Blackberry Wine (7 page)

‘Cause you don’t get to see much of the world from underground, lad, and I allus wanted to see what else there was. Have you done much travellin?’

Jay told him he had been to Florida twice with his parents, to the south of France, to Tenerife and the Algarve for holidays. Joe dismissed these with a sniff.

‘I mean proper
travellin
, lad. Not all that tourist-brochure rubbish, but the real thing. The Pont-Neuf in the early morning, when there’s no-one up but the tramps coming out from under the bridges and out of the Metro, and the sun shinin on the water. New York. Central Park in spring. Rome. Ascension Island. Crossin the Italian alps by donkey. The vegetable caique from Crete. Himalayas on foot. Eatin rice off leaves in the Temple of Ganesh. Caught in a squall off the coast of New Guinea. Spring in Moscow and a whole winter of dogshit comin out under the meltin snow.’ His eyes were gleaming. ‘I’ve seen all of those things, lad,’ he said softly. ‘And more besides. I promised mesself I’d see
everything.’

Jay believed him. He had his maps on the walls, carefully annotated in his crabby handwriting and marked with coloured pins to show the places he had been. He told stories of brothels in Tokyo and shrines in Thailand, birds of paradise and banyan trees and standing stones at the end of the world. In the big converted spice cupboard next
to his bed there were millions of seeds, painstakingly wrapped in squares of newspaper and labelled in his small careful script: tuberosa rubra
maritima, tuberosa
panax
odarata
, thousands and thousands of potatoes in their small compartments and, with them, carrots, squash, tomatoes, artichokes, leeks – over 300 species of onion alone – sages, thymes, sweet bergamots and a bewildering treasure store of medicinal herbs and vegetables collected on his travels, every one named and packaged and ready for planting. Some of these plants were already extinct in the wild, Joe said, their properties forgotten by everyone but a handful of experts. Of the millions of varieties of fruit and vegetables once grown, only a few dozen were still commonly used.

‘It’s your intensive farming does it,’ he would say, leaning on his spade for long enough to take a mouthful of tea from his mug. ‘Too much specialization kills off variety. Sides, people don’t want variety. They want everythin to look the same. Round red tomatoes, and never mind there’s a long yeller un that’d taste a mile better if they gave it a try. Red uns look better on shelves.’ He waved an arm vaguely over the allotment, indicating the neat rows of vegetables rising up the railway embankment, the home-made cold frames in the derelict signal box, the fruit trees pegged out against the wall. ‘There’s things growin here that you wouldn’t find anywhere else in the whole of England,’ he said in a low voice, ‘and there’s seeds in that chest of mine that you might not find anywhere else in the whole world.’ Jay listened to him in awe. He’d never been interested in plants before. He could hardly tell the difference between a Granny Smith and a Red Delicious. He knew potatoes, of course, but Joe’s talk of blue jackapples and pink fir apples was beyond any experience of his. The thought that there were secrets, that arcane, forgotten things might be growing right there on the railway embankment with only an old man as their custodian fired Jay with an enthusiasm he had never imagined. Part of it was Joe, of course. His stories. His memories. The
energy of the man himself. He began to see in Joe something he had never seen in anyone else. A vocation. A sense of purpose.

‘Why did you come back, Joe?’ he asked him one day. ‘After all that travelling, why come back here?’

Joe peered out gravely from under the bill of his miner’s cap.

‘It’s part of me plan, lad,’ he said. ‘I’ll not be here for ever. Some day I’ll be off again. Some day soon.’

‘Where?’

‘I’ll show you.’

He reached into his workshirt and pulled out a battered leather wallet. Opening it, he unfolded a photograph clipped from a colour magazine, taking great care not to tear the whitened creases. It was a picture of a house.

‘What’s that?’ Jay squinted at the picture. It looked ordinary enough, a big house built of faded pinkish stone, a long strip of land in front, with some kind of vegetation growing in ordered rows. Joe smoothed out the paper.

‘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.

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 blasé 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 décor 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 château, 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 Château 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.’

Even now Kerry showed no surprise. Irritation, yes. Almost anger. But she remained untroubled, secure in her convictions.

‘You’re pissed again, Jay,’ she said. ‘You haven’t thought any of this through. You come to me with this crazy idea about a second home, and when I’m not
instantly
taken by it—’

‘It isn’t going to be a second home.’

The tone of his voice surprised both of them. For a moment he sounded almost harsh.

‘And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?’ Her voice was low and dangerous.

‘It means you’re not listening to me. I don’t think you’ve ever actually
listened
to me.’ He paused. ‘You’re always telling me to grow up, to think for myself, to let go. But you’re happy to keep me a permanent lodger in your house, to keep me dependent on you for everything. I don’t have anything of my own. Contacts, friends – they’re all yours, not mine. You even choose my clothes. I’ve got money, Kerry, I’ve got my books, I’m not exactly starving in a garret any more.’

Kerry sounded amused, almost indulgent.

‘So
this
is what it’s all about? A little declaration of independence?’ She fluttered a kiss against his cheek. ‘O?. I understand you don’t want to go to the party, and I’m
sorry I didn’t realize that this morning, OK?’ She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled. The patented Kerry O’Neill smile.

‘Please. Listen. Just this once.’

Was this what Joe had felt, he wondered. So much easier to leave without a word, to escape the recriminations, the tears, the disbelief. To escape the guilt. But somehow he just couldn’t do that to Kerry. She didn’t love him any more, he knew that. If she ever had. All the same, he couldn’t do it. Perhaps because he knew how it felt.

‘Try to understand. This place –’ His gesture included the club, the neon-lit street, the low sky, the whole of London, heaving, dark and menacing below it. ‘I don’t belong here any more. I can’t think straight when I’m here. I spend all my time waiting for something to happen, some kind of sign—’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, grow up!’ She was suddenly furious, her voice rising like an angry bird’s. ‘Is this your excuse? Some kind of idiotic angst? If you spent less time mooning on about that old bastard Joe Cox and looked
around
you for a change, if only you took
charge
instead of talking about signs and omens—’