Lace (33 page)

“You haven’t seen the last working bay. There it is ahead of us. This is where the bottles are recorked and we fit those little wire nozzles over the cork to keep them in place.
After that we rest the bottles for a few years in those cellars at the far end, then we label them and send them off to customers.”

Maxine looked along the high-arched tunnel; either side was lined with deep bays stacked high with champagne, the black green bottle bases facing toward them in an endless rich pattern.
Suddenly, Charles tugged her into another deep bay. He pinned her shoulders against the chalk walls where they could be seen by anyone who happened to pass, but Maxine was now heedless of anything
except her urgent need for Charles, and their sexual tension swiftly built up to a climax as violently explosive as the cork bursting from a bottle of champagne.

W
ITHIN THREE MONTHS
of her marriage, Maxine found to her joy that she was pregnant. Unfortunately, she felt ill throughout
her pregnancy, so all her plans for the chateau had to be postponed and she did the minimum work for Paradis. She thanked her lucky stars for the stolid, tough Christina, who continued to run the
day-to-day aspects of their business. As Maxine grew larger and larger, she felt dull and sleepy. “I thought I was going to have a wonderful complexion and be radiantly serene,” she
shouted to Charles from her bathroom, “not become bovine and lethargic. No, don’t you
dare
come in, I’m heaving myself into this disgusting support corset. I think
I’m going to give up clothes and just lie around in a negligee on a sofa like Madame Récamier for the next few months.”

In an easy birth, she had a son, Gerard. Happily she and Charles counted his toes and analyzed his features. “He’s got
your
nose,” said Charles fondly.

“But
your
mouth,” Maxine added.

“And my hair, though not nearly enough,” said Charles, tenderly stroking the soft, pale, beige silken head.

“I had no idea that being a father would make me so happy,” Charles admitted four months later. He tugged at Maxine’s cream chiffon negligee and softly kissed
the base of her throat.

“Then you’re going to be twice as happy, Charles.”

Suddenly alert, he sat up and looked at her questioningly. “Goodness. You don’t mean . . . but Gerard is only four months old!”

“Goodness had nothing to do with it,” said Maxine, slyly quoting Mae West.

This time the birth was extremely difficult. She was in labour for three agonizing days, at the end of which she gave birth to another son, whom they christened Oliver.

The birth left Maxine exhausted and depressed. Her stitches were painful whenever she moved. She burst into tears over trivial matters and she snapped at Charles. As she knew perfectly well that
she was a very lucky woman with no reason to feel sorry for herself, she felt secretly anxious about the melancholy that swamped her. Was there something wrong with her? Charles quietly spoke to
the doctor about her tears and tantrums. She hadn’t been as bad as this after the birth of Gerard. The doctor said that it would probably be a couple of months before she recovered fully from
the birth. Could not her sister or her mother or a friend come and stay to cheer her up? Someone she’d known a long time and with whom she felt comfortable?

As soon as the doctor departed, Charles reached for the telephone. Pagan was still in Egypt, and there was no answer from Kate, but he got Judy on his first try. He explained the situation.

“I can’t possibly drop everything and come immediately,” said Judy. “I’m a hired hand, remember? But I’m due for a vacation, and anyway, I’ll be over in
Paris for the collections in two months’ time. I could come for a couple of weeks before then, if you like.”

Maxine burst into tears when she heard of Judy’s visit. She didn’t want to see anyone. Harassed, Charles took his dogs for a long walk in the rain.
Women!
However, as the
weeks passed, his wife slowly grew stronger and more cheerful and by the time Judy arrived, Maxine longed to see her again.

Every morning Judy ate breakfast in Maxine’s blue silk bedroom, while Maxine lay back against lace-trimmed pillows beneath the billowing blue silken swags that fell from the gilded coronet
fixed high above her head. In the morning they went for a short, brisk walk, pushing the two high baby carriages before them over the frozen ground of the park. In the afternoon they sat and
chatted in the nursery.

From the moment Judy arrived, Maxine began to recover her spirits. She loved Judy’s ability to go straight to the point. “You sharpen my wits, Judy,” Maxine said, with
admiration and a twinge of regret. “You make me focus on what is
important
, as opposed to what is merely urgent. And you do this naturally, whereas I find it takes a great effort of
will on my part. Every day when I get to my desk, I find it covered with problems. It’s so tempting to avoid the big ones, and so much easier to occupy oneself with little
difficulties.”

“That’s because you’re fat, idle and happily married,” said Judy.

“I’m all for marriage,” Maxine yawned. “Why don’t you try it?”

“Oh, because I don’t like very young men or very old men: I like middle-aged men, but nobody will admit to being one.”

“No, seriously, Judy, haven’t you got some special fellow? You never mention anyone, but surely . . .”

“I know plenty of men, Maxine, but I can’t seem to get particularly
interested
in any of them, that’s all. I go out on dates but I never seem to fall in love. I see
other women do it all the time, but it just doesn’t seem to happen to me. Anyway, I’m on the road so much that a serious love affair would be a geographical impossibility.”

“You don’t think that perhaps you’re frightened of giving yourself to a man?”

“Oh, shove it, Maxine. No, really, there
are
other things to life, you know. . . . I’m only twenty-two!
Men
of my age don’t go mooning around and worrying if
they’re not in love. I suspect that women overrate falling in love.”

“Only because you haven’t yet!”

“If you don’t shut up,” Judy said amiably, “I shall feel obliged to throw this glass of champagne at you.” She raised her long-stemmed, tulip-shaped glass as the
cold red sun touched the horizon. “Incidentally, how come you don’t have real champagne glasses?”

“That
is
a real champagne glass,” said Maxine, clasping her hands behind her head and leaning back against the buttoned crimson velvet of her chair. “The traditional
glass is not supposed to be wide and shallow. A wide glass prevents the concentration of the bouquet, and the wine goes flat more quickly because such a large surface of it is exposed to the
air.” She yawned, stretched and scooped up the black cat that lay in front of the fire. “You see, I now know every bloody thing there is to know about champagne.”

Judy stared into the blazing fire, glanced around the room and then looked at Maxine. “You got it all, kid,” she said, grinning.

“And Heavens, I
work
for it!” Maxine suddenly looked harassed and the cat stiffened in surprise. “It’s damned hard work running a home, no matter what the size is.
In fact, I think it’s easier to run a business, because your business shows results. Nobody notices housework unless you don’t do it, then they complain. And business hours are
generally only eight hours a day, five days a week, while housekeeping is sixteen hours, every damn day of the year, if you’re running a home with young children.” She sighed,
“Well, at least I no longer have any guilt about being a mother who goes out to work—although Charles’s sisters never stop sniffing about it.”

She relaxed again and the cat settled down. “Do you remember, after I had Gerard I also became a bit depressed for no apparent reason? Charles was working hard, running a house was no
longer a novelty, I was no longer a young bride showing off. . . . I felt
guilty
because I was depressed. I thought it must mean that I was not maternal, that I was a bad mother, otherwise I
would have been happy with my baby, wouldn’t I?”

An ironic smile shadowed her face. “So I started to cheer myself up with little snacks between meals, not exactly in secret, but when nobody else was around, you understand. . . . You
remember that chocolate is my great weakness? I used to nibble chocolate cakes and chocolate ice cream, drink hot chocolate with thick cream. . . . When I put on weight, I simply stopped standing
on the scales, and then I became pregnant again so fast that I had a good excuse for getting . . . well, I never used the word ‘fat’ to myself, of course.”

She looked up, still stroking the cat on her lap. “Then one day, walking along the street, I caught sight of myself in a shop window—and I didn’t
recognise
myself! I
tell you it was a real shock and I thought, heavens, I’ll soon be as tubby as I was when I first went to Switzerland. That had been puppy fat and not difficult to shed, but after two babies,
the doctor warned me it would be more difficult.”

The cat stretched her front paws and extended her little claws and dug them into Maxine’s knee. She gave it a little slap and continued, “So in order to take my mind off the diet he
gave me, I went back to work at Paradis. I worked there every single day for a month, and by the end of the month, to my surprise I found that I was happy again! I hadn’t had time to eat, or
feel bored or sorry for myself.” She yawned. “So when I’ve stopped feeding Oliver, I’m going back to work. I’ve argued the case with myself and the doctor and
we’ve decided that it’s better the babies don’t have a twenty-four-hour-a-day, depressed, overweight, worried mother. Sixteen hours a day is enough time to spend at
home.”

“You get top marks for sheer ingratitude,” Judy said. “Here you are, twenty-four years old, with a marvellous husband, two adorable babies, a flourishing business, a title and
a chateau. What
more
could you want?”

“Money,” said Maxine simply.

“But I thought you were rich!”

“That’s the other reason I went back to work. Paradis pays for all our personal expenses, although the profits really ought to be going back into the business. Christina is getting
angry about it, and I don’t blame her. But what can I do? We’re poor. It’s almost our only income.”

She hesitated, and then in a rush she said, “To tell you the truth, we probably can’t afford to live here much longer. That’s why I’m so glad to have you staying here
now. Charles is as stubborn as a mule, he refuses to sell the chateau, but it’s going to fall around our ears at any moment. He insists that one day the vineyards are going to show a profit,
but the harvest is mortgaged to the hilt, so it won’t make any difference if we have a good one, and we’ll be in dreadful trouble if we
don’t.
Papa is going to discuss the
business with Charles this weekend. He’s an exporter, so it might be possible for him to improve our foreign sales. But there’s so much competition in the champagne industry, and
nobody’s ever
heard
of de Chazalle champagne. They buy from Moet or one of the other big firms.”

Judy said thoughtfully, “You must forgive me if I point out that you have six indoor servants. That’s not what I call poor.”

“Yes, but the two maids are essential to clean this vast place. Charles needs a secretary. The children need a nanny if I am to work. The four of them need a cook, and five servants need a
housekeeper to supervise them.”

Judy raised a skeptical eyebrow, lay back against her chair and looked into the hypnotic flames of the fire. “Maxie, I
know
you’re sitting on a gold mine. I can feel it. I
just can’t
quite
work out how you can make money, except that you’ve given me such a wonderful time here that I find myself thinking I would far rather stay here than at the
grandest hotel. This last month has been a dream. I’ve never enjoyed myself so much in my life. And I’ve never felt so comfortable and so happy. You’re a very gifted hostess,
Maxine. Wouldn’t it be possible to run the chateau as a sort of hotel, perhaps not
exactly
a hotel, but the sort that’s run for paying guests who would like to experience castle
life exactly as if they were private guests? For, say, sixty dollars each a weekend, you could give people a
fantastic
time!”

Maxine sat up. It was a brilliant idea! Why hadn’t she thought of it? It was very much like what she was doing already, in a small way; Charles’s sisters already used the place as a
rest home. And perhaps she might open a branch of the antique shop in the stables.

“I could help to arrange for publicity at the American end,” volunteered Judy. “What you need is a steady flow of people from the States who want to enjoy the chateau
experience. Perhaps you should start by asking some well-known Americans to stay free.”

“But I thought the idea was to make money,” Maxine objected.

“Yes, but if you invite a couple of Hollywood stars—they often visit Paris—you’ll get terrific coverage in the American papers and then you’ll be talked about. Word
of mouth! Honestly, Maxine, I know this business. You mustn’t think that PR is free; you mustn’t make the same mistake as the rest of your goddamned compatriots. You pay for it, just as
you do in advertising, only in a different way.”

Judy rolled her eyes in mock Gallic exasperation. “It’s riskier, because you can’t control what publicity you’re going to get, but if you’ve got a good, newsworthy
product and the PR is handled efficiently, you get good coverage.”

“I’ll speak to Papa this weekend,” said Maxine thoughtfully,
“before
he speaks to Charles about the vineyards.”

Charles was appalled by Judy’s idea and made it clear that he wanted no part of it. He found it painfully distasteful to think of strangers in his family home. He
realised that something had to be done to stop the chateau from falling down, but he was working as hard as he could to make the estate pay and to modernise it and he simply didn’t have time
for any other ventures. Eventually, however, he was worn down by Judy’s enthusiastic insistence and Maxine’s quiet determination. Vulnerable because of his exhaustion and anxiety,
knowing that something had to be done, he agreed to let Maxine go ahead, provided she committed none of his meagre capital to the project—because there was simply none to spare.