Something, I thought. I must do something. I had no weapon. Nothing. Gerard. Plaster of Paris.
What did I have...
I had knowledge.
Naylor hit Gerard’s face a swiping blow with his fist and when he had him off balance he tied the second wrist to the railing, and although I could then see only his back the desperation in Gerard’s body was like a shout.
In my mind I was begging, ‘No, don’t do it, no, no...’ and Naylor wound the bandage once round Gerard’s neck.
Knowledge.
The bandage went round twice and three times. Naylor was intent on the work. So was Denny, his back to me, the barrel of the gun drooping.
Gerard was kicking backwards and not reaching Naylor’s legs, yelling to him, screaming that what he was doing was useless, useless, people knew he was there and would come looking.
Neither Naylor nor Denny believed him. They were intent... enjoying... the wrapping of a living head... to turn it to rock.
The weapon I had was knowledge.
I moved. My muscles felt stiff. I slid jerkily round the vat I’d tested for St Estèphe and climbed its ladder.
Go on yelling, Gerard, I thought. Go on filling the hearing aid of the deaf man. Go on kicking. Keep them looking your way.
My hands grasped the locking nut which connected the hose to the valve at the top of the feeder vat. Usually I could turn them easily without a wrench. My hands slipped with sweat. I’d got to unlock it. Only chance. Had to have the hose off the vat.
Had to have the hose free at that end.
On top of the vat I strained with almost fury and felt the locking nut turn and turn again and come loose. I lifted the hose off the vat and carried the end of it with me down the short ladder, trying to do it all silently, making small noises that sounded frightful to me but brought no dreaded shouts from the floor.
I was down the ladder. By the pump. From the pump the main long hose ran down to the ground and away into the distance, going to the great storage vat in the main hall. Long hose, holding a good deal of wine.
I switched on the pump. Begging. Praying. Sick.
The pump went smoothly about its business, efficient beyond dream. Wine gushed out of the hose I held like red force-driven water out of a fire hose. I directed it straight at Naylor, drenching Denny on the way. I propped the spurting nozzle between the railings. I climbed over the railings myself and made the flying leap that had been so illogical, so impossible, so deadly. I landed on Denny who couldn’t see for wine, and grabbed his shotgun from him and hit him hard with it on the head.
Naylor, totally surprised, tried to clutch me. I felt such anger for him that he would have needed twice his strength. I caught him by his clothes and pushed him until he was under the gushing wine, and I pulled his head back by the hair until the wine was running full onto his face, onto his glasses and up his nose and into his opening mouth until he was beginning to choke.
I was drowning him, I thought.
Perhaps I shouldn’t.
He was gagging for breath. Waving his arms about. Helpless.
I half pulled, half pushed him back to the crate Gerard was tied to and propped him chest forwards against it, holding him there by leaning on his back.
He really was choking. Not breathing.
I hit him very hard with my palm below the shoulder blades and the air trapped in his lungs rushed out through the wine blockage in his trachea, and he began to breathe again in whooping gasps like whooping cough, air fighting against wine in all his bronchial tubes.
He had dropped the plaster of Paris bandage at Gerard’s feet. I picked up the roll, wet and soggy and pink now with wine, and unwound the layers from Gerard’s throat.
Naylor hadn’t had any scissors. The bandage led from Gerard’s neck down to one wrist and from there to the other. Tight knots on his wrists beyond undoing.
Something to cut with, to free him.
Old blunt penknife. I felt in my pocket for it and with some astonishment came up with Flora’s new sharp silver present. Blessed Flora.
I out the roll of bandage off Gerard’s wrist and then cut the bandages tying his wrists to the crate. Even when his wrists were no longer fixed there he held onto the rail for a few moments, and in that time I’d wound the end of the bandage roll about eight times around one of Naylor’s wrists instead, and fastened it similarly to the crate.
Naylor leaned over the crate, retching, coughing, his glasses opaque with wine, his body jerking with the effort of drawing breath. He seemed hardly to notice, much less fight, when I fastened his other wrist to the rail.
Denny on the floor returned to life. I looked down from tying knots and watched fuzzy thoughts begin to straighten out in his eyes, and I took one of the empty bottles out of the crate and hit him again with it on the head.
The bottle broke. A claret bottle, I remotely noticed. The pieces fell into the wine that was still flooding out in a red lake all over the floor, curling round corners, making rivers, pulsating down from the open hose. The smell of it filled the senses; heavily sensuous, headily potent.
So much wine... The main valve on the huge storage vat must be open, I thought. The whole thing must be emptying through the pump. Fifteen hundred gallons...
Denny was lying face down in it. I hauled him over to the crate, turned him onto his back, pulled his arms up, and with soggy pink bandage tied each of his wrists separately to one of the sturdy lower slats.
Wine swirled through his hair. If there was blood there also, I couldn’t see.
Gerard watched, leaning against the crate.
When I’d finished the essential tying there was still some bandage left in the roll. I wound some more of it round each of Naylor’s wrists, joining them in more and more layers to the crate, and then used the last of it to do the same for Denny.
The gypsum in the bandage had been already released to some extent by the wine so that my fingers were covered with pale pink slime. I picked an empty bottle from the crate and held it under the spurting hose until it was half filled and then I carefully poured wine over each tied wrist until the bandages were soaked right through.
Gerard watched throughout, speechless.
Finally I went up the stairs and switched off the pump.
The gusher stopped. The only sound suddenly was the laboured wheezing of Naylor fighting for breath.
I looked down for a moment at the scene below: at so much floor redly awash, at Denny lying on his back with his hands tied above his head, at Naylor heaving over the crate, at the shotgun lying in the wine, and the broken claret bottle... and the bottles in the crates.
The only thing that might cut through hardening plaster of Paris was broken glass.
I went down the stairs and carefully removed the broken bottle from anywhere near Denny, and took enough bottles out of the crate to make sure Naylor couldn’t reach any.
I pushed the shotgun well out of their reach with my foot.
What else?
Nothing else.
I was myself, like Naylor and Denny, soaked from head to foot with wine: jacket, trousers, shirt, socks, shoes, all dark red against dark red skin. Gerard alone, though copiously splashed, was relatively dry.
I said to him, ‘Could you fetch your car to the gate? I’ll drive from there, but I’m not quite sure that I’m what they’d expect in this neighbourhood.’
‘What about them?’ he said, looking at our captives.
‘We’ll send the posse. I’d like to get away from here first. Denny has a partner somewhere.’
‘Right. Yes, I’ll get the car.’ He sounded exhausted and very subdued, and looked anywhere but at my face.
Denny stirred and groaned. Naylor wheezed. In a very few minutes the bandages round their wrists would be pink rock, and it would take a saw to release them.
We left without locking anything. Gerard brought the car to the gates and I drove from there on, apologising as I got in for the stains I would be leaving on the upholstery. He said stains were secondary. He said little else.