Lace (32 page)

With an effort, Charles pulled himself away, gave a great sigh of anticipation, heaved Maxine into his arms (she would never be as light as thistledown) and carried her up the curved staircase
to the dusty, but magnificent, blue-brocaded state bedroom. Moonlight fell in silver shafts across the room as he gently laid her on the antique, silk bedcover, then fiercely tore his clothes off
and fell upon her.

Maxine gasped with surprise. She had not expected the gentle, amiable, amusing Charles to be so masterful, so passionate, so skillful.

For the next four hours Maxine felt her body move and respond as she had never known it could. Afterward, she didn’t want to leave him. Naked, she clung to him, her
tangled, damp yellow hair falling over her full, milky breasts. “I don’t want to go,” she whispered, with tears in her eyes, resisting as he gently, insistently tugged her off the
bed and helped her to dress in the moonlight.

“Your parents will be concerned,” he said. “I’m driving you back to Paris now, but I shall speak to your father in the morning.”

Stopping only in the hall to pick up the torn, white wisp of lace, they drove to Paris, speeding through the air in Charles’s open, dark green Lagonda. They both exulted as the vintage
sports car leaped through the mysterious night landscape. It seemed oddly silent, theirs alone. Clouds swept across the moon, then the night was velvet-black again, except for the golden track
forged ahead of them by the headlights.

As they tore past black poplar trees, through dark tunnels of green gloom, they heard the odd, harsh animal noises of the night, so similar to the inarticulate, helpless sounds that had just
been heard in the moonlit sheen of the blue brocade bedroom.

P
AGAN COULDN
’
T COME
to the wedding, because she was in Egypt, but nothing could have kept Judy and Kate away.
Kate’s gift was a hunk of amethyst as a paperweight for Maxine’s desk, and Judy brought a charming Steinberg etching of a nervous, blank-eyed bride clutching her gawky groom. Pagan sent
a beautiful antique Damascan chest inlaid with a mother-of-pearl design.

Maxine and Charles were married at the
mairie
in Epernay almost a year after they had met. Maxine wore a pale-pink silk dress with a skirt that was layered like rose petals, and a large
cream straw hat. She and Charles sat in two hard little chairs while the brief marriage ceremony was performed by the mayor, who wore his ceremonial red, white and blue sash. Then they signed the
civil register, the French equivalent of signing a marriage contract. They were now officially married, and with their whole family swept off to the Royale Champagne for a lunch that lasted until
six in the evening, when Maxine returned to Paris with her parents, as was the custom.

The church ceremony was held on the following day in the mellow, stone church at Epernay. A French bride normally has no matron-of-honour and no bridesmaids, but Maxine’s two small girl
cousins were to be
enfants d’honneur
, following her over the ancient stones.

Maxine had asked Kate to help her dress. In the hotel bedroom Kate laughed as she looked at Maxine, who was wearing only a froth of diaphanous veiling and skimpy, white satin underwear. Her
clothes had been laid out on the bed. “Really, Maxine, even your wedding dress is practical!” Kate picked up the cream silk calf-length coat. Designed by Raphael, it was tight-waisted,
with a row of seed-pearl buttons stretching from the demure mandarin collar to the hem of the lavishly full skirt. For the wedding, the coat was worn over a strapless cream tulle ball gown, but
later it could be worn by itself—as a coat or dress—to the races at Chantilly or almost any formal indoor occasion.

“Well, it’s the prettiest dress I’ve ever had,” Maxine reasoned, “so I don’t want to wear it only once.”

For once Maxine didn’t look efficient; in fact, she looked ethereal as she floated down the aisle between solemn stone columns. Beneath the hem of the long, full cream coat billowed a
froth of cream tulle, and on her head Maxine wore a simple coronet of starlike flowers. As she passed Kate, the demure Maxine gave her a quick lascivious wink.

As soon as they returned from their honeymoon, Maxine was introduced to all the notable families of the district. Christina continued to run the day-to-day affairs of Paradis
while Maxine made these important new contacts. Most of all, she enjoyed her visit to the house of Moet & Chandon, whose tradition of hospitality dated back to the Napoleonic era. Like Empress
Joséphine, the Czar of Russia, the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia before her, Maxine was shown around the long, subterranean cellars to watch the making of champagne. They moved
through dark vaults, gray and green with age, smelling of damp chalk, mold and sour wine. “There are eighty miles of these cellars carved from the chalk soil under Epernay,” said
Charles. He took Maxine’s hand and scraped her nails on the crumbly surface of the cellar wall. “You see? The whole of the champagne district is composed of this special chalk;
it’s
only
on this ground that the vines produce grapes with the unique champagne flavour. There’s nowhere else in the world like it.”

By the end of the visit, Maxine thought that she’d heard quite enough about champagne for a bit, although she knew it might have been worse. She might have married a sheep farmer or a
canning industry king or a railway coupling manufacturer, after all. As if reading her thoughts, Charles said, “You needn’t worry. I don’t intend to become just another champagne
bore. My business is part of my life and my heritage—in other words, it’s my responsibility—but I’m not a city businessman. I’m a countryman. I like looking after my
land and walking across it with my dogs, then in the evenings I like to read or listen to music—a quiet life.”

“And then at night,” said Maxine, “you like to make love.”

“All the time I like to make love,” said Charles firmly.

The next day Charles suggested that Maxine should pay a visit to his headquarters and learn a little about champagne production. “As the wife of the owner, you have to know these
things,” he said, “so now for a little homework. I’ll try not to make it too dull, my darling.”

We’re in for a boring morning, thought Maxine as, in her bedroom, she stepped into her Christian Dior going-away suit of primrose linen. It had a full, knife-pleated skirt and a little,
tight-waisted jacket that buttoned down the front and she looked charmingly demure in it. “You look prim and proper, very ladylike,” said Charles approvingly, as he helped her into the
Lagonda.

They screamed to a stop just outside Epernay in a stone courtyard and entered the ancient building that now served as an office. In the dim, empty entrance hall, as they climbed the worn stone
steps to the laboratory, Charles explained, “What a champagne house tries to do is to produce a wine that is
always
the same taste and quality. As the weather is always different and
each harvest is different, one can only achieve this consistency by blending.” He paused to open a plain, white-painted door. “You are now going to meet the most important person in any
champagne manufacturer’s firm: my blender.” He beckoned her in. “You can’t blend champagne by machine. A good house must have a good blender: the reputation of the entire
firm depends upon his palate, eyes and nose.”

They entered a scrupulously clean laboratory: in front of a row of wooden chairs there stood a few spittoons. Several unmarked bottles stood on the central wooden table. “No Smoking”
signs hung on the wall. It was indeed extraordinarily dull so far, thought Maxine, as she was introduced to a pendulous-bellied man with a lugubrious face, the purple-red colour of a turkey
cock’s wattle.

The
chef de cave
solemnly offered them a glass of nonvintage champagne. Maxine thanked him with the grace and dignity that befitted her new position, and Charles then led her back down
the stairs and along the black and white marble-tiled corridor toward the dim hall.

Suddenly he grabbed Maxine’s wrist and pulled her into a dark recess under the staircase. He swiftly unbuttoned her primrose jacket, dipped both his hands into her lace bra and stopped her
gasp of horror with his mouth. She felt his tongue pushing against hers. Then Charles pulled his head back and said in a normal voice, “The first bottling generally takes place sometime after
April and we add a little cane sugar to the blend to start a second fermentation.” He started to kiss her nipples. Maxine felt physically helpless, but as she groaned with reluctant pleasure,
Charles suddenly withdrew his hands and buttoned her up as fast as a lady’s maid.

Weak with desire, Maxine whispered, “You mustn’t, you really mustn’t . . . do that sort of thing.” But she didn’t sound convincing.

Charles took her by one hand and led her down more stone steps, saying loudly, “The second fermentation is when the champagne acquires its sparkle. That sparkle is really gas. Fermentation
builds up an explosive pressure of gas. So a good cork is vital.”

Still speaking smoothly, he tugged her from the bottom of the staircase and into the shadows underneath it. Then he held her against his chest as, with his right hand, he felt under the primrose
pleated skirt and tugged at her panties.

“Off!” he muttered.

“Charles! You must be
mad
, someone might
see
,” Maxine protested.

“Off!” Charles ordered, giving the lace a vicious tug. Nervously, Maxine wriggled out of them and tried to pick up the scrap of yellow lace, but Charles wouldn’t let her bend
down. “I’m not having you turn into a prim little countess who worries about what people think all the time, like my sisters,” he said.

Then he froze as they heard footsteps approaching them. Maxine shut her eyes, and waited for the humiliation! The footsteps advanced and paused, then she heard a door open and bang. Charles
released his grip. Maxine quickly bent down, picked up her panties and stuffed them into her linen shoulder bag. Without saying anything, Charles took her by the arm and hurried her toward the
elevator at the back of the hall, saying in a normal voice, “I hope you’re going to be warm enough: I warned you yesterday that the cellars are cold. Shall I get a coat from the
car?”

A youth in a white overall appeared behind them and sprang forward to open the iron grille of the two-person elevator.

“No, no, Charles, stop fussing,” Maxine said in a wobbly voice for the benefit of the respectful boy as he closed the grille shut behind them. Charles pressed a green button, the
little lift started to jerk downward and, as Maxine half-expected, his hand was under her skirt, his thumb moving in a steady rhythm against her flesh. The lift jerked downward. Charles’s
other hand was clamped around her naked buttocks, the back of her skirt was caught up against the lift. She’d never get those creases out, Maxine thought, it took hours to iron. “Until
Dom Perignon came along in 1668, bottles were sealed with linen bungs dipped in olive oil, and of course this didn’t provide a hermetic seal,” Charles explained gravely. Oh, God, she
could think of nothing except his fingers. Now she’d risk humiliation rather than have him stop. Charles went on, as if he was having a conversation with his mother. “Dom
Perignon’s
brilliant
idea was to wet a bit of cork to make it pliable, then ram it into the neck of the bottle.” Maxine jumped and quivered as he continued, “The cork
sealed the bottle and stopped the gas escaping.”

The elevator stopped with a swift, gentle shudder. Charles pulled back the iron grille. “The pressure inside a bottle of champagne is about the same as the tire pressure of a bus . . . so
you see how important the cork is.”

Maxine staggered out, smoothing down her skirt. Breathless and wobbly, she moved along the cellars, past thousands of bottles tilted neck downward in racks against the green-tinged chalk walls.
Charles waved one hand toward the neat, lustrous rows, the little green soldiers of his empire. “We leave the bottles of blended wine in cellars for a year or two, then they’re put in
these special racks so that the sediment from the wine drains down slowly onto the cork.”

“Onto the cork,” echoed Maxine, in a dazed voice. A drip fell from the ceiling onto her cheek, then Charles tugged her by the wrist into one of the dim, bottle-filled bays and again
unbuttoned Maxine’s jacket. This time she didn’t protest.

“Yes,” said Charles gravely, “onto the cork.” He pulled her back into the main passage and they walked down the long, wide cellar toward a row of silent men in navy
sweaters and overalls, all working with their backs to Maxine as they swiftly twisted the bottles.

Maxine watched the bottles slowly move into the shining maw of a steel machine. Somewhat to her disappointment, Charles was now behaving perfectly. But he moved her closer to the machine so that
it hid their bodies from the workers beyond, who could only see their heads. Then Charles grabbed her hand and held it against him, so that Maxine could feel his mounting excitement. Maxine grasped
him as Charles continued to talk in a normal voice. “When the cork is removed, the frozen sediment comes out, clinging to it. Clever idea isn’t it?” His body shuddered at the
touch of her fingers as he droned on in the bored, singsong voice of a tourist guide. “After that, the wine is sniffed to check that it’s still in good condition, and finally, as
you’ll see in the next bay, these men give it a sending-off dose—that’s a tiny quantity of sweetened liqueur made from old wine and cane sugar. . . .”

He gave a great contented sigh. After a moment, they moved to the next bay where Charles picked up a beaker of liqueur and gave it to Maxine to sniff. “You don’t add much if you want
a
brut
wine, which is generally the best wine a firm makes,” he said. “The liqueur content is increased, according to how sweet you want your wine to be—extra dry, dry,
demi-doux
and
doux
, which is disgustingly sweet and will never be served at my table.”

“Our
table,” said Maxine as they moved on. She added, “I think I could make a batch by myself now.”