by G S Johnston
‘These are extreme conditions. No-one can see in this fog. You made decisions you thought were just.’
Just decisions … Amelia could barely scrape up the meaning of these words.
‘With you, Ilaria smiles,’ Amelia said. ‘I’ve even heard her laugh.’ Sister Helen couldn’t refute this. An idea came to Amelia. Although she fought it, it glimmered as an answer. ‘Would you take her?’
Sister Helen sat back. ‘I’m not sure she should be separated from you.’
‘Could she go with you, just for a week, and see how she fares?’
Sister Helen focused on the middle distance, considering this proposal. ‘We run a boarding school. She could stay with us. But I’m still not sure—’
‘If she’s unhappier, if that’s possible, she can come back here.’
‘But you’ll miss her.’
‘I miss her now. But my needs are nothing to hers.’
Sister Helen breathed out. ‘I’ll speak with the camp authorities. And the school. I can’t promise anything.’
‘She whimpers when she sees the barbed wire. She must go from here.’
The following week, Sister Helen took Amelia aside and told her she and Father Owen had spoken with the school and they’d agreed to take Ilaria. And she had permission from the camp. It just needed Amelia to sign some papers, and it could be done. Amelia breathed in, held her breath to tighten her resolve. Although Ilaria would find the separation distressing, it could only be better for the child to be away from that infernal place. Amelia fought back the tears. She would miss her, as she did Italo and the boys. But she would worry less for Ilaria; in her absence, she would be safer.
She smiled when she told Ilaria she was going to live with Sister Helen for a week at the boarding school. Ilaria glared at her, that stony, blank expression that had become her state. Then she smiled, small, just a lift to the edges of her lips.
Her hand slipped from Amelia’s. She walked away, holding the fringes of Sister Helen’s cloak. She didn’t look back, not once, leaving Amelia heartbroken but resolved. She remained watching, sorry she’d not return, pleased she’d gone, until there was nothing left to see. Maria came to her side.
‘I’m burning,’ Amelia said. Despite the settling cool of the evening, she pulled at her grey scarf until it came free of her neck. ‘No tears will put out the flame. If only …’
If only what? What else could she have done?
They stood together, side by side, for over an hour. Maria said nothing, her silent presence everything Amelia needed.
And then the evening’s cold descended and Maria said the evening meal would soon be served, and they should prepare themselves.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The days without Ilaria were drained and drawn long. Amelia forced herself to be busy. As they cleaned the camp, helped in the kitchen, Maria assured her she’d made the right decision.
‘The hardest decision for a woman,’ Maria said. ‘But the child had lost her light. She’ll find it again there.’
In the next fortnight, Amelia had her appeal before the advisory board. This gave her much to think about, something to work for, and something more to fear. It was wrong to stake too much hope on release, but stories circulated of people who’d secured their release one way or another. Surely, she had good cause – a child, a farm, a business – but she’d been labelled a threat to the country’s security, and this opinion would take something to change.
At the appeal, she’d have no legal representation. Her solicitor in Babinda had sent some arguments with some legal weight. She’d written back for clarification of points, but the mail was slow. Of course, when it did finally arrive, it had been opened, which no doubt slowed the progress and alerted the authorities to her arguments. This surveillance prompted even further feelings of alienation, more disorientating than the camp itself. But that was the intention. Despite all her requests, no businessmen from Babinda had vouched for her good character.
And she’d wake in the night and strain her ears for Ilaria’s breathing. But there was nothing. How could she give up her child? Was she reckless? No. This was the best she could do.
Italo wrote to her at least once a fortnight, always a different hand. He’d been concerned for Ilaria in the camp and thought Amelia had made the right decision. It would be hard for Amelia, but Ilaria would be safer. He made no mention of himself, of how he was keeping, even when she wrote back asking explicitly.
When a week was over, Sister Helen brought Ilaria to the camp. She was still quiet and sullen, but Sister assured Amelia she’d been livelier during the week.
‘She’s even started to speak a little,’ Sister said. ‘She knows a lot more than she lets on.’
Amelia had to decide. The child looked better, brighter, the dark circles gone from her eyes. And Sister reported she was eating well, which was obvious in her ruddy cheeks. She and Ilaria walked the grounds in silence, although Ilaria had to be coaxed from Sister’s side.
‘Do you like living with Sister Helen?’ Amelia said, once they were away from her.
But the sullen veil had slipped over Ilaria again, and she wouldn’t be drawn on her feelings.
‘Where do you sleep?’ Amelia said, attempting a more general discussion.
‘With the others,’ Ilaria said.
‘Are they nice girls?’
‘Their parents don’t want them.’
Amelia breathed in. The child had learnt implication and blame.
‘Can we go back to Sister Helen?’ Ilaria said.
Amelia kept her gaze for some moments. What could she say? Her position was far too complicated to justify to Ilaria. Would she be safe? Marta had died away from her. Could Amelia protect her in this place? She was nearly at an age for school. The nuns would school her and, most importantly, in English. She nodded, and Ilaria turned and skipped away to Sister Helen, which said all that needed to be said.
‘Then it’s decided,’ Amelia said to Sister Helen. ‘She’ll stay with you.’
‘I’ll pray to Our Lady to watch over her.’
‘Don’t bring her here again. It upsets her.’
‘But you’ll miss her …’
A knife slid into Amelia’s heart. Sister Helen was a good soul. Amelia was right to trust her. Something Italo had said came back to her.
‘Until I leave this place,’ she said. ‘I’ve ceased to exist. I’m just a number, QF 8788.’
Now it was Amelia’s turn to walk away, not to look back, to be casual, as if it were Ilaria’s first day of school. How could steps, so common in a day, be so heavy?
The morning of her appeal, she received a letter from Flavio. She ripped it open, apprehensive for news of the farm, hopeful of something good. They were preparing for the harvest, but he’d been unable to secure men to cut the crop. On the street in the village, Fergus Kelly had given an impassioned speech about boycotting any work on the Italian-owned farms to protest the enemy aliens’ crimes.
At first Flavio had doubted such a campaign would have any effect; ultimately, the canecutters had to work to earn a living, and there were so many Italian-owned farms that if they boycotted them all they’d not be working. The mill had accepted his booking unequivocally for mid-November, but when he tried to engage cutters, they turned away in droves. He had no idea how he’d get the crop from the field to the mill.
She looked from the letter. It was dated the thirteenth of October, 1942. It was now the tenth of November, the letter almost a month old. The agitation lodged in her throat. It was only a few days before the cane was due at the mill. Had Flavio found men? She had no way of finding out. If he hadn’t, men would come onto their land and harvest the crop, take it to the mill and claim it as their own.
They would lose another year’s income, which would make their lives impossible, unable to continue the mortgage payments. The pressure built in her. She wrote a quick letter back to him, encouraged him not to give up and that a solution could be found. But she k
new the letter was useless. By the time it arrived, all would be laid to rest. But the boy must feel abandoned and needed some words of support in whatever dire situation engulfed him.
There was a long chain of appeals, many desperate women trying to find a way home. She was the last in the day, ushered in by an armed guard as another woman left in tears. Two long desks faced each other, a judge and two other official men. Another man, the stenographer, sat to the right. She arranged her papers and dictionary in front of her. She breathed deeply to keep the spasm in her heart at bay.
It began in a cordial manner – they asked of her life, her family. Then the judge asked if she had anything to say.
‘I am innocent,’ she said.
They asked so many questions, of her allegiances, why they’d travelled to Italy, what they’d done there, why she’d wanted to start an Italian school, what she had been signalling from the house’s tower at night to the Japanese. What did she speak of when she took food to the poor? Over and over and over, they recounted the details of her crimes, hopping from one to the other in no seemly order, hoping, no doubt, to muddle her. Everything was typed by the clerk, the machine pounding into the small silences between their demands and her responses. And as they talked at her, she realised something as plain and simple as day and night.
Fergus Kelly had been watching her.
It was a habit he’d begun so many years ago and couldn’t cease. But whereas once it was driven by desire, now it was fuelled by hate. She’d refused him, denied him, injured him. He would think her his wife, that he was a cuckold. For years, he’d not betrayed her because he sought to destroy her. He’d played this game far better than her. She was the victim of a jealous lover and greed and spite. He’d turned her over to the authorities.
‘Would I be able to speak?’ she said.
The judge looked at her. In the void, the banging typist ground to a halt.
‘I want to show you something,’ Amelia said.
After some seconds, he nodded and she moved towards him. She flicked through the leaves of her dictionary, the fluttering pages stopping in the centre. From between the pages, she pulled two photographs, stored there, far from Italo’s eyes.
She presented them. He glared over the rim of his glasses at the first. It was Flavio, standing in front of a newly planted field. It was early evening. He was stripped to the waist, smiling, no shyness of the camera. Flavio’s happiness glowed. She’d taken it when the fields were planted after Italo’s arrest, after the fire. She sent a copy to Italo as pleasing proof the work was done.
No comment flickered over the judge’s face, no words. He looked at the second photograph. It was Fergus, smiling and falling from the back of a mule in Egypt.
‘Since my husband’s arrest, we’ve suffered great deprivation. We lost the major part of a crop to a fire that even the police agreed had been deliberately lit. Can you imagine the strain on our finances?’
His face remained steel.
‘Look at these two photographs,’ she said.
The judge squinted at the two images. ‘What of them? I see no connection.’
‘This is my son.’ She motioned to the one on the judge’s left. ‘The older photograph is of Fergus Kelly. Oisin, his father, owns the property next to ours. My husband bought our land from him.’ She breathed in deeply, the typist pounding. ‘Fergus wants our land back. Inch by inch, he’s instigated this. He burnt the crop. But we survived. He has misconstrued my actions. I was working, trying to save the farm. Perhaps my pages moved in front of the lamp, causing the light to flutter, but there was no signal. I had no time to signal to the Japanese. But he was watching me. He’s reported the light in my window at three in the morning. And in the last few weeks, he has incited the men not to harvest our crop. This morning, I’ve had a letter. In the next few days, when the crop isn’t harvested, he’ll come onto the land and take it. Without a crop, the bank will close on the mortgage. Then the bank will appoint a farm manager, and no doubt it will be him and—’
‘I fail to see—’
‘Do you see some resemblance between these two photographs?’
The judge glared at her and then narrowed his eyes, looked from one photograph to the other and then back to the other. He nodded.
‘Soon after I arrived in Australia,’ Amelia said. ‘After I’d married Italo, Fergus Kelly was my lover. Flavio was conceived with Fergus in the last weeks of 1920. He was born in September 1921.’
The stenographer’s rhythm broke, a small silence. The judge, an old man who she’d wager couldn’t remember passion, glared at her.
‘Maria Pastore,’ she said, ‘who is also held here, will vouch for this story. Fergus Kelly seeks revenge, means to have our land. This is the real reason I’m here.’
The judge looked again from one photograph to the next.
‘These are serious allegations,’ he said. ‘What proof do you have?’
‘Just the photographs. And with this confession, I’ve destroyed what shreds of honour I have left. Your typist has written it all. It’s on the record. I’m a whore.’
Amelia turned away.
‘Stay there,’ the judge said. He rang a bell. ‘Bring Maria Pastore.’
He put the photographs together and handed them back to her. He looked at his notes, asked if there were any further questions from the other men who sat on the bench. Amelia stood, so close to these men she could hear them exhale. But no-one looked at her.
‘When Maria Pastore enters the room, you’ll look at me, not at her. Do you understand?’
Amelia nodded.
The wall clock tick-tocked. She looked at her feet. She counted the seconds, tried to bring them to minutes, but she lost count of the reckoning when she heard the door behind her open. Two sets of steps.
‘Are you Maria Pastore?’
‘I am.’
It was Maria’s voice.
‘Who is the father of Flavio Amedeo?’
She heard Maria’s breath catch. And then there was nothing. No sign of breathing.
‘Do you not have an answer?’
Again there was silence, and the pound of the typist made way to the tick of the clock and the beat of her heart.
‘What is the purpose of such a question?’ Maria said.
‘Just answer it.’
There was a drawn silence. ‘Italo Amedeo.’
Amelia stared at her feet. She couldn’t meet the judge’s eye.
‘Thank you,’ the judge said.
She heard Maria taken from the room. The judge told her to return to her seat, but she couldn’t. He advised her, sarcasm lacing his tone, all comments would be taken into consideration. The men stood to leave as she still stood before them. They straightened their papers, picked them up and filed from the room.
The typist packed away his equipment. She couldn’t take back the pages. He looked at her then lowered his eyes and left.
She’d said aloud something she’d held within her heart for over twenty years. It was over. Her darkest secret told, written and soon to be filed away. But there was no sense of having lightened a burden.
Despite Maria’s profuse, profound and often repeated apologies, which she accepted, in the coming months Amelia distanced herself from her and the other Italians in the concentration camp. She wanted nothing to do with them, nothing to do with her compatriots, nothing to do with the homeland or her chosen land. The reasons for such isolation were nebulous, complex and included embarrassment at her confession. But she found solace from her anxiety in letters, in Gertrude’s flowers, and in reading.
The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine.
Never had she read something so profound, written by an Irishman of English.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
In July 1943, almost a year after Amelia’s failed attempt to be released, after many First Holy Communions in the camp’s makeshift church, through births and deaths, the Allied forces invaded Sicily. The beginning of the e
nd had begun. The forces inched their way through the south of Italy, insistently further north towards Rome.
In the camp, accurate information was hard to obtain, but by the end of July, the internees had heard the king of Italy had arrested Mussolini. For Amelia, this news had a hint of betrayal; Italy had imprisoned its saviour. Bittersweet. This thought caught her by surprise, and she wondered at herself and how she could still think such a thing. Her support of Mussolini had placed her in a concentration camp. But above this, she felt an optimism; the tide of Italy’s involvement in the war was changing. Perhaps she could see the end of it. She cared not for right or wrong. She wanted peace and to return to her home.
On the eighth of September, Italy surrendered to the Allied forces. The Italians in the camp were no longer the enemies of Australia. The news sent waves of speculation crashing through the camp: What would happen? Would they be released? Amelia looked at these women, drawn to exhaustion and nervous collapse by months of inactivity and worry. It almost made her laugh; what threat had they posed? Yet they weren’t free.
The camp had reports great confusion followed Italy’s surrender. Germany invaded, freeing Mussolini, who then fled to the north. Though she’d written many letters to her family, they remained unanswered, not a single word about them for over two years. Now their village was under German control, and she prayed they would go unnoticed.
At the morning rollcall on the twenty-sixth of November, 1943, there was no rollcall. The Italian women were told they were free to leave. Amelia felt confused, as if she’d misheard, except that the women looked at one another, their faces full of blighted wonder. It must be true. They were free to leave.
Fearing the authorities may change their minds, the women returned to their huts and pitched their few belongings into whatever cases they had. Amelia had little worth taking, all in one portmanteau. She gave back the jam tin of common yellow daisies to Gertrude, who was still an enemy and wouldn’t be released.
