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Chapter 21
…call’d mine host
To council, plied him with his richest wines,
He didn’t choose a gourmet restaurant, after all, and I only had to muddle through three forks, a simple feat recalled with ease from my days of eating at Embassy dinners. Except for the forks, my lunch with Armand Valcourt bore no resemblance t
o those plodding Embassy events.
For one thing, the surroundings were more comfortable. The restaurant’s dining room was rustic, whitewashed country French, its deep-silled windows stuffed with flowers blooming pink and red in the slanting midday sunlight. Pine tables, artfully distressed in keeping with the country theme, were set at discreet intervals around the room, and the russet tile floor gleamed warmly mellow, spotless, at our feet.
They’d seated us beside the fireplace. Not yet in use, it too was filled with flowers, shell-pink roses mixed with ferns and feathered pale chrysanthemums. The smell of roses, delicate, seductive, clung to every breath I took. It swirled around the scent of wine, the whiff of garlic, and the tender tempting fragrance of the shellfish jumbled on my plate.
Exquisite food, a charming ambience, and the close, attentive company of a handsome man who, if not exactly an aristocrat, was clearly near the top rung of the social ladder, as evidenced by the quietly respectful service we’d received. It was a shade surreal, the whole affair, which was perhaps why I felt so terribly relaxed. That, or the fact that Armand had twice refilled my wine glass.
He was holding out the bottle now, dividing the remaining wine between our empty glasses as he finished off an anecdote about his daughter and her bicycle.
“She looks like you, you know,” I told him. “Not feature for feature, but the smile is the same.” We were speaking English, mainly I think because it gave us the illusion of privacy, encircled as we were by three tables of French-speaking patrons.
“Thank you,” he said, and looked at me. “You have no children?”
“No.”
He didn’t push it, didn’t pry. “They are like nothing else, children. Nothing can prepare you for the feelings they create. You would do anything.” He pried a mussel from its shell and chewed it thoughtfully. “I was not sure, myself, that I wanted a child, but when Lucie was born…” He set his fork down with a shrug. “Everything was changed.”
“It must be difficult, though, raising her alone.”
“Not quite alone.” He smiled, a smile that forgave my ignorance of the privileged world he lived in. “There was a nurse, in the beginning, to take care of her. Then, when Brigitte died, Martine came back to live with us. And of course, there is always François.”
“He’s been with you a long time, has he, François?”
“A long time, yes. His parents worked for my grandparents, and François himself was born the same year as my father—1930.” He caught himself and winked at me. “Don’t tell him I told you this. He likes to be most secretive about his age. My wife said always François was like those men in films, you understand, the valet faithful to the family who counts their needs ahead of his.”
I told him I could understand her point. “He looks the perfect butler, and he does seem rather loyal.”
“Perhaps. But he is more like family, François, and he stays because the vineyard is his home as much as mine. He does not serve without the questions, like the valet of the films, and if he serves at all it is because he likes the person he is serving.”
“He must like you, then.”
Armand smiled above his wine glass. “I try his patience, sometimes, but this is natural for people who have passed a life together. Lucie he adores.”
I remembered the way François had watched his young charge by the ducks that morning, how his weary eyes had softened on her face. But even as I thought of that another image rose to take its place—of François staring, startled, at the laughing little girl. Seeing ghosts, he’d told me. For a moment I debated asking Armand if Lucie looked very like her mother, but then decided it might be easier to ask him about Didier. If I could only find some plausible excuse, some way of leading him round to the subject…
Toying with my glass, I tried the indirect approach. “You said Martine came back to live with you when… when you were widowed. Where did she live before that? Here in Chinon?”
“With her husband, yes. You know that he is dead?” The dark gaze flicked me, moved away. He shrugged. “One should not be speaking ill of the dead, I know, but he was not a pleasant man, her husband. Already when she came to help with Lucie there were problems with the marriage.”
I nodded, pleased that my tactic had worked. “Yes, I’d heard they were divorced.”
“Annulled. There is a difference, to the Church.” The wine swirled like liquid gold in his glass as he lifted it and smiled faintly. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”
“And you don’t, I take it?”
“Me? No, I believe in the things that I can touch—my land, my family, old traditions and good wine. And you?”
I had to admit I hadn’t the faintest idea. “I’m a skeptic, I’m afraid.”
“You have no religion?”
