Proof by Dick Francis
As a post-race jollification it would have done a funeral proud, but gradually the worst of Orkney’s sulks wore off and he began to make comments that proved he had at least understood what he’d seen, even if he took no joy in it.
‘He’s lost his action,’ he said. ‘Back in July, when he won, he had a better stride. Much more fluent. That’s the only trouble with two-year-olds. You think you’ve got a world beater and then they start developing unevenly.’
‘He might be better next year,’ I suggested. ‘Won’t you keep him? He could be worth it.’
Orkney shook his head. ‘He’s going to the sales next week. I wanted a win today to put his price up. Jack knew that.’ The echo of grudge was still strong. ‘Larry Trent might have leased him. He thought, as you seem to, that his action might come back once he’d finished growing, but I’m not risking it. Sell, and buy yearlings, that’s my preference. Different runners every year… more interesting.’
‘You don’t have time to grow fond of them,’ I said neutrally.
‘Quite right,’ he nodded. ‘Once you get sentimental you throw good money down the drain.’
I remembered the friendships my father had had with his steeplechasers, treating each with camaraderie over many years, getting to interpret their every twitch and particularly loving the one that had killed him. Money down the drain, sure, but a bottomless pleasure in return such as Orkney would never get to feel.
‘That damned jockey left his run too late,’ Orkney said, but without undue viciousness. ‘Breezy Palm was still making up ground at the end. You saw that. If he’d got at him sooner…’
‘Difficult to tell,’ I said, drawling.
‘I told him not to leave it too late. I told him.’
‘You told him not to hit the horse,’ Isabella said calmly. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Orkney.’
Orkney could, however. Throughout the sandwiches, the cheese and the strawberry tartlets he dissected and discussed the race stride by stride, mostly with disapproval. My contention that his colt had shown great racing spirit was accepted. Flora’s defence of the jockey wasn’t. I grew soundly tired of the whole circus and wondered how soon we could leave.
The waitress appeared again in the doorway asking if Orkney needed anything else, and Orkney said yes, another bottle of gin.
‘And make sure it’s Seagram’s,’ he said. The waitress nodded and went away, and he said to me, ‘I order Seagram’s just because the caterers have to get it in specially. They serve their own brand if you don’t ask. They charge disgraceful prices… I’m not going to make life easy for them if I can help it.’
Flora’s and Isabella’s expressions, I saw, were identical in pained resignation. Orkney had mounted his hobby horse and would complain about the caterers for another ten minutes. The arrival of the fresh bottle didn’t check him, but at the end he seemed to remember my own job and said with apparently newly-reached decision, ‘It’s local people like you who should be providing the drinks, not this huge conglomerate. If enough people complain to the Clerk of the Course, I don’t see why we couldn’t get the system put back to the old ways. Do you?’
‘Worth a try,’ I said non-committally.
‘What you want to do,’ he insisted, ‘is propose yourself as an alternative. Give these damn monopolists a jolt.’
‘Something to think about,’ I murmured, not meaning to in the least, and he lectured me at tiresome length on what I ought to do personally for the box-renters of Martineau Park, not to mention for all the other racecourses where the same caterers presided, and what I should do about the other firms of caterers who carved up the whole country’s racecourses between them.
‘Er… Orkney,’ Flora said uncertainly, when the tirade had died down, ‘I do believe, you know, that at a few courses they really have finished with the conglomerates and called in local caterers, so perhaps… you never know.’
Orkney looked at her with an astonishment which seemed to be based less on what she’d said than on the fact of her knowing it. ‘Are you sure, Flora?’
‘Yes… I’m sure.’
‘There you are then,’ he said to me. ‘What are your waiting for?’
‘I wouldn’t mind shuttling the drinks along,’ I said. ‘But what about the food? This food is good, you’d have to admit. That’s where these caterers excel.’
‘Food. Yes, their food’s all right,’ he said grudgingly.
We’d finished every crumb and I could have eaten the whole lot again. Orkney returned to the subject of Breezy Palm and two drinks later had exhausted even Isabella’s long-suffering patience.
‘If you want me to drive you home, Orkney, the time is now,’ she said. ‘You may not have noticed that they ran the last race ten minutes ago.’
‘Really?’ He looked at his watch and surprisingly took immediate action, standing up and collecting his papers. ‘Very well then. Flora, I’ll be talking to Jack on the telephone… and er…’ he made an effort to remember my name as the rest of us stood up also.’Good to have met you… er… Tony.’ He nodded twice in lieu of shaking hands. ‘Any time you’re here with Flora… glad to have you.’
‘Thank you, Orkney,’ I said.
Isabella bent to give Flora a kiss in the air an inch off her cheek and looked vaguely at my sling, finding like Orkney that hands unavailable for shaking left goodbyes half unsaid.
‘Er…’ she said, ‘so nice…’
They went away down the hallway and Flora sat down again abruptly.
‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ she said fervently, i’d never have got through it without you. Thank goodness he liked you.’
‘Liked?’ I was sceptical.
‘Oh yes, dear, he asked you back, that’s practically unheard of.’
‘How did Isabella,’ I asked, ‘get him to go home?’
Flora smiled the first carefree smile of the day, her eyes crinkling with fun. ‘My dear, they will certainly have come in her car, and if he didn’t go when she says she would drive off and leave him. She did it once… there was a terrible fuss and Jack and I had to put him on a train. Because, as you’ve noticed dear, he likes his gin and a few months ago he was breathalised on the way home and lost his licence… but he doesn’t like one to talk about that either.’
After the races, during the evening shift in the shop, I telephoned again to Henri Tavel in Bordeaux and listened without much surprise to his news.
‘Mon cher Tony, there is no Château Caillot in St Estèphe. There is no Château Caillot in Haut Médoc. There is no Château Caillot in the whole region of Bordeaux.’
‘One thought there might not be,’ I said.
‘As for the négotiant Thiery et Fils…’ the heavy gallic shrug travelled almost visibly along the wires,’… there is no person called Thiery who is négotiant in Bordeaux. As you know, some people call themselves négotiants who work only in paper and never see the wine they sell, but even among these there is no Thiery.’
‘You’ve been most thorough, Henri.’
‘To forge wine labels is a serious matter.’
His voice, vibrating deeply, reflected an outrage no less genuine for being unsurprised. To Henri Tavel, as to all the chateau owners and wineshippers of Bordeaux, wine transcended religion. Conscious and proud of producing the best in the world they worked to stiff bureaucratic criteria which had been laid down in Médoc in 1855 and only fractionally changed since.
They still spoke of 1816, a year of undrinkable quality, as if it were fresh in their memory. They knew the day the grape harvest had started every year back beyond 1795 (September 24th). They knew that wine had been made uninterruptedly in their same vineyards for at least two thousand years.
Every single bottle of the five hundred and fifty million sent out from the region each year had to be certified and accounted for; had to be worthy of the name it bore; had to be able to uphold the reputation for the whole of its life. And the life of a Bordeaux red wine could be amazing… With Henri Tavel
To forge a Bordeaux chateau label and stick it on an amorphous product of the European wine lake was a heresy of burning-at-the-stake proportions. Henri Tavel wanted assurances that the forgers of Caillot would feel the flames. I could offer only weak-sounding promises that everyone would do their best.
‘It is important,’ he insisted.
‘Yes, I know it is. Truly, Henri, I do know.’
‘Give my regards,’ he said, ‘to your dear mother.’
Life continued normally on the next day, Wednesday, if a disgruntledly itching arm could be considered normal. I was due to take it back to the hospital for inspection the following afternoon and meanwhile went on using the sling much of the time, finding it comfortable and a good excuse for not lifting the cases. Brian had become anxiously solicitous at the sight of it and carefully took even single bottles out of my grasp. Mrs Palissey was writing down the telephone orders to save me the wincing. I felt cossetted and amused.
She and Brian left early with the deliveries because there were so many: some postponed and some in advance, including the glasses and champagne for the next day’s coming-of-age. I kept shop, smiling, ever smiling as usual, and thinking, when I could.
Shortly after eight in the evening Gerard walked in looking grey and tired and asking if I could shut the damned place and come out and eat. Somewhere quiet. He wanted to talk.
I looked at the fatigued lines in his face and the droop of his normally erect body. I was twenty years younger than he and I hadn’t had a general anaesthetic, and if in spite of taking things fairly easy I still felt battered and weak, then he must feel worse. And maybe the cause wasn’t simply the profusion of little burning stab wounds but the residue also from the horsebox… the frissons of nearness to death.
‘We could take Sung Li’s food home to my house,’ I suggested diffidently, ‘if you’d like.’
He would like, he said. He would also buy the food while I fiddled with the till and locked up, and how soon would that be?
‘Half an hour,’ I said. ‘Have some wine.’
He sighed with resignation, sat on the chair I brought from the office and ruefully smiled at our two slings.
‘Snap’ he said.
‘Flora’s idea, mine.’
‘Sensible lady.’
‘I’ll get the wine.’
In the office I poured some genuine wine from St Estèphe and some of the Silver Moondance version into two glasses and carried them out to the counter.
‘Taste them both,’ I said. ‘Say what you think.’
‘What are they?’
‘Tell you later.’
‘I’m no expert,’ he protested. He sipped the first, however, rolling it round his gums and grimacing as if he’d sucked a lemon.
‘Very dry,’ he said.
‘Try the other.’
The second seemed at first to please him better, but after a while he eyed it thoughtfully and put the glass down carefully on the counter.
‘Well?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘The first is demanding. The second is pleasant… but light. You’re going to tell me that the first is more expensive.’
‘Pretty good. The second one, the pleasant but light one, came from the Silver Moondance. The first is near enough what it should have tasted like, according to the label.’
He savoured the various significances. ‘Many might prefer the take. People who didn’t know what to expect.’
‘Yes. A good drink. Nothing wrong with it.’
He sipped the genuine article again. ‘But once you know this one, you grow to appreciate it.’
‘If I had any just now I’d give you one of the great St Estèphes… Cos d’Estournel, Montrose, Calon-Ségur… but this is a good cru bourgeois… lots of body and force.’
‘Take your word for it,’ he said amiably. ‘I’ve often wished I knew more about wine.’
‘Stick around.’
I tasted both the wines again myself, meeting them as old friends. The Silver Moondance wine had stood up pretty well to being opened and refastened, but now that I’d poured the second sample out of the bottle what was left would begin to deteriorate. For wine to remain perfect it had to be in contact with the cork. The more air in the bottle the more damage it did.
I fetched and showed him both of the bottles, real and fake, and told him what Henri Tavel had had to say about forgeries.
He listened attentively, thought for a while, and then said, ‘What is it about the fake wine that seems more significant to you than the fake whisky? Because it does, doesn’t it?’
‘Just as much. Equally.’
‘Why, then?’
‘Because…’ I began, and was immediately interrupted by a row of customers wanting to know what to drink inexpensively with Sung Li’s crispy duck and Peking prawn and beef in oyster sauce. Gerard listened with interest and watched them go one by one with their bottles of Bergerac and Soave and Côtes du Ventoux.
He said, ‘You sell knowledge, don’t you, as much as wine?’
‘Yeah. And pleasure. And human contact. Anything you can’t get from a supermarket.’
A large man with eyes awash shouldered his way unsteadily into the shop demanding beer loudly, and I sold him what he wanted without demur. He paid clumsily, belched, went on his weaving way: and Gerard frowned at his departing back.
‘He was drunk,’ he said.
‘Sure.’
‘Don’t you care?’
‘Not as long as they’re not sick in the shop,’
‘That’s immoral.’
I grinned faintly. ‘I sell escape also.’
‘Temporary,’ he objected disapprovingly, sounding austerely Scots.
‘Temporary is better than nothing,’ I said. ‘Have an aspirin.’
He made a noise between a cough and a chuckle. ‘I suppose you’ve lived on them since Sunday.’
‘Yes, quite right.’ I swallowed two more with some St Estèphe, in itself a minor heresy. ‘I’m all for escape.’
He gave me a dry look which I didn’t at first understand, and only belatedly remembered my rush down the yard.
‘Well… as long as I’m not being robbed.’
He nodded sardonically and waited through two more sales and a discussion about whether Sauternes would go with lamb chops, which it wouldn’t; they would each taste dreadful.
‘What goes with Sauternes then? I like Sauternes.’
‘Anything sweet,’ I said. ‘Also perhaps curry. Or ham. Also blue cheese.’
‘(rood heavens,’ said Gerard when he’d gone. ‘Blue cheese with sweet wine… how odd.’
‘Wine and cheese parties thrive on it.’
He looked round the shop as if at a new world. ‘Is there anything you can’t drink wine with?’ he said.
‘As far as I’m concerned… grapefruit.’
He made a face.
‘And that’s from one,’ I said, ‘who drinks wine with baked beans… who practically scrubs his teeth in it.’
‘You really love it?’
I nodded. ‘Nature’s magical accident.’
‘What?’
‘That the fungus on grapes turns the sugar in grape juice to alcohol. That the result is delicious.’
‘For heaven’s sake…’
‘No one could have invented it,’ I said. ‘It’s just there. A gift to the planet. Elegant.’
‘But there are all sorts of different wines.’
‘Oh, sure, because there are different sorts of grapes. But a lot of champagne is made from black-skinned grapes… things may not be as they seem, which should please you as a detective.’
‘Hm,’ he said dryly. His glance roved over the racks of bottles. ‘As a detective what pleases me is proof… so what’s proof?’
‘If you mix a liquid with gunpowder and ignite it, and it burns with a steady blue flame, that’s proof.’
He looked
‘Proof that the liquid is at least fifty per cent alcohol. That’s how they proved a liquid was alcohol three centuries ago when they first put a tax on distilled spirits. Fifty percent alcohol, one hundred percent proved. They measure the percentage now with hydrometers, not gunpowder and fire. Less risky, I dare say.’
‘Gunpowder,’ he said, ‘is something you and I have had too much of recently.’ He stood up stiffly. ‘Your half-hour is up. I’ll get the food.’
FOURTEEN
Gerard followed me home in his mended Mercedes and came into the house bearing Sung Li’s fragrant parcels.
‘You call this a cottage?’ he said sceptically, looking at perspectives. ‘More like a palace.’
‘It was a cottage beside a barn, both of them falling to pieces. The barn was bigger than the cottage… hence the space.’
We had joyfully planned that house, Emma and I, shaping the rooms to fit what we’d expected to be our lives, making provision for children. A big kitchen for family meals; a sitting room, future playroom; a dining room for friends; many bedrooms; a large quiet drawing room, splendid for parties. The conversion, done in three stages as we could afford it, had taken nearly five years. Emma had contentedly waited, wanting the nest to be ready for the chicks, and almost the moment it was done she had become pregnant.
Gerard and I had come into the house through the kitchen, but I seldom ate there any more. When the food was re-heated and in dishes we transferred it to the sitting room, putting it on a coffee table between two comfortable chairs and eating with our plates balanced on our knees.
It was in that warm looking room with its bookshelves, soft lamplight, television, photographs and rugs that I mostly lived, when I was there at all. It was there that I now kept a wine rack and glasses lazily to hand and averted my mind from chores like gardening. It was there, I dare say, that my energy was chronically at its lowest ebb, yet it was to there also that I instinctively returned.
Gerard looked better for the food, settling deep into his chair when he’d finished with a sigh of relaxation. He put his arm back in its sling and accepted coffee and a second glass of Californian wine, a 1978 Napa Cabernet Sauvignon I’d been recently selling and liked very much myself.