Corduroy Mansions

8. The Merits of Italian Wine (or some of it)

While Caroline sat in the coffee bar with James, listening to his unexpected and unsettling disclosure, William was busy taking delivery of a large consignment of Brunello di Montalcino, eighteen cases in all, of which seven were already promised to clients and three were semi-promised. A semi-promise was where the client said that he would take something and the merchant said that he would set it aside, both knowing that neither meant it. Failure to take up a semi-promise had no consequences for the client but he could nonetheless treat such a failure as cause for minor umbrage - mild disappointment, perhaps, that something he might have wanted had been sold. But there were limits to this umbrage and if the merchant thought these limits had been surpassed, he could come back with a remark about making firm orders in future. Clients who traded in semi-promises did not like firm orders and would usually let the matter drop at that point.

William’s assistant, Paul, a young man of nineteen, was late that morning and came in to find William stacking the last of the cases of Brunello. William looked pointedly at his watch and then at Paul, who was dressed in the outfit that he wore every day - denim jeans and a T-shirt of a colour somewhere between grey and white. He wondered whether it was always the same pair of jeans and the same T-shirt, but it was difficult to tell. Paul seemed clean enough to him and was never, as William put it when commenting on the unwashed who appeared to circulate in London, ‘slightly off’. Indeed, Paul wore something, some cologne or aftershave, that had a pleasant, slightly sandalwood tang to it. William had once discovered a bottle of white wine from the Veneto which seemed to have exactly the same nose to it as Paul’s cologne. He had called out to Paul, ‘My goodness, Paul, this Italian white smells exactly like—’ And had stopped himself before he said you. One man - even a new man, which William would claim to be - did not comment to another man on how he smelled; there were taboos about this, and the most that any man could do of another was to wrinkle his nose slightly, or perhaps waft the air in front of his nose with a hand - a gesture into which all sorts of alternative and innocent meanings could be read.

But now there was the issue of time-keeping, rather than smell, and William looked again at his watch and then glanced at Paul.

‘Not my fault,’ said Paul. ‘Somebody on the District Line. Everything stopped.’

William rolled his eyes. He suspected that Paul’s excuses for being late were not always true; indeed he thought that Paul, for all his merits - and he was a willing worker - had little idea of the difference between lies and the truth. This suspicion had been aroused on a number of occasions, most recently when, in the course of a desultory conversation during a slack period in the wine shop, William had commented on a newspaper report about a government minister found to have been lying.

‘Can’t blame him,’ said Paul. ‘Poor geezer. All those journalists after him like that. Can’t blame him.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said William. ‘He is a minister of the Government. He should not tell lies.’

‘A few porkies,’ said Paul. ‘Everybody tells porkies now and then. Specially if somebody’s trying to get you.’

William found himself almost speechless. ‘Porkies!’

‘Yeah, porkies. What difference does it make if he says that he didn’t do it? Nobody’s been hurt, have they?’

William was silent for a few moments. ‘You don’t mind being lied to? You don’t mind? When you trusted somebody and then he goes and lies to you when you’re paying him your taxes . . .’

‘Don’t pay all that much tax,’ Paul had said, looking reproachfully at William. ‘If I earned more, then I’d pay more tax and maybe I’d feel a bit different. But as it is . . .’

Now, glaring at his assistant, William resorted to sarcasm. ‘You seem to live in a highly suicide-prone area, Paul. How many this year? Four? Amazing. Other people don’t seem to suffer from quite as many person-on-track delays as you do. Extraordinary.’

Paul shrugged. ‘Awful, isn’t it? You’d think that they might choose a time when people didn’t need to get to work. Why jump in front of a train when people need to get to work?’

William found himself being drawn into the exchange. He had started off talking about punctuality, but the conversation was entering deeper waters. ‘People don’t think about these things,’ he said. ‘They’re usually very upset. But let’s not dwell on that. There but for the grace of God go I.’

Paul looked at him in astonishment. ‘What?’

‘Never mind. It’s an expression that means, it could happen to anybody. They don’t teach you people anything these days, do they?’

‘I wouldn’t choose the District Line,’ said Paul.

William opened one of the cases of wine and held a bottle up to the light. ‘Look at this lovely stuff. You do know that they gave this to the Queen when she visited Italy last, don’t you? They had a state banquet and served Her Majesty Brunello di Montalcino.’

Paul stared at the bottle. ‘They could hardly give her Lambrusco.’

‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Paul,’ said William. ‘Lambrusco has its place. Not the sort of stuff that we get in this country, but the real thing. They make it around Reggio Emilia and Parma. And I’ve tasted some very fine examples of it in the past. Out there it’s much drier.’

‘It tastes like sherbet here,’ said Paul.

‘Perhaps. But that’s because it’s the sweet version. The locals drink it dry, and eat some fresh Parmesan cheese with it. It’s delicious.’

William replaced the bottle of Brunello in its case. At this point the telephone rang and Paul, being closer, answered. He smiled as he spoke, and William began to wonder whether it was to be one of those long personal calls that irritated him so much. But then Paul mumbled something and handed the receiver to his employer.

It was Marcia.

‘I’m coming round at lunchtime,’ she said, ‘with some very interesting news.’

‘What is it?’

‘You just wait.’