Blackberry Wine

A shrug. ‘Bof.’

‘Caro Clairmont seems to know a lot about her.’

Again the shrug.

‘Caro makes it her business to know everything.’

‘I’m curious.’

Flatly: ‘I’m sorry. I have to go.’

‘I’m sure you must have heard something-’

She faced him for a second, her cheeks flushing. Her arms were folded tightly against her body, the thumbs digging into her ribs in a defensive gesture.

‘Monsieur Jay. Some people like to pry into other people’s business. God knows, there was enough gossip about me once. Some people think they can judge.’ He was taken aback by her sudden fierceness. Suddenly she was someone else, her face tight and narrow. It occurred to him that she might be afraid.

LATER THAT NIGHT, BACK AT THE HOUSE, HE WENT OVER THEIR conversation. Joe was sitting in his usual spot on the bed, hands laced behind his neck. The radio was playing light music. The typewriter keys felt cold and dead under his fingertips. The bright thread of his narrative had finally run out.

‘It’s no good.’ He sighed and poured coffee into his half-empty cup. ‘I’m not getting anywhere.’

Joe watched him lazily, his cap over his eyes.

‘I can’t write this book. I’m blocked. It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t going anywhere.’

The story, so clear in his mind a few nights before, had receded into almost nothing. His head was swimming with wakefulness.

‘You should get to know her,’ advised Joe. ‘Forget listening to other people’s talk and make up your own mind. That or kick it into touch altogether.’

Jay made an impatient gesture.

‘How can I do that? She obviously doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. Or anyone else, for that matter.’

Joe shrugged.

‘Please yourself. You never did learn how to put yourself out much, did yer?’

‘That isn’t true! I tried-’

‘You could live next door to each other for ten years and neither of you’d make the first move.’

‘This is different.’

‘I reckon.’

Joe got up and wandered to the radio. He fiddled with the dial for a moment before finding a clear signal. Somehow Joe had the knack of locating the oldies station wherever he happened to be. Rod Stewart was singing ‘Tonight’s the Night’.

‘You could try, though.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to try.’

‘Happen you don’t.’

Joe’s voice was growing fainter, his outline fading, so that Jay could see the newly whitewashed wall behind him. At the same time the radio crackled harshly, the signal breaking up. A burr of white noise replaced the music.

‘Joe?’

The old man’s voice was almost too faint to hear.

‘I’ll sithee, then.’

It’s what he always used to say as a sign of disapproval, or when signalling the end of a discussion.

‘Joe?’

But Joe had already gone.

34

Pog Hill, Summer 1977

IT REALLY STARTED WITH ELVIS. MID-AUGUST, THAT WAS, AND Jay’s mother grieved with a vehemence which was almost genuine. Perhaps because they were the same age, he and she. Jay felt it, too, even though he’d never been an especial fan. That overcast sense of doom, the feeling that things were coming apart at the centre, unravelling like a ball of string. There was death in the air that August, a dark edge to the sky, an unidentifiable taste. There were more wasps that summer than he ever remembered before – long, curly, brown wasps which seemed to scent the end coming and turned spiteful early. Jay was stung twelve times – once in the mouth as he swigged a bottle of Coke, lucky not to be taken to Casualty – and together Gilly and he burned seven nests. Gilly and Jay started a crusade against the wasps that summer. On hot, moist afternoons, when the insects were sleepy and more docile, the two of them went wasping. They would find the nests, stuff the hole with shredded newspaper and firelighters and flame the whole thing. As the fire took and smoke poured into the nest the wasps would come flying out, some buzzing and burning like German aircraft in old black-and-white war movies, darkening the air and sighing, an eerie, chill sound, as they spread, bewildered and enraged, over the war zone. Gilly and Jay lay quiet in a hollow near by, far enough away from the danger spot, but as close as they dared, watching. Needless to say, this tactic was Gilly’s idea. She would squat, eyes wide and bright, as close as she could. No wasp ever stung her. She seemed as immune to them as a honey badger to bees, and as naturally lethal. Jay was secretly terrified, crouching in the hollows with his head down and pounding with black exhilaration, but the fear was addictive and they sought it time and again, clinging to each other and laughing in terror and excitement. Once, urged by Gilly, Jay put two Black Cat bangers into a nest under a dry-stone wall and lit the fuses. The nest blew apart, but smokelessly, scattering stunned and angry wasps everywhere. One managed to get into the T-shirt he was wearing and stung him again and again. It felt like being shot, and Jay screamed and rolled on the ground. But the wasp was indestructible, twitching and stinging even as he crushed it beneath his frantic body. They killed it at last by tearing off the shirt and dousing it in lighter fluid. Later Jay counted nine separate stings. Autumn loomed close, smelling of fire.

35

Lansquenet, April 1999

HE SAW HER AGAIN THE NEXT DAY. AS APRIL RIPENED TOWARDS May the vines had grown taller, and Jay occasionally saw her at work amongst the plants, dusting with fungicides, inspecting the shoots, the soil. She would not speak to him. She seemed enclosed in a capsule of isolation, profile turned towards the earth. He saw her in a succession of overalls, bulky jumpers, men’s shirts, jeans, boots, her bright hair pulled back severely under her beret. Difficult to make out her shape beneath them. Even her hands were cartoonish in overlarge gloves. Jay tried to talk to her several times with no success. Once he called at her farm, but there was no answer to his knock, though he was sure he could hear someone behind the door.

‘I’d have nothing to do with her,’ said Caro Clairmont when he mentioned the incident. ‘She never talks to anyone in the village. She knows what we all think of her.’

They were on the terrasse of the Cafe des Marauds. Caro had taken to joining him there after church while her husband collected cakes from Poitou’s. In spite of her exaggerated friendliness, there was something unpleasant about Caro which Jay could not quite analyse. Perhaps her willingness to speak ill of others. When Caro was there Josephine kept her distance and Narcisse scrutinized his seed catalogue with studied indifference. But she remained one of the few people from the village who seemed happy to answer questions. And she knew all the gossip.

‘You should talk to Mireille,’ she advised, sugaring her coffee extravagantly. ‘One of my dearest friends. Another generation, of course. The things she’s had to bear from that woman. You can’t imagine.’ She blotted her lipstick carefully on a napkin before taking the first sip. ‘I’ll have to introduce you one day,’ she said.