Joanne Harris - Blackberry Wine

Then her eyes flicked towards him, and it was as if a blind had been slammed down, so fast that he was left wondering if he had only imagined her before.

‘Madame-’

For a second she halted, looked at him with a blankness which was almost insolent. Her eyes were green, a curiously light verdigris colour. In his book he’d coloured them black. Jay smiled and reached out his hand over the hedge in greeting.

‘Madame d’Api. I’m sorry if I startled you. I’m-’

But before he could say anything else she had gone, turning sharply into the rows of vines without a backward glance, moving smoothly and quickly down the path towards the farmhouse.

‘Madame d’Api!’ he called after her. ‘Madame!’

She must have heard, and yet she ignored his call. He watched her for a few minutes more as she moved further and further away, then, shrugging, turned towards the house. He told himself that his disappointment was absurd. There was no reason why she should want to talk to him. He was allowing his imagination too much freedom. In the bland light of day she was nothing like the slate-eyed heroine of his story. He resolved not to think of her again.

When Jay got home, Clairmont was waiting for him with a truckload of junk. He winked as Jay turned into the drive, pushing his blue beret back from his eyes.

‘Holà , Monsieur Jay,’ he called from the cab of his truck. ‘I’ve found you some things for your new house!’

Jay sighed. His instincts had been right. Every few weeks he would be badgered to take off Clairmont’s hands a quantity of overpriced brocante masquerading as country chic. From what he could see of the truck’s contents – broken chairs, sweeping brushes, half-stripped doors, a really hideous papier-mâché dragon head left over from some carnival or other – his suspicions hardly began to cover the dreadful reality.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ he began.

Clairmont grinned.

‘You’ll see. You’ll love this,’ he announced, jumping down from his cab. As he did, Jay saw he was carrying a bottle of wine. ‘Something to put you in the mood, héh ? Then we can talk business.’

There was no escaping the man’s persistence. Jay wanted a bath and silence. Instead there would be an hour’s haggling in the kitchen, wine he didn’t want to drink, then the problem of how to dispose of Clairmont’s objets d’art without hurting his feelings. He resigned himself.

‘To business,’ said Clairmont, pouring two glasses of wine. ‘Mine and yours.’ He grinned. ‘I’m going into antiques, héh? There’s good money in antiques in Le Pinot and Montauban. Buy cheap now, clean up when the tourists come.’

Jay tried the wine, which was good.

‘You could build twenty holiday chalets on that vineyard of yours,’ continued Clairmont cheerily. ‘Or a hotel. How’d you like the idea of your own hotel, héh ?’

Jay shook his head.

‘I like it the way it is,’ he said.

Clairmont sighed.

‘You and La Païenne d’Api,’ he sighed. ‘Got no vision, either of you. That land’s worth a fortune in the right hands. Crazy, to keep it as it is when just a few chalets could-’

Jay struggled with the word and his accent.

‘La Païenne? The godless woman?’ he translated hesitantly.

Clairmont jerked his head in the direction of the other farm.

‘Marise as was. We used to call her La Parisienne . But the other suits her better, héh? Never goes to church. Never had the baby christened. Never talks. Never smiles. Hangs on to that land out of sheer stubborn spite, when anyone else…’ He shrugged. ‘Bof . It’s none of my business, héh ? But I’d keep the doors locked if I were you, Monsieur Jay. She’s crazy. She’s had her eye on that land for years. She’d do you an injury if she could.’

Jay frowned, remembering the fox traps around the house.

‘Nearly broke Mireille’s nose once,’ continued Clairmont. ‘Just because she went near the little girl. Never came into the village again after that. Goes into La Percherie on her motorbike. Seen her going into Agen, too.’

‘Who looks after the daughter?’ enquired Jay.

Clairmont shrugged.

‘No-one. I expect she just leaves her.’

‘I’m surprised the social services haven’t-’

‘Bof . In Lansquenet? They’d have to come all the way over from Agen or Montauban, maybe even Toulouse. Who’d bother? Mireille tried. More than once. But she’s clever. Put them off the scent. Mireille would have adopted the child if she’d been allowed. She’s got the money. The family would have stood by her. But at her age, and with a deaf child on top of that, I suppose they thought-’

Jay stared at him. ‘A deaf child?’

Clairmont looked surprised.

‘Oh yes. Didn’t you know? Ever since she was tiny. She’s supposed to know how to look after her.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s what keeps her here, héh ? That’s why she can’t go back to Paris.’

‘Why?’ asked Jay curiously.

‘Money,’ said Clairmont shortly, draining his glass.

‘But the farm must be worth something.’

‘Oh, it is,’ said Clairmont. ‘But she doesn’t own it. Why do you think she was so anxious to get the Foudouin place? It’s on a lease. She’ll be out the day it expires – unless she can get it renewed. And there isn’t much chance of that after what’s happened.’

‘Why? Who owns the lease?’

Clairmont drained his glass and licked his lips with satisfaction.

‘Pierre-Emile Foudouin. The man who sold you your house. Mireille’s great-nephew.’

They went out onto the drive then, to inspect Clairmont’s offerings. They were as bad as he had feared. But Jay’s mind was on other things. He offered Clairmont 500 francs for the whole truckload: the builder’s eyes widened briefly, but he was quickly persuaded. Winking slyly: ‘An eye for a good bargain, héh ?’

The note disappeared into his rusty palm like a card trick.

‘And don’t worry, héh . I can find you plenty more!’

He drove off, his exhaust blatting out pink dust from the drive. Jay was left to sort out the wreckage.

Even then Joe’s training held good: Jay still found it hard to throw away what might conceivably be useful. Even as he determined to use the entire truckload for firewood he found himself looking speculatively over this and that. A glass-panelled door, cracked down the middle, might make a reasonable cold frame. The jars, each turned upside down on a small seedling, would give good protection from late frost. Little by little the oddments Clairmont had brought began to spread themselves around the garden and the field. He even found a place for the carnival head. He carried it carefully to the boundary between his and Marise’s vineyard and set it on top of a fence post, facing towards her farm. Through the dragon’s open mouth a long crêpe tongue lolled redly, and its yellow eyes gleamed. Sympathetic magic, Joe would have called it, like putting gargoyles onto a church roof. Jay wondered what La Païenne would make of it.

Pog Hill, Summer 1977

JAY’S MEMORIES OF THAT LATE SUMMER WERE BLURRY IN A WAY the previous ones were not. Several factors were to blame – the pale and troubling sky, for one thing, which made him squint and gave him headaches. Joe seemed a little distant, and Gilly’s presence meant they did not have the long discussions they’d had the year before. And Gilly herself… it seemed that as July turned into August Gilly was always at the back of his mind. Jay found himself dwelling upon her more and more. His pleasure at her company was coloured by insecurity, jealousy and other feelings he found it difficult to identify. He was in a state of perpetual confusion. He was often close to anger, without knowing why. He argued constantly with his mother, who seemed to get more deeply under his skin that summer than ever before – everything got under his skin that year – he felt raw, as if every nerve were constantly exposed. He bought the Sex Pistols’ ‘Pretty Vacant’ and played it in his room at full volume, to the horror of his grandparents. He dreamed of piercing his ears. Gilly and he went to the Edge and warred with Glenda’s gang and filled bags with useful rubbish and took them over to Joe’s. Sometimes they helped Joe in the allotment, and occasionally he would talk to them about his travels and his time in Africa with the Masai, or his journeys through the Andes. But to Jay it seemed perfunctory, an afterthought, as if Joe’s mind were already on something else. The perimeter ritual, too, seemed abbreviated, a minute or two at most, with a stick of incense and a sachet of sprinkler. It did not occur to him to question it then, but afterwards he realized. Joe knew. Even then he had already made the decision.