Blackberry Wine (26 page)

It was as he lay beside the riverbank that Rosa found him. His eyes were open, but he did not seem to be looking at anything. The radio, swinging from a branch overhanging the water, was playing Elvis Presley. At his side stood an opened bottle of wine. Its label, too far away for her to read it, said ‘Raspberry ’75’. There was a red cord knotted around the neck of the bottle, which caught her eye. As she watched, the Englishman reached for the bottle and drank from it. He made a face, as if the taste were unpleasant, but from across the river she caught the scent of what he was drinking – a sudden bright flare of ripe scarlet, wild berries gathered in secret. She studied him for a moment from the other side of the river. In spite of what
maman
told her, he looked harmless. And this was the man who tied the funny little red bags on the trees. She wondered why. At first her taking them was a defiant gesture, erasing him as much as possible from her place, but she had come to like them, their dangling shapes like small red fruit on the shaken branches. She no longer minded sharing her secret place with him. Rosa shifted her position to squat more comfortably in the long weeds on the far side of the river. She considered crossing, but the stepping stones had submerged in recent showers, and she was wary of jumping to the far bank. At her side the curious brown goat nuzzled restlessly at her sleeve. She pushed the goat away with a flapping motion of her hand.
Later, Clopette, later
. She wondered whether the Englishman knew about the wasps’ nest. He was, after all, less than a metre from its opening.

Jay lifted the bottle again. It was over half empty, and already he felt dizzy, almost drunk. It was in part the sky which gave him this impression, the raindrops zigzagging down onto his upturned face like flakes of soot. The sky went on for ever.

From the bottle the scent intensified, became something which bubbled and seethed. It was a gleeful scent, a breath of high summer, of overripe fruit dripping freely from the branches, heated from below by the sun reflecting from the chalky stones of the railbed. This memory was not entirely pleasant. Perhaps because of the sky he also associated it with his last summer at Pog Hill, the disastrous confrontation with Zeth and the wasps’ nests, Gilly watching in fascination and himself crouching close by. Gilly was always the one who enjoyed wasping. Without her he would never have ventured near a wasps’ nest at all. The thought somehow disturbed him. This wine should have brought back 1975, he told himself aggrievedly. That’s when it was made. A bright year, full of promise and discovery. ‘Sailing’ playing on the radio. That’s what happened before, with the other bottles. But his time machine
was two years out, bringing him here instead, sending Joe even further away. He poured the rest of the wine onto the ground and closed his eyes.

A red chuckle from the bottom of the bottle. Jay opened his eyes again, uneasy, certain that someone was watching him. The dregs were almost black in this dull daylight, black and syrupy, like treacle, and from where he was lying there almost seemed to be movement around the neck of the bottle, as if something were trying to escape. He sat up and looked a little closer. Inside the bottle, several wasps were gathered, attracted by the scent of sugar. Two crawled stickily on the neck. Another had flown right into the belly of the bottle to investigate the residue at the bottom. Jay shivered. Wasps sometimes hide in bottles and drinks cans. He knew from that summer. A sting inside the mouth is both painful and dangerous. The wasp crawled thickly against the glass. Its wings were clotted with syrup. He thought he could hear the insect inside the bottle, buzzing in a growing frenzy, but perhaps that was the wine itself calling, its hot bright scent distressing the air, rising like a column of red smoke, a signal, perhaps, or a warning.

Suddenly his closeness to the wasps’ nest appalled him. He realized he could hear the insects beneath him under the soil’s thin crust. He sat up, meaning to move away, but a recklessness seized him, and instead of retreating he moved a little closer.

If Gilly was here
 …

Nostalgia was upon him again before he could stop it. It dragged at him like a caught bramble. Perhaps it was the scent from the bottle, from the spilled wine on the ground making him feel this way, this trapped summer scent, intoxicating, overwhelming. The radio near by gave a quick crackle of static and began to play ‘I Feel Love’. Jay shivered.

This was ridiculous, he told himself. He had nothing to prove. It was twenty years since he last fired a wasps’ nest. It seemed a reckless, lethal thing to do now, the kind of
thing only a child would do, oblivious of the risks. Besides …

A voice – from the bottle, he thought, though it might still be the wine talking – cajoling, a little scornful. It sounded something like Gilly’s voice, something like Joe’s. It was impatient, amused beneath the irritation.
If Gilly was here you wouldn’t be so chicken
.

Something moved in the long grass on the other side of the river. For a second he thought he saw her, a blur of russet which might be her hair, something else which might be a stripy T-shirt or pullover.

‘Rosa?’

No response. She stared out at him from the long grass, her green eyes bright with curiosity. He could see her now he knew where to look. From a short distance away, he could hear the sound of a goat bleating.

Rosa seemed to look at him with encouragement, almost with expectation. Beneath him he could hear the wasps buzzing, a strangely yeasty sound, as if something below the earth were fermenting wildly. The sound, coupled with Rosa’s expectant look, was too much for him. He felt a burst of exhilaration, something which stripped the years away and made him fourteen again, invulnerable.

‘Watch this,’ he said, and began to move closer to the nest.

Rosa watched him intently. He moved awkwardly, inching towards the hole in the bank. He moved with his head down, as if this would fool the wasps into thinking him invisible. A couple of wasps settled momentarily on his back. She watched as he pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket. There was a lighter in one hand, the same lighter he had offered Rosa that day by the stream. Carefully, he opened the lighter and doused the handkerchief in the fluid. Holding the object at arm’s length, he moved closer to the nest. There was a larger hole under the banking, a hole which might once have housed rats. Around it, a complex of mud honeycomb. A moment’s hesitation,
choosing his spot, then he pushed the handkerchief right into the nest, leaving a tag-end of fabric dangling down like a fuse. As she watched, he looked at her and grinned.

Banzai
.

He must have been drunk. That was the only explanation he could think of later, but it didn’t feel like being drunk at the time. At the time it felt right. Good. Exciting. Amazing how quickly these things came back. He only had to flip the Bic once. The flame caught instantly, flaring with sudden, incredible fierceness. There must have been plenty of oxygen down the hole. Good. Briefly Jay wished he had brought some firecrackers. For a second or two there was no response from the wasps, then half a dozen came flying out like hot cinders. Jay felt a surge of euphoria and jumped to his feet, ready to run. That was the first mistake. Gilly always taught him to keep low, to find a hiding place from the start and to crouch low, under a root or behind a tree stump, as the enraged wasps came flying out. This time Jay was too busy watching Rosa. The wasps came out in a dreadful surge, and he ran for the bushes. Second mistake. Never run. The movement attracts them, excites them. The best thing is to lie flat on the ground, covering the face. But he panicked. He could smell burning lighter fluid and a vicious stink like burnt carpet. Something stung him on the arm and he slapped at it. Several wasps stung him then, maddeningly, through his T-shirt and on his hands and arms, zinging by his ears like bullets, darkening the air, and Jay lost what cool he had. He swore and slapped at his skin. Another wasp stung him just under the left eye, driving a brilliant lance of pain into his face, and he stepped out blindly, right over the edge of the cutaway and into the water. If the river had been shallower he might have broken his neck. As it was his fall saved him. He hit the water face-first, sank, screamed, swallowed river water, surfaced, sank again, made for the far banking and found himself a minute later several yards downriver, his T-shirt nubby with drowned wasps.

Under the nest, the fire he had lit was already out. Jay regurgitated river water. He coughed and swore shakily. Fourteen had never seemed so far away. From her distant island in time he thought he could hear Gilly laughing.

The water was shallow on that side of the river, and he waded out onto the bank and flopped on all fours into the grass. His arms and hands were already swelling from the dozens of stings, and one eye was puffed shut like a boxer’s. He felt like a week-old corpse.

Gradually he became aware of Rosa watching from her vantage point upstream. She had wisely moved back to avoid the angry wasps, but he could see her, perched on the top rung of the gatepost beside the dragon’s head. She looked curious but unconcerned. Beside her the goat cropped grass.

‘Never again,’ gasped Jay. ‘God, never again.’

He was just beginning to consider the idea of getting up when he heard footfalls in the vineyard beyond the fence. He looked up, just in time to see Marise d’Api as she arrived breathlessly at the gate and swept Rosa into her arms. It took her a few moments to register his presence, for she and Rosa had begun a rapid interchange of signing. Jay tried to get up, slipped, smiled and made a vague gesture with one hand, as if by following the rules of country etiquette he might somehow make her overlook everything else. He felt suddenly very conscious of his swollen eye, wet clothes, muddy jeans.

‘I had an accident,’ he explained.

Marise’s eyes went to the wasps’ nest in the banking. The remains of Jay’s charred handkerchief still protruded from the hole, and he could smell lighter fluid across the water. Some accident.

‘How many times were you stung?’ For the first time he thought he heard amusement in her voice.

Jay looked briefly at his arms and hands.

‘I don’t know. I … didn’t know they’d come out so fast.’
He could see her looking at the discarded wine bottle, drawing conclusions.

‘Are you allergic?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Jay tried to stand up again, slipped and fell on the wet grass. He felt sick and dizzy. Dead wasps clung to his clothes. Marise looked both dismayed and almost ready to laugh.

‘Come with me,’ she said at last. ‘I have a stings kit in the house. Sometimes there can be a delayed reaction.’

Carefully Jay pulled himself up the banking towards the hedge. Rosa trotted behind, closely followed by the goat. Halfway to the house Jay felt the child’s small cold hand slip into his and, looking down, he saw that she was smiling.

The house was larger than it seemed from the road, a converted barn with low gables and high, narrow windows. Halfway up the front wall, a door stared out in midair from the loft where bales of hay were once kept. An old tractor was parked by one of the outbuildings. There was a neat kitchen garden by the side of the house, a small orchard – twenty well-kept apple trees – at the back and a woodpile at the other side, with cords of carefully stacked wood for the winter. Two or three of the small brown goats wandered skittishly across the vineyard’s small paths. Jay followed Marise along the rutted pathway between the rows of vines, and Marise put out a hand to steady him as they approached the gate, though he sensed this was less out of concern for him than for the vines, which his clumsy approach might have damaged.

‘In here,’ she told him shortly, indicating the kitchen door. ‘Sit down. I’ll get the kit.’

Her kitchen was bright and tidy, with a shelf of stone jugs above a porcelain sink, a long oak table, like the one at his own farm, and a giant black stove. Bunches of herbs hung from low beams above the chimney: rosemary, sage and pennyroyal. Rosa went to the pantry and fetched some lemonade, pouring a glassful and sitting at the table to drink it, watching Jay with curious eyes.

‘Tu as mal?’
she asked.

He looked at her. ‘So you can talk,’ he said.

Rosa smiled mischievously.

‘Can I have some of that?’ Jay gestured at the glass of lemonade, and she pushed it across the table towards him. So, he told himself, she can lipread as well as sign. He wondered whether Mireille knew. Somehow he didn’t think so. Rosa’s voice was childish but steady, without any of the usual fluctuations of tone of the deaf. The lemonade was home-made and good.

‘Thank you.’

Marise flicked him a suspicious look as she came into the kitchen with the stings kit. She had a disposable syringe in one hand.

‘It’s adrenalin. I used to be a nurse.’

After a moment’s hesitation Jay held out his arm and closed his eyes.

‘There.’

He felt a small burning sensation in the crook of his elbow. There was a second’s light-headedness, then nothing. Marise was looking at him in some amusement.

‘You’re very squeamish for a man who plays with wasps.’

‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ said Jay, rubbing his arm.

‘If you behave like that, you can expect to be stung. You got away lightly.’

He supposed that was true, but it didn’t feel that way. His head was still pounding. His left eye was swollen tight and shiny. Marise went to the kitchen cupboard and brought out a shaker of white powder. She shook some into a cup, added a little water and stirred it with a spoon. Handing him the cup: ‘Baking soda,’ she advised. ‘You should put some of this onto the stings.’

She did not offer to help. Jay followed her advice, feeling rather foolish. This wasn’t how he’d envisaged their meeting at all. He said so.

Marise shrugged and turned back to the cupboard. Jay
watched as she poured pasta into a pan, added water and salt, placed the pan carefully on the hob.

‘I have to make lunch for Rosa,’ she explained. ‘Take what time you need.’ In spite of her words, Jay got the distinct impression she wanted him out of her kitchen as soon as possible. He struggled with the baking soda, trying to reach the stings on his back. The brown goat poked its head around the door and bleated.