Araluen

by Judy Nunn

  ‘More tea?’ she offered. ‘Neil, Alan, you must surely be ready for another cup.’

  Kate was aware that she’d disappointed her mother. It was regrettable, but inevitable. She would certainly have done battle for the house on aesthetic grounds if its preservation had been practicable, but she could not fight for its symbolic significance the way she knew her mother would have liked. Unlike Hilda she was not a romantic. She probably never had been. As a little girl, her mother’s stories of Grandmother Ellie and the past had enchanted her. But then so too had fairy tales. She’d long since grown up, and more and more these days she’d come to realise that, although she loved her mother dearly, Hilda Durham lived in a fantasy world.

  ‘Well that’s it,’ Stan said, clapping his hands together loudly by way of a finale, ‘family meeting’s over. Let’s call Ivy in: we need more cake.’

  That night, shortly before dinner, Kate visited her mother in the upstairs sitting room that was Hilda’s personal domain. She was seated as usual by the window that looked out over the balcony and the rear garden, browsing through a copy of Tatler, her dry sherry digestive on the coffee table next to her.

  ‘Do come in, darling,’ she said, putting down the magazine.

  Kate entered and pulled up a chair beside her mother’s. ‘I’m sorry, Marmee.’ It was the name they’d adopted by mutual consent when, aged ten, Kate had first read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Hilda loved the way her daughter called her Marmee.

  ‘Good heavens, what on earth are you sorry for?’

  ‘For disappointing you as I did.’

  ‘But my clever, clever, Kate, how could you possibly disappoint me?’ Hilda appeared bemused. ‘I am so very proud of you.’

  ‘Old Elianne House,’ Kate prompted. Her mother seemed to have forgotten.

  ‘Ah yes. That.’ Hilda gave a slight shrug and looked out the window. ‘You wouldn’t have won, anyway.’

  ‘I know.’ Kate sensed that her mother wasn’t really seeing the balcony, or the gardens stretched out below.

  ‘How sad to think that a symbol of such love should be sold off piecemeal,’ Hilda said quietly, more to herself than to Kate.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ She’s not here at all, Kate thought, she’s off somewhere in the past again.

  Kate had spent her childhood wondering why her mother dwelt so much in the past. Was it in order to escape the present? But her mother led an extremely comfortable life, so why the need for escape? Then two years previously, and for some unfathomable reason Kate associated the occasion with her sixteenth birthday, the thought had suddenly struck her. It might simply be the drink. No one had ever mentioned Hilda’s drinking, and no one had ever seen her inebriated. But the digestive dry sherry had always been a daily habit and the medicinal brandy not an irregular occurrence. Kate had wondered ever since how many digestive and medicinal measures her mother might secretly imbibe. Perhaps the past wasn’t her mother’s escape at all: perhaps the liquor was.

  ‘She was over seventy when I first met her,’ Hilda said, continuing to stare out the window, ‘but still so beautiful, so very beautiful.’

  Here we go again, Kate thought, Grandmother Ellie. Kate could even vaguely remember her great-grandmother, a slim, regal woman with white, white hair. She could remember Big Jim too, just, although he hadn’t been particularly big then, a rather withered man, she recalled, who seemed terribly, terribly old. They’d died the same year, when she was five.

  ‘Of course I knew who she was,’ Hilda went on, ‘everyone knew who she was. I’d seen her picture in the paper – Elianne and Jim Durham were famous. But I never dreamt I’d marry into the family. I never dreamt I’d come to know her as I did.’

  She’s really rambling tonight, Kate thought. It’s probably because of the family meeting and the talk of the old house’s demolition. Or perhaps it’s simply the sherry, who can tell?

  ‘You’re so like her, Kate.’ Hilda turned from the window. ‘You’ve grown into your beauty, my darling, just as I said you would.’

  Kate was startled from the complacency of her thoughts. Her mother’s eyes were not vague, but highly perceptive.

  ‘Do you remember how I used to tell you that you would be beautiful?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ Kate replied a little brusquely. She could recall only too well her mother’s constant attempts to be a guiding influence in a masculine world and to make her aware of her femininity. ‘You will be beautiful one day, Kate,’ Hilda would say, ‘do not doubt yourself, my dear.’ But Kate had not doubted herself for one minute. She’d needed no confidence booster, and she certainly didn’t need to be beautiful.

  ‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’ Hilda smiled her pretty smile. ‘But you will soon. One day, very soon, you’ll know that you’re beautiful.’

  Hilda had recognised every nuance of the change in her daughter. Kate’s physical blossoming had been evident at first glance, but she’d also sensed the restlessness in the girl. Kate is still a virgin, Hilda had thought. She hasn’t discovered her true womanliness yet. But she wants to. She aches to.

  ‘You look so like the pictures of Grandmother Ellie as a girl.’ Hilda studied her daughter fondly. ‘The same green eyes and auburn hair.’ She smiled again, and reaching out her hand, she stroked her fingers along the curve of Kate’s cheek. ‘It’s a very effective mix with the Durham bones, I must say.’ Her smile faded and her fingers rested where they were as her eyes locked with her daughter’s. ‘I do hope you will find a great love, my darling, one as fulfilling as Grandmother Ellie’s.’

  Kate felt uncomfortable, exposed somehow. Her mother, far from being in her customary distracted state, seemed altogether too knowing.

  ‘I think it’s time we headed downstairs for dinner,’ she said and she stood. ‘We don’t want to keep the others waiting.’

  ‘Goodness me, no.’ Hilda glanced at the antique mantel clock, which still kept perfect time. A lovely piece in cherry wood with brass-fitted face, it had belonged to Grandmother Ellie and was one of her favourite possessions. ‘We certainly don’t want to keep them waiting.’ She drained the last of her sherry, delicately patted the corners of her mouth with a lace handkerchief and rose to her feet. ‘After Christmas, when Ivan leaves,’ she said, ‘we shall do a tour of Elianne House, you and I. No one else, just the two of us, and we shall bid our farewells.’

  Our farewells to what, Kate wondered, the past? Her mother wore that distant expression again.

  ‘Yes of course, Marmee, that’s exactly what we’ll do.’

  BONUS CHAPTER SAMPLER

  JUDY

  NUNN

  Kal

  They hugged each other and there were tears in Rico's eyes as he held his brother tightly to him. ‘Find gold for me, Gio. Find gold for me at the bottom of the world.’

  Kalgoorlie. They called it Kal. It grew out of the red dust of the desert over the world's richest vein of gold. People were drawn there from all over the world, to start afresh or to seek their fortunes.

  People like Giovanni Gianni, fleeing his part in a family tragedy. Or Maudie Gaskill, one of the first women to arrive at the gold-fields, and now owner of the most popular pub in town. Or Caterina Panuzzi, banished to the other side of the world to protect her family’s honour.

  The burgeoning town could reward you or it could destroy you, but it would never let you go. You staked your claim in Kal - and Kal staked its claim in you.

  In a story as sweeping as the land itself, bestselling author Judy Nunn brings Kal magically to life through the lives of two families, one Australian and one Italian. From the heady early days of the gold rush to the horrors of the First World War, to the shame and confrontation of the post-war riots, Kal tells the story of Australia itself and the people who forged a nation out of a harsh and unforgiving land.

  BOOK ONE

  THE MIGRANTS

  1892

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Vide ’o mare quant’e hello,

&nb
sp; Spira tantu sentimento,

  Comme tu a chi tiene mente,

  Ca scetato ’o faie sunna.’

  A light snowfall started to blanket the earth as the men’s voices rang out across the mountainside. The men ignored the snow as they squatted around the open fire, clutching their mugs of red wine, their coat collars raised, their woollen caps pulled down over their ears.

  ‘Guarda, gua’, chistu ciardino;

  Siente, sie’ sti sciure arance ... !’

  Giovanni’s voice was raised above the others’. Although the youngest worker at the camp, he was the only one who could play the concertina and he always led the evening song. Besides, he had by far the finest voice. At least that’s what Rico thought as he glanced fondly at his younger brother as they sang the haunting ‘Torna a Surriento’. Several of the dozen or so men sang well, and all were of robust voice, but Giovanni, with his fine natural tenor, was a joy to the ear.

  Half an hour later the men acknowledged defeat— the snowfall had all but extinguished the fire—and, with mugs freshly refilled, they retreated to their tents. But, from Giovanni and Rico’s tent, the concertina played on.

  “Vide ’o mare quant’e bello ...’

  Gradually, the men joined in and, from tent to tent, their voices once more rang out until the wine was finished and it was time to sleep.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING it was Rico who first saw the four figures trudging up the mountain track, their bulky wool-clad bodies black against the snow.

  They looked tiny in the distance. Four dark dots. But then everything looked tiny in the Alps. Even the fir trees, thirty, forty feet high and shaggy with snow, were dwarfed by the landscape. And in the summer months, free of their white disguise, the massive grey boulders, some of which were as large as the village church, looked like pebbles on the side of the mountain.

  But amongst the magnitude of nature’s architecture it was the village itself that looked tiniest of all. Nestled in the valley far below and built of rock quarried from the very mountains which dwarfed it, the village looked defiant. Its church bell rang importantly on Sundays, its stone chimneypots puffed busy smoke into the Alpine air, and its people lived their lives ignoring nature’s surrounding statement that human existence might not be of vast importance in the ultimate scheme of things. Against the backdrop of the mountain splendour, the village and its people were a testament to the wonderful audacity of man.

  That it was Rico who first saw the girls was no accident—he’d been watching for Teresa since the dawn light first cut the icy air. While the men scraped clear the small stone fireplace and fetched dry wood from their tents to boil their mugs of thick, black coffee, Rico stood stamping his heavy work boots in the snow, his black eyes searching the track to the village for the first sign of the girls.

  ‘She is coming,’ he said to Giovanni as his brother handed him a tin mug of scalding coffee, so hot he could feel the warmth of the metal through his thick leather working gloves. ‘See? There.’ He pointed. ‘She is coming.’

  It wasn’t long before the other men noticed the girls and gathered to whistle and heckle as they passed by.

  There were always girls climbing the mountain at this time of the year, peasant girls from nearby villages and farms, crossing the Alps to work in the chalets during the heavy tourist season when extra chambermaids and serving girls were required. The workers always whistled and heckled—but nothing more. They themselves were peasants, employed by the government to work in the stone quarries, or to chop the timber for railway sleepers, or to dig the railroad tunnels and service the tracks through and over the Alps. They came from similar farms and villages and they knew the girls to be good Italian virgins, just like their sisters. They would never dream of accosting them.

  For the most part the girls enjoyed the flirtation. Some pretended they didn’t and marched past with their noses in the air but, more often than not, they smiled saucily at the men and called out their own cheeky responses as they walked on.

  This morning, though, was different. This morning the girls stopped.

  ‘Teresa!’ Rico ran to the tallest of the group. He took her in his arms, lifted her into the air and kissed her passionately. She returned his kiss with equal ardour and the heckling died away as the men watched in envy. The couple’s lips finally parted and, arm in arm, they walked several paces away where, oblivious to their onlookers, they again fell into each other’s embrace.

  Giovanni was the first to initiate a conversation with one of the other girls. She had been standing closest to Teresa as the couple kissed and had stared with open-mouthed fascination at their passion.

  Teresa and the other two girls wore heavy skirts hitched up at the waist with twine to prevent the hems from dragging in the snow. However, the raised hemlines revealed no tempting display of ankle, just heavy walking shoes and thick woven leggings. They wore bulky overcoats and large woollen shawls draped over their heads and shoulders.

  The girl who attracted Giovanni’s attention was different. She wore men’s trousers, far too big for her, tied at the waist with a length of rope. Through the open front of her coat the swell of her breasts was visible beneath the coarse fabric of her shirt. A long woollen scarf was woven around her head and neck in the style that many men adopted when they worked in the bitter cold.

  Giovanni walked over to her. ‘You look like a boy.’

  She glanced down at the trousers. ‘They are my brother’s,’ she answered. I did not want my skirt to be ruined.’

  Each of the girls was carrying a knapsack, on which was tied a pair of snowshoes. As several of the men drifted over, they put their bundles down and prepared to stop for a chat. Giovanni was determined to keep his girl to himself and as she eased her knapsack from her back, he took it from her.

  ‘Let me help you,’ he said, managing to edge her to one side. ‘My name is Giovanni.’ The girl gave him a friendly smile and her blue eyes danced, but she did not offer her own name in reply. Her skin was milky white and Giovanni noticed that a wayward auburn curl had escaped the confines of her scarf.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ he asked, fascinated. She was beautiful.

  ‘My family has a farm near Ridanna.’

  ‘Ah,’ he nodded. ‘So how do you know Teresa and the other girls? They come from Santa Lena.’

  ‘I do not know them,’ she answered. ‘My father made enquiries. There were no girls from Ridanna climbing the mountain and he did not want me to walk on my own, so he took me to Santa Lena.’ She gave him a cheeky smile. ‘I do not know why Papa did not want me to walk alone—perhaps he worried about the railroad workers.’ Again the blue eyes danced. Laughter bubbled beneath the surface of her beauty.

  Giovanni knew she was joking but he was defensive nevertheless. ‘Oh we mean no harm, we are no danger—’

  ‘I know,’ she laughed. The young man was so serious, she should not make fun of him. ‘I know you are not.’ She cast a glance in Teresa’s direction. The lovers were still in a deep embrace. Rico had taken off his gloves and Teresa’s shawl lay unheeded on the snow as he raked his fingers through her dishevelled hair. A handsome woman with a strong-boned face and wild black tresses, Teresa clung fiercely to Rico’s body as his mouth left her lips and started to travel down her neck. She appeared transported, her mouth open, her eyes closed.

  The girl watched, shocked but fascinated. They were so blatant they might as well have been naked, she thought. They were making love, fully clothed, out here on the snowy mountainside for all to see.

  She was suddenly aware that Giovanni was watching her with as much interest as she was watching Teresa and she averted her eyes, embarrassed.

  Giovanni himself was a little embarrassed by his brother’s behaviour and felt he owed some explanation. ‘Rico is my brother,’ he said. ‘We also come from Santa Lena. He and Teresa have known each other for a long time, they are bound to marry some day.’

  The girl’s momentary confusion was over and her smile was warm. G
enuine. They love each other very much. That is good.’

  Then as quickly as Teresa had fallen into Rico’s arms, she thrust him away from her. ‘Enough, Rico, leave me alone,’ she cried laughingly. ‘It is a full day’s walk to Steinach and we must get there before dark.’ He tried to embrace her again but she pushed him away. I will see you in four months,’ she said, picking up her knapsack. She started up the track, turning to wave every few steps, and the other girls followed.

  ‘Goodbye,’ the girl said to Giovanni.

  ‘Goodbye,’ He watched the four of them as they trudged on up the track but he was really only looking at the girl

  THE FIRST HOUR wasn’t heavy going. The track wound gently around the base of the mountain and there was not much climbing. The girls chattered and breathed puffs of white steam as they walked. It was cold but there was little breeze and the sun’s rays would soon warm the air. It was going to be a fine day.

  The girls were excited, undaunted by the eight-hour trek to Steinach, the little Austrian village on the other side of the mountain where a sleigh would be waiting to take them to the ski resort.

  Teresa and her two friends had worked in chalets for the past two seasons. As they compared notes and giggled at stories about the incompetence of tourist skiers, the girl studied Teresa. Tall, handsome, strong, she wore her woman’s sexuality like a badge of honour. The image of the lovers and their unashamed passion was still fresh in the girl’s mind.

  Caterina had never seen people kiss like that. She had just turned eighteen and she had kissed several boys over the past two years, one of them a number of times. She had even parted her lips for Roberto and once his hand had brushed her breast as if by accident. Her heart had pumped wildly at the time but she had suffered terrible pangs of guilt until confession the following Sunday. After that, she avoided Roberto, but she could not keep at bay the memory of his moist lips and the tantalising touch of his hand on her breast.