The Irresistible Inheritance Of Wilberforce (11 page)

One morning I went out to the bank to arrange some money transfer or other, and came back to find Catherine sitting in the kitchen, crying. I went up to her and put my arms around her and asked, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I rang my mother up, to see how she was.’

‘And how was she?’

Catherine wiped the tears from her cheeks with an angry gesture. ‘When she knew it was me, she put the phone down.’

It was only the occasional shadow such as that that interrupted our happiness. We made new friends to replace those that had separated themselves from us since our marriage. I bumped into an old university friend, Colin Holman, who had become a successful doctor in private practice. Catherine rediscovered a few married ex-school friends who had settled in London, and we began to go out to dinner from time to time, or have the occasional dinner party in our new flat. Our life was busy enough, our new-found friends, if they had heard about Catherine’s broken engagement with Ed Simmonds, cared nothing about that, and our past lives became, at least for me, a dim memory.

One morning, after dining at the flat of one of our new friends, Catherine said to me, as we sat drinking tea in the kitchen at breakfast, ‘Darling, I think you were quite tight at dinner last night. You talked a great deal about wine. I’m not sure everyone’s quite as interested in the subject as you are, darling.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think I’d had too much to drink, because I didn’t really like what they were serving. It was far too young, absolutely stiff with tannin.’

Catherine stirred her tea and said, ‘Yes, darling, I’m sure you’re right. But don’t you think you’re drinking just a little too often at the moment?’

I was surprised by her remark. ‘Am I? Don’t confuse tasting with drinking, darling. It is one of my great interests in life. That’s why I agreed to buy Caerlyon and the wine from Francis.’

‘I know that, darling. Don’t be grumpy. I was only saying.’

I thought it was an odd remark for her to make, and after a moment I drank my cup of tea and said, ‘I’m going next door; I’ve got bills to pay.’

At lunch that day we opened two bottles of wine, a good white burgundy with the small starter Catherine had prepared, and then a bottle of Bordeaux with the poached eggs and salad. Catherine matched me glass for glass, as if to apologise for her remark at breakfast and show me that she had not meant it; afterwards we stepped out into the bright sunshine, went to Hatchards and bought a pile of great, glossy recipe books for the new kitchen and Robert Parker’s definitive work on the wines of Bordeaux, for me.

It was about six months after we were married that we had our first real row.

Catherine had gone out to have lunch with a girlfriend, and I sat at home and decided it would be interesting to compare a 1989 and a 1990 Château Talbot. I opened both bottles and let them breathe for an hour and come up to room temperature, and then poured out a little of each into two glasses. For me, the 1990 was almost thin, whilst the 1989, if not a great wine, had far more power and finish. It was a fascinating contrast of tastes, similar and yet dissimilar.

When Catherine arrived home, I was scribbling some tasting notes in my book. ‘Nice lunch, darling?’ I asked her.

‘Yes,’ she replied, and bent to kiss me. Then she said, ‘Darling, you do rather reek of wine.’ She looked at the two empty bottles, which I had placed on the sink, and said, ‘Have you drunk all that yourself? Now, today?’

‘Tasting, darling, not drinking,’ I reminded her. She said nothing, but looked at me, and then looked at the two empty bottles, and then back at me. She bit her lip for a second, and then left the kitchen and went upstairs.

I said nothing. I wasn’t going to be lectured about drinking wine. It was the great enthusiasm of my life: I was learning something new every time I opened a bottle. I finished writing up my tasting notes and then went next door to the sitting room, and sat down at the desk I kept my papers in. When Catherine came downstairs, I pretended to be engrossed in the business plan I was writing for my new software consultancy. As a matter of fact, I had been writing the plan for some months now.

‘How’s your new business idea coming on?’ said Catherine, sitting down next to me.

‘It’s coming on,’ I said.

‘You never seem to go and see anybody about it. I thought that’s how you got business - by going and seeing people.’

‘I’m not quite at that stage,’ I told her. ‘I’m still working on the basic concept.’

Catherine was silent for a moment, and I marked a page with my pen. Then she said, ‘It would be good for you if you went back to work, in a way.’

‘That’s the idea,’ I told her, ‘but there’s no rush. When you’ve worked non-stop for most of your life, a few months off is no bad thing.’

‘But don’t you get out of touch, darling? I mean, if you don’t go and see people, how can you know what’s going on, or what sort of things they might need? Aren’t people simply going to forget all about you?’

I said, ‘I think my reputation as one of the best software developers in the country might last more than six months.’ I was starting to get angry, because there was truth in what Catherine was saying. People would forget me; most people forgot all about me five minutes after meeting me. They remembered Andy; they remembered the name of the company, except that now it wasn’t called Wilberforce Software Solutions any more, but Bayleaf UK, after the giant American software business that had bought it.

‘Well, even so, aren’t you getting bored just sitting around the house all day? I mean, most men of your age do something. It can’t be good just sitting around drinking all the time.’

I turned and looked at Catherine. ‘Are you getting bored with me? Is that what you’re saying?’ I asked her.

She looked shocked, and said defensively, ‘No, darling. But I don’t like it when you drink so much. You need something else in your life.’

I could feel real anger running through me now, like a virus multiplying itself at raging speed. Where had it come from? I felt that if Catherine said another word about my drinking too much, I would hit her. Instead I jumped up, and the pages of my business plan went flying all over the room. Catherine started, and put her hand to her mouth in alarm.

I said, ‘I’m tired of this conversation. I don’t like being lectured. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re living in my flat, bought with my money, earned by my hard work, in one of the best streets in London. I’m entitled to do what I like, I should think.’ Then I left the flat, slamming the front door, and walked about twice around Hyde Park before I felt able to return home.

When I came back, I went up to Catherine, who was sitting in a chair in the sitting room, reading a novel, and I kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her. ‘I didn’t mean to be cross.’

‘I tidied up your papers,’ she said. ‘I hope I’ve put them back in the right order.’

‘I saw,’ I said. ‘Thank you, darling.’

She was very quiet all that evening, but the next day it was as if there had been no row, and everything was as it always had been between us. Except that it wasn’t as it always had been. It was as if a fine crack had appeared in a once perfect porcelain bowl. The damage had been mended and could not be seen. But the bowl, which had been unblemished before, was cracked now.

For a few weeks I made a conscious effort to taste less wine at lunch time, at least when Catherine was there. I set up one or two meetings and went to them, and talked to a couple of people whom I thought might back my new business venture. But my heart wasn’t in it: I couldn’t persuade myself I really wanted to do this, and I don’t think I convinced them.

‘Keep in touch,’ they said, but they didn’t mean it.

Then I hit upon a different idea: instead of having to go through the effort of setting up meetings which I didn’t want to go to, and where I could never think of what to say, I thought I would tell Catherine I was having lunch with one or other of my old customers, and then just go and have lunch somewhere by myself.

The drawback in this plan was that it was not always possible to find somewhere with a reasonable wine list. I resented paying over the odds for wines that I would hardly bother to open at home. But I decided I had to be realistic; it was better to spend a bit of money to have a glass of decent wine, even if I knew I was being robbed. This worked well. I found, to my surprise, a few wine lists which were really quite interesting even if expensive, with wines that sometimes were new even to me.

At first Catherine was very pleased with me. ‘You see,’ she would say as I rolled back into the flat cheerfully after another of my solitary, but satisfactory lunches. ‘It makes all the difference getting out and meeting people. You’re in a much better mood now you’re getting out and about.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you were absolutely right about that, darling.’

‘And what do they think of your new idea?’

‘Oh, I think they’ll go for it.’

‘That’s brilliant!’ said Catherine, jumping up from the sofa and giving me a hug. She sniffed. ‘What have you been eating?’

‘Peppermints,’ I said, bringing a bag of them out of my pocket. ‘Want one?’

I suppose this new plan became too much of a good thing, after a while. Catherine didn’t say anything, but her initial enthusiasm about my getting out and meeting people began to wear off. It might have lasted a bit longer except that one day I decided to have lunch in a restaurant in Walton Street that had become rather a favourite of mine. I ordered a starter and drank a bottle of a good white Rhône wine with that. I was just in the act of tasting the glass of Bordeaux that the sommelier had poured for me, before the next course arrived, when Catherine came into the restaurant with Sarah, one of her girl friends. I might have known it was a mistake to eat somewhere so close to Sloane Street. I knew Catherine was shopping and having lunch with someone that day.

She saw me and I saw her at the same instant. I began to prepare the words I would say to her when she came over. But she didn’t come over. She turned away. Sarah hadn’t seen me. She had only met me once or twice and quite possibly wouldn’t have recognised me anyway. I wouldn’t have known her, had she not been with Catherine.

I finished my lunch as quickly as I reasonably could, and paid my bill. Catherine had been given a table at the back of the restaurant. I could not see her, and made no effort to look for her. I walked slowly home, went to my desk, pulled out my wretched business plan and made a few more notes in its margins. When Catherine came back to the flat half an hour later, I was still at it.

I heard her come in and shut the door. Then she went into the kitchen and I heard the kettle boiling. After a moment, I went to the door of the kitchen and looked in. She was sitting at the table with a mug of tea, smoking a cigarette, something she hardly ever did. She did not smile, or say anything, when she saw me.

‘That was a funny coincidence,’ I said. ‘My date stood me up. He had to go to a meeting and rang me on the mobile after I’d sat down. So I thought I’d just have lunch anyway. Ha ha.’

Catherine said nothing for a moment. Then she said, ‘You looked so damned . . . furtive.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Catherine stared at me. She had avoided looking at me before, but now she stared at me in the same way Andy once had, when I had told him I was selling the business without consulting him; the way Ed Simmonds had when I had admitted I’d been seeing Catherine without his knowledge. It was a weary, contemptuous expression. She said, ‘You haven’t been having business lunches with anyone, have you? I was pretty sure it was all a lie, but now I know what you’ve become.’

I didn’t ask her what she thought I had become. I didn’t want to hear her tell me I was a drunkard, because I knew it would make me angry. My face felt rigid and frozen.

‘My God!’ said Catherine. ‘If Sarah had seen you, or recognised you. Sitting there red-faced with a bottle of wine, on your own. I would have died.’

‘I think I’ll get on with my work,’ I told her, ‘if you’ve nothing else to say.’

Catherine didn’t reply. She sat smoking her cigarette, with the same distant expression on her face. I went back to my desk. A few minutes later I heard the front door shut, as she went out again.

Later that evening she returned. I was sitting in the kitchen, watching television, drinking a glass of wine. ‘Where have you been?’ I asked.

‘Out.’

‘Do you want something to eat?’ I asked. ‘We could go to Shepherds Market and find somewhere?’

‘I’m not hungry,’ said Catherine.

‘Neither am I, really.’

She took her coat off and hung it up and went upstairs. A few minutes later she came down again, and sat opposite me. ‘Pour me some wine,’ she commanded.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘What would you like? I’ve got some Bordeaux open, or there’s a bottle of—’

‘Just whatever’s open,’ she said, so I poured her a glass and refilled my own.

She sipped it, without showing much appreciation, and then said, ‘Wilberforce, what’s happening to us?’

‘How do you mean?’

She sipped some more, looking at me searchingly. ‘This isn’t what I thought being married would be like. I should have got to know you better first, shouldn’t I?’

‘What more is there to know?’ I said. ‘I haven’t changed.’

‘Ah,’ said Catherine. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Maybe there isn’t anything to know about you. It’s just that I thought there was. But maybe there isn’t. Maybe you’re completely empty inside. Is that why you have to fill yourself up with wine every day?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I wasn’t angry now. It suddenly seemed to me to be very important that I understood what Catherine was trying to tell me, but somehow her words made no more sense than if she had been speaking in Mandarin. ‘I’m not a drunkard, as you seem to think. Since I inherited the undercroft, I’ve become very interested in wine.’