‘Sam!’ Carla wasn’t impressed. ‘You weren’t bored at Grandpa’s, were you?’
‘No. Grandpa used to teach me about the grapes, and tell me stories. It was interesting at Valley View.’ He changed the subject. ‘Mum, I liked being in the plane, that was cool, but this is a strange place for a holiday. Why are we here?’
‘I told you, Sam, to look at Grandpa’s old vineyard. I might decide to sell it but I want to see it before I make such an important decision.’ She hadn’t told him anything about the Stenmark family. She chose to keep that as a surprise.
‘Oh, yeah. I forgot.’ He went back to playing with his much-treasured Star Wars figures.
Angie gave Carla a sideways knowing look and said, ‘It’ll be late afternoon by the time we get to Nuriootpa. Do you want to check into the motel I booked, get settled, and look at Krugerhoff in the morning or…?’
‘The agent has the keys. I asked him to have the electricity, water and gas reconnected. I want to see the place today, so I can get an idea as to what it’s like. Tomorrow there’ll be plenty of time for a thorough inspection.’ She chose not to tell Angie what the real estate agent had said about Krugerhoff—the property was derelict, a real mess.
Angie tossed her head back and chuckled. ‘I thought you would. You’re so much like Rolfe. Do it today. Why wait till tomorrow was one of his axioms.’
‘I remember Dad saying that.’ So many things about her father were just memories now, as they were with Derek. That’s what happened when a loved one passed on. The present stopped, leaving only the past. Time capsules, scenes, things said, happy and sad times to be remembered with love.
‘We’ll go to the agent’s office first? I think he’s in First Street.’
As Angie stopped the car near the two metre high, rusty wire gates, Carla tried to recall how her father had described and drawn the perimeters of Krugerhoff—Darn. Why hadn’t she brought his journal? Mmm, too late to worry about that now. She saw that the wooden sign proclaiming the winery’s name had been worn down over time until only the upright posts, leaning at an angle, remained. Little could be seen beyond the gates because a proliferation of low shrubs and stripling gums had grown up over the years. Carla could see a single track leading from the side of the gate into the property.
Carla took out the key ring containing half a dozen keys that the agent had given her. She fitted the first one in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn. In succession she tried the others, all to no avail. Either she had the wrong set of keys or the lock’s internal mechanism had rusted up, rendering it useless.
‘It’s gonna rain, Mum,’ Sam prophesied from behind his mother and Angie. He was staring up at a darkening sky. A mass of grey clouds hung ominously above them. In the distance they could hear crackling thunder and see flashes of lightning. The bush was still and soundless…another sign that rain was imminent.
‘Let me try,’ Angie offered. She took the keys off Carla.
The three, engrossed in gaining entry to Krugerhoff, didn’t hear a Land Rover stop on the verge of the road. A tall, rangy man wearing a weather-beaten hat, khaki shorts and a zip-up vest over a khaki shirt, unfolded himself from behind the driver’s wheel and got out. He walked lightly considering his height and weight, almost soundlessly, towards them.
‘Hey! You okay there? Do you need some help?’
Shock caused Angie to drop the keys in the dirt. ‘Damn!’
The three turned to look at the stranger.
‘Are you a policeman, mister?’ Sam asked as he stared curiously at the man’s dirty elasticised boots and overall khaki look.
‘No way, buddy.’ He grinned at Sam. ‘I’m Paul van Leeson, I live down the end of this road. You have a problem?’
‘Hello, I’m Carla Hunter,’ Carla introduced herself, Angie and Sam. ‘I…I the real estate agent gave me these keys to Krugerhoff but none seem to work.’
‘Kiwis, hey!’ Paul acknowledged their nationality then said matter of factly. ‘The lock’s probably stiff, or stuffed. I’ll get my can of WD– 40. Lubricating the lock might free it up.’
Angie and Carla looked at each other as Paul loped back to the Land Rover.
‘He’s nice,’ Angie whispered, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively at Carla.
‘If you like them long and lean,’ Carla countered, straight-faced.
Paul returned carrying a can and sprayed a small burst from it into the lock opening. He put the can in his vest pocket then held his hand out for the key. ‘I’ll give it a go if you like.’
‘Thanks.’ Angie handed over the keys.
With a minimum of fiddling he opened the lock and without being asked to, began to push back the wire gates. ‘These haven’t been opened for a while,’ he said with a grunt. ‘Thinking of buying Krugerhoff?’ he stated the obvious. ‘Funny,’ he scratched the tip of his nose in contemplation, ‘I wasn’t aware of it being on the market.’
‘Er, no. We just want to take a look,’ Carla’s evasive answer surprised even herself. ‘Thanks for helping us, Mr van Leeson. Very kind of you.’ He was staring at her, a quizzical expression in his grey eyes. She didn’t like that—it was almost as if he thought he knew her though she was sure she’d never set eyes on him before. Cheeky Australian! She wondered if all Australian men were as bold, but then in the next instant dismissed the thought.
‘Call me Paul,’ he insisted. ‘Here.’ He took the can out of his pocket and held it out to Carla. ‘I see you have other keys. You might need the old WD-40 again.’
‘I couldn’t…’ Carla shook her head but Angie had no problems in taking the can from him.
‘Thanks. How can we get it back to you?’ the ever-practical Angie asked.
‘If you’re staying at Nuriootpa, drop it at my office in Gawler Street. Otherwise just leave it by the gate when you’re done. Can’t miss the office though. It’s the best looking building in the street.’ He gave them an all-encompassing cheeky grin. ‘I’m the architect who designed and built it.’ He reached into his vest pocket again, pulled out a business card and gave it to the receptive Angie.
After tipping his hat and ruffling Sam’s spiky ginger hair he strode back to his vehicle.
Carla stared after him for a second or two, but as another roll of thunder and more lightning followed, she pulled her thoughts back to the situation and ordered her small retinue forward. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ She took Sam’s hand and with Angie bringing up the rear they walked quickly down the barely definable track.
The agent’s statement about Krugerhoff being derelict was no exaggeration. Carla had seen some rough places, cottage hideaways in New Zealand’s South Island, but none wilder or more unkempt than her father’s vineyard. The light was fading with the approaching storm but they managed to reach the front porch of the cottage and open the front door before the first drops of rain began to fall.
The door opened straight into the living room and once inside their entry disturbed thirty years of dust. They sneezed, repeatedly. There were several broken windows in the room and down the hallway came the scurrying sound of some small animal who’d been disturbed and was making a rapid exit. Carla flicked the light switch on. Light from the old globe flickered on then the glass shattered, throwing the room into semi-darkness again. She took Sam with her and tried the light in the kitchen and had better luck—it didn’t explode. Her hand reached for the tap at the sink to check the water supply. An awful shuddering erupted through the walls as water dribbled then rushed through the pipes for the first time in many years. The rusty trickle sluiced layers of dust from the bottom of the stainless steel sink and down the drain, then the water slowly cleared until it looked clean. She turned the tap off.
‘One of the bedrooms is an office,’ Angie told Carla as she joined her in the kitchen.
Suddenly the full force of where she was hit Carla. Why she was here and that once her father had flicked the light switches on, turned on the tap as she had just done, made coffee on the stove and sat
on the sofa facing the fireplace. He had given succinct descriptions of the rooms in his journal and over the last two weeks, having read the words so often, she knew much of it off by heart. One room she didn’t care to go into was the bedroom where he and Marta had made love but she thought Angie and Sam would think it strange if she didn’t.
Outside, the storm was providing them with a wonderful light and sound performance. Sheets of heavy rain thundered down onto the cottage’s roof. So far there were no leaks! For a while they stood by the broken front window in the living room, looking out. Lightning flashes illuminated the other buildings and where the vines had once grown. The stark white-blue lightning made everything glow eerily. Carla shivered, not because it was cold but because of the memories. Once, so long ago, Krugerhoff had been her father’s pride and joy and, according to his journal, he’d had such hopes…
‘What a dump,’ Sam muttered.
‘It…it’s not a dump, Sam, it’s just that the cottage hasn’t been lived in for a very long time. Not since before your mother was born,’ Angie told him. She glanced at Carla and saw her reaction, the sadness in her eyes. ‘I reckon that with a good scrub, some fresh paint, and new furniture, it could all look very nice.’
‘Mmm, maybe,’ Sam was unconvinced, but he added after further consideration, ‘It’s way bigger than our flat in Christchurch. Can we look at the other buildings when the rain stops?’
Carla put her arm around him. ‘No, it’ll be dark soon. We’ll do that tomorrow. Let’s just go through the cottage tonight and tomorrow, after breakfast, we’ll come back for a better look, really explore the place.’
‘Okay. You know, Mum,’ Sam looked up at Carla. ‘It gives me a funny kind of feeling inside,’ he touched the area over his heart, ‘knowing Grandpa once lived here.’
Carla smiled down at her son. When she spoke, the words came out softly. ‘Me too, Sam. Me too.’
CHAPTER SIX
As the storm raged, through a rusted hole in the galvanised cladding of the winery wall, three pairs of eyes watched lights come on in the cottage for the first time.
‘Bloody squatters,’ the youth muttered. Tall for a Vietnamese, and muscled from working in the vineyards, he spat his disgust on the earth floor.
‘Not squatters, Tran. Squatters couldn’t get electricity on,’ countered the older female. Taller than the child by thirty centimetres, and older than the youth by five years, Kim Loong answered her brother.
‘Are not we squa…squatters?’ the child asked in hesitant English.
‘We are. So what, Su Lee?’ Tran stared at Kim and spoke softly as if he were imparting secrets. ‘Been a lot of people here lately. Something about to happen,’ he prophesied glumly. ‘We should clear out before we’re found. Been here three months, saved some money.’ He looked at Kim. ‘Go to a big town, maybe Adelaide. Find plenty work there.’
Kim shook her head in disagreement. ‘Work is easy to get in Valley, even after harvest, because people move on, leave jobs for us. We stay is better. Roof over our head, enough to eat. Must save much more before go to big town.’ She sighed. ‘Everything ’spensive in Australia.’
‘Better than streets of Saigon, hey!’ Tran said with a giggle, digging Kim in the ribs and receiving a quelling look for his comment.
‘Look, they leave now. Lights turned off,’ Su Lee advised. ‘Maybe no come back.’
‘Come, let’s make dinner,’ Kim ordered.
In single file they walked, making no sound on the winery’s dirt floor which was littered with pieces of wood, metal pipes and rusting machinery parts, to the rough accommodation Tran had built for them inside the cavern-like winery. Using rusted sheets of galvanised iron and pieces of timber, he had screened off a section about six metres square. They entered their one-room squat by lifting back one of the sheets of metal, ducking low and crawling inside.
Kim and Su Lee kept their ‘home’ immaculate. The dirt floor was swept daily and the mats and blankets they slept on were rolled up and put in a corner during the day to stop curious animals and insects from taking up residence. Home comforts were minimal. A spirit stove, several vari-sized saucepans and a wok for cooking, a metal kettle to boil water, old fruit boxes with secure wire doors to keep their non-perishable food in, and a small shrine to Buddha which was always adorned with flowers and perfumed candles. Clothes were washed on the banks of the nearby creek, where it meandered through the vineyard, and were then strung up on rope lines to dry, high enough not to hit the young people’s heads on.
As Tran lit the two Tilley lamps, their only source of light at night, Kim took out a wooden board and began to chop vegetables and slice pieces of chicken bought in Nuriootpa that afternoon, to make a stir-fry with noodles. Su Lee had already fetched three buckets of water from the creek: one for cooking and two for personal washing.
‘I think we should look for someplace else,’ Tran continued to expound his idea. ‘Can’t stay in winter, our arses will freeze off. And not as much work around Valley then, with vines all dead.’
‘Don’t be vulgar, Tran Loong,’ Kim reprimanded, her dark, slanted eyes glancing meaningfully towards Su Lee. Their young sister’s English wasn’t as good as hers—she’d been taught by Sister Dinah in Saigon—or even Tran’s but like most children Su Lee picked up ‘bad’ words very easily. ‘It will be cold, and we may have to find a new home before winter. You been tinkering on that motorbike,’ Kim threw him a cross look. ‘Get working you go around Valley, find somewhere better.’
Tran shrugged. ‘Need money for a new part. Can get it second-hand, it won’t cost much.’
One of Kim’s eyebrows lifted. ‘How much?’
‘Forty dollars.’
Almost a week’s part-time wage in some vineyards she reasoned. Experience told her he’d probably added five to ten dollars to the cost to have something left over for himself. Kim swallowed a sigh. Tran was like that, and had a tendency to be sly when it came to money. She reached inside her shirt for the moneybelt she wore around her hips under her skirt, took out the two twenty dollar bills and gave them to him, asking, ‘Will new part get bike to work?’
‘Should do,’ Tran said confidently.
Since she had discovered her brother’s weakness for the TAB and other forms of gambling—he was so like their father—she kept their money on her person, rather than hiding it somewhere, in case he discovered their savings and gambled it away as he had done, once before. Apart from that Tran was trustworthy enough and most of the time he worked hard. Good with his hands, he could build just about anything. His only other flaw was that, being eighteen, he tended to be impatient.
Kim understood his impatience. She had been eighteen once, though it seemed…a lifetime ago. At that age she’d been living rough on the streets of Saigon, after being sold to a brothel owner at the age of nine. She had run away from the brothel several times only to be found, beaten and returned to the brothel until, at seventeen and having saved a handful of dongs, she’d escaped and successfully made her way to Saigon. But remembering the past made her shudder and she chopped the carrot into pieces more vigorously than she needed to.
Still, the memories insisted on surfacing…
As the fourth child and second daughter in an impoverished rural family, she had been the daughter her parents considered disposable when drought caused the rice crop to fail and her parents needed money to buy food for the family. Don’t think about those bad days, about how bad they had really been she told herself. Doing so made the nightmares return.
The past is just that, past. Tran, Su Lee and Kim were in Australia now, legally, and here there was the opportunity to be whatever they wanted to be. With a sense of purpose she turned her thoughts to the two women and the boy who’d come to the cottage. Would they be back? She wasn’t scheduled to work tomorrow so she and Su Lee would keep watch and see if they did.
‘Everything looks worse in the daylight than it did last night.’ Carla’s tone was despondent as they walked
around the perimeter of the cottage and moved towards a large tin building. Angie thought that was most likely where the grapes had been crushed, the juice fermented and eventually bottled—the winemaking area.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Angie tried to sound positive. ‘The buildings have stood up to thirty years of wear and tear pretty well, considering there’s been little maintenance on them.’
‘The agent told me that one of Dad’s workers—Otto—used to caretake the place until his death about three years ago. Said the old chap would trim the vines in winter and so on, and expected Dad to return one day. He wanted things to be ready for him when he did.’
‘Aahhh. That’s why the vines don’t look too wild and the winery seems to be in good shape. Let’s go inside,’ Angie suggested. She unlocked the wide door and pulled it back. Sunlight flooded the interior adding to the light which came from glass skylights in the roof. She walked around, studying everything with great interest, inspecting the crushers, the vats, and other pieces of equipment. ‘This would have been state-of-the-art equipment thirty years ago. And there’s little deterioration. Otto must have run the machinery, kept things oiled and working until he was no longer able to.’
‘So,’ Carla mused, half to herself, ‘there wouldn’t be the expense of having to replace too much if…I mean, if someone wanted to start the winery up again, doing the processing wouldn’t be too difficult?’
Angie thought about Carla’s statement for a little while before answering. ‘I wouldn’t think so, but an expert, a viticulture engineer would have to check everything out, make sure all the equipment is in working order.’
‘Hey, Mum, look over here,’ Sam called out from down the other end of the cavernous shed.
He’d found a cache of bottles on racks in a corner, and several small oak barrels.
‘Rolfe’s first vintage, I reckon,’ Angie said.
‘Wouldn’t be any good now, would it?’ Carla queried. She picked up one of the green bottles; there were several hundred of them. The label read: ‘Krugerhoff, Chardonnay, 1962.’ So long ago. After a wan smile she put the bottle back with the others.
Sundown Crossing Page 9
