The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers

by Paul Torday

  These were the last of the days of wine and roses, when credit was limitless and the optimism of bankers and their faith in their customers was a thing of beauty to behold.

  He rang the number in the classified ad and, after one or two failed attempts, managed to speak to Mynheer Hans van der Kloof somewhere in Holland. This gentleman had a rich, confident voice that somehow reminded Charlie of thick-cut marmalade; he greeted Charlie with pleasure and within a few moments the two of them were on first-name terms.

  ‘You are interested in fine wines?’ Hans asked Charlie.

  ‘Rather a hobby of mine,’ said Charlie. ‘Don’t get as much time to explore it as I’d like, and I don’t pretend to be especially knowledgeable. But I’m semi-retired now; I’ve just liquidated various investments, and I’m looking for something to keep me busy.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Hans van der Kloof. ‘You are the typical English businessman; you don’t know how to stop working. You are in the habit of making money, I think. Well, Kloof Wines might be the answer for you.’

  Charlie admitted modestly that the cut and thrust of business life was hard to give up, but his medical advisers had suggested stepping back to two or three days a week.

  ‘Then what we are offering is ideal for you. As we say in Holland, it is a pigeon flying into your mouth,’ said Hans. ‘It is not so necessary to have much knowledge of wine. You must learn something of our very special production methods at Chateau Kloof. You must love the wine to sell it.’

  They agreed to meet and Charlie said that he would come over to Holland in the next few days. Just before the conversation came to an end, Mynheer Kloof added casually, ‘One small thing: our minimum investment for distributors is ten thousand euros. Cash only, of course.’

  This sparked off a brief discussion after which it was agreed that, if Charlie liked what he saw on his visit, he could take away one hundred cases for five thousand euros. The minimum recommended retail price was two hundred euros a case.

  *

  Charlie left The Laurels a couple of days later, and got himself to Kemble station and from there to London. In the city, he used his new credit cards to buy himself a dark grey suit and a pair of shiny black shoes. Sylvia Bently might not have recognised him, he looked so neat and tidy. Next he found a budget van rental company, hired a large white van, and drove it to Harwich. There he took a ferry to the Hook of Holland and, on disembarkation, drove south through sheets of rain, following the directions given by Hans van der Kloof.

  At this stage of any new business venture, Charlie would normally have been in a state approaching elation. As I had begun to realise the last time I met Charlie, what kept him going was his ability to delude himself. He was the perfect example of hope triumphing over experience. Experience told him that any new business he became involved in was probably doomed to failure: either because it was an enterprise no one else would consider undertaking or because it was an enterprise that a very great number of people had already undertaken - people who were far better equipped to succeed, both financially and intellectually, than Charlie. Hope, on the other hand, usually reigned supreme in Charlie’s plans, at least in these early stages.

  On the ferry, Charlie went to the bar and ordered himself a celebratory glass of champagne. He fell into conversation with a man in a fur-lined suede coat who bred schnauzers and was off to Germany to purchase a new breeding bitch from a very particular bloodline. For a while they talked dogs, and dog food, and Charlie only just managed to stop himself from selling the man some Yoruza. That was finished, he told himself. The man asked Charlie what he did and Charlie replied, ‘Oh, I’m in the wine trade, myself.’ He was satisfied to see that this information was greeted with respect by the dog breeder.

  ‘Rhine wines, is it?’ asked the man. ‘Hocks? Moselle?’

  Charlie shook his head.

  ‘Well, you won’t find much wine in Holland,’ said the man, laughing. ‘Germany or France is where you’ll be heading, that’s my guess.’

  These words echoed in Charlie’s mind as he drove south, through flat countryside dotted with charming small farms and criss-crossed by drainage ditches. Contented-looking cows, which Charlie thought must be of the cheese-producing variety, grazed in lush meadows. Pigs rooted about in muddier enclosures, and ducks and geese floated on sheets of water or paddled along silty banks. Cyclists pedalled slowly along roads that ran flat and straight to the horizon. This rural landscape was interrupted from time to time by the occasional modernistic structure; metal pipework and tanks that indicated the location of a factory or sewage treatment plant. Of vineyards, however, there was none.

  This expedition may have been the beginning of the tenth, or perhaps even the thirtieth, of Charlie’s business ventures.

  He had lost count. Each time one of his schemes failed, it took a little longer for him to get over the disappointment. Each time he started out, he had to dig a little deeper to find the well of optimism that kept him going, as disaster after disaster proved beyond reasonable doubt his absolute unfitness for any form of business. As Charlie drove, these feelings arose in him once more and he experienced, not for the first time, the state of accidie: familiar to medieval monks and once known as the eighth deadly sin, this numbness of the heart, this loss of faith and belief, this weariness of the world and all its ways, was now invading Charlie’s soul.

  He knew, even as he drove south entertaining visions of himself as the host of wine tastings in great houses up and down England, that selling Chateau Kloof probably wouldn’t work. He told himself that the wine trade was the most respectable, profitable and interesting business that he had attempted; deep inside he knew that after a few days, or weeks, at best months, failure would be knocking on his door once again. He knew that he had to impress Mynheer Kloof with a show of enthusiasm, combined with that innate integrity and charm that in Charlie’s mind were the defining characteristics of the English upper classes. He knew he had to convey, above all, confidence: the confidence of a man with the Midas touch, a man who could get rich in his sleep, a man to whom bankers would fall over themselves to lend money.

  He didn’t think he could do it any more.

  As he drove on, what he most wanted to do was to stop the van, climb out and lie down in one of the muddy ditches that ran alongside the road. For a long time he had presented a brave front to the world. I don’t think it had ever occurred to him just to go and get a job working in a pub or a shop, or any of the countless unskilled jobs that he was qualified to do. Perhaps it was the result of an upbringing during which he had been taught to believe - among other fantasies - that he was a distant member of the Royal Family. I think, more likely, it was some fatal disconnection with the real world which led him to want the things he did not have, and yet could have had if only he had applied his brains and courage to more conventional lines of employment.

  Over the last twenty years or so, Charlie had lived by deception, mostly of a minor nature, but even there he had failed to make his mark. He was not on the Ten Most Wanted list; he had barely registered on the fraud radar of banks and credit card companies. His crimes were regular, but small. Nevertheless, they were using up his stock of courage. Courage to go on; courage even just to exist - it is a finite commodity in most of us and so it was with Charlie.

  At length he came to a crossroads which he thought he recognised from the directions he had been given. He took a right turn and, as promised, found the two white-painted posts by the side of the road exactly one and a half kilometres from the crossroads. Rain continued to sweep across the flat landscape under low clouds. In every direction were fields of vegetable crops; what they were Charlie could not have said. Between the white posts ran a straight metalled road, covered in muddy tyre tracks that stretched into the infinite gloom. Some distance away was a low range of red-brick farm buildings, and as he approached, Charlie noticed that the skyline was also relieved by several fibreglass tanks, and long breeze-block buildings with corrugated roofs.r />
  He pulled up in the cobbled yard next to a green twin-cab Toyota pick-up, rather like the one he used to drive during his Yoruza days. The farmhouse beside it was quite extensive, but of no architectural merit: its most prominent feature was a large satellite dish. As he got out of his van, a man opened the nearest door and looked out to see who had arrived. This man wore a short black leather jacket, and had dark skin, black hair and a moustache: he might have been Turkish, or possibly Iraqi. He certainly did not look like a farmer, or a vintner.

  He stared at Charlie and then, turning his head, shouted: ‘Hansi!’

  Then he disappeared back inside. A moment later a very tall man emerged through the doorway, bowing his head so as not to strike it on the lintel. He wore a checked shirt and jeans. He had ruddy cheeks and blue eyes in a round face adorned by gingery mutton-chop whiskers, and topped with receding wiry hair. When he saw Charlie, who was picking his way across the muddy courtyard, he opened his arms wide and said: ‘Mr Summers! Welcome to Chateau Kloof!’

  They shook hands and went inside. The door opened straight on to a large kitchen. At a long table sat the first man, reading a newspaper; a slatternly-looking woman with straggly blonde hair who was nursing a baby with a runny nose; and a small boy who played continuously with a handheld electronic game.

  Charlie had a picture in his mind of what Chateau Kloof should look like: an expanse of turrets and leaded roofs; stone walls mirrored in the glassy waters of a moat with swans gliding by; a drawbridge leading to a vaulted tunnel and an inner courtyard where he might have been greeted by his host in a quilted silk smoking jacket. He had expected at least some display of wealth and elegance; certainly nothing like the scene before him.

  *

  Over a cup of coffee they discussed business. Charlie had many questions, and the answers he received seemed either incomplete, or unsatisfactory. No, they did not grow the grapes here: there was another farm, in the south, where the grapes were grown and harvested. The wine was produced here, though, and Charlie would see how it was done. The technology was the very latest; more advanced than even the best vineyards in California. They had their own special, secret method of maturing the wine. Would Charlie please sign the non-disclosure document, and hand over the euros?

  Charlie did sign and, with some misgivings, handed over the cash he had brought in his briefcase. He might not have done so, but when he asked to see the wine first, Mynheer Kloof and the other man in the black leather jacket had suddenly looked so unfriendly, and the atmosphere had become so chill, that Charlie remembered he was alone miles from anywhere, and that he might as well fall in with their wishes.

  After that, everyone began to smile again and Charlie was taken on a tour. He gazed, uncomprehendingly, at a stainless-steel vat full of a purple liquid in one of the low buildings he had observed on his arrival. He witnessed a row of barrels in which many thousands of litres of Chateau Kloof were said to be maturing. There was an odour, everywhere, that reminded Charlie of school dinners. The explanation for this familiar smell became clear when Hans van der Kloof said, ‘And now, Charlie, I tell you our great secret, what gives our wine its special flavour and bouquet. Some growers mature their wine in oak barrels to give it a special taste. This is very old fashioned nowadays, I think. We are different. At Chateau Kloof we grow many fields of beetroots, and pickle them to preserve them. We use the same vats to mature our wine. That is the secret of our special flavour and colour. Now you see how much I trust you: this is private information, known only to ourselves.’

  After this revelation, they returned to the kitchen. Charlie was handed a few packs of marketing literature. It was the first thing he had seen on his visit of which he could thoroughly approve: glossy photographs of sunlit hillsides covered in rows of vines; a long pedigree of the Kloof family, not unlike Charlie’s own family tree, proving the descent of the Kloof bloodline from the Emperor Charlemagne, who had caused the first vineyard to be planted; reproductions of several gold medals said to have been awarded at various wine festivals; and some lyrical description of the wine and the winemaking processes which omitted any mention of beetroot.

  The dark-haired man in the leather jacket helped Charlie load the van with the cases of wine. These too were well presented and adorned with ornate labels in blue and gold inks. Charlie’s spirits rose for a moment. Perhaps this really could work, after all: at any rate, it all looked very convincing.

  Once the van was loaded, Charlie went back into the house to bid farewell. On the kitchen table stood an open bottle of rich red wine.

  ‘Now you must taste the wine,’ said Mynheer Kloof. He poured out three glasses and handed one to each of them, then proposed a toast.

  ‘To the success of our first English distributor,’ he said. ‘Proost!’

  ‘Down the hatch,’ replied Charlie.

  ‘What did you think of the wine?’ I asked Charlie, later, when he reached this point in the story.

  ‘I don’t know much about wine,’ he replied. ‘I’d be the first to admit that a pint of beer is more in my line. This stuff had quite a powerful taste. I don’t think I would have wanted a refill. I thought it might go well enough with a strong curry, or something of that sort.’

  Toasts exchanged, and after many more expressions of mutual esteem and invitations for Charlie to come again soon, he left. He was thankful that he had been able to leave at all. The whole set-up had filled him with uneasiness from the first moment.

  ‘They were all smiles most of the time,’ he told me, ‘but if I’d tried to short-change them I think I might have ended up in a field, pushing up beetroots.’

  *

  Buying the wine turned out to be the easy part. Charlie took a different ferry back to England, arriving this time in Hull. From there he drove to York and used his credit card to rent a room in a hotel outside the city centre. He chose York because he had not been to York before: it was one of a diminishing list of towns or cities where he was, as yet, unknown. He knew York to be a prosperous sort of place where no doubt plenty of people drank wine. He managed to insert an advertisement in the local paper the day after his arrival, and to have some leaflets run up advertising a wine tasting. Then he spent several hours distributing the English-language brochures Mynheer Kloof had given him, in the leafier and more genteel suburbs where he felt wine drinkers might live. No one could say Charlie did not put his back into it: he was quite done in after two days and had to lie in his hotel room watching television for most of the next day until he recovered.

  The evening of the wine tasting arrived. It was to take place in a function room provided by the hotel, who also undertook to announce the event on a welcome board in the foyer. Charlie had some business cards printed which bore the legend:

  Charles Edward Gilbert Summers Esq.,

  Master of Wine

  The cards gave a mobile number, but no address.

  Charlie set out a few rows of the marketing literature on one table. On another was a row of bottles of Chateau Kloof, which he had opened; in between these were small plastic pails for spitting out the wine, as Mynheer Kloof had instructed him, together with some plates of water biscuits, and little saucers laden with lumps of Cheddar and a few pickled gherkins. Then Charlie put on his grey suit, now slightly wrinkled, and his shiny black shoes, and waited for the customers to pour in.

  Trade was slow. A couple of men in suits wandered in early on. Charlie had seen them at the hotel bar on the previous evening and presumed they must be visiting businessmen. One of them said, ‘Mind if I try some of that vino?’

  ‘That’s what we’re here for,’ Charlie replied. The man poured himself a generous measure, and drank about half the glass. Then he screwed up his face.

  ‘Where do you get that stuff, mate? What is it?’

  Charlie offered them a Chateau Kloof brochure and gave them the marketing spiel, but they were already leaving. After this unpromising start the evening did not improve. A couple of elderly ladies appeared in
the doorway giggling and clutching at each other nervously. When Charlie welcomed them, they admitted to having been lured to the hotel by Charlie’s leaflet campaign. They helped themselves to small measures of wine, sniffed it and sipped, and then left again without saying anything. Another man in an old overcoat fastened with baler twine came in, a woollen cap on his head and several days’ growth of beard on his chin. He nodded pleasantly to Charlie, poured himself a full glass of wine, and drank it in a single gulp.

  ‘Cheers, mate,’ the connoisseur said, giving Charlie a wink.

  Then he helped himself to a refill. After he had drunk two or three more glasses Charlie asked him to leave. There was no rancour; the man thanked Charlie and said he’d send in an order for a few cases just as soon as he had an address for Charlie to send them to. And that was it. No other visitors came. Charlie’s first (and last) wine-tasting event was over.

  *

  The following day Charlie packed up his rented van. He filled it with diesel at a nearby garage, and when he went to pay, he found that the card reader rejected his credit card. So that game was over: he had to pay for the fuel from his diminishing reserves of cash. There would be no more wine tastings. In any case, the evening in York had not encouraged him. Not knowing where to go, or what to do, he instinctively turned for the town that had once been his home. He drove north to Middlesbrough.

  It occurred to him that his life, as it had been conducted for the last two decades or more, was coming to an end. The sense of inevitable failure that had filled him as he drove out to Holland now returned stronger than ever. The feeling was so profound that, as he drove, his vision blurred with tears. He did not know why he was weeping, or what would make him stop: he knew only that he had a vanload of undrinkable, unsaleable wine to get rid of; after that, the future stretched in front of him as barren as a polar desert. Charlie was returning to the place where he was born: but no friends, no family, no warm fireside awaited him.