Elianne (59 page)

‘They’re here,’ he said, rising from the throne-like chair that even at first glance clearly belonged to the patriarch of the house. ‘Let’s go out and meet them.’ He always bellowed a greeting from the front verandah: it was his habit.

‘No, no, dear,’ Hilda insisted, ‘sit down, please do, we have a little surprise in store.’

As she crossed to the door, she cast a quick glance at her son, a mixture of nervousness and excitement. Alan stood, returning an encouraging smile, while Stan, intrigued, seated himself back in his armchair and waited for his surprise.

‘Come in, my darling, come in.’ Hilda embraced her daughter warmly, and offered Frank her cheek, which he kissed. ‘Hello, Frank dear, how lovely to see you.’ Then she stepped back, fingers lightly to breast in breathless anticipation. ‘Well, well, who do we have here?’ she said and she looked down at the little boy who was clutching Kate’s hand as if it was a lifeline.

They all looked at the boy, whose guard was instantly up, his eyes flickering around at the strange faces and then down at the floor.

Kate gave his hand a quick squeeze. ‘Don’t worry,’ she whispered, ‘they won’t bite.’

Stan stared long and hard at the child. He was obviously Asian, or some sort of half-breed, but he seemed oddly familiar. There was something about him: what the hell was it? Stan was puzzled. Why had Kate brought a Chink home, and why did the boy remind him so strongly of someone?

There was silence while they all waited for Kate to make the introduction. As they had expected, she did so directly to her father.

‘Dad, there’s a special person I’d like you to meet.’ Hand in hand she and the boy crossed to Stan’s armchair, where they halted in front of him. ‘This is Neil Durham,’ she said.

Stan’s eyes left the boy and he glared up at his daughter. What sort of sick joke was she playing at?

‘Neil was married. His wife, Yen, died in the war,’ Kate went on. ‘She named her son after her husband. This is Neil’s boy, Dad. This is your grandson.’

Stan’s eyes returned to the boy, and he knew that this was no joke at all. The resemblance was uncanny. He was looking at an Asian version of his son. For one of the few times in his life, Stanley Durham found himself utterly dumbstruck.

‘Hello, Neil,’ he said finally.

The boy’s eyes flickered up from the floor. ‘Hello,’ he replied. Normally his gaze would have returned to the floor, but something in the eyes of the big man in the big chair compelled him to retain focus just that little bit longer.

Introductions were then made all around, after which Hilda fetched some lemonade for Neil. He sat on the edge of his chair sipping his drink and refusing a scone with jam and cream, mainly because he was sure he’d drop it. The others talked among themselves, trying not to place any pressure on the child, for he was obviously nervous.

Frank noticed, after a while, that the boy’s eyes kept darting towards the open door where Ben lay curled up on the verandah.

‘Do you want to go outside and say hello to Ben?’ he asked.

Neil looked at him, confused.

‘Ben, that’s the dog’s name, Ben. Do you want to go outside and pat him?’

The boy nodded.

‘Why don’t we all go outside?’ The suggestion came from Stan. He stood. ‘It’s cooler now, let’s sit on the verandah.’

They trooped outside to where a miscellany of chairs constituted the verandah furniture and Neil knelt beside Ben, patting the old dog, who responded with a thump of his now threadbare tail.

Stan chose to sit in one of the canvas deck chairs, which was surprising for, like Hilda, his preference was always a hardback at the table. The particular deck chair he chose, however, happened to be the one closest to the dog.

‘We’re going to get Neil a dog, Dad,’ Kate said as telling looks were exchanged. Stan’s eyes hadn’t left his grandson.

‘That’s good,’ Stan replied, ‘a boy needs a dog.’

‘He is old this dog.’ The child’s English was good, but stilted.

‘Yep,’ Stan said. ‘He’s fourteen now. That’s old for a dog.’

Neil looked up and gave a solemn nod. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘it is old,’ and he returned his attention to the dog.

Conversation dwindled away and they sat, relaxed and comfortable, watching the child and the dog. Then after a little while, Stan stood.

‘I need some exercise,’ he said.

The child looked up once again, sensing the comment had been made to him.

It had been. ‘Ever seen the inside of a sugar mill, son?’

Neil shook his head.

‘Do you want to?’

The boy gave a vigorous nod.

‘Come on, then.’ Stan reached out his hand and the boy stood and took it. ‘We’ll go for a walk.’

The two set off down the stairs.

As they reached the bottom, Kate rose from her chair and called after them. ‘You’ll have to take the car, Dad – it’s too far for him to walk.’

‘What’s wrong with a piggy-back,’ Stan called in reply and he swung the boy up onto his shoulders.

Neil squealed excitedly. ‘Ben can come too?’

‘Sure, why not, if he can make the distance. Come on, Ben.’

The dog obediently hobbled down the stairs. He would go a hundred metres or so before turning back for home.

Kate’s image of Stan the Man striding off towards the mill, his grandson on his shoulders, a boy from Vietnam, would stay with her forever. How times had indeed changed.

M
y sugar mill and plantation of Elianne, although loosely based upon the grand estates of old, is fictional, as are all of Elianne’s family members and the workers employed upon the estate.

In writing of the township of Bundaberg, I have referred to some of the well-known early entrepreneurs and local businesses for the purposes of authenticity, but these only in passing. All major characters in the novel are fictional.

I have tried to be consistent as far as possible, but it’s difficult to be spot-on when neither the locals nor the historians can say exactly why the grand, main thoroughfare of Bundaberg was named Bourbon Street and exactly why and when it became Bourbong, which I find very amusing. Theories abound, one being that the original surveyors, who were inspired by many Aboriginal words in their naming of streets and sites, euphonised
‘
boorbung
’, the local term applied to a string of nearby waterholes. Some believe ‘bourbong’ is the phonetic spelling of the French
bourbon,
the name given to a particular variety of cane grown in the area before 1875. And there’s even the theory that Bourbon Street was changed to Bourbong during the years of prohibition. That one sounds a bit dicey to me, but take your pick – it’s all part of the colourful world that is Bundaberg.

M
y thanks, as always, to my husband, Bruce Venables, and also to those loyal stalwarts who continue to lend support and encouragement: big brother Rob Nunn, Susan Mackie-Hookway, Sue Greaves, Colin Julin and my agent, James Laurie.

A special thank you to other friends and family who offered invaluable research assistance in their specific areas of expertise: Dr Meredith Burgmann, Dr Christopher Bradbury, Ros Forrest, Paul Ham and my niece Cory Kentish.

I could not have written this book without ‘the Bundaberg connection’. My sincerest thanks to Ian Gibson for sharing his vast knowledge of the sugar industry and for his infinite patience in spelling out so much detail to a novice, even to the point of providing personally hand-drawn maps. My thanks and gratitude also to Sue Gammon of Bundaberg Library, who not only provided invaluable research material, but so willingly shared her extensive knowledge of, and her passion for, the region.

Thanks also to Peter Lamond of Ferrymead House Museum; to the helpful staff at the Bundaberg Visitors Information Centre; and to the many friendly citizens of Bundy who so warmly welcomed me to their beautiful part of the world.

My thanks to Beverley Cousins, Brandon VanOver and Kate O’Donnell. Thanks also to Brett Osmond, Gavin Schwarcz, Jess Malpass and all the hard-working team at Random House.

Among my research sources, I would like to recognise the following:

Bundaberg: history and people.
Janette Nolan, University of Queensland Press, 1978.

Southern Sugar Saga.
John Kerr, Bundaberg Sugar Company Limited, 1983.

History of the White Australia Policy to 1920.
Myra Willard, Melbourne University Press, 1923.

Control or Colour Bar? A proposal for change in Australia’s immigration policy
. The Immigration Reform Group, Melbourne, 1960.

Welou, My Brother.
Faith Bandler, Wild & Woolley Pty Ltd and Aboriginal Artists Agency Limited, 1984.

Vietnam, the Australian War.
Paul Ham, HarperCollins, 2007.

Bundaberg in Pictures: 140 years of history.
Bundaberg Newspaper Company, 2000.

100 Years of News: Bundaberg in the 1900s.
Ed. Sandra Godwin, Bundaberg Newspaper Company, 2000.

The History of Bundaberg.
J.Y. Walker, Gordon and Gotch, 1890.

Summer Memories Through Winter Eyes.
Betty Bull, Fiona Drews, Margaret van Hennekeler, 1987.

The Story of Kolan.
Don Dignan, M.A., Dip.Ed., W.R Smith & Paterson Pty. Ltd., 1964.

From stage actor and international television star to blockbuster bestselling author, Judy Nunn’s career has been meteoric.

Her first forays into adult fiction resulted in what she describes as her ‘entertainment set’.
The Glitter Game
,
Centre Stage
and
Araluen
, three novels set in the worlds of television, theatre and film respectively, each became instant bestsellers.

Next came her ‘city set’:
Kal
, a fiercely passionate novel about men and mining set in Kalgoorlie;
Beneath the Southern Cross
, a mammoth achievement chronicling the story of Sydney since first European settlement; and
Territory
, a tale of love, family and retribution set in Darwin.

Territory
, together with Judy’s next novel,
Pacific
, a dual story set principally in Vanuatu, placed her firmly in Australia’s top-ten bestseller list. Her following works,
Heritage
, set in the Snowies during the 1950s;
Floodtide
, based in her home state of Western Australia;
Maralinga
, set in South Australia during the British atomic weapons tests; and
Tiger Men
, a sweeping family saga set in Tasmania, have consolidated her position as one of the country’s leading fiction writers.

Judy Nunn’s fame as a novelist is spreading rapidly. Her books are now published throughout Europe in English, German, French, Dutch and Czech.

Judy lives with her husband, actor-author Bruce Venables, on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

www.judynunn.com

By the same author

The Glitter Game
Centre Stage
Araluen
Kal

Beneath the Southern Cross
Territory
Pacific
Heritage
Floodtide
Maralinga
Tiger Men

Children’s fiction
Eye in the Storm
Eye in the City

Other titles by Judy Nunn

Beneath the Southern Cross

In 1783, Thomas Kendall, a naïve nineteen-year-old sentenced to transportation for burglary, finds himself in Sydney Town and a new life in the wild and lawless land.
Beneath the Southern Cross
is as much a story of a city as it is a family chronicle. With her uncanny ability to bring history to life in technicolour, Judy Nunn traces the fortunes of Kendall’s descendants through good times and bad to the present day . . .

Kal

Kalgoorlie. It grew out of the red dust of the desert over the world’s richest vein of gold . . .
From the heady early days of the gold rush, to the horrors of the First World War in Gallipoli and France, 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.

Heritage

In the 1940s refugees from more than seventy nations gathered in Australia to forge a new identity – and to help realise one man’s dream: the mighty Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. From the ruins of Berlin to the birth of Israel, from the Italian Alps to the Australian high country,
Heritage
is a passionate tale of rebirth, struggle, sacrifice and redemption.

Territory

Territory
is the story of the Top End and the people who dare to dwell there. Of Spitfire pilot Terence Galloway and his English bride, Henrietta, home from the war, only to be faced with the desperate defence of Darwin against the Imperial Japanese Air Force. From the blazing inferno that was Darwin on 19 February 1942 to the devastation of Cyclone Tracy, from the red desert to the tropical shore,
Territory
is a mile-a-minute read.

Pacific

Australian actress Samantha Lindsay is thrilled when she scores her first Hollywood movie role, playing a character loosely based on World War II heroine Mamma Tack. But on location in Vanuatu, uncanny parallels between history and fiction emerge and Sam begins a quest for the truth. Just who was the real Mamma Tack?

Maralinga

Maralinga, 1956. A British airbase in the middle of nowhere, a top-secret atomic testing ground . . .
Maralinga
is the story of Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner, who accepts a posting to the wilds of South Australia on a promise of rapid promotion, and of adventurous young English journalist Elizabeth Hoffmann, who travels halfway around the world in search of the truth.

Floodtide

Floodtide
traces the fortunes of four men and four families over four memorable decades in the mighty ‘Iron Ore State’ of Western Australia. The prosperous 1950s when childhood is idyllic in the small city of Perth . . . The turbulent 60s when youth is caught up in the Vietnam War . . . The avaricious 70s when WA’s mineral boom sees a new breed of entrepreneurs . . . The corrupt 80s, when greedy politicians and powerful businessmen bring the state to its knees . . .