Vintage (5 page)

“But you’re no gentleman,” purred Odile.

“Good point,” said Hilarian. They didn’t have to know that he’d simply helped the extraordinarily drunken subeditor from
Vinifera
to her room and kissed her good night at the door. “Who’s choosing the wine?” Hilarian changed the subject. He picked up the list and started to scan it. These three always took more trouble over choosing the wine than they did the food. “And whose expense account are we on today?” he added.

“I’ll pick this up,” said Ronald. Ronald had
Vinifera
’s most important column. It was said that winemakers the world over tweaked their wine to Ronald’s taste in search of his approval. His annual guides shifted millions of copies.

“In that case … ” Hilarian suggested Chassagne Montrachet at three hundred pounds a bottle. Would have been rude not to.

Over lunch, the three critics discussed the previous evening’s award ceremony. They agreed that the overall quality of that year’s competitors was patchy, the result of very strange summer weather. Unusually heavy rain in Northern Europe led to much of the grape harvest there rotting in the sodden vineyards. Meanwhile, Southern Europe roasted and the grapes in that part of the continent had a cooked jammy taste. Ronald and Odile also agreed that
Vinifera
had been “dumbing down.”

“I blame
Sideways,”
said Ronald. “Now that everyone is getting into wine they keep telling me to make my columns more goddamn accessible.”

“That’s a good thing, surely?” said Hilarian.

Ronald and Odile looked at him as though he were mad; they actually prided themselves on producing impenetrable columns. They were elitists. Wine intellectuals. Snobs. Since his own main money-spinner was a guide to supermarket wines retailing at less than a tenner a pop, Hilarian often wondered why they bothered with him.

“So,” said Ronald when the last of the wine had been drunk and the three were sipping espressos, “you ready to pay up, Hilarian?”

“Pay up?”

“Your bet,” said Odile helpfully. A slightly cruel smile twisted her perfectly made-up mouth. Somehow she had managed to eat an entire meal without displacing any of her signature red lipstick.

“I made a bet? Who with?” Hilarian asked. “And,” he added with a groan, “how much did I lose?”

He felt a chill travel the length of his body as Odile and Ronald looked at each other conspiratorially. Ronald’s
old eyes crinkled with pleasure. Hilarian tried to retain some semblance of composure but his mind was traveling back to the previous year’s
Vinifera
awards, when he bet Ronald ten thousand pounds that Maison Randon’s Éclat would take the highest prize in the champagne section. It didn’t. Ronald had insisted that the bet be paid though Hilarian couldn’t even remember having made it.

“You haven’t lost anything,” said Odile at last.

Hilarian was flooded with relief.

“Yet!”

Both she and Ronald laughed.

“By the look on both your faces,” said Hilarian, “I’m guessing that I made a silly wager.”

“Very silly,” said Odile.

Ronald agreed.

“Well, for goodness’ sake, tell me what it was.”

“That an English sparkling wine would carry off wine of the year at the
Vinifera
awards within the next five years.”

Hilarian didn’t put his head in his hands but that was what he felt like doing.

“Oh dear,” he said. “How much?”

“Fifty thousand dollars,” said Odile, clapping her hands in glee.

“Sweet Jesus.”

“Don’t blaspheme,” said Ronald.

“I must have been very drunk,” Hilarian groaned.

“Of course,” said Odile. “You always are.”

“Neither of you took me up on it,” said Hilarian hopefully.

Odile grinned wickedly as she reached into her handbag and pulled out a tattered paper napkin. She flourished it at Hilarian.

“Ta-daa! We wrote it down,” she said.

Hilarian looked at his signature in blurry felt pen with horror.

“ ‘Fifty thousand dollars. English sparkling wine to win Wine of the Year within the next five years.’ Signed Hilarian Jackson.” Odile read it out as though she were trying to be helpful.

“And you’re going to hold me to that?” Hilarian asked. He knew that shit-bag Ronald would. Fifty grand was nothing to that decrepit bastard. Odile came from money and Ronald’s books had made him a mint but Hilarian didn’t have that kind of cash. Nowhere near. He certainly had no “old money” as Ronald had often implied. Hilarian may have had a title but, as was the case with so many British aristocratic families, all the accompanying dosh had gone to repairing the drafty family pile in Northumberland.

“No,” said Odile. “That would be cruel.”

Hilarian was so relieved he thought he might lose control of his bowels.

“But when we had finished choking in horror at the very thought of a world-beating English sparkler, Ronald and I agreed that it would be a bit of fun to take you up on your challenge in another way. So, in five years’ time, we’re going to have our own private Judgment of Paris.”

Hilarian raised an eyebrow. The Judgment of Paris was the name given to the infamous Paris wine tasting of 1976. Prior to that date, it was taken as gospel that French wines were the best in the world and, to prove it conclusively, a wine merchant named Steven Spurrier organized a blind tasting comparing French wines to their American equivalents. The idea was to put the upstart Yanks in their place. Eight of the nine tasting judges were French. And they judged the best wines to be American. When the competition was reprised several years later, some of the French houses tactfully refused to take part.

“Weren’t there three competitors in the original judgment?” Hilarian mused. “I mean in the myth, of course.”

“Exactly,” said Odile. “You’re not the only one who had a classical education. Aphrodite, Athena and Hera.”

Hilarian gave Odile a small round of applause.

“And so we will judge wines from three different nations. All made from this year’s harvest. Champagne for my country. ‘Champagne’ from the United States for Ronald here.” Odile made little quotation marks in the air to remind her companions that she fully subscribed to the French view that no sparkling wine produced outside the Champagne region should ever be called by that name. “And from your country, Hilarian, a sparkling white wine. Whatever you want to call it.” She flicked her hand dismissively. “Or if you prefer, we can make you an honorary Italian and you could champion Asti Spumante instead. Might give you a better chance.”

“Ha ha ha,” said Hilarian.

“What do you think?”

“It’s not what I wagered,” said Hilarian.

“No,” said Ronald. “It gives you better odds. You only have to beat two other wines with your chosen vintage.”

“How much?” Hilarian ventured.

“Let’s stick with your original stake,” said Odile. “Fifty thousand dollars each.”

Hilarian tried not to wince. Fifty thousand dollars. What was that in pounds?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Ronald to Odile.

Thank goodness, thought Hilarian.

“It’s got to be fifty thousand sterling!”

“Even better,” Odile laughed.

“Are you serious?” Hilarian asked her.

“Of course,” said Odile. “Winner takes all. Agreed? I’m going to buy myself a nice little Mercedes with your cash, boys.”

“I wouldn’t be too cocky, Odile,” said Ronald. “You remember 1976.”

“Not as well as you, old man,” said Odile. “Are you in, Hilarian?”

He couldn’t afford to be. He had an ex-wife, two teenage sons to put through university and a telephone-number overdraft. But the moment of reckoning was five whole years away. Maybe he would have fifty grand to spare by then. He didn’t want to look a party pooper. Or give Ginsburg a reason to think he wasn’t doing quite as well as him. And perhaps … a tiny flicker of optimism tickled the back of Hilarian’s brain. His wasn’t a
totally
impossible position. Some of the finest palates in the world had mistaken the Sussex sparkler Nyetimber for vintage champagne. And if he did win, what he could do with a hundred thousand pounds … 

“I’m in,” he said as confidently as he could. “You know I think East Sussex has a terroir that easily rivals that of the Marne. And if there’s one good thing about global warming, it’s that it has been fabulous for the Great Britain grape. We’ve had a couple of outstanding years. I’d be happy to put a hundred thousand pounds on an English sparkler.”

“Then let’s raise the bet!” said Ginsburg.

“No,” said Hilarian quickly. “Really, fifty grand is fine. I wouldn’t want you to have to raid your retirement fund, Ronald.”

“Then it’s settled,” said Odile. “I love a competition. Fifty thousand each. We’ll declare our chosen vineyards at the London wine fair in June. These are the parameters. No bigger than fifty hectares. Must never have won an award before.”

Bugger, thought Hilarian. That ruled out Nyetimber and Ridgeview.

“May the best wine win,” said Ronald.

They raised a toast to that.

“OK. Let’s make this official.” Ronald got out his pen and started to draw up a contract on another napkin.

“Will you please rip that up?” said Hilarian, nodding at the original wager from the night before.

“Don’t you want to keep it as a souvenir of your overarching optimism?” Odile teased.

After lunch, Hilarian felt the beginnings of a headache as he climbed into a taxi and it wasn’t the Chassagne Montrachet that had brought it on. Had he really just bet fifty thousand pounds that he could find a hitherto unknown sparkling wine from England that would beat a vintage champagne? He ran through the possibilities in his mind. And decided that there were no possibilities.

If the other two didn’t let him wriggle out of this bet, he was stuffed.

K
elly was smoking the remains of a cigar someone had left behind in room 506 when her supervisor caught her. In her hurry to put the cigar out, she missed the ashtray balanced on the bed beside her and stubbed the glowing butt straight into a pillow instead. The smell of singed feathers instantly filled the room.

Kelly fanned the smoke ineffectively.

“Kelly!”

She waited to be told she could collect her wages on the way out.

“You know you shouldn’t be smoking,” said Geraldine. But the expression on her boss’s face told Kelly that her illicit puff on a Monte Cristo was the least of Geraldine’s concerns that morning.

“We need to talk,” said Geraldine ominously. “What I’ve got to say is very unpleasant, so I want you to sit down.”

Kelly’s heart flapped against her rib cage as she sat back down on the bed. Geraldine shook her head. This is it, thought Kelly. She’s found out. Just that morning, one of the Polish chambermaids had caught Kelly buttoning up her overall as she followed Daniel Weston out of an empty room where they’d spent their usual half hour. Alicia must have said something to Geraldine. And now the jig was up. She’d definitely get the sack. It was a shitty job but Kelly couldn’t afford to lose it.

“Sorry, I … ” Kelly began. “I can explain. You see, I was feeling faint and I had to lie down and this bloke … ”

Geraldine put up her hand to stop Kelly’s excuses. “It’s OK. Forget about it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Kelly, sweetheart … ”

Sweetheart? Kelly was even more on her guard.

“Your mum’s been on the phone. Said she’s been trying to get you on your mobile but you’ve not been answering. Is your phone working?”

Of course Kelly’s phone wasn’t working. As usual, she was out of credit.

“It’s urgent,” Geraldine continued. “You better get home right away. Now.”

“Right now?” Kelly had another three hours left on her shift.

“Yes,” said Geraldine. “Oh, you poor girl! Come here.”

Geraldine threw her arms around the younger woman and squeezed her tightly.

“Is Mum OK?” Kelly asked, suddenly really worried. “Has something happened?”

“Your mum’s fine,” said Geraldine.

Then what was the problem, Kelly wondered. What was all this friendliness about?

“Your dad’s dead.”

Kelly took up Geraldine’s kind offer of an afternoon off.

“You look after yourself,” Geraldine told her. “Get a taxi straight home, you hear?” She handed Kelly a twenty-pound note. “Call me and let me know you’re OK.”

“It’ll probably cost twenty-five to get to Tooting from here,” said Kelly, folding the twenty into her wallet.

Geraldine and the other chambermaids scraped together five more pound coins to cover the rest of the fare.

And now Kelly was spending their money in Topshop, Oxford Circus. There was, you see, absolutely no need to hurry home as far as Kelly was concerned. Her dad was dead. So what? She’d never met him. In fact, her mother had always refused to tell Kelly his name, leading Kelly to conclude that her mother didn’t actually know who he was either. The slag.

With five pounds left after she had bought herself a couple of T-shirts, Kelly bought a top-up card for her phone. An hour later, she finally called her mum.

“Where the hell are you? I want you back home,” said Marina. “Now.”