Virgile's Vineyard by Patrick Moon

Author:Patrick Moon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 781783067725
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

August

‘I think I must be the only Frenchman not on holiday,’ said Virgile, slumping wearily into his solitary armchair with a homemade after-dinner tisane. ‘Have you noticed? Even the vines are deserted at this time of year.’

‘I thought August holidays were compulsory for the French,’ I answered from the sofabed. ‘Won’t they cancel your citizenship?’

‘Others may be ready for the vendange but I’m not,’ he sighed. ‘There’s so much weeding I should be doing, plus another round of spraying. And as for the cave … I need so much more equipment to handle the extra volume this year and I haven’t even bought most of it yet!’

‘And the legal problem with the co-op?’ I asked, wondering whether much of his effort might still be in vain.

‘I think we might be all right. There’s certainly been nothing in response to our notice.’

‘What does Serge say about it all?’

‘Luckily, he sees the funny side,’ yawned Virgile, rubbing sleep from his eyes. ‘He says, if one of us has to go to prison, it ought to be him because I’m productive and he’s completely useless. I could certainly have worse landlords.’

I was feeling almost as exhausted as Virgile myself. Whatever the percentage of the English population currently on holiday, much of it seemed to have arrived to share the sunshine at my house. Blithely ignoring the capacity of a three-bedroomed property, improbable numbers of visitors had been determined to demonstrate how much they were missing me and their sense of loss had conveniently climaxed in August.

It was not so much the shopping and cooking that had worn me out. Indeed, many of my visitors were proving keen enough to indulge their favourite Mediterranean fantasies in my kitchen. It was the sheer logistics of juggling bodies between beds, sofas, futons and poolside recliners, borrowed from Krystina – which is why I had asked to spend the night on Virgile’s sofabed.

‘I saw a friend of yours last night,’ he said with a grin.

‘Krystina?’ I asked, my hopes of rejection suddenly reviving.

‘No,’ he blushed, ‘your neighbour. Monsieur Gros, isn’t it? He was down here playing boules in the square outside the cave but I think he’d had a few too many in Le Pressoir, so his boules kept rolling in amongst my cuves. You hadn’t told him about me, it seems.’

‘He’s very possessive. I didn’t think he’d understand.’

‘I don’t think he does … Understand about my sort of wine-making, I mean. We got talking, you see. He was telling me how I didn’t need half my equipment. “A lot of silliness” were his precise words,’ Virgile chuckled. ‘He said I was nearly as bad as this English neighbour of his, the one that he’d been dragging round the Languedoc all year, trying to teach him a thing or two about wine. That’s when I guessed there could only be one of you. But don’t worry, he said he’d get your ideas straightened out when you helped him with the vendange.’

‘He said what?’

‘I didn’t think you knew about that bit!’ Virgile laughed at my look of blank dismay.

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