Blackberry Wine (25 page)

‘It’s all right,’ explained Joséphine when he mentioned this to her. ‘It’s how people are here. They need a little time to get used to you. Then …’ She grinned. Jay was carrying a shopping bag filled with gifts which people left for him under Joséphine’s bar – cakes, biscuits, bottles of wine, a cushion-cover from Denise Poitou, a terrine from Toinette Arnauld. She looked at the basket and her grin widened. ‘I think we can say you’ve been accepted, don’t you?’

There was one exception to this new-found welcome. Marise d’Api remained as remote as ever. It was three weeks since he had last tried to speak to her. He had seen her since, but only from a distance, twice in the tractor and once on foot, always at work in the field. Of the daughter, nothing. Jay told himself that his feeling of disappointment was absurd. From what he had heard Marise was hardly going to be affected by what happened in the village.

He wrote back to Nick with another fifty pages of the new manuscript. Since then progress had been slower. Part of this was to do with the garden. There was a great deal of
work to be done there, and now that summer was in sight the weeds had begun to take over. Joe was right. He would need to sort it out while it was still possible. There were plenty of plants there worth saving, if he could only clear the mess. There was a square of herbs about twenty feet across, with the remains of a tiny thyme hedge around it. Three rows each of potatoes, turnips, globe artichokes, carrots and what might be celeriac. Jay seeded marigolds between the rows of potatoes to eliminate beetles, and lemon balm around the carrots for the slugs. But he needed to consider the winter’s vegetables and the summer’s salads. He went to Narcisse’s nursery for seeds and seedlings: sprouting broccoli for September, rocket and frisée for July and August. In the cold frame he had made from Clairmont’s doors he had already seeded some baby vegetables – Little Gem lettuces and fingerling carrots and parsnips – which might be ready in a month or so. Joe was right, the land here was good. The soil was a rich russet, at the same time moist and lighter than across the river. There were fewer stones, too. The ones he found he slung onto what would become his rockery. He had almost finished restoring the rose garden. Pinned into place against the old wall the roses had begun to swell and bud; a cascade of half-opened flowers dripping against the pinkish brick to release their winey scent. They were almost free of aphids now. Joe’s old recipe – lavender, lemon balm and cloves stitched into red flannel sachets and tied onto the stems just above the soil – had worked its usual magic. Every Sunday or so he would pick a bunch of the most open blooms and take them to Mireille Faizande’s house in the Place Saint-Antoine after the service.

Jay was not expected to attend Mass.
En tout cas, tous
les
Anglais sont païens
. The term was used with affection. Not so with
La Païenne
across the river. Even the old men on the café’s
terrasse
viewed her with suspicion. Perhaps because she was a woman alone. When Jay asked outright, he found he was politely stonewalled. Mireille looked at the roses for
a long time. Lifting them to her face, she breathed the scent. Her arthritic hands, oddly delicate in comparison with her bulky body, touched the petals gently.

‘Thank you.’ She gave a formal little nod. ‘My lovely roses. I’ll put them into water. Come in, and I’ll make some tea.’

Her house was clean and airy, with the whitewashed walls and stone floors of the region, but its simplicity was deceptive. An Aubusson rug hung on one wall, and there was a grandfather clock in the corner of the living room which Kerry would have sold her soul for. Mireille saw him looking. ‘That belonged to my grandmother,’ she said. ‘It used to be in my nursery when I was a child. I remember listening to the chimes when I lay awake in bed. It plays a different carillon for the hour, the half and the quarter. Tony loved it.’ Her mouth tightened, and she turned away to arrange the roses in a bowl. ‘Tony’s daughter would have loved it.’

The tea was weak, like flower water. She served it in what must have been her best Limoges, with silver tongs for the sugar and lemon.

‘I’m sure she would. If only her mother were a little less reclusive.’

Mireille looked at him. Derisively. ‘Reclusive?
Héh!
She’s antisocial, Monsieur Jay. Hates everyone. Her family more than anyone else.’ She sipped her tea. ‘I would have helped her if she’d let me. I wanted to bring them both to live with me. Give the child what she needs most. A proper home. A family. But she—’ She put down the cup. Jay noticed that she never called Marise by name. ‘She insists on maintaining the terms of the lease. She insists she will stay until next July, when it expires. Refuses to come to the village. Refuses to talk to me or to my nephew, who offers to help her. And afterwards,
héh
? She plans to buy the land from Pierre-Emile. Why? She wants to be independent, she says. She doesn’t want to owe us anything.’ Mireille’s face was a clenched fist. ‘
Owe
us! She owes me everything. I gave her
a home. I gave her
my son!
There’s nothing left of him now but the child. And even there she’s managed to take her from us. Only she can talk to her, with that sign language she uses. She’ll never know about her father and how he died. She’s even fixed that. Even if I could—’

The old woman broke off abruptly. ‘Never mind,
héh
!’ she said with an effort. ‘She’ll come round eventually. She’ll have to come round. She can’t hold out for ever. Not when I—’ Again she broke off, her teeth snapping together with a small brittle sound.

‘I don’t see why she should be so hostile,’ said Jay at last. ‘The village is such a friendly place. Look how friendly everyone’s been to me. If she gave people a chance I’m sure they’d welcome her. It can’t be easy, living on her own. You’d think she’d be pleased to know people were concerned—’

‘You don’t understand.’ Mireille’s voice was contemptuous. ‘She knows what sort of welcome she’d get if she ever showed her face here. That’s why she stays away. Ever since he brought her here from Paris it’s been the same. She never fitted in. Never even tried. Everyone knows what she did,
héh
. I’ve made sure of that.’ Her black eyes narrowed in triumph.

‘Everybody knows how she murdered my son.’

‘WELL, SHE EXAGGERATES, YOU KNOW,’ SAID CLAIRMONT
peaceably. They were in the Café des Marauds, which was filling up rapidly with its after-work crowd, he in his oil-stained overalls and blue beret, a group of his workers, Roux amongst them, gathered around a table behind him. The comfortable reek of Gauloises and coffee filled the air. Someone behind them was discussing a recent football match. Joséphine was busy microwaving pizza slices.

‘Héh, José
,
un croque, tu veux bien?’

On the counter stood a bowl of boiled eggs and a dish of salt. Clairmont took one and began to peel it carefully. ‘I mean, everyone knows she didn’t actually
kill
him. But there are plenty of other ways than pulling the trigger, héh?’

‘Driven him to it, you mean?’

Clairmont nodded. ‘He was an easy-going lad. Thought she was perfect. Did everything for her, even after they were married. Wouldn’t hear a word spoken against her. Said she was highly strung and delicate. Well, maybe she was,
héh
?’ He helped himself to salt from the dish. ‘The way he was with her, you’d have thought she was glass. She’d just come out of one of those hospitals, he said. Something wrong with her nerves.’ Clairmont laughed. ‘Nerves,
héh
! Wasn’t anything wrong with her nerves. But anyone dared say anything about her—’ He shrugged. ‘Killed himself trying to please her, poor Tony. Worked himself half to death for her, then shot himself when she
tried to leave him.’ He bit into his egg with melancholy gusto.

‘Oh yes, she was going to leave,’ he added, seeing Jay’s surprise. ‘Had her bags all packed and ready. Mireille saw them. There’d been some row,’ he explained, finishing the egg and gesturing to Joséphine for a second
blonde
. ‘There was always some kind of a row going on in that place. But this time it really looked as if she was going to go through with it. Mireille—’

‘What is it?’ Joséphine was carrying a tray of microwaved pizzas, and looked flushed and tired.

‘Two Stellas, José.’

Joséphine handed him the bottles, which he opened using the bottle-opener fixed into the bar. She gave him a narrow look before moving on with the pizzas.

‘Well anyway, that was that,’ finished Clairmont, pouring the beers. ‘They made out it was an accident,
héh
, as you would. But everyone knows that crazy wife of his was behind it.’ He grinned. ‘The funny thing was that she didn’t get a penny from his will. She’s at the mercy of the family. It was a seven-year lease – they can’t do anything about that – but when it runs out,
héh
!’ He shrugged expressively. ‘Then she’ll be gone, and good riddance to her.’

‘Unless she buys the farm herself,’ said Jay. ‘Mireille said she might try.’

Clairmont’s face darkened for a moment. ‘I’d bid against her myself if I could afford it,’ he declared, draining his glass. ‘That’s good building land. I could build a dozen holiday chalets on that old vineyard. Pierre-Emile’s an idiot if he lets it go to her.’ He shook his head. ‘All we need is a bit of luck and land prices in Lansquenet could rocket. Look at Le Pinot. That land could make a fortune if you developed it properly. But you’d never see her doing that. Wouldn’t even give up the marshland by the river when they were thinking about widening the road. Blocked the plan out of sheer meanness.’ He shook his head.

‘But things are on the up now,
héh
?’ His good humour
was already restored, his grin oddly at variance with his mournful moustache. ‘In a year, maybe two, we could make Le Pinot look like a Marseilles
bidonville
. Now that things are beginning to change.’ Once again he gave his humble, eager grin. ‘All it takes is one person to make a difference, Monsieur Jay. Isn’t that right?’

He tapped the rim of his glass against Jay’s and winked.

‘Santé!’

FUNNY, HOW EASILY IT ALL CAME BACK. FOUR WEEKS NOW
since his last sighting of Joe and still he felt as if the old man might reappear at any moment. The red flannel sachets were in place in the vegetable garden and at the corners of the house. The trees at the land’s boundary were similarly adorned, though the wind kept stripping them off. Marigolds, propagated in the home-made cold frame, were beginning to open their bright petals amongst Narcisse’s seed potatoes. Poitou baked a special
couronne
loaf in thanks for his grain pack, which, he claimed, had given him more relief than any drug. Of course, Jay knew he would have said that anyway.

Now his garden had the best collection of herbs in the village. The lavender was still green, but already more pungent than Joe’s had ever been, and there was thyme and cologne mint and lemon balm and rosemary and great drifts of basil. He gave a whole basket of these to Popotte when she came by with the mail, and another to Rodolphe. Joe often gave out little charms – goodwill charms, he called them – to visitors, and Jay began to do the same: tiny bunches of lavender or mint or pineapple sage, tied with ribbons of different colours – red for protection, white for luck, blue for healing. Funny how it all came back. People assumed this was another English custom, the general explanation for all his eccentricities. Some took to wearing these little posies pinned to their coats and jackets – though
it was May it was still too cool for the locals to wear their summer clothing, though Jay had long since turned to shorts and T-shirts for everyday wear. Strangely enough Jay found the return to Joe’s familiar customs rather comforting. When he was a boy Joe’s perimeter rituals, his incense, sachets, pig-Latin incantations and sprinklings of herbs too often irritated him. He found them embarrassing, like someone singing too fervently in school assembly. To his adolescent self, much of Joe’s everyday magic seemed rather
too
commonplace, too natural, like cookery or gardening, stripped of its mysteries. Serious though he was about his workings, there was a cheery practicality to all of it, which made Jay’s romantic soul rebel. He would have preferred solemn invocations, black robes and midnight ritual.
That
he might have believed. Reared on comic books and trash fiction, that at least would have rung true. Now that it was too late, Jay found he had rediscovered the peace of working with the soil. Everyday magic, Joe used to call it. Layman’s alchemy. Now he understood what the old man meant. But in spite of all this Joe stayed away. Jay prepared the land for his return like a well-raked seedbed. He planted and weeded according to the lunar cycle, as Joe would have done. He did everything right. He tried to have faith.

He told himself that Joe was never there at all, that it was in his imagination. But perversely, now Joe was gone he needed to believe it was otherwise. Joe was really there, a part of him insisted. Really there, and he had blown it with his anger and disbelief. If only he could make him come back, Jay promised himself, things would be different. There were so many things left unfinished. He felt a helpless rage at himself. He’d had a second chance, and stupidly he’d blown it. He worked in the garden every day until dusk. He was sure Joe would come. That he could make him come.

PERHAPS AS A RESULT OF DWELLING SO CONSTANTLY ON THE
past, Jay found himself spending more and more time by the river, where the cutaway dropped sharply into the water. There he found a wasps’ nest in the ground, under the hedge close by, and he watched it with relentless fascination, recalling that summer in 1977, and how he was stung, and Gilly’s laughter at the den at Nether Edge. He lay on his stomach and watched the wasps shuttling in and out of the hole in the ground and imagined he could hear them moving just under the surface. Above them the sky was white and troubling. The remaining Specials were as silent, as troubling as the sky. Even their whispering was suspended.