Blackberry Wine Read Free Page A

of Stolly instead, OK?’
    ‘Kerry, stop talking like my mother.’
    ‘Then stop behaving like a child. Why can’t you just grow up, for God’s sake?’ It was a perpetual refrain.
    Stubbornly: ‘The wine was Joe’s. I don’t expect you to understand.’
    She sighed, exasperated, and turned away.
    ‘Oh, please yourself. You always do. The way you’ve fixated on that old bugger for all these years, anyone would think he was your father or something, instead of some dirty old git with an eye for little boys. Go on, be a mature adult and poison yourself. If you die they might even do a commemorative reprint of
Jackapple Joe
, and I could sell my story to the
TLS
—’
    But Jay was not listening. He lifted the glass to his face.The scent hit him again, the dim cidery scent of Joe’s house, with the incense burning and the tomato plants ripening in the kitchen window. For a moment he thought he heard something, a clatter and glitzy confusion of glass, like a chandelier falling onto a laid table. He took a mouthful.
    ‘Cheers.’
    It tasted as dreadful as it did when he was a boy. There was no grape in this brew, simply a sweetish ferment of flavours, like a whiff of garbage. It smelt like the canal in summer and the derelict railway sidings. It had an acrid taste, like smoke and burning rubber, and yet it was evocative, catching at his throat and his memory, drawing out images he thought were lost for ever. He clenched his fists as the images assailed him, feeling suddenly light-headed.
    ‘Are you OK?’ It was Kerry’s voice, resonant, as if in a dream. She sounded irritated, though there was an anxious edge to her voice. ‘Jay, I told you not to drink that stuff, are you all right?’
    He swallowed with an effort.
    ‘I’m fine. Actually it’s rather pleasant. Pert. Tart. Lovely body. Bit like you, Kes.’ He broke off, coughing, but laughing at the same time. Kerry looked at him, unamused.
    ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that. It isn’t my name.’
    ‘Neither is Kerry,’ he pointed out maliciously.
    ‘Oh well, if you’re going to be vulgar I’m going to bed. Enjoy your vintage. Whatever turns you on.’
    The words were a challenge which Jay left unanswered, turning his back to the door until she had gone. He was being selfish, he knew. But the wine had awakened something in him, something extraordinary, and he wanted to explore it further. He took another drink and found his palate was becoming accustomed to the wine’s strange flavours. He could taste old fruit now, burnt to hard black sugar, he could smell the juice from the vegetable-cutter and hear Joe singing along to his old radio at the back of the allotment. Impatiently he drained the glass, tasting thezesty heart of the wine, feeling his heart beating with renewed energy, pounding as if he had run a race. Below stairs the five remaining bottles rattled and shook in a frenzy of exuberance. Now his head felt clear, his stomach level. He tried for a moment to identify the sensation he felt and eventually recognized it as joy.

4
Pog Hill, Summer 1975
    JACKAPPLE JOE. AS GOOD A NAME AS ANY. HE INTRODUCED HIMSELF as Joe Cox, with a slanted smile, as if to challenge disbelief, but even in those days it might have been anything, changing with the seasons and his changing address.
    ‘We could be cousins, you and me,’ he said on that first day, as Jay watched him in wary fascination from the top of the wall. The vegetable-cutter whirred and clattered, throwing out pieces of sour-sweet fruit or vegetable into the bucket at his feet. ‘Cox and Mackintosh. Both apples, aren’t we? That must make us nearly family, I reckon.’ His accent was exotic, bewildering, and Jay stared at him without comprehension. Joe shook his head, grinning.
    ‘Didn’t know you was called after an apple, did you? It’s a goodun, an American red apple. Plenty of taste. Got a young tree meself, back there.’ He jerked his head towards the back of the house. ‘But it’s