by Judy Nunn
‘Now just a minute, boy, you listen to me.’ Dunleavy strode after him and Paolo turned at the bedroom door to face the man. Dunleavy’s face was distorted now. Rage and frustration made him ugly. ‘Do you realise how much money I’ve spent on you?’ he snarled. ‘Do you have any idea? God damn you, boy, you owe me!’
‘Yes, sir, I do. And I shall repay you. However long it takes. Every cent.’ Paolo closed the door behind him. Any minute Dunleavy would start throwing punches.
In his bedroom, Paolo dressed, packed his suitcase and sat on his bed waiting for the dawn. Apart from his beloved books, the ones he’d acquired in his weekly foraging through second-hand bookshops with Ira, he took only the barest of essentials.
When the first glimmer of morning shone through his attic window, he stole quietly out onto the landing.
‘Meg!’ She was huddled in a blanket on the stairs, waiting for him. ‘How long have you been there?’
She shrugged, she didn’t know how long she’d been sitting in the cold. ‘I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Paolo.’ Her eyes were puffy from crying.
‘Oh, Meg.’ He sat beside her.
‘I’m sorry.’ She couldn’t help it, she started to cry again. ‘I’m really, really sorry,’ she whispered through her tears.
‘Sssh, it’s all right.’ He put his arms around her. ‘Stop crying, it’s all right.’
‘I feel so ashamed.’
‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Sssh.’
‘Do you forgive me?’
‘Of course I forgive you.’ He stroked her hair until the crying was reduced to sniffles. ‘Come on now, go back to bed, I have to leave before your father wakes up.’
‘Are you leaving because of me?’
‘No.’ He rose and hauled her to her feet. ‘I have my own family and my own home, you know that.’
‘Will you be my brother, Paolo?’
‘Of course I’ll be your brother,’ he grinned. ‘I’ll always be your brother.’
They hugged each other warmly. ‘It’s good to have a brother,’ she whispered. ‘Happy Christmas, Paolo.’ She watched as he crept down the stairs.
Things would never be the same again, Meg realised. But something positive had come out of the hideous events of the night. She’d grown up.
‘Your father loves you very much, Meg,’ her mother had said after she’d taken her to her room and tucked her into bed like a child. ‘You must forgive him.’
It was then that Meg had seen the shock and pain in her mother’s face. But her mother never showed emotion. It frightened Meg. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she asked, her voice a whisper.
‘Nothing.’ As she sat on the side of the bed, Elizabeth fought back the tears of hurt which she knew she must not shed until she was alone. Neither her husband nor her daughter must see her cry. ‘There is nothing on this earth that can destroy this family, my darling,’ she smiled. ‘Never forget, we are Dunleavys.’ She kissed Meg’s forehead. ‘Now get some sleep. And try to be kind to your father in the morning.’
Meg had impulsively hugged her mother and they’d clung to each other for a moment or two before Elizabeth had silently left.
Life would go on as usual, Meg realised. But things would never be the same again. She’d grown up.
TWO DAYS LATER Ira Rubenstein insisted upon accompanying Paolo to the railway station.
‘You’ve done enough for me as it is,’ Paolo said as they left the boarding house.
‘Rubbish, it’s been a most companionable Christmas. Besides, there’s nothing better than a railway platform farewell.’
Ira bought a newspaper for Paolo to read on the train. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, glancing at the sports pages, ‘your Les Darcy’s done it again.’
‘What?’
‘World middleweight champion, Eddie McGoorty, a clear knockout. Look.’ He handed Paolo the newspaper.
‘Knockout Win for Australia’s Golden Boy of Boxing at Sydney Stadium’, Paolo read. ‘Nice news to go home to,’ he said. Then he read further. ‘United States authorities have not recognised the match as a “title” match, it is therefore unclear in boxing circles as to whether or not Darcy is the World Middleweight Champion.’ He smiled. ‘We Aussies can’t take a trick can we?’
‘All aboard!’ The guard blew his whistle.
Paolo tucked the newspaper under his arm and boarded the train. ‘Thanks, Ira. For everything,’ he said as he leaned out the window. ‘You’re a good mate. I mean that.’
‘Will you take a word of advice from a good mate, Paolo?’
‘Yep, sure.’
‘Don’t join the army. You don’t have to fight in a war to be a hero.’
Steam billowed out over the platform and Paolo saluted with his newspaper as the train chugged out of the station.
It was early in the misty morning of the 5th of April, 1916, that the SS Corsican, with her cargo of 28 officers and 942 enlisted men of the 11th Battalion, arrived at the French port of Marseille.
Only 330 men, less than one-third of the original 11th, had survived the massacre of Gallipoli, and in January, with the arrival of reinforcements, it had been decided to create three new Australian divisions. All original battalions were to be halved in order to take advantage of the seasoned troops’ experience. In the case of the 11th, the odd-numbered sections were to remain with the battalion while the even-numbered sections were sheared off to form the core of the 51st Battalion. To their great satisfaction, the boys of the goldfields of Western Australia were destined to remain with the 11th Battalion.
‘Only right, I reckon,’ Snowy Wilson, a miner from Boulder, remarked. ‘You get used to a name.’
The first sign of Marseille was the beam of the lighthouse blinking through the morning fog. Then, gradually, the shadow of the shoreline came into view.
‘Crikey, look at that,’ Jack Brearley breathed to no one in particular, but Tom Brereton and Rick Gianni standing beside him nodded in silent agreement, equally awestruck.
They were not the only ones. There was a general sense of wonder from the men gathered on deck as the rugged mass of the Ile D’If with its majestic chateau loomed before them. Then, beyond the island, materialising like magic from out of the mist, was the great harbour of Marseille. Ships crowded the massive wharves, guns threatened from all sides and, stretching as far as the eye could see, was a vast city of spires and chimneys. A city so vast it was beyond the imagination of the boys from the goldfields.
‘Crikey,’ Jack whispered again.
The troops were confined to the ship for most of the day until the order came, in the late afternoon, to march the half mile to the railway station.
‘Vive l’Australie! Vivent les Australiens!’ Their reception was overwelming. Elderly men, matrons and young girls crowded the pavements as the soldiers marched through the cobbled streets of Marseille; then, at dusk, as the train steamed out of the city, crowds of citizens continued to wave and wish them well.
Through the low, tree-covered hills of the outlying countryside the train steamed across bridges and viaducts until, in the middle of the night, a halt was called at the small town of Orange. There, for the first time in France, the bugle call of ‘Welcome to the Cookhouse Door Boys’ sounded and the men tumbled from the train for a meal and hot tea provided from the quartermaster’s stores.
Then they were back on board and once more on the move. For over two hundred miles they travelled beside the River Rhône, through countryside alive with the fertility of spring. Orchards in blossom, hillsides covered with endless vineyards and fields which flourished under the care of the women and children who tended them. All along the route it was the women and children who worked the farms and railway crossings—Frenchmen of military age were serving at the front.
Mâcon, Lyons, Avillon, past Châlons where a halt was called and a good meal served again to the troops. A number of the diggers decided to go into town.
‘Bonjour. J
e suis Australien. Je m’appelle Jack.’ It was the only French Jack had so far managed to learn and his accent was appalling. But he was so earnest that it worked and an hour later he, Tom and Rick returned to the train with extra provisions acquired by trading the sugar and chocolate saved from their Red Cross parcels. The extra provisions were in the form of a bottle of whisky and two bottles of red wine.
The men had not been told of their destination but Rick, having earlier traded his rum ration with Snowy Wilson for a map of France, had been assiduously following their route.
‘We might be close enough to Paris to see it from the train soon,’ he said after they had passed Dijon.
Word spread and the men crowded to the windows. A loud cheer went up as they caught a far-off glimpse of the Eiffel Tower but, disappointingly, that was all they managed to see.
‘Cripes, what’s that?’ Snowy exclaimed a little while later as they passed a great palace surrounded by acres of formal gardens.
‘It’s the Palace of Versailles,’ Rick said. ‘Seventeenth century. Built by Louis XIV.’
‘The gardens are famous for their topiary,’ Jack said and he smiled smugly at Rick’s look of surprise.
‘What the bloody hell’s tope—?’ Snowy floundered for the word.
‘Topiary,’ Jack replied with an air of vast knowledge. ‘It’s the art of hedge cutting.’ An image of the gardens of Maison Picot in Perth flashed through his mind. ‘It’s an art form, Harry,’ Gabrielle Picot’s disdainful tone as she patronised his father.
‘You’re pulling my leg,’ Snowy said, craning to get a last look at the Versailles gardens as the train sped on.
‘Nope.’
Rick was strangely quiet after they’d passed Versailles and Jack thought that perhaps, like Tom, he’d drunk too much, although it’d be out of character for him. Tom of course was a different matter. Tom had already drunk half the bottle of whisky they’d traded and was staring morosely out the window. Since the death of his brothers, Tom’s drinking was no longer raucous and good-humoured. It was hostile and aggressive. Poor old Tom, Jack thought, he was a bitter man in the drink.
‘What’s the matter, Rick?’ For a long time, Jack had tried to maintain the family enmity—out of a sense of duty more than anything. He would not be a traitor to his father, he told himself, and whenever Rick Gianni attempted to exchange pleasantries, he would snap back or walk away. But, in the face of battle, it had become more and more senseless to continue the feud of their fathers. If they ever made it back to Kal, the enmity would be there, waiting for them, Jack knew it. But they were on the same side here, fighting a common foe.
Finally, it had been the very nature of Rick himself that had won through. He was a gentle man, a man who didn’t belong on a battlefield, but he did his job as well as any other soldier and Jack couldn’t help but respect him for that.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked again. Rick was still staring down at his map, his mind a million miles away. ‘You feeling crook?’
Rick had been praying for the train to stop. Any minute now, surely, he’d been thinking. They were well due for a tucker break. And as they passed out of the picturesque countryside and into the industrial landscape where the military traffic was heavier, the train was slowing down. ‘We must be near Houilles,’ he replied, as much to himself as to Jack. ‘Versailles is just south of Paris and we’re travelling northwest and Houilles is about five miles northwest of Paris. We must be quite close.’
‘What’s at Houilles?’ Jack asked, mystified.
‘Solange.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Jack asked. ‘Jump?’
Such a notion hadn’t entered Rick’s mind, he’d just been daydreaming, hoping that the train would stop so that he could simply stand on the ground and imagine that he was near the town where Solange had spent her childhood, the town where perhaps, even now, Solange was living with her family. He looked wistfully out the window. Jump? It was tempting.
‘Go on,’ Jack grinned. ‘I dare you.’
Rick grinned back. ‘You’re a troublemaker, Brearley.’
IN ORDER TO cause as little disruption as possible, small townships were chosen as stopping points to feed the troops and the next stop was a tiny village just north of Saint Germains.
‘Well?’ Jack had finished his meal and walked over to Rick whose pannikin sat virtually untouched on the ground beside him. ‘How close do you reckon we are?’
‘What?’ Rick looked up, distracted.
‘Houilles. How far away do you reckon it is?’
‘About four or five miles I suppose.’ It was exactly what Rick had been thinking.
Jack squatted on the ground beside him. ‘Well, I’m game if you are.’ A blank silence. ‘Face it, mate, you’ll never do it on your own. I’ll come with you.’
‘Why?’
‘For fun,’ Jack shrugged.
‘Absent without leave? There’d be trouble.’
‘What do you think they’d do to us? Firing squad? Send us home in disgrace? Well, that wouldn’t be too bad, would it?’
Rick continued to look at him, bemused; he could never really tell when Jack was joking.
‘Come on, mate, we’ve earned some fun,’ Jack urged. Then, in his posh English officer voice, ‘Good God, Sergeant Gianni, we’re officers now, it’s high time we granted ourselves a little well-earned rest and recreation, what?’
Rick couldn’t help but smile. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said suddenly, ‘but I’ll do it on my own. No sense in both of us copping it.’
‘Copping what?’ Jack was excited now, this was an adventure. ‘We wandered off to have a look at the countryside and we got lost and when we got back the train had gone. Simple.’
‘What do we do then?’
‘We report to the nearest military headquarters and say we’re sorry.’
IT TOOK THEM less than two hours to reach Houilles. They walked half the distance and the other half they travelled in the back of a dray. Whilst the horse clopped along the country road, the driver, a wiry talkative Frenchwoman, chattered to Rick in Italian. Her husband’s mother was Italian, she said, although her husband had been born in France.
Jack sat silently in the back of the dray, frustrated at not being able to join in the conversation or practise his atrocious French, but enjoying the countryside nonetheless.
They were barely ten minutes’ walk from Houilles, she told them as they got out of the dray. Maybe, at the front, they would meet her husband, he was a soldier too. In the valley of the River Somme, she said, that’s where the fighting was, and she wished them well.
The family Bouchet was well known in the village of Houilles and by late afternoon they had found the house. A modest little stone cottage on the outskirts of town.
‘I’ll wait for you in the pub,’ Jack said. He’d taken careful note of the tavern during their walk through the village. ‘Don’t be too long, we’ll need to find a room for the night.’
THE WOMAN WHO opened the door was plump, fair-haired with a pleasant face. She had once been very pretty.
‘Bonjour, Madame,’ Rick said.
‘Bonjour, Monsieur.’
‘Madame Bouchet?’ he queried.
‘Oui.’
‘Je suis Australien. Je m’appelle Rick.’ As usual, Jack’s introduction worked.
‘Ah. Australien.’ She beamed.
‘I am a friend of your daughter,’ he explained. The woman stared blankly at him. ‘From Kalgoorlie.’
‘Oh. Kalgoorlie.’ She beamed again.
‘Is Solange here?’
‘Oui, oui. Solange est ici. Entrez. Entrez. Je vais la chercher.’ The woman hustled him inside, calling as she did, ‘Maurice! Il y a quelqu’un pour Solange … il est d’ Australie!’
As she ushered Rick into the small front parlour, a nuggety middle-aged man materialised by her side. Black-browed and solemn, his hair was wet and his face shiny. A man well scrubbed after a hard day’s physical work.
; ‘C’est le père de Solange,’ Madame Bouchet said. Then, to her husband, ‘Il vient de Kalgoorlie.’
‘Rick Gianni, sir, how do you do.’
They shook hands and, although the man’s face remained expressionless, his clasp was firm and welcoming and there was a touch of reverence to his tone as he said ‘Kalgoorlie’.
Kalgoorlie had always impressed Maurice Bouchet. Anywhere as rich in gold as Kalgoorlie impressed Maurice and he no longer recalled his initial anger when Solange had left the family home. Now he was proud that his daughter had had the courage to adventure so far and return so wealthy. Other men’s daughters remained with their mothers and fed the chickens.
The men sat whilst Madame Bouchet ran off to fetch her daughter. ‘Solange, Solange, il y a quelqu’un qui veut te voir. Il est de Kalgoorlie,’ they could hear her calling.
For several minutes they sat in silence, Rick self-conscious under the relentless scrutiny of Maurice Bouchet.
Then Solange was at the parlour door. Rick jumped to his feet. She was beautiful. More beautiful than ever, in her peasant dress and apron. His Solange. But she seemed tentative, nervous. Rick was confused. He understood her reserve in the presence of her parents, but where was her pleasure in seeing him?
‘Hello, Enrico.’
Her mother insisted they all sit and talk. She would get coffee, she told them. ‘Oui, coffee. Sugar,’ she said to Rick, as proud of the English words Solange had taught her as she was of her hospitality. Coffee and sugar were rare to come by these days, but Marie Bouchet would gladly offer up her precious reserves for a friend all the way from Kalgoorlie.
They talked a little about the war whilst she was gone. His son, too, was in the army, Maurice told Rick, Solange translating. Young Georges had left for the front only six months previously.
‘He is too young,’ Solange added.
The discourse was stilted, awkward. She was evading his eyes, Rick thought.
When Madame Bouchet returned with the coffee, the conversation changed. ‘Solange nous a beaucoup parler de Kalgoorlie,’ she said.
