Blackberry Wine

him, feeling her hair against his face, her lips against his, her eager softness in his arms and her breath against his cheek. Her kiss tasted exactly how he’d imagined it: raspberries and smoky roses. They made love there, on Jay’s unmade bed, with the goat looking curiously through the half-closed shutters, and the sweet golden light kaleidoscoping across the dim blue walls.

For a while that seemed enough.

62

SOON. SOON. THEY WERE IN EVERYTHING NOW, THE SPECIALS – IN the air, the ground, the lovers; he lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling; she asleep, her face turned into the pillow like a child’s, her bright hair a pennant against the linen. More potent than ever now, I could feel them, hear their eager voices urging, coaxing. Soon, they whispered, It has to be soon. It has to be now.

Jay looked at Marise asleep beside him. She looked trusting, secure. She murmured something quiet and wordless in her sleep. She smiled. Jay pulled the blanket closer around her and she buried her face in it with a long sigh.

Jay watched her and thought about the morning. There must be something he could do. He could not let her lose the farm. He could not abandon Lansquenet to developers. The film crew was arriving tomorrow. That gave him what? Six hours? Seven?

To do what? What could he do in seven hours? Or seventy, for that matter? What could anyone do?

Joe could do something.

The voice was almost familiar. Cynical, hearty, a little amused.

You know he could.

Sure. He almost spoke aloud. But Joe was dead. Grief surprised him again, as it always did when he thought of Joe. Joe was dead. No more magic. Like the Specials, it had finally run out for good.

Tha never did have much sense, lad.

This time it really was Joe’s voice. For a second his heart leaped, but he realized that Joe’s voice was in his mind, in his memory. Joe’s presence – his real, independent presence – was gone. This was just a substitute. A game. A conceit, like whistling in the dark.

Remember the Specials, I telled you. Don’t you remember?

‘Of course I do,’ whispered Jay helplessly. ‘But there are no Specials any more. They’re all gone. I finished them. I wasted them on trivial stuff, like getting people to tell me things. Like getting Marise-’

Why don’t you bloody listen? Joe’s voice, if it was Joe’s voice, was everywhere now – in the air, in the light from the dying embers, in the glow of her hair spread out across the pillow. Where were you when I was teaching you all those times at Pog Hill? Didn’t you learn anything?

‘Sure.’ Jay shook his head, puzzled. ‘But without Joe none of that stuff works any more. Like that last time at Pog Hill-’

From the walls, laughter. The air was rich with it. A phantom scent of apples and smoke seemed to rise from the coals. The night sparkled.

Put your hand often enough in a wasps’ nest, said Joe’s voice, and you’re going to get stung. Even magic won’t stop that. Even magic doesn’t go against nature. You’ve got to give magic a hand sometimes, lad. Give it summat to use. A chance to work for itself. You’ve got to create the right conditions for magic to work.

‘But I had the talisman. I believed-’

Never needed any talisman, replied the voice. You could have helped yourself. You could have fought back, couldn’t you? But no. All you did was run away. Call that faith? Sounds like plain daft to me. So don’t come that faith bullshit with me.

Jay thought about that for a moment.

You’ve already got all you need, continued the voice cheerily. It’s inside you, lad. Allus has been. You don’t need some old bloke’s home-brew to do that work for you. You can do it all on your own.

‘But I can’t-’

No such bloody word, lad, said the voice. No such bloody word.

Then the voices were gone, and suddenly his head was ringing, not with dizziness but with sudden clarity. He knew what he had to do.

Six hours, he told himself. He had no time to lose.

NO-ONE SAW HIM LEAVE THE HOUSE. NO-ONE WAS WATCHING. Even if they were no-one would question his presence, or find it odd. Nor was the deep basket of herbs which he carried in any way unusual. The broad-leaved plants which filled it might be a present for someone, a gift for a flagging garden. Even the fact that he was muttering something under his breath, something which sounded a little like Latin, would not surprise them. He was, after all, English, therefore a little crazy. Un peu fada, Monsieur Jay.

He found he remembered Joe’s perimeter ritual very well indeed. There was no time to make incense, nor to prepare any new sachets, but he did not think that mattered now. Even he could sense the Specials around him, hear their whispering voices, their fairground laughter. He took the seedlings carefully from the cold frame, as many as he could carry, along with a trowel and a tiny fork. He planted them at intervals on the roadside. He planted several at the intersection with the Toulouse road, two more at the stop sign, two more on the road to Les Marauds. Fog, Lansquenet’s special fog, which rolls off the marshes and into the vineyards, rose about him like a bright sail in the early sun. Jay Mackintosh hurried on his circuit, half running in his haste to make the deadline, planting Joe’s tuberosa rosifea wherever there was a branch in the road, a gateway, a sign. He turned round roadsigns or covered them with greenery when he could not dig them out of the soil. He removed Georges’ and Lucien’s welcome placard altogether. By the time he had finished there was not a single signpost for Lansquenet-sous-Tannes remaining. It took him almost four hours to complete the fourteen-mile circuit, looping around the village towards the Toulouse road, then back across Les Marauds. By the end he was exhausted. His head ached, his legs felt shaky as stilts. But he had finished. It was done.

As Joe hid Pog Hill Lane, he thought in triumph, he had hidden the village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes.

Marise and Rosa had gone by the time he got back. The sky began to lighten. The mist cleared.

63

IT WAS ELEVEN O’CLOCK BEFORE KERRY ARRIVED. CRISP AND COOL in a white blouse and grey skirt, her document case in one hand. Jay was waiting for her.

‘Good morning, Jay.’

‘You’re back.’

She looked over his shoulder into the room, noting the empty glasses and the wine bottles.

‘We should have started earlier,’ she said, ‘but would you believe it? We got lost in the fog. Great blankets of white fog, just like the dry ice at a heavy-metal concert.’ She laughed. ‘Can you imagine? Half a day wasted already. And on our budget. I’m still waiting for the camera crew. Seems they took some kind of a wrong turning and ended up halfway back to Agen. These roads. It’s a good thing I already knew the way.’

Jay looked at her. It hadn’t worked, he thought bleakly. In spite of everything, in spite of his faith.

‘So you’re still going ahead with it?’

‘Well, of course I’m going ahead,’ replied Kerry impatiently. ‘It’s too good an opportunity to miss.’ She examined her nails. ‘You’re a celebrity. When the book comes out I can show the world where you got your inspiration.’ She smiled brightly. ‘It’s such a wonderful book,’ she added. ‘It’s going to be a terrific success. If anything, it’s even