2008 - The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce

by Paul Torday

  It was inevitable that the wine affected me. My balance, which has been deteriorating these last few months, was not good. I have also developed a distasteful tendency to perspire heavily when I am not drinking wine, and I find my hands tremble. As I am no longer inclined to drive, since the accident, it matters less than it might otherwise have done. I have a Screwpull corkscrew and that opens all but the very oldest bottles without trouble, no matter whether my hands are shaking or not. And when I drink wine I find I become very peaceful, very reflective, sometimes even devotional in my moods. When I am not drinking it, I become restless, prone to unhappy memories of events earlier in my life. I walk around my flat in Half Moon Street, which is on the edge of Mayfair, in the West End of London. I pick up books and put them down unread. I go out into Hyde Park and try to blow the memories away in the fresh air. I walk down Piccadilly and look into the shop windows, or prowl among the bookshelves of Hatchards, or stare at the mountains of crystallised fruit in the windows of Fortnum’s. The memories won’t go away, and so I go back to my flat and bring up a bottle of wine from the small cellar of perhaps a thousand bottles that I keep there, and drink it. My main collection of wine is still in the undercroft at Francis Black’s old house in the North of England, which I acquired when I bought his house from his executors when he died. From time to time I go up there to gaze at my wine and make sure everything is all right, and I check that the temperature controls are working, and the security alarms are correctly set. I ship another few cases back to Half Moon Street to keep me going. The quantity of stock never seems to lessen, though—as if, when I am not there, the wooden cases and the racked bottles are secretly multiplying themselves. But I never linger for more than a few hours there: too many ghosts.

  When I have opened the wine, rotated it this way and that in the glass, and savoured its aroma, and when I have sipped the first sip, then peacefulness gradually returns.

  §

  I finished the foie gras and sipped at the Rieussec. It was a good wine, with a delicious honey flavour, almost too powerful. I knew I would forget its taste instantly with the first glass of Petrus. They took the plates away and I was left in peace for a moment, to glance about me. This was a restaurant for the rich and famous. It had taken quite an effort on my part to reserve a table, some weeks ago. Now there was scarcely an empty place in the room. The restaurant had filled up. But it was not noisy. There were perhaps only a dozen tables in quite a large room, well apart from each other so that one could neither overhear nor be overheard. I supposed that if I ever read the newspapers, I would recognise some of the people in here. There were three men ordering their dinner at the next table, and one of them was, I am fairly sure, a government minister. But I felt no real curiosity and I am sure I was invisible to them—not smart enough, sitting on my own, an object worth only a moment’s glance until the eye moved on to something more rewarding to look at elsewhere in the room.

  The lamb arrived underneath a huge silver dish cover, and then one or two people did glance my way, their attention caught by the theatre of the waiters removing the dish cover with a flourish, to show the rack of lamb underneath with its little paper crowns on each cutlet.

  The sommelier was at my elbow asking if I would like to taste the wine. I dared not speak, but simply nodded my head in assent. A very little was poured into my glass, and the waiter warmed the bowl with his hands and moved it just enough so that the dark, almost purple liquid lost its meniscus for a moment. Then he handed the glass to me. First I inhaled the scent of the wine and then, when its flavour had filled my nose and lungs, I sipped it.

  I knew what to expect: flavours of truffles, spices and sweet fruit. Then those tastes receded and it was like entering another country, a place you have always heard of and longed to go to but never visited. It was an experience almost beyond words, not capable of being captured by the normal wine enthusiast’s vocabulary. I sipped the wine and I was so happy, all of a sudden, that a huge smile came over my face. I think I laughed.

  The sommelier smiled too. “Is it wonderful, sir?”

  I handed him the glass and he too inhaled it. “It is wonderful,” I told him.

  He smiled again and said, “There is nothing else on earth like it, monsieur.” Then, with true grace, he poured me a full glass of wine and left me alone to enjoy it. The waiter presented me with two cuts of lamb from the rack, and I ate part of one of them—just enough to allow its taste to complement that of the wine.

  I ate morsels of lamb, and sipped from my glass. And in that other country, where the wine took me, was Catherine. Not exactly sitting at the table with me; it was more subtle than that. She was somewhere behind my left shoulder and, although I could not see her, I knew how she looked. Twenty-five years of age, and pretty as a picture, just as she had been for the last two years. I could smell the perfume she wore, and it smelled the same as the wine. Then, above the clatter of the knives and forks and the growing din of conversation from the tables around me, I could hear her humming. She had once been a member of a choir and it was an air from Bach that she was singing. I don’t remember which one but I remembered the tune very well, and the pure sound of her voice. I hummed along with her, as I sometimes used to, even though she said I had no ear for music.

  The head waiter appeared at my elbow: “Excuse me sir, but would you mind not humming so loudly? It might disturb the other guests.”

  The image of Catherine vanished in a moment, and I felt dislocated inside my head. The wine tasted suddenly flat and insipid. “Was I humming?” I said, restraining my annoyance at having my tranquil mood disturbed. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  I bent my head over my plate and ate another forkful of lamb, in order that the head waiter would go away.

  He bowed his head and said, “So sorry to disturb you, sir. Most considerate, sir. Thank you so much.”

  The sommelier came and poured a little more wine and I noticed I had drunk more than half the bottle. I said to him as he filled my glass, “I think you said this was the last bottle but one?”

  “Yes, monsieur, that is correct. One last bottle and then it is gone. I do not know that there are many bottles of that vintage left in the whole of London now.”

  “Then bring it up and decant it, please.”

  The sommelier replied, “Are you certain, monsieur? Two bottles of a wine like this in one evening, for one man. Is it not too much sensation at one time?”

  The thing is, I knew he was right. It was, without a doubt, overdoing it. I could not possibly enjoy the second bottle as much as the first. My palate would become dulled and furred with the wine. Moreover it would be the fourth, possibly the fifth bottle of wine I had drunk today, and that was before I found my way home and drank the bottle of Montagny that I always had as a nightcap.

  The fact remained that I could not bear the thought of anyone else having that bottle. It had to be mine. It was as simple as that. “Please bring it, anyway,” I said.

  The sommelier bowed but there was doubt in his eyes, and I saw him go and have a conversation with the head waiter. I think they were wondering whether I would make more of a scene if I drank the wine than the scene they knew I would make if they did not bring it up for me.

  Then he disappeared and after a few minutes came back with the second bottle of Petrus, and whilst he went through the same rituals as before, he found time to refill my glass from the first bottle. I noticed some curious glances from around the restaurant. One man, more inquisitive or ill-mannered than the others, arose from the table of three that I had noticed earlier and walked across to me.

  “Forgive me for intruding,” he said, “but I noticed the label on that bottle of wine. Is that Petrus you’re drinking?” Without waiting for an answer he bent over and examined the label, which the sommelier instinctively turned so that he could read it.

  “My God. The 1982,” he exclaimed, and then turned and said to me with some admiration, “I say, you really know how to push the boat out. Wel
l done, old boy. Enjoy yourself!” He went back to his table and there was a little extra buzz to their conversation. I tried hard to ignore their looks and after a while the wine absorbed me again in its powerful and aromatic embrace. I found that I was drinking wine from the second bottle. It was nearly the same, but not quite: once again the sense of being in a different place, but now seeing the landscape of this unknown country from a new vantage point. And Catherine came back, somewhere nearby, and together we sang a few bars of ‘Jesu, joy of man’s desiring’.

  This brought the head waiter back. “I really must ask you not to sing quite so loudly, sir,” he said. “It is disturbing the other customers.”

  “And I really must ask you not to interrupt me while I am drinking my wine,” I replied. “It is impossible to enjoy it properly if I keep being distracted like this, and I feel I have paid a fair price for the goods in question and am entitled to a proper enjoyment of them.”

  It sometimes happens that my mannerisms of speech become a little strange under the influence of a lot of wine. I find my language tends to become ornate, almost flowery, and sometimes bends and even breaks under the weight of the complex ideas I wish to express. I stopped humming for a while, and after a moment the head waiter went away again. But by now I was the object of some attention around the restaurant. I think that, by then, everyone in the room knew that I was sitting drinking my way through more than six thousand pounds’ worth of expensive wine on my own.

  I heard, or I imagined that I heard, snatches of conversation: “He doesn’t look like he could afford a can of Special Brew, let alone one of the most expensive wines in the world.”

  “He’s probably a hedge-fund manager having a blow out after making a few million quid.”

  “Or after losing it, more likely.”

  “What an odd-looking creature,” said a woman’s voice.

  “He’s so pale,” said another. “I hope he’s not going to be sick all over the place.”

  “Darling! I’m trying to enjoy my dinner, thanks very much.”

  It was too much. I stood up and turned around to try and catch sight of Catherine, to ask her what to do. My chair fell over backwards. I raised my glass of wine in the direction where I thought Catherine might have been standing a moment or two ago, before I turned around, and sipped it and said, “Darling, come and try some of this. It’s really very good.”

  The room moved sideways and I found the head waiter had put his arm around me affectionately. That was very nice of him. I had begun to form the impression he did not really like me.

  “Get him a taxi,” I heard him say to someone, as we both slid towards the floor. He was trying to hold me up, I realised, but I was just a bit heavy for him.

  “Where do you live?” he asked me. Now he was staring down at me from somewhere far above, and his voice sounded very remote. The great claret was exercising a strong narcotic effect on me. My eyes felt heavy.

  “What do we do about the bill? We’re down more than six grand if he doesn’t pay,” whispered another man nearby. I realised it was the sommelier’s voice, and he was no longer French, but from Birmingham.

  I reached into my pocket. I didn’t want any trouble. It was odd how often these difficulties arose when I ate out. I thrust the bundle of notes in the direction of the voice and managed to say, “Do take what I owe from these notes. And do remunerate yourselves for the trouble and inconvenience I may be causing you. Please convey my sincere apologies to my fellow guests for any disturbance.”

  How much of this I actually managed to speak out loud, I do not know, but the notes were snatched from my hand. I found that if I moved my head a little to the left I could pillow it on the head waiter’s shoes. They were black and well polished and surprisingly comfortable to nestle against.

  “What’s his name?” someone asked.

  “Table booked in the name of Wilberforce.”

  “Do we know his address?”

  “No, he’s never been here before.”

  “I think we would have remembered if he’d been here before,” said a sarcastic voice.

  “Has he got any ID?” asked the first voice. I think it was the head waiter’s.

  A hand snaked its way into the inside pocket of my suit jacket and found my wallet. “Found a card here in the name of Wilberforce, address Half Moon Street.” Then everything went black.

  TWO

  “You’ve been out of it for three days,” a voice said. I recognised the voice. It was a kind voice, but also a voice that I associated with someone telling me things for my own good. Confusion swarmed in my head. I opened my eyes and saw a cream ceiling. Well, that meant nothing. After a moment I found the energy to turn my head, and realised I was in a place I knew.

  I let my head flop back on the pillow and tried to make sense of my life. I had been away on a trip to South America. There had been trouble in a café in Medellin, in Colombia. I chased away these remarkably convincing images, which flashed on and off deceitfully in my head, and made a mental effort. Then I knew, or thought that I knew, that I was in my own bedroom.

  Of course, it might not have been my own bedroom. That might have been another one of those odd memories. Of one thing I now felt sure: the voice was Colin’s.

  “Colin?” I said faintly.

  The voice spoke again from somewhere behind me: “How are you feeling, dear boy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Sleepy. Cold.”

  There was a pause and then Colin came into view: tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed and good-looking, as slender as when I had first known him at university twenty years ago, his face set in that expression of detached and reproachful kindness that some doctors acquire.

  He handed me a glass of water. “Sip this,” he told me. “You must be quite dehydrated. We’ve had you on a drip but there’s no substitute for water.”

  I sipped the water. It tasted disgusting but I made myself swallow some. After a while I found I could half-sit up on the pillow. I looked around and, after all, the room was familiar. It was my own bedroom.

  “How long have I been asleep?” I asked. Colin pulled up a chair. He was wearing a tweed jacket over a checked shirt, a spotted blue tie and twill trousers. On anyone else these clothes would have looked old-fashioned. On Colin almost anything looked elegant. It was a professional asset, I used to think. He made all his patients feel inadequate and so more inclined to do everything that he told them to do. He had been just another unruly medical-school undergraduate when I had first met him, although even then his clean-cut English-public-schoolboy looks had marked him out as different from the parade of spots, straggly beards and unwashed ringlets that had characterised many of the rest of us.

  Then he had managed to find a position in a practice in Pimlico; a couple of years later he had married the daughter of a very wealthy family of London rentiers and bought into a private practice in Eaton Place. His patients included most of the ruling families in the Middle East, the Ukraine and Russia. He had taken me on a couple of years ago, for old times’ sake.

  “You haven’t been asleep. You’ve been in a coma.”

  I stared straight ahead of me at a picture on the opposite wall. I found it too much of an effort to turn and look at Colin, after the first glance. My eyes roved up to gaze at the ceiling and somehow, wouldn’t stop looking at it.

  “A coma?” I replied. “Isn’t that the same thing as being asleep?—only for a long time?”

  Colin took my wrist, felt for my pulse and said nothing, but I knew he would be looking at his watch. After a time he dropped my arm as if it had lost any further interest for him, and asked, “Do you remember anything about where you were and what you were doing before you woke up just now?”

  Instantly the bees started humming in my head. Fragments of experience crowded in at the gates of my memory, clamouring for my attention. I had arrived in Bogota on the Avianca flight from Medellin. I had had to leave Medellin in a hurry, but I couldn’t recall exactly why, in my
present state, and somehow I felt thankful that I couldn’t. Someone had been following me in Medellin, and the same someone was following me in Bogota. I went into one of the better hotels and whoever it was did not like to come in after me and I managed to get out of the side entrance and go down a back street. But then a few blocks from the hotel I heard hurrying footsteps behind me, echoing in the street, and that smell I had noticed in Medellin. I hadn’t liked the smell. I hadn’t liked it at all. I turned, but the street was empty behind me. The pavements gleamed slick with recent rain. I could taste the fear in my mouth. Then I remembered another taste: the spice and caramel of Petrus; and I remembered how I had been drinking some of the 1982 only a moment or so ago.

  “I think I was in a restaurant,” I told Colin. “Drinking some wine.”

  “Yes,” said Colin, “you were. You were drinking quite a lot of wine, they tell me.”

  “It was Petrus,” I said simply.

  Colin said, in a sharper tone of voice, “Wilberforce, look at me.”

  I wanted to look at Colin, and explain to him how good the wine had been, but I found I could not move my gaze from the ceiling. It seemed like too much trouble to move my eyes.

  “I’m OK as I am,” I said.

  “You’re not OK,” replied Colin. I heard his chair scrape as he pushed it back and then he walked around to the front of the bed. Now I had to look at him, or rather the top of his head. My eyes still refused to travel down as far as his face.

  “We both know you are in an advanced stage of alcoholic addiction,” said Colin, in his most reasonable voice. “After all, I’ve been telling you for some time how it would end, and you haven’t really ever tried to deal with this.”

  “I have tried,” I said. “I did the Twelve Steps when you booked me into the Hermitage. I did the detox, and the rehab. I did all those things, but it always seemed such a waste not to drink some of the wine Francis gave me. I’m not an alcoholic. I just love Bordeaux.”