A Good Year

“That’s amazing,” he said, raising his glass to Roussel. “Congratulations.”

Roussel seemed hardly to hear him. “Nobody down here makes wine like this,” he said. “And yet I realized that there was a problem: I couldn’t sell it-not legally, at any rate, because the Cabernet and Merlot vines hadn’t been declared. So I went to Maitre Auzet for advice, thinking that she could find a petite lacune in the law. She’s clever like that.” He took a mouthful of wine and chewed on it for a few seconds before spitting it into the drainage channel. “That’s when it started. Instead of a loophole, she found a buyer; someone who would take all of it, every year, and pay cash-good money, no paperwork, no tax, no questions asked. I couldn’t resist. My wife, my daughter, my old age…” He looked at Max with the mournful, guilty expression of an old hound caught in flagrante with an illicit lamb chop.

Max leaned back in his chair while he took in what Roussel had just said: Nathalie Auzet, notaire and negociant. No wonder she looked so prosperous. “Who does she sell it to?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met the buyer. Nathalie said it wasn’t necessary.”

“Well, where do you send it? Paris, Germany, Belgium?”

Roussel shook his head. “Who knows where it goes? The truck comes once a year-in September, just before I start the vendange, and always at night. The wine from the previous year is transferred from the barrels, and I get my cash the following week. From Nathalie.”

“But the truck. Surely it has a name on the side? A company, an enterprise of some sort?”

Roussel’s hand dropped down to fondle Tonto’s ear. “No. That’s not normal, I know, but in an affaire like this, one doesn’t ask too many questions. All I can tell you is the truck that picks up the wine has license plates with a 33 registration.” He cocked his thumb over his shoulder, in a vague northerly direction. “The Gironde.”

Max shook his head. “How long has this been going on?”

“Seven or eight years, maybe a little longer. I don’t remember exactly.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Max, “is why you’re telling me all this. I might never have found out.”

Roussel stared at the shimmering horizon through the half-open doors of the cave, his eyes narrowed, his dark brown face immobile, etched with deep lines. His head might have been cast in bronze. He turned back to Max.

“Your uncle was more interested in his books and his music than the vines. Even so, there were many times I almost told him, but-well, I paid for the vines, I planted them, I nursed them. I buy new oak barrels-the best French oak-every four years. No expense is spared. Everything is correct. And your uncle never suffered; it wasn’t like stealing. It seemed fair. Not strictly honest perhaps, but fair. And now it’s all changed, with you wanting to improve the vines, bringing in all these oenologues…” He finished the wine, swallowing this time, and put the glass down carefully. “To tell you the truth, Monsieur Max, I knew someone would find out. I thought it best to tell you myself.” He resumed the mournful expression as he waited to see how his confession had been received.

Max was silent for a few moments. And then: “You say it was Nathalie Auzet’s idea?”

Roussel nodded. “She’s no fool, that one. She took care of everything.”

Two surprises for Max in the space of half an hour. The vineyard was not what it seemed. The glamorous notaire was not what she seemed. As for Roussel: Was he genuine, or was he playing some game of his own? Could the wine be sold legally, or would there be horrendous penalties? There were complications galore, far too many for any kind of instant decision.

“Well,” said Max, “I’m glad you told me. I know it wasn’t easy. Let me think about it.”

The afternoon had drifted into a still, warm evening under a lavender sky shot through with streaks of pink, promising another glorious day tomorrow. The tantalizing whiff of cooking came through the open windows of houses in the village. Christie had managed to find a three-day-old copy of the International Herald Tribune, and was giving Max belated news of the outside world, mostly the summer antics of politicians, as they walked toward Fanny’s. Passing the boules court, they paused to watch the next throw. As always, it was an all-male event.

Christie found this puzzling, coming as she did from a country where women’s participation in sports now extended to boxing-and soon, no doubt, to sumo wrestling. “You’ve been coming down here a long time,” she said. “Do you know why it is that you never see women playing?”

“Never thought about it,” Max said. “You just don’t. Hold on.” He went over to an old man, dark and wrinkled as a well-cured olive, who was waiting his turn to throw, and repeated the question. There was a cackle from the old man, and he said something to Max that provoked a ragged chorus of cackles from the other players.

Max was smiling when he came back to translate. “You’re not going to like this. But he said women should be home cooking dinner. Oh, and he said he could teach his dog to play boules better than any woman.”

Christie’s face, her shoulders, her whole body stiffened with indignation. “We’ll see about that. Watch this, buster.”

She stepped onto the court, taking a boule from the startled old man, and went up to the pitching mark drawn in the dust. The players fell silent. She crouched down, took long and careful aim, and let fly, scattering the other boules and scoring a direct hit on the cochonnet.

Turning to the old man, now even more startled, she tapped herself on the chest. “ St. Helena junior bowling champion, 1993.” Reversing the direction of her hand, she then tapped him on the chest. “And you can tell your dog to eat his heart out.” The old man watched her leave the court, raising his cap to scratch his head. How times have changed, he thought to himself. How times have changed.

As soon as they reached the restaurant, Christie went to wash the dust from her hands, giving Fanny the chance to ask Max a question that had occupied her for several days: “The little American girl- she’s your copine?”

“No, no, no,” said Max. “Just a friend. Too young for me.”

Fanny smiled and ruffled his hair as she gave him the menu. “You’re quite right. Much too young.”

Christie came back to find the look of dismay still on his face, but put it down to hunger. “So tell me,” she said, “where were you this afternoon?”

As they worked their way through the meal-a vegetable terrine followed by breast of Barbary duck, served, as it should be, with the skin crisp-Max reported on his expedition, and Roussel’s revelations.

Christie’s immediate reaction was smug satisfaction. “I knew it,” she said. “You can never trust a woman with hair that color. What a piece of work. You can be sure she’s robbing old Roussel blind somewhere along the line.”

“You’re probably right. I’d really love to find out where the wine goes. If we knew that…”

Christie mopped up some of her gravy with a piece of bread, a French habit she’d acquired unconsciously. “She must be working with someone. Has she ever said anything that made you suspicious? Did you see anything in her office?” A smile of pure mischief. “I guess you never made it to her bedroom.”

Max cast his mind back to the previous Sunday, when he had waited for Nathalie in her living room. What can you discover in ten minutes? He thought of the good furniture, the vintage carpet, the signed Lartigue photographs, the expensive volumes on painting and sculpture, the wine book he had leafed through. The wine book.

“There was one little thing, a wine label she was using as a bookmark. Odd sort of name, which of course I’ve forgotten. But I did make a note of it when I got back to see if I could find some of the wine. Apart from that, nothing. Are you going to have cheese?”

They ate on in thoughtful silence, broken eventually by Max. “The simplest thing would be to blow the whistle on her-I mean, the wine belongs to the property, and she and Roussel have been stealing it. Get