Blackberry Wine

21

Lansquenet, March 1999

JAY PULLED A HANDKERCHIEF OUT OF HIS DUFFEL BAG AND USED it to staunch the blood, beginning to feel cold now and wishing he’d brought his Burberry. He also took out one of the sandwiches he had bought at the station earlier that day and forced himself to eat. It tasted foul, but the sickness receded a little and he thought he felt a little warmer. It was almost night. A sliver of moon was rising, just enough to cast shadows, and in spite of the pain in his foot he looked around curiously. He glanced at his watch, almost expecting to see the luminous dial of the Seiko he got for Christmas when he was fourteen, the one Zeth broke during that last, most dreadful week of August. But the Rolex was not luminous. Trop tacky, mon cher. Kerry always went for class.

In the shadows at the corner of the building something moved. He called out, ‘Hey!’ hoisting himself up onto his good leg and limping towards the house. ‘Hey! Please! Wait! Is anyone there?’

Something smacked against the side of the building with the same flat sound he heard before. A shutter, perhaps. He thought he saw it outlined against the purple-black sky, flapping loosely in the breeze. He shivered. No-one there after all. If only he could get into the house, out of the cold.

The window was about three feet from the ground. There was a deep ledge inside, half blocked with debris, but he found that he could clear enough space to push through. The air smelt of paint. He moved carefully, feeling for broken glass, swinging his leg over the ledge and into the room, pulling the duffel bag in behind him. His eyes had become accustomed to the dark and he could see that the room was mostly clear, except for a table and a chair in the centre and a pile of something – sacks, maybe – in one corner. Using the chair for support, Jay moved over to the pile and found a sleeping bag and a pillow rolled snugly against the wall, along with a cardboard box which contained paint tins and a bundle of wax candles.

Candles? What the hell…?

He reached into his jeans pocket for a lighter. It was only a cheap Bic, and almost out of fuel, but he managed to strike a flame. The candles were dry. The wick spluttered, then flared. The room was mellowly illumined.

‘That’s something, I suppose.’

He could sleep here. The room was sheltered. There were blankets and bedclothes and the remains of that lunch-time’s sandwiches. For a moment the pain in his foot was forgotten, and he grinned at the thought that this was home. It deserved a celebration.

Rummaging through the duffel bag, he pulled out one of Joe’s bottles, and cut open the seal and the green cord with the tip of his penknife. The clear scent of elderflower filled the air. He drank a little, tasting that familiar, cloying flavour, like fruit left to rot in the dark. Definitely a vintage year, he told himself, and despite everything he began to laugh shakily. He drank a little more. In spite of the taste the wine was warming, musky; he sat down on the rolled-up bedding, took another mouthful and began to feel a little better.

He reached into his bag again and took out the radio. He turned it on, half expecting the white noise he had heard on the train all the way from Marseilles, but surprisingly the signal was clear. Not the oldies station, of course, but some kind of local French radio, a low warble of music, something he didn’t recognize. Jay laughed again, feeling suddenly light-headed.

Inside the duffel bag the four remaining Specials began their chorus again, a ferment of yahoos and catcalls and war cries, redoubling in frenzy until the pitch was wild, feverish, a vulgar champagne of sounds and impressions and voices and memories, all shaken into a delirious cocktail of triumph. It pulled me along, dragging me with it, so that, for a moment, I was no longer myself – Fleurie, a respectable vintage with just a hint of blackcurrant – but a cauldron of spices, frothing and seething and going to the head in a wild flush of heat. Something was getting ready to happen. I knew it. Then, suddenly, silence.

Jay looked around curiously. For a moment he shivered, as if a sudden breeze had touched him, a breeze from other places. The paint on the wall was fresh, he noticed; beside the box containing paint cans was a tray of paintbrushes, washed and neatly aligned. The brushes were not yet dry. The breeze was sharper now, smelling of smoke and the circus, hot sugar and apples and midsummer’s eve. The radio crackled softly.

‘Well, lad,’ said a voice from the shadows. ‘You took yer time.’ Jay turned round so fast that he almost overbalanced.

‘Steady on,’ said Joe kindly.

‘Joe?’

He had not changed. He was wearing his old cap, a Thin Lizzy T-shirt, his work trousers and pit boots. In one hand he held two wineglasses. In front of him, on the table, stood the bottle of Elderflower ’76.

‘I allus said you’d get used to it one day,’ he remarked with satisfaction. ‘Elderflower champagne. Gotta bittova kick, though, annit?’

‘Joe?’

A flare of joy went through him, so strong that it made the bottles shake. It all made sense now, he thought deliriously; it was all coming together. The signs, the memories – all for this – all finally making sense.

Then the realization slammed him back, like awakening from a dream in which everything seems on the brink of being explained, but falls away into fragments with the light.

Of course it wasn’t possible. Joe must be over eighty years old by now. That is, if he was alive at all. Joe left, he told himself fiercely, like a thief in the night, leaving nothing behind but questions.

Jay looked at the old man in the candlelight, his bright eyes and the laugh-wrinkles beneath them, and for the first time he noticed that everything about him was somehow gilded - even the toes of his pit boots – with an eerie glow, like nostalgia.

‘You’re not real, are you?’ he said.

Joe shrugged.

‘What’s real?’ he asked carelessly. ‘No such thing, lad.’

‘Real, as in the sense of really here.’

Joe watched him patiently, like a teacher with a slow pupil. Jay’s voice rose almost angrily.

‘Real, as in corporeally present. As in not a figment of my deluded wine-soaked imagination, or an early symptom of blood-poisoning or an out-of-body experience while the real me sits in a white room somewhere wearing one of those coats with no arms.’

Joe looked at him mildly.

‘So, you grew up to be a writer, then,’ he remarked. ‘Allus said you were a clever lad. Write any gooduns, did yer? Make any brass?’

‘Plenty of brass, but only one good one. Too long ago. Shit, I can’t believe I’m actually sitting here talking to myself.’

‘Only one, eh?’

Jay shivered again. The cold night wind sliced thinly through the half-open shutter, bringing with it that feverish draught of other places.

‘I must really be sick,’ said Jay softly to himself. ‘Toxic shock, or something, from that sodding trap. I’m delirious.’

Joe shook his head. ‘Tha’ll be reight, lad.’ Joe always used to slip into dialect when he was being satirical. ‘It were only a bit of a fox trap. Old feller used to live here kept hens. Foxes were allus in an out at night. He even used to mark where traps were with a bit o rag.’ Jay looked at the piece of flannel in his hand.

‘I thought…’

‘I know what yer thought.’ Joe’s eyes were bright with amusement. ‘You were allus same, jumpin in half cocked before you knew what were goin on. Allus askin questions. Allus needin to know summat an nowt.’ He held out one of the wineglasses, now filled with the yellow elderflower wine. ‘Get this down thi,’ he suggested kindly. ‘Do yer good. I’d tell yer to go out back an get yersen some bishop’s leaves, but planets are all wrong for pickin.’

Jay looked at him. For a hallucination, he seemed very real. There was garden dirt under his fingernails and in the cracks in his palms.

‘I’m sick,’ whispered Jay softly. ‘You left that summer. Never even said goodbye. You’re not here now. I know that.’

Joe shook his head. ‘Aye,’ he said kindly. ‘We’ll talk about that another time, when you’re feelin more yerself.’

‘When I’m feeling more myself, you won’t be there.’

Joe laughed and lit a cigarette. The scent was pungent in the cold air. Jay noticed, with no surprise, that it came from an old packet of Player’s Number 6.

‘Want one?’ asked Joe, handing him the packet.

For a moment the cigarette felt almost real in Jay’s hand. He took a drag, but the smoke smelt of the canal and bonfires burning. He flicked the butt against the concrete floor and watched the sparks fly. He felt slightly dizzy.

‘Why don’t you lie down for a while?’ suggested Joe. ‘There’s a sleeping bag and some blankets – pretty clean anall. You look all-out knackered.’

Jay looked doubtfully at the pile of blankets. He felt exhausted. His head ached and his foot hurt and he was beyond confusion. He knew he should be worried. But for the moment he seemed to have lost the ability to question. He lay down painfully on the makeshift bed and pulled the sleeping bag over himself. It was warm, clean, comforting. He wondered fleetingly whether this might be a hallucination brought on by hypothermia, some sick adult version of The Little Match Girl, and laughed softly to himself. The Jackapple Man. Pretty funny, hey? They’d find him in the morning with a red rag in one hand and an empty bottle of wine in the other, frozen and smiling.

‘Tha’s not goin to dee,’ said Joe in amused tones.

‘Old writers never do,’ muttered Jay. ‘They just lose their marbles.’ He laughed again, rather wildly. The candle guttered and went out, though Jay’s mind still insisted he saw the old man blow it out. Without it the room was very dark. A single bar of moonlight touched the stone floor. Outside the window a bird loosed a brief, heartrending warble of music. In the distance, something – cat, owl – screamed. He lay in the dark, listening for a while. The night was full of noises. Then came a sound from outside the window, like footsteps, and he froze.

‘Joe?’

But the old man was gone – if he had ever been there. The sound came again, softly, furtively. It must be an animal, Jay told himself. A dog, maybe, or a fox. He got up and moved towards the shuttered window.

A figure was standing behind the shutter.

‘Jesus!’ He took a step backward and his injured ankle gave way, almost spilling him onto the floor. The figure was tall, its bulk exaggerated by the heavy overcoat and cap. He had a brief glimpse of blurry features beneath the cap’s peak, of hair spilling out over the collar, of angry eyes in a pale face. A flash of almost recognition. Then the moment passed and the woman looking at him from outside the shutter was a complete stranger.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ He spoke English automatically, not expecting her to understand. After that night’s events he wasn’t even certain she was real at all. ‘And who are you, anyway?’

The woman looked at him. The old shotgun in her hand was not quite pointing at him, but by a tiny movement could be made to do so.

‘You are trespassing.’ Her English was strongly accented but good. ‘This house is not abandoned. It is private property.’

‘I know. I-’ This woman must be some kind of caretaker, Jay told himself. Perhaps she was paid to ensure no damage was done to the building. Her presence explained the mysterious sounds, the candles, the sleeping bag, the smell of fresh paint. The rest – the unexpected appearance of Joe, for instance – had been his imagination. He smiled at the woman in relief.

‘I’m sorry I shouted at you. I didn’t understand. I’m Jay Mackintosh. The agency may have mentioned me.’

She looked at him blankly. Her eyes flicked momentarily behind him, taking in the typewriter, the bottles, the luggage.

‘Agency?’

‘Yes. I’m the man who bought the house. Over the phone. The day before yesterday.’ He gave a short, nervous laugh. ‘On an impulse. The first I’ve ever had. I couldn’t wait for the paperwork. I wanted to see it straight away.’ He laughed again, but there was no returning smile in her eyes.

‘You say you bought the house?’

He nodded. ‘I wanted to come over and see it. I couldn’t get the keys. Somehow I managed to get stranded here. I hurt my ankle-’

‘That is impossible.’ Her voice was flat. ‘I would have been told if there had been another buyer.’

‘I don’t think they were expecting me so soon. Look, it’s perfectly simple really. I’m sorry if I startled you. I’m actually very glad you’re looking after the building.’

The woman looked at him oddly but said nothing.

‘I can see they’ve been doing the place up a little. I noticed the paint pots. Did you do it yourself?’

She nodded, her eyes lightless. Behind her the sky was hazy, troubled. Jay found her silence disconcerting. Clearly his story hadn’t convinced her.

‘Do you… I mean, is there a lot of that kind of work hereabouts? Caretaking, I mean. Renovating old properties.’

She shrugged. The gesture might mean anything. Jay had no idea what it was supposed to convey.

‘Jay Mackintosh.’ He smiled again. ‘I’m a writer.’

That look again. Her eyes flicked over him in contempt or curiosity.

‘Marise d’Api. I work the vineyard across the fields.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ Either shaking hands wasn’t a local custom, or her refusal was a deliberate insult.

Not a caretaker, then, Jay told himself. He should have known it at once. That arrogance in her face, that harshness, proved it. This was a woman who tended her own farm, her vines. She was as stony as her land.

‘I suppose we’ll be neighbours.’

Again, no answer. Her face was a blind. No way to tell whether, beneath it, lay amusement, anger or simple indifference. She turned away. For a second her face, turning towards the moonlight, was silvered with light, and he saw that she was young – no older than twenty-eight or – nine – her features sharp and elfin beneath the big hat. Then she was gone, curiously graceful in spite of her bulky over-clothes, her boots kicking a swathe through the damp weeds.

‘Hey! Wait!’ Too late Jay realized that this woman could help him. She would have food, hot water, antiseptic, perhaps, for his injured ankle. ‘Wait a minute! Madame d’Api! Perhaps you could help me!’

If she heard him she did not reply. For a moment he thought he saw her, outlined briefly against the sky. The sound in the undergrowth might have been that of her passage, or something else altogether.

When he realized she was not coming back Jay returned to his makeshift bed in the corner of the room and lit a candle. The almost-empty bottle of Joe’s wine was standing by the bedside, though Jay was certain he had left it on the table. He must have moved it himself, he thought, during his fugue. It was understandable. He’d had a shock. By the light of the candle he peeled away his sock to examine the damage to his ankle. It was an ugly slash, the flesh around it bruised and swelling. Bishop’s leaves, the old man had said, and in spite of himself Jay smiled. Bishop’s leaves – the Yorkshire name for water betony – had been a common ingredient for Joe’s protection sachets.

But for now the only available antiseptic was the wine. Jay tilted the bottle and poured a thin stream of yellow liquid onto the gash. It stung for a minute, releasing its scent of summer and spice, and though he knew it was absurd, such was the power of that scent that Jay felt a little better.

The radio gave a sudden crackle of music and fell silent.

A breeze of other places – a scent of apples, a lullaby of passing trains and distant machinery and the radio playing. Funny how his mind kept going back to that song, that winter song, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

Jay slept, a piece of red flannel still curled tightly in his palm.

But the wine – raspberry red, blackberry blue, rosehip yellow, damson black – stayed awake. Talking.