Blackberry Wine

Jay suddenly wondered how much of that, too, was a fake. ‘I telled yer first off, didn’t I? Astral travel, lad. I travel in me sleep. Got it down to an art, anall. I can do anywhere. Egypt, Bangkok, the South Pole, dancin girls in Hawaii, northern lights. I’ve done em all. That’s why I do so much bloody sleepin.’ He laughed, and flicked the stub of his cigarette onto the concrete floor.

‘If that’s true, where are you now?’ Jay’s tone was suspicious, as it always was when he thought Joe was mocking him. ‘I mean, where are you, really? The seed packet was marked Kirby Monckton. Are you…’

‘Aye, well.’ Joe lit another cigarette. Its scent was eerily strong in the small room. ‘That dun’t matter. Thing is, I’m here now.’

He would say no more. Beneath them, in the cellar, the remaining Specials rubbed together in longing and anticipation. They made barely any sound, but I could feel their activity, a fast and yeasty ferment, like trouble brewing. Soon, they seemed to whisper from their glassy cradles in the dark. Soon. Soon. Soon. They were never silent now. Beside me in the cellar they seemed more alive, more alert than ever before, their voices swelling to a cacophony of squeaks, grunts, laughter and shrieking which rocked the house to its foundations. Blackberry blue, damson black. Only these remained, but still the voices had grown louder. As if the spirit released from the other bottles were still active, lashing the remaining three to greater frenzies. The air sparkled with their energy. They had even penetrated the soil. Joe, too, was here all the time, rarely leaving, even when other people were present. Jay had to remind himself that others could not see Joe, though their reactions showed that they usually felt something in his presence. With Popotte it was a smell of cooking fruit. With Narcisse, a sound like a car backfiring. With Josephine, something like a storm coming, which raised the hairs on her arms and made her prickle like a nervous cat. Jay had a great many visitors. Narcisse, delivering garden supplies, had become quite friendly. He looked at the newly restored vegetable garden with gruff approval.

‘Not bad,’ he said, thumbing a shoot of basil to release the scent. ‘For an Englishman. You might make a farmer yet.’

Now that Joe’s special seeds had been planted, Jay began work on the orchard. He needed ladders to climb high enough to strip the invasive mistletoe and nets to protect the young fruit from birds. There were maybe a hundred trees there, neglected in recent years but still good: pears, apples, peaches, cherries. Narcisse shrugged dismissively.

‘There’s not much of a living in fruit,’ he said dourly. ‘Everyone grows it, but there’s too much and you end up feeding it to the pigs. But if you like preserves…’ He shook his head at the eccentricity. ‘There’s no harm in it, I suppose, heh?’

‘I might try and make some wine,’ admitted Jay, smiling.

Narcisse looked puzzled. ‘Wine from fruit?’

Jay pointed out that grapes were also a fruit, but Narcisse shook his head, bewildered.

‘Bof, if you like. C’est bien anglais, ca.’

Humbly Jay admitted that it was indeed very English. Perhaps Narcisse would like to try some? He gave a sudden, malicious grin. The remaining Specials rubbed against each other in anticipation. The air was filled with their carnival glee.

Blackberry 1976. A good summer for blackberries, ripe and purple and swimming in crimson juice. The scent was penetrating. Jay wondered how Narcisse would respond to the taste.

The old man took a mouthful and rolled it on his tongue. For a moment he thought he heard music, a brash burst of pipes and drums from across the water. River gypsies, he thought vaguely, though it was a little early in the year for gypsies, who came mostly for the seasonal work in the autumn. With it came the smell of smoke, fried potatoes and boudin the way Marthe used to make it, though Marthe had been dead for ten years, and it must be thirty or more since she came with the gypsies that summer.

‘Not bad.’ His voice was a little hoarse as he put the empty glass back onto the table. ‘Tastes of…’ He could hardly recall what it did taste of, but that scent remained with him, the scent of Marthe’s cooking and the way the smoke used to cling to her hair and make the apples of her cheeks stand out red. Combing it out at night, loosening the brown curls from the tight bun in which she kept them, all the day’s cooking smells would be trapped in the tendrils at the nape of her neck – olive bread and boudin and baking and woodsmoke. Freeing the smoke with his fingertips, her hair tumbling free into his hands.

‘Tastes a little of smoke.’

Smoke. It must be the smoke which made his eyes water as they did, thought Narcisse dimly to himself. That or the alcohol. Whatever the Englishman put in his wine, it’s…

‘Strong.’

50

AS JULY VEERED INTO SIGHT THE WEATHER GREW HOTTER, THEN scorching. Jay found himself feeling grateful that he had only a few rows of vegetables and fruit to care for, for in spite of the closeness of the river the earth had become dry and cracked, its usual russet colour paling into pink and then almost white under the sun’s attack. Now he had to water everything for two hours every day, choosing the cool evenings and early mornings so the soil’s moisture would not be lost. He used equipment he found in Foudouin’s abandoned shed: large metal watering cans to carry the water and, to bring it up from the river, a handpump which he installed close to the dragon head at the boundary between his land and Marise’s vineyard.

‘She’ll be doing well enough from this weather,’ confided Narcisse over coffee in Les Marauds. ‘That land of hers never dries out, even in high summer. Oh, there was some kind of drainage put in years ago, when I was a boy, pipes and tiling, I think, but that was before old Foudouin even thought of buying it. Now it’s fallen into disrepair, though. I doubt she’s ever thought of restoring the drainage.’ There was no rancour in his voice. ‘If she can’t do it herself,’ he said bluntly, ‘then she won’t have it done at all. It’s the way she is, heh!’

Narcisse was suffering from July’s intense heat. His nursery garden was at its most delicate, with gladioli and peonies and camellia just ready to be sold to the shops, with baby vegetables at their most tender and fruit just forming on the branches of his trees. The sudden clap of heat would wither the flowers – each one needed a whole canful of water every day – burn the fruit from the branches, scorch the leaves.

‘Bof.’ He shrugged, philosophical. ‘It’s been looking that way all year. No rain to speak of since February. Maybe enough to wet the soil, heh, but not enough to go deep, where it matters. Business will be bad again.’ He gestured towards the basket of vegetables beside him – a gift for Jay’s table – and shook his head. ‘Look at that,’ he said. The tomatoes looked as large as cricket balls. ‘I feel ashamed to sell them. I’m giving them away.’ He drank his coffee mournfully. ‘I might as well give it up now,’ he said.

Of course, he meant no such thing. Narcisse, once so monosyllabic, had become quite garrulous in recent weeks. There was a kindly heart beneath his dour exterior, and a gruff warmth which made him liked by people who took the time to get to know him. He was the only person from the village with whom Marise did business, perhaps because they used the same workers. Once every three months he delivered supplies – fertilizer, insecticide powder for the vines, seeds for planting – to the farm.

‘She keeps herself to herself,’ was his only comment. ‘More women should do the same.’ Last year she installed a sprinkler at the far edge of her second field, using water from the nearby river. Narcisse helped her carry it and put it together, though she installed the thing herself, digging trenches across the field to the water, then burying the pipes deep. She grew maize there, and sunflowers every third year. These crops do not withstand dryness as vines do.

Narcisse offered to help her with the installation, but she refused.

‘If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing yourself,’ she commented. The sprinkler was working all night by then – it was useless in the daytime, the water evaporating in midair before it even touched the crop. Jay could hear it from his open window, a dim whickering in the still air. In the moonlight the white spume from the pipes looked ghostly, magical. Her main crop was the grapes, Narcisse said. She grew the maize and sunflowers for cattle feed, the vegetables and fruit for her personal use and Rosa’s. There were a few goats, for cheese and milk, and these roamed free around the farm, like pets. The vineyard was small, yielding only 8,000 bottles a year. It sounded a lot to Jay, and he said so. Narcisse smiled.

‘Not enough,’ he said shortly. ‘Of course, it’s good wine. Old Foudouin knew what he was doing when he put in