Berry Flavours (2 page)

His face, his redhead skin blotchy and dry had been out in the weather for years too long. His eyebrows were long, wiry and silver, and stuck out at odd angles. His nose was straight, and his eyes were blue, but pale. His stare gave Clancy the feeling he wasn’t really looking at her, it was the direction his eyeballs took.

His gut stretched the customary blue shirt and challenged the button on his RM Williams moleskins. On his feet were the biggest pair of Rossi boots she’d ever seen.

Clancy’s hand disappeared in the bear paw. “I am.” She shifted her seat to the left to accommodate his bulk at the bar.

“Mac Thomas, but you know that. Hope you didn’t take any notice of that piece-of-work,” he said, and jerked a thumb in Berry’s direction.

When Clancy glanced over Mac’s shoulder, she could see Berry disappearing out of the bar. In that instant, he turned and tipped an imaginary hat at her, grinning broadly.

She liked he knew she’d be watching him. She made a note to find out what sort of ‘tin-pot little affair’ Berry might have ‘over yonder’, and to find out more about Berry Lockett. The card felt warm in her pocket.

“He seemed to be right about a few things,” she said thinking about the wine in front of her, and about the comfortable chitchat she’d had with him.

“Yes, well, he’s not always right.” Mac Thomas rolled his shoulders. “Ready to get started?” He lifted his chin in the direction of the door and walked off. “Let’s go.”

Clancy downed a little more of her wine, slid off the bar stool and picked up her bags. She shrugged on her heavy backpack, gripped the handle of her wheelie-bag and picked up her laptop.

She was ready to get started.

All over again.

Chapter Two

Mac Thomas boomed a one-sided conversation the whole time since she’d pushed her bags into the back of the vehicle.

     He’d sat in the driver’s seat and waited until she clambered into the Land Cruiser’s passenger side, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. He turned the key in the ignition before she’d closed the door and buckled herself in.

“I see by your CV you’ve done a fair bit of fancy restaurant work,” he bellowed at her as they roared out of the pub car park.

“My family owns a restaurant. Not really fancy, but innov—”

“Doesn’t cut the mustard for me,” he said and glanced sideways at her. “May as well straighten it out from the get-go, I want plain, good and lots of it. There’s plenty of cow cockies around here and people from the city come to experience what we’ve got and what we’ve got is a lot of cow cockies. And cow cockies eat plain.”

Clancy attempted to reply. “Well—”

“Just want to get it straight before we start,” he thundered again. “’Course, my boy likes to think he’s better than the rest of us and fancies himself a bit of a connoisseur in the food department, but I’m the one calling the shots.”

Clancy decided she didn’t need to reply. Sounded like he was winding up to a soliloquy. In any case, if plain was what he wanted, she could do plain; might even find it challenging. How many ways to do plain? There must be thousands. All she’d need would be a few basic garden herbs, a few home grown veggies and—

“He’s working the place for me, while I go out and do the marketing. Look, the old estate has been a bit neglected the last year or so, but now we’re on top of things we need to get it back to its finer glory. And good food’s the way to go. Isn’t it?” He thumped his enormous stomach and glanced at her again.

She nodded. “Sure is.”

“We’ll certainly see what you can do by tomorrow. I’ve got a big opening do planned for the weekend, and it’ll be the whole Christmas bit. Reckon you’ll be in the swing by then? You can practise on me and my boy.”

She figured that would be all right. It was only Tuesday and wouldn’t take long to check the pantry and storeroom for provisions make the appropriate orders and get the menu underway.

“This big do,” she asked raising her voice to catch his attention before he opened his mouth again. “How many are you catering for?”

“Hundred.”

“And style of service?”

“We’ll get to that.”

That sounded interesting. Something to get her teeth into right from the start. Good. No time to dwell on cutting apron strings and all that.

They’d  driven  only  a  few  kilometres  before  Clancy  saw  a  sign approaching:

    MacGregor Thomas Vineyard Estate 4 kms

Thomas turned the car left at the arrow, and the bitumen abruptly finished a few metres in. It was an easy drive; undulating country on both sides of the dirt road, dotted with dairy cattle and the odd paddock of sheep.

They rounded a bend and Thomas’s boom began again, a finger jabbing here and there as the buildings came into view.

“That there is the house where we live and down there opposite is the restaurant. Down that way is the…”

Clancy had tuned out. She gazed across at the old homestead with its huge verandah and its straggling grapevine draped over the front of it. Nothing extraordinary there. It was the restaurant that caught her attention, and the dilapidated sign spanning across the front of it.

It was enormous. It stood off the ground like a shearing shed. A ramp angled up to a double doorway. Ancient corrugated iron, thick timber struts and beams and generous windows. She couldn’t wait to see the fit-out inside.

“…was the original shearing shed so I gutted it and…”

There’d been an attempt at a garden to pretty the place up, the corral- like fence in the front now protecting only the weeds from kangaroos and wallabies. Plastic tables and chairs were stacked on a lean by the back of it.

As they drove past, she turned to see more. There’d been sandstone pavers laid, and an outdoor fireplace, and something which resembled a wood-fired oven.

“…then the kitchen itself was a bit of a shonk, but I eventually got him to pass it, you know, to keep in theme with what…”

Under the shed itself she could see a jumble of equipment, more chairs, and generally a heap of junk stuck out like the proverbial sore toe. She imagined it would all be loaded into a truck in the next day or so and removed. Likewise, someone would tidy up the garden and maybe deliver some new outdoor furniture. That plastic stuff was really tacky.

A creep of unease spread though her still queasy stomach. Something on the edge of her subconscious nudged a question forward, but she couldn’t quite grasp it.

“…and the heating proved to be a no-show, but we’re used to that out here. Bit breezy in the real winter, but it’s hardly that now. I’ve got plans for the…”

The vehicle skewed toward the homestead. He boomed on, but she wasn’t listening. What the homestead had hidden from view, until they pulled up, was the spread of leafy vines, which stretched for what seemed like miles in front of her. The hills behind the house were covered in vines as far as the eye could see.

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” she breathed.

“What? Yes. But a lot of back-breaking work has gone into that beautiful, and a lot more back-breaking work is still to be done. And now the bloody bottom’s dropped out of the market, we’ve got to take steps to ensure we can get over the line and stay there.”

The glut of grapes in the industry this year was no secret. Yet panning ahead of her were hectares of fruit not far from the picking. She felt another tingle of apprehension. “You won’t be pulling up the vines?”

“Jee-sus, no. People still want their wine but I reckon we’ve neglected another area of revenue.” He thrust his chin towards the barn-like building. “The restaurant.”

The vehicle came to a sudden full stop and he launched himself out before she could even unbuckle her seat belt.

“Get yourself over to the restaurant. I’ll meet you there in a minute.”

“Right,” she muttered, and stepped out of the car.

She stretched, winced at the throb in her temples. Should have had a big glass of water at the pub. She pulled the clip from her hair, shook her head and earned another throb, then gathered the unruly lot into a twist and re-clipped it.

She headed for the building, over a stretch of cleared land, her feet sinking into soft sand and dirt mixed with gravel. It made the going hard. She wondered how patrons dealt with it – if it was in fact the car park for the restaurant.

On closer inspection, the ‘restaurant’ really did resemble more a shed than anything else. And it looked as if it had been neglected for a lot longer than a year. As she stepped on to the ramp, a plank of wood gave way under her weight. She yelped, her foot crunching through soft rotting timber, which scraped the inside of her leg above her boot.

Clancy reefed her foot out of the hole, balanced on the other foot and clutched a wobbly handrail. “This is not a good start.” She steadied herself, bent down to examine her leg.

“Doesn’t look like it,” a male voice piped up beside her. She jumped afresh.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Greg Thomas.” He bent and checked the few timbers ahead of them, shook the rail. “Didn’t think they’d be this brittle. Reckon these few’ll hold. Are you okay?”

Clancy gripped the outstretched hand which guided her up a metre or two. “Yes, I am, thanks. I’m Clancy Jones. The new cook.”

“Good to have you on board. I take it the old man is meeting us over here?”

When Clancy finally met his eyes, she’d already gazed over big feet encased in solid working boots, lean legs in blue jeans, a broad chest and a stomach draped with an old flannelette shirt over a pale grey T-shirt. Wisps of ginger chest hair curled at the base of his neck. His hair was deepest auburn, his face a younger, sharper version of Mac Thomas. But those eyes. Blue of blue of blue. Piercing, and strange, as if they looked at you from a different perspective. And not a good one.

“Who?”

“Dad. He said he was meeting us here?”

“Yes. Yes, he did.”

“All right, so you and I may as well go on inside and I’ll show you around.” He smiled at her.

Warning bells were clanging. It was a brilliant smile, dazzling in its effect, fake, and almost leery.

Her head pounded. Oh God, this was the son and heir. This was also looking like she’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

She followed him up the ramp aware at any moment she could plunge through and break her neck, so she stepped carefully and at a much less enthusiastic pace than he set.

At the door inside, she was a little dismayed to note the whole internal floor was timber. “Oh no,” inadvertently escaped her.

“Don’t worry about this floor. We’ve checked it over. It’s fine.”

“The ramp…?”

“Was also due for replacement but the tradesman never returned.”

“Your father said there was a function at the end of the week.”

He nodded. “Over this way.”

Clancy followed him to the back of the huge room. She took in the exposed timbers of the ceiling, cobwebs draping many metres below where they originated and wasp and swallow nests dotting every mitre she could see. At times a pungent aroma wafted up from the floor.

There was a short wall of timbers in front of her, a gate of sorts and then some pens beyond, all smeared and splashed with stains of light and dark.

“This is a shearing shed.” She looked around her, dismayed. Bewildered.

“Yep. Not used as that now of course. This,” he turned and spread his arms wide, “is the restaurant.”

“I missing something here.” Perhaps dehydration had killed off more than a few brain cells; like maybe her eyesight. There was nothing in here. “So, where do you intend to have the function?” Where was the pristine, stainless steel kitchen with a huge gas cooktop, and state-of-the-art chargrill, and freezers and a coolroom and a stylish but snappy bar and—

His grin dropped away. “Here, of course.”

“How?”

“That’s your job.”

Clancy began to see where this was going. “I don’t think so. I’m a chef, not an interior designer of shearing sheds.”

Greg Thomas stepped into her space. The sudden glare backed her up a pace. At the same time Mac Thomas lurched into the shed and marched over to them.

“Don’t get your knees in a knot. The whole new fit-out is due tomorrow.” He kept booming. “We’ve had it decked out as a restaurant before, I told you that. But it just got a bit untidy, ‘specially when we put the sheep back in. You’re gaping.”

Clancy closed her mouth, turned away. “The whole fit-out... you mean that junk under the floor is the old—”

“S’right. It’s gonna be a busy place tomorrow with the tradies in. I’ve made bloody sure every tradie known to man will be on deck to get cracking.”

Clancy turned to stare out the huge window space along the walls. “Glaziers...?”

“Yep. And plumbers and sparkies and cabinet makers and the furniture truck.”

“Four working days left up to Christmas Day and you don’t have a restaurant.”

“S’right. You’ll see, we’ll get you there.”

Clancy rounded on him. “It’ll take a week to prepare a Christmas function and I haven’t even got a kitchen. I took the job expecting to walk in and begin work. I can’t order anything without a storeroom, or a coolroom or kitchen benches or—”

“Hey! We’ll get it done.” Mac Thomas shoved a gnarly finger at her. “Your job is to go over my menu and get prepared.”

“Dad.”

Clancy frowned and waved her hand around. “Where am I going to work while you outfit this shed?”

Mac Thomas swung his arm towards the back corner. “Over there. We’ll get a desk in. You’ll be right.”

“A desk.”

“Dad.”

“Mr Thomas, if you haven’t got a restaurant ready to go, functioning and clean, fully stocked—”

“Your job is to get it ready once the tradies are done. They’ll be finished by sundown tomorrow.” Mac Thomas turned and clomped away.

“What about staff?” She followed him. “What about—”

He didn’t bother to turn around but boomed over his shoulder. “I’ll bring my menu. Be at the house at two pm. I’m looking forward to dinner tonight.”

Clancy stopped following as Mac Thomas hurled himself out of the shed. She stood a moment or two watching as his uneasy gait crabbed its way across the paddock, small puffs of dust billowing at his feet. She turned to look at Greg. “What the hell—?”

Greg shrugged his shoulders. “Once you answered the ad, he just went ahead and started to order everything.”

Clancy was shaking her head. “Uh, I didn’t sign on for this. I need to speak to your father. I can’t do this without a kitchen even on the ground yet. Four days – barely that, and the worst week of the year for getting what you need in time.”