Blackberry Wine

64

AROUND NOON POPOTTE BROUGHT A PARCEL AND THE NEWS from the village. The film crew never arrived, she reported excitedly. The English lady interviewed no-one. Georges and Lucien were furious. En tout cas, she shrugged, it was probably for the best. Everyone knew that their plans never came to anything. Georges was already talking about a new venture, some kind of development plan in Montauban, which couldn’t possibly fail. Lansquenet had already moved on.

THE PARCEL WAS POSTMARKED KIRBY MONCKTON. JAY OPENED IT alone, with care, unwrapping the stiff sheets of brown paper, untying the string. It was large and heavy. As he removed the packaging an envelope fell out. He recognized Joe’s writing. There was a single sheet of faded letter paper inside.

Pog Hill Lane, 15th September.

Dear Jay,

Sorry about the rush. I never was any cop at goodbyes. I meant to stay on a bit longer, but you know what things are like. Bloody doctors won’t tell you anything till the last minute. They think that because you’re old you’ve got no idea. I’m sending you my collection – I reckon you’ll know what to do with it. You should have learned something by the time you get this. Make sure you get the soil right. Fondest regards, Joseph Cox.

Jay read the letter again. He touched the words on the page, written in black ink in that careful, shapeless hand. He even lifted the paper to his face to see if anything of him remained – a whiff of smoke, maybe, or the faint scent of ripe blackberries. But there was nothing. If there had been magic, it was elsewhere. Then he looked in the package. Everything was there. The contents of the seed chest, hundreds of tiny envelopes and twists of newspaper, dried bulbs, grains, corms, seed fluff no more substantial than a puff of dead dust – every one marked and numbered. Everything alight with the scent of those other places. Tuberosa rubra maritima, tuberosa diabolica, tuberosa panax odarata, thousands of potatoes, squash, peppers, carrots, over three hundred species of onion alone – Joe’s entire collection. And, of course, the Specials. Tuberosa rosifea in all its glory, the true jackapple, the rediscovered original.

He looked at them for a long time. Later he would look at them all, placing each packet in the correct drawer of the old spice chest. Later there would be time for sorting, for labelling and numbering and cataloguing, until at last every one was in place again. But first there was one more thing he had to do. Someone to see. And something to find. Something in the cellar.

THERE WAS ONLY ONE POSSIBLE CHOICE. HE WIPED OFF THE familiar dust from the glass with a cloth, hoping time had not soured the contents. A bottle for a special occasion, he thought, the last of his own Specials – 1962, that good year; the first, he hoped, of many good years. He wrapped the bottle in tissue paper and put it in his jacket pocket. A peace offering.

She was sitting in the kitchen, shelling peas, when he arrived. She was wearing a white shirt over her jeans, and the sunlight was red on her autumn hair. Outside he could hear Rosa calling to Clopette.

‘I brought you this,’ he told her. ‘I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. I thought maybe you and I could drink it together.’

She stared at him for a long time, her face unreadable. Her eyes were cool, verdigris, appraising. Finally she took the outstretched bottle and looked at the label.

‘Fleurie 1962,’ she said, and smiled. ‘My favourite.’

THIS IS WHERE MY STORY ENDS. HERE, IN THE KITCHEN OF THE little farmhouse in Lansquenet. Here he pours me, releasing the scents of summers forgotten and places long past. He drinks to Joe and Pog Hill Lane; the toast is both a salute and a goodbye. Say what you will, there’s nothing to beat the flavour of good grape. Blackcurrant aftertaste or not, I have my own magic, uncorked at last after thirty-seven years of waiting. I hope they appreciate that, both of them, mouths locked together and hands clasped. Now it is for them to do the talking. My part is at an end. I would like to think that theirs ends as happily. But that knowledge is beyond me now. I am subject to a different kind of chemistry. Evaporating blithely into the bright air, my own mystery approaches, and I see no phantoms, predict no futures, even the blissful present barely glimpsed – through a glass, darkly.