Villagers looked heaven wards with sombre eyes

JANE lifted her eyes skywards, shielding them with her hand against the rays, rubbing the back of her wrist across her brow, sticky with perspiration and dust. No storm or temperamental atmospheric conditions had been forecast. Luc and Clarisse would have postponed the launch of the vendange until it had blown itself out, if it had been reported on the méteo. They would have been checking for this and checking again. Several of the foreign pickers were giggling. They were losing concentration. Wine and fatigue. A weather drama promised a bit of excitement to break up the punishing drudge of the day. The villagers looked heavenwards with sombre eyes, lifting off their hats, unfurling their cotton scarves, dabbing at their foreheads. This did not bode well, the wind swirling, like rushing water, in the crowns of the high trees bordering the vineyards. The harvest could be at risk, fruit damaged, if the signs in the sky delivered on their louring threat. And a ruined harvest meant trouble for the estate’s already struggling economy, for its profile, for the contracted wine deliveries. Not good for the region’s terroir. Its reputation. It was already a challenge to pick when the days had grown so hot, temperatures soaring: 30ºC to 32ºC in the fields, meant 35ºC on the vines. It shocked the grapes when they arrived at the winery to be crushed and their juice was plunged into vats regulated at 14ºC. Clarisse should have ordered the picking to be done at night, as these hired men on their own smallholdings might have done in the old days. But Cl arisse Cambon was not a Provençal. She was a different breed. A woman with a face full of make up living on the periphery of their lives. Not God-fearing, like their own tidy wives. Full of self-importance. And loose morals, it used to be whispered in the villages. Madame didn’t have their feel for the land. Her sister-in-law, though, the spinster, Isabelle, God rest her soul, she had known better. She had learned the business the hard way: out on the land, digging with her own hands.