Terroir (33 page)

Sophie was at the window again as the blue Ford pulled into the parking space and the boy got out. She'd no idea how old he really was. Maybe twenty? Maybe more. His mother wound down the window and lit a cigarette, blowing smoke into the street. Then she handed him an envelope, waving him away as he hesitated. The boy had a vaguely lopsided walk, like a hare. He disappeared and a few second later the apartment bell rang. Sophie clicked on the intercom.

– Yes?

– M'th Mattinson?

– Yes. Is that Stephen? You're on time!

She pressed the button to unlock the door.

– Come on up.

That was twenty minutes ago. She'd helped him undress and taken him to bed. He'd fumbled the condom and she'd had to help him with that, too, stroking it on to make him ready. His harelip and cleft palate had been repaired as a baby but had left him disfigured, his speech muffled by his tongue as it tried to form consonants. After making love she kissed him – only him – as if she was grateful and he'd smiled and snuggled into the pillow. It's funny, but she
was
grateful. He'd sleep for twenty minutes as his mother smoked and read a paperback in the car in the street below. Then she'd wake him and he'd hand her the envelope and leave, smiling shyly from the doorway. His mother would have the engine running by the time he reached the car.

Right now there was peace. Tranquillity, in which he could dream; where she needed and wanted nothing. A space, a moment of satisfaction because things had gone well, unforced and natural. The space let her drift back to her dream: she and Gérard walking through rooms of varnished oak panelling which workmen were sanding down to the grain. Her dad would approve of that. That dream somehow turning into the night the mill burned down, when she'd watched with a blanket around her as her parents held her and rats had poured out from the flames. Rampaged into the night for the neighbourhood cats to hunt and kill. Before that, the fox in the snow, turning to look at her father, its eyes flaring.
Like it was daring me.
She still thought about that night as a watershed. The way their lives had moved, past and future sharply bifurcating.

Sophie's mobile phone beeped in the next room. She usually switched it off. It wasn't like her to forget. She slipped from the bed and into her nightgown, lifting the phone from her jacket pocket. It was Dan.
Phuket awesome. People (girls) ace. CU in a few months!
She smiled and typed a quick reply with her thumbs.
Missing you. SophieX
. When she got back to the bedroom the boy was awake and getting dressed. He handed her the envelope and Sophie straightened his collar and kissed him on the cheek.

– Thank you Stephen. You were wonderful!

– You w … w … were. Th … thanks …

He stammered a little and flushed. His hair was beautiful: ringlets of copper that had lain on the pillow like a hoard of spilled coins. When he left, she clicked the door closed and pressed her head to it, hearing the lopsided cadence of his footsteps.

Sophie wandered into the lounge, flexed her calves on tiptoe, picked up her novel and yawned. She was free until 2 o'clock when she had her next client. That would be another story. She'd have to strip the bed and tidy up a bit first. Today she'd finish around four
-
thirty. Afterwards, she'd walk back through the city as herself again. Through the poplars with pale new leaves. Over the tramlines in the city square to her bus. Home to Gérard in her other apartment, the one they shared now. Home to his seductive unforced surprise.
Sophie! Ça va, darling?
The kiss on her cheek as he balanced a glass of wine and a kitchen knife; chords from the sound system breaking into notes that fall like dust glittering from a comet.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

‘The Shoemakers of Nakasero' appeared in
Moving Worlds
; ‘Terroir'
and ‘The Glover'
(winner of the 2014 Short Fiction International Short Story prize) appeared in
Short Fiction
; ‘Leverets'
and
‘Solomon'
appeared in
Short Fiction in Theory and Practice.

My thanks to Chris Stroud and Meg Vandermerwe of the Centre for Multilinguism and Diversity, University of the Western Cape, South Africa, for their hospitality during my 6
-
week Fellowship in April/May 2014 which enabled me to carry out substantial work on the manuscript of this book.

I am indebted to Marie Vidalenq of
Ch
â
teau Les Farcies du Pech
in Pécharmant, France, for her time and patience in explaining the working of that vineyard – and for the opportunity to taste some excellent wines. Any errors in the workings of the fictional vineyard in
Terroir
are entirely my own responsibility.

My special thanks to Penny Thomas of Seren Books for guiding the stories in this collection to completion and for her attentive reading of the text.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Graham Mort is a poet and short story writer who has also written for BBC radio. He is Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University and has worked across sub
-
Saharan Africa and in Kurdistan on literature development projects. Graham's new and selected poems,
Visibility
, were published by Seren in 2007, followed by a new book of poems,
Cusp
, in 2011. His first book of short stories,
Touch
, was published by Seren in 2010 and contained the Bridport Prize
-
winning short story, ‘The Prince'.
Touch
went on to win the Edge Hill prize for the best UK collection of short fiction in 2011. The stories in this new collection,
Terroir
, were written over a five
-
year period, including during a writing fellowship at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, in 2014. A number of them have been published in literary journals, whilst ‘The Glover' won the Short Fiction International Short Story Prize in 2014. In the same year, some stories from
Touch
were translated into Vietnamese by the writer Nguyen Phan Que Mai and appeared in the magazine
Tuoi Tre
. Graham is currently working on a new book of poems.

Seren is the book imprint of Poetry Wales Press Ltd

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

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Twitter: @SerenBooks

© Graham Mort 2015

ISBNs

978-1-78172-230-5 Pback

978-1-78172-231-2 Kindle

978-1-78172-232-9 Ebook

The right of the Graham Mort to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

This book is a work of fiction. The characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author's imagination. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The publisher works with the financial assistance of The Welsh Books Council