The northerly was flinging white petals and mangled buds across the yard to the porch. The clothesline whirled, laden with ballooning towels, hammock sheets and shirts gross with air. Unmatched socks and a pair of underpants lay beached on concrete.
Emmie extracted a petal from Misha’s half-empty saucer. ‘Why does the wind always wait till the cherry’s out?’
‘Equinoctial gales. Look at the catkins thrashing pollen about. Rebekkah’d be beside herself.’
‘Rebekkah?’
‘My first tutorial.’ He blew out, a long exhalation of relief. ‘I’ll never forget that lot.’
Emmie knew his tutorials’ names and some of their problems and all of their essay topics. She might do English some time when she was old—but what about the fees.
Get the money back from Murray for starters. He did not say it. Murray was a mine shaft, a gap they circled but did not explore.
As was Alice.
He was working steadily on the novels. Emmeline continued to be amiable but uncompromising. He could work on the oeuvre, she said, till he was blue in the face with narrative structure and nitpicking symbolism—but leave Aunt out OK. And me.
Which meant he would have to leave out the life entirely. He had worked it out though. Hell yes, Rob had worked it out. He would complete his literary analysis first. Then when Emmie read the letters, changed her mind and embraced the truth he would sort out the rest and rewrite in depth which is what you write in. In the moments of sanity which sometimes sneaked up on him at dawn he realised how difficult this method would be, if not impossible. And there were other worries. Would the letters convince? Would she read them? But these were night thoughts. During the day he saw that there was a great deal to do on the works themselves; focus, analysis, concentration, all were required. Enough in all conscience as Maureen would say. More than enough. Yes.
‘I must go and see Maureen,’ he said.
Emmeline laid another damp petal alongside the saucer of milk. ‘When are you going to give up your flat?’
He grinned at her. ‘Next week.’ There were better subjects for concentration: shared abandon, the squelching wonder of it all, geography of body and mind. He was happier than he had ever been in his life.
They drove across Kilbirnie to take Spiro to the airport, Calvin on the lookout for Cs and Robin cursing himself. His own stupidity had landed him in this and now the man was about to go, to swan off to his own remembered hills leaving his offsider to carry the can and dree his own dim little weird at Dionysus as promised. Emmie patted his knee. ‘Cheer up.’
‘C! There!’ screamed Calvin from the comfort of his booster seat.
Robin swung the wheel, overcorrected, nearly hit a dog.
‘For God’s sake don’t do that.’
A glint of steel to the left. ‘Do what?’
‘Shriek behind me. I know he’s not used to cars but …’
‘Maybe you’re not used to kids.’
‘A car is a lethal weapon.’
‘Anyway I yelled too.’
‘I’m used to you.’
‘Hhh.’
They drove on, their faces blank with assumed calm. ‘It was one, wasn’t it, Mum?’
‘Sure it was,’ she said. ‘C for Calvin and Casey Total Exhaust. Good one. Look! C for Chain Nail Truss. What’s a Chain Nail Truss?’
‘I’ll tell you some time,’ he muttered.
She gave him a sharp glance, waved with enthusiasm at the two figures waiting on the distant kerb. ‘There they are, hon.’
Calvin was fighting with his safety belt. ‘Now we’ll see the fishes eh.’
‘Not today, Cal,’ said Rob.
‘But I told him we could.’
‘You didn’t tell me.’ He switched off the ignition. The small finality of the click filled the car followed by Calvin’s wail. ‘But Muum …’
Her safety belt hissed back. ‘We’ve plenty of time, plenty.’
‘We have not. If I’d known, if you’d said, I’d have started hours ago.’
Robin had met Andoni before. He was large and bald like Spiro but his moustache lacked the exuberance of his cousin’s; a thin organic strip clung to his upper lip, formal and groomed as a black bow-tie. Spiro stood looking expectant beside a suitcase and a small grip. Why were those in the front seat silent and Calvin roaring in his throne behind and when were they going to get out? He opened Emmeline’s door in encouragement. She hopped out, kissed him and turned to Andoni. ‘How very nice to meet you,’ she said, glad to know there were two decent men left in the world.
‘Why is your son weeping?’ asked Spiro nervously. Children were beyond him. They were inexplicable and too sudden and he had an aircraft to catch which doubtless even now was sitting on the tarmac at Rongotai with its nose in the air waiting for him. He had never travelled without his wife before and the arrangements, the packing, the remembering and doing of it all had been much more confusing than he remembered. Also he had slept badly and his eyes were sore and worst of all he was not sure whether the whole thing was not an act of madness, a dreadful mistake out of which he could no longer extract himself with honour. He moved from one foot to the other. His voice was agitated. ‘Does Calvin also come?’
The problem was explained amidst Calvin’s bawls and Emmie’s over-reactive smiles. Robin said nothing. He tried to right Calvin, who was now performing (another of Eileen’s remembered pejoratives) flat on his back on the footpath, and was greeted by flying feet. Spiro stood looking at his watch, his mouth busy.
‘Why,’ said Andoni dragging his eyes from Emmeline’s legs, ‘do not the boy and the mother come up to see the fish and drink coffee and you two go to the airport and Robin comes back?’
The relief. So simple, so tidy, so wise. Spiro embraced his cousin and kissed Emmeline on both cheeks. She had helped out occasionally at Dionysus when he was short-staffed and he liked her; her cheerful speed pleased him. He shook her hand in final farewell, embraced Andoni once more and waved at Calvin’s back now disappearing safely up the steps.
Robin watched her face. She seemed cheerful but then she also liked the fish, was happy for her son and had gone off her lover. He swung Spiro’s suitcase into the boot and slammed hard.
She waved as they left but he was not reassured.
They could walk around holes, avoid the ruined mine shafts of too much Alice and too little Candida, fuck themselves silly and count the world well lost for love, but nature, he remembered from primary, abhors a vacuum. Things grow over holes and disguise them, branches are laid above sharpened spears. Things change. Emmie seemed more ready to leap to her son’s defence than formerly as though to demonstrate something. That Robin must learn the ropes. That there are different forms of passion.
Spiro was not going to waste a moment of the journey. He dragged a new recipe for sun-dried tomato pesto out of his pocket. He had found it beneath power bills when he was tidying his desk in case the aircraft fell from the sky. It would be very useful indeed for Robin. He was to keep it with care and feel free to use it while he was away. Feel free, said Spiro again.
‘I’ve got a good one, Spiro.’
‘This is better.’
‘Shove it in the glove box.’
‘But will you remember it?’
Probably not, but I don’t need it and won’t use it and when you ask for it on your return as you undoubtedly will, all will flood back and I can get shot of the thing. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that discussions about even the simplest arrangements with Spiro were invariably lengthy. Spiro liked to explore alternatives—to pontificate, to unbutton and have his talk out like Dr Johnson.
‘Yeah, sure.’
Spiro looked at the glove box and pressed the button. It opened with a slow yawn to reveal a half-eaten piece of cake, a video of a Russian Lear where the treatment of the Fool was particularly interesting, a plastic bottle, a dead banana and a sun hat.
‘I can’t put it there!’
‘Try the dashboard.’
More doubt, more anxious hesitancy as to safety, procedure, access. And this was the man who, on his own ground and untormented by helpers other than his own team could feed five hundred with a flick of his wrist and time to spare.
He was now on to the catering for the Wine Festival. Rob did realise the size of the operation, the meticulous planning required, the work? Days, days they would be working, the whole team. Rob had been there last year, he reminded him. He remembered, did he not, the size of the task, the enormity?
Yes, he did.
Not only the food, food they knew, food came last, on the day itself, five thousand individual pieces and all had gone last time. Robin must remember that people eat all day. They graze, the public, graze like cattle from morning till night. And it was not only the food. Its preparation they knew. But the planning, the transport. Robin had considered had he not, the equipment? Now was not too early, not too early at all, to plan the transport, to arrange the details for the erection of the marquee. All, all must be in its place for the arrival of the five thousand pieces which was just the start.
‘And of course the problem of not knowing. Never to know how many. Thousands there maybe. Fourteen, fifteen vineyards, maybe more this year, who knows how many will come to Dionysus? It is not only for us, for the food. It is the wine they are coming for, and for some the screaming music which luckily I don’t hear and nor will you this time because of being flat out and the Boss also.’ Spiro gave him a comradely thump on the shoulder. ‘Boss,’ he said again and leaned back to chew his moustache. ‘Simple but nice. Now is the time when they are right. But simple to eat on plastic plates does not mean simple to make ahead and simple to keep coming and coming all day while the wine flows and the crowd gets happy and the noise more.’ He paused. ‘You have the menu from last year safe?’
‘Yes, but I’m going to alter it a bit.’
Disbelief flooded Spiro’s eyes, dropped his mouth. Disbelief and anger ticking. ‘It is not to be altered. I spend days, weeks, with the balance, the subtle, the goodness. For days I was working to bring it all together and easy to eat as well.’
‘We can’t do exactly the same again every year, Spiro.’
‘We haven’t. Second time only is this one.’
Robin waited at the roundabout and explained carefully. ‘Spiro, if you give me the responsibility of Dionysus you have to give me some freedom with the menus.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m in charge. I don’t mean I’ll change anything unnecessarily, hell no, it’s the last thing any sane man would do. Your menus work. We all know that. But I must be free to make minor alterations if I want to.’
More chewing, an angry huff. ‘Why?’
Because responsibility is power? Bugger that. Because I get bored making crostine for thousands. Because Emmie makes the best blini in the world and she’s said she’ll help.
He tried another line often mentioned by Spiro. ‘Because cooking is a creative art.’
‘Which is it you change?’
‘Blini instead of crostine.’
‘Your Emmeline’s speciality. She is helping then, she and her blini. Now you are talking. No more the agenda fish hide.’
They stopped at the airport, Spiro’s shoulders still heaving at his wit. He embraced him, dropped one eyelid.
‘The blini for this time,’ he said. ‘Go with God, you and your angel fish.’
‘Sure,’ said Emmeline flaked out in a bikini trying for a mini-tan. ‘I said I would if we can find a sitter. But what I’d really like of course is to take him too.’
She sat up to anoint herself with the Cancer Society large economy-size sunscreen. It was, she explained, the only one where you could combine protection with donation to a good cause and wasn’t it a clever shape. You could get drunk with power pumping the stuff, like striped toothpaste when it started and every kid in town was squeezing.
‘Although of course,’ she said lying down again beside Misha’s semi-clotted milk saucer, ‘nothing really works with redheads. Don’t worry,’ she yawned, covering her face with Aunt’s old straw hat which was etched at the rim with something black and suspect that looked like ergot but presumably was not. ‘I said I would and I will.’ She lifted the hat slightly to glance through chequered sunlight at his face. ‘But he would so enjoy it.’
She could not mean it. He loved the thug too but this was ridiculous. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’
The hat was back in place. ‘Oh, we’d have to find someone to mind him all day. I realise that, but someone’d jump at the day out. I’ll ask Thea.’
But Thea and Ruby were going to Eketahuna that weekend to see Gran who had been a bit off for some time and didn’t seem to be picking up as quick as Mum and the rest of them had hoped. Thea was sorry but there it was.
Other sitters also declined. Maybe if it’d been next year. But no. They were tied up this time.
Calvin was into finger food and Emmeline gave up fighting about vegetables in the weekend. She slapped the meat in the sesame bun, neat as a pin and ready to go. ‘It would have to be someone he knows well, of course. Murray, for instance,’ she said licking her thumb.
Robin gave a short squirt of the Cancer Society can. It was a good shape, a miniature white plastic petrol container destined to save the day. He rubbed the stuff into his palms, sniffed. Lisa had had aloe-scented hand lotion. He had never smelled an aloe but then who had in Seatoun and you have to believe something. ‘Calvin,’ he said, ‘doesn’t like Murray.’
She was watching him. ‘How do you know?’
He was silent. He didn’t even know whether Calvin liked him, though he had hopes.
At homey sir, he is all my exercise, my mirth, my matter.
Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy, my parasite, my soldier, statesman, all.
And Hamnet had died and here he was still hunting for clues in the text and Emmeline waiting hamburger in hand.
‘I don’t.’
‘You’d think they’d work out some way to make the sesame seeds stick on,’ she said licking again. ‘And who else is there?’
He could see Calvin having fun, belting around the beaten grass with his water bottle, his pumpkin smile wide beneath his dumb French Foreign Legion sun hat, his arms covered with Total Block. He would certainly enjoy it. Kids should enjoy things, they should learn to enjoy things early as Calvin had done. Robin’s Inner Child kicked. His mother had not taught him early enough, possibly because she had not had much to enjoy herself at the time, but what excuse was that.
‘I could ask Maureen,’ he said to Emmie’s shoulder.
‘Isn’t she a bit old?’
‘I’ll ask.’
The house needed painting, the downpipe on the south side was green with mould. Perhaps he could steamblast it some time but that would remove more paint and he was damned if he was going to paint it while Murray lay around like a Palatine, a word he had been meaning to check for some time to see if it meant what he thought.
He turned his attention to the fence which was more satisfying; a good fence, a strong fence, a fence of class. He laid his palm against it as you might on the neck of a promising colt from the home farm.
‘Hello Robbie!’ called Maureen, shoving the casement window open beside him with a small explosive puff. ‘It sticks,’ she explained.
Nobody else called him Robbie now. He had never liked the Bobbie/Robbie stuff. But the connotations, ah, the connotations. Those he had loved and still did. Charles Lamb had been sorry when there was no one left to call him Charlie. ‘Hi,’ he called loudly.
‘Come in dear, come in.’
Murray, fortunately, was not at home. His exams were over and, as he told them, he was quietly confident, though of course you can never trust the sods. As usual he had taken a week off study immediately prior to the first paper. He found it invaluable.
Rob looked at Maureen’s smiling face. How could he have been so idiotic as to have thought for one possible moment he could have asked her. Excuse me Maureen. Could you see your way to minding the child of my de facto, my lover, the light of my life, while she and I work side by side as we were destined to do from earliest childhood but unfortunately I did not have the wit to notice at the time. Though you do realise Maureen, even though it doesn’t look like it, that I loved your daughter dearly.
Maureen tugged open the back door which also had a tendency to stick and waded towards him.
He took her arm, held her firm. ‘What on earth’s happened?’
‘Oh, it’s my silly knees. Come and I’ll tell you. No no no. I don’t want an arm.’
They progressed slowly into the ziggurat room. Maureen crashed straight legged onto the sofa; the over-stuffed cushion on which Betty sat bounced slightly, upending her into Maureen’s lap. She took the battered doll and kissed her, her hands busy fluffing out the few inches of skirt with practised hands. ‘Silly old me,’ she murmured.
Why do they do it? he wondered. Old men never do. They have more sense. Their ailments or accidents—self-inflicted or otherwise, are never silly. Their backs, if and when they go on them, may be cursed but never belittled. No one tells an old man that he must be furious with himself for having hit a head, twisted an arm or thrown his back out yet again. Such trials descend on old men, are inflicted from on high and must be born with courage.
‘It’s my own silly fault,’ said Maureen yet again. ‘I told you I’d been biking again. Well, I overdid it. You see these things you know. In the hairshop. When I go for a cut I see them, those little papers Eileen used to hand over the fence and I miss them my word, but it was a lovely wedding wasn’t it. Every time you pick up a paper now they’re at it, old as you like, all busting themselves getting fit. Men and women. There was a man last week, eighty-seven, he said, and fitter than he’d ever been in his life. Works out three times a week, runs all over and his wife as well, though she’s only seventy-nine but trim as you like. They all say it makes them happy, gives them a ‘positive attitude to life through exercise,’ they say, and I thought that’s you my girl, that’s what you need. Mind you I couldn’t afford the gym and that, but I doubled up on the biking and then trebled and pretty soon I was going for miles and I did feel better, that’s the sad thing. And then blow me down I woke up one morning and there’s my knees up like balloons and painful as all get out. It doesn’t seem fair somehow.’ Maureen stretched out her legs and tucked back her skirt in demonstration of her stupidity.
Her knees were certainly enormous. Swollen and shiny, the fat jowls and bulging foreheads of truculent politicians and bald babies stared back at him. ‘I’ve always been wide behind the caps,’ she said, ‘but look at the fronts.’
Yes, she did have pills. The doctor said they would go down in time and to keep them up. Frankly Maureen couldn’t wait to get shot of the silly things.
They sat contemplating the affected areas for a few moments while he murmured his sympathy. He could not ask if Murray had taken over the cooking. He could only hope.
She bounced Betty on her thigh a couple of times. ‘Robin?’
‘Yes.’
‘You and Emmie.’
‘Yes?’
‘If you would like me to have it …’ She brushed his wedding ring, her fingers snatching away as though singed. ‘… Any time. Not now, I don’t mean. But if you would like me to later I would be very happy. Rather than just, well, put away somewhere, you know what I mean?’
She was smiling at him, smiling widely at the one she loved. ‘And it looks as though it’s all going to turn out all right with Murray and the loan and that, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ He couldn’t look at her. It was impossible and his eyes were wet. ‘Maureen,’ he mumbled. ‘I …’
‘I’m glad I mentioned it, then,’ she said quickly, bouncing Betty with renewed vigour. ‘And would you check the letterbox on your way out, dear. It’s never anything but long envelopes with bills but I’d like the Contact if it’s there.’
*
He had rung Wilfred and Shara several times. At first when Shara answered she was cautious, speaking in the guarded tones of doctors talking over their patients’ heads as they lie listening with polite interest trying to memorise phrases such as ‘unacceptable angulation’ and ‘external fixation’ so they can ask nurse after.
‘He’s fiiine,’ she said, drawing the word out so that Robin would get the picture. He was OK. Like fine-ish. He was getting there. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘It’s just like, you know, he’s got a way to go yet. Yeah. Yeah, OK. You hear that? That’s Wil, he says he’s fiiine.’
But latterly her tone had changed. She was cheerful. Everything was good, good, great, yeah. When was he coming down? Tons of room. Yeah.
Wil rang. ‘So when are you coming down? When’re you bringing Emmeline and the boy?’
‘Wil, I …’
Emmeline paused beside him, the tissue half-way to Calvin’s leaking nose.
‘I’m a box of birds now. When are you coming?’
‘Wil, I told you. I said. I said I didn’t know how Emmie
Emmeline took the receiver from his hand. She did not snatch or grab as he did in attempted retrieval. ‘Leave me alone,’ she hissed. Calvin, his nose still leaking, looked up, clung to her leg.
‘Mr Hughes?’ She was polite and crisp and devastating. She explained that she was sure that Mr Hughes had loved Alice O’Leary very much and she believed most sincerely that for some reason Alice had told him this odd story about herself and Miss Bowman. She continued calmly through the muffled contradicting exhortations from Central. She had never heard a word about Alice O’Leary being her mother, she did not believe it for a moment and as far as she was concerned the matter was at an end. She had been loved by Miss Bowman and had loved her back, a woman who had devoted her life to her and although she hated to disappoint Mr Hughes, let alone hurt him in any way, she could not do it. Come and stay, she meant. No, she couldn’t.
Calvin was clinging tighter. ‘Mum?’
Robin tried to seize the telephone as she dropped her left hand on the burrowing head. Her voice was no longer calm. Yes, she had hoped they might have been able to come and see him but now, in the circumstances … Her voice caught, got stuck in her throat. ‘I, sorry, I …’ She handed the receiver to Rob and hid her head in her hands.
So this was where it had got them, all the pussyfooting around mine shafts. They should have explored them, all of them, got to the bottom of the things, roared and screamed and let the echoes rage. What had they been afraid of? Why had they been so shy when every mound and crevice was known? And poor old Wil still clinging in silence to the other end of the line from Central.
Calvin was now crying, his nose unchecked and streaming.
‘Wil,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll write. Yes. Yes. Bye then. Yeah. I’ll write. Bye.’
He replaced the receiver, listened to the small sound. It’s the small sounds. Clicks, snapped twigs, boots on stone. ‘Why the hell did you do that?’ he said to the eyes above the hands.
Calvin was now howling at the unknown, burrowing like a liane between them.
‘It’s all right,’ he said finally. ‘It’s all right. Forget it. It’s all right.’
He dropped on his knees to Calvin. ‘What’s up, matey?’
Murray would be happy to come and mind Calvin for the day if it would be any help. He realised it would be a full-time job but if it would be any help at all he would be happy to. And he was not that struck on the wine aspect. Wine had never been one of his things. Nobody enjoyed a good Müller Thurgau more than he did, but in his opinion there was a lot of bull talked and written about the stuff, and he could take it or leave it. Besides he had always been very fond of Calvin, he said, bending to wipe the upturned nose with a decisive jerk.
‘So that’s all right,’ Emmie told Rob beneath the duvet which was getting too hot now it was summer. He moved his legs slightly. They still had not discussed things properly. Had not had the flamer to clear the air. He had not even discovered why she had bounced at Wil, except for vague mutterings about exhaustion, and she was never exhausted. She did not know how to be exhausted, but certainly things had caught up with them. Emmeline had a part in a children’s play called Manu and the Kelpie and his own life had gone mad with food and faces in endless combinations. People pecking at food, stuffing themselves with food, swigging and eating, eating, eating. Eating on the move like ruminants or squeezed onto narrow chairs or queuing at the buffet with already laden plates for just a touch more. A sliver of torte perhaps. A smidgen of pastrami. A bean.
They set off at daybreak in the Dionysus van to pick up the team, Emmie and Calvin in the front because of the hills. Murray sat in the back among the spare seats and the five thousand pieces. The marquee was upright, the power on, utensils at the ready, all the gear and tackle and trim of their trade was waiting in the Wairarapa.
Murray, having chosen the best seat before the other clowns arrived, had time to tell them that he’d never seen much point in all this fussing about food. Give him a good steak any day. He patted Calvin on the head. ‘Comfy, son?’ Calvin did not reply.
Wanda, as usual on Sundays, was unavailable. Her place had been taken by an unknown quantity called Serena, a tall rangy blonde who looked anything but. She laughed a lot as she told them in a high thready voice about some of the more gracious functions she had helped out at—the Yacht Club stayed in her mind, as did Government House. The kitchens, she told them, were out of sight. Scott, who Robin had moved from sandwiches of necessity, stared at her in silence. The rest, both regulars and casuals, nodded politely. The regulars had been forged in the heat; Merle who could do anything, Ron who was a tower of strength and Jayne who was quick off the mark.
Robin drove slowly over the long curving bends of the Rimutaka Hill. He had travelled in the back of the van many times and knew its reluctant sway, the sickening lurch of its rear end towards the edge and the cliffs of scrub and ragged bush below. No one must be sick, especially Calvin.
Serena became silent as climb and bend followed descent and sweep and the van churned upwards once again. Hadn’t Dionysus got a minibus, she asked faintly.
‘No,’ said Scott.
They made it all in one piece.
The Wine Festival was in full swing and Dionysus was on top of things but only just.
As usual at this stage a routine had not been completely established. Things were both fluid and disorganised and would soon become hectic. People were shouting, falling over each other’s feet; the vineyard owner’s dog had discovered the rabbit fricassees waiting for more secure storage. They had been saved from destruction by a quick kick in the haunch from Scott who was immediately abused by Serena, Merle and an apoplectic passer-by who asked Scott what he thought we were here for if not to love those weaker than ourselves and she was going to report him to the SPCA immediately. Robin, who shared her sympathies but was glad the rabbit fricassees were safe, tried to keep out of it but failed. A full-scale row developed; the team were at each other’s throats.
Robin exercised crowd control, his palms raised to restrain the mob. Scott, his face expressionless, dropped a carton. Black plastic plates skidded across the trestle table onto beaten grass to lie in shuddering piles around the ankles of his detractors.
‘Wash them,’ said Robin. ‘And that’s it. All of you. Now get on with it.’
Murray departed hand-in-hand with Calvin in his Foreign Legion hat, his mini-Total Block in his pocket. They would take the courtesy bus, explained Murray, just get on and off where they liked, case the joint, go where the spirit moved them, wouldn’t they, Cal?
‘Yeah,’ said Calvin inspecting a thread of grated raw carrot left over from Emmie’s farewelling hands.
Serena took over front of house. Out of the corner of his eye as he assembled for presentation, which is all, he watched her transforming the trestle tables behind which the hordes would jostle as they ordered rabbit fricassee or lamb fillet with polenta or maybe just a simple but nice blini or two with spinach and walnut salad. Serena seemed efficient as she anchored the cloths with clips, rerolled some of the hundreds of knife/fork/napkins-to-go which had slipped a bit, dealt with plates and studied the flow. ‘Hey, Rob, this OK?’
They worked it out together. If they come this way?—yeah but what if they …? He had done it dozens of times, worked it out as Spiro had taught him. ‘A caterer is only as good as his flow.’ No jams. The effort is no use if they can’t get at it.
And paying on the spot would take time even with token money.
‘And what about the posies?’ said Serena. ‘Where’s the posies?’
‘Oh Emmie’s done pumpkins and stuff. Look.’
The first of the bell peppers, the last of the pumpkins gleamed together on straw platters. Pink potatoes shone beside ruby tamarillos and crisp apples from the cool store. Emmie’s mounds of polished fruit and vegetables were cornucopias in the round; symbols, if you could stand it, of glowing abundance and plenty. A harvest festival in spring when every leaf was sharp and green and still unfurling.
The music was blaring and thumping alongside. A band he didn’t know—Sinking Lid. Rock and roll meets country. Not bad. He would have a look later. The wine buffs and bibbers were already in action in the marquee alongside. The experts sampled, tasted with discern-ment. The more enthusiastic bibbers did not bother. They were into it.
The tents, the noise, the streaming crowds trekking across flattened paddocks and dusty paths reminded him. Miss Bowman had once taken Emmie and him to an A and P Show in the Wairarapa; a long haul by train and bus to every wonder in the world and a Mermaid in a Bottle. There had been no vineyards then, no heady decisions required as to nose or body or aftertaste. There had been meat pies and candyfloss and picnics and hot water from the stand behind the Women’s Rest and a beer cavern beneath the Grandstand labelled Gentlemen Only where, Miss Bowman told him, he would be fortunate enough to be admitted in due course providing he behaved always in a gentlemanly and chivalrous manner.
Emmie was polishing her final pumpkin; she could make even a Green Triumble shine.
‘Not the asparagus,’ he yelled. ‘Rebekkah’s bringing the kids.’ She turned to laugh, waved a hand. ‘Love yah,’ she yelled back.
‘Hi, Rob!’
He glanced up. Rebekkah was followed by a man with a child clamped to each hand—a man so neat, so struc-tured as to appear slightly surreal. Threads of hair were plastered across his scalp, the middle button of his blazer was buttoned. Even his blond beard was a production; bits had been left out, shaved where beards normally are not. A man, it was clear, who spent time on his image.
‘And this is Wes,’ said Rebekkah fondly. ‘We finally got it all together, didn’t we, love?’
Wes agreed. It had been and still was part of an ongoing process but he and Bekk were finally learning to communicate. They had both taken counselling for dialogue skills and empathic listening between partners. The thing was to be pro-active.
‘Great,’ said Rob. ‘Great,’
‘Hey,’ roared Wes grabbing Haden and Shelley whose outstretched hands were about to deconstruct Emmeline’s pumpkins. ‘Watch it, you lot.’
‘I bet his other dame shot through,’ muttered Emmie above swirling cream and the roar of the hand beater. ‘Why’d she take the creep back? Kids, I suppose. I dunno …’ The rest was drowned as she switched to High.
Queues were forming; there was no time for words. There was heat, sun, grass, dust and action. They were, as Spiro would have told them, flat out like a lizard drinking. Chaos was contained, panic averted, the five thousand pieces were diminishing by the minute.
‘We’re out of tapenade!’
‘Here.’
‘Profiteroles!’
‘Here, dummy.’
Merle and Rob were now side by side at the table. Emmie was in charge behind the chest-high structure dividing the cooking area. He glanced at her occasionally; was greeted by a grin, a wink, a snarl. He was ready to understand, even to accept her rejection of poor old Wil. He would accept anything. His heart melted through the soles of his Reeboks as his hands and the rest of his mind ticked steadily and he nodded, smiled, took tokens and nodded again at the orderly crowd which was becoming less so. Undoubtedly there would be some fat on the arse for Robin and he would give them all a bonus and have a party. He paused, his splayed fingers momentarily steady on token money. He and Emmie would have a party. A minor orgy. Jesus.
Someone was shoving, yelling, elbowing his way to the front through mutters and stirs of dissent. ‘Piss off,’ said a blonde in a floral hat guarding her polenta.
Nothing stopped Murray. He stood before them, his face grey and oiled with sweat. ‘I’ve lost him,’ he said.
He should have fought her. Insisted. Not that shit. Don’t come. Stay home.
‘Merle. Get Ron to help you till we get back, OK?’
‘Sure,’ said the startled face.
He would find him. Find him first, bring him back and tell her then. No. He grabbed the keys of the van. ‘Emmie,’ he yelled.
The three of them squeezed in the front and shot off down the road.
‘Someone’ll have seen him,’ he said. ‘Those announcements at shows. Kids get separated all the time, remember?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I just turned round,’ said Murray, ‘and he’d gone.’
He couldn’t even drive fast. Calvin could be anywhere; alone on the tracks beaten on the verges, outside paddocks, lost in the dust of the vineyards. Found. Found by someone decent. Someone responsible. Or otherwise. The etched image of a child walking away hand in hand.
She clutched his arm as they swung a corner.
‘Christ!’ yelled Murray two vineyards later. ‘Look.’
Robin pulled onto the verge.
She was scrabbling over Murray’s knees, her hands on the door handle.
‘No!’ yelled Robin.
He grabbed her back, slammed her against the seat.
She was fighting, clawing, teeth bared. She was getting out. Going to join the child and the man walking beside him.
Her nails were biting his arm.
‘Listen. I’ll park the van behind that shed. You stroll back. Casual. Easy. “Hi.” Murray and I’ll come back otherwise we’ll lose him. Get it?’
‘What if the guy’s, you know, helping?’ said Murray.
‘Then we won’t thump him, fuckwit.’
‘And don’t look as we pass,’ he told her.
She clenched her eyes.
Robin signalled, turned slowly in behind the shed. It was bigger than a garage, a large barn backed by hawthorn.
She was out running before he seized her arm. ‘Walk. Just walk. And go round the other side of the shed.’
She was distracted, whimpering. He held her arms tight. ‘Calm down.’
‘Hh.’
‘Calm down. Now!’
‘Yes.’ She strolled away.
‘We’ll give her a minute or two,’ said Rob.
Murray, his mouth hanging, was silent. ‘And you drive,’ said Rob.
‘Just do it for Chrissake. Pull over beside them. Calm, slow, we’re looking at the view.’
Murray swung the van onto the road by the laughing crowd waiting for the courtesy bus at the gates of the vineyard and the group of three further along the verge. Emmie was on her knees, her face hidden.
‘Now!’ he said and jumped from the van as the guy took off. Robin had one glimpse of tight-faced terror and the man was away, wide shorts flapping as he sprinted down the road.
He was going to lose him. Pop music was belting above Calvin’s wails, his glasses were fogged, his breath rasping as he threw himself at the slight figure and flattened him. He had hold of one foot only, its trainer slipping from his grasp, when Murray arrived, climbed into the shallow ditch and sat on the guy.
‘Take him away,’ he hissed over his shoulder.
‘Come on, Cal,’ said Emmie, tugging her reluctant child.
Robin climbed up from the spreadeagled figure, moved to the head and began thumping it on the ground. Thumping from rage, from despair, from loss of innocence.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Murray, ‘you’ll kill the poor sod.’
A guy in a passing truck went for the cops. They handed the captive over, stared at the stained face, the T-shirt labelled Instant Arsehole, the tick of fear beneath the eye, the ordinariness. The dreadful pitiful ordinariness. For the first time in his life Robin was glad of Murray’s presence. He might indeed have killed the guy. Left him to die face down in docks and plantain and crushed grass.
Emmeline and Calvin appeared. She was talking talking talking, explaining that when people love people they have to know where people are and people must stay with the people who are minding them and ask them for an icecream if they want one, not just go off with someone else without telling.
They climbed into the van, Murray in the back.
‘Let’s get one now then,’ said Calvin.
*
Rob drove with one hand, hers clamped by his side, Calvin on her knee.
‘Did you see his T-shirt?’ she muttered behind Calvin’s back.
‘Yeah.’
‘He shouldn’t have had that T-shirt.’
‘Forget it. It’s just words. Letters.’ He thought quickly. ‘Like the ones Japanese wear. Boogie ladder. Hopper girl,’ he said making shut-up faces above Calvin’s head.
‘He wasn’t Japanese,’ she said bleakly.
Murray sat silent, his smirk unseen as Calvin handed his mother the raspberry ripple. ‘Want a bite?’
‘Thanks hon. Thanks a lot.’
They parked the van on the road and walked past milling crowds and safely grazing sheep to the vineyard and the Dionysus tent beyond.
The vines were in new leaf; pin-sized green grapes stood upright on stalks, like spores on the fruiting body of some particularly unattractive fungus. Straw surrounded the roots; they were cherished these vines, cherished and precious and time consuming for their owners.
Rob was looking for distraction, finding things to show her. Men in wide-brimmed Man from Snowy River hats new since last year; men in baseball caps, designer straws, panamas. Where were the hats of yesteryear—the towelling, the canvas, the floppies? Rob caught sight of a yellow towelling in the distance and was reassured.
The shimmering silver of the bands’ tent roof was glinting like a sunlit glacier above a middle-aged woman who swayed alone, arms high to snap the rhythm. Soon she must dance, join the kids, but not yet. The band had changed. A torch singer was belting out her somebody-done-somebody-wrong song, her hair grey beneath her black garden-party hat, her elegant twenties gown swinging, her voice deep and true. ‘Look at the bow on her behind, Em. Just on the curve. Any good?’
‘Yes.’
He got marks for trying. ‘Yes,’ she said again.
‘You’re so rich / that’s the answer,’ yelled the trouper. The applause was long and loud. The singer acknowledged it, bowed graciously beneath her feathered hat, swept her long skirt from side to side in recognition of their good taste and discernment.
‘I’ll go on,’ said Rob.
‘Just one more.’
The next song was unexpected. The husky contralto was deeper than ever, pregnant with warning above the tooty beat of the electric organ. The words were advice from a soul who had been there, had been down to the woods today and received a big surprise. It would have been safer, she confided, to have stayed at home.
Emmeline’s face was motionless, deadpan as a woman in a blue movie. ‘I should have killed that man,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t I kill him?’
The food had disappeared but the packing, the sorting, the cleaning up took time. Serena was declared a good find by Merle, Ron had taken a slice out of a finger but no worries. Murray and an unchastened Calvin jigged by the dying embers of the band. Murray, as he told them, felt it was the least he could do.
It was late when they set off and there was little sound in the van as they crawled over the Rimutakas. The hills were dark, the scrub deepening to black in the steep valleys below.
Calvin fell asleep as the van left Featherston and was not alone. As Serena explained, they were all pooped.
‘Rob,’ said Emmie.
He changed down, hugged the curve. ‘Nnn?’
‘The old man, Wil.’
He was concentrating, didn’t take it in. ‘Yeah?’
‘I’ll ring him shall I? When we get home?’
He was grinning his head off. He heard his voice still grinning at the tight bends, the sharp-angled curves of the road downhill.
‘It’ll be too late for him tonight. Tomorrow’ll do, hon.’