Elianne (58 page)

Kate returned with the sleeves of her own shirt, which she’d ripped off to form two rags, both now drenched. ‘Here,’ she said, handing one to him, ‘you do Dad and I’ll do you.’

Cradling his father’s head on his knees, Alan started to bathe the blood from Stan’s forehead, while his sister knelt behind him, dabbing gently at his back.

‘God, you’re a mess,’ she said, peering closely. ‘The cuts aren’t deep, but we’ll have to get at you with tweezers later. I can feel glass splinters everywhere.’

‘So can I. Ouch! Go easy.’

‘Don’t be a wimp.’

She cleaned the blood off as best she could, then they sat together watching The Big House burn. The blaze was now at its peak, hungry tongues of fire devouring balcony railings and licking at walls like an insatiable beast revelling in its prey.

‘Quite a spectacle,’ Kate said. ‘The end of an era.’

‘He did it deliberately you know.’

‘
What?
’

‘Dad. He lit the fire himself. There was a trickle burner on the verandah, he wasn’t mucking around.’

‘Good God.’ Kate looked down at Stan, whose head was still resting in his son’s lap. ‘I expected him to burn the diaries, but not the whole damn house.’

‘Yep, pretty radical,’ Alan agreed drily. ‘A bit excessive to my mind, sending everything up in smoke.’

‘Not quite everything.’

Her brother looked a query.

‘Not the diaries,’ Kate said, ‘not the originals anyway. The ledgers are in the boot of my car: I didn’t want to risk Dad destroying them.

As if he knew he was being talked about, Stan suddenly stirred. His eyes opened and he regained consciousness to find his head cradled in his son’s lap. He sat up, disoriented. What had happened?

He looked at his son, and then at his daughter, and then at the house that was burning like a funeral pyre. Of course, that’s what happened, he vaguely recalled. He’d burnt down The Big House.

Kate and Alan exchanged a glance. They could both see that the madness had left their father. In fact he seemed extraordinarily sober.

‘It’s over, Dad,’ Kate said.

They sat together side by side, the three of them, and watched in silence as the fire devoured the past.

T
he early seventies ushered in many changes for Australia and its people. After twenty-three years of Liberal–Country coalition government, the Labor party was voted into power in 1972 under the leadership of Edward Gough Whitlam.

Although the Vietnam War was to drag on for a further two years, the last Australian troops were finally withdrawn and the country’s participation in the conflict formally declared at an end with the delivery of the Governor General’s proclamation on 11 January 1973.

The Whitlam Labor government announced an official end to the White Australia Policy, proclaiming its intention to eradicate racial discrimination. It appeared, without doubt, that Australia was a country on the move.

As if in a bid to keep pace with the rapid changes of the new decade, the sugar industry continued to capitalise on the technological breakthroughs of the sixties and production kept rising. Australia was a major sugar-producing country and had for some time been a respected world authority on cane-harvesting mechanisation. The central focus of this latest technology was the heart of the Queensland southern cane-fields region itself, Bundaberg. Bundy had become famous. And in the thick of it all was Alan Durham.

Alan’s prescience had paid off. His company had expanded dramatically, business was booming: he was a wealthy young man. But the fulfilment of his private life far exceeded that of his commercial interests, for Paola had recently given birth to their second child, a baby girl whom they’d named Sophia after Luigi’s mother. The birth of little Sophia had brought joy to everyone, not least of all the child’s paternal grandmother. Hilda Durham had embraced grandparenthood with a passion.

Christmas 1974 was looming and Hilda couldn’t have been happier. In fact she felt she’d never been quite this happy. Christmas was now the true family occasion that in her opinion it should always have been. She recalled the Christmases of old when Elianne’s senior staff and families had been entertained in the formal dining room of The Big House, elaborate affairs, impressive certainly, but stilted and with far too many speeches. Then there’d been those several years following Neil’s death, those terrible years when Christmas had ceased to exist. She didn’t think about those years any more: she’d put them behind her; these were happy times. She adored being a grandmother and Christmas in the new house, so ideally suited to family gatherings, was the highlight of her year.

The home that Hilda and Stan now shared wasn’t really new at all. Situated not far from the site of old Elianne House, it was a gracious Queenslander in true classic style and had been home to one of the estate’s senior staff members in bygone days. Hilda actually preferred it to The Big House. She’d said as much to Stan.

‘I did find The Big House just the tiniest bit ostentatious, dear, I must admit. We really didn’t need that amount of space.’ Her intention had of course been to ease her husband’s mind about the change in their lifestyle, but she’d been nonetheless honest. She found her new home pleasantly reminiscent of old Elianne House, stylish but at the same time warm and welcoming, an elegant home and as such a constant reminder of Grandmother Ellie herself.

Grandmother Ellie still featured a great deal in Hilda’s conversation, although Big Jim had become notably absent. ‘Sacrifice’ rather than ‘great love’ was Hilda’s theme these days. Indeed Grandmother Ellie’s strength and devotion to family throughout her entire life had become the stuff of legend. Grandmother Ellie had been a true matriarch, and Hilda’s only wish was that she herself might one day prove worthy of such a title, which was why Christmas was so very important.

This Christmas promised to be particularly fulfilling with a new grandchild present. Alan and Paola would of course be bringing little Sophia, barely a month old, along with their son, Ricky, just turned four. Luigi and Maria would be there too, and Paola’s brother, Georgio, accompanied by his new young fiancée, who was most welcome, as Cook always said ‘the more the merrier’.

Hilda knew that following the luncheon the Fiorellis, together with Alan and his family, would join the rest of the clan at Alfonso’s house for their customary raucous get-together, but she didn’t mind in the least. On the contrary, she very much approved. Family was family after all, and it was good for the grandchildren to experience both cultures. Why little Ricky could already speak Italian, just imagine that. Hilda found it a tremendously exciting sign of the times.

And Kate, too, would be home for Christmas, with Frank. Hilda did so wish that Kate would have a baby. She’d be twenty-eight years old in only a month or so and had been married for two whole years – surely time was running out. But Kate had declared that career took precedence until she was thirty. She’d even announced, and with Frank’s approval, that after having had children she would continue to work! Hilda wasn’t sure she understood the modern woman. According to recent press reports, Kate was
of significant importance to the country
.

The youngest member ever appointed by the Australian Government to the Advisory Committee on Livestock Breeding, Control and Distribution, Dr Kate Durham also heads a private consultancy firm advising the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service, the CSIRO and the Australian Livestock Breeders Association. Dr Durham is clearly a young woman of significant importance to this country.

Hilda was proud of her daughter’s achievements certainly, but when it came time in a young woman’s life to embrace motherhood, surely men could take over those jobs of
significant importance to the country
.

She naturally did not express such views to her daughter, who she knew would simply scoff and call her old-fashioned. And she had to admit, after all, that Kate’s contacts in high places had certainly proved beneficial for the family.

Hilda could barely contain her excitement at the thought that Kate and Frank were bringing with them a new member of the family. The three were due to arrive on the afternoon of Christmas Eve and she and Alan would be eagerly waiting to greet them. They’d kept the news from Stanley though. They’d both agreed with Kate that it should come as a surprise.

When Kate had made general enquiries about bringing her brother’s widow to Australia, she’d confronted more difficulty than she’d anticipated, a fact which she’d found most disappointing. For all Whitlam’s declaration of ‘no more White Australia Policy’, it appeared the government was not as keen as it had professed to be in welcoming the Vietnamese to Australia, even those married to Australian citizens. There still seemed to be a guard up against Asian immigration including, at this stage anyway, those of refugee status.

Annoyed at the bureaucratic red tape confronting her, she’d unashamedly used her government contacts, and in doing so had discovered that she couldn’t bring Yen to Australia anyway. Yen was dead, along with most of her family, killed two years previously in a Viet Cong raid upon her village. But Yen’s child had survived, a boy now five, the son Neil never knew he had. Yen had been in the early stages of pregnancy when her husband had died.

The boy had been brought up by Yen’s aunt, a widow who, living some distance from the village, had escaped the massacre. The widow was poor and illiterate, but had received assistance from a Catholic priest who was a close friend of the family. The priest had arranged with the bank in Vûng Tàu for her to draw funds from the monthly deposits that arrived from Australia in order that she might adequately support her dead niece’s child. He had also taken it upon himself to continue the boy’s education, teaching him English, as Yen herself had been doing. It had been Yen’s greatest wish that she and the child might one day go to Australia and meet her husband’s family. She had wanted her son prepared for that day.

The Catholic Church in Vûng Tàu had proved of great assistance in Kate’s application to bring the child to Australia. The priest, only too eager to see the boy afforded a better life, had produced all the necessary documentation, marriage and birth certificates, records of the child’s baptism – there was every proof to hand that this was the legitimate son of Neil Durham.

Kate had nonetheless encountered bureaucratic obstacles on the home front. She was told she must bide her time, she was fobbed off, but she’d refused to be daunted. Using her stellar status, she’d gone directly to federal level. A favour asked had been granted and she’d succeeded in her aim. She had brought her nephew to Australia and the legal adoption process was currently under way. She and Frank were about to become parents well before they’d planned, and were now bringing the child home to meet his new family.

They drove up from Sydney in Frank’s Land Rover, staying overnight in Ballina, showing the boy the countryside, watching him relax more and more with the passing of each hour. He’d been understandably guarded when they’d first met, trying very hard Kate could tell to disguise the fact that he was frightened. She could see so much of her brother in the child and she’d desperately wanted to hug him, to feel Neil’s flesh and blood in her arms. But hugs would come later, she’d told herself, and she’d offered her hand instead.

‘Hello, I’m your Aunt Kate,’ she’d said.

‘Hello.’ He was a good-looking boy, tall for his age, and he’d shaken hands very solemnly, doing his best to be grown up. But after a second or so, his eyes had flickered nervously to the ground, avoiding further contact.

Now, after only several days of their acquaintanceship, he was becoming simply an excited little boy enjoying new sights and the company of people he liked. He particularly liked Frank. Frank’s laidback personality and man-to-man attitude made him a winner with little boys, who wanted to be just like him. It was happily apparent to Kate, although no surprise, that Frank was a born father.

The trip north served to bring them closer together, all three, and as they turned off the Bundaberg–Gin Gin Road onto the dirt road of Elianne, they felt to Kate already like a family.

She looked out at the passing cane fields and the giant mill in the distance, recalling how, just ten years earlier, when she’d returned after her first year at university, everything, familiar as it was, had appeared on the cusp of change. She’d presumed this was because she herself was changing. She’d been wrong, she now realised. Elianne
had
been changing. But she hadn’t known then to what an astonishing degree; the canecutters a dying breed mechanical harvesters replacing them; fewer people living on the estate, most commuting instead from Bundaberg; merchants closing up shop and moving from Elianne’s village into town; the changes had been endless. Yet now, as they passed by the mill and the mill dam and the sugar shed, and then on past the stables and the old hall and the once-busy village green, everything appeared as it had in her childhood. It seemed as if nothing at all had changed.

Frank sensed her reflective mood. ‘Good to be home, I take it?’

She smiled. ‘This is no longer home, my darling,’ she replied. ‘Home is with you, home is wherever we are, you and I.’ She turned to look behind her at the boy who was leaning out the open window drinking in the sights and the smells. ‘But yes,’ she said, ‘yes, it’s good to be back.’

They pulled up outside the family home in the late afternoon glow.

Hilda, Stan and Alan were gathered in the sitting room, Cook having just delivered a fresh batch of scones to go with the afternoon tea she’d served. Cook and Max had remained in Stan’s employ, but the household was without a maid these days since Ivy had left to get married.

There was only the one sitting room at Durham House, big and airy with shuttered windows looking out over the front verandah. The main door and the shutters were now open wide, giving access to what little breeze there was – the day had been stifling – and Stan heard the four-wheel drive pull up outside.