Thirty Thousand Bottles of Wine and a Pig Called Helga Page 6

  ‘If our wine can be this good, how could we possibly pull out all of those vines?’ I asked Jeff while waving the glass of Semillon toward our vines.

  ‘We can’t,’ Jeff agreed.

  ‘So we’re farmers now?’

  ‘Seriously Toddy, how hard can it be?’

  How. Hard. Can. It. Be? Five very simple, single syllable words. But it’s the question mark at the end that gives the game away. In that little symbol there is a galaxy of uncertainties.

  ‘You don’t need ten years at uni to be a farmer,’ I scoffed. I had it all planned out – I’d be the brains, naturally; Jeff the brawn.

  Jeff joined in my singing of Pet Shop Boys’ ‘Let’s Make Lots of Money’ (though really, with Jeff’s voice, he should have left all the singing to me) but then he suddenly stopped.

  ‘You really think you’re more intelligent than me, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Yes I do.’

  ‘Piss off!’

  ‘It’s okay to be going out with someone smarter than yourself, you know. There’s no shame in loving someone for their brilliance and punching above your weight. You go okay.’

  ‘You’re not smarter than me!’

  ‘Than I. And yes, I am.’

  ‘I’d say we’re equals.’

  ‘In most areas. But in brains and looks, I’ve got the upper hand.’

  ‘Now I know you’re not being serious. Have you looked at this face lately?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Yeah, good one. You’re very lucky to have me, you know!’

  ‘Every morning, Jibbuz . . . every single morning I wake up and I look at you and I just cannot believe how lucky I am.’ I increased the pitch of my voice an octave and continued with tongue firmly in cheek, ‘I pinch myself and I think: I’m just the luckiest person in the whole wide world.’

  Little did we know we’d just dived headfirst off a very high cliff and we’d forgotten to tie on our bungee cords. Who was smarter or better looking probably shouldn’t have been the main topic of conversation.

  The next morning we went exploring before driving the van back to Sydney to reload. I’ve always loved the feeling of exploring a new home – only now we had one hundred acres to absorb.

  First we made our way up into the vineyard. As we passed the main dam, we noticed a school of enormous silver perch in the shallows, each as big as a rugby ball. We climbed the small ridge that keeps the dam from hijacking water that flows through a natural creek then walked up the hill toward the perfectly straight rows of vines. Being late September, the vines had only just burst their buds. To a novice like me the new growth looked like delicate little orchids: dainty yellow-green leaves with a stamen-like formation in the middle. Each was bent lightly by the strong breeze blowing down the length of the rows. For as far as the eye could see, these little green ‘flowers’ danced in the wind and it had the overall effect of a vast field of butterflies, gently flapping their wings before taking off in massive co-ordinated flight. The vision was awe-inspiring.

  We walked to the back of the property where natural bushland formed our north-eastern border. It had taken us about ten minutes to walk this far and from the back corner of the property we were treated to a stunning vista of the Barrington Tops, looking out over our burgeoning grapevines, over the neighbour’s open paddocks with grazing heifers to the mountains beyond. Looking west we could also see the Brokenback Range in all its glory.

  We continued down the left side of the vineyard. From here, the small sign at the top of the post told us the Chardonnay vines looked the most advanced in growth. Its rows ended at the central aisle then the Semillon took over, up over a slight hill that gave the impression of an emerald ocean wave. It may have been the wind, but I got tears in my eyes.

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ I said to Jeff.

  ‘I was about to say the exact same thing,’ he said and squeezed my hand. ‘This is the most beautiful property I have ever seen.’

  We cut across the main field to the west of the house and watched grey kangaroos scatter before we got too close. The olive trees reminded us of our holiday in Italy in 2009, back when Flo the cat took it upon herself to move into our house in Annandale.

  ‘Leroy is going to love it here,’ Jeff said with a chuckle. ‘He’s going to be the king of the castle.’

  Between the two olive groves we came to the small dam that Cain had told us about and we sat on its bank listening to the scores of birds around us. A magpie called and then two ducks flew in to land on the khaki water in front of us.

  ‘Jesus, you couldn’t get any more On Golden Pond if you wanted.’ I again tried hard not to cry; I was just so overwhelmed by the beauty of it all.

  ‘Never seen it,’ Jeff said with a shrug, so my Katharine Hepburn impression that followed was met with a completely blank face.

  ‘We better get back to Mum and Roy,’ Jeff said after we sat in silence for a few minutes more.

  ‘Let’s just check out the shed first,’ I suggested and it took us another ten minutes to walk across the field, past the house and into the shed we’d never been inside before.

  It was more of a warehouse, really. The previous owners had stripped it of everything except one long tool bench and it must have measured twenty metres long and eight metres wide. It contained a large mezzanine and another bathroom and toilet.

  ‘What are we going to fill this with?’ Jeff yelled at me across the space.

  ‘Wine,’ I answered simply.

  *

  We got back to Sydney late Sunday. Jeff went to work one last time on the Monday to hand over to his replacements, while I spent most of the day cramming as many of our possessions into the truck as I could, filling every last nook and cranny, mostly with Jeff’s cushions. I couldn’t help but count – they numbered ninety-three to be exact. Unfortunately the cookbooks were all in boxes so I couldn’t count those.

  We were due at Mel and Jesus’s for dinner. Mel, although heavily pregnant with their first child, Sophia, wanted to cook for Jeff’s mum. Mel’s crunchy uncooked semolina orange cake is the stuff of legend but in truth she is a much better cook than her more talked-about dishes will have you believe. Millie likes things plain, none of the fancy million-flavour meals I tend to cook, so she was looking forward to catching up with Mel and ‘Elvis’ (Jesus was not a name she could quite get used to).

  ‘I think we should drive to the property after dinner,’ I said to the others on our way to Mel and Jesus’s.

  ‘Mum isn’t ready yet,’ Jeff said, anticipating his mother’s reaction.

  ‘Toddy, you’re bleedin’ joking, ent ya?’ she asked warily.

  ‘Come on, Millie, pack your bags, you’re off to the Hunter!’ I said like a game show host and this sent my ‘mother in law’ into a blind panic.

  After Mel’s surprisingly competent roast chicken dinner we returned to Annandale to retrieve Leroy and made the long drive to our new home. I was alone in the moving truck; Jeff, Millie and Leroy followed behind in the Barina. It would take us until around midnight to get to Block Eight but I couldn’t wait – it just felt stupid to be cooped up in Annandale any longer than we needed to when we had the fresh open space of Block Eight waiting for us.

  We were all exhausted when we arrived, and Millie and Jeff were freezing. While my ride in the truck had been full of music and solo singalongs, unfortunately Leroy wasn’t used to such long drives and had shat in his cat carrier inside the Barina. There ain’t quite a stink like a hot cat turd. Jeff and his mum had weighed up whether to pull over and clean it all up, but with only thirty minutes to go, they decided that it was best to just get to Block Eight and deal with it then. The smell had been so bad they rode the rest of the way with their windows down, the crisp September night air made even colder by the speed of the car. Millie’s teeth were chattering.

  First, we cleaned up Leroy, who was a little out of sorts. Next, I reversed the truck up to the back door and we began unloading a few essentials like t
he fridge, perishables and a bed for Millie to sleep in. We were cold and tired, and I think they were both fully pissed off with me for taking them on this crazy trip in the middle of the night. When Millie tripped over the vacuum cleaner I thought, She’s going to break her bloody leg.

  ‘Oh bleedin’ hell,’ Millie said from the floor.

  ‘Mum!’ Jeff yelled. And then the two of them burst out laughing. It was the tension-breaker we needed and after making Millie’s bed we sat on the back deck drinking beers and looking out over the property.

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘I just can’t believe this is where we live now.’

  ‘Look at the stars,’ Jeff said, gazing up to the sky, as Millie slapped away bug after bug after bug.

  Gradually we were getting used to the scale of things, or at least that’s what we thought. It is so much easier to underestimate things when you’re in the dark.

  *

  One of my little quirks (okay, maybe it’s not so little and perhaps I have too many to count) is that whenever I move house I like to stay up all night and unpack as much as I possibly can. There’s just something so comforting in making a new place immediately your own. Jeff and Millie went to bed and I stayed up having another few glasses of wine, picking my way through the boxes we’d piled up the day before, deciding which pieces of our former life I was going to force into the new jigsaw it had become. By about three I had managed to unpack most of the kitchen and when I went to bed Jeff’s soft snores told me he was truly content.

  Up again at six, I continued with my unpacking as quietly as I could, not realising until I heard her cough that Millie had risen at dawn and was on the back deck having her tea and cigarettes while admiring the view. I went out to see if she wanted more tea.

  ‘Toddy,’ she said, ‘I just love it here, I do.’

  ‘Every time we’ve moved, you’ve been with us.’

  ‘Oh, I have too, haven’t I?’

  ‘You’re our good luck charm, Millie. We love that you’ve been a part of this.’

  Later that morning, we asked Millie to choose a spot to plant the three Japanese maple trees we’d brought with us from Annandale. With wine-red leaves in autumn, the potted statement trees had dwarfed the back deck of that house and we thought they’d make a similar impact on our property, visible from just about every corner of the open fields, and of course they would always remind us of Millie. Jeff dressed her up in a straw hat and gumboots and off she went with a shovel to dig some holes for the trees, down on the main ridge of the dam. I carried the trees down one by one and helped Millie get them into the ground, then we watered them with buckets filled with water from the dam. When we trudged back up to the house, we expected to turn back and see their lovely shocks of purplish red but from the front deck their two-metre high forms simply disappeared in the distance and we could barely make them out. It was another early lesson in the scale of the property and a reminder that a lot of our Annandale life simply wouldn’t fit in here.

  While I got ready to go back to work, Jeff went on the internet to find the nearest Bunnings and took Millie to grab a few supplies. It was a hardware store, not home décor, so I didn’t exactly feel like I was missing out. I continued unpacking while they were gone and with all the doors and windows of the house open still could not believe just how quiet our new home was. I have to admit, after a while that silence began to irk me somewhat and, as my too-many-horror-films mind took over, I had to put on some music to distract it.

  Most people say you have to keep a cat indoors for three or so days when you move house but already I could tell Leroy was going stir-crazy being cooped up inside. When Jeff and Millie returned with the car packed full of supplies we discussed the pros and cons of letting him go exploring.

  ‘There’s no way he’s going to stray,’ Jeff said.

  ‘He spent most of last night under my bed,’ Millie added. ‘He’ll be too scared to go too far.’

  ‘I really don’t know . . .’ I said hesitantly. ‘What if he runs off? We’ll never find him . . . out there . . .’ I pointed to the Great Cat Unknown.

  ‘I think he’ll be fine,’ Jeff said and Millie said, ‘Me too,’ and so it was decided.

  Jeff put Leroy in the walking harness we’d bought for this very occasion and instantly you could see the look of distaste on his face. When his paws hit the back deck, he just threw himself on the ground and did a kind of ’80s breakdance move, writhing in circles.

  ‘Oh he hates that,’ I stated the obvious.

  ‘C’mon Roy,’ Jeff said. ‘Let’s get this stupid thing off you.’

  He quickly removed the harness and set Leroy back down. Leroy sniffed the air several times, took in a long recon look of the property, then walked down the back steps to continue his sniffing mission. We could tell by his body language that he was curious and happy. He’d never known so much open space in all his life, and the only grass he’d ever touched in the past couple of years was the tiny patch in our Annandale courtyard. And off he went to explore – not very far, and coming back every half an hour or so to nibble some biscuits and make sure Jeff was still inside.

  After lunch we took Millie on a walk to the bush next to the main dam, where we discovered the creek that runs through the property. We got to it through a casuarina forest, and again their lovely whispers welcomed us as we walked over millions of their dried needles, the sunlight dappled by their branches.

  ‘We should build a nature walk all over the property,’ I suggested helpfully. ‘A few kilometres of boardwalk through all these secret little spots – people would really love it and then we could run along it too.’

  ‘We could take guests on guided walks,’ Jeff suggested.

  Millie stopped dead in her tracks: ‘What the bleedin’ hell was that?’ Her eyes popped with fear.

  ‘A cicada, Millie.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A cicada? Kind of like a big cricket,’ I explained. ‘That noise is them rubbing their back legs together.’

  Millie nodded as though she knew what I meant but I could tell perhaps it was time to get her safely back to the house where she could swat away flies and mosquitoes – bugs she knew.

  I could have walked for days on end but that would have to wait, and would come in due course. For now, I needed to get ready to go back to work.

  It was after midnight and I couldn’t sleep. Not because it wasn’t quiet or dark enough (we insisted on sleeping with all the curtains drawn because the thought that ‘anyone’ could roam onto the property and peer in at us without us knowing was just too plain terrifying). Even with the gate on the street securely locked I couldn’t sleep, my mind was dreading what was to happen tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until I returned to Block Eight.

  I sat bolt upright in bed. ‘Jeff,’ I whispered, nudging him awake. ‘Jeff?’ He groaned and came-to. ‘Did you lock the gate?’

  Like drawing the curtains, failure to complete the task, we were sure, would result in our horrific deaths.

  ‘Shit, no!’ he said.

  ‘Come on, you’ll have to come with me,’ I said throwing on the day’s dirty clothes.

  We drove down to the gate. I reversed the car back up the drive so the high beams could shine toward the padlock and onto the road to illuminate any imminent threats. I jumped out quickly, ran to the gates and closed them, then pushed the padlock together, checking it twice for safety.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said in a whisper to Jeff. ‘I couldn’t have slept knowing it was open to just anyone,’ and then I reversed back into the olive grove before driving back to the house.

  Rather than a daily commute, I would be spending every Tuesday and Wednesday night for the following six weeks (the settlement period) at Annandale. I’d left myself a mattress on the floor, a television, a handful of towels and one plate, one cutlery set, one glass . . .

  If waking at five wasn’t taxing enough, then the three and a half hour drive followed by a one hour wait at t
he rental place to return the van certainly didn’t help, and then while I sat at my desk typing away on the latest presentation to show international execs, all I could think about was being back at Block Eight; wishing I was with Jeff, Leroy and Millie, exploring, enjoying the peace and quiet and wondering what project would be at the top of the list. By the time I made it back to Annandale later that night, I was a mere shell; I was pretty much at rock bottom. I grabbed a pre-made meal from the local supermarket and a bottle of wine and went back to another shell – the home that was formerly ours. It echoed with loneliness and never in my life did I crave company more than I did that first night. I missed Jeff and Leroy more than I could ever imagine and the thought that this would be my life for the foreseeable future filled me with utter dread.

  I called Jeff. ‘How was your day?’ I asked.

  ‘Good. I gave Mum the job of walking to the letterbox each day so she went down today and I think it took her about fifteen minutes each way. I’ve made a list of all the things I want to do to the house, starting with paint, but what were you thinking of for wallpaper in the living room again?’

  ‘You know, just anything like Ina’s.’ One of my discoveries during my days off work was Ina Garten’s cooking show, The Barefoot Contessa, and I loved her house in the Hamptons almost as much as I loved watching her cook. I made Jeff watch episode after episode, pausing to point out the features I loved most in her house.

  ‘How was your day, Monkey?’ he asked.

  I wanted to cry, silly me. I wanted to tell him I was exhausted and lonely and . . . scared. The very first night we’d moved into Annandale I’d had a nightmare about a woman dressed in Victorian clothing and I convinced myself that I’d seen a ghost and now that I was there all alone she was going to come and rip my head off for destroying what was once her home. ‘Oh good, the usual,’ I said instead. ‘Will you be scared up there without me after Millie goes home?’

  ‘Hell yes!’ he said. ‘Closing that gate last night scared the shit out of me.’