‘As a matter of fact, Colin,’ I told him, ‘there is. I’m about to start drinking again. I’ve been trying not to all day. It’s not that I’m a serious drinker. I just love wine. But I’m worried that if I start again now, I will forget to stop.’
‘Are you drinking at the moment?’ asked Colin.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Then don’t start,’ he told me. ‘I’ve two more appointments but I can be free in an hour. I imagine you’re at the flat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stay there. Don’t have a drink. Don’t go out. I’ll be with you as soon as possible.’
‘Thank you, Colin,’ I said, with a sense of relief. ‘You’re a real friend. I’ll wait for you; take as much time as you like - I’m not going to go anywhere.’
‘And don’t have a drink,’ he repeated.
‘No, I won’t,’ I promised. We hung up.
Colin had not been a close friend at university, but now I was in trouble, he was there for me. Why weren’t there more people like that in the world? Where was Eck? Where was Ed Hartlepool? Where were any of them - when I really needed someone? It was funny how people turned out.
The other thing was, Colin was an extremely good doctor. If there was anything wrong with me, he would sort it out. I had nothing to worry about. If I had been drinking a little more than I should have been - and now I admitted to myself that there were times when my enthusiasm for good Bordeaux had perhaps been excessive - Colin would find a cure for it all. There must be some pills you could give people. I would be able to drink just the right amount of wine, and never too much. Colin would fix that for me. I had no need to worry about it any longer.
I thought that Catherine would understand now if, finally, I poured myself a glass of wine. Colin would be here soon, and he would sort me out. The Sociando-Mallet had been open for several hours now: it would be beginning to slowly oxidise and die. I wondered if it would be noticeable. I poured myself a glass and tasted it, but the wine was good.
The wine was very good.
Four
By the time Colin arrived at the flat I had drunk the bottle of Sociando-Mallet, another bottle of a Margaux, and I had just started on a third bottle, of a St Emilion. There was nothing much he could do for me that night except help me to bed. He left a note for me asking me to call on him at his consulting rooms near Belgrave Square when I awoke. I found the note when I came downstairs the next morning. There was no food in the flat, so I drank a glass of white wine and went to call on Colin.
The waiting room where Colin worked was done up like a drawing room, with stiff, uncomfortable chairs, and rows of this month’s glossy magazines laid out on a low glass table. I picked up a copy of Country Life and turned its pages without reading anything, while I waited for Colin to find a gap between his other patients’ appointments.
When I went in to see him, he was sitting behind a large partner’s desk with a thin brown folder open in front of him. He waved at me to sit down in the chair opposite.
‘Morning, old boy,’ he said. ‘How do you feel?’
Colin himself looked healthy, and much younger than the reflection of myself I had seen in the mirror that morning. ‘I’m fine,’ I assured him.
‘You were into your third bottle by the time I arrived. Do you often drink that much wine, that quickly?’
‘No,’ I said. Then, because I thought it was important to be accurate if Colin were to help me, I added, ‘I mean, yes, I do sometimes drink a few bottles, but I usually take more time to appreciate it.’
‘I see,’ said Colin, and made a note.
‘I was a bit stressed out yesterday,’ I explained.
‘Quite. I quite understand. All the same, three bottles is a lot of wine for a single person in a single day, let alone in a couple of hours.’
‘I suppose it is,’ I agreed. ‘I’ve never really thought of it like that.’
‘I’m going to take you on as a patient,’ said Colin. ‘That is, if you want me to help you.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ I replied.
‘I’m very expensive.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’m very grateful.’ I was grateful. It would be so nice to have someone taking an interest in me, now I was on my own again.
‘There might be more expense on the way,’ Colin warned me, ‘because I think the first thing you ought to do is check yourself into The Hermitage. I’ll make all the arrangements, but you need to understand what we are trying to achieve. You need to want to do it.’
‘I’ll do anything that you suggest,’ I told him. ‘What happens at The Hermitage?’
Colin stood up and stretched, then walked around the desk and sat down again in a chair on the same side of the desk as me. ‘I’m not a specialist in the treatment of addictive behaviour, ’ he explained.
‘I’m not addictive,’ I protested. ‘That’s people who smoke dope, or use syringes. Drinking a little wine isn’t addictive.’
‘I’m afraid I think that it is,’ said Colin, ‘and if you want me to help you, you must be ready to listen to me and then take my advice. Otherwise, we will risk wasting each other’s time.’
‘Of course,’ I said. The thought that Colin might drop me before he had really begun to help me frightened me.
‘Wilberforce,’ said Colin, ‘the causes of addiction can be both familial and genetic. Often it is both. Did anyone in your family drink?’
‘I don’t know who my real parents were,’ I said. ‘My foster parents never did.’
‘It is a disease,’ Colin explained, ‘and in the end it is a disease of one’s own sense of self. Until you can understand that, and truly accept that you need help that only someone, or something external to you can change the way you are, you will never be cured.
‘The Hermitage offer special programmes for people, like you, who have got into the habit of drinking too much, or who have become addicted to drugs of one sort or another. They have a programme called the Twelve Steps, which is based on the work of Alcoholics Anonymous. They have a good record of helping people. I recommend you enter yourself into one of their programmes. It would mean going down to their place in Gloucestershire for a few weeks to give it a try.’
‘Of course; if that’s what you suggest, I’ll do it.’
‘It’s far from being cheap,’ Colin said, ‘but, if you can afford it, I can’t think of a better way to tackle this. Wilberforce, you’ve got to want to do it. Otherwise it’s a lot of money down the drain.’
‘I’ll do it,’ I told him.
The Hermitage was a large country house, set in rolling wooded countryside. When the taxi brought me down the drive, it reminded me at first glance of Hartlepool Hall; but Hartlepool Hall didn’t have modern wings, and brick-built staff houses, or a car park. I went into the hall, and it was like checking in at a country-house hotel. There were cut flowers everywhere; a smiling, elegant woman took down my details and made a print of my credit card; then a porter took my suitcase and showed me to my room.
It was an elegant room. It was faultlessly decorated: a pale-green carpet, green floral curtains tied up with velvet cords, a large double bed with a cream bedspread, and a door into a large bathroom. A bay window looked out on to a wooded valley with a stream running down it.
I was just unpacking my clothes when there was a knock at the door. I went and opened it and saw a man, younger than myself, with hair cut very short, wearing a short-sleeved khaki shirt and blue jeans. Although it was January and there were still patches of frost in the valley where the sun had not been able to reach, the temperature inside the house was very warm.
‘Hello,’ said the young man. His eyes glinted cheerfully behind round, horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘I’m Eric.’
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I’m Wilberforce.’
We shook hands. I wondered what he wanted.
He said, ‘We’re going to be spending some time together, and I just wanted to introduce myself. Have you had lunch?’
‘Not yet.’
‘There’s a canteen, but for now I’m going to suggest you and I have a light lunch together, to give ourselves time to get to know one another before you meet some of our other guests. If I call back in ten minutes, would that suit you?’
‘Very well, thanks.’
Quarter of an hour later we were sitting in a small room in one of the modern wings I had noticed. The room was sparsely furnished. There was a sideboard with a sink unit built in, a table, two chairs, and a whiteboard. A small fridge stood in one corner. On the table in the centre of the room there were two places laid, and two plates of smoked salmon and lettuce. A jug of water sat in the middle of the table.
Eric said, ‘Ah, smoked salmon! My favourite.’
We ate the food. It tasted of nothing. Eric poured me a glass of water and watched me drink it. It tasted of metal and effluent. He said, ‘You’d rather be drinking wine, I expect.’
‘No,’ I lied.
‘You see,’ began Eric and then stopped. He said, ‘What can I call you? I can’t call you Wilberforce.’
‘Everyone else does,’ I said.
Eric shook his head: ‘It sounds so formal, using your surname. We’re not formal here. We can’t be. You and I need to become really good friends. Do you mind if I call you Will instead?’
‘If you want to.’
‘Great, Will. If you’re comfortable with that, then I am. I’m going to tell you a little bit about myself. We will be working hard together, and you need to know about me, and to trust me, Will. I was an alcoholic once.’
I gazed at him. It was quite possible: at any rate, there seemed no reason to disbelieve him.
‘You’d never guess it to look at me now,’ he said with pride. I did not reply. Eric went on, ‘You know, I was drinking a bottle of whisky a day. A day! Can you believe it?’
I didn’t know what to say, but Eric wasn’t waiting for my responses. He wanted to talk about his life as an alcoholic.
‘Yes, a bottle a day. I was a wreck. I lost my job. My wife left me. But I couldn’t stop drinking. Then, one day, some friends took me to a group at our local church, which helped people like me. And they got me to take the first step.’
Eric got to his feet, picked up a marker pen and wrote on the white board: ‘Step One: We must admit we are powerless over alcohol. We must admit we cannot manage our lives.’
He sat down again, and jerked his thumb at the scrawl on the board, which I could barely read. He said, ‘That’s the first step, Will. Just now I admitted to you I was once an alcoholic. My own life started to change from the day I finally found the courage to admit it to myself. That’s our process here. We need to admit we’ve got a problem. After that, there will be more steps that we will have to take together. The first step is the biggest and most important. After that, we will take them one at a time. That’s how we live our lives here: one step at a time. But with my help, and God’s help, you’re going to find the strength to walk this road with me and at the end you will be cured, just as I am.’
‘Did your wife come back to you in the end?’ I asked.
Eric looked a little put out. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But that’s another story.’ He rose to his feet again, went across to the fridge and took out a can of Diet Coke. ‘Want some?’
I shook my head. He popped the can, upended it and took a long pull on it. A trickle of Coke ran down his chin and the side of his neck, which he wiped away with his finger. Then he put the can down beside the sink and came and sat down again.
‘So, Will, my question today is: do you think you’ve got a problem? Let’s look at some of the issues around that, shall we?’
‘I do like drinking wine,’ I admitted. ‘I mean, I can drink it, or not drink it, as I please. But I do enjoy it. I’m very interested in it.’
‘Wine is a good drink,’ said Eric, ‘in moderation. Our Lord drank wine. And how much wine do you drink, Will?’
‘I like to try different wines. I enjoy comparing the tastes. I keep notes. It’s a great interest of mine.’
‘Will, you’re not really answering my question,’ said Eric. ‘How much do you drink each day?’
‘Oh, it can vary,’ I said, ‘but I suppose three or four bottles a day.’
‘A day!’ exclaimed Eric. ‘Four bottles a day!’ He got to his feet again, and went to the sink, finishing off his can of Diet Coke. He came back and sat down again.
‘Will, I want to say something. You’ve got a big problem. But you’ve also got a big heart. It took courage to do what you have just done: to admit that you are powerless to stop drinking wine. That’s great.’ He went and wrote on the whiteboard: ‘W. drinks four bottles of wine a day.’
He returned and said, ‘That’s a lot of wine. That’s nearly fifteen hundred bottles of wine a year.’
‘I collect wine. I have quite a lot of it.’
‘Really?’ said Eric. ‘And what do you call quite a lot?’
‘I have a hundred thousand bottles in my cellars - maybe a bit more.’
Eric said, ‘Will, we’re not going to get this done if you’re going to be flippant. This is very serious stuff we’re doing here. This is about your life. This is about changing the rest of your life. So in this room we tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’
‘I am telling the truth,’ I said. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
Eric looked at me sadly. I had disappointed him in some way. He went and wrote again on the whiteboard: ‘I have a hundred thousand bottles of wine.’
He came back and said, ‘You dream about wine, don’t you, Will? You dream about that wonderful wine cellar, where there’s always more wine, where you can always go and find another bottle.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Except that it’s not imaginary.’
‘I used to dream that I had my own off-licence,’ said Eric wistfully. ‘I dreamed I had shelves and shelves of whisky: Bell’s, Famous Grouse, J & B, and Johnny Walker Black Label. I dreamed I could go there whenever I wanted to get more whisky. It was such a dreadful feeling when I awoke, to find that the whisky wasn’t there after all. I used to curl up in a ball on my bed, and cry like a baby.’