Beneath the Southern Cross (64 page)

‘December, strange time for a fire,' Fulham said between clenched teeth.

‘Just burning off a few bits of rubbish,' Kitty said brazenly, as if daring him to differ.

The men made a perfunctory search of the place, but they found nothing. That bastard foreigner downstairs, Fulham thought. He'd brick the bloke, he'd plant some dirt on him and get his shop closed down. Fulham didn't like being taken for a fool.

‘We'll be watching this place from now on,' he warned Kitty.

‘I don't know why on earth you'd bother,' she said as she saw them out the door.

She and Artie sent word through the network of supporters that the house in Campbell Parade was no longer safe. But the end was in sight and, barely a year later, there was no longer a need for such refuges.

Nine days after its historic victory, the Whitlam Labor Government withdrew Australia's last remaining military advisers from Vietnam. The troops would soon be on their way home.

Amongst the first wave of conscriptees, Jim Hamilton served two terms in Vietnam, surviving the Battle of Long Tan and the early horrors of the war, during which the Australian troops experienced the majority of their casualties.

He returned to Sydney a changed man. Physically uninjured he was nonetheless a casualty of the war. The army offered no form of counselling. It simply didn't occur to the military authorities that the aggression and violence which it had so successfully instilled into its raw young recruits might continue unchecked following theirdischarge.

Not long after his return, Jim and his friend Shorty Barber went to the Bondi RSL. Jim and Shorty, who was six foot four with a build to match, had served together in Vietnam and had become close mates.

They walked straight into the bar, ignoring the grizzled old bloke at the front door who seemed about to ask them something.

They plonked themselves down on the bar stools and Jim called out, ‘Two schooners, mate, whatever's on tap.'

The barman looked up from the glass he was wiping and past them to the old bloke who'd appeared at the door.

‘You boys members?' the barman asked.

‘Course we are,' Jim said and he looked at Shorty who nodded. But behind them the old bloke was shaking his head.

‘Sorry, can't serve you if you're not members,' and the barman put down the glass, picked up another from the tray on the bar, and continued wiping.

‘You what?' The glint in Jim's eye was dangerous.

‘Gotta be a member, mate, or you gotta be signed in by one.'

Jim looked around at the bar and lounge. There were half a dozen old men in the place, one bloke propped at the end of the bar, the others sitting in lounge chairs sipping their beers. ‘R … S … L,' Jim spelled out slowly. ‘Returned … Servicemen's … League.'

Shorty recognised the signs. The calm before the storm. ‘Come on, Jim,' he said, ‘let's go.'

But Jim ignored him. ‘This is a club for returned soldiers, right?'

‘Yep,' the barman nodded.

‘So I'm a returned soldier, mate,' Jim snarled. ‘How about you?' He stood and turned to face the men in the lounge. ‘How many
of you old bastards have been to war?' he yelled at the top of his voice.

Probably most of them, Shorty thought. ‘Hey, Jim …' He tried to interrupt but, as usual, there was no stopping Jim once he'd started.

‘Well I've been to bloody war, I've fought for this fucking country!' Jim shouted. ‘I've fought so that old bludgers like you can sit on your fat fucking arses and do bugger-all all day!' He picked up two beer glasses out of the tray, one in each hand, and he hurled one, with all of his might, at the mirror behind the bar.

‘Fucking bastards!' he yelled as the glass smashed and the mirror cracked. Then he hurled the other glass. ‘Fucking bastards!'

He grabbed two more glasses.

‘Get your mate out of here,' the barman said to Shorty as the old man at the door ducked out to call the police.

Shorty dragged Jim out of the bar. ‘Come on, mate, let's get you home.'

One of the old men ducked as a glass careered past, and they all sat watching silently whilst Jim was hauled, screaming, through the door.

‘Fucking bastards!' And the final glass smashed against the wall outside.

The nights were bad for Jim. Regularly he woke in a sweat, paralysed with fear, reliving his terror. He was lying in the mud of a riverbank. He could hear their voices. Four of them, Vietcong, not far away, getting closer now. And closer. Death was preferable to being taken alive, and the muzzle of his rifle was in his mouth, his finger on the trigger. Now? Should he do it now? Surely they could see him, theirvoices were directly above. But he daren't look up, he daren't make the slightest movement. Now? Slowly, his finger moved on the trigger. That was when he woke up.

There were the images, too, and the smell. The charred bodies, barely recognisable as human, the acrid stench of burning flesh, but worst by far were the heads on spikes.

In the dead of the night, the sheets sticky with his sweat, Jim saw the American's head. A sergeant he'd been, or that's what the Yanks who'd known him had said, and his severed penis had been stuffed into his mouth. A young American soldier Jim had met, just a kid, his helmet too big for his head, had had an obsession
about doing the same thing to the Gooks. Every dead Gook he found, he cut its head off and shoved its dick into its mouth.

Jim often awoke gagging, the nights were bad for him. In fact Jim Hamilton was a bitofa mess altogether. As some soldiers aptly put it when describing casualties like Jim, the war had ‘fucked his brain'.

Caroline knew that her son was suffering, but she was powerless to help. If she tried, he became irritable and accused her of fussing, so she left him alone. But her son's alienation was the final stamp upon Caroline's awful loneliness. Emma had been living in London for over three years, and Bruce had shifted from the Woolloomooloo house into a flat in Kensington with two other students. She understood, of course. He needed to be closer to New South Wales University where he was studying economics.

Caroline was extremely proud of Bruce, he would be the first of their family to achieve a university degree. How proud Kathleen would have been. But she sorely missed her youngest son. And perhaps if he'd been living at home, he could have helped Jim. Although Caroline knew, deep down, that nothing could help Jim.

Thankfully, Kitty visited often. Caroline wished she could be like Kitty, passionate and committed. Every day was full and exciting to Kitty. But Caroline found passion in nothing, and her days were empty and dull.

When the weather was fine, she idled away the hours walking through the Botanic Gardens and down to Circular Quay where she sat and gazed at the boats on the harbour and marvelled at the ever-expanding city.

The expansion was as much upward as outward. The AMP building had led the brigade in 1962, and others had soon followed—the State Office Block, Australia Square, like termite mounds, they clustered about the Quay, towering competitively to increasingly dizzy heights.

On Bennelong Point the country's most controversial building was slowly taking shape. Opinions were divided about the Sydney Opera House and its inflated cost. Somesaid it was an indulgence, and when its designer Joern Utzon had resigned from the project in 1966, the denigrators had been quick to label the thing a disaster. But there were those who loved its design and followed its progress with interest. Caroline was one.

On days when the weather was inclement, Caroline sat in front of the television set, taking little note of what she was watching but finding the midday American soap operas, and the noise in general, somehow comforting.

Kitty was most disapproving when she arrived to find Caroline in her dressing gown curled up on the sofa, mindlessly watching TV commercials which advocated to housewives the advantages of this or that soap powder for a whiter wash.

‘For goodness' sake, Caroline, how can you?' Daytime television was a sin to Kitty. In fact she wasn't too sure about the evening variety, with the exception of the news.

Kitty would then switch the set off and make them a coffee, and Caroline would say, ‘You're so bossy,' but she was always pleased to see Kitty. Kitty Farinelli was a breath of fresh air.

 

It was early in '73 Tim Kendall died, or rather, in Kitty's opinion, gave up. Not long before his eightieth birthday he retired from the company and took to his bed. He'd served his purpose, he told his daughter as she sat by his bedside. He enjoyed talking to Kitty, he could be honest with her.

He couldn't with Ruth. Ruth would nag him, but then he could tell she was frightened. ‘For goodness' sake, Tim,' she'd say, ‘get up and have a walk, just a gentle one, get some fresh air in your lungs. It's what the doctor recommends.' Poor Ruth, still vigorous and young for her years, she didn't know what it was like to feel constantly worn out and exhausted.

Tim was not enjoying old age. He hated the fact that his body was letting him down, that he no longer had the stamina to run the company and call the shots. He was not one to enjoy sitting with a book, or listening to music, or taking a gentle walk now and then.

He'd tied up all the loose ends. There were trust accounts and property investments left to Ruth and Kitty so that they would be wealthy in their own right.

‘But I'm leaving my shares in the company to Wally and the partners,' he told Kitty. ‘They've worked hard, they've earned it.'

‘You're giving up, aren't you, Dad?'

Kitty knew, he thought gratefully. But then Kitty always knew, there'd never been secrets between them. And he did so love the way she cut to the chase.

‘Why?'

‘Because I'm bored,' he said. ‘Tired, and very, very bored.'

A week later, Tim Kendall died in his sleep.

 

Having escaped the war, young Wallace Kendall had gone from strength to strength. Old Tim Kendall had died and Wallace's own father, Wally, in ill health and rapidly aging, had retired. So, at the tender age of twenty-seven, Wallace Kendall had become the driving force behind the successful chain of Kendall Markets.

Gradually, over several years, Wallace replaced the older board members, retiring them prematurely with healthy payouts and replacing them with younger members, among them, his friend Bruce Hamilton.

Then Wally Kendall had a stroke. In 1975, at sixty-six years of age, grossly overweight, his body had finally succumbed to the years of cigars, heavy drinking and general good living.

It was a debilitating stroke and the doctor said he would never recover; in fact it was quite likely a further stroke would follow. So a live-in nurse was hired to meet Wally's every need, and the family, his wife Darlene in particular, watched and waited for the inevitable.

Wally was reduced to a pathetic figure. Confined to a wheelchair, with no movement save for the fingers of his left hand which twitched and trembled continuously. Everything about him was twisted, grotesque: his crippled spine, his drooping right eye, his dribbling mouth. So impaired was his speech that the words he bravely struggled to muster came out as an indiscernible growl. But, unbeknown to his family, beneath the pitiful exterior, Wally's mind was intact. His brain was as alert as ever, and his inability to communicate this was torture.

He could hear them talking about him as if he wasn't there.

‘The lawyer said everything's in order,' Lucy informed her sister Julia and her stepmother Darlene, whilst Wally listened from his wheelchair only yards away. ‘Daddy kept his will up to date. Joe wouldn't give me the details of course, but he said it's most equitable.'

Good on you, Joe
. He'd like to see Joe, Wally thought.

Wally's lawyer, friend and ally of thirty years, Joe Davison, had
visited him in the hospital, and again shortly after his return home, but he'd not been back for the past several weeks.

Bugger it, I want to see Joe. Can one of you bloody women get Joe?

Wally scowled and his eyes flashed angrily, but if any of the women noticed, they put hisgrimaces down to his affliction.

‘Right we are, pet, time for our walk.' It was the nurse, come to wheel him out onto the verandah as she did every late afternoon.

The nurse, the bloody nurse, she was the worst of the lot. An old battleaxe. Couldn't they have found a pretty one?

‘Comfy are we?' she said. She always spoke at him, never to him. She never looked into his eyes for any response, expecting none.

She shoved a pill into his mouth and poured water down his throat until he gagged. Sometimes she even massaged his throat to help the pill go down, just as if he was a dog. Christ how he wished they'd get rid of her.
Sack her. Sack her
. Wally practised and practised the words over and over, but they always came out the same growl, and people had given up taking any notice.