conversations with hardyman
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A small restaurant in Mayfair, the kind of place where they only went when it was acknowledged beforehand that Hardyman would be paying. Beautifully presented first courses, insubstantial content compensated for by depth of taste; second courses of subtlety; a main course with potatoes weaved extravagantly into European sauces, cream and olive oil, coriander and chickpeas. They ate well and talked like generals.
‘It’s up to you, if you want to be left in the 1990s,’ said Hardyman, waving a fork. He usually followed the phrase it’s up to you with earnest arguments on why Pitt was wrong. ‘But it’s not just about business, the wine business, any kind of business. Society itself, John, is undergoing the kind of dramatic tsunami that hit the West in the 60’s, and none of us know how it will sort itself out.’
The word tsunami, thought Pitt, had swept through society like a tsunami since the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004.
‘The Internet, cell phones, apps, Twitter, the whole shebang... no one knows where it’s going or how far it’s taking us all, but it’s changing everything. The whole fabric of life, the interaction of society.’
Pitt had a plate of beef in rich red wine, with chic morsels of mashed potato before him. Almost finished. He continued to eat.
‘You didn’t even change with the 60s, did you?’ said Hardyman. ‘An ancient artefact, preserved in aspic for future generations to stare at. When you die, they’ll put you in a glass case.’
‘I was two in 1960,’ said Pitt. ‘D’you think I should have been smoking pot and sleeping with women in Camden by the summer of ‘66?’
‘No, but you could have been doing it by the summer of ‘76. The 60s weren’t a blip; things didn’t return to normal when they were all over. They changed society and everyone in it. Except you. And now it’s happening again.’
Hardyman sucked up a long, thin coil of pasta and said, ‘They make television documentaries about people like you. And the people in them always look sad and absurd.’
‘I’m thinking of doing a green harvest this year,’ said Pitt. ‘As my accountant, I thought I ought to run that by you.’
Hardyman paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.
‘No one green harvests in England.’
Pitt placed his knife and fork on the edge of his plate. Took another small sip of wine; a simple Pinot Grigiot, which they had allowed the waiter to recommend.
‘You green harvest...’ began Hardyman, then he spluttered into his food. Took a much larger swallow of wine and said, ‘does anyone green harvest in England?’
‘I’ve not checked on their websites,’ replied Pitt glibly. ‘Maybe I’ll do that when I get home.’
‘You never go on the bloody Internet.’
The waiter appeared beside the table and stood with his legs pressed together.
‘Can I take your plate, sir?’
Pitt answered with his eyebrows. Hardyman looked perturbed, as he always did when a plate was cleared away before one of the diners at the table had finished.
‘Do you know anyone who never uses the Internet?’ he said to the waiter. ‘I mean, anyone under seventy.’
The waiter shook his head as he lifted Pitt’s plate.
‘I think it’s rather rare these days, sir,’ he said.
Hardyman pointed a fork in the direction of Pitt, crammed a last mouthful in and placed his cutlery on the plate, gesturing for the waiter to take it with him.
‘You will wither and die,’ said Hardyman, as the waiter walked away, his legs only slightly less attached to each other. ‘Green harvest,’ he then blurted out scornfully. ‘Are you going to sell this year’s at fifty pounds a bottle?’
‘Twenty,’ said Pitt softly.
‘Who’s going to buy that? John...’ and he let the sentence drift off, and shook his head for all the world like he was talking to an incorrigible child.
‘It’ll be a wine worth paying twenty pounds for,’ said Pitt.
*
On the way home on the train he explained green harvesting to Yuan Ju. His head resting back against the seat, staring out at Oxfordshire and Wiltshire as they flew past in the light of early summer. Soft words spoken as they walked between the vines. He lifted the small, immature bunches of grapes, and told her how some of them are harvested to cut down on the yield. She listened with her head slightly to the side, straining to understand. He wasn’t sure if she understood anything that he said, but he imagined that she was enraptured by the sound and depth of his voice. The yield is lower, which allows the vines to concentrate their goodness on a small number of grapes, making those grapes – and consequently the wine – of a higher quality.
Yuan Ju listened to every word. Pitt smiled as he told her about Hardyman’s exasperation and how it was rare for a vineyard in England to harvest the grapes in this way. Ju smiled in return, a lovely movement of her lips; eyes that smiled with the mouth. They stood and looked at each other amongst the vines, until she seemed to query him, and he continued talking about the harvest and the arguments for and against early trimming. They walked on, in the warmth of early evening, Ju attentive to every word.
Pitt sat with his head against the chair, staring out at England as it travelled by.