apparent soon after that she had been schooled perfectly in French and was just as colourful in that language.
It also turned out that Mathilde had been expelled from her smart Manhattan school for lewd behaviour and her mother Ann, in desperation and to appease her most recent husband, had packed her off to France to make her someone else’s problem for a while. There is no way the sisters could have known that they both battled the same stifling insecurities; that what had turned Clementine shy and clumsy had turned Mathilde caustic and hard. Clementine thought Mathilde unspeakably ungrateful for shunning the warm, comforting arms of her mother; Mathilde thought Clementine a dowdy spinster-in-the-making who had turned their no-doubt potential Prince Charming of a father into the dark, uninterested force he appeared to be.
Worse, upon her arrival in Saint-Vincent-sur-Marne, Mathilde made it perfectly clear that she had no interest in grapes, wine, champagne nor, certainly, in Clementine, of whose existence, she claimed, she had been totally unaware until seeing her standing “all fat and sweaty” outside the crumbling house when she arrived.
A more robust adult might have recognised the psychology of a resentful teenager and ignored it, but the thin-skinned Clementine was cut to the quick. On cold nights she could still feel the warmth of Ann’s arms, yet the woman had failed to mention so much as her name to Mathilde? Oh yes, Mathilde assured her. Her mother loved and left stepchildren all the time. It was really no big deal in the United States.
For the first week or two, Clementine fought to findcommon ground but Mathilde made sure there was none. The only thing she was truly interested in was sex and this was a problem because sex was in short supply in Saint-Vincent-sur-Marne. Clementine of all people knew that. She’d never had it. And she wanted it. Desperately and secretly.
With Benoît Geoffroy, the boy next door.
The only child of another sixth-generation vigneron, Benoît was two years her senior. A dark-haired, dark-eyed, solid young man of a serious nature, he loved the grapes and bubbles of Champagne every bit as much as Clementine. Day after day, the two worked at identical tasks in their neighbouring wineries and on their adjoining plots of grapes dotted about the hills and valley, but both were so crippled with reserve that little more than embarrassed looks and the odd “more rain” or “another frost” had ever passed between them. This didn’t stop Clementine from dreaming of more. She dreamed of it often, in her creaking oak bed with the window open and nothing but fresh air and fantasies between herself and the object of her desires.
And she had dreamed of it more often than usual just prior to Mathilde’s arrival because she’d come the closest she’d ever been to having her love for Benoît requited. She’d sat five rows behind him at church one Sunday totally transfixed by the back of his neck: the way his shirt was caught in the collar of his jacket, the downy confusion of his hairline. Afterwards, outside on the steps as she shuffled into the sun with the rest of the congregation, she had felt a strange heat radiating from behind her and turning towards the source had found it to be the man of her dreams.
His cheeks had burned instantly and while he held her gaze for only a second he had asked, well it was more of a mumble really, if she was going to the Saint Vincent’s Day parade that year.
Now, this might seem an insignificant inquiry to a regular person but remember Clementine was far from regular. She had never been asked anywhere by anyone, let alone the man of her dreams, so although all she could do at the time was nod vigorously and scuttle away, the memory of his smell, his voice, the soft little clutch of hairs he had missed shaving on his cheek, kept her warm night after night after night.
Sophisticated Mathilde, used to leaving a trail of broken-hearted
It also turned out that Mathilde had been expelled from her smart Manhattan school for lewd behaviour and her mother Ann, in desperation and to appease her most recent husband, had packed her off to France to make her someone else’s problem for a while. There is no way the sisters could have known that they both battled the same stifling insecurities; that what had turned Clementine shy and clumsy had turned Mathilde caustic and hard. Clementine thought Mathilde unspeakably ungrateful for shunning the warm, comforting arms of her mother; Mathilde thought Clementine a dowdy spinster-in-the-making who had turned their no-doubt potential Prince Charming of a father into the dark, uninterested force he appeared to be.
Worse, upon her arrival in Saint-Vincent-sur-Marne, Mathilde made it perfectly clear that she had no interest in grapes, wine, champagne nor, certainly, in Clementine, of whose existence, she claimed, she had been totally unaware until seeing her standing “all fat and sweaty” outside the crumbling house when she arrived.
A more robust adult might have recognised the psychology of a resentful teenager and ignored it, but the thin-skinned Clementine was cut to the quick. On cold nights she could still feel the warmth of Ann’s arms, yet the woman had failed to mention so much as her name to Mathilde? Oh yes, Mathilde assured her. Her mother loved and left stepchildren all the time. It was really no big deal in the United States.
For the first week or two, Clementine fought to findcommon ground but Mathilde made sure there was none. The only thing she was truly interested in was sex and this was a problem because sex was in short supply in Saint-Vincent-sur-Marne. Clementine of all people knew that. She’d never had it. And she wanted it. Desperately and secretly.
With Benoît Geoffroy, the boy next door.
The only child of another sixth-generation vigneron, Benoît was two years her senior. A dark-haired, dark-eyed, solid young man of a serious nature, he loved the grapes and bubbles of Champagne every bit as much as Clementine. Day after day, the two worked at identical tasks in their neighbouring wineries and on their adjoining plots of grapes dotted about the hills and valley, but both were so crippled with reserve that little more than embarrassed looks and the odd “more rain” or “another frost” had ever passed between them. This didn’t stop Clementine from dreaming of more. She dreamed of it often, in her creaking oak bed with the window open and nothing but fresh air and fantasies between herself and the object of her desires.
And she had dreamed of it more often than usual just prior to Mathilde’s arrival because she’d come the closest she’d ever been to having her love for Benoît requited. She’d sat five rows behind him at church one Sunday totally transfixed by the back of his neck: the way his shirt was caught in the collar of his jacket, the downy confusion of his hairline. Afterwards, outside on the steps as she shuffled into the sun with the rest of the congregation, she had felt a strange heat radiating from behind her and turning towards the source had found it to be the man of her dreams.
His cheeks had burned instantly and while he held her gaze for only a second he had asked, well it was more of a mumble really, if she was going to the Saint Vincent’s Day parade that year.
Now, this might seem an insignificant inquiry to a regular person but remember Clementine was far from regular. She had never been asked anywhere by anyone, let alone the man of her dreams, so although all she could do at the time was nod vigorously and scuttle away, the memory of his smell, his voice, the soft little clutch of hairs he had missed shaving on his cheek, kept her warm night after night after night.
Sophisticated Mathilde, used to leaving a trail of broken-hearted
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