House of Peine (14 page)

The warmth was moving swiftly out of the Marne, dragging with it the vibrant greens of the leafy vines and leaving behind a mottled carpet of brown and tan.

When the first frost of the season arrived in November there was not so much as a burp of indigestion from the vignerons. A frost at this time of year could wreak little havoc. The chaufferettes could stay quietly rusting in the barn. The leaves were about to fall anyway, clearing the way for the
arduous
task of pruning in the chilly days that lay ahead.

No, the only sleepless night in the valley on that first frosty night was had by Mathilde. It was sheer coincidence, too, that when the temperature plummeted towards rock bottom she plummeted with it, hitting it that very morning; not with a dramatic thud, either, but with a whisper so sly no one heard it, not even her. She had lain awake the whole night. She lay awake still as the sun rose and shone harshly through her curtainless window. It was bright enough to hurt her eyes but had nowhere near the oomph required to keep the room from freezing, her quilt offering little respite from the chill
that ate away at her bones. All she could rely on for warmth were the dwindling contents of the near-empty bottle that she clutched beneath the covers.

Had Mathilde been a vine, her Peine forebears would no doubt have compared her to the flourishing specimens on either side and seriously weighed up her viability. Something had gotten under her skin and was sucking the life right out of her, that was obvious. And any vigneron worth his salt knew that there were only two options for a vine in that condition: give up, rip it out of the ground, throw it on the compost heap; or persevere, save it, graft it onto new healthy rootstock.

But Mathilde was not a vine, she was floundering alone on a rocky outcrop … nobody had even noticed her deterioration. Her body, lying in its bed all on its own, curled around a bottle, was only just this side of being emaciated. She was as thin as a post, her skin still scarred and crusty with the rash she could not shake. Her hair was limp and shapeless, its faded strawberry roots making the Paris highlights look brassy in comparison. As her once-stellar looks suffered, so too did her inner health. Too much drink and too little food had left her thoughts jumbled and confused. All she was really aware of now was the very real dread collecting in her shrunken stomach like a tumour, gathering momentum, getting bigger and fiercer the more she refused to confront it.

Her work in the winery had crashed to a halt a few days earlier when she had found herself suddenly unable to write down a single word on her clipboard. Her pen had become clumsy in her hand, seeming to grow comically beneath her touch until it became too enormous to grasp. Her thoughts, too, could no longer fit in her head, her mind could not dictate what she wanted to think. Mathilde had been frightened by this in a way she had never been frightened before but there she was, alone on that outcrop, having so successfully
alienated 
everyone with her rudeness that even if they had noticed her decline they might not have been moved to help her.

Her sisters had been giving her a particularly wide berth since her cruel remarks following Hector's departure.

“He's probably somewhere in the Ardenne having the time of his life with an 18-year-old stripper by now,” she'd commented airily to Clementine. “What a relief to no longer be tortured by such a flabby old spinster as you.”

But this had been the beginning of Mathilde's downward slide. As she said the words she had known that they were cruel and would cause pain and this, to her horror, had brought her no pleasure. Usually Mathilde felt the thrill of the hunter when she hit her target. This thrill wasn't a
made-up
thing, it was a ping, a physical sensation, almost painful but with triumph attached, which thwacked at her heart. It surged through her, normally, and she gained strength from it — a little like being plugged into the national grid. But on this occasion the thrill had been missing, replaced by that infernal clawing at her innards that had rendered her
incapable
of enjoying anything but the harshest of spirits.

Mathilde had felt her sanity slithering between her scaly fingers ever since then and had been drinking through the night to keep whatever it was that was haunting her at bay, had been unable to muster the energy to get out of bed — not that anyone cared.

Anyone other than La Petite, that was.

As Mathilde lay frozen and chasing numbness under the covers, La Petite sat up in her bed, warm as toast with Cochon cuddled next to her, craning her skinny chicken neck to see what the frost had done to the Champagne countryside. It was a shame she couldn't get down to see Saint Vincent. A decent frost would surely give him a sparkly white beret, which would tickle her funny bone no end. Still, she sighed a little
murmur of contentment at being so snug and close to heaven when Mother Nature had covered everything else in her icy blanket. This sigh led to a hiccup, which led to her calling out to Sophie to bring her a cup of coffee and some Turkish delight (which she knew was in the cupboard and about which she had had the enormous pleasure of dreaming).

She was missing Hector, as were they all, but she was stirred up by something else this particular morning, and not just the promise of rose water and pistachio sweets. Today was going to be a big day. The big day. Mathilde's vigneron
fore-bears
might not be there to seal her fate but they had left a proxy in La Petite, who was not going to die before she had done all she could to ensure the middle Peine was grafted, not composted. She was particularly grateful to have woken up with this excitement jiggling in her belly because she was worried she might have left her run a bit late, been too slow with the letter, not worded it correctly.

Just as she was revisiting this niggling doubt, there was the sound of wheels spinning in the driveway followed by car doors slamming; the crunch of gravel under heels and finally, after mutterings always brought on by the knobless front door, the rat-a-tat-tat of a gloved hand knocking on it.

Downstairs, Sophie nearly jumped out of her skin. Clementine was in the winery, seeking solace by tending her adolescent wine, so it was hardly going to be her who was knocking. But who then? The whole time Sophie had lived there, only one person had come to the door: a nervous pimply priest whom Clementine had yelled at so robustly he had turned and fled, cassock flapping, without so much as crossing the threshold.

She put La Petite's tea tray down. When she finally wrenched the recalcitrant door open, much to her amazement standing on the doorstep was a half-sized version of her eldest
sister. It was as though Clementine had been reduced on a photocopier. The proportions were the same, as were the crinkly ginger hair, the suspicious dark eyes, even the wary slightly sour placement of the lips, one on top of the other slightly pinched and only too ready to be even more so. Sophie was confused. “Amélie?” she asked. But how could it be? Amélie would be 17 or 18 by now. This was just a moppet.

“Who the frick is Amélie?” the moppet asked, her gaze frank, her freckles standing out like orange Icelandic poppies.

“Excuse me, mademoiselle,” a distinguished-looking gentleman standing next to her said in passable French. “I regret arriving on you like this but I think it is the better way. May we come in?”

Sophie's thinking was working in slow motion. She took in the gentleman. He wore an expensive black wool coat, lovely leather gloves and shiny punched leather brogues that she thought someone else had probably polished. He had neatly clipped hair and white teeth. He seemed very American.

Sophie's mouth dropped down to her chest. “George?” She looked back at the little girl. “And Edie? Are you Edie?”

“Well, at least she's heard of us,” Edie told her father in a voice far too world-weary for someone young enough to be carrying a slightly grubby pink panther toy on one purple velvet hip. She shivered inside her sheepskin-lined tunic then peered behind Sophie into the gloomy hall.

“I'm so sorry,” Sophie said, realising they were still standing on the doorstep and the wind was whipping off the frosty ground so robustly that the tips of her ears were like ice chips. “Come in, come in. I'm Sophie.”

“It smells funny in here,” Edie said loudly as she made her way down the hall. “I hope you have mould insurance.”

“You speak such good French,” Sophie said, ignoring what she had said in it as she led the pair into the kitchen.
“Did your mother teach you?”

“Yeah, right,” Edie answered. “We have French maids. I've been speaking French since I was two.” She plonked herself down at the kitchen table and nuzzled her pink panther. “Do you have any chocolate-chip cookie-dough ice-cream?”

“Please excuse my daughter,” George said. “It's been a long day and I gave her liquorice in the car.”

Sophie wasn't quite sure what that was supposed to mean but nodded sympathetically and put the coffee pot on.

“He means where we come from, kids aren't supposed to eat sugar,” Edie explained. “It makes them hyper. So, what about frogs? Do you have any of those? And snails. You eat them too, huh? Is my mother here, by the way? She does not like mould. Do you even have a dehumidifier?”

“Edie,” her father said tiredly. “Remember what we talked about in the car.”

Edie bit her lip. “How you have to wash your hands after using the public restroom so you don't get a baby off the seat?”

“Edie!” It had clearly been a long trip. “You know that's not true. And that is not what we were talking about.”

“Yeah, yeah, Dad,” that same world-weary tone crept back, “I know. I'm supposed to keep very quiet and not say anything to Mom about running away and leaving me.”

“Edie!”

“What?” His daughter asked, wide-eyed and innocent. “I'm talking to Sophie. You didn't tell me not to say anything to her. You didn't even mention her.”

Sophie put a baguette and a dish of the Mirabella jam down in front of Edie, whose face lit up.

“Cool. Look at this breadstick! Mom tells people I can't have gluten but that's only because she says so, not because I'm allergic or anything. Hey,” her mouth was full already, “this jelly is good. Is that plum? I can taste ginger. Oh, wow.”

George looked as though he was busting with the effort of not telling her to slow down but dragged his eyes away from her and looked instead around the homely kitchen. “So, this is where she's been all these months,” he said wistfully.

Sophie did not like to point out that Mathilde pretty much only ventured into the kitchen when she had filled up every ashtray in the house and needed to find a new one. “Mm-hm,” she agreed politely, giving him a shy smile.

“Edie, would you like to go outside and play for a few minutes?” he said in English. “I'd like to talk to Sophie.”

Edie looked at him blankly. “Play?” she answered, dramatically dropping her bread and jam back on the plate. “Where? Isn't this, like, a farm? What am I going to play on? A combine harvester? A haystack? Dad, please. I'm from Manhattan.”

Sophie understood enough English to follow this. “One moment,” she said and going to the foot of the stairs, she whistled vigorously up towards La Petite's room. No doubt at the old woman's insistence, Cochon came bounding down the stairs, ears forward.

Edie nearly fell off her chair at the sight of him. “What the frick is that?” she cried, abandoning the pink panther and getting down on her knees, opening her arms to the little horse who nuzzled straight into them. “Oh, wow. His neck smells beautiful.” Her face was buried in it. “Like new shoes!”

“He's a dwarf miniature horse,” Sophie said, “but he's named after a pig. A little misunderstanding at birth, you might say.”

“He's adorable.” Edie was entranced and Cochon similarly. “Dad? Don't you think? Look at his little tail and his tiny little feet. He's like a dog, only a million times better.” Cochon licked her beaming face with his rough pink tongue. Then amid peals of her laughter, the two of them skated across the kitchen floor and out the back door into the cold.

“I got a letter,” George said, once Edie was gone. “From, I think she said she’s your great-grandmother. Mrs Petite, is it?”

Sophie laughed. Well, La Petite was someone’s
great-grandmother
. And she supposed it was a better way to introduce herself to George than as his estranged wife’s estranged father’s itinerant gypsy grape-picker. “What did she say?” she asked pleasantly.

“She said that Mathilde was here and desperately needed us. I got the impression she was, I don’t know, in some sort of trouble.”

“You didn’t think to come sooner? She’s been here since May.”

This just slipped out and Sophie regretted it when she saw how stricken George looked.

“I know what you must think of me,” he said. “And believe me, I think it, too. But the truth is, I’m afraid of flying. Haven’t been on an airplane until today, yesterday, whenever it was, since I was Edie’s age. I still …”

He broke off, then put his elbows on the table and rested
his head in his hands. Suddenly his hair seemed thinner and greyer, his shirt collar not quite so crisp, his nails not so expertly clipped. “I’m so sorry,” he said, seemingly to the table. “It’s been a very long day. We got lost driving from Charles de Gaulle. Edie has been asking so many goddamned questions. I don’t know how to answer them. I don’t know what the hell is going on. That is the truth. I don’t know what the hell is going on but — shit — that’s not it either. Shit.”

Sophie said nothing. She’d seen people unravel before and in fact George was doing it most politely. She just waited.

“To begin with I didn’t come because I thought she’d be home soon,” he said eventually. “I really did. She’s done it before you know, shot off for a while, left a couple of messages, acted like it’s nothing out of the ordinary, come back with expensive gifts but no apology. I mean, that is pure Mathilde. But she’s worth it. I accept that. For a long while, I accepted it. But this time it was different. This time, before I knew it, one week had turned into two, then two into four. She’d been gone a month, a whole month. And you know what?” When he looked at Sophie his eyes were filled with the beginnings of tears. “I realised I liked it better without her.” His voice broke. “And Edie, God, Edie has been like a different kid. Happy. Normal. No tantrums, no fights, no …” He broke off and let Sophie pour him another coffee.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve never done this before. I guess I have jet lag or something. You don’t even know me and here I am pouring my heart out all over your kitchen table.”

“It’s good like that, this table,” said the soft-hearted Sophie with true sympathy. “So, do you want me to tell Mathilde you are here?”

George blew out a lungful of breath. “How is she?”

Sophie was nothing if not diplomatic. “I don’t know how she was before,” she pointed out.

“I know she can be a little abrasive,” he conceded. “She’s kind of famous for it. Especially when she’s tired. She works too hard.”

“She’s certainly been pretty abrasive since she got here,” Sophie confessed. “And she’s not been looking so good. She doesn’t really eat. And she’s drinking a lot and taking pills too, I think.” Actually, she had not even seen Mathilde for the past few days. “Come to think of it, she may not have gotten out of bed for a while.”

George was silent. So this was the trouble, the danger. “Back home,” he said, “we call that —”

“You bastard!”

Sophie nearly jumped out of her skin but should have known better than to assume Mathilde was tucked quietly away somewhere while the secrets that made her human were being revealed.

“How dare you?”

George’s mouth was open to answer his wife but the state of her had rendered him speechless. Her bathrobe had slipped off to reveal one skeletal shoulder, her hair was lank and matted on one side, her eyes sunken deep into her skull.

“How dare you come here! How dare you talk to her!” Mathilde pointed one thin shaking finger at them. She looked like a witch.

With expert timing, Cochon chose that precise moment to skitter back into the kitchen with a ruddy-cheeked, mud-splattered Edie in tow. She had some sort of foliage caught in one of her curls and her pants had slipped down to reveal a pale slice of smooth chubby flesh underneath her striped T-shirt.

“Mom!” she cried, when she saw Mathilde standing there. She started to move towards her but became uncertain when Cochon dug in his heels, his eyes rolling back in his head, teeth bared. Edie stopped then, too, changed her tack. “Can I have a
little horse like this one, Mom?”

Mathilde made no attempt to conceal her horror at the sight of her daughter. Sophie had to keep from crying out as she watched this sink in instantly for Edie: confusion, disappointment, fear rippling across the little girl’s face.

“Mom?” Her voice lost its excitement, took on a whining tone. She plucked the pink panther from the chair where she had left it and started tugging at its ear. “I’ll feed it and take it for walks and clean up after it. The little horse. It won’t be like the dog, Mom. Or the hamster. Or the rat. I promise. Mom?”

But with a slow-motion whirl of pastel chiffon, Mathilde turned on her kitten heels, floated down the hall, pulled open the front door, got into the Deux Chevaux, and was gone.

“Shit,” said George, watching her disappear in a cloud of dust from the doorstep. “Shit, shit, shit!”

“You have a car,” Sophie urged him. “Follow her.”

“What did I do?” Edie asked, starting to cry. “Daddy, what did I do? I never said a thing about her leaving. I just want a little horsey-pig thing. Dad? Dad?”

“Not now, Edie.”

“I’ll take care of her,” Sophie said to George, giving him a shove. “You just go.”

“She hates me, she hates me, she hates me,” wept Edie as her father scrabbled for his keys and jumped in his rental to follow Mathilde. Sophie took the child by her heaving shoulders and headed her back inside, Cochon trotting along supportively at her side. But inside the door Edie shook off Sophie’s hands and collapsed on the bottom stair, weeping as though her heart were breaking. At first Sophie tried to soothe her but because she knew exactly what it felt like to be
abandoned
by your mother, she had trouble keeping this up and soon started to weep too.

Cochon had limited patience for this sort of thing. He had grown up with Clementine and Olivier, after all, and did not particularly care for outbursts of any emotion other than anger. After a few minutes, he remembered the comfort of La Petite’s bed and, taking one slightly disgusted look at the two bawling beauties in front of him, he leapt between them and bounded up the stairs with his tiny horse-hoof clatter.

“Sophie-e-e-e-e!” the old woman’s voice soon wafted down the stairs. “Sophie-e-e-e-e!” The two girls dried their tears and looked up towards the ceiling.

“What is that?” Edie sniffed. “It sounds spooky.”

Sophie laughed, her spirits already restored, and wiped her own nose. “It is, sort of.” She got up and held out a hand for Edie to grab. “Come on, let’s go and meet La Petite.”

The old woman was sitting up in bed twinkling with anticipation when the two of them stepped into the room. “Aha-a,” she croaked. “At last I get to meet the new generation. Welcome, my sweet.”

Edie went right to the bed and ran her chubby fingers over La Petite’s crinkled face, then patted her greasy braid. “Wow. How old are you?” she asked. “You must be, like, a thousand.”

“I certainly feel a thousand,” La Petite agreed. “But I might actually only be five hundred. So what do you make of it all so far?”

“I love the little horse,” Edie said, jumping up on the bed and helping herself to some Turkish delight. “But my mom has run away, which is pretty weird because she was run away in the first place. And my dad’s all tense and crazy. I’m not sure how it’s going to end up.”

Sophie was astounded. It was as though Edie and La Petite had known each other forever, were merely picking up on the strands of a conversation started over tea and
madeleines
earlier in the day.

“Have you two met?” she asked, sidling over and sitting on the end of the bed, helping herself to a sweet as well.

Edie looked at La Petite. “You do kind of look like Mrs Milligan. She lives in our building,” she said. “Only her wrinkles don’t go in so many different directions.”

La Petite hooted with laughter.

“Mrs Milligan makes the best chocolate brownie,” Edie told Sophie. “She says gluten free is a crock.” She popped more Turkish delight in her mouth. “This is really nice,” she said. “It tastes of flowers.”

“You certainly inherited the family way with words,” La Petite told her kindly, although it occurred to Sophie that the family didn’t really have a way with words. “Now, what’s with these tears I see shining on those cheeks?”

Edie looked at her, weighing up what she should tell the old woman.

“We-e-e-ell,” she eventually began, her chin jutting out in mild defiance, “I think everyone cries when their mother runs away from them. Twice.”

La Petite passed a piece of candy to Cochon, but he was really a chocolate horse. He spat it out on Mathilde’s Frette linen and licked at it half-heartedly before sighing and closing his eyes. “Why do you think your mother is so fond of running away?” La Petite asked.

Edie pulled at her sleeve. “Well, I guess I screwed up her life. You know, by being born and all.”

“That’s not true,” Sophie said. “You mustn’t say that.”

“She says it herself,” argued Edie, which somewhat diluted Sophie’s point.

“She can be pretty mean,” La Petite pointed out. “We’ve noticed that ourselves.”

“You have?” Edie was astonished. “Usually grown-ups call it something else.”

“Grown-ups can be very annoying like that,” La Petite said, “but mean is mean in my opinion, especially when you’re on the receiving end of it. Of course, there’s usually a good reason for a person to turn mean. It’s not an entirely natural condition.”

“But what reason does Mathilde have to be mean?” Sophie felt moved to ask. “She has everything a person could ask for. What’s missing?”

“Yes, Edie,” La Petite asked. “What’s missing?”

Edie screwed up her nose and took a deep breath. Just because nobody had ever asked for her opinion didn’t mean she didn’t have one. “It just hasn’t turned out the way she expected,” she said in a way that made Sophie want to cry again to know that she thought of such things. “I guess maybe she didn’t know what it would be like having a kid and that if I was a pair of shoes she would have taken me back and got a refund because I didn’t fit right. But you’re not allowed to do that with kids. There are laws.”

“You look pretty good to me,” La Petite said. “What makes you think you don’t you fit right?”

“We-e-ell,” Edie said again, making a play of pulling at one thick fuzzy ginger ringlet, “I think she prefers blondes.”

“But that’s just hair!” cried Sophie, even more upset now.

“Yes, but I’m also not pretty like her and I’m, you know, kind of tubby. I really like chocolate-chip cookie-dough icecream even though Mom tells everyone I’m lactose intolerant. It’s just like the gluten. I’m not, you know, allergic or anything. I’m just not allowed it.”

“Phut.” La Petite was deeply unimpressed. “You poor girl. You got here just in time. Don’t worry, my sweet, about your mother or your father or any little thing. It’s going to end up just fine.”

La Petite’s great-grandfather had also taught her that
sometimes all a poor lost soul needed was to be told that everything was going to be all right. There was nothing magical about that, either.

“So, what about school?” The old woman continued.

“Oh, that.” Edie’s face fell and Sophie felt a sympathetic strumming in her chest. “Um, well, the good news is that I’m not deep down stupid because I’ve had all the tests but I don’t read and write so good. I’m not the only one in fifth grade who gets special lessons but it sure makes my Mom pretty mad.”

One chubby little hand reached back into the Turkish delight box, icing sugar puffing up into the air as she scrabbled.

“Edie,” La Petite sounded very serious. “I am going to tell you something that no one else may ever tell you and I want you to listen very carefully to me. And when I’m gone I want you to listen to your Aunt Sophie, because she will tell you the same thing. It is something you need to know.”

Edie looked at her. “If it’s about the man’s penis and the woman’s vagina, I’ve been told that already and frankly I’m not surprised you all drink so much.”

“The penis and vagina business I’ll leave to someone else, I promise,” the old woman said with remarkable composure.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Edie told her. “So, shoot.”

“In my time, which as you know there has been quite a lot of,” she said, settling herself importantly in her bed, laying her crinkled hands neatly on top of the covers, “I have seen many, many little girls who have something wrong with them and I can officially tell you right here and now that you are not one of them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all. You are perfect just the way you are. Perfect. The trouble is, and it’s not with you at all you see, that your mother is mean. It’s not her fault, but that does not change the fact that she is mean. She never learned how to be a good mother and
that’s a shame for both of you. But the good news is, it’s not too late. It’s never too late. Your aunts and I are going to help her.”

“We are?” Sophie had her doubts. “Does Clementine know this?”

“We are. Especially Clementine. Even if she doesn’t know it yet, but she will. And your father’s going to help too,” La Petite told Edie, “although we may need to get him a new spine.”

“My dad is actually pretty cool,” Edie told them. “Well, maybe not cool but I didn’t ruin his life. He told me that. He says his life has been better since I was in it, which is a pretty nice thing to say to your kid, don’t you think?”

“You, my sweet,” La Petite said opening her arms to Edie, “might even be better than perfect.”

“And you might be better than Mrs Milligan,” Edie told her, climbing into her embrace. “That brownie sure is good but she does smell of mothballs.”