Blackberry Wine

29

Lansquenet, March 1999

THE NEXT THING JAY DID IN LANSQUENET WAS TO FIND A builder’s yard. The house needed extensive repairs, and although he could probably manage some of the work himself, most of it would have to be done by professionals. Jay was lucky to find them to hand. He imagined it would cost a great deal more to have them come over from Agen. The yard was large and sprawling. Wood had been stacked in towers at the back. Window frames and doors propped up the walls. The main warehouse was a converted farm, low-roofed, with a sign above the door which read, CLAIRMONT – MEUNUISERIE-PANNEAUX-CONSTRUCTION.

Unfinished furniture, fencing, concrete blocks, tiles and slates were piled messily by the door. The builder’s name was Georges Clairmont. He was a short, squat man, with a mournful moustache and a white shirt, greyed with perspiration. He spoke with the thick accent of the region, but slowly, reflectively, and this gave Jay time to understand his words. Somehow everyone here knew about him already. He supposed Josephine had spread word. Clairmont’s labourers – four men in paint-spattered overalls and caps turned down against the sun – watched with wary curiosity as Jay passed. He caught the word Anglishe in a rapid mutter of patois. Work – money – was limited in the village. Everyone wanted a share in Chateau Foudouin’s renovation. Clairmont flapped his hand in annoyance as four pairs of eyes followed them into the woodyard.

‘Back to work, heh, back to work!’

Jay caught the eye of one of the labourers – a man with red hair tied back with a bandanna – and grinned. The redhead grinned back, one hand across his face to hide his expression from Clairmont. Jay followed the manager into the building.

The room was large and cool, like a hangar. A small table near the door served as a desk, with papers, files and a telephone-fax machine. Next to the telephone was a bottle of wine and two small glasses. Clairmont poured out two shots and handed one to Jay.

‘Thanks.’

The wine was red-black and rich. It was good, and he said so.

‘It should be,’ said Clairmont. ‘It was made on your land. The old proprietor, Foudouin, was well known here once. A good winemaker. Good grapes. Good land.’ He sipped his wine appreciatively.

‘I suppose you’ll have to send someone out to see the house,’ Jay told him.

Clairmont shrugged. ‘I know the house. Went to see it again last month. Even drew up some estimates.’

He saw Jay’s surprise and grinned.

‘She’s been working on it since December,’ he said. ‘Painting this, plastering that. She was so sure of her agreement with the old man.’

‘Marise d’Api?’

‘Who else, heh? But he’d already made a deal with his nephew. A steady income – a hundred thousand francs a year until his death – in exchange for the house and the farm. He was too old to work. Too stubborn to leave the place. No-one else wanted it but her. There’s no money in farming nowadays, and as for the house itself, heh!’ Clairmont shrugged expressively. ‘But with her it’s different. She’s stubborn. Been eyeing the land for years. Waiting. Fencing it off bit by bit. Serve her right, heh!’ Clairmont gave his short, percussive laugh. ‘She’d never give me any work, she said. Rather get a builder in from town than owe money to someone from the village. Do it herself, more likely.’ He rubbed his fingers together in a speaking gesture. ‘Close with her savings,’ he explained shortly, finishing the rest of his wine. ‘Close with everything.’

‘I expect I’ll have to offer her some kind of compensation,’ said Jay.

‘Why?’ Clairmont looked amused.

‘Well, if she’s spent money-’

Clairmont gave a raucous laugh.

‘Money! More likely to have been robbing the place. Look at your fences, your hedges. Look how they’ve been moved. A dozen metres here, half a dozen there. Nibbling at the land like a greedy rat. She was at it for years when she thought the old man wasn’t watching. Then, when he died…’ Clairmont shrugged expressively. ‘Heh! She’s poison, Monsieur Mackintosh, a viper. I knew her poor husband and, though he never complained, I couldn’t help hearing things.’

That shrug again, philosophical and businesslike.

‘Give her nothing, Monsieur Mackintosh. Come to my house this evening and meet my wife. Have dinner. We can discuss your plans for the Foudouin place. It will make a wonderful holiday home, monsieur. With investment anything is possible. The garden can be replanted and landscaped. The orchard restored. A swimming pool, maybe. Paving, like the villas in Juan les Pins. Fountains.’ His eyes gleamed at the thought.

Cautiously Jay replied, ‘Well, I hadn’t really thought beyond immediate repairs.’

‘No no, but there will be time, heh?’ He slapped Jay’s arm companionably.

‘My house is off the main square. Rue des Francs Bourgeois. Number four. My wife is longing to meet our new celebrity. It would make her very happy to meet you.’ His grin, part humble, part acquisitive, was oddly infectious.

‘Take dinner with us. Try my wife’s gesiers farcis. Caro knows everything there is to know in the village. Get to know Lansquenet.’

JAY EXPECTED A SIMPLE MEAL. POT LUCK WITH THE BUILDER AND HIS wife, who would be small and drab, in an apron and headscarf, or sweet-faced and rosy, like Josephine at the cafe, with bright bird’s eyes. They would perhaps be shy at first, speaking little, the wife pouring soup into earthenware bowls, blushing with pleasure at his compliments. There would be home-made terrines and red wine and olives and pimentoes in their spiced oils. Later they would tell their neighbours that the new Englishman was un mec sympathique, pas du tout pretentieux, and he would be quickly accepted as a member of the community.

The reality was quite different.

The door was opened by a plump, elegant lady, twinsetted and stillettoed in powder-blue, who exclaimed as she saw him. Her husband, looking more mournful than ever in a dark suit and tie, waved to him over his wife’s shoulder. From inside Jay could hear music and voices, and glimpse an interior of such relentless chintziness that he blinked. In his black jeans and T-shirt, under a simple black jacket, he felt uncomfortably underdressed.

There were three other guests as well as Jay. Caroline Clairmont introduced them as she distributed drinks – ‘our friends Toinette and Lucien Merle, and Jessica Mornay, who owns a fashion shop in Agen,’ – simultaneously pressing one cheek against Jay’s and a champagne cocktail into his free hand.

‘We’ve been so looking forward to meeting you, Monsieur Mackintosh, or may I call you Jay?’

He began to nod, but was swept away into an armchair.

‘And, of course, you must call me Caro. It’s so wonderful to have someone new in the village – someone with culture – I do think culture is so important, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ breathed Jessica Mornay, clutching at his arm with red nails too long to be anything but false. ‘I mean, Lansquenet is wonderfully unspoilt, but sometimes an educated person simply longs for something more. You must tell us about yourself. You’re a writer, Georges tells us?’

Jay disengaged his arm and resigned himself to the inevitable. He answered innumerable questions. Was he married? No? But there was someone, surely? Jessica flashed her teeth and drew closer. To distract her he feigned interest in banalities. The Merles, small and dapper in matching cashmere, were from the north. He was a wine- buyer, working for a firm of German importers. Toinette was in some kind of local journalism. Jessica was a pillar of the village drama group – ‘her Antigone was exquisite’ – and did Jay write for the theatre?

He outlined Jackapple Joe, which everyone had heard of but no-one had read, and provoked excited squeals from Caro when he revealed that he had begun a new book. Caro’s cooking, like her house, was ornate; he did justice to the souffle au champagne and the vol- au-vents, the gesiers farcis and the boeuf en croute - secretly regretting the home-made terrine and olives of his fantasy. He gently discouraged the ever