A Room With No Natural Light

by Douglas Lindsay

  Financially it made little sense to leave the wine aging in barrels for up to a year longer than necessary. Hardyman had often shown Pitt the figures, bland tables of statistics that demonstrated there was no fiscal benefit to selling the slightly more expensive wine, against the delay in getting it onto the market. The great wine taster that Hardyman had been, he refused to accept that you could actually tell the difference between a bottle that had been aged for two or fifteen months.

  Pitt had ignored him. He enjoyed the company of the barrels.

  The basement also held racks of sparkling wine, which had to be turned every day to evenly distribute the yeast sediment. This was a job that had long since been done by a gyropractor in virtually every vineyard on earth; a machine that automatically turned each bottle eight times a day. Pitt, alone amongst his peers, still did the job manually. Usually, he would talk to the bottles as a group while he slowly went about his task. Occasionally, he would address an individual bottle if he felt for some reason that it required extra encouragement.

  Rarely did Daisy question him to his face, although she thought his behaviour remarkably odd and sad, regardless of what was down there. Mrs Cromwell, for her insidious part, questioned Pitt’s behaviour regularly when in conversation with Daisy.

  Sometimes, Pitt would feel claustrophobic in amongst the vines, out in the open air, closed in by stalks and the boundaries of the vineyard. In the cellar, space seemed infinite, the darkness of the corners extended for miles.

  The cellar, like love, knew no boundaries.

  *

  The door opened. Even after the refurbishment of the cellar, the door had creaked loudly and Pitt had been quite happy. He liked the sound. He liked the warning. A few months previously, Jenkins, without speaking to Pitt, had had one of the men oil the hinges. The door opened in silence. Pitt had not said anything. He could wait. The oil would wear off, the hinges would creak again. Some day.

  Light poured in, like wine. Pitt looked from the darkness at the figure of Jenkins standing in the doorway.

  ‘Are you here, Mr Pitt?’

  Time was up. Pitt wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting in the cellar. Usually, he did not take a watch. He would sit for as long as was required. Today, he had instructed Jenkins to come and get him when the men from DEFRA arrived.

  He stared down at the brown boots he’d been wearing for the past fifteen years. They’d been resoled three times. The last time he’d been told that maybe he ought to get a new pair. Pitt liked his boots.

  He walked out of the darkness, Jenkins imagined him some kind of monster emerging from the depths.

  ‘Did you read the report from the bank?’ asked Pitt.

  He and Jenkins walked out of the cellar, up the steps, towards the light of day.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Anything I should know about?’

  ‘They have a few suggestions, most of which you will have heard before. All the things that Mr Hardyman used to talk about. A café, a shop, wine tasting for the public, tours of the vineyard, maybe expanding the farmhouse so we could take in guests.’

  ‘Does it suggest that I get rid of my mother-in-law to make more space?’ said Pitt dryly. He didn’t smile, Jenkins did.

  ‘And there’s a chance of a TV documentary thing. They’re looking for a vineyard, a year-in-the-life sort of idea. A vineyard that does the whole organic, everything local, nothing added, all that kind of stuff. You know, like River Cottage, that kind of thing.’

  ‘What’s River Cottage?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. We fit the bill of what they’re looking for. If we apply and get it, then expand the business as suggested, they reckon the vineyard could turn over a nice profit.’

  ‘Could it?’

  Jenkins shrugged. Round the corner of the farmhouse, into the sun. Pitt closed his eyes for a second, felt the warmth on his face.

  ‘A year?’ said Pitt.

  ‘Well, I guess they don’t move in and live with us for a year. I presume they come every now and again. At harvest, bottling, you know, various stages.’

  Pitt opened his eyes and looked across the vines; those at the top of the vineyard before the hill gently sloped away to the south.

  ‘It’s not happening,’ he said bluntly.

  Jenkins nodded. He knew Pitt wouldn’t accept anyone onto the vineyard that didn’t have to be there.

  ‘Where are they?’ he asked.

  ‘In the kitchen,’ said Jenkins. ‘Ju’s making her coffee.’

  Pitt turned and looked at Jenkins with a raised eyebrow, then walked towards the kitchen.

  23

  She had a thick file of papers, was going through her questionnaire, ticking and writing, marking boxes as she went. Occasionally, she would take a sip of coffee, although it must have long since gone cold. She smelled of cigarettes, and traces of alcohol came through her breath behind the coffee. Her fingers smelled of onions from making bolognaise sauce the previous evening.

  Jane Horsfield herself was unaware of the aromas of tobacco and alcohol, but she could smell the onions. Every time she caught a vague murmur of the aroma she cursed herself for not washing her hands quickly enough.

  ‘When was the last time you used insecticides on the vines or on any other part of the vineyard?’ she asked.

  Jenkins was standing to the side, leaning back against a worktop. He had finished his coffee, was eating his third flapjack, chewing quietly in the corner. Yuan Ju had left the room after making the coffee. Pitt wondered where she’d gone.

  Daisy sat across the table from Pitt, watching him, watching Horsfield. Pitt had not previously discussed the issue of the birds with her, and she herself had not noticed. She would not let this latter fact keep her from considering this a blatant act of obfuscation by her husband.

  If Horsfield was wilting in any way from the stare from across the table, she did not show it.

  ‘Never,’ said Pitt. Horsfield looked up sharply, took another sip of cold coffee as she held Pitt’s gaze.

  ‘You’ve never used chemicals of any sort on your grounds or plants?’

  ‘No,’ said Pitt.

  ‘That’s pretty unusual, isn’t it?’ said Horsfield, although it was more of a statement than an actual question.

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Pitt. ‘You’d need to speak to other yards to find out what they do.’

  ‘Well, that’s just it, Mr Pitt. I do speak to other yards, and I do know what they do.’

  ‘I have no interest in other yards,’ said Pitt.

  ‘Surely you care what your competitors are doing?’ she asked.

  ‘They’re not my competitors,’ replied Pitt.

  Horsfield drained her coffee, licking her lips as if that final cold mouthful had been particularly satisfying.

  ‘So, who would you say were your competitors, Mr Pitt?’

  ‘I’m not in competition.’

  ‘You’ve won awards,’ she said. ‘I presume you’ve lost some too. You must only have done that through competition.’

  ‘Growing wine is not an empirical process. You can’t put a number on a bottle of wine. If some people want to judge them, that’s their business, but by its nature it has to be done on a purely subjective basis. I don’t care what anyone thinks, I care what I think. Thereafter, I need to sell the wine in order to keep the vineyard in business, but, that aside, it’s of no interest to me. I can sell one bottle or a thousand.’

  ‘Very noble,’ she said dryly. Across the table, Daisy did not look as if she thought it was at all noble. Pitt, for his part, did not think it noble either.

  ‘We don’t use chemicals because that would impact adversely on the quality of the grapes we produce,’ he said.

  ‘So how do you deal with any insect or fungal problems that arise?’

  ‘By paying attention,’ said Pitt. His voice was dead. He had no interest in talking to DEFRA, but wanted to avoid some apocalyptic scenario where they arrived heavy-handed and wiped out his business for an enti
re year. With the dual threat from the bank, however, Pitt was already presuming the worst.

  ‘I bow to your self-righteousness, Mr Pitt,’ said Horsfield acerbically. ‘I’m curious why you’re so reluctant to become part of a television documentary series. Yours is just the kind of sanctimony that Channel 4 like to thrust down our throats on a Sunday evening, in an attempt to make us feel bad about eating chickens that haven’t been allowed to roam free all their lives, haven’t had all their meals cooked for them by a gourmet chef and who haven’t been taken on at least three trips to the seaside each year of their feather-and-shit-strewn little lives.’

  She had delivered the monologue whilst staring at the long list of questions which required to be gone through, finally looking up with her own look of reverse sanctimony as she finished.

  Pitt held her gaze. His eyes were dead. He had shut down.

  He was not even too concerned about the source of her information. How could DEFRA know about the bank’s demands, the offer of reality television? Yet Pitt did not think about that.

  There was nothing sanctimonious about him. There were plenty of negative words that could be used to describe him, but that was not one. He had no interest in what other people thought; he had no interest in promoting his own views. He did not see his way as right, and everyone else’s way as wrong. He had his way, and no one else was of any concern.

  He did not drop his gaze, and finally the grey depths of his eyes unnerved Horsfield and she looked back at her list of questions.

  ‘I understand you did not report the first instance of a dead bird?’

  She looked up sharply again. Pitt felt himself shrivel down to a tiny black ball at the pit of his stomach. Wished he could disappear.

  24

  Yuan Ju was preparing fried noodles with vegetables. A more elaborate concoction of spices, as she had judged that the tastes of the men were becoming more sophisticated. Thursday afternoon. The weekend had already begun to prey on her, there was a tightness in her muscles.

  Daisy had gone to collect her mother, they would be returning later. The woman from DEFRA would be filing her report. The threat of the bank lingered in the air. Pitt sat in the kitchen, watching the only person with whom he felt he had any level of empathy; and perhaps it was implicit in that empathy that they did not talk to each other.

  Ju was taking her time over the vegetable preparation. The meal did not need to be served for over and hour, and she was taking comfort in Pitt’s presence.

  No words had been said, and she still had not caught his eye. The sun had the warmth and brightness of a mid-summer’s afternoon; a heavy heat hung in the kitchen air, yet it was comforting rather than stifling. Where she stood at the kitchen window, Ju could smell the jasmine. With the summer heat and the smell of the flowers, if she closed her eyes, she could be in the hills where her grandmother had grown up, the village she had visited every summer of her life. Until this one long, sad summer in England.

  He watched her hands and the movement of her fingers. She took a small red chilli from a pack and laid it on the wooden board. She cut the stalk off the end and then hesitated. There was total silence in the room and from outside. No planes overhead, none of the men driving a quad bike through the vineyard at that moment. There were no birds.

  She swallowed and looked at the floor in his direction. She had thought about this moment many times. She would wait another few seconds. She felt nervous, but somehow even those nerves were submerged beneath the weight of her fear of the coming weekend.

  She saw his feet move and then he stood and walked slowly towards her. He stopped beside her. He was looking at her, but she kept her eyes diverted, now looking back down at the chopping board.

  They breathed each other in. She heard him swallow. He felt captivated and ridiculous. What would he say to Daisy, if she walked in now? How absurd would he look? The guilt would be draped on him as surely as if he was making love to Yuan Ju on the kitchen table.

  And the thought was there, in his head; Ju beneath him, naked and passionate, as he thrust into her.

  Without lifting the knife too high she offered it to him, her fingers trembling slightly. He wondered what he was doing, and banished the thought of her naked body from his head. He took the knife, making sure their fingers did not touch. She couldn’t breathe; her throat was dry.

  He manoeuvred the chilli from her fingers, as she seemed unable to move. He sliced it lengthways, as he had seen her do many times in the previous few weeks, and then began to chop it very finely, the movement of the knife so slow that it made no sound on the wood. Her fingers were still resting on the board beside him, no more than a couple inches from the knife.

  He was standing next to the cook, chopping a chilli, aware that his mouth was dry and his heart was pounding. She let her eyes drift over his hands and up the length of his arms, but they never reached his face. She could not look at him.

  Would he be standing so close if he knew what she would be doing that weekend?

  Pitt suddenly thought again of the shame if Daisy should return at that moment. Or if Jenkins or one of the other men came in. He hesitated and slowly laid the knife down on the board even though he hadn’t finished. He couldn’t look at her, didn’t want to leave her side. He wanted to stand this close, he wanted their hands to touch, he wanted to hold her. More than anything, he wanted to talk to her. He wanted to ask her where she had come from, and why she was here, and where she went on Saturday afternoons, and what was it about those days that made her so sad.

  A thought came into his head. A thought from nowhere. A strange thought that made no sense whatsoever. He glanced at her, and, since he did not have Ju’s inhibition, he was able to look at her face from so close beside her. Her head was bowed, her eyes on his fingers, although her look shifted when she realised that he was staring at her.

  How could it be? The thought that had just occurred to him, how could it be? He did not know where the thought had come from. He had never had a thought like that in his life. He had never before had a thought that transcended rationality.

  He lowered his eyes at last, aware that he might have been making her feel uncomfortable. In fact, Ju flowered beneath his gaze. Their fingers still sat side by side on the chopping board, and had drifted to no more than a fraction of an inch apart. He wanted to touch her, to make that infinitesimal movement to his right. It was all it would take to feel the electricity of the touch.

  His head dropped an inch. Their fingers remained so close, but he was not going to be able to bridge that divide. Now that he realised the truth, however, he did not just want to touch her finger. He wanted to hold her, he wanted to take the great weight of melancholy that hung so heavily around her and throw it away, banish it from her forever.

  He frowned. He didn’t really understand, and his inability to show her his compassion depressed him further. Slowly his fingers curled up, moving away from Ju, as he removed his hand, then he turned away without looking at her. A few steps across the kitchen, while Ju stared at the chopping board, he lifted his hat from the far side of the kitchen and walked slowly back outside.

  Finally, when he was gone, she was able to breathe properly, but she felt the awful weight of his leaving, and she wondered if she had in some way overstepped the mark.

  She heard his footsteps on the stones outside and watched him walk away towards the vines, his hat on his head, his shoulders slightly stooped.

  25

  Mrs Cromwell could have done what she did whilst staying with her sister for the night, but she was happy to wait. She was going to take more pleasure out of making the phone call in front of Yuan Ju. She didn’t know whether or not she understood, and didn’t care. There was more implicit and unpleasant mischief-making to be had if Yuan Ju knew what was going on.

  On the drive home from Devon, Daisy gave Mrs Cromwell the full details of the visit of the DEFRA woman, which gave Mrs Cromwell one extra person to call. She had no intention of letting Daisy kn
ow what she was about to do, although she didn’t necessarily mind her knowing either. She milked her for all the information she could, although, once she had heard Horsfield’s name, she already had everything she required.

  Friday morning, a grey day. Mrs Cromwell sat and ate breakfast with Pitt and Daisy at the table, for the first time eating food prepared by Yuan Ju. Daisy wondered what her mother was thinking. Pitt ignored her; had no doubt that she would have her reasons and that those reasons would be anything other than having decided to give Ju a chance. He refused, however, to allow himself any thoughts of Mrs Cromwell and her motives. Everything she did was in her own interest, with no regard for anyone else. Such a person was not to be second-guessed; you waited and dealt with the consequences of their actions when they arose.

  No conversation at the table. Pitt did not look at Ju. Mrs Cromwell had the cool composure of a general who calmly eats breakfast before unleashing war. Daisy knew there was something coming and fretted over her toast. Her mother did everything for a reason, and the thought that she was about to do something bold, scared and excited and angered her.

  Pitt finished breakfast and did not sit in silence for long. Most mornings, he would give it time, see how the kitchen would develop, gauge whether or not he was likely to get time alone with Ju. Today, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. The clouds were gathering.

  As he was walking out the door, he hesitated, a sudden thought about whether or not he should be leaving Ju alone with the two women of the house. Something might happen in his absence. He played the scenario through of how the situation would develop if he returned to the table, and realised there really was nothing to be done. He was just going to have to wait to find out what it was that Mrs Cromwell had in mind.

  He stepped out into a morning that was cooler and fresher than it had been for some time. He looked up at the sky, listened to the gentle wind in the trees. As ever, he found himself straining to hear the sound of birds.