Blackberry Wine Part 17

"There's no call for that kind of language,' said Mrs Simmonds.

'Joe! Joe! Open up! Joe?'

'You watch it, lad, or I'm callin the police.'

Jay spread his hands placatingly. 'OK. OK. I'm sorry. I'm going. I'm sorry.'

He waited until she was gone. Then he crept back and made his way around the house, still certain Joe was in there somewhere, angry at him perhaps, waiting for him to give up and leave. After all, he had been taken in before. He searched the overgrown allotment, expecting to see him checking his trees or in his greenhouse at the signal box, but there was no sign of any recent presence but his own. It s only when he realized what had gone that the truth of ame home. Not a rune, not a ribbon, not a scrawled sign a tree trunk or a stone. The red sachets had disappeared n the sides of the greenhouse, from the wall, from the nches of the trees. The careful arrangements of pebbles the paths had been scattered to meaningless debris. The ar charts tacked to the wall of the shed and the green- ise, the arcane symbols Sellotaped to the trees - all the as Joe had put up as part of his permanent solution were ie. The cold frames had been tumbled, leaving the plants ide to fend for themselves. The orchard was strewn with amer's windfalls, grey-brown and half melted into the d ground now. Hundreds of them. Pears, apples, plums, rries. That was when he really knew. Those windfalls.

oe had gone.

'he back door was imperfectly closed. Jay managed to $r it open and let himself into the empty house. It smelt 1, like fruit gone to rot in a cellar. In the kitchen, tomato Bts had grown monstrously leggy in the dark, reaching "pale, fragile fingerlings towards the thin edge of light at window before dying, stretched out and waterless, ^nst the sink top. Apparently Joe had left everything t" as it was: his kettle on the hob, his biscuit box - still h a few biscuits in it, stale but edible - his coat hanging On the peg behind the door. The light in the cellar was , but there was enough daylight from the kitchen to see rows of bottles, jars and demijohns ranked neatly on shelves there, gleaming like buried gems in the under- light.

ay searched the house. There was little enough to find; 's possessions had not been extensive, and as far as he Id see the old man had taken practically nothing with i. His old kitbag was missing, his Culpeper's Herbal and few clothes - his pit cap and boots among them. The d chest was still there by his bed, but when Jay opened it Found its contents had been removed. The seeds, roots, 'kages, envelopes and neatly labelled twists of crinkly 247.

brown newspaper were gone. Inside the chest nothing but dust remained.

Wherever Joe had gone, he'd taken his seeds with him.

But where had he gone? His maps were still hanging in place on the walls, labelled and marked in Joe's small painstaking script, but there was no clue as to where he might be heading. There was no pattern to his many itineraries, the coloured lines joining at a dozen different points: Brazil, Nepal, Haiti, French Guyana. Jay searched under his bed, but found nothing but a cardboard box filled with old magazines. He pulled them out, curious. Joe had never been a great reader. Except for CuJpeper's Herbal and the occasional paper, Jay rarely saw him read anything, and when he did it was with the frowning slowness of a man who had left school at fourteen, following the script with his finger. But these magazines were old, faded but kept tidily away in the box and covered with a piece of card so that the dust would not damage them. The dates on the covers were a revelation: 1947, 1949, 1951, 1964 . . . Old magazines, their covers coloured the same distinctive yellow and black. Old copies of National Geographic.

Jay sat on the ground for a few minutes, turning pages gone crispy with age. There was something comforting about those magazines, as if by simply touching them he could bring Joe closer. Here were the places Joe had seen, the people among whom Joe had lived -- mementoes, perhaps, of his long years on the road.

Here was French Guyana, Egypt, Brazil, South Africa, New Guinea. The once-bright covers lay side by side on the dusty floor. Jay saw that he had marked some pa.s.sages in pencil, annotated others. Haiti, South America, Turkey, Antarctica.

These were his travels, this the itinerary of his wandering years. Each one dated, signed, coded in many colours.

Dated and signed.

A cold finger of suspicion traced its way down his back.

Slowly at first, then turning the pages with growing, dreadful certainty, he began to understand. The maps. The 248.

necdotes. The back copies of National Geographic, dating ight back to the war . . .

He stared at the magazines, trying to find another reason, omething to explain. But there could only be one expla.n.a.lon.There had never been any years on the road. Joe c.o.x was miner and had always been a miner, from the day he left chool to the moment he retired. When Nether Edge pit losed down he'd gone to his council pit house on Pog Hill ane on his miner's pension - maybe with invalidity, too, ecause of his maimed left hand - and dreamed of travel- gag. All his experiences, his anecdotes, his adventures, his sear-misses, his swashbucklings, his ladies in Haiti, his tevelling gypsies - all taken from this pile of old maga(oes, all as fake as his magic, his layman's alchemy, his ecious seeds, no doubt collected from growers or mail- fler suppliers while he wove his dreams - his Jies - alone.

Lies. All of it. Fakery and lies.

Sudden, overwhelming anger shot through him. It was and reason - it was all the hurt and confusion of the t few months; it was Gilly's abandonment and Joe's ayal; it was his parents, himself, his school; it was Zeth; sbs Glenda and her gang; it was the wasps; it was his I at everything, coalesced for a moment into a single bolt Bin and fury. He flung the magazines across the floor, &ig and stamping on the pages. He tore off the covers, ding the pictures into the mingled dust and mud. He rid down the maps from the walls. He tipped over the tty seed chest. He ran down into the cellar and smashed ything he could see - the bottles, the jars, the fruit and Inspirits. His feet crunched on broken gla.s.s. low could Joe have lied?

low could he?

fc forgot that it had been he who had run away, he who I lost his faith. All he could think of was Joe's deception. tides, he had come back, hadn't he? He had come back.

if there had been magic, it was long gone.

249.

His back hurt - he must have strained it when he greyed out in the cellar - and he went back into the kitchen feeling leaden and useless. He had cut his hand on a piece of gla.s.s.

He tried to rinse it in the sink, but the water had already been turned off. That was when he saw the envelope.

It had been propped up neatly against the draining board by the window, next to the dried-up bar of coal tar soap.

His name was written across the top in small, shaky capitals. Too large to be simply a letter, it looked plump, like a small packet. Jay tore the envelope clumsily, thinking perhaps this was it, Joe hadn't forgotten him after all; this had to be some kind of explanation, a sign . . .

A talisman.

There was no letter in the envelope. He looked twice, but there wasn't even a slip of paper. Instead there was a small packet - he recognized it as one of Joe's seed packets from the chest, faintly labelled in red pencil. 'Specials'.

Jay tore open a corner. There were seeds inside, tiny blackfly seeds, a hundred or more, rolling between his clumsy fingers as he tried to understand. No note. No letter. No instructions. Just seeds.

What was he supposed to do with them? Anger lashed him again. Plant them in his garden? Grow a beanstalk to the Land of Make-Believe? He gave a furious croak of laughter. Just what exactly was he supposed to do with them?

The seeds rolled meaninglessly between his fingers.

Tears of angry, desolate laughter squirted from his eyes.

Jay went outside and climbed up onto the back wall.

He tore the packet open and let the seeds float down into the cutting, blackfly on the damp winter wind. He sent the shredded envelope fluttering after them. He felt sourly exultant.

Later he thought that maybe he shouldn't have done it, that maybe there was magic in those seeds after all, but it was too late. Whatever Joe had left for him to find, he hadn't found it.

49.Lansquenet, Summer 1999 CAME IN LIKE A s.h.i.+P, BLUE SAILS UNFURLED AND SWELLING.

good time for writing - Jay's book lengthened by another pages - but even better for planting, picking out the seedlings and setting them in their raked beds, thin!

out potato plants and putting them in rows, or weed- stripping garlands of goosegra.s.s and ground elder l the currant bushes, or picking strawberries and aberries from their green hollows to make jam. Joe I especially pleased by this.

'here's nothin like pickin yer own fruit from yer own len,' he pointed out, teeth clamped around the stub of a itette. The strawberries were abundant this year - three i8 fifty metres long, enough to sell if he had a mind to ^'Jay was uninterested in selling. Instead he gave them Sy to his new friends, made jam, ate strawberries by the Vad, sometimes straight from the field, with the pink soil I dusting the flesh. Joe's crow-scarers - flexible canes Orated with foil streamers and the inevitable red talis- i - were enough to discourage the bird population.

(oi should make some wine, lad,' advised Joe. 'Never Ie any strawberry mesself. Never grew enough of 'em to tier. I'd like to see what it turns out like.' Jay found he 251.

could accept Joe's presence without question now, though not because he had no questions to ask. It was simply that he could not bring himself to ask them. Better to remain as he was, to accept it as another everyday miracle. Too much investigation might open up more than he was willing to examine. Nor was his anger entirely gone. It remained a part of him, like a dormant seed, ready to sprout in the right conditions. But in the face of everything else it seemed less important now, something which belonged to another life.

Too much ballast, Joe always said, slows you down. Besides, there was too much to do. June was a busy month.

The vegetable patch needed attention: new potatoes to dig and store in pallets filled with dry earth, young leeks to peg out, endives to cover with black plastic sh.e.l.ls to protect them from the sunlight. In the evenings, when the day cooled, he worked on his book as Joe watched from the corner of the room, lying on the bed with his boots against the wall, or smoking and watching the fields with bright, lazy eyes. Like the garden and the orchard, the book needed more work than ever at this stage. As the last hundred pages drew to a close, he began to slow, to falter. The ending was still as hazy in his mind as when he first started. He spent more and more of his time staring at the typewriter, or out of the window, or looking for patterns in the shadows against the whitewashed walls. He went over the typed pages with correcting fluid. He renumbered sheets, underlined t.i.tles. Anything to fool himself that he was still working. But Joe was not fooled.

Tha's not written much tonight, lad,' he commented on one unproductive evening. His accent had broadened, as it did when he was at his most satirical. Jay shook his head.

'I'm doing all right.'

Tha wants to get it finished,' continued Joe. 'Get it out of your system while you still can.'

Irritably: 'I can't do that.'

Joe shrugged.

'I mean it, Joe. I can't.'

252.

"No such b.l.o.o.d.y word.' It was another of Joe's sayings.

Does tha want to finish that b.l.o.o.d.y book or not? I'm not join to be here for ever, tha knows.'

It was the first time Joe had hinted that he might not stay.

[ay looked up sharply.

'What do you mean? You've only just come back.'

Again Joe gave his loose shrug. "Well . . .' As if it were ibvious. Some things did not need to be said. But Joe was more blunt. 'I wanted to get you started,' he said at last. 'See f0i in, if you like. But as for stayin . . .'

'You're going away.'

'Well, probably not just yet.'

Probably. The word was like a stone dropping into still water.

'Again.' The tone was more than accusing.

'Not just yet.'

'But soon.'

Joe shrugged. Finally: "I don't know.' b Anger, that old friend. Like a recurring fever. He could Itel it in him, a blush and p.r.i.c.kle at the nape of his neck.

linger at himself, at this neediness never to be satisfied. a "Got to move on sometime, lad. Both of us have. You more han ever.' ' Silence.

;; 'I'll probly hang on for a while, though. Till autumn, at feast.'

v It occurred to Jay that he had never seen the old man in (rinter. As if he were a figment of the summer air. 'Why are you here, Joe, anyway? Are you a ghost? Is that t? Are you haunting me?'

Joe laughed. In the slice of moonlight needling from ehind the shutters he did look ghostly, but there was nothing ghoulish in his grin.

'Tha allus did ask too many questions.' The thickening of us accent was a mockery of itself, a dig at nostalgia. Jay suddenly wondered how much of that, too, was a fake. "I elled yer first off, didn't I? Astral travel, lad. I travel in me 253.

sleep. Got it down to an art, a.n.a.ll. I can do anywhere. Egypt, Bangkok, the South Pole, dancin girls in Hawaii, northern lights. I've done em all. That's why I do so much b.l.o.o.d.y sleepin.' He laughed, and flicked the stub of his cigarette onto the concrete floor.

'If that's true, where are you now?' Jay's tone was suspicious, as it always was when he thought Joe was mocking him. 'I mean, where are you, really? The seed packet was marked Kirby Monckton. Are you . . .'

"Aye, well.' Joe lit another cigarette. Its scent was eerily strong in the small room. 'That dun't matter. Thing is, I'm here now.'

He would say no more. Beneath them, in the cellar, the remaining Specials rubbed together in longing and antic.i.p.ation.

They made barely any sound, but I could feel their activity, a fast and yeasty ferment, like trouble brewing.

Soon, they seemed to whisper from their gla.s.sy cradles in the dark. Soon. Soon. Soon. They were never silent now.

Beside me in the cellar they seemed more alive, more alert than ever before, their voices swelling to a cacophony of squeaks, grunts, laughter and shrieking which rocked the house to its foundations. Blackberry blue, damson black.

Only these remained, but still the voices had grown louder.

As if the spirit released from the other bottles were still active, las.h.i.+ng the remaining three to greater frenzies. The air sparkled with their energy. They had even penetrated the soil. Joe, too, was here all the time, rarely leaving, even when other people were present. Jay had to remind himself that others could not see Joe, though their reactions showed that they usually felt something in his presence. With Popotte it was a smell of cooking fruit. With Narcisse, a sound like a car backfiring. With Josephine, something like a storm coming, which raised the hairs on her arms and made her p.r.i.c.kle like a nervous cat. Jay had a great many visitors. Narcisse, delivering garden supplies, had become quite friendly. He looked at the newly restored vegetable garden with gruff approval.

254.

'Not bad,' he said, thumbing a shoot of basil to release the scent. "For an Englishman. You might make a farmer yet.'

Now that Joe's special seeds had been planted, Jay began work on the orchard. He needed ladders to climb high enough to strip the invasive mistletoe and nets to protect the young fruit from birds. There were maybe a hundred trees there, neglected in recent years but still good: pears, apples, peaches, cherries. Narcisse shrugged dismissively.

'There's not much of a living in fruit,' he said dourly.

I'Everyone grows it, but there's too much and you end up ^feeding it to the pigs. But if you like preserves . . .' He shook us head at the eccentricity. 'There's no harm in it, I lauppose, h.e.l.l?'

'I might try and make some wine,' admitted Jay, smiling.

Narcisse looked puzzled. 'Wine from fruit?'

Jay pointed out that grapes were also a fruit, but Narcisse hook his head, bewildered.

!'Bof, if you like. C'est bien anglais, pa.' ^Humbly Jay admitted that it was indeed very English. Herhaps Narcisse would like to try some? He gave a sudden, malicious grin. The remaining Specials rubbed against each H&er in antic.i.p.ation. The air was filled with their carnival ^Blackberry 1976. A good summer for blackberries, ripe ld purple and swimming in crimson juice. The scent was jtaetrating. Jay wondered how Narcisse would respond to H18 taste.

^}The old man took a mouthful and rolled it on his tongue.

glor a moment he thought he heard music, a brash burst of ppes and drums from across the water. River gypsies, he pbeught vaguely, though it was a little early in the year for IJIypsies, who came mostly for the seasonal work in the JBtUtumn. With it came the smell of smoke, fried potatoes jknd boudin the way Marthe used to make it, though Marthe ad been dead for ten years, and it must be thirty or more ice she came with the gypsies that summer.

'Not bad.' His voice was a little hoa.r.s.e as he put the 255.

empty gla.s.s back onto the table. 'Tastes of . . .' He could hardly recall what it did taste of, but that scent remained with him, the scent of Marthe's cooking and the way the smoke used to cling to her hair and make the apples of her cheeks stand out red. Combing it out at night, loosening the brown curls from the tight bun in which she kept them, all the day's cooking smells would be trapped in the tendrils at the nape of her neck - olive bread and boudin and baking and woodsmoke. Freeing the smoke with his fingertips, her hair tumbling free into his hands.

Tastes a little of smoke.'

Smoke. It must be the smoke which made his eyes water as they did, thought Narcisse dimly to himself. That or the alcohol. Whatever the Englishman put in his wine, it's . . .

'Strong.'

256.

50.}'.

;AS JULY VEERED INTO SIGHT THE WEATHER GREW HOTTER, THEN.

fescorching. Jay found himself feeling grateful that he had pmly a few rows of vegetables and fruit to care for, for in [rite of the closeness of the river the earth had become dry nd cracked, its usual russet colour paling into pink and en almost white under the sun's attack. Now he had to iter everything for two hours every day, choosing the cool enings and early mornings so the soil's moisture would Bt be lost. He used equipment he found in Foudouin's tandoned shed: large metal watering cans to carry the tier and, to bring it up from the river, a handpump which i installed close to the dragon head at the boundary estween his land and Marise's vineyard.