The French House, Helen Fripp [e textbook reader .txt] 📗

finer points of viticulture. François made it sound like poetry. Sometimes, too tired to go to bed after their long days, they made love by the firelight and woke in the morning, still in each other’s arms, with the embers glowing white and hot.

His delight in her knowledge of the wine business still made her feel like the sun had come out after over a year of marriage. This was the perfect moment to tell him her news.

‘I have a surprise.’ She took him to sit on the millstone, away from the workers and prying ears. ‘Another blend, more important than anything in that room.’

François pulled her close. ‘More important than our first vintage?’

‘I’m pregnant,’ said Nicole.

François buried his head in his hands. Was he hiding tears?

‘I could taste everything so clearly and I just knew. I’ve known for a week, but I wanted to be sure. You have given me two gifts. A palate that can discern any grape, even its position on the Montagne, just by tasting. But best of all – a baby, François. We’re going to be a family.’

François jumped up to face her, his jaw set. He had that wild animal look in his eye again, like the time at the well, as though she wasn’t there. Her heart lurched.

‘Jesus Christ, Nicole, why do you think I’d want to bring an innocent baby into this world? The poor child will be half me. There’s a war on, no end of evil. How can you sit there smiling like you’ve turned lead to gold?’

He disappeared into the vines. It was the same as before. She waited, but he didn’t return.

She couldn’t breathe and nausea overcame her as the carriage sped her home in a blur, bumping through the vineyards, jolting her fragile bones. She ached for his arms around her and her baby, but he didn’t come home.

Evening came, then night. Still no François. She fantasised about the knock on the door, the sorry, it was such a shock, please forgive me, Babouchette. At dawn, the bed was freezing and she was sick. She heaved herself up to clean the bowl. Josette would suspect and she couldn’t tell anyone without him there. A knock at the door, a horse passing, sent her flying to the window for his return, only to be disappointed over and over again. Everything tasted false and she could barely eat without wanting to retch.

She and François had chosen to live mainly at their simple house at Bouzy, in the middle of the vineyards outside Reims, instead of their fashionable house in town. It was a mellow stone house, like a child’s drawing, with a path leading to the front door, four symmetrical windows and an inviting glow at the hearth. A rough kitchen table where Josette prepared the food, wooden chairs and threadbare cushions in front of the fire, bookshelves overflowing with their favourite authors and wine manuals, always flooded with light, and until now, happiness. It was their hideaway, a far cry from the grand mansion she had grown up in at the rue de la Vache and it was easy to hide her grief here amongst the vines.

After a week passed, she told Josette that François had been called away unexpectedly on a sales trip. Her secret pregnancy created a wall between her and the people she loved. How could she talk to her mother without telling her? How could she face Natasha’s piercing eyes without her just knowing? She buried her head in her wine manuals to distract herself from thinking about him every second. Between these pages, life was straightforward, one simple action of planting leading to an inevitable flowering, fruiting and yield, as long as you followed the rules.

November brought gloom and driving rain and misery, and finally François. He appeared, bedraggled from the storm, looking like a ghost, almost hidden by the biggest bunch of purple irises she had ever seen.

She tore them off him and flung them at the wind and they scattered over the garden like confetti.

‘You abandoned me when I needed you,’ she raged. ‘Coward!’

‘I’m worse than that, Babouchette. I’m that and everything that could be bad about a human being.’ He looked haunted and gaunt.

‘I’m sick, I’m weak and tired and pregnant and you just walked away. You’re not the man I thought I married.’ Everything was so mixed up. She was angry and hurt, yet so relieved to see him.

‘Let me come in, Babouchette. It’s still me, but there’s a part of me I need to tell you about. The part who disappears when you need me most.’

She drew him inside, afraid.

‘I need you here, all of you.’ She moved the piled-up wine manuals off his chair and stoked the fire. ‘Don’t leave anything out. I’ll try to understand.’

He held his hands to the flames.

‘The well was so deep, you couldn’t see the bottom of it the day you threw the coin. When the black descends, that’s how I feel, like it’s so deep it will never end and I have to get away before it overwhelms me. It comes when I’m happiest.’

‘Happiness makes you unhappy?’ she asked, trying to understand.

‘You remember when we visited Calais? The beach glittered and the sea was flinty grey, like your eyes. The waves rolled in with such force, it was exhilarating and frightening to watch. The undertow, the very thing that creates the energy and excitement, could drag you under and drown you. That’s how it is.’

‘You’re scaring me, François.’

‘It is frightening. A winter sunrise is so beautiful and intense it hurts. A summer’s evening in the vineyards turns a thousand different colours and the birdsong at dusk is deafening and I want to dance and sing and shout. Then I know I’ll have to pay and it will turn to dust.’

‘All those times we danced?’ Something inside her turned cold with dread.

‘I go to the river, you know the part where it’s so wide you can’t see to the other side?’

She nodded,