Since the wasp incident Marise no longer avoided him. They greeted each other over the fence or the hedge, and though she was rarely exuberant or forthcoming, Jay thought Marise had begun to like him a little. Sometimes they talked. September was a busy time for her, with the grapes fully formed and beginning to turn yellow, but the rain, which had not really given up since last month, was causing renewed problems. Narcisse blamed the disastrous summer on global warming. Others muttered vaguely about El Niño, the Toulouse chemical plants, the Japanese earthquake. Mireille Faizande curled her lip and talked about Last Times. Joséphine remembered the dreadful summer of ’75, when the Tannes dried up and rabid foxes came running out of the marshes into the village. It did not rain every day, but even so the sun was barely present, a tarnished coin in the sky, giving little warmth.
‘If it goes on like this there won’t be any fruit for anyone this autumn,’ said Narcisse dourly. Peaches and apricots and other soft-skinned fruit were already done for. The rain ate through the tender flesh and they dropped, rotten, to the ground, before they had even finished developing. Tomatoes failed to ripen. Apples and pears were hardly any better. Their waxy skin might protect them to some extent, but not enough. Vines were the worst.
At this stage the grapes needed sunlight, Joe said – especially for the later harvests, the Chenin grapes for the noble wines, which had to be sun-dried, like raisins. These grapes rely on the exceptional conditions of Lansquenet’s marshland: the hot, long summers, the mists which the sun brings from across the river. This year, however, the pourriture noble had nothing noble about it. Rot, pure and simple, set in. Marise did what she could. She ordered plastic coverings from town, which she fixed into place over the rows of vines with the help of metal hoops. This saved the vines from the worst of the rain, but did nothing to protect the exposed roots. Any sunlight was hampered by the presence of the sheets, and the fruit sweated inside the plastic. The earth had long since been trodden into mud soup. Like Joe, she laid pieces of carpeting and cardboard between the rows to avoid further damage to the ground. But it was a futile gesture.
Jay’s own garden fared a little better. Further from the marshland, raised above the water level, his land had natural drainage channels, which carried excess water down to the river. Even so the Tannes rose higher than ever, spilling out across the vineyard on Marise’s side, and cutting dangerously close on Jay’s, eroding the banking so sharply that great slices of earth had already fallen into the river. Rosa was under instructions not to approach the damaged banking.
The barley was a disaster. Fields all around Lansquenet had already been abandoned to the rain. In one of Briançon’s fields a crop circle appeared, and the more gullible of Joséphine’s drinkers began to speculate about space aliens, though Roux thought it more likely that Clairmont’s mischievous young son and his girlfriend knew more than they were telling. Even the bees were less productive this year, Briançon reported, with fewer flowers and poor-grade honey. Belts would have to be tightened throughout the winter.
‘It’s hard enough getting the money from this year’s crop to plant next spring,’ explained Narcisse. ‘When the crop’s bad, you have to plant on credit. And with rented land becoming less and less viable, héh!’ He poured Armagnac carefully into the hot dregs of his coffee and downed it in a single mouthful. ‘There’s not enough money in sunflowers or maize any more,’ he admitted. ‘Even flowers and nursery produce aren’t making what they used to. We need something new.’
‘Rice, maybe,’ suggested Roux.
Clairmont was less downcast, in spite of poor business throughout the summer. Recently, he had been north with Lucien Merle for a few days, returning full of enthusiasm for his Lansquenet project. It transpired that he and Lucien were planning to go into partnership on a new scheme to promote Lansquenet in the Agen region, though both of them seemed unusually secretive about the matter. Caro, too, was arch and self-satisfied, calling at the farm twice ‘in passing’, though it was miles out of her way, and staying for coffee. She was full of gossip, delighted with the way Jay had renovated the farm, intensely curious about the book and hinting that her influence with the regional literary societies would be certain to make it a success.
‘You really should try to get yourself some French contacts,’ she told him naively. ‘Toinette Merle knows a lot of people in the media, you know. Perhaps she could arrange for you to give an interview to a local magazine?’
He explained, with an attempt not to smile, that one of the main reasons for escaping to Lansquenet had been to avoid his media contacts.
Caro simpered and said something about the artistic temperament.
‘Still, you really should consider it,’ she insisted. ‘I’m sure the presence of a famous writer would give us all the boost we need.’
At the time Jay barely paid attention. He was close to completing the new book, for which he now had a contract with Worldwide, a large international publisher, and had set himself a deadline of October. He was also working on improving the old drainage channels on his land, with the aid of some concrete piping supplied by Georges. His roof, too, had developed a leak, and Roux had offered to help him mend it and repoint the brickwork. His days were too busy to give much time to Caro and her plans.
That was why the newspaper article took him completely by surprise. He would have missed it altogether if Popotte hadn’t spotted it in an Agen paper and cut it out for him to read. Popotte was touchingly pleased by the whole thing, but it immediately made Jay uneasy. It was, after all, the first sign that his whereabouts were known. He could not remember the exact words. There was a great deal of nonsense about his brilliant early career. There was some crowing about the way he had fled London and rediscovered himself in Lansquenet. Much of it consisted of secondhand platitudes and vague speculation. Worse, there was a photograph, taken in the Café des Marauds on 14 July, showing Jay, Georges, Roux, Briançon and Joséphine sitting at the bar with bottles of blonde in their hands. In the picture Jay was wearing a black T-shirt and madras shorts, Georges was smoking a Gauloise. He did not remember who took the photograph. It could have been anyone. The caption read, ‘Jay Mackintosh and friends at the Café des Marauds, Lansquenet-sous-Tannes.’
‘Well, tha couldn’t have kept it quiet for ever, lad,’ observed Joe when Jay told him. ‘It had to get out some time.’
He was at his typewriter in the living room, a bottle of wine at one elbow, a cup of coffee at the other. Joe was wearing a T-shirt which read ‘Elvis is alive and well and living in Sheffield’. Jay noticed that now, more and more often, his outline seemed translucent at the edges, like an overdeveloped photograph.
‘I don’t see why,’ he said. ‘If I want to live here it’s my business, isn’t it?’
Joe shook his head.
‘Aye. Mebbe. But you’re not goin to carry on like this for ever, are you?’ he said. ‘There’s papers to sort out. Permits. Practical things. Brass, anall. You’ll be short of that soon.’ It was true that four months of living in Lansquenet had cut heavily into his savings. The repairs to the house, furniture, tools, supplies for the garden, drainage pipes, the day-today expenses of food and clothing, plus, of course, the purchase of the farm itself, had eroded them beyond his expectations.
‘There’ll be money soon enough,’ he replied. ‘I’m signing the book contract any time now.’ He mentioned the sum involved, expecting Joe to be awed into silence. Instead he shrugged.
‘Aye. Well, I’d rather have a quid in me hand than a cheque int post,’ he said dourly. ‘I just wanted to see you sorted, that’s all. Make sure you’re all right.’