LITMIR.BIZ

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Shall we get on?’

      They were standing at one end of a long, narrow room in the rear of Wigmore & Welch’s St James’s Street shop. The summer light was bright, and reflected off the white cloths spread over two long trestle tables down either side of the room. Along the length of the table, open bottles and rows of glasses were lined up. Down the centre of the room stood four waist-high metal cylinders; spittoons. Wigmore & Welch, wine merchants, were holding a press tasting for the publication of their latest list. Bell picked up a tasting sheet. Each wine was listed with blank spaces next to it for her comments.

      ‘Forty-seven wines,’ she remarked to Max. ‘Too many for me this morning. I’m just going to look at the clarets.’

      ‘Attagirl,’ he responded with his Wild West smile. ‘See what they’ve got that beats de Gillesmont.’

      She walked the length of the room to where the line of high-shouldered bottles glowed against the white cloth. Wigmore & Welch prided themselves on their clarets, and today they were offering for comment a dozen fine wines from the sixties and seventies. Several of them would still be too young for drinking, but Bell was eager to see how they were developing, quietly sitting in their bottles. Her eyes flicked along the row of labels, then she picked up a bottle and poured an inch of wine into a glass. Quickly she held the glass up against the white cloth background to see the colour, then bent her head over the rim of the glass and sniffed sharply. Only then did she take a mouthful of wine, rolling it gently on her tongue and staring absently into the middle distance as she did so. Finally she twisted round and spat the mouthful into one of the tall metal spittoons.

      Frowning with concentration now she scribbled on her tasting sheet ‘Good colour. Still closed in on the nose, but developing. Plenty of fruit and some oak.’ It was a special vocabulary, almost shorthand, but when Bell came back to her notes in a year, or two years, or whenever she tasted that particular wine again, it would be enough to trigger her memory.

      Slowly she moved along the line of twelve bottles, tasting and spitting out a mouthful of each, writing quickly on her tasting sheet, talking to no one. Then she went back and tasted from three of the bottles again.

      At last she pushed her hair back from her face and folded up her notes. The fine concentration needed was tiring, even after only twelve wines, and all round her people were working their way through forty-odd.

      Across the room Max caught her eye and winked. Bell blew him a kiss, spoke briefly and in a low voice to two or three of the other tasters and turned to go. She would have to move quickly to get to Heathrow in time for her plane. At the door she met Simon Wigmore, scion of the family and latest recruit to the company of pinstriped well-bred young men who staffed the shop and the offices. His pink face brightened when he saw her.

      ‘Bell! Not going already?’

      ‘Yes, Simon, I’m sorry. I’ve got a plane to catch so I only had time to look at the clarets. The La Lagune is spectacular, isn’t it? Thank you for the tasting – I must dash.’

      Simon Wigmore turned round to watch the tall, slim figure taking the steps two at a time. He sighed. Somehow he never seemed to be able to pin Bell Farrer down for long enough to … well, long enough for anything.

      Out on the pavement Bell spotted the yellow light of a taxi and waved energetically.

      ‘Heathrow, please,’ she said and slammed the door behind her.

      ‘Right you are, duck,’ responded the driver, pleased. Bell stared out at the West End traffic and sighed with relief. At least she was on her way.

      Three hours later Bell was ensconced in her window seat aboard the Air France 707, staring out at the curve of the French Atlantic coast as the plane dipped to meet it. At the same moment Baron Charles de Gillesmont sat facing his mother down the length of highly polished walnut dining table. He was peeling a peach, using a tiny mother-of-pearl handled knife to make a little unbroken whorl of golden skin. Hélène de Gillesmont’s mouth tightened with irritation as she watched him.

      ‘Charles,’ she said sharply, unable to bear the tense silence any longer, ‘you do not even do me the courtesy of listening to what I have to say.’ The baron looked up, laying down the peach and his knife as he did so with a gesture of infinite weariness.

      ‘I am so sorry that I can’t make you understand. I can’t bear to see you go on hurting yourself, and us, like this. God knows we have talked about it enough. There is no possibility, I tell you, none whatsoever, that Catherine and I can be together again. Too much has happened for us to be able to go back and take up the same old reins. And, as you know perfectly well, she is happy in Paris. And I … I am busy with what I have to do here. I don’t wish to change things, Hélène.’

      The baronne clicked her tongue sharply. ‘I can understand that you are still grieved, shocked even, but defeated? My son? If only you would bring Catherine back here, make her stop all this Paris nonsense. You are her husband, after all. Then give her another child, and …’

      Charles pushed back his chair with a savage jolt, knocking the table so hard that his glass fell over. A few drops of pale gold wine ran out on to the polished wood.

      ‘Why can’t you be quiet?’ His voice was barely more than a whisper and his face was dead white. Hélène faltered for a moment and put up a hand to adjust the smooth coil of grey-blonde hair. Her eyes avoided her son’s face until he spoke again, in a normal voice now.

      ‘Will you excuse me? I have to go and check whether Jacopin has left for the airport.’

      ‘And why,’ his mother called at his departing back, ‘must we have some foreign girl that none of us know in the house, now, of all times?’

      In the doorway Charles looked back, a tired smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

      ‘Mama, this time is no different from any other. This is what our life is like, now. Nothing is going to change so you had better accustom yourself to it. You still have me, and Juliette, after all.’

      This time the click of Hélène’s tongue was even sharper.

      ‘And a fine pair you are. My beautiful children, the envy of everyone, and what have you grown up into? One stubborn, cold, living like a monk, and the other no better than a hippy.’

      But Charles was gone. He walked briskly down a flagged corridor to a heavy oak door. Inside, the little room was a comfortable clutter of papers, dusty bottles with torn labels, maps and rows of books. In the middle of the room, on a square of threadbare carpet, was an elegant little desk that might have been Louis XVI with an ancient black telephone perched on the top. Charles dialled a number and spoke at once.

      ‘Pierre? Has Jacopin taken the car to meet the young lady?’ Evidently satisfied with the reply he replaced the receiver and briskly took up a pen and a sheaf of account sheets. For a moment or two he stared intently at his work, then shrugged and leaned back in his swivel chair. From his window, at the extreme corner of the front façade of the château, he could see a sweep of manicured lawn and the curve of the gravel drive. Uncomfortable memories tugged at his consciousness as he stared unseeingly out, but he refused to admit them. Not worth starting work now, he told himself. Miss Farrer will be here within the hour, and the rest of the afternoon must be devoted to her.

      He picked up a copy of La Revue de France Vinicole, tilted his chair so that he had a clear view of the driveway, and settled down to read.

      Bell passed the trio of smiling hostesses at the aircraft door and stood at the top of the steel steps. Somewhere out there, underlying the airport smells of oil and rubber, she could detect the real smell of the country. It was earthy and sensuous, but clean and natural too, made up of damp leaves and rich food and woodsmoke. Even here in the airport chaos there was a feeling of calm, fertile prosperity. It was good to be back.

      ‘S’il vous plaît, madame,’ murmured a portly French businessman behind her, nudging her slightly with his briefcase. Bell started and hurried down the steps. She was waved through customs and her canvas bag rolled

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