Greenlight

by Benjamin Stevenson

‘Spaghetti bolognese, please.’

  Alan made a show of leaning over the bar, peering at the floor beneath the stools.

  ‘You got a kid?’

  ‘Huh? No.’

  ‘Spaghetti’s for kids.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s for kids. Only. You have to order an adult meal.’

  ‘I’m not that hungry.’

  ‘Does this say Under-Twelve?’ Alan picked up the menu and jabbed a finger on the spaghetti. ‘Or Not-That-Hungry?’

  ‘Mental age,’ called Brett, and the lads beside him laughed. ‘Give it to him.’

  ‘Are you on one of those city diets?’ Alan asked. ‘Or are you just a cheapskate?’

  ‘Neither,’ said Jack. ‘I just want the small spaghetti. I’ll pay full price. Charge me for the parma.’

  ‘If you’re paying.’ Alan shrugged, then said almost to himself: ‘Sydney wankers. It’s not gluten-free, if you’re wondering.’

  Jack ignored him. Next time he was going to the bakery.

  The meal was out suspiciously faster than you could even microwave it. A boy in a white t-shirt and a black apron scanned the room and brought it over. He was young, twelve at the most. Child labour laws didn’t apply in small towns, apparently.

  ‘You order the kid’s meal?’ he asked. Jack nodded. The kid placed it down in front of Jack and then said, completely without irony: ‘In all my years as a chef, I never seen that before.’

  If the kid was even a year older, Jack would have insulted him. So much material to work with. Instead he thanked him and twirled a forkful while examining the bowl. No pubes. Not from that chef, anyway. He took his time eating, feeling each bite slide down his throat. Surprisingly, it tasted quite good – real mince and tomatoes – and by the end he wanted more. Looking down at the empty bowl, he was glad to have eaten it. Mission accomplished. That never changed, whether he was doing well or not, that small feeling of victory. The coin successfully flipped. His internal acrobat straightened on the tightrope. Bowed.

  What next? He needed to talk to Andrew Freeman but he didn’t know how to make that introduction. Until meeting Lauren tomorrow night, he had nothing to do. But something was circling in his head. Lauren in the driveway. She had a pretty laugh, he recalled. But that wasn’t what he was thinking of. It was her, glancing back to the house. Chewing her lip.

  ‘Help us,’ she’d said.

  Not ‘Help me’. Not ‘Help him’.

  Help us.

  There was someone sitting on the step when Jack got back to the house.

  Jack’s next thoughts came in rapid succession. The first, that he’d recognise the straight-backed posture of an off-duty policeman anywhere. The second was to wonder if anyone within two hundred kilometres wasn’t keeping tabs on him. And the third, that Andrew Freeman looked happy to see him.

  Which was odd, seeing as he’d refused every single interview request during filming, and because Jack had made him out to be, at worst, a conspiratorial murderous prick, and, at best, just a regular one.

  ‘Andrew.’ Jack nodded in greeting.

  ‘Is Mary-Anne treating you well?’ Andrew said, standing, and Jack realised he’d never got his hostess’s name. She was an uncredited extra. Andrew was in his sixties and country-skinny, which meant he was thin but tightly wrapped in sinew, a skeleton wound in rope and dipped in skin. He was wearing bright blue shorts and had a cyclist’s calves, overstuffed like a sock full of doorknobs. ‘Thought I’d come and welcome you to Birravale.’

  ‘You missed the welcome parade,’ Jack said.

  ‘That bad, huh?’ Andrew had crossed the lawn now. He opened the door of his Subaru Forester, tilted his head towards the passenger seat. ‘Hop in. I wanna show you something.’

  It was a short drive back up the hill to the Freeman winery. Jack was impressed by how steep the road became beyond the Wades’, the gradient pushing him back in his seat. He could see in his mind tendrils of thick wine bleeding down the hill, pouring into town. Andrew’s car was impeccably clean, even the floor mats vacuumed and shampooed. There was an earthy smell, though, one not easily vacuumed out: a dusty, almost spiced tinge that he couldn’t place. Outside, a yellow sign announced they were approaching a CREST. Behind it, there was another yellow sign – STEEP DESCENT and a zigzag squiggle. Jack wondered if that’s where Andrew got his calves, pumping up that hill every day.

  Andrew hooked into a driveway before they reached the sign. They passed under an arch with Birravale Creek Wines nailed up in wooden letters.

  ‘Where’s the creek?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Nowhere.’ Andrew smiled. ‘It just sounds good. Have you ever heard of a winery not named after nature? Those are the rules: landmark, plant or animal.’

  ‘Maybe there was one, back in the day?’ Jack suggested. ‘Family business?’

  ‘My wife’s. Yeah, maybe. Hopper’s Crossing’s as close as we get, I reckon. Doesn’t matter, we like the name. Besides, a creek means the wine’s flowing. Swamp doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.’ Jack didn’t laugh. ‘Sorry. Winemaker’s joke.’

  ‘What’s the Wade winery called?’

  ‘Vineyard.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The Wades own a vineyard. They only grow grapes, don’t make the wine. Brewed offsite. Blends.’ Jack could hear the distaste as if Andrew had just taken a sip of it.

  ‘What’s their vineyard called then?’ Jack realised he didn’t actually know. He’d always just thought of it as the crime scene.

  ‘Wade Wines.’

  ‘The exception that proves the rule?’ Jack said.

  Andrew pulled off the drive and onto a small square of clipped grass where there were about a dozen cars parked.

  ‘Nope. Like I said. Landmark, plant’ – he switched the engine off – ‘animal.’

  They parked and Jack got out, followed Andrew towards two buildings. A wood-walled homestead, with a tin roof peaking steeply towards the sun. Aztecs could have sacrificed to the gods on that roof, rolled heads down that galvanised pyramid, Jack thought. On the right, towards Birravale itself, there was a less impressive square building that was half the homestead’s height with a flat roof. It looked like a shoebox but with windows. Jack could hear the clinking of glasses and the general hum of conversation from within. Must be the restaurant. What made it incredible was how it sat, right on the precipice where the land began falling steeply away. The best seats in the restaurant were literally hanging over the edge. In the middle of the buildings the driveway turned in a loop, a circle of flowers in the middle. Further forward, behind the homestead, the tops of the two silos glinted in the sun. One of which Curtis had split open with his axe.

  ‘So this is where the tourists are,’ he said aloud. Realising he hadn’t seen many in the town.

  ‘Well, the Wades are closed,’ Andrew said, ‘obviously.’

  ‘Business is good for you, then?’

  ‘It’s okay. Not many weddings. No surprises there.’

  ‘Impressive structure.’ Jack gestured to the restaurant.

  ‘It’s the original building.’ Andrew pointed to the car park. ‘Used to be over there, but we moved it. We wanted the view.’

  ‘Sounds like a big job.’

  ‘Worth it to preserve the history. The Wades just knocked theirs down and started again up the hill. That’s why our wine has flavour.’ Andrew smiled, then leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘Tell you what . . . the previous owner wasn’t too happy about being asked to knock the old one down. The Wades said they were buying the land not the buildings. Well, the old owner, he knocked it down all right, but then he filled the underground with concrete. Ha. Now Curtis can’t grow on it anyway – that bit of land’s useless. The best thing is, Curtis probably hasn’t even figured it out yet.’ Andrew’s eyes sparkled with a prank well played. But there was a spite there too.

  Jack had known that the restaurant had been knocked down, the new one built up the hill, and the cellar scuttled to ruin the growth
of any vines on top of it. (That last row of grapes, which Jack had always liked to imagine were dying because of Eliza, blooded into the soil, were actually wilting out of revenge.) But he hadn’t known that knocking down the original restaurant was a condition of sale. He was about to ask something, but Andrew was distracted by a small woman hurrying past, too many bottles of wine cradled precariously in her arms.

  ‘Hold up,’ Andrew called.

  The woman turned. She had dyed blonde hair with silver roots, a small tight mouth with pursed lips, as if pulling every breath through a straw. Her brown eyes reflective, she looked as if she was about to say something. Again Jack was struck with the feeling of knowing someone he’d never met: Sarah Freeman. Her mouth relaxed; she’d changed her mind, said nothing.

  ‘What have you got there?’ Andrew said as she walked over to them.

  ‘I thought these would be nice?’ She wasn’t able to hand him a bottle, so proffered the spread of them. Andrew picked one up, tossed it from his left to right hand.

  ‘Andrew, that’s a thousand-dollar bottle of wine,’ Sarah said curtly.

  ‘An important dinner,’ Andrew said to Jack. ‘Collectors.’ He turned the wine over in his hand, held it to the light. Looked at the label.

  ‘Nup,’ he said, ‘I think we want the ones we just got in.’

  ‘I really don’t think —’

  ‘Treat them to the new ones.’

  ‘You don’t have to give them those.’

  ‘What’s life without a few thrills, love?’ Andrew flashed a grin at Jack, who had a sudden realisation that Andrew’s brash business confidence was not so different from his own faux producer-voice. Andrew and Sarah weren’t having a discussion; Andrew was merely repeating what he wanted until she conceded. ‘She thinks they’re too expensive. But there’s nothing better than seeing a man with money actually pumping through his veins.’ Then back to Sarah: ‘These are valuable men. Start them off with one of these, sure. But then let’s give them what they’ve paid for.’

  Sarah nodded as Andrew slotted the bottle back in her arms.

  ‘Jack Quick, by the way,’ Jack said, gesturing to her load, ‘I’d shake your hand, otherwise.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ Sarah said, and turned back to the restaurant. Jack had an image of her tripping, on her knees in a $6000 puddle. He thought about Andrew tossing the bottle back and forth, and didn’t think he’d care.

  ‘Right, that’ll be fun,’ said Andrew. He turned. The point of his boot crunched the gravel with his pivot, as if he was grinding out a durry. ‘Come.’

  He led Jack through the gap between the buildings and the silos came fully into view, towering more than ten metres high. Steel ladders ran up the side of both. The closest had a grey metal sheet riveted to it at torso height. A repair job. Jack imagined Curtis up there, swinging from the hip. Red wine spurting back at him.

  Andrew walked past the silos, fumbled a key from his pocket and stooped over. Jack thought he was fiddling with the ground, but as he got closer he could see that Andrew had unlocked a set of butterfly doors inlaid forty-five degrees into the sheer hillside, homestead to the left, shrubbery invading the hill behind. Andrew yanked the doors open and beckoned to Jack to follow him in.

  The light thinned as Jack descended a flight of creaking stairs. The smell was musty, earthy, more like a spice rack than a cellar. There was the same tang in the air as in Andrew’s car. He heard a click and a series of fluorescents stammered into life, illuminating a huge underground cellar. Stone arches divided the room, holding up the roof, which was low but not low enough to have to stoop. The walls were brick, cladded in clay or dirt, Jack couldn’t tell. The floor began as polished concrete but turned to rock and dirt further back. It wasn’t sloped; it had been built into the hill. The Freemans weren’t afraid of a challenge, Jack realised. They wanted a cellar built into a mountainside, a restaurant literally suspended over a valley, and that’s what they got. Andrew was excited by people with money pumping through their veins. And beneath them, Curtis Wade wouldn’t replace his broken couch. Jack could see why they hadn’t got along.

  Jack stood at the base of the stairs, taking it all in. The arches that led to further chambers splitting off to the left and right. The series of safe-like steel doors. The oak barrels that lined each wall, stacked three high, hundreds of them. Some of the barrels on the bottom rows were two-toned in colour, a redness bisecting the light chestnut-coloured oak. Of course, Jack remembered. This room would have flooded too. Curtis’s couch. Mary-Anne’s skirting. Andrew’s cellar. Everywhere he went, Jack kept being reminded the town was tainted. Stained.

  Andrew was at a rack of bottles laid out in honeycomb shelving, rifling through them. He plucked one out, tilted it to the light. He held it up to Jack as if for approval. Jack shrugged.

  ‘Did you bring me here just to show off?’ Jack said.

  He felt uneasy, and he was cold. Andrew was being kind, nice, which didn’t match how Jack had portrayed him in the series – as a complete arsehole. Not that he was one, but Jack had told the nation he was. Jack didn’t know exactly why Andrew Freeman had approached him, but he didn’t fancy being trapped underground with him for too much longer.

  ‘Of course not,’ Andrew said, slightly taken aback – and maybe a little hurt – that Jack wasn’t impressed by him. He walked back to the stairs. ‘I brought you here to choose a bottle. This isn’t what I wanted to show you. This way.’

  Andrew flicked the switch on the wall and the cellar disappeared. The square of light at the top of the stairs shimmered like an invitation.

  Andrew tucked the wine bottle under one arm and placed a hand on the lowest rung of the ladder. The ladder ran up the flank of the repaired silo before curling over the rim.

  Andrew started to climb without asking Jack to follow. About ten rungs up, the ladder was encased in a circular cage which went all the way to the top. The chute was secured at the bottom by a padlocked grate. Andrew unlocked the padlock and worked it through the latch, the grill swinging open with a clatter. Whump. The sound shocked Jack. Andrew climbed into the chute.

  Jack’s fingers had found their way into his mouth; he was gnawing at his nails. He wasn’t afraid of heights, even though he probably should have been, but he remained respectfully aware of them. He placed a hand on the ladder and felt the vibrations of Andrew’s climb rumbling through his fingertips. He breathed in and shut his eyes. Besides, he reminded himself, people aren’t scared of heights, they’re scared of the ground.

  People bounce, too. Everyone thinks that when someone falls from a height they just go splat. But they don’t. There’s a puff of dust and then they’re in the air again, ragdoll limbs akimbo, as if the earth is spitting them back out rather than colliding into them. People bounce. Jack knew. His brother had. Only once.

  Jack opened his eyes and slowly climbed. His grip was tight, knuckles strained. He took it one rung at a time.

  On top of the silo, he was glad he had. The views were spectacular. Now he was level with the canopy, Jack could see the ridges of the mountains beyond, fire trails carved through the trees like veins. Turning, he had a bird’s-eye view of Birravale. From up here it looked like a child’s diorama, small square blocks dotting the road. He counted the buildings, no more than thirty. Tiny cars moved like they were on rails. A toy town. Lazily built, as if the playing child had forgotten some essential parts that made it a real town. Beyond was land in square patches of yellow, green, and dark brown – a country both dead and alive, stitched together like a quilt.

  And, of course, directly beneath them, the Wade property. The hexagonal restaurant took pride of place, undeniably drawing the eye. Jack’s eyes followed the final vine on the Wade property, down to where Eliza had died, near where the old restaurant would have been. He wondered what the old restaurant had looked like, struck by the irony of Andrew, with his multimillion-dollar fit-out, calling Curtis’s single indulgence tacky. Andrew Freeman thought he was so different
to Curtis Wade – but they’d both found money, though Andrew had married into it. He seemed to pride himself on technicalities. He owned a winery, after all; Curtis only owned a vineyard.

  From here, Curtis’s rows of grapes looked like gouges in the dirt. Some were covered in white nets, cocooned like spider’s webs.

  Before the land started to really run uphill, there was the small patch of overgrowth unofficially separating the two properties, where Jack had found Eliza’s shoe. And then, as soon as the elevation started, the Freeman place began. It was as if both wineries had sat flat, side-by-side, then someone had folded the earth and put Andrew Freeman on top.

  The Freemans’ trellises were different too. Because it was too steep to run them straight down the hill, their vines were along the slope, perpendicular to the Wades’. It gave the impression of a Vietnamese rice paddy rather than a winery.

  ‘I like it up here.’ Andrew was sitting on the edge of the silo, knees folded out into the air, the backs of his heels drumming against the steel. Jack sat as close to the middle of the roof as possible, next to a large metal nub that looked like a submarine hatch.

  ‘Sarah brought me up here on one of our first dates. I thought to myself, for the rest of my life I gotta have this view. That’s when I knew I was gonna marry her. You can sit on that, it’s fine.’

  Jack sat down on the hatch. There was a picnic basket beside Andrew, but Jack didn’t remember him carrying it up; he must keep it up here. Andrew swivelled around, back to the air now, which disconcerted Jack even more. He opened the bottle and pulled two glasses from the picnic basket. The wine he poured was red, smelled fruity. Andrew handed him a glass.

  ‘I know nothing about wine,’ Jack said, ‘if you’re expecting a discussion on the notes.’ He’d been on a date once, at a tasting, and the sommelier had said his glass should have the essence of an oak bushfire. Jack didn’t know how he was supposed to taste a bushfire, let alone the type of tree aflame, but he’d nodded anyway, said he could taste some roasted koala in there too. There was no second date.