Quintin Jardine: Blood Red

‘ Arrels de vi ,’ I read aloud. ‘Means “The roots of wine” in English, doesn’t it?’

I should explain that the St Martí community, even Tom and I sometimes, when there’s nobody else around, speaks a variety of tongues in its daily discourse, but most commonly Catalan, the language on the screen.

‘That’s right,’ Ben replied.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s the name of my wine fair. . the fair I’m planning, that is.’

‘What’s a wine fair?’ I asked.

He and Gerard gazed at me, their expressions dangerously close to patronising. ‘A wine fair,’ the priest replied, ‘is a gathering of producers, brought together to display and offer their latest and finest vintages, for an educated public to taste and, hopefully, to buy.’

I looked at the Englishman. ‘Where are you going to hold it?’

Ben waved a hand towards the door. ‘The plan is that it’ll be out there, in Plaça Petita.’

I walked over to the entrance and looked at the small square, gently sloping, but terraced. Four pathways lead into it, two of them rising from the car parks that lie below the village. ‘Will it be big enough?’

He nodded. ‘Should be. I reckon it’ll take at least a dozen stands, and that’s as many as I’d want. . for a first effort, at any rate.’

‘Who’ll be here?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’m approaching all the Emporda wine-makers. So far the response has been good.’

Catalunya contains a number of comercs , or regions; Emporda is ours, and it’s split into two subdivisions, upper and lower. ‘When are you going to have it?’ I asked.

He pointed to a date at the foot of the poster on the screen. ‘First week in September, soon as the August chaos is over. . that’s if I can get everything put together. I’ve still got a hell of a lot to do.’

‘Need any help?’

He grinned. ‘Nice of you to offer, but I have to sell the concept to the exhibitors myself.’

‘There’s more to it than that, surely. There’s marketing, publicity; I could use the information centre to plug it, and to sell advance tickets.’

‘Advance tickets? I plan to sell on the day, that’s all.’

I frowned at him. ‘Ben,’ I said, ‘I don’t know a hell of a lot about business, but I do know that if you’ve covered your overheads before the show opens, everything else is profit.’

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ he conceded. ‘If you’d do that, I suppose it would be a big help.’

‘I will, and you could sell tickets through the hotels as well,’ I added.

‘That would be good too. I know most of them. Then there are the restaurants I supply; I’m sure they’ll advertise it, at the very least.’

I was well warmed up. ‘I could talk to the people I know in the tourist department in L’Escala; to see if they’d help. They have a website.’

Ben grimaced. ‘You might have a problem with them. There’s one big fly in the ointment; I need the mayor’s cooperation. I called her yesterday and. . let’s just say she didn’t make any encouraging noises.’

‘Why do you need her onside?’

‘Because Plaça Petita is public land, and the mayor has the power to decide whether it can be used or not.’

‘What about the local traders’ association? You’re a member. Can’t they put pressure on her?’

‘I’ve talked to the leaders; they’re scared of upsetting her. A lot of them rely on town hall approvals to run their businesses. Getting on the wrong side of the mayor is never a good idea in L’Escala. Besides. .’ He paused.

‘What?’

‘I’m not sure, but I think there might be a little bit of prejudice.’

‘Are you saying they’re agin it because you’re British?’

‘Could be.’

Beside me, Gerard sighed. By that time, he’d come to know my rising hackles when he saw them.

‘The hell with that,’ I declared. ‘Most of their businesses only survive because of the money that the Brits, the French, the Belgians and the rest of Europe spend in this town. And as for the mayor, L’Escala educates its children and runs its social facilities thanks to the taxes paid by expat property owners. You concentrate on bringing in the wine producers and leave her to me.’

Ben frowned. ‘Are you sure? I can’t afford to pay you, Prim. This will be a shoestring operation.’

‘I don’t want paying,’ I told him. ‘But I’d better have some sort of authority when I go to see her.’

And that is how I became operations manager of Arrels de Vi, the St Martí d’Empúries wine fair.

If I ever suspect in future that I’m getting too big for my boots, I’ll remember my visit to the Casa de la Vila, the town hall of the Ajuntament of L’Escala, climbing the stairs to the reception desk on the first floor, and confronting authority, face to face.

Dolores Fumado Ortega, the mayor’s chief of staff, as she had introduced herself, was a short, stocky woman of an age that wasn’t easy to guess, but had to be fifty-something, maybe edging towards the next Big One. She was dressed in a grey seam-strained skirt, and a white blouse outlining the industrial-strength bra that was necessary to restrain her formidable bosom. Her hair was on the dark side of blond, but with a blue sheen, professionally shaped and lacquered. The ladies of L’Escala have a wide choice of hairdresser; I suspected that she paid daily visits to hers.

She had greeted me coolly, in a way that made it clear that whoever I was, she was more important, and the temperature seemed to be falling by the minute. She peered at me over the top of gold-framed, light-reactive glasses, her eyes offering nothing. ‘It is quite impossible,’ she declared. ‘The mayor’s diary is full. She couldn’t possibly see you now.’

I smiled, taking the meek and mild route. ‘I’ll wait.’

‘There is no point, senora.’ (There is no proper equivalent of Mrs in Catalan or Castellano.) ‘She has meetings all day and will have no free time.’

‘I’ll come back tomorrow, if you’d like to schedule me in.’

She sighed, telling me that I was trying her patience. ‘That will not be possible either.’

‘The day after?’

She shook her head. ‘The mayor is busy with the affairs of the town, with important matters.’

I tried smiling again. ‘Everything is important to someone,’ I ventured. ‘The wine fair is important to us.’

‘But not to the mayor.’ She had grown so frosty that she reminded me of a dumpy version of the witch in Narnia.

The truth is, the meek never will inherit the earth, so I changed tack. ‘When’s the next municipal election?’ I snapped. I could feel my eyes narrow as I spoke.

‘In two years. How is that relevant?’

‘How? Time for a reality check, Senora Fumado. I did some research before I came here. At this moment the mayor is at the head of a coalition. Her party has six seats out of thirteen; she’s sat on her arse in that office ten feet away from us thanks to the support of the single independent councillor that the people returned last time, her sister’s father-in-law, as I understand it. She’s hanging in there by little more than one polished fingernail. Two years from now she’s going to need all the goodwill she can get.’ Dolores began to move, as if to walk away from me, then stopped, as if she’d realised that wasn’t going to shut me up. ‘What she won’t need,’ I told her loudly, ‘is a determined, well-resourced person who speaks English, French, Catalan and Spanish lobbying against her, and maybe even fielding a multinational slate of expatriate residents. It may be an inconvenient truth, but truth it is, that I, and people like me, British, Belgian, French, Dutch and the rest, have a vote in the local elections and can stand as candidates. How many of us voted last time? Damn few. But how many of us are there in this town, just waiting to be stirred up? You don’t need much to find the answer. Just pick up the local telephone directory and flick through it.’