“Go get something to eat and enjoy your string quartet,” I said to her. “Eli and I will take over for a while. I think he left you a sausage. Maybe two.”
She smiled. “Thanks. Amanda Heyward called about half an hour ago. Said she planned to drop by to give you the fixture cards for the next few months. Also something about a guest list.”
A fixture card was a one-month calendar listing dates and locations of meets for a foxhunt. For more than a century, my farm had been part of the territory of the Goose Creek Hunt. During hunting season their meets commenced at Highland Farm once every five or six weeks. Amanda, the GCH’s secretary and an old family friend, was responsible for distributing the cards.
As thanks for letting the hunt ride through our farm so often, she’d also offered to take charge of the guest list for our auction and mail the invitations. Amanda had worked in corporate fund-raising for heavyweight multinationals and big-name museums for years until too many eighty-hour workweeks burned her candle to a charred wick. Her offer was a godsend.
She showed up in the tasting room dressed in mud-spattered jodhpurs, riding boots, and a high-necked white blouse, her long gray-brown hair pulled up in a windblown knot, ruddy face sunburned after an afternoon of galloping across the countryside. She kissed Eli and me and accepted the glass of Cabernet Sauvignon he poured for her.
“I just went riding with Sunny.” She climbed up on one of the bar stools and dropped a leather satchel on the floor. “Heard you were there this morning discussing Jack’s wine cellar, Eli. All that security stuff he wants to install is driving Sunny crazy. Costs a fortune. What does he keep in there worth that kind of money? The goblet they used at the Last Supper?”
“You’d be surprised,” Eli said. “He’s got some wines you’ll never find anywhere anymore.”
“Yeah, but around here everyone’s got fantastic or expensive vintages on their sideboard or in the basement. I know I do—and half the time we don’t even bother to lock our front door it’s so safe.” She set her glass on the bar and tucked a stray piece of hair back into her French knot.
“Among other things, Jack has verticals of some of the legendary Bordeaux,” Eli said.
“What’s a vertical?” Amanda asked.
“A bottle of wine for every single year it was made. Sorry,” he said. “I thought you knew wine jargon.”
Amanda babysat for us when we were kids and she’d changed Eli’s diapers. Mine, too. Eli, acting pompous, didn’t impress her.
“I know enough about wine to know some of those years had to be duds,” she said. “So he’s got swill among the gems.”
“Not exactly.” I joined her on another bar stool. Some days my bad leg ached worse than others. Today was one of those days. “Most wine is drunk in the year it’s produced. It’s only the good stuff that gets laid down to drink later. If the year was a dud, as you said, those bottles generally were consumed right away. Later it’s harder to find that vintage, which drives up the price. The value of owning verticals comes from the fact that it’s a complete collection.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “But I still think the last time anyone had to worry about locking something up around here was when the Yankees were in town during the War of Northern Aggression. Jack’s going really over the top with that bionic password stuff or whatever it is he’s thinking about.”
I saw Eli suck in his breath. He wasn’t going to let this go. I glared at my brother and said to Amanda, “Didn’t you want to talk about the guest list for the auction?”
“Oh, sure.” She bent to retrieve her satchel from the floor and missed seeing Eli make a face at me and roll his eyes. When she sat up, she put on a pair of reading glasses and opened a paisley folder, pulling out a spreadsheet.
“We have just over one hundred sixty people coming so far. That’s not counting the RSVPs we’ve received since Ryan’s column on the Washington wine ran in the Trib. We’re probably going to be at our max capacity by the end of next week. Then we start turning people away.” She looked up over the top of her glasses.
“What a shame,” I said. “Why don’t we talk to Mick about setting up a tent in his garden? Then we don’t have to turn away anybody.”
“His house is magnificent,” Amanda said, “now that Sunny almost finished redecorating. I’d hate not to use it. We could put a tent any old place.”
“Let’s think about it. We’ll figure out something,” I said. “By the way, Ryan agreed to be our auctioneer and said he’ll write up the wine notes for the catalog. It looks like we’re going to have plenty of donations thanks to the Romeos. They’re like the Mafia volunteer squad putting the squeeze on people. Everyone’s contributing at least one bottle. Sometimes more.”
“I’ll bet your new neighbors aren’t.” Amanda’s eyes went cold. “The Orlandos.”
“I don’t know. They only just moved in,” I said. “I haven’t met them.”
“His law firm represents animal rights groups.” She slapped the folder with the spreadsheet shut and jammed her glasses into a small Burberry case with a sharp shove. “She’s the kind who throws paint on people who wear fur. They came by the kennels asking about the condition of the hounds. Very confrontational. Shane happened to be there and was more polite to them than I would have been. He said the hounds were well treated and not to worry. Then they insisted on coming inside to see for themselves. So he told them it was private property and asked them to leave. The next day they sent a letter saying we should consider their farm closed to the Goose Creek Hunt. Until hell froze over.”
She picked up her wineglass and downed the contents.
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“They have the right to keep you from foxhunting there if they want to,” Eli said. “It’s their land now.”
“Which has been part of our territory for more than a century.” Amanda banged the base of her wineglass on the bar emphasizing each word. “Oh, God, sorry. I’m just livid every time I think about it. I know it’s their land, but they have no idea what they’ve just done. What that means.”
“No visit from the Welcome Wagon?” Eli said and smirked.
I slashed an index finger across my throat and shook my head. He smirked some more.
“You grew up here,” Amanda said. “On this farm. Or have you forgotten about it, now that you’re living in subdivision land?”
“Come on, Amanda, that’s not—”
Amanda cut him off. “George Washington had foxhounds. He wrote about hunting all the time in his diaries. So did Jefferson. The earliest surviving record of organized foxhunting in America comes from right here in northern Virginia—a pack organized by Lord Fairfax in 1747.” She recited the names and figures, glaring at Eli. “Foxhunting is part of our history, our culture. You know perfectly well how hard we fight for the open spaces, to keep land pristine and undeveloped. The Orlandos came from Manhattan. Acres of concrete between two rivers. The only place more disconnected from reality and the world of nature is Disneyland.”
“Have you tried talking to them?” I eyed my brother, who grinned at me and picked up my cane, hooking it around his neck to fake a swift stage exit.
Amanda looked at Eli like he was dryer lint, then glanced at her watch. “Not yet. There’s a meeting at the kennel in half an hour to discuss what we’re going to do. In the worst case, how to work around losing all that land. I’d better get going. I’ll call you about the guest list in a day or two, Lucie.” She nodded stiffly at my brother. “Eli.”
After she left I looked at my October fixture card. They’d scheduled a meet at Highland Farm for the sixteenth, in nine days. Mick now rode with the Goose Creek Hunt. Maybe I could ask him what the hunt decided to do about losing the Orlandos’ land as part of their country. With the auction coming up, I didn’t want to get Amanda worked up on that subject again.