Kal (35 page)

Damn, he thought, the waiters hadn't closed the windows. Harry had instructed them always to close the balcony windows early on a Friday. Friday was payday for the timbercutters who frequented the hotel next door. Payday and the end of the work week. Friday was a rowdy night at the Sheaf.

Harry quickly crossed to the windows, noticing that one or two of the diners were already distracted by the din. He signalled a waiter to turn up the gramophone and, as he stepped out onto the balcony, the string quartet swelled in volume.

Harry closed the windows behind him and looked down into the street below. Half a dozen men had staggered out of the Sheaf and one voice was raised above the general drunken din. It was a voice Harry knew. Rico Gianni. He stepped back out of the light, not wishing to draw attention to himself. But it was too late. Rico had sensed the figure on the balcony and looked up. He yelled something out in Italian and his voice was ugly.

‘Look, my friends!' he was shouting. ‘Look at who is watching us from his castle. Mr Deputy Mayor himself!' The others tried to quieten him, but he refused to listen. ‘Tell him to come down and join the common people,' he jeered.

As his friends dragged him away, Rico yelled up at Harry. In English this time. ‘You are a thief, Harry Brearley! You are a thief and a coward and one day you will pay for it.'

‘Come on, Rico,' one of the men urged. ‘Leave him
alone, it's not worth it.' Every couple of months Sergeant Baldy Hetherington was forced to lock Rico up for the night. Drunken behaviour, inciting an affray, using indecent language in a public place, and always relating to the Brearleys. ‘It is still early. We will go back to your house and drink some wine,' the man insisted. ‘Come on.' And the others started to drag the protesting Rico down the street.

‘
Bastardo
!' Rico kept screaming up at Harry, but he allowed himself to be led away.

Harry slipped back inside the restaurant, angry more than shaken by yet another episode. If there was any way he could have the entire Gianni family run out of town he would. But Giovanni Gianni was a respected citizen, and although Rico was generally avoided, there were many who sympathised with Teresa and the constant fight she must have in protecting her young family from her husband's madness.

Teresa had not expected Rico home this early tonight. She did not like the raucous group of timbercutters he had brought back with him, but it was safer for him to bring his work friends home to drink. He was less likely to get into trouble that way.

Teresa looked at her son and shrugged her shoulders. She knew Enrico hated it when his father came home half drunk. She worried about the boy. Carmelina still knew how to charm her father, and six-year-old Salvatore was Rico's pride and joy…' but Enrico, who had always been a sensitive boy, was withdrawing more and more from the brutality of his father. And the more he withdrew the more Rico challenged him.

‘Stand up for yourself, boy,' he barked constantly. ‘You are thirteen years old. Soon you will be a man; you must learn to fight.' This followed the time Enrico had come home with a swelling eye and a bloodied face.

‘Just a boy at school,' he had explained, knowing
that if his father found out it was Jack Brearley, there would be hell to pay. Enrico wanted no repercussions from the fight—it had been a fair one. Although it was out of character for him, he had entered the fray as readily as Jack—the two of them had been spoiling for a fight for a very long time. But Jack Brearley was undoubtedly the stronger and more aggressive of the two and Enrico had been sorely beaten.

As a result of his beating, Rico had insisted his son learn to fight. Enrico detested the whole exercise—not so much the lessons themselves but the hostility they brought out in his father.

‘What's the matter with you?' Rico would yell, exasperated when the boy failed to respond. ‘Where is your rage? Fight me! Come on fight me!' When Enrico's efforts continued to be half-hearted, he would throw up his hands. ‘You are just like your uncle. Soft. Giovanni would walk away, too, before he would face his enemies. Well, go to him, see if I care.' And Rico would walk off in disgust.

The truth was, Rico was jealous of the boy's relationship with his uncle. Since Giovanni had left the family home, Enrico had been slipping away to spend more and more time with his idol. And recently, when Giovanni had bought a piano accordion, he had given Enrico the old concertina.

‘Shut up that noise,' Rico would bellow on the occasions when, in his drunkenness, the music became a symbol of the distance between him and his son. And then Teresa would turn her full venom upon him.

‘If he stops that noise I will leave this house!' she would yell back at him. And later, when they had made love, she would try to talk sense to him. ‘Why do you fight the music, Rico? You love the concertina, you love to sing along. And the boy is a fine musician, Giovanni always said he was.' Even as she sensed the tension,
Teresa continued boldly. ‘You must let him spend time with Giovanni, he is a sensitive boy.' And, for a while, there would be a grudging sense of peace until the next drunken rage.

Knowing the effect Rico was having on his son, Giovanni had tried to discourage Enrico's constant visits. If they exacerbated his father's anger they served no purpose. But eventually it was Teresa herself who encouraged the relationship.

‘It is better that the boy sees you, Giovanni,' she had said during one of his visits to the family home.

Giovanni had deliberately called on a Friday night when Rico was out drinking so that he could insist she accept some money from him. ‘For the children, Teresa. Please take it. What else can I spend it on?' She had reluctantly agreed.

‘He is the firstborn,' she continued. ‘Rico is trying to mould him as himself. It is wrong. When Enrico is grown perhaps he will be able to see the pain in his father. If not,' she shrugged, ‘at least he will be able to defend himself. He needs you, Giovanni.'

So the visits had become more and more regular. And Giovanni enjoyed the company of the boy. Enrico never spoke of his unhappiness at home and Giovanni never encouraged it. Instead, he asked the boy to teach him to read and write, a request which filled Enrico with pride. And they played music together and sang and sat in silence watching the sunset and then Giovanni would say, ‘It is time to go home, Enrico,' and the boy would reluctantly leave.

 

‘E
NRICO
, B
RUNO'S GLASS
is empty,' Rico shouted drunkenly. ‘More pasta, hurry up, boy…' His brush with Harry Brearley had enraged Rico and as usual, he decided to take his ill-humour out on his eldest son. Any interruption from Teresa merely angered him the more.
‘Shut your mouth, woman. The boy wants to behave like a girl, let him be treated like a girl. He can wait on the men like a good daughter should.' The other men took no notice as they played their cards and held their glasses out to be filled.

When one of the glasses smashed to the floor, Enrico was roared at, as if it was his fault, and ordered to clean up the mess. He stood looking at the glass for several moments while the men returned to their cards. Then he picked up his concertina and walked to the front door.

‘Where are you going, boy?' Rico growled. ‘I told you to clean up that mess.'

‘Clean it up yourself,' he answered. There was a deadly silence and all eyes were turned on Rico, waiting for his reaction. Rico was momentarily lost for words. Never had his son answered back to him.

Enrico glanced briefly at his mother. ‘I'm going out,' he said and he didn't look at his father as he gently closed the door behind him.

It was barely dusk when Enrico arrived at the boarding house where his uncle lived, but Giovanni was already on his way out.

‘Can I come with you?'

‘No, Enrico, I am sorry.'

The boy nodded, but he looked so forlorn standing there, his concertina in one hand, the other hand in his shorts pocket, eyes downcast, studying his worn boots as he scuffed them in the dust of the front verandah.

‘Is there something wrong?' Giovanni asked.

‘No.'

‘Has there been a bad fight at home?'

‘No.' The accompanying shrug said, ‘No worse than usual', but Giovanni sensed something had happened.

‘Well, I suppose my friend won't mind if I am a little late. I see you have brought the concertina—would you like to play for me?'

Enrico looked up. ‘Can I play you my song?' he asked hopefully. ‘I finished it yesterday.'

They sat on the steps of the front verandah and Enrico played. It was a pretty song of his own composition; he'd been working on it for weeks. As he played, Giovanni watched the boy's tension fade away until there was nothing but his concentration upon every note. Music was Enrico's salvation, Giovanni thought. His father would never be able to take that from him.

‘It is a fine song,' Giovanni said as the boy concluded. ‘You are a true musician, Enrico.'

The boy smiled happily. Giovanni would never say that if he didn't mean it. ‘It's a love song,' he said. ‘I am going to write words for it.'

Giovanni laughed. ‘Well, you're a better man than I am.' Learning to read and write was still a painful process for Giovanni. ‘And is there someone you write this song for?' he asked with a suggestive wink. ‘A girl at school maybe?'

‘No,' Enrico answered in all seriousness. ‘Not yet.' He had indeed been noticing the girls at school. ‘But I like love songs. I like the way you sing them.'

Giovanni rose and spanked the dust from the seat of his good trousers. ‘I must go now.' He knew the boy was loath to leave. ‘It is Saturday tomorrow. Will you give me a writing lesson in the afternoon?' The boy nodded eagerly.

‘It is time to go home, Enrico.'

Enrico watched as Giovanni walked down the street. He wished they could have sat and played and sung together for hours. What would happen when he went home? he wondered. Perhaps his father would beat him. It had never happened before. For all Rico's violence he had never laid a hand upon his children. But then Enrico had never defied his father before.

He didn't want to go home. He couldn't face that
yet. So he followed Giovanni instead, stealthily, from a distance. When they turned into Hay Street and he saw Giovanni enter Red Ruby's, Enrico felt a sense of shock. He knew what Red Ruby's was. The boys at school told fascinatingly lewd stories about the brothels and what went on inside them.

He sat on the kerbside a block away from Red Ruby's fantasising about what was going on behind the bright red shutters through which the soft rose light glowed. He mustn't think less of Giovanni, he told himself when the initial shock had worn off. Giovanni was not a married man, there was not a woman in his life. And men needed women. Enrico had known for a long time now what his mother and father were doing when the bed squeaked and he heard their moans and grunts through the thin partitioning wall. It stirred him. He wondered what it was like, being with a woman.

As he watched from the kerbside, he saw other men arrive. Not only at Red Ruby's but at the many other brothels that lined the street on either side. He didn't hear the light footsteps behind him. So absorbed was he that he didn't notice her until she spoke.

‘What are you doing, young man?'

Startled, Enrico looked up. Although it was a bright moonlit night, he couldn't see her face clearly. But her voice was young and humorous and her accent fascinating.

‘What are you doing sitting in the gutter?' He could tell she was smiling.

‘Um … I was just…' He started to get up. He could feel himself blushing.

‘No no,' she insisted. ‘Do not stand, it is not necessary.'

He watched, astonished, as she bent and gathered up her skirts, raising them to her waist and displaying the layers of petticoats underneath. Then carefully
holding her skirts in her lap, she sat beside him in the gutter.

‘I must not spoil my dress,' she said. ‘It is pretty, is it not?'

He stared back. He could see her now, in the moonlight. A lace shawl covered her head and he wasn't sure what colour her hair was, but soft curls framed a face that was one of the prettiest he had ever seen.

‘You like it?' she insisted. ‘My dress?'

He realised that he had been staring at her, jaw agape. ‘Yes … um…'

‘You did not answer my other question.' Her smile was mischievous. ‘What are you doing sitting in the gutter staring at the houses?'

‘Um…' Enrico was flustered, the guilty images still in his mind. Didn't she know what those houses were?

Solange laughed and decided to save the boy from further embarrassment. ‘My name is Solange Bouchet. What is yours?'

‘Enrico Gianni.'

‘How old are you?'

‘Fifteen.' He lied without hesitation. ‘How old are you?'

‘Nineteen,' she said. She didn't believe the boy for one minute. Perhaps he was fourteen, certainly no more. But such a beautiful boy, she thought, with his serious dark brown eyes.

‘Where do you come from?' Enrico asked. He couldn't stop staring at her. ‘The way you speak…'

‘I am from France,' she said. ‘A little town called Houilles not far from Paris.' He waited for her to go on. Lost for words, he simply wanted to hear her talk. ‘The people in Houilles are miners also, but they do not mine for gold. In Houilles they mine for coal.' She wrinkled her nose comically. ‘Coal is not so romantic, so I come to Kalgoorlie instead.' Still he said nothing.

Oh well, Solange thought, if he was not going to be amusing she would go. She was already late for work, Ada would be cross. But then she was always late for work and Ada was always cross. Never for long though. The youngest girl working at Red Ruby's, Solange was Ada's favourite.

She noticed the concertina. ‘You play music?' she asked.