by Gloria Bevan
‘Tracy Cadell.’ Stephen’s tone was expressionless. ‘Alison’s cousin.’
For a moment a shadow of pain clouded Cliff’s grey eyes then he smiled. ‘Tick, tick, tick, it’s all coming back. You were the girl who was coming out from England—correction, the girl who came out here, for the wedding?"
‘That’s right.’ Tracy’s voice was perfectly composed, but inwardly her heart was crying wildly, ‘Not Alison’s wedding—my wedding! Mine and Stephen’s!’
‘I guess,’ Cliff looked away, passing a tongue over his lips, ‘they put you in the picture, Steve and Lucie, about what happened down here before you arrived?’
‘Oh yes.’ Tracy was aware of a loaded silence, then Cliff was speaking again.
‘Alison ... she told me about you—’
‘What did she say?’ Tracy inquired lightly.
He shrugged slight shoulders. ‘Nothing much, actually. Just that you were a funny conscientious sort of kid, always trusting everyone, believing everything you were told—’
‘Tracy,’ Steve broke in in his vibrant tones, ‘is helping out with the office work at the valley. Don’t know how I’d get along without her now—’
‘Now that I’ve let you down, you mean?’ Cliff’s tone was low and strained.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘No need. Talking of the office,’ Cliff turned an anxious face towards Tracy, ‘tell me, has there been any mail for me, by any chance, from a firm called Smith & Galway?’
Before she could make an answer Stephen cut in. ‘It’s okay. I’ve fixed all that!’ His voice tightened. ‘You won’t be hearing from that outfit again.’
‘Well,’ Cliff relaxed against the piled pillows, ‘that’s one worry off my mind. If you only knew—’
‘Forget it!’ At Stephen’s taut and forbidding tone, Tracy glanced up at him in astonishment. Lucie, in an obvious effort to divert the course of the conversation, delved into her flax kit and produced a wrapped fruit cake. ‘For you, Cliff—’
‘Gee, thanks a lot, Lucie!’ He placed the cake in his bedside locker. ‘They feed us pretty well here, but they don’t exactly go in for home-made cakes, not like you make, anyhow. Oh, by the way,’ his tone was carefully controlled, ‘there hasn’t been any other mail for me, by any chance?’
‘From the Islands, you mean?’ Tracy was aware that Steve was wearing his dark angry look again, his mouth a hard line. It seemed that today his brother was in for a share of the chilly treatment he had once handed out to her. ‘Were you expecting any?’
Cliff glanced aside. ‘No, no, just a thought—how was the trip down, Miss Cadell? Enjoy it?’
‘Tracy!’ she corrected him—in her soft, warm tones, aware of the effort it must have cost him to repeat that particular name with all its painful associations. ‘Did I ever?’ Her face was alight with enthusiasm. ‘It was just about the most exciting trip of my life. We followed the road around the cape ... fabulous!’
‘I know, it’s breathtaking, isn’t it? Those views ... we did it all just a while ago...’ Cliff’s voice altered and a spasm of pain crossed the young face.
Lucie was once again delving in her capacious Maori kit, extending a bundle of papers. ‘There was some mail for you, Cliff, all these mountaineering magazines—’ He made a wry grimace as he took the packet from her hand. ‘Insult to injury! Thanks, anyway, Lucie.’
‘I was going to post them on to you, but Steve said we’d be making the trip down to see you soon, so I held on to them—Oh, goodness,’ the soft brown eyes were anxious, ‘you don’t mind about them? I mean—’
‘I know what you mean.’ The boyish face relaxed in a teasing grin. ‘It’s okay, Lucie. It’s all in the luck of the draw! and I can still take an interest in climbing, you know, in my quiet way.’ For a moment the light tones were tinged with bitterness, but the next moment he was smiling again. ‘I’m not giving the game away yet, you knew.’ At her look of disbelief he added laughingly, ‘Oh, not the high peaks, the record-breakers. They’re not for me, not now, but I’ve got another idea. How would it go, I asked myself, if I had a bash at writing a book on climbing? I’ve got plenty of stuff to use, swags of photos. Who knows? My modest experience in climbing New Zealand peaks might come in handy for some of the overseas climbers who come over here. I could give them a few pointers on mountain safety’ and rescue. Could be it would be interesting to them, at any rate. What do you reckon, Steve?’
His brother didn’t answer for a moment. The dark intense face was lost in thought. ‘Should work out! It’s worth giving it a go! At least the market in that line isn’t too overcrowded!’
‘What he really means,’ Cliff turned towards Tracy, ‘is that to really grab the interest it would have to be a history of wine-making. It’s an idea, at that!’
‘There’s that little portable typewriter in the office,’ Steve suggested. ‘I’ll send it down to you with the books and diaries.’
‘Great,’ Cliff said. ‘Shove it all in a box with the photographic stuff and I’ll do the sorting out.’ He appealed to his aunt, ‘Lucie, you know where all my gear is?’
She nodded. ‘We’ll see to it, Cliff. Anything else you want?’
‘How about two good pins?’ But he was laughing. ‘Apart from that, you mean? Anyhow, what’s all the news of the valley? Picking all finished, I guess, or you wouldn’t be here, Steve. Still got the same old bunch on the job?’
‘Just about.’ For a second Stephen’s lip lifted at the corners as he shot a swift and secret glance towards Tracy.
‘How about the conference at the Bay of Plenty? You wouldn’t miss that?’
‘We didn’t. Took it on the way here.’ The deep tones quickened with interest. ‘The change is on, that’s for sure! With Auckland growers this year will be remembered as the start of something good in local wines. The rush is on to plant classicals, even a few good reds. A couple of years and New Zealand should be producing some splendid wines. One thing’s for sure, the days of the cheap good New Zealand wines are over. We’ve got to concentrate harder, grow better grapes, forget about copying European names!’
‘Funny, that,’ Cliff murmured with a grin, ‘even though we plant the same vines the taste will be different.’
‘That’s because of soil conditions.’
‘Listen to him!’ Cliff appealed to Tracy. ‘Don’t you get browned off with wine talk all the time? I don’t know how you put up with it. He’s dedicated to the vineyards, haven’t you noticed?’
Tracy smiled her wide heartwarming smile. ‘I get that feeling too.’ But her thoughts were busy. ‘I’m fascinated with wine-growing too. I want to learn more about it, the bottling, the selling angle, so that I can discuss it with Stephen, be a real help to him in his work.’ With an effort she brought her mind back to Cliff’s pleasant tones.
‘How do you feel about being in on the wine-making caper?’
She glanced down at him, blue eyes alight with enthusiasm. ‘It fascinates me! Honestly. From what I can make out it’s a sort of—’ she hesitated, ‘personal thing.’
Cliff grinned back at her. ‘Mystique? You’ve got something there!’
She laughed, ‘Something like that. The first day I came to the vineyards the big purple grapes were simply bursting on the vines. It really got me. I think it’s a wonderful idea, replacing so many of the common grapes with the classical vines. Even if it does mean waiting a while to get results, it would be worth it in a few years when—’ All at once she realized that Steve was listening intently and she broke off, adding after a moment in confusion, ‘I get a bit carried away sometimes. I guess to me it’s all so new and different. But then of course,’ she laughed lightly, ‘I have nothing to do with the hard slog out in the hot sun among the vines. I’m down below in a nice cool office.’
‘Funny,’ Cliff teased, ‘I had an idea ... someone told me ... something about you having a bash at the picking?’
‘Oh, that,’ once again she was conscious of Stephen�
��s quizzical glance, ‘that was ages ago, when I first came to the valley and got tangled with one of your local wasps. We didn’t exactly hit it off.’
‘So I gathered. You’re like old Steve,’ there was a teasing light in his eyes. ‘Two of a kind. Wine-making never did a thing for me. I reckon it’s one of those things you’re born to. What do the old hands in Henderson say about it? “Anything you do with wine-making should be done with love.” ‘
Love. Tracy averted her glance, conscious of the faint pink that was creeping up her cheeks. Cliff however, had swung around to face his brother. ‘How’s about that classical white you’ve been experimenting with at the valley? The one you talked of pioneering? Wasn’t it always your big dream to switch to all classicals?’
Steve said quietly, ‘Changing over to classicals means a hang of a lot more equipment, expense...’ He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Maybe I will—one of these days.’
‘But you—’ the younger man broke off, looking discomfited. After a moment he went on in a low tone, ‘You mean you can’t run to it. Not after Smith & Galway! I get it! Gee, I’m sorry about that, Steve.’
‘I said forget it!’
‘Oh, Mr. Crane—’ A smiling young nurse was approaching the bedside. With her twinkling green eyes and lively smile she was the type of girl, Tracy thought irrelevantly, who one would like to have around when lying imprisoned in a remote country hospital.
‘Oh, lord,’ Cliff groaned. ‘The visitors’ bell. It must have gone ages ago!’
‘I thought you hadn’t heard it. Or didn’t you want to?’ Something in the warm intimacy of that intercepted glance that passed between them told Tracy that the injured man had found some feminine consolation for his shattered love affair. She was young, no more than eighteen probably, with cropped red hair showing beneath her pink cap, a. small square freckled face—as different a girl from. Alison as one could imagine. But then perhaps Cliff had had his fill of sophisticated charmers.
Amid a chorus of goodbyes, messages and good wishes the little party left the sunny porch, moving through the ward with its many smiling Maori faces and out into the upturned blue saucer of a cloudless sky.
It was later, when Tracy was perched on a high stool in the bedroom brushing out the long strands of her hair, that Lucie wandered into the room and seated herself at the writing desk, a picture postcard in her hand.
‘Funny,’ Tracy’s voice was thoughtful, ‘about those letters that Cliff spoke of, the ones from some special firm. I thought I handled all the mail that came into the office, but I don’t remember seeing any by that name.’
‘You wouldn’t, you know!’ Lucie was searching through a drawer in search of a ball-point pen. ‘Steve would have grabbed them before you ever set eyes on them. The moment he caught sight of the name on the envelopes he’d have ripped them open and paid the money.’
‘Money?’ Tracy turned inquiringly towards her.
Lucie sent her an odd look. ‘I may as well tell you. Seeing you keep the books at the office you’d probably come across it anyway. And it’s not as though you’re likely to go blabbing about family affairs to anyone we know. It’s just that anyone local would recognize the name Cliff mentioned as a firm of money-lenders, and he was in with them pretty deep. I wouldn’t have guessed how deep except that Steve told me all about it. He was afraid I’d give Cliff money to settle them. Not that he ever asked me ... trouble with him is that he’s far too good-natured, he always has been. He’d give anything away and money just slips through his fingers. He got through the capital his father left him ages ago. Those overseas climbing expeditions ran into real money. But he managed along all right with wages, that is, until he met Alison.’
Lucie stared past Tracy, brown eves dreaming. ‘He was crazy about her, right from the beginning. I don’t think he’d ever really fallen for a girl before and he fell hard! Seeing she was so much better off financially than he was he seemed to think he had to prove himself to be on an equal footing, buy her the most expensive gifts he could think of—that yellow Mini was one. And some of the jewellery he gave her must have cost the earth. There was one piece, a rare greenstone pendant that had once belonged to a Maori chieftainess. I can’t even imagine what he must have paid a collector to obtain it. Poor old Cliff, he really got carried away with his big ideas. Once he climbed up on the merry-go-round he just couldn’t get off. He made Alison the wildest promises of what they’d do once they were married, promises he couldn’t possibly have made good. Then he put a huge deposit on an expensive ranch-style house. Of course in the end he lost that too. When Alison discovered the truth of it all she was furious. No doubt that was one of the reasons why the wedding plans were all off! It’s too bad for Cliff. He won’t get over it in a hurry. Awful enough to be turned down by his fiancée...’ her voice trailed away and Tracy mentally supplied the unspoken ending. ‘But to be disillusioned in the loved one as well!’
Lucie’s voice blended with her musing. ‘It was so hard on Steve—’
‘Steve?’ Tracy glanced up quickly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Why, don’t you see? He paid out big money to settle all those debts of Cliffs. It means that now he won’t be able to follow up his plans of changing over to classical wines, going in for personal named wines in a big way. It would mean equipment, endless expense. With classicals he’d have to keep the wine for four years before selling, one year in oak, three in the bottle. Just imagine the storage problem, and the cost of that alone! He’ll have to make the move in the end, of course, his whole future depends on what’s in the bottle that carries his name. It’s just too bad that he can’t afford to change over right now, when the other growers all around are switching.’
‘I suppose.’ But on another level she was flooded by a tremendous sense of relief. So that was the reason why Stephen had been so incensed at her wearing Alison’s greenstone pendant. To him it would be a painful reminder of his brother’s long list of debts, money squandered on a girl who wasn’t worth such sacrifices. Far from ever having been in love with Alison, he had for her cousin only contempt. Obviously he despised her aimless existence, her selfishness, her treatment of his brother. At last she understood the bitterness that had extended even to the strange girl who bore Alison’s name.
Lost in her thoughts, she was scarcely aware of Lucie’s incredulous tones. ‘Would you believe it? It’s been here all the time, in my writing case! I must have zipped it in the pocket that last day. Honestly, I was in such a tizzy at the time I scarcely knew what I was doing! It’s pretty stale news now, but if you still want it—’
‘Want it?’ Tracy was still away in her private dream, a preview of the future where she and Stephen worked side by side in the vineyards, extending the winery; over the years winning national, perhaps even overseas recognition, for their unique personal named wines.
‘Don’t you understand? It’s the letter! The one Alison left for you when she went away! Only I couldn’t find it all this time. Here it is, anyway. I’ll leave you to read it.’
After Lucie had gone, Tracy still hesitated, resisting an impulse to toss the message in the basket unread. A vague presentiment of disaster urged her to destroy it. For whether by accident or intent, somehow Alison had that unhappy knack of spoiling things for her. She always had done. The next moment she told herself not to be so stupidly imaginative, and slitting open the sealed envelope, she scanned the straggling writing.
‘Tracy dear,
I’m in a frightful rush, just off to the airstrip to catch a plane back to Auckland where I’m joining up with a cruise ship going to the islands. By the time you read this I’ll be oceans away, but I just wanted to let you in on a few things. You see, Steve and I ... Steve and I ... Tracy’s heart plunged and the words danced before her distraught gaze. What could she mean? It was a moment before the writing slipped back into focus. ‘... thought it would be better if I went right away for a while. Heaven only knows what wild story the others will cook up between them
as a cover-up for your benefit. I can’t see Steve broadcasting the story that he was crazy about his brother’s girl, tried to get her away from him, and sent Cliff crashing into an accident. But that’s what happened.
‘Thing is, Steve and I—well, he told me last night that ever since the day he first set eyes on me, he’s been crazy about me, can’t live without me, and he’s never going to give up trying to make me feel the same way about him. Everything would have been okay, but his brother had to walk in right in the middle of a big love scene, and did Cliff go to town! Not that I care now what he thinks! It was all a stupid mistake, the engagement. I was going to finish with him even if Steve and I hadn’t felt this wav about each other. But Cliff ... imagine, telling me all those lies, making out he was wealthy and all that. Once you’ve met a man like Steve you don’t think any more about his young brother, and believe me, he’s a lot younger in his ways than he looks!
‘Steve says that as soon as things have blown over a bit and Cliff’s up and about again, he’s going to send for me, wherever I happen to be, and then it will be wedding bells for us both. But don’t waste time waiting around for this wedding, Tracy, because I’ve no idea how long it will be before Stephen gives me the green light to go ahead. And whatever you do, keep all this to yourself. It’s top secret.
‘Until I hear from Steve to come back to New Zealand, I’m staying on in the Pacific Islands. Not a bad place to wait around in. Sorry about the bridesmaid thing and you having to come all this way for nothing, but you’ll have had the trip out of it.