Vineyard in a Valley

by Gloria Bevan

  ‘But we won’t be cooking here,’ Lucie murmured, eyeing the snowy electric range. ‘Steve’s taking us out to dine at the Reef tonight. It’s a restaurant out at the Whakatane heads.’

  The soft summer dusk was falling when later the party went out to the Holden, standing not far away in the well-kept grounds of the motel. Although Stephen said nothing to Tracy beyond a prosaic ‘hop in’, his eyes said something else ... there was no doubt that he approved of her appearance, and indeed she quite liked it herself. The cream crimplene frock with its gold-linked belt was simplicity itself, but it definitely did something for her. Maybe it was the sun that lent her skin this glowing look. Or could be it was just plain, old-fashioned happiness! She’d never had a holiday like this, with everything so different, unexpected. Whoever heard of a great rock in the business centre of a main street? Who would have dreamed a few short weeks ago that Stephen could ever look at her—like that?

  It wasn’t far to the Heads, and once out of the main street with its views of fishing boats and harbour, they came in sight of the headland. Sparsely settled, it consisted of sun-dried paddocks and grazing sheep and cattle. Out at the Heads, on a high rock at the entrance to the river mouth, a bronze statue of a Maori girl stood poised, outlined against the geld and apricot of a blazing sunset.

  ‘She looks,’ Tracy observed in her warm soft voice, ‘as though she’s just about to dive into the water!’

  ‘Who? Oh—’ Stephen glanced towards the graceful curves of the feminine figure—‘That’s Wairaka. That rock she’s standing on happens to be quite historic, sacred to the Maori people. They say the karaka trees that still grow in its slopes are planted from seed brought to New Zealand in the canoe that brought the first Maori settlers here when they migrated from somewhere out there in the Pacific.’

  ‘Really?’ Tracy’s eyes were wide with interest. ‘But who was she, the Maori girl?’

  ‘That’s quite a story.’ Lucie took up the tale. ‘She was the daughter of Toroa, the captain of the historic canoe. Yon see, when they arrived here they paddled up the river for a short distance, then they beached the canoe in a cave. When the warriors went ashore the women were left to guard the canoe and as the tide came in it began to float away. Wairaka that was the captain’s daughter—she was pretty high rank—she wouldn’t ever have to paddle a canoe, but when it started to drift away she called out—I don’t know Maori, but anyway it meant: “I will acquit myself like a man,” then with the other women she paddled the canoe back to shore.’

  ‘Quite a girl,’ Tracy murmured. ‘She was really a bit ahead of her time, don’t you think? A sort of early Women’s Lib?’

  ‘Oh, definitely,’ Stephen agreed. ‘Nowadays she Looks out at the big game fishing boats putting out to sea—here comes one now!’ They watched the launch with its twin outriggers, a flag fluttering at the mast head signifying the day’s catch, as it shut off the engine and glided over the water. ‘Here’s the Reef!’

  They moved into a softly lighted restaurant where strains of music mingled with the dull roar of the surf. The waiter led them to a corner table where wide windows looked out to the harbour entrance and the reef beyond.

  On Stephen’s advice Tracy selected from the menu a truly New Zealand meal. A seafood cocktail, toheroa soup, succulent New Zealand lamb accompanied by roasted kumeras, and a luscious sweet featuring the sharp-sweet flavour of tamarillos. She didn’t know why all at once she was content to take his advice instead of trading insults with him. It seemed that happiness made one disinclined for battle. It was easier tonight to drift on this lulling tide of content.

  ‘One more local product—’ Stephen beckoned to the wine waiter. ‘Have you any Valley Red?’

  A few minutes later the waiter returned with a bottle of wine bearing the familiar label and Tracy raised her glass to Stephen’s. ‘A good trip!’ Fascinated, she watched the tiny diamonds rising in the goblet, marvelling that from the terraced vineyards in the bush-sheltered valley had come this sparkling matured red wine with its unique blending of flavours.

  ‘Care to dance?’

  She nodded and rising from the table went with him towards the cleared area in the centre of the tables. Soon they were merging into the music and movement, and that too, she thought dreamily, formed a part of the enchantment. Certainly they matched each other perfectly, steps, height, everything. Once again she was aware of the magnetism flowing between them, powerful as an electric current.

  They were seated once more at the table watching an outsized pumpkin-coloured moon climb over the sea, when two men stopped beside Steve.

  ‘Hey, Steve! Thought it was you!’ The swarthy-looking man in his early thirties was accompanied by an older man so resembling him in features and colouring that Tracy took them to be father and son.

  ‘Joseph! Take a seat!’ Stephen shook hands with the strangers, then made the introductions. ‘Joseph Selevich junior and senior. My aunt Lucie and,’ he turned towards Tracy, ‘this is Miss Cadell. She’s staying with us at the moment back at the valley.’ As the two men seated themselves at the table, Stephen said to Tracy, laughter glimmering in his eyes, ‘These two characters happen to be winegrowers too. Just too bad their second-rate northern varieties don’t compare with our wines from the valley!’

  The short dark-haired man grinned. ‘What went to his head, Miss Cadell, was winning the gold medal last year for his Pinot Chardonnay at the International Wine Exhibition, top wine of the show—’

  ‘You must admit, though, Jo,’ his father argued, ‘that we’ve got to hand it to Steve. We’re all in on that win. It proved there’s a place for the small wine-maker in New Zealand as well as the big business concerns.’

  Joseph Junior was eyeing the wine bottle in its wicker cradle. Raising his thick black brows significantly in Tracy’s direction, he said with a grin: ‘I see he sticks to the home product!’

  ‘Nothing but the best!’ Stephen agreed in his laconic tones.

  ‘We’ll thrash that one out later, at the conference,’ the older man said with a chuckle. ‘I hear you’re making a big name for yourself, Steve, with your Valley Pearl. We’re trying out something along the same lines. There’s no doubt it’s the classical whites we’ve got to concentrate on in the future if we’re going to put our wanes on the map.’

  Stephen nodded. ‘Now you’re talking!’

  The older man swung around to Tracy. ‘Don’t you agree. Miss Cadell?’

  ‘Oh yes, yes,’ she stammered, jerking herself from thoughts of Stephen and trying to hide her obvious inattention.

  ‘What do you think of this wine business, anyway?’

  She laughed. ‘What gets me is this sort of intense personal dedication to the vineyards. You know? And those gorgeous exotic names—Palomino, Pinot, Gamay—but of course it’s all new to me.’

  ‘You’re learning fast. Bet you could tell me which vines turn yellow in the autumn and which change to red?’

  She wrinkled her nose at him. ‘Not that fast.’

  ‘Forget it,’ Joseph senior said with a smile. ‘Anyway, you’ll be able to see for yourself in a few months.’

  A few months. In spite of herself a deep sigh escaped her and the wine-grower caught her downcast glance, ‘You’re thinking you mightn’t be around the valley to make a personal inspection of the vines, eh?’ he teased.

  Tracy shrugged slim shoulders, forced a smile. ‘Who can tell?’

  She brought her mind back to Stephen’s voice. ‘Sorry I’ve got to take off with these blokes, but someone’s got to talk some sense into them at the conference. Okay if I drop you and Lucie back at the motel, Tracy?’

  ‘Of course.’ Her light tone belied her feelings, for underneath she felt a stab of disappointment. A stroll along the cool sandy beach would have made the whole day complete. Just the two of them, she and Stephen. Somehow they never really managed to get things out into the open. There were so many matters that puzzled her, questions she wanted to ask him, but there never
seemed to be any opportunity. For although they worked side by side in the vineyard office, there he was very much her employer. Today in the relaxed holiday atmosphere everything seemed different, and out there on the silvered sands...

  Back at the motel a short while later, she watched as he turned the car and swept away. There was an odd little ache in her heart. If he had stayed, if they had been alone together, would he ... would she? She turned away with a sigh. Oh well, there would be other times, other nights.

  She was still thinking of him when later she went to her room, moving silently in the darkness because Lucie was already asleep in the twin bed.

  Now that she had succeeded in changing Stephen’s opinion of her maybe they could start afresh. There was no doubt but that he drew her with a dangerous magnetism against which she had no defence. Trouble was, she thought, rummaging through her overnight bag in search of pyjamas, that she never really knew him ... disturbingly attractive to her one moment, antagonizing her the next ... but always someone you couldn’t forget. A thought crossed her mind and she wondered if Alison had found him so. According to the conversation overheard amongst the women pickers in the vineyard her cousin had found him more than attractive, but that was mere gossip. Nothing that concerned her, how could it? She pushed the disturbing thought aside.

  When she arrived at the sun-splashed breakfast table, he was waiting there, looking fresh and alert, and undeniably pleased to see her, she thought with a tell-tale leap of the heart.

  ‘Lucie’s not coming down to breakfast, says she’d rather have a sleep-in today instead. How did it go, the conference?’ Tracy asked, sipping a glass of pineapple juice.

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t bad, although I could think of a lot of things I’d rather have been doing last night—’ For a moment their glances locked. ‘General opinion seemed to be,’ he went on his laconic tones, ‘the same as I think myself, and that is that the day of any old wine for New Zealand is passing. Folk are getting wine-minded, more choosey. They know’ what they want and they expect to be able to get it in the local product. It’s the classical whites that are what we’ll all have to go in for. The Auckland area will never produce quality reds, that’s for sure. Thing is, in Auckland we’ve got a white, not a red wine climate.’

  Absorbed in his subject, he looked alert and clean-cut and so utterly heart-stirring that Tracy’s mind slipped away from the matter so near his heart to other more personal reflections. When he was like this, intent on his work, confiding to her his dreams of the future, everything else was forgotten and she could study him to her heart’s great satisfaction, the dark intelligent face, the vibrant tones with their ring of vitality and purpose Was that what stirred her so about him?

  Soon they were on the road, moving through the small picturesque township, then swinging inland to the coast and the ‘sunshine town’ of Opotiki. As they left the settlement behind a sign at the bridge bade them ‘farewell and good luck.’ A nice gesture, Tracy reflected, but as it happened the good luck had already come her way, for hadn’t she succeeded in overcoming Stephen’s initial misconception of her capabilities? And somehow all at once that seemed the most important thing in the world! As if that wasn’t sufficient good fortune, here she was heading along a winding road where every bend disclosed a fresh vista of the countless bays.

  As they moved along the highway Tracy reflected that the coast road was far removed from the ordered highways she had known in Auckland. Through the tangled branches of wind-swept pohutukawas on the cliff edge she caught glimpses of campers’ tents and caravans nestled amongst bush at the water’s edge; fishermen were surf-casting on the rocks. In this rugged country, wild and remote, it was as if they had left civilization behind.

  The metal roads were now steep and winding, but Steve was a competent driver, she’d give him that. Slowing to a crawl, he waited while two Maori boys mounted on the broad backs of their sturdy rock ponies, sugar sacks for saddles, thundered past on the loose metal. Around the next bend they came suddenly on a milling herd of black cattle and Stephen pulled in to the roadside as the Maori drover and his dogs moved the stock over a narrow, one-way bridge. Then they were climbing up, up into the clouds, it seemed to Tracy, swinging around bends over dizzying heights to drop swiftly down precipitous slopes. At length they cut inland to the rugged sheep-farming country. Blackberry grew wild in the paddocks and the dried grass at the edge of the highway was splashed with the pink and white of belladonna lilies. Tracy raised her Instamatic to her eyes to snap a cluster of steers that were gathered around a drinking hole bulldozed in a paddock and ringed with cabbage trees.

  The vehicles they passed now were jeeps and Land-Rovers, great transporters their long trailers tightly packed with sheep. As they swept through a small Maori settlement a group of smiling dark-eyed children trudging along the road home from school, raised chubby hands in greeting. A little further on two stockmen seated on the raiis of a tea-tree corral waved their battered Kiwi hats in salutation as the Holden swept by.

  Then they were once again in sight of the sea and soon Stephen guided the car off the road and over a narrow path overgrown with fern and bracken, that led towards a sandy inlet. The twisted roots of gnarled pohutukawas clung precariously to the bank and thick sand below was crisscrossed with the footprints of gulls. Tide and weather had piled heaps of driftwood high along the shoreline and the far end of the bay was hidden in a cloud of spray.

  ‘You may as well take in a bit of the coast at first hand,’ Stephen told Tracy. He was guiding the dust-covered car down a rough track bulldozed down to the sand below. Soon they were out of the car and seated on a great bleached fallen log, while Lucie poured tea into plastic cups from her ever-ready thermos.

  It was heavenly, Tracy thought, to feel the fresh invigorating sea breeze tearing at her hair after the dust of the road. Afterwards she and Stephen strolled along the beach beside the breaking waves and Tracy paused to pick up a strange shell.

  ‘It’s so hot and sticky.’ she glanced up to meet his gaze, ‘could we—I mean, have we time?’

  ‘Just what I was going to suggest! So what are we waiting for?’

  No need to put the thought into words, that shimmering sea was infinitely tempting. On this occasion Tracy had no need for instruction in the matter of changing sheds on remote New Zealand beaches. The thickly-growing creepers and dense bush nearby provided a natural shelter and it took only a short rime to slip from her clothing and pull on her swim-suit, still damp from yesterday’s dip.

  After the heat of the journey, the sharp cool touch of the crystal-clear water was a delight. Together they moved through the waves, striking out for the depths ahead, then turned to follow the long line of the shore. After a time Tracy fell far behind. A good swimmer, she knew herself to be hopelessly outdistanced by Stephen’s effortless crawl and her strokes were flagging. Stephen, however, slowed his pace to her progress and at last they emerged from the water, moving towards the log where Lucie still sat in the shade of overhanging trees.

  ‘You still won’t change your mind about a swim?’ Tracy asked her lightly.

  Lucie pulled a face. ‘Ask me on the way back. I just can’t let Cliff see me looking too frightful!’

  Cliff. With a little shock of surprise Tracy realized that she had almost forgotten the object of the long motor journey. It’s my holiday, she told herself, that’s why I’m enjoying the trip so much! Not just because Stephen Crane is here with me ... well, not altogether, honesty made her admit. Not just because of him!

  Reluctantly she got back into the car. She thought she could never have enough to satisfy her of bathing in these crystal-clear bays with their water and sense of remoteness.

  ‘I wish he didn’t have to go.’ She was speaking her thoughts aloud as Stephen reached a hand towards the starter button.

  ‘You know something, Tracy?’ His repeated attempts to start the engine brought no response, merely an ominous unfamiliar whirring. ‘I’ve got an idea you might get that w
ish!’

  ‘Steve!’ Lucie glanced across at him in alarm. ‘You don’t mean to say we’re stranded here, miles from anywhere?’

  ‘We are, you know!’

  ‘But surely you can do something to get her going?’

  ‘I’ll keep trying, but if the trouble’s what I think it is...’

  He broke off and getting out of the car, lifted the bonnet and peered inside. ‘Hmm ... just what I was afraid of! Seems to be a wire hanging loose. It looks pretty hopeless. We’ll have to have a replacement pump before we can get her moving again. Just a small job, once you get a new pump!’

  A worried frown lined Lucie’s forehead. ‘But, Steve, this place is miles from civilization. All the same, there might be a village somewhere around, some tiny settlement with a

  local garage .. Her voice died away uncertainly.

  ‘A local garage mightn’t have one in stock! No,’ he slammed down the bonnet, ‘we’ll just have to wait until someone comes along and ask them to get a message through to the nearest garage. If they don’t happen to have an electric pump they’ll be able to phone through and get one sent out from Gisborne.’

  ‘But it might take ages—’

  He shrugged. ‘May be able to get it tomorrow, if we’re lucky! Good thing we threw in the tent and sleeping bags.’ He turned towards Tracy. ‘Ever done any camping out?’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve never had the chance.’

  ‘Well,’ something in his deep intent look sent that silly illogical happiness of yesterday surging back, ‘there’s got to be a first time! Looks like you’re about to try it out in just about the most remote place you could pick on—how’s the eats department, Lucie? Anything left?’