Vintage (14 page)

‘J’ai beaucoup mieux pour vous.’

Vanishing into the back room, Biancarelli reappeared with a narrow black sheath, supported by shoulder straps, with a side split to the knee. Draping it against herself and adopting a model’s pose, she put her head on one side and regarded her mirror image.

‘I was keeping it for myself.’

Clare noticed the keyhole bodice, which would expose her breasts.

‘Papa is not going to like it.’

Indicating the changing-cubicle and holding out the dress, Beatrice Biancarelli shrugged. She would deal with the Baron.

‘Tant pis!’

Halliday Baines, his athlete’s body finely tuned, kneeled on the beach on the Marlin Coast of Queensland, a few kilometres along the Cook Highway north of Cairns. He was building a castle for his five-year-old son Billy, well away from the cream foam of the breakers.

Filling his bucket with sand, the little boy, his narrow chest as brown as his father’s, looked longingly at the deceptively inviting ocean, which he knew very well he was forbidden to enter, even to cool off, except from the safety of the netted area farther down the beach.

‘Tell me about the stingers, Dad.’

‘Chironex fleckeri.’ Halliday gave the stingers their Latin name as he had many times in the past. The little boy loved to hear the story of the box jellyfish that infested the waters, on the edge of which stood the neat house, its wide verandahs overlooking the eucalyptus trees and the deserted shore, in which he had been born.

‘Why “box” jellyfish, Dad?’

Billy waited for the answer, which he knew by heart.

‘Because they have a four-sided bell…’

‘“A kind of box…”’ Billy patted the sand in his bucket.

Halliday smiled.

‘A kind of box.’ He raised his arms and advanced menacingly towards Billy.

‘With tentacles three metres long hanging from each corner,’ they said in unison.

‘With enough poison in them to kill hundreds and hundreds of prawns, not to mention three or four human
beings!’ Halliday put his arms threateningly round his delighted son.

‘“Takes three minutes to die…”’ Billy had not the least idea what he was talking about but he liked the sound of the words. ‘The pain’s terrible. The venom… The venom… What does the venom do, Dad?’

‘Arrests your heart, nukes the red blood cells, and destroys the skin tissue. Upend your bucket, lad. We’ll just finish this castle then it’ll be time for tucker’

‘Mum said we could have a barbecue.’

‘Coral trout or barramundi?’ Halliday had been fishing earlier in the day.

‘Barramundi.’

‘Get your togs on then, son.’ Halliday stood up and flexed his muscles.

‘Mum says you’re going away.’

‘I’m always going away, Boy-oh!’

‘Mum says you’re not coming back.’

‘She did?’

‘She says we’re going to live in Katoomba.’

‘Katoomba’s a great place. Fantastic scenery, gum trees. You’ll have your Uncle Chris…’

‘Where will you be, Dad?’

‘I’ll be in France. All over. I’ll be back to visit. Don’t you worry. I’ll tell you about the jellyfish.’ Halliday raised his arms. ‘With the long tentacles…’

Billy did not smile.

‘Mum says you’re not going to live with us any more.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Who’s going to fix the barbecues?’

Halliday looked out at the ocean. It was a good question. The question from the standpoint of a five-year-old.

The split had been coming for a long time. Halliday could not entirely blame Maureen. The fact was that he was never at home.

He had met Maureen at Sydney University, where she was reading for an arts degree and he for a degree in agricultural science. Not long after their graduation and marriage he had reluctantly left Maureen – who not only hated to travel but had a flying phobia and had never been out of the country – to spend six months in France examining the country’s wine regions. It was there that he developed an interest not only in wine but in climate, and in particular the effects of temperature and humidity on wine styles, which he brought back with him to Australia.

His pragmatism, unfettered by tradition, led to his rapid grasp of methods and technology, which were now doing for the wine trade what the Japanese had once done for the motor industry. By flouting the most hallowed convention of French wine, that of terroir – the belief that a vineyard’s soil is unique, and capable of shaping a wine’s flavour – together with that of the Appellation Contrôlée system which supported it, he demonstrated that competent wine farming, combined with the closest attention to high-tech detail in the cave, was all that was required.

A maverick who believed that a good machine was better than a bad team of harvesters, Halliday Baines preferred to gather his grapes with giant tractors which straddled the vines and beat them with rubber arms which shook off the bunches. He was the doyen of a growing band of itinerant oenologists who were reshaping winemaking methods all over the globe. With a technique all of his own – le style Baines – he was widely acclaimed by wine writers in both the northern and southern hemispheres, by whom he was recognised as a star winemaker with a big reputation.

Halliday worked not only in Australia, where the grapes had sometimes to be shipped distances the
equivalent of that between southern Turkey and Bordeaux, but in vineyards all over the world, some of which were twenty hours’ flying time away.

The initial reaction of the Bordelais to the presence of the pugnacious Australian was resentment. His technical expertise, plus his natural affinity for the soil, which they could ill afford to dismiss, eventually won them over. Halliday Baines now acted as consultant oenologist to half a dozen classed growth Médoc châteaux, where from August to October – his lack of French notwithstanding – he advised the château owners about fermentation temperature gradients, clone numbers, yeast strains, and the exact proportions of free-run juice versus what came out of the press.

His long absences from home, plus the fact that his sensitivity was more often than not reserved for his vines rather than the needs of his wife and family, had – not surprisingly – had a deleterious effect on his marriage.

Maureen, a schoolteacher, had, he supposed, been patient. Although Halliday had, since his university days, loved her for her quiet good nature, her efficiency as homemaker and the fact that she was a wonderful mother to Billy, they had actually spent very little time in each other’s company. It had never occurred to him, because of her full-time teaching job (she was now Head Teacher of a Cairns primary school) and the demands of their son, that Maureen might be bored.

When he had arrived home from Argentina on their wedding anniversary, with a gold bangle he had grabbed from the Duty Free shop in Buenos Aires, to find her with her metaphorical bags packed, he was totally unprepared.

‘You’re not going to like my anniversary present,’ Maureen, who had never beaten about the bush, said as he
embraced her on the verandah where she had been awaiting his arrival. ‘I’m leaving you, Halliday.’

Although there was a strange feeling of trepidation in his entrails, he had tried to make light of her pronouncement.

‘You’ve been watching too many movies.’

‘I’m serious.’ Maureen pulled away. ‘I thought it better to give it to you straight.’

Halliday couldn’t believe that he was hearing what he was hearing.

‘You’ve never said anything.’

‘You were never here.’

‘I thought you liked it that way. I thought you didn’t mind.’

‘You never thought.’

‘Look, Maureen, I’m sorry, I’ll try to spend more time at home. We’ll take a trip…’ He couldn’t remember the last time he had taken Maureen away.

‘It’s too late, Halliday. There’s somebody else.’

It was that which had done for him. He didn’t know if it was the jet-lag or the shock of her totally unexpected pronouncement but he had lost his rag.

‘Bitch!’

He was surprised to find tears in his eyes.

Maureen had slapped him sharply across the face and gone indoors leaving him to stare at the blurred green and gold of the ocean as he attempted to analyse his reaction to the fact that his wife had been unfaithful to him. The energy and drive that enabled him to run a world-wide business, do the work of three men and cope with different time zones and lack of sleep, had contributed to his own (technical) infidelity with women in various quarters of the globe who, captivated by his outdoor charm and his charisma, had flung themselves at his feet. While enjoying their company however, he had,
paradoxically, never – not even in imagination – pictured himself as anything but firmly committed to Maureen. Patently he had been living in cloud-
cuckoo-land
.

Later in the evening, after Billy had gone to bed, Maureen had apologised for the slap, which was due to her overwrought state, and revealed, to his amazement, that Chris Owens, a TV producer who lived in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, had been her lover for the past five years.

‘What did you expect me to do, Halliday?’ Maureen said, surprised at his amazement. ‘Spend the rest of my life cleaning the house, going to work, and picking up Billy from school? I’m thirty-five years old!’

Looking at Maureen, in her brief shorts, radiant with the unmistakable glow of a woman in love, he wondered how he could have been such a damned fool.

‘Is that it then?’

‘I’m afraid it is.’

‘Not a chance?’

‘You’ve blown it.’

‘What about Billy?’

Five years, Maureen had said. He suddenly grew frightened. As usual, Maureen read his thoughts.

‘I met Chris when you first took off for Chile. Billy was three months old…’

‘I am going to see Billy…?’

‘Whenever you like. You’re his father. Billy loves you.’

‘What about Billy’s mother?’

‘You didn’t give me much of a chance.’

‘I’ve been a damned fool. Look, Maureen, what if I stayed around more…’

‘Halliday Baines? The big-shot winemaker.’

‘Christ, Maureen! Give me a break.’

The conversation with Maureen had taken place more than a week ago, since when Halliday had moved his kit downstairs and slept in the den. Now, watching Billy put on his tee-shirt, pick up his bucket and his spade, he thought his heart, to which he had never paid the slightest attention, would break.

In answer to Billy’s question as to the fixer of future barbecues, the preparer of coral trout and barramundi, Halliday replied, ‘Uncle Chris.’

‘Uncle Chris doesn’t do barbecues.’

‘What does Uncle Chris do?’

There was silence as Billy walked ahead of him up the beach. His five-year-old was already well drilled in the art of diplomacy. He added the pain of Billy’s unfamiliar reticence to the other hurts he had totted up during the past week.

The barbecue was to be the last evening the three of them would spend together. Although Maureen set a special table on the verandah and they opened a bottle of Penfold’s Grange, with ‘vintage’ Coke for Billy – a joke at which nobody laughed – it was not a resounding success. In the absence of hunger, invariably the best sauce, the barramundi, white and succulent, was only messed with, and Maureen threw most of the fish away together with the pavlova she had made – Billy’s favourite dessert.

After dinner, while Maureen, who had tactfully left the two of them alone together, was indoors stacking the dishwasher, Halliday and Billy sat side by side on the
hammock, its motion, propelled by Halliday’s foot, in harmony with the waves.

‘Do the Four Kings, Dad.’

Ever since he could distinguish the pictures on the cards, Billy had been mesmerised by his father’s card tricks. As he grew older, whenever Halliday was at home, he had entertained him with stories about magicians. He told him about the water-spouter who could shoot half a dozen jets from his mouth, and the stone-eater who could swallow thirty pieces of gravel. He told him about Johannes Brigg, a German entertainer who had no legs and only one hand, but could simultaneously juggle with umpteen cups and balls and play several musical instruments.

Sending Billy indoors to fetch the cards, Halliday thought that this would be the last time. Doing the Four Kings in the presence of ‘Uncle Chris’ would not be the same.

Extracting the four kings from the deck that Billy brought him, Halliday fanned them out so that each one slightly overtopped the other and showed them to his son. Sliding them together again, he turned them face down and placed them on top of the pack. Slowly and deliberately, watched closely by Billy on the hammock, he dealt the four top cards on to the table.

‘Don’t take your eyes off them for a moment!’

Dealing four more cards from the pack he laid them, one by one, next to each of the kings.

‘Alligator, alligator, alligator!’

Chanting the magic words, Halliday told Billy to inspect the cards on the table. The four kings had miraculously disappeared.

‘How’d ya do it, Dad?’ Billy’s question was always the same.

So was Halliday’s answer ‘Tell you when you’re grown up.’

Tonight the response stuck in his throat. He put his arm round his son, feeling the slightness of his body through his pyjamas. ‘Come closer, I’ll show you.’

Holding the boy tight, he explained how, while he was drawing the four kings from the pack and fanning them out in his hand, he had surreptitiously positioned four ordinary cards beneath them. Having shown Billy the four kings, he had pushed them together in such a way that when he replaced them the four ordinary cards were on top of the pack. These were the first four he dealt on to the table. The second four were the kings.

‘Gee, Dad. Show me how to do it!’ Billy’s eyes were alight.

Taking the small fingers in his own, Halliday helped them manipulate the cards. Repeating the manoeuvres over and over, until his eyelids were heavy and it was growing dark on the verandah, Billy finally mastered, albeit clumsily, the moves of the trick. Trying it out on his father, he was delighted with the result.

‘Am I grown up now, Dad?’

The pride in his small voice knocked Halliday for six. He took the boy in his arms.

‘Time for bed, son.’

‘Do you have to go away tomorrow?’

‘’Fraid so.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘All the way to France.’

‘To make some more wine?’

‘As a matter of fact I’m going to a big, big party.’

‘Whose birthday is it?’ Billy snuggled into his lap.

Putting away the cards for the last time, Halliday said, ‘It’s not exactly a birthday party, son. It’s called the Fête de la Fleur.’