money to buy when prices were low.

  Clothilde wasn’t pleased when she discovered she was to be mistress of a small wine-growing property in the Marne. She had imagined herself dwelling in a fine town house in Paris, attending court, occasionally travelling south to live la vie champêtre when it pleased her. Acquaintance with the British aristocracy had shown her that it was considered not only desirable but actually smart to live part of the time on one’s country estate.

  But to be condemned to live all the time in a ramshackle old house in the Marne! Worse yet, there was almost no money. If there had been any kind of income from the former great estates, she would have repaired the manor house and laid out pretty gardens. But the only money came from the sale of the grapes from the few acres of vines ‒ excellent vines, producing sought-after grapes fetching good prices. But that was trade.

  Claude had come to terms with the situation long ago. The grinding experience of fighting the bureaucrats for his house and few fields had taught him that you had to make the best of what you had.

  To Clothilde’s horror, Claude went into the wine-making business.

  He had good advice from his lawyer, who had many clients among the champagne-makers of the district. Mérimé Pourdume explained that to be a champagne-maker wasn’t considered bourgeois. Great noblemen of the past had done it, the process had been discovered originally by the chief cellarer of a famous monastery, there was history and prestige behind it. Moreover, it was lucrative.

  In the thirty years that ensued, Clothilde de Tramont never really reconciled herself to the idea that she was married to a wine-maker. It offended her that her daughter, Seraphine, had to accept a marriage with a minor English nobleman whose family she had come to know during the years of exile. When Clothilde’s son Philippe was born, rather late in her marriage, she begged Claude to leave ‘trade’ so as not to bring a stigma on the boy. But Claude had continued his struggle to learn the business of champagne-making until the day he died, three years ago.

  Now Clothilde herself and Philippe were supposed to run the firm of Tramont de Tramont, champagne-makers. Clothilde had never cared to learn anything about it and Philippe had scant ability where business was concerned.

  Luckily they had a fine chief cellarman, who knew more about champagne than the Tramont family were ever likely to learn. In his capable hands the small firm managed to make a profit, whereby the workers were paid and a balance was left over so that mother and son could live in comfort.

  But the only way to restore the glories of the de Tramont family was for Philippe to make a splendid marriage. And somehow that wasn’t proving quite so easy as Clothilde had envisaged.

  While these two went for an anxious discussion with M. Pourdume, Nicole Berthois amused herself in the streets and alleys of Rheims. Though she had anxieties of her own, today she banished them. When she went at last to Madame Treignac’s to ask for Paulette, she was on the crest of a wave of happiness ‒ she had seen handsome and fashionable people, watched glossy horses and carriages, listened to a street band, and generally enjoyed herself without the expense of a single sou.

  The storeman came out of his room full of cloth bales to inspect her when she stepped inside the back door from the cobbled courtyard. ‘Oh, it’s you, Nicole. You can go straight up. I think the girls are still working but they should break for lunch any moment now.’

  He stood to watch the twinkle of slim ankles under cinnamon skirts as she ran upstairs. Nicole, perfectly aware of the fact, twirled about at the first landing so that he could have a glimpse of brown thread stockings above good leather shoes before she started on the second flight which took her out of sight.

  Paulette had heard her footsteps. She came out of the big attic workshop on the third floor. ‘Nicole, you’ll have to sit quiet for a few minutes. Madame hasn’t closed for the lunch hour yet, she has a customer.’

  Nicole followed her sister into the workshop. It was a fine airy room ‒ draughty, in cold weather ‒ with skylights to give perfect illumination for the seamstresses and embroideresses. Eight girls were seated at tables, with work spread out before them, some still busy, some beginning to fold the garments into their muslin protective wrappings in preparation for the meal. Lunch was eaten at the work bench. Not the slightest crumb or spot of soup must touch the dresses, or there would be fines and stoppages of pay and scoldings.

  ‘Who’s in the showroom, then?’ Nicole inquired after she’d kissed and hugged her sister.

  ‘Don’t know. Who is it, Francoise ‒ d’you know?’

  ‘The bottle-green moire, isn’t it? It’s one of your own, surely, Paulette ‒ they came to fetch it first thing this morning, remember?’

  ‘Oh, her,’ Paulette said with a shrug. Anyone who ordered a gown in March and left it until early May before having it fitted was unworthy of consideration.

  It seemed that lunch wouldn’t be served for at least another half hour. After Nicole had brought her sister up to date with
news of the farm, Paulette followed suit with little incidents from her life at the dressmaker’s. Nicole found it all terribly strange: imagine spending all your day shut up in an upstairs room, with only a view over roofs for diversion, and only the gossip from the workroom and the showroom to talk about.

  Nevertheless it was intriguing. Rich women came and went through the grandiose front door. Downstairs in the fitting room some fine lady was surveying herself in the big gilt mirrors.

  ‘Could we go down and take a look, Paulie?’

  ‘What!’

  ‘I’d like to see the showroom. From the outside, you can see fine velvet curtains. Couldn’t we look?’

  ‘But Madame’s there, with the customer …’

  ‘Go on, take her,’ the other girls urged. ‘You can stay behind the big draft screen that shields the passage door. Go on, Paulie, let your country mouse of a sister see how the city people live!’

  Laughing and yet a little scared, Paulette led Nicole down the stairs up which she had just come. On the first floor they went through a door and along a short passage; Madame Treignac and her husband lived here, in two rooms far less splendid than the showroom. They went down a carpeted stairway to the ground floor, where Paulette softly opened a big mahogany door.

  Immediately the tops of the stately windows and their velvet hangings could be seen over the tapestry screen that stood in front of the door. Nicole was about to peep round it when a rustle of movement and a cough made her stop. She drew back in alarm. By craning their necks the girls could just see, reflected in one of the mirrors that graced the room and reflected light, a trousered leg and an elegant boot polished like glass.

  ‘A husband!’ breathed Paulette in Nicole’s ear.

  Nicole stifled a giggle. Poor man, doomed to wait while his wife was pushed and prodded in the fitting room on the other side.

  The door of that room was thrown open with a bang. Madame Treignac could be heard uttering soothing cries.

  ‘Nonsense, nonsense, the gown looks terrible!’ stormed an angry voice.

  Nicole recognised it at once. It belonged to the lady who had referred to her as a common peasant girl.

  ‘Philippe, give me your opinion. There is something utterly wrong about this gown, now isn’t there?’

  Indeed there was. By a trick of reflections in mirrors, the girls behind the screen could see Clothilde de Tramont in her almost-completed gown.

  ‘She’s put on weight since she ordered it,’ Paulette whispered to her sister. ‘My word, it’s a mess.’

  ‘You’ll have to let it out,’ Nicole replied.

  ‘Can’t. It’s cut too strictly.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to let in a piece.’

  ‘Can’t do that either. I’ll tell you why ‒ Madame used up the rest of the bale to make a semi-mourning dress for little Mademoiselle Lubec. Her mother didn’t want to put her into black, you see, and rather than miss a sale, Madame remembered the end of the piece used for Madame de Tramont.’

  ‘Dear me,’ Nicole murmured with amusement. ‘What a problem. She’ll have to tell Madame de Tramont she’s got too fat.’

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ said Paulette in a muffled shriek, which was luckily drowned in the noisy complaints of the customer.

  Philippe, bored out of his mind by a half hour wait with not even a newspaper to look at, was trying to help Madame Treignac convince his mother that the gown fitted beautifully. ‘It’s fashionable to be nipped in at the waist, surely?’ he remarked.

  ‘Nipped in? I feel as if I’m encased in armour. I can’t breathe! I tell you, you’ve done something silly with this gown since I was measured for it ‒’

  ‘No, no, madame, I assure you ‒’

  ‘One thing is certain! I’m not paying good money for a disgraceful piece of work like this!’

  ‘The gown is beautifully made, madame. Only the finest workmanship, I assure you. And when you have worn it once or twice, it will seem easier ‒’

  ‘Do you take me for a fool? If I tried to go out to an afternoon engagement in this dress, I should have a fainting fit.’

  ‘Mama, truly, it looks fine. You must allow for the fact that the material is new and stiff ‒’

  ‘Stiff? Stiff? Silk shouldn’t feel like board! I can feel it pressing against my ribs to such an extent I can’t draw breath. Look at my face ‒ it’s giving me an apoplexy!’

  An impulse of mischief, prompted by a wish to pay back the slighting remark in the Grand Square, caused Nicole to step from behind the screen.

  ‘The gown is a disaster, Madame,’ she told Clothilde de Tramont calmly. ‘It’s too tight because your figure has changed since you were measured. That’s why you’re going red in the face.’

  Chapter 2

  The silence that followed Nicole’s remark was ominous. It was broken by Paulette. She gave a little squeak of terror and threw her apron of crash linen over her face. Philippe gave a little gurgle of stifled laughter. Madame Treignac, her angular face going white with shock, drew a careful breath.

  ‘Changed?’ echoed Clothilde, recovering from the surprise of Nicole’s sudden intervention. ‘Nothing of the kind! My figure is just as it always was!’

  Now Nicole saw what she had done. Out of a silly impulse of revenge, she would lose a customer for Madame Treignac and her sister’s job. Her quick wits flew to her aid.

  ‘Ah, madame,’ she said in a tone of sympathetic understanding, ‘the head of a great household such as yours cannot afford the time to think of herself. You have the servants to control, parties and outings to arrange, correspondence to attend to.’ Here Nicole’s imagination ran out. She really couldn’t think of much more that a wealthy woman could have to do. ‘In the midst of all this,’ she went on, ‘is it surprising that you are unaware that a more majestic outline has developed?’

  ‘More majestic,’ echoed Madame Treignac in a faint, hopeful murmur. ‘A fine figure of a woman, as the saying goes.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Nicole agreed, ‘very much in the fashion. But alas it does mean that the dress is now too tight.’

  ‘Too tight,’ said Clothilde de Tramont. ‘Of course, that’s what’s wrong with it. That’s why my upper arms feel as if they were gripped in a vice ‒ the sleeves are cutting into them.’

  ‘I believe the dress is a little too tight,’ Madame Treignac said.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ demanded Clothilde in vexation, ignoring the fact that she had been making a great fuss only a few minutes ago over the suggestion her figure had changed. ‘Absurd creature. Well, then …’ She turned this way and that to view herself in the mirror. ‘The bodice must be let out.’

  ‘Let out,’ gasped Paulette, looking ready to throw her apron over her face again, though she had just emerged.

  ‘Yes, certainly, let out. Who are you, in any case?’

  ‘I’m … ah … madame, I’m the seamstress who cut and made the dress.’

  ‘Then you know just how to do it. I shall expect to return this afternoon for a new fitting of the bodice ‒’

  ‘Impossible,’ whispered Paulette.

  ‘Impossible? How impossible, young woman?’

  ‘Because … ah, you see … the seams were cut very fine, to ensure a trim fit.’

  ‘Cut very fine? What does that mean?’

  It means, thought Nicole, that there isn’t enough material on the seams to let out. Oh dear … She cast a glance of sympathy at Paulette.

  Paulette faltered out just that information to Clothilde, who frowned for a moment but then waved a ringed hand dismissively. ‘I suppose then, two pieces must be let in at the sides. That can be done without spoiling the cut?’

  Oh yes, thought Nicole, if there were any fabric left to use. But alas Madame Treignac had sold about one-third of the piece of moire silk paid for by Clothilde to make a dress for someone else’s child.

  ‘Madame de Tramont,’ Nicole said quickly, ‘although of course it would be perfectly simple to put two new pieces in
to the bodice, don’t you think that would make the shape unduly dull? That would mean, let me see ‒ eight plain seams at the front not counting the fastening. Don’t you agree it would be much better to enhance the line rather than have a plain alteration? Insertions of fine embroidery edged with braid ‒ how very elegant that would look!’

  ‘Very elegant,’ echoed Madame Treignac in a voice of sudden gratitude. ‘Yes, indeed, only today I have received a parcel of new braid from Paris ‒ there is a very handsome one with steel beading that glints grey and green. How splendid it would look if one put it in here, and here …’ Her slim fingers flickered over the moire silk, putting little chalk marks to suggest the placing.

  ‘And embroidery?’ urged Clothilde.

  ‘Paulette could make the embroidery insertions,’ Nicole said, taking her sister in a firm grasp and propelling her forward. ‘Suppose she were to do green eyelet work on black silk ‒’

  ‘Or brown,’ Madame Treignac put in, ‘or dark blue …’

  ‘Or, since summer is coming, beige would be very suitable,’ Paulette said, plucking up courage to look into Clothilde’s thoughtful face.

  ‘Beige … beige …’

  ‘No, madame,’ Nicole said, shaking her head. ‘The colour of the gown is sumptuous, one shouldn’t detract the eye by adding too much contrast. No, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll have black or brown.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps … yes, I think, black, Madame Treignac. Black embroidery insertions with black braid edged with beading … I believe it will look very well.’ She turned, portly and good-humoured now. ‘And how much is all this extra work going to cost me?’

  ‘Oh, a mere nothing, madame, I assure you! This way, madame, let us try the braid against the bodice before you take it off.’ The dressmaker led her customer away to the fitting room, with Paulette in her train.

  Nicole was left with Philippe de Tramont. ‘That was quick thinking,’ he remarked with a grin.