Blackberry Wine

‘That’s me chatto, lad,’ he said. ‘In Bordo, it is, in France. Me chatto with the vineyard and me hundred-year-old orchard with peaches and almonds and apples and pears.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘When I’ve got me brass together I’ll buy it – five grand would do it – and I’ll make the best bloody wine in the south. Chatto Cox, 1975. How’s that sound?’

Jay watched him doubtfully.

‘Sun shines all year round down in Bordo,’ said Joe cheerily. ‘Oranges in January. Peaches like cricket balls. Olives. Kiwi fruit. Almonds. Melons. And space. Miles and miles of orchards and vineyards, land cheap as dirt. Soil like fruit cake. Pretty girls treadin out the grapes with their bare feet. Paradise.’

‘Five thousand pounds is a lot of money,’ said Jay doubtfully. Joe tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger.

‘I’ll get there,’ he said mysteriously. ‘You want somethin badly enough, you allus get there in the end.’

‘But you don’t even speak French.’

Joe’s only response was a stream of sudden, incomprehensible gibberish, like no language Jay had ever heard before.

‘Joe, I do French at school,’ he told him. ‘That’s not anything like-’

Joe looked at him indulgently.

‘It’s dialect, lad,’ he said. ‘Learned it off of a band of gypsies in Marseilles. Believe me, I’ll fit right in there.’ He folded the picture carefully away again and replaced it in his wallet. Jay gaped at him in awe, utterly convinced.

‘You’ll see what I mean one day, lad,’ he said. ‘Jus you wait.’

‘Can I come with you?’ Jay asked. ‘Will you take me with you?’ Joe considered it seriously, head to one side.

‘I might, lad, if you want to come. I might anall.’

‘Promise?’

‘All right.’ He grinned. ‘It’s a promise. Cox and Mackintosh, best bloody winemakers in Bordo. That do yer?’

They toasted his dreams in warm Blackberry ’73.

11

London, Spring 1999

BY THE TIME JAY ARRIVED AT SPY’S IT WAS TEN O’CLOCK AND THE party was well under way. Another of Kerry’s literary launches, he thought ruefully. Bored journalists and cheap champagne and eager young things dancing attendance on blase older things like himself. Kerry never tired of these occasions, dropping names like confetti – Germaine and Will and Ewan – flitting from one prestigious guest to the other with the zeal of a high priestess. Jay had only just realized how much he hated it.

Stopping at the house only long enough to pick up a few things, he saw the red light on the answerphone blinking furiously, but did not play the message. The bottles in his duffel bag were absolutely still. Now he was the one in ferment, jittering and rocking, exhilarated one moment, close to tears the next, rummaging through his possessions like a thief, afraid that if he stopped still for even a second he would lose his momentum and collapse listlessly back into his old life again. He turned on the radio and it was the oldies station again, playing Rod Stewart and ‘Sailing’, one of Joe’s favourites – allus reminds me of them times I were on me travels, lad - and he listened as he stuffed clothes into the bag on top of the silent bottles. Amazing how little he could not bear to leave behind. His typewriter. The unfinished manuscript of Stout Cortez. Some favourite books. The radio itself. And, of course, Joe’s Specials. Another impulse, he told himself. The wine was valueless, almost undrinkable. And yet he could not shake the feeling that there was something in those bottles he needed. Something he could not do without.

Spy’s was like so many other London clubs. The names change, the decor changes, but the places stay the same: sleek and loud and soulless. By midnight most of the guests would have abandoned any pretentions to intellectualism that they might have had, instead settling down to the serious business of getting drunk, making advances to each other, or insulting their rivals. Getting out of the taxi with his duffel bag slung across his shoulder and his single case in his hand, Jay realized that he had forgotten his invitation. After some altercation with the doorman, however, he managed to get a message to Kerry, who emerged a few minutes later wearing her Ghost dress and steeliest smile.

‘It’s all right,’ she flung at the doorman. ‘He’s just useless, that’s all.’ Her green eyes flicked at Jay, taking in the jeans, the raincoat, the duffel bag.

‘I see you didn’t wear the Armani,’ she said.

The euphoria was finally gone, leaving only a kind of dim hangover in its wake, but Jay was surprised to find his resolve unchanged. Touching the duffel bag seemed to help somehow, and he did so, as if to test its reality. Under the canvas the bottles clinked quietly together.

‘I’ve bought a house,’ said Jay, holding out the crumpled brochure. ‘Look. It’s Joe’s chateau, Kerry. I bought it this morning. I recognized it.’ Beneath that flat green stare he felt absurdly childish. Why had he expected her to understand? He barely understood his impulse himself. ‘It’s called Chateau Foudouin,’ he said. She looked at him.

‘You bought a house.’

He nodded.

‘Just like that, you bought it?’ she asked in disbelief. ‘You bought it today?’

He nodded again. There were so many things he wanted to say. It was destiny, he would have told her, it was the magic he had searched for twenty years to recapture. He wanted to explain about the brochure and the square of sunlight and how the picture had leaped out at him from the page. He wanted to explain about the sudden certainty of it, the feeling that it was the house which chose him, and not the other way around.

‘You can’t have bought a house.’ Kerry was still struggling with the idea. ‘God, Jay, you dither for hours over buying a shirt.’

‘This was different. It was like…’ He struggled to articulate what it had been like. It was an uncanny sensation, that overriding feeling of must-have. He hadn’t felt this way since his teens. The knowledge that life could not be complete without this one infinitely desirable, magical, totemic object – a pair of X-ray spectacles, a set of Hell’s Angels transfers, a cinema ticket, the latest band’s latest single – the certainty that possession of it would change everything, its presence in the pocket to be checked, tested, retested. It wasn’t an adult feeling. It was more primitive, more visceral than that. With a jolt of surprise, he realized he had not really wanted anything for twenty years.

‘It was like… being back at Pog Hill again,’ he said, knowing she wouldn’t understand. ‘It was as if the last twenty years hadn’t happened.’

Kerry looked blank.

‘I can’t believe you impulse-bought a house,’ she said. ‘A car, yes. A motorbike, OK. It’s the kind of thing you would do, come to think of it. Big toys to play with. But a house?’ She shook her head, mystified. ‘What are you going to do with it?’

‘Live in it,’ said Jay simply. ‘Work in it.’

‘But it’s in France somewhere.’ Irritation sharpened her voice. ‘Jay, I can’t afford to spend weeks in France. I’m due to start the new series next month. I’ve got too many commitments. I mean, is it even close to an airport?’ She broke off, her eyes moving again to the duffel bag, taking in, as if for the first time, the suitcase, the travelling clothes. There was a crease between her arched brows.

‘Look, Kerry-’

Kerry lifted a hand imperiously.

‘Go home,’ she said. ‘We can’t discuss this here. Go home, Jay, relax, and we’ll talk it all through when I get back. OK?’ She sounded cautious now, as if she were addressing an excitable maniac.

Jay shook his head. ‘I’m not going back,’ he said. ‘I need to get away for a while. I wanted to say goodbye.’