Wild Grapes

by Elizabeth Aston

  “Huh,” said Gina. “Whose idea was it that Fergus should come along for the ride?”

  “His,” said Zoe after a moment’s thought. “Yes, he suggested it.”

  “How long is he going to be here today, in Sybil’s cottage?”

  “Lunch now, and then he’s going to finish the pool for her, and I shouldn’t be at all surprised if they weren’t making plans for this evening.”

  “Oh, it’s too bad,” said Gina. “I don’t want to be cooped up in this little room for hours and hours.”

  “With shingles,” added Zoe.

  “Shingles? I haven’t got shingles.”

  “Yes, you have. We had to have some excuse for your being up here; it’s a funny guest who doesn’t ever join the party. Shingles sounds nice and infectious. Fergus offered to bring the tray up, but I told him how painful shingles is. That’ll keep him away, you know how Fergus frets and worries when he’s ill.”

  “Why not plague, and a cross on the door and be done with it?” said Gina resentfully.

  “Now, no bitterness, I’m only trying to help. I say, this is a very saucy book. Is it yours?”

  Gina glanced at the paperback Zoe was holding up. It had a lascivious scene depicted in shades of grey and rust on the cover, with the title blazoned across the top in heavy silver lettering: Antics at Antioch.

  “Certainly not,” said Gina.

  “It looks good,” said Zoe, skipping through a few pages. Her eyebrows rose. “Wow! Do you think your Sybil reads this sort of thing? Bit racy for someone of her age.”

  “No, she doesn’t read them, she writes them,” said Gina.

  “Writes them!” Zoe was impressed. “Well, hats off to her.” She looked at the spine of the book. “The Madam Press. I’ve heard of them. They sell thousands and thousands of these.”

  “Hence the signs of comfort all around you,” said Gina.

  “Tell you what, I think I’d better go down and keep an eye on Fergus. This biddy knows a thing or two, I can tell that much. Dear Fergus would be shocked to pieces if he saw this; it’s like putting your hand out to stroke a kitten and discovering you’ve got a panther sitting there.”

  Zoe paused at the door. “I don’t know why you don’t just come clean with Fergus, Gina. Much simpler.”

  “He’ll disapprove terribly, you know how law-abiding he is. Probably straight on the phone to Popplewell and then I’ll be for it.”

  “I don’t think Fergus has got much time for young Popplewell,” said Zoe. “And I know he’s worried about you, he’s been fretting because we haven’t had a card or a phone call.”

  “Tough,” said Gina.

  Harry’s office was humming with activity as he walked through the outer area to his room. As he divested himself of helmet, boots and the rest of his biking gear, Sally came in.

  Harry had no time for flashy young secretaries; he wanted someone with poise, experience, a sense of humour, no family problems, no boyfriend crises and who could spell. Sally, a grandmother of fifty-two with tremendous style and a degree in French, was the answer. Harry was the envy of all his colleagues and friends.

  “Letter to sign,” she said, putting the folder on his desk. “I’ve done the rest. Tickets for the exhibition in Paris next week; are you still going?”

  Harry shrugged on a jacket over his polo-necked shirt. “No,” he said briefly. “Can’t get away just at the moment, things a bit tense back at Heartsease. Jaspar can go. Any news?”

  Harry hadn’t been into the office for a few days, and he loved to catch up on the gossip.

  “Janos is engaged; he’s going to marry that girl he’s been going out with. He’s over the moon.”

  Harry raised his eyebrows. “What, the astonishingly exotic girl from an atoll? Does she realize what she’s letting herself in for, marrying a Hungarian?”

  “They’ll have beautiful children.”

  Harry pulled a face. “Children!”

  “Janos is already designing the nursery.”

  “Oh, great,” said Harry, flipping through his mail in a dissatisfied way.

  “Your friend William rang, can you meet him for lunch.”

  “Too much work,” said Harry. “I hate William, boring on about his wife and how happy they are. I don’t believe a word of it, I think it’s armed warfare in that household. I daresay she keeps him in one of those smart units in the kitchen that she’s so proud of.”

  “I hear she’s expecting a baby,” observed Sally.

  “Oh, terrific,” said Harry. “Then I’m definitely not having lunch with him, he’ll be drooling on about Vicky and baby names. And look,” said Harry, tossing a thick cream envelope down on to his gleaming black desk. “A wedding invitation. Another one. All I do is go to weddings, my morning coat is wearing out. Mr and Mrs Nestor... their daughter Penelope... Good God, she’s marrying Esmond. Esmond! I can’t believe that Esmond is getting married.”

  Sally silently left the room and came back with a cup of coffee.

  “Don’t do that, Sally,” said Harry, who was still gazing at the invitation. “I can get my own coffee.”

  “Just for once,” said Sally. “You need reviving, all this matrimonial and paternal news is clearly disturbing you.”

  “I should think so,” said Harry, flinging himself into his exceedingly comfortable black leather seat. He gave it a few discontented swivels. “If it goes on at this rate, I won’t have an unmarried friend left.”

  “It catches you in the end,” said Sally. “Unless you’re going to be a ’bachelor, forty-three’, and we all know what that means.”

  “What?” demanded Harry. “What does it mean?”

  “Calm down,” said Sally. “A man who isn’t married or living more or less permanently with a girlfriend by the time he’s forty isn’t going to get married. Or if he does, it’ll be hard going.”

  “Boyfriends, that’s what you mean,” said Harry, now in the sulks.

  “Possibly,” said Sally. “But you’ve plenty of time yet.”

  “Little do you know,” said Harry.

  Nerina put her spiky green head round the door. “Hawwy,” she lisped. “Dan’s off, toothache. We’re a wider short.”

  Harry hurled himself from his chair. “See to all this, Sally,” he said. “I’ll call back tonight and take the papers home with me. Nerina, pass me my helmet.”

  “Gareth, what does ‘jejune’ mean?” Lori asked as he came into the kitchen on a coffee hunt after a late lie-in.

  “Sterile, isn’t it? Something like that. Look it up in the dictionary. Silly sounding word, why did that pop into your head?”

  Gareth was in a pair of boxer shorts and a cotton dressing-gown, and his tanned stomach curved gently over his waist elastic as he bent down to find the coffee cream in the fridge.

  Lori poured him out some coffee. “Tara.”

  “Oh, Tara.”

  “She said it about the guest room. She said all those rich colours and swags were jejune.”

  “Tara doesn’t know the meaning of half the words she uses,” said Gareth, deep in his Sunday paper.

  “She wasn’t being complimentary, though, was she?”

  “Probably not,” said Gareth. Vestiges of nursery loyalty kept him from saying that Tara thought making complimentary remarks was a waste of good breath. “You like the way you’ve done it up, presumably?”

  “Yes. Well, I thought I did.”

  “Then I wouldn’t worry what Tara thinks about it. If she doesn’t like her room here, then she can stay in London.”

  Gareth was feeling a little sour about his sister; her behaviour last night at dinner had, he felt, bordered on the offensive. Since Gareth had one of the thickest skins in the business, this would have astounded his friends and colleagues.

  The wild boar had been roasted to a turn, the sauce was exactly right, the potatoes quite delicious. All was going well, and Tara was too busy eating to say much, when the family circle was disturbed by a peal on the period doorbel
l.

  “Who’s that?” said Gareth with a frown.

  “I’ll get it,” said Lori, reappearing a few minutes later with Don behind her.

  “Sorry to break in on your meal,” he said, with an amiable and unapologetic smile. “Prim told me that you wanted a word, Gareth. I was passing, so I thought I’d drop in. Knew you wouldn’t mind, Mrs Slubs told me you were only family for dinner.”

  “No, no, delighted to see you,” said Gareth. “Let me pour you a glass of wine.”

  Don stretched out his hand and picked up the bottle. “Not a bad wine,” he said.

  “Tara chose it,” said Lori.

  “What have you been eating?”

  “Wild boar,” said Tara.

  “Good choice then,” said Don, replacing the bottle on the table. “Yes, I’ll have a glass of that, Gareth.”

  “Are you having more wine, Gareth?” said Tara sweetly.

  “I am,” said Gareth.

  “Gareth’s company have just done a programme on drinking,” said Tara to Don. “About how many units you should drink a week, and how much it costs the health service to cope with disorders caused by alcoholism.”

  “I don’t think a glass of wine constitutes alcoholism,” said Gareth crossly.

  “And there was the series on obesity, wasn’t there?”

  “Thank you, Tara.”

  “Units,” said Don thoughtfully. “Strange that one of the great pleasures of civilized man has come down to being units.”

  Tara was there, a sweet smile still on her lips. “Civilized?” she said. “I don’t think anyone talks about civilization these days. If you’re talking about Western post-industrialized society, no sociologist would allow you to use that term. It implies that other socio-ethnic groups not part of the Western cultural imposition are not civilized.”

  Don gave Tara an amused glance as he held his glass up to the light. “Excellent,” he said.

  “I don’t think we need to go into that at the moment, Tara,” said Gareth.

  “It’s a subject that needs to be logomachized,” said Tara. “Without a methodological apprehension, your inferential grounds are meaningless.”

  “Meaningless,” repeated Don. “Yes, indeed.”

  That had been bad enough. But bloody Tara had gone through his work over the last eighteen months, suggesting, all the time, that his concern for black Northern Irish transvestites, urban gays in the north of England and for the problems of depressed teenage muggers was superficial and cynical in its approach.

  And all this in front of Don, who clearly found it very funny.

  “Isn’t it?” said Lori with a moment of unkindness. “Superficial and cynical, I mean. Don’t you do it because it’s what the programmers want?”

  “I suppose so,” said Gareth. “I’m bloody sure the viewers don’t want it, but it gives the powers-that-be a pleasant feeling of somehow caring more deeply about mournful issues than anyone else.”

  “Besides, upbeat stories aren’t newsworthy.”

  “Very true, my love,” said Gareth, feeling mildly comforted and turning his eyes to the astonishing goings-on in Tooting. SECRET ORGIES IN CHURCH HALL, screamed the headlines.

  How peaceful life in Heartwell is, by comparison, thought Gareth. No excitement here beyond an argument over the church flowers. Give me London any day, that’s where Life is.

  “You do realize Tara’s got her eye on Don?” said Lori, as she loaded the last of the dishes into the dishwasher and shut the door with a bang.

  “Tara’s got a boyfriend,” said Gareth absently, still deep in Tooting.

  “I’ll make a bet with you; she’ll be down here much more often.”

  “Not on the weekends when the children are home from school,” said Gareth. He had laughed when Lori noticed that, despite Tara’s solicitous enquiries about their daughters and professed enthusiasm for their company, she never came at the weekends when they were at home.

  It was deliberate, of course. Tara always removed the term’s dates from the cork noticeboard in the kitchen and stowed the paper away in her bag. You couldn’t leave things like that to chance.

  Zoe knocked on the door and looked in as Gina answered with a wary, “Who is it?”

  “Bored?” asked Zoe.

  Gina just looked at her.

  “Good news, you can come out for a bit. Fergus and Sybil and I are going off to a garden.”

  “A garden?”

  “Yes, to look at some special plants. Fergus is very knowledgeable, which is quite unexpected, and Sybil’s a real enthusiast, so off we go. Stay within sound of the phone, I’ll ring to let you know when we’re starting back. You should have at least three hours of freedom.”

  “And then no doubt Fergus and you are coming to eat here?”

  “‘Fraid so. I asked Sybil over to our cottage, but they vetoed that. I can hear the car revving up; natives are getting restless. So it’s supper on a tray for you, I hope you’ve got lots you want to read. Bye!”

  Gina bounded out of her room as the sound of the car died away. She was feeling decidedly displeased, and her displeasure was aimed mostly, and quite unfairly, at Fergus.

  Stupid man, she said as she wandered out into the garden. What did he want to come here for? Why couldn’t he have stayed in Oxford? And why did he have to get all budsy-wudsy with Sybil, instead of minding his own business?

  Three hours, Zoe had said. What should she do?

  Vineyard, she decided. She’d buy a bottle of something fizzy as a thank-you to Sybil. There would be plenty of time to do that and be back for Zoe’s warning call.

  Tomorrow she’d be going back to the Hall, what a relief. At least she had settled in there in her impostor’s guise. Having to skulk and pretend here in Heartwell on top of that was just too much, she told herself as she crossed the road. She set off down the footpath which would take her across two fields and then join up with the track which led to the vineyard.

  The scars of last night were still with her; she’d never felt nervous walking alone in open countryside, but now she did. She walked briskly, jumping over the stile between the two fields and almost running the last hundred, wooded yards to the track.

  That was better, and she slowed down to a gentle stroll more suitable for the hot, heavy weather. Through the archway, into the courtyard. There was the shop, and on the door was a large sign.

  CLOSED.

  Gina cursed under her breath, and was turning to go back when the door flew open. Nadia was standing there, attired in a rather grubby blue and white striped apron. She was glaring.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “Some wine,” said Gina, going back to the shop door.

  “It says closed. Can’t you read?”

  “I know it says closed,” said Gina, irritated. “That’s why I was going away.”

  “Without any wine?”

  “This is a pointless conversation,” said Gina. “If you’re closed, then I’ll go.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I’ll go to the pub when it opens, and ask them to sell me some wine. Or the village shop will be open later, and I can buy it there.”

  “Oh, no, you won’t. You can buy it here, from me. Come in, come in.”

  Gina shrugged at this perversity, hesitated for a moment and then went through the door. Inside she stood still in surprise, looking round at the chaos about her.

  “Whatever’s happened?” she asked. “Did burglars get in?”

  “Burglars? What burglars? I did this, by myself. My husband should have helped, but he has to work in our house today, because he wasted time already helping some woman in the village to build her swimming pool.”

  “That was Sybil and me,” said Gina. “I’m sorry if we took your husband away from important work. He was very helpful, and he did offer to come.”

  “Of course he offers to come, when a pretty woman asks him. He says it was to help the old woman, but then he thinks I’m stupid. So, you
like the look of my husband, huh?”

  “I like Byron, yes,” said Gina.

  Take him,” said Nadia dramatically. “Take him! He would be pleased to get away from me, I’m just his Russian wife who married him to get a passport.”

  Any English person would have been acutely embarrassed by this, would have hastily bought whatever bottle was nearest, and then would have fled from the shop, apologizing.

  But Gina wasn’t English. She was an American, and half-Russian herself, and, without ever having behaved like that herself, she understood Nadia’s temper. Besides she was very interested in this mention of marrying someone to get a passport.

  “Calm down,” she said. “I’m not after your husband. I can tell you, my life’s quite complicated enough as it is without adding Byron to the mixture. No, don’t start up again. Listen, did you marry Byron for a passport?”

  Nadia’s eyes darkened tragically. She became a broken woman, an exile from Siberia, a dying swan.

  Gina went on looking steadily at her. “Well?”

  “Okay, I tell you the story. Do you like stories? This story is a good one, with a kink in its tail, like all the best stories.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “My great-grandmother left Russia in 1917, in a hurry. Everything then was at sixes and sevens, you know that?”

  Sixes and sevens was a good way to describe the Russian Revolution, thought Gina. “Yes, it was,” she agreed.

  “Her family weren’t aristocrats, but her husband, my great-grandfather, who was much older than she was, was a merchant, he did a lot of business in America. He could see the way things were going. So she left her baby with her older sister, and went to the States. The sister and baby were supposed to follow, only they never did.”

  “How dreadful.”

  “They didn’t get killed, it wasn’t dreadful at all.”

  “No, I mean being separated from her baby.”

  “I don’t think she minded so much. She was only seventeen, and was having a good time, and then she had more children.”