Peter May - The Critic

The sight of her mother disappearing into the dark brought fresh tears to eyes that had fought to stay dry, and she felt the comfort of Fabien’s arm as it slid around her shoulder. She looked up and saw Enzo standing at the other side of the tomb, his mouth set in a grim line, his eyes full of sadness. She knew that Scotsmen often wore their kilts to weddings. She’d had no idea that they wore them to funerals, too. And she was moved that Enzo had taken the trouble. He made a striking figure with his white shirt and black tie, black dress jacket, and the eight metres of pleated tartan wool that made up his kilt. Silver trim on a black leather sporran gleamed dully in what little light the sky let through. There were small, thoughtful touches, too. The black flashes on either side of long, dark socks that stretched over sturdy calves and folded down below the knee. Black shoes laced up above the ankles. His black hair, pulled back in its habitual ponytail and held by a black ribbon. But it seemed greyer somehow, its white flash less distinctive.

And then it was over, mourners drifting away from the graveside, among the tombs and headstones of this tiny cimetiere in the shadow of the hills. Past the old stone chapel with its faded stained-glass windows, out on to the narrow road that wound through the jumble of mediaeval houses gathered around this final resting place. Acorns fallen from a towering oak beyond the wall crunched underfoot, the only sound to break the shuffling silence as they left.

Nicole took her father’s arm as they walked towards the car. He was a big man reduced by loss, stooped and defeated. He looked awkward and uncomfortable in a suit that didn’t fit him, that would not button shut across a belly that had expanded since last he wore it.

Enzo stood back and watched father and daughter with an ache in his heart. Sadness for them, discordant memories for him. He became aware of someone stopping at his side and turned his head to find himself looking into Fabien Marre’s cautious black eyes. Anger displaced melancholy. He kept his voice low. ‘I thought I told you to stay away from Nicole.’

‘And I’m supposed to listen to a man in a skirt?’

If they had not been at a funeral Enzo would have taken him down with a swift left hook. In his imagination, at least. He contained his anger by making and unmaking fists at his side, then shoved his hands into his jacket pockets to keep them under control. He thought about all the hours they had spent decoding Petty’s Gaillac ratings. Enzo had been keen to read what Petty had written about Laurent de Bonneval’s Cuvee Special, since he had tasted it himself. But it hadn’t been among the coded reviews downloaded from the server. The wines of La Croix Blanche, however, had. He said, ‘We decoded Petty’s reviews of your wines.’ And saw Fabien tense.

‘Oh?’

‘Don’t you want to know how he rated them?’

‘I don’t give a damn what Petty thought.’

‘Three A2s and two B1s. We figure he must have been planning to change his value ratings for the Gaillac wines, otherwise they’d all have been 1s. There’s hardly a single wine that costs more than fifteen euros.’

Fabien said nothing.

‘He liked your wines, Monsieur Marre. If he’d published those ratings, you’d have been selling them all over America by now.’

‘So why would I want to kill him?’

Enzo looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know that you would. But, then, you had no way of knowing he was going to rate you at all, if we’re to believe that you threw him off the vineyard.’

‘It doesn’t matter to me what you believe.’

‘And what about Nicole? Does it matter to you what she thinks?’

A frown gathered the young man’s brows into a knot. ‘Why don’t we just leave Nicole out of this?’

‘You’re the one who’s bringing her into it. You’re the one who’s here.’ He glanced towards the line of cars and saw Nicole’s father and aunt driving off, leaving her standing in the road. She turned and looked back at Enzo and Fabien, and her concern was clear for them both to see. ‘You shouldn’t have come to the funeral, Marre. You’ve no business here.’

And as he walked across the small car park towards Nicole, he realised that the rain had stopped, and he lowered his umbrella. He took her in his arms and held her for a long time, before releasing her with unexpected tears in his eyes.

She said, ‘Thank you for coming, Monsieur Macleod.’ She reached up and touched his face briefly with cold fingertips. A tiny expression of gratitude and affection. ‘When do you leave for America?’

‘I fly out tomorrow. I’m going up to Paris this afternoon.’

She nodded almost imperceptibly towards Fabien, who remained standing, a lone figure, by the cemetery gate. ‘I hope there’s no trouble between the two of you, Monsieur Macleod. I really do.’ She avoided his eye, focusing somewhere off into the middle distance. ‘I think he’s really special.’ And she flicked a quick, apprehensive look at Enzo to guage his reaction.

But he remained impassive. ‘Be careful, Nicole,’ was all he said.

Then she took both of his hands in hers and stared studiously at the ground. She took a deep quivering breath and turned her face up towards him. ‘There’s something you should know.’ He saw the pain in her eyes. ‘I won’t be coming back to university, Monsieur Macleod.’

The yard was still crammed with vehicles, and the house full of mourners eating the quiche and petit fours that Nicole’s aunt had made the previous day, drinking the wine that Fabien had brought in the back of his four-by-four. Nicole’s father had changed out of his suit as soon as he got back to the house. Now he was comfortable again in his dungarees and cloth cap, anxious to move on, to fill his head with work and leave no room for thought or memories. He and Enzo followed the track up the hill above the house to where he had walked with Nicole the day she got back. A warm breeze had sprung up out of the south to sweep the sky from the tops of the hills. The worst of the rain had passed. Battered and torn clouds let fragments of light break through to rush in ever changing shapes across an undulating landscape, messengers bearing the promise of better weather to come.

‘It breaks my heart, Monsieur Macleod. It really does.’ The dogs went barking off ahead of them, scattering a gaggle of hens around the boarded-up remains of the abandoned farmhouse at the top of the hill.

‘She’s a smart girl, Monsieur Lafeuille. Brightest of her year.’

Her father raised his hands in a gesture of guilt and frustration. ‘I know, I know. She deserves better. And I appreciate everything you’ve done for her, I really do.’ He shook his head helplessly. ‘But I just don’t have the money.’ He waved an arm vaguely in the air. ‘The farm is all I have. It’s how I make my living. I have no choice but to work it. And I just can’t do it on my own. God knows, I might even have to let a few fields to my neighbours. We did that once before, for a season, after I nearly cut my foot off with a chainsaw.’

They stopped at the top of his world and looked out over the land that bound him as well as fed him. Land that demanded not only his life, but that of his daughter.

‘The one bright spot for Nicole in this dark place we’re in, Monsieur Macleod, is young Fabien Marre. He arrived yesterday. He’s been a great support to her. A nice lad.’ He managed to raise a smile and turned it towards Enzo. ‘And he’s of the land. Just like us.’ He shook his head. ‘And there was me thinking she was never going to find herself a man.’

Enzo nodded. Whatever doubts he had about Fabien Marre, this was neither the time nor the place to voice them. But where Nicole’s father saw the young winemaker as light in their darkness, Enzo feared he might only be casting ever deeper shadows. He hoped he was wrong.