Blackpeak Vines

by Holly Ford

  ‘Don’t you have a meeting to get to?’

  ‘I’ve got time.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come on,’ he dared her, ‘you can show me.’

  Ella passed the laptop up to him. ‘Just don’t delete anything.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

  She twisted around to watch his face as he moved through the shots.

  ‘These are interesting.’

  Ella nodded approvingly. She liked interesting; it was so much better than good.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Oh, that’s Vito.’

  ‘I like his suit.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s Fratelli Sammartino.’

  A shadow crossed Luke’s face. He flicked to the next shot. For a second, they both considered Vito’s close-up. Ella hadn’t looked at it for a while herself — she’d forgotten quite how well he could work a lens.

  ‘He’s very’ — the corner of Luke’s mouth turned down — ‘photogenic.’

  ‘Yes. He is.’ She sighed to herself. ‘He’s a lovely guy, too, actually.’

  ‘Is he?’ Luke grinned. ‘I see.’

  ‘No,’ she told him. ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Ah. So where is he now?’

  ‘Back in Italy, I presume.’ She narrowed her eyes at Luke. ‘Although being a model, he could be anywhere.’

  ‘Sorry I asked.’ Still grinning, he handed her laptop back. ‘It’s obviously a touchy subject.’

  ‘When did you say you were leaving?’

  Luke checked his watch. ‘Now.’ Deftly, he finished his Windsor knot.

  Ella looked him up and down.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Very nice.’

  ‘Well.’ For a moment, Luke remained where he was, looking down at her. It was the closest she’d ever seen him look to awkward. ‘See you later, then.’

  She giggled. ‘Bye, dear. Have a nice day at the office.’

  ‘Don’t do anything bad, or you’ll be in trouble when I get home.’

  Lizzie walked back in. ‘That was Rob on the phone.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ella, not daring to look at Luke.

  ‘He said he’s planning to do some fencing tomorrow if the weather’s fine.’ Lizzie looked puzzled. ‘He seemed to think you’d want to know.’ Picking up Ella’s empty coffee cup, she carried it back to the kitchen.

  Reluctantly, Ella raised her eyes to meet Luke’s.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, softly. ‘It sounds like it’s your lucky day.’

  Chapter ELEVEN

  The morning’s rain came almost as a shock. Lizzie, watching it pound the office windows, tried to remember how long it was since she’d last seen it. Beyond the glass, the vineyard was wrapped in grey, its boundaries lost in cloud. If it was like this at Blackpeak, there’d be no fencing for Ella today. Though she had vowed to herself she would never say a word about Rob to her daughter again, Lizzie couldn’t help feeling relieved. A little cooling-off time, she thought, looking gratefully at the rain, was just what everybody needed.

  Lizzie pulled on her jumper and turned back to her laptop. It was good weather for thinking, too, which she needed to do urgently. Jules, bless her heart, had wasted no time in flogging her doco to the network. The budget they’d signed off on was Attenborough-esque — they were clearly expecting a mega-production. Lizzie sighed. She felt like a total bitch, but, secretly, she’d been hoping nothing would come of it. She still couldn’t decide whether it would be more excruciating if Richard came back to work on it, or if he didn’t. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, she had to go and look at Carr Fergusson’s bloody lakes. Apparently the network execs had been a bit iffy about the series at first (they’d already seen all those mountains in The Lord of the Rings, blah blah blah) but Jen’s photographs of the Opal Lakes had clinched it.

  Well. Lizzie squared her shoulders. Just because she had to go up there didn’t mean that she had to go with him. Opening up her browser, she typed in ‘helicopter charters’. There — that was the company logo she’d seen on the sign in the paddock outside town. She rang the number.

  ‘Why don’t you get Carr Fergusson to fly you up?’ suggested the man on the other end of the line. ‘He knows the lakes like the back of his hand.’

  Ugh. Lizzie closed her eyes. ‘I’m really looking for a commercial operation,’ she told him, hoping he’d shut up and take the bait. ‘It’s a day’s work first-up. But we’re looking at shooting around here for a month, and we’re going to need more than one chopper in the air. Think of this as a trial run.’

  ‘Okay.’ He still sounded unsure. ‘I guess we can fly you over. When were you wanting to go?’

  She glanced out the window again. ‘As soon as this weather clears.’

  Four days later, Lizzie arrived at Lakeview Helicopters in a jubilant frame of mind. It felt good to see the sun again. The sky had finally cleared — most of it, anyway — and she couldn’t wait to be up there in it. She loved flying. She always had. In the days when television production had involved more than scripts and a cheque book for her, there was nothing she’d enjoyed more than a helicopter shoot.

  ‘You sure you want to go up today?’ asked the lone boy behind the counter, gawking at her like he’d never seen a woman before. ‘We might have to turn back — this weather could close in again any minute.’

  ‘Well, let’s give it a try, shall we?’ Lizzie stared him down. She checked her watch. ‘Is the pilot here?’

  ‘That’s me.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Hayden. We spoke on the phone.’

  ‘Oh — yes, of course.’ God. He looked about twelve. How old did you have to be to hold a commercial licence?

  ‘Just fill out these forms and we can be on our way.’ He pushed a clipboard towards her.

  Having signed away her life and limbs, Lizzie followed him out to the square of tarmac. Well, she thought, as he went through his safety checks, he seemed to know what he was doing. Of course he did. He must have been flying these mountains for years.

  The rotors beat into life, and Lizzie felt her usual thrill as the helicopter rose into the morning.

  ‘Can we take a run up the river first?’ she asked, getting out her phone.

  ‘You don’t want to go straight to the Opal Lakes?’

  ‘We’ve got the whole day,’ she reminded him. ‘I want to take a few shots up around the headwaters.’

  There was a pause. ‘Okay.’

  They’d been in the air for about an hour when Lizzie decided it was time to turn south for Glencairn. She peered down at the homestead as they flew over Blackpeak.

  ‘That’s Blackpeak Station,’ Hayden informed her, helpfully.

  ‘Yes.’ Lizzie smiled to herself. ‘That’s my car, actually. My daughter, Ella, is down there today.’

  ‘Oh, you know Charlie Black?’

  ‘And Rob, yes. We’ll be shooting at their place, too. In fact,’ she added, as it loomed into view, ‘let’s take a turn around the peak while we’re here.’

  Obediently, Hayden veered off. He didn’t say much, but at least he was compliant.

  ‘Can you land up here anywhere?’ Lizzie asked, as they circled the summit of Black Peak.

  Hayden appraised the mass of jagged rock. ‘No,’ he told her. ‘Not this time of year, anyway. Maybe with a big snow you could get the skids down.’

  ‘Is that a sheep?’ Lizzie pointed to a white blob balanced precariously on a boulder.

  ‘Yeah.’ Hayden laughed. ‘You’d wonder what the hell it was thinking, wouldn’t you? Silly bugger.’ He brought the chopper around again. ‘We good to go to the lakes now?’

  ‘Okay.’ Lizzie looked at the mountains towering behind Black Peak. ‘How about after that, we take a ride up there?’

  ‘Those are the Southern Alps.’

  ‘I know that,’ she said patiently. ‘I’d like to see them a bit closer.’

  ‘You’re talking about crossing the Main Divide?’

  ‘Not crossing it, exactly,’ Lizzie soothed. ‘
Just hanging about over it for a while.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hayden, dubiously.

  ‘We can soon come down if the weather packs up. Come on, you must do it all the time.’

  Hayden thought about it. ‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘After the lakes. We’ll see how the cloud is looking.’

  Lizzie rather liked the cloud, she thought, looking out at it. She liked that edge of blackness in the sky, the shadows drifting over the hills, the sharp yellow light. You hardly ever saw shots of the high country looking moody like this; it was always bathed in brilliant sunshine. Given Hayden’s reluctance, she was beginning to understand why. Apparently no one wanted to take you up there if there was so much as a smudge in the sky.

  Twenty minutes of silence later, Hayden’s voice crackled in her ear.

  ‘We’re coming up to the lakes now.’

  Lizzie sat forward. As they crested the final knife-sharp ridge, she saw the Opal Lakes below them. Oh! Lizzie caught her breath. Jen’s photographs hadn’t done them justice. At the bottom of a sheer-sided basin, two almost-perfect ovals glowed, one falling into the other, their presence that much more miraculous for the desert of rock and scree around them. A small glacier clung to the mountain peak above, sending down a trickle of dust in its melt that gave the lakes their milky, opalescent swirl. Away from the dust of the inlet falls, the water was as clear as glass, sparkling with the colours of the schist below and the ever-changing sky above it. It was hypnotic to watch — and almost impossible to capture on her phone.

  ‘You’ve got to get me down there,’ she ordered Hayden.

  ‘Down?’ he echoed. ‘I can’t land here.’

  Lizzie sighed with frustration. ‘How am I supposed to get a crew in, then?’

  Hayden was silent.

  ‘Look,’ said Lizzie, firmly. ‘You’re not much use to me if you can’t even get one person with no gear on the ground. Can you do this work, or can’t you?’

  ‘I guess I could make a skid landing over there,’ he offered, finally, pointing at a spot about halfway up the lower lake, on the least precipitous side of the basin. ‘If I get the nose in, you can hop out.’

  ‘Great. Let’s go.’

  Hayden shook his head. ‘But—’

  ‘But what?’ she snapped.

  ‘But then I’ll have to take off, understand? You’ll be on your own.’

  Thank God, Lizzie thought. ‘Pick me up in an hour,’ she told him.

  ‘An hour?’ Hayden looked horrified. ‘I meant a few minutes, tops.’

  ‘I need an hour,’ she insisted. ‘It’ll take me that long to get around the lakes. I need to check out where we can shoot from.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘It’ll be fine. I promise. Just get me down.’

  Hayden looked undecided.

  ‘Look, it’s not like you can lose me down there.’ Lizzie tried a softer approach. ‘Just pretend I’m a heli-skier doing a run. You drop them off, don’t you?’

  ‘They’ve got guides.’

  ‘But I don’t need a guide, do I?’ She sighed again. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘You’ll stay in the basin?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘I guess …’ Lizzie heard Hayden swear under his breath. ‘Okay.’

  She felt like cheering as, at last, they descended. Hayden nosed the helicopter into the slope.

  ‘Back here in one hour,’ he told her.

  ‘Okay.’ Lizzie took off her headset. On Hayden’s thumbs-up, she opened the door, climbed down onto the skid, and then stepped carefully onto the scree. It felt stable enough. She scrambled across it and, huddled to the rock, signalled to Hayden that she was clear. The wash of the rotor beat at her shirt and whipped her hair as the chopper backed away.

  With a profound sense of relief, she watched Hayden clear the ridge and disappear.

  Lizzie pushed the hair back out of her eyes and looked around. Beautiful … It was like another planet. Thankful that she’d worn trainers, she picked her way down to the edge of the lake, testing every foothold. The scree continued into the depths of the lake, and Lizzie had no desire to join it. Having reached the water, she hesitated. It seemed almost sacrilegious to disturb it. She slid her hand in. Good God, it was cold — so cold it hurt. She picked a stone out and watched it fade as it dried, losing all it colours. Lizzie stood up, drying her reddened hand on her jeans. Right, best get on with it, then. She only had an hour. Where could they put Richard without drowning him?

  The best place — the money-shot — would be on the rocks between the two lakes. Was it safe to stand there? And where would the camera go? Lizzie headed off to investigate.

  It took longer to get up there than she’d thought. By the time she reached the rocks, it was just about time to turn back. She checked her watch again. Surely she had ten minutes? And it would be quicker walking back down.

  There was plenty of room, she discovered, clambering up, to stand there. At the moment, anyway. She wondered if the lake levels rose and fell. Was there always just this trickle between them, or did the whole upper lake overflow? She’d have to find out. And just how stable — she eyed it nervously — was that glacier? You wouldn’t want a big chunk of it suddenly coming down and … she shuddered.

  Pushing aside such thoughts, Lizzie made her way along to the edge of the outlet falls and, turning, took in the iridescent expanse of water below and behind her. It was a different effect down here: you couldn’t see, of course, the swirl of glacial dust in the upper lake. That would have to be shot from above. She scanned the surrounding screes. There were ways up there, she thought, for a keen cameraman. After all, hunters got in here on foot, didn’t they? Though what they shot at, she couldn’t imagine — there wasn’t another living thing so far as she could see.

  So, then. Lizzie went over it in her mind: Richard would stand here doing his piece to camera. The wide shot would look stunning. And they could get that wide shot from … there, maybe! Right at the far end of the lower lake — it looked like there might even be a flattish spot there. That was the shot she needed to send back to Jules. Lizzie checked her watch again. She didn’t have time.

  Unless … unless she went over the outlet stream and back down the other side of the lake. Then she’d go right past it. She sized up the stream. It looked easy enough to jump across. Lizzie looked down at the lower lake: it was deep, and only a couple of metres below. The worst she could get was wet, right?

  Once again, she looked at the time. No, it was too risky. She didn’t know the ground on the other side of the lake, and the distance might be deceptive. The safe thing to do was to go back the same way she’d come. Reluctantly, Lizzie turned around. Could she talk Hayden into going away again? Looking up at the sky, she doubted it. There was more than one cloud, now. She’d just have to come back for the shot another day — thank God for network budgets.

  Halfway back to her pick-up spot, Lizzie thought she heard a helicopter’s rotor. Oh dear, was it later than she thought? No, she still had ten minutes to go. If it was Hayden, he was early. Keeping an eye out for him, she picked up her pace. But the only thing to appear above the ridge was a tiny finger of cloud. It must have been somebody else, she decided. A tourist flight, probably.

  She cast a quick glance behind her. High above the head of the lakes, the sun sparkled on the glacier, the crevasses reflecting the blue of the sky. Lizzie paused to take a couple of shots, then hurried on. Arriving with four minutes to spare, she breathed a sigh of relief and settled down on the rocks to wait for Hayden.

  Chapter TWELVE

  Having dropped Lizzie off at the airfield, Ella pulled up outside Blackpeak’s homestead just in time to see Charlotte exit it at speed. Rob followed more slowly. Seeing Ella standing there in the drive, he stopped.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Morning.’ Ella smiled nervously.

  Together they watched Charlotte stride off through the gap in the hedge. A few seconds later
, they heard an engine start and the rapid crunch of wheels on gravel.

  ‘Well.’ Rob let out a long breath. ‘You ready to go for a ride?’ He nodded at the loaded-up quad bike parked in the drive. ‘Hop on.’

  Ella looked dubiously at her camera gear.

  ‘Here,’ he offered, holding out his hand. ‘We can stow that up front.’ Finding a small corner not taken up with fencing gear, Rob wedged the bag in and swung onto the bike. He looked expectantly at Ella. She looked back.

  ‘Have you been on a quad bike before?’

  She shook her head. She’d been on a moped a couple of times, but this thing was huge. Where did you even get on?

  ‘Just climb up behind me,’ Rob smiled. ‘Put your foot there — that’s it. Watch yourself on the wire.’

  There wasn’t much room to manoeuvre. Forced to use Rob as a climbing frame, Ella tried not to notice just how good those spectacular muscles felt under her hands.

  ‘All set?’ he grinned over his shoulder. ‘Hold on.’

  To what? She looked behind her, but the back tray was piled high with wire and waratahs.

  ‘Probably safest if you hold onto me,’ Rob shouted, over the engine noise. ‘It’s going to get a bit rough. I don’t want to lose you.’

  What was this, some peculiar type of torture? Punishment for her sins? Biting her lip, Ella reached forward and took as modest a hold as she could of Rob’s checked shirt. They sped up the track to the first gate. On the other side, as promised, things got rougher.

  The first bump threw her hard against Rob’s back.

  ‘Hold on tight,’ he yelled. ‘It gets tricky up here.’

  Thighs jammed against his, Ella gave up on modesty and wrapped her arms around him. Oh, she could get used to this, she thought, feeling the press of her breasts against his back as the wind stung her face and the tussock flew by around them. This was definitely the way to travel. An hour later, as Rob brought the bike to a halt at last, it took her a moment to remember to let go.

  ‘This is us.’ Killing the motor, he nodded at a line of rusty wire clinging to the remains of some prehistoric-looking timbers. Further up the fenceline, a tin hut in more than the usual state of disrepair rotted picturesquely against a backdrop of trees.