The Champagne War Read online

  ‘Go on,’ Gaston encouraged her. ‘I’ll keep things bubbling along here.’

  Sophie stood, open-mouthed, the silk of her dress creasing in her fists as she held her gown and train clear of the dark, dry earth, and gazed across a vineyard as the sun lowered in a glorious champagne-and-pink sunset.

  ‘Chardonnay,’ she whispered. ‘Here?’

  ‘An experiment that this goddess of grapes agreed to join me in. She’s all yours.’

  ‘Jerome!’ She swung to look at him, knowing her expression was struggling to convey her awe, her gratitude, her love for his romantic soul. ‘You did this for me?’

  He nodded, grinning at her obvious pleasure. ‘Everyone was sworn to secrecy. I mean, this field is a few years off producing fruit you can use but I think she’s going to flourish for you because from the moment you told me about your dream for an all-chardonnay champagne, I wanted to make it come true. I think one day it will be the style all houses aspire to. But you will be among the first, if not the first.’

  Her eyes misted and glittered from being filled with his love and hers for him. ‘I don’t know what to say other than thank you for believing in me.’

  ‘Make these little vines count. Love them as I love you.’

  She reached up to embrace him, wanting to kiss him deeply, to run her hands through his hair, which had been combed straight but wanted to go wild. She had a better idea. ‘Let’s hurry up and bring our wedding feast to a close so you can carry me up the stairs and shut the world out.’

  ‘That’s a lot of stairs,’ he mumbled as their lips met and she had a taste of what awaited her at the top of her house . . . their house now.

  But the world was not to be shut out. As she flung her arms around her husband, a youth ran over and interrupted them.

  ‘Monsieur, madame!’

  ‘What is it, Stephane?’ She watched Jerome’s forehead crease, knowing hers was doing the same at the boy’s urgent tone.

  ‘You must come, quickly.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ Sophie asked, feeling tendrils of fear emerge from the place to which she’d banished them.

  ‘Commandant de Saint Just has sent me. You must come immediately.’ They both stared at him, bewildered. ‘He has received word and had to announce to your guests that Germany has declared war on Russia, monsieur . . . and that France will be next.’

  The lad tugged at Jerome’s sleeve and, shocked by this revelation, they began to run, Sophie no longer caring about ruining her silk. It was like hearing the news that her family had gone missing all over again; all the same feelings of dread began to crowd in as she held grimly onto Jerome’s hand and hurried alongside him.

  ‘Wait!’ They all stopped. ‘How do we know France is involved?’ Jerome demanded, looking as though he’d refuse to take another step until that question had been answered.

  The lad shook his head. ‘All I know is what the commandant whispered to me, sir. He’s received word that German troops have begun to assemble on the frontier of Belgium.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know what that means but he said you would.’

  Sophie’s mouth pursed in private despair. ‘Yes, we do.’

  Part One

  1

  YPRES, BELGIUM

  April 1915

  It was the infant at home Dieter thought of as he watched his fellow infantrymen retreat. If his son were old enough to understand, he would surely be proud to know that his father had been chosen among the few for this special task. And if he grew up to have a similar interest in science, he might also be as intrigued to learn how the clever German Jewish chemist, Fritz Haber, had arrived at his cunning plan.

  This will end it, they had been told, and Dieter believed his superiors, keen to be among those selected to unleash a new weapon on this forsaken salient in Belgium they were all fighting to own. He wanted to be home with his wife and child . . . in time for summer. Perhaps that didn’t have to be a dream. Let this war be done during spring; he couldn’t think of a better birthday present for his wife than what was about to unfold, and if it did all go to plan, it would be science and not artillery that closed this hellish war. Home to his peaceful hamlet of Kerpen, back to his job as a teacher of science and arithmetic as well as husband, father. Riding a bicycle to the school where he taught no longer seemed unimaginative or unambitious – it was his safe world and he wanted to return to it with all of his heart, for this new world he was moving through was ugly and frightening . . . and nothing could be worth the mass death and suffering.

  The men in charge had judged the day perfect: it had broken clear and the evening winds of Flanders tended to blow cool, damp, and tonight they would whisper in the right direction. He was simply obeying orders. He noted it was uncharacteristically quiet for what felt like a momentous time: no guns, no activity. Mostly it felt as though everyone – on his side, anyway – was holding a collective breath.

  He cast a glance down the line to where the next soldier, tasked with a similar duty, was looking back at him in similar nervous anticipation. Dieter’s rib cage suddenly felt like an anvil, his heart a hammer pounding against it. It was his moment; he was one of the heroes. Dieter was going to be one of the integral parts of a machine that would end this war. Bless Fritz Haber and his big brain.

  So it was with a certain amount of righteous pride that Dieter Meyer, from a small hamlet about twenty miles from the grand city of Cologne, pulled the string that opened the valve on the bottles he was responsible for – three of more than five thousand, he’d heard – on this sunny late afternoon in the region north of the large town of Ypres. There were still some bright patches of grass to admire in the distance, beyond the crisscross of trenches that the French occupied, as spring beckoned summer. If the cunning of Fritz Haber was right, there would be no French left breathing in the next hour . . . and as the first hiss told Dieter that the gas was escaping, he wondered about the animals of the region. Would everything in this killing mist’s path die? No one he’d spoken to in the army knew what it was capable of, how effective it might be, or how expedient as a weapon.

  The vapour was trying to emulate the colour of that bright spring grass of Belgium but instead rose up in a sickly hue that was more chartreuse . . . but even that was being kind. It was more like the colour of the slime one finds in a pond, its dirty tone leaning towards puce spoiling the green. He watched the chlorine gas rise to the top of the trench, where it seemed to hover momentarily on the parapet as though taking stock of its surrounds. Then, as if on a given signal, this twenty-foot wall of green fog began to move, riding on the wind that gave it motion. It wasn’t in any hurry, he noted, but it was in constant motion and it felt relentless as it rolled over itself towards the trenches of France and her allies.

  As Dieter Meyer was considering himself a hero, in the opposing trench Lieutenant Jerome Méa was thinking how glad he was that his army had finally addressed the dismaying losses of French infantrymen due to their scarlet trousers making them easily visible to the enemy. He had been informed that a new uniform was now being distributed through France and would be in Belgium shortly. He smirked to himself. Ypres should have been first on the distribution list, for here was the fiercest fighting. The cloth, which was to have been made up in patriotic threads of the tricolour – red, blue and white – was apparently now woven from only two threads, forming a new hue termed ‘horizon blue’. Ironically, the red thread could only be achieved with a dye available from Germany. He didn’t even know why he was pondering such trivia: probably because this tiny patch of land in Flanders was an ancient town known for its cloth trade. Whatever had prompted it, the thought was as useless as their presence here felt hopeless. He didn’t regret joining up and doing his duty, but he didn’t believe this place was worth his life or the lives of the men under his command, or indeed the Allies who fought alongside them, from the Algerians in their exotic uniforms to the Australians from the other side of the world. It made him stand straighter to know that all these men
had enlisted and travelled so far to look after France, but instead they were here in a tiny Flemish place to prevent the Germans sweeping through Belgium.

  Yes, he would defend her in spirit, but he reminded himself that the ‘she’ to whom his heart belonged and for whom he would gladly sacrifice his life was not a nation but his wife, Sophie. They’d barely been married a month before he joined up and left with other men from the Reims and Épernay region to rousing cheers, while they made promises to be home soon, victorious. That was last summer – not yet a year, but it felt like eternity since he’d caressed her oval face, which held so much promise in eyes the colour of the winter vines she prized. She was the first woman he’d met who set no store by her looks and took no pain to highlight them with cosmetics or fancy styling. Churlish rivals had suggested it was easy to be casual about prettiness when one was blessed with a body shaped like a mannequin and features that presented such harmony. And it was true – the mirror could not deny the beauty of her wide gaze, which looked out over a promontory of chiselled cheeks. The defined eyebrows matched the wide bow lips that found their widest smile for him. And he liked her best when she flung off that straw hat she wore in the fields and untied her hair to remind him of burnished oak, which in the right light cast off golden glints. Jerome still couldn’t understand how she had not married that dashing cousin of hers, Gaston de Saint Just, who might even be here among the Arab forces he led. Instead, and this prompted a small but genuine grin, she had chosen him. He’d only known her from afar as the child of the Delancré champagne house. Unlike his paunchy brother, he’d not thought himself in the league of the Delancré heiress and had thus never attempted to gain her attention and risk rejection, disappointment or humiliation.

  If he was honest, it was only he who liked to think of himself as a simple farmer, and Sophie had called him out on several occasions for a conceit of false modesty. She suffered no fools, this woman. That he farmed was fair enough, but there was no way around the fact that he came from a family of wealthy grape growers who owned great swathes of the finest agricultural land, including vineyards in and around Reims and Épernay.

  And now he wanted to go home to continue that marriage. He’d answered his call to duty. He’d carried himself tall and heroically through this last six months certainly, and through some of the most unimaginable fighting that any soldier could be asked to survive. He’d led his men with courage and by example, never asking them to do anything he wouldn’t do himself, but Jerome was feeling especially maudlin this bright spring day, which had slipped into a soft afternoon. He had the curiously morbid sense that a bullet had his name inscribed on it, or a mortar shell would single out his trench and his section of it to land upon. Why? Why today of all days did it feel so prophetic? Perhaps because the guns had become quieter; the enemy didn’t seem as lively or busy at their role of killing. It was as though, in this last hour or so, the other army wasn’t present. The damp winds were, though, and were blowing towards them, bringing that familiar stench of the dead. The German silence felt ominous, especially given that there had been such a robust strafing in the morning with an increase in shelling. So why the quiet now?

  As he frowned into this query, his sous-lieutenant sidled up. ‘Supper, sir?’

  Jerome nodded; he hadn’t realised that afternoon had slipped away. Supper used to be his favourite meal in the short month he’d lived with Sophie as man and wife. What he wouldn’t give to eat supper in her presence again. He’d give his life for a night with her.

  ‘I’ll be right there.’ He nodded but his attention was caught and trapped by a strange miasma that he noticed was reaching over the lip of the enemy trench in the distance. Fingers of a sinister green clawed above the top, and then what could only be described as a sheet of mist kept rising until it formed a vast wall that seemed to run the length of the front for as far as he could see. Was this some sort of new gunpowder the Germans were using? He couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing and had barely realised he’d called out.

  Men ran to his call; orders were given and a hail of bullets began. As if travelling on unseen wheels, the wall of green began to accelerate towards them. Fear gripped them all, including Jerome, who yelled as loud as his neighbour.

  ‘Fall back!’ he bellowed, unsure they could make it far enough. Whatever that was, he didn’t want to find out what it was going to do to them. ‘Run!’

  Most of them made it about two miles before it consumed them and they began to founder and fall, a green froth at their mouths. And as men in masks or clutching thick pads to their faces materialised out of the killing mist, all Jerome could hear was the screaming of donkeys and horses along with the screams of men clawing at their throats. He was strong; with two soldiers hanging off his shoulders, he used all his power to drag them along before he himself dropped, a tingling sensation clambering through his body.

  Jerome was astonished and somehow deeply saddened that in this moment, as he heaved to get more air into his lungs, he would focus on the tiny mice and voles and other small creatures dying alongside them in the choking chaos.

  2

  ÉPERNAY, FRANCE

  August 1915

  The woman in front of Sophie looked over her shoulder and caught her attention. For over two hours they had been riddling the champagne bottles, angled into the shelves they called pupitres. It needed focused diligence to carefully turn the thousands of bottles one-eighth forwards from yesterday’s position. She thought the woman was suggesting they have a break from their toil, but when she followed her neighbour’s gaze, she recognised a man waiting.

  Sophie straightened, frowning momentarily at the mayor. Had she forgotten a meeting? The smile that began to erupt shrank alongside the sudden bitterness in her throat, as though she’d swallowed aloes. Mayor Maurice Pol-Roger looked as though he too was tasting something unpleasant and his normally tall stature appeared slumped, defeated. She wiped her hands on her apron in a nervous gesture and tried not to hear the sudden heavy silence in the cellar, which had been full of women’s chatter just moments earlier. There was only one reason that their fine mayor would arrive unannounced at the Delancré mansion on the avenue and that was to do his sorry duty. She even had a moment in these terrifying seconds to feel sorry for him before the silent pain roared in and consumed her. It was a wave whose one purpose was reaching the shore of her heart, foaming and clawing to hang on before the sea of trauma would claim it back, dragging it shrieking. But the shrieks were hers. They were not histrionic or highly pitched. No, they were formed from sharp and shallow breaths with a lower sound . . . more like a keening animal.

  But only Sophie could hear them. She had deliberately trapped them inside her chest: courage was everything in this moment. The country demanded this of its women at present, but her surname especially counted for so much that her bravery, it seemed, was something to which the women of Épernay aspired. They needed her strength to embolden them . . . but also to lean upon. War arriving on French soil almost a year ago meant the women were already adrift on a dark sea; with the arrival of today’s news Sophie guessed that she no longer had even hope to shield her from the war’s ocean of pain.

  Jerome was gone. It was her turn to grieve.

  The mayor could tell she already knew, and saved her any preamble. ‘Madame Delancré, I am so deeply sorry . . .’

  She didn’t need to hear any more. She had heard those words time and again as they were spoken to other distraught wives, mothers, fiancées and sisters.

  Pol-Roger brought news only of loss. Loss of the future and its potential; loss of the one aspect of her existence that made life bearable through the war. It especially – and perhaps most poignantly – carried news of the loss of love. Love during war was the one shining beacon of survival. When it was stolen, the thieving hands took everything. She’d taken so long to find romantic love and once it was hers it had consumed all corners of her existence. She had felt invincible with it. Love had become her armo
ur and even as she’d stayed strong and smiled as Jerome left, proudly wearing his new uniform with those scarlet trousers, she’d felt as though her mind might just implode from sadness. They’d only just found each other, just understood what it felt like to have a full heart; she’d been swollen with her desire for him and what they were going to achieve together.

  War took him from Épernay. And now a few words were about to take him from her . . . forever.

  Sophie Delancré wouldn’t cry. Tears would come later in private. Now it was brittle shock, as dry as the envelope sounded when the mayor put the telegram in her hands, along with another murmured apology. He could have just allowed the messenger on his bicycle to deliver it, but he’d made it his obligation to visit every woman to deliver the news in person, as much as it pained him. He was a good man, an excellent figurehead for Épernay, and he needed her to be strong now for all of them. She raised her eyes from the paper to meet his gaze and saw he was struggling for composure. Everyone loved Jerome.

  ‘We must be brave,’ she heard herself say, appalled at her cool tone. The words sounded meaningless and yet even in their hollowness there was a sense of comfort. Saying them helped simply because it was something to break the dread silence. The tall man – who in spite of his thick, wiry moustache bore a striking resemblance to his clean-shaven father, one of the founders of the industry she was a part of – touched his hat in silent acknowledgement and withdrew as the women workers flocked like hens to each other, making soft sounds. She felt hands on her; they squeezed her arms and hugged her soundlessly to convey their pity and understanding.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Excuse me, please,’ she appealed to them, hating their looks of sympathy. She knew, as they did, that the pain was only just beginning. Shock would tranquilise her for a while, keeping the agony of despair at bay. But the reality would soon sink its claws in and hold her helpless, before tearing away at even the smallest shreds of resolve. Sophie made it all the way to the second floor before she had to face a smile from a maid who was ignorant of her news. The envelope was buried in her apron pocket, rustling with dark eagerness to be opened.