As the fan begins to take effect, Bill sets out the bread and cheese for morning tea. Simon doesn’t seem to notice the ten white ceramic vats in shining rows on their stands, like futuristic eggs from which the first vintage will come to life. Nor the new oak barrels, in which some of the fermented wine will be aged.
Bill warms milk in the microwave and downgrades his expectations. A part of him had hoped that the ceramic vats and wooden barrels would inspire some kind of love at first sight in Simon, like they had in himself. Plant the seeds of a passion, or at the very least spark an interest, or something. In fact, Simon doesn’t appear to have even seen his costly, crucial and beautiful vessels. The elegance of the ceramic, the squat heft of the oak. The volume they will contain. The contrast between old and new. The complementary ways in which they reflect and soak up light. Nothing. The vessels haven’t even registered.
Simon’s slumped over Solangia. Dazed. Glassy-eyed.
Ah, there’s time, Bill thinks.
Four rows weeded was the modest goal for the first session, for an obese middle-aged man embarking on the first day of physical work in his life. But new weeds had sprung up and threaded through the dead stalks above, making removal difficult. The sheer weight of organic matter accruing on the tarp was staggering. Bill had to stop applying pesticide several times to help Simon drag the laden tarp to the bonfire site, and has fallen behind schedule himself.
He hands his son a tea and takes the baby. How light she is. To his great relief she latches on to the bottle’s rubber nipple and rips the entire contents down. Bill burps her on his shoulder. It’s all coming back. Her lids droop. Her face is less red, but the spots stand out more. She will sleep better in the cool of the shed. Something can be salvaged.
It’s time to ask Simon the question Bill’s been deliberately withholding in order to prove how open-minded he is. ‘She’s Mäori?’
‘Her biological father’s from around here, actually. Ngäti Kahungunu. Could be a good in for you, Bill—make some local connections.’
‘Right. I’ll dig a hangi. Invite all my new rellies over.’
‘You should.’
‘Jesus, Simon.’ Bill shakes his head at the outlandishness of the suggestion and laughs. He’d forgotten just how rose-tinted the glasses are that Simon sees through. ‘Ah, it’s good to see you, son.’
‘I’m serious. You need a network, Bill. Everything could go tits-up any minute.’
‘Right.’
There are the new wooden matai barrels, currently being swelled, to empty and clean out again, and hundreds of empty bottles to be rinsed. It’ll be the third run. Bill’s very anxious to have everything clean and sterile. It’s essential. The bedrock. Simon gets up for another cup of tea. Slower to recover than Solangia, his face is still fiery red. He knocks the cup back where he stands, pours a third cup and turns to the food.
‘The first three days are the hardest,’ Bill offers.
Simon appears crushed rather than encouraged. ‘Uh-huh.’ His mouth is crammed full of bread and cheese, his eyes remain glassy.
‘Righto,’ Bill says. ‘Before we get stiff.’
‘Before? I was stiff three hours ago.’
‘We’ll have lunch at the house at 12.30. Something more substantial.’
They get in a solid half hour of rinsing bottles without interruption from the baby. Bill hands over the hose and they swap roles. Solangia sleeps on and progress continues. Simon is strong beneath all his weight and together they move the vats and barrels easily. Bill waits for some sign that the ceramic vats, at least, have registered on Simon as objects of note. However Simon’s only comment about them, when it finally comes, is a doleful, ‘Just need some wine in them now.’ Bill has scrupulously asked nothing about the baby’s teenage father, not wanting to come across as judgemental, but now, annoyed, he’s tempted. But he doesn’t. The whole idea is that Simon gets a break from nagging. Has time to clear his head. Bill decides to decide about the teenager that he’s very fortunate to have someone as understanding as Simon looking after his daughter while he’s in juvenile detention.
Solangia wakes just as they stop for lunch. They had a good run of uninterrupted work and the morning no longer appears such a dead loss after all. Simon feels it too, Bill can tell, by the way he briskly picks her up. His pulverised weariness from morning tea has gone.
As they head for the house, in the shade provided by a row of straggly peach trees, Simon is even moved to animated speech.
‘Pretty interesting biology coming out of New Hokitika.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Regarding Sam’s stomach.’
‘Right.’
Simon turns. ‘You’re not following it?’
‘I’m having a break from everything, Simon. I’m offline. Thought that with my retirement, I’d actually retire.’
‘But it’s Sam.’
‘I’ll come out of retirement if he wakes up.’
‘Wow.’
‘What?’
‘Well.’
‘No, go on.’ Let’s get it over with, Bill thinks. We’ll talk about that corporate chattel named Sam in hospital who’s not sentient and probably not even alive anymore.
‘It’s just that, you know, growing up, it was all you ever talked about. Or it seemed that way. And now you can’t be bothered even reading updates.’
‘Was it?’ They’re back in the sun and Simon’s sweating. They stop and Bill takes the sleeping baby from his son. ‘It wasn’t all I talked about.’
‘Pretty much, Bill.’
‘Oh. Well, if that’s the case, I’m sorry.’ He knows it’s true. Deep embarrassment lies in wait if he thinks about his attempts to parent ‘like Sam would’. It led to silence and absence and three different mothers for his three sons.
‘Well, I’m pretty surprised, Bill, I must say.’ This is practically a declaration of war by Simon’s standards.
‘Mmmm.’
‘Given that you were an expert on every crackpot theory that came out about him when we were kids. And now you suddenly don’t care.’
‘It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just…’ As they troop up onto the porch, he hands Solangia back and retrieves his keys from his pocket. By the time he’s opened the door and got his shoes off, the rest of his explanation is yet to arrive. He lets it lie, hoping the distractions of fridge and baby will satisfy his son.
‘It’s not that you don’t care,’ Simon prompts him, ‘but…? ’ The brief walk in the sun has reddened Simon’s face again. It makes him look angry.
‘Oh, yes. The, um, biology is… Take a seat.’ Bill takes plates of tomato, cheese and ham out of the fridge and lays them on the kitchen table. ‘I feel vindicated by the science, broadly speaking, but the details? I mean, it’s been a huge relief after all those years—decades—of being disbelieved, but the details of his digestive tract, or whatever, are not of burning importance to me.’
Simon sits at the table with Solangia, not touching the food. ‘But it tells us things about the world he comes from.’
‘What did they find?’
‘Well, his uniquely adapted vegetarianism tells us—’
Bill interrupts. ‘I can tell you he was vegetarian because I saw him sitting up in bed, eating only vegetables, in Hokitika in 1986. I don’t need a biopsy to know that.’
‘But you can’t have known that his digestive system has adapted over tens of thousands of years to specifically eat cooked vegetarian food.’
‘And?’
Simon frowns. ‘It means that the whole population Sam belongs to has eaten cooked vegetables for a long time, right?’
‘Yes, if the digestive system’s evolved that way.’
‘So?’
He’s doing ‘Sam teaching’ on me, Bill thinks. Jesus, being silent and making me work things out, like I did with him and his brothers. And look where they’ve ended up. ‘So Sam’s people stopped eating meat a long time ago.’
‘And?’
&nbs
p; ‘I don’t know, Simon. They made a choice a long time ago as a society not to eat meat?’
‘Exactly. A long time ago. It implies a very long-established decision not to eat meat made on ethical or environmental grounds.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘Imagine humans agreeing not to eat meat 50,000 years ago for abstract reasons? Impossible.’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘And what about his messages? Surely you…’
‘I’m waiting for him to wake up and write with his own hand.’
‘So you think that the messages are…’
Here’s where I denounce the messages as fake, Bill thinks, and ruin in one stroke my reputation and most important relationships. And bring about my financial ruin as the icing on the cake. ‘Simon, the messages are… approximations.’
‘Lies, you mean?’
‘No, I didn’t say that. But look, I think that if they hitched Solangia here up to that ultra-sensitive high-tech equipment, they’d find plenty to work with, some neural potential that could be elaborated with algorithms. It’s science, but it’s mixed up with hope and intuition. Simon, I want him to sit up and look me in the eye and write with his own hand, like he used to.’
‘A lot of people think the messages are fake. Maybe the majority of people. You didn’t know that, did you? You won’t see that accusation in print, of course. Libel.’
‘No…’
‘You seem surprised, Bill.’
‘They must be disappointed.’
‘They’re like you. They turn off the news. They don’t believe anything in the media anymore.’
‘What was the last message?’
Simon doesn’t have to think for even a second, and there’s open scorn in his voice. ‘Wish for your neighbour the opportunity to have the things you have.’
Bill has been avoiding the messages. It’s worse than he feared. ‘Fuck.’ He reddens, gets up. It’s awful. Bill burns with shame at the gate he’s opened for Venture Group as he leaves the kitchen, the house, and walks barefoot up to the big shed, scarcely feeling the sun beat on his bare head.
But who would forgive me, he thinks, if I came clean now? I’ve lied too long. I mean, can I even forgive myself? Can I? There is only one person whose forgiveness he really needs. If not forgiveness, then at least her advice—on how to find a way to forgiveness. Pacing in the big shed, Bill calls her, the only person whose opinion really matters. It’s about to go to message when Trix answers.
‘How are the grapes?’
‘They… they’re souring.’
‘Yes?’
‘I just… Can we talk?’
‘We are talking.’
‘I mean properly.’
‘About?’
‘You know.’
‘So you can explain why you sold out every principle you believe in? Sounds fun, Bill Peters, but I’d rather have my fingernails pulled out. Goodbye.’
‘Wait. Trix, I’ve been out of the loop up here. I just—’
‘Out of the loop? I’m… staggered. Goodbye.’
He pockets his screen, turns on the fan and punches in the top setting, Tibetan Cloud. As he drinks in the cooling blast he looks around the dim, high-ceilinged space, full of all the stuff of his new life. The uniform rows of ceramic eggs. The oak barrels. The press, the destemmer, racking plates, barrel spears, the sparger, stirrers, dip tapes, spray balls, the rotary cleaning head. It’s substantial. This jumble of stuff that was foreign to him has become familiar in the last couple of months. They’re getting to know each other. It’s not just functional knowledge, but personal; the weight and feel of things, aromas. He feels his growing competence. Knowledge is accumulating. Expertise will come. Apart from the niggling knee, he feels physically strong, fitter than he has felt for decades. He knows he can get the winery going, get this big ball rolling. Yes. It will carry him through a long and fruitful retirement.
The morning’s crates of cleaned bottles glisten. Water will soon become wine. Trix will come around in a year or two. He just needs a bit of hands-on help around the vineyard before then. That’s all. He takes his screen from his pocket, deletes the ads for shizer porn and constipation medication, and looks up the number for Wiz Couriers.
‘Wiz.’
In his kindly, seasoned voice, ‘Sorry to bother you, but is Samantha there?’
‘Which one?’
‘Ah…’
‘Ladbrook or Puketapu?’
‘Puketapu.’
‘Ah, hang on, I think she’s downstairs. I’ll put you through.’
The call is answered gruffly by a male. Bill makes his request. He hears the click and thump of pool balls, a burst of laughter.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi Samantha, this is Bill Peters from Rifle Range Road. You dropped a package off and we talked about Sam II. Do you remember?’
‘Oh, yeah. What’s up?’ He can hear her smile.
‘I have something that needs to be delivered and thought I could arrange it privately with you, you know, rather than give half the fee to the company.’
‘That won’t be possible. Goodbye.’
He feels slapped. Then his screen vibrates in his hand. Unknown caller.
‘Half? They take 60 per cent.’
‘Oh, dear. Well, it would be an unusual kind of delivery. A late pick-up tonight and delivery to Tawa, just north of Wellington. ‘
‘Tawa tonight? An eight-hour return trip. I’m assuming the item is large.’
‘No, she’s small. Just a pup.’
‘An animal—that makes sense at night. Well, let’s see. I’m not working tomorrow so that’ll be fine. Five hundred and fifty?’
He’ll make it a grand when she arrives. ‘Done. See you at 10 tonight.’
‘You have my private number now. Thanks for calling.’
‘You’re welcome.’
Karen’s tour of the house with Pastels takes forever. Laughter and free-flowing conversation comes straight up the stairwell and filters through Jeremiah’s solid oak office door. It’s faint and intermittent, but distracting nevertheless. He puffs anger through his nose. He’s online, amassing facts about the moon along with quotes from celebrities. A line from a poem might also be useful, he thinks, to break out when he’s alone in the spa pool with Tiroli. He tries ‘shakespeare moon’ and finds something with potential. Just a little alteration is needed. He practises, ‘Don’t be a barren sister all your life/ Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon.’ A knock at his door.
He jumps. ‘Yes.’
Karen pops her head in. ‘Pastels has gone. Do you have a minute?’
‘She has?’ He closes the page. ‘Yes.’
Karen slips inside, shuts the door, and leans her back against it. ‘I know you wanted St Tropez but this arrangement with Pastels will actually have a practical benefit. She’ll be able to help around the house and keep Manny in line.’
‘I think you were a bit harsh about St Tropez.’
‘Oh?’
‘I think she could pop toast.’
Karen smiles. ‘I know what you wanted to pop.’
‘Ah.’ The girl is thin to the point of fragility, insipid, speechless with fright. ‘Not my type.’
‘Am I your type?’
‘Yeah, and you’re one of a kind.’
She blushes. He also colours, moved by the effect his words had on her, his difficult wife, who has always been difficult and always will be. A rush of affection and tenderness destabilises him.
She crosses the floor of his study. Blood rushes to his extremities; his breath catches. Now? He wants her, to be intimately united with her.
Chaste, she sits side-saddle on his knees and kisses him lightly. They breathe and blink at each other as they kiss. Her scent envelops him. They hold hands. Link fingers. It’s been too long, he thinks. Yet he feels she may bolt at any second and that he must tread carefully.
‘Pastels had one main question.’
‘Oh, yeah? About frid
ge access?’
‘No, about Mandela’s name.’
‘Right.’
‘I heard you from the kitchen, yelling about not calling him Manny. And then you called him Manny a minute later yourself. What’s that about? You sounded like a rich prick who thinks he can say what he likes to the help.’
‘Just showing her who’s boss.’
She stands and moves to the window. Wrong tack. He sighs.
‘And who the slave is.’
‘Nobody’s a slave,’ Jeremiah tells her. ‘But if the roles are clearly established early on, there won’t be a problem going forward.’
‘Roles… I’ve seen the way Golden Gators talk to locals. Don’t be like that, Jeremiah. They’re not subhuman. We were Outers too, remember?’
‘I know, I know.’
The thing is, that the people Jeremiah admires most at work—those he tries hardest to please, who have the most power and the ability to somehow command every situation they find themselves in—treat the locals dismissively. It’s about business time, about importance, about being in the moment with the people who matter and not subjecting them to pointless chitter chatter with interchangeable minions who will shortly disappear to carry out their basic tasks, often incompetently. And more practically, it’s about keeping service standards up, keeping the help on their toes. They respect strength and need firm and unambiguous direction. But he can’t tell Karen this. ‘It’s not really about Pastels,’ he says, drooping into downcast squirrel.
‘What then?’ She’s leaning her back against the window now.
‘The party tonight… The garden.’
‘What about the party?’
‘The masks. The Chef.’
‘So you scream at Pastels because the Chef might do something that makes the super-elite a little uncomfortable.’
‘We’re like the Trojan Horse.’
‘Ha!’
He laughs too, out of nervousness more than anything.
‘They know Malcom’s coming, Jeremiah. They’re baby boomers, they like a bit of excitement. They’ve been alive too long, since World War II.’
Star Sailors Page 30
