There was a small crowd at the graveyard. Much talk of how there would have been far more people had it been held in London. Hardyman had wanted to be buried near the sea, the place where he had grown up, the place where he had come less and less, while dreaming of it more and more.
The vicar was mournful; there was no celebration of Hardyman. As if he had chosen to pass on God’s annoyance at Hardyman for having taken his own life; for having wasted a life. There was no music, just the wind blowing in over the stones, past the caravans and the mobile homes. Pitt could barely hear the vicar, so he switched off and did not listen at all.
When it was over, and it did not last long, everyone was invited back to a pub for a few drinks. Sandwiches would be laid on. Pitt would not have gone, except he found it was the same inn he was booked into for the night. He ended up sitting amongst people he did not know for an hour.
He had never met Mrs Handyman before. The long-suffering Mrs Hardyman, as Hardyman had usually referred to her, particularly when talking about the multitudinous women through which he seemed to work his way. She seemed brittle on the day of her husband’s funeral; Pitt had been expecting a strong woman, independent. A woman who had been oblivious to her husband’s adulterous nature, perhaps because she had been doing the same herself. Possibly a woman who was now glad that her husband was gone. Yet, all he saw was sadness and loneliness, and a woman who looked like she would struggle to identify her place in the world now that she was no longer someone’s wife. The widow Hardyman would struggle to fill the place that Mrs Hardyman had so readily filled.
The hour crawled slowly by. No one spoke to Pitt, the grey man in the corner. He sat with a glass of Chablis, the wine that he and Hardyman had preferred to drink together. He’d had to pay for it, as the official wine of the wake was a cheap Californian. Chablis, with its crisp acidity, made him think even more of Hardyman than usual that day. He wondered where Hardyman was now. Maybe he would join Pitt in the cellar, sitting with the wine, accompanying it while it matured. The thought that it might happen made Pitt smile behind the glass at his lips.
He tried not to listen to what everyone was saying, but conversations drifted in and out. Not many people were talking about Hardyman. Economic crises, money and stress, the angry society. Middle class conversations straight from the Mail and the Express and the Telegraph. Pitt didn’t know who these people were.
Eventually, a man in a brown jacket became drunk and started to talk a little louder; loud enough and close enough to Pitt, so that he could not avoid listening. He, at least, had Hardyman as subject matter.
He had killed himself because of excessive debts; too many borderline legal investments that had gone wrong; too much money spent on women; too excessive a lifestyle, while his fortune was slipping away on a raft of toxic debt. The man kept saying toxic debt, over and over, as if it was that toxicity which had killed him. As if Hardyman had been literally poisoned by it.
Pitt sat for a few minutes, finally could not block it out, drained his glass, got up and went outside for a walk.
The wind on the beach was stark and raw, and Pitt walked along the stones for two hours. By the time he came back to the inn, the evening was well advanced, the sun had begun to sink behind the land, and Pitt had made his mind up about Yuan Ju.
20
Pitt lay in the light of morning, listening to the silence. He had woken with his back turned to Daisy and had not moved. Lying still, eyes open. Daisy was restless and he wondered if she was awake. Did not dare move in case she spoke to him.
He had woken with his spirits already flat. It might have been because of Hardyman, but there had been three mornings since the funeral and this was the first where he’d awoken to the dreadful, oppressive weight of depression.
The thought of Daisy speaking to him so early filled him with dread, and he lay perfectly still and closed his eyes, listening to the morning, hoping that he would hear the sound of birds.
*
Muesli. He ate slowly. Daisy seemed to be in a rush. Her mother had not appeared at all this morning, not even to make toast and get in the way of Yuan Ju. Ju glided around the kitchen, her eyes meeting those of neither Daisy nor Pitt, nor any of the others who came and went; Jenkins and Blain, the other hands who sometimes changed with the weather.
Since Hardyman’s death, Ju and Pitt had been bonded in melancholy. Daisy had not seemed to notice. Daisy did not care about Hardyman’s death. It did not directly affect her, and therefore was of no consequence. She herself had not died. No one from whom she expected anything had died. Hardyman’s death did not intrude on her world, and so, after the fashion of the truly self-obsessed, it was of no interest to her.
Pitt was hunched over his breakfast bowl, trying to focus on what needed doing that day. Wondering how long he could delay addressing the accountancy issue. Ignoring the doubt at the back of his mind that there was a reason he’d woken in such a terrible, depressive mood. The only comfort of the day was the presence of Ju, ever serene, ever beautiful.
Her beauty was something that had occurred to him only after a few weeks, but which he now could not ignore.
When Daisy was in the room, he would not look at Ju, at least not without looking at Daisy beforehand. She would read his thoughts; see right through him.
He glanced up. Daisy had her back turned, fiddling in a drawer, searching for something, muttering, cursing.
Pitt looked at Ju. She was side on to him, washing down the doors on the cupboards beneath the work surface. Pitt had never seen anyone wash those cabinets before, not unless something had been actively spilled on them. Ju worked with concentration, cleaning in the way in which she did everything; measured and thorough. As usual, she had her hair tied back, and, as usual, a couple of strands had fallen loose, and she continually swept them back, away from her face.
She never glanced in his direction, yet he knew that she was aware of him looking. Languid movements under his interested eye, and she seemed to slow down even more. She enjoyed him looking and she was returning the look, even though she did not turn her head.
They were becoming more and more attached to one another, had more understanding of one another, every time they shared time in the kitchen; regardless of whether or not they were alone. And yet, still he did not understand the root of her sorrow, beyond homesickness and a general discomfort of a foreign land. Still, he did not understand what took her every Saturday evening.
He turned at a noise at the door. Mrs Cromwell was there, a small suitcase at her feet, pulling on her coat. She was staring at Pitt, had been watching him as he watched Ju. Mrs Cromwell’s face was knowing, understanding. Loathing.
Pitt, expressionless, turned back to his cereal. He lifted the coffee mug to his face. Daisy glanced at her mother, as she closed the drawer in which she’d been searching for an age.
‘I’m not ready yet,’ she said. Every word between them was delivered antagonistically.
‘We need to go,’ said Mrs Cromwell crisply. She was still looking at Pitt, although she was thinking about Yuan Ju.
Pitt glanced at Daisy as she bustled out of the room. Mrs Cromwell was going to stay with her sister for a night or two. He wasn’t sure how long. Had forgotten about it. Daisy would be out until the afternoon. The run down to Devon and back; stop for lunch and bitter gossip. The elder sister’s complaints about the neighbours and the warden of the sheltered housing and the youths that congregated in the park across the wall, and how you could never see their faces, and how you could hear their foul language and how Mrs Donahay said that some evenings she could recognise the smell of dope in the air and how the widow Baird claimed to hear the sounds of sex practically every weekend. In the morning, the grass would be covered with beer cans, even though they weren’t allowed to drink alcohol in the park, but the police never seemed to care.
*
They left half an hour later, by which time Pitt was already at the far end of the vineyard, taking his daily walk through th
e vines; his daily search for signs of trouble on the leaves and in the fruit; his daily check on the canopy that would be reported back to the men with relevant instructions. These days, he also walked in search of bird song, but none came.
Mrs Cromwell had not moved from her position at the door until Daisy was ready. She had watched Pitt until he’d finished his breakfast and had left the room, well aware that he did not wilt at all under the intimidating fury of her stare; and once he was gone, she had stood in impotent anger watching Yuan Ju, and her deliberate movements around the kitchen.
She would not remain impotent for long. Daisy might have been blind to what was going on; Daisy might have been bloody-minded about sticking with the woman she had been so foolish to employ, but Mrs Cromwell at least had the wit and intelligence about her to see everything; and to be in a position to do something about it.
Yuan Ju would be leaving soon.
‘There’s a call for you.’
Pitt looked up. He was bent low, pruning leaves where he felt that the developing fruit was not receiving enough sunlight; a not untypical act of excessive vine micro-management. Had the vines had a wish, it would have been that Pitt could leave them alone.
Jenkins was holding a mobile towards Pitt, who did not immediately rise. When his man came searching for him out in the vines, it was never good.
‘The bank,’ said Jenkins.
Pitt’s never changing face. He stood and took the phone, and spoke roughly at it.
21
‘No one runs a business like this anymore, Mr Pitt.’
A man from a bank bearing ill news did not need to be faceless and grey, did not need to meet all sorts of perceptions of how a banking executive would look. However, McKendrick Arnold from The Bank, was sitting across the kitchen table from Pitt in his grey suit, with his name the wrong way round and his face the colour of his trousers, sucking the life out of the room, the day, and out of Pitt.
It took a lot to make Pitt disinterested in owning a vineyard; and Arnold had achieved it in less than five minutes.
‘I think we can all accept,’ said Arnold, as if there were more than two of them in the room, ‘that Mr Hardyman was a great finagler of figures. He has been propping your company on stilts built from the most tenuous of accounting practices for too long. That, and he was a friend of my superior at the bank; not something of which I particularly approved. That kind of arrangement is one of the reasons the country now finds itself in its current state.’
McKendrick lifted his eyes from some paperwork and engaged Pitt. Pitt returned the stare, his eyes having shut down.
He could walk away right now, could not cope with talk of money and business and accounts. That was why Hardyman had been there. The brick wall separating Pitt from the business concerns.
‘I take it,’ said Arnold dryly, ‘that you are not friends with anyone at the bank, Mr Pitt?’
Pitt held his gaze but ignored the question. Arnold looked into the dead eyes for as long as he could, then shook his head to break the moment. Pressed on, to get past the undeniable fact that Pitt intimidated him.
‘You owe the bank a lot of money, Mr Pitt, and an examination of your books and the running of your vineyard gives a clear indication that you are going to be unable to reverse this situation without taking further steps to expand the earnings potential of your concern. Now, we both know that this is not possible with regard to wine production. As far as I can tell, the past four summers you have handled the crop and harvest with extreme efficiency and productivity.’
As he talked, he had been looking at the accounts, but with the compliment he broke off to give Pitt some sort of look of positive appraisal. Pitt’s expression of loathing sent Arnold’s eyes back to the dry figures in front of him.
‘The very nature of your success at your core business, coupled with the fact that you are so clearly unable on the back of this to make a going concern of your enterprise, leads us to the conclusion that you require to expand the money-making side of the business in order to survive.’
Another quick glance, a look even more quickly dismissed this time.
‘With this in mind,’ said Arnold, ‘I’ve drawn up a list of suggestions on how you might go about turning the vineyard into a profitable business model.’
‘That didn’t take you very long,’ said Pitt.
‘I’ve had it in hand for some time, Mr Pitt. However, as we’ve already established that Mr Hardyman carried undue influence over the workings of the bank, I need not tell you why I have not previously brought this to your attention. There is also, however, a precipitous opportunity which has presented itself in the last couple of days, involving television, which I have added to the list.’
Pitt did not touch the file. Arnold put his index finger on it and pushed it an inch closer to him. Pitt stared at the finger, as if pouring acid onto it. Arnold left it there for a second, and then quickly withdrew before it got burned.
‘I’ll leave it with you, Mr Pitt.’
Arnold looked at the clock above the door through to the sitting room.
‘It’s Wednesday afternoon, Mr Pitt,’ said Arnold, mundanely, and Pitt wondered if he would further explain what country there were in and who was in government. ‘I’ll need an answer on the way forward by Monday. And I don’t think I need to tell you the effect it will have if you choose to do nothing.’
Arnold leaned forward, gave the report another small push towards Pitt – as if attempting to underline his authority over the matter – placed the remaining papers back in his briefcase and stood up.
*
‘They’re coming tomorrow. Can’t put them off any longer.’
Five minutes, forty-three seconds later. Pitt was in the same position. This time Jenkins was sitting across the table, in the same seat that Arnold had inhabited.
‘How many are coming?’
DEFRA were on to them, having found a time in their diaries to come to investigate the large area of land where birds did not go, and where birds that strayed, ended up dead. Pitt had no experience of them, and did not know whether they would arrive mob-handed to tear the place apart in search of truth, or whether a one man band would arrive to gauge the situation, ask a few questions and make a judgement on the level of resources required.
‘They’re government,’ said Jenkins, mirroring Pitt’s thought, ‘so they probably don’t have enough staff to change the toilet paper. I reckon they’ll send down a couple of guys to check us out, and then, if they think there’s any need, or, more to the point, if they think the press are going to get wind of it and start creating a stink, they’ll come down here with eight hundred men in white suits.’
Jenkins looked ruefully at Pitt and almost managed a smile.
‘In which case,’ said Jenkins, drawing a finger across his throat, ‘we’re fucked.’
Pitt had never uttered a profanity in his life, and did not appreciate his men swearing either. Jenkins nodded an apology as soon as he’d said it.
‘We may be anyway,’ said Pitt, and slowly he pushed the report, which had lain untouched in front of him for over six minutes now, towards Jenkins. ‘Take a look at that, let me know what it says.’
Jenkins started to open it, and then picked up on the feeling that Pitt did not want it touched anywhere near him. So he lifted it and stood up.
‘I’ll, eh... take a look, let you know.’
Pitt nodded, Jenkins pushed his chair back and walked quickly from the room.
Pitt stared at the empty chair. Outside the sun shone brightly and insects hovered in the air. No birds were singing.
*
Later that night, as he sat at dinner with Daisy, silence continued across the table. He could tell that Daisy was edgy and annoyed, had something to say. A few years previously she would probably have felt able to raise whatever was bothering her. However, they had descended into such a miserable state of non-communication, and Pitt’s mood was so black and un-engaging, that she kept it to h
erself, and they ate in colourless stillness as the sun disappeared behind the trees.
Later, Pitt went to the cellar; Daisy drank gin and tonic and watched television.
22
There was a drip in the corner. Pitt sat in near darkness, the only sound the occasional drop of water, which took more than fifteen minutes to collect.
There was a light on near the door, but where Pitt was sitting it was almost completely dark. The cellar was large, with a stone, cold floor, and brick walls. Cool, dark and dry, with the exception of the drip in the corner.
Slowly, over the years, Pitt had worked the cellar into beautiful order, rows of oak barrels in regimented lines. The vineyard was well run and well kempt, the farmhouse had been beautifully restored; yet, the cellar was Pitt’s true source of pride. It could have been the cellar of a vineyard and winemaker open to the public, who charged £30 for a tour of the facilities and a short wine tasting, and who showed off to the colour supplements and the Californian tourists.
Round the corner from the kitchen door, a narrow flight of steps led underneath the house to a narrow wooden door. There was nothing from the outside to suggest that the cellar would be anything other than a rough place, a dumping ground for junk.
Inside, the walls and floor had been repaired and cleaned. Not a cobweb, not a mouse hole, not a rodent dropping. Not a piece of dust.
Pitt had personally built the wooden racks that ran down the sides of the walls and down the centre of the room. In each rack there were six barrels. There were fifteen racks in all. Each barrel produced three hundred bottles of wine. The wine was placed in the barrels in early January, to be bottled at some stage around a year later. Pitt had no pre-determined period, although he rarely drew the wine from the barrels in under ten months. Sometimes, he left it as long as a year and a half. He knew that most of his customers would not have been able to taste the difference after the first couple of months in a barrel, but he could, and that was all that mattered to him.
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