Tristram Bennett was back in the tiny cottage behind Brympton Hall. He was lying in bed, completely naked except for an enormous cigar. Emily was lying beside him, her hands folded behind her head, eyes closed, a dreamy look on her face, her shock of red hair bright against the pillows. Tristram had been thinking seriously about his own position in Colvilles and the dues he was owed by society in general. He had been hurt by various episodes in his youth when he felt people, particularly schoolmasters, had not paid him the respect due to a man of his abilities. There had been that refusal to take his going into the Church seriously. On another occasion they had laughed when his mother suggested putting him in for the Diplomatic Service. Only a month ago he had heard of a contemporary of his at school who had just been made a director of a leading bank in the City of London. And here he was, languishing away as junior manager for Colvilles in East Anglia, a post that had provided insufficient scope for his genius.
Emily was not quite asleep. She was dreaming of a great ball where she had gone with Tristram. Now he had left her to play cards and she was besieged by a host of beautiful young men, asking her to dance. The champagne was flowing freely. Through the great windows you could see the garden glowing in the lights strung between the trees and the young couples strolling arm in arm along the paths. This was where she belonged, Emily thought, as she was led away to the dance floor by a young hussar with a slight scar on his cheek that made him seem even more romantic.
‘I tell you what I’m going to do,’ said Tristram, taking a long pull at his cigar. ‘The firm is now as full of holes as one of those Swiss cheeses. Randolph gone, the fool Cosmo locked up and not speaking for something he didn’t do, the old boy Nathaniel out of his depth and past it. Don’t you agree, Emily? You’ve watched what’s been going on.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Emily although it was hard to tell whether she was speaking to an imaginary lover in her reverie or the real one on her right-hand side.
‘They’ve never given me a chance,’ Tristram went on. ‘Just because I was unlucky enough to back a few wrong horses and put my money on the losing cards once or twice doesn’t mean I haven’t got a financial brain. Oh no. It just needs a chance. And I won’t get a chance to do that mouldering up here with the donkey rides on the beach and the boats messing about on those ridiculous Broads.
‘I’m going to sell my shares, all of them, and set myself up as an independent investor with the proceeds. How about that, Emily?’
Emily was still dancing with the hussar with the scar. ‘That sounds very nice, Tristram,’ she said.
Now it was Tristram’s turn to dream, staring out of the little window at the upper branches of the trees waving in the wind. He saw himself at a large desk in a large office in the City, signing cheques and bankers’ drafts, looking for new investment opportunities. His firm would expand, possibly, into casinos and luxury hotels and horse racing. Surely, he thought, you couldn’t lose if you owned the bookies or the roulette wheel. ‘Yes, Mr Bennett,’ ‘What good taste you have, Mr Bennett,’ ‘Thank you, Mr Bennett.’ He was completely incapable of seeing himself as others saw him. He had, after all, been the only boy in his school who had been totally on the side of Malvolio through all his troubles at the court of Olivia in Shakespeare’s Illyria. They were both sick with self-love, the lovers, dreaming their way to running Colvilles or enjoying the most perfect romance.
A thin sunshine illuminated the last stage of the Powerscourts’ journey from Dijon to Beaune the following morning. They were following the route of the Cote de Nuits in the heart of Burgundy, one of the most famous wine routes in the world. Powerscourt remembered travelling the same path years before with his father when his three sisters had been left in London with their mother while the men went off to taste the wines of France. Louis the Fourteenth, his father told him, had been devoted to the Cote de Nuits, Madame de Pompadour had more expensive tastes with Romanee Conti, and Napoleon never set forth on campaign without a decent supply of Chambertin. Lady Lucy had fallen asleep, still weary from the ordeals of yesterday. Stretching away on the south-and east-facing slopes the vines reached out in ordered rows like soldiers on parade. The villages with the numinous names, Powerscourt remembered, Marsannay la Cote and Gevrey Chambertin, Chambolle Musigny and Nuits St Georges, Vougeot and Reulle Vergy, Vosne Romanee and Aloxe Corton all had a number of features in common. They all seemed to be virtually uninhabited, windows shuttered, gates to the store rooms locked and barred. Sometimes an occasional peasant could be seen tending the vines as they stretched across the hillside but nobody could describe the art of the vigneron as being arduous. And every now and then there was a sudden glimpse of hidden wealth, an imposing new house, a brand new car, a Citroen come to grace the hills and the sleepy villages of Burgundy.
The Alchemist’s brother Marcel had not heard of the terrible storm in the Channel. He had expected Powerscourt to arrive in Beaune the day before. One of his men, Jean Jacques, a slim young man with only a couple of teeth left from street fighting, had been posted at the railway station for most of the day to vet the arrivals. The Alchemist had sent descriptions of Powerscourt and Lady Lucy over from London.
‘They’re not coming, boss,’ Jean Jacques had told Marcel at the end of the day. ‘They’re probably still in London. We could head back to Lyon.’ Jean Jacques thought he had a girl in Lyon.
‘Don’t hurt yourself trying to think, Jean Jacques,’ had been Marcel’s reply, ‘just get yourself back down the station first thing in the morning.’
Powerscourt overheard his neighbours on the train talking in a very excited fashion. Most French conversations, he would have admitted readily, took place in an excited fashion but this was something more. After a moment or two he looked at the date on his newspaper. He stared out at the vines of Comblanchien going past his window. He looked again at the prosperous pair conducting the conversation. They were both in their Sunday best, boots polished, dark waistcoats and great jackets to conceal their girth, hair washed and moustaches waxed. Powerscourt didn’t think they were going to church. Gradually it came back to him. He remembered the hotel-keeper telling his father and himself about it late one night at their hotel in Meursault when the other guests had gone to bed. He remembered even more clearly the very special bottle the hotel-keeper had fetched from his cellar to keep them company. Powerscourt told Lucy the story as soon as she woke up.
‘This is a special day in Beaune, Lucy, one of the most special days in the year. Hundreds of years ago, in the middle of the fourteen hundreds or somewhere around there, a Chancellor of Burgundy and his wife decided to endow a hospital for the sick here in Beaune. It was going to look after everybody, rich or poor. They’d just had a lot of plagues in these parts, I seem to remember. Nicolas Rolin, that was the man’s name. Anyway, he endowed his hospital not with money but with vineyards. And not just any old vineyard but ones that sat between Aloxe Corton and Meursault, two of the finest wines in Burgundy, or anywhere in the world come to that. I think the hospital may have been left other parcels of land and vineyards over the years.’
‘What’s all that got to do with today, Francis? There’s nothing special going on in the wine world today, is there?’
‘There is here,’ said her husband triumphantly. ‘On the third Sunday in November the Hospices de Beaune – that’s the all-purpose name for the hospital and its various sections – have an auction where they sell off all their wines from that year. It’s considered a great honour to have acquired one of these great vintages and sometimes the wine goes for far more than anybody expected. But this is the important thing, Lucy. All the money raised at the Hospices de Beaune auction goes to pay for the hospital, the nurses, the doctors, everything is paid for out of the funds realized at the wine auction. And today is the third Sunday in November.’