The Last Double Sunrise

by Peter Yeldham

  “Remember I said her mum is the real guvnor in this family?” Gianni reminded Carlo.

  “I remember,” said Carlo. “You told me you always do what she says, and it seems to have turned out nicely.”

  “It certainly has,” his friend agreed, and looking at Julia he murmured, “She’s truly lovely. I hope it turns out as well for you.”

  They drove away conscious they had just forty-eight more hours before she had to leave. It would be six months before he’d see her again.

  Carlo was almost tempted to plead for a sabbatical week or even a weekend so he could travel with her, but knew it was impossible. Major Morton was a friend and lenient, but there were limits. Six long months. He tried not to think about it. Six bloody months, surrounded by all those bloody air force pilots.

  Now it was the last day, and their pact of friendship was becoming too difficult for him to sustain. He was in love, he desperately wanted to tell her, but did his best to maintain the pact and his silence. Aware of this, Julia searched for topics of conversation but it felt like meaningless chatter as they tried to fill in the hours of that final day. They passed a small vineyard, where they stopped to watch rows of vines being tended.

  “Does it make you homesick?” she asked.

  “Not a bit. Just sorry I worked so hard trying to please him. He sold our place soon after we left Mum thinks, or so she said in her last letter. He went to work for Mussolini and I feel he’d been doing that for a long time. That’s why I think that newspaper story was true.”

  “But unfair. Whatever he did for Mussolini has nothing to do with you. Papers here shouldn’t have published it. Ever since that ban on your painting people have come to like you and call you the POW Artist. In my opinion the newspapers make popular people a target. It’s just crappy journalism.”

  He put his arm around her as they walked from the vineyard to where the car was parked in the shade. “I particularly love you when you get cross.”

  “We weren’t going to talk of love so soon.”

  “My darling, the Italian word for love is amore, and we have to stop this. We only have today then I won’t see you for six months. I can’t bear this game of being friends any more, or the thought of losing you.”

  She was silent for a moment, then said, “There are some things I have to tell you that might change your mind. Will we be alone in the studio tonight? I don’t want anyone else to hear what I’ve got to say.”

  A week earlier a plane carrying the popular band leader Glenn Miller was reported missing over the English Channel, believed to have been shot down. In tribute Carlo played his record of Moonlight Serenade that evening while waiting for Julia to join him. He played it in the hope he’d persuade her to dance, in preference to telling him whatever secret it was she had to impart.

  When she came in he held out his hands and they danced together. The soft romantic sound of his orchestral music weaved its magic as their dance became a hot-blooded embrace. It was almost impossible to ignore the desire they were both feeling. That was when she asked him to turn off the music and to sit down.

  “I have to tell you this, Carlo. I must, because nothing would ever feel right between us if I tried to conceal it. We can’t continue pretending to be friends when it’s impossible to dance without wanting to make love. At least that’s how I feel, and I know you feel the same.”

  “Yes,” he said, but she gestured to be allowed to continue.

  “It was soon after I joined the air force that I met Oliver Renshaw, and after only a few days I felt I was head-over-heels about him. With previous boyfriends I’d always been a bit impulsive and, while they were just flirtations it gave me a reputation in our family. Not Mum and Dad, I hasten to add, but there are lots of cousins, Aunts and Uncles. To them I was …I don’t know how to put it really, a bit fast, I suppose. Or just bloody stupid.

  “But that was all going to change when I met ‘him’ as Aunty Win calls him. I’ll call him that because then I don’t have to say his name. I was almost twenty-one when I fell for him. For a year and a half we were happy, but then I began to notice things. He was rather selfish and conceited, and in all sorts of ways he took me for granted. We started to have quarrels, one quite angry one that left me feeling it was over. I asked to be moved away from Sydney, but wherever I was posted he’d find out and turn up with a big smile so there’d be a brief reunion until we had more rows. It was becoming a long-running soap opera as my Mum told you. She’d often warned me that’s what it was, and of course I took no notice. But it got worse. Finally, about six months ago, I broke it off and was granted compassionate leave and that’s when he began to really stalk me.

  “It was a nightmare; he’d harass me by phone, at home or wherever I was, even when I stayed with a girlfriend—he’d turn up and insist I’d invited him as well. That’s how I began to lose friends, because they wouldn’t put up with him. He started leaving rude or embarrassing messages about me almost everywhere, which made me feel very uncomfortable. It became obvious he was determined to ruin my life.

  “About four months ago I made the biggest mistake of my life by asking him to meet, to try and talk him out of this relentless persecution. We had drinks at a pub and he promised to stop what he was doing. At the time I was staying with a former school friend and he insisted he walked me home. There’s a park on the way to her place…and that’s where he raped me.

  “I remember being giddy and feeling a bit sick, so he said to sit and rest on a park bench. I woke at three in the morning, lying on the grass knowing I’d been raped because my underwear was there beside me, along with some of my clothes. Whatever it was he’d slipped in my drink I knew it was happening, but somehow I’d been unable to resist. For weeks I couldn’t tell anyone, I was too confused and angry and ashamed. I kept it a secret until I found out I was pregnant. That’s when I had to tell my parents because I wanted an abortion. But it’s illegal in this State, in the whole country unless you get two doctors, one of them a psychiatrist, to say it’s a medical health necessity.

  “There was no way I was going to have his child, but it was absolutely horrible getting the permission, then trying to find a quack who specialised in it. Some are back-street butchers on account of the illegality. The law made it feel sleazy, the ‘surgeon’ was someone who ‘arranged removals’—that was what he called it—and he insisted that he be paid only in cash. No receipts. By the time it was over the whole thing had made me feel rather like a criminal. So much secrecy and even scorn, the way his nurse looked at me and held out her hand for the money before anything could begin. I was made to feel disgusted with myself.”

  Carlo could see she was close to tears. He wanted to beg her to stop but knew she wouldn’t. She wasn’t even looking at him.

  “I had the termination about five weeks ago but somehow the news of it leaked out. Aunty Win knows, so does half the family. Dad wanted to go to the police about the rape, but I’d heard about too many girls in court being torn to shreds by barristers, publicly accused of ‘asking for it’ and that kind of ugly smear. It was when he found out about the abortion that I almost went to the police. He must have been stalking me again to know about it, which scared me. Until the week before I met you he was still in touch, telephoning, trying to blackmail me into meeting again, or he’d spread the word about what I’d done. I felt under an awful stress. I suppose it’s the reason I was in a foul mood when we met. I’d just had a real showdown with his parents, having to warn them I’d go to the police if I ever heard from him again.

  “So that’s why I want us to be friends for a while and why I’m nervous about love. And even if I wasn’t nervous—we couldn’t do anything. It feels much too soon after the operation. Too soon after everything, really.”

  She sat silently in the studio, looking exhausted and totally drained at the stress of having to relive all this. When Carlo said nothing for a few moments she stood up, kissed him on the cheek and started to leave.

  “No,
don’t go,” he said.

  “I should be getting get back to Aunty Win’s.”

  “Please Julia, not yet.”

  “I’ve got to be up early in the morning to catch the train back to Griffith, pick up my uniform, then get to Sydney for the plane. Busy day. I really should have gone yesterday. Besides, what else is there to say?”

  “I’ve got plenty to say. I’d like to kill that bastard. Is there any chance he’ll ever try to bother you again?”

  “I doubt it. He knows, so do his family, what’ll happen if he comes near or even calls me again.”

  “You said you want to be friends, and you’re nervous about being in love. I can hardly blame you after what that evil shit did. But does that mean you still don’t know how you feel about us?”

  “It means I’m nervous about the way I feel. It’s not your fault, Carlo, it’s mine.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Since it’s a night for brave confessions, can I make one? I slept with Tiffany Watson.”

  She nodded, then managed a smile and said, “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “It wasn’t love. It was enjoyable, but never love. I left her a note when I walked out of there.”

  “No regrets?”

  “At leaving? None.”

  “So what about your Italian friend Silvana? Is she important?”

  “Silvana was pure juvenile lust, my first look at a nude model. She put me up the night I found the Villa Medici locked, but I fell asleep in the middle of a word apparently, before anything could happen. Silvana is a nice girl on her way to becoming a film star, and I wish her luck. I’m a newcomer at falling in love, but I know for certain I’m in love with you. I’ll wait and hope the feeling will be returned because despite the difficulties, despite the bloody war and every other thing, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  She just looked at him, a flushed faint smile on her face. Then she put her arms around him and kissed him.

  “I’ll be back Carlo.”

  “I’ll be waiting, tesoro mio.” he said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  On the last morning he woke early, showered and walked across town to the cottage where Julia was saying goodbye to Great-aunt Win. As they were leaving Win reminded Carlo he knew where she lived and she’d be very glad to see him whenever he had time to spare. It was an endorsement Julia told him as they walked to the station, not extended to any of her previous friends, male or female. While they waited she went through the details of her travel schedule. She was leaving the car in the garage at her Aunt’s home because the train to Griffith would be so much easier. There she’d collect her uniform and catch up with her parents before another train to Sydney then Kingsford Smith airport this afternoon, where an RAAF De Havilland Flamingo transport plane would take her and others on to their squadron’s base at Longreach.

  “Longreach is well named. Long journey,” Carlo said, while they waited on the platform. “Did it have to be so far?”

  “I just wanted to get away. I wish now I’d asked for Newcastle or anywhere in Sydney or Cowra,” she said with a smile that made him want to wrap his arms around her, which he impulsively did, holding her close, feeling her heart beat and his own body responding.

  “It’s going to be a long six months,” was all he could think of to say, almost relieved when the train appeared before he could say anything even more foolish.

  “I’ll write,” she said, and kissed him before boarding. She took a window seat and blew a kiss as the whistle sounded and the train moved. He barely had time to respond, trying to walk beside her, but she settled back, the train picked up speed, and that was the dismal moment he lost sight of her.

  His walk back towards the camp took him past Winifred’s cottage where she was pottering in the front garden, with frequent glances at the street as if waiting for Carlo to come past. When she spotted him she moved to the picket fence to intercept him.

  “Have you got time for a cup of tea?” she asked.

  “A quick one, Win.”

  “It’s always quick. I keep the kettle on the old fuel stove.”

  He followed her into the house and sat down while she took less than five minutes to appear with a tray bearing a teapot, cups, milk and sugar.

  “You’ll miss her.”

  “I’m missing her already. I felt lonely before the train was out of sight.”

  “She told you, didn’t she?” Winifred said, pouring the tea. When he hesitated she stared at him. “She told you what that creature did?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “It was against my advice. But she said you had to know. To my mind males of the species have never been adept at coping with that kind of thing. My instinct felt it would all be too much. Enough to make one run for cover.”

  “No offence to your instinct, Win, but I’ve no intention of running for anywhere.”

  She handed him his cup of tea and smiled. “No, I somehow didn’t think you would. I was just testing to see if we’re on the same side.”

  “I think we are, if she’ll allow me to be.”

  “Give her time. You’ve hardly known each other a week.”

  “I only needed a day. When I learned three close friends were killed at sea, she sat and listened to my sorrows and held my hand. I think I was in love before I fell asleep that night. Does the Air Force know about what happened to her? And why she needed the long leave?”

  “No. A friendly family G.P. gave her a medical certificate that declared she had deep-vein thrombosis that caused some depression. He recommended a minimum six weeks of rest on sick leave. During it she requested the transfer to Queensland, no doubt to get away from it all.”

  “Six long months,” he said.

  “Patience, my dear boy. The war must come to an end soon.”

  “I’ve been hearing that since I was taken prisoner in 1940.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Just turned twenty-one.”

  “And you’d won the scholarship to the French Academy in Rome.”

  He looked surprised, then realised. “Janet told you.”

  “Janet told me a great deal. She’s very fond of you. You and Julia together, that would make her very happy. Jamie, too.”

  “And perhaps you?” said Carlo.

  “Perhaps even me,” Winifred agreed.

  Afterwards she watched Carlo walk towards the POW camp, looking like a harried young man in love with no real certainty about his future.

  As he had for much of his life, Carlo found that tension and anxiety could best be allayed by engrossing himself in unbroken hours of painting. He spent more time than ever in the studio. He worked late at nights to solve his sleep problem, creating some striking sets for the theatre, and was completing new paintings of his own. He painted landscapes, walking to discover special heritage buildings, and revisited some of the historic places he’d seen with Julia. He painted a portrait of her along with some miniatures, one of which he sent home with a letter to his mother and Luigi.

  He had mail from Beatrice, sent long before she received the portrait, to say Silvana had finally married her on-and-off fiancé and was becoming a star. She’d heard of the breakout at Cowra, but received his letter saying all was calm in his compound, so that was a relief. The mail was now more reliable, and the daily news more exciting. The Rhine was at last crossed and the Allies were on their way to Berlin. Tokyo had been bombed and Australians and Americans were winning back Pacific islands. But amid these good tidings, there was some truly terrible news. The discovery of Auschwitz and other death camps, where men, women and young children had been slaughtered, in what Himmler had called the final solution of the Jewish Race. How could monsters like him exist? In a moment of relaxation, knowing Rome was now liberated and the war must be close to an end as the laws of censorship had been dismantled, Beatrice wrote a postscript:

  Luigi and I have done what we could to combat this evil. It must be over soon, my darling, and I long to see you
again.

  With love,

  Mum. (As you say I’d be called in Australia.)

  But censorship had not been dismantled. Letters bound for overseas were all scanned. There were undercover Nazis still working in Rome, members of the Gestapo and S.S. aided by fascists supporting Mussolini, who himself was protected by elite German troops in Milan. Nothing had really changed.

  It was April in Rome—springtime—and at last Italians felt certain the war was in its final stage. How many times since 1940 when Mussolini had rashly chosen to join Hitler’s war had Italians believed their role in hostilities was over? But now it must truly be the end. Berlin was under siege, Beatrice and Luigi had delivered a final group of Jewish escapees safety into the hills, and they were sharing a sense of relief their role in this dangerous work was at last finished. It happened without the slightest warning.

  The back door of the apartment that opened onto a laneway was kicked open, and the two men carrying guns were inside before Luigi had any chance to reach for his service revolver. He hurled himself at one intruder, but Beatrice was overcome by the other. He had her in a grip that almost choked her, his revolver jammed tightly against her face.

  “On your hands and knees or I’ll kill her,” the first man threatened Luigi.

  Beatrice tried to shout, to tell him not to, but the barrel of the gun was forced into her mouth. She watched in horror, unable to scream, as the other intruder slammed the butt of his gun onto Luigi’s head. It was a vicious blow, hard enough to kill him. Then between them they clapped a plastic strip across her mouth, tied her hands and feet and carried her to the back door. One of them took Luigi’s gun. A car was parked in the lane outside, a driver at the wheel waiting for them. Beatrice was pushed on the floor in the rear of the vehicle. One of the men sat there guarding her with Luigi’s revolver, as the other assailant sat in front with the driver. With no alarm raised, nor any person in the vicinity even aware of what had happened, they were gone.