Many of the fields are furrowed with trenches and pockmarked from shells, and coils of barbed wire mar the view. But the surviving vines are heavy with fruit.
We stoop, kneel, and bend for hours without speaking; the only sound besides the crickets and frogs is oursécateurs, snapping like locusts. The trick is to find just the right stem to cut with one hand so the cluster of grapes will fall freely into the other hand. Then the grapes are placed carefully in a basket, so as not to bruise the fruit. Monsieur Corpart could not stress this enough: Unlike many other wines, champagne must be made from undamaged fruit.
Some of the children are quite good at the job, their small hands quick and nimble. But of them all, Topette is the star. She likes to compete with me to see who can pick the most.
Topette lives with my family in Dakar now, and I have even shared with her my secret cave within a cave. When we return after working half the night in the fields, my mother rubs ointment into our sore muscles, and then we fall exhausted onto my pallet of blankets.
Terrible news filters down from the champagne makers aboveground: Monsieur Corpart tells us the cellar master of Pol Roger suffered a serious head injury when struck by shrapnel, and several workers were killed while loading a wagon when a shell landed in the courtyard at Krug. At Ruinart Père et Fils, André Ruinart became ill after working in his flooded cellar for months.
But still, the champagne must be made.
What a joyous day it was, when we finished bringing in the harvest with only minor injuries to two women and one old man, all struck by shrapnel when they did not throw themselves to the earth in time.
The grapes still have to be pressed for their juice, then filtered into vats, and later bottled and put to rest neck down in thepupitres. But our harvest is complete.
Émile arrived just in time for the end-of-harvest feast for the fieldworkers.
My mother accuses me of having quite forgotten my fiancé, and I do believe she is correct. Émile brought me another note from that gentleman; it was short and full of instructions for what I must do to remain a lady under wartime circumstances.
I asked Émile to sit beside me at the harvest party.Mamanfrowned when she saw Émile brush my hand with his, but then, coughing into her handkerchief, she looked away, and with the rest of us, she offered up a toast to the end of the war.
This time I sent a much longer note with Émile for him to give to his commanding officer, my fiancé. I thanked him once again for the earbobs, the comb, and the cheese, and with a sincere apology wrote that the war had changed everything and that I was breaking off our engagement.
?One day a Madame Deresme, an experiencedmaîtresse, stopped by Dakar. With her was an older gentleman I had heard of but did not know personally, a Monsieur Forsant, superintendent of schools for Reims.
Superintendent, now, of ruined and empty schools.
Madame Deresme had the idea of opening a school right here, in the caves. What was needed, she said, was a routine, a schedule, a semblance of regular life that would take our children into the future.
The caves go on for many kilometers, so even though they are already housing thousands of troops and civilians as well as a hospital and a bakery and a grocery and a café and a winery operation, there is plenty of room to set up a school.
There are different chambers for classes and an exercise yard or gymnasium. The so-called gymnasium is considered especially important so that the children, deprived as they are of fresh air, will not fall ill and can express a child’s natural enthusiasm and energy.
We build partitions from the cases of champagne and cover the chalk walls with straw matting decorated with wallpaper rescued from a ruined interior decoration shop. We bring in potted plants that wilt soon enough from lack of sun, but nonetheless brighten the corners. Desks and chairs are scavenged from the ruined schools aboveground. We put up the flag of France, as well as those of our allies, the British Union Jack and the Australian Union Jack with its Commonwealth Star.
The school under the House of Pommery is named for GeneralManoury. It is a mix of boys and girls, and our little scholars follow a strict daily routine based upon the national curriculum. One could almost fool oneself that things were normal, except that unlike a typical school, six cows are stabled nearby to provide milk—my brother, Henri, has discovered his talent as a milkman—and there is a gas mask at the ready for each and every student.
Though I was never particularly attentive to my own school studies as a child, I now work as an assistant to Madame Deresme. I help the children with their history and geography, remembering the lessons as my father once taught me. Among my daily duties is to be sure there is always a lamp left burning in the deepest caves, in case of further evacuation. We are ever fearful that a shell might collapse the highest floors of the cave system.
While I doubt my letters reach Émile, I write to him to tell him what I am doing. He loves books of all kinds. He would be pleased.
I do believe my little Topette is proud to see me there, as well, standing at the head of the class. Like me, she is not a natural student, more suited to action than to contemplation. But as Madame Deresme tells the children every day, it is their duty to study hard so that they may lead France into the future.
They are like the champagne, encapsulating the hopes of a nation. We must wait for them to mature so they can lead us toward the future.
Chapter Thirty-three
The next day Rosalyn put on a long-sleeved silk wrap dress and topped it with a long cashmere sweater, sprinkling her wrists with lavender oil, and tried to psych herself up for the party. She felt hypersensitive and fragile, as though she were dressing a wound.
What kept her going was the image of Lucie living down in those caves. Rosalyn wanted to see where the young woman had spent the war years, to see if she could discover any sign of her, maybe even find the little niche that she and her family had claimed for their own.
Emma dashed those hopes as André drove them toward Reims.
“We can poke around a little tonight, of course. But they’ll have most of the tunnels cordoned off—don’t want wayward guests getting lost down there, or stealing vintage secrets or whatever it is they’re afraid of. No, we’ll have to get permission to explore if we want to find where Lucie really was. But for now, how about a quick tour of Reims?”
Emma pointed things out as they navigated the city. “As you can tell, a lot of the architecture is relatively new, as so many buildings had to be rebuilt after World War One. The Second World War wassomewhat kinder to our poor Reims, but left its mark, as well. TheRémoishave been put through it.”
They drove by picturesque parks and peaceful squares; Rosalyn tried to imagine them full of refugees and the injured.
