––––––––
Pitt was sitting in the cellar when the door opened. It was Daisy. She stood framed in the light of the corridor outside. She looked sullen. It was a long time since she had disturbed his idyll of the cellar; a few years perhaps. His look was impassive, as always, but he had been glad not to be talking to the wine at the time. He didn’t mind Jenkins or Blain or one of the others walking in on him; but Daisy did not belong down here, she did not belong in his cut-off world of viticulture. Daisy was of the kitchen and the bedroom, stalking the corridors of the house; harsh words and glances, a life drained of affection.
‘Hardyman’s office is on the phone, they need to talk to you.’
Pitt dropped his eyes. Hardyman’s office never phoned. Hardyman phoned. He felt a strange, unexpected twisting of his stomach.
*
A few minutes later, Pitt stepped out of the farmhouse into the shade of the late afternoon trees. It still felt warm. He had had a brief conversation with Hardyman’s office. Hardyman was dead. The police were not seeking to interview anyone else in connection with the death. Everyone shocked. They were calling all his clients. They would let him know when the funeral arrangements had been made.
After that brief call, he’d had an even briefer conversation with Daisy.
‘Hardyman’s dead,’ he said. ‘Killed himself.’
Daisy, who had stood watching Pitt while he took the call, looked unimpressed.
‘All right for some,’ she said.
Immediately, she had one of those rare moments when she realised she sounded like her mother, but covered the thought with an expression that deepened and turned more unpleasant. She walked from the room, nowhere to go. Glanced at the clock as she went, realised she could have a gin and tonic, and so her final moments of departure had some purpose.
Pitt was alone with Yuan Ju for the first time in a couple of days. Ju had been setting the table for the workers as Pitt had talked on the phone, with Daisy watching; an intruder to the bad news. From two pots on the stove, food burbled and popped; the kitchen was filled with the scent of garlic and lime and soy and coriander.
It had become so commonplace, that Pitt had to force himself to stop and enjoy it, to take in this new pleasure that had come to his life. The way Hardyman would have done.
Except, Hardyman had not been enjoying life so much after all.
Their eyes met, an occurrence more rare than finding themselves alone. She was standing by the table, seven sets of chopsticks in one hand, seven knives and forks in the other. He was standing by the Welsh dresser, where the old-fashioned dial phone sat perched on a clear surface; where once it had been in amongst clutter and discarded papers and new bills, until Ju had brought order.
They drew each other in, but did not move. It did not matter whether Ju understood the words that had been spoken, for she completely understood the look on Pitt’s face.
The kitchen was still and warm, dinner bubbled on the stove. The twin malevolent presence was absent, and sadness weighed upon both Pitt and Ju. They embraced each other from a distance of five yards. She did not know this man at all, but she sensed every part of him. She knew every inch of his body, she knew what he was feeling, she knew the thoughts that ran through his head.
She could walk forward now and take him into her arms, as much for herself as for him. Today, at this moment, they were equal, and they could have and hold each other.
In thirty years, Pitt had made one friend. He had lost the friends from old, the university crowd, long ago. Once Daisy had Pitt to herself, she had been happy to shake off the others. Pitt had, much to her chagrin, acquired Hardyman along the way; now he was gone, and the instant sadness of it drained him.
He lost himself in Ju’s eyes for a few moments. He had no idea how long they stood there. It was just a few minutes, but it could have been an hour. Time stopped. The growing feeling that he’d had, that he and Ju had, an understanding that was of a different world than language, was confirmed. Bound in sadness, nothing for them except each other.
As if Daisy had sensed it and decided to leave them alone.
Pitt felt her hair in his hands. Their foreheads together, his neck slightly bent, their bodies still apart. Then slowly drawing closer and closer, until they touched, and he drew her head into his chest. He smelled her hair. Her arms circling him, touching lightly behind, her head squeezed into his chest, the first embrace she had felt in months.
They stood, five yards from each other, both imagining the caress and the comfort of the other. Yet, they could not move. Pitt could feel her hair, and smell her and feel her embrace, yet could not draw her in. Their eyes locked, they stared across the kitchen. Ju could not take a step closer to him, no matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she believed that it was what Pitt wanted.
Pitt had to make the move. Yet he could not.
His head and heart engulfed by sadness and a crippling feeling of hopelessness, finally he snapped the spell, turned away, opened the back door and walked out into the shade of the afternoon trees.
Jenkins was coming towards him, an abrupt re-acquaintance with reality, riding one of the quad bikes the guys had persuaded him to buy three summers previously. Pitt stood in front of him, the lugubriousness that was his common demeanour supplemented by something even more tragic. Jenkins, forceful and direct, the bringer of ill news, was stopped in his tracks.
‘You all right, Mr Pitt?’ he asked, as he climbed off the bike, cutting the engine.
Pitt was staring in the trees. With the noise of the engine gone, he could hear the buzz of insects but not the sound of birds. Suddenly the lack of birds gave him an immense feeling of claustrophobia, as if he and Jenkins were trapped somewhere that birds could not go.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What’s up?’
Trying to flick the switch, from introspection to business. Usually it was straightforward. Usually he would be trying to remove himself from Daisy’s acerbic words about poor yields and bad weather and inefficient management.
‘Bad news,’ said Jenkins. The expression on Pitt’s face was unchanging. At this stage of the summer there was never going to be good news. The summer months were all about hoping for good weather, and hoping nothing went wrong. Good news came in agonisingly slow stages, a minute at a time, when nothing happened. Bad news arrived in an instant, on the back of a quad bike.
‘The vet we took the bird to...’ said Jenkins, then he let the sentence drift off, the look on his face saying the rest. Felt responsible, as he had trusted Blain on his word. ‘We thought we could trust the guy to come back to us first.’
‘Who did he show it to?’ asked Pitt.
‘A contact he had at DEFRA.’
Pitt breathed out strongly through his nose, his lips tight shut, his face set in stone.
‘What did he find wrong with it?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jenkins.
Another heavy breath. He realised at that moment that this was what he had been expecting. He had no idea why the birds were dying, yet somehow he felt that it was not going to be explained by science.
‘So why did he take it to DEFRA?’
Jenkins wasn’t entirely sure of the answer to that either, but in the absence of mundane fact, it had been an inevitability. In retrospect, what vet would not have taken it to DEFRA?
‘I guess because it’s unexplained,’ he said. ‘Birds are dying all over the place, there’s shit coming down from somewhere... It seems he thinks he was doing us a favour by making every effort to try and identify what was wrong. That’s what took so long. He had every damn test he could think of done on that bird. Turns out Blain even gave him a second specimen.’
He paused. Thought that somehow Pitt looked hollow.
‘He was going to DEFRA the minute we took him the bird,’ said Pitt.
He turned away from Jenkins and looked across the tops of the nearest vines. His mind was slowly emptying. He didn’t want to think about anything at that moment, the prospects were so grim.
When they had seriously talked about financing and the bank, Hardyman had always sounded bleak. There had been a clear implication that he, Hardyman, was all that stood between the banks and Pitt losing control of the vineyard and wine press.
‘Do we know if there’s any sort of timescale?’ he asked, without turning back. Words directed into the cooling late afternoon air.
Jenkins shook his head.
‘All right,’ said Pitt. ‘Maybe we’ll have a bit of time. If there’s no kind of avian flu evident, and since it doesn’t involve pigs or cows or sheep... you know...’ and he shook his head, as if he was struggling to think clearly, ‘maybe we’ll be all right for a few weeks yet. Maybe they’ll just see it as this kind of weird thing that’s happening. A curiosity.’
He looked up at the sky, wondering where the plague was coming from. Jenkins followed his gaze, thinking that his boss was being far too optimistic.
‘They found nothing wrong with the bird,’ said Pitt, more a statement than a question.
‘Nothing.’
Pitt closed his eyes, took in a final breath of fresh air. He was going to retreat downstairs, half an hour’s peace before dinner. Maybe he would not come up for dinner.
‘Hardyman’s dead,’ he said bluntly. ‘We’ll need to get a new accountant.’