‘Your boyfriend was a bit of a rotter, as I recall.’ Betsy grasped my hand between hers. ‘Well, listen, whatever you decide to do, whatever you need, we’ll be here for you. Won’t we, Mar?’
Marjorie confirmed it and even offered to run me to appointments if I needed her to. Their kindness melted my heart and I leaned my head against Betsy’s shoulder. ‘Thank you both.’
‘So now we’ll need to have a rethink.’ Jensen ran a hand through his hair. ‘The vineyard, the very manual job Lottie does … She can’t continue as she is. No offence.’
Nothing is guaranteed to offend me more than adding that particular phrase to an unsolicited opinion. I sat up straight and gave him my sternest stare. ‘Despite you announcing that you were a second doctor in that cubicle today, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He blinked at me, startled. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Providing Betsy is happy for me to carry on working here, that’s what I intend to do.’
‘Course she is,’ Marjorie answered for her.
‘But what if you had another accident?’ Jensen frowned. ‘I’d never forgive myself.’
‘But I’m not your responsibility, so no forgiveness needed. I’m young, fit and strong,’ I replied, laying a hand on my stomach, ‘and quite capable of delegating when necessary. Besides, Betsy offered me this job for only six months, so I’ll be out of your hair by the time the baby arrives.’
Jensen gritted his teeth. ‘You’re twisting my words.’
‘Are you suggesting Lottie leaves us, dear boy?’ Betsy looked appalled.
He knocked his brandy back. ‘Gran, we agreed that you’d stay here for the time being on the basis that Lottie would keep an eye on you and help you out. Not only in the vineyard, but in the house as well. Lottie, you might not be my responsibility, but Gran is.’
‘Good grief, boy.’ She stared down her nose at him. ‘She’s only having a baby. If Emmeline Pankhurst could give birth to five children while leading the fight for the emancipation of women, I’m sure Lottie can look after a few grapes and one old lady.’
Marjorie sniggered and topped up her and Betsy’s glasses. ‘To women’s rights!’ She raised her glass. ‘Cheers!’
Jensen groaned and dropped his head into his hands. ‘I’ll go and make that tea.’
I watched him stride away into the kitchen. Oh dear, I had a feeling that offer to take me to dinner had been well and truly rescinded.
Chapter 18
‘Experiment, taste, make plenty of notes and then taste again,’ said Sidney, burying his nose deep into a glass and inhaling. ‘That’s the way to make the best blend.’
‘According to Ted’s book, the 2016 Classic Cuvée had exactly the same proportions as our option two, but it tastes completely different,’ said Matt, scratching his head with the end of pencil. ‘I can’t figure out why.’
It was Wednesday afternoon and Sidney had asked me to join him, Matt and Clare in the winery. For the last few days, while I’d been getting to grips with being pregnant, he’d been getting to grips with the contents of every one of Ted’s bottles and tanks and working out what needed doing and when. This morning, the three of them had concocted five different blends of the 2017 wine still in the tanks, made from grapes picked last autumn – Ted’s last harvest.
‘It said in his notebook that the 2016 harvest was late and the grapes were small,’ I remembered. ‘Whereas in 2017, there was a much warmer September and October. Do you think that could have affected the flavours?’
‘Top marks for Miss Allbright,’ Sidney said with a twinkly smile which I couldn’t help returning. He folded his arms and crossed his legs, a gesture I already recognized as his I’m-going-to-tell-you-a-story pose. ‘Frost, rain, drought all make their presence felt in the finished wine …’
We’d all fallen under Sidney’s spell instantly. For a man in his seventies, and who was recovering from a heart attack, he was bursting with energy and had wasted no time in getting to work. His passion for wine was infectious and his presence and guiding hand had put a new spring in everyone’s step; for the first time since I’d been here, it felt as if everything might be okay, as if we could carry on Ted Butterworth’s legacy. And heaven knows, I needed something to go right, I thought, tuning back into Sidney’s lecture. He gave us a lot of lectures.
‘The length of time on the vine is one of the key factors in taste. And judging when to harvest is a minefield. Pick the grapes too early and the wine will be too acidic, too late and the wine will be flabby.’
‘Yuck. Reminds me of my reflection in the mirror at the gym this morning.’ Clare pulled a face.
Sidney chuckled. ‘Flabby just means not acidic enough. And you, my fair lady, are neither flabby nor acidic.’
Clare and I exchanged fond looks; he was so charming and gentlemanly and we’d previously agreed we both wanted to adopt him to be our granddad.
Matt scratched his head again and sighed. ‘So is our 2017 harvest acidic or flabby?’ He looked completely bamboozled. Either that or he’d been forgetting to use the spittoon again.
‘It will be neither.’ Sidney stood and turned to the winery desk. On it were five glass jugs, each containing half a litre of clear liquid. In front of each jug was a slip of paper on which was written its precise contents – the proportions of Butterworth’s three grape varieties plus some tiny additions that I couldn’t make out. Option two, which Matt had been talking about, was made from 55 per cent Chardonnay, 12 per cent Pinot Noir and 33 per cent Pinot Meunier. The others were all slight variations on those quantities.
He worked his way along the samples, from option one to five, pouring a quarter of a glass of each, holding it up to the light and examining it, before inhaling deeply and lastly tasting it. He drew air in over his tongue, pushing it around his mouth.
Finally, he nodded and turned to Matt. ‘Rightio, young man. Let’s do an option six. As option four but lower the Noir by one per cent and increase the Meunier by the same.’
‘On it.’ Matt jumped up and set to work and once the blend was done and the proportions written down on paper, he poured Sidney a small glass of it.
I held my breath as Sidney tasted it.
‘Well?’ said Clare, unable to contain herself.
The blissful smile on Sidney’s face said it all. He lifted his glass up and addressed the ceiling. ‘Ted Butterworth, my dear old friend, we’re going to do you proud.’
Matt poured some for the rest of us and we all tasted what would become Butterworth’s Classic Cuvée 2017. Clare and Matt made appreciative noises, smacking their lips while Sidney made notes and I took my time, practising my wine-tasting skills, rolling it around my tongue with my eyes closed, identifying its unique notes, spitting it out into an empty glass. My ability to detect flavours had improved a hundredfold since being at Butterworth’s, as had my confidence to say what I tasted.
When I opened my eyes, Sidney was looking at me warmly. ‘Does it pass muster?’
I nodded. ‘It smells delicious: baked apples and caramel, and I tasted sharp fruit, but not too acidic. But most of all—’ I stopped, realizing that I was about to head into fairy-tale territory.
Sidney leaned back on the desk and twirled the end of his moustache. ‘Most of all?’
Matt and Clare were listening now.
‘Well, it’s magical,’ I said, feeling silly. ‘I know it’s just a glass of wine, but when I taste it, it conjures up a picnic on an English summer’s day, with sunshine and cakes and laughter and games of rounders. And, well, it makes me happy, that’s all.’
Matt swallowed hard. ‘That’s exactly the sort of thing Ted would have said,’ he said gruffly.
‘Oh honey,’ said Clare with a sniff, ‘I think you’ve summed it up perfectly.’
Sidney’s eyes sparkled. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, not only have we found our blend today, I think I may have found my new apprentice.’
Matt and Clare raised their glasses to that and I smil
ed at my lovely new friends. I was falling in love with life at the vineyard. In an ideal world, I’d love to be an apprentice, maybe even go back to college and take a course in viticulture. But the reality was very different; this was a summer job and Betsy had only promised Ted that she’d stay here long enough to gather in this year’s harvest. And then there was the small matter of my pregnancy; I was putting off making any firm plans, or even vague ones, until I’d seen the midwife tomorrow. But despite the transient position I found myself in, I really couldn’t imagine giving the baby up. Which meant by winter I’d be about to bring a child into the world, which was hardly the best time to start studying. Plus, I’d be jobless and homeless too. And the thought of that was breaking my heart.
The Thursday antenatal clinic was very busy, but thankfully I didn’t bump into anyone I knew; even receptionist Nicky, Dad’s tenant, wasn’t there. I wanted more information about this pregnancy before I started passing the news on to others. After introducing myself to Issy the midwife and answering some questions, it was time for my first weigh-in. I glanced at the dial and gulped.
‘Okay,’ said Issy, making a note on the computer, ‘you can get down now and put your shoes back on.’
I stepped off gladly and slipped on my trainers. What a shocker! I’d never been so heavy in my life and my pregnancy wasn’t even showing yet. At this rate, by the time the baby was due, I’d need one of those weighbridges they use to measure lorries before they get on ferries.
‘Do you know how far on I’m likely to be?’ I asked her.
She shook her head, making her ponytail swing from side to side. She was probably younger than me, had grey-blue eyes, a round face, a bulky watch on one wrist and a tattoo of a bumble bee on the other.
‘Not just by looking at you, no,’ she said. ‘And because you have carried on having periods, we can’t even work it out. But I’d say definitely less than nine months.’
‘Very funny,’ I said, liking her instantly. ‘I’ve read stories about women who give birth without even knowing they’d been pregnant, and I thought they were made up. I feel bad now.’
Issy strapped a cuff around my arm, popped her stethoscope on and pumped up the blood pressure monitor. She let it down with a hiss of air and nodded. ‘Normal. Excellent.’
She began typing information into the computer.
‘So you said you’ve been sick quite a bit, you went off certain foods and have been feeling more tired than usual.’ She said it without a hint of irony but I couldn’t believe how I’d missed the signs.
‘I’ve been such an idiot,’ I groaned. ‘When you put it like that it’s obvious, but recently I’ve moved house, changed cities and generally been under quite a bit of stress; I thought it was that.’
‘It’s more common than you think, especially if it’s not planned.’
‘Harvey and I always played it safe, he took his duty as chief contraceptive officer very seriously.’
Issy raised an eyebrow approvingly. ‘Good man. He sounds like a keeper.’
I cleared my throat. ‘We’ve split up, actually. So I’m flying solo.’
‘Whoops, me and my big mouth. Sorry.’ She winced. ‘And not entirely solo, I’ll be here.’
I smiled, trying not to think about Evie and how much I wished she was here with me too. ‘Do most women already know their due date when they come to see you for the first time?’
‘Some do.’ She shot me a conspiratorial smile and carried on typing. ‘I shouldn’t say this but my favourite ladies are the ones who had no idea – the happy accidents.’
I puffed out my cheeks. ‘This is definitely an accident; the jury’s out on whether it’s happy or not.’
‘Oh crumbs, sorry.’ Issy looked distraught. ‘Never assume, my dad says. It makes an ass of “u”,’ she drew the letter in the air, ‘and me. Only not you,’ she added hurriedly. ‘Just me. I’m the ass. Nearly always.’
I couldn’t help but smile at her earnest face. ‘It could certainly have come at a better time, that’s all, and with a better father.’ I swallowed. ‘I wish my mum was still alive to talk to about it.’
‘Of course.’ Issy nodded. ‘Have you got someone to support you: a friend, family?’
I didn’t want to get into the situation with Evie right now so I said I did.
‘Okay, now first things first, we’ll get you booked into the hospital for a scan and find out when this baby is due. Then you can work out what to do next. Sound like a plan?’
I rubbed my face with the tissue and stood up to leave. ‘Do you know how long it will take for an appointment?’
She shrugged. ‘A couple of weeks, maybe more.’
‘Good,’ I said with a sigh of relief. By then, I was hoping Evie would have answered my calls and we’d have made up. I could manage by myself if I had to, but I’d much rather have her by my side if she could bear it.
‘In the meantime, eat plenty of fruit and vegetables and steer clear of booze. Oh and one more thing: I don’t have your address on the system?’
‘Well, the fruit and veg isn’t a problem,’ I said with a grin. ‘But I live on a vineyard, I work for Butterworth Wines.’
Issy’s eyes twinkled. ‘I get the feeling you and I are going to be friends.’
I almost hugged her; little did she know I could use a friend right now.
Chapter 19
It was another ten days before I saw my other new friend again. It was Saturday afternoon and I’d just emerged from The Stables when Jensen pulled his car into the yard.
‘Wow, look at you.’ Jensen’s deep blue eyes crinkled at the corners as he greeted me with a kiss. ‘I didn’t realize blooming was an actual thing before. But you are definitely blooming.’
‘That’ll be my permanently red cheeks. Not to mention,’ I continued, waffling to cover up the fact that I was quite shocked with how pleased I was to see him again, ‘that blooming is another way of saying that I’m bursting out of my clothes.’
I didn’t know whether it was psychosomatic, but in the two weeks since I’d found out I was pregnant, I’d ballooned. My stomach didn’t look any different, but my face looked like a full moon, my waist had disappeared and all I could get into, bra-wise, were a couple of sporty crop tops I’d bought when I was going through a yoga phase. At this rate, there’d be no need to break the news to the rest of the team; they’d have to be blind not to notice there was a lot more of me than there’d been when I’d arrived at the vineyard eight weeks ago.
Jensen’s eyes flicked momentarily to my enormous bosom. I coughed.
‘Um. I hadn’t noticed,’ he said, running a hand through his floppy curls. ‘But you’re feeling okay?’
‘Well …’ I hesitated.
Physically I was fine, I’d stopped being sick and after weeks of needing early nights and having to drag myself out of bed in the morning, I had more energy than I knew what to do with. Mentally, however, I was still struggling: with a pregnancy I hadn’t planned and with worrying thoughts about Harvey and what he was going to say and do when he found out I was carrying his child. And then there was the rift between Evie and me. I’d phoned and sent numerous messages which she hadn’t returned; I’d even been to her house but if she’d been in she didn’t come to the door. I missed her so much; we’d always been there for each other and I didn’t know how to make things right.
‘Yes. Perfectly okay,’ I confirmed finally, opening the gate and waving him through to the terrace. ‘And the vineyard is in tip-top shape too. Come and see for yourself, everyone is waiting for us and we’ve got loads to show you.’
Around the patio table, sheltering from the fierce glare of the August sun under the shade of a parasol, sat my team plus Sidney. The table groaned with tea things: a luscious Victoria sponge, a plate of scones, dishes of jam and cream, and a bowl of fruit salad, all courtesy of Betsy, who had sent her apologies but she and Starsky had an important engagement with Marjorie that she couldn’t get out of. Alongside jugs of water t
here was an ice bucket containing two bottles of Butterworth sparkling wine and a tray of glasses.
‘Right, all present and correct,’ said Roger officiously, handing a pile of paper to Pippa, who sat on his left. ‘So take an agenda and pass the rest on. Let’s get going.’
‘Just in time!’ Clare beamed at us, pouring tea from a large pot. ‘Betsy has done a separate pot of decaff, for some reason, if anyone would prefer it?’
I caught Jensen’s eye and we shared a knowing smile. Betsy had been such a dear this last fortnight: suggesting all sorts of things she thought I might like food-wise and even offering me the use of her bathroom for a soak as The Stables only had a shower.
‘Me please,’ I said, taking the empty seats between Clare and Sidney. ‘I’m on a health kick,’ I said, in answer to her look of disbelief.
‘Does that mean I can have your slice of cake?’ Godfrey asked hopefully, dolloping cream and jam on to a scone.
‘I’m only giving up caffeine, Godfrey. Cake is still on the agenda for now. Baby steps.’
I heard Jensen chuckle softly at my unintended pun; I didn’t dare look at him.
Roger rapped a spoon on the table and Matt and Clare rolled their eyes.
‘Talking of agendas.’ He opened his notebook and wrote down all our names for the minutes. ‘First item: welcome by Lottie.’
‘Thank you, Roger; and thank you for coming this afternoon, everyone,’ I said, spooning a small amount of fruit salad into a bowl. Despite what I’d just said to Godfrey, it was the thought of the sharp and sweet fruit rather than the cake that was making my mouth water.
‘So much has happened since our open day two weeks ago, I thought it would be easier to update each other together. Firstly,’ I said, smiling at Sidney and covering his hand with mine, ‘a big thank-you to Sidney for helping us out in the winery. You’ve achieved so much for us, we’ve all learned a great deal and we couldn’t have managed without you. We’re really going to miss you.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Roger, raising his teacup.
A Vintage Summer Page 20
