Heritage

by Judy Nunn

  Her reply was candid and comfortable, and once again she’d put him at his ease; she tended to have that effect on him, he thought.

  ‘He’s a beaut bloke, Lucky,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ she agreed.

  They returned to Cooma in the mid afternoon – it was Sunday and Rob was picking up several of the men to take them back to the camp.

  ‘So when do you start work, Ruth?’ he asked as they drove into town.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘My medical clearance was finalised last week and I report for duty first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Best of luck,’ he said as he turned off Sharp Street into Vale. They were only a block from Dodds now, and he wanted to ask her out to dinner next weekend, but he wasn’t sure how to put it. A sightseeing drive was one thing, but dinner was a different matter altogether.

  She seemed unaware of his dilemma as they turned into Commissioner Street and he did a u-turn to pull up outside the pub.

  ‘I’ll be moving out of Dodds in a week or so,’ she said. ‘The Authority’s lining up accommodation for me.’

  ‘Right, that’ll be nice.’ Perhaps lunch might be a better idea, he thought distractedly as he walked her to the main doors.

  ‘Thanks so much, Rob. I’ve had a wonderful time.’

  She shook his hand warmly, but the gesture seemed such a closure to the day that he faltered over his invitation.

  ‘Any time. Perhaps we might do another drive next weekend?’ It was all he could come up with.

  ‘I’d like that,’ she smiled. She had sensed he was working up the courage to offer a more intimate invitation, and she didn’t wish to encourage him. She liked him a great deal but she wasn’t ready for a relationship.

  Well, it hadn’t been a ‘no’, Rob thought, cursing his own inadequacy as she disappeared into Dodds. At least she wanted to see him again.

  Maarten Vanpoucke was deep in thought as he walked down Vale Street. He’d stepped out of Hallidays store into Sharp Street just in time to see the jeep rounding the corner, Ruth smiling and talking animatedly to the man driving. It had shocked him. Was she already being courted?

  As he crossed Commissioner Street, he saw the jeep pull away from the kerb outside Dodds. He knew she was staying at Dodds; the hotel was listed in her medical file as her current address. Perhaps her escort had merely taken her for a drive in the country. He certainly hoped so; there couldn’t be any competition. He had to devise a plan: he needed to socialise with her. Once they developed a friendship, it wouldn’t take long for him to exert the power which he knew he still had over her. He’d felt it in her presence: even though she herself had been unaware of it, the bond between them was as strong as ever.

  It would be Lucky who would provide the link, he decided. How ironic that it should be her own husband who would open the doors for him. And how convenient that he himself was the only one to know of their marriage. At least he assumed that to be the case, and it would certainly work to his advantage. He would make his move next weekend, he thought. Lucky was always in town on a Saturday.

  It was noon on Monday, midway through the day shift, and Lucky had sent half the crew off for crib after the second firing for the day. They had thirty minutes before they relieved the other members of the team – work never stopped in the Eucumbene-Tumut tunnel. Gone were the days of the lazy mid-morning smoko breaks over billy tea, and although many teams working out in the open still sat around a campfire and boiled a billy, they made sure it was only when the bosses weren’t about. If you worked for Kaiser you were allowed just the one half-hour crib break in an eight-hour shift, and sometimes even that was cut short.

  There was little talk among the twenty men in hardhats and overalls sitting on the long wooden bench in the gloom of the massive tunnel, their backs to the rock wall, scoffing their hasty meal. They rarely complained about the short crib break; they were there to work, and time meant money. They enjoyed the competitive element and they certainly had no complaints about the pay. Indeed, to the migrants, who comprised the majority of the workforce, the opportunities on offer were beyond all expectations. They had left everything behind to arrive with nothing in a new country, and yet working for the Americans could see them owning a house in six months. Their work ethic was strong and, efficient teamwork being imperative, their camaraderie was intense – they were Snowy men and proud of it.

  Lucky himself rarely took a crib break. As shift boss he preferred to eat his meal on the job, and he wolfed a sandwich down while the first of the locos drove in with its train of six cars, and the operator of the huge motorised mucker began the laborious process of shovelling up the rock spoil and loading it into the muck train.

  After the firing, a scant five minutes was allowed for the smoke and dust to clear before the lengthy mucking-out process began. When the spoil had finally been cleared, it would be Lucky himself, together with another of the strongest men on the team, who would bar down the face to free it of any loose rock. Then the whole cycle would begin all over again.

  The ‘jumbo’, a huge, three-tiered, steel-framed gantry on which twelve heavy pneumatic drilling machines were mounted, would be propelled on rails up to the tunnel face. The drilling would take place simultaneously, then the drill holes would be loaded with explosives. When the jumbo had been led back on its tracks and the men had retreated a safe distance behind the firing switch, the detonation would take place. The entire process of drilling, firing and mucking out took approximately four hours, so two cycles per shift was the common aim.

  Crib break over, Lucky called the men back to work. It was time to relieve the others. They stood downing the last of their cold drinks and lukewarm coffee, Karl Heffner complaining that it wasn’t the same as billy tea. In his earnest desire to become a true blue Aussie, Karl had not only developed a love of billy tea, he’d perfected the art of whingeing.

  ‘I hear soon the buggers they give us a thermos for tea,’ he said. ‘They issue all workers with a bloody thermos, so no-one will boil a bloody billy.’ Along with his Australian idiosyncrasies, Karl had worked hard on his swear words.

  ‘Thermoses, eh?’ one of the Aussies scoffed. ‘I reckon there’ll be a helluva lot of ’em busted if they try to bring ’em in.’

  They trooped back to work, all except Pietro, who remained seated at the far end of the bench, his chin lolling forward on his chest, his lunchbox unopened on his lap.

  ‘Pietro?’ Lucky said, but there was no reaction from the boy. ‘Pietro?’ Still no reaction. He was fast asleep, Lucky realised with concern. He grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. ‘Pietro, wake up.’

  Pietro awoke with a start, nearly falling off the bench. He’d been in a deep and dreamless sleep, the first dreamless sleep he’d had in weeks. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. He looked about, confused and disoriented, then saw Lucky gazing down at him.

  ‘Lucky,’ he said, ‘I fall asleep, I am sorry,’ and he jumped to his feet, stumbling a little, still feeling groggy.

  ‘Sit down, Pietro.’

  Pietro looked at the men marching off down the tunnel. ‘But crib is over. I go to work.’

  ‘I said sit down.’

  Pietro did as he was told and Lucky sat beside him, examining him closely, noting the pallor of his skin and the shadows under his eyes.

  ‘You’re not well – what is it? What’s wrong?’

  ‘Is nothing. I do not sleep so good, is all. I have more dreams. The dreams like I tell you, you know? Of the priest?’

  He’d told Lucky his dreams were a breakthrough – a memory. And although he feared the priest, it was a good thing that he remembered. But he hadn’t told Lucky that the dreams were now getting out of hand.

  Over the past several weeks, the more Pietro had tried to discover the priest’s link to his past, the more his every sleeping hour had become haunted by the man with the piercing eyes. Yet he was no closer to discovering the truth. The previous Saturday, however, two days before, i
n the little back verandah room with Violet, after he’d lain drowning in the blood, the priest’s eyes devouring him, and after Violet had woken him fearful that he’d choke in his sleep, Pietro had been sure of one thing.

  ‘The other night in my dream, Lucky,’ he now said, eager to share his discovery with his friend, ‘I find out why is it that I fear the priest. The priest, he is going to kill me. I do not know why – this I must discover. Why is it the priest wish to kill me?’

  Lucky berated himself for not having paid more attention to Pietro’s condition. Whether the priest was simply a recurring nightmare, or whether he was indeed a fragment of the boy’s tortured memory, was beyond determination, but one thing was certain. Pietro was distracted and in a state of exhaustion.

  ‘Have you been to see your doctor?’ he asked abruptly.

  Pietro recognised Lucky’s anxiety and realised that his talk about the priest must have sounded all wrong. Lucky was his boss, and they were at work. This was not the time or the place to talk of such things.

  ‘I am sorry, Lucky,’ he said. ‘Is wrong I talk like this.’

  But Lucky was not interested in apologies. ‘You haven’t, have you? You haven’t been to see your doctor.’

  Pietro shook his head, and he knew what was coming.

  ‘Have you had any more fits since you’ve been on your medication?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pietro felt terribly guilty that he hadn’t told Lucky about his fits. It had been wrong of him to keep silent, he thought, Lucky had put his own job on the line by not reporting his epilepsy to the Authority a full nine months ago.

  ‘I have a fit in Sydney at Christmas when I am with Violetta,’ he said, staring at the ground as he made his admission, ‘and I have another three weeks ago.’

  Oh God, Lucky thought, and cursed his own stupidity. He’d been eager to believe the illness could be controlled with regular medication, as Maarten Vanpoucke had intimated; but he’d behaved irresponsibly and had endangered the team.

  ‘You cannot work in your condition, Pietro – you know that, don’t you? You’re a danger to yourself and to the others.’

  ‘Yes, this I know.’

  Lucky had such a huge affection for the boy and he looked so miserable that he longed to tell him everything would be all right, but he couldn’t give Pietro any false assurances. The boy had problems beyond all comprehension, and to have a man on the team who was mentally unstable was a risk to the others. But what would happen to him, Lucky thought, if he lost his job – with a young wife and a baby on the way?

  ‘I’m going to organise a vehicle to take you into town,’ he said. ‘You will go directly to your doctor and you’ll take time off work and stay home for as long as the doctor says is necessary. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, Lucky, I understand.’

  Lucky walked off, wondering what on earth he was going to do. He couldn’t allow Pietro to remain on the team – he would have to find him some other form of employment, but where? Doing what? Pietro had no skills other than those of a labourer, but as a labourer he was a liability to his workmates.

  Pietro sat there feeling wretched. Lucky was cross with him because he had not told the truth, but he’d been worried that he might lose his job. He should not have come to work today, he thought, he should have listened to Violetta and Maureen.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more about the priest,’ Violet had said when she’d woken him from his dream. ‘I hate him.’ She’d been terrified by his choking and the sound of his voice calling his own name. ‘I don’t care if you remember – Pietro, it doesn’t matter any more. Maybe it’s best to forget. Forget the priest!’

  Brunch had not been the same that day. And in the late afternoon, when Maureen had returned from the hospital and remarked upon how tired Pietro looked, Violet had told her why.

  ‘It’s the priest, Auntie Maureen, he’s had dreams about the priest again, and running through the snow, and the blood and …’

  Maureen had recognised Violet’s distress as genuine; this was no manufactured drama, she knew, and she’d been concerned herself. The boy looked utterly exhausted.

  ‘You haven’t been to see the doctor, have you?’ she’d asked sternly, and when he’d shaken his head she’d been quite adamant. ‘You must, Pietro. You must stay here tonight. Don’t report for work tomorrow – we can telephone and say you’re not well. Stay in town and see your doctor instead.’

  Then Violet had joined in. ‘Auntie Maureen’s right, Pietro. Stay here and go to the doctor, I’ll come with you. We’ll go together,’ she’d pleaded, ‘please, sweetie.’

  The two of them had been most insistent. But he hadn’t listened.

  He should have, he thought. Now he’d been caught out and Lucky, his best friend in the world, would be forced to fire him.

  ‘I am sorry, Lucky,’ he said again twenty minutes later as they stood beside the jeep, the engine running, ‘I have done wrong.’

  ‘No, you haven’t.’ Lucky embraced the boy as he’d wanted to do in the tunnel; the poor kid looked so woebegone. ‘We’ll find a way around it, Pietro, don’t you worry. Now you do whatever the doctor advises,’ he said as Pietro climbed into the passenger seat. ‘And you rest up in town for a few days, all right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pietro was relieved that Lucky didn’t seem angry with him after all.

  ‘Young Pietro Toscanini is here, doctor. He doesn’t have an appointment, but Mrs Chapman is a little late, so I wondered if …’

  ‘Yes, yes, show him in and bring me his file.’ Maarten put on his spectacles. Old Mrs Chapman could wait, he thought. She was an irritating hypochondriac at the best of times, and the Italian was such an interesting case.

  ‘Pietro, come in, come in.’ He stood behind his desk and gestured at the chair opposite. ‘Sit down, my boy.’

  Pietro sat.

  ‘Thank you, Edith.’ Maarten accepted the file she handed him, and as she closed the door behind her he sat and smiled benignly at Pietro. ‘I haven’t seen you for some time – have you been keeping well?’ He certainly didn’t look well, Maarten thought.

  Pietro shook his head. ‘I do not sleep good,’ he said. ‘For three weeks I do not sleep good. Since my fit, I have dreams.’

  ‘Ah, so you suffered another seizure? Let me see …’ Maarten opened the file and glanced through the medical report. ‘You had a seizure in December …’

  ‘Yes, it is Christmas. I am in Sydney with Violetta.’

  ‘Of course, you both came to see me. And you’ve suffered another seizure since then, is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you been taking your medication?’

  ‘Yes, I take my pills every day.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what might have triggered this seizure?’

  Pietro nodded, he remembered only too well. ‘I get in a fight, and this fight it upset me.’ If the doctor asked for details, he’d say it was in a pub, he thought – he certainly wouldn’t tell him he’d attacked Violetta’s father.

  The doctor didn’t ask for details, however; he gave an understanding nod that seemed to say ‘boys will be boys’, but there was a touch of admonishment in his tone. ‘With a condition like yours, Pietro, it is wise to avoid aggression whenever possible. Any form of violence is a possible trigger, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘So following the fight, you felt the warning symptoms …’ Maarten checked his notes again. ‘The tic in your left eye, headache, general fatigue?’

  ‘Yes, the fight it upset me and I go inside. Then I feel the fit coming.’

  ‘So you were alone when the attack happened?’

  ‘No, Violetta, she is with me. And I tell her to ask me questions, like you say she can do. I wish for her to ask me about the house. Why I cannot see inside this house. Is most important I remember,’ Pietro said earnestly, ‘because Violetta, she has a baby and I will be a father.’

  ‘Really?’ Maarten look
ed up from the notes he’d been making and smiled. ‘My heartiest congratulations.’ The boy seemed happy about the fact, so he supposed congratulations were in order.

  ‘Thank you. Oh, Violetta and me, we have been married many months now,’ Pietro added hastily – he didn’t want the doctor to get the wrong idea. ‘We marry in October; we are married when we come to see you.’

  ‘Well, well, how surprising, again my congratulations.’ Maarten wished the boy would get back to the point, he was curious to know if the girl had made contact during the seizure.

  ‘Yes, and I wish for my baby to know who I am. This is why I must remember.’

  ‘Of course, most understandable. So did Violet manage to get through to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you respond?’

  ‘Yes, I answer her.’

  How interesting, thought the doctor as he made a further note on the medical report.

  ‘I do not know that I answer her until after, when she tell me.’

  ‘Naturally,’ he nodded, ‘it would be most unlikely that you would. But when she told you of your responses, did you recall anything?’

  ‘Yes, I see things.’

  ‘Ah.’ Even more interesting, Maarten thought. ‘Did you see inside the house?’

  ‘No. I try, but I cannot see inside the house. The door, it will not open. I am under the house, I see the floor, it is above me, and I see the man’s shoes on the steps …’

  ‘These are images you’ve told me about before, Pietro, they’re here in your report.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I see this before,’ Pietro was reliving the sequence of events in his mind, trying to get everything in the right order for the doctor, ‘but then I see the floor it is not above me, the floor it is beneath me. I am inside the house,’ he said. ‘I am kneeling. But I cannot see the house, I can see only the floor. And then I see the man’s shoes. And I see a priest’s robe. And then I see a Bible that he holds in his hands.’

  A cassock and a Bible, Maarten thought, remembering how he’d always held the peasants’ Bible as one by one he’d heard their confessions, and how afterwards they’d kissed the hem of his cassock. Amazing, he thought – the boy was regaining his memory.