Blackberry Wine Part 7

'Of course not!' Her denial confirmed his suspicions. Jay felt a sudden impulse to prove to her that he could hold his own as well as she could - ever since the rock fight in the ash pit he had felt that, when it came to natural aggression, she had him at a disadvantage.

'We could go tomorrow,' he suggested. 'Go to the ash pit and dig up some bottles.'

132.

Gilly grinned. In the sunlight her hair glowed almost as brightly as the end of the cigarette. There was a pink stripe of sunburn over her nose. Jay felt a wave of some emotion he could not recognize wash over him, so strong that he felt slightly sick. As if something had s.h.i.+fted inside him, tuning into a frequency hitherto unknown and unguessed at. He felt a sudden, incomprehensible urge to touch her hair.

Gilly looked at him derisively.

'You sure you're up for it?' she asked. 'You're not chicken, are you, Jay?' She pumped her arms and squawked, 'Bwrakka-bwraaak! Not even a teeny-tiny bit?' The feeling, that moment of mysterious revelation, had pa.s.sed. Gilly flicked her cigarette b.u.t.t into the bushes, still grinning. Jay grabbed at her and mussed her hair to hide his confusion, until she screamed and kicked him in the s.h.i.+n. Normality - at least what pa.s.sed for normal between them - was resumed.

That night he slept badly, lying awake in the dark thinking of Gilly's hair - that wonderful, gaudy shade between maple leaf and carrot - and the red shale of the scree above the ash pit, and Zeth's voice whispering I can wait and You're dead in his ears, until at last he had to get up and take out Joe's old red flannel talisman from its usual place in his satchel. He gripped it - worn and s.h.i.+ny with three years of handling - in the palm of his hand, and immediately felt better.

Scared? Of course he wasn't.

He had magic on his side.

27.Lansquenet, March 1999 I'VE BECOME FOND OF JAY. WE HAVE MATURED TOGETHER, HE.

and I, and in many ways we are very similar. We are complex in ways which are not immediately apparent to the casual observer. The uneducated palate finds in us a brashness, a garrulousness which belies the deeper feelings.

Forgive me if I become pretentious with age, but that is what solitude does to wine, and travel and rough handling have not improved me. Some things are not meant to be bottled for too long.

With Jay, of course, it was something else. With Jay it was anger.

He did not remember a time when he was not angry at someone. His parents. His school. Himself. And most of all, there was Joe. Joe, who vanished thai day without warning or reason, leaving only a packet of seeds, like something out of a mad fairy tale. A bad vintage, that anger. Bad for the spirit, mine and his. The Specials sensed it, loo. On The table, the four remaining bottles waited in subdued, ominous silence, their bellies filled with dark fire.

When he awoke in the morning Joe was still there. Sitting at the table with his mug of tea, elbows propped on the wood, his cap at an angle, his little half-moon reading gla.s.ses perched on the end of his nose. Dusty sunlight came through a knot-hole in the shutters and gilded one shoulder into almost-invisibility. He was made of the same airy fabric which filled his bottles; I could see right through him where the light hit him full-on, though he looked solid enough to Jay, sitting bolt upright from one dream into another.

'Morning,' said the old man.

"I see what this is,' whispered Jay hoa.r.s.ely. 'I'm going crazy.'

Joe grinned.

'You allus were a bit daft,' he said. 'Fancy throwin them seeds out over the railway. You were supposed to keep em.

Use em. If you ad of done, like you were meant to, then none of this would ever ave appened.'

'What do you mean?'

Joe ignored the question.

'You know, there's still a good old crop of tuberosa rosifea growin under that railway bridge. Probly the only place in the world with such a good crop. You ought to go and see it some time. Make yerself some wine.'

'What do you mean, use them? They were only seeds.'

'Only seeds?' Joe shook his head in exasperation. 'Only seeds, after everything I taught you? Them jackapples were Specials, I telled you. I even wrote it on the packet.'

'I didn't see anything special about them,' Jay told him, pulling on his jeans.

'You never? I tell you, lad, I put a couple of them ro.sifRas in every single bottle of wine I ever made. Every bottle I ever made, since I brought em back from South America. Took me five years just to get the soil right. I tell you-"'

'Don't bother.' Jay's voice was harsh. 'You never went to South America. I'd be surprised if you ever even made it out of South Yorks.h.i.+re.'

Joe laughed and brought out a packet of Player's from his coat pocket.

'Mebbe not, lad,' he admitted, lighting one. 'But I saw it all the same. Saw all of them places I felled you about.'

'Course you did.'

Joe shook his head sorrowfully.

'Astral travel, lad. Astral b.l.o.o.d.y travel, how the b.l.o.o.d.y else d'you think I'd be able to do it if I was underground half me b.l.o.o.d.y life?'

He sounded almost angry. Jay eyed the cigarette in his hand with longing. It smelt like burning paper and Bonfire Night.

"I don't believe in astral travel.'

Then how'd you b.l.o.o.d.y think I got here?'

Bonfire Night, licorice, frying grease, smoke and Abba singing The Name of the Game' at Number One all that month. Himself sitting in the empty dorm smoking - not out of pleasure but just because it was against the rules. Not a letter. Not a card. Not even a forwarding address.

'You're not here. I don't want to have this conversation.'

Joe shrugged.

'You allus were a stubborn beggar. Allus askin for explanations. Never happy just to take things as they were.

Allus wantin' to know how it worked.'

Silence. Jay began to lace his boots.

'Remember them Romanies that beat the meter at Nether Edge that time?'

Jay looked up for a moment. 'Yes, I remember.'

'D'you ever figure out how they did it?'

Jay shook his head slowly.

'Alchemy, you said.'

Joe grinned.

'Layman's alchemy.' He lit a Player's, looking smug.

'Made emselves some moulds shaped like fifty pences, see? Made em out of ice. Lad fromt council thought them fifties had melted into thin air.' He laughed hugely.

'He were right a.n.a.ll, wan't he?'

Nether Edge, Summer 1977 JAY WALKED TO THE EDGE, JOE'S TALISMAN TUCKED SNUGLY INTO.

his pocket. The sun was veiled, as it was for most of that summer, but the sky was hot and pale, bleeding the air of oxygen and the countryside of colour. Fields, trees, flowers all looked to be varying shades of grainy grey, like the screen on Maggie's black-and-white portable. Above Nether Edge a small bright blur hung in the sky like a beacon. A warning, perhaps.

Gilly was wearing cut-off jeans and a striped T-s.h.i.+rt. Her hair was tied back with a piece of red ribbon. She was eating a sherbert fountain, and her tongue was black with the licorice.

'I wasn't sure you'd make it,' she said.

Jay thought of the talisman in his pocket and shrugged.

They were safe, he told himself. Safe. Protected. Unseen. It had worked dozens of times before.

*Why shouldn't I?'

Gilly shrugged.

'They've got some kind of a den over there,' she said, jerking her head towards the ca.n.a.l. 'A tree house, I think, where they keep their stuff. I've seen them going there a couple of times. I dare you to go in.'

It's only a poxy den, Jay. Dare you.'

Her eyes gleamed slyly, that cat's-eye marble green reflecting the colourless sky. She finished the sherbert fountain and lobbed the packet into the ca.n.a.l, keeping the licorice stub in her mouth, like a cigar b.u.t.t.

'Unlesh you're yeller,' she said, doing a pa.s.sable Lee Marvin.

OK.'.

They found the den close to the lock. It wasn't a tree house, but a small shack built from a.s.sorted dump-rubbish: corrugated cardboard, sheets of tarpaper and fibregla.s.s. It had windows of plastic sheeting and a door taken from somebody's old shed. It looked deserted.

'Go on, then,' said Gilly. "I'll keep watch.'

Jay hesitated for a moment. Gilly grinned brashly; her face looked stretched into one giant freckle. He felt suddenly dizzy at the sight of her.

'Ah, get on with it, will you?' she urged.

Touching the talisman in his pocket, Jay walked resolutely towards the den. It was bigger than it had looked from the path and, despite its eccentric construction, it was solid. The door was padlocked, a heavy industrial lock which might have come from someone's coal cellar.

Try the window,' said Gilly from behind him. Jay whipped round.

'I thought you were keeping watch!'

Gilly shrugged.

'Ah, there's n.o.body here,' she said. 'Go on, try the window.'

The window was just big enough to crawl through. Gilly pulled back the plastic sheeting and Jay squeezed inside. It was dark, and there was a smell of sour earth and cigarette smoke. A pile of blankets lay on the floor above a couple of 138.

crates. A box of clippings. A dog-eared poster cut from a girls' magazine was stapled to one wall. Gilly put her head through the window.

'Find anything good?' she enquired pertly.

Jay shook his head. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable in there, imagining himself trapped in the den as Zeth and his friends rounded the corner.

'Look in the crates,' suggested Gilly. 'That's where they keep their stuff. Magazines and cigarettes, stuff they've lifted.'

Jay pushed over one of the crates. a.s.sorted rubbish spilled out across the floor. Make-up, empty lemonade bottles, comics. A battered transistor radio, sweets in a gla.s.s jar. A paper bag filled with fireworks, bangers and jumping-jacks and Black Cats in their waxy casings. Two dozen Bic lighters. Four unopened packets of Player's.

'Take something,' said Gilly. 'Take something. It's all nicked anyway.' Jay picked up a s...o...b..x of clippings.

Rather half-heartedly he scattered them across the earth floor of the den. Then he did the same with the magazines.

'Take the cigs,' urged Gilly. 'And the lighters. We'll give them to Joe.' Jay looked at her uneasily, but the thought of her contempt was more than he could take. He pocketed cigarettes and lighters, then, at Gilly's insistence, the sweets and the fireworks. Fired by her enthusiasm he tore down the poster from the wall, stamped the records, stomped the jars. Remembering how Zeth had smashed his radio, he took the transistor as well, telling himself they owed it to him. He spilled cosmetics, crunched lipsticks underfoot, threw a tin of face powder against the wall. Gilly watched, laughing wildly.

'I wish we could see their faces,' she gasped. 'If only we could!'

'Well, we can't,' Jay reminded her, climbing quickly out of the den. 'Come on, before they get back.' He took her hand and began to pull her after him up the path to the ash pit, their stomachs suddenly filled with b.u.t.terflies at the thought of what they'd done; The sensation was not altogether unpleasant, and suddenly they were both laughing like drunks, clinging to each other as they stumbled up the path.

'If only I could see Glenda's face,' spluttered Gilly. 'Next time we'll have to bring a camera or something, so we can have a permanent record.'

'Next time?' The thought killed the laughter.

'Well, of course.' She spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world. 'We've won the first skirmish. We can't just leave it now.'

He supposed he should have told her, This is where it ends, Gilly. It's too dangerous. But it was the danger which attracted her, and he was too intoxicated by her admiration to plead caution. That look in her eyes.

'What are you staring at me for?' she demanded belligerently.'I'm not staring at you.'

'Yes, you are.'

Jay grinned. 'I'm staring at the great -- big -- earwig that just landed in your hair from that bush,' he told her.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'' screamed Gilly, shaking her head.

'Wait a minute! It's just there,' he said, slyly knuckle- rubbing the top of her head.

Gilly kicked him hard on the ankle. Again normality was restored.

For a while.

140.

Lansquenet, March 1999 THE NEXT THING JAY DID IN LANSQUENET WAS TO FIND A.

builder's yard. The house needed extensive repairs, and although he could probably manage some of the work himself, most of it would have to be done by professionals.

Jay was lucky to find them to hand. He imagined it would cost a great deal more to have them come over from Agen.

The yard was large and sprawling. Wood had been stacked in towers at the back. Window frames and doors propped up the walls. The main warehouse was a converted farm, low- roofed, with a sign above the door which read, clairmont MEUNUISERIEPANNEAUX-CONSTRUCTION.