'A very decent wine,' murmured Trevor appreciatively as he examined the bottle's label. 'Rather out of fashion these days. I fear it's been elbowed aside by all these overpoweringly fruity colonial Chardonnays.'
'My cousin – he chooses the wine. I show you list.' He passed Trevor a handwritten sheet. The MP beamed with delight as he read it. 'Well, well! Small but perfectly formed, as they say.' He handed it back.
'Pliz?'
' – A good list.'
'Ah. Thank you. My cousin – his hobby.'
'Ah.'
The limits of language had made themselves felt, and silence prevailed. Celia picked up the conversation effortlessly, just as she did on a thousand other dining nights in London. 'You have a lovely view here. Was the land expensive?'
'He does not own the land.' No, the land was owned by a British company, thought Gregor, a company that would have no compassion about foreclosure as soon as it realised the payments had ceased.
'Are you married, Mr – um?' asked Celia.
'Yes, but she died.'
'Ah.'
They ate peacefully, listening to the distant sea as the conversation lulled. Gregor cleared away the plates and brought them strong dark coffee, which he served on the verandah with a selection of almond biscuits. Trevor had drunk a fair amount, and seemed intent on explaining the benefits of a capitalist society to Gregor, who merely smiled and nodded.
'People have to build their own lives,' he insisted. 'Then, if they make a hash of it, they only have themselves to blame.'
'But what if – something – go wrong beyond their control?' asked Gregor.
'It's up to them to find a way of putting it right, of course. Like you and this place.' Gregor's heart skipped a beat. For a moment he thought that his guest had seen through him. 'You and your cousin could have decided to buy a little one star Bed & Breakfast hotel, but no, you went for the best, borrowed – a considerable amount of money, I imagine – and good luck to you.' He drained his coffee cup and looked around, smacking his lips. 'Time for a digestif? A drop of brandy, perhaps.'
'Pliz, on the side table, help yourself.'
Celia watched as her husband rose unsteadily to his feet and headed for the array of amber bottles gathered at the rear of the room's marble serving board.
'Darling, a snifter for you? Help you sleep?'
'Just a small one.' Trevor was one of those men who preferred his alcoholic company to keep pace with him. 'Gregor, will you join us?'
The little taxidriver stood beside the man who had ruined him, and poured himself a grappa. 'This is very good. You should try.' He held up the bottle for his guest to see.
'Rather too rough for the European palate, I fear,' said Trevor dismissively, ignoring the fact that his host was also European. 'Good heavens! This cognac! Do you know what you have here?'
Gregor shrugged. 'I know nothing of brandy. Is good?'
'Good? This is – ' He stared down at the bottle in amazement. He had been about to say, this is the best, a quite unique '34 that stands head and shoulders above any other costly cognac in the world. But then he saw the amount that was left and knew that he could – would – easily finish it, and changed his remark to 'this is a very pleasant drink. May I?' And of course Gregor agreed with a hospitable smile, sipping his grappa as Trevor brought the bottle to the table and carefully poured a measure for his wife, then filled his own glass to the brim.
Celia and her husband finished a bottle of the most expensive cognac either of them had tasted in a very long time. Trevor rested his head on the back of his chair and listened to the hushing sea. It seemed to be speaking to him – calling – soothing – beckoning. Gravity was crushing down on him. His lips felt numb. Something was dripping on them. He raised his hand to his face and his fingers came away stained with spots of blood. As he slid from the chair and fell heavily to the floor, cracking his head on the flagstones, Celia gave a little scream and was shocked to find that she, too, was suffering from a nosebleed.
'What's wrong?' she gasped, staring incredulously at Gregor. A hot brick of pain thudded into her chest. She could feel blood pouring down the back of her throat. Trevor was convulsing on the floor beside her.
'All I could find was poison for the rats,' Gregor explained apologetically. 'Very strong taste. But hidden in brandy, I think. Especially after spicy food. Mrs Colson. I let your husband choose.' Gregor raised his hands in a gesture of personal absolution. 'He chose the best.' He turned the label of the cognac bottle to show Celia the row of golden stars, but her eyes stared past him, reflecting only pain, terrible endless pain. 'Five Star, see. Very good. To be fair, this bottle was the only one I put poison in, out of so many. Always a man like that has to have the very best, no?'
Gregor waited for the bodies of his two guests to stop twitching, then stripped and dragged them to the open basement door, kicking them down into darkness. His cousin was due to have the area pumped full of cement in a week, to stop the foundation piles from shifting. It would be an easy matter to bring the delivery date forward. He wondered how long it would take him to forge Mr Colson's signature from the visitors' book. A man like that always came abroad with plenty of travellers' cheques. After locking the door, he walked down to the jetty and plunked the empty brandy bottle into the sea. A terrible waste of a fine cognac, he knew.
Tonight, though, a glass of homemade wine would taste just as well.
SCRATCH
It was too wet and too cold to go all the way into town for such a trivial purpose, but as Ann pointed out, he might regret it if he didn't. Somebody had to win, after all, and there was a double rollover this week.
He had tried to point out the folly of buying the tickets at all, had explained that the odds were so astronomical she was more likely to be struck by lightning ten times in a row than win the national lottery, but she would not be told. Somebody has to win, she would say, I've seen them on the telly, grinning brickies, office workers in syndicates, housewives, don't tell me that they've all been struck by lightning ten times.
She was missing his point. To say that they were short of money was an understatement. They were living in a limbo somewhere beyond bankruptcy, about to have their electricity cut off, about to lose their house and all its contents, and hoping against hope that everything would be neatly sorted out by winning an unimaginable amount of money seemed, well, unrealistic to say the least.
But he went, because she wanted him to and he loved her. That was what you did, wasn't it, if you loved someone? Things you didn't want to do yourself. The engine of the little Fiat sounded as if it was suffering from tuberculosis. He crested the hill and looked down on the wet rooftops of the town, the ashen carparks, the hideous plasticky shopping centre and the inhospitable moorland that butted against the new estate beyond. How he hated what he saw, how he longed to get out, even though he knew he was imprisoned here as surely as if he was locked inside a cell. Money could do that, just lift him up and set him down somewhere better. A simple row of numbers marked down in biro, the work of a moment. But the odds! The astronomical odds! He'd read that each week 30,000 people picked the numbers 1 to 6 in consecutive order! Ann had read an article on the subject which advocated ringing the number 1 – infrequently chosen for its proximity to the top of the sheet – and multiples of ten, which did not look random enough for the public to select. But how could anyone really know? Second-guessing the laws of chance would require understanding how life itself was shaped.