Just South of Rome (9 page)

I didn’t write to Stefano.

I did go to Rome though. In fact, I spent a further week in Italy. I could afford to, given the ‘tour rates’ at the Hotel Visconti. And it seemed that I was seeing the country through new eyes. Oh, the motorways were as terrifying as they had been, and the narrow laneways as threatening, and the Lambrettas as cacophonous. But the countryside was different, the cities more welcoming and the people friendlier. Or was it me? I couldn’t be sure.

I finished the panto and I’ve been in London for several months now, happily settled in a little bedsitter in Shepherd’s Bush, and I’ve even landed my first West End job. Well, it’s not exactly the West End, rather a small fringe theatre off St Martin’s Lane, but close enough to the hub of things and very exciting. I often think of Stefano, and of Genzano di Roma and the Hotel Visconti. But I haven’t written. Not yet anyway.

I did write to Roland though. His was the first letter to arrive after I’d sent my address to family and friends at home.

‘At last,’ he wrote in response, ‘I was beginning to worry. But you’re there! In London! The cornerstone of civilisation! Now you can become a citizen of the world …’

‘Cornerstone of civilisation’, my eye. Roland does so tend to live in his yesterdays, I thought as I looked around at the gray, dank London of today. Glorious, certainly, but to my eyes a city of the past. I thought of Sydney and the bright, exciting promise of its future. Suddenly I felt proud to be Australian, and I wondered whether, when I finally went home, I would see my country through different eyes. I had a feeling I would.

‘Lovely to hear of your fringe theatre job,’ Roland’s letter continued, ‘and to know that you’re comfortably settled, but for goodness sake, what of your Italian
adventures? I want all the details please. I am planning a trip there myself next spring. Did you go to my friend Wendy’s restaurant just south of Rome, as you promised you would? I do hope so …’ I wasn’t yet ready to detail him my adventures. Perhaps one day I might. Perhaps one day I might tell the world. Perhaps one day when I’m sixty, like Roland, I might end up boring some twenty-nine-year-old witless, regaling him or her with my romantic Italian sojourn.

No, that’s not fair, I told myself. Roland is never boring. He’s inspirational, in his own way. Perhaps I’ll be an inspiration to youth in my middle years. That would be nice. But then perhaps not. Perhaps Roland’s right, after all. Perhaps I’m too pragmatic and should have been a pharmacist.

Anyway, thinking about Roland always brings out the wicked in me, so I couldn’t resist writing …

I wasn’t being malicious, I decided. In fact, I was doing him a favour. After all, the Hotel Visconti is wonderful fodder for a writer. It might inspire in him a short story, a novella even.

‘It’s called the Hotel Visconti, and you’ll find it in a town called Genzano di Roma … just a little further south of Rome.’

Available November 2013

1964

S
ome people didn’t like the smell. Some people found it overly rich and cloying, some even used the term ‘sickly’. But they were strangers, visitors from the city.

There had always been visitors to the mill. Overseas dignitaries, politicians, even the odd prime minister had enjoyed the lavish garden parties and general hospitality f on offer at Elianne. At times there might be dozens of them, strolling about the grounds of The Big House, or lolling in the wicker chairs on its broad verandahs and upper balconies, while the more active opted for tennis and bowls on the grass courts and greens.

In earlier times, before dirt tracks became accessible roads, and before motor vehicles were the ready form of transport, guests would stay for days on end. The arduous trip by horse and carriage demanded its reward, and Elianne had much to offer – not least of which was the mandatory trip to the nearby mill. The intrepid would climb to the lofty heights of the lookout tower and drink in the panorama of cane fields, stretching like a vast green ocean to the horizon while those without a head for heights would be taken on a tour of the massive metal complex with its varying levels and intricate steel walkways, its giant vats and machines and eighty-foot-high
ceiling, and they would marvel at the magnitude of its scope and industry.

During the crushing season, from mid-year until December, the cacophony of heavy machinery was overwhelming as the mill’s giant rollers and presses smashed and mashed and ground the cane through every stage of its transition to raw sugar. Nothing was wasted. The fibre that was left from the crushing was burnt in the furnaces to generate steam power; the mud filtered from the cane through the presses was returned to the field as fertiliser; and after the painstakingly long crystallisation process, the molasses residue was mixed in with the stock feed or sent to the distillery for the making of rum. The whole exercise was highly efficient as men and machines went about their tasks with precise teamwork.

The mill was a busy, buzzy place during the crushing season, like a beehive where each worker knew precisely the purpose he served. The men took pride in the fact they were Elianne workers. They thrived on the noise and the industry and the smell of the mill, the very smell that some of those from the city professed to find ‘sickly’.

Kate and her brothers loved the smell of the sugar mill. They found the toffee-scented air heady and intoxicating. It was the smell they’d grown up with, all three of them. It was the smell of home.

I’ve missed it, Kate thought, breathing in the richness as she wandered through the cathedral-like metal maze, where the giant mechanical monsters now sat eerily silent. Even during the slack season the smell is here, she thought, it’s always here. It’s been here for as long as I can remember.

She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed the mill and the plantation over the past year. She’d been too distracted. Her life had undergone such a radical change. She remembered how she’d anticipated with relish every homecoming from boarding school in Brisbane. Every
end-of-term holiday, every long weekend had seen her eagerly embrace the familiarity of her childhood. The cane fields shimmering in the heat; the smell of the mill and the easy friendship of the workers, so many of whom were like family; the horse races with her brothers along dusty dirt roads; swimming in the dam and the way, knees clutched to chests, they ‘bombed’ each other off the end of the jetty; tin canoes and excursions up and down the river; laden mango trees climbed to see who could shake down the most fruit; and on and on it went, the list was endless.

But this homecoming was different. Something had changed. After a year at university, this homecoming had taken her by surprise. It was more intense, more meaningful. The past seemed more precious than ever, as if she were somehow threatened with its loss. Perhaps it’s because
I’m
different, she thought. Perhaps it is
I
who has changed, and things will never be the same again. The notion was disturbing, even a little sad, but also strangely exciting.

Although the mill appeared deserted, Kate was aware she was not alone. The gentle clink of tinkering could be heard as here and there mechanics cleaned and serviced the machinery. But the delicacy of the sounds only served to highlight the stillness. At least it seemed so to Kate. She loved the mill most of all during the slack season when it lay dormant, quietly exhaling its treacly breath, biding its time before the next crushing frenzy.

‘Buongiorno
, Kate. Welcome home.’

The voice that jolted her from her reverie came from behind the massive filter press nearby; it belonged to Luigi Fiorelli. He rose to reveal himself, burly, grease stained and good natured as always.

‘Is good to see you,’ he said with a huge grin and a wave of the grimy rag he held in his hand.

‘Good to see you too, Luigi.’ She smiled and returned the salute.

‘How you like it down South, eh? You have good time down there?’ His tone was highly sceptical. During his eighteen years in the southern cane fields of Queensland, Luigi had travelled no farther than Bundaberg, on the other side of the river just fifteen miles from Elianne. He hadn’t even made the trip to Brisbane, which, although two hundred and forty road miles to the south, was easily accessible by both rail and road. He didn’t like big cities, he said, which was perhaps an odd remark from one who’d been brought up in the backstreets of Naples. But then his brothers, also Neapolitan by birth, were of exactly the same mind. The Fiorellis stuck to their farms and to Elianne, never travelling any further afield than Bundaberg. Why bother, they would say, and many felt the same way. Bundaberg, affectionately known to all as Bundy, had been successfully servicing the area for nigh on a hundred years.

‘Yes, I had a very good time down south, Luigi,’ Kate replied. ‘I like university very much.’

‘
Si, si,
sure, sure, university is fine, very good, but
Sydney …
’ Luigi was now openly scathing ‘… you don’ like
Sydney
! You can’ tell me you like
Sydney,
Kate.’

The thought was clearly anathema to Luigi, but Kate made no reply, maintaining instead an enigmatic silence.

Luigi Fiorelli had emigrated from Italy with his three older brothers in 1946, following the war. His brothers had become market gardeners, starting out with tomatoes and zucchinis, and also tobacco, or ‘tabac’ as they called it. Over time, and with application to the all-powerful Colonial Sugar Refinery, they had converted their modest acreage to cane, but twenty-two-year-old Luigi had followed an altogether different path. A skilled mechanic, he had applied for a position at Elianne. He was forty now, and one of the estate’s senior overseers, responsible for the repairs and maintenance of all mill machinery. He preferred to do more than supervise, however, and was
invariably to be found in his overalls working alongside those under his command. ‘How a mechanic is to be a mechanic without he get his hands dirty, eh?’ he would say. Luigi’s command of English had improved immeasurably over the years, but his accent and disregard for syntax hadn’t changed very much.

The Fiorelli brothers and their families remained inextricably linked to Elianne. Luigi, his wife and two teenage children lived on the estate in one of the many comfortable cottages made available by the company to the mill’s most valued employees. The three older brothers, now independent growers and each also with a family, relied upon Elianne for the crushing of their cane, delivering it to the collection points each season, from where it would be taken by cane train to the mill.

The mill was essential to the livelihood of the entire district. The estate itself was home to many, and for some, like Luigi, it was their whole world. Kate’s continued silence, which appeared a comment in itself, now plainly shocked him.

‘You don’ say to me I am wrong, Kate. A girl like you who is born right here at Elianne? Your ancestors who build this place,’ he stretched out his arms as if to embrace the mill and all it stood for, ‘how you can like Sydney? Is not possible.’

Kate laughed. ‘I’m ashamed to admit, Luigi, that yes, I like Sydney very much.’ Her eyes, beguilingly green and mischievous at the best of times, held a cheeky challenge as she added boldly, ‘In fact I
love
Sydney.’ She clutched a dramatic hand to her heart. ‘I love everything
about
Sydney.’ She enjoyed teasing Luigi, whom she’d known as a colourfully avuncular figure all her life, but there was nevertheless a touch of defiance in her statement. Such a comment, even in jest, would annoy her father immeasurably, and indeed others of his ilk. Like many powerful businessmen, particularly those in the sugar trade, Stanley
Durham did not see eye to eye with the politics of the South. Queenslanders were a breed apart, he believed, and needed a different set of rules to live by; they always had.

‘Oh, this is most terrible.’ Realising he was being teased, Luigi joined in the joke, pounding his forehead with the butt of his hand in typically Italian fashion. ‘You turn into a Southerner.
Mamma Mia
, what we tell your papa?’

‘I suggest we keep it our little secret, Luigi.’

‘Very good, very good,’ an exaggerated shrug of resignation, ‘I say nothing to Stan that his daughter is a traitor.’

‘Yep, best we keep Stan the Man out of it I reckon.’

Kate blew him a kiss, and Luigi saluted her once more with his oil rag. He watched as she turned, flicking her auburn hair back like a horse might its mane. Then she walked out of the mill with that easy, confident stride of hers. There was still the tomboy in her, he could see that, still the physical assurance that she could outride, outswim and outrun many a male her age. Growing up in a man’s world she’d always been competitive, never one content to sit among the women on the sidelines of life. But he’d recognised the change in her the moment he’d seen her enter the mill, well before he’d made his presence known. No more the lanky teenager, Kate Durham had become a woman.

He plonked himself down on the wooden crate and resumed his work. The fact was hardly remarkable, he told himself. Kate would be eighteen in mid-January, barely one month away. But the change was confronting nonetheless. It wasn’t just the way her body had matured, which was to be expected – there was a sexual awareness about her, he could sense it. She’s probably lost her virginity in Sydney, he thought disapprovingly. Luigi’s own daughter, Paola, was just three years younger than Kate and he dreaded the prospect of her falling for some lusty young buck after nothing but sex. Paola would marry when she’d met the right man, and she would be wed a virgin; he’d kill any bastard who attempted to deflower her.

Luigi wondered how Stan would react if he discovered his daughter was no longer a virgin. Indeed he’d wondered from the outset why Stanley Durham had allowed his daughter to travel so far afield for her education. Surely Kate could have gone to university in Queensland. She would still have been away from home of course, that was unavoidable, but at least she wouldn’t have been influenced by the decadence that abounded in the south. Sydney was a den of vice; everyone knew that.

Luigi had never voiced such misgivings, however – it was hardly his place to do so. He and Stan were friends certainly, but Luigi Fiorelli, an intelligent man, was well aware there were limitations attached to such a friendship. Ah well, he now told himself, it is none of my business, and he shrugged and got on with his work.

Stanley Durham made a point of initiating close ties with his workers, particularly his key employees, who called him by his first name. Those of long standing like Luigi were indeed considered friends, and often asked up to The Big House, although such offers were never extended when visiting dignitaries were ensconced there.

Stan chose not to play ‘the Boss’ among the general hierarchy of Elianne, but rather the skipper of the team. His workers called him Mr Stan to his face, but he was indirectly referred to by all as Stan the Man, a term which rather pleased him, for he saw himself as a man’s man and a leader of men. But if the truth were known ‘Stan the Man’ was just another term for ‘the Boss’, because that’s exactly what Stan Durham was. He was very like his grandfather, who had built Elianne out of nothing; in fact Stan the Man was Big Jim Durham all over again.

Kate set off at a leisurely pace on the mile-long walk to The Big House. The day promised to become a scorcher, but at the moment a mild breeze alleviated the discomfort; even at its most intense, the weather was never as oppressively
humid as it was further to the north, where the swelter of the tropics could be overwhelming. In any event, Kate loved the heat of midsummer. Many from the South considered it insufferable, but personally she couldn’t understand how others could withstand the cold as they did. Sydney’s climate was supposedly temperate and yet she’d found the winter quite uncomfortable. She dreaded to think what a Melbourne winter would be like, or worse still a Tasmanian one.

She crossed the rail tracks to where she’d left the dogs sitting patiently beside the mill dam. The moment they saw her approach, they jumped up, tails wagging, but they didn’t leave the spot, waiting for her to come to them instead. Cobber and Ben were well trained and knew that the dam was as close to the mill as they were allowed to go.

‘Good boys,’ she said. As she reached them then continued down the dirt road, the dogs raced on ahead, Cobber having trouble keeping up with Ben, although it didn’t ultimately matter as Ben kept circling back to round him up.

Cobber was an eight-year-old Golden Labrador just beginning to show his age and Ben was a hyperactive Blue Heeler who happily rounded up everything he saw except stock. The family had inherited Ben, now four, as a pup from a local farmer who bred working dogs. ‘He’s no use to me,’ the farmer had told them, ‘he got kicked by a steer and won’t go near cattle.’

It’s so good to be home, Kate thought as she watched the dogs at play, Ben circling back to nip at Cobber’s heels as if to speed him up, Cobber accepting the bullying good-naturedly; the two were great mates. Ostensibly the dogs belonged to the family, but everyone considered them Kate’s as she’d trained them and they simply adored her. Kate had always had a way with animals.