Terroir (5 page)

– Well?

– We harvest the day after tomorrow. Thursday. I'll call Gaspard now.

André left Raymond to supervise the last cleaning of the press and sorting tables and went to the phone. No need to check with Gaultier. This was his call. In three days the new wine would be fermenting in the vats; in three weeks, a secondary fermentation would be taking place in the new barrels, smoothing out acidity, drawing out the flavours of tannin and oak.

That night it was chilly in the annexe. André was planning to spend the winter at home. A few weeks away, at least. He was too agitated to sleep, thinking of ripe fruit being picked. He saw it being lifted from the vines to baskets, then to the trailer and the winery to be sorted. He saw the hydraulic press bursting their skins, the sugar
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saturated juice running towards the vats. Then a faint scratching sound outside his door, the handle turning softly. When Ghislaine got in beside him she was naked. Her hair was long again and he could feel her bracelet scratching his spine. Then her mouth was hot against his, tasting of honey and coffee. Without speaking he ran his fingers over her hips, the curve of her back, the unbearably soft skin of her thighs.
Ch
é
rie!
She was whispering, her breath warming his ear.
Ch
é
rie!
André put his leg between hers, pinning her hands, and she was laughing softly. Then Raymond was there, looking on, leaning on his hoe and smiling, his eyes luminous as a wolf's. When André touched himself against her it was over. He came in slow, hot spurts. When he woke, it was to cold sheets damp from his sweat. At the window, mist was evaporating from the vines. Then, as he turned to check his clock, the crunch of Gaspard's tyres on gravel. André piled the sheets into the laundry basket and went for a shower, his head splitting.

The harvest was completed in three days of steady graft, dawn to dusk. There was a curious sense of closeness, even Gaspard taking on a fatherly presence, cajoling the younger workers, joshing with the women, getting things done. In the end, less than an eighth of the fruit was discarded after sorting. The grapes that went into the crusher were as good as any André had seen. His father had harvested two weeks ago and it had been the usual mess.
A real fuck-up, but it's done.
What do you expect?
Gaultier made a flying visit, clapping André on the shoulder, nodding approvingly at Gaspard before shooting off to another vineyard.

The yard was cleaned up, the casual workers paid off, the whole operation dropping down to tick
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over as fermentation began. From now on, control was the issue. The temperature in the vats and in the winery itself was governed by thermostats linked to a computer. André had estimated ten days for the first fermentation before running the must into barrels for the malolactic process. In the end, it ran to twelve days before all the barrels were filled. He'd worked for over two weeks without a break. Gaspard had promised to be around for a week or so and André showed him how to look after the wine and check the temperature, which was automatically adjusted. It wasn't difficult. He showed him the thermostats.

– Here, Gaspard, I'd check them twice a day. Just in case. You can also use manual control, if need be.

– No problem, boss. Now, pack your stuff and take a break.

Gaspard had insisted that he took a few days off, went home to see his family. The next day he got the bike ready, checking the gearbox and fork oil, putting a change of clothes into the panniers. Before he left, Gaspard called him into the office.

– First, take this.

He stuffed an envelope into André's leather jacket.

– What's that?

– A bonus. Cash. You've worked well beyond the call of duty.

He took André by the arm and led him to the desk.

– And I'd like you to sign this.

– Which is?

– A new contract for next year. Plus three per cent on your salary. Same commission.

– But what if the wine…?

– What if the wine's shit, eh?

Gaspard chuckled.

– Gaultier's sampled it. He told me it's very promising. You did everything right. I don't want you to slip away from us just yet.

André signed. He remembered Ghislaine's face in the woods, the scent of her skin. He remembered where he'd smelt that perfume. On the Paris subway once, standing next to a beautiful middle
-
aged Parisienne who was watching a Japanese busker play the cello. She'd smiled at him and walked away, heels clicking. Ghislaine. He shrugged away the thought of her, signed and took the money. André shook hands with Gaspard, kissed Ghislaine chastely on both cheeks. He'd trembled with cold on that first ride and she'd rubbed his arms to warm them.

– Be careful on that thing.

Gaspard was pumping his hand.

– Yes, be careful.

She said it wistfully, as Gaspard turned into the house, her voice clotted.

André started the bike as they watched from the doorway. Man and wife. He thought of the wine in the fermenting vats, its smell of fruit and carbon dioxide, its subtle chemical changes. André made the sign of a telephone with his gauntlet.

– I'll call.

– Relax. Don't worry. You've earned a rest.

Gaspard had his arm around Ghislaine's shoulder as he pulled away. She gave an apologetic little wave and he gunned the bike.

He rode for twenty minutes in a daze of tiredness, sunlight strobing through poplars. It felt good to have the bike under him, to be alive, to have the future. Sun struck against his visor burnishing its tiny scratches. The road ran down steeply to the river, coiling into a series of bends. In half an hour he'd be on the motorway. In three hours he'd be having a beer with his father and uncles, discussing the harvest, talking about football, the new wine. André changed down, feeling the heat from the cylinders against his shins. A lorry laden with grapes was coming up the hill, two young women seated up behind the cab, the breeze fluttering their tee shirts against their breasts. He changed down again, pressing the brake lever. The handbrake felt soft, then it was pulling against nothing. The bike kept going. Too fast. He tested the brake again and looked down. A spray of fluid shone across his right boot. He pressed the footbrake hard and the back wheel slewed on the slick, throwing him into the path of the lorry. A girl's hand went up to her mouth as the bike bucked and he hit the road.

André fell into the taste of berries breaking against his tongue. There was the scent of Ghislaine on his jacket, the heat of her body, her knees against his thighs, the swart stubble under her arms. Then the woods at dusk: blue shadows cooling like molten iron poured between the trees, a silence that howled and tore at them. He remembered long notes drawn from a cello, an echoing subway, footsteps, a man's black hair swooping over his face.

When he rolled into the road, gravel scarred his visor, blinding him. The bike slid away, a spray of sparks into the long screech of the lorry's brakes. He knew the meaning of
terroir
. It was the land and everything that had happened to it. Present, past and future. Everything that had and could happen. Everything that might come of the land, its fruits, the labour of human beings on it, their generations. Then there was no more to remember or to do or say. His mouth was numbed. No pain, but something beyond. The bike shimmered in petrol vapour, evaporating. There were footsteps and voices fading towards him. A blur of wild flowers on the verge. Convolvulus, pale as the smocks of choirboys. And there was life bursting in his mouth, its brief aftertaste.
Terroir
.

LEVERETS

Ellen ducked into the church porch, out of the rain. There was a dead starling on the bench, its wings folded, its plumage dulled. It looked like a knight with folded arms carved in stone, a sepulchre. She remembered starlings in autumn, how they gathered over the shorn meadows in their thousands, darkening the sky and thrumming like war.
Then landing to pick over stalks of barley so the fields looked as if soot had fallen over them from the sullen chimneys of the village.

The headstones in the churchyard glistened with rain. Her mother and brother were buried under green humps at the east wall. Paupers' graves. Her mother had died of consumption and her brother, Ben – a beautiful boy with brown curls and freckled skin – of next to nothing. A rash that had started under one ear, spread to his throat and become a fever. He'd burned under her hands as she bathed his face and as her mother coughed her own life away in front of a damp fire in the room below. The doctor had stood in the doorway shaking his head, refusing the shillings she'd raised from the miner's fund her father had paid into.
Try to keep them warm.
That was all he'd said, as if he knew it was hopeless.

That's how they were taken, their kind. Killed by next to nothing. Flux, consumption, syphilis, scarlet fever, measles, influenza, typhus, mad dogs and hunger. And tetanus. Their uncle, Tom, had scratched his wrist baling hay for Terry Hoad and it had gone bad ways. A week later he was dead. He'd gone rigid from the arms downward, staring at the bare boards of the bedroom ceiling in the infirmary where they'd taken him in case it was catching. There were so many ways to die and so little ground to house the dead. She turned the stiff bird with her finger, feeling the child in her belly, its pressure against her skirt band.

The cottage stood at an angle to the churchyard where she waited, separated by a line of flagstones and an iron fence. A few crocus shoots were pushing through. A billy goat was tethered to a stake, its rank stink mingling with sulphurous rain and the wet wool of her shawl. The goat's eyes were pale yellow, like brimming chamber pots. Its horns curled outwards, its balls dangled from matted wool. Ellen made a run to her front door, squeezing through the stone stile to shoulder the swollen timber inwards. A grey spiral of smoke twisted up from the fire. She took the loaf from under her shawl and put it on the table, throwing some sticks from a broken skip onto the coals.

The cottage was one
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up, one
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down, just like any other in the village. It was in a row of eight and backed onto a yard with a line of earth privies, a midden, and an iron pump. In fine weather you could hang your washing there. In wet weather whole families took to their beds to keep warm. If the rain persisted, which it usually did, the drains backed up and the yard flooded. In summer, heat brought the same persistent stench. She'd seen the vicar's teenage daughters cover their faces as they went by, ducking their heads in a kind of furtive distaste whilst trying not to. No doubt that was their penance for the day, how they learned humility.

Ellen went to the coalhole out back, cracked a cob of coal with the hammer and tumbled it into the bucket. The coal broke open easily, showing a glossy face with the faint imprint of a fern. Someone explained that to her once, her father probably, but she'd forgotten how the fern got there. She clumped into the house, pushed the door to and set about re
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making the fire. Beyond the window the village was crouched in mist, smoke coiling from chimneys, rooftops steaming as their heat escaped. A brewery dray came up the hill to the King's Head, its two shire horses stepping high, the driver hunched under his oilskin cape.

Ellen re
-
built the fire, pushing the sticks into the glow of the inner coals. She waited, watching the wood smoulder. She leaned in to blow, feeling her belly tighten. A few sparks crackled from the wood, then smoke, then flames licking, caressing, consuming. She let it catch then stirred the heap of flame until the coal sputtered, sending out plumes of smoke that caught fire like tiny volcanoes. They'd learned that at Sunday school, how the earth was hot at the core and how molten rock could burst out through a crack as if hell had broken free. She could read and write and do her sums. Not much more. And not that it had helped. But the Bethel lot were good for something. They stuck together and they liked to get ahead.

When her father was transported – seven years under the Night Poaching Act – the Seddons became disreputable. Though even some chapel folk were glad of the rabbits and pheasants her father brought by when the mine owners had laid them off. They made them shareowners in the mines so that each man was entitled to a part of the profits. But when the lode ran out and they were drilling bare rock, there was nothing for them.
Bloody simpletons,
her father called them.
A share of nowt is nowt.
He couldn't read and write, but he knew that much. He'd been gone four years.

She'd worked since she was twelve years old. Scullery maid, cheese presser, drudge on a local farm. The poorer your employer the harder they rode you. She was nineteen now and on the Parish. She'd given away the only thing she had that was worth anything. Call it virtue. Call it love. Some did. Michael had liked her though. She knew that. He'd have wanted the child. She knew that too, or thought she did. She wasn't stupid. Men were men in the end. They were made a certain way and it couldn't be helped.

Ellen sat in her father's chair, kicking off her clogs, watching water pool on the flagstones and darken them. In winter they gave you wicked chilblains. She placed her hands flat on her stomach, watching the fire wax into flame, feeling the child. She was four months pregnant. For the first three she'd been sick as a pup every morning, emptying her guts into the midden under the hard eyes of her neighbours. They'd know why, where, when and with whom. She was a dirty little slut to the chapel
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going Methodists and teetotallers. She didn't care. She'd been kissed and fondled by Michael Simpson out back in the pub yard with drunken miners stumbling past and pissing up the wall. And after three gins and a plate of hot peas, she loved it. Loved his beery kisses, the tickle of his beard, the warm feeling of him inside her. Fingers at first, their tips rough from work, working their way towards her. Then they found more private places to meet and he'd grown bolder. He liked her as well as wanted her, she knew that. He died under a ton of rock in Swinton Level. Never uttered a word, just sputtered blood and broken teeth and gave up the ghost. The brass band turned out for his funeral and the mine bosses paid for a barrel of beer. Another life bought cheaply.
Tha'll do me, Ellen,
was all he'd said, after that first time, kissing her nipples and closing up her blouse.
Tha'll do me.