Sundown Crossing

by Lynne Wilding

  Carl turned as Carla spoke. In seconds the expression on his face changed, from surprise to amazement at her resemblance to Anna Louise, and then restrained fury. When he regained control his features tightened into an unreadable mask. His blue eyes, wide with an anger that was mirrored in Carla’s eyes, speared into hers. It seemed ages, but in real time only a few seconds passed as he stared at his son’s daughter. His head shook from side to side as, wordlessly he rejected her.

  ‘Grandfather,’ Carla said again. This time she did not have the courage to smile with the address.

  ‘How dare you speak to him,’ Lisel, almost beside herself with rage, hissed at Carla. ‘Are you so thick-skinned, or stupid, that you can’t see that we want nothing to do with you?’

  ‘If my grandfather says so, then I’ll believe him.’ Carla pointed towards Lisel. ‘When you say it I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You bitch. Are you calling me a liar?’

  Paul, standing behind Carla, put restraining hands on her shoulders just in case the situation became physical.

  ‘Lisel, Carla,’ Luke tried to calm the women down. ‘This isn’t the time or the place for such a discussion.’

  ‘I agree,’ Carla responded. Her chin rose defiantly at Lisel but her words were directed to Luke, ‘Name the time and the place…’

  Carl Stenmark spoke. ‘Enough, all of you.’ His gaze raked over Carla. ‘I know who you are. You are a brazen upstart who has deluded herself into thinking the Barossa can be her new home, and that she’s welcome here.’ His voice, authoritative and loud when he chose, drowned out all others. ‘My grandson tells me that you’re intelligent.’ His gaze flicked momentarily towards Luke then back to Carla. ‘I don’t think that can be true. An intelligent person knows when to advance and when to retreat, when to cut their losses and move on.’ He pointed the index finger of his right hand at her to emphasise his words. ‘It’s been inferred that you’ll not be accepted in the Valley, and it’s only a matter of time before your pathetic venture fails and you’re bankrupted. If you leave now you might salvage something from your misadventure. Stay and you’ll lose everything.’

  ‘Easy, Carl,’ Paul interceded. ‘That sounds a bit too threatening for my liking.’

  ‘Stay out of it,’ Carl stared imperiously at the architect. ‘This situation is none of your concern. Stick to what you’re good at, Paul, designing buildings and wineries, not Valley politics.’

  ‘I’m your son’s daughter, Rolfe’s child. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’ Carla, to her shame, couldn’t keep the pleading tone out of her voice. She moved closer to her grandfather, until they faced each other, and she was aware that Paul had moved too, and that his hands were still placed lightly on her shoulders. Somehow, the thought lodged in her subconscious, it was a comfort to have him there, being supportive.

  For a brief time two pairs of blue eyes locked. In her grandfather’s depths Carla saw a fleeting sorrow, the pain caused by remembering, then uncertainty, until his mouth tightened and his eyes glazed over and hardened. He straightened to his full height—taller than Luke, she noted, and almost as tall as Paul. A very imposing figure. She saw his features set, turning to granite as he dismissed her overture.

  ‘I had one son,’ he said, his tone deep, harsh. ‘His name was Kurt. He died, a long time ago.’

  Hurt beyond measure, as he began to turn away, Carla struck back the only way she could, with words. ‘A while ago you used the word pathetic. Well, I believe the word applies to you, Grandfather. You and your judgements are pathetic, and whether you like it or approve I am your granddaughter and I will never deny my relationship to you. That you choose not to recognise me for reasons that are…questionable and archaic, is a matter for your conscience.’ From somewhere, she didn’t quite know how, she managed to dredge up a hard-edged smile. ‘But that probably won’t be difficult for you. I’ve heard that the Stenmarks don’t have too much of a conscience.’ Carla felt little satisfaction when she saw that barb strike home—Carl couldn’t disguise the hurt in his eyes quickly enough to what she’d said.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve, speaking to my father like that,’ Lisel said, incensed by Carla’s accusation. She raised her hand but was prevented from striking by Luke. He grabbed her wrist, forced it back to her side, and held it there.

  ‘That will do.’ Luke’s gaze flicked towards Carla. ‘And enough from you too.’ The family squabble had become ‘the show’. Everyone in the restaurant—diners and waiters—was watching, listening to every word, though pretending they weren’t. ‘As I said before, this isn’t the time, or the place.’

  ‘I agree,’ Paul said as he gave Luke a conspiratorial nod.

  Sam, who’d also seen and heard the argument, rushed to his mother’s side. He tugged her skirt then placed himself in front of her. ‘Mum, are you okay? What’s going on?’

  Sam’s apprehension made Carla aware that the dispute had become too public. She blinked back tears of disappointment and frustration. She lifted her son up to reassure him that everything was all right, and in particular so that the Stenmarks could see him. To hell with all of you, she silently reaffirmed her attitude. If they wouldn’t accept her, she wouldn’t accept them. Who needed them anyway? They were a cold-hearted bunch, all of them with, possibly, the exception of Aunt Greta.

  ‘It’s all right, Sam, there’s nothing for you to be concerned about.’ She hugged his slim body to her. ‘Let’s go back and finish your cake, shall we?’ Her chin lifted with steely determination. Carl Stenmark’s words, his rejection of her and Sam wounded her more than she cared to think about but she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of seeing how deep the hurt went. And then her grandfather’s words reverberated inside her head—‘If you leave now you might salvage something from your misadventure. Stay and you will lose everything.’ Leave. Like hell she would. She and Sam and Angie would stay and succeed, if it killed her!

  Carl watched his granddaughter spin around on her heel and walk past van Leeson towards their table. Her spine was straight, and she held her head high. Dear God, for a moment in time it had been as if Anna Louise was with him again. A band of sorrow wound around his heart and squeezed till it hurt almost too much to bear.

  She was so like…her father. Proud, impulsive, independent. Carl knew that his rejection of Carla and her son had cut deep, just as he knew that she wouldn’t give any of them the satisfaction of seeing precisely how deep. Her being here in the Valley was something he and Rhein Schloss didn’t need but instinct and a lifetime of experience told him that Rolfe’s daughter would not leave voluntarily. She would have to be made to leave. He gave a low, growling sigh as he moved towards the restaurant’s front door. The die was cast, and so be it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Kim scraped the bowl of one of Tran’s favourite dishes into a plastic container and closed the lid. She put the container in the fridge and turned out the kitchen light. Two nights in a row Tran had, after finishing work and going into town, not come home in time to eat dinner with them. An odd occurrence for him because he loved his food, especially when it was hot and fresh. Something was going on, she sensed it in her bones. Her brother was a secretive man and for the last two weeks his behaviour had been different. Stopping work on the vines as early as he could get away with, showering and changing, then rushing off on his motorbike without a word as to where he was going, and coming home late, sometimes very late and cranky.

  She knew that since his recent nineteenth birthday Tran considered himself a man who no longer had to tell his older sister where he was going and what he was doing—that much was obvious. Also obvious to her was what he was doing. She recognised the signs, having seen them in her father when she was small, and now she saw them in Tran. He was gambling, and regularly contributing less of his wage to their savings. He always had a ready excuse though—he had expenses, the bike needed a new part, he had a girlfriend, he needed new clothes.

  Kim was fairly sure there was no gir
lfriend, but she would have preferred a woman to be in Tran’s life rather than him becoming obsessed with gambling. She knew how hard life could be when the urge took hold, as it had on her father. One time when he hadn’t been able to repay his debts thugs had come to the farm, dragged him out of the hut and beaten him until he was almost dead. She remembered that experience well. Her mother and the older children had had to take over the farm work, leaving Kim to nurse the head of the house back to health. Her father’s condition, his impatience with being unwell and the strain it had put on the family was something she would never forget. Her small, thin mouth tightened as she forcibly put the memories aside. She was not going to repeat the gambling experience with Tran, of that she was determined. Tran, Su Lee and herself had come too far, suffered the pain of severing family ties, risked everything for a new life in a new country and she would not let her brother’s weakness ruin their future.

  Kim moved through the caravan to check on Su Lee. Her sister was asleep on her side of the double bed, the book she’d been reading still in her hand. Kim smiled as she eased the book away and put it on the side table. Such a lucky girl to be getting an education, she thought fondly. Su Lee would do well because she was eager to learn and had a thirst for knowledge. Already her young head was full of dreams, of possibilities of what she might one day become. But, Kim stifled a yawn as her thoughts harked back to the immediate problem, what to do about Tran?

  When they’d come to Australia to start anew she had made a promise from which she would not be swayed. Life would be different, better, here than it had been in their home village and in Saigon. Had she still been a captive in the brothel or living on Saigon’s streets, by now she might have succumbed to corruption, drugs or disease. Her life, and ultimately her sanity had been saved by Sister Dinah Sherwood, a middle-aged Australian nursing nun who, on international donations and handouts, ran a shelter for orphans and street kids. Sister Dinah gave the children she gathered to her clothes, food, an education—a chance for a better life when they grew up.

  At the age of seventeen, because she had no money or anything of value to give, a gang of drug addicts had beaten her up and left her in a rubbish-littered alley to die. Kim had been picked up by Sister Dinah, and taken in her kombivan to the orphanage and nursed back to health. Life on the streets had made Kim feral and it had taken months for Sister Dinah’s gentle manner to break down her distrust enough for her to open up and tell her story.

  Grateful for the nun’s kindness, Kim stayed at the orphanage to help the nun and her small staff. They’d taught her to speak, read and write English, and Sister Dinah encouraged Kim to make contact with her family again, and to apply to the Australian Embassy for permission to migrate to Australia. Kim had done so and included Tran and Su Lee in her application for residency. Processing and approving the application had taken four years but finally they’d made it, thanks to Sister Dinah’s persistence with the Australian Immigration Department. Now they were here and she intended to make a success of her life and put the memories of a harrowing past behind her.

  Sighing, she pulled back the covers and hopped into bed, too weary to wait up for Tran. They would speak in the morning. Everything was beginning to come together for them now that Carla was well into the process of resurrecting the vineyard. They had a roof over their heads and steady employment, their savings were growing and Su Lee was going to school. She turned out the light only to stare wide-eyed into the darkness. She would not allow Tran to cause them to fail, there was too much at stake. Turning on her side, she willed sleep to overtake her…

  Kim cried out in her sleep and Su Lee shook Kim’s shoulder till she woke up.

  ‘You were having the bad dream again, weren’t you?’ Su Lee whispered. She hugged her sister to her, as if doing so would banish the demons.

  ‘I am all right,’ Kim assured her. ‘Go back to sleep.’ She waited until Su Lee’s breathing had deepened with sleep but she could not drift off. The details of her kidnapping, regurgitated by the nightmare, were too fresh in her mind. Propping herself up on a pillow, the resurfacing memories rolled on…

  Once she had adjusted, her captor, Tuen, introduced her to the other women and children of several different ages who lived in his brothel. For almost a year Kim worked in the kitchen, cleaned and tidied the various bedrooms, until she began to develop physically. A single tear slid down her cheek as she recalled her ‘initiation’ into the intimacies that took place between a man and a woman, her cheeks warming with embarrassment and shame.

  Tuen had received a huge bonus for presenting a customer with a rarity, ‘a young virgin’, and thus began her experience in the brothel’s true work.

  The first time she ran away she was twelve. She thought she had planned it well, going when Tuen and two of his underlings were away on business. It took three days of walking, hitching the occasional ride, to find her way back to her parents’ farm where, much to her disappointment and sadness, she was not welcomed. Her mother told her she could not stay, her father said this was the first place Tuen would look for her and—as if she didn’t already know—he was a very bad man, capable of doing everyone in the family harm if they hid her.

  Their rejection was a hard lesson to absorb. Two days later Tuen’s underlings found her walking along the side of the road and took her back. She was beaten and starved, again, until she became compliant, after which Tuen warned her that if she ran away again, when found and returned he would turn her into a junkie, like Nhat and Su Mai and, once addicted she would lose all will to ever run away.

  In the darkness of the caravan’s bedroom Kim drew her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees as she fought to forget the past, but the memories had become imbedded in her brain. By fourteen Kim knew one thing, the next time she tried to escape she needed a plan that would work. Living almost solely within the confines of the brothel, apart from the occasional trip into town, every day she had seen what brothel living did to the women, how it demoralised and eventually destroyed them. By thirty most of the women looked fifty, similar to the old woman she had seen when first brought there. Almost half were addicted to some type of drug and the others could barely put an intelligent sentence together.

  She was smart enough to understand that a similar fate could befall her if her escape was not successful. It took a year to plan and execute. The first decision had to be where to go. Saigon, she had heard, was a big city, so it should be easy to get lost there. She needed money, for bribes, for living. That was the most difficult task to accomplish because Tuen paid his prostitutes a pittance. Lastly, she had to change how she looked so that Tuen’s men—they’d be sent to find and bring her back—would not recognise her. And…if she failed in this attempt, all was lost.

  Fate, for once, smiled on Kim and she escaped Tuen’s dominance but found life on the streets of Saigon hard, almost as hard as being in the brothel. She’d lived on her wits, learnt to steal, to lie, to fight and to survive, until Sister Dinah found her and showed her how good life could be.

  Now wide awake and holding back the tears that accompanied the memories, Kim’s ears picked up the sound of Tran’s bike as he drove into the yard and turned the motor off. She looked at the clock on the bedside table. 1.35 am. Tut-tutting she got out of bed and moved through the caravan. She found him opening the fridge door, looking for his dinner.

  ‘Where you been?’

  Instead of answering the question he said crossly, ‘I’m not a child,’ his irritation obvious. ‘I go wherever I want.’ He sat down, ignored her and began to eat the cold food from the container.

  ‘Gambling. I know. That’s what you do. It has to stop.’ Kim sat opposite him at the compact, built-in table. ‘You like our father but I no let you ruin what we have by behaving foolishly.’

  ‘Foolishly!’ He stared belligerently at her. ‘You dare to call me foolish.’ Aggrieved, he puffed his chest out. ‘I am grown, and my money is my money. I have earned it. You,’ he stabbed the air wi
th his chopstick, ‘cannot stop me, older sister.’

  The sad thing was she knew he was right. She couldn’t. Her mother had tried to limit her father’s gambling activities only to be beaten by him. What had stopped Chou Loong’s gambling was fear; the threat of being crippled if he reneged on any more losses. However, the urge to gamble had remained strong within him and changed him into an unhappy, moody man. She remembered his anger, his frustration, and that it was often taken out on members of the family.

  Her gaze moved off Tran to stare out the window. It was totally black outside but beyond the blackness were the vines and they were laden with fruit. Accepting that she wasn’t going to get anywhere with Tran in the mood he was in, her thoughts focused on the coming harvest. It was only days away, and Carla and Angie needed every pair of hands, including Tran’s, at harvest time, so now was not the time to confront him and his problem, or to tell him that if he couldn’t stop he must leave and make his way in the world on his own. It would make her sad to say such things to her brother—they had been through a lot over the past few years—but she believed she had to. Tran had to decide what was important to him, gambling or family but, for now she would wait until harvest was over.

  Without answering, a tactic she knew would annoy him because Tran hated to be ignored, she stood, turned on her heel, walked back into the bedroom and drew the curtain across the doorway.

  ‘You seem preoccupied tonight,’ Josh made the comment. His gaze was centred on Carla as he sat across from her at her dining-room table. There’d been just the three of them for dinner—Carla, Josh and Sam. Angie had left earlier for a meeting in town and after eating, Sam had raced off to play with Su Lee until it got dark.