She toyed with the idea of pouring herself another brandy, but it was easy to decide not to do it. No. Whatever else might happen to her, she didn’t think that was going to be her particular problem. It was enough to have watched it happen to her father.
‘Well now.’ Bell looked at her white face in the mirror. ‘While you are thinking about this, why not try to be totally honest?
‘Is it that you are scared of Edward being hurt like that one day if you disappear? You’re trying to protect him, in your heavy-handed way?
‘Well, yes …
‘Or are you really much more frightened of it happening to you? No commitment, therefore no risk?
‘Yes.’
Bell folded her arms on the dressing-table in front of her, laid her head on them and cried.
If someone else had told her her own story she would have dismissed it as too neat and pat. Incapable of loving, of marrying, because of her parents’ tragedy? Cool and collected outside in self-protection, but a guilty mess inside? Surely human beings were more complex than that?
‘This one isn’t,’ said Bell, through the sobs.
At last the storm subsided. She snatched up a handful of tissues from the box in front of her and blew her nose. A red-eyed spectre confronted her in the mirror.
‘What you really need,’ she addressed herself again, ‘is to look a complete fright tomorrow. That will give just the important, extra edge of confidence. Come on, Bell. What’s past is past, and the only thing that you can do now is carry on. At least you seem to understand yourself quite well.’
She put her tongue out at herself and caught the answering grin. That’s better.
She leant over and stuffed her passport and tickets into one of the pockets of her squashy leather handbag. Then she zipped and buckled the canvas holdall and stood the two bags side by side next to the door.
Notebooks, traveller’s cheques, file, tape recorder … she counted off in her head. All there.
She was ready to go, whatever might lie ahead.
‘Hello, gorgeous.’ The voice had an unmistakable Aussie twang. ‘All dressed up and somewhere to go? Not with me, as per usual.’
Without looking round, Bell knew that it was Max Morgan, wine correspondent of one of the local radio stations. She always felt that he only refrained from pinching her bottom because she was big enough to pinch him back. Still, she turned and smiled at him. His aggressiveness was redeemed by his raffish cowboy good looks, and she liked him well enough to ignore the challenge he invariably dangled at her. It was just a little harder to take than usual at five to ten on a Monday morning.
‘Hello, Max. Thank you for noticing the extra polish on my turnout this morning. As a matter of fact I am winging my way direct from here to Château Reynard itself.’
Max rolled his eyes and pursed his lips in a silent whistle of mock amazement.
‘Comment? Ze baron opens sa coeur to ze jolie Eenglish scribblaire?’ The parody French accent overlying the rich Australian vowels made Bell dissolve into laughter.
‘Something like that. It should be interesting.’
‘Too right. See if you can sweet talk him into getting out a bottle of the ’61. Haven’t tasted it myself, but I hear …’ He bunched his fingertips and kissed them extravagantly.
‘Mmmm. Shall we get on?’
They were standing at one end of a long, narrow room in the rear of Wigmore & Welch’s St James’s Street shop. The summer light was bright, and reflected off the white cloths spread over two long trestle tables down either side of the room. Along the length of the table, open bottles and rows of glasses were lined up. Down the centre of the room stood four waist-high metal cylinders; spittoons. Wigmore & Welch, wine merchants, were holding a press tasting for the publication of their latest list. Bell picked up a tasting sheet. Each wine was listed with blank spaces next to it for her comments.
‘Forty-seven wines,’ she remarked to Max. ‘Too many for me this morning. I’m just going to look at the clarets.’
‘Attagirl,’ he responded with his Wild West smile. ‘See what they’ve got that beats de Gillesmont.’
She walked the length of the room to where the line of high-shouldered bottles glowed against the white cloth. Wigmore & Welch prided themselves on their clarets, and today they were offering for comment a dozen fine wines from the sixties and seventies. Several of them would still be too young for drinking, but Bell was eager to see how they were developing, quietly sitting in their bottles. Her eyes flicked along the row of labels, then she picked up a bottle and poured an inch of wine into a glass. Quickly she held the glass up against the white cloth background to see the colour, then bent her head over the rim of the glass and sniffed sharply. Only then did she take a mouthful of wine, rolling it gently on her tongue and staring absently into the middle distance as she did so. Finally she twisted round and spat the mouthful into one of the tall metal spittoons.
Frowning with concentration now she scribbled on her tasting sheet ‘Good colour. Still closed in on the nose, but developing. Plenty of fruit and some oak.’ It was a special vocabulary, almost shorthand, but when Bell came back to her notes in a year, or two years, or whenever she tasted that particular wine again, it would be enough to trigger her memory.
Slowly she moved along the line of twelve bottles, tasting and spitting out a mouthful of each, writing quickly on her tasting sheet, talking to no one. Then she went back and tasted from three of the bottles again.
At last she pushed her hair back from her face and folded up her notes. The fine concentration needed was tiring, even after only twelve wines, and all round her people were working their way through forty-odd.
Across the room Max caught her eye and winked. Bell blew him a kiss, spoke briefly and in a low voice to two or three of the other tasters and turned to go. She would have to move quickly to get to Heathrow in time for her plane. At the door she met Simon Wigmore, scion of the family and latest recruit to the company of pinstriped well-bred young men who staffed the shop and the offices. His pink face brightened when he saw her.
‘Bell! Not going already?’
‘Yes, Simon, I’m sorry. I’ve got a plane to catch so I only had time to look at the clarets. The La Lagune is spectacular, isn’t it? Thank you for the tasting – I must dash.’
Simon Wigmore turned round to watch the tall, slim figure taking the steps two at a time. He sighed. Somehow he never seemed to be able to pin Bell Farrer down for long enough to … well, long enough for anything.
Out on the pavement Bell spotted the yellow light of a taxi and waved energetically.
‘Heathrow, please,’ she said and slammed the door behind her.
‘Right you are, duck,’ responded the driver, pleased. Bell stared out at the West End traffic and sighed with relief. At least she was on her way.
Three hours later
