The Crush

The bunkhouse was in the French style, painted white under a black slated roof, upon which sat a rusting iron cockerel who used to tell which way the wind blew. The floorboards creaked under Harrison as he crept out. Dawn chased shadows across the Pyrenees, bringing the last day of the crush.

Izzy was in the mess, preparing breakfast, “el madrugador” she said, handing him a cup of coffee. He drank it on the porch watching the sunrise. Gustaf strolled towards the mess, bareback, his T-shirt slung over his shoulder. Harrison watched the horizon, “sun coming up,” he said. “That’s a surprise,” Gustaf grinned, “come on, starving.” Harrison thought Gustaf a god disguised as a mortal. Harrison was at the stage of life, where he didn’t know if Gustaf was the boy he wanted to be, or the boy he wanted to have.

The other vendangeurs began filing into the mess. Izzy served up eggs, fried potatoes, bacon, beans and doorstep slices of bread on Bavarian plates and hot coffee in enamelled mugs. Le Bouchon, snout and fur of a bear, her nails long hooked talons, came in barking at them to get going. She winked at Harrison. Once he had stumbled across her swimming in the rockpools naked as the day she erupted from hell and she had taken a liking to him. She gave him special treatment, which embarrassed him, because she was harsh with most everyone else. Once, as he was climbing into the truck, she had playfully slapped his ass to the delight of everyone watching. It had mortified him.

In the trucks heading down to the vineyard, the grape pickers were quiet, just the odd chattered word, one or two smoking. Up the south facing slopes they chugged, to the furthest reaches of the steep terrain. They hopped from the trucks more eager than usual, people were already joking and kidding.

Harrison and Gustaf were porters. They each hauled a backpack called a hotte, the pickers placed their bunches of grapes into bushels which they collected. Harrison still found it tough going but he liked that you got to move around and chat to everyone. Gustaf did it at his ease, it was his ninth season. It was in his blood. His folks had made the wine-picking pilgrimage for fifty years, driving up from Madrid.

They were plucking the hardy merlot grape. Harrison possessed a vague notion of plucking dark blue skinned blackbird song. He liked the tough little merlot – it was patient, allowing Pinot and the others to be plucked first. It was Harrison’s first season. He adored everything about the vineyard. He wrote poetry about the grapes. He thought often about the grapevines starting to swell and bursting open in early spring, then flowering in later spring, followed by the swelling of the young, green, hard grapes and then their turning red or yellow as they ripened in the sun. Harrison liked to think about the hands of beautiful blue-eyed Alicia, the Andalusian girl, plucking grapes from this little corner of the world, that would end up in a bottle of merlot on a table in Buenos Aries, during a romantic meal, that resulted in a little Argentine being born. Harrison thought of the grapes as being alive and prescient. Indeed, some of the grapes would live on beyond the lives of the pickers, perhaps in a coveted bottle in a dusty cellar somewhere in Moscow.

It was the last day of the vendange, the grape harvest, affectionately referred to as the crush. People were in giddy form. Claudia let her sharp shears fall on her foot and tore flesh, the Greek boy, Leon took her to one of the trucks to tend to it. When they returned, Claudia’s silences and blushes gave her away, Leon had tended to more than her poor foot.

Harrison and Gustaf took their wrapped lunches and sat under the shade of the vines. They looked down on St. Emilion, across to Pomerol, across the Dordogne and the Garonne rivers feeding the Gironde estuary, which flowed into the Bay of Biscay. Gustaf took a bottle of merlot from his knapsack, “cadeau pour toi”, he said, “dernier jour”. He poured the wine into two glasses. They toasted, the wine flowed down Harrison’s throat soft as velvet, a vague prune sweetness with a hint of chocolate, the creamy taste lingered in his mouth. They ate ravenously - bread with cheese and salami, tortillas and sweet cake.

“When you are back in rainy England, you’ll miss this,” Gustaf said.

“What good do you reckon the view does for the grapes?”

“I don’t know”, Gustaf said, “I ain’t no grape.”

“It’s almost a pity to pluck them.”

“If the grape is not picked,” Gustaf said, “as in Ovid, she becomes wretched and sleepless with anguish, starts to waste away. Her skin grows dry and shrivelled, the lovely bloom of her flesh loses all moisture, nothing remains but a stone.”

“Did you see Claudia and Leon?”

“I saw them,” Gustaf smiled, “young love is sweet.”

They gulped the wine and dozed in the shade of the vines, their T-shirts serving as pillows, the heat of the earth on their backs, the great wine country spread below them. The breeze carried merry voices of the others lunching, the static sound of a mariachi band lilting from the truck radio. Gustaf lay across and kissed Harrison on the lips and they fell into one another. They broke hearing Le Bouchon calling them back to work. They tumbled from the vines. She stood, curving her pincers out into two great arcs. She would not in a thousand lifetimes imagine what they were doing in there, their mouths red and stinging.

For Harrison, that afternoon was very heaven. Sun blazing down on the terraces, people jolly in anticipation of the fiesta. They were all comrades now, after a season spent in the vines together. There was a puck on the shoulder here, a hug now and again, some were making arrangements to meet back in Galicia, back in La Rochelle. A sadness descended on the little troop as they made their way down the hill for the last time. When the trucks pulled up to the yard, the hum of activity in front of the big house, busy setting up for the carnival, lifted their spirits.

Harrison took his towel and wash things, went into the washroom, showered the dust and earth of the vineyards off his body, shaved, brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He dressed, putting on the clean shirt he had been keeping. He made his way across to the grand festival. Strings of electric bulbs ran from the big house across the front crease to the barn, under which were four long trestle tables at which the vendangeurs and the winemakers were sat. Harrison sat across from Gustaf, he looked up and winked, Harrison’s heart swelled.

The table was crammed with bottles of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and Malbec and sauvignon blanc and sémillon. Room was made for large steaming bowls of beef bourguignon and coq au vin. Platters of potatoes dauphinoise, quiche lorraine, breads, Lyonnaise salad and mushroom risotto were plonked down. Followed by canelés and pear tart and then cheese plates with crackers. Throughout the feast, wine was poured, wine was drunk. When everyone was fed and watered, the winemakers made speeches, La Bouchon made a speech, Izzy made a speech, thanking the workers and blessing the harvest.

After they ate, there was a bonfire burning, someone had brought a guitar and another a fiddle and someone was blowing into a harmonica. The air smelt of the vines and of the earth and of perfume and cologne. People tipsy now on wine, began to dance. Harrison listened to Alvaro, the old, hardy grandpappy from the big house, tell tales of that country, about people who had lived in it, fallen in love in it, vanished from it. He spoke of wine and said that a person who has plucked grapes, can appreciate life, Harrison liked that.

Silly dancing started, Gustaf and Harrison pretended to waltz, people hollered and whistled. Their hearts burned for one another. They strolled away from the bonfire, through the poplars, down the quiet road and into the lower reaches of the vines.

Gustaf took Harrison’s hand, told him about his life in Madrid, that he would be doing his final year in medicine and would become a paediatrician. In the light he looked wild. Harrison looked down on the big house and bonfire, strains of music and laughter drifted on the night air.

“You will remember me?” Gustaf asked.

Harrison would remember their first date under the vines drinking merlot for the rest of his life. Which was not long. Harrison was dying, knew he was dying. A doctor below in Bordeaux had told him the news that he had feared this while past. He reckoned there was no point in telling anything about that now and ruining a perfect day.

“Whenever I drink merlot,” Harrison said.

“You want me?”

“Christ yes,” he said, “yes.”