E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten
Laurain Vintage 1954
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-350-0
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-80533-350-0
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Antoine Laurain was born in Paris and is a journalist, antiques collector and award-winning author of ten novels, including The Red Notebook and The President's Hat. His books have been translated into 25 languages and sold more than 200,000 copies in English. He lives in Paris, France.
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Magalie had only been in the Larnaudies’ salon once before, and that had been more than three years ago. She remembered a comfortable family sitting room, with exactly the kind of decor you would expect from people for whom money had never been an issue. Anyone who lived there would feel protected by something solid yet impalpable that seemed to emanate from every inch of the room. The carpet and the rug on the floor, the wallpaper, the large sofa, the Louis XVI armchairs, the paintings and the objects on the sideboard were all reassuring. As was the white marble mantelpiece characteristic of Haussmann buildings, with its bronze mantel clock reflected in the gilt mirror. Magalie was certain that if Hubert were to produce a photo of the room taken fifty or a hundred years ago from the old family album, it would be a question of spot the difference, so similar would the photo be to what was here now.
It was very unusual for Hubert to invite anyone into his home on the spur of the moment, let alone complete strangers, which they all were, apart from Abby, and he could not help thinking that Charlotte would not have been best pleased had she been there. She was always so concerned about whether he had eaten. Well, he was going to do better than that, he was going to drink. A good bottle of wine, with nice people. Finally, some spontaneity and good luck had arrived to brighten his grey autumn days.
‘Sit down, please,’ he said, putting the wine on the coffee table. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
‘Would you like any help?’ asked Magalie.
‘No, thank you, Abby. Why don’t you and Julien sit on the sofa. Bob, you could take this bergère.’
Bob wasn’t sure what Hubert had said. At the French Institute in Milwaukee they had studied a poem about ‘un prince et une bergère’. Surely bergère meant shepherdess? In the poem the shepherdess had been a girl of modest means who looked after the sheep in the meadows. Obviously, there were no sheep or shepherdesses here.
‘Bergère,’ said Magalie, tapping one of the arms of the chair.
Bob shrugged, indicating he still didn’t understand, but he sat down anyway and looked around the sitting room. The room was like the ones he’d seen in old black-and-white French films. But in colour. It was a far cry from the way his house looked in Milwaukee. Typically French, he thought. ‘Everything is very old here,’ he whispered, leaning towards Magalie, who nodded.
‘Here we go,’ said Hubert, coming back into the room.
He put four wine glasses and a plate of crackers on the table, then picked up the corkscrew.
‘I was saying that everything is very old here, very typically French,’ said Bob.
And Magalie murmured to Julien with a wink, ‘I’ve lived here since 1868 …’
Hubert broke off from cutting the foil covering the cork to tell Bob, ‘I’ve lived here since 1868.’
Bob repeated the date and raised his eyebrow. Hubert gave his customary smile, and Magalie exchanged a conspiratorial look with Julien, who immediately concentrated on the bottle.
‘It was my family who built this apartment building. I’ve lived here all my life and my father before me, and before him, my grandfather and before that, my great-grandfather. And so on back to the time of Napoleon III. I’m a true Parisian, and that’s rare these days.’
Bob nodded, impressed. ‘So the name in the elevator, that’s yours?’
‘Yes, it is. Name of Anatole, my great-great-grandfather. That’s him.’ He pointed to a painting of a severe-looking old man with a goatee beard and watch chain, staring out at them angrily.
‘You must know everything about the history of the neighbourhood.’
‘Oh, yes! For example, Abby’s studio used to be a carpet shop and before that a hardware store, Ménard et Filles. I remember that closing when I was a child; it was run by Louise Ménard, who wasn’t very pleasant. Before that, the shop sold silks from Lyon, and when the building was first inhabited, it was an antique shop called Au Casque d’Or. The building itself was created on the site of Saint-Martin Abbey, which burned down during the French Revolution and fell into ruin. Our building stands on the exact spot where the abbey church once stood.’
‘There’s a story attached to this bottle, Monsieur Larnaudie.’ It was Julien, silent up until this moment, who had just spoken, quickly, almost breathlessly.
‘A story? You’re right, Julien,’ replied Hubert, inserting the screw into the cork. ‘It must have been bought by my grandfather. Maybe he didn’t have time to drink it, and then it was forgotten about for sixty years, in the chaos of the cellar.’
‘No … I was referring to something else, Monsieur Larnaudie,’ said Julien. ‘Something that happened in 1954 over the Saint-Antoine vineyard.’
Hubert stopped opening the bottle and everyone looked at Julien, who ploughed on. Even though he had promised himself never to talk about flying saucers in front of any woman he was interested in, it would be impossible to drink a glass of this wine without relating what had happened to Pierre Chauveau. Was he about to lose all credibility in Magalie’s eyes? After the management committee meeting she had invited him into her studio to see the broken statue. But then Bob had knocked on the window. Julien felt that an understanding had started to develop between them, which had only been strengthened by the break-in to the cellars. But now maybe it was going to evaporate. As Julien began to tell them what had happened on the night of 16 September 1954, he worried he was taking a big risk. He told them about the spaceship that had appeared above Jules Beauchamps’s vines, the statement made to the police, the nickname given to his great-grandfather, the exceptional vintage produced that year, the showing of Spielberg’s film. He left nothing out.
‘And he disappeared with his dog?’ asked Hubert.
‘Yes, he was never seen again. My family still think he drowned in a pond, but he didn’t say he was going boating that day, and Ausweis, the dog, could swim. She would have come back.’
There was a silence. ‘What a story.’ Bob was the first to speak. ‘In Milwaukee, there was a man who said he saw a flying object … but he was a bit strange … so maybe that doesn’t count.’
‘I believe in flying saucers,’ said Magalie. ‘Why shouldn’t there be any? There are plenty of meteorites.’
Julien turned to her. If he hadn’t stopped himself, he might have gone down on one knee then and there and asked her to be his wife.
‘My family also had someone disappear,’ said Hubert. ‘But it’s not as interesting as your story. It was Cousin Léonard who vanished, Léonard Larnaudie. He lived on the third floor, overlooking the courtyard, opposite my apartment. In the 1930s he decided to go and make his fortune in Chile – he wasn’t married, had no children and nothing to lose. I think he was also slightly mad. Anyway, five years later, he sent a signed postcard from Santiago simply saying, “It’s done!” We never heard from him again. Had he really made a fortune? No one ever knew. He became a legend in our family, Cousin Léonard. His apartment lay empty for more than twenty-five years. The family finally sold it at the end of the 1950s, for nothing, to make up for the money lost in Suez Canal shares.’
‘Shall we open it?’ asked Magalie, indicating the bottle.
Hubert released the cork with a satisfying pop, and held it up to sniff it. ‘Very promising. Let’s taste it. I hope we’re not all going to disappear,’ he joked.
He poured out the wine. They all swirled their glasses and breathed in the bouquet, then Hubert raised his glass and the others followed suit.
‘My friends, we are about to drink more than a wine: we’re going to drink … a bygone age. A liquid that’s been in this bottle since 1954. This bottle was laid down in a different France, a different world. Back then, it was the Fourth Republic; the president was René Coty; people were going to see the films of Jean Gabin and were listening to Édith Piaf sing on the radio; few French people had televisions, and more than a quarter of the population still lived off the land. All that is contained in what we are about to drink … To a bygone age!’ Hubert held his glass out and they clinked with a crystalline tinkle.
‘To a bygone age! Chin chin!’ said Magalie.
‘To France!’ said Bob.
Hubert went one better. ‘To France, good wine and friendship!’
‘It’s excellent,’ declared Magalie after the first sip.
‘I’m not sure if it’s...
