The Irresistible Inheritance Of Wilberforce (29 page)

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to last long if I allowed myself such fancies as that. I decided to take a few bottles of Bordeaux upstairs, select one and have a glass of wine while I waited to see whether Catherine would return.

I went upstairs into the shop and sat down at Francis’s desk, found a bottle of Lynch-Bages on the rack at the side of the shop, opened it and poured myself a large glass. As I sipped it, I realised for the first time the immensity of my inheritance. There were a hundred thousand bottles downstairs, a lifetime’s consumption, even if I never added to the collection. But what bottles I had inherited: there was nothing common, nothing ordinary about any of them. Every single one of them had been chosen with a care, a love of wine, a profound knowledge. Not one of them would be anything less than an exceptional experience. This, that I was drinking, was delicious. Its fragrance filled my brain. I poured myself a second glass.

As the wine infused my blood, as I tasted the first glass of the second bottle, I wondered what transubstantiation was taking place here. I was drinking the same wines on which Francis had lived; as I consumed them, and they became part of me, would I become more like Francis? Would I become Francis?

I laughed out loud at myself, and poured more wine into my glass. I realised I was on my way to becoming properly drunk, for perhaps the first time in my life. I had occasionally drunk more wine than I should have done, in my evenings with Francis in the latter days of his life. I had explored the edges of inebriation with him; now I was penetrating further into that territory.

I didn’t care. My whole life had changed beyond recognition in twenty-four hours. If I couldn’t have a few drinks to mark the rite of passage, when would I ever learn how life should be lived?

It was getting dark. Unsteadily I rose to my feet and switched the shop lights on. I looked at my watch and thought that it said half past seven. Where had the time gone? I remembered Francis telling me, ‘This place steals your time.’ He was right. I splashed a little more wine into a glass and then reproached myself for not pouring it properly. Catherine obviously wasn’t coming back. They had got the better of her between them.

I stood up and went and opened the door, feeling the need of some fresh air. Suddenly the whole place had begun to feel unbearably stuffy. I didn’t want to drink any more for the moment. I went outside into the courtyard. It was dusk, cool and quiet. That sweet smell from the hills was all around me: a scent of distant heather; the wine - who knows? I looked up at the sky and saw it was a moonless night. A million stars glittered in the firmament. I craned my neck, looking at all the constellations, as if I had never seen them before. I could not ever remember the night sky looking so bright, so full of hope.

Then I saw the lights of a car coming down the lane; Catherine’s car turned into the courtyard and stopped. She got out, still wearing the fur coat she had had on earlier in the day, but now she was hatless and, as she walked towards me, her fair hair shone in the light from the shop. She looked at me standing in the doorway of the shop and said, ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m drunk,’ I told her. ‘I’ve drunk at least two and a half bottles of wine. I didn’t think you were coming back.’

‘Well, I have,’ said Catherine. ‘It wasn’t easy to get away, believe you me, with Ed and my mother watching me like hawks. I’m sure they suspect something.’

‘Suspect what?’ I asked. I felt as if I wasn’t making much sense.

‘About you and me.’

‘About you and me?’ I swayed as I spoke, and caught the doorway to steady myself.

‘Come along,’ said Catherine. ‘I’ll get you inside the flat. I’ve never seen you drunk before, Wilberforce; it’s rather sweet. You don’t do this sort of thing very often, do you?’

I watched her whilst, with quick efficiency, she switched off the lights and locked up the shop. Then she took my arm and guided me across the courtyard into the flat.

‘You’re in no condition to drive tonight,’ said Catherine. ‘You might as well stay here. I’ll make up the bed in Francis’s spare bedroom.’

She steered me into an armchair and then ran quickly and lightly upstairs. I lay in the chair and started to fall asleep. Everything was being paid for at once: fifteen years of unremitting work; Francis’s death; the wine. I felt tired beyond knowing. I was just aware of Catherine taking me upstairs into Francis’s second bedroom and undressing me, and somehow managing to help me into my bed. I lay tucked up, like a child waiting to be read a story.

‘I must go,’ said Catherine. ‘My mother will be wondering where I am. I can’t tell her too many lies in one day; she’s too sharp.’

‘Don’t go,’ I said, but my eyelids were closing, even as I spoke.

‘I must,’ said Catherine, ‘but I will be with you in the morning, as soon as I can.’

Then she was gone and I fell into a deep sleep.

I awoke to the sound of birdsong and to sunlight coming in through the undrawn curtains. For a while I had not the least idea where I was. Then fragments of memory came back to me: the funeral, the drinks party, Catherine leading me upstairs. She must have had to put me to bed, I realised. She must have undressed me.

I went downstairs and found that the hot water worked in the shower room, and then found Francis’s razor and shaved. When I had finished, I wandered into the kitchen with a towel around my waist to look for the kettle and the coffee jar. Catherine was standing in the kitchen. She was wearing a pullover and jeans, with a handbag slung over her shoulder.

‘My mother thinks I’m at Fenwick’s,’ she said, ‘organising my wedding list.’

I pulled the towel around myself tightly, feeling embarrassed.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she laughed. ‘I had to take all your clothes off last night and put you to bed. It’s too late to blush now.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you, Wilberforce?’ she asked, coming up to me.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Then do it now.’

2002

One

The first time I entered Francis’s shop I did not see the undercroft.

Inspired by some unaccustomed lightness of heart, some unaccountable impulse to see what was beyond the valley where I had worked for so many years, I had driven past the shopping mall and up the hillside and discovered Caerlyon. Maybe it was something in the evening light: a hint, in the colours of a spring sky at evening, of undiscovered country. I drove up the hillside and came at last to the house and saw the sign, placed on the edge of a quiet little country lane, that invited passers-by who were interested in fine Bordeaux wines to drop in to the shop in the courtyard. Whoever had caused the sign to be written and placed there had suffered from an excess of optimism; or pessimism; or both.

I crossed a cobbled courtyard in which three cars were parked, opened the door of the shop and went inside. In front of me was a large desk, and behind it a man with his feet propped up on the desk top was reclining in a swivel chair. On my side of the desk two other, younger men sat with their backs to me. All three were swirling a pale-coloured liquid around in their glasses and going through the motions of sniffing the contents of the glass. Beyond the desk a wide and ancient stone staircase led downwards to some interior darkness. The rest of the room was filled with wooden cases of wine, with bottles stacked singly or in pairs upon them. The walls were lined with racks on which more bottles gleamed. A half-empty bottle of white wine sat on the floor.

As I entered, a bell rang above the door, the man with his feet up looked up, and the other two turned to see who had come into the shop. A small brown spaniel pattered around the desk from where it had been sitting in a basket and inspected my trouser leg. One of the two men on my side of the desk, who had gingery receding hair and red cheeks and blue eyes said, ‘Good heavens! A customer! Things are looking up, Francis.’

I felt I had intruded into a private party.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I just wanted to have a look, but I think I’m interrupting you.’

The man behind the desk swung his feet from the desk top to the floor and stood up. He was very tall and thin, and I guessed he was the far side of sixty. He was wearing a baggy grey cardigan, out at the elbows, and very old fawn corduroys. His face was sad and handsome, with bags under his brown eyes and arched eyebrows. His black hair, streaked with silver, was brushed straight back from his forehead. Despite the scruffiness of his clothes he wore them with an air of ineffable elegance.

‘Come in, come in,’ he said, and to the spaniel, ‘Campbell, go and sit down. We are certainly open, and you are very welcome. Eck, find the gentleman a chair.’

The ginger-haired man went and started to drag a chair towards the desk. The third man, still seated, now rose and introduced himself. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘I’m Ed Simmonds.’

Ed Simmonds was also tall and thin, but much younger than the man behind the desk. He had a mass of curly blond hair spiking in every direction and a friendly, open face.

‘I’m Wilberforce,’ I said.

We shook hands. Ed turned and indicated the older man with a wave of his hand. ‘That is Francis Black, the proprietor of this shop, and the man struggling with that chair is Hector Chetwode-Talbot. We call him Eck.’

‘Very pleased to meet you,’ I said, ‘but I feel as if I’m intruding.’

‘Then the fault is ours,’ said Francis Black. He produced a tall-stemmed wine glass from somewhere, like a magician bringing a rabbit out of a hat, and reached down to pick up the bottle of wine on the floor. He poured a measure into the glass and then handed it to me.

‘We are trying out some Condrieu I have just got in,’ he said. ‘Sit down and taste it. No obligation to buy anything.’

‘No one ever buys anything from Francis,’ the man called Eck said to me. ‘If you hang around here long enough he gives you a glass of something anyway. Francis is the last of the world’s great wine bores, aren’t you, Francis?’

‘I have an interest in the subject,’ said the older man modestly. ‘But you haven’t tasted the wine, Mr . . .’ He paused, evidently having forgotten my name.

‘Wilberforce,’ I said. ‘Please just call me Wilberforce. That’s what everybody else does.’

‘No relation to the great liberator of slaves, I suppose?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

I realised that I was expected to taste the wine, so I took a sip. I managed to stop myself from making a grimace. I very rarely drank wine and did not really enjoy it. The wine tasted tart at first, then a little sweeter. I took a second sip.

‘Very nice,’ I said.

‘I don’t think you drink wine very often,’ said Francis Black.

‘Is it that obvious?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I can always tell. Nothing gives me more pleasure than introducing newcomers to the art of tasting wine.’

‘Watch out,’ said Ed Simmonds. ‘He’ll sell you a case before you know about it.’

‘I should never take advantage of anyone like that,’ said Francis Black seriously. Then he asked, ‘How did you happen to come across the shop tonight? Had you heard about us from somebody?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ I said. ‘The truth is, I work down in the valley. I was on my way home but it was such a lovely evening I decided to go for a drive. I’d never come up the hill before, you see. And then I saw the sign to your shop and I thought I would just come and have a look.’

I tasted the wine again. A fragrance like honey filled my mouth, and infused itself into me.

Francis watched me and said, ‘You’re beginning to find the taste of the wine, aren’t you? How long have you worked in the valley?’

‘About twelve years,’ I said.

‘And this is the first time you’ve been up here? You must keep your head down,’ said Eck. ‘What do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I work in computer software,’ I said.

‘Really,’ said Ed Simmonds. ‘You must be enormously brainy. I am absolutely baffled by computers. I’ve just had to buy one for my office at home and I simply can’t get it to work at all. I don’t even know how to work the email. I can hardly turn the computer on. Waiting for it to start up is as exciting as watching paint dry.’

‘It’s probably not set up quite right,’ I said. ‘It’s a common enough problem.’

‘I’m sure,’ agreed Ed Simmonds, ‘and it’s got me beat.’

‘Well, if you like,’ I said, ‘I’ll come across and see if I can fix it up for you.’

Ed said, ‘Would you really? That’s nice of you. I tell you what: come over on Saturday if you’re free and have a look at it, and then I’ll give you a spot of lunch. Could you bear to do that?’

‘I’d be very happy to try and help,’ I said, ‘and Saturday would be fine.’

‘Well, this is my lucky day,’ said Ed.

‘But where do you live?’ I asked Ed.

Eck laughed and said, ‘Ed always imagines everyone knows where he lives.’

Ed Simmonds blushed and said, ‘Do you know where Hartlepool Hall is?’

Of course I did: Hartlepool Hall was an enormous stately home a few miles away, which was open to the public. I had never been there, but I knew exactly where it was. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where at Hartlepool Hall should I come to?’ I imagined he must have a cottage on the estate or work in one of the estate offices there: I knew it was a huge set-up.

‘Just come to the front door and ask for me,’ said Ed. He stood up and said, ‘Thanks for the wine, Francis. I’ll pick up a couple of cases later on in the week, if you can get them up from the cellar. I think my pa would like it. No, no, don’t bother now: I’m going out to dinner and I must get moving - I’m late as it is.’

He turned to me and said, ‘See you on Saturday morning about twelve, Wilberforce. And don’t forget, you’re expected to stay for lunch.’ Then he was gone.

I said, ‘Does he really live at Hartlepool Hall?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Eck. ‘His father is the Marquess of Hartlepool, and Ed will be Ed Hartlepool one day. Sooner rather than later, from the look of his father.’