“Good God,” said Odile.
“Bit of excitement,” said Ronald.
“Now, that is what I call a resignation. Does Mathieu Randon have a history of having people assassinated?” asked Hilarian.
“If I were you,” Ronald said to Gerry Paine, “I’d get out there and start the dancing.”
Mathieu Randon merely shook his head as Christina finished her passionate speech to a round of raucous applause. He wasn’t going to hang around and dignify the stupid woman’s half-baked opinions with a response. Before the crowd even finished applauding the beatific supermodel, Randon was installed in the back of a black BMW that whisked him back to the Craven Hotel on Park Lane. The driver knew not to make small talk.
As the sole senior representative of Domaine Randon remaining at the wine fair’s awards dinner, it was left to Axel Delaflote to issue a hasty rebuttal of Christina’s claims in the manner he assumed his boss would have expected. Jennifer led the gaggle of journalists that gathered around his table and shot tough questions at him like a firing squad. There would be no opportunity for Axel to relax over port that night.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “Miss Morgan’s revelation is as much news to Monsieur Randon as it has been to you this evening. Of course, Domaine Randon will be investigating claims that child labor was involved in the production of the Fast Life sportswear range. But as far as Maison Randon is concerned—and I think that all of us gathered here today are rather more interested in wine than in trainers—I can assure you that no children were involved in the production of our world-class wines. Though perhaps you should ask one of the kind gentlemen from Bollinger about their Côte aux Enfants. Now, if you’ll excuse me … ”
The Bollinger rep shook his head and prepared to spin the old yarn for the journalists who hadn’t yet heard it.
“It’s just a legend,” he promised them. “We do have one particularly steep vineyard at Bollinger called the Côte aux Enfants that was traditionally picked by children. Of course, these days … ”
Axel took advantage of the moment to slip away.
CHAPTER 25
Gina had been thinking a great deal about her future since that weekend with Kelly at Froggy Bottom. There was no doubt she needed to escape. Living with her mother and slogging away as a chambermaid at the Gloria Hotel didn’t work for her anymore. It was not where she wanted to be. She wanted her own place. She wanted a future that didn’t involve more of the same until she got married to some dickhead who treated her like dirt until she divorced him and she ended up in a bedsit as had happened to her mum. Might as well make the most of her assets now.
And so Gina did as Kelly suggested and tried to make the most of her looks. She had one real designer outfit in her wardrobe: a little black dress by Gucci that she had found left behind in a waste bin at the Gloria. Clearly somebody’s mistress had dumped some very expensive gifts after a dirty weekened gone wrong. It was the luckiest shift Gina had ever worked. A brand-new set of silk-and-lace La Perla underwear—still bearing the tags—had also been left behind. Gina hid the lingerie and the dress in her trolley. The dress was ripped but it was easily repaired and, miracle of miracles, it fit Gina like a dream.
Gina wore that Gucci dress as she walked into the lobby of the Craven Hotel—a little farther down Park Lane from the Gloria—and made for the bar. She knew she looked as good as she ever would and that gave her a glow of confidence, even as her cheap leather-look stilettos pinched her feet. She’d pay for that in blood later on.
She took a high stool at the bar and ordered a glass of champagne. At fifteen pounds a pop, she couldn’t afford it, but it was important to set the tone. To ooze “expensive.” She also tipped the barman five pounds, knowing that he would suss her out soon enough and his collusion was vital to her being allowed to remain in the bar nursing that one glass for as long as she needed to while less savvy girls were discreetly escorted outside.
The bar at the Craven was perfect for Gina’s purposes. The mirror behind the optics afforded her a fantastic view of the people coming in and out without her having to turn round. She could see who was alone. Who looked lonely. There were lots of groups of businessmen in that night but very few guys on their own. She kept an eye on two guys at a corner table. They were having an animated and sometimes angry conversation. Eventually one of the men got up and bid his companion good night. The other guy remained seated for a while, looking contemplative and slightly stressed-out, swirling the ice around in his glass. Then he got up and walked over to the bar. He asked the barman what kind of cigars they kept in-house. The barman offered him the pick of the humidor. While the barman went in search of the cigar cutter, which had not been returned to its proper place the last time it was used, the customer caught Gina’s eye in the mirror.
“I’ve been watching you all evening,” he said. “Hard to believe that a beautiful woman like you would have to spend her Friday night alone.”
Gina took in the French accent, the elegant suit, the handsome face, and allowed herself the fantasy for a moment that she was being chatted up by a man who would take her out to dinner, whisk her away on a surprise weekend break and finally present her with a diamond solitaire. That he wasn’t thinking about any of those things was obvious in the way he let his eyes travel the length of her body with no hint of embarrassment. To him she might have been a pair of shoes, a car, a horse … He wanted to know exactly what was on offer. It was just another transaction.
“Perhaps you’d like another glass of champagne?” he suggested.
Gina nodded. Dutch courage.
“Not your house rubbish,” he told the barman. “Randon Éclat.”
Gina was impressed.
“Come and join me,” he said, gesturing toward the table he had occupied with his colleague.
The man smoked his cigar, Gina drank her champagne and they went upstairs. The deal had been sealed at five hundred pounds for the night. While her new client was in the bathroom, Gina observed the man’s expensive designer luggage and texted Kelly.
“I think I’ve moved into the premier league.”
CHAPTER 26
The weather throughout Britain was spectacularly clement for the time of year but there were storm clouds over Froggy Bottom.
After the wine fair debacle, Guy and Kelly traveled back to Sussex in silence and they hadn’t spoken since. Hilarian had tried to broker peace between them (his own disappointment in Kelly was tempered by the secret joy he felt at seeing Gerry and Ronald get covered) but a whole week later, Guy was still white-hot with rage. When he thought about the absinthe-induced vomiting disaster, Guy simply wanted to throttle the stupid, ignorant girl. He wished he had Hilarian’s patience.
As Dougal grew older and frailer, Guy had worried endlessly about the fate of Froggy Bottom. He knew that Dougal had kids—a daughter and a son—but neither had ever visited the farm, not even when their father was on his last legs. Guy knew that Dougal had divorced his wife for a brief fling with the Croatian woman who cleaned their house in South Kensington. Dougal had lost touch with his children after that. But, as Hilarian explained, it wasn’t as though Dougal’s children had actually been children when he got divorced. They were in their thirties by then. Their mother had been shagging one of Dougal’s schoolfriends for years. It seemed extreme that Dougal’s children couldn’t find it in their hearts to forgive him as he lay dying. As it was, they didn’t even turn up at the funeral. Guy and Hilarian were the only mourners at the service in the tiny parish church of St. Jude.
Still, Guy expected to meet Dougal’s children soon enough. He had imagined them descending on Froggy Bottom the moment Dougal’s death was announced, with an estate agent or three in tow. But the will soon changed that. It had seemed like the lesser of two evils when Kelly turned up. She had no interest in wine whatsoever and yet the trust meant she couldn’t just sell the house and vineyard either. But now she was installed in the farmhouse like an overgrown teenager: sleeping till
midday, smoking, drinking, stealing money—Guy knew exactly where the cash from his ginger jar had gone. He began to wonder whether he wouldn’t have preferred to find himself in the employ of one of Dougal’s legitimate children.
And so Guy seethed as he went about his business in the vineyard, carefully calibrating the amount of leaf cover so that the ripening grapes would get just the right amount of sun.
Guy had some radical ideas about growing vines. He pruned aggressively. Some might have thought too aggressively. But he had persuaded Dougal that they should not go for bulk at Froggy Bottom. There was no point, he argued, since the kind of person who bought cheap wine would always pick an Aussie chardonnay over an English wine anyway. They would assume that anything from England was a novelty. A joke. So Froggy Bottom had to focus on attracting the cognoscenti with a top-quality wine and that meant getting the very best grapes.
That was why Guy clipped whole bunches of un-ripened grapes and cast them aside so the grapes that remained would have a better chance to flourish. He stuck to organic methods of pest control. Roses were planted at the head of each row of vines to attract the hungry bugs that might otherwise make themselves at home on the grapes.
The metal stakes holding the vines up weren’t pretty but they too were the ecological option. He explained to Dougal that wooden stakes required coats of distinctly inorganic preservative to keep them from having to be replaced year after year.
Guy was happy that his methods were paying off. But he was aware that if he didn’t get Kelly on board soon, then at the end of her five years there, it might all be for nought.
Kelly was woken by her mobile phone ringing. It was Gina.
“Five hundred pounds,” she said. “For one night’s work.”
Kelly sat up at once. “What was it like?” she asked.
“Same as usual. Only much better paid!” Gina laughed. “Actually, it was really all right. He was French.”
“Ugh.” Kelly pulled a face at the thought. “Did he smell of garlic?”
“Of course not. He was pretty good-looking,” Gina continued. “Knew what he was doing. Seemed to enjoy himself. And he’s asked me if I’d be willing to go and see him at home. In Paris!”
“Oh my God,” said Kelly. “Are you going?”
“A thousand quid and a trip to France? Of course I am.”
“When?” Kelly asked.
Gina named the weekend. “It’s your birthday weekend, I know. And I said we’d go out in London but this is a big opportunity for me, Kels. My brother said he’d still hang out with you though.”
“You’ve told him you’re going to Paris?”
“Not who with, of course. I told him my new boyfriend is taking me,” said Gina. She sounded a little sad, thought Kelly as she considered the rather less romantic truth. “This could be it, Kels. I’ve read about this sort of thing in magazines. There was this girl who got into this kind of circle and next thing you know she’s on a yacht in the Med, entertaining some sheik. She came back from one weekend with enough money to pay off the mortgage on her flat. I just want to get enough money to go to college.”
“I don’t know why you want to go back to school,” said Kelly.
“Not school, Kelly. College. It’s because I want to make something of myself.”
Kelly snorted.
“It’s not funny,” said Gina. “You’ve got to make the most of the opportunities you’re given. And your gifts. I wish I’d known that when I was at school.”
“Don’t you start,” said Kelly. “You’re beginning to sound like Hilarian.”
“How’s it going down there in Sussex?”
“Badly. I got wasted at the wine fair. Threw up.”
“So?”
“Over three people.”
“Oh.”
“Everyone was really pissed off with me. Hilarian’s put a bet on Froggy Bottom in some competition. The people I threw up on were something to do with that. If we win, the vineyard gets a hundred grand.”
Gina exhaled slowly.
“Wow.”
“It’s not for five years but Guy’s already like a headless chicken about it.”
“The hottie?”
“He’s not hot.”
“He is. How is he?”
“Still not talking to me.”
As a matter of fact, at that exact moment, Guy decided that he would try to talk to Kelly again after all. She wasn’t going anywhere. She had nowhere else to go. Since she was a resident evil, he would have to make the best of the situation. Perhaps he had been too harsh on her. Perhaps he should try a different approach, “nice” her into treating Froggy Bottom less like a flophouse and more like the cutting-edge business Guy wanted it to be. He resolved that when he’d finished tying the chardonnay vines to their new position on the stakes, he would invite Kelly to join him in his flat for a drink. Just a small one. And he would try to draw out of her how she envisaged her future in Sussex. If he could discover just one thing she was passionate about, then he was sure he could use that knowledge to fire up her enthusiasm for the farm. The wine business wasn’t just about mud and vines. There was marketing to be done, for example. Perhaps Kelly could find a niche for herself there.
Guy had a very vivid flashback to the Vinifera vomit debacle.
Perhaps not.
When Guy came in from the vineyards, he found Kelly sitting on the step outside the farmhouse. Though it was almost four in the afternoon, she was wearing a dressing gown and fluffy slippers. She had a fag in one hand and her mobile phone in the other.
“Better signal out here,” she said.
Guy’s attempt at reestablishing friendly relations started badly.
“Got over your hangover?” he asked.
“Don’t start,” Kelly snapped. “I’m sorry, OK, I let you down, I let Froggy Bottom down, but most of all I let myself down,” she paraphrased the traditional teacher’s lament. “I’m a waste of space. I know.”
She got up and turned as if to go back into the house.
“Hang on,” said Guy. “Come out into the garden with me. It’s a nice afternoon. Just right for drinking rosé.”
Kelly frowned.
“You want to have a drink with me?”
“Yes. Toast the start of the weekend.”
“I’ll put my jeans on,” she said.
Kelly’s suspicion only increased when she joined Guy in the garden. He really was making an effort. Kelly discovered that he had got out the picnic table and laid it with a white cloth. A bottle of rosé—Froggy Bottom’s own—was already chilling in the ice bucket. He even pulled out Kelly’s chair.
“What are you up to?” Kelly asked him.
“Why do I have to be up to anything? I just thought it would be nice to share a bottle of wine with my nearest neighbor on this most beautiful of evenings.”
It was indeed a beautiful evening. It was approaching what is sometimes known as the “magic hour” when the setting sun casts a gentle pink glow over everything and smoothes out any flaws like a soft-focus lens. There was hardly a breath of wind, so the sound of the swallows could be heard overhead though they were almost too high in the sky to be seen.
For a little while Guy and Kelly didn’t talk and the silence seemed almost companionable, but pretty soon both of them realized that the silence wasn’t companionable at all; it was awkward. Kelly had hardly touched her glass of wine.
“Don’t you like it?” Guy asked.
“I don’t feel like I can drink in front of you. What was it you called me at the wine fair? A drunken slut?”
Guy shifted awkwardly in his chair. He had indeed called Kelly a drunken slut and much worse too. He had been raised by a mother who had instilled great respect for women in her son and being reminded that he had used such a gender-specific slur didn’t sit well with him at all.
“Well … ” he hummed. It was on his lips to ask her if she didn’t think he had a point. Thankfully he managed to keep it in. “I’m sorry,” he s
aid. “That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about tonight. I really just wanted to have a friendly drink. Look”—he took a big gulp from his glass—“I’m not so uptight that I don’t occasionally go over my weekly units myself.”
Kelly managed a little smile. She picked up her glass and took a swig of her own.
“Do you like it?” Guy asked.
“It’s OK. Tastes like strawberries,” she added.
“That’s what I was aiming for. Listen, we’ve started off badly,” Guy admitted then. “You said that these vines were like my babies. Truth is, they are. Your father planted the first vineyard in the seventies but they were getting a bit tired. I saw my chance to put my mark on this place.”
Kelly nodded. And helped herself to some more rosé. She noticed Guy watching her closely. Too closely, she thought. He threw up his hands when he noticed her reaction. “No, no. I mean, help yourself. I’m glad you like it.”
“Thanks. What were you going on about?”
“I’ve wanted to be a winemaker for so long, Kelly. It’s not the kind of ambition you’d expect the average kid from Jo’Burg to have. But my parents took me to Stellenbosch when I was about twelve and we visited the vineyards there. It was so beautiful. I decided there and then that I was going to study at the university of Stellenbosch and one day I would have a vineyard of my own. Well, I’m still a long way off owning a vineyard, but your father gave me the chance to be pretty much my own boss at Froggy Bottom.”
“That’s great,” said Kelly.
“So, you can understand why I get so precious about it.”
Vintage Page 17
