Beneath the Southern Cross

by Judy Nunn

  Artie was aware he was being given the once-over, and he too sensed that their visit was not welcome.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to talk alone together,’ he said meaningfully to Kitty. ‘Rob and I can go for a walk in the park.’

  ‘No, no,’ Kitty ignored him, ‘I want Rob to meet the children.’ She said to Caroline, ‘May we come in?’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry,’ Caroline replied distractedly, appearing to notice for the first time that they were standing on the porch. ‘Come in, I’ll make us some tea.

  ‘They’re not here,’ she said, leading the way to the kitchen. ‘The boys play footie on Saturday afternoon and Emma’s at the pictures with a girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh what a shame, do you have any photographs?’

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Well, I’ll put the kettle on while you go and get them.’

  Caroline reluctantly went upstairs and Arturo muttered to Kitty in Italian, ‘Why do you boss her about? She does not want us here, we must go.’

  ‘Have a quick cup of tea and then leave us alone together.’ Kitty automatically replied in Italian. When they were on their own with their son, they invariably spoke Italian, forcing the boy to follow suit. ‘Do you want to go to the park, Rob?’ she asked as she filled up the kettle.

  ‘Yes, can we go now?’ Rob was bored already, he didn’t want to sit around drinking tea.

  ‘In a few minutes,’ Kitty said. ‘Be patient.’ She winked at Artie. ‘You can take him to see the Archibald Fountain.’ Artie smiled back, recalling the first night they’d met.

  As she reached the bottom of the stairs, Caroline heard the three of them chatting in Italian. Were they talking about her, she momentarily wondered. But then the boy was joining in, and she heard the Archibald Fountain mentioned. No, she was just being paranoid, and she really must make some effort, she’d been churlish and probably rude. Still, they could have telephoned. Then she could have avoided them altogether.

  ‘You speak Italian, Kitty, I’m very impressed,’ she said, forcing a smile as she put the photographs on the table.

  ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to be rude.’ Kitty dumped the kettle on the stove. ‘We always speak Italian with Rob, it’s become a bit of a habit. We want him to grow up bilingual, although he’s not too sure about it himself, are you, Rob?’

  Rob shrugged as if he didn’t care, but he did really. Very much. He’d never admit to the kids at school that he spoke Italian. He had enough trouble with the way he looked as it was. And he insisted that his name was Robert, not Roberto.

  ‘Here, I’ll do that,’ Caroline said as Kitty lit the stove, ‘you sit down.’

  Artie dutifully admired the photographs of the children, Kitty pointing out how pretty Emma was, and Artie marvelling at his wife’s capacity for small talk. It was a talent Kitty rarely displayed. As soon as they could make good their escape, Artie and Robert disappeared off to the park.

  Caroline wrapped up some bread. ‘You can feed the pigeons,’ she said to Rob.

  ‘Thanks.’ He was a handsome little boy when he smiled, she thought.

  Caroline relaxed a little after they’d gone. ‘You’re deliberately pushing me, aren’t you, Kitty? You haven’t changed,’ she said. Caroline had always admired Kitty’s boldness. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘You have,’ Kitty said, ‘you’ve changed a lot.’

  ‘Yes.’ Straight to the point, Caroline thought, typically Kitty.

  ‘You’re very unhappy, aren’t you?’

  Caroline gave a snort of derision. ‘Do you blame me?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Strange, Kitty thought, how Caroline’s beauty had been destroyed from within. She was a little weightier, it was true, but the handsome brow was still clearly defined, the mouth still luscious, she should have been a handsome woman. But dissatisfaction and resentment had marred her looks.

  ‘You have every right to be unhappy,’ she agreed, ‘but why are you so bitter?’

  Caroline was confronted. Just as Kitty intended her to be. No-one had spoken to her this way. She’d had endless condolences and offers of help, but no-one really understood. They thought they did. A woman grieving for her husband, and left with three children too. Sad. Tragic. But they didn’t understand at all. She wondered if Kitty might. She obviously wanted to try.

  ‘He died such a senseless death,’ Caroline began. ‘It shouldn’t have happened. He shouldn’t have died the way he did.’

  ‘What way?’

  Caroline’s dark eyes glared with irritation. ‘Senselessly,’ she snapped. ‘Stupidly, uselessly, unnecessarily.’

  ‘But he didn’t. Gene didn’t die a senseless death. He died doing what he loved most. He smashed himself up in a racing car.’ Ignoring Caroline’s anger, Kitty barged on relentlessly.

  ‘Would a heart attack have been better? Or a stroke? Cancer perhaps?’

  ‘Yes!’ Caroline yelled. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Any one of the above! Or all of them! All of them would have been better!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they wouldn’t have been his decision!’ She screamed it out. ‘What right did he have to take risks like that? What right did he have to leave me alone? To leave his children without a father? What right?’ She was shaking now, enraged far more with her dead husband than with Kitty’s goading.

  Kitty sat in silence for a moment, watching Caroline fight to regain her control. And when she had, Kitty said quietly, ‘He didn’t mean to do it, Caroline. He didn’t mean to die and leave you alone.’

  ‘I know.’ Caroline’s anger had evaporated and once more she was cold and distant. ‘But don’t glorify his death to me, Kitty. He died ignominiously on a seedy little racetrack in country Victoria and his life with me was one whole lie.’

  Caroline’s icy statement had the desired effect. Kitty lapsed into silence. So now we get to the truth, she thought, as she waited for her friend to continue.

  ‘I never knew he was racing, you see. In all the years of our marriage he never told me. He lied every time he went to a race meeting, and he lied every time he came home.’ Caroline had told no-one the real reason for her pain and there was a sense of relief in saying it out loud.

  ‘But he’d been brought up with racing cars,’ Kitty’s voice was gentle now, no longer provocative, ‘you told me that when we first met. And his father had been killed in the Indianapolis 500, you told me that, too.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So surely, by keeping you in ignorance he was being protective. I should imagine it would have taken a great deal of self-control for Gene to keep quiet about his racing.’

  Caroline gave a derisive snort, but Kitty continued in earnest. ‘No, listen to me, Caroline, please! How many men who live dangerous lives would go home and brag to theirwives? Or if not brag, at least feel the need to talk about the danger, get it out of their system? But Gene didn’t. He knew that if he had, you would have been living in daily terror.’

  Kitty was right, Caroline realised, feeling drained and exhausted, but somehow calmer than she had in months. ‘Why did he have to do it at all, though? It was so selfish. Why did he have to take the risks?’

  ‘Because racing was in his blood. And because it was his life and he had to live it his way.’ Kitty smiled to soften her words as she added, ‘And it would have been selfish of you not to let him.’

  Caroline was overwhelmed with a sense of relief. Tomorrow she might once more blame Gene for cheating her of their life together, who could tell, but for now Kitty’s words were a great comfort. ‘You’re a clever woman, Kitty Kendall,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Kitty Farinelli now.’

  ‘Of course.’ It was Caroline’s turn to be direct. ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘More than I ever thought humanly possible.’

  ‘Oh I am glad. I thought he might be a gesture.’

  Kitty gave a hoot of laughter.

  Ten minutes later, when Artie returned from the park with his son, he found Caroline
Hamilton a different woman altogether.

  ‘Arturo,’ she said and she smiled apologetically, ‘I’m sorry I was rude, I have my bad days and this was one of them.’

  That smile. He hadn’t noticed she was beautiful.

  ‘What did you do?’ he asked Kitty when they left.

  ‘Taught her a bit about acceptance, I think,’ she grinned. ‘You would have been proud of me.’

  Kitty hoped that she’d helped. She wondered how she would cope if Arturo died, and she shuddered at the thought. Life must be very hard for Caroline.

  Kitty’s own life had not been without its problems. Early in her marriage she had suffered two miscarriages and, just five years previously, a premature labour which, at seven months, had cost not only the life of her baby, a girl, but very nearly her own. Since then she and Artie had stopped trying to have more children. It was sad; she knew that Arturo would have liked a large family, and she regretted the fact that Roberto had no sibling, but Kitty herself bore the loss with fortitude. Her body had rebelled; it refused to bear more children and, after a period of grief over the loss of her baby, she accepted the fact and got on with her life.

  It was a good life too, and Kitty lived it with her customary zest. She had given up full-time employment before Roberto’s birth and wrote freelance now from their home at Bondi Beach. They had shifted to Bondi shortly after their marriage in order to be near the water. Having lived by the harbour all her childhood, Kitty missed the water, and with the baby due and the need for a bigger flat, why not rent one by the beach? Artie had no objections, and they had started to hunt for a place they could afford.

  Then Tim Kendall had entered the picture, announcing that he was going to buy them a house as a wedding present. Kitty’s refusal to accept his offer led to open war between them. She’d never accepted his assistance before, she said, and she didn’t intend to start now.

  ‘It’s a wedding present, for God’s sake!’ he roared, but she wouldn’t listen.

  Ruth joined in. ‘Please, darling,’ she begged, taking Kitty aside. Father and daughter couldn’t be in the same room together when they disagreed, neither listened and neither would back down. ‘Please accept your father’s offer, if not for yourself, then for the baby.’

  ‘My baby will not be brought up in the manner to which my father wishes it to become accustomed,’ Kitty said with the mulish arrogance she always adopted when taking a stand. ‘My baby will be brought up in the manner which Arturo and I can afford, we do not need somebody else’s money.’

  ‘That “somebody else” is your father,’ Ruth said, exasperated, ‘and he wishes to give you a wedding present.’ But her plea fell on deaf ears.

  Ruth appealed to Artie. ‘Please, Arturo, help me.’

  Artie, however, had decided to keep well out of it. He wasn’t sure if Kitty was just being stubborn, or whether this perverse family pride was yet another Australian trait about which he had yet to learn.

  Then Tim Kendall himself sought Artie’s help.

  ‘It’s up to you, Artie,’ he said over a beer on the balcony, turning the radio down, even though the Rabbitohs were winning. ‘You have to get her to accept the house.’

  ‘I think this is between you and Kitty,’ Artie said, backing off.

  ‘Oh no it’s not.’ Tim had thought long and hard, and Artie was his only hope. ‘In an Italian village, if a bloke gets married, doesn’t he accept a few goats or something from the bride’s father?’ He was being blunt, he knew it, but he didn’t mean to be condescending, and he hoped Artie wouldn’t take offence.

  Artie didn’t at all. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘or a cow or some sheep, that is most common. It is her dowry.’

  ‘Exactly. Well, that’s what the house is. A dowry. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Yes, of course I understand.’ So some customsremained the same in their two countries, Artie thought, and the knowledge pleased him.

  ‘A house is hardly a cow!’ Kitty exploded when he told her.

  ‘It is not the point, Kitty, and you know it, now accept your father’s offer.’

  She was taken aback. ‘But I was refusing mainly on your behalf,’ she said, ‘I thought you realised that.’ Arturo was a man to whom self-respect was of the utmost importance. Kitty had assumed that he would be insulted, that to him the offer of a house would imply he was not a good provider. ‘I thought you’d be too proud to accept his help.’

  ‘It is not his help, it is his gift. And there is a difference between pride and perversity. You are being perverse in refusing your father’s gift, you should accept it with pride.’

  It was as simple as that. The next day, much to her father’s astonishment, she graciously accepted his offer, though she politely refused to allow her parents any say in her choice.

  Tim didn’t mind. ‘Just remember,’ he said, ‘that money’s no object,’ but Ruth was deeply disappointed. She would have so loved to have done the rounds of the harbourside homes for sale and to have picked the most gracious with the most splendid view.

  ‘Bondi Beach!’ she said a week later. ‘But I thought you wanted a harbour view.’

  ‘No, just water. It looks out over the ocean, it’s lovely.’

  ‘But it’s a holiday suburb, people go there to swim. Nobody lives at Bondi Beach.’

  ‘Oh yes they do, Mum,’ Kitty laughed. ‘Just waittill you see it.’

  ‘My God, it’s a shop!’ Tim exclaimed as he and Ruth stood with Artie and Kitty in the middle of Campbell Parade looking up at the dilapidated three-storey building.

  ‘Well, it was once, downstairs,’ Kitty said as her parents gazed with horror at the gutted shopfront, ‘and it probably will be again. I’m thinking of opening a sort of bookshop.’

  ‘A bookshop on Bondi Beach?’ Her father looked horrified. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Not a mainstream bookshop. I’d stock the sort of stuff that gets lost in commercial outlets.’ It was sounding worse by the minute, Tim thought. ‘It’d be a sort of meeting place, a cafe, I thought, with a reading room where people can sit and talk.’

  ‘Nobody reads in Bondi Beach, you’d go broke in a week.’

  ‘Oh, it wouldn’t be run to make a profit, just a hobby really, and it won’t be for ages yet, not until well after the baby’s born.’ She fumbled about in her handbag for the front door keys. ‘But I’ll have to do something with my time eventually. Arturo’ll be at work all day and I know I’ll go mad just being a housewife.’ She found the keys. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘I’ll show you upstairs, the rooms are big and the view’s spectacular.’

  Kitty unlocked the door and Ruth followed her inside.

  ‘What do you think, Artie?’ Tim asked.

  ‘I like the house very much.’

  ‘No, about this other business.’

  Artie wasn’t quite sure himself whether Kitty had thought her project through properly. Was she trying to set up a Bondi Beach Push, he wondered. But he was happy to see her so excited by the prospect, even if it never eventuated.

  ‘If anyone could make it work,’ he answered diplomatically, ‘I am sure that person would be Kitty.’

  When Roberto was two, Kitty embarked upon her project. As a bookshop it proved a dismal failure, but as a meeting place it gradually grew very popular. Many of both Kitty’s and Artie’s friends were struggling writers, mostly working journalists with minor published works, and Kitty’s intention had been to give them a centre from which to market and sell their works. The writers themselves came. They sat, they drank coffee, they read and discussed each other’s work, but they rarely made a purchase, and the general public appeared completely disinterested.

  The habitués of Kitty’s, as the place became known, although there was no sign to indicate it, sat around for so long that Kitty decided they needed to be fed more than coffee and biscuits. She applied for a licence from the local council and set up a kitchen downstairs from which she served big bowls of pasta with hunks of fresh bread for five shillings
a pop. She did the cooking herself. Arturo had taught her the basics, but her culinary skills had long since outstripped his. She made just the one pasta a day, but she varied it throughout the week, and the aroma of garlic, herbs, onions and tomatoes which wafted each morning down Campbell Parade attracted many a passer-by.

  On the window tables overlooking the beach, she set up a chess and a chequerboard, and both were always in use. And on days when the breeze was not too strong or the sun not too glaringly hot, many lifted their chairs outside and sat on the pavement to look out over the ocean.

  Determined to cater to all, Kitty continued to stock a limited selection of obscure writers’ works in a reading room out the back. The room led onto a small courtyard where people sat in the sun and read the daily newspapers, which Kitty also supplied. And then second-hand books appeared. They grew in number until a book-exchange-cum-miniature library materialised in the reading room.

  It was a bizarre place, and it attracted an eclectic clientele. Some would come up from a morning’s sunbake on the beach, others would step fresh off the Bondi tram; whilst some came for the food and some for the conversation, there were those who came simply because they knew they would meet others of their kind and that they would be free to speak their own language without being glared at.

  Business was thriving, and eventually Kitty hired a cook and a waitress. The cook was Italian, a man in his sixties, and the waitress a nineteen-year-old Czech from Prague. Then, a year later, Kitty hired a manager, a Frenchman, Jean-Claude, and retired upstairs to write. She’d proved her point, she thought. Potpourri it may be, unusual, even outlandish to some, but, in four years, she had made a success of Kitty’s.

  ‘You actually make a profit?’ her father asked.

  ‘Yep. Enough.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’ Strange sort of place, he thought, but she’d made a go of it. ‘Good on you,’ he said.

  Ruth had a few misgivings, however. ‘It’s a most admirable effort, darling …’ she said, and Kitty waited for the ‘but’, ‘… but I’m not sure it’s quite the right sort of setting inwhich to bring up a child.’