by Jo Thomas
‘Yup, I’ll go and get changed,’ I say, my mouth suddenly very dry. ‘I’ll find us some leftovers from lunch too. Sandwich OK?’ I’m twittering, I always do when I’m nervous. But I have no idea why I should be nervous right now. It’s just Isaac, me and a bunch of bats, and a load of grape juice. At least the wasps have gone to bed. I try not to look at him. He lets go of my wrists as I turn to go, feeling the drips of juice running down my fingertips as I drop my hands to my side.
‘Wait.’ He grabs hold of my wrist once more and, surprised, I turn back to him.
He holds up my dripping wrist, and then, my mouth falls slightly open as I watch him dip his head and then put his lips on the inside of my wrist and suck. I feel my eyes widen like saucers, and this time the voltage going through my body is off the scale. It’s like I’ve been properly shocked and I’m rooted to the spot.
Then Isaac lifts his head, grins his lazy smile and says, ‘Good grape juice. Fantastic sugar levels.’ His smile broadens and I manage to snatch my hand away and march as fast as my wobbling knees will take me back to the farmhouse, where I wash and change, put on shorts, a sweatshirt and some wellies I bought in the Intermarché. But still the inside of my wrist tingles.
Back in the chai Isaac has made huge headway mopping up the grape juice. We work late, filling up the concrete tanks. Climbing the ladder, this time I put the hose in further and Isaac starts the pump. We take it in turns.
The grape juice is sucked up into the tank but by the third barrel, what with pulling the hose up the ladder, I’m so tired I think I may fall asleep there and then.
We bicker late into the night.
‘Look, why don’t you do the pump and I’ll do the ladder . . . ?’
‘No, it’s my turn up the ladder . . .’
By one o’clock in the morning we’re washing down the barrels and crates for the next day. At two a.m. I bid Isaac good night and finally fall into bed, tired, hungry and aching in every bone in my body. Isaac was right, maybe I am too stubborn for my own good. But he’s just as bad.
I am desperate for sleep to come and claim me, but every time I shut my eyes his lips are on my wrist again and again and again.
‘I look like the elephant man!’
The next morning Candy’s foot is swollen to the size of a football. She can’t even get her beaded flip-flops on, and not for want of trying.
‘I think you look lovely,’ says Nick, but she doesn’t hear him.
‘What am I going to do? Quick, don’t let Isaac see.’ She dodges behind Nick as Isaac gets out of the van and explains he’s got to get back to Featherstone’s to see in another batch of wine and barrel it. He’s brought a couple of Moroccan ladies with him to pick. They smile and shake my hand.
‘Enchanté,’ I say, and smile.
‘They can stay just until lunchtime. Then they have to get back for their children. I’ll be back with the yeast for the grape juice.’
‘Yeast?’
‘Yes, we’ll add it when I get back. What we want now is a nice balanced, controlled fermentation for the next ten to fourteen days. The more stable I can get it at this stage, the more uniform it will taste when we come to blend it. Getting the mix right now is essential.’ His brows furrow as they always do when he’s being serious, usually about wine.
‘And what’s in this mix you’re working out?’ I frown back.
He taps his nose and suddenly breaks into a smile. ‘That’s where a wine-maker plays his cards close to his chest. This is why they pay us big bucks!’
‘Really?’
‘Or, will do, one day.’ He throws his head back and laughs, tossing the van keys up in the air and catching them again. ‘I have to get on. Have a good day’s picking, everyone. Candy, take care of that foot.’ He winks at her and heads to the van.
Candy groans. She comes out from behind Nick. She is bright red with sunburn from yesterday, exactly the colour of a cooked lobster, and her foot looks like a balloon with five little baby balloons sticking out of the top.
‘Candy, you’d better stay inside today. Everyone else OK to keep going?’ They nod. ‘Grab a coffee and I’ll go and sort out Henri. Today we start on the next parcelle over.’
A hare shoots through the vineyard, followed by another, darting in and out of the mist, surprising me and making me smile, reminding me why it’s a privilege to be here.
‘Henri!’ I call, holding his harness in one hand and a bucket of pony nuts in the other. The horse lifts his head and without hesitation marches purposefully towards the gate and waits for me to get there.
‘Bonjour,’ I say to him, rubbing his nose. ‘Prêt pour un autre jour?’ Then I open up the gate and he walks out and stops just by the trailer. The sheep try to make a run for it at the same time but I herd them back in, catching one between my knees and walking him backwards into the field before shutting the gate.
‘OK.’ I shout to the pickers. ‘I want you to remember, no rotten ones, don’t forget, hang on to your secateurs and treat the grapes gently! We’re making wine with love and care here.’
Gloria and I are picking together. She’s got Madame Beaumont’s little three-legged stool that she moves with her down the vines.
‘How’s your dad?’ she asks once we get into our picking routine, her breath rising like smoke from the other side of the vine. Although it’s going to be hot, there is the hint of an autumnal chill in this early morning air, making us move quickly.
‘Actually,’ I find myself frowning, ‘I’m not sure.’
‘You’re not sure? I thought he was always ringing you.’ Snip, Snip.
‘No, well, he was but now he’s . . . well, he’s always out!’
‘That’s good isn’t it?’ Snip, snip.
‘I’m not sure. He has barely been out since . . . well, since my mum died.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She shuffles the little stool forward.
I never know how to answer that, so I don’t.
‘And now, every time I ring, according to my sister, he’s out. At the pub or helping out his mate, the plumber. He came to fix our water tank a couple of weeks ago. Turned out they were at school together.’
‘Oh, well, that’s a good thing. Sometimes in life it helps to go back to your past in order to move on to your future. And it’s good your sister’s there,’ she says, moving her stool down to the next vine, and I’m with her.
‘Well, that’s the other thing. I haven’t seen my sister in years. We fell out. But she’s recently separated from her husband. I’m worried. I wonder how she’s managing on her own with the boys. I just hope that she’s going to be OK.’
‘It’s good you’re worried about your sister, no matter what’s happened. That’s family.’
‘Well, I brought her up. She was only twelve when Mum . . . She married young, to a promising footballer. They were childhood sweethearts. He was a few years older than her. I never really liked him. He didn’t like her spending time with her family, was very possessive. He borrowed our family savings, never repaid them, and after that we never really saw her again, until now, now that she’s separated from him.’
‘I’m sure she’s enjoying spending time with your dad,’ Gloria says reassuringly.
I look around. Picking’s going well, but slowly. We still have so much more to do.
‘What about you, Gloria? Do you have family?’
Snip, snip. The sound of the secateurs is all I can hear for a moment and I’m about to apologise if I’ve upset her in any way, then she says, ‘I was married . . . for a long time. To Paul.’ I actually hear her swallow and I feel like I’m in a confessional box, listening from behind the big green vine leaves.
‘He left me just over a year ago. Huh,’ she gives a hollow laugh, ‘for his secretary. How predictable can you get?’
‘Oh, Gloria!’
To my surprise she carries on, talking as she’s cutting as if she’s telling the vines, not me. I almost feel like I’m eavesdropping.
‘The thing is, Paul was a company man. An engineer. We moved a lot with his work, lived abroad, all over. I never really felt like I had a home. We’d stay somewhere for a couple of years then have to relocate. I couldn’t wait for him to retire, so we could finally settle down and start living, maybe even come to France.’ She stops cutting just for a moment, lifting her face to the warming sun, and it seems to help push away the pain.
‘Do you have children?’ I ask gently.
‘No, no children. We were never in one place long enough to have a family. I didn’t want to have them to send them to boarding school. We couldn’t even have pets. I always swore I’d have a cat when he retired.’
I can’t believe it: kind, motherly Gloria, dropped like a second-hand Jaguar whilst her husband updates to a newer, younger model.
‘But why the call centre, Gloria? Was it your way of reclaiming your independence?’ I suddenly love the thought of this.
‘No,’ she says flatly. ‘I’m broke.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve only ever paid married person’s National Insurance, so I won’t even have a pension. He managed to cut me out of everything.’
‘But that’s not right. You were his wife. You’re entitled to half of everything.’
‘Not if he cleverly manages to convince the judge he hasn’t got anything. Lost his job and says he isn’t earning. I’ve no idea where it’s all gone. But his new wife will be well set up.’
‘But what about the house?’
‘Rental proprieties. We’d planned to buy a flat in London and a holiday house out here in France, once he retired.’
‘Oh, Gloria.’ I want to run round the vine to hug her, but we’re halfway down it and actually I don’t think it’s what she would have wanted.
‘So, I couldn’t have been more chuffed when this opportunity came up,’ she says, reverting to her usual optimistic self.
‘You’re a fantastic cook, Gloria.’ I think back to the night of the coq au vin when Madame Beaumont fell. ‘You should do that for a living.’ There I go again, trying to fix other people’s lives.
‘Thank you. I used to cook for my husband’s work colleagues, the whole corporate wife thing.’
‘Harrumph!’ I say.
‘Actually, I loved that bit of it. I love to cook and feed people.’
‘Well, I can’t tell you how much you’ve helped me.’
‘I’ve loved it. It’s made me feel like we’re the family I always wanted.’
Tears suddenly prick my eyes and there’s a ball in my throat that I swallow down.
‘It was the fact he stopped me feeling like a woman I resent. At a time when . . . well, I just felt invisible. I wasn’t the young, pretty executive’s wife any more, who listened to his work plans and helped him with his presentations. I had no children to be proud of. No career of my own. And then finally, I didn’t even feel like a woman any more, just someone existing . . . with hot flushes!’ And she manages a little laugh.
‘Did you ever want a career, Gloria?’ I keep cutting and dropping the grapes into the bucket.
‘Oh, I started out as a bookkeeper – that’s how we met – but once we started travelling it was much harder. I always thought our time would come, but it never did. You can’t wait for your life to start, I’ve realised; you may just run out of time.’
We carry on snipping until the end of the row.
‘Tell you what, why don’t I do the lunches for the rest of the pick?’ says Gloria brightly.
‘Really?’ I ask with a mix of amazement and relief.
‘Yes, I’d like to.’
‘Well, that would be fantastic. Agreed!’
The sun is starting to get hotter. I make sure everyone stops for water and puts on hats and suncream. I can’t afford to lose any more workers.
By lunchtime, Nick has fallen by the wayside with an old back injury from his rugby-playing days.
‘Ooh, rugby!’ Candy coos as he lies on the cold kitchen floor. ‘There was that Welsh rugby player who came out as gay. So brave,’ she sighs, looking at him in total admiration.
Gloria is back in the kitchen and I’m leaving her to it. She puts more ice on Candy’s foot, instructs Nick to rub after-sun balm on her and finds him paracetamol from her bag, which seems to contain a potion for everything.
‘Paul was such a hypochondriac,’ she tells us, suddenly talking freely about him, like a tap that’s been switched on and is now flowing again.
She then serves eggs with thick, creamy, yellow homemade mayonnaise, my favourite, followed by wild boar casserole with lentils, garlic, thyme and a red wine. And tarte au chocolat for dessert.
The pickers move on to the cheese: a big round brie, white on the outside and its soft, yellow inside oozing across the worn wooden board, to everyone’s delight. The bread basket is topped up by Gloria as the long creamy strings of cheese are negotiated and guided on to plates.
I’m smiling with the others when suddenly my phone rings in my shorts pocket and I move away from the table, pulling it out and looking at the screen. I go over to where Henri hangs his head over the field gate while I hold the phone out in front of me to see who’s FaceTiming me. The image is blurred and I can’t tell who it is.
There is a rustle and some talking that sounds a lot like Madame Beaumont giving a nurse short shrift.
‘Madame Beaumont?’ I stare at the screen.
‘Oui? Allo?’ she says, but all I can see is her ear.
‘It’s Emmy!’ I find myself shouting. ‘Look at the screen. Don’t hold it to your ear.’
‘Emmy? Is that you? Are you harvesting?’ Suddenly she looks at the screen and I can see her face, close and peering into the iPod. A nurse seems to be close by, trying to give a helping hand, but Madame Beaumont seems determined to master this on her own, making me smile.
‘How are you?’
‘Not dead!’ she says flatly in a rasping, husky voice, giving the nurse a sideways look. ‘But out of the woods, they say,’ and she coughs. ‘Now, écoute, listen. Have you begun the harvest?’ she says in a stilted way as if she’s sending a coded message.
‘Um, well, we’re getting there. The grapes are coming in and I’ve made juice.’ I tell her the edited highlights.
‘Bravo!’ I hear her in the distance, as if she’s moved the phone back to her ear. I drop my voice.
‘But, um, what about yeast?’ I ask her. I need to know what she thinks. ‘Should I add yeast?’
‘What’s that?’ she shouts back.
‘Yeast? Do I add it?’ I shout back and turn round to the lunch table, but thankfully no one appears to have heard.
‘Mon Dieu! Non! Whatever you do, don’t let him put yeast in the wine. It must stay wild. The wild yeasts from the hillside, naturally there, will do the job.’
‘But what if . . . ?’ But the screen goes black. I run my thumb over it and try and call her back, but she doesn’t reply. I try again, still nothing. It’s hot. I turn back to look out over the vines and I wish Dad could see this, but as he has only just rediscovered the pub after fifteen years, he’s hardly likely to come here. I wish my nephews were here, running in and out of the vines, laughing.
I know it can’t happen, but I want to tell them about the harvest anyway. I take a picture of the vines and then the pickers. La vendange! I type, and then send it to Layla. I get her usual reply followed by lots of yellow happy faces. Then I press the button to ring home.
‘There’s no one here right now, please leave a message after the tone.’
I sigh. I won’t leave another message. They’ll probably think I’ve been drinkin
g, leaving mad rambling messages about Clos Beaumont and the harvest. I move away from the vines. The sun is hot on my shoulders as I walk back to the lunch table and put my phone down on it. I sit at the end of the bench and a hand reaches from behind me with a bottle, pouring wine into my glass. I turn.
‘Oh, no, it’s fine, I won’t, Nick,’ I say, putting up a hand, thinking I still have so much work to do.
‘Wasn’t it you who said you can’t make what you don’t know about?’ It’s Isaac, not Nick. He’s back and topping up my glass.
I can’t help but laugh.
‘Actually, I think you’ll find it was Madame Beaumont who said that. She’s out of the woods. On the mend,’ I smile at him.
‘Well, here’s to Madame Beaumont then.’ He raises a glass, as do I, and my homesickness seems to dissolve for the time being, replaced by the excitement I feel when Isaac is around these days and we’re talking about the harvest.
‘Ouch,’ I say, itching again.
Gloria takes a sharp intake of breath. Gloria and I are working a parcelle of Merlot grapevines together. One each side of the vine. Mr and Mrs Featherstone have had to bow out today but are vowing to return, but right now it’s just me and Gloria.
‘Same here,’ she says. Every few steps one or other of us stops to itch. It’s slowing us down.
By the time we have trodden the juice in the barrels and pumped it into the vats I’m itching all over, on my stomach, my arms, even under my breasts.
‘Jesus!’ Isaac takes a couple of steps back as he arrives from Featherstone’s to drive Gloria, Nick and Candy home. Nick is still laid up with his back but is keeping Candy company in Clos Beaumont’s kitchen. She’s been working on a laptop.
‘What the hell?’ Isaac is still recoiling.
‘What?’ I panic. Have I messed up the wine? I turn this way and that to see what’s happened. ‘What have I done?’
‘What happened to you?’ His face screws up like he’s sucking a sour sweet. I stop and look down at the bites.
