Blaze (76 page)

‘You're a sweetie,' said Miche affectionately and leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

‘Careful now, you may make me lose control.'

Miche could not help laughing out loud at his response. ‘One day I may. One day!'

Jeremy joined in the laughter, and when he dropped her off at the restaurant she was a lot more relaxed.

He took her hand and walked her to the door. ‘Good luck, kid,' he said with feeling. He didn't know what else to say, so he kissed her and walked quickly to his car.

The hostess smiled at Miche. ‘Are you meeting someone?'

Miche nearly crumpled as her assumed calm disintegrated and she felt like bursting into tears. ‘Yes, I'm meeting my . . . er, Mr Birchmont.' She managed to say before words deserted her.

‘Oh yes. On the terrace.'

For Miche it felt like the longest walk she had ever made, but it was over in less than thirty seconds as the hostess led her out to the terrace. Miche had gone through this moment in her mind a score of times, trying to visualise the man she was about to meet, rehearsing many introductory remarks, and now she was desperately hoping the girl would leave them and let them meet alone.

Once outside, the hostess indicated the furthest table, where a gentleman was seated. ‘Over there. Best table on the terrace.'

At that moment the man looked up from the wine list that he had been studying and saw her.

Everything went into slow motion for Miche – she'd heard that often happened in accidents. The background hum of voices around the terrace and birds in the garden seemed to be suddenly switched off.

She was aware she was walking forward, but it felt like she was stepping through glue. And for a moment she thought her eyes were failing her too, for she couldn't make out his features. She had a blurry impression of someone tall, a navy jacket and blue shirt, silver hair. Suddenly he was no longer an imagined being but a real person, right there slowly rising to his feet. The distance between them closed, sounds of low talk, clinking of glasses and plates, background music slowly returned. He was standing, smiling, slightly tremulous, a little awkward.

The hostess pulled out Miche's chair and suddenly glanced at them. There was not the easy normalcy of two people greeting each other. The tension between the man and the young woman communicated to her and she too felt suddenly awkward.

She leaned forward to take Miche's napkin, which was twirled in her wineglass, at the same moment that Gordon stuck out his hand towards Miche. The momentary confusion when Gordon's hand collided with the hostess was the trigger for a small release of tension and father and daughter were both smiling when their hands first touched. The hostess laughed and excused herself, retreating to fetch the menus.

‘Hello,' Miche managed in a small voice.

‘Hello to you too. And thanks so much for letting this happen.' He gave her hand a little squeeze then withdrew it. ‘Sit down, sit down.'

Miche sat and found herself desperately needing to do something, so she reached out and took the stiff white linen napkin and began fiddling with it, then quickly put it down again. Her rehearsed lines just wouldn't come out.

Gordon knew he had to say something and all his practised opening lines were forgotten. ‘I thought long and hard about what I'd say at this moment, but I'm damned if I can remember,' he said in a low voice.

Miche couldn't yet look at him, she straightened the fork by her bread plate. His voice was softly modulated, a pleasant Australian accent. A voice she didn't know, yet every syllable rang through her head in an echo.

She surprised herself by suddenly finding her voice. Found herself able to respond. ‘I'm having the same problem.' She managed a weak smile and was able to look him in the eye to see the relief he obviously felt.

‘Would you like to choose a wine? Or something else, perhaps?' He looked at the wine list rather than at his daughter.

‘I think you know more about wine than I do,' she said.

He nodded in acceptance and gave her a quick smile.

With a shock, Miche now saw that his eyes were the same colour as her own. His face was weathered, slightly rugged and attractive. Pleasant was the adjective that came to mind.

‘Does a light dry white sound appealing?' Miche nodded in agreement and he indicated the selection to the hostess. ‘A local vintage Jeremy recommended,' he added. ‘I have to say, I'm very grateful to Jeremy for arranging this.' When she didn't answer, he steered away from the subject. ‘Jem says you met in France?'

‘Yes, I was writing a story on a young model. We did the photographs at the chateau where Jeremy was working. Very different from the vineyards around here.'

‘Australian winemakers have a different ethos in many respects. A lot of blokes in the business now learn the European techniques and then adapt them to our conditions. Jeremy is good at that. He will go far if he sticks at it.'

‘I don't know much about winemaking and vineyards. What are your prospects when you work for someone else? Sounds a bit like being a hand on a ranch. It's not like you own the property,' said Miche.

‘Depends on your abilities. Vignerons, or those who have the nose and specialist knowledge, are far more valuable than the guy who owns the dirt,' said Gordon. ‘It's more intricate than farming. You don't just plant the vines and a vintage wine ends up in a bottle.'

‘So everyone keeps telling me‚' she said a little defensively. And suddenly the easy flow of words between them seemed to run into a dry patch. There was brief silence that was instantly awkward.

He sipped his glass of water. ‘Michelle, I know this is hard. Where do you want to start?'

She took a deep breath, ‘Well, for a start I'm called Miche. Michelle seems so formal. Why don't you tell me a bit about yourself? All I know is where you were born.'

‘Fair enough. I was born in Adelaide, but grew up in the hills behind the city. On the edge of the grape country. I loved the area, so always hankered to go back there. But as a young man I wanted to see what was on the other side of the world. Did a bit of travelling, then came home and was conscripted. I was caught up with the war in Vietnam. When that was over, I took off for the States. I particularly wanted to see my best buddy's sister. I had made friends with an American helicopter pilot who spent time at Nui Dat, the Aussie base camp. He was killed and I went over to the States to look up his sister. He'd talked about her, showed me her picture. They were very close. She was a budding big shot in journalism. Guess who?' He gave a wry smile.

‘Yes, Mom talked a little about her brother,' said Miche.

‘So that was how we met. New York was a buzz to a country bumpkin like me. I landed a job with a pretty far-sighted Aussie fellow who decided to export Australian wines to England and the States and I was hired as a salesman trying to persuade liquor outlets to stock Australian wine. Quite a challenge at the time. However, thanks to my mates in the New York Rugby Club, who did a lot of serious drinking at the Mad Hatter's Bar, we started to spread the word.' He chuckled at the memory, then paused as the girl brought the wine, showed him the bottle and asked if he'd like to try it. ‘The lady can be the judge,' he said gesturing to Miche.

She took a sip and nodded. It was a lovely wine. ‘So how come you're back here?' It was an oblique question that, translated, meant, ‘Why did you leave my mother and me?'

He didn't pick up on the subtext and continued chattily, ‘Big cities didn't suit me. And when some friends back in Adelaide told me about an opportunity to buy a few acres in the Barossa I was dead keen. I'd always had it in the back of my mind to be a winemaker. I was working my way around the Napa Valley in California by that time. Spent time in a handful of the wineries there. I figured the Barossa property that came up was about as cheap as it was ever going to be, so I went out on a limb financially and had a go. It was hard for a while, but we seem to have come good.'

‘Wine all over Australia seems to be doing okay. But everyone I talk to here says the best years are yet to come,' said Miche.

‘Yeah. Could be. No argument that the product is top quality, and we have a lot of land that's every bit as good as the best in France and California when it comes to wine production.'

There was a brief pause as they both searched for a neutral topic.

Gordon plunged ahead. ‘Can I finish telling you my story?'

She nodded, glad he was doing the talking.

‘Look, Miche, what happened between your mother and me was sad, but it wasn't any horrendous event or mystery . . . I always assumed you knew what happened, which was simply, that our worlds didn't mesh. We were young, in love, having fun and suddenly there was all this responsibility of finding work, supporting a wife and a baby in a culture completely alien to a boy from the Adelaide Hills.'

Miche was silent for a moment. Her mother had said something similar about the country boy not fitting into New York as if it were a fault on his part.

Miche had sometimes found it hard to settle into Australia with its idiosyncrasies and so many little things that were different from America, so she could imagine how it must have been for her father. ‘So why did you leave us, if you loved us?' she blurted out, terrified she was going to cry.

At the sight of her hurt and bewildered face, Gordon longed to reach out and hug the daughter he hadn't held for so long. But he kept his fingers tightly interlocked – he hadn't earned that right yet. He spoke quietly. ‘I didn't think of it as leaving in any permanent sense. It was difficult when the New York job didn't work out, so I went out to California with the idea of seeing what I could find out there and my plan was that you and Lorraine would come over. Well, as you probably know, your mother was working in newspapers and then she moved onto Nina Jansous' magazine – they were good friends. She told me in one of the last letters she wrote to me that she'd asked Nina to be your godmother, your protector, even though she didn't believe in religious ceremonies. Anyway, Nina's magazine became her life. She loved it. She didn't want to move to southern California. All the action she wanted was in New York.'

Miche certainly couldn't imagine her mother being comfortable anywhere other than in New York. The countryside was, in her mind, adequately represented in Central Park. A casual coffee in Greenwich Village was Lorraine's idea of dropping out of the high-rise, big city milieu. Vacations had meant visiting friends with homes in the Hamptons or Long Island, or a trip to a five-star hotel with her mother on assignment. Once Miche had stayed with a girlfriend whose grandmother had a big country home and there had been horse riding, canoeing and picnics. It was an unforgettable holiday for her. Lorraine had shuddered at the idea and been glad Miche enjoyed it and she hadn't had to go along.

Miche spoke slowly, ‘I remember a vacation one year when we went out to California. All I remember was Disneyland. I was about five. Was that to see you?'

He nodded. ‘I kept trying. I wanted her to see the kind of life we could have as a family. But she was totally wrapped up in her career. There was no question she would allow me custody. Sharing you when we lived on opposite sides of the country was impossible in those days. When your mother wouldn't move to California, I came back here. A couple of years later I went back to California and managed to scratch together a bit of backing from the winegrower I'd worked for over there. I went armed with a pretty fair plan, so he flew out for a look at the vines I'd planted, and gave me the ground stake to set up my own winery. His investment eventually paid off handsomely,' he added. ‘Sadly, your mother couldn't see the potential as he could.' He shrugged, ‘By then she was working for
Blaze
and totally wrapped up in that world. I called her in New York one last time to see if she'd let you come and stay for school holidays, anything. She said it was too late, so I asked for a divorce. You were ten years old. I'd never been very flush with money. I sent what I could, but everything was returned to me. The lawyer who handled the divorce over there has been my only point of communication.' He swallowed a mouthful of wine. ‘I did what she wanted and kept out of the picture.'

‘Mom said you never tried to keep in touch, you never helped her financially . . .'

‘I don't want to criticise her, especially now, God knows . . . but she had her reasons. I remarried and I don't know if she ever did . . .' Seeing Miche shake her head, he sighed. ‘Her career was everything. Yet it doesn't sound like it made her happy.' He paused and studied her then went on gently, ‘You must have been her life.'

Suddenly Miche found that tears were spilling from her eyes.

Gordon couldn't bear it. He reached across the table offering a hand in support and Miche, while wiping her eyes with the napkin, reached out and let him take her free hand. It was a move she hadn't thought about. It just happened, as if she needed to do it and there was no alternative. In a moment she was back in control and their hands parted.

For Gordon the contact, albeit so brief, had been far more significant than their initial touch. He looked into her face, wishing the years could roll back to the day he'd first held his newborn daughter in his arms. ‘Miche, I would give anything to turn back the clock, but I can't.' They stared at each other for a moment, registering every detail of the face opposite, seeing the surface similarities, trying to see beneath the skin, to somehow reach inside each other and pull out the tangled feelings that bound them both.

‘Miche, let's talk about us, the present, and let the future take care of itself. But first there's something I have to give you.' He reached down by his feet and lifted a cardboard carton onto the seat beside him. Miche leaned over and looked at it curiously. ‘I had this put away safely, I pulled it out to give to you.' He gave a shy, embarrassed smile.