Blackberry Wine

12

Pog Hill, Summer 1975

SUMMER STEERED ITS COURSE AND JAY CAME MORE OFTEN TO Pog Hill Lane. Joe seemed pleased to see him when he came by, but never commented when he did not, and the boy spent days lurking by the canal or by the railway, watching over his uncertain territory, ever on the lookout for Zeth and his two friends. His hideout at the lock was no longer secure, so he moved the treasure box from its place in the bank and cast about for a safer place. At last he found one in the derelict car on the dumping ground, taping it to the underside of the rotten fuel tank. Jay liked that old car. He spent hours lounging in its one remaining seat, smelling the musty scent of ancient leather, hidden from sight by the rampant greenery. Once or twice he heard the voices of Zeth and his mates close by, but crouching in the low belly of the car – Joe’s charm held tightly in his hand – he was safe from any but the closest investigation. He watched and listened, intoxicated with the delight of spying on his enemies. At such times he believed in the charm implicitly.

He realized, as summer drew inevitably to its close, that he had grown fond of Kirby Monckton. In spite of his resistance he had found something here that he never had elsewhere. July and August sailed by like cool white schooners. He went to Pog Hill Lane almost every day. Sometimes he and Joe were alone, but too often there were visitors, neighbours, friends, though Joe seemed to have no family. Jay was sometimes jealous of their time together, resentful of time given to other people, but Joe always welcomed everyone, giving out boxes of fruit from his allotment, bunches of carrots, sacks of potatoes, a bottle of blackberry wine to one, a recipe for tooth powder to another. He dealt in philtres, teas, sachets. People came openly for fruit and vegetables but stayed in secret, talking to Joe in low voices, sometimes leaving with a little packet of tissue paper or a scrap of flannel tucked into hands and pockets. He never asked for payment. Sometimes people gave him things in exchange: a loaf or two, a home-made pie, cigarettes. Jay wondered where he got his money, and where the £5,000 to pay for his dream château would come from. But when he mentioned such things the old man just laughed.

As September loomed closer, every day seemed to gain a special, poignant significance, a mythical quality. Jay walked the canal side in a haze of nostalgia. He took notes of the things Joe said to him in their long conversations over the redcurrant bushes and replayed them in his mind as he lay in bed. He cycled for hours over deserted, now-familiar roads and breathed the sooty warm air. He climbed Upper Kirby Hill and looked out over the purple-black expanse of the Pennines and wished he could stay for ever.

Joe himself seemed untouched. He remained the same as ever, picking his fruit and laying it out in crates, making jam from windfalls, pointing out wild herbs and picking them when the moon was full, collecting bilberries from the moors and blackberries from the railway banking, preparing chutney from his tomatoes, piccalilli from his cauliflowers, lavender bags for sleeplessness, wintergreen for rapid healing, hot peppers and rosemary in oil and pickled onions for the winter. And, of course, there was the wine. Throughout all that summer Jay smelt wine brewing, fermeriting, ageing. All kinds of wine: beetroot, peapod, raspberry, elderflower, rosehip, jackapple, plum, parsnip, ginger, blackberry. The house was a distillery, with pans of fruit boiling on the stove, demijohns of wine waiting on the kitchen floor to be decanted into bottles, muslins for straining the fruit drying on the washing line, sieves, buckets, bottles, funnels, laid out in neat rows ready for use.

He kept the still in his cellar. It was a big copper piece, like a giant kettle, old but burnished and cared for. He used it to make his ‘spirits’, the raw, eyewatering clear alcohol he used to preserve the summer fruit which sat in gleaming rows on shelves in the cellar. Potato vodka, he called it, jackapple juice. Seventy per cent proof. In it he placed equal quantities of fruit and sugar to make his liqueurs. Cherries, plums, redcurrants, bilberries. The fruit stained the liquor purple and red and black in the dim cellar light. Each jar carefully labelled and dated. More than one man could ever hope to eat. Not that Joe minded; in any case, he gave away much of what he made. Apart from his wine and a few licks of strawberry jam with his morning toast, Jay never saw him touch any of those extravagant preserves and spirits. Jay supposed the old man must have sold some of these wares during the winter, though he never saw him do it. Most of the time he just gave things away.

Jay went back to school in September. The Moorlands School was as he remembered it, smelling of dust and disinfectant and polish and the bland, inescapable scent of ancient cooking. His parents’ divorce went through smoothly enough, after many tearful phone calls from his mother and postal orders from the Bread Baron. Surprisingly, he felt nothing. During the summer his rage had sloughed away into indifference. Anger seemed childish to him somehow. He wrote to Joe every month or so, though the old man never wrote back as regularly. He was not much of a writer, he said, and contented himself with a card at Christmas and a couple of lines near the end of term. His silence did not trouble Jay. It was enough to know that he was there.

In the summer Jay went back to Kirby Monckton. Part of this was on his own insistence, but he could tell his parents were secretly relieved. His mother was filming in Ireland at the time, and the Bread Baron was spending the summer on his yacht, in the company, rumour had it, of a young fashion model called Candide.

Jay escaped to Pog Hill Lane without a second glance.