Kal

by Judy Nunn

  THEY HAD STOPPED lying about Giovanni’s illness a year ago. There was no longer any point. ‘I must leave the Midas, Caterina,’ he’d said. ‘They know I’m ill, I can no longer hide it.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ she’d answered. ‘It will be good to have you home where I can look after you.’ And it was.

  The months before Giovanni became incapacitated were amongst the happiest times they had spent together. They both knew he was dying, they didn’t need the doctor’s ‘a year, maybe a little more’. They didn’t speak of it, but they made every moment count. And, when his illness became so pronounced that they could no longer make love, they lay on the bed and made love with their voices and the mere touch of their hands.

  Giovanni was fully prepared for his death, and so were those around him.

  ‘I’ll look after Mamma, Giovanni.’

  ‘I know you will, Paolo. You’re a good son and a fine man. We are all very proud of you.’

  After a year of field work, Paolo had become the youngest mine manager to be appointed in Kal.

  ‘And I will look after Briony and Rosalina too.’

  Briony had set her sights upon Perth University and Paolo was proud that he had been her inspiration. ‘It may not be Harvard, Paolo,’ she’d said with a touch of defiance. ‘But I’ll be a success like you one day.’

  ‘Are you too proud to accept my assistance?’ he’d challenged.

  ‘Of course not,’ she’d laughed. ‘You’re rich, you can afford it, and you’re my brother.’

  Giovanni studied his stepson, so solemn, so responsible. ‘It is good that you look after your mother and your sisters, Paolo,’ he said, ‘but look after yourself as well.’ He smiled. ‘I was once a very serious young man like you; it was your mother who gave me the gift of laughter. Find a good woman, Paolo. Find a woman who can teach you the frivolity of life.’

  ‘WHY DOES RICO not come to see me?’ Giovanni asked Teresa one day as she sat in the bedside chair. His lungs wheezed as he breathed and his voice rasped so, it was painful to listen. He had been confined to his bed for a month or so now.

  ‘I think he is frightened of death, Giovanni.’

  Teresa wasn’t. Teresa would welcome her own death if it weren’t for her son. Young Salvatore was all that was left in her world. She no longer loved her husband and even her daughter was no reason to live. The girl was secretive, sullen and wilful and Teresa could do nothing but pray for her soul.

  ‘I think he has always been frightened of death.’

  ‘Poor Rico,’ Giovanni murmured. ‘If things had been different …’ His words tailed off, breathing was difficult, but Teresa knew what he was thinking.

  ‘Don’t you dare carry guilt to your grave, Giovanni.’

  But he did feel guilty, he couldn’t help it, as he thought of that night on the mountainside all those years ago. ‘The madness in Rico,’ he said, shifting his position in the bed a little, ‘if it weren’t for the accident—’

  ‘If it weren’t for the accident he would still be mad. You listen to me, Giovanni, for I should know.’ Teresa leaned forward and there was a zealous light in her eyes, as though at that moment she was a messenger from God. ‘When we were courting, there was many a time Rico would have killed a man who so much as looked at me if I had not stopped him. The De Cretico brothers may have broken his knees but they did not send him mad. There has been madness in Rico for all of his life.’ She sat back in her chair once again. She had spoken God’s words. ‘So you go with a clear conscience.’

  ‘She’s a tiger,’ Giovanni whispered to Caterina when Teresa had gone. ‘Ferocious. You should have seen the light in her eyes.’ Caterina laughed. ‘She is, I tell you,’ he insisted, encouraging her laughter. ‘A tiger! I pity poor Rico when she turns her religion on him.’

  They laughed together until it brought on a coughing fit. He sat up in the bed and she held the bowl for him and when it was over she lay beside him.

  ‘Well, she’s a tiger who is right,’ Caterina said.

  Giovanni dozed all that afternoon and slept fitfully during the night. The next day he was weaker, each coughing bout leaving him frail and exhausted, and the next day weaker still.

  Caterina stayed with him. She lay next to him, stroking his hand as he dozed on and off, and she herself dozed for a while to awake to the faintest sound of a song. He was humming, very quietly, and she recognised the tune. ‘Torna a Surriento’.

  She leaned up on one elbow and pushed the damp hair from his brow. He opened his eyes.

  ‘My girl from the mountain.’ His breathing was heavy and laboured, his voice the huskiest whisper.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled, ‘it’s me. I’m here.’

  Giovanni held her hand as he closed his eyes. He could see the young girl in her brother’s trousers, excitedly climbing the mountain. ‘You look like a boy,’ he’d said. Then he saw her eyes, saddened and distant, over the rim of the tin coffee mug as she crouched in the snow by the fire. ‘My name is Giovanni,’ he’d said. He heard the Pride of Erin waltz and saw the blue hat. He watched it. Nearer and nearer it came. The face beneath looked up, the blue eyes met his and he heard himself say, once again, ‘My name is Giovanni’. Images of Caterina swirled through his mind and Giovanni smiled as he fell asleep.

  Caterina didn’t know what time he died, but she awoke at dawn to feel his skin cool against hers. The same gentle smile was on his lips as she kissed him. And, at last, she allowed herself to cry.

  ‘Giovanni,’ she whispered. ‘Giovanni, mio amore.’ She curled up against him, her head in the crook of his arm, and lay there silently, pretending that they were sleeping.

  ‘Mamma.’ Rosalina was at the door.

  ‘You and Briony get yourselves breakfast, darling,’ she called back, keeping her voice steady. ‘Tell Briony to pack your school lunch for you, there’s a good girl. I won’t be out for quite a while.’

  She stayed with him until noon. Finally, she stopped pretending they were sleeping and said her last goodbye. ‘Mio amore,’ she whispered and kissed him one more time. Then she went out into the kitchen where Briony was waiting.

  Jack Brearley came home to a hero’s welcome. As he stepped off the train, photographers and journalists were there to greet him. The newspapers heralded the return of Jack Brearley, recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest military honour accorded a soldier in battle.

  The mayor wanted to hold a banquet in his honour; the keys of the city were his. But Jack would have none of it.

  ‘There you go, Jimmy.’

  The very afternoon of his homecoming, he sat with the twins in the upstairs lounge at Maudie’s and handed his young brother James the medal. A simple iron cross, with a simple inscription. For Valour.

  ‘Crikey,’ seventeen-year-old James’s eyes were on stalks. ‘The VC,’ he breathed, and his sister Vicky, sitting on the floor beside him, was equally wide-eyed.

  ‘They say it’s made from the metal of a cannon seized by the British at the Battle of Sebastapol,’ Jack told them. He didn’t want to spoil Jimmy’s excitement at the gift, but the medal meant nothing to Jack. He could barely remember the bunker and the bullets. He didn’t feel he deserved all the fuss.

  He recalled the presentation ceremony in the Red Room at Buckingham Palace. King George V himself had pinned the medal on his chest. There had been other recipients of the Victoria Cross, nearly all of them dead. The medals were posthumously awarded, the citations read out acknowledging noble and heroic acts, but all Jack could think was, ‘They’re dead—do they care?’ And Rick Gianni was dead too.

  Jack heard the words of his citation. ‘… and further, Sergeant Jack Brearley did, in the face of intense machine-gun fire, leave his own position of safety in order to save the life of a fellow soldier …’

  But he hadn’t, had he? Jack thought. He hadn’t saved Rick’s life. Perhaps if Rick Gianni had lived, Jack might have felt he’d earned a medal. Perhaps. But it all seemed rather pointless somehow.

&
nbsp; RICO’S REACTION TO the newspaper headlines which Carmelina read out at the breakfast table was, predictably, violent. ‘Jack Brearley a hero! Hah!’ he scoffed. ‘No Brearley is a hero. They are cowards, the lot of them.’

  ‘He risked his life to save Enrico,’ Teresa snapped back as she washed the breakfast dishes. She usually ignored him these days or took herself off to church when he started on one of his tirades, but she was not going to let this one go. ‘He risked his life to save our son!’

  ‘But he didn’t, did he?’ Rico goaded. ‘He didn’t save our son.’

  ‘He tried.’ Teresa looked down at the suds in the washing-up bowl, wondering why she was bothering to answer him back. It never worked. She gritted her teeth. ‘He risked his life to save Enrico,’ she said again.

  ‘You think so?’ Rico was ready to do battle, any mention of the name Brearley fired him up. ‘Jack Brearley was always a braggart and a fool. If Enrico had not followed him, the boy would be alive today …’

  Teresa stopped washing the dishes. She took off her apron, dried her hands on a tea towel and collected her scarf from its peg by the door. She checked that she had a coin in the pocket of her skirt for the poorbox as she walked out the door.

  ‘That’s right,’ he roared after her, ‘walk away! Go to your church!’

  Carmelina drained the last of her coffee, rose from the table and left the room. Seconds later, she returned with her jacket and purse.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Rico demanded.

  ‘To work.’

  ‘You don’t start until lunch time.’

  These days Carmelina worked the daytime shift at Restaurant Picot. She liked it that way; it left her evenings free for Louis. No longer were their meetings restricted to Sundays only—now, several nights a week, she would wait for him in the room at Red Ruby’s.

  Carmelina took no notice of her father. Like her mother, she walked out without a word and Rico remained at the table alone, with no one to talk to until his afternoon shift at the mine.

  He wished Salvatore was here; he could sometimes talk to his son. But eighteen-year-old Salvatore, now a miner himself, left for the early shift at seven each morning.

  Rico contemplated getting himself another cup of coffee but he couldn’t be bothered. He was bored, he wanted to go to work. For the past year, he’d been working double shifts and that was the way he liked it—worth every penny of the bribe money it cost him—he enjoyed physical labour and the mine was a much happier place than home. Recently, however, most underground bosses had disallowed double shifts and were giving the jobs to the diggers.

  What had he done, Rico thought, to deserve such misery? Why had the two women most precious in his life turned against him? He’d been forced to accept the fact that his wife no longer loved him and he blamed religion for that. But his Carmelina, his precious Carmelina, why did she hate him? What had he done to deserve the loss of his daughter?

  CARMELINA DID NOT hate her father. Nor did she hate her mother. She neither hated nor loved anything in her life, except Louis Picot. She was totally dependent upon him now. Upon Louis and the laudanum he supplied her.

  The drug had started as a sexual enhancement. ‘Just a sip my darling, just for fun,’ he’d said the first time as he offered the spoon. ‘For me,’ he’d added on noting her hesitation. He thought the laudanum might be amusing for a change. And of course she’d obeyed.

  Louis himself had taken some laudanum and their love-making that night had been sensual and erotic. Like it used to be, Carmelina thought, her senses lost in carnal delight. She felt no pain; he didn’t defile her—in her opiate state, she felt nothing but pleasure.

  Laudanum was her friend from that night on. Even when he brutalised her, the drug freed her from pain and she floated in a cloud.

  He gave her a bottle upon her request. ‘If it pleases you, my darling,’ he said, although Louis himself had little time for addicts.

  Carmelina relied upon the drug to relieve the stresses at home. Her father screaming, her mother remote, closed off, it was easy to lie on her bed in her room and drift away to another world.

  Louis Picot was becoming bored with Carmelina. The pain he administered seemed to have little effect. She no longer cried out, which detracted from his pleasure; there were no fresh fields to discover, no surprises he could inflict upon her. Whatever he did, she accepted quietly in her drug-induced state. He would need to get rid of her soon, he decided. Besides, he was too busy for Carmelina, his mind was on other things.

  Since his father’s stroke six months previously, Louis had set about establishing his newfound authority. He had dismissed the efficient, long-serving managers of the hotels and replaced them with subservient men who would know their place. He had been about to dismiss Harry Brearley too but decided that, perhaps, there was a little further use to be gained from the man.

  ‘I am prepared to preserve the public image of your involvement with the restaurant, Harry,’ Louis had said with magnanimity. ‘It will serve as excellent cover whilst you commit yourself to the brothels. Their management needs to be taken strictly in hand now that those intolerable women are no longer there.’

  Harry had been shocked to hear that Louis had ruthlessly dismissed Jeanne Renoir and Emily, giving them a week to get out of Kal.

  ‘If you’re not gone by next Friday, Jeanne,’ Louis had said quite calmly, ‘I’ll expose you as a whore to the entire town.’ Jeanne had been shocked to the core—this was the little boy she had once bounced on her knee. ‘Your reputation, my dear,’ he’d announced, ‘is entirely in your own hands.’

  ‘She’s a parasite,’ Louis had said when Harry had challenged him. ‘A parasite who’s been feeding off my father for years. Well, she’s of no use to him now. The poor old bastard can’t even control his bladder—what use is a whore?’

  However, when Louis had boasted of his actions to his stricken father, he’d noticed a glint in the old man’s eyes. It was a glint of anger, Louis could have sworn it. ‘Jeanne’s old now, Papa,’ he’d said defensively, ‘she’s old and she has wrinkles—you’d want nothing to do with her, I swear.’ The glint was still there. ‘Besides, she’s been robbing you for years.’ But his father would have known that, Louis realised; no one put anything past Gaston Picot. Surely the glint of anger was not directed at him, he thought. No, it was just a reflection of light through the bedroom window. The old man was catatonic, he could comprehend nothing. But the eyes continued to glare accusingly and Louis felt uncomfortable as he recalled the doctor’s words. ‘You never can tell with stroke victims,’ he’d said, ‘perhaps they do understand, we can’t be sure.’ So Louis stopped visiting Maison Picot.

  Now, with the soldiers home from the war, business was hectic for Louis Picot. The restaurant was thriving and the brothels had never been busier. But they needed to expand, to recruit more girls, and Harry Brearley was utterly useless. It would be left to Louis to take over the brothels, just as he had the restaurant. There was so much to be done.

  While Carmelina floated on laudanum during the nights at Red Ruby’s, Louis’s mind was on other things.

  JACK BREARLEY WAS appalled by the chaos in Kal. There were brawls in the streets and drunken diggers lounged outside pubs yelling abuse at any Italian who happened to pass by. They taunted anyone who even looked Italian. Greek merchants hung signs in their windows. ‘We are Greeks, not Italians’. This was peacetime, Jack thought, the war was over. Why so much hate?

  ‘There always has been,’ Maudie said as she sat at the kitchen table darning a hole in one of Jimmy’s socks. ‘They’re just letting it out now, that’s all.’

  ‘Back in an hour or so, Maudie,’ Harry came in, downing a glass of whisky, ‘bit of business to attend to.’

  He had just received a telephone call from Louis Picot, nagging him again about the need for more whores, and Harry was annoyed. He wished he could tell young Picot to go to hell, but he didn’t dare. Since Gaston’s stroke, his son Louis was now a p
owerful man.

  Harry was no longer interested in the brothels—they were too much hard work and they were tawdry when all was said and done. He belonged at Hannan’s or Restaurant Picot amongst his own style of people.

  Damn it, Harry thought, he’d go and see Ada at Red Ruby’s and leave the whole business to her. He really wasn’t up to those trips to Fremantle any more, and those shady dealings with prostitutes in grubby backrooms. It had been different when Jeanne and Emily were about, they had lent a dignity and style to the whole sordid business.

  ‘Shan’t be long,’ Harry said, no longer able to put off the inevitable. He dumped his glass in the sink and left. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, Jack thought, and already his father was into the whisky. Maudie no longer noticed, but Jack did.

  Jack had been home barely a week and he was horrified at the change in his father. Harry Brearley, once his childhood idol, was now a hopeless alcoholic. Even his wife had given up on him. Tough, honest, no-nonsense Maudie looked tired, and a touch defeated. Well Jack was determined that things would change. If he couldn’t help his father, he’d get that light shining in Maudie’s eyes again. She had been a mum to Jack all his life. The best mum a bloke could have.

  ‘They’ve never liked foreigners on the goldfields, Jack.’ When Harry had gone, Maudie continued the conversation as if he’d not been there and she hadn’t once looked up from her darning. ‘You know that.’

  ‘You always taught me that if a man was honest it didn’t matter where he came from.’

  ‘Ah yes, but I’ve never been too comfortable with foreigners, all the same. They’re a funny bunch, speaking a different language, and you never quite know what they’re thinking.’

  Old habits died hard, Jack thought. There was a touch of bigotry even in good old Maudie. A bloke had to go away to war to realise that men were pretty much the same. He recalled the truce at Gallipoli and the Turkish soldiers they’d exchanged cigarettes with. Young blokes they’d been, just like himself, with the fear of dying in their eyes.