Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,65
not have noticed that they ran the last race ten minutes ago.’
‘Really?’ He looked at his watch and surprisingly took immediate action, standing up and collecting his papers. ‘Very well then. Flora, I’ll be talking to Jack on the telephone… and er…’ he made an effort to remember my name as the rest of us stood up also.’Good to have met you… er… Tony.’ He nodded twice in lieu of shaking hands. ‘Any time you’re here with Flora… glad to have you.’
‘Thank you, Orkney,’ I said.
Isabella bent to give Flora a kiss in the air an inch off her cheek and looked vaguely at my sling, finding like Orkney that hands unavailable for shaking left goodbyes half unsaid.
‘Er…’ she said, ‘so nice…’
They went away down the hallway and Flora sat down again abruptly.
‘Thank goodness that’s over,’ she said fervently, i’d never have got through it without you. Thank goodness he liked you.’
‘Liked?’ I was sceptical.
‘Oh yes, dear, he asked you back, that’s practically unheard of.’
‘How did Isabella,’ I asked, ‘get him to go home?’
Flora smiled the first carefree smile of the day, her eyes crinkling with fun. ‘My dear, they will certainly have come in her car, and if he didn’t go when she says she would drive off and leave him. She did it once… there was a terrible fuss and Jack and I had to put him on a train. Because, as you’ve noticed dear, he likes his gin and a few months ago he was breathalised on the way home and lost his licence… but he doesn’t like one to talk about that either.’
After the races, during the evening shift in the shop, I telephoned again to Henri Tavel in Bordeaux and listened without much surprise to his news.
‘Mon cher Tony, there is no Château Caillot in St Estèphe. There is no Château Caillot in Haut Médoc. There is no Château Caillot in the whole region of Bordeaux.’
‘One thought there might not be,’ I said.
‘As for the négotiant Thiery et Fils…’ the heavy gallic shrug travelled almost visibly along the wires,’… there is no person called Thiery who is négotiant in Bordeaux. As you know, some people call themselves négotiants who work only in paper and never see the wine they sell, but even among these there is no Thiery.’
‘You’ve been most thorough, Henri.’
‘To forge wine labels is a serious matter.’
His voice, vibrating deeply, reflected an outrage no less genuine for being unsurprised. To Henri Tavel, as to all the chateau owners and wineshippers of Bordeaux, wine transcended religion. Conscious and proud of producing the best in the world they worked to stiff bureaucratic criteria which had been laid down in Médoc in 1855 and only fractionally changed since.
They still spoke of 1816, a year of undrinkable quality, as if it were fresh in their memory. They knew the day the grape harvest had started every year back beyond 1795 (September 24th). They knew that wine had been made uninterruptedly in their same vineyards for at least two thousand years.
Every single bottle of the five hundred and fifty million sent out from the region each year had to be certified and accounted for; had to be worthy of the name it bore; had to be able to uphold the reputation for the whole of its life. And the life of a Bordeaux red wine could be amazing… With Henri Tavel I had myself tasted one ninety years old which still shone with colour and sang on the palate.
To forge a Bordeaux chateau label and stick it on an amorphous product of the European wine lake was a heresy of burning-at-the-stake proportions. Henri Tavel wanted assurances that the forgers of Caillot would feel the flames. I could offer only weak-sounding promises that everyone would do their best.
‘It is important,’ he insisted.
‘Yes, I know it is. Truly, Henri, I do know.’
‘Give my regards,’ he said, ‘to your dear mother.’
Life continued normally on the next day, Wednesday, if a disgruntledly itching arm could be considered normal. I was due to take it back to the hospital for inspection the following afternoon and meanwhile went on using the sling much of the time, finding it comfortable and a good excuse for not lifting the cases. Brian had become anxiously solicitous at the sight of it and carefully took even single bottles out of my grasp. Mrs Palissey was writing down the telephone orders to save me the wincing. I felt cossetted and amused.
She and Brian left early with the deliveries because