A Visit to Richard Leroy, 2024
Whoa! Déjà vu.
What happened?
A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.
How much like it? Was it the same cat?
Might have been, I’m not sure. What is it?
A déjà vu is usually a glitch in The Matrix. It happens when they change something.
– Neo & Trinity, The Matrix, 1999
Sheltering beneath the glass canopy suspended over the front door, trying to keep dry from the gentle pitter-patter of raindrops, I had eventually given up knocking. The door was locked, the windows and the doors to the adjacent cellar firmly shut. It seemed pretty clear by now, five minutes having past as I stood half-in and half-out of the rain, that there was nobody home.
By which I mean Richard Leroy was not home.
I turned around and stared out onto the Grande Rue, the narrow road which runs up through the centre of Rablay-sur-Layon and which was clearly named by someone with a sense of ambition. Or possibly a sense of humour. As I did so it dawned on me that Richard and I had not agreed a meeting place, merely a day, and a time. I had assumed he meant that I should come to his house; after all, when I first visited him back in 2010 (nearly fourteen years ago – where has the time gone?!) we tasted in the little garage-cum-barrel-cellar built into the side of his residence. But what if he had intended we meet somewhere else? What if he thought I would know where?
A fragmented memory began to crystallise. Hadn’t I read somewhere, during the many years that have passed since I was last here, that Richard had bought new cellars? Ever so slowly, the thought materialised, taking on more certain and solid form. Yes, I remember. I read that somewhere. He has new cellars. The problem was; I had no idea where they were.
As I stood there wondering what my next step should be, I heard the rumble of a vehicle coming up the hill, and then a large van drove past. In one of the front seats was a clean-shaven and bespectacled man, with a cap atop his head, and wearing so many layers of protection against the February weather – a thick coat, over another coat, over another – that he could, at a squint, have passed for the Michelin Man.
I did not recognise him.
But he waved at me.
Déjà vu.
Suddenly I was back in 2010, waiting nervously on this very doorstep for my first-ever meeting with Richard Leroy. Standing there, I had watched a little combi-van drive past several times, and it later transpired that it had been Richard behind the wheel, quickly finishing a few errands and dropping off one of his vineyard workers before he came to greet me. In 2024, however, the occupant of the van I had just locked eyes with didn’t look like Richard at all, although I only had a momentary glimpse. But if it was him, surely he would appear soon once he had parked up?
I decided to wait a little longer, and allowed another five minutes to pass by.
Still no Richard.
I figured I should explore, and headed up the hill, following the direction of the van. And this was where Lady Luck shone her light upon me (well, there’s a first time for everything) as who should I find a few hundred metres up the road, at the entrance to some wholly unfamiliar cellars, but a bespectacled, beard-free, and warmly-wrapped-up Richard Leroy.
