The Naked Sommelier Read online

  The Naked sommelier

  A Laura McLove novel

  by

  Claire Doyle

  Maybe it’s better to arrive than travel hopelessly.

  I first met Leo after my mother died. When the inheritance cheque arrived, I considered my options carefully and decided to visit a psychic.

  Maggie Lightly advertised in the Evening Standard and I was not a little intrigued by where she lived: she lived on Abbey Road. She said her flat had a view of the zebra crossing.

  Three days later, we sat at a table by her window and I gazed out at the street below. She spread the cards into a Celtic Cross.

  “You’re a writer,” she said. I startled. She lifted my left hand, looked at the lifeline and said–damn her!–“You have the line of Mark Twain.” I had never considered such a thing.

  “Fiction or non-fiction?” I asked.

  “What’s the difference?” she replied. She was shrugging.

  “One has a beginning, a middle and an end. The other is about facts …”

  “What’s the difference?” she said again.

  I stared at her. I had nothing to say. I wasn’t a writer. I didn’t like writing and I didn’t have a story. I looked out the window and thought about that album cover. It was there, that’s where the fab four walked across the zebra crossing. People thought Paul McCartney was dead in 1969.

  Who me? A writer? I followed her advice and wrote junk for a year and then I understood why writers shoot themselves, turn to drink and take off on road trips. I cursed that psychic. I’d only gone to see what her flat was like. She lived on Abbey Road.

  Jobless, manless, childless and rudderless, I left London to add another to the list— homeless. Failure had been my towering achievement. Real life and its tick-tock lurked in the shadow but—like Morrissey—I’d never had a job because I never wanted one. There was one thing I now could do, however. I could afford to bugger off for a while. I fled London leaving the weary sense that everything in my life was over.Some go to Harvard, some go to Yale. Some go to Oxford or Cambridge. But I’m a mystic of a transcendentalist school.

  Hell, I went to Emerson College.

  1

  Emerson College, Sussex, England, October 2009

  It was a Friday morning and I heard the water outside my window. An odd sensation because I lived in the middle of the country, not by the sea. My window faced west from a tiny attic room with sloped roofing that I hit my head on as I opened it, and every morning someone—I never did find out who—switched on the garden water feature before I got up, and switched it off again in the late afternoon.

  The sound of running water in the middle of the country was a pleasant sensation where there was no stream, and I imagined the air that came in the open window was energised with negative ions. I needed those energised ions. I had a hangover.

  It was raining and, as it was a Friday, I skipped first class. We were reading Rudolf Steiner’s Agriculture Course but it was unstudiable, incomprehensible, supersensible even, as they say here at Emerson, and I’d read it alone once during a long weekend and was none the wiser for my trouble. I sat on the armchair below the window, opened my journal and began to write.

  I was forty-six then. Time was running out. Did I have enough of it left to write a novel? Jack Kerouac died at forty-seven from alcohol problems. I might just die with my novel inside me. I had learned about life and love but I couldn’t get it to flow on the page. What did men write about? War. Women. Sex. The Big Issues. What did women write about? Men. Children. Love. That’s what I decided to write about. Love. I opened my journal and began to write. Love. I wrote it again. Love. I deleted it. What is love? I deleted that too. What is sex? Ah! I began thinking about all the men I had ever known. Some nice. Some not so.

  Men! Goddammit! The words weren’t flowing, so what could I do? I needed a walk. I needed a holiday. What I had was a notebook and pen. I took my coat, hat, notebook and pen. I put on my boots and left the room. I walked down through Tablehurst farm, past the pigs, the Friday chicken slaughter and the heap of farm junk, on through mud past the apple orchard onto Forest Way and through the woods until the village green, but no-one was there as usual. Oh! Forest Row! You are too small for me! I wondered what to do with my day and as the sun was coming out, I took the bus to the seaside.

  By midday I was on Brighton seafront. I bought a hot doughnut at the pier and began walking westwards in the direction of Hove. At least I was having a walk. I had my notebook. I had my pen. I was ready for action. I walked past the derelict West Pier as far as the Peace Angel and sat on a bench. I got out my notebook. I put my notebook back. I decided to walk back towards The Lanes and find a bookshop.

  I found a bookshop. In the spiritual section, I picked up a book called a gratitude journal. Apparently by writing out what I wanted every day and feeling the sense of having it already, I could bring it to me. It was too good to be true! I could bring a novel to me! I could bring a man to me! I, Laura McLove will take on The Universe and I shall overcome! I bought the gratitude journal and went to the coffee shop. Now I had two notebooks and one pen. I found a copy of The Guardian, and ordered an Americano with milk. I sat on a sofa, opened the paper at the quick crossword and took out my pen.

  The first clue was three across: ‘pining for a loved one, (8)’. I wrote ‘lovesick’ across the boxes as my Americano arrived. I picked up two sugar lumps and plopped them in first, milk second, my spoon stirring last. I was happy. Was there ever a happier moment than a crossword and a coffee in a cafe all alone?

  I had a poet friend years back. He spent his days walking and reading and drinking at art shows and we’d often sit in a cafe with a crossword. He didn’t care which newspaper because he never bought one. He got annoyed when I was too quick filling in the answers only to get them wrong and make a mess of the thing. We idled many days together.

  He recited a poem about me once at a poetry slam—‘Laura The Tap Breaker’—about the day I broke a tap and the water was everywhere and I yelled at him, “You’re useless!” when he couldn’t help me fix it. He was only good for poetry and drinking. He’d adopted an aristocratic air, although he was from a council estate in Bermondsey. I also had an aristocratic disdain for work, the only decent thing the aristocracy ever gave us.

  I was a walker, an idler, a fringe-dweller, a Gypsy and not quite yet but nearly—dare I?—a writer. What the hell was I doing studying biodynamic farming? It was so much hard work. I didn’t want to be a farmer, I wanted to be a peasant.

  One down: ‘pining for a loved one, (8)’. I wrote ‘lovelorn’ down the boxes and across the previous entry. I finished up my coffee and left. Maybe today was a bad day for crosswords after all.

  Returning through the village later, I came to the recycling centre. There was always something to find in here. I looked at the usual cast-offs and arrived at the bookshelf. I picked up an old paperback and read the whole first page. I was hooked. I had just struck gold in the village dump. The author? John Fante. I bought Ask the Dust for 20 pence and continued my way home.

  There were students pruning apple trees in Tablehurst’s orchard now. A French accent drew me up between the tree lines and I stopped in my tracks. “Hello. And what are you doing here pruning our English apple trees?”

  “I’m learning biodynamics ’cos I’m gonna make wine back home,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.” His beauty was astonishing. Eyes of cornflowers, hair of flax, lips for kissing. He was younger than me for sure. A beauty. A colt. A star in the night sky. And French. Oh yes. His name was Leo.

  “I’ve never heard a French person say ‘gonna’ before–it’s cute.”

  “Where are you from?” he asked.

  “Je suis Ecossaise
,” I replied, “Scotland.”

  “You’re accent is cute too, c’est mignon.” He was beyond radiant and I was dazzled and wanting more but it would have to wait. For now, he had work. “I live in one of the attic rooms in the main building. They let me out once a day,” I said as I walked away. “Come and knock on my door sometime.” A French winemaker! Right on my doorstep! He’d got me from the first merlot.

  Continuing home, I stood aside for the John Deere tractor to pass and at the top of the hill I turned to see the forest once more with its rain-soaked, blue-green hue. It was stunning. Past the second apple orchard and horses on my right, down another little hill and there’s the pond and uphill again onto Emerson campus until I stood bang in the middle in front of reception. There she was to meet me. Lilly, my one and only friend in the world, all a-blonde and ginger sitting by the puddle. Lilly the college cat.

  Lilly was a free range being. Outcast from her former home as there was a new baby in the house, she had found her way up to the attic and so I took her in and fed her. She was very welcome to my little room and was often camped outside the door when I came home. Me and Lilly managed our lives quietly. She was too wet to pick up that day so I let her follow me indoors and up the stairs until we reached the top. I gave her a rub down with a towel and let her settle on the bed. She began purring and cleaning herself and went to sleep.

  I lay down next to her and thought about writing but didn’t. One day I would write, but that day wasn’t today. Every day might be that day but somehow that day never became today. The days of waiting were upon me. The days in which nothing very much happened. The days when I didn’t seem to make very much happen. Oh boredom! Walking, writing, coffee, thinking, dreaming of another day when things would happen. I opened the John Fante novel. It was about a young man struggling to be a writer.

  2

  On Brighton Pier in a dream, the pier sparkling with fairy lights. A happy feeling with fairground music playing. All at once I was standing on my mother’s grave. Still a happy feeling. A scroll on the grave revealed a word: ’pregnancy’. There was a white bird in front of me now, a dove I supposed. The bird split in two as I picked it up becoming an object rather than a living bird now and embarrassed, I placed the broken bird on the grave in two pieces with the thought that I would return to mend it later.

  I woke and wondered if I could be pregnant. It was impossible. I got my pen out. I counted up the years I had been coupled. I was thirty years into adulthood, just five years I’d been officially coupled and adding up the long tail-ending of love affairs and the affairs that didn’t work out I could take that to ten years. Twenty years single. That was a lot of acting interested, as Jerry Seinfeld once said. It was also a lot of not having sex to deal with. No wonder I was exhausted—and sexually frustrated. I needed a haircut. That would make me feel better. I needed a man. Maybe like a hole in the head or like a fish needs a bicycle but God! Give me something! I was a seething cauldron of frustration but you would never know it to look at me. Make love, McLove! It’s your name stupid! It’s what you’re supposed to do! Do it! Do something!

  3

  It was a few days before I met Leo again. It was raining so I couldn’t go for my usual walk, my counterpoint to writing or, in my case, not writing. So this particular day found me in the college library. I decided to bring Lilly with me. She didn’t like the rain much either, being a cat.

  An overwhelming odour of old books pervaded the room and I mean old. There was an original copy of Madame Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine and that other old classic, Dion Fortune’s Psychic Self Defence. The room had the feel of an occultist’s library which, in fact, it was. It had a still and heavy sense and and there was a floor creak from time to time although the verdant surroundings outside pressed in with the light through the high windows.

  On the few occasions the librarian was in, you could see books and index cards on her desk piled as high as her bouffant hair and she was surely the only person who understood the borrowing system. She had probably read Psychic Self Defence. She had probably understood it. She spoke with a posh English accent. Someone told me she was ninety years old.

  The library had the only campus wireless connection. A Danish student had said he could sense electromagnetic fields and had conducted a full college campaign to disallow its use. He won in the end—except for the library—but left the college as he upset so many people in the process but mainly he upset himself.

  Such was life at Emerson—one foot in the modern world and one foot firmly entrenched in the deep, occult past. Yes, Emerson College was a Mystery School. I was lying on the sofa, shoes off, with my back to the high window reading The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie. At least I hadn’t been sent to an all-girls school as a child, I thought, although I did spend a year being taught by an Irish nun.

  I looked up when I heard the door open. I saw an angel. It was Leo. He broke into a smile and I was sunk and I knew it.

  “Is that your cat?” he asked in that gorgeous French voice. Lilly was purring on my lap.

  “I’ve adopted her whilst she’s here,” I said. “She belongs to Francis in fact, but the new baby means it’s difficult in the house so, well the truth is, I think she’s adopted me. You know what cats are like. Her name is Lilly.”

  “I like cats,” he said. He sat down next to me on the sofa. I sensed his aroma, the smell of his sweater, his shampoo, the rain on him.

  “What have you come in for?” I asked.

  “I’m looking for the wine directory. D’you know where it is? I haven’t used the library much so far.” I pointed to the agriculture section.

  “So tell me about wine,” I said.

  “It’s made from grapes,” he replied. I laughed.

  “Tell me about you. Tell me about you and wine!”

  “I’m a sommelier.”

  “How exciting!”

  “Yeah, I know all about wine. I worked at The Dorchester once. I was the head wine waiter.”

  “Head sommelier at The Dorchester. You must have served some famous people.”

  “Yeah, Paul McCartney …”

  “God, I love Paul McCartney! What did he drink?”

  “He drank a Château Haut Brion 1989.”

  “Any other Beatles?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you serve any other Beatles? You know, Ringo Starr, George Harrison?”

  “No, I didn’t. But I served Madonna once.”

  “God! I love Madonna! What did she drink?”

  “Very expensive mineral water!” he said. “I used to work for Gordon Ramsay too.”

  “Was he hard to work for?”

  “All kitchens are tough and hard work, it’s just the way it is.” He got up from the sofa and went in the direction of the wine directory. I liked his arse. “I’ve found it!” He returned to the sofa. I liked his thighs.

  “I wanna make my own wine,” he said. He held the book up to show me. “This lists all the biodynamic winemakers in the world. There’s loads of them in France but most keep quiet about it because they’d be seen as mad. I wanna make a natural wine, you know, without chemicals, and using the yeast in the air and on the surface of the grapes, farm with horses, low impact, no additives.”

  “Can you really do that these days?”

  “The real good wine comes from a mixed farm with a vineyard. You won’t find it for sale much anywhere, it sells privately. My parents have a farm back in Bordeaux. I remember when they had horses but now it’s all tractors. Do you like wine?” he asked.

  “I love wine. Back in London, I hung out with a bunch of artists and poets, freeloaders, big drinking intellectual types and we would go around together in the east end to all the art openings for free drinks. I even learnt something about art. They didn’t seem to mind me hanging on to them, I don’t think they gave a shit.”

  “I love the east end,” he said.

  “Where are you going to work next summer?” All farming students took w
ork placements on a farm. “I dunno,” he replied. “I gotta bad knee so I don’t know if I can do too much real heavy work. I’m thinking of north America.”

  I could go on about our first conversation, a getting to know you thing, but here’s what you need to know—Leo was a traveller and so was I. He was an expert in something with which I had a longstanding, complicated relationship—wine. He knew how to make it, he was here to learn how to do it au naturel. He was a man of the earth. He was a man of the terroir. And he was hot. Hot. HOT. The only men for me are the traveller men and Leo for me will always be the Traveller Man. I was an amateur at love and I was about to learn that I needed to go pro.

  Back in the attic later, I tried to remember it all. I was in a deep hypnosis. My mind and hormones had gone into overdrive. Lilly meowed at my feet but I couldn’t think straight to feed her. I had to work something out. How on earth did that gorgeous man get here into this college on his own and still be single? It defied the laws of the Universe. Or did it? I picked up that gratitude journal I bought in Brighton. I picked up my pen. And I wrote.

  “I am so happy and grateful Leo and I are spending next summer together and are in love.”

  It was done. It was on its way. It was all I had to do so I wrote it again.

  “I am so happy and grateful Leo and I are spending next summer together and are in love.”

  I laughed aloud then went to the kitchen to find Lilly’s crunchies. I filled her water bowl and her crunchie bowl and she sat munching and crunching on the floor by the door. She had no idea of the spiritual forces I was bringing to bear for us in our little room. She was a cat and I loved her.

  I picked up my violin from the bed. It was flawed—I had made it myself—and I’d varnished it a burnt orange colour like my hair. It took me eighteen months to persevere and finish and I’d decorated it with a ruby ribbon around the scroll. A classical musician wouldn’t say so—they’re hard to please aren’t they?—but my one violin was more beautiful than all the violins in all the world because I had made it. I hung it back onto the wall where it lived. I’d placed my name tab inside the soundbox on the wrong side before I glued it over. I was useless at detail but I was good at the bigger picture and I was good at imagining things—like me and Leo in bed. In love. On holiday.