In the soft light of dawn, the wooden cross appeared small and fragile. Thorny branches seemed to press in around it – as though the blackberries had begun growing back last night, the minute Stella and Grace had departed.
Stella stood there quietly, looking down at the grave. She focused on the date William had painted on the cross – the carefully drawn numbers of even size.
She pictured her father making the little cross, and then coming out in secret to place it on the grave. She wondered if the black - berries had already been there, or whether they had grown up later over a jungle of long grass and weeds. She wondered if William had understood that it was not just a baby’s grave he was marking, but the grave of his grandson. She felt again the sense of loss. He was gone. She would never know.
Kneeling in the dew-damp earth, she touched the smooth surface of the stone. She recognised with a stab of pain that William’s death was crucial to her presence here. If he had not been lost, she might never have come home.
Stella stayed there on her knees as the sun rose behind her, casting long, pale shadows over the ground. A fresh breeze stirred, carrying the smell of salt and seaweed into the garden. Gradually she became aware of sounds behind her. She turned to see a figure approaching. For an instant she did not recognise it as Grace – her mother was dressed in trousers and a shirt, and wore a wide-brimmed fisherman’s hat. As she drew nearer, Stella saw that the clothes, though old, were neatly pressed. Grace had taken them, she guessed, from the pile of carefully laundered clothes in William’s wardrobe.
As she came to stand at her daughter’s side, Grace hugged the shirt close to her body. Her fingers smoothed the fabric over her skin. She gazed down at the cross, as if still surprised to see it there. Then she scanned the earth around it.
‘All the blackberries will have to go,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to dig out the roots or they’ll keep growing back.’
The two pulled on their gloves and began to tackle the task. Progress was slow and difficult. The new season’s growth formed only the outside of the bushes; beneath that lay a decade’s accumulation of dead branches – a dense tangle of brittle brown stalks and curled leaves. It was a place of sticky spider’s webs, abandoned birds’ nests, and fragments of snakeskin – papery husks stamped with a tessellated pattern of scales.
As the morning wore on, more and more of the earth was revealed. Untouched by the sun, it was dank and barren, dotted with white fungus and beetles’ eggs.
Finally, all the bushes had been cut off at the roots. Grace began dragging the prickly branches into a heap, ready to be burned, while Stella turned to the task of digging out the stumps from the soil.
The roots were deep and stubborn. Stella had to lever them loose with a fork, then pull them out with leather-gloved hands. Sweat ran down her forehead into her eyes. She could feel the sun burning the back of her neck. But she kept on with her task, only pausing now and then to look at the stone egg and the wooden cross, standing at the centre of an ever-growing circle of cleared ground.
Around noon, Grace disappeared towards the house – returning after a few minutes with two cups and a glass jug full of lemonade that tinkled with ice-cubes as she walked.
Stella took three long gulps of the sweet sour drink, quenching her thirst. Then she sipped it slowly, savouring the tang of lemon backed by a touch of mint. It tasted fresh, alive – like the essence of spring. She emptied her glass before handing it to Grace to take back inside.
Left alone again, Stella looked out over the barren earth that surrounded the grave. She pictured the place as she wanted it to become – bright with flowers through every season of the year. There would be Grace’s lilies, of course; and other blooms in bold, strong colours – yellows, reds, purple, orange. And blue … Stella found herself remembering a beautiful shade of cornflower blue.
The blue of Zeph’s painted dome, rising up against the sky …
Stella closed her eyes on an image of Zeph’s face. He was the Zeph of the past, with his long salt-bleached hair, the teardrop stone hanging on a leather thong around his tanned neck.
Stella felt a sudden longing for that Zeph – a need for him that rose up inside her with a fierceness that took her breath away.
He became alive again in her heart. She wanted to bring him here and show him the grave. To tell him everything that had happened. She imagined him taking her in his arms. How light and free she would feel, with the pain she still held inside her now shared between two …
But the boy had sailed away. A new Zeph had returned – achingly familiar, and yet a stranger.
Stella remembered what Spinks had said about his interview with Zeph the day they’d found William – that when Zeph had been asked if he knew Stella, he’d given the same answer she had.
They had known one another a long time ago.
But it was nothing to do with now.
Stella got to her feet, and dragged on her leather gloves. Grasping the long handle of her garden fork, she forced the prongs deep into the earth, wedging them under a thick-stemmed stump. Then she leaned hard, wrenching the roots from the earth. Without pausing, she moved to another stump, and bent again to her task.
By the end of the day, the work was done. Every fragment of the blackberries was gone, all the weeds had been pulled out, and the ground had been raked free of small stones and shells. Thick brown smoke rose into the air from three piles of burning branches.
Grace and Stella stood together, watching curious seabirds walk over the new space – printing the earth with triangle footmarks in long, criss-crossing lines.
‘We should plant it as soon as possible,’ Grace said. ‘We can still catch the spring growth.’
Stella nodded, but said nothing. She was remembering how Clifford, the developer, had stood not far from here – looking out over the garden while he described his vision.
Eight – maybe ten – beach houses …
Stella peered sideways at Grace. The woman looked tired. This was not the time, Stella told herself, to tell Grace about the threat to Seven Oaks. Yet, now that they had stopped working, Stella felt a sudden urgency to address the problem.
She turned to Grace. ‘Mum …’
Grace nodded absently, her gaze still following the wandering birds.
‘There’s no money,’ Stella continued. ‘William left no savings.’
Grace frowned, looking puzzled – and then she waved one hand in the air. ‘Well, I’ll manage somehow. I don’t need to be able to buy expensive things.’ She glanced at Stella. ‘You said I’d get the pension.’
‘You will,’ Stella said. ‘But it won’t be enough.’
She paused to take a breath. Then she began to explain about William’s debt – and the threat to Seven Oaks.
Grace kept shaking her head, seeming unable to take in the information. Finally, Stella decided to be blunt.
‘The fact is, the bank will make you sell the property. Remember the car that turned up here yesterday? That was a developer. He wants to buy the place. And he was sent here by the bank manager. He plans to bulldoze the house, Mum, and the garden. Everything will be destroyed.’
Grace moved round to look straight at Stella. ‘It can’t be true,’ she whispered. Her eyes grew wide with horror.
Stella stared past her at the grave garden. ‘It is true,’ she said.
Grace covered her mouth with her hands.
Stella waited for a few moments – then she touched the woman’s arm. ‘Could anyone in your family help? I know Daniel would, but he’s got no spare money. Perhaps if you contacted your parents …’
‘No. No. How could I do that?’ Grace’s eyes smouldered with mixed anger and sadness. ‘William wouldn’t allow me even to write. I couldn’t possibly contact them after all these years – and ask for money!’
‘Well, is there someone else you could turn to?’ Stella asked. ‘Anyone at all?’ She tried to sound hopeful, but she was not expecting a positive reply.
Grace shook her head. ‘There’s no one.’
The woman looked down at the ground. She was silent for a long time. Stella sensed her battling to come to grips with all that had been said. It could not be easy for her, Stella knew. Grace had spent over thirty years living with a husband who had made every important decision. Now that he was gone, Grace was like an insect, freshly emerged from a cocoon. Her wings were still wet and fragile, her legs shaky.
When Grace finally faced her daughter again, her eyes were dark with anxiety but her voice was steady.
‘What can I do?’ she asked. ‘There must be something I can do. You’ll have to go away soon, I know. You’ve got your work waiting for you—’
‘No,’ Stella broke in. ‘I’m not leaving. We’ll face this together.’
Grace looked at her in confusion.
‘I’m going to stay here for as long as it takes,’ Stella added, ‘to make sure you’re all right – and that Seven Oaks is safe.’
Grace stared now, in amazement. ‘You can’t. You’ve got your own life to think about.’
‘I want to stay,’ Stella said firmly. ‘I’ve decided – I’m going to call Lorna and cancel the ticket she’s booked.’
Grace shook her head wonderingly, relief and gratitude flooding her face. Then a worried frown reappeared. ‘Do you have any idea – what we can do?’
Stella sighed. ‘I’ve been thinking about it ever since I spoke to the bank. So far I’ve come up with nothing. I could file a few stories from here and sell them, but that’s not a long-term solution. I thought of trying to get a job. There’s the fish factory, but they mainly use young girls – they don’t have to pay them much.’
‘There might be something in St Louis,’ Grace offered.
‘I thought of that, too,’ Stella said. ‘But I’m really not very employable. I can write. I can type. I can do a bit of shorthand. That’s all.’
‘No, I meant for me,’ Grace said.
Stella smiled. She knew Grace had never had a job in her life. The woman knew only how to do the work of a housewife – gardening, cleaning, sewing, cooking …
Stella took her mother’s hand. It seemed an easy gesture now – Grace’s toughened skin rubbing comfortably against her own. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll think of a plan.’
The next morning, Stella went outside early to cut some kindling. The sun had not yet gathered its warmth – and as she crouched by the woodblock with a tomahawk she shivered in the chill coming in off the sea.
Splitting the kindling was a satisfying task – as the blade came down, the thin sticks broke neatly away. All Stella had to do was make sure she missed her fingers.
When the box was nearly full, Stella paused, the tomahawk poised in the air. Behind the wash of the sea and the chatter of birds in the poker flowers, she could hear the sound of a vehicle engine.
She went out to the driveway to wait for its arrival. She squashed a flicker of hope that it could be Zeph coming here – telling herself that it was probably the developer returning to make another attempt to buy Seven Oaks. She eyed the tomahawk, still in her hands. If it were Clifford, she decided, she would not even give him the chance to get out of his fancy car.
An old blue van lumbered into view. As it came towards Stella, an arm was thrust out through the window, waving a huge orange crayfish. Stella glimpsed Joe’s face behind the steering wheel. He brought the van to a halt close to where Stella stood. The giant grasshopper legs of the crayfish almost brushed her face.
‘Take this,’ the old man called out. As he turned off the ignition, the engine convulsed a few times before stopping.
Stella grasped the spiky body of the crayfish with both hands. It must have weighed several kilos.
‘One of the fellas gave it to me,’ Joe said, climbing out of the van. ‘Octopus got to it so the factory turned it down. But there’s nothing wrong with it. I boiled it straightaway.’
He gave Stella a keen look. ‘I know William never took crays home with him. Didn’t like eating anything that came from the sea. But now he’s gone, and I thought perhaps you and Grace …’ He broke off, looking suddenly doubtful.
Stella smiled. ‘Thank you. I love crayfish. And I haven’t had any since I got here.’
Joe reached back into his van. ‘I’ve got some scallops, too. You should eat them fresh. If I had to choose, I’d put the cray in the freezer.’
‘Okay, I’ll do that,’ Stella said. Then she pictured the freezer, jammed with Grace’s cakes, stews and pies – the crayfish would never fit in the small space that remained.
An idea came to her. ‘Have you got a freezer on Grand Lady?’ she asked.
‘Course I do. She’s a fishing ketch.’
‘Good,’ Stella said. ‘Come with me.’
The sudden shift from sun to shadow as Stella stepped into the shed left her blind for a few seconds. She blinked in the gloom before walking over to the workbench and putting down the crayfish. As Joe came in she grabbed an empty fish bin and beckoned him over to the freezer.
‘Most of this stuff will never get eaten,’ she said. ‘Just tell me what you’d like.’ Lifting the lid, she began reeling off the names written on the packages inside.
‘Egg and Bacon Pie? Harvest Stew? Courting Cake? There are ten of them …’
Joe nodded eagerly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Very nice …’ He took the frosty bundles from her and stacked them in the fish bin. As she worked her way through the top layer, he peered over her shoulder – his eyes wide with wonder, as though the freezer were an Aladdin’s cave full of unimagined treasures.
‘This is my lucky day,’ he said, more than once.
When the bin was full, Joe hoisted it up onto his shoulder.
‘Get them straight back and into your freezer,’ Stella advised him. ‘If they start to thaw, you’ll have to eat everything now!’
Joe chuckled at the thought as he headed for the door. He paused there to wave at Stella. ‘Let me know what Grace thinks about the crayfish,’ he said. ‘If she reckons it’s any good, I’ll bring you some more.’
Stella stood in the shed, listening to the van starting up outside. She smiled, remembering all the times she’d taken leftover food to Joe down at the wharf.
‘Your mum’s the best cook in Tasmania,’ he liked to say.
The old man had not been the only one to enjoy William’s leftovers, Stella recalled. Sometimes her father had asked her to take spare food to other fishermen as well – single men, whose vessels were provisioned with tinned stew and sacks of potatoes and onions. These men praised Grace’s cooking, too. Apart from the meals they ate at the pub, they said, hers was the only decent food they ever got to eat.
And now the pub served only chips and nuts and drinks …
For a long moment, Stella stared thoughtfully into the grey shadows. Then she looked across to the other side of the shed, at the shelves loaded with jars of pickles, jams and preserves – dozens and dozens of them. She shifted her gaze towards the space next to the freezer, where she could see the stack of wooden panels – the spare leaves for the sea-room dining table. Striding over to them, she ran her fingers along the dusty edges, counting them. There were twelve. She pictured them all in place, side by side …
She turned, finally, to the back corner of the shed, where – so many years ago – she’d seen the Boyd family cutlery set hidden away. She recalled the rows and rows of knives and forks and spoons set into beds of velvet.
She drew in a slow breath as a vision came to her, clear and strong …
The long table, with all Grace’s cutlery laid out, shining in the sunlight streaming in through the sea-room windows. Plates piled up, ready to be filled from steaming dishes and platters. An array of tender roast meat and garden vegetables; hearty casseroles, fragrant with herbs; golden-crusted pies with cut-out patterns of pastry; home-made bread, still hot from the oven.
A banquet spread out in full view of the ocean.
‘A café.’
The words sounded loud in the quiet, dusty air. They hung there, mocking. But Stella fought against the echoes of doubt – and began to lay out a plan.
She was not picturing the kind of café a person would find in Sydney or Hobart, or even St Louis. She saw a place more like the ones she had visited in wayside settlements in remote corners of the world. They were not cafés so much as family dining tables opened up to strangers. There was no complicated menu – usually no menu at all. Guests just paid an agreed fee, and then sat down to eat as they would in their own home.
Some were dirty places, serving food that was unsafe for a traveller to eat. Others were clean and friendly – they offered meals that were simple and good. But, occasionally, Stella had eaten surprising, wonderful dishes in settings that had lingered in her memory.
There was the cave-café near a Hindu shrine at the source of the Ganges. Stella had sat under the steady gaze of an ancient sadhu with grizzled locks and a face marked with ash, while a young boy crouched next to her, grinding spices in a stone mortar, and then roasting them on an open fire. The child had cooked a fragrant curry of dhal and vegetables, golden with saffron. The flavours had been clean and fresh – linked somehow with the crystal headwater of the Ganges flowing past; and the peaks of the Himalayas lining the horizon.
Then there was the farm-café in outback Massachusetts. A handpainted sign on the highway promised ‘Good home-cooked food. Vermont maple syrup.’ The place was run by two old women dressed in matching frocks. One had prayed before the meal; the other had served the food. They had sat down with Stella and watched her eat – offering her food that was as plentiful and hearty as the furnishings were lean and bare.
In an oasis near the heart of an African desert, Stella had been offered wheat cakes toasted to a warm brown that mirrored the hue of the sun lying over the sand … In a tent made of felt she’d sipped sugary tea, and eaten mares’ milk cheese, flavoured with herbs.
There were many more of these wayside cafés that Stella remembered – dotted around the globe. They thrived in places where they did not have to compete with real cafés and restaurants. Places where there was nowhere else to eat – like Halfmoon Bay.
Stella stood up, pacing the floor of the shed as questions circled in her head.
Who would come? How often? What would they be prepared to pay?
The lounge bar at the Halfmoon pub had been busy all year round. Many families used to eat there once a week; a few regulars would have counter meals every evening. Several times a week in the summer, groups of people came off the yachts that moored in the gulch, eager for a hot meal after weeks or months at sea. Other visitors would turn up as well – youth hostellers lashing out on a dinner to remind them of home; bushwalkers hungry after braving the wilds; and ordinary tourists who had ventured off the beaten track.
It could work, Stella told herself. There were lots of questions that would have to be answered, she knew. But as she headed for the doorway there was a lightness inside her, and a spring of excitement in her step.
William’s photograph still stood on Aunt Jane’s sideboard, along with the other tokens of his life that Grace had assembled. Stella smiled into her father’s face. The bright look in his eyes seemed to match her mood.
She slid open the damaged drawer, revealing the weather journal. Lifting it up, she pulled out another book from underneath it. The cover was plain, but she knew what it was: William’s ledger of household expenses. The man had been as diligent about keeping this book up-to-date as he had been about his fishing log and weather journal.
Stella opened it up. In ruled columns, William had listed amounts spent on items like diesel, rope, petrol; and the cost of council rates, dental bills and other services. In a column called ‘Food and Groceries’ he gave an account of every cent that was spent at the local shop. It was this last column that drew Stella’s attention. She checked the cost of all the items that Grace noted down each week from her recipe book and then ordered from Mrs Barron.
As she added up the figures, Stella’s heart sank. The costs were very high. If Grace started ordering in large quantities, all the profits of the café would be eaten up by Mrs Barron’s bill.
Stella felt the dream – the means of saving Seven Oaks – ebbing away. Still holding the open book, she walked over to the window, staring helplessly out over the garden. As she did so, a sudden movement caught her eye – drawing her gaze beyond the picket fence. Out in the paddock, a wallaby was hopping past. It came to a standstill and – lowering its furry grey head – began nibbling on the leaves of a small bush.
Stella watched it for a while as it grazed slowly over the shrub, picking out the tenderest morsels. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She closed the accounts book and perched it on the sill – then she hurried from the room.
A steep track wound up the side of the small mountain that lay to the south of Halfmoon Bay. Stella drove along it, the tyres of the ute slipping in surface mud. She peered ahead looking for some sign of a house. Mrs Barron had given her directions to Laurie’s place, but Stella wasn’t sure if she’d followed them correctly. She seemed to have been driving for too long. The coastal trees had dwindled and then disappeared, giving way to dense rainforest. Through the open window she could smell damp leaves, and the resinous fragrance of sassafras bark.
Finally she reached the place where the track ended in a parking area. And there, half-covered with a piece of frayed tarpaulin, she saw Laurie’s Jeep.
Stella parked beside it and climbed out, wrapping her workshirt close to her body as she felt the chill of the higher altitude. She turned round slowly, searching for some kind of building. All she could see were trees. Then she looked up, scanning the side of the mountain. Glimpses of roofing iron and weatherboards showed through small gaps in the tree canopy.
She set off along a muddy path that led up towards it. She walked between slender myrtle trunks daubed with lichen. Now and then she had to duck her head to pass beneath branches draped with pale green moss. As a child, she remembered, she’d thought the hanging moss was hair, left behind by some magical forest creature as it ran through the trees. Like the track, the path seemed to go on for too long – then, suddenly, Stella emerged onto a flat grassland.
Laurie’s weatherboard house stood in the middle of the clearing. Stella paused, surprised by the sight of such an ordinary family home set here, in the middle of the bush. It looked as if it had been plucked from a suburban street; she could imagine it surrounded by pruned roses.
As she drew nearer, Stella faltered again. Looking down the side of the building, she saw that the structure had been sawn in two – straight through the roof and the walls. The two halves of the house had been placed side by side, but there was a space between them. On the roof, pieces of timber and builder’s plastic bridged the void, but the gap in the walls remained – a long, dark slit.
‘Still working on it.’ Laurie’s voice came from behind where Stella stood.
She spun round. The man was over near the edge of the treeline. Dressed in khaki and grey, he blended in with the trees.
He came to stand next to Stella, looking across to the building.
‘Paid a hundred bucks for it,’ he said, ‘when the mine closed at the Gap. Had to cut it in half, though, to get it up here.’
Stella glanced back at the narrow pathway. It was hard to see how the building could have been brought here even if it had been cut into twenty sections.
‘Come on up,’ Laurie said. ‘I’ll brew some tea.’
Stella followed the man towards the house. They passed a line of tanned animal hides draped over a wire fence; and a dead wallaby, not yet skinned, hanging by its tail from a clothesline. Two shirts flapped in the breeze.
Laurie waved one hand at the rusty remains of a vehicle, abandoned by the side of the house.
‘That’s how I get stuff up here,’ he called back. ‘I’ve got a hidden track through the trees.’ He turned round and winked. ‘This way I get to say who can drive up here, and who can’t …’
He paused to let Stella catch up to him. She saw now that the vehicle was the remains of a Jeep – just a chassis with wheels.
The man led the way on round the side of the house to the back door. There, he pulled off his boots, revealing striped socks that had been hand-knitted from leftover scraps of wool. As Stella bent to remove her boots, he kicked the door open with his foot.
A smell of roasting meat greeted Stella as she stepped into a hallway. She breathed it in, picking up complex layers of flavour that she could not identify.
‘I’m baking a piece of goat,’ Laurie said. ‘Young goat, it is. Too good to boil.’
He stopped, then, and looked enquiringly at Stella. ‘After some meat, are you?’
Stella nodded. ‘I know you sell it at the shop, but I want to see about getting some direct from you.’
Laurie grinned. ‘That’s what I like to hear. I’ve got plenty to spare since the pub closed their kitchen. Come on in – but watch your step.’
He guided Stella along the hallway. When they came to the place where the two halves of the house met, she could see where a chainsaw had chewed a rough path down through the plasterboard walls and across the wooden floor. A wide plank bridged the gap. As she stepped onto it, she looked down – glimpsing an underworld of bare earth and dead grass.
Up ahead, Laurie disappeared through a doorway to the left. Stella followed him, entering a room that was bright with sunshine.
Laurie already had the oven door open. ‘Look at this.’ He drew out a large covered baking pan and lifted the lid.
Steam billowed out. As it cleared, Stella saw a large piece of roasted meat. Hot fat sputtered from skin that had turned a deep rosy red.
‘Mountain pepperberry – that’s the secret ingredient,’ Laurie said. ‘Grind the berries over the meat – not too fine – rub it in. You’ve got the colour, then – and the spice as well.’ He tilted the pan, showing Stella that the meat was sitting on a rack above an inch of thin stock. ‘That’s the most important thing. Keeps it all moist. The same goes for all game – cook it long and slow. You can’t go wrong.’
Laurie covered the pan again and pushed it back into the oven. He motioned for Stella to take a seat at a table. As she pulled out a chair, she glanced around the kitchen. The place was surprisingly neat and organised. The furnishings were simple – just a table, two chairs, a few cupboards and a sink. The wood-fired oven dominated the room, along with an island bench topped with a piece of pine that had been worn in the middle by years of chopping. A set of knives was laid out there on a piece of folded cloth. They looked clean and very sharp.
‘That’ll be a good piece of meat,’ Laurie commented. ‘It’ll have the taste of spring feed in it, so I haven’t added too much to it. As I said – there’s the pepperberry. Then I like to baste with a bit of honey. If you can get some from Joe – that’s the best. It’s got a touch of smoke in it. Sometimes I’ll add some of that as well …’ He pointed up to the ceiling where bunches of spiky-leafed herbs hung from a wooden frame. ‘Lemon thyme. It grows in the bush, right where the animals are feeding. That can be a good guide to what will go with what.’
Stella listened to him carefully, storing the information away. The smell of the roasting meat made her feel hungry, even though it was not yet noon. She wondered who Laurie was going to share it with – or if he planned to eat alone.
Laurie came to sit at the table. ‘So, how much meat would you like?’ he asked. ‘Is it just for you and Grace?’
Stella licked dry lips. ‘No, it will be for lots of people. We’re opening a café.’
Laurie raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re what? Tell me more.’
The man leaned forward in his chair, listening intently while Stella explained the simple facts of the plan she had in mind. She spoke cautiously, sounding out his reaction as she went. When she was finished, he was still for a moment. Then he nodded his head, pressing his lips together.
‘It’s a bloody good idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right behind you. And so will everyone else. There’s heaps of food around here that comes for free. Not just meat. Down there at the bay they’ve all been trying to think of ways to help Grace. Especially the fishermen. I’ll put the word out. They’d be more than happy to throw an extra line over every time they go out. You’ll have all the fish you can use. And that’s just the start of it. You’ll have vegetables, fruit. As much as you want …’
Stella smiled. She felt the warmth of his response reaching out to her, enveloping her like a soft summer breeze. Wrapped in its arms, she felt all the questions and worries drifting away. She was sure, suddenly, that the café would succeed. Seven Oaks would be safe.
‘You look hungry to me,’ Laurie said. He gestured behind her. ‘Grab a red wine from the cupboard. I know it’s lunchtime – but this is a time to celebrate.’
Stella reached into the cupboard and pulled out a bottle. A handwritten label was stuck to the side. Spidery handwriting ran across it.
Halfmoon Shiraz 1987
‘That’s something to think about, too – for the café,’ Laurie said. ‘Ted Barron makes that out the back of the shop – from his own grapes. Drinks a bit too much of it himself, it’s true. But it’s a very good drop.’
Stella pulled out the cork and lifted the bottle to her nose. She breathed the warm, deep fragrance of full-bodied grapes and sunshine.
When Stella returned she saw Grace in the back corner of the garden, turning over the compost pile. Tension showed in every line of the woman’s body as she bent over, stabbing her fork deep into the heap and then heaving it to one side. Catching sight of Stella, she straightened up – her face looking strained, as if she expected more bad news.
Stella called out to her. ‘Come inside!’
Grace hurried over, brushing her hands clean on her trousers. Once in the kitchen, she sat at the table, looking anxiously at her daughter.
Stella drew up a chair opposite her. She was silent – torn between the excitement of her conversation with Laurie and her concern about how Grace would react to her proposal.
Grace picked up the sugar bowl and began digging at it with a silver teaspoon. She seemed unable to be still.
Stella took a breath. ‘I’ve got a plan. A way to make some money.’
Grace looked at her with a mixture of hope and doubt.
‘I started thinking about how you’re a great cook,’ Stella said. ‘That’s what we have to use. You!’ She ignored the puzzled frown on Grace’s face. ‘We’re going to open a café.’
‘A café!’ Grace’s lips parted in surprise. ‘That’s ridiculous!’
‘No, it’s not. I’ve thought it all through. It will be a simple place, just serving evening meals. Casseroles, pies, vegetables, soups. Home-made relishes, bread, puddings. All the things you do so well. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been in places exactly like what I’m imagining. Home-cooking cafés.’
‘Home-cooking cafés.’ Grace repeated the words slowly. Then there was a long silence. The tin roof creaked as it expanded in the sun. Stella watched a tiny spider spiralling from a strand of web that seemed to come from nowhere.
When Grace finally spoke again, small lines of concentration marked her brow. ‘Where would it be – this “café”?’
‘Here. At Seven Oaks.’
Grace’s head jerked back. For a while she was speechless. ‘You mean – have strangers coming into the house?’ Her voice rose sharply. She waved one hand, wiping away her daughter’s suggestion. ‘No. Definitely not. This is our home!’
‘If we don’t find a way to earn some money,’ Stella said, ‘it won’t be our home much longer. It’ll be a line of beach houses, owned by mainlanders.’
Grace flinched at her words. Stella gripped the side of the table as she fought against a rising sense of panic. So much was at stake …
‘Anyway,’ Stella continued, ‘only some of the customers will be strangers. Others will be from Halfmoon – the ones who used to eat at the pub. People you know …’
Stella’s voice faltered. Her last words sounded hollow. Who did Grace know? Stella remembered what Pauline had said to her down at the wharf, when she had just arrived back – that Grace had hardly been seen by anyone for years.
Stella pushed back her chair and went to stand by the window. She felt her belief in the plan beginning to weaken – she could see now that opening up her home to strangers was too much to ask of Grace.
She gazed out over the garden. Away in the far corner she could see the little cross, propped up beside the stone. A shaft of sun, piercing the shadows, lit up the silvery bleached wood – making it stand out brave and strong against the dark earth.
‘We have to do it.’ Stella threw the words behind her into the quiet. Then she turned back to face the room, bracing herself for Grace’s reply – the words of defeat, denial, weakness …
But, instead of speaking, Grace got up and walked over to the stove. Reaching up to the mantelpiece, she grasped her recipe book. Then she found her notepad – the one she used for planning meals and writing out shopping lists.
Returning to the table, Grace sat down. She smoothed back her hair, tucking away strands that had come loose from her ponytail. Then she began turning the pages of the book, and making notes.
Stella crossed to stand at Grace’s side. Glancing at the notepad she saw the names of three recipes. She eyed them uneasily. Was Grace going to start cooking again – avoiding reality by losing herself in the comforting pattern of weighing, measuring, chopping, frying …
Grace looked up. ‘When I was cooking for the volunteers,’ she said, ‘I found that some recipes worked better than others in very large quantities.’
Stella smiled, relief flowing through her as she realised that Grace was taking the café plan seriously. But there was still another hurdle to be faced. She leaned over Grace’s shoulder and placed her hand on the recipe book. She closed it up and slid it away.
‘That way of cooking won’t work any more,’ she said. ‘If we begin by choosing recipes and then buy all the ingredients at the shop, we won’t make a profit.’
Grace frowned at her. ‘Then what are we going to do?’
‘Start with ingredients,’ Stella said. ‘And they will choose themselves. We’ll make dishes that use all the fruit and vegetables that are in season. We’ll use Laurie’s game. Fish that the factory won’t take. Crayfish that have been damaged by octopus. Abalone. Joe’s honey. Oysters and mussels from the lagoon.’ Stella smiled, caught up in a vision of the bounty that awaited their harvest.
She spread her arms wide. ‘We’ll use whatever is wild. Whatever we can get for free.’
Grace stared in mute astonishment.
Then, a look of wonder broke slowly across her face.