Araluen (6 page)

Franklin had never seen two people kiss in such a way. Only once had he seen his parents kiss and it had been gentle and discreet. It had also been very brief — when his father had noticed him watching he had immediately broken away. And here were these two women, feverishly feeding upon each other's mouths.

Gaby's bodice was undone and her breasts were exposed. Franklin stared in horror as Catherine's mouth travelled down the long, slender neck. Her lips engulfed a quivering nipple and Gaby, eyes closed, mouth open in ecstasy, cried out, dragging at Catherine's skirts, exposing her legs and her undergarments and the rhythm of her grinding pelvis.

As he watched them grunting together in the straw like animals, Franklin felt repulsed, but he couldn't turn away.

Pulling herself up onto one elbow, Gaby lifted her own skirts and started to tear at her underclothes.

Catherine's hand was between her legs and Gaby was parting her thighs, moaning loudly.

Then Catherine's voice, thick and guttural. ‘Oh mon amour, mon amour
tu est belle
... ’ Her hand moving quicker. Gaby, arching her back, her eyes opening wide ...

‘Oh God, the
boy
!’ Gaby hissed. ‘Kate, the boy!’ Quickly, Gaby covered her breasts and pulled her skirts down, but Catherine made no attempt to repair her disarray. Slowly she raised her head and looked at Franklin. Her skirts were bunched
around her thighs, her thick, grey-black hair had broken loose from its pins and fell around her shoulders, pieces of straw sticking out of the tangled mess.

She stared at Franklin for what seemed an age and he stared back at her, powerless to move. Gaby looked from one to the other, waiting for Catherine to say something.

Eventually, Catherine sat up and straightened her skirts. ‘You'll tell your father, I suppose,’ she said. More a statement than a question. Franklin continued to stare back at her.

Oh God, Catherine thought, how had she let this happen? Apart from holding hands on their walks together — and then in a way that could only be construed as friendship — she and Gaby had risked no physical contact. They hadn't visited each other's rooms in the dead of the night, they hadn't shared embraces when they were sure nobody was looking — it hadn't been worth the risk. And now, with only a day to go, convinced that the entire property was deserted, they'd abandoned themselves. If only they'd lasted one more day! Just one more day!

Catherine cursed herself. And now, of course, the boy would tell his father. And Charles would withhold the allowance granted her under George's will ...

But there was a regret far more important than the loss of her family inheritance. It was in the boy's eyes as he met hers. Utter disillusionment. She'd been his idol, she knew that. And Gaby had fascinated him.

Oh well, one day he would come to understand
sex, Catherine told herself. Then maybe ... But she knew it was futile. The boy would never understand the love she and Gaby shared. He was repulsed, sickened by the sight of the two of them.

She tried to shake off his accusing stare. ‘I said, I suppose you'll tell your father,’ she repeated.

‘No.’ Finally Franklin found his voice. ‘No, I shan't tell him.’ Catherine looked at him disbelievingly. ‘You have my word,’ Franklin said, and he turned and walked out of the stables.

That night Franklin received the beating he'd anticipated for lying to his parents but his mind was so preoccupied that he barely felt it. ‘The boy’, he kept hearing as the bamboo rod seared the back of his legs. ‘Kate! The boy!’ Gaby had hissed.

Was that all he'd been to them — ‘the boy’? And all the time he'd accompanied them on their walks, had they been wishing he wasn't there so they could do their filthy things to each other? He hated them. But he would keep his word. Like Grandfather George, he would always keep his word.

The next day Catherine and Gabrielle left Araluen, bound for Sydney. It would be over fifteen years before Franklin saw them again.

S
URRY HILLS, SYDNEY'S
seedy backyard, was still a colourful area in 1930, despite the City Council's determination to strip it of its original charm. But then its original charm had always been an arguable point. There were a few old-timers who recalled peaceful rolling hills, grand estates and sheep grazing in nearby Hyde Park. Others romanticised the turn of the century when the ‘larrikin pushes’ — the hooligan street gangs — pelted each other with ‘Irish confetti’, a mixture of gravel and broken bricks. And for some, Surry Hills was at its most alluring in the 1920s when the hardened criminals took over and business boomed for the sly grog and cocaine traders.

So, when the Council started systematically demolishing whole blocks of Surry Hills under the guise of ‘cleaning up the rat-infested inner city streets', the die-hard residents pragmatically decided that it was just another phase the suburb was going through. Many of them refused to be pushed out of their homes to make way for the businesses, warehouses and factories that would
command higher rates for the Council and higher rentals for the landowners. Surry Hills was a residential area, they said. Surry Hills was their home. And if it meant more people had to be crowded into fewer of the tiny terrace houses and cottages, then so be it. Everyone agreed, after all, that no matter how the face of the suburb changed over the years, it was the people who made Surry Hills. And in the face of adversity, the bond forged between the people of Surry Hills always became stronger. Always had and always would, they said.

To twenty-five year old Franklin Ross, it was an exciting place. But then the whole of Sydney was an exciting place — if Franklin had any regret at all about leaving the comfort of rural South Australia, it was the fact that he hadn't done it earlier.

He sorely missed Araluen and the vineyards, but that couldn't be helped. One day he would buy a vineyard of his own, he promised himself. One day. In the meantime, he had to make his fortune.

The break with the family hadn't been all that difficult — but then of course he'd presented his arguments with clarity and precision.

‘Kenneth is the next in line, Father. He will be here to look after the family. And if we don't start broadening our horizons, the wines of The Ross Estate will always be considered colonial.’

Charles wondered what was wrong with ‘colonial’ — it suited him perfectly — but he didn't say so. He'd never really understood his youngest son. Franklin had many of the qualities Charles most admired: he was a serious, responsible young man, not in any way frivolous. But there was a
ruthlessness in him, an ambition, that was quite foreign to Charles.

‘Your grandfather was proud of being colonial, Franklin. He worked hard to establish our roots here and I'm sure — ’

That was when Franklin knew that he'd won and he couldn't disguise the triumph in his voice as he interrupted. ‘Grandfather also worked hard to break into the Sydney retail market. He hoped it would be the first step to an international reputation. And it's not happening, Father! The distributor's doing nothing! Grandfather George would be the first person to send me to Sydney. I know he would!’

That clinched it. Charles stopped arguing. He gave Franklin a sizeable sum of money to get started and agreed to send him a comfortable monthly allowance for a period of ‘ ... shall we say three years?’ he suggested.

‘It may take longer, Father,’ Franklin replied diplomatically. ‘I intend to work very hard at establishing our interstate market.’ He didn't think it was necessary to tell his father his true intentions. He felt his father didn't quite have the vision to understand.

Franklin's true intentions were to conquer as much of the civilised world as he could lay claim to in his lifetime.

He had told his father no lies; he would most certainly deal with their Sydney distributor, and the wines of The Ross Estate would one day rank among the finest in the world — Franklin would make sure of that. But his vision was far broader.

Franklin had sensed very early in his life that his
father was not a leader. His father was the protector of a small rural community and he was training his first-born son to follow in his footsteps. Surely that couldn't have been what Grandfather George had intended for The Ross Estate, Franklin reasoned. Not Grandfather George!

Franklin meant to follow his grandfather's patriachal doctrines to the letter. He believed in them implicitly. He would marry sensibly, sire as many sons as possible and allow the eldest one to take over the reins. But the reins to what? That was where the difference lay. Franklin Ross's first-born would not simply inherit ‘a family’ — he would inherit an empire.

What's more, he would be trained to do so. He would be trained to be strong. A leader. And Sydney was where it all started.

Sam Pritchard, the distributor, was a tough little cockney who didn't like being ordered about by a smooth-talking member of the landed gentry who'd probably never seen a hard day's work in his life. ‘I'm aware The Ross Estate wines are good, son, of course I am. I know my business.’

‘Do you?’ Franklin stared down at the man, willing him to look up from his order books. ‘Do you really know your business?’

It worked. Sam looked up. And he met such a steely glint in the young man's eyes that he decided not to push his luck.

‘Look, Mr Ross,’ he explained patiently, ‘I can't spare a salesman to personally deal with your range — be reasonable now, you couldn't expect
me to, could you? But I’m quite prepared to give you a full list of all our outlets and you can have a bash at them yourself. I can't be fairer than that now, can I?’

‘Thank you. I would appreciate it.’

Sam was annoyed as he watched Franklin Ross walk out of the offices. Why had he allowed himself to be intimidated? On first appearances there was nothing unusual about the young man. He was well dressed, well spoken, pleasant looking — a gentleman, certainly. But there were plenty of those around. A minute or so in his company, however, and one realised that there was something dangerous about Franklin Ross. Something unrelenting. You wouldn't want to cross him, Sam thought.

Franklin stepped out into the hustle and bustle of Goulburn Street and looked up at the bright blue sky. The glorious summer's day seemed to heighten the grime and diversity of Surry Hills. Squalid little terrace houses were jammed in between factories, shops and warehouses. Around one corner was a hive of industry, around another, the unemployed. Dozens of them, spilling out of pubs, lounging around in tiny doorways of tiny houses. Children and dogs played on the dusty curbside. Unemployment. Overpopulation. The Great Depression. But it wasn't depressing to Franklin. This was a big city — weakened and wounded, certainly, but not dead. It was the perfect place to make things happen.

Surry Hills was where he would live, he decided.
He would find accommodation this very afternoon and book out of his city hotel immediately.

It had always been Franklin's intention to find cheap lodgings. He had already invested most of the money his father had given him and he meant to bank all of his considerable monthly allowance and exist upon whatever part-time job he could get while he serviced the wine outlets and investigated business prospects.

‘Perfect,’ Franklin said, as he looked around the sparsely furnished room. It was clean, it was tidy and it overlooked busy Riley Street — that was what Franklin liked best about it. He glanced out of the window before turning back to the nuggety, dark-haired man leaning in the doorway. ‘Perfect,’ he repeated. ‘I'll take it, Mr Mankowski.’

Solomon Mankowski grinned and offered his hand to Franklin. ‘Solly,’ he said. ‘My friends call me Solly. And you have not yet seen the bathroom. Follow me.’

Solly led him back down the single flight of stairs to a workshop on the ground floor and out through a door at the rear. A small weatherboard shack had recently been attached to the house — in it were an enamel bathtub and a washstand with basin. There wasn't room for anything else.

‘You see?’ Solly turned on the bath tap to prove that it worked and stood back proudly. ‘Good, yes? A whole many houses in Surry Hills do not have bathrooms.’

The lavatory wasn't quite as impressive. It was housed in a rickety wooden box right down the end of the narrow backyard. ‘No matter,’ Solly said reassuringly. ‘The owner, he say he will give me a new one next year.’

Franklin had presumed from his proprietorial air that Mankowski himself was the owner but it appeared that Solly rented the house, conducted his successful boot-making business on the ground floor, lived in the basement and sub-let the two rooms on the first floor.

‘Millie Tingwell, she has the other room upstairs. Do not concern yourself,’ Solly added hastily, ‘she is very quiet.’ Then his face became a mask of tragedy. ‘Poor woman, two years ago she lose her husband. A factory accident, very sad.’ He led the way back to the shop at the front of the terrace house. ‘I do what I can to help her, of course. For no extra rent I let her use my kitchen.’ He stopped at the door which led from the workroom to the shop.

The smell of leather was overpowering but not unpleasant, Franklin decided. Just as the chaos of the workroom itself was not unpleasant. The half-finished boots, the heavy industrial sewing machine on the scarred wooden table, the strips of leather and twine hanging from hooks everywhere — it all spelt industry.

‘For a little extra rent you maybe want to use my kitchen too?’ Solly asked.

‘No, thank you.’ Franklin shook his head and followed the man into the shop.

They sat opposite each other across the counter, surrounded by displays of boots, shoes, belts and
assorted leather goods and for a full ten minutes they haggled. Franklin was aware that Solly had assessed the quality and the price of his suit, his waistcoat, his shirt, his hat and, above all, his boots and had come to the conclusion that here was an easy bet.

Having already enquired as to the average price of rooms in Surry Hills, Franklin was also aware that Solly was asking over four times the accepted amount.