Spilt Wine

41. And Worsens Further

After Philippe had left, Catherine and I remained silent as we assessed the situation. Finally, she said, "At least we can see each other now."

I diverted my eyes from where they had been, blushing. "More of you than I should."

She glanced down and shrugged. "It's only hair."

We again remained quiet for a while, then I said, "It's certainly less cramped than in the trunk, though there's still the stench of rotting potato."

"That's probably what's caked on your forehead and plastered in your hair."

"Remind me not to do a face press again, it's not a good climbing move."

After a short pause, I quietly spoke. "I've been running my tapes, trying to sense where we are. Did you feel the hill?"

"We went up for a long while, not steadily, but definitely up. Rolling against you wasn't just trying to be close, I was being pulled toward the back of the boot."

"The obvious hills around here are the Côtes. The driving was quite flat for much of the first half-hour, so he could have headed across the river and into the hills in the Jura. There's wine there, but that's more than a forty-six-minute drive. I feel we're in the Hautes Côtes."

"Yes, but not the Nuits, though, those are too close. The Hautes Côtes de Beaune are the right distance."

"Up the valley from Meursault, through Auxey-Duresses. We could be in the Saint-Romain area. I've bought wines from Alain Gras there, and there's the tonnellerie –"

"We buy our pièces from them, François Frères. I love watching the coopers."

"There's been a lot of new development up in this area, assuming that's where we are. New plantings, new wineries, modern installations; the land is much more affordable than down on the Côtes."

"This place seems quite new."

We continued the light conversation, not burdening ourselves with thoughts of the desperate situation we were in, but talking of things peripheral to that and then rambling into stories from our past. 

Catherine began talking about her time in Ireland, offering some images from her early days there. She talked of walks along the seashore with her two cousins and their friends. "It was down the slope in front of the house, but was so different from my experience of the seashore in Brittany. There the sea broke onto the rocks in great white crashes, here it was mostly a calm sea, ripples, sometimes small waves, except in strong west winds, or when there was a big storm offshore."

She smiled at her thoughts. "The house sat at the edge of Kenmare, a small town at the head of a long bay, more than thirty miles in from the open sea, from the North Atlantic. I thought if the storms out there at the mouth of the bay were strong enough to push waves this far in, I wanted to go see them."

"I don't know Kenmare – I can't picture it on the maps in my head."

"It's about a twenty-mile drive from Killarney, do you know Killarney?"

I nodded. "Yes, south-west corner of Ireland."

"Can you picture the deep inlets, the jagged coast down in that corner?"

"I see four or five sharp headlands, like the spread fingers of a hand reaching out to the sea."

"There are four. It's in the centre of those, the middle inlet, the longest one." She continued to reminisce about hiking in the hills above the inlet and out at the ends of the peninsulas. Of drives into Killarney through the national park and around the shores of Lough Leane. Of pausing to watch rowers out on the lake. "We would often picnic on grass in the park there. It was –"

"Enough of your fucking talking!" Philippe's angry voice surprised us. He strode across to the table and grabbed a roll of tape. "This will shut you up."

He wrapped the broad adhesive across Catherine's open mouth and tightly around her head.

"Aay meed thoo feeeee," Catherine mumbled through the tape.

"What are you mumbling for? Speak up, woman." He laughed as he headed across the room to tape my mouth.

"She said she needs to pee."

"What again? She went only a couple of hours ago."

"She's pregnant, remember, she nmmm –" Tape stopped the rest of my sentence.

"I can fix both those problems." He laughed as he finished the taping, then he strode back across the room and slammed his fist into her abdomen. And again. And again. And then harder.

I watched in horror from the opposite corner, straining at my lashings as the yellow puddle grew and dribbled from the chair seat to the floor.

"Stay here." Philippe looked at us, then laughed. "I'm going to get some medicine for you. Something to ease your pain, all of your pains." As he walked through the doorway, he paused and said, "With you gone, I own Domaine Ducroix. That's another forty million added to my rapidly growing empire." He closed the door and locked it behind him.

Catherine sat convulsing, writhing in her seat, her face drained of colour, and I sat straining at my bindings, unable to do anything to help her.

Then there was a gunshot, then three more. Then silence, a long silence. Then two more shots. A while later came the squeal of grating metal and a low rumble. I pictured the garage door being rolled up. Then the car started, roared, squealed tires, and its sounds faded into the distance.

Then, there was silence again.