Olives And Oranges

7

Olives And Oranges

November (ctd.) Bean having learned that SA actually grew olives, the Junior Drones had conceded that it would be jolly good fun to see the olive groves—dashed Mediterranean! according to Crumpy. Duck scratched his chin dubiously. “Them places down McLaren Vale are pricy. Ya won’t get away with much under seventy bucks a head for lunch—tourist prices, ya see: real rip-off joints.”

    “Well the cellar door at Lloyd Brothers?” groped Greg. “Bit of tasting, few nibbles.”

    The winemaker looked dry. “You’ve still gotta book, for six or more, and if that’s not a warning sign, I dunno what would be! –Look, we’d be better off with me Aunty Joyce!”

    Reddening, Egg began: “Duck, we can’t just—”

    “Rats!” Forthwith he rang his Aunty Joyce. Thrilled, apparently; looking forward to meeting us all.

    We were supposed to have heard of McLaren Vale. True, Bean and Bean Minor had: it was one of the great winegrowing districts of South Australia. Which they had told me before! Er… If they said so. But apparently it also grew olives, some of the trees having been planted in the late eighteen hundreds. The Lloyd Brothers Estate had been producing eating olives and olive oil since around 1997, one of the earliest in the industry. We goggled, wondering if we’d misheard, as this information was prised out of Duck, and the Bean, who unfortunately had reclaimed his technological nuisance instrument, started pressing buttons and frowning and muttering…

    “Uh—but didn’t you say that South Australia’s had olive trees for nearly two hundred years?” groped the Egg.

    “Yeah. They dunno why they were planted originally—see, the Brits that came out,” Mr Drake explained, “they wouldn’t of known an olive if they’d fallen over it. Well there was an industry of sorts, supplied the home market for the next hundred years or so, but it must of been mainly the fruit, nobody wanted olive oil for cooking, yer average Aussie housewife wouldn’t’ve known what to do with it. It died the death around 1950, they reckon.”

    “Hang on!” said the Bean, looking startled.

    “We’re not going to hang on if you’re going to read out some pre-processed rubbish from the W. word, Bean,” warned Bean Minor, give the lad a medal!

    “No! I read somewhere that Australia had a big influx of Greek and Italian migrants around 1950!”

    “Yeah—well yeah,” Duck acknowledged, now apparently into his stride and like the majority of the male side, difficult to stop once the verbal flow had commenced. “Apparently the olive growers of the time didn’t have the nous to hang on for a brand-new market. The modern industry only got going well into the 1990s. But the trees at Lloyd Brothers Estate are old. Um, well some of the original ones had Kalamata stock grafted onto them later on by some old Greek guy who settled there. They’re used for the eating olives. Um… Aw, yeah! Verdale, that’s the original type at Lloyd Brothers: used for the oil, mainly, I think. They reckon cuttings from the two of them got the SA olive industry going. Well it’s a great place to visit, lovely setting, but like I say, all the restaurants on the McLaren Vale estates are real tourist traps.”

    “It’d be very interesting to see their prices,” said Egg thoughtfully.

    Duck looked wry. “Yeah well some of them have got them on their websites, Alan, you can look ’em up, but be prepared to pass out. I was thinking of shouting Mum and Aunty Joyce to a meal last time we were down there, but heck! I looked up Coriole Vineyard, and the buggers charge a minimum eighty-five bucks a head!”

    “For lunch?” croaked the Bean.

    “Yeah, mate, for lunch!”

    Crumpy began: “I could—”

    Duck awarded him a buffet on the shoulder which made him, solid tho he is, stagger. “No, ya couldn’t, Crumpy, mate!”

    And that seemed to be that. Duck would drive us Junior Drones down to McLaren Vale in the people carrier, and we would have lunch with his Aunty Joyce and do a bit of a tour of the vineyards and the olive groves. And as Greg cheerfully rubbished any feeble suggestions that (a) The boys might be wanted to help out in the vineyard and (b) I might be wanted to help out at Silvercreek’s cellar door, we went. Happily waved off by our genial host. Personally I was wondering when the man would let us earn our keep, and I was pretty sure Egg and Crumpy were, too.

    Duck had breezily declared that it wasn’t far… Help! We drove for miles and miles and miles. Right through the conurbation, out the far side, into some slightly higher ground, the terrain becoming slightly rolling instead of the dead flat, vast acreages of suburbia we’d just passed through, on into the hinterland, flashes of a glorious sea view to our right, the day visibly warming up—thank God the people carrier had air conditioning—past wide stretches of the low, bare slopes of South Australia, just dry fawn grass, and suddenly into more suburbia!

    “Hallett Cove,” said Duck briefly. “Lots of youngish families. Wouldn’t fancy it meself.” Yuh—uh—there was no cove in site! Just little boxes of neat suburban bungalows in subfusc shades in amongst the dust-dry slopes.

    And we drove on…

    Well to cut a long story short we did arrive at his Aunty Joyce’s house, in what he said was now McLaren Vale. It was in a back street of a village, tho they didn’t seem to use the term here, amongst suburban neighbours no different in kind from most of Adelaide suburbia: bungalows with neat gardens. Aunty Joyce’s, however, was a bit of a surprise. Her small front garden was bursting with the denizens of the vegetable kingdom: a couple of large, heavily-leafed trees and a splendid array of flowering shrubs jostling amidst spikes of lavender and other tall flowers, with a magnificent orange-flowered creeper trailing over the little wooden archway over her front gate. And a lovely little white picket fence!

    “Yeah, she’s got a green thumb,” Duck acknowledged mildly as we admired it all. “Nah, mate,” he added as Bean hazarded that that looked like a peach tree: “Almond. And the other one’s an apricot. Bear like mad in SA’s climate, almonds and apricots.”

    “Really? So is there an almond industry?” asked the Egg, smiling.

    “Yeah, sure. Up in the Adelaide Hills. Very pretty when the trees are in bloom, but they’ll be over now.” With this he blew a cheery blast on the horn and the front door opened, to disgorge a small, plump, grey-haired lady clad in a bright floral blouse and royal blue cotton slacks, and that was it for the rest of the day. Aunty Joyce took over completely.

    Well one might say that one vineyard is very much like another, likewise any olive grove, but of course South Australia is very different from France, and so after Aunty Joyce’s magnificent lunch of quiche and salads, followed by coffee and yummy squares of a flat brown confection that she called “just brownies”, with apologies for not having time to whip up a nice dessert for us, we began our tour of McLaren Vale.

    It was all beautiful, but so strange, with a backdrop of a range of drying-out low South Australian hills beyond the leafy vines already laden with fruit. No, not due for harvesting for several months yet, Duck confirmed, greeting a checked-shirt- and jeans-clad acquaintance happily and plunging into viticulture chat, not failing to introduce Michael and Tommy, whose family came from Burgundy…

    Well yes, it did get rather oenological, tho the object of the exercise had been to see the olive groves, but never mind, there were plenty of those, all the vineyards seeming to combine grapes and olives on a commercial scale. Of course there were tastes available, so we all sampled happily—wines as well as olives and oil. Mmm, yummy! But we didn’t buy any olive products from the estates’ little shops: frankly, one had to wince at the prices. Taken aside, Duck admitted that Spanish olives and Spanish or Italian olive oils were loads cheaper in the supermarkets: ya wouldn’t buy the SA oil unless you were into them poncy dribbles of it on yer gourmet nosh. Aimed at the ladies that fancied themselves as gourmet cooks. O-kay. Got it.

    Many of the olive trees looked as old as Duck had claimed they were, and one of the vineyards had a driveway lined with them, one would almost have said it was the South of France, except that one emerged from the silvery-green tunnel of foliage to the view of those low, dry, rounded hills, typical of an old, old continent eroded by wind, sun and rain over many millennia.

    All in all it was a completely fascinating afternoon, and we piled back into the people carrier somewhat sticky, not to say replete, after all those tastings. Back to Aunty Joyce’s to freshen up, thank goodness! Of course she tried to make us stay for dinner, but Duck gave her a hug and told her it’d be corker but he didn’t want to be on the roads when the pubs closed. So off we went, with the warning from Duck that we’d strike the bloody rush-hour but at least most of them’d be going the other way. Aunty Joyce having interrogated him, we had learned that we’d come on the old road—well, he said defiantly, it let them see a bit more of the country! That was all very well, Duck, but it had been a big day, and they weren’t used to our climate: mind you go back the quick way! Dratted Bean of course started quietly googling and was later able to confirm that yes, there was a main highway, and that was what he took back to the city. No wonder it seemed lots quicker!

    “Aw, thought you’d be loaded up with bottles of gourmet virgin olive oil and mingy little fancy jars of the dearest olives in the Southern Hemisphere,” drawled Greg as the weary wanderers returned to Silvercrest.

    “Do me a favour!” replied Duck feelingly. “At them prices? Mindjew, I have got a jar of olives for ya!”

    Forthwith he produced it. Donated by Aunty Joyce. Bottled by her from her very own olive tree. (No, it didn’t need any looking after, Michael, they grew like weeds in our climate! –Cosy laugh. It was easy, dears: you just made sure the ripe olives were dry, pricked them a bit and salted them, and then bottled them in olive oil! Well after all, the Mediterranean peasants had been doing it for hundreds of years, hadn't they? It wasn’t that hard!)

    And our blissful day amidst the vines and the olive groves ended with a good laugh at the expense of the fancy gourmet cooks of the Southern Hemisphere. All of whom, given the prevalence of those garden suburbs, could jolly well have grown their own olive trees and bottled their own olives!

    Greg seemed very keen for us to hive off again, this time for a day trip to “the Riverland”, to visit Duck’s uncle’s citrus orchard. I looked anxiously at the Egg.

    “Egg, do you think Greg doesn’t want us?”

    “No,” he said, smiling. “Galloping paranoia, Sister Bean, old thing! He’s just a very hospitable chap, proud of his country—think I mean his state!” he amended with a choke of laughter, “who wants us to have a good time.”

    I sagged. “Oh, good.”

    “Oh and by the way, if Bean tries to tell you some nonsense about its being nearly nine hundred kilometres to Renmark, where the uncle lives, ignore him,” he added. “Penalty of relying on the ubiquitous piece of technology.”

    I stared at him in gathering delight, so to speak. “Ooh! Do you mean—”

    “Yes!” he gasped. “Chose the wrong bally website! It’s only just over two hours’ drive from here!”

    After I’d recovered from the helpless giggling fit, which continued for an appreciable period, as the movement of existence through the temporal continuum is generally calculated by the human ant, I asked with delicious anticipation: “And whence cometh thy facts, oh estimable Egg?”

    “From a human being who’s driven there,” he replied calmly.

    Promptly I exploded in more giggles. Serve the dashed Bean right! What a chump!

    I did check with Greg to make sure he didn’t need us, but no: it wasn’t a very busy period for them—the packing shed was busy, filling Christmas orders, but harvest time was still months off, and they didn’t need help in the bottling plant, tho they were bottling last year’s vintage. “Uh—not the Reserve Bin stuff, love! Just our bread-and-butter table wines.”

    Oh: right. “I don’t think they do that at Château LeBec,” I ventured.

    He laughed. “I bet! But that’s a grand cru de Bourgogne, isn’t it?”

    I nodded hard. Well his French accent was terrible, but he was right, of course.

    “Yeah; we’re not in that bracket,” Greg added cheerfully. “But our Reserve Bin Shiraz isn’t bad: had a few very good years. –Not that I really want to see my wines snapped up by the barmy collectors that shove it in their air-conditioned so-called cellars and gloat over it instead of drinking it,” he added drily.

    “Mon Dieu, non!” I gasped.

    “Right,” he agreed, grinning. “Don’t know they’re alive, eh?”

    That was abso-bally-lutely spot-on. Whanged the old iron pin directly on the cranium, so to speak. “Rather!” I agreed fervently.

    “Yeah,” he said with a smile, plunging into oenological talk…

    Well it ended up with a bottle or two being opened, Greg’s arm round me on the sofa in his roomy, rather shabby sitting-room with its saggy but very comfortable furniture, and Bean and Bean Minor coming in hot and tired after a day doing some viney job with Webber, and discovering us with bitter indignation.

    “Wasting your best year on her?” gasped the blasted Bean.

    “She once said that Angas Brut was yummy because of its dashed bubbles!” gasped Bean Minor. “Oncle Fernand says she’s got the palate of a—a—un phacochère!”

    “Warthog,” Bean translated, glaring at me. “He’s right.”

    “Bullshit,” the sturdy Greg returned. “Siddown and have some. –Think there might be some crackers and cheese in the kitchen if ya fancy them. Aw—there’s those olives from Duck’s Aunty Joyce, too.”

    “They won’t clean the palate,” the dashed minor sibling replied sternly. “They’re too salty, and far too rich-tasting.”

    “I thought they were lovely!” I cried indignantly.

    The cold glance just flickered over me. “You would. They’d kill dead any decent red wine that came near them.”

    “Okay, don’t have them,” said Greg amiably. “Leaves all the more for us, eh, Liddle Mel?”

    “Yes!” I agreed with a rather unfortunate loud giggle in there somewhere.

    “Just watch out for her, Greg,” said the Bean grimly. “She collects chaps like other people collect stamps!” With this he turned on his heel and—hah, hah—stamped out.

    “Do ya?” asked Mr Lewisham, unmoved.

    “Yes!” cried Bean Minor. “You’re getting as bad as Mum, Mel!”

    “Impossible!” I gasped, this time collapsing in a positive gale, nay cascade, of giggles.

    “Yeah well,” said the vineyard owner stolidly, “I’m too old for her, and if ya wanna know, I was just wishing I had a little daughter like her.”

    “It would be awfully nice,” I admitted. “Dad’s a— I’ve forgotten the English expression, dash it!”

    “She’ll be forgetting all her English if she gets really sozzled,” said Bean Minor  grimly, removing a bottle of 2004 Reserve Bin Silvercreek Shiraz just as I was reaching for it. “She probably means ‘no-hoper’—well, he is. I wouldn’t say that excuses her, tho.”

    “Stop talking about her, I mean me, in the third person!” I cried.

    “Shut up. You’re drunk. Go to bed,” the insignificant legume ordered sternly.

    “I am not drunk!” To prove it I stood up with my arms raised to shoulder height on either side of— Oops! “Help!”

    “Saoule comme un Polonais,” said Bean Minor with satisfaction, grabbing me. “Come on.” He dragged me off bodily. Gangly but strong, and a lot taller than me, of course, dashed boy.

    At the door he paused and said politely in his best Marbledown School manner: “Frightfully sorry about this, sir. She’ll be all right tomorrow. Keeps worrying about the situation back in Blighty, y’see.” And hauled me out ignomim—igmonimo— Hauled me out.

    … Actually we didn’t head off to The Riverland next day, because oddly enough I was feeling a trifle under par, as it were. The old brainbox not in absolutely tip-top form, don’tcha know. That sort of thing.

    Well a day just pottering round Silvercreek afforded one time to reflect, apparently, because that evening Egg decided to confiscate Bean’s technological implement, as it was driving us all bonkers—tho, true, the nine hundred kilometres thing had been a little drop of joy amidst the general gloom. And discovered, on the convening of a meeting of the more senior Junior Drones, that he had two more of the dashed things stashed away!

    “That pink one’s Mel’s,” the guilty legume disclosed with a scowl, “and don’t let her have it back: she’ll start trying to contact John, and fifty to one the bombers will have hacked into his number! And don’t ask me where he found her a dashed pink one!”

    “Pink for a girl!” replied the Egg with his amiable laugh, investigating it. “Have you been charging it?” he demanded suspiciously.

    The Bean scowled. “A phone’s no use unless it’s—”

    “She wasn’t using it, you chump, and we don’t want her to use it, do we?” He poked at it, and peered. “Well I think the dashed thing’s turned off… What do you think, Crumpy?”

    “Um… It’s an older model than mine,” the spongy wheaten comestible discovered. –It would be. Crumpy’s dad buys everything that’s the newest and most expensive and replaces everything with a new model as soon as— Quite. Well the Roller has been known to last two years, yes, but that’s about as far as he goes. Which is longer, come to think of it, than any of his strings of bimbos have lasted.

    The Crumpet poked at the thing experimentally. “No, that’s definitely On,” he decided. “Hang on… Ooh!” as the thing rang and he dropped it, fortunately on the rug.

    “Should I?” he asked the Egg, as he retrieved it.

    “Er—well where are you supposed to be, old man?”

    “Um, nowhere, really.”

    It was still ringing. “Don’t answer it,” I began, “it’ll be—”

    Too late, he’d answered it. It wasn’t even on speaker-phone but we could all hear the shriek of: “Who the Hell are you?”

    “—Mum,” I finished somewhat redundantly: all Junior Drones are acquainted with that shriek of hers.

    Mutely the Crumpet held the instrument out to me. I looked frantically at Egg.

    “Ix-nay on the ocation-lay,” he said.

    Rather fortunately I was acquainted with this archaic form of verbal communication as practised by traditional public-school boys even in the New Millennium, so I nodded and said: “Stop shouting, Mum!” as I put it on speaker-phone—if I was going to suffer, so could they.

    “What? I’m not shouting!” she shouted. “Where in God’s name are you, darling?”

    “Staying with friends. Where are you?” I added hurriedly.

    “What? Oh—Kew. The shoot went wrong, I told them—” The rest of the sentence was drowned by the ecstatic if desperately muffled splutters from the three senior Junior Drones, male variety. Yet another Lady Patrizia F.-B. Nature epic from the genuine deepest jungle of Kew Gardens!

    “—So we’re shooting the damned plants at Kew,” she finished redundantly.

    “That’s good. Much safer than Central America,” I said incautiously.

    “What? No! Do you mean Belize? That was ages ago! No, it was filthy China; darling, you cannot believe their disgusting lavatory habits, words cannot describe—! In what was meant to be the best hotel, too! I ask you! I rang Jerry Dayton immediately and said ‘Jerry, dear, if ever a place was crying out for one of your nice clean hygienic hotels it’s bloody China! Why in God’s name don’t you build there?’ But he said their plumbing infrastructure is hopeless, and until they get it sorted he doesn’t intend to set toe in the place. So I said to Reggie, that was It, I,T. No more filthy Chinese hotels, thank you very much! He could get them to bring the Winnebago round immediately, because having hardly any room to move and sharing with Trisha with a decent chemical one is at least better than this unspeakable filth! So he said ‘Oh, Hell, is your loo like that, too?’ And we took off first thing in the morning, and cancelled our return booking and arranged to drive straight to the airport when we finished the shoot. Not that there was a panda to be seen, of course. I told Trisha there wouldn’t be, but of course she started to bawl—my dear, if there’s one thing I cannot abide it’s that watering-pot act of hers! So I sent her home: they’d given me a nice little Hong Kong girl who spoke English and did what she was told. But the bloody rhododendrons were hopeless, darling: either dripping wet or totally out of reach, and Josh broke his ankle, so that was that, and I said to Reggie, ‘It’s Kew or we cancel the whole damn’ show.’ So here I am, it’s the dreariest hotel, but getting here is such a bore, I swear the bloody London traffic gets worse every month! Reggie made the mistake of ordering the so-called roast beef and Yorkshire pudding: my dear! Nasty, pathetic little American-style squashed chewy pop-overs! So Trisha and I are just sticking to our Fortnum’s hamper.”

    The Egg at this choked: well tho he knew her ways, this was positively parodying herself.

    “But what I was going to say, darling—Go AWAY! I’m not DRESSED!—what I was going to say, have you seen that rather sweet outfit of mine, the white with the little red dots, a coat and dress—cotton or linen or something, anyway it’s a summer outfit, and I suddenly thought it’d go marvellously with the red things we’re filming, they’re the very shade!”

    Oops. “Isn’t it in your wardrobe at the flat?” I croaked. –That outfit was last seen in a command performance at a posh country-house weekend tennis party, selected by my escort, one Flossie (James) Nightingale, Hon. Sec., Junior Drones, as having the requisite look—i.e. ladylike, suited to the occasion and not likely to shock the stuffy senior barrister from the Chambers to which he aspired, who was the host. On my back: quite. Um… Ooh, help. It could just possibly be hanging in the wardrobe in John’s cottage. If the beastly terrorists hadn’t blown it sky-high by now.

    And the only reason I’d agreed to go to the dashed thing in the first place was because Flossie was an old chum and he needed to suck up to this particular barrister for the sake of his blessed career, and all the other females of his acquaintance would take an ell if invited to a weekend away with his gracious self.

    She was screaming again.

    “Well I don’t know where it is, Mum. And would it be appropriate for a rhododendron forest in China? I mean wouldn’t the public expect to see you in safari gear?”

    “They grow way up in the mountains,” noted the Bean, Resident Botanist.

    “Rubbish! My fans like me to be well-dressed: I’m famous for it!”

    Notorious for being flashily dressed, yes. But that outfit had had taste—Flossie of course had been quite right about it. One of the boyfriends must have chosen it for her. And paid for it, natch.

    “Well, um, get the producers to spring for something new. After all, it’s for their benefit for you to look decent.”

    “They’re so mean… No, I tell you what! I’m dining in town with Jerry Dayton tonight—”

    Omigod. My ears were burning and so were the Bean’s—literally, poor lad.

    “—So,” she decided happily, “that’s that!”

    “Mm,” I croaked. “Good show.”

    “Oh, talking of town, I know what I wanted to say—NO! Will you go AWAY! I’m not DRESSED! –WHAT? No, I do NOT want disgusting Full English! Go AWAY!—Darling, I heard the most extraordinary story: you remember Johnny Raice, don’t you? Gorgeous looks, of course, that soldierly bearing, I must say the figure is to die for, but ra-ther up-himself, I always thought. Well I bumped into Priscilla Brinsley-Pugh at Harrods—my dear, that place is so rundown these days, it’s those Arab owners, they haven’t a clue, one can never find a thing one wants—and she said she’d heard his flat had been blown up! But apparently he wasn’t in it. Well there was no funeral notice, and she saw his mother at a point-to-point and she hadn’t heard anything about it. But if it hasn’t been blown up, it seems an extraordinary story to have got around, don’t you think?”

    I looked helplessly at the Egg. He shook his head firmly.

    “It—it does seem odd, Mum,” I managed.

    “So you haven’t heard anything?”

    “No,” I croaked.

    “Oh. I sort of thought those odd little friends of yours knew him… Something to do with his horse, was it? Well never mind. But if it is true, it’s awfully odd! I mean, in the centre of London?”

    At this point the Bean took a deep breath, grabbed the phone and said briskly: “Mum, stop talking garbage. Mel doesn’t get the dumb London gossip that hags like Mrs B.-P. pick up, how on earth would she know anything about it?”

    “Is that you, Michael? How are you, darling? –YES! I’m COMING, dammit! –Sorry, darling, must rush! Big kiss and hug!”

    In the ringing silence which followed, we all looked at one another limply.

    Eventually the Crumpet offered weakly: “Well if that phone didn’t need charging before, it will now. What’s the other one for, Bean?”

    He scowled. “In case.”

    “In case one of your beleaguered pals takes the initial plasticised metallic abortion off you, is this?” enquired the Egg. “Right!” he pocketed it.

    “Pray accept a medal, Hon. Chairperson,” said Crumpy.

    “Accepted with thanks, Mr Lamont. –All right, Bean, turn this pink thing off, will you?”

    He scowled but he fiddled, and apparently succeeded. So the Egg pocketed it, too. “Have a gorilla,” he said, passing Bean’s original phone to Crumpy.

    “Thanks, old man. If it rings I’ll just ignore it, shall I?”

    “That’s the ticket! –You all right, Mel?” the Egg added on a carefully casual note.

    I was about to say of course I was, but found myself blurting like an idiot: “She cuh-called him Johnny! And he’s nuh-not up-himself!” And bursting into tears.

    Crumpy was nearest, so he put his arm round me, but clearly couldn’t think of anything to say. So the Bean, astonishingly, weighed in with: “Buck up, Mel. You know Mum’s the frightful sort that calls every chap by a bloody pet name, whether she knows him or not. Just like that ghastly neighbour of Egg’s people.”

    “Ma Berrington—yes,” the Egg agreed with a shudder in his voice.

    “Mm,” I agreed, sniffing.

    “Better pop off to bed, Mel,” said Crumpy kindly.

    “Mm, I think I will,” I agreed, going slowly over to the door. As I closed it I heard Bean saying viciously: “Trust bloody Mum! I could kill her!”

    And the Egg replying: “One admits the soft impeachment, old chap. Personally I’m rather fed up with John, myself. If he wanted Mel, and he damn well did know she was keen, why the Hell couldn’t he have had the sense to turn that bloody posting down and hold out for a desk job?”

    He had a point, I decided, sniffing hard. But John wouldn’t have been my Colonel if he hadn’t put Country and Duty and stuff first, would he? …Blast the horrid old MOD, why couldn’t they have let me be with him, wherever it was they’d hidden him away? And—and was he even getting enough fresh air and exercise?

    Well bother!

    Well the good old people carrier—usually used for such tasks as collecting and delivering bunches of pickers in the season, or taking “the boys” from the winery’s various sheds, hangars, etcetera, to the pub for various celebrations: staff birthdays, that sort of thing—as I say, the good old vehicle took us safely and rapidly up to Renmark in the Riverland. Tho not without the cosily helpful Mrs Janine Stuart’s having imparted several gruesome stories, that we didn’t actually want to hear, about various horrific accidents that had occurred on the Something Highway which we had to take. These all turned out to have taken place at dead of night, of course, and frequently to have involved intoxication on the part of one or more drivers, and/or large lorries booming over from “interstate” with exhausted drivers hyped up on uppers, so why we needed to know on a sparkling blue summer’s day was beyond us. As the annoyed Egg noted, once the innocently beaming dame had toddled off. –All right, Bean, technically not yet their summer, we know, but did this explain why there was a report on the local News that the SA grain harvest had been safely gathered in? (Unfortunately it did, and it all got far too bally agricultural and meteorological, but we’d long since stopped listening.)

    Duck’s uncle, known as Mac, presumably for his surname, Macdonald (Duck’s mum’s brother, yes), was a tall, thin, amiable character with a wide grin on his very tanned face and silvering, naturally curly hair clipped short just like his nephew’s. He took charge of me immediately, saying in a countryman’s slow drawl: “You better stick with me, Mel, ya don’t wanna let him get ’is mitts on ya; thinks ’e’s God’s gift.” Yes well one had already gathered that, of course, but nevertheless I was nothing loath: Mac was evidently a very nice man. And he smelled wonderful! Well, his own warm smell, yes, mixed with a tangy, citrusy perfume, doubtless the result of working with oranges all his life! He was dressed in the inevitable jeans and casual shirt, with not a straw cowboy hat, but a wide-brimmed felt hat, which his nephew eyed sourly, supposing: “Been shopping, have ya, Mac? R.M. Williams in town, was it?” To which Mac drawled easily: “Aw—somethink like that. Got new boots, too, while I was at it. Wouldn’t wanna let you down in front of yer English mates, would I?” –Wink at the lads.

    Duck glared at the boots in Q., what time I cried: “Ooh, aren’t they smart!”

    Mac smirked. “Thanks, pet. Glad ya like ’em. –Hey, I’ll be the belle of the ball at the next B&S hop, won’t I?”

    “Yeah right,” returned his nephew sourly. “You aren’t a bachelor, ya drongo, you’re divorced.”

    “Aw, shit, doesn’t that count?” he drawled.

    “I’m sure it does!” I said quickly. “But what is a B&S ball, exactly?”

    “Bachelors’ and spinsters’,” replied Mac simply. “So ya don’t have them in England, then?”

    “I don’t think so!” said Egg with his pleasant laugh.

    “Nah, well, most of them are only country hops,” the citrus grower revealed, with his slow smile. “Wouldn’t have a bar of the great big do they put on every year. Nah… All the trendies from Adelaide turn up for that. Gallons of booze, and they all bring their flamin’ drugs, it’s not just pot, by no means. They sniff stuff as well, or it’s them pills all the kids are into these days—now, whaddis that, that they call them pop concerts they have these days?” he asked his nephew. “With the whatsernames… Not nosh pits, is it?”

    “Raves, and it’s mosh pits, ya know that perfectly well!” he replied in annoyed tones.

    Mac’s thin, tanned face remained unmoved. “Aw, ye-ah: them,” he drawled. Then he winked, and the boys, taken by surprise, all gave startled guffaws.

    “Yeah, well…” he concluded, his arm tightening round me. “Ya gotta laugh, eh?”

    “Of course!” I agreed eagerly.

    And with that we were off on a tour of the orchards. Tho with the warning that the oranges’ and mandarines’ season was over: the picking was done. Well a few still on the trees, that the pickers had missed. Still some limes to go, tho.

    “Limes as well oranges and mandarines?” croaked Crumpy.

    “Eh? Yeah, sure. And a few lemons. Lessee…” Mac counted on his fingers and beamed at him. “Fourteen. Yeah: we grow fourteen varieties of citrus fruit, all up. See…” Kindly he broke it down for him.

    “Gosh!” said the Crumpet in awe.

    “Yeah. Well the bulk of the South Australian lemons aren’t grown here in the Riverland, but we always manage to sell them.”

    “And whereabouts is your processing plant, sir?” asked Trelawney eagerly.

    “Heck, Teddy, make it ‘Mac’, oke?” he drawled. “Ya got the wrong end of the stick there: see, we’re just growers. Our fruit goes to the big packers, over at Loxton.”

    Trelawney’s face fell. “Oh,” he said sadly. “So it’s just an orchard, really.”

    “Yeah, sure.”

    “But it’s lovely!” I cried. “Just smell it!”

    “Mmm, super!” Bean Minor agreed. “I say, it must be really something when the trees are in bloom!”

    “Well yeah,” the orchardist owned. “None of yer fancy bottled scent needed round here. M&D Orchards are self-scented, ya see.”

    “Of course,” said Egg, smiling. “You must be the M in the name, presumably? –Yes. But who’s D, may I ask?”

    I looked up nervously at Mac; what if it had been the divorced wife? –Phew! No, it was his cousin, Si Drake.

    “Me other uncle,” Drake explained.

    “Yeah. When ’e’s here,” noted Mac drily. “He’s gone off on what he calls a fact-finding mission: read some barmy thing about, uh, orange flower water—think it was… Yeah, orange flower water. He reckons they bottle it in Turkey, ya see. Well don’t look at me, that’s what he said. He reckons,” he said heavily, “that Turkey’s a lot safer than the rest of the Middle East and he’ll be okay there.”

    “Um, yeah, I do know some people that went on holiday there: great beaches. They said it was bonzer,” put in Duck on an uneasy note.

    Mac sniffed. “We got beaches in Oz, haven’t we? We-ell…” He scratched his chin in the exact same gesture Duck often used. “That’s where’s he’s gone. I did point out that the orange blossoms are what we get the oranges from, the nit, and if we want a decent harvest, we don't wanna waste them on trying out some fancy scented stuff that ten to one no-one here’ll want to buy. Only see, he’d got the bit between his teeth by then…”

    I’d been mulling it over and trying to translate it in my head. “Oh!” I cried. “Of course! It’s eau de fleurs d’oranger!”

    “It would be,” said Bean, staring at me.

    “No, you idiot!” cried Bean Minor. “I know what she means! Those delicious little cakes Marthe made once! Little crescent shapes, remember?”

    “That’s right!” I agreed. “Weren’t they gorgeous? Um, but Grannie said they were Arab food and wouldn’t let her make them again,” I remembered sadly.

    “No, it was an awful pity. But, um, I think it’d be difficult to make a profit from it, Mac. Marthe only used a few drops for a whole batch of the little cakes. You’d need a huge market to make it worthwhile,” the minor legume informed him.

    “That’s what I thought. Aw, well, he’s always got some bee in ’is bonnet… And at least this time he doesn’t want us to spend megabucks on some giant Yank picking machine.”

    Er… Those of us who’d thought that the Americans had giant truckfuls of badly-paid Mexican and Guatemalan pickers to do that job just held our peace.

     So we strolled around the wonderful orchard, that seemed to stretch for miles, and Mac found some juicy big oranges for us, right off the trees—nah, just chuck the peel on the ground, it’s all compost! Oh, wow! Nothing from a shop came close!

    “They’re so aromatic! And sweet!” I gasped.

    Mac smirked. “Nothing like fresh fruit straight off the tree, eh? Well we keep some for ourselves, of course, and freeze a bit of juice: seemed barmy not to. And Si’s wife, she does marmalade and candied peel; now that’s nice, I reckon you’d like that, Mel.”

    Okay, I’d like that. And we adjourned to the roomy farmhouse, where Si’s wife—Noni—turned out to be a bustling, cheery woman in her fifties who got us settled on the wide, shady verandah with big glasses of what she called “citrus punch, but non-alcoholic”, which seemed to consist of soda water plus a mixture of juices—certainly the expert palate of Bean Minor immediately discerned orange and lime, and he thought mandarine, therein—and bustled off to get us lunch: “Nonsense, I won’t hear of you going in to town! It's not often we have guests for lunch!”

    —Quiche and salads, just like Aunty Joyce’s! Followed by a huge orange cake, double-tiered—is that the word? Well two enormous layers of cake, sandwiched with whipped cream, the whole flavoured with…

    “Sweet orange peel!” beamed Bean Minor.

    “That’s right, dear: our Navels! Fancy you spotting that! The cake’s got the juice in it too, of course.”

    “Yes, I can taste it,” he replied seriously.

    Oops: the kindly, tolerant smile indicated she didn’t believe a word of that, but never mind, everyone was happy. Very happy, actually. It was one of the best English-style cakes I had ever eaten. Undoubtedly Marthe could make it, if given the recipe, but would Grannie ever let her? No, the silly old bat. English. Even worse than Arab.

    Mac thought we hadn’t had a proper look at his mandarine trees, so after lunch we set off round the orchards again. He also thought I could ride with him on his mini-tractor. Certain siblings sighed resignedly as he helped me onto it and got on behind me, and Duck awarded us a sour look, but I ignored the lot of them. He was a lovely man, and why shouldn’t I ride, necessarily very close, on his baby tractor with him? Er—yes. With him and his hard-on, it dawned as we progressed slowly over the grassy bits between the trees, but never mind, it wasn’t the first time by any means! Males had been offering me rides on their laps or on their unlikely vehicles, not to say in their more conventional vehicles, ever since I was… Er, yes. Some of them more than old enough to know better, too. In fact I had come to the conclusion that some of them never did know better.

    And so Mac and I rode off happily in the sun, he clasping me very tightly round the waist with one wiry arm while he steered with the other…

    “Ooh, look!” I gasped, as a tree with large, juicy glowing globes amongst the glossy green leaves was discovered.

    “Yeah, few left on this one,” he drawled. So I ate a lovely sweet mandarine straight from the tree… “Mmm! Delicious! So sweet!” I smiled.

    “Yeah? Makes two of ya, then, pet,” he replied, grinning like anything.

    Rather unfortunately I responded with a loud giggle and: “Stop it!” in the tone that kind of contradicts the semantic import of the sentence, so to speak, just as Bean and Duck came up to us.

    “Cut that out, Mel,” sighed my sibling. “Look out, Mac, she’ll encourage you if you give her the slightest chance, and she’ll mean nothing by it!”

    “Never thought she would, ya nong,” he replied affably.

    “No,” I agreed, smiling warmly at him. “—You are an idiot, Bean. Just accept that the world’s made of two sexes!”

    Well take it for all in all it was a completely jolly day! And with grateful thanks to Mac and Noni, and also to Duck for bringing us, we set off back to Silvercreek. Duck somewhat mollified, I think, by my electing to sit beside him in the front. At least, judging by the leg-squeezing he managed to fit in, in between negotiating the highway, he was mollified, not to say possibly rather more encouraged than one had intended. Oh well!

    We finally arrived back in time for a late dinner laden with oranges, juice, a whole cake, bags of candied peel and jars and jars of marmalade from the generous Mac and Noni. Which were greeted by Greg with: “Crikey! Well we won’t have to buy marmalade for the next year or so, that’s for sure. You sure they could spare all this, Duck?”

    “Yeah, they got cupboards full of it. And one of the freezers is full of chopped-up ones waiting for her to make more marmalade, too. Only she reckons this is the best, it’s got the strips of peel, see? The frozen stuff, it goes mushy, she reckons. Still tastes good, tho!” he grinned.

    “Of course!” I agreed. “It’s made from beautiful fruit off their very own trees! –There were still some oranges and mandarines on the trees, Greg, and you should have tasted them! They were so sweet and aromatic! Unbelievable!”

    “Yeah, everything’s best straight off the tree or out of the garden, pet,” he said tolerantly. “You’d be used to city living, in England, wouldja?”

    “Well in England pretty much, yes, and partly in France, we were in Paris for a while, but during the COVID lockdowns we had plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables—no oranges, tho, only apples and plums—because we were at the Château LeBec.”

    “With Grannie,” put in Bean Minor with a shudder.

    “Yeah,” Bean agreed sourly. “She won’t listen to anything, Greg, she doesn’t even take any notice of Oncle Fernand!”

    “So ya said, Michael,” he agreed, patting him kindly on the shoulder. “So what’s gonna happen when them barrels and tanks aren’t replaced?”

    Bean’s mouth tightened. “I’d say a whole year’s vintage will have to be scrapped and production will grind to a complete halt.”

    “Jesus!” gasped Duck. “Ya mean it’s that bad? With a grand cru de Bourgogne?”

    “Yes,” Bean and Bean Minor confirmed bitterly.

    “Yes,” I agreed. “Last time that Oncle Fernand tried to point out that some of the old oak barrels will simply have to be replaced, and you can still get very decent ones—from Spain, I think—she screamed at him and accused him of trying to rob her blind.”

    “Which is ridiculous,” Bean pointed out heavily, “because actually he’s the major shareholder in the firm, not her.”

    “Eh?” groped the burly vineyard owner.

    “Yes,” he confirmed. “And he owns the château, but that’s separate. We thought it was— I’ve forgotten the dashed English word! What is it, Mel? Like in that English novel you and Mireille both liked when we were with the cousins in Paris. Um, I think you said there was a very funny curé in it. Tante Louise wanted to try it but the English was too hard for her: that one.”

    Er… Oh! It must have been Pride and Prejudice. Help, it seemed a lifetime ago, yet it was only back in… Well, before the dashed pandemic struck. Um, the 2018-2019 academic year, I think. Mireille was reading English and I was reading French so we kind of helped each other. If one says “reading” when it’s not Oxbridge?

    “Entailed,” I supplied.

    “Yes,” Bean agreed: “that’s it. Only we were wrong: they don’t have that in France. But the château and the business have come down in the male line for generations. When Grannie’s father died she mainly got money and I think some jewellery, and only a few shares in the business. Her brother, Oncle Fernand’s father, got the château as well as most of the shares in the wine business. Oncle Fernand was an only child, he inherited the lot. So strictly speaking she hasn’t got any say in what happens to the château, but that doesn’t stop her making all the decisions about it. And she does her best to make all the decisions about the business, too.”

    “Oncle Fernand’s terrified of her, he doesn’t dare to stand out against her—well not in anything she's likely to find out about,” added Bean Minor.

    “Ri-ight,” said Greg slowly. “Uh—stop me if it’s a rude question, but how old is this Grannie of yours?”

    “Eighty-six—nearly eighty-seven by now,” Bean reported. “Still hale and hearty, tho.”

    “Yes. Skinny as a rake and fit as a flea,” said Bean Minor in disgusted tones. “She could last another ten years. We knew we’d never get the chance to learn anything new if we stayed on at Château LeBec: that’s why we decided to come out here, really.”

    “Well ya would!” said Duck strongly.

    “Too right,” Greg agreed. “If I’ve got this right, your uncle can leave his holding in the business to anyone, can he?”

    The Bean nodded. “That’s right.”

    “So has he got any kids?”

    “Yes, beastly Gérard,” said Bean Minor.

    “He’s a playboy, Greg,” put in Crumpy helpfully at this point. “Spends his time skiing in Switzerland in the winter and partying with the European jet-set the rest of the year.”

    ‘Yes,” Trelawney agreed unexpectedly. “When we were at School we saw a snap of him in a mag. with a minor Royal. He’s a complete parasite.”

    “That’s the word!” I agreed. “He gets a regular income from the vineyard. It’s somehow tied up, but I don’t know the English words.”

    “It sounded to me like a trust fund, Mel,” said Egg. “Set up by his grandfather.”

    “Right,” the Bean agreed. “The income comes indirectly from the vineyard, of course.”

    “You mean there’s shares in the vineyard kind of tied up for him?” asked Greg.

    “Yes, if I’ve got the right end of the stick,” Egg replied, looking at the Bean.

    “Yes, that is right,” he confirmed glumly. “His grandfather did it before he was even born—that is, if he was going to be a boy. Set aside a lump sum plus a certain number of shares. He can’t touch the capital or sell the shares but he gets the income.”

    “That’ll go, then, if Château LeBec goes under,” noted Duck.

    “One consolation,” Bean agreed sourly. “But if you’re wondering if Oncle Fernand’s going to leave the business to him, Greg, he isn’t. He showed us his will: Gérard gets the château and enough to maintain it, but the business will come to Tommy and me.”

    Greg and Duck were now exchanging uneasy glances.

    “Yeah, if there’s anything left to leave,” Bean admitted sourly.

    Egg was looking at Greg’s face. “We all realise that Fernand’s a weak-minded, lily-livered coward, Greg, but he genuinely loves the business.”

    “And the terroir,” said Bean Minor.

    “Yuh—uh, yeah, Tommy: think that’d go without saying,” the owner of Silvercreek noted. “But that still doesn’t give him the guts to stand up to your Grannie, eh?”

    Duck made a face. “S’pose it sounds pretty off to say so, but let’s hope the old bird drops off the twig real soon, then, and Château LeBec can survive!”

    “And so say all of us!” the Egg and the Crumpet declared feelingly.

    “Hear, hear!” Bean, Bean Minor, Trelawney and I agreed.

    And with that Greg heaved himself up, noting that this rated a couple of bottles of a decent year, and we all settled down to our belated dinner round the big kitchen table. Cold ham “off the bone” and a huge bowl of potato salad left for us by Janine S. The Silvercreek Reserve Bin 2004 washed it down rather well.

    And as the cake from Noni Drake of course wouldn’t keep we had that for  dessert. It was another orange cake, but different from the one we’d had at lunchtime. It tasted faintly spicy: of cinnamon, according to Bean Minor. At this point Duck got up and investigated the kitchen cupboards, found where Mrs S. kept the spices, located the jar labelled “Cinnamon” and sniffed it.

    “Well?” asked Greg, poker-face.

    “Yeah, that’s it,” the winemaker confirmed.

    “’Course!” chirped Trelawney—possibly it was because he hadn’t been brought up on Burgundy like some present that that wine had gone to his head so fast. “The jolly old palate never misses! Here’s to it!”

    “To what, old man?” asked the Crumpet weakly.

    “To South Australia, of course! Smashing wine and olives and oranges! And—and marmalade and sunshine in November! And perdition to horrid old Grannie!’ he ended—a trifle unfortunately, but one approved the sentiment.

    “Hear, hear!” Greg and Duck agreed, grinning.

    “Abso-bally-lutely!” said Crumpy fervently, raising his glass.

    “I’ll drink to that!” the Egg grinned, as Greg considerately topped up his tipple.

    Well possibly a decent Shiraz would not be at its absolute best on top of an aromatic orange cake lightly enhanced with cinnamon. But oddly enough no-one objected. And we all drank the toast.

    “To South Australia! Wine and olives and oranges!”

Next chapter:

https://theeggandfriendsdownunder-anovel.blogspot.com/2026/05/helping-out.html