by Gloria Bevan
The amused glint was back in his eyes. He seemed, she thought with a flash of irritation, to gain an awful lot of amusement from teasing her. Alison’s English cousin! He would take an opposite stand, probably merely to annoy her. He was regarding her now with that compelling gaze that for some reason she found so difficult to meet. ‘You want to see all you can of the country, don’t you, while you’re here?’
‘Oh, I do, I do! But—’
‘Well, you won’t get a second chance to see Auckland city in gala mood like it will be tonight—’
Tracy had a feeling that it wouldn’t be much fun anyway being partnered to the city by this sardonic man with his unfathomable attitude towards her, but anyway it would be an experience.
‘Well, what do you say, Miss Cadell?’
She raised clear blue eyes, smiled gaily. ‘Love to.’
‘Right! That’s fixed, then. I’ll go and take a look at the pickers. If the weather holds,’ he squinted up towards a cloudless sky, ‘another week should do it.’
‘It would be dreadful if heavy rain spoiled the crop after all the year’s work,’ Tracy murmured to Lucie as Stephen took his leave.
‘Oh, my goodness, yes! Even light rain would take the sparkle off the grapes. But Steve won’t think of picking them until the grapes are absolutely perfect, not like other growers who take advantage of the weather instead of risking everything! But that’s just Steve!’
All afternoon the older woman worked happily on her sheepskin rug and Tracy soon realized that Lucie, absorbed in her task, was undisturbed by such mundane matters as the preparation of meals. It was late when they all sat down to a table overlooking the terraced vineyards. The meal was a simple one, consisting of sliced cold meats, a salad that Tracy had offered to put together because Lucie’s hands were sticky with carpet glue which she had difficulty in removing. Slices of honey dew melon, chilled and delicious, served as a dessert, followed by coffee and a selection of local cheeses.
The only other member of the staff, Tracy found, was the truck driver who she had seen on her way to the house. ‘This is Bill Evans,’ Stephen made the introduction in his offhand tones, ‘he’s kept busy most of the time with the bottling.’ As she met the friendly expression in the bright blue eyes, Tracy took an immediate liking to this pleasant, middle-aged man.
‘That was tough luck, Miss Cadell,’ he said in his rich tone as they seated themselves at the table, ‘coming all this way across the world for a wedding and then finding there wasn’t one.’
‘Well,’ Tracy admitted, relieved to find someone in the party who was not reluctant to approach the subject of Alison, ‘it was a bit of a shock.’
‘Still,’ Lucie cut in quickly, ‘she’ll get a trip out of it, and in the summer, the best time of all to see the country too!’
Tracy was speechless with indignation. A trip! Just like that! She’d spent her entire savings on fares and expenses to come here and they were dismissing the whole thing as carelessly as though she were Alison, with her cousin’s freedom from financial concern. How could she make them understand that her own circumstances weren’t at all similar? She made one more attempt. ‘Actually, with me it’s different altogether from the way things were with Alison—’ but no one appeared to be listening and her faltering tones died away.
Later, as cigarette smoke rose among the coffee cups, Tracy asked idly: ‘Who were the women who were picking out in the vineyards today?’
‘Oh, they’re all local housewives,’ Lucie said’. ‘The same women come every year in the season, about thirty of them, and they all live somewhere handy.’
‘They’re a good gang,’ Stephen stubbed out his cigarette. ‘I’m darned lucky to have them.’
‘It must be rather fun for them too,’ Tracy remarked reflectively, ‘out there in the open. I’ve never worked—’
‘You wouldn’t want to start on that caper!’ Once again, she noticed, he was wearing his distant look. ‘It’s hot as blazes! I’ll tell you something, Miss Cadell! In my vineyard you wouldn’t last the distance, not even one day! It’s work, real backbreaking sweating physical toil, something you wouldn’t even know about.’
All at once she was swept by a gust of anger. How dare he! Merely because she and Alison had attended the same school he apparently took it for granted that she was a clueless socialite, untrained, inept when it came to a matter of ‘real work’. She dropped her gaze, fearful that he would catch the angry shine in her eyes. How gratified he would be to realize that he had at last goaded her into furious resentment. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how deeply his careless words had penetrated. They were so untrue, as he would very soon find out!
‘I keep telling you,’ in vain she tried to subdue the tremor of indignation in her low tones, ‘that I’m just a working girl.’
His sardonic lift of his lips was more damning than any words. Like Alison, it said, busy with fun-work, financed by doting relatives. Playing at work. Playing at life.
‘What did you do, Tracy?’ Clearly Lucie had noted Tracy’s heightened colour and was endeavouring to steer the conversation towards less controversial channels. Her gaze went to Tracy’s small hands with their smooth skin and gleaming fingertips. ‘Was it office work?’
She nodded. Well, let him continue to think that she was a worthless socialite whose working career had consisted of a brief fling at finding out how the other half lived. To argue the matter with him merely brought that maddening half smile to his lips, but to prove her point, that would be different! And that was exactly what she intended to do, first thing in the morning. Only she would have to be cunning about her plans. Raising her eyes to his, she asked innocently, ‘Do you need any more helpers just now?’
‘Not at the moment.’ Clearly he did not connect her inquiry with anything personal, which she supposed was something to be grateful for.
‘Oh, but you do, Steve!’ His aunt’s high sweet tones broke in. ‘I almost forgot to tell you—Katie rang while you were away at the wharf. She has to go up country to nurse a sick uncle. Said to tell you she was sorry to let you down.’
Stephen’s face sobered. ‘One of my best pickers too. Oh well, it can’t be helped. It’s too late now to get hold of anyone else. We’ll just have to manage with the others.’
Or hire me, Tracy thought jubilantly, but she made the observation silently. She could scarcely wait until morning to put her plan into action. With a start she brought her mind back to the older man’s measured tones. ‘Steve shown you around the place yet?’
‘No, but—’ Out of a corner of her eye she was aware of Stephen’s quizzical glance. ‘Everyone’s busy around here just now,’ she went on rapidly, ‘and I’ll see it all before I go—’
‘What’s wrong with now?’ Stephen rose, pushing back his chair from the table and turning to Tracy. ‘If you’ll excuse us, folks? It won’t be dark for a while yet.’
Outside the surrounding hills were a dark blur and an amethyst haze lingered over the landscape. They went through the open french doors, crossed the terrace and strolled down the steps. Then they were taking a flight of stairs leading down to a cellar below. He touched a light switch and at once the big room sprang to life. Tracy saw that one end of the area was given over to long shelves stacked with bottles of wine. Below was a curving counter. ‘This part of it’s the shop,’ Stephen told her.
Tracy looked curiously around her, her gaze roving over the gold and silver medals, the framed certificates of national and international awards that hung on the wall. ‘But where are the casks?’
‘Further along ... Bill’s department. I didn’t think you’d be interested.’
‘Oh, but I am!’ Moving towards a doorway, she peered into the shadows where against a backdrop of maturing wine, she discerned a grape crusher, large vats and smaller wooden barrels, a gleaming stainless steel clinic and laboratory equipment. ‘So this is where the wines are fermented?’ She put a hand against a great vat of stainless stee
l. ‘You’re going in for modern equipment now?’
He shook his head. ‘Only for the whites. The reds need maturing in wood to bring out their full potential.’
She glanced around her. ‘I had no idea...’
‘You’re learning. As one winemaker around here puts it, the dessert wines, sherry, port, muscatel, are like a strong robust man. They can stand up to almost any onslaught, but the table wine, on the other hand, is a weakling. He has to be protected, fussed over, looked after ever so carefully.’ He moved towards a desk where a telephone was propped on a pile of account books. ‘Over here is the office.’
‘Who does the office work?’ Tracy asked, and immediately regretted the careless inquiry, for hadn’t he mentioned that his brother—
‘No one—now,’ his tone was curt, ‘but I’ll catch up on it once the picking’s over.’
He turned and she hurried along at his side as they mounted the concrete steps together. At this rate she reflected she would certainly take in the entire vineyard in double-quick time.
‘You don’t have to, you know,’ she said breathlessly, quickening her steps to match his long strides as they emerged on to .the narrow path.
He stared down at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Show me around the place.’
‘You mean you’re like your cousin?’ Once again it seemed he had taken her up wrongly. ‘Not interested?’
‘No, no, I didn’t mean that! I think it’s all awfully interesting. Honestly! It’s just ... just...’ she floundered helplessly, ‘that you must have other things to do.’
He sent her a quizzical glance. ‘I can put up with it, Miss Cadell—’
‘Tracy!’ she whispered.
He ignored that. ‘If you can!’
‘Put up with it? I think it’s beautiful!’ They were passing through a small gateway, coming in sight of a pool surrounded by feathery papyrus grass and tattered banana palms, shadowy in the light that was fast deepening to a velvety blue. She moved towards the pool where a pink plaster flamingo was perched on one leg and a massive russet flower from a banana palm growing nearby, hung low over the water.
They strolled on between high hedges to emerge suddenly in sight of a sunken pebble garden where dwarf trees rose from pottery urns and pink geraniums trailed over low walls. ‘It used to be a tennis court in the old days,’ Stephen told her, ‘now it comes in handy for entertaining. We usually put on something for the pickers at the end of the vintage. They’ve been working flat-stick for five weeks now, one more week should see the finish. They seem to want a barbecue-cum-hangi this year—’
‘Sounds like fun.’
‘The hangi?’
‘And the picking.’ They were strolling on towards a rise overlooking the terraced vineyards in the sheltered valley where Tracy had seen the women pickers earlier in the day. The vines stretched away in the fading light, the shelterbelt of silver gums and pines dark shapes in the gathering dusk.
‘I doubt if the pickers would agree with you,’ he said dryly. ‘It’s pretty hard going, what with the heat and the fruit flies and the wasps. But they come back year after year, the same gang of local women. The first day their tongues move faster than their hands, but before long they’re getting into their stride. If only we don’t get rain this last week—’
‘Rain? On a perfect summer night like this?’ The velvety blue dusk seemed to enfold them, faint stars pricked the clear dark sky.
He laughed. ‘You don’t know Auckland! We’re on a narrow isthmus here, between two big oceans, fair game for all the winds that blow.’
‘I just can’t believe it could change. It’s so beautiful, you get the feeling it will go on and on, just like this.’
He bent on her his deep compelling gaze. ‘Don’t let it fool you, Tracy!’ Why did her perfectly ordinary name sound so different on his lips? ‘There’s a saying around this part of the country. “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute!” That’s Auckland—unpredictable.’
‘Like you!’ Some imp of mischief made her say the words. She was leaving in a day or so, so what did it matter what he thought of her? At least he wasn’t going to have matters all his own way.
She glanced up to catch once again the twinkle of amusement in his glance. ‘That’s right, like me!’
She laughed her clear young laugh. ‘Well, anyway, I still think it would be fun working out there with the grapes. If only it wasn’t quite so dark I could have a closer look at the vines. I suppose there are ever so many different varieties?’
‘Are there ever? These nearer ones,’ his gaze swept proudly over the rows and rows of grapes, ‘they’re the bread and butter ones that have been all we’ve needed in the past for the New Zealand wine industry. Now,’ he shrugged broad shoulders, ‘for some reason Kiwis are getting more wine-conscious every day. That’s why I’m going in for the aristocratic vines, the ones that are going to put this country on the winemakers’ map in the future.’ He reached with pride towards a single vine rising against a low wall. ‘See this Palomino? Ten years old and last year I took over five hundred pounds of grapes off the vine! My guess is that the newcomers will do just as well as the old varieties!’ The ring of enthusiasm in his deep tones sharpened. ‘You just have to wait a bit longer for the crop, that’s all!’
Tracy had an impression that deeply absorbed in his plans for the future of his winemaking industry he had entirely forgotten her existence. In an effort to bring the subject back to her own interests she said lightly: ‘Maybe it’s because I’ve always been stuck at an office desk that the picking of the grapes appeals to me so much. I’ve never done any outside work.’
All at once he was a stranger again, cold and forbidding. ‘I scarcely think you’d appreciate the change!’
But she had endured just about enough of being told what she would and wouldn’t like. It was clear that he was treating her exactly as though she were Alison, rich, spoiled, capricious, incapable of earning a living. ‘Oh, but I would!’ she argued. They had turned back and in the swiftly falling darkness she couldn’t see his expression. ‘You’d be surprised how much I’d like to try it!’ He was silent and she could almost feel his unspoken disapproval. It spurred her on to say brightly: ‘You did need another helper over there in the vines?’
‘I need one all right.’ Ice crackled in his tone. ‘But you wouldn’t last an hour at the game, let alone a ten-hour day! It’s no work for soft city types, needs plenty of arm muscle!’
‘I’m not Alison, you know!’ It was a mistake, she realized the next moment, to have mentioned the other girl, for now his tone was more distant than ever. ‘You’re joking, of course?’
‘But I’m not! I’m not! I hadn’t planned to stay after tomorrow, but if I could have a go at the picking, that would be different!’
‘We’ll see,’ he said coolly, ‘how you feel about it in the morning. Six-thirty’s the starting time!’
‘Oh, I know how I’ll feel about it!’ she flung at him. ‘It’s just up to you!’ But he didn’t appear to be listening and as she hurried along at his side as they approached the lighted house on the rise above, somehow she didn’t give much for her chances.
CHAPTER TWO
When they reached the house, Tracy left Stephen in the lounge room while she made her way to the kitchen. As she had expected, Lucie and Bill Evans were busy at the sink and Tracy made to take the tea-towel from the man’s hand. ‘Women’s work!’ she smiled.
He looked surprised. ‘Your cousin never had any ideas in that direction! I didn’t have a night off duty all the time she was here.’
Not again, Tracy told herself wearily. Why must they all persist in regarding her as nothing more than a carbon-copy of Alison? ‘I don’t know about her,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I’m helping!’
‘Good on you!’ Bill said, and relinquished the tea-towel.
As the evening progressed Tracy found herself hoping that Stephen had forgotten his offer to escort her into town to vie
w the city centennial celebrations. No doubt he had had quite enough of her enforced company for one day, and she felt exactly the same way about him! They were seated in the lounge, watching a television programme, when Lucie’s gaze went to the clock on the mantel. ‘Steve! You’d better get going if you’re not going to miss the start of it all! Lawrence and Di rang while you were out in the vineyard just now with Tracy. They said to tell you they’d meet you down by the Post Office.’
‘Good! That’s what I’ve been waiting for. How about it, Miss Cadell?’ He eyed Tracy with his cool inquiring look. ‘Still feel like coming along to take a look around?’
She was on the point of refusing the casually extended invitation so obviously made from a sense of politeness, then she had second thoughts on the matter. Why shouldn’t she see this unfamiliar city in gala mood? Chances were that she would never again find herself in this part of the world. She wanted to make the most of every minute of her stay, didn’t she, even if it meant going with this grim-faced escort who was no doubt hoping she would refuse his offer.
‘Oh, I’d love to!’ She could discern no change in his expression, which was disappointing, but still she intended to take advantage of the opportunity, even if he didn’t speak a single word to her all evening.
The other two came out to the terrace to see them off, waving with the light behind them. As she seated herself in the big grey Holden, Tracy mused that it was an odd way to be taken out for an evening’s entertainment, but then everything since her arrival in the country had been strange and hard to fathom. Everything except the vineyard, which was so attractive that she just hoped she’d get her way and be able to stay for a week’s grape-picking. It would be long enough to prove to the tight-lipped man at her side that in spite of being Alison’s cousin she was far from the helpless nit he apparently thought her.