She swung the Mercedes off the road and onto the rough cart track, through the gateposts with the small hand painted sign that read ‘Château Hightower’, and smiled. At least David had never lost his sense of humour; nor, she thought fondly, his patience. He should have divorced her and got another woman by now, someone who would love him, make him happy. He deserved that; but right now she was glad he hadn’t.
After a few hundred yards the track, as usual, turned into a quagmire, and the car lurched and bumped through the gates of the pig farm with its appalling stench; muddy water splashed on to the windscreen and she put the wipers on. A filthy dog ran out of an outhouse and barked at her. She passed the pens and the farmhouse, and drove through another gate, past another sign marked ‘Château Hightower’, with an arrow underneath it. She could see the small cluster of buildings a mile or so down to her right, nestling in the valley of the South Downs, the fields of vines staked out, and sheep scattered incongruously on the slopes around, like white bushes.
As she drove down the steep hill the lake came into view on the left, a weird lifeless expanse of water with a strange man-made island in the centre. The estate agent’s blurb had described it as a unique medieval pond believed to contain rare carp; it had excited David at the time more than the buildings. Carp, she thought, there were people who believed eating carp was the secret to eternal youth.
She passed the huge open-sided barn that contained a rusting tractor and a pyramid of manure, and pulled up in the muddy courtyard in front of the ramshackle flint cottage that was David’s home and, for a brief time, until the isolation and the cold had finally become too much, had been hers also.
It had been a long time since she had been down here and little had changed. The stable block on the far side of the courtyard still looked as if it was about to collapse, in spite of the freshly painted sign of the wall which read: ‘Château Hightower Reception’. She smiled again; the absurd grandeur of the name always made her smile. A mud-spattered Collie sloped out of a doorway and looked at her dozily.
‘Hallo, Vendange,’ she said.
The dog managed a single flick of its tail, then dipped its nose and sniffed something on the ground. She walked past David’s Land Rover over to the stables, opened the reception door, and looked in. It was a cold, musty room, with a stone floor and an old kitchen table with an even older cash register perched on top. Two half-empty bottles with Château Hightower labels stood there, their corks sticking out of their necks like ill-fitting top hats. The rest of the room was piled high with white boxes, all with Château Hightower stencilled in green. She went out and the door swung shut behind her with a loud bang.
She walked the length of the courtyard to a tall flint barn at the end, which looked as if it might once have been a chapel, and went in. It was dank and cold, with a stale vinous smell like an empty pub.
Her husband was standing down at the far end between two massive plastic vats, deep in thought. She walked past a shiny red grape-crushing machine, past a row of smaller plastic vats, and a large glass jar filled with an opaque liquid. He raised a wine glass to his nose, sniffed thoughtfully, then tipped the contents into a drain cut into the centre of the floor.
‘Hallo, David,’ she said.
He looked up with a start. ‘Good God!’ He smiled and scratched his beard. ‘You gave me a fright!’
‘I’m sorry.’
He walked towards her, his arms open; he was wearing a grimy denim jacket and tattered cotton trousers. She felt the prickle of his beard against her face and the cold wetness of his lips.
‘Aren’t you frozen in that?’
‘Is it cold? I hadn’t noticed.’
She looked down at his feet. ‘I thought farmers wore wellies – not bedroom slippers.’
‘I’m not a farmer,’ he said, with a hurt expression. ‘I’m a chatelain.’
She smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot.’
‘Anyway, they keep my feet warm. Here, I want you to taste this.’ He walked over to one of the giant vats and half-filled the glass from a tap on the side. ‘Forget the colour, it’s very young; it’ll clarify.’
She looked dubiously at the murky grey liquid, then sniffed it; there was a soft, flowery smell.
‘Good nose, eh?’
She nodded.
‘It’ll get stronger. But not bad, eh?’
She tasted the wine and winced at the coldness. Dutifully, she swilled it around in her mouth, looking at him for instructions as to whether to swallow it or spit it out. She saw the desperate eagerness in his eyes, like a child waiting for praise. In contrast to its nose, the wine had a dull steely taste; something almost buttery. She swallowed, wondering if it was the right thing to do. ‘Hmmm,’ she said, pensively. She saw the enthusiasm waver on his face and doubt appear. ‘It’s very nice. Very nice.’
Happiness flooded across him, and he rubbed his hands together gleefully. ‘I think I’ve cracked it, don’t you?’
‘All your wines are very nice, David.’
He shook his head. ‘Everything I’ve done to date has been rubbish, a con, a copy of something else; second rate Alsace. I’ve tried to copy Breaky Bottom, St Cuthmans, and everything else that I thought was good.’ He shook his head and clapped his hands. ‘Originality. I want to create a great English wine, something distinctive, unique.’ He formed a circle between his forefinger and his thumb. ‘And limit the production; that’s the secret. They’ll be queueing all the way to the road for it.’
‘If they can stand the smell of pigs.’
He looked hurt and she was sorry she had made the remark.
‘Did you – did you really like it?’ he said.
She nodded.
‘It’s got a long way to go yet; you realize what it is don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she lied, giving him a reassuring smile.
He looked relieved. ‘I knew you would; at least if you picked up nothing else from being married to me, you learned your wines.’
She smiled again, reassuringly.
‘I think Fabian would have been proud of this. He came down for the vendange last year; he helped pick these grapes. It’s going to be very special, isn’t it?’
She nodded.
‘Chardonnay!’ he exclaimed, looking up at the ceiling; he repeated the word, loudly, clearly, like a Bible thumper in the pulpit. ‘Chardonnay!’ The word echoed around the cold damp barn, and his teeth shone maniacally through his beard.
Alex shuddered; he seemed such a stranger, suddenly.
‘Montrachet, Corton Charlemagne!’ He kissed the tips of his fingers.
‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.
‘I could make twenty-five thousand bottles this year; that’s not bad is it?’
‘I need to talk to you, David.’
He held out his hands. ‘Look, look at these.’
She stared at the grime in his nails and in the pores of the skin.
‘I used to have them manicured in London, didn’t I? Do you remember?’
She nodded.
‘My hands were beautiful – it’s just everything I did with them was crap. Now they’re filthy, ugly, but with them I create great beauty. Isn’t that wine wonderful?’
‘Yes; I hope it does very well for you. Can we go in the house and talk?’
‘Sure.’ He took the glass from her and walked towards the door; he stopped and patted a huge stainless steel trough. ‘For fermentation,’ he said proudly. ‘No other winery in England has one like this.’ He looked up at Alex, and she stared into his sad brown eyes. This was the world he’d rejected London for, the life he’d rejected his big salary and fast cars and smart suits and expensive manicures to live; to do his own thing: this cold dingy building with its sour smell and strange machines, the rows of vines and the sheep and the solitude.
‘Are you happy?’ she said.
‘I’m doing what I want.’
‘But are you happy?’
He shrugged and walked in. She follow
ed him out of the building into the bright daylight, across the yard with the smell of mud and dog and manure, and ducked after him through the low doorway into the cottage.
He filled the kettle from the tap in the stone sink and put it on the Aga. Alex sat down at the pine table and instinctively brushed some breadcrumbs into the palm of her hand.
‘Do you want anything to eat?’
She shook her head, and emptied the crumbs into the large brown paper bag that was the waste bin.
‘It’s nice seeing you. You haven’t been down for a long time.’
She looked at the heap of plates and dishes piled around the drying rack, and smiled. ‘You ought to get a dish-washer.’
He shook his head. ‘No good for wine glasses; leaves a deposit.’
‘You make it hard.’
He shrugged. ‘Not much else to do when it’s dark; might as well wash the dishes.’
The kettle made a faint-hearted hiss, like a sigh, she thought. ‘I went to a medium.’
He wiped a mug carefully with a dishcloth and looked at her. ‘And?’
‘He got in touch with Fabian.’
David put the mug down and pulled a tobacco tin out of his pocket.
‘I know what your feelings are on the subject, but there are some things that have been happening – some very strange things.’
‘What sort of things?’
Alex stared at an old wooden clock on a shelf. Four-fifteen. ‘Is that the time?’ she said weakly, looking at her own watch for confirmation.
‘It’s usually a few minutes fast.’
‘I was meant to be at Penguin at four.’ She shook her head.
David looked at her. ‘Important?’
She nodded. ‘It’s taken a month to set it up.’
‘Can’t someone else go for you?’
‘No.’
‘I thought you had some good assistants.’
‘I do, but I have to be there myself for this one.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’d be lucky to get there by six.’ She found herself blaming David; it was his fault that she had forgotten, that she was stuck down here, in this filthy kitchen, in the middle of bloody nowhere. His fault that she might have blown one of her best-ever deals. ‘Can I use your phone?’ she said, lamely.
‘You don’t need to ask; you own half of it.’
‘I don’t want a lecture,’ she snapped, ‘I just want to use the bloody –’ She paused, bit her lip; there was no point in getting mad; no point in trying to blame David, or anyone else.
‘You were pretty convincing.’
‘I think I’ve salvaged it.’ She dug her hands into her coat pocket. The wellingtons were slightly too big and her feet slipped about inside them; she wondered whose they were.
The track squelched and moved beneath the weight of their feet as they walked along below the fields of vines; endless rows of thin gnarled branches, unrelieved by any greenery or flowers, they stood like a regiment of skeletons at the gates to Hades. Alex shuddered, worried by the horrific thoughts that had been coming into her mind recently. She slipped, and grabbed on to David’s arm; it was rigid, powerful, and his strength surprised her; she had forgotten how strong he was.
‘O.K.?’
‘Fine.’
‘Finished pruning on Sunday,’ he said, proudly. ‘Three months, almost to the day.’
‘Good,’ she said, enthusiastically, assuming that it was. The afternoon light was fading, and the air was turning sharp. She heard the bleat of a sheep, and a light aircraft droned high above them.
‘You think I’m cracking up, don’t you?’ she said.
‘No, I don’t think that,’ he said, looking annoyed suddenly. ‘How the hell did the sheep get up there, look.’ He pointed, and Alex followed the line of his finger up the hillside beyond the vineyard.
‘Doesn’t Vendange keep them under control?’
‘Bloody dog’s not interested in sheep; all he wants to do is sleep and chase rabbits.’
‘There must be something wrong with his genes.’
David looked at her oddly, then up at his vineyard again. ‘Bloody things. Must be another hole in the fence.’ He shook his head. ‘I think you’re under a lot of strain and it’s showing, isn’t it? You’ve always been super-efficient, that’s how you’ve succeeded; you’d never have forgotten an appointment in the past. Roses in windscreens, in bowls. There are a lot of red roses in the world, Alex. Nice to think they’re a message from Fabian, but it’s a little improbable; you’re clutching at coincidences, putting a meaning to them, and screwing yourself up in the process.’
‘I am not screwing myself up,’ she said angrily.
At the end of the vineyard the track forked. ‘Shall we walk around the lake?’
‘Sure,’ she said.
They walked through a short wood and came out on to the bank of the lake. Alex stared at it and felt unsettled; she had never felt comfortable with it, and now it had a sinister, almost menacing feel. Medieval pond: the estate agent’s description had never left her mind since she had first read the blurb. She wondered if it had ever been drained and what secrets were buried at the bottom of it. She smelt the flat stagnant smell, saw the thick reeds, like dead men’s fingers, and the strange octagonal concrete island a hundred yards out in the middle. There was a ballroom underneath, at the bottom of the lake. The agent had taken them there once, hastily. It had been built at the end of the last century by an eccentric engineer who had had something to do with designing the London Underground, according to the agent. Now it wasn’t considered safe any more.
She shuddered at the memory of the place; they had gone in through a door in the bushes somewhere nearby and down into a tunnel under the lake, opening and closing various watertight doors as they went – a precaution against flooding, the agent had said. And then they had come into a vast room, with a domed glass roof covered in slime and tendrils of weed, the occasional dark shape of a fish just distinguishable from the murky water. There had been an ominous puddle of water on the floor, and the agent had looked up nervously and declared that the roof could cave in at any time. That was four years ago.
‘Remember going into that ballroom?’ she said to David.
He nodded.
‘Is it still standing?’
‘I’ve been meaning to have a look; I’ll go out in the boat with a snorkel one day and see if it’s still there.’
‘You could go down the tunnel.’
He shook his head. ‘Too dangerous; if there’s a leak and one of the sections has filled up, you’d be drowned if you opened the door. Fabian used to be obsessed by the place; I gave him quite a bollocking last year when I caught him going down there.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a pity; it would have been a good place for a party.’
‘I thought you didn’t like parties any more.’
‘It would go with my chatelain image, don’t you think? Launching the new vintage with a party under the lake?’
She smiled.
He pulled his tobacco tin out and prised off the lid. ‘Look, Alex, I didn’t mean what I said as a criticism. I’m very fond of you still; I always will be – that’s my problem and I have to cope with it. Fabian’s dead. Mediums are charlatans. They’ll take your money for as long as you’ll pay them.’ He rubbed the cigarette tightly between his fingers, then put it between his lips; they stopped and he clacked his lighter; Alex smelt the sweet smoke for an instant.
‘How did the medium know the truth about the lorry?’
‘He didn’t. He read in the papers that it was a lorry, which you knew was wrong; by a sheer fluke the boys in the car thought it was a lorry, and that makes you think the medium is a genius. Anyway, you gave a false name – there probably was someone called Johnson whose son was killed by a lorry; there are hundreds killed on the roads every week. Think about it.’
‘He didn’t say that it was a lorry. He said that Fabian was saying it was a lorry.’
‘Look, see what we’re doing; raking it all up
again.’ He shook his head. ‘Your medium chap, Ford, or whatever his name is, told you that he was in touch with Fabian?’
Alex nodded.
‘So what you’re implying is that Fabian’s lived on – is still living on, since the accident, albeit in another world – the spirit world, or whatever?’
She nodded again.
‘So surely he would have realized after the accident that he was mistaken, that it was a car not a lorry? Why didn’t he tell the medium?’
She stared ahead across the water and tried to block out his words. A ripple appeared suddenly and she wondered if it was a fish. She felt tired and drained, as if all the energy had been vacuumed out of her body, and she was left weighed down by a coat of heavy lifeless flesh. ‘How do you explain Philip Main?’ she said, but there was no fight left in her words.
‘Your hearing Fabian’s voice coming from him?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s probably acting; maybe he’s a good actor.’
‘Why should he do that? Anyway, it happened with you, too, David. It was as if you’d – you changed into him. I heard his voice coming from you.’
He shrugged. ‘The mind can play strange tricks.’
They stood in silence for a moment.
‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘I’d like to go back now.’
They turned around and walked in silence. There was a loud plop near them.
‘A fish!’ said David.
‘It sounded big.’
He nodded, and smiled sadly. ‘Fabian would have made a much better fisherman than me; he had more patience.’
‘It’s funny how you can see different sides of your own child; I never thought he was patient; he used to fly into the most frightful tantrums when he was younger, if he didn’t get what he wanted immediately. Dreadful, it used to frighten me.’
‘He had a good nose for wine. I think he could have gone a long way in wine, if he’d wanted.’ He noticed the scorn on Alex’s face. ‘A growth industry,’ he said, defensively. ‘When he was last down here, only a few weeks ago, he tasted the Chardonnay; got it right away. That’s pretty good.’