Artistic License

by Elle Pierson

  No, it could not. Sophy stared up at the mountains as well. It sounded silly even to her vivid imagination, but she felt as if she’d grown up in the shelter of the Remarkables, metaphorically as well as literally. She would always look at them and see home. Today, with the sunshine on her face and the breeze rushing through the open window to tousle her hair, she felt that surge of happiness that sometimes overtook her on a hot Central Otago day. Even when she was buried to the eyeballs in assignments and bar shifts, it could feel like she was on summer holiday.

  The present company wasn’t too shabby, either.

  They drove over the Kawarau Bridge, high above the river, and Mick pulled the car over so they could watch the bungy jumping. The bridge was packed today, the line of waiting participants and giggling spectators stretching back into the parking lot.

  “Whenever we drove over the bridge when I was little, I’d keep my fingers crossed that the timing would be right to see someone jump,” Sophy said, smiling as she watched a harnessed woman peer nervously over the edge, obviously debating whether she’d lost her mind or not. She grinned at Mick. “Want a go?”

  Mick winced as he watched the woman plunge headfirst over the edge. Her outstretched hands touched the water before she was flung back up, bouncing around on the end of the rope like a cork on elastic. They could hear the laughter clear to their car.

  “I have a healthy respect for the relationship between my size and gravity,” he said, “and rubber pulleys do not enter the equation.”

  “So that’s a ‘no’?”

  “That’s a no fucking way.”

  As they pulled back into the road, Mick glanced at her. “Is it something you could do, if you wanted to?”

  Sophy nodded, appreciating that he’d actually asked this time, instead of just assuming that her asthma prevented her from doing anything more vigorous than an energetic bout of embroidery. It didn’t overly bother her, as God knew, there had been plenty of occasions in her life when she’d been grateful for the free pass out of sports. The hearty hockey-playing type she was not. But Mick had already displayed warnings signs of being an unexpected fusser.

  “I actually did it for my twenty-first birthday,” she said reminiscently. Under extreme duress from Melissa and in a slightly tipsy condition from noon cocktails, but it still counted.

  “Fun?”

  “Completely awesome.”

  “And would you do it again?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  They were nearing Gibbston Valley, which was heavily populated with vineyards, and she pointed out the turn-off for Silver Leigh. The car wheels clattered over the cattle guard at the entrance, and they followed the long, smooth sweep of stones up to the public car park. The winery restaurant was popular in summer, and the outdoor picnics tables were full, the lunch crowd cheerful and boisterous. Children stripped down to shorts and sandals were paddling in the stream and terrorising a pair of ducks.

  The Cheesery was set a short distance down a gravel path, and her parents’ house was built in the private area out the back. It wasn’t until Sophy was walking down to the shop, Mick striding easily at her side, that she had sudden second thoughts.

  Their newly minted friendship was without precedent in her personal experience. It usually took months, more often years, before she felt this comfortable with a new person. The lack of constraint between them now seemed so natural that it hadn’t occurred to her how it might look to the people who knew her best. She hadn’t brought a friend home to meet her parents since she was sixteen.

  And the one and only time she’d brought a man here, they’d been dating off-and-on (and shortly after, definitely off) for almost six months, and he’d invited himself after complaining about her standoffishness as a pseudo-joke. It had been a very awkward afternoon.

  She slanted a glance up at Mick. His face showed nothing but interest as he took in the crops and outbuildings of the vineyard. He had been prepared to drop her and run, but his meeting wasn’t for another couple of hours, and there wasn’t much to do between here and the Kawarau estate. She had insisted that he stay, so she would just have to make the best of it. It would only be awkward if she allowed it to be.

  And any day now, pigs would fly, and she would be given academic tenure in Calculus.

  The interior of the Cheesery was blessedly cool and quiet, experiencing a temporary lull in sales while people were out getting happily sloshed in the sunshine. The young woman behind the counter looked up from the commercial scales, where she was weighing a wedge of the signature Leigh Blue, and smiled at her. “Hey, Sophy.” She turned her head and called into the kitchens, “Marion! Sophy’s here.”

  There was an inaudible response, the mumbled words pleased and light in pitch, and then Sophy’s mother appeared through the staff doors, pulling off her latex gloves and looking delighted.

  “Hello, darling,” Marion said, glancing at her watch as she hurried forward to envelop Sophy in a hug. They’d met up for lunch in Arrowtown only a week ago, but her mum didn’t ration her affections. She’d always been equally pleased to see her daughter whether she was returning home from a term at boarding school or returning home from a trip to the shops. “You made good time. I wasn’t expecting you and Dale until closer to dinnertime.” Her eyes had gone over Sophy’s shoulder to where Mick waited in polite silence. “And you aren’t Dale,” she finished cheerfully.

  Mick came forward and shook Marion’s outstretched hand. His posture was regimentally upright, his handshake firm and crisp. Sophy half-expected them to stamp one foot and salute one another.

  “Mick, this is my mother, Marion James. Mum, this is Mick Hollister,” she said a bit warily, in response to her mother’s expectant look. “He works for the Ryland Curry Security Corporation, and he’s been kind enough to pose for me this week.”

  “Hades,” Marion surmised, taking in the breadth of Mick’s shoulders with an evaluating stare that actually brought a faint reddening to his cheekbones. Her eyes twinkled at his slight embarrassment. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mick. I hope you’re going to join us for a late lunch.”

  “Oh.” Mick looked a bit at a loss. “That’s extremely kind of you, but…”

  Accustomed to struggling in social situations, Sophy found it equally difficult to watch other people flounder. “Do stay,” she said quickly, reaching out with a light touch to his hand. His fingers briefly flexed into a fist as his gaze shot to hers. She couldn’t read the expression there. She smiled a bit too brightly. “Mum makes the most amazing barbequed ribs.”

  “It’s true,” said Marion sapiently. “I do.”

  Mick looked from one woman to the other, the corners of his mouth twitching.

  “Amazing, huh?” he said at last.

  “Epic poems have been composed in their honour,” Sophy replied solemnly.

  “Jamie Oliver would fall at my feet and weep,” confirmed Marion.

  Waving her arms like a farmer herding straggling sheep, she hustled them toward the back door, where a private pathway led to the family home. Mick gave in gracefully, obviously amused. Sophy was glad to see that he looked considerably happier than he had when he’d arrived at the art school that morning. Walking slightly ahead with Marion, she felt her mother’s eyes on her and looked up to encounter a quick, pointedly curious stare. She flushed.

  She was apprehensive that the barbequed ribs would be accompanied by a delicate interrogation, but was spared any mortification by her mother’s tact and her father’s single-minded cheese obsession. He came in directly from the storerooms, where a batch of their prizewinning aged cheddar had just reached maturity, and was so excited that he accepted Mick’s presence at the table without question.

  He’d brought Carl Hanning with him, one of the owner-operators of Silver Leigh, and the three men were soon engrossed in a conversation that spanned the rudimentaries of aging cheese and the intricacies of grape harvests. She was taken completely by surprise when Mick revealed that he had
a stake in a vineyard in California. What a London-based security consultant wanted with a winery investment in Napa, she had no idea. There was apparently no end to the man’s hidden depths.

  Sophy watched Mick’s blunt features become progressively animated and lively, and thought again how attractive he was. Their eyes met when he was midway through a sentence, and he faltered for just a second. As he regrouped, tugging a pen and notebook from his pocket and drawing a series of quick diagrams for his engrossed companions, he sent her a sexy flashing grin.

  Marion cleared her throat softly. Sophy ceased her mental lusting long enough to find her mother watching her with an expression that passed over speculation and landed straight on smug.

  “Soph, why don’t you give me a hand with the pudding?” Marion suggested, smiling blandly.

  Mick immediately broke off his conversation and started to rise, but she waved him down. “No, please, don’t get up. We won’t be a minute. Sophy.”

  Sophy had heard her name spoken in that particular tone countless times throughout her life, and it acted directly on her well-trained arms and legs. They tended to move in the direction indicated without waiting for the rest of her to concur. Stifling a resigned sigh, she followed her mother through the patio slider and into the kitchen.

  “Which is the pudding?” she asked, going directly to the fridge and opening it. “Is it the pavlova, or is that for the weekend? Oh. Please tell me it’s the brownies.”

  “It’s the brownies,” said Marion, leaning back against the table, relaxed and watchful. “The pavlova is for tonight. Megan Custer is coming for tea.”

  “Oh God, is she?” asked Sophy, momentarily diverted by dismay. She pulled out the pan of brownies, dropped it on the counter, and began to sift through the bulging freezer compartment for ice cream. “Great. Last time I talked to her, she asked me if I encountered more depravities at the bar or in my “work”, in inverted commas, as an artist. And she criticised me for not doing more volunteer work, which I think is bloody cheek considering that the most she does for charity is to donate her husband’s old shirts to the Salvation Army.”

  “Mick seems very nice,” said her mother, totally disregarding her tirade.

  “Jesus, Mum,” said Sophy, picking up a knife and beginning to mark an even cutting grid on the brownies. “Subtle.”

  “You could have given me a bit of warning,” Marion complained lightly. “If I’d known you were bringing someone, I would have made something special.”

  “Your food is always special,” Sophy said absently. She cut a careful slice, eyed it with dissatisfaction, and began to make amendments. “And you thought I was bringing Dale.”

  Her mother made a rude noise. She had been a primary school teacher before she’d had Sophy, and the first time she’d met Melissa’s new boyfriend, she’d said that she recognised the type and they never changed. They would be charming trouble from the new entrants’ classroom to the retirement home.

  “I had no idea you were seeing someone,” Marion pressed. “Sophy, give me that knife before you chop off a finger. Brownies are square; they don’t need to be sculpted. You didn’t mention it when I saw you last Monday.”

  “I hadn’t met him last Monday,” said Sophy, surrendering the knife and going to hunt out the dessert bowls. “And I’m not seeing anyone. I met Mick last week. He’s been the perfect model, and I hope we stay friends. End of.”

  “Hmm,” said Marion. She said nothing further, but her silence communicated volumes.

  When the dessert bowls had been scraped clean, she wasted no time in deflecting both Mick’s move to do the dishes and her husband’s offer to take him on a tour of the storerooms. “You would lose track of time, and he’d miss his meeting,” she said firmly to Gregory, and smiled at Mick and Sophy. “Why don’t the two of you take Jeeves for a walk by the stream? It’s a gorgeous day outside. No need to spend it cooped up in the factory.”

  She was going to have words with her mother later. Where they landed on the scale between “butt out” and “thank you” remained to be seen.

  “Great family,” Mick said as they walked beneath the weeping willows, following the winding path of the stream through the back paddocks of the vineyard. It was achingly hot, and Sophy wished she’d thought to change out of her dress and into a pair of shorts. Mick wore long pants with his tee, but he was apparently one of those people who remained cool and clear-skinned regardless of the temperature, could likely wear linen on a boiling day and still emerge unwrinkled, and probably never sweated through his deodorant.

  It must be genetic. Sophy was most like her dad in appearance – her mother was a tall blonde with less boobs and butt – but she had definitely inherited Marion’s intolerance for extreme temperatures and her propensity toward untidiness. It was a bit cooler under the melancholy droop of the trees, however, and she enjoyed the feeling of being back at home.

  Jeeves’s habit of waiting until she’d switched his lead to her other hand before he weaved back to the opposite side forced her to tread an uneven path to avoid tripping over him. The third time that her hip and hand had brushed against Mick’s side, he’d hesitated before wrapping his large palm around hers in a firm clasp. She had been too embarrassed to look at him, but her fingers had given his a momentary squeeze in return.

  They walked on now, hands swinging lightly between their bodies. Ever insensitive to atmosphere, Jeeves vetoed the idea of an idle ramble and strained against his lead, only pausing to do unappetising things with rabbit droppings.

  “I couldn’t ask for better parents,” Sophy said simply, scowling back at Jeeves as she pulled him away from his unsavoury snack. “I occasionally used to wish I had a sibling, but the cousin I live with, Melissa, is the same age as I am and we grew up together. I can’t imagine being any closer to a blood sister or brother.”

  “You might be considerably worse off,” said Mick coolly, and she glanced at him, startled.

  At least six different questions hovered on the edge of her tongue, but she bit them all back. She’d decided it was best to keep things as casually friendly between them as possible, which necessarily meant keeping her nose out of his most intimate business.

  Friends held hands, didn’t they?

  She and Melissa had used to hold hands all the time.

  Admittedly, it had been on the walk to and from kindergarten.

  “Did you live here when you were a kid?” Mick asked, reaching with his free arm to pull a hanging branch out of her way. “It must have been a great place to grow up.”

  “My parents bought the Cheesery and the house plot when I was seven,” Sophy answered. “Before that, we lived just down the street from the house in Queenstown. I remember our first house, just, but I think of Silver Leigh as home. I always used to arrive back for school holidays, come out here by the stream and just breathe.”

  “You didn’t go to the local high school, then?”

  “No, Melissa and I both went to boarding school in Dunedin.” And there were five years of her life she would never get back. “Unfortunately.”

  Mick raised an eyebrow. “That bad?”

  “To be fair, at thirteen the image I had of boarding school was entirely based on old Enid Blyton books from the fifties. You know, midnight feasts, pranks played on teachers, lots of sandwiches and lemonade, the odd game of lacrosse. So I wasn’t completely opposed to the idea, and several of my friends from primary school were going. There are more options for secondary schools in Dunedin.”

  “But your illusions were shattered?”

  “It was just regular old high school. Only you never got to leave.” Sophy shuddered. “And you had to share a room with seven other teenage girls and go to bed at nine o’clock.”

  The confidences seemed to be piling up on her side of the balance sheet, so she ventured a query that seemed harmless enough. “Where did you go to school?”

  Her gaze turned slightly speculative when he named the highly exclusive boys’ prep
school in Auckland. Other than the swanky car, and one of those James Bond gadget-style watches that looked as if it could activate holograms and shoot poison darts in its spare time, there was nothing about Mick that suggested aggressive wealth and privilege. But that particular school was a colonial younger cousin to the likes of Eton and Harrow, a bit of an anomaly in a country that claimed not to be class-conscious. It was mostly attended by the sons of politicians and millionaires, with the boys dressed like they were on their way to an Oxford regatta or a party in The Great Gatsby.

  Try as she might, she could not picture a young Mick Hollister in a striped blazer and straw boater.

  “And have you worked for Ryland Curry since you left school?” she asked a shade tentatively, waiting to see if the gates came slamming down.

  Mick adjusted his grip on her hand. She hoped her palm wasn’t damp.

  “No,” he said. “I joined the Army when I was eighteen. Did a couple of peacekeeping tours in the Pacific and the Middle East.”

  That accounted for the excellent posture, then. Sophy wasn’t sure what to say to that. She always felt a bit overwhelmed talking to people with careers that could actually be life-threatening.

  Complaining about the times she’d stabbed herself in the hand with a sculpting chisel seemed a little petty by comparison.

  “Did you…I mean…did you enjoy it? Army life?” she ventured lamely.

  “Well, I was pretty disappointed at first. It was nothing like my Boys’ Own adventure book,” he teased her, and she landed a pointy elbow in his ribs.

  “No, they were decent enough years,” he went on thoughtfully. “It wasn’t the route I’d intended to take, but I wouldn’t trade a lot of the experiences I had. Made some lifelong friends.”

  “What did you want to do before that?” Sophy asked curiously, and this time a hint of aloofness washed over his face.

  “University, I suppose,” he said evasively. “I…let a situation influence me into changing paths.” His demeanour discouraged further prying as he went on more lightly, “But I did end up back in study in the end. I started to get sick on duty. Exhausted, anaemic, gut problems. The military docs thought I’d picked up a virus abroad. I couldn’t get a handle on it, and eventually I had to take personal leave and then invalid out. It was shortly after that I was diagnosed with Coeliac; they’d tested for it in the past, but the early test came back with a false negative. Once I changed my diet, things improved pretty rapidly, but by that time I’d been headhunted by William Ryland for his private security detail in Europe. His cousin was my commanding officer. I had some initial doubts, but…” Mick shrugged, one corner of his mouth twisting wryly. “Ryland is a difficult man to refuse. He hears the word ‘no’ as a starting point for negotiations.”