Blackberry Wine Part 4

93.Lansquenet, March 1999 THE AIR SMELT OF NIGHTFALL, BITTER-SMOKY, LIKE LAPSANG TEA,.

mild enough to sleep outside. The vineyard on the left was filled with noises: birds, frogs, insects. Jay could still see the path at his feet, faintly silvered with the last of the sunset, but the sun had left the face of the house and it was lightless, almost forbidding. He began to wonder whether he should have postponed his visit till the morning.

The thought of the long walk to the village dissuaded him. He was wearing boots, which had seemed like a good enough idea when he left London, but which now, after so many hours of travelling, had grown tight and uncomfortable.

If he could only get into the house - from what he'd seen of security that wouldn't be difficult - he could sleep there and make his way to the village in daylight.

It wasn't as if he were trespa.s.sing, really. After all, the house was nearly his. He reached the vegetable patch.

Something on the side of the house - a shutter, perhaps - was flapping rhythmically against the plaster, making a nagging, mournful sound. On the far side of the building shadows moved under the trees, creating the illusion of a man standing there, a bent figure in cap and overcoat.

Something whipped across his path with a snapping noise - a p.r.i.c.kly artichoke stem, still topped with last year's flower, now desiccated almost to nothing. Beyond it, the overgrown remnants of the vegetable patch swayed briskly in the freshening wind. Halfway across the abandoned garden something fluttered, as if snagged on a stiff piece of briar. A sc.r.a.p of cloth. From where Jay was standing he could see nothing more, but he knew immediately what it was. Flannel. Red. Dropping his bag by the side of the path he strode into the drift of weeds which had been the vegetable garden, pus.h.i.+ng aside the long stems as he pa.s.sed. It was a sign. It had to be.

Just as he stepped forward to take hold of the piece of flannel something crunched briefly under his left foot and gave way with an angry clatter of metal, punching through the soft leather of his boot and into his ankle. Jay's feet gave way, tipping him backwards into the greenery, and the pain, bad enough at first, bloomed sickeningly. Swearing, he grabbed at the object in the dim light, and his fingers encountered something jagged and metallic attached to his foot.

A trap, he thought, bewildered. Some sort of trap.

It hurt to think straight, and for precious seconds Jay yanked mindlessly at the object as it bit deeper through his boot. His fingers felt slick on the metal, and he realized he was bleeding. He began to panic.

With an effort he forced himself to stop moving. If it was a trap, then it would have to be forced open. Paranoid to imagine someone had set it deliberately. It must have been someone trying to catch rabbits, perhaps, or foxes, or something.

For a moment anger dulled the pain. The irresponsibility, the criminal carelessness of placing animal traps so close to someone's house - to his house. Jay fumbled with the trap.

It felt ancient, primitive. It was a clam-sh.e.l.l design, fixed into the ground by a metal peg. There was a catch at the side. Jay cursed and struggled with the mechanism, feeling the teeth of the trap crunching deeper into his ankle with 95.every move he made. Finally he managed the catch, but it took several tries to push open the metal jaws, and when he finally got it clear he pulled himself back, awkwardly, and tried to a.s.sess the damage. His foot had already swollen tight against the leather, so that the boot would be difficult or impossible to remove in the normal way.

Trying not to think about the types of bacteria which might even now be working their way into him, he pushed himself upright and managed to hop clumsily back to the path, where he sat down on the stones to try to remove his boot.

It took him nearly ten minutes. By the time he had finished he was sweating. It was too dark to see very much, but even so he could tell it would be some time before he dared to try walking.

96.Pog Hill, Summer 1977 IDE'S NEW DEFENCES WERE NOT THE ONLY CHANGE AT POG HILL.

that year. Nether Edge had visitors. Jay still went to the Edge every couple of days, attracted by its promise of gentle dereliction, of things left to rot in peace. Even at the peak of that summer he never abandoned his favourite haunts; he still visited the ca.n.a.l side and the ash pit and the dump, partly to look for useful things for Joe and partly because the place still fascinated him. It must have attracted the gypsies, too, because one day there they were, a shabby foursome of caravans, squared together like pioneers'

wagons against the enemy. The caravans were grey and rusting, axles sagging under the weight of acc.u.mulated baggage, doors hanging by a string, windows whitening with age. The people were equally disappointing. Six adults and as many children, clad in jeans or overalls or cheap bright market-stall nylons, they gave off an air of distant grubbiness, a visual extension of the smells which floated from their camp, the permanent odour of frying grease and dirty laundry and petrol and garbage.

Jay had never seen gypsies before. This drab, prosaic group was not what his reading had prepared him to expect. He had imagined horse-drawn wagons with outlandishly decorated sides, dark-haired dangerous girls with daggers in their belts, blind crones with the gift of far seeing. Certainly Joe's experiences with gypsies seemed to confirm this, and as Jay watched the caravans from his vantage point above the lock he felt annoyed at their intrusion. These seemed to be ordinary people, and until Joe confirmed their exotic lineage Jay was inclined to think they were nothing but tourists, campers from the south walking the moors.

'No, lad,' Joe said as he pointed out the distant camp, a pale string of smoke rising from a tin chimney into the sky of Nether Edge. 'They're not trippers. They're gypsies all right. Mebbe not proper Romanies, but gyppos, you might call em. Travellers. Like I was once.' He squinted curiously through cigarette smoke at the camp. 'Reckon they'll stay the winter,' he said. 'Move on when spring comes. No-one'll bother em downt Edge. No-one ever goes there any more.'

Not strictly true, of course. Jay considered Nether Edge his territory, and for a few days he watched the gypsies with all the resentment he had felt against Zeth and his gang that first year. He rarely saw much movement from the caravans, though sometimes there was was.h.i.+ng strung out on nearby trees. A dog tethered to the nearest of the vehicles yapped shrilly and intermittently. Once or twice he saw a woman carry water in large canisters to her vehicle. The water came from a kind of spigot, set into the square of concrete by the dirt track. There was a similar dispenser on the other side of the camp.

'Set it up years back,' explained Joe. 'Gypsy camp, with water an lectricity laid on. There's a pay meter down there that they use, an a septic tank. Even rubbish gets collected once a week. You'd think more people'd use it, but they don't. Funny folk, gypsies.'

The last time Joe remembered gypsies on the waste ground was about ten years previously.

'Romanies, they were,' he said. 'You don't get many proper Romanies nowadays. Used to buy their fruit and 98.'from me. There wasn't many that'd sell to em in them . Said they were no better than beggars.' He grinned.

I, I'm not sayin everythin they did was dead-straight st, but you've got to get by when you're on the road. ' worked a way to beat the meter. It took fifty pences, Well, they used water and lectricity all summer, but i they'd gone and council came round to empty the r, all there was at bottom was a pool of water. They r did find out how they'd done it. Lock hadn't been hed. Nothin seemed to have bin interfered with at all.' y looked at Joe with interest. ? how did they do it?' he enquired curiously.

e grinned again and tapped the side of his nose.

Ichemy,' he whispered, to Jay's annoyance, and would ao more on the subject.

e's tales had renewed his interest in the gypsies. Jay ihed the camp for several days after that, but saw no nice of secret goings-on. Eventually he abandoned his But post at the lock to hunt more interesting game, :hing for comics and magazines from the dump, comb- he railway for its everyday leavings. He worked out a I way of getting free coal for Joe's kitchen stove. There t two coal trains a day, rumbling slowly along the line i'Kirby Main. Twenty-four trucks on each, with a man g on the last one to make sure no-one tried to climb the wagons. There had been accidents in the past, Joe ; kids who'd dared each other to jump onto the trains.

bey might look slow,' he said darkly, "but every one of t trucks is a forty-tonner. Never try to get up on one, y never did. Instead he found a better way, and Joe's 6 lived on it all through that summer into autumn, a they finally closed down the line altogether.

Fery day, twice a day, just before the arrival of the train, would line up a row of old tin cans on the side of the ray bridge. He arranged them in pyramids, like coco- at a shy, for maximum appeal. The bored workman on the last truck could never resist the challenge they presented.

Every time the train pa.s.sed by he would lob chunks of coal at the cans, trying to knock them off the bridge, and Jay could always count on at least half-a-dozen good-sized pieces of coal each time. He stored these in an empty three- gallon paint tin, hidden in the bushes, and every few days, when this was full, he delivered the coal to Joe's house. It was on one of these occasions, when he was fooling about by the railway bridge, that he heard the sound of gunfire from Nether Edge and froze, the coalbox dropping from his hand.

Zeth was back.

100.Lansquenet, March 1999 ULLED A HANDKERCHIEF OUT OF HIS DUFFEL BAG AND USED.

sstaunch the blood, beginning to feel cold now and ElQg he'd brought his Burberry. He also took out one of B ndwiches he had bought at the station earlier that and forced himself to eat. It tasted foul, but the ess receded a little and he thought he felt a little Iter. It was almost night. A sliver of moon was rising, (Bough to cast shadows, and in spite of the pain in his Ike looked around curiously. He glanced at his watch, t expecting to see the luminous dial of the Seiko he &r Christmas when he was fourteen, the one Zeth broke Og that last, most dreadful week of August. But the X was not luminous. Trop tacky, mon cher. Kerry iys went for cla.s.s.

t^he shadows at the corner of the building something li. He called out, 'Hey!' hoisting himself up onto his feteg and limping towards the house. 'Hey! Please! Wait!

yone there?'

paething smacked against the side of the building sthe same flat sound he heard before. A shutter, ftps. He thought he saw it outlined against the te-black sky, flapping loosely in the breeze. He s.h.i.+vered. 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 s.p.a.ce to push through.

The air smelt of paint. He moved carefully, feeling for broken gla.s.s, 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 h.e.l.l . . . ?

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 lunchtime'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 102.

turned it on, half expecting the white noise he had heard on the train all the way from Ma.r.s.eilles, 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 lightheaded.

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 c.o.c.ktail 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 s.h.i.+vered, 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 I 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-s.h.i.+rt, his work trousers and pit boots. In one hand he held two winegla.s.ses. 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 j with satisfaction. 'Elderflower champagne. Gotta bittova kick, though, annit?'

'Joe?'

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

'hen the realization slammed him back, like awakening n a dream in which everything seems on the brink of ig explained, but falls away into fragments with the ,t.

of course it wasn't possible. Joe must be over eighty rs old by now. That is, if he was alive at all. Joe left, he I himself fiercely, like a thief in the night, leaving king behind but questions.

iy looked at the old man in the candlelight, his bright s and the laugh-wrinkles beneath them, and for the first s he noticed that everything about him was somehow [ed - even the toes of his pit boots - with an eerie glow, nostalgia.

fou're not real, are you?' he said. ie shrugged.

A/hat's real?' he asked carelessly. 'No such thing, lad.' leal, as in the sense of really here.' ie watched him patiently, like a teacher with a slow >il. Jay's voice rose almost angrily. leal, as in corporeally present. As in not a figment of my ided wine-soaked imagination, or an early symptom of id-poisoning or an out-of-body experience while the real sits in a white room somewhere wearing one of those ts with no arms.' ie looked at him mildly.

>o, you grew up to be a writer, then,' he remarked. 'Allus I you were a clever lad. Write any gooduns, did yer?

< p="">

'lenty of bra.s.s, but only one good one. Too long ago.

t, I can't believe I'm actually sitting here talking to ,elf.'

3nly one, eh?'

iy s.h.i.+vered again. The cold night wind sliced thinly 104.

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 amus.e.m.e.nt. 'You were allus same, jumpin in half c.o.c.ked before you knew what were goin on. Allus askin questions.

Allus needin to know summat an nowt.' He held out one of the winegla.s.ses, 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.'

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

I? "I'm sick,' whispered Jay softly. "You left that summer.

iNever even said goodbye. You're not here now. I know Ithat.'

^ 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 ca.n.a.l and bonfires burning. He flicked the b.u.t.t 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 a.n.a.ll. 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 makes.h.i.+ft 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 GirJ, 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 106.

pa.s.sed and the woman looking at him from outside the shutter was a complete stranger.

'What the h.e.l.l 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.