––––––––
Would he have spoken to Hardyman had he still been alive? With the vineyard being all that had preoccupied him for the previous thirty years, he’d had confidence in his own decisions. Should there ever have been some point on which he was unsure, he was willing to trust to his own judgement, learning from what might turn out to be a mistake.
Now, however, he had another person for whom to make decisions, with nothing on which to base his reasoning.
He was sure that Ju hated the Saturday nights. Perhaps some of the women enjoyed it; he was prepared to believe anything of anyone. He had learned enough to know that you could not judge all people against the same criteria. What was awful or shameful or hurtful or anathema for some would be pleasure for another. However, after his summer with Yuan Ju, he was sure at least of this: that once she had learned of the demise of Chen Yun’s sex ring, her heart would sing.
The phrase actually passed through his head. Her heart will sing.
Ju was now constantly there. She possessed him. He thought about what he could do to make her time in the cellar more comfortable. He thought about ways in which she might be detected, and how he could guard against it. He thought about what he would do once he had her passport. Would she want to return to China? Perhaps she’d had to leave and would be in trouble if she went back. Would she be happy going somewhere with Pitt? Was the connection between them as real to her as it was to him?
His mind poured over what was best for her, plans and ideas and options filling his head, but it all came down to the same thing. He was taking her away, and, for the first time in his life, he was giving himself to someone. His days at the vineyard were coming to an end; his marriage to Daisy was over.
Under normal circumstances it would be the kind of thing that two people talked over together. He doubted in this case, even if he and Ju could have communicated, whether she would have been able to be honest with him. It was up to him to make the decision, and it did not even have to be the right one. There probably wasn’t a right one; it just had to work for Ju.
He tried not to think of what else he and Ju might have. His thoughts did not extend to the two of them making love. Yet, he imagined them checking into a hotel together, away from the vineyard, away from the dying birds and the missing birds, his wife and his mother-in-law, away from government inspectors and pushy banks and dead accountants, away from television crews and the silence of the cellar that had seduced him for years, and that he now felt entombed Ju.
Away from all of that, his life of mundane distractions, Pitt and Ju together. He would take her into his arms, she would press her head against his chest, and they would stand like that and would not move. He would kiss her eventually, but not for a long time. The sensation of holding her, the touch of her skin, feeling her body pressed against his, the smell of her, the softness of her hair as it caressed his chin.
He had not had a flippant thought in over three decades, and now he had allowed himself to fall in love with an illegal immigrant who’d been forced into the sex trade, and who was more than twenty years younger than him. Hardyman would have been proud.
He almost smiled at the thought, as he sat in the kitchen drinking coffee, staring at the floor; but his eyes were dead. The all-consuming thoughts that filled his head did not show themselves. Daisy sat at the table, throwing him occasional looks while she wrote a shopping list. Mrs Cromwell was either sleeping or perched in front of the television being appalled by Great Britain.
Pitt was waiting for Daisy to leave, so that he could take bedding and some more food down to Ju. He was going to have to risk discovery by Mrs Cromwell.
‘Don’t suppose there’s any point in asking if you need anything?’ said Daisy.
He was waiting for the question so that he would not be caught daydreaming. Daisy knew him not to be a daydreamer.
‘I’m all right,’ he said.
‘There’s a surprise,’ said Daisy.
She pushed her chair back and started bustling around the kitchen, collecting all the necessary items; car keys, bags, purse, list, coat.
‘Don’t talk yourself into a standstill while I’m gone,’ she said to his back as she left.
Pitt neither replied nor turned round.
*
He wanted to cook something for Ju, something more interesting than the few things he had thrown together that morning, but he did not have the time. What he had to do had to be done quickly. It was not the time for Pitt to cook his first meal in over ten years.
Searching around the kitchen he realised that Daisy had gone to the supermarket for a reason, and, in the end, he had collected more or less the same items that he’d taken down to Ju that morning. He left the small bag sitting on the table and then walked quickly through the farmhouse and up the stairs. On the way he passed the television room, Mrs Cromwell sitting straight-backed, her grey hair sticking up above the back of the rocking chair, watching quiz shows, getting annoyed by the stupidity of people who knew less than she did.
Into the spare room. Dug out an old mat and a couple of blankets. Put a pillow in a case, piled all the items up and placed them under his arm.
What was it going to matter if he was seen? He wasn’t sure, but wanted to avoid the problem. He stopped and listened; nothing but the faint murmur of the television. Ju continually flashed through his head. Lying uncomfortably on a concrete floor. Lying on the bedding that Pitt was taking down. Lying on the same bedding, Pitt beside her, their bodies tangled beneath the blankets.
He stopped himself at the top of the stairs and listened for any further movement; a last chance for circumspection. If he was to be seen, then he had to be going about his business with self-assurance. He generally did not answer to Daisy, and never to Mrs Cromwell, so he could not let them have anything to ask him. It had to look as if he was meant to be carrying bedding through the house, that there was a perfectly valid reason for it.
He set off down the stairs.
*
Pitt walked into the cellar. The light was still on; no others had been added to brighten the room. He stopped for a second, listening to the silence. For so many years this had been his place of refuge; now it was where he kept Ju prisoner. Now it was just part of the vineyard, the business that he was about to lose, from which he was about to walk away. As such, his affection for it had gone. This wine would be for someone else to taste, for someone else to sell. He would never get to know how it had matured; he would never get to know how this vintage compared with 2004, the year against which he judged them all.
And so he had switched off. There was no point in feeling remorse or longing for something from which he was choosing to walk away.
Ju was where he had left her. Sitting in the small wooden chair, back straight, legs together, the book in her lap. The small bag of food he had left earlier was sitting on the floor by the chair, and he wondered if she had eaten anything.
She looked up at him, but only as far as his waist. Bedding under one arm, a small bag of provisions in the other. After the short hesitation, he stepped forward and laid the bedding down against the wall. Then he took two cups from the bag he was carrying, went into the small bathroom and filled them from the tap. He came out, set them on the floor and sat down a couple of feet from Ju, uncomfortably crossing his legs.
She watched him curiously for a few moments, as he took the food from the bag and laid it out. Cherry tomatoes, crusty bread, a sliced red pepper, slices of cooked ham, some Cheddar, grapes. Laying it out like this, Pitt thought it looked insubstantial.
Ju laid her book to the side and settled herself on the floor opposite Pitt, crossing her legs with much greater ease. Pitt was already feeling his muscles stretched, numbness in the buttocks, pins and needles in his feet, uncomfortable sensations all over the lower half of his body.
He offered one of the cups to Ju. Their fingers touched momentarily as he passed the glass, and the electricity that flooded through him seemed to expel the strain on his legs. She took a sip of water, set the cup on the floor.
Pitt indicated with his hand for Ju to eat something. She broke off a small bunch of grapes, and tentatively put one in her mouth. Pitt copied her movement, the grape bursting between his teeth.
They ate all the food that Pitt had brought down for dinner, and did not look at each other.