A Good Year

Two

Standing in the crush of humanity as the tube rattled away from South Kensington toward Notting Hill, Max was rediscovering the face of public transport. Almost everyone around him, it seemed, had undergone the modern tribal ritual of piercing. Pierced nostrils, pierced eyebrows, pierced lips, pierced ears, several pallid but prominently displayed pierced navels. Other visible body parts, those that hadn’t been pierced, were tattooed. A handful of older, more conservative passengers, without nose jewelry or ear trinkets, looked like relics from a distant, unadorned age. They buried their faces in books or newspapers, carefully avoiding eye contact with those members of the pierced generation jammed up against them.

Max wedged himself in a corner of the lurching carriage and took the letter from his pocket. He read it once, then a second time, his rusty French gradually coming back to him as he went over the formal phrases. Lost in thought, he almost missed his stop, and he was still preoccupied when he pushed open the thick smoked-glass doors of the restaurant.

The hubbub of a fashionable haunt in full cry washed over him like a wave. The long, low-ceilinged room, with its hard surfaces and echoing acoustics, was a giant amplifier, following the popular theory that a high decibel level is essential for the enjoyment of food. It was a place where, if you were romantically inclined, you would have to bellow sweet nothings in your companion’s ear. But that was clearly part of the restaurant’s appeal, because every table seemed to be taken.

A sinuous young woman, tightly wrapped in what looked like black clingfilm, swayed up to Max, eyebrows raised, eyelashes a-flutter. “Do you have a reservation with us tonight?”

“I’m supposed to be meeting Mr. Willis.”

“Oh, Charlie. Of course. If you’d like to follow me?”

“To the ends of the earth,” said Max. The young woman giggled, and led the way with the undulant strut that none but the runway model or the restaurant hostess can achieve without dislocating a hip.

Charlie was at a corner table, an ice bucket at his elbow. He grinned as he saw Max. “I see you’ve met the lovely Monica. Isn’t she something? Only girl I know who plays tennis in high heels.”

Monica smiled at them before swaying back to the reception desk, and Max looked at the beaming, rosy face of his friend. Dear old Charlie. Nobody could call him handsome-he was a little overweight, carelessly dressed, his hair perpetually awry-but he possessed abundant charm, liquid brown eyes, and an evident enthusiasm for the company of women that they seemed to find irresistible. He had so far avoided marriage, but with some difficulty. Max had been less fortunate.

He had made the mistake, a few years before, of marrying Charlie’s sister Annabel. The marriage had been turbulent from the start, and had ended badly. Much to Charlie’s disapproval, Annabel had run off to Los Angeles with a film director, and now lived in a four-million-dollar wooden shack on the beach at Malibu. The last time Charlie had seen her, she had embraced the promise of eternal youth offered by Botox and power yoga. Beyond redemption, Charlie had said to Max. I could never stand her anyway; you’re better off without her. And so their friendship had survived the marriage, if anything stronger than before.

“Now then,” said Charlie, pouring champagne, “listen to this. They’ve doubled my salary, given me a Mercedes and full partnership shares, and told me the world’s my oyster. So tonight’s on me.” He raised his glass. “To London property prices-let’s hope they continue to go through the roof.”

“Congratulations, Charlie. It couldn’t happen to a nicer crook.” Max sipped his wine and studied the bubbles spiraling up from the base of his glass. Champagne, he thought, was always associated with good times-a drink for optimists.

Charlie looked at him, head cocked to one side. “You said it had been one of those days. What happened? No assets left to strip?”

Max described his lunch with Amis and the small humiliations of handing back his car keys and then finding two bruisers in uniform standing over his desk. “So that was the bad news: no bonus, no job, no car. But then this arrived.” He pushed the letter across the table.

Charlie took one look at it and shook his head. “Wasted on me, old son. My French isn’t up to it. You’ll have to translate.”

“Remember when we were at school and I used to be packed off to spend the summer holidays in France? My dad’s brother, Uncle Henry, had a place about an hour from Avignon -big old house surrounded by vines, not far from a little village. Uncle Henry and I used to play tennis and chess, and in the evenings he’d get me tipsy on watered-down wine and give me lectures about life. Very decent old stick, he was.” Max paused for another nip at the champagne. “Haven’t seen him for ages. Now I wish I’d seen more of him, because he died a couple of weeks ago.”

Charlie made sympathetic noises, and refilled Max’s glass.

“Anyway, he never got married, never had any children.” Max picked up the letter. “And according to the will, I’m his sole surviving relative. It looks as though he’s left me everything-house, twenty hectares of land, furniture, the lot.”

“Good God,” said Charlie. “Twenty hectares is more than forty acres, right? Sounds like an estate to me. A chateau.”

“I don’t remember it quite like that, but it’s certainly a big house.”

“With vines, you said?”

“Sure. Vines all over the place.”

“Right,” said Charlie. “This calls for something a little out of the ordinary.” He raised an arm and made energetic circling motions at a waiter, calling out for a wine list. Turning back to Max, he said, “You know I’ve always liked a drop of wine. Well, I’m taking it seriously now, starting a cellar. I’m even going to an evening wine-tasting course. This is all most exciting. Ah, there you are.” The sommelier had arrived, and Charlie started to brief him.

“We’re celebrating,” he said. “My friend here has just inherited a chateau and a vineyard in France, and so we’re looking for something appropriate in the way of homemade wine.” He wagged a finger at the sommelier. “Homemade in Bordeaux, mind you. A classic claret. None of your New World novelties.”

Charlie and the sommelier bent over the list, exchanging knowledgeable murmurs while Max looked around the room-glossy women and prosperous-looking men, London ’s privileged class, all of them talking at the top of their voices. Max felt a sudden desire to be somewhere quiet, and then thought of his empty apartment. Not that quiet. He looked down at the letter again, and wondered how much the property would fetch if he decided to sell; certainly more than enough to get him out of the hole he was in. He raised his glass in a private toast to Uncle Henry.

“Excellent,” said Charlie. “That’s the one.”

The sommelier pursed his lips and nodded in silent approval before going off in search of the wine.

“There,” said Charlie, pointing to his choice on the list. “The ’82 Léoville Barton. Top bottle. Can’t do better than that.”

Max looked at where the pointing finger had stopped. “Are you serious? Three hundred and eighty pounds?”

“That’s nothing these days. Not long ago, half a dozen punters-young bankers, I think they were-had dinner at some place in St. James’s and went mad. They blew forty-four thousand quid on six bottles of wine. The chef was so tickled he gave them a free dinner. You must have read about it.”

The sommelier returned, and Charlie paused to watch him perform the opening ceremony. The bottle was presented for inspection, in the way a proud parent displays a particularly well-favored baby. The lead capsule was cut, the long, aristocratic cork withdrawn and sniffed, the dark ruby liquid poured with practiced care into a decanter, with a little more than a mouthful going into a glass.

Now it was time for Charlie’s performance. “There are five steps,” he said, reaching for the glass, “that make all the difference between the art of drinking and the act of swallowing.” The sommelier looked on with the indulgent patience that comes from the thought of a substantial commission. “First,” said Charlie, “mental preparation.” He worshipped his glass for a few moments before raising it to the light. “Next, the pleasure of the eyes.” He tilted the glass so that the differences in color could be seen-deep red at the bottom, fading into a lighter maroon at the top, with a rim that was faintly tinged with brown. “Now for the nose.” He swirled the wine gently, opening it up to the air, before dipping his nose into the glass and inhaling. “Ah,” he said with a slow smile, his eyes closed. “Ah.”

Max felt like a voyeur spying on a profoundly personal moment. Over the years of their friendship, he had always been amused by the passion with which Charlie attacked his hobbies, from skateboarding when they were at school to last year’s preoccupation with karate. Now it seemed that wine had taken over. Max smiled at the expression of purest pleasure that had spread across Charlie’s face. “So far so good?” asked Max.

Charlie ignored him. “Now for the pleasures of mouth, tongue, and palate.” He took a sip of wine, holding it in his mouth while he sucked in a little air, making a discreet lapping sound. For a few seconds his jaw went up and down as though he were chewing, and then he swallowed. “Mmm,” he said. “The final step is appreciation. Messages from the palate to the brain. Thoughts of the wine still to come.” He nodded to the sommelier. “That’ll do nicely. You can let it breathe for a while. No, we can do better than that-you can let it regain its composure.”

“Very impressive,” said Max. “You had me on the edge of my seat. Is that what you learned in the wine-tasting course?”

Charlie nodded. “Elementary stuff, but it’s surprising what a difference it makes-just taking the time to concentrate on what you’re drinking. And we’re in luck tonight. I had a look at the menu while I was waiting, and there’s saddle of lamb. Terrific with a great Bordeaux. And I thought we might start with a few blinis to go with the rest of the champagne. How does that sound?”

The congealed chops of Max’s lunch with Amis seemed a long way away. “Sounds like the ideal diet for an unemployed man.”

Charlie dismissed the problem with a wave of his hand. “You’ll be fine. Anyway, there’s your inheritance. You’re part of the landed gentry now. Tell me about the chateau.”

“The house, Charlie, the house.” Max was silent for a moment, looking back into his memory. “It’s quite old; goes back to the eighteenth century, I think, what they call down there a bastide, which is a step or two up from a farmhouse. Big rooms, high ceilings, tiled floors, tall windows, thick walls. I remember it was always cool indoors. Cool, and actually a bit of a mess. Uncle Henry wasn’t too fussy about housework. A wonderful old dear used to come on a bicycle once a week and rearrange the dust in between drinks. She was always catatonic by lunchtime. There was a little scullery behind the kitchen where she used to sleep it off in the afternoon.”

Charlie nodded. “Probably still there. Now come on, give me something an estate agent could get his teeth into: number of bedrooms, reception rooms, bathrooms-I take it there’s what we in the trade call indoor sanitation facilities-lavish appointments, architectural features, turrets, crenellations, that sort of thing.” He leaned back to allow the waiter to serve the caviar blinis, and the interrogation stopped while they ate the golden, savory pancakes, a perfect foil for the glistening mounds of black, salty bubbles that burst in the mouth.

“I could get used to this,” said Max, as he wiped his plate clean. “Do you think it would taste as good if it were called fish eggs?”

Charlie dabbed his mouth with his napkin, and finished his champagne. “Not another drop of wine do you get until you give me some more details. Furnish me with particulars, old son. Furnish me with particulars.”

“Furnish you? God, you’re beginning to sound like a property ad in Country Life.” Charlie grinned, and nodded in agreement as Max continued. “It’s been a long time since I was there. Years, actually. Let’s see. I remember a library with a huge stuffed bear in it, a dining room we never used because we always ate in the kitchen, an enormous vaulted sitting room, a wine cellar…”

“Good, good,” said Charlie. “Always a most desirable feature.”

“… a row of attics that ran the length of the third floor of the house…”

“Not attics, Max. Staff accommodation,” murmured Charlie. “Excellent. Plenty of room for the odd maid and butler.”

“… I think there were half a dozen bedrooms and two or three bathrooms. Oh, and a grass tennis court and outbuildings, barns and things like that. A courtyard with an old fountain.”

“I can see it now. Sounds to me like a stately home. General state of repair and decoration? Has the refurbisher been around in the last hundred years or so?”

Max shook his head.

“No? Well, they’ve probably been keeping him busy in the Cotswolds. So how would you describe the interiors?”

“Not great. You know, slightly shabby.”

It was Charlie’s turn to shake his head. “No, no, Max. We don’t call it shabby. We call it the patina and faded charm of a bygone age.”

“Of course, right. Well, there’s plenty of that.”

The lamb arrived, moist and tender. The wine was poured, admired, and sipped. Charlie, his nose still hovering over his glass, looked up at Max. “How would you rate it?”

Max took another sip, rolling the wine around his mouth as Charlie had done. “Bloody good. Bloody good.”

Charlie raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Won’t do, old son. You can’t describe a work of art like that. You’ve got to brush up on the jargon, the connoisseur’s vocabulary.” He held up one hand, anticipating Charlie’s reaction. “I know, I know. You’re always saying we talk a lot of crap in the property business. But believe me, we’re just beginners compared to the wine boys.” He struck a pose, holding his glass by its base and swirling it gently. “Do I detect faded tulips? Beethoven in a mellow mood? The complexity, the almost Gothic structure…” He grinned at the expression on Max’s face. “I’ve never heard such a lot of twaddle in my life, but that’s the way some of them bang on.”

He then told Max about the first meeting of the Young Connoisseurs’ Club, which he had been invited to join by Billy, his friend in the wine trade. Half a dozen young men-enthusiastic drinkers, but by no means connoisseurs-had gathered in a set of dignified chambers in St. James’s, the headquarters of an old established firm of shippers. Here, amidst the spittoons and flickering candles, beneath portraits of the bewhiskered gentlemen who had founded the firm, they were to sample wines from a few of the lesser-known chateaux in Bordeaux, and one or two promising upstarts from Australia and California.

Their host, Billy, was young, as wine merchants go. He had been taken into the firm when his more elderly colleagues had realized that their equally elderly customers were buying less wine, often as a result of natural causes (or, as some would say, death). Billy’s mission was to find younger, thirstier souls with a good thirty or forty years of drinking ahead of them, to educate them, and, naturally, to make them faithful clients. Charlie was in the first batch, eager but ignorant, and Billy started the proceedings by demonstrating the basic steps of tasting. Watch me, he told his audience, and do as I do.

The pupils had been rather puzzled to see that the first part of the ritual involved Billy’s tie, an ornamental polka-dot creation made of thick Jermyn Street silk. He carefully tucked the end into the waistband of his trousers, advising the others to do the same.

Next, he picked up his glass, not with a nonchalant grab, but delicately, holding the base of the glass between the thumb and the first two fingers. His class stood lined up in front of him, ties tucked in, glasses at the ready but as yet unfilled, waiting for further instructions.

Swirling, said Billy. You must learn to swirl, to let the air in and allow the wine to breathe. The class imitated as best they could the small circular movements of his hand, swirling make-believe wine in empty glasses and beginning to feel faintly ridiculous. It was to get worse before it got better.

The class held their empty glasses up to the candlelight, to appreciate the imaginary subtleties of color in their imaginary wine. They applied their noses to the empty glasses, breathing in the imaginary bouquet. They took an imaginary mouthful and had an imaginary spit, thankful that their ties were out of the way of any imaginary drops. By this time, everyone was ready for a large Scotch, but it was not to be.

At last, Billy poured out the first of the wines to be tasted as he moved on to part two of wine appreciation for beginners. This was in the nature of an anatomy lesson. Wine had a nose, the class was told. Wine had body, wine had legs. Wine had a robe, a bouquet, a personality, an essence. And it was not enough, according to Billy, merely to go through the motions of tasting; one must also know how to describe what one has just tasted. So, as the class dutifully swirled and sipped and spat, Billy provided a running commentary on the wines under review.

The first, so he said, was vigorous and well constructed, even a little bosomy. The second was an iron fist in a velvet glove. The third was a little jagged around the edges, but potentially drinkable. The fourth was a little young to be up so late. And so it went on. As the would-be connoisseurs worked their way through the bottles, the descriptions became more and more outlandish: truffles, hyacinths, hay, wet leather, damp tweed, weasel, hare’s belly, old carpet, vintage socks. Music made a brief appearance, with one wine being compared in its lingering finish to the final notes of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 (the Adagio). Surprisingly, there was never a mention of the main ingredient, presumably because grapes, honest and worthy and indeed essential though they may be, were not considered sufficiently exotic to gain a place in the wine lover’s lexicon.

“That was just the first session,” Charlie said. “It got better after that, and I learned quite a bit.” His face became serious as he stared into the dark red heart of his wine. “It is quite extraordinary, though,” he said, talking more to himself than to Max. “The most elegant drink in the world. When I’ve made my bundle, I shall have this every day. I might even buy a vineyard.” He came out of his reverie and grinned at Max. “And you’ve already got one. Lucky sod.”

“Not for long. I think I’ll have to sell it.”

Charlie winced, then did his best to look stern and businesslike. “Never, ever make a rushed decision about selling land. They’re not making any more of it, or so I’m told. Rent it or sit on it, but don’t get rid of it. In any case, you might be able to make a very tidy living with twenty hectares of vines.”

Max remembered the ocean of green that surrounded the old house. In his memory, there was always a man on a tractor somewhere on the horizon. Uncle Henry referred to him as Russell, but that couldn’t have been his real name. When he came to the house, he brought with him whiffs of garlic and engine oil. Shaking hands with him was like grasping a warm brick.

“I don’t know, Charlie. It’s not a game for amateurs.”

Charlie finished a mouthful of lamb and took a long, considered pull at his glass. “It’s changed, no doubt about that. There’s a guy taking the course who works for one of the really big shippers, and he’s been telling me all kinds of fascinating stuff. Garage wines, for instance. Have you ever heard about garage wines?”

Max shook his head.

“If you want to pull rank, you call them boutique wines, or haute couture wines. Small vineyards, small production, seriously big prices. Le Pin is probably the best known at the moment. Five thousand pounds a case, sometimes more. And that’s wine you won’t be drinking for years. Not bad if you’re the one growing the grapes, is it?” He looked at Max, a forkful of lamb halfway to his mouth. “And you can grow a lot of grapes on twenty hectares.” Charlie gave him the kind of long, significant look-head tilted downward, eyes looking up beneath a frowning forehead-that he used to great effect with girls or when describing a particularly enviable property to his clients.

Max began to have the sense that he was being nudged, not too subtly, into a new career among the vines, and as the level of wine in the decanter dropped he became sure of it. At one point, Charlie abandoned rational persuasion altogether in favor of appeals to what he hoped was Max’s latent desire to become a French peasant. “Buy a beret!” he said. “Take tractor-driving lessons! Get your hands dirty! You’ll love it.”

They ate and drank in the companionable silence of old friends, Charlie glancing at Max from time to time as if trying to read his thoughts. In fact, Max was having some difficulty reading them himself. He had always been attracted to change, and the idea of leaving a soggy, jobless London for the warmth and light of the south was immensely appealing. Also, he was curious to see how reality compared to his memories: if the old house was as big as he remembered; if the rooms still had the dry, pungent smell of herbs and lavender; if the sounds of a summer afternoon were the same; if the girls in the village were still as pretty.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t any money in the nostalgia budget. “The problem is,” he said to Charlie, “I’m skint. No, worse than skint. Rent, credit cards, debts of one sort or another-I’m a financial disaster. I can’t afford to go swanning off to the south of France. I’ve got to get a job. Simple as that.”

“Let’s have a little cheese to go with the rest of the wine, shall we? And I’ll tell you why it’s not as simple as that.” Charlie leaned across the table, one finger tapping on the cloth to emphasize his words. “First, you’ve arrived at a moment in your life of marvelous freedom. No deadlines, no appointments, no responsibilities…”

“No money,” said Max.

“… a detail I shall come to in a moment. This is a turning point, an ideal time for you to take a break, look at what fate and Uncle Henry have dumped in your lap, and decide what you want to do. The weather down there will be delightful, and the trip will do you the world of good. Put the roses back in your cheeks.”

“Charlie, you don’t…”

“Hear me out. At the worst, you’ll decide to sell the house, in which case you can put it with a local agent while you’re down there. At the best… well, at the best, you’ll decide to stay on and do what I’d like to do: make a really good little wine. Can you imagine a more pleasant life? Agreeable working conditions, the cash rolling in, and as much free wine as you can drink. Heaven.”

As usual when he was in the grip of one of his enthusiasms, Charlie chose to ignore practical problems-in this case, as Max pointed out again, lack of funds. He could barely afford a train ticket down to Brighton, let alone a voyage of discovery in the south of France.

“I was coming to that,” Charlie said. He patted the pockets of his jacket and fished out a checkbook, placing it with a slap on the table between them. “I’m making so much loot I don’t know what to do with it, and there’s a lot more in the pipeline. My flat’s paid for, they’ve given me a car, and I’m not interested in yachts or racehorses.” He sat back and beamed at Max.

“Women?”

“Of course. But that’s just pocket money.” He took a pen from his pocket and opened the checkbook. “You can look on this as a bridging loan.” He scribbled out a check, tore it from the book, and passed it across to Max. “There. That should keep you going for a month or two while you sort everything out.”

Max looked down at Charlie’s scrawl and blinked.

“Charlie, I can’t possibly…”

“Don’t be bloody stupid. If you sell the house, you can pay me back. And if you keep the house, we can turn it into some kind of mortgage. You can’t afford not to give it a go. This is the chance of a lifetime, old son. What do you say to a modest glass of Calvados?”

Max continued to protest and Charlie continued to insist as one Calvados led to another. Unnoticed by them as they talked, the restaurant had become empty and quiet. Standing nearby, Calvados bottle at the ready, the sommelier concealed a yawn and longed for a cigarette. The sound of laughter came from the kitchen, and the waiters started stripping the cloths from the tables. The lovely Monica, now dressed in black leather and carrying a crash helmet, stopped at the table to pat Charlie on the head and wish the two friends good night.

At last, Max gave in, folding the check and putting it away with fuddled fingers. Then, with even more difficulty, he wrote out an IOU for ten thousand pounds on his napkin and stuffed it into Charlie’s top pocket.