Heritage (19 page)

‘Your move,' Maarten said.

‘Oh. Sorry.' Lucky forced the image of her from his mind. ‘Daydreaming.'

 

The night was cold, and Pietro put his arm around Violet as they walked along Sharp Street. The wind had died down and there was a stillness in the air, the feeling of snow. But snow in Cooma was not romantic; it invariably led to sludge the following morning. They crossed the stream and walked up the hill, towards Maureen's cottage, which sat beside the main road to Sydney, half a mile out of town.

Violet was chatting nineteen to the dozen. She'd seen all of Marilyn Monroe's pictures, she said, but she liked
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
best – she'd seen it three times now.

‘I am sorry,' Pietro said. Why had she not told him?

No, no, she protested, she wanted to see it another three times, it was the best picture in the world, and Marilyn Monroe was much better than Joan Crawford, and Bette Davis. Then she went on to list her favourites. ‘Doris Day's my second best favourite,' she said, ‘and I like Grace Kelly, and Rita Hayworth too, because they're so beautiful.'

They arrived at the cottage, pretty with its white-painted stone walls and its quaint little picket-fenced front verandah and blue-trimmed window frames.

‘You are more beautiful than all of the film stars, Violetta,' he said as he kissed her.

Her heart stood still. She was Marilyn and Doris and Grace and Rita, all in one. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?' she asked.

‘Yes. Thank you.' Pietro was pleased. She had never asked him in for a cup of tea before. Not at night. Whenever he'd seen her home after a dance or the pictures he'd kissed her goodnight at the bottom of the steps which led up to the little fenced verandah, and then he'd walked back to the hostel.

She opened the front door. The house was in darkness, and she switched on the lights in the front lounge room.

‘Maureen, she is asleep?' he whispered.

‘No, she's at the hospital, she's on night shift.'

‘Ah yes.' Maureen had told him herself, of course. In the excitement of the day he'd forgotten.

They walked through to the kitchen where they hung their coats on the pegs by the back door, and Violet filled the kettle. He sat at the table watching her as she set out the teapot and cups. She was so beautiful.

She could feel him. She could actually
feel
him watching her. It was as if he were touching her. But he wasn't.

Violet hadn't planned to ask Pietro in for a cup of tea, the invitation had popped out unexpectedly. But she knew that she wouldn't have asked him if her aunt had been home. Just as she knew that her aunt would not approve of her entertaining Pietro alone late at night.

‘He's a nice young man, Violet,' Maureen had said in her direct fashion. ‘I like him very much. And I'm glad that he looks like Gilbert Roland or whoever, and that he makes you feel beautiful, but you mustn't get too carried away with romance when it comes to the physical, you know what I mean?'

Violet had hoped that Auntie Maureen wasn't about to give her a lecture on sex like her mother had done before she'd left home. But Maureen hadn't.

‘You do know what I'm talking about, don't you, Violet?' she'd asked.

‘Yes, of course I do.' Auntie Maureen sometimes treated her as if she were simple, Violet thought, but she didn't really mind. Auntie Maureen was just being Auntie Maureen, it wasn't her fault that she had no sense of romance.

‘Good, we'll leave it at that.'

Violet had been thankful. She hadn't liked hearing her mother talk about sex, she'd found it sordid. True love wasn't about ‘men having their way and women paying for it'. At least that's what she'd thought at the time. But since she'd been seeing Pietro she'd started to wonder what it would be like if she let him ‘have his way'. When he kissed her, he not only made her feel beautiful, he made her feel something far more, although she didn't tell Auntie Maureen that. There were some things she couldn't discuss, even with Auntie Maureen. Some things had to be experienced.

She lit the gas stove and set the kettle on the burner, and as she felt him watching her, she wondered whether tonight would be the night. Was that why she had asked him in for tea?

She had stopped talking. It wasn't like her, he thought.

‘Grace Kelly, I think she is very good,' he said. ‘And Gary Cooper, I think he is good also. I see
High Noon
, we have this picture in Spring Hill when I first come to the Snowy.' She had turned to him, but still she was silent, and he wondered why. ‘My English then it is bad, so I do not understand what they speak, but Grace Kelly and Gary Cooper, they are very good I think.'

‘Do you want to see my room?'

‘Yes.' It came as a surprise, but he supposed he did; she seemed to want him to.

Taking him by the hand, she led him out onto the back verandah and through the door to the sleep-out at the rear of the house.

‘This is my room,' she said.

It was a tiny room, just a single bed with a small chest of drawers and a tallboy. Apart from the pink chenille bedspread and the pictures of film stars sticky-taped to the walls, it reminded Pietro of his barracks room at Spring Hill.

‘Is nice,' he said.

She maintained her hold on his hand as she sat on the bed, so he sat beside her. He noticed the fluttering of her pulse at the base of her throat and he felt his own pulse rate quicken as she leaned towards him, her head slightly tilted, her lips parted, her eyes closed. She wanted him to kiss her. Here, in her bedroom. It wasn't right, he knew it, but he couldn't resist.

Pietro was aroused the moment their lips met. He was aroused every time they kissed, but he always maintained his self-control, carefully avoiding contact so that she shouldn't be aware of his erection. Now, he felt a touch of panic as her arms circled his neck, drawing him closer and closer, then taking him with her as she lowered herself back onto the bed. He knew he should break away, but he couldn't. She was rubbing her breasts against him, and her mouth was more urgent than it had ever been, her tongue darting across the ridge of his teeth, beckoning him, teasing him.

Violet couldn't believe that she had actually put her tongue in his mouth, tentatively at first, then demandingly, wanting him to do the same. She wanted him to kiss her the way Craig McCauley had kissed her that time behind the pavilion. And she wanted him to touch her breasts the way Craig McCauley had tried to before she'd hurled him off her. Why did she want this? She'd found Craig McCauley repulsive, and Pietro was gentle and romantic and everything that love should be. So why was she rubbing herself against him and pulling him down on top of her as she lay back on the bed?

She was breathless, they both were, and Pietro was losing control, he couldn't help himself. He cupped a hand around her breast, feeling the hardened nipple through her cotton brassiere, and she moaned. Then, before he knew it, they were lying on the bed, locked together, and he was thrusting his body at her.

The feel of his erection startled Violet and she gasped. Rock hard, it ground itself against her pubic bone. She wasn't repulsed, but she was shocked; his hardness frightened her. She was about to lose her virginity.

Pietro stopped, something was wrong. He looked at her briefly, at her wide, startled eyes, and he heard the voice of Sister Anna Maria.

You will respect your intended according to the laws of the church, Pietro. You will seek her father's permission to court her legitimately, and you will never … never, do you hear me … attempt to take advantage of her.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat with his head in his hands. ‘I am sorry,' he said. ‘I am sorry, Violetta.'

Violet wriggled her way to sit beside him. What had happened? She'd been prepared to do it, although she was thankful now that it hadn't happened. Why had he stopped?

‘Pietro …' She put her hand on his knee.

‘No, no.' He pushed it away. ‘I am sorry. I am very, very sorry, please forgive me.'

‘Pietro …' she pleaded, but, eyes trained on the floor, he refused to look at her. ‘Pietro, please …'

Slowly, he turned to her.

‘I asked you into my room,' she said. ‘It was my fault. I am to blame.'

‘No.' He shook his head firmly. ‘No, is not you to blame. But it must not be this way. Is wrong this way.'

‘Yes, I know. And I'm sorry.'

‘I love you, Violetta.' Finally, he said the words that he'd been longing to say for the past two months. ‘With all my heart, I love you.'

It was the most romantic moment of Violet's life. Far, far more romantic than anything she had seen on the screen. She ignored the urgent whistle of the kettle coming from the kitchen. ‘I love you too, Pietro,' she said.

The countryside was riotous with blossom. It was the first week of September, and the dusky mustards and gaudy golds of the various wattles mingled with the whites and pinks of the flowering plums and cherries, heralding the arrival of spring.

The change of season brought a renewed vigour to social activity; roads were more accessible and the workers' trips into town more frequent. It was also easier for those wishing to make the journey out to the work camps, and spring brought with it an influx of pimps, prostitutes and professional gamblers. All of which made Merv Pritchard's job that much harder.

‘Hello there, Merv, how'd you be?'

‘G'day, Jack.' Big Merv Pritchard stepped out of the police car and nodded to the muscular Irishman who was leaning against the wall of the administration hut, chatting to his offsider and having a smoke. ‘I'm fine, thanks. What brings you two to Spring Hill?' His query was facetious and required no answer – as if he didn't know what brought Flash Jack Finnigan and his fellow card sharp to Spring Hill on payday.

‘Oh, just catching up with a few mates, you know how it is.' The Irishman, a roguishly handsome man in his mid-thirties, gave an easy grin and dragged on his cigarette.

‘Sure I do.' Merv smiled pleasantly enough, but his eyes issued a warning which Jack acknowledged; the men understood each other implicitly. Then Merv disappeared inside the admin hut for his meeting with Rob Harvey.

Jack Finnigan was the most successful of the local gambling kings, and well liked throughout the work camps where he and his offsider, a taciturn Latvian known as Antz, travelled intermittently. Jack ran his operation like a legitimate business, which it was as far as he was concerned, and he had his own code of ethics. If a married man was foolish enough to lose everything he had, then Jack would give him a sizeable amount back with the warning, ‘always leave some to send home to the wife'. If the same man was to repeat his folly, then Jack would bar him from future games, refusing to take his money.

Jack's motives weren't altruistic: he knew only too well that one of the rules by which gambling was tolerated was that the men should have money enough left to send to their families. But he was nonetheless perceived as a good bloke by all, and he reinforced the perception with generous donations and sponsorships. Churches and hospitals had a great deal to thank him for, as did a number of local youth organisations and football clubs. As a result, the police turned their well-practised blind eye to his lucrative business in the townships and work camps, aware that it was a case of ‘the devil you know'. Jack's card and dice games flourished, and the ever-popular traditional two-up, played throughout the work camps, was a different sort of game when the Irishman was there. Flash Jack was prepared to meet the wager of every serious punter present and the stakes went higher than ever. He also organised sporting competitions and boxing tournaments, occasionally competing in the latter himself, ‘for the fun of it'. And it must have been, for when Jack competed, the money was more than likely on him and he stood to lose a bundle. It was a well-known fact that, not only was Jack Finnigan a master in the ring, he would never throw a fight in order to pick up the winnings. Flash Jack Finnigan was an honest bloke, the men said, and they were right. In his own way, Jack was.

‘Saw Flash Jack and his mate outside,' Merv remarked to Rob Harvey after they'd greeted each other and he'd settled himself in the chair on the opposite side of Rob's desk.

‘Yeah.' Rob nodded, knowing Merv's remark was not confrontational, but rather a friendly warning to keep an eye out for trouble. ‘We were just chatting.' Rob himself wasn't a gambler but, like Merv, he understood the men's need for distraction in their sometimes lonely and always isolated world.

‘And there's a caravan parked on the back road about half a mile out too. Nobody in it, but I take it a pimp's arrived.'

It wasn't a question – Merv didn't intend to put him on the spot – so Rob smiled and shrugged his ignorance, although he knew the men had been queuing up outside the caravan throughout the night.

‘I'll send him packing as soon as he opens for business,' Merv said.

‘Fair enough.' Rob involved himself in neither the gambling nor the prostitution which was readily on offer, but he could sympathise with those who did, particularly those wanting for female companionship.

Having spent all his working life in the company of men, Rob Harvey was self-conscious with women, even those who found him attractive, and many did. When he felt the need for female companionship, he didn't visit the prostitutes in town, but made a discreet trip to Sydney. Not to the brothels, but to the more upmarket bars where women were impressed by men from the Snowy. Everyone knew that Snowy workers spent up big – a ten pound note was called ‘the Snowy quid' in Kings Cross – and as a result Rob was able to conduct his transactions decorously. He never discussed money, always giving the woman her promised ‘present' in an envelope as she left his hotel room, the mutual pretence that she wasn't really a prostitute being maintained throughout. Like so many others, Rob Harvey was a lonely man.

But Merv hadn't come here today merely to discuss the necessary vices of men. There'd been an outbreak of thieving over the past several months – tools and copper cable had been vanishing at an alarming rate. Pilfering from the company was not uncommon, copper cable regularly went missing – copper fetched a high price – and there were always farmers keen to buy tools at half their market value from the workers who smuggled the stolen goods into town. But the current spate of thieving had been on a larger scale than normal and more professionally organised. Rob and Merv had been doing their homework.

‘You were spot on,' Merv said. ‘It's Slim Parker all right. We've been keeping a watch on him, and one of the boys saw him unloading the stuff in his garage, bold as brass.'

Wayne ‘Slim' Parker was a small-time sub-contractor. A local with an eye to the main chance, he'd put himself into hock, bought a '49 Fargo and for the past two years had arrived every month, rain, hail or shine, to deliver his supplies of tobacco, Arnott's biscuits, Vegemite, tomato sauce and every other manner of work camp necessity. From the outset, it had been easy for him to load the empty truck with a few added goods for the trip back. But lately he and his mates had become greedy.

‘We didn't book him,' Merv continued, ‘I wanted to wait until we could tie up your end.'

‘It's an Aussie mob,' Rob said, and Merv rolled his eyes in mock surprise. ‘Yeah,' Rob agreed. Whenever there was a scam, it was invariably the Aussies, and it really pissed him off. Why couldn't they just do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay like the migrants did? He'd sack them when they were caught, and he hoped they'd do time – it'd serve them right – but of course that'd all depend on the magistrate. ‘I'll give you their names,' he said. ‘They're stashing the stuff in a work hut near the old tunnel site.'

Half an hour later, the policeman left, the plan being to wait until Slim's next delivery, so they'd catch the men in the act.

As he drove off, Merv decided that while he was out here he might as well pay another visit to the pimp's caravan. The bastard wouldn't be open for business in broad daylight so he wouldn't be able to book him, but at least he could piss him off. God, he hated the pimps. Scum of the earth.

The caravan remained deserted, however, pulled over by the side of the road, locked and empty. But the pimp would be back for business tonight. And so will I, Merv thought as he climbed into the police car.

 

From behind a clump of wattles, Al the Frenchie watched the copper drive away. He'd been strolling back from Spring Hill after a card game with some of the workers just off the morning shift when he'd heard the car coming around the bend behind him. He'd automatically ducked out of sight, probably unnecessarily, but it was a habit of his. Just as well, he'd thought, when he'd seen the police car. How come the coppers were on to him already? Word had never got out this quick before. Good thing he'd holed the two girls up at the pub for the day.

Al cursed the copper. He wouldn't be able to work out of the van tonight, and the van always turned over top money, far more than the pub, particularly on payday. He didn't dare risk it, though – the bastard copper was bound to turn up.

Alain Duval, known as ‘Al the Frenchie' on his home turf in Sydney, had been a small-time but relatively successful Kings Cross pimp for the past five years. No-one really knew where he came from. He probably wasn't even French. His English was fluent, but his accent was an indecipherable mixture of European-Australian, and he spoke a hybrid gutter language that befitted his trade.

It was the way Al wanted it: he liked to be a mystery. Besides, he felt that he added a touch of glamour to the backwater that was Sydney. He longed for the Berlin of the twenties, before the war, when he'd been nineteen and beautiful. Canny too. It had been an easy step from prostitution – men, women, he hadn't cared so long as they paid – to running his own racket. Everyone had wanted him then, he thought. They'd wanted to fuck him, they'd wanted to be fucked by him, and most importantly they'd wanted to be a part of his life, so it had been easy to fuck them back. Berlin loved beauty in those days. Berlin had been the most erotic, most decadent city in the world. But the war had fucked them all, hadn't it? Now he was no longer beautiful. A lifetime of debauchery had caught up with him and he knew it showed. He was forty-eight years old and he ran a team of doped-up hookers in Kings Cross. Life was shit. But at least he was still canny.

Al the Frenchie was indeed more cunning than most of his contemporaries. He'd been practising his trade in the Snowies for a number of years and he was yet to be caught. His visits were fleeting; he stayed for only several nights and was gone by the time the word had got around. He considered himself a valuable commodity on the Snowy: the workers needed to be serviced, and he was there to provide the women to do it. Shit, he thought, the hookers were hopeless on their own; they were slags, with no sense of business. But the Snowy was also a source of fascination to Al. All those Europeans working themselves into an early grave, he thought, earning a good quid it was true, more than they would in their home countries, but to what end? Accidents were rife, they lived for a quick visit into town every third payday weekend, and there was always a queue a hundred yards long outside his caravan. Shit, he thought, who'd want a life like that? Australia, the land of opportunity. Well, it was. For those who knew how to take advantage, and he did. In Al the Frenchie's view, there were those who earned their money the hard way, and there were those who profited from their labour.

As Al watched the copper drive off, it irked him to think that he'd come all the way out to this arse-end of the world just for a one night stand. What the hell, he thought, there were other ways to make money. It was payday, Flash Jack Finnigan was at Spring Hill and there'd be big dough around tonight. He'd stay for the game, he decided. There'd be other strange faces turning up at the camp – Jack had a regular following, and all sorts fronted for play wherever the Irishman went. He wouldn't call attention to himself, he'd watch from the sidelines, he decided, and who knew, perhaps he'd come out the winner in the end. Workers were renowned for being careless with their cash and Al's fingers were nimble. They always had been. Ever since the good old days in Berlin.

 

‘Come in spinner,' the boxer called.

Behind the corrugated iron hut that was the wet canteen, dozens of men were gathered around the ring of steel cable staked to the ground. Two men stood on the flattened surface in the centre and, as the boxer stepped back and the spinner raised the wooden kip in his hand, the crowd fell silent.

With a deft flick of the wrist, the pennies resting on the kip were sent spinning high into the air and, as they landed, the boxer stepped forward. The coins were resting heads and tails up.

‘No throw,' he announced, to the spinner's annoyance – it had been the third ‘no throw' in succession. The boxer called in a new spinner, as the rules demanded after three ‘no throws', and the kip changed hands. The babble of men's voices resumed, until the next cry. ‘Come in spinner.' And, for a brief moment, silence once again reigned.

Flash Jack stood among the crowd, to all intents and purposes just another punter, but his presence was forcing the stakes higher. Men pooled their bets, knowing that Jack would meet their wager, and the common aim was to beat the Irishman. Jack never controlled the two-up games – that was another understood regulation by which gambling was tolerated. Two-up was run by one of the workers, to protect the men from professional gambling sharks who might use weighted coins or manipulate the game in some way to their advantage. Jack abided by all the rules.

‘Heads!' the boxer called.

‘Lucky by name, Lucky by nature, eh?' Flash Jack Finnigan called across the ring, as he doled his money out to the runner.

Lucky returned a smile, accepting his winnings from the runner. If he'd had a quid for every time someone had said that, he thought … But he had to admit, these days he agreed with them, life was good. And tonight he was certainly having a run of luck. Not that it would have bothered him overly if he weren't. He'd lost and won heavily on two-up in the past.

Lucky had never been a gambling man in his younger days, and he still didn't consider himself one. But like the others, he earned big money and, like all those with no family commitments, there was little to spend it on. What else was there to do with one's time, locked out here in the company of men? Besides, he enjoyed the simplicity of two-up. He played it with equal simplicity: he chose to bet heads or tails and then he stuck with it. The game usually favoured one or the other. Tonight it was heads – fourteen out of the last twenty throws had been heads – and he was doing well, a hundred and sixty quid to be exact, close to two months' wages. He'd stick it out for another ten throws, he decided. Then he'd call it quits, since he was on the morning shift.