A Beer in the Loire

by Tommy Barnes

  I noticed that despite living in this wonderful house in the countryside, with this forest opposite us and being surrounded by such charming towns, Rose had been forced to spend more and more time at home in front of a computer screen working at her internet marketing job, and less and less time doing what she came to do. Any spare moments she had were spent looking after Albert. She was barely leaving the house, and consequently she was going on more and more trips to England. This wasn’t the life I had promised her. I realised that unless I got this brewery right very quickly, there was a good chance that one day she was going to go back to England and not come back. I had been completely self-obsessed for the last year and I hadn’t noticed her slipping away.

  So it all came down to the market in Marigny-Marmande. One more chance. The market was held on a Thursday, which meant Damien couldn’t help me because he had to work. I would be on my own at the mercy of the French. The beer was good now. What I needed was for the people of the Richelais to give me a second chance.

  I know this is quite a heavy emotional bit, but I’m going to break out here because I’ve just had an idea for a book that I want to run past you: One Thousand Shades of Moss. It’s a racy, soft-porn story for moss lovers. Extract:

  Peregrine rubbed Tabatha’s expansive bosom in a large circular motion, her skin so soft to the touch that it reminded him of a fresh patch of sphagnales in the autumn.

  ‘Oh Peregrine, keep rubbing my bosom in a circular motion, you’re relentless, like a hand-held whisk. You’re like a Nutribullet. Oh yes, yes, YES, SPOROPHYTES!!!’

  Phone call from Mishi: ‘Listen, now, Tommy, the flat-bottomed boat has broken its tether. It was last seen floating past Montsoreau, where the Vienne joins the Loire. That’s not why I’m phoning you. I need you to dig some holes in my lawn.’

  ‘Oh. Right. The boat’s gone where?’

  ‘It’s heading out to sea. Never mind that. It’s not important. Can you dig the holes or not?’

  ‘I can’t I’m afraid, Mishi. I’ve got to prepare for the market.’

  ‘OK sweetie. Completely understand. Now, you sound terribly miserable, but you know you’re on to something there. Stick at it.’

  That a dog would know how important a set of van keys was is completely beyond comprehension. And yet while I chased Burt around the dingly dell, my precious van keys dangling from the side of his mouth, dripping with saliva, I’m telling you, he knew exactly how important they were. At this point It was 7 a.m.

  ‘BURT! FOR GOD’S SAKE DESIST!’ I cried as he hurtled around the garden like a jet-propelled beanbag until eventually his obesity sided against him and he came to a halt. I wrestled the keys out of his mouth and got into the 1982 Peugeot J9 pompier van.

  It’s funny, you know, Burt smells of fast-food trucks and old people’s homes and I honestly can’t tell you why that is. Sometimes when he’s asleep in front of the log burner I lie down next to him and hug him and listen to his heart thudding away and I wonder why he hates me.

  Three quarters of an hour after I’d managed to retrieve my keys, Burt was staring at me from the passenger seat of the pompier van.

  ‘Why don’t you take the car?’ said Rose, who was standing by the van, wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm.

  ‘No, Rose. It will start. It just has to warm up. It’s a work of art.’

  ‘But you’ve been trying to start it for three quarters of an hour. And it’s not a work of art – it’s just an old van. At this rate you’re going to miss the market.’

  It was now quarter to eight on the morning of 21 December. It was D-day. The day of the truffle market at Marigny-Marmande. The rules say you have to be there by 8 a.m. or they can give your stand to someone else. It was the most important morning of my life, so of course the bloody Peugeot wouldn’t start. Of course it wouldn’t. As the days got colder, the van had become more and more temperamental, but forty-five minutes without starting was exceptional.

  Rose gave up trying to reason with me and returned to the warmth of the house. I sat in the van in the pitch black. I couldn’t take the car because that would mean all the doubters would have been right about the van, and as everyone knows, it’s better to bollocks up your last chance of salvation than admit you were wrong about something you were clearly wrong about. Burt was still staring at me from the passenger seat. I thought he’d be furious at having to sit in a freezing cold, unmoving van for forty-five minutes, but when I summoned the courage to meet his glare he was actually just staring blankly at me. He’d gone beyond rage. It was just a look of How the … I mean what the even fuck is this?

  After trying and failing to start the van, you have to give it a bit of time for the engine to drain, so the forty-five minutes that morning had been spent by turning the key, listening to the starter motor whirr for thirty seconds and then spending ten infuriating minutes drinking more coffee from a flask I had made myself that was supposed to last all day and letting the engine de-flood before I could try again.

  I had fifteen minutes before I had to be at the market. I was in a caffeine-induced state of extreme tension. I was angry, wildly paranoid and incredibly anxious. If the van didn’t work this time I would be too late for the market and that would be it. I pulled the choke out to the maximum length and turned the key. The van turned over perfectly well, but it was not catching. Fifteen seconds passed. It was still turning over. Thirty seconds. The engine was flooding. It wasn’t going to work. Forty-five seconds. It was pointless now. Burt yawned. I should have stopped but somehow I couldn’t release the key. I just kept going. A minute. It was turning over slower now. The battery was running out. I rested my head on the steering wheel. A minute and fifteen seconds. Burt scoffed and shook his head. I looked over at him smirking. I looked back to the steering wheel. I looked over again at him, still smirking. I looked back to the wheel. It was then I realised: he had bloody sabotaged van. That was it. He had been building up to this ever since he had arrived, and I don’t know how he did it, but he he had sabotaged my van and he had completed his mission to ruin my life. It was too much.

  ‘WHY DON’T YOU BLOODY LOVE ME, BURT?’ I screamed. I lunged at him, ready to sort this out once and for all, Greco-Roman style, but as I took my hand off the key and before I could get him into a head lock, there was a great roar. A glorious roar of an engine I will always remember. A roar that in truth probably sounded more like a koala bear coughing on a bong but to me sounded like the opening chords to the greatest 1980s power ballad ever written (‘What about Love’ by the band Heart, if you were wondering). The van was alive. I put my hands back on the wheel.

  ‘LET’S FUCKING DO THIS!’ I screamed to Burt, who was utterly unimpressed as I slammed the van into first and we powered out of the gates, a great jet of slick black smoke trailing behind us. We wheeled left onto the road to Marigny-Marmande, tyres squealing, not even bothering to see if anything was coming. I had ten minutes to get to the market. Easy in a normal car, not so good in the velocity-shy Beast of Burgundy. It was still dark and it was incredibly foggy. Visibility was about twenty metres. It might not have been fog; it might have just been the black smoke from the van. That was immaterial. It was going to be a terrifying drive.

  I hammered the van up to 70 kph. There was an otherworldly drone all around me – a drone of vibrating metal and things that were formerly metal but had since degraded. Caffeine coursed through my veins. The face of Bad-Life-Choices De Niro appeared in a cloud in front of me saying, ‘Don’t go above seventy.’ I kept my foot down. We hit 80 kph. I could see virtually nothing ahead of me. The rear-view mirror shook so much that it seemed I was in the midst of an earthquake. I didn’t care. I kept my foot down. The speedometer continued to rise. If anything had stopped in the fog on the road ahead of me – a car, a bike, a wild animal – it would have been squashed flat, such was the lack of visibility combined with the ridiculous braking distances of the 1982 Peugeot J9 pompier van. 85 kph. The needle continued to rise. The noise was unbea
rable. I KEPT MY FOOT DOWN. Suddenly, as the noise in the van reached the point where it could go no further and its only option was to explode, the drone subsided and all I could hear was the gentle purring of the engine. The speedometer read 90 kph. The van stopped shaking. The van loved 90 kph. That was its spiritual home. All this time I had been hacking around at 70 kph, worried that any faster and the van would explode, but in fact all it wanted to do was drive at 90 kph. The fog cleared. The van had reached some kind of state of bliss. Everything was OK. For a moment I didn’t feel like my eyes were going to pop out.

  We floated along the winding road from Braslou to Marigny in this old van, Burt, my faithful hound, glowering as a truly biting wind poured through the gaps in the doors and windows, as if we were being transported by a higher power, until finally we saw the light of the salle des fêtes – the village hall – just as you enter Marigny-Marmande. I swerved into the car park. People dived for cover. I jumped out of the van and charged into the hall to find where my stand was. The main hall was reserved for truffle sellers: it was a truffle market, after all. The smell of truffle was overwhelming, ever so slightly nauseating. A man pointed me over to a big white marquee attached to the side of the hall where the non-truffle market stalls were.

  It was hectic in there. The commune had provided the tables for the stands, which were currently being pushed around and argued over by stallholders. People carried boxes and dragged great refrigeration units on trailers, it was pandemonium. To a man in my state, on the edge of pyschosis, it was the perfect place to be. The scenes of chaos mirrored what was happening in my head.

  Most of the other stands were on their way to being completed. After a bit of pushing about, I found the organiser, a nice guy with a handlebar moustache, who assured me he hadn’t given my stand away. He showed me to my table – a surprisingly decent spot in the centre of the marquee.

  The market was about to start and I wasn’t nearly ready. I ran back and forth to the van unloading my stock, my little fridge to keep the tasting beers cold, carry cases, boxes, my banner, which I attached to the front of the table, innumerable other bits and bobs that are necessary at a market stall. In the panic I didn’t even have the time to worry about the significance of this market, about whether I had any reputation left, whether I would sell a single bottle of beer or instead be cast out by the people of the Richelais.

  Finally, I had set up my beers and I was ready. A jolly-looking man with a grey beard came over and tapped me on the shoulder. He was very amused about something. He talked very quickly and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. I was too pumped up and flustered to be able to concentrate on him, I may as well have been on the phone to a fax machine, so I smiled and nodded furiously till he became confused and went away.

  It felt busy from the start; there were people buzzing around behind me, people to the left and right of me, but no one seemed to be stopping at my stall. Now the enormity of what this market meant started to hit me. This was our future on the line. The future of my son. This was it … and nobody was stopping at my stand.

  It was bizarre. The only way I could understand it was people must have been making a very deliberate choice to avoid my table. I mean, there was no one. Other stalls seemed to be doing brilliantly, but there was absolutely no one at my stall. My worst fears were realised. The damage had been done at the last market in Chaveignes and the sweaty-balls beer at the shop had finished me off. I must be a laughing stock. They must have organised this before I arrived. The people of the Richelais had organised a boycott of my beer. The shame alone was enough to mean we would have to leave Braslou, leave France, never mind the economic reality of having zero income. You can’t keep making bad decisions and expecting everything to be OK. You can’t sell people shit beer and expect them to forgive you. I might have made a few quid at that market at Chaveignes, but I’d finally pushed my luck too far and I’d lost people’s trust.

  My heart started to pound. I felt weak. I was suffering some kind of stroke. A heart attack, maybe. I didn’t know what to do. I could feel the eyes of all the other stallholders staring at me. I pretended it was all fine for a few moments. Then I texted Rose: We’re fucked. I’m coming home. Also, I might be about to die of something.

  She replied: OK, Tommy. We tried. Stay where you are. I’ll come and buy some beer. Try and stay alive till then.

  I shut my eyes, dreading the appearance of my nan’s alarm clock, but it wasn’t there. Instead, I heared my nan saying to me, ‘You’re not facing life. You’ve got to face life.’

  ‘I am facing life. There’s nothing I can bloody well do, Nan.’ I whispered to myself. As I said this, I realised the jolly guy with the grey beard was by my side again. This time he’d brought Sylvain, the pasta maker from the stall opposite, who I had met back at the asparagus market in Braslou. The jolly guy started rabbiting on and laughing again. I assumed he was trying to console me until Sylvain interjected.

  ‘He’s saying your stall is facing the wrong way.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I didn’t need this nonsense right now.

  ‘The market is behind you. Look at the tables.’ He said slowly and clearly.

  I looked around. At first, I didn’t understand what he meant. I was facing the main door where people entered. That seemed like a good direction to face. But as I looked at the table set-up, I realised that once all the tables had been erected they actually, very deliberately, formed a sort of passageway that snaked round the room. Customers had to follow this path. I was facing inwards, facing the backs of all the other stalls, standing in the gangway while the customers walked around behind me.

  ‘Told you,’ said my nan.

  The jolly man burst out laughing and patted me on the back. He walked off, shaking his head. The other stallholders laughed. It was humiliating, but when you’ve made a fool of yourself as many times as I have, humiliation is a like an old friend. An old friend who you have tried to lose contact with, but who keeps finding out where you live.

  I laughed weakly along with everyone else and set about turning my stand to face the right way. To face up to life. Thanks to the power of caffeine, within five minutes or so I was the other side of the table and my beers and banner were pointing in the right direction. It all made sense now – it was obvious, but at the time, when I had been setting up, not all the tables were erected, so you could walk in amongst the stands. Now people could only travel a certain way through the marquee. Suddenly there were customers at my stall. It was 9.30 in the morning. People were trying my beer!

  I was told afterwards that the market wasn’t as busy as it usually is, but I found it to be a whirlwind. A constant stream of people came to my stand and they were more enthusiastic than ever. It’s a great feeling, selling something you are proud of. Most stallholders probably feel this from the beginning, because they’re not idiot enough to ever try and sell something that they know is shit, but for me it was a new experience.

  Mid-morning and Rose came to see how I was doing. It’s fair to say she was surprised. She’d been expecting the worst.

  ‘Are you OK? You seem to be doing all right,’ she said, eyeing the great queue of people snaking from my stand.

  ‘What? Oh, right. Yes. Sorry, Rose, false alarm. I just had my stand facing the wrong way, that’s all. Simple mistake.’

  ‘You did what? But surely only an absolute moron …?’

  ‘Can’t speak now, Rose, too many customers. I’ll tell you about it later.’

  The customers came in a steady stream throughout the morning. I was doing rather well. As far as I could see, the only person doing better than me was the guy next to me. He was selling snails. And as the market continued towards noon I did better and better.

  The market ended suddenly about 12.30 p.m. and at last I had a chance to take stock. I had sold a lot of beer. In fact I had sold pretty much everything I had. Of course, I sold a lot of beer at Chaveignes and that had made me feel awful, but this was completely differ
ent. People genuinely liked the beer. I liked the beer. At Chaveignes, by selling shit beer I was making the world just a tiny bit worse. Now I was making the world better.

  Relief doesn’t generally rank at the top of the feelings charts. It’s normally happiness, bliss, ecstasy, those are the feelings that people associate with victory, but I felt relief. Glorious relief. It was mostly relief that my instincts were right. This was how it was supposed to have gone, this was how it had happened in my head right from the start. Despite each set back, my instincts were telling me that the brewery could work and I trusted them. This was just one market – I knew that, and there still issues to iron out – I had to iron out the problems with the van and of course I had to hit Burt really hard with an iron, but these were little problems. As the customers drifted away with bags of snails, truffles and beer I saw now that the opportunity to make this life sustainable was real. I had to make sure I took it, and if I did, I wouldn’t have to go back to an office to die. And that was when I felt elated.

  I swapped a bottle of beer for some spices with the lady behind me and another bottle for some fruit from the fruit and veg stand opposite. I swapped a beer for some of Sylvain’s pasta and another bottle for a croissant and some bread. We all packed up and went in our different directions. The van started first time. On the journey home Burt stared at me blankly.

  It was a cold winter but the house was warm. From the market on 21 December through to New Year I sold all of my stock. I removed all my meatball beer from the farm shop and sold only beer made from the new fermenters. Beer I was proud of. I sold hundreds of bottles at the farm shop. People were arriving every day at the brewery to buy beer. Lots of people who had tried it at the market. People who had heard about it from other people. I sold everything I had before the year was up. I knew then that if I could sell like this every month, I could make a living. We wouldn’t be rich, but we could make enough between the two of us and Rose could spend more time making sculptures and less time sitting in front of a computer.