Tales of the Unexpected Read online

  ‘You can’t be sure of that,’ his daughter said.

  ‘I’m telling you I can. Though I say it myself, I understand quite a bit about this wine business, you know. And anyway, heavens alive, girl, I’m your father and you don’t think I’d let you in for – for something you didn’t want, do you? I’m trying to make you some money.’

  ‘Mike!’ his wife said sharply. ‘Stop it now, Mike, please!’

  Again he ignored her. ‘If you will take this bet,’ he said to his daughter, ‘in ten minutes you will be the owner of two large houses.’

  ‘But I don’t want two large houses, Daddy.’

  ‘Then sell them. Sell them back to him on the spot. I’ll arrange all that for you. And then, just think of it, my dear, you’ll be rich! You’ll be independent for the rest of your life!’

  ‘Oh, Daddy, I don’t like it. I think it’s silly.’

  ‘So do I,’ the mother said. She jerked her head briskly up and down as she spoke, like a hen. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Michael, ever suggesting such a thing! Your own daughter, too!’

  Mike didn’t even look at her. ‘Take it!’ he said eagerly, staring hard at the girl. ‘Take it, quick! I’ll guarantee you won’t lose.’

  ‘But I don’t like it, Daddy.’

  ‘Come on, girl. Take it!’

  Mike was pushing her hard. He was leaning towards her, fixing her with two hard bright eyes, and it was not easy for the daughter to resist him.

  ‘But what if I lose?’

  ‘I keep telling you, you can’t lose. I’ll guarantee it.’

  ‘Oh, Daddy, must I?’

  ‘I’m making you a fortune. So come on now. What do you say, Louise? All right?’

  For the last time, she hesitated. Then she gave a helpless little shrug of the shoulders and said, ‘Oh, all right, then. Just so long as you swear there’s no danger of losing.’

  ‘Good!’ Mike cried. ‘That’s fine! Then it’s a bet!’

  ‘Yes,’ Richard Pratt said, looking at the girl. ‘It’s a bet.’

  Immediately, Mike picked up the wine, tipped the first thimbleful into his own glass, then skipped excitedly around the table filling up the others. Now everyone was watching Richard Pratt, watching his face as he reached slowly for his glass with his right hand and lifted it to his nose. The man was about fifty years old and he did not have a pleasant face. Somehow, it was all mouth – mouth and lips – the full, wet lips of the professional gourmet, the lower lip hanging downward in the centre, a pendulous, permanently open taster’s lip, shaped open to receive the rim of a glass or a morsel of food. Like a keyhole, I thought, watching it; his mouth is like a large wet keyhole.

  Slowly he lifted the glass to his nose. The point of the nose entered the glass and moved over the surface of the wine, delicately sniffing. He swirled the wine gently around in the glass to receive the bouquet. His concentration was intense. He had closed his eyes, and now the whole top half of his body, the head and neck and chest, seemed to become a kind of huge sensitive smelling-machine, receiving, filtering, analysing the message from the sniffing nose.

  Mike, I noticed, was lounging in his chair, apparently unconcerned, but he was watching every move. Mrs Schofield, the wife, sat prim and upright at the other end of the table, looking straight ahead, her face tight with disapproval. The daughter, Louise, had shifted her chair away a little, and sidewise, facing the gourmet, and she, like her father, was watching closely.

  For at least a minute, the smelling process continued; then, without opening his eyes or moving his head, Pratt lowered the glass to his mouth and tipped in almost half the contents. He paused, his mouth full of wine, getting the first taste; then, he permitted some of it to trickle down his throat and I saw his Adam’s apple move as it passed by. But most of it he retained in his mouth. And now, without swallowing again, he drew in through his lips a thin breath of air which mingled with the fumes of the wine in the mouth and passed on down into his lungs. He held the breath, blew it out through his nose, and finally began to roll the wine around under the tongue, and chewed it, actually chewed it with his teeth as though it were bread.

  It was a solemn, impassive performance, and I must say he did it well.

  ‘Um,’ he said, putting down the glass, running a pink tongue over his lips. ‘Um – yes. A very interesting little wine – gentle and gracious, almost feminine in the after-taste.’

  There was an excess of saliva in his mouth, and as he spoke he spat an occasional bright speck of it on to the table.

  ‘Now we can start to eliminate,’ he said. ‘You will pardon me for doing this carefully, but there is much at stake. Normally I would perhaps take a bit of a chance, leaping forward quickly and landing right in the middle of the vineyard of my choice. But this time – I must move cautiously this time, must I not?’ He looked up at Mike and smiled, a thick-lipped, wet-lipped smile. Mike did not smile back.

  ‘First, then, which district in Bordeaux does this wine come from? That’s not too difficult to guess. It is far too light in the body to be from either St Emilion or Graves. It is obviously a Médoc. There’s no doubt about that.

  ‘Now – from which commune in Médoc does it come? That also, by elimination, should not be too difficult to decide. Margaux? No. It cannot be Margaux. It has not the violent bouquet of a Margaux. Pauillac? It cannot be Pauillac, either. It is too tender, too gentle and wistful for Pauillac. The wine of Pauillac has a character that is almost imperious in its taste. And also, to me, a Pauillac contains just a little pith, a curious dusty, pithy flavour that the grape acquires from the soil of the district. No, no. This – this is a very gentle wine, demure and bashful in the first taste, emerging shyly but quite graciously in the second. A little arch, perhaps, in the second taste, and a little naughty also, teasing the tongue with a trace, just a trace of tannin. Then, in the after-taste, delightful – consoling and feminine, with a certain blithely generous quality that one associates only with the wines of the commune of St Julien. Unmistakably this is a St Julien.’

  He leaned back in his chair, held his hands up level with his chest, and placed the fingertips carefully together. He was becoming ridiculously pompous, but I thought that some of it was deliberate, simply to mock his host. I found myself waiting rather tensely for him to go on. The girl Louise was lighting a cigarette. Pratt heard the match strike and he turned to her, flaring suddenly with real anger. ‘Please!’ he said. ‘Please don’t do that! It’s a disgusting habit, to smoke at table!’

  She looked up at him, still holding the burning match in one hand, the big slow eyes settling on his face, resting there a moment, moving away again, slow and contemptuous. She bent her head and blew out the match, but continued to hold the unlighted cigarette in her fingers.

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ Pratt said, ‘but I simply cannot have smoking at table.’

  She didn’t look at him again.

  ‘Now, let me see – where were we?’ he said. ‘Ah, yes. This wine is from Bordeaux, from the commune of St Julien, in the district of Médoc. So far, so good. But now we come to the more difficult part – the name of the vineyard itself. For in St Julien there are many vineyards, and as our host so rightly remarked earlier on, there is often not much difference between the wine of one and the wine of another. But we shall see.’

  He paused again, closing his eyes. ‘I am trying to establish the “growth”,’ he said. ‘If I can do that, it will be half the battle. Now, let me see. This wine is obviously not from a first-growth vineyard – nor even a second. It is not a great wine. The quality, the – the – what do you call it? – the radiance, the power, is lacking. But a third growth – that it could be. And yet I doubt it. We know it is a good year – our host has said so – and this is probably flattering it a little bit. I must be careful. I must be very careful here.’

  He picked up his glass and took another small sip.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, sucking his lips, ‘I was right. It is a fourth growth. Now I am