Blackberry Wine (16 page)

Her eyes gleamed slyly, that cat’s-eye marble green reflecting the colourless sky. She finished the sherbert fountain and lobbed the packet into the canal, keeping the licorice stub in her mouth, like a cigar butt.

‘Unlesh you’re
yeller
,’ she said, doing a passable Lee Marvin.

‘OK.’

They found the den close to the lock. It wasn’t a tree house, but a small shack built from assorted dump-rubbish: corrugated cardboard, sheets of tarpaper and fibreglass. It had windows of plastic sheeting and a door taken from somebody’s old shed. It looked deserted.

‘Go on, then,’ said Gilly. ‘I’ll keep watch.’

Jay hesitated for a moment. Gilly grinned brashly; her face looked stretched into one giant freckle. He felt suddenly dizzy at the sight of her.

‘Ah, get on with it, will you?’ she urged.

Touching the talisman in his pocket, Jay walked resolutely towards the den. It was bigger than it had looked from the path and, despite its eccentric construction, it was solid. The door was padlocked, a heavy industrial lock which might have come from someone’s coal cellar.

‘Try the window,’ said Gilly from behind him. Jay whipped round.

‘I thought you were keeping watch!’

Gilly shrugged.

‘Ah, there’s nobody here,’ she said. ‘Go on, try the window.’

The window was just big enough to crawl through. Gilly pulled back the plastic sheeting and Jay squeezed inside. It was dark, and there was a smell of sour earth and cigarette smoke. A pile of blankets lay on the floor above a couple of
crates. A box of clippings. A dog-eared poster cut from a girls’ magazine was stapled to one wall. Gilly put her head through the window.

‘Find anything good?’ she enquired pertly.

Jay shook his head. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable in there, imagining himself trapped in the den as Zeth and his friends rounded the corner.

‘Look in the crates,’ suggested Gilly. ‘That’s where they keep their stuff. Magazines and cigarettes, stuff they’ve lifted.’

Jay pushed over one of the crates. Assorted rubbish spilled out across the floor. Make-up, empty lemonade bottles, comics. A battered transistor radio, sweets in a glass jar. A paper bag filled with fireworks, bangers and jumping-jacks and Black Cats in their waxy casings. Two dozen Bic lighters. Four unopened packets of Player’s.

‘Take something,’ said Gilly. ‘Take something. It’s all nicked anyway.’ Jay picked up a shoebox of clippings. Rather half-heartedly he scattered them across the earth floor of the den. Then he did the same with the magazines.

‘Take the cigs,’ urged Gilly. ‘And the lighters. We’ll give them to Joe.’ Jay looked at her uneasily, but the thought of her contempt was more than he could take. He pocketed cigarettes and lighters, then, at Gilly’s insistence, the sweets and the fireworks. Fired by her enthusiasm he tore down the poster from the wall, stamped the records, stomped the jars. Remembering how Zeth had smashed his radio, he took the transistor as well, telling himself they owed it to him. He spilled cosmetics, crunched lipsticks underfoot, threw a tin of face powder against the wall. Gilly watched, laughing wildly.

‘I wish we could see their faces,’ she gasped. ‘If only we could!’

‘Well, we can’t,’ Jay reminded her, climbing quickly out of the den. ‘Come on, before they get back.’ He took her hand and began to pull her after him up the path to the ash pit, their stomachs suddenly filled with butterflies at the
thought of what they’d done. The sensation was not altogether unpleasant, and suddenly they were both laughing like drunks, clinging to each other as they stumbled up the path.

‘If only I could see Glenda’s
face
,’ spluttered Gilly. ‘Next time we’ll have to bring a camera or something, so we can have a permanent record.’

‘Next time?’ The thought killed the laughter.

‘Well, of course.’ She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world. ‘We’ve won the first skirmish. We can’t just leave it now.’

He supposed he should have told her, This is where it ends, Gilly. It’s too dangerous. But it was the danger which attracted her, and he was too intoxicated by her admiration to plead caution. That look in her eyes.

‘What are you staring at me for?’ she demanded belligerently.

‘I’m not staring at you.’

‘Yes, you
are
.’

Jay grinned. ‘I’m staring at the
great
– big –
earwig
that just landed in your hair from that bush,’ he told her.

‘Bastard!’
screamed Gilly, shaking her head.

‘Wait a minute! It’s just
there
,’ he said, slyly knuckle-rubbing the top of her head.

Gilly kicked him hard on the ankle. Again normality was restored.

For a while.

THE NEXT THING JAY DID IN LANSQUENET WAS TO FIND A
builder’s yard. The house needed extensive repairs, and although he could probably manage some of the work himself, most of it would have to be done by professionals. Jay was lucky to find them to hand. He imagined it would cost a great deal more to have them come over from Agen. The yard was large and sprawling. Wood had been stacked in towers at the back. Window frames and doors propped up the walls. The main warehouse was a converted farm, low-roofed, with a sign above the door which read,
CLAIRMONT – MEUNUISERIE-PANNEAUX-CONSTRUCTION
.

Unfinished furniture, fencing, concrete blocks, tiles and slates were piled messily by the door. The builder’s name was Georges Clairmont. He was a short, squat man, with a mournful moustache and a white shirt, greyed with perspiration. He spoke with the thick accent of the region, but slowly, reflectively, and this gave Jay time to understand his words. Somehow everyone here knew about him already. He supposed Joséphine had spread word. Clairmont’s labourers – four men in paint-spattered overalls and caps turned down against the sun – watched with wary curiosity as Jay passed. He caught the word
Anglishe
in a rapid mutter of patois. Work – money – was limited in the village. Everyone wanted a share in Château Foudouin’s renovation. Clairmont flapped his hand in annoyance as four pairs of eyes followed them into the woodyard.

‘Back to work,
héh
, back to
work
!’

Jay caught the eye of one of the labourers – a man with red hair tied back with a bandanna – and grinned. The redhead grinned back, one hand across his face to hide his expression from Clairmont. Jay followed the manager into the building.

The room was large and cool, like a hangar. A small table near the door served as a desk, with papers, files and a telephone-fax machine. Next to the telephone was a bottle of wine and two small glasses. Clairmont poured out two shots and handed one to Jay.

‘Thanks.’

The wine was red-black and rich. It was good, and he said so.

‘It should be,’ said Clairmont. ‘It was made on your land. The old proprietor, Foudouin, was well known here once. A good winemaker. Good grapes. Good land.’ He sipped his wine appreciatively.

‘I suppose you’ll have to send someone out to see the house,’ Jay told him.

Clairmont shrugged. ‘I know the house. Went to see it again last month. Even drew up some estimates.’

He saw Jay’s surprise and grinned.

‘She’s been working on it since December,’ he said. ‘Painting this, plastering that. She was so sure of her agreement with the old man.’

‘Marise d’Api?’

‘Who else,
héh
? But he’d already made a deal with his nephew. A steady income – a hundred thousand francs a year until his death – in exchange for the house and the farm. He was too old to work. Too stubborn to leave the place. No-one else wanted it but her. There’s no money in farming nowadays, and as for the house itself,
héh
!’ Clairmont
shrugged expressively. ‘But with her it’s different. She’s stubborn. Been eyeing the land for years. Waiting. Fencing it off bit by bit. Serve her right,
héh
!’ Clairmont gave his short, percussive laugh. ‘She’d never give me any work, she said. Rather get a builder in from town than owe money to someone from the village. Do it herself, more likely.’ He rubbed his fingers together in a speaking gesture. ‘Close with her savings,’ he explained shortly, finishing the rest of his wine. ‘Close with
everything
.’

‘I expect I’ll have to offer her some kind of compensation,’ said Jay.

‘Why?’ Clairmont looked amused.

‘Well, if she’s spent money—’

Clairmont gave a raucous laugh.

‘Money! More likely to have been robbing the place. Look at your fences, your hedges. Look how they’ve been moved. A dozen metres here, half a dozen there. Nibbling at the land like a greedy rat. She was at it for years when she thought the old man wasn’t watching. Then, when he died …’ Clairmont shrugged expressively.
‘Héh!
She’s poison, Monsieur Mackintosh, a viper. I knew her poor husband and, though he never complained, I couldn’t help hearing things.’

That shrug again, philosophical and businesslike.

‘Give her nothing, Monsieur Mackintosh. Come to my house this evening and meet my wife. Have dinner. We can discuss your plans for the Foudouin place. It will make a wonderful holiday home,
monsieur
. With investment anything is possible. The garden can be replanted and landscaped. The orchard restored. A swimming pool, maybe. Paving, like the villas in Juan les Pins. Fountains.’ His eyes gleamed at the thought.

Cautiously Jay replied, ‘Well, I hadn’t really thought beyond immediate repairs.’

‘No no, but there will be time, héh?’ He slapped Jay’s arm companionably.

‘My house is off the main square. Rue des Francs
Bourgeois. Number four. My wife is longing to meet our new celebrity. It would make her very happy to meet you.’ His grin, part humble, part acquisitive, was oddly infectious.

‘Take dinner with us. Try my wife’s
gésiers farcis
. Caro knows everything there is to know in the village. Get to know Lansquenet.’

JAY EXPECTED A SIMPLE MEAL. POT LUCK WITH THE BUILDER AND HIS
wife, who would be small and drab, in an apron and headscarf, or sweet-faced and rosy, like Joséphine at the café, with bright bird’s eyes. They would perhaps be shy at first, speaking little, the wife pouring soup into earthenware bowls, blushing with pleasure at his compliments. There would be home-made terrines and red wine and olives and pimentoes in their spiced oils. Later they would tell their neighbours that the new Englishman was
un mec sympathique, pas du tout prétentieux
, and he would be quickly accepted as a member of the community.

The reality was quite different.

The door was opened by a plump, elegant lady, twinsetted and stillettoed in powder-blue, who exclaimed as she saw him. Her husband, looking more mournful than ever in a dark suit and tie, waved to him over his wife’s shoulder. From inside Jay could hear music and voices, and glimpse an interior of such relentless chintziness that he blinked. In his black jeans and T-shirt, under a simple black jacket, he felt uncomfortably underdressed.

There were three other guests as well as Jay. Caroline Clairmont introduced them as she distributed drinks – ‘our friends Toinette and Lucien Merle, and Jessica Mornay, who owns a fashion shop in Agen,’ – simultaneously pressing one cheek against Jay’s and a champagne cocktail into his free hand.

‘We’ve been so looking forward to meeting you, Monsieur Mackintosh, or may I call you Jay?’

He began to nod, but was swept away into an armchair.

‘And, of course, you must call me Caro. It’s so wonderful
to have someone new in the village – someone with
culture
– I do think culture is so
important
, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ breathed Jessica Mornay, clutching at his arm with red nails too long to be anything but false. ‘I mean, Lansquenet is wonderfully unspoilt, but sometimes an educated person simply longs for something more. You must tell us about yourself. You’re a writer, Georges tells us?’

Jay disengaged his arm and resigned himself to the inevitable. He answered innumerable questions. Was he married? No? But there was someone, surely? Jessica flashed her teeth and drew closer. To distract her he feigned interest in banalities. The Merles, small and dapper in matching cashmere, were from the north. He was a wine-buyer, working for a firm of German importers. Toinette was in some kind of local journalism. Jessica was a pillar of the village drama group – ‘her Antigone was
exquisite
’ – and did Jay write for the theatre?

He outlined
Jackapple Joe
, which everyone had heard of but no-one had read, and provoked excited squeals from Caro when he revealed that he had begun a new book. Caro’s cooking, like her house, was ornate; he did justice to the
soufflé au champagne
and the
vol-au-vents
, the
gésiers farcis
and the boeuf en
croûte –
secretly regretting the home-made terrine and olives of his fantasy. He gently discouraged the ever more eager advances of Jessica Mornay. He was moderately witty, anecdotal. He accepted many undeserved compliments on his
français superbe
. After dinner he developed a headache, which he attempted, without success, to dull with alcohol. He found it difficult to concentrate on the ever-increasing rapidity of their French. Whole segments of conversation passed by like clouds. Fortunately his hostess was garrulous – and self-centred – enough to take his silence for rapt attention.

By the time the meal was over it was almost midnight. Over coffee and
petits fours
the headache subsided and Jay was able to grasp the thread of the conversation once more.

Clairmont, his tie pulled away from the collar, his face mottled and sweaty: ‘Well, all I can say is it’s high time something happened to put Lansquenet on the map, héh? We’ve got as much going for us as Le Pinot down the road, if we could only get everybody organized.’

Caro nodded agreement. Jay could understand her French better than her husband’s, whose accent had thickened as his wineglass emptied. She was sitting opposite him on the arm of a chair, legs crossed and cigarette in hand.