Blackberry Wine Part 2

10.

Pog Hill, July 1975 HE WENT TO SEE JOE MANY MORE TIMES AFTER THAT, THOUGH HE never really got to like his wine. Joe showed no surprise when he arrived, but simply went to fetch the lemonade bottle, as if he had been expecting him. Nor did he ask about the charm. Jay asked him about it a few times, with the scepticism of one who secretly longs to be convinced, but the old man was evasive.'Magic,' he said, wirking to prove it was a joke. 'Learned it off of a lady in Puerto Cruz.''I thought you said Haiti,' interrupted Jay.Joe shrugged. 'Same difference,' he said blandly.

'Worked, didn't it?'Jay had to admit that it worked. But it was just herbs, wasn't it? Herbs and bits of stick tied into a piece of cloth.And yet it had made him . ..Joe grinned.'Nah, lad. Not invisible.' He pushed the bill of his cap up from his eyes.'What then?'Joe looked at him. 'Some plants have properties, don't they?' he said.Jay nodded.

'Aspirin. Digitalis. Quinine. What woulda been calledmagic in the old days.''Medicines.''If you like. But a few hundred years ago there were no difference between magic and medicine. People just knew things. Believed things. Like chewin cloves to cure toothache, or pennyroyal for a sore throat, or rowan twigs to keep away evil spirits.' He glanced at the boy, as if to check for any sign of mockery. 'Properties,' he repeated. 'You can learn a lot if you travel enough, an you keep an open mind.'Jay was never certain later whether Joe was a true believer or whether his casual acceptance of magic was part of an elaborate plan to baffle him. Certainly the old man liked a joke. Jay's total ignorance of anything to do with gardening amused him, and for weeks he had the boy believing that a harmless stand of lemongra.s.s was really a spaghetti tree - showing him the pale soft shoots of 'spaghetti' between the papery leaves - or that giant hogweeds could pull out their roots and walk, like triffids, or that you really could catch mice with valerian. Jay was gullible, and Joe delighted in finding new ways to catch him out. But in some things he was genuine. Maybe he had finally come to believe in his own fiction, after years of persuading others. His life was dominated by small rituals and superst.i.tions, many taken from the battered copy of Culpeper's Herbal he kept by his bedside. He tickled tomatoes to make them grow. He played the radio constantly, claiming that the plants grew stronger with music.

They preferred Radio I - he claimed leeks grew up to two inches bigger after Ed Stewart's Junior Choice - and Joe would be there, singing along to 'Disco Queen' or 'Stand By Your Man' as he worked, his old-crooner's voice rising solemnly above the redcurrant bushes as he picked and pruned. He always planted when there was a new moon and picked when the moon was full. He had a lunar chart in his greenhouse, each day marked in a dozen different inks: brown for potatoes, yellow for parsnips, orange for carrots.Watering, too, was done to an astrological schedule, as was the pruning and positioning of trees. And the funny thing was that the garden thrived on this eccentric treatment, growing strong, luxuriant rows of cabbages and turnips, carrots which were sweet and succulent and mysteriously free of slugs, trees whose branches fairly touched the ground under the weight of apples, pears, plums, cherries.

Brightly coloured Oriental-looking signs Sellotaped to tree branches supposedly kept the birds from eating the fruit.

Astrological symbols, painstakingly set into the gravel path and constructed from pieces of broken pottery and coloured gla.s.s, lined the garden beds. With Joe, Chinese medicine rubbed shoulders companionably with English folklore, chemistry with mysticism. For all Jay knew he may have believed it. Certainly, Jay believed him. At thirteen anything is possible. Everyday magic, that was what Joe called it.

Layman's alchemy. No fuss, no fireworks. Just a mixture of herbs and roots, gathered under favourable planetary conditions. A muttered incantation, a sketched air symbol learned from gypsies on his travels. Perhaps Jay would not have accepted anything less prosaic. But in spite of his beliefs - maybe even because of them - there was something deeply restful about Joe, an inner calm which encircled him and which filled the boy with curiosity and a kind of envy. He seemed so tranquil, alone in his little house, surrounded by plants, and yet he had a remarkable sense of wonder and a gleeful fascination with the world.

He was almost without education, having left school at twelve to go down the mines, but he was an endless source of information, anecdotes and folklore. As the summer pa.s.sed, Jay found himself going to see Joe more and more often. He never asked questions, but allowed Jay to talk to him as he worked in his garden or his unofficial allotment on the railway bank, occasionally nodding to show that he'd heard, that he was listening. They snacked on slabs of fruit cake and thick bacon and egg sandwiches - no Trimble loaves for Joe - and drank mugs of strong, sweet .

tea. From time to time Jay brought cigarettes and sweets or magazines, and Joe accepted these gifts without especial grat.i.tude and without surprise, as he did the boy's presence.

As his shyness abated Jay even read him some of his stories, to which he listened in solemn and, he thought, appreciative silence. When Jay didn't want to talk he would tell the boy about himself, about his work in the mines and how he went to France during the war and was stationed in Dieppe for six months before a grenade blew two fingers off his hand - wiggling the reduced limb like an agile starfish then how, being unfit for service, it was the mines again for six years before he took off for America on a freighter.'Cause you don't get to see much of the world from underground, lad, and I allus wanted to see what else there was. Have you done much travellin?'Jay told him he had been to Florida twice with his parents, to the south of France, to Tenerife and the Algarve for holidays. Joe dismissed these with a sniff.'I mean proper travellin, lad. Not all that tourist-brochure rubbish, but the real thing. The Pont-Neuf in the early morning, when there's no-one up but the tramps coming out from under the bridges and out of the Metro, and the sun s.h.i.+nin on the water. New York. Central Park in spring.

Rome. Ascension Island. Crossin the Italian alps by donkey.

The vegetable caique from Crete. Himalayas on foot.

Eatin rice off leaves in the Temple of Ganesh. Caught in a squall off the coast of New Guinea. Spring in Moscow and a whole winter of dogs.h.i.+t comin out under the meltin snow.'

His eyes were gleaming. 'I've seen all of those things, lad,'

he said softly. 'And more besides. I promised mesself I'd see everything.'Jay believed him. He had his maps on the walls, carefully annotated in his crabby handwriting and marked with coloured pins to show the places he had been. He told stories of brothels in Tokyo and shrines in Thailand, birds of paradise and banyan trees and standing stones at the end of the world. In the big converted spice cupboard nextto his bed there were millions of seeds, painstakingly wrapped in squares of newspaper and labelled in his small careful script: tuberosa rubra maritima, tuberosa panax odarata, thousands and thousands of potatoes in their small compartments and, with them, carrots, squash, tomatoes, artichokes, leeks - over 300 species of onion alone sages, thymes, sweet bergamots and a bewildering treasure store of medicinal herbs and vegetables collected on his travels, every one named and packaged and ready for planting. Some of these plants were already extinct in the wild, Joe said, their properties forgotten by everyone but a handful of experts. Of the millions of varieties of fruit and vegetables once grown, only a few dozen were still commonly used.'It's your intensive farming does it,' he would say, leaning on his spade for long enough to take a mouthful of tea from his mug. 'Too much specialization kills off variety. Sides, people don't want variety. They want everythin to look the same. Round red tomatoes, and never mind there's a long yeller un that'd taste a mile better if they gave it a try. Red uns look better on shelves.' He waved an arm vaguely over the allotment, indicating the neat rows of vegetables rising up the railway em[3ankment, the home-made cold frames in the derelict signal box, the fruit trees pegged out against the wall. 'There's things growin here that you wouldn't find anywhere else in the whole of England,' he said in a low voice, 'and there's seeds in that chest of mine that you might not find anywhere else in the whole world.' Jay listened to him in awe. He'd never been interested in plants before. He could hardly tell the difference between a Granny Smith and a Red Delicious. He knew potatoes, of course, but Joe's talk of blue jackapples and pink fir apples was beyond any experience of his. The thought that there were secrets, that arcane, forgotten things might be growing right there on the railway embankment with only an old man as their custodian fired Jay with an enthusiasm he had never imagined.

Part of it was Joe, of course. His stories. His memories. The energy of the man himself. He began to see in Joe something he had never seen in anyone else. A vocation. A sense of purpose.'Why did you come back, Joe?' he asked him one day.

'After all that travelling, why come back here?'Joe peered out gravely from under the bill of his miner's cap.'It's part of me plan, lad,' he said. 'I'll not be here for ever.Some day I'll be off again. Some day soon.''Where?''I'll show you.'He reached into his works.h.i.+rt and pulled out a battered leather wallet. Opening it, he unfolded a photograph clipped from a colour magazine, taking great care not to tear the whitened creases. It was a picture of a house.'What's that?' Jay squinted at the picture. It looked ordinary enough, a big house built of faded pinkish stone, a long strip of land in front, with some kind of vegetation growing in ordered rows. Joe smoothed out the paper.'That's me chatto, lad,' he said. 'In Bordo, it is, in France.

Me chatto with the vineyard and me hundred-year-old orchard with peaches and almonds and apples and pears.'

His eyes gleamed. 'When I've got me bra.s.s together I'll buy it - five grand would do it - and I'll make the best b.l.o.o.d.ywine in the south. Chatto c.o.x, 1975. How's that sound?'

Jay watched him doubtfully.'Sun s.h.i.+nes all year round down in Bordo,' said Joe cheerily. 'Oranges in January. Peaches like cricket b.a.l.l.s.

Olives. Kiwi fruit. Almonds. Melons. And s.p.a.ce. Miles and miles of orchards and vineyards, land cheap as dirt. Soil like fruit cake. Pretty girls treadin out the grapes with their bare feet. Paradise.''Five thousand pounds is a lot of money,' said Jay doubtfully.

Joe tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger.'I'll get there,' he said mysteriously. 'You want somethin badly enough, you allus get there in the end.''But you don't even speak French.'Joe's only response was a stream of sudden, incomprehensible gibberish, like no language Jay had ever heard before.'Joe, I do French at school,' he told him. 'That's not anything like--'Joe looked at him indulgently.'It's dialect, lad,' he said. 'Learned it off of a band of gypsies in Ma.r.s.eilles. Believe me, I'll fit right in there.' He folded the picture carefully away again and replaced it in his wallet. Jay gaped at him in awe, utterly convinced.'You'll see what I mean one day, lad,' he said. 'Jus you wait.''Can I come with you?' Jay asked. 'Will you take me with you?' Joe considered it seriously, head to one side.'I might, lad, if you want to come. I might a.n.a.ll.'

'Promise?''All right.' He grinned. 'It's a promise. c.o.x and Mackintosh, best b.l.o.o.d.y winemakers in Bordo. That do yer?'They toasted his dreams in warm Blackberry '73.

11.

London, Spring 1999 BY THE TIME JAY ARRIVED AT SPY'S IT WAS TEN O'CLOCK AND THE party was well under way. Another of Kerry's literary launches, he thought ruefully. Bored journalists and cheap champagne and eager young things dancing attendance on blas older things like himself. Kerry never tired of these occasions, dropping names like confetti - Germaine and Will and Ewan - flitting from one prestigious guest to the other with the zeal of a high priestess. Jay had only just realized how much he hated it.Stopping at the house only long enough to pick up a few things, he saw the red light on the answerphone blinking furiously, but did not play the message. The bottles in his duffel bag were absolutely still. Now he was the one in ferment, jittering and rocking, exhilarated one moment, close to tears the next, rummaging through his possessions like a thief, afraid that if he stopped still for even a second he would lose his momentum and collapse listlessly back into his old life again. He turned on the radio and it was the oldies station again, playing Rod Stewart and 'Sailing', one of Joe's favourites - allus reminds me of them times I were on me travels, lad - and he listened as he stuffed clothes into the bag on top of the silent bottles. Amazing how littlehe could not bear to leave behind. His typewriter. The unfinished ma.n.u.script of Stout Cortez. Some favourite books. The radio itself. And, of course, Joe's Specials.

Another impulse, he told himself. The wine was valueless, almost undrinkable. And yet he could not shake the feeling that there was something in those bottles he needed. Something he could not do without.Spy's was like so many other London clubs. The names change, the dcor changes, but the places stay the same: sleek and loud and soulless. By midnight most of the guests would have abandoned any pretentions to intellectualism that they might have had, instead settling down to the serious business of getting drunk, making advances to each other, or insulting their rivals. Getting out of the taxi with his duffel bag slung across his shoulder and his single case in his hand, Jay realized that he had forgotten his invitation. After some altercation with the doorman, however, he managed to get a message to Kerry, who emerged a few minutes later wearing her Ghost dress and steeliest smile.'It's all right,' she flung at the doorman. 'He's just useless, that's all.' Her green eyes flicked at Jay, taking in the jeans, the raincoat, the duffel bag.'I see you didn't wear the Armani,' she said.The euphoria was finally gone, leaving only a kind of dim hangover in its wake, but Jay was surprised to find his resolve unchanged. Touching the duffel bag seemed to help somehow, and he did $o, as if to test its reality. Under the canvas the bottles clinked quietly together.'I've bought a house,' said Jay, holding out the crumpled brochure. 'Look. It's Joe's chteau, Kerry. I bought it this morning. I recognized it.' Beneath that flat green stare he felt absurdly childish. Why had he expected her to understand?

He barely understood his impulse himself. 'It'scalled Chfiteau Foudouin,' he said. She looked at him.

'You bought a house.'

He nodded.

'Just like that, you bought it?' she asked in disbelief. 'You bought it today?'He nodded again. There were so many things he wanted to say. It was destiny, he would have told her, it was the magic he had searched for twenty years to recapture. He wanted to explain about the brochure and the square of sunlight and how the picture had leaped out at him from the page. He wanted to explain about the sudden certainty of it, the feeling that it was the house which chose him, and not the other way around.'You can't have bought a house.' Kerry was still struggling with the idea. 'G.o.d, Jay, you dither for hours over buying a s.h.i.+rt.''This was different. It was like ...' He struggled to articulate what it had been like. It was an uncanny sensation, that overriding feeling of must-have. He hadn't felt this way since his teens. The knowledge that life could not be complete without this one infinitely desirable, magical, totemic object - a pair of X-ray spectacles, a set of h.e.l.l's Angels transfers, a cinema ticket, the latest band's latest single - the certainty that possession of it would change everything, its presence in the pocket to be checked, tested, retested. It wasn't an adult feeling. It was more primitive, more visceral than that. With a jolt of surprise, he realized he had not really wanted anything for twenty years.'It was like ... being back at Pog Hill again,' he said, knowing she wouldn't understand. 'It was as if the lasttwenty years hadn't happened.'Kerry looked blank.'I can't believe you impulse-bought a house,' she said. 'A car, yes. A motorbike, OK. It's the kind of thing you would do, come to think of it. Big toys to play with. But a house?'

She shook her head, mystified. 'What are you going to do with it?''Live in it,' said Jay simply. 'Work in it.''But it's in France somewhere.' Irritation sharpened her voice. 'Jay, I can't afford to spend weeks in France. I'm dueto start the new series next month. I've got too many commitments. I mean, is it even close to an airport?' She broke off, her eyes moving again to the duffel bag, taking in, as if for the first time, the suitcase, the travelling clothes.There was a crease between her arched brows.'Look, Kerry--'Kerry lifted a hand imperiously.'Go home,' she said. 'We can't discuss this here. Go home, Jay, relax, and we'll talk it all through when I get back. OK?'

She sounded cautious now, as if she were addressing an excitable maniac.Jay shook his head. 'I'm not going back,' he said. 'I need to get away for a while. I wanted to say goodbye.'Even now Kerry showed no surprise. Irritation, yes.

Almost anger. But she remained untroubled, secure in her convictions.'You're p.i.s.sed again, Jay,' she said. 'You haven't thought any of this through. You come to me with this crazy idea about a second home, and when I'm not instantly taken by it--''It isn't going to be a second home.'The tone of his voice surprised both of them. For a moment he sourided almost harsh.'And what the f.u.c.k is that supposed to mean?' Her voice was low and dangerous.'It means you're not listening to me. I don't think you've ever actually listened to me.' He paused. 'You're always telling me to grow up, to think for myself, to let go. But you're happy to keep me a permanent lodger in your house, to keep me dependent on you for everything. I don't have anything of my own. Contacts, friends - they're all yours, not mine. You even choose my clothes. I've got money, Kerry, I've got mybooks, I'm not exactly starving in a garret any more.'

Kerry sounded amused, almost indulgent.'So this is what it's all about? A little declaration of independence?' She fluttered a kiss against his cheek. 'OK.

I understand you don't want to go to the party, and I'm .

sorry I didn't realize that this morning, OK?' She put her hand on his shoulder and smiled. The patented Kerry O'Neill smile.'Please. Listen. Just this once.'Was this what Joe had felt, he wondered. So much easier to leave without a word, to escape the recriminations, the tears, the disbelief. To escape the guilt. But somehow he just couldn't do that to Kerry. She didn't love him any more, he knew that. If she ever had. All the same, he couldn't do it.

Perhaps because he knew how it felt.'Try to understand. This place -' His gesture included the club the neon-lit street, the low sky, the whole of London, heaving, dark and menacing below it. 'I don't belong here any more. I can't think straight when I'm here. I spend all my time waiting for something to happen, some kind of sign--''Oh, for Christ's sake, grow up!' She was suddenly furious, her voice rising like an angry bird's. 'Is this your excuse? Some kind of idiotic angst? If you spent less time mooning on about that old b.a.s.t.a.r.d Joe c.o.x and looked around you for a change, if only you took charge instead of talking about signs and omens--''But I am,' he interrupted her. 'I am taking charge. I'm doing what you've always told me to do.''Not by running away to France!' The note in her voice was almost panic now. 'Not just like that! You owe me. You wouldn't have lasted two minutes without me. I've introduced you to people, used my contacts for you. You were nothing but a one-book wonder, a has-been, a f.u.c.king fake--']ay looked at her dispa.s.sionately for a moment. Strange, he thought remotely, how quickly gamine could s.h.i.+ft to plain meanness. Her red mouth was thin, vicious. Her eyes were crescents. Anger, familiar and liberating, wrapped around him like a cloak, and he laughed.'Can the bulls.h.i.+t,' he told her. 'It always was a mutual convenience. You liked to drop my name at parties, didn'tyou? I was an accessory. It did you good to be seen with me.

It's just like people who read poetry on the tube. People saw you with me and a.s.sumed you were a real intellectual, instead of a media wannabe without a single original thought in her head.'She stared at him, astonished and enraged. Her eyes were wide.'What?''Goodbye.' He turned to go.'Jay!' She s.n.a.t.c.hed at him as he turned, slapping smartly against the duffel bag with the flat of her hand. Inside, the bottles whispered and snickered.'How dare you turn your back on me?' she hissed. 'You were happy enough to use my contacts when it suited you.

How dare you turn round and tell me you're leaving, without even giving me a proper explanation? If it's personal s.p.a.ce you want, then say that. Go to your French chfiteau, if that's what you want, go wallow in atmosphere, if that's going to help.'She looked at him suddenly. 'Is that it? Is it another book?' She sounded hungry now, her anger sharpening into excitement. 'If that's what it is you have to tell me, Jay. You owe me that. AftEr all this time . . .'Jay looked at her. It would be so easy to say yes, he told himself. To give her something she would understand, maybe forgive.'I don't know,' he said at last. 'I don't think so.' A taxi went by then and Jay flagged it down, throwing his luggage onto the back seat and jumping in with it. Kerry gave a cry of frustration and slapped the window of the taxi as if it were his face.'Go on then! Run away! Hide! You're just like him, you know: a quitter! That's all you know how to do! Jay! lay!'As the taxi pulled smoothly away from the kerb Jay grinned and settled back against his duffel bag. Its contents made small contented clicking sounds all the way to the airport.

12.Pog Hill, Summer 1975 SUMMER STEERED ITS COURSE AND JAY CAME MORE OFTEN TO.

Pog Hill Lane. Joe seemed pleased to see him when he came by, but never commented when he did not, and the boy spent days lurking by the ca.n.a.l or by the railway, watching over his uncertain territory, ever on the lookout for Zeth and his two friends. His hideout at the lock was no longer secure, so he moved the treasure box from its place in the bank and cast about for a safer place. At last he found one in the derelict car on the dumping ground, taping it to the underside of the rotten fuel tank. Jay liked that old car. He spent hours lounging in its one remaining seat, smelling the musty scent of ancient leather, hidden from sight by the rampant greenery. Once or twice he heard the voices of Zeth and his mates close by, but crouching in the low belly of the car -- Joe's charm held tightly in his hand - he was safe from any but the closest investigation. He watched and listened, intoxicated with the delight of spying on his enemies. At such times he believed in the charm implicitly.

He realized, as summer drew inevitably to its close, that he had grown fond of Kirby Monckton. In spite of his resistance he had found something here that he never had elsewhere. July and August sailed by like cool white 66.schooners. He went to Pog Hill Lane almost every day.

Sometimes he and Joe were alone, but too often there were visitors, neighbours, friends, though Joe seemed to have no family. Jay was sometimes jealous of their time together, resentful of time given to other people, but Joe always welcomed everyone, giving out boxes of fruit from his allotment, bunches of carrots, sacks of potatoes, a bottle of blackberry wine to one, a recipe for tooth powder to another. He dealt in philtres, teas, sachets. People came openly for fruit and vegetables but stayed in secret, talking to Joe in low voices, sometimes leaving with a little packet of tissue paper or a sc.r.a.p of flannel tucked into hands and pockets. He never asked for payment. Sometimes people gave him things in exchange: a loaf or two, a homemade pie, cigarettes. Jay wondered where he got his money, and where the -5,000 to pay for his dream chateau would come from. But when he mentioned such things the old man just laughed.

As September loomed closer, every day seemed to gain a special, poignant significance, a mythical quality. Jay walked the ca.n.a.l side in a haze of nostalgia. He took notes of the things Joe said to him in their long conversations over the redcurrant bushes and replayed them in his mind as he lay in bed. He cycled for hours over deserted, now-familiar roads and breathed the sooty warm air. He climbed Upper Kirby Hill and looked out over the purple-black expanse of the Pennines and wished he could stay for ever.

Joe himself seemed untouched. He remained the same as ever, picking his fruit and laying it out in crates, making jam from windfalls, pointing out wild herbs and picking them when the moon was full, collecting bilberries from the moors and blackberries from the railway banking, preparing chutney from his tomatoes, piccalilli from his cauli- flowers, lavender bags for sleeplessness, wintergreen for rapid healing, hot peppers and rosemary in oil and pickled onions for the winter. And, of course, there was the wine.

Throughout all that summer Jay smelt wine brewing, fer- 67.menting, ageing. All kinds of wine: beetroot, peapod, raspberry, elderflower, rosehip, jackapple, plum, parsnip, ginger, blackberry. The house was a distillery, with pans of fruit boiling on the stove, demijohns of wine waiting on the kitchen floor to be decanted into bottles, muslins for straining the fruit drying on the was.h.i.+ng line, sieves, buckets, bottles, funnels, laid out in neat rows ready for use.

He kept the still in his cellar. It was a big copper piece, like a giant kettle, old but burnished and cared for. He used it to make his 'spirits', the raw, eyewatering clear alcohol he used to preserve the summer fruit which sat in gleaming rows on shelves in the cellar. Potato vodka, he called it, jackapple juice. Seventy per cent proof. In it he placed equal quant.i.ties of fruit and sugar to make his liqueurs. Cherries, plums, redcurrants, bilberries. The fruit stained the liquor purple and red and black in the dim cellar light. Each jar carefully labelled and dated. More than one man could ever hope to eat. Not that Joe minded; in any case, he gave away much of what he made. Apart from his wine and a few licks of strawberry jam with his morning toast, Jay never saw him touch any of those extravagant preserves and spirits.

Jay supposed the old man must have sold some of these wares during the winter, though he never saw him do it.

Most of the time he just gave things away.

Jay went back to school in September. The Moorlands School was as he remembered it, smelling of dust and disinfectant and polish and the bland, inescapable scent of ancient cooking. His parents' divorce went through smoothly enough, after many tearful phone calls from his mother and postal orders from the Bread Baron. Surprisingly, he felt nothing. During the summer his rage had sloughed away into indifference. Anger seemed childish to him somehow. He wrote to Joe every month or so, though the old man never wrote back as regularly. He was not much of a writer, he said, and contented himself with a card at Christmas and a couple of lines near the end of term. His 68.silence did not trouble Jay. It was enough to know that he was there.

In the summer Jay went back to Kirby Monckton. Part of this was on his own insistence, but he could tell his parents were secretly relieved. His mother was filming in Ireland at the time, and the Bread Baron was spending the summer on his yacht, in the company, rumour had it, of a young fas.h.i.+on model called Candide.

Jay escaped to Pog Hill Lane without a second glance.

13.Paris, March 1999 JAY SPENT THE NIGHT AT THE AIRPORT. HE EVEN SLEPT A LITTLE.

on one of Charles de Gaulle's contoured orange chairs, though he was still too jumpy to relax. His energy seemed inexhaustible, a ball of electricity punching against his ribs. His senses felt eerily enhanced. Smells - cleaning fluid, sweat, cigarette smoke, perfume, early morning coffee - rolled at him in waves. At five o'clock he abandoned the idea of sleep and went to the cafeteria, where he bought an espresso, a couple of croissants and a sugar fix of Poulain chocolate. The first Corail to Ma.r.s.eilles was at six ten. From there, a slower train would take him to Agen, where he could get a taxi to ... where was it? The map attached to the brochure was only a sketchy diagram, but he hoped to find clearer directions when he reached Agen. Besides, there was something pleasing about this journey, this blurring of speed to a place which was nothing yet but a cross on a map. As if by drinking Joe's wine he could suddenly become Joe, marking his pa.s.sage by scratching signs on a map, changing his ident.i.ty to suit his whim. And at the same time he felt lighter, freed of the hurt and anger he had carried for so long, such useless ballast, for so many years.

70.Travel far enough, Joe used to say, and all rules are suspended.

Now Jay began to understand what he meant. Truth, loyalty, ident.i.ty. The things which bind us to the places and faces of home no longer applied. He could be anyone. Going anywhere. At airports, railway stations, bus stations, anything is possible. No-one asks questions. People reach a state of near-invisibility. He was just another pa.s.senger here, one of thousands. No-one would recognize him. No- one had even heard of him.

He managed to sleep for a few hours on the train, and dreamed - a dream of astonis.h.i.+ng vividness - of himself running along the ca.n.a.l bank at Nether Edge, trying vainly to catch up with a departing coal train. With exceptional clarity he could see the somehow prehistoric metal of the train's undercarriage. He could smell coal dust and old grease from the trucks' axles. And on the last truck he could see Joe, sitting on top of the coal in his orange miner's overalls and a British Railways engineer's cap, waving goodbye with a bottle of home-brewed wine in one hand and a map of the world in the other, calling in a voice made tinny by distance words Jay could not quite hear.

He awoke, needing a drink, twenty miles from Ma.r.s.eilles, with the countryside a long bright blur at the window. He went to the minibar for a vodka and tonic and drank it slowly, then lit a cigarette. It still felt like a forbidden pleasure - guilt laced with exhilaration, like playing truant from school.

He pulled the brochure out of his pocket once more.

Decidedly crumpled now, the cheap paper beginning to tear at the folds. For a moment he almost expected to feel differently, to find that the sense of must-have was gone.

But it was still there. In the duffel bag at his side the Specials lolled and gurgled with the train's movement, and inside the sediment of past summers stirred like crimson slurry.

He felt as if the train would never reach Ma.r.s.eilles.

Pog Hill, Summer 1976 HE WAS WAITING ON THE ALLOTMENT. tTHE RADIO WAS PLAYING, tied with a piece of string to the branch of a tree, and Jay could hear him singing along - Thin Lizzy and 'The Boys Are Back In Town' -- in his extravagant music-hall voice. He had his back turned, leaning over a patch of loganberries with secateurs in one hand, and he greeted Jay without turning round, casually, as if he had never been away. Jay's first thought was that he'd aged; the hair beneath the greasy cap was thinner, and he could see the sharp, vulnerable ridge of his spine through his old T-s.h.i.+rt, but when the old man turned round he could see it was the same Joe, jay-blue eyes above a smile more suited to a fourteen-year-old than a man of sixty-five. He was wearing one of his red flannel sachets around his neck. Looking more carefully around the allotment Jay saw that a similar charm adorned every tree, every bush, even the corners of the greenhouse and the home-made cold frame. Small seedlings protected under jars and bisected lemonade bottles each bore a twist of red thread or a sign crayoned in the same colour. It might have been another of Joe's elaborate jokes, like the earwig traps or the sherbert plant or sending him to the garden centre for a long weight, but this time there was a dogged, sombre look to the old mai amus.e.m.e.nt, like that of a man under siege. Jay asked h about the charms, expecting the usual joke or wink, h Joe's expression remained serious.

'Protection, lad,' he said quietly. 'Protection.'

It took the boy a long time to realize quite how serious was.

Summer wound on like a dusty road. Jay called by P Hill Lane almost every day, and when he felt in need solitude he went over to Nether Edge and the can Nothing much had changed. New glories on the dun abandoned fridges, ragbags, a clock with a cracked cash a cardboard box of tattered paperback books. The railwc too, delivered riches: papers, magazines, broken recon crockery, cans, returnable gla.s.s. Every morning he comb the rails, picking up what looked interesting or valuab and he shared his finds with Joe back at the house. Wi Joe, nothing was wasted. Old newspapers went into t compost. Pieces of carpet kept the weeds down in t vegetable patch. Plastic bags covered the branches of I fruit trees and protected them from the birds. He demo strated how to make cloches for young seedlings from t round end of a plastic lemonade bottle, and potato-plante from discarded car tyres. They spent a whole afternoi dragging an abandoned box freezer up the railway bankil to make a cold frame. Sc.r.a.p metal and old clothes we piled into cardboard boxes and sold to the rag-and-bo: man. Empty paint tins and plastic buckets were convert into plant pots. In return, he taught Jay more about t, garden. Slowly the boy learned to tell lavender fro rosemary from hyssop from sage. He learned to taste si - a pinch between the finger and thumb slipped under t.

tongue, like a man testing fine tobacco - to determine i acidity. He learned how to calm a headache with crus.h.i.+ lavender, or a stomach ache with peppermint. He learned make skullcap tea and camomile to aid sleep. He learni to plant marigolds in the potato patch to discourage par 73.sites, and to pick nettles from the top to make ale, and to fork the sign against the evil eye if ever a magpie flew past.

There were times, of course, when the old man couldn't resist a little joke. Like giving him daffodil bulbs to fry instead of onions, or planting ripe strawberries in the border to see if they'd grow. But most of the time he was serious, or so Jay thought, finding real pleasure in his new role as a teacher. Perhaps he knew it was coming to an end, even then, though Jay never suspected it, but it was that year that he was happiest, sitting in the allotment with the radio playing, or sorting through boxes of junk, or holding the vegetable-cutter for Joe as they selected fruit for the next batch of wine. They discussed the merits of 'Good Vibrations' (Jay's choice) versus 'Brand New Combine Harvester' (Joe's). He felt safe, protected, as if all this were a little pocket of eternity which could never be lost, never fail. But something was changing. Perhaps it was in Joe: a new restlessness, the wary look he had, the diminis.h.i.+ng number of visitors - sometimes only one or two in a whole week - or the new, eerie quiet in Pog Hill Lane. No more hammering, no singing in the yards, less was.h.i.+ng hanging out to dry on clothes lines, rabbit hutches and pigeon lofts abandoned and derelict.

Often Joe would walk to the outer edge of his allotment and look over the railway in silence. There were fewer trains, too, a couple of pa.s.senger trains a day on the fast line, the rest shunters and coal trucks ambling slowly north to the yard. The rails, so s.h.i.+ny and bright last year, were beginning to show rust.

'Looks like they're plannin to close the line,' Joe remarked on one of these occasions. "Goin to knock down Kirby Central next month.' Kirby Central was the main signal box down by the station. 'Pog Hill, a.n.a.ll, if I'm not mistaken.'

'But that's your greenhouse,' protested Jay. Since he had known Joe, the old man had used the derelict signal box fifty yards from his back garden as an unofficial greenhouse, and it was filled with delicate plants, tomatoes, two peach trees, a couple of vines branching out into the eaves, escaping onto the white roof in a spill of broad, bright leaves.

Joe shrugged.

'They usually knock em flat first off,' he remarked. 'I've bin lucky so far." His eyes moved to the red charm bags nailed to the back wall and he reached out to pinch one between finger and thumb.

Thing is, we've bin careful,' he continued. 'Not drawn attention to usselves. But if they shut that line, there'll be men taking up the track all down Pog Hill and towards Nether Edge. They might be here for months. And this here, it's private property. Belongs to British Railways. You an me, lad, we're trespa.s.sers.'

Jay followed his gaze across the railway cutting, taking in, as if for the first time, the breadth of the allotment, the neat straight rows of vegetables, the cold frames, the hundreds of plastic planters, dozens of fruit trees, thick stands of raspberries, blackcurrants, rhubarb. Funny, he'd never thought of it as trespa.s.sing before.

'Oh. D'you think they'd want to take it back?'

Joe didn't look at him. Of course they would take it back.

He could see that in the old man's profile, in the calculating look on his face - how long to replant? How long to rebuild?

Not because they wanted it, but because it was theirs to take, their territory, wasteland or not, theirs. Jay had a sudden, vivid memory of Zeth and his mates as Zeth booted the radio into the air. There would be the same expressions on their faces as they pulled up the railway, broke up the greenhouse, tore up plants and bushes, bulldozed through the sweet drifts of lavender and the half-ripened pears, unearthed potatoes and carrots and parsnips and all the arcane exotica of a lifetime's collection. Jay felt a sudden br.i.m.m.i.n.g rage for the old man, and his fists clenched painfully against the bricks.

'They can't do that!' he said fiercely.

Joe shrugged. Of course they could. Now Jay understood 75.the significance of the charm bags hanging on every surface, every protruding nail, every tree, everything he wanted to save. It couldn't make him invisible, but it might . . . might what? Keep the bulldozers away? Impossible.

Joe said nothing. His eyes were bright and serene. For a second he looked like the old gunslinger in a hundred Westerns, strapping on his guns for a final showdown.

For a second everything - anything - seemed possible.

Whatever might have happened later, he believed in it then.

76.Ma.r.s.eilles, March 1999 THE TRAIN REACHED Ma.r.s.eILLES AROUND NOON. IT WAS WARM.

but cloudy, and Jay carried his coat over his arm as he moved through the aimless crowds. He bought a couple of sandwiches at a stand by the platform, but was still too nervous, too energized to eat. The train to Agen was almost an hour late, and slow; almost as long as the journey from Paris. Energy drained away into exhaustion. He slept uncomfortably as they nudged from one small station to another, feeling hot and thirsty and slightly hungover. He kept needing to take out the leaflet again, just to be sure he wasn't imagining it all. He tried to get the radio to work, but all he could get was white noise.

It was late afternoon when he finally reached Agen. He was beginning to feel more alert again, more aware of his surroundings. He could see fields and farms from the carriage, orchards and ploughed chocolate-coloured earth.

Everything looked very green. Many of the trees were already in flower, unusually early for March, he thought, though his only experience of gardening was with Joe, a thousand miles further north. He took a taxi to the estate agent's - the address was on the leaflet - hoping to get permission to view the house, but the place was already shut. d.a.m.n!

In the excitement of his escape Jay had never considered what he would do if this happened. Find a hotel in Agen?

Not without seeing his house. His house. The thought lifted the hairs on his forearms. Tomorrow was Sunday. Chances were that the agency would be closed again. He would have to wait until Monday morning. He stood, hesitating in front of the locked door as the taxi driver behind him grew impatient. How far exactly was LansquenetsousTannes?

Surely there would be something, even something basic like a Campanile or an Ibis or, failing that, a chambre d'hote where he could stay? It was half-past five. He would have time to see the house, even if it was only from the outside, before the light failed.

The urge was too strong. Turning back to the bored taxi driver with unaccustomed decisiveness Jay showed him the map.

"Vous pouvez m'y conduire tout de suite?'

The man considered for a moment, with the air of slow reflection typical of that part of the country. Jay pulled out a clip of banknotes from the pocket of his jeans and showed them to him. The driver shrugged incuriously and jerked his head towards the cab again. Jay noticed he didn't offer to help with the luggage.

The drive took half an hour. Jay dozed again in the leather-and-tobacco scented rear of the cab, whilst the driver smoked Gauloises and grunted to himself in satisfaction as he blared without indicating through files of motorway traffic, then sped down narrow small lanes, honking his horn imperiously at corners, occasionally sending flurries of chickens squawking into the air. Jay was beginning to feel hungry and in need of a drink. He had a.s.sumed he would find a place to eat when they reached Lansquenet. But now, looking at the dirt lane down which the taxi jolted and revved, he was beginning to have serious doubts.

He tapped the driver on the shoulder.

'C'est encore Join?'