Gabriel's Bay

by Robertson, Catherine

  Sidney walked home, picked up E.H. Gombrich, and over the next forty-five minutes retained not one word.

  ‘I’m still seething,’ she said, as Kerry opened the wine.

  ‘I’ll fill it to the top,’ he said. ‘Throw this standard drink nonsense to the wind.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sidney took the glass, carefully, because it was indeed brimming. ‘But don’t let me quaff in anger. It’s not pretty.’

  ‘He did apologise.’

  ‘Really?’ said Sidney. ‘You mistook those insincere platitudes for an apology?’

  ‘He acknowledged that we’d been put out.’

  ‘His first reaction was irritation that he had to drive to the Boat Shed to fetch Madison. Only then did he realise we’d been waiting for him for fifteen bloody minutes at the school, sweating like bomb-disposal experts over the unstable gelignite that is the Booths, Lincoln and Reuben. And then he spouted weasel words, before slinking off.’

  Kerry had taken a seat in the old armchair across from Sidney, who’d commandeered the sofa and was tempted to stretch right out on it. It wasn’t a date, she had no one to impress, and Rick Jensen’s rudeness plus a car ride with both Reuben and the Booth sisters had left her as frayed as Mr Phipps’s garden twine, which looked to have been recycled year on year since the sixteenth century.

  ‘Not wanting to put a gloss on his behaviour,’ said Kerry, ‘but he did pick her up. Fifteen minutes late, I grant you, but at least he didn’t disappoint Madison.’

  ‘Yes, there’s that,’ said Sidney. ‘Though, to be honest—’ She lowered her voice; the boys were in bed, but that did not mean they were asleep. ‘I wonder if Madison is better off spending as little time as possible in that environment. Rattling around in that big house, with only occasional company from a dodgy, unreliable father, and a mother who seems to have checked out completely. How can that be good for her?’

  ‘And what will happen when the vineyard is sold?’ Kerry also spoke quietly. ‘Will they go their separate ways?’

  ‘Oh, God, I can’t bear to think of it,’ said Sidney. ‘In my darkest moments, I have this vision of them fighting each other not to get custody of Madison.’

  ‘If you’re that concerned,’ said Kerry, ‘can you not have a word?’

  ‘Non-stick Rick would only fob me off,’ said Sidney. ‘And I’m not even sure Olivia sees me as a fellow woman, but more as a helpful child-minding dog, like Nana in Peter Pan.’

  Kerry laughed, and Sidney felt the surge of satisfaction that comes with pulling off a funny line. Instantly, the feeling u-turned and sank downwards as gloom. He probably thought the comparison was apt rather than ridiculous. The comparison was apt, the only difference being she’d not yet had to prevent her children being abducted by fairies.

  ‘How are the bees?’ said Kerry.

  OK, jam jars and beehives. In the absence of cats, perhaps she could become a crazy bee lady.

  ‘The queen is laying eggs with a speed and efficiency Japanese factories would envy,’ said Sidney. ‘So we’ve added a queen excluder and placed honey supers on the top deep, plus we’re checking the varroa mite treatments, and the pollen stores to see if we need to feed supplements. Checking for wax moth, too. Stuff like that.’

  Kerry’s mouth hung slightly open. ‘I have to confess I lost you at “queen is laying eggs”. I had a vision of Her Majesty roosting and that was that.’

  ‘You could come with me one time, if you like?’

  That didn’t sound like flirting, did it? It was bees, for heaven’s sake, not etchings.

  ‘I would like,’ said Kerry. ‘Though I’m probably more interested in witnessing Mr Phipps utter an actual word. I’m still not convinced he can, despite your assurances.’

  ‘He’s no chatterbox, that’s for sure,’ said Sidney. ‘Even when his wife was alive, he never talked much. Mary didn’t, either. I suspect they communicated by telepathy.’

  ‘When did she die?’

  ‘Oh, gosh — five years ago now. In sad circumstances, too. She went for a hike in the bush and didn’t come back. They found her body in a stream. Seemed she’d slipped while crossing, knocked herself out and drowned. Poor Mr Phipps was bereft. She was only sixty-seven.’

  ‘That is sad,’ said Kerry. ‘I’m sorry for the old boy. Any children?’

  Sidney shook her head. ‘He and Mary married late, in their forties. She was a local girl. He’d been a train driver. Drove the last of the steam trains and shifted to diesels, as they all had to. Quit when the railway was privatised in the eighties, moved here, met Mary, who I think had been divorced or widowed, and took up as handyman, gardener and beekeeper.’

  ‘And enthusiastic war-gamer by all accounts,’ said Kerry. ‘By the way, does he have a first name? Not that I intend to call him anything but “Mr Phipps”.’

  ‘Titus.’ Sidney smiled at Kerry’s wide eyes. ‘I know. Like something out of Dickens.’

  Kerry raised his glass. ‘To Titus Phipps! Whose middle name is, with luck, Montague or Uriah.’

  ‘Or Ebenezer, or Smike.’

  ‘Or — who’s that joker in Great Expectations?’ Kerry snapped his fingers. ‘Pumblechook!’

  ‘Or Wackford,’ said Sidney.

  ‘Wackford! God, yes, I’d forgotten about old Wackford.’

  When was the last time she’d had a conversation like this? With Gene and Jacko, she was only a bit part, a stooge for their double act, never an equal. Mac? Perhaps, but when did they ever have time to sit down for a proper chat? And besides, Mac thought novels were for the weak-minded who couldn’t deal with the real world. Even Crime and Punishment had been too airy-fairy for her liking.

  Had she even talked like this with Fergal? She remembered listening, rapt, as he painted idyllic pictures of their life to be, his accent soft and beguiling. She remembered him being romantic, wooing with wildflowers and poetry. But had he been funny? Looking back, laughter was not what she could recall.

  And now here was Kerry, putting his serious face on.

  ‘I wanted to ask your advice,’ he said.

  Of course he did.

  ‘Both Jonty and Meredith have promised to think about showing their miniatures to the public, and I hope to enlist Doctor Love this week—’

  ‘Wait — Jonty promised?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t say no.’

  ‘That he said anything at all is my point.’

  ‘What do you know about Sophie, their daughter?’ said Kerry.

  ‘Is this a diversion?’ said Sidney. ‘To steer me away from a Jonty hate-rant?’

  ‘Just curiosity. And cowardice — I daren’t ask Meredith.’

  Sidney sighed. ‘From what Mac has told me, seems that Nicola was always seen as “the good daughter”, and Sophie the stroppy tearaway. Jonty, in particular, actively favoured Nicola. Went to her graduation from law school, but not Sophie’s from art school, even though she achieved a First Class Honours degree.’

  ‘Really? I got the impression she wasn’t making a living as an artist, so I assumed she was, er—’

  ‘A bit shit?’ said Sidney. ‘I’ve only seen her early stuff, but she’s very talented. She just also happens to be intractable and demanding, which was OK for a couple of years when she could claim to be an enfant terrible. But the act — and she — quickly got old, and now none of the top galleries will touch her. And without that kind of patronage, it’s nigh-on impossible to reach buyers with serious money.’

  ‘Influence,’ said Kerry, nodding. ‘That’s the key.’

  ‘And that’s what you need,’ said Sidney. ‘If you want your miniatures idea to take off. You need the right people on your side.’

  ‘Which brings us back to the start — me asking your advice,’ said Kerry. ‘Do I need to woo the Progressive Association? Or is Mac’s opinion of them universal?’

  Good question. Sidney sipped her wine, deliberated.

  ‘If you don’t have them on your side, it won’t be a disaster,’ she said, ‘b
ut it will definitely limit your options. For example, Bernard Weston owns enormous amounts of commercial property in town, so if you needed a venue … Elaine Pardew is on the Hampton District Council, and it would be loads easier if they were behind it, at least in name. Geoffrey Naylor comes from money, and gets a big woody from being the one everybody comes begging to. And every single committee member, apart from Tinker, is a fixture in the Hampton Rotary Club or the Soroptimists — all those organisations that are magnets for well-off, late-middle-aged white people. Which means they know absolutely everyone.’

  ‘In other words, get wooing,’ said Kerry, glumly.

  Sidney fetched the wine bottle, topped up both glasses. As she poured his, Kerry gave her a look she recognised. Her sons were not usually subtle about their demands, but every so often they’d play the appealing, big-eyed urchin card.

  ‘Ha, not likely,’ she said, as she resumed her seat. ‘I’ve ruled myself out of contention for wooing. Had a set-to with Maureen Roper about her wish to remove Judy Blume and Captain Underpants from the school library — didn’t quite call her a Nazi cow, but, you know. And when Prince Joffrey — that’s Geoffrey Naylor — groped me at Doctor Love’s Christmas drinks, I grabbed his fingers and bent them right back.’

  ‘With your lid-conquering hands of strength,’ said Kerry.

  ‘Too right. Horrible perv.’

  ‘Anyone else you’ve made an enemy of?’

  ‘Not directly,’ said Sidney. ‘But they all know I’m mates with Mac.’

  Kerry screwed up his mouth. ‘Another I need to woo, don’t I?’

  ‘Oh, without Mac’s support you are definitely toast,’ said Sidney. ‘My gosh, isn’t this lobbying business a thorny thicket? Are you sure you’re up for it?’

  This time his expression surprised her — ambition she read in it loud and clear, and more than a hint of mischief. He was Reynard the Fox — red-haired trickster, schemer, adventurer — and suddenly, urgently, she wanted to be part of whatever he had planned.

  Damn it to hell, she had a crush on him. But — she took a breath — no one knew. He certainly had no clue, and that’s how it would stay, as her secret. And with willpower, the crush should quickly fade. No one need ever know.

  Good. All sorted. No harm done.

  ‘Want to watch Project Runway?’ she said.

  Chapter 18

  Madison

  The day was cloudy and cold. Too cold, really, to be outside, but Madison had found a blanket to sit on (she hoped it was old), and she wore the pink quilted coat Mum had bought her online from Burberry. In her lunchbox, she had some of Oksana’s dumplings, microwaved and wrapped in foil to keep them warm, an apple and the last of Sidney’s chocolate chip biscuits. Aidan and Rory said it wasn’t fair how many Sidney let her have, but she hadn’t been greedy, had eaten only one a day, which sort of made her feel better about hiding them from her mum, who would never put biscuits on the shopping list she gave to Oksana.

  Oksana had told Madison’s dad that there was never any food, and said she would go to the supermarket if he gave her more cash. Madison’s mum said Oksana would rip them off, but when Oksana dumped the shopping on the kitchen floor she placed the receipt and the change on the table so no one could miss it. Madison’s mum complained once that Oksana didn’t always follow the list she was given, but Oksana said, ‘I buy for growing child, not alkash.’ Madison guessed that word meant ‘adults’.

  Blanket, lunchbox and book wouldn’t all fit in her schoolbag, so Madison had hung the blanket over her arm, and trudged with it all the way up the hill to the copse of trees beside the top vines. From the house, the trees looked soft and light, a friendly green hideaway, but close up, they were a tangle she had to push through, branches catching on her coat and leaving marks. Underneath, the ground was bumpy, and muddy, too, after last night’s rain, and the light through the leaves was only bright in patches, so it took Madison a good five minutes to find a place where she could sit and read that wasn’t too uncomfortable and wouldn’t make the blanket too dirty.

  She thought about going back to her room, but that morning, when she was getting dressed, she’d heard her mum and dad yelling. Well, her mum was yelling but her dad sounded quite angry, too, saying something about buying things on Trade Me. Madison had crept out to go make herself breakfast, but even in the kitchen she could still hear her parents yelling, so she’d gone out onto the back verandah and seen the friendly looking trees, and decided to go there instead. It would be a kind of adventure, like the Famous Five children had, though without ginger beer and buns, and potted meat, which didn’t sound all that nice anyway.

  Madison’s book was one Sidney had lent her, an old one about a boy who was picked to go to wizard school. Written decades before Harry Potter, Sidney told her, and by a way-better author, though J.K. Rowling was good, too. The book didn’t have jokes in it like Harry Potter — the boy was very serious, and quite cross a lot of the time, which was fair enough because the other boys were bullying him about the fact he’d been a lowly farmhand, a goat-herder. There was one other student who was his big rival, and they were competing with magic, and the boy was just, maybe, about to make a really big mistake with a spell—

  ‘Woah!’

  The voice made Madison jump a mile. Clutching her book, heart thumping, she scrambled up onto her feet, started backing away.

  ‘Hey, hey, don’t be scared.’

  The man put his hands up in front of his chest like he was surrendering. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. Just surprised to see you is all.’

  She knew him, sort of. Knew his face. He came and did work around the vineyard for Rainer, mowing and maintenance and stuff. Rainer had other contractors at the moment, too, mainly from overseas, which was OK because he spoke French and Spanish as well as German and English. The workers were shoot-thinning and wire-lifting at the moment — Madison knew the right words. They started early, even on weekends.

  She saw the cigarette between the man’s fingers, the messy roll-your-own sort. That’s why he was here. It was break time.

  The man saw her notice the cigarette, made a face and tucked it into his jeans pocket. Pointed at her book. ‘What’re you reading?’

  He had the kind of unwashed look that would make her mum shudder — black jeans and a t-shirt with stains, yellowish-brown skin and greasy, long hair. Plus he had a huge bruise around his eye, and two of his fingernails were all black, like they were dead. But his face was kind, and his smile was nice, open, not creepy. He was a lot younger than she’d first thought, too. Looked more like a skinny kid than a grown-up.

  Madison held out her book. He took it, kept his thumb inside to mark her page.

  ‘Oh, yeah!’ he said. ‘Ged! And the dragons!’

  ‘Are there dragons?’

  ‘Yep. And three more books after this one.’

  Really? Madison hoped Sidney had those, too.

  He handed it back, gestured to her blanket and schoolbag. ‘Picnic?’

  ‘Um …’

  She could share the dumplings with him, she supposed. And half the biscuit.

  He mistook her hesitation. ‘Private. I get it.’ He smiled to show he wasn’t offended. ‘No worries. I’ll find another spot.’

  ‘Is this your spot?’

  ‘Well, I don’t own it,’ he said. ‘But I come here most days I’m working.’

  Madison thought about all the branches she’d had to break on her way in.

  ‘I didn’t hear you walk up,’ she said. ‘You didn’t make much noise.’

  He gestured behind him. ‘There’s sort of a path. You have to go right round the back.’

  She’d remember that for next time.

  He was rocking back on his heels, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his grubby jeans. Didn’t seem in a hurry to find his other spot. Perhaps he didn’t get to talk to people much?

  ‘How did you hurt your eye?’ was all Madison could think to ask.

  ‘Ah …’ He squinted
upwards, as if trying to remember. ‘You know. Kind of a fight.’ Shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dumb stuff.’

  When he wasn’t smiling, his face got all pinched, and his eyes got big, like one of those skinny rescue dogs they showed on TV ads. Madison felt sorry for him.

  ‘Do you want a biscuit?’ she said. ‘Chocolate chip.’

  ‘Sure!’ Shrugged again. ‘Don’t have anything to offer you, though.’

  ‘That’s OK.’

  Madison handed him the last biscuit, watched him wolf it in two bites.

  ‘Are you wire-lifting?’ she asked.

  ‘Mowing.’

  The word came out soggy, crumby. He swallowed, then his face brightened. ‘Want a ride? I could give you a ride on the tractor?’

  That sounded like fun! But …

  ‘I’m not allowed,’ said Madison. ‘Can’t go near any of the machinery, or get in the way of the workers. Health and safety.’

  ‘Health and safety, eh?’

  He ducked his head, mumbled at his feet. ‘Yeah, well you don’t wanna mess with health and safety.’

  She’d upset him. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nah!’ His head came up, eyes wide. ‘Not your fault! It was a dumb idea.’

  He bent his neck again, nudged a root with the toe of his boot.

  A shout, faint, from a distance, but she recognised the voice.

  ‘Rainer,’ she said. ‘He sounds like he’s cross.’

  ‘Yeah, well, who isn’t?’

  The man spoke more to himself than to Madison. Then he shivered, like a wet dog or, as Sidney said, like someone was walking over his grave. Madison didn’t like it when she said that. Didn’t like thinking of Sidney having a grave.

  ‘Better head off,’ he said. ‘Get back to making an honest living.’

  Suddenly, she realised they hadn’t been introduced.