The Company of Fellows (10 page)

“
Well,” she
said, clapping the crumbs off her hands. “Most of it, even the old
stuff, still isn’t at its best. Especially the pudding wines. And
on a selfish note I haven’t exactly developed my taste buds to
their full potential yet. So the right thing would be to wait for
ten years before you open a bottle.” She paused. “Do you like to do
the right thing, Tommy?”

“
When I
can.”

“
And when’s
that? When you can do it straight away? Or when you’re not
nuts?”

Tommy couldn’t
detect the slightest hint of humour or malice in her voice. Clearly
Charles had gone into more than basic details about his background.
He wasn’t sure whether it should, but that made him feel more
relaxed with her. He said nothing.

“
Good answer,”
said Becky. “Sorry,” she added, seeming to shrink into herself.
“Dad didn’t believe in the right thing.” She wasn’t looking at him.
For the second time Tommy felt her loss coming through whatever act
it was she was putting on and, looking at her line-free face, he
was reminded just how young she was. “People thought he cared about
pleasure, yeah? That it was all that mattered to him but it wasn’t.
He believed in projects. He was a sentimentalist, you know? The
best project, he used to say, the only project really worth
following, is love.”

Tommy wondered
when Charles used to say it. He took the deep red pashmina from the
back of her chair and placed it around her shoulders, his hands
firm through the silk cloth as he did so. “Let’s go and get the
car.”

Tommy parked
the old white Renault 4 in Bane’s Avenue. It was strange being
inside Charles’ house again. The meticulous order was still there,
but it wasn’t the order that had been the soul of the place. That
had been in the heavy air that dripped with expectation of things
that might be. But the expectation had gone. The smell of game had
disappeared and was replaced with nothing but the sharp must of a
house going cold.

“
It’s
downstairs in the cellar,” said Becky. “Follow me.”

Becky turned
right at the end of the corridor, opened a white clapboard door,
and reached inside for the switch. “Mind yourself on the stairs,”
she warned.

Tommy followed
her down the narrow, uneven concrete. He could feel the air getting
cooler and damper, the atmosphere protected year-round from the
vicissitudes of sun and central heating. At the bottom Becky
stopped and huddled herself against the wall. “Through there,” she
said, ushering Tommy past her. The cellar had two rooms. The
ante-chamber, in which they were standing, was cluttered floor to
ceiling with tools and meters, fuse boxes and DIY paraphernalia. It
was no more than 6 feet across, a tiny fraction of the building’s
footprint. Through the overalls and wrench kits it was difficult to
see that there were actually steps immediately in front of him, and
that they led up to a small hole no more than 30 inches square –
just large enough to put a case of wine through. Tommy blinked as
Becky flicked on the lights.

“
You’d better
hurry.” He heard her voice, agitated, just behind him; then back on
an even tone. “You don’t want to raise the temperature too
much.”

That’ll be the
least of the wine’s problems if the college movers get their hands
on it, Tommy thought.

“
The cases
should have your name on,” she called.

Tommy banged
his knee on the concrete steps, taken aback by their steepness. The
top step was just as narrow as the others. How the hell was he
going to get a case of wine through there safely? “Any chance of a
hand?”

“
Sorry,” she
said. “I haven’t got my inhaler with me. This place fucks my
chest.”

Great.

He looked into
the vast cellar. He couldn’t tell how far back it went through the
walls of racking but from the size of the house he guessed it was
upwards of 30 feet. He was through now. It was very different from
his own customised cellar, just rack on rack of bottles slotted
into little square pigeonholes. Underneath each was a hand-written
label listing the wine’s chateau or estate of origin, its year,
date and place of purchase, and provenance. Around the outer walls
were neatly stacked unopened cases. Tommy guessed that the
arrangement of the cellar would follow the pattern of the rest of
the house, that rather than store bottles by region or by date,
Charles would have ordered them towards the far end in ascending
quality. Quality judged by what? he wondered. Points that had been
assigned to them by the Wine Spectator or some other source of
received wisdom? He doubted it. Years of Charles’ own tasting
experience, or just a sense when he held the bottle in his hand?
Possibly. Most likely, Tommy thought, Charles would have ranked the
wines according to the strength of anticipation he felt at the
thought of drinking them. He could easily imagine the Professor
planning the direction of his life as a road that led to the back
of the cellar, planning his death at the moment he tasted the
finest wine of all.

Tommy made his
way to the back of the cellar, and was pleased to see that there
were several holes in the rack, and two plain crates on the floor
marked “Tommy West. This way up.”

“
Got them
yet?” Becky sounded anxious.

Tommy picked
up one of the crates. “Coming.” He carried it deftly to the small
entrance, his back to the antechamber, and laid it lightly just
inside. “Two seconds.” He looked out at her and smiled. She had
taken a couple of steps back up the stairs and was sitting with her
arms folded around her knees. He brought the other case and laid it
beside the first, climbed out and bent back inside, lifting one
case at a time very slowly until the bottom of the case was level
with the bottom of the hole. He eased it gently through towards
him, and took it down the steps. As soon as the second crate was
through the lights went off.

“
I’ll get you
a drink, shall I? Meet you in the sitting room?” said Becky,
already on her way.

“
Please,”
seemed to be the right answer, and he followed with the first of
the cases, which he set down with a feather touch in the hall,
pleased that Charles seemed not to have set the thermostat for
winter before he died.

The sitting
room on the first floor was where Professor Shaw had held informal
drinks parties for students and visiting academics. It had a
wall-length bar along one side, every inch of which the Professor
had filled with bottles of spirits and fortified wines. They were
divided into whiskies, brandies, armagnacs, cognacs, calvados,
ports, madeiras, and sherries, each ascending by age. The room’s
deep crimson walls matched the fabric of a chaise longue, and the
only other furniture was a polished black grand piano and red
velvet stool. The room was laid out to be wholly functional, and
that function was entertaining.

Tommy
remembered the receptions he had been to. At some stage someone
would always sit down and play the grand piano flawlessly. For a
moment people would fall silent to listen and then the gentle
background would fade against the sound of laughter and the
rat-a-tat-tat of ideas being fired off, always with passion but
never with anger – not in this room at least. As he remembered one
by one the evenings he had spent here, he came inevitably to the
last of them; and the pleasant sounds disappeared.

He joined
Becky on the chaise longue and took an enormous balloon-stemmed
glass from her, with a cinnamon-scented Armagnac swirling around
the bottom. Her wrap and trousers blended into the upholstery and
Tommy noticed for the first time how small she was.

“
I’m going to
stay here tonight,” she said. “I don’t want to go home.”

“
Will you be
all right on your own?”

“
No,” she
said, matter-of-factly.

“
Then I’ll
stay.”

“
Thank
you.”

The armagnac
was mellow like caramel and candied pears. Warm smells and tastes
returned, the start of new memories of being here.

“
Want to
talk?” Tommy asked.

“
No.” They sat
as the sky turned the rich colours of the room and finally
everything became textureless and grey. “Want to make love?” Becky
asked flatly.

“
No.”

“
Hold.” Which
may have been a question, a command, or just a noun.

Becky leaned
over into his arms. Olives and green tea, the smell of her hair.
Gentle rise and fall of her shoulders on his chest. Tommy ran his
fingers over her cheeks, round her chin, and noticed again how
small she seemed with his hands against her.

Pulling her
into him he closed his eyes and returned in his mind to the cellar.
What had he seen? Immaculate shelves, with barely a few weeks’ dust
anywhere. No cobwebs, no cellar mould. How often was the wine
disturbed to wipe down the bottles? It must take weeks each time to
do it with enough care to preserve the precious liquid. Perhaps
Charles employed someone just to do that – someone he trusted
sufficiently. A graduate student perhaps. He retraced his steps to
the back wall. How many holes were there? 26. Good. Two bottles
from Shaw’s last lunch. Yes, there were the labels. 12 in each of
Tommy’s cases. He hadn’t managed to catch all the labels. Becky had
been too anxious to leave the cellar. Not to worry. What could he
see in the place he had made sure to look, topmost and furthest
right? The very back of the cellar, the place of honour. Two holes.
Two labels. Chateau Cheval Blanc, 1947, Berry Bros, 1994. Eszencia,
Mezes Mały, 1864, Sotheby’s New York, 1998, private collection,
Budapest.

1947,
1864.
Sweat caught in the small of her
back, arching round, full lips turning to draw him in.

Tommy opened
his eyes. Becky was asleep. He bent his neck forward and kissed the
top of her head; nuzzled his lips into her hair; whispered. “Now I
know your father was murdered; and I’ll find the person who did
it.”

MARCH
1995

2 am. Tommy
should have been sleeping. For the last two and a half years he
hadn’t slept, but he’d always known that it was because he was
thinking about his thesis. Now it was finished at last. He had
submitted two bound copies, one for each of his examiners, to the
Graduate Studies Office. Tradition, and common sense, dictated that
candidates keep a third copy for themselves so that they could use
it whilst they prepare for their
viva
voce
, the grilling session in front of
their examiners and, according to Oxford’s diktats, any members of
the public who cared to attend that determined whether they
received their doctorate or not. But Tommy was spent. He didn’t
want to see his thesis again before the
viva
, so he had left his third copy
in Professor Shaw’s college pigeon hole. He needed to forget it
altogether for a month or so, so he felt fresh and enthusiastic
again when he started applying for posts.

But he
couldn’t forget it. It played itself like a loop in his head. The
idea that anyone would need a printed copy to remind themselves of
something that had been their whole life for years was absurd. He
knew every comma in every draft he’d written.

He was
becoming increasingly frustrated that he couldn’t settle. Perhaps
he’d built this moment up too much in his head and it would take a
day or so for him to settle into the new routine; or at least into
a life where he had no routine. He knew he shouldn’t let it get to
him. That last thing he needed to do if he was going to sleep was
think how much he needed to sleep He’d tried everything he could to
distract himself but nothing had worked, not television, not a
trashy novel, not food, not drink.

He gave up on
bed and went to his study. He looked at the pile of papers on his
desk.
Time to change all
that
, he thought, picking them all up in
one great pile and depositing them in a corner.
Time to do something so this doesn’t remind me of work all
the time
. Perhaps he should cover his desk
and use it as a dining table for a change. That wasn’t a bad idea,
he congratulated himself, wondering what colour would make the room
feel the least like it felt at the moment. He fetched a bundle of
T-shirts from his wardrobe and by the time he had brought them back
from his bedroom his thesis was out of his mind
completely.

The sound of
the telephone shattered his newly discovered peace. He reached for
it instinctively. “Hello?”

“
Good evening,
Tommy.” It was Professor Shaw.

“
Hello,” he
said again, not quite sure what else to say to a supervisor calling
him at past two in the morning.

“
I got your
thesis,” Shaw continued. “Thank you.”

Tommy couldn’t
tell if there was a hint of sarcasm in the Professor’s voice, or
maybe bitterness. Tommy hadn’t shown his supervisor the final
draft, which was very much not the standard procedure. It hadn’t
occurred to him that the Professor would take it as a snub. Tommy
just knew that he had finished. There was no point in asking anyone
else what needed changing. Nothing did. Still, there was something
in the voice that he couldn’t explain by the fact that it was two
in the morning. A slight hesitation of some kind.