by Gloria Bevan
‘Almost.’ Lucie had come to seat herself at Tracy’s side. She was tying a silk scarf over her golden hair and her small face appeared more puckered and elf-like than ever. A gold mesh shopping kit dangled from her hand. ‘Ever driven a Mini?’
‘No, but I’m looking forward to doing just that.’
‘You’ll soon get the feel of it. Now you do the driving, Tracy, and I’ll navigate. If we meet anyone on the driveway leading out to the road just pull over to the side and let them pass. Hurray! We’re off!’
It was a delight, Tracy found, to be at the wheel of the small car, even if she had to keep a sharp look-out on each bush-concealed bend. But they met only a herd of black steers straggling across the road in the direction of a cleared paddock on the opposite side of the read. Behind them strolled a farmer with his dogs. Pulling to the grassy verge, Tracy waited until the last of the stragglers made a wild dash through the open gateway.
In spite of her reputation for having little sense of direction Lucie was at least familiar with the winding tracks that criss-crossed the bush-covered hills and at length the two entered wide suburban streets where timber houses painted in pastel shades were set far back from the highway amid their sweeping lawns. In the flourishing modern settlement with its attractive stores and buildings, Tracy guided the car to a convenient parking lot in the main street. As she strolled with Lucie past the attractive display windows with their late-fashion merchandise, she found shopping in the township to be a leisurely and pleasant experience. The young assistants were friendly and helpful and music echoed softly around them as they entered a colourful new shopping mall in search of Lucie’s varied requirements. Glimpsing a craft shop with a display of native artefacts and carvings, Tracy left the older woman chatting with a store assistant while she went in search of one of the capacious, light Maori flax kits that she noticed were so popular with other shoppers.
As the softly-spoken Maori girl handed Tracy the woven bag, she smiled shyly. ‘I saw you parking your car outside a few minutes ago. Don’t mind my asking,’ she went on in her beautifully modulated tones, ‘but isn’t that the car that Miss Cadell used to drive? I’ve never seen another one around here the same bright shade of orange.’
Tracy’s clear blue eyes held the Maori girl’s lustrous dark gaze. ‘Did you know her? Miss Cadell?’
‘Know her!’ The soft laughter rang out. ‘She was always in here—one of my best customers. She bought oodles of native artefacts, Maori carvings, place mats, kits, greenstone jewellery, just about everything we have in the shop. She said she was getting married, staying on in this country, and wanted the souvenirs to send back to England, but she hasn’t been in here for weeks. I thought maybe she’s married now and moved away to another town.’
‘I think she changed her mind about getting married,’ Tracy said slowly, reluctant to go into the matter of how she came to be driving Alison’s car.
‘Oh well,’ the Maori girl was philosophical, ‘I guess she could have any man she wanted, a girl like that! She’s beautiful, and the way she wears her clothes ... a completely different outfit every time she came in here. To dress like that must have cost a fortune! We don’t see that high fashion London boutique gear out here, not expensive stuff like that. She was so elegant-looking, different somehow from any other girl I ever saw. Everyone in town used to turn around for a second look whenever she walked down the street. Guess they never saw anyone quite like her in the village, a gorgeous English girl like that!’
‘I’m from England too. But Tracy made the observation silently. Somehow it wasn’t at all the same thing, as she well knew. She brought her mind back to the musical tones.
‘And that fabulous little orange Mint! I recognized it the minute I saw it today. I sold her the yellow sheepskin seat-covers the first day she drove it into town here.’ Dark eyes regarded Tracy curiously. ‘Did you buy the Mini from her?’
‘No, no, I just have a loan of it from someone else for the day.’
‘I see, I just wondered. She told me her fiancé had given it to her as an engagement gift—’ She stopped short as the hanging bead curtain was pushed aside and a woman customer entered the tastefully decorated room. ‘There’s nothing else I can show you?’
‘No.’ Tracy stared back at the attractive Maori girl with dazed blue eyes, ‘no, thank you.’
Moving from the dim interior of the softly lighted craft shop, she blinked a little in the brilliance of the sunshine falling across the street. Alison’s car! Oh, she should have guessed as much right at the beginning. Who else but Alison would own the most conspicuous little car in the district? One facet, though, of what she had just learned struck her as puzzling. On the single occasion when Stephen had discussed with her his brother’s affairs—if you could term his terse bald statements a discussion—he had told her that Cliff wasn’t a partner in the wine-making business, as Alison had intimated in her letter, but drew wages from occasional employment in the vineyards; that all he earned was immediately swallowed up in the equipment and expenses incurred with his mountaineering expeditions. For a young man in those circumstances a new car seemed a somewhat expensive engagement gift, but then—a sigh escaped her—when it came to Alison, it seemed that nothing was too good. Lucky Alison!
All at once she became aware that from the opposite side of the roadway she was in the act of crossing Lucie was beckoning wildly. The next moment she was brought to a sudden hurried halt as a truck with a squeal of brakes pulled up almost upon her. ‘Better watch where you’re going, miss!’ The truck driver’s irate expression softened as, grizzled head thrust from the cab opening, he looked down at Tracy’s small surprised face, eyes wide with shock.
All the time she was driving back to the vineyards Tracy was busy with her thoughts. She hoped that Lucie would put her abstracted mood down to unfamiliarity with the car she was driving and the winding roads, and indeed the older woman, chatting happily, appeared unaware of Tracy’s short replies.
When they reached the house Lucie collected her parcels and hurried up the steps. ‘I’ll put the car away in the motor shed,’ Tracy called after her. And as far as I’m concerned, she added mentally, it’s going to stay there! She wasn’t going to drive the orange Mini, she couldn’t now that she knew who the vehicle belonged to. Guiding the car to the dimness of a long motor shed, she switched off the motor, picked up her flax kit and was moving towards the door of the garage when a deep familiar voice arrested her.
‘Hi! How did you like driving the Mini?’ Stephen stood in the shadows. He must have been there all the time, but even shadows, she thought crossly, couldn’t conceal the sardonic gleam in his eyes.
She swung around to face him. ‘It was fine, but—’ she was surprised to find her heart beating faster. ‘Why didn’t you tell me,’ she burst out accusingly, ‘that it was Alison’s car?’
‘Lucie tell you?’ His tone was carefully controlled.
‘No, someone else! A girl I met in one of the shops in Henderson. She said,’ she avoided his glance, ‘that your brother gave it to her as an engagement gift.’
‘That’s right!’ There was a taut note in his tones that warned her she was treading on dangerous ground, but she was determined to make herself clear.
‘But if it belongs to her,’ she persisted, ‘why hasn’t she done something about it? Sold it ... or something?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s up to her. Guess she’ll get around to it, one of these days. Meantime,’ he went on in that maddening laconic tone, ‘you may as well make use of it, keep the battery up, hmm?’
‘No!’ The vehemence of her denial surprised herself. All these years, forced to make do with Alison’s left-overs and now ... No, she’d rather walk!
‘Why not?’ He was regarding her narrowly. ‘She’s your cousin, isn’t she?’
Useless to attempt to explain to this chilly-eyed stranger that that was precisely the reason why she was refusing his offer. ‘I just—don’t want to have anything to do wi
th it,’ she said in a low, unsteady voice.
‘As you please.’ To her surprise and relief, he appeared to have abandoned the argument. ‘Lucie’s bus will be back from the panel-beaters in a day or two.’
‘That’s good!’ Tracy forced a smile and turned away to make her escape. As she hurried away she marvelled at Stephen’s inexplicable behaviour. Moody, changeable, unpredictable, she simply couldn’t understand him.
Before seeking out Stephen in the morning, she glanced over the terraced rows of vines. It was clear that the last day of the harvest was over, for no pickers were to be seen. She made her way down the steps to the underground office and as she expected found him there, his dark head bent over the piles of invoices, correspondence and account books lying open on the big desk.
‘Morning!’ she said brightly. ‘Want any help?’
For a moment his gaze remained abstracted, then his lips twitched with the old indulgent amusement. ‘No, thanks, Tracy.’ He might just as well have completed the sentence, she thought with a quick intake of breath, ‘Not from you!’ She bit back the angry retort that trembled on her lips and said instead: ‘You look awfully busy down here. All these papers...’
He threw her an expressive, rueful glance. ‘Only about six months’ backlog to catch up with! Thing is,’ he ran a harassed hand through his hair, ‘where the devil to make a start on sorting it all out?’
‘I could help you.’ He wasn’t making it any easier for her, she reflected helplessly, with his ‘humour-the-child’ attitude. ‘You said you’d talk it over with me today.’ She raised clear blue eyes to his cool glance. ‘Remember?’
For a moment he regarded her uncomprehendingly. ‘Oh, that! I’d forgotten. The typewriter’s over there on the other desk. You can play around with it if you like ... you’ll find paper in the drawer.’
Play around with a typewriter. It was too much to take. Frantically busy or not, whether he wished or no, nevertheless she was determined that he was going to hear the truth of her capabilities.
‘It wasn’t play to me, it was a job!’
‘Oh yes?’ Leafing through a toppling pile of receipts, it was clear that he was only half listening. ‘Got to get some sort of order around the place. Sit down, Tracy,’ he pulled forward a chair and she dropped down to face him across the litter of papers. ‘Working, you said? How long?’
She shrugged lightly. ‘Ever since I left business college in London. I worked for the same firm of importers until I resigned to come out here on this trip to New Zealand. About five years altogether. Not that they’ll miss me all that much.’ The old habit of deprecation against which she had long struggled in vain made her add, ‘I guess any girl who’s trained for it can do shorthand and typing and book-keeping.’
He was so surprised that the match he was holding to her cigarette scorched his finger. ‘Damn!’ He lighted his own, then blew cut the tiny fame. ‘You shouldn’t give me shocks like that! You’re a working girl, then?’ The thick black brows were raised in perplexity, the deep tones thoughtful as he studied her reflectively. ‘How come, then—’
She smiled ruefully. ‘How come I went to an expensive school? How come I can afford a trip half way across the world just to be bridesmaid at a family wedding? That’s what I’ve been trying and trying to tell you all this time! This trip out here,’ she cried with feeling, ‘has taken every bit of my savings. Five long years of them!’ She went on to explain the circumstances of her education, the drab penny-pinching years that had followed.
He listened in silence, his chair tilted back, a sandalled foot propped on the desk, until her low sweet voice died away.
‘Well, I’ll be—’ His considering look, Tracy thought, was heartwarming—very.
She flicked the ash from her cigarette in a glass ashtray balanced on a heavy open ledger. ‘I did try to tell you.’
‘So you did, but I wouldn’t listen! Well, I’m listening now. How are you on an adding machine?’
‘Can do!’
‘Tremendous! You’ve got yourself a job, Tracy. Get stuck into these, will you?’ The chair legs came down with a crash on the concrete floor as he reached towards a sheaf of invoices. ‘After that—shorthand, you said? That means we can get rid of a few letters, the urgent ones can go in the post today. They’re mostly just inquiries re prices. There’s a ball pen around somewhere—’ He flung open a drawer in the desk. ‘Here you are, Tracy. Latch on to this! And this!’ A notebook came flying over the litter of papers. ‘Forget about the invoices, that can wait! Right now we’ll get this order off the ground for a start. Ready? Right! Make it to the Manager, Hong Kong Imports Ltd—got it?’
‘Yes, sir!’ Her gay and confident reply evoked no answering response and she realized that he was already absorbed in the details of his task. It was an unfamiliar world to him, she surmised. You only had to look at his worried frown, the dark hair rumpled where he had ran his hands through it. Obviously an outdoor type of man, he would be more at ease out in the open among the vines, tending, cultivating, spraying, anything rather than struggling with the irksome paper work that must be dealt with. With her wide office experience she could help him a lot—if he’d let her.
‘Give me that last bit again, will you?’
With a jerk she brought her mind back to the squiggles in her shorthand notebook.
He had dictated half a dozen letters when he paused to regard her consideringly. ‘Reckon you could run off a few answers to these inquiry ones? Just give them the prices, different varieties in the wines. I’ll give you the gist of it and you can do the rest. Right?’
She nodded, following his pointing finger to the printed catalogue giving details of red and white wines that he had placed before her.
Making an effort to banish all personal matters from her mind, she settled down to transcribing the letters Stephen had dictated, then went on to compose answers to the inquirers, giving the required information as he had instructed. Soon a pile of neatly typed letters lay beside the heavy elderly typewriter awaiting Stephen’s signature.
In the early afternoon he left the office to attend to duties in the vineyard and Tracy, left alone, worked steadily as the hours slipped by. From outside on a high puriri tree she caught the sound of a soft cooing and glancing upwards, glimpsed a Hash of iridescent green and blue as a wood pigeon flew past the window. Sunlight slanted across her desk and the breeze blowing in at the open windows was cool and fresh, spiced with the aromatic tang of tire surrounding bush.
All at once she was conscious of a deep sense of satisfaction out of all proportion to the circumstances. What was the matter with her? She was back to square one tied down once again to dreary office work. But of course it wasn’t just like that. There was no doubt that whatever their personal disagreements, working with Stephen Crane had turned out to be an oddly satisfying experience. At last, at last, he was treating her as a person in her own right. She was doing the only job she knew, and doing it well, for no one could fault the neatly set-out letters and flawless typescript.
She worked all afternoon and at last pulled the cover over the typewriter. Then, stretching both arms above her head, she sat on in the silent office, dreaming. After today they could start afresh, she and Stephen, she mused happily, with no more misunderstandings between them. Now that he realized she wasn’t just another Alison, he might even cease to regard her with that wary, guarded expression. Maybe he’d even—she checked herself sharply. Where were her random thoughts leading her? Come to that, why was it so awfully important to her that he should change his earlier opinion of her? She shied away from following the matter to its conclusion. She only knew that she was looking forward to the barbecue tonight.
Tracy found that when it came to organizing a social function Lucie proved to be amazingly competent. ‘Get the chops out of the deep freeze, will you, please, Tracy?’ she requested. ‘I’ll make some honey-and-wine sauce to go with them. You’ll find coffee up on the shelf, we’ll need lots of that. Steve w
ill set up the barbecue later. The wine’s his department too. I thought that seeing we’ll have a crowd of women tonight, I’d whip up a few cheesecakes. The hangi’ll take care of the pork and chicken and veges. Steve’s out there in the garden now, digging the pits—’
‘Pits?’ Tracy wondered if she had heard correctly, and Lucie, busily beating eggs in a basin, laughed merrily at Tracy’s puzzled expression.
‘A hangi’s just food cooked the way the Maoris used to do it long before the pakeha, the white man, arrived in this country. It’s delicious! The meats and vegetables are put into a Maori flax kit, covered with a cloth and lowered down over the hot embers. Steam does the rest. When you lift out the baskets, everything’s cooked to perfection. You’ll be surprised!’
Tracy was surprised already. It was astonishing to discover that Lucie, who had always appeared somewhat careless regarding household matters, appeared to be completely in control of the situation when it came to catering for a gathering such as the evening’s hangi-barbecue. But then, Tracy reminded herself, Lucie had lived for years on a vast station where no doubt she had often been called upon to entertain crowds of visitors. "Whatever the reason, without undue effort she was calmly going on with the preparations. ‘Coffee mugs can go out on the table outside now,’ she murmured, and Tracy took the laden tray, making her way out into the sunshine and along the path to the sunken garden.
Steve was working nearby on a grassy plot, tossing spadefuls of earth from the pit he was digging in the sun-baked ground.
‘Lucie tell you about the hangi idea?’ he inquired,