The Vineyard Page 8

  “You had a brother?”

  “Yes. Brad was four years older than me.”

  “Yet you inherited the vineyard.”

  “Brad opted out early on,” Natalie said and grew silent again.

  Olivia wanted to ask more, but she wasn’t sure if this was the right time. Natalie had explicitly said curiosity was a must for the job. But at what was clearly a painful moment?

  The silence felt right. She sensed that Natalie needed it. Indeed, after several minutes, the older woman returned to the photograph of the boy and seemed to find new strength.

  My parents were terrified. They didn’t say it. They didn’t say much at all as they packed us up and moved us out, but looking back all these years later, I can imagine what they felt. Our world had radically changed. Life as we’d known it was done.

  My brother, Brad, who was nine at the time, was the one who, much later, re-created for me the cold, dark November day when we left New York. We took the train to Providence as we had so many other times when we went to the house in Newport. Those other times, we had been headed for vacation, wearing new clothes, carrying valises crammed with more new clothes, and we were met at the train by our driver in the latest-model car. This time, our clothes were older, our valises and trunks filled with the last of our earthly possessions, and we passed up the first-class Pullman car in favor of coach. We were met in Providence by one of the few employees my father still had.

  His name was Jeremiah Burke. My father had brought him from Ireland several years before to grow our potatoes.

  The farm was my father’s hobby back then. It was the place he escaped to when he wanted a break from the rest of his life. He had been known to return to New York with dirt under his nails, and he took pride in it. Hobby or not, he liked doing things well. Even in this, he was competitive.

  Hence, Jeremiah Burke. Jeremiah not only knew about growing potatoes, but he knew about farm management. Within months of his arrival, my father put him in charge.

  In addition to a lyrical brogue, Jeremiah brought with him from Ireland a wife and a child. The three of them had lived until then in the stone farmhouse that was about to become our home.

  That drizzly November day, Jeremiah picked us up in the old work truck that he used on the farm. Though he had cleaned it as best he could, it still smelled of dirt. To us it was a foreign smell, a rough smell, adding one more unknown element to the fear we felt that day.

  We piled our trunks in the back and ourselves in the front. In later years, my brother and I would automatically climb into the bed of the truck. On this day, though, as my brother told it, we were packed in the front, one child each on the lap of a parent, with Jeremiah at the wheel. If the crowding caused discomfort, we were too numb to feel it. Even my father, who had once been so gregarious, was dead quiet.

  We headed south out of Providence. When the paved road ended, we jolted over rutted dirt roads, but I remember neither that nor our actual arrival at Asquonset. Brad said the place was dismal, and I’m sure it was. We were used to luxury. Asquonset was anything but.

  “I cannot imagine that,” Olivia chided.

  “You’re being polite.”

  “No. Really. It’s such a beautiful place.”

  “Now.”

  “Even the land. I imagine it would be beautiful without a single building on it.”

  Natalie smiled. “Good girl. I’ve chosen the right person. Your heart’s in the right place. We just have to fine-tune your view of reality. I may not remember my very first view of this place, but I certainly do remember the ones after that. ‘Beautiful’ was not an adjective that I would have used to describe Asquonset back then.”

  The Burkes had moved into a smaller cottage on the property, leaving the stone farmhouse for us, and my father had done his best. Those pieces of furniture that we hadn’t sold had been shipped ahead and were in place in the living room, kitchen, and bedrooms. Jeremiah’s wife, Brida, had scrubbed the house and made it shine as much as a farmhouse built in the 1870s could shine, but it was as different as night and day from the home we had left in New York. As was the custom in the country, the ceilings were low so that the fire could more easily heat the damp, cold air, and we did have indoor plumbing. We were lucky in that. But the place was small, closed in, and dark, totally alone on its windy hill.

  It was a metaphor for our life.

  Natalie stopped talking. Her eyes were faraway as she moved her hand ever so lightly over the photograph.

  “Who is this boy?” Olivia asked.

  The older woman looked up with a start. It was a minute before she found herself and smiled. “This boy?” She raised the picture. “This boy is my very first distinct memory.”

  It was late afternoon on the day of our arrival in Asquonset. I was outside in fields that had yielded their crop of potatoes six weeks before. I’m not sure how I got there. I doubt my parents would have wanted me out in the rain. I suppose that they were unpacking at the house and didn’t see me leave.

  I must have been desperate to escape. Between their personal gloom and those low ceilings, I imagine that I felt choked.

  The fields were bare, plowed clear of everything but rain and earth. I walked as far and as fast as I could, but I was frightened enough of the place to keep the farmhouse in sight. It was small and distant. But it was there.

  I’ll never forget it. I wore a little hat, just as I would have if I’d been in New York. It was made of felt and had a tiny turned-up rim and straps that went under the chin. It was no match for the rain. With each step my hair grew wetter, until it hung in sodden strands around my face. I was wearing T-strap shoes that had been white that morning. They had been scuffed during the trip from New York, but out there in the field, they were quickly covered with mud. I bent to wipe them clean. When I straightened, the hem of my coat had mud on it, too.

  The coat and my dress were pale blue. They were the best of my old clothes that still fit. Horrified, I tried to brush the mud off, but the smear spread. The more I brushed, the worse it got. My stomach began to hurt. The sense of loss went far beyond my clothes.

  Then I saw Carl.

  She was lost in the snapshot, which she held now as though it were gold.

  It took Olivia a minute to make the connection. “This is Carl?”

  “It is,” Natalie said with a contented sigh.

  “He was Jeremiah’s son?”

  “Why the surprise?”

  Why the surprise? The scenario Olivia had dreamed up was suddenly all wrong. “I just—just assumed that Carl was a newer acquaintance. I thought he was from somewhere else.”

  “Well, he was, if you count his being born in Ireland. But he was a toddler when his parents brought him here. He was Seamus then. Somewhere along the line, people started calling him Carl. He doesn’t have any of the brogue that Jeremiah did.”

  Geography wasn’t the half of it. Olivia was talking about social status. She had pictured Natalie marrying someone very upper crust. Not that she could say that without sounding like a snob, which, Lord knew, she wasn’t. But this being a fantasy, she had imagined a prince.

  “I pictured him as a longtime wine person,” she said with some tact.

  Natalie smiled a sweet smile. “Ah, but he is. He’s more of a wine person than anyone else I’ve met in the last seventy years. Not that I knew it that first day. It was a while before I learned what was being grown on the far side of the hill. Remember, this was 1930. Prohibition was still in effect. We didn’t talk about growing grapes or making wine, and we surely didn’t talk about selling what we made. We weren’t supposed to be doing what we did.”

  Olivia couldn’t get over the idea that Carl Burke had been a hired hand. The more she looked at his picture, though, the more familiar he felt. She had seen his face before. It had been in some of the pictures she had restored. He had been a grown man then, but the eyes were the same. They were calm to the point of impassivity, feeling more familiar to Olivia with each minute t
hat passed.

  “What about that first memory?” she asked. “What did he say out there in the field?”

  But Natalie had lowered the snapshot. Her eyes were on the door and had taken on a special light. Olivia followed her gaze. Recognition was instant.

  Carl Burke was a good-looking boy who had grown into a good-looking man. He was approaching eighty now and had earned the right to be craggy and slouched. But he stood tall, and if being craggy meant having a shock of silver hair, a ruggedly handsome face, and an air of dignity, Olivia was all for it. She might have fallen in love with the man on sight herself, if he hadn’t been taken already.

  Natalie reached for his hand. “Carl, come meet Olivia.” Seeming eminently pleased with herself, she drew him forward. “Carl Burke … Olivia Jones.”

  “Welcome,” Carl said. His voice was quiet. Taken alone, it would have been dispassionate. Taken with the warmth in his eyes, it was—yes—kind and very definitely sincere. “I just met your daughter. She’s a little sweetie.”

  “And Olivia just met your son,” Natalie injected with pride.

  Olivia frowned. “His son?”

  “Simon. Downstairs in the hall.”

  Oh dear. Simon. The vineyard manager. The man with the midnight blue eyes. “He’s the dark, silent type,” Natalie had said with fondness. “Like his father.”

  Olivia had simply assumed that the Seebrings took pride in hiring families. Not having heard Simon’s last name—and believing Carl to be royalty of sorts—she hadn’t made a connection between the two men. Suddenly, though, it made perfect sense. It also explained Greg Seebring’s remark about a Burke conspiracy to take over the vineyard.

  Olivia saw the resemblance now as she looked at Carl. Father and son had the same quiet eyes. Granted, Carl’s were warmer than Simon’s, but neither man looked sly.

  Of course, Olivia had thought Ted was interesting. She had thought Jared was responsible, and that anyone who could cook as well as Peter had a homing instinct. She had been wrong on all counts. She might well be on this one too.

  “I’m sorry,” she told Carl awkwardly. “I hadn’t realized that Simon belonged to you. I guess I’m not too quick on the uptake today.”

  He brushed aside her apology. “Did he show you around outside?”

  Natalie answered. “He didn’t have time. He was heading for Providence. He thinks we have a problem with mold.”

  Carl made a frustrated sound. “The weather’s ripe for it.” He turned to Olivia. “Farming is never easy.” He gestured toward the door. “I brought your bags over to the wing. Didn’t know which went in which room, though.”

  Olivia had been planning to get their luggage herself. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, I did. We want you here. I’m doing my part to get you securely installed before anything changes your mind.” He said the last with an odd gravity and turned to Natalie. “We lost Paolo. He’s leaving with Marie.” Both names were spoken beautifully, with just the hint of an accent that didn’t seem Irish at all.

  Natalie hung her head. After a minute, with a resigned sigh, she told Olivia, “An operation like ours requires a fair amount of large equipment. In addition to helping out Simon, Paolo is our in-house mechanic—was our in-house mechanic. I wasn’t joking when I mentioned a hornet’s nest. We’re having something of a house revolt here.”

  Olivia looked from one face to the other. “All because of the wedding?”

  Natalie moved closer to Carl. Their hands met, linked, found an unobtrusive spot behind Natalie’s back, but Olivia noticed. Any romantic would. It was a sweet gesture, the sign of a sharing of strength, and all the more meaningful for its privacy. Olivia was touched.

  “It isn’t only the wedding,” Natalie said. “It’s Al’s death. He courted these people. He gave them flowers on their birthdays and handed out Christmas bonuses. Me, I was the taskmaster. I told them what needed to be done. If a floor was mopped once and felt sticky, I had it mopped again. If the silver had tarnish on its back side, I wanted it repolished. I’ve never been one to like leaving a job half done. Unfortunately, that ruffles feathers sometimes. So Alexander was the one who did the stroking. He applied salve after I cracked the whip. He was the good guy, I was the bad guy. They felt that they lost their best friend when he died.”

  “And now she’s marrying me,” Carl picked up. “Some of them feel betrayed.”

  “They don’t understand what we feel,” Natalie told him.

  “Well, they should,” he insisted with more fire than Olivia had yet seen. “These people aren’t strangers to affairs of the heart. Paolo was mooning over Marie for twelve years before she took notice, and Anne Marie, the receptionist in the business office, just announced that once her divorce is final, she’s marrying her high school sweetheart from thirty years back.”

  Natalie’s eyes widened. “Is she leaving, too?”

  “No, but she could be sticking up for us more than she is—not that it would help much, what with the business office being apart from the rest.”

  Natalie explained to Olivia, “Asquonset has three divisions. The vineyard produces the grapes. The winery turns the grapes into wine. The corporate staff gets the wine into restaurants and stores. Since the corporate offices are housed way over on the far side of our land, the staff there is isolated.” She took a tired breath. “Our accountant just left, but we saw that coming. He was a longtime friend of my late husband and has been threatening to retire for years. The others on the corporate side are newer and younger. They live in local towns and work nine to five, with four weeks’ paid vacation a year, health care, retirement funds, and so on. They won’t leave. Nor will anyone at the winery. Success begets loyalty, and we’ve been very successful. Our wine maker has built a name for himself in viticultural circles in part because of the freedom and money we give him to work with. So he won’t leave.”

  “The problem,” Carl picked up, “is with employees who’ve been here awhile. Some, like the accountant, are reaching retirement age and would be leaving anyway. Others not so. But it has to do with what Nat said before. They loved Alexander. He was the guy who doled out everything good. If you were to ask them, they’d say he was the one who hired them in the first place.”

  Natalie scowled. “He did no such thing. I advertised, I interviewed, I hired.”

  Carl touched her cheek and said a soft, “We’re aware of that. They aren’t.”

  She was that easily diffused. Letting out a breath, she said, “Yes. The problem in a nutshell.” Her eyes found Olivia’s. “There was never cause to make it clear. My husband needed the stature more than I did, so I let him have it. Unfortunately, that’s backfiring on me now. They all saw Alexander as father of the vineyard. They loved him. They felt loyalty to him. That loyalty goes on. Like my children, they’re offended that I’m remarrying so soon.”

  Carl added a quiet but potent, “And so low.”

  “Well, they are ignorant,” Natalie declared.

  “Ignorant or not, they’re leaving us in the lurch.”

  Olivia asked, “How many have left?”

  “Paolo’s leaving brings it to four,” Natalie said.

  “Four, out of how many in all?”

  “Thirteen. The vineyard operation has Simon, his assistant, a general field hand, and Paolo. We have two full-time people at the winery—the wine maker and his assistant. There are four in the office—an accountant, a marketing director, a sales administrator, and a receptionist. And three here at the house—a maid, a cook, and a groundskeeper. The field hand went first. He’d been nursing a grudge against Carl since Carl brought in a woman to a position above him.”

  “The grudge worsened when Simon took over as manager and the field hand stayed a field hand, instead of moving up,” Carl said.

  Natalie resumed the count. “Soon after that, we lost the accountant. Now Marie and Paolo.” She raised wary eyes to Carl. “Do we expect more?”

  “Joaquin is grumbling.” Agai
n spoken with style, in this case a gently lyrical Wa-keen.

  “Joaquin,” Olivia echoed, marveling at the beauty of the names.

  Natalie’s smile held surprise. “You did that well. The name is Portuguese. Our staff has always been heavily Portuguese, what with their numbers being so large, so close by, just over the Massachusetts line. Joaquin is the groundskeeper, but he’s truly a Jack of all trades. His wife is our cook.” She grew fierce. “Carl, keep him. If he goes, Madalena goes. I can’t do without my cook, not right before the wedding.” Suddenly defiant, she drew herself up and returned to Olivia. “But it’s their loss. With or without them, Asquonset is solid. We have Carl to thank for that.”

  Carl’s cheeks grew ruddy. “Come on, Nat.”

  “Carl and Simon,” she amended, no less vehement for splitting the credit. “The vines are stronger every year. Production is up. The grapes are more balanced. Our wines are steadily gaining recognition.” She sent Carl another wary look. “Is Simon right? Is there a problem with the Pinot Noir?”

  “There may be.”

  “Then he isn’t just running away?”

  “Oh, he is,” Carl granted with a small smile. “But he may have a valid excuse.”

  Olivia was wondering what the big man was running from when Natalie faced her with a flourish. “There you have it. Our staff is depleted, the vineyard is wet, and my children are sure to make more trouble before the summer’s out. You, my dear, are not only my memoirist, you’re my personal buffer. Are you up for it, Olivia Jones?”

  WAS OLIVIA UP FOR IT? Was she ever. She wanted nothing more than to return to Natalie’s first distinct memory, anxious to get the memoir fully launched. But Natalie had to see about hiring a new maid, not to mention giving a pep talk to Madalena and Joaquin.

  So Olivia spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking. She emptied Tess’s bags and then her own, filling closets and drawers with what they had brought, but their new clothes were nowhere near as exciting as the shirts Natalie had pulled from a carton before sending her off. Half were T-shirts, half were polo shirts, half in Olivia’s size, half in Tess’s. Some were burgundy with ivory print, some the reverse. All had the vineyard’s logo and name.