Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

his hand. “Is it about me?” She paused. “You want to talk about it?”
    Skirting the thick entanglements of brambles, he smiled to reassure her and explained his doubts about the Bondino project and the prospect of a conflict, even a breach, with the mayor.
    “What bugs me most of all,” he said as he led the way through the thin brush and onto the ridge that let them look down the valley to the town, “is the thought that Bondino could change Saint-Denis beyond recognition. It’s like being in bed with an elephant to have an international firm worth tens of millions of euros dominating our lives. But as the mayor says, if we don’t get jobs, Saint-Denis could be finished anyway.”
    “So what’s the worst that could happen?” she asked, looking down at the view. “You have a fight with the mayor, resign orget fired and this wine project goes ahead anyway. You’ll walk into a police job in Paris, J-J and I will see to that, and then you’ll move in with me. We can come back here every holiday to your house. Does that sound so bad?”
    She turned to face him, still holding his hand. “You can say I’m being stubborn for not giving up my career in Paris. And I can say you’re being stubborn because you won’t give up your country life in Saint-Denis. And so two people who make each other happy are going their separate ways. But what if Saint-Denis gives you up, Bruno? What then?”
    Her eyes searched his face, but he had no answer. The thought of a new life in Paris with Isabelle, marriage and perhaps children … Appealing as the prospect seemed, he just couldn’t embrace it. Bruno knew himself well enough to understand that much of his need for Saint-Denis was that its people had become the family his orphaned childhood had never provided, with the mayor as father figure. Yet there had never been a woman with whom he could talk like this, a woman whose judgment he trusted, a friend as well as a lover.
    He drew her to him and hugged her close. “Let’s see how things go these next few days,” he said. “Will you be staying here with me?”
    “I can’t, damn it,” she said, speaking into his shoulder. “They’ve based me in Bordeaux. I have to get back for a 9 a.m. meeting tomorrow morning.
Merde
, Bruno, I never cry,” she said, turning away and putting a hand to her eyes.
    Gigi came running to snuffle at their feet and gaze up inquiringly as Bruno embraced Isabelle and stroked her hair. Suddenly he saw on his watch that he was going to be late for the
minimes
. He grabbed Isabelle’s hand and they walked quickly back toward the house, Gigi trotting at their side. They laughed as his long ears bounced like flopping wings as he scrambled over fallen branches.

20
    Bruno had a theory that a country displayed its deepest national character in the way it played rugby. The English relished wars of attrition in the mud, grim battles for inches between bloodied forwards under gray skies. The Welsh played like quicksilver, fans of the dashing break through the line by a nimble fly-half dancing his way through the defense. The Scots loved the heroic charge, even when it looked most hopeless, the brave sprint down the wing with the fullback and every man hurling himself into the line. The Irish loved cunning, and they played with creative trickery, suddenly switching their line of attack or kicking ahead to frustrate their opponents.
    But the French played with unique flair, ready to use their running backs like forwards to power through on the wing. Even better, they loved to play their forwards as if they were wingers, constantly passing the ball to one another and overwhelming the defenders as they sidestepped and broke tackles and moved and thought too fast for the other side to react. And that was how Bruno taught his ten-year-olds, drilling them constantly into the habit of always being just three paces behind the boy with the ball, ready to take the pass.
    “Now turn and pass; turn and pass. Make each pass clean,”he panted as they ran the length of the field and back again. “Tackle low, you defenders. Get his ankles and he’ll come down. That’s how you stop them. Don’t grab his arms. Go low. The lower the better.”
    By now the older juniors and the adult team members were drifting through the entrance gates and past the stadium, heading to the locker rooms to change for their own training sessions. Some girls accompanied their boyfriends and took seats in the stadium to watch.