Heritage (44 page)

Klaus raised his hand.

‘Good,' Fritz said briskly, and Klaus heard the door open and the tramp of feet as the men left the room. Then silence, and he thought he was alone. But he wasn't. Fritz had remained.

‘By the way,' he said, ‘I have taken the liberty of rearranging your face. It is to our advantage for you to remain undetected. I hope you will appreciate my handiwork.'

Klaus could hear the sneer of superiority in his voice.

‘Goodbye, Klaus. We will not meet again.'

Cam Campbell stepped out of Stewarts store, slipping the small parcel he'd just purchased into his coat pocket. He walked down Denison Street to his ute parked outside the pub. He greeted all those he passed and they greeted him in return. Cam knew everyone in Adaminaby, and everyone knew Cam.

It was sad to think the old town's days were numbered. Sad, Cam inwardly cursed – it was more like bloody criminal! Adaminaby was one of the oldest towns in the region – there were some families who'd been living in the township itself and in the district it served for more than five generations. He was from one of them. And the bloody SMA was going to drown the place! The dam wall was nearing completion and just over a year from now they'd start flooding the town. Then there'd be no such place as old Adaminaby; it'd be lying dead at the bottom of a bloody great lake! Oh sure, they'd drawn up plans for a brand new Adaminaby, but it would never be the same – the old days'd be gone, and all in the name of progress.

Cam Campbell's ongoing fight with the Snowy Mountains Authority over the payout for his land continued. He wouldn't sell up until the very last minute, he'd decided, and he'd come out on top. He already had. He wasn't going to lose his homestead, as it was on high ground well above the area allocated for flooding, and he'd already purchased other grazing lands. But the loss of Adaminaby angered him.

For now, though, on this hot, dry Saturday morning, the wide, sunbaked main street lined with its tin-roofed shops and verandahs remained as it always had: a symbol of rural Australia.

Cam climbed into his ute and headed for Cooma. He hadn't planned on heading there – it had been an on-the-spot decision after he'd picked up his supplies. He'd been about to drive back to the homestead when he suddenly thought of Violet. He hadn't seen his daughter since her Christmas holiday in Sydney. She'd rung to say that she'd had a wonderful time, and had promised her mother that she'd come home for a whole weekend in the New Year – she'd ask Mr Halliday for a Saturday off, she'd said. But it was now late January and still she hadn't come, and Cam had an uneasy feeling that perhaps she might be avoiding him; they'd had a number of altercations over the past several months. It wasn't right for a man to be estranged from his daughter, he'd thought, so he'd popped in to Stewarts store to buy her a present. He was pleased with his choice: a small candle in a frosty pink glass bowl; Violet liked pretty things.

‘G'day, Frank.'

Frank Halliday was by the catalogue stand near the door tending to a customer's queries about deliveries, and as Cam greeted him, he looked around the store for Violet, but she was nowhere in sight. The two other regular young shop assistants were behind the counter, busily serving, and there was a girl he hadn't seen before stacking the shelves.

‘G'day, Cam,' Frank replied, ‘you haven't been around for a while.'

‘You know how it is, big towns are a bit much for blokes like me.' Cam gave his easy, matey grin. ‘How you going, Frank, keeping well?'

‘Oh you know, as well as can be expected.'

Cam was waiting for Frank Halliday to give Vi a yell – ‘hey, Vi, your dad's here' – like he normally did, but the man was making no move.

‘Vi out the back, is she?' he asked.

‘Vi doesn't work Saturdays any more – she hasn't for the past three weeks.' Surely Cam knew that, Frank thought.

‘I'm sorry, Mr Halliday,' Violet had said, ‘I know how busy Saturdays are, and I hate letting you down, but it's personal family business. I hope you understand.'

The way she'd put it, he hadn't dared enquire further, but he'd presumed that she wanted to go home for the weekends and he'd hoped that her mother wasn't ill.

‘Oh.' Cam was obviously surprised by the news, although he tried not to let it show. ‘Rightio. Thanks, Frank, I'll see you later then.'

‘Yeah, see you later, Cam.'

It wasn't like young Violet to lie, Frank thought, returning his attention to his customer. But he wasn't about to say anything to Cam Campbell; Frank always made it a practice to mind his own business.

What the hell was going on? Cam wondered as he drove to Maureen's. If Violet was no longer working on Saturdays, then why hadn't she come out home as she'd promised?

 

Violet and Pietro were in the kitchen preparing scrambled eggs and bacon. ‘Brunch', Violet called it; she found the term and its connotation sophisticated. ‘It's not breakfast and it's not lunch,' she explained to Pietro, ‘and it's sort of decadent.' She had to explain ‘decadent' then, which had been a bit more difficult, but Pietro had been quick to grasp the general idea, and brunch had taken on a whole new meaning. Brunch was the midday meal he and Violetta had after they'd spent a languid morning in bed, making love and discussing their future. Pietro very much liked brunch.

Saturdays were special. Violet no longer worked at the store, and Pietro didn't apply for shift work on Saturdays. He'd decided that being with Violetta every single weekend, instead of just one out of three, was more important than the extra money Saturday provided. Besides, he'd nearly saved enough for their house: by the time the baby came they would be in their very own home. In the meantime, he arrived at Maureen's each Friday night and left on Sunday evening to start work on the early shift the following day. Saturday had become the most important day of the week.

Aware of the fact, and thoughtful of the young couple's privacy, Maureen had rostered herself on to a regular Saturday shift at the hospital. But her warnings to Violet had become more dire than ever.

‘For God's sake, Violet, you have to go home and see your parents. You've got to tell them before you start to show. If you turn up looking pregnant your father'll probably have a bloody heart attack.'

Violet's stance had been sulky and rebellious. ‘I'm not giving up a weekend with Pietro,' she'd said. She now had a valid reason for hedging; she longed to avoid the confrontation with her father and oscillated continuously between self-justification and guilt. Her life was happy and she wanted it to stay that way. Why invite unpleasantness? Besides, she was still mad at her father for the things she'd overheard him say about Pietro, and she told herself she didn't care if she never saw him again. But she did feel shockingly guilty about her mother.

‘Then get some time off from the store and go during the week,' Maureen had argued. ‘I'll come with you, I promise. Please, Violet, you owe it to your mother.'

Violet had finally agreed, but she still hadn't named a day. It was frustratingly typical, Maureen thought. The girl was burying her head in the sand in the hope that it would all just go away.

Violet took the pan to the table and started quickly spooning the eggs onto plates.

‘How's the bacon going?' she asked.

‘Is good. Is ready.' Pietro turned the sizzling rashers with a spatula, then exclaimed as the fat splattered his bare chest.

‘I told you it was dumb to cook bacon without your shirt on,' Violet said, but she loved him wandering about the kitchen shirtless – it was so wonderfully decadent.

‘Is no matter.'

Pietro spooned the bacon onto the plates and they sat.

‘We could go to the pictures tonight,' she said eagerly. ‘There's a beauty on. What do you reckon it is? I'll give you three guesses.'

Her eyes were sparkling with childlike anticipation and she wriggled about in her excitement, the pink silk chemise displaying the voluptuousness of her body to perfection. Pietro laughed – the mixture of child and woman captivated him.

‘I cannot guess, you must tell me.'

She struck a dramatic pose. ‘
From Here to Eternity
,' she declaimed.

Pietro wasn't sure if it was the title of the film or part of Violet's performance, so he waited for her to go on.

‘It's one of the greatest love stories ever to hit the screen,' she said, quoting the advertising jargon. ‘Everyone's talking about it. And it stars Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster,' she added importantly.

‘Ah,' he nodded, still none the wiser.

‘They're two of the biggest stars in Hollywood, Pietro, everyone knows that.'

‘Then we must see this film,' he agreed. He didn't care about Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster. He didn't care about anything, so long as he and Violetta were together.

‘I can't wait.' She wriggled again and started tucking in to her eggs. ‘Oh,' she said, ‘we forgot the toast.'

‘No, no,' he stopped her from getting up, ‘you stay, I will do it.'

But as Pietro rose and crossed to the bread bin, he was startled by a burly figure which suddenly appeared in the doorway.

Cam stood speechless at the sight that confronted him. He'd parked his car out the front and entered via the rear verandah, and the back door which he knew was always left open. There they were – his daughter and the Italian: her in her nightwear and the Dago half naked.

Violet looked up, wondering what had caught Pietro's attention, and saw her father standing only several feet from her husband.

For a split second, all three remained frozen. Then Cam lunged at the Italian.

Pietro ducked to one side and, caught off-balance, Cam staggered into the kitchen.

‘No, Dad!' Violet stood and yelled as her father fought to regain both his balance and his dignity.

Cam perused his daughter with distaste. She looked like a whore, he thought.

‘Leave him alone!' Violet didn't yell this time, but her voice had the ring of authority. ‘You can't touch him!'

Can't touch him? he thought. How dare the little slut put on airs and graces and order him about? ‘Can't touch him?' he roared. ‘I'll bloody well kill him.'

‘We're married.'

Cam had been about to hurl himself again at the Dago, but he was halted by the shock of her announcement.

‘You're what?'

‘We're married,' she calmly repeated.

‘You're married?'

His face was so comical in its disbelief that Violet wanted to laugh.

‘We've been married for over three months,' she said, ‘and there's nothing you can do about it.'

‘Isn't there just,' he snarled. ‘I can have the bloody marriage annulled, that's what I can do.'

‘No, you can't. I'm nineteen years old, I'm not a child any more.'

‘Don't you talk back to me, girlie.' The superior tone of her voice infuriated him, he refused to take any more of her cheek. ‘You're coming home with me right now.' He grabbed her wrist and dragged her, protesting, out of the kitchen and through the lounge.

Pietro, who had made no attempt to speak for fear any interruption from him would only anger Violetta's father more, was galvanised into action at the sight of his wife being so manhandled. He raced after them, catching Cam as he opened the front door, grasping him by the shoulder.

‘You will let her go,' he said.

‘Piss off, you filthy little Dago.'

Cam shoved the Italian roughly aside and hauled Violet out onto the front verandah and through the open gate of its little picket fence. As he dragged her after him down the several steps, she stumbled, but he retained his hold on her wrist – he didn't care if she fell, he'd drag her along the bloody ground and out into the street if need be.

Pietro, who had followed, dived forward and grabbed Violet around the waist, stumbling with her, breaking both her fall and her father's grip as they tumbled to the patchy grass of Maureen's front yard.

‘You are hurt?' His first concern was for his wife and their child, and, terrified, he helped her to her feet.

‘I'm fine, Pietro, honest.' She would have been anyway, she was as strong as a horse and the fall wouldn't have hurt her, but she was thankful to be out of her father's clutches.

She was about to run back inside and yell for Pietro to follow. They could lock the doors and leave her father to his fury. She'd call the police if necessary.

But, assured of his wife's safety, something happened to Pietro. Something deep inside him seemed to snap and he lost all control. He'd never known anger – in the whole of his life he'd never raised his hand at another human being – but he screamed with rage as he charged at Cam Campbell.

The collision brought both men to the ground, Pietro landing heavily on top of the older man who was winded. There was the crunch of glass as the little pink bowl in Cam's pocket was crushed to pieces within its tissue paper.

Cam struggled to his feet, fighting to regain his breath, ready to teach the Dago a lesson, but before he could fully recover, he found himself being dragged out of the front yard.

Pietro didn't know how to fight. He hadn't been taught and he'd never had the desire to learn, he'd never felt the urge to fight. But he did now. He dragged the man who would have harmed Violetta away from her, away from the house where she lived and into the street. He'd lost all sight of the fact that the man was her father.

Out on the pavement, Cam had recovered his breath and was prepared to do battle. He was good with his fists and far stronger and heavier than the puny Dago – he'd flatten the kid. But the ferocity of the young Italian was bewildering. The boy didn't fight ethically and he didn't fight dirty, he just screamed and clawed like a wild animal. The kid was a lunatic, Cam decided as he tried to land a punch, which missed. Then suddenly he was on his back and Pietro was straddling him, his hands about his throat, screaming like a madman.

‘You harm Violetta and I kill you! You harm her baby and I kill you!'

Cam didn't hear the words, he just heard the demented screaming, and with all his strength he bucked the kid off him, scrambling to his feet, his fists clenched. He'd belt the Christ out of the crazy bastard.