‘That damned jockey left his run too late,’ Orkney said, but without undue viciousness. ‘Breezy Palm was still making up ground at the end. You saw that. If he’d got at him sooner...’
‘Difficult to tell,’ I said, drawling.
‘I told him not to leave it too late. I told him.’
‘You told him not to hit the horse,’ Isabella said calmly. ‘You can’t have it both ways, Orkney.’
Orkney could, however. Throughout the sandwiches, the cheese and the strawberry tartlets he dissected and discussed the race stride by stride, mostly with disapproval. My contention that his colt had shown great racing spirit was accepted. Flora’s defence of the jockey wasn’t. I grew soundly tired of the whole circus and wondered how soon we could leave.
The waitress appeared again in the doorway asking if Orkney needed anything else, and Orkney said yes, another bottle of gin.
‘And make sure it’s Seagram’s,’ he said. The waitress nodded and went away, and he said to me, ‘I order Seagram’s just because the caterers have to get it in specially. They serve their own brand if you don’t ask. They charge disgraceful prices... I’m not going to make life easy for them if I can help it.’
Flora’s and Isabella’s expressions, I saw, were identical in pained resignation. Orkney had mounted his hobby horse and would complain about the caterers for another ten minutes. The arrival of the fresh bottle didn’t check him, but at the end he seemed to remember my own job and said with apparently newly-reached decision, ‘It’s local people like you who should be providing the drinks, not this huge conglomerate. If enough people complain to the Clerk of the Course, I don’t see why we couldn’t get the system put back to the old ways. Do you?’
‘Worth a try,’ I said non-committally.
‘What you want to do,’ he insisted, ‘is propose yourself as an alternative. Give these damn monopolists a jolt.’
‘Something to think about,’ I murmured, not meaning to in the least, and he lectured me at tiresome length on what I ought to do personally for the box-renters of Martineau Park, not to mention for all the other racecourses where the same caterers presided, and what I should do about the other firms of caterers who carved up the whole country’s racecourses between them.
‘Er... Orkney,’ Flora said uncertainly, when the tirade had died down, ‘I do believe, you know, that at a few courses they really have finished with the conglomerates and called in local caterers, so perhaps... you never know.’
Orkney looked at her with an astonishment which seemed to be based less on what she’d said than on the fact of her knowing it. ‘Are you sure, Flora?’
‘Yes... I’m sure.’
‘There you are then,’ he said to me. ‘What are your waiting for?’
‘I wouldn’t mind shuttling the drinks along,’ I said. ‘But what about the food? This food is good, you’d have to admit. That’s where these caterers excel.’
‘Food. Yes, their food’s all right,’ he said grudgingly.
We’d finished every crumb and I could have eaten the whole lot again. Orkney returned to the subject of Breezy Palm and two drinks later had exhausted even Isabella’s long-suffering patience.
‘If you want me to drive you home, Orkney, the time is now,’ she said. ‘You may not have noticed that they ran the last race ten minutes ago.’
‘Really?’ He looked at his watch and surprisingly took immediate action, standing up and collecting his papers. ‘Very well then. Flora, I’ll be talking to Jack on the telephone... and er...’ he made an effort to remember my name as the rest of us stood up also. ‘Good to have met you... er... Tony.’ He nodded twice in lieu of shaking hands. ‘Any time you’re here with Flora... glad to have you.’
‘Thank you, Orkney,’ I said.
Isabella bent to give Flora a kiss in the air an inch off her cheek and looked vaguely at my sling, finding like Orkney that hands unavailable for shaking left goodbyes half unsaid.
‘Er...’ she said, ‘so nice...’
They went away down the hallway and Flora sat down again abruptly.
‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ she said fervently, ‘I’d never have got through it without you. Thank goodness he liked you.’
‘Liked?’ I was sceptical.
‘Oh, yes, dear, he asked you back, that’s practically unheard of.’
‘How did Isabella,’ I asked, ‘get him to go home?’
Flora smiled the first carefree smile of the day, her eyes crinkling with fun. ‘My dear, they will certainly have come in her car, and if he didn’t go when she says she would drive off and leave him. She did it once... there was a terrible fuss and Jack and I had to put him on a train. Because, as you’ve noticed dear, he likes his gin and a few months ago he was breathalised on the way home and lost his licence... but he doesn’t like one to talk about that either.’
After the races, during the evening shift in the shop, I telephoned again to Henri Tavel in Bordeaux and listened without much surprise to his news.
‘Mon cher Tony, there is no Château Caillot in St Estèphe. There is no Château Caillot in Haut Médoc. There is no Château Caillot in the whole region of Bordeaux.’
‘One thought there might not be,’ I said.
‘As for the négotiant Thiery et Fils...’ the heavy gallic shrug travelled almost visibly along the wires,’... there is no person called Thiery who is négotiant in Bordeaux. As you know, some people call themselves négotiants who work only in paper and never see the wine they sell, but even among these there is no Thiery.’
‘You’ve been most thorough, Henri.’
‘To forge wine labels is a serious matter.’
His voice, vibrating deeply, reflected an outrage no less genuine for being unsurprised. To Henri Tavel, as to all the chateau owners and wineshippers of Bordeaux, wine transcended religion. Conscious and proud of producing the best in the world they worked to stiff bureaucratic criteria which had been laid down in Médoc in 1855 and only fractionally changed since.
They still spoke of 1816, a year of undrinkable quality, as if it were fresh in their memory. They knew the day the grape harvest had started every year back beyond 1795 (September 24th). They knew that wine had been made uninterruptedly in their same vineyards for at least two thousand years.
Every single bottle of the five hundred and fifty million sent out from the region each year had to be certified and accounted for; had to be worthy of the name it bore; had to be able to uphold the reputation for the whole of its life. And the life of a Bordeaux red wine could be amazing... With Henri Tavel I had myself tasted one ninety years old which still shone with colour and sang on the palate.
To forge a Bordeaux chateau label and stick it on an amorphous product of the European wine lake was a heresy of burning-at-the-stake proportions. Henri Tavel wanted assurances that the forgers of Caillot would feel the flames. I could offer only weak-sounding promises that everyone would do their best.
‘It is important,’ he insisted.
‘Yes, I know it is. Truly, Henri, I do know.’
‘Give my regards,’ he said, ‘to your dear mother.’
Life continued normally on the next day, Wednesday, if a disgruntledly itching arm could be considered normal. I was due to take it back to the hospital for inspection the following afternoon and meanwhile went on using the sling much of the time, finding it comfortable and a good excuse for not lifting the cases. Brian had become anxiously solicitous at the sight of it and carefully took even single bottles out of my grasp. Mrs Palissey was writing down the telephone orders to save me the wincing. I felt cossetted and amused.