Heritage (49 page)

‘Ruth's just arrived in town,' he said.

‘Really? Welcome to Cooma.'

‘Thank you. I've only been here a week, but I love the place already.'

‘And she has a job as an interpreter and teacher with the SMA,' Lucky boasted.

‘In just one week?' Maarten smiled his congratulations. ‘Well done.'

‘Oh I haven't started – I have to get my medical clearance yet.'

‘Indeed? Well, if you wish to cut corners and avoid any delays, I'd be only too happy to oblige.'

‘Maarten's a doctor, Ruth,' Lucky explained as she looked a query at him, ‘he has a private practice in Vale Street. It's not far from Dodds – I can show you where it is.'

Maarten produced a card from the inner pocket of his jacket and presented it to her. ‘Ring my receptionist and make an appointment for next week,' he said. ‘Tomorrow, if you like, I think there are one or two holes in the day. I'll give you top priority, I promise.'

‘Thank you, Doctor Vanpoucke, that's very kind.'

‘Any friend of Lucky's …' he smiled, ‘and do call me Maarten.' He turned to Lucky. ‘And you, my friend, you've been neglecting me sadly of late. Could I inveigle you into a game of chess next Saturday, and dinner perhaps?'

Lucky hesitated awkwardly, put on the spot, as was Maarten's intention.

‘I think he'll be dining with his fiancée, Peggy,' Ruth said, ‘they usually do on a Saturday, I believe, isn't that right, Lucky?'

‘Yes.' She'd said it with such ease, he was lost in admiration. ‘We go to Dodds as a rule, it's become a bit of a custom.'

‘Yes, of course, how silly of me to forget,' Maarten replied, and he turned to Ruth. ‘Lucky's engagement is the very reason for his neglect of me – lamentable but understandable. Well, it's been lovely to meet you, Ruth.' He shook her hand again, relishing the touch of her. ‘I'll see you during the week.'

How neatly things were falling into place, he thought as he left them and strolled up Sharp Street.

It had taken Marge Campbell a little while to adjust to Pietro. She'd welcomed him as warmly as possible – she had nothing against foreigners, but it had been difficult to come to terms with the fact that her Vi had married one.

On Pietro's first visit the three of them had sat in the front room drinking tea.

‘The front room,' Violet had remarked as she'd carried in the tea tray, ‘gosh, Pietro, you're getting the royal treatment.'

‘Don't be silly, Vi,' her mother had said, ‘we always entertain guests in the front room – you know that. Now, Pietro, how do you take your tea?' She'd spoken loudly and enunciated clearly. ‘Do you like milk?' And she'd held up the milk jug, just to ensure that he understood.

‘He speaks English, Mum, and he's not deaf.'

But after ten minutes or so, Marge had relaxed and she'd found herself warming to the young man. His manners were impeccable and he was certainly handsome; Vi's child was bound to be a looker, she thought.

‘Is beautiful, your farm,' Pietro said.

Lucky had given him the use of the Land Rover for the day, and Pietro had been hugely impressed as he and Violet drove through the valleys and over the hills of her father's lands. As he'd driven over the cattle grid and up the broad path to the rambling homestead, with its huge verandahs and groves of poplars, he'd been lost in awe.

‘Never do I see a farm so beautiful,' he said to Violetta's mother.

‘Property, Pietro,' Violet reminded him.

‘Property, yes.' He smiled at Marge. He liked Violetta's mother; she was nice and she looked very like Violetta except much older. And a bit tired, he thought. ‘Always I forget is property. In my country, is farm. Violetta she correct me.'

Now that she was getting used to it, Marge found it rather pretty the way he called her daughter Violetta.

‘We have farms here too,' she said, ‘don't you listen to Vi – she just likes to show off.'

Violet grinned. Her mum had taken to him, she could tell. They were getting on like a house on fire.

‘So tell me about your farm, Pietro. Vi said you grew up on a farm.'

Violet flashed a warning at her mother. She'd said no such thing. She'd told her mum that Pietro had lived on a farm as a child, but that his parents had been killed in the war and he'd been brought up in an orphanage.

Marge blushed, realising that she'd put her foot in it.

But Pietro didn't seem to mind.

‘My farm is high in the mountains,' he said. ‘Much more high than here. And I have goats. I have a pet goat. Her name is Rosa.' Pietro intended to tell Violetta's mother everything he could remember about his farm. He would tell her about the mountains in springtime and how he'd helped Rosa have her baby. But Violetta's mother interrupted him.

‘How nice.' Marge decided it was time to check on the roast; Violet's signals were painfully obvious. ‘I'll just see how lunch is going. Cam and the boys'll be back any minute; they've been out for a morning ride.' She disappeared to the kitchen.

‘Why you not wish I should talk to your mother, Violetta?' Pietro asked, a little hurt. The signals had not gone unnoticed by him either.

‘I
want
you to talk to her, sweetie,' Violet assured him, ‘I just don't want her asking questions, that's all.'

‘Ah,' Pietro said, ‘she does not know.' Violetta had not told her mother that he had only fractured memories of the farm, and no recollection of his parents. Perhaps she was ashamed, he thought.

Violet could see he was hurt and she cuddled up to him on the sofa.

‘I just want to give them some time, Pietro. I mean, I'm married, I'm going to have a baby – they've got a lot to get used to, without … you know?'

‘Yes, is correct.' Violetta was right, he thought. He must not seem strange to her family, he must try to fit in.

 

Marge dumped the oven dish onto the newspaper which she'd laid out on the Laminex-topped kitchen table and turned the legs of lamb with a carving fork. She always cooked two, but the way her boys ate, there was rarely any meat left. She wished she could have added an extra leg with Pietro here, but there wasn't enough room in the oven of the old Kooka. It was time Cam bought her one of those new-fangled stoves that had more space, she thought. Crikey, there wasn't enough room to cook a decent sized roast as it was – she had to keep rotating the other two pans with the vegetables.

She heard Cam and the boys talking on the back verandah as they took off their boots. It was a rule of hers: no work boots in the house, and the men always obeyed – the house was her domain. Then there was the closing slap of the back flywire door and all three of them barged into the kitchen.

‘Smells good, Mum.' It was twenty-one-year-old Johnno, the younger of her sons. ‘Jeez, I'm starving, I could eat the leg off a skinny priest.'

‘Mind your language,' she said meaningfully.

Johnno raised an eyebrow that said ‘what language?', but twenty-four-year-old Dave got her drift.

‘He's here, is he?'

‘In the front room,' she said.

‘Strewth, you're laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?'

‘Course she's not,' Cam reprimanded his son. ‘This is Vi's husband and we'll welcome him into the family the proper way. You just mind your Ps and Qs, Dave.'

Dave and Johnno exchanged a look. Any other member of the family would have been welcomed into the kitchen; the front room was for bunging it on.

‘Go and wash up and we'll have a cup of tea before lunch,' Marge said.

‘A cup of tea?' Another incredulous reaction from the boys, and this time Cam agreed – the rules didn't need to be stretched that far.

‘Give it a break, Marge,' he said. ‘We'll have a beer.' And they trooped off to the laundry to scrub up for Sunday lunch.

 

When Cam had told his wife about their daughter, Marge was aghast.

‘You mean she's been married for three whole months?'

‘Three and a half. Fifteenth of October – I checked with the Registry Office.'

‘And now she's pregnant …'

‘So she says.'

Shocked as she was, Marge's mind had worked swiftly. ‘Oh dear God, that's why she married him.'

‘Not according to Maureen: she says Vi's only two and a half months gone.' Cam hadn't dared admit to the earlier warnings he'd had from Maureen about Violet's imminent love affair. But Christ alive, he thought he'd nipped it in the bud. How the hell was he to know it'd get so out of hand?

Then, when he'd told his wife about his run-in with the young Italian, much to his surprise, Marge had turned on him.

‘God in heaven, Cam, what have you done?'

‘
Me
? What have
I
done? The kid
attacked
me!'

‘With no provocation on your part, of course.' Marge knew her husband only too well.

Cam was exasperated beyond measure. Maureen had said the same thing. What was wrong with the stupid cows? Why did everything have to be his fault?

‘Jesus Christ, woman, why blame me?'

‘Don't blaspheme,' she said automatically. Despite the fact that in becoming a Campbell woman Marge had lost touch with the church, her Irish Catholic upbringing regularly came to the fore.

‘It's not my fault Vi married a bloody Dago.'

‘For goodness sake, keep your voice down – what would the boys say if they heard you talk like that!' The boys couldn't have heard – they were out rounding up strays – but the mere thought of it sent a shiver down her spine. Cam had rammed home to the boys his ‘all men are equal' ideals for years, and now he was about to be exposed as a hypocrite.

‘Christ, Marge, it's different when your own daughter marries one.'

It was then that Marge read him the riot act.

‘Now you listen to me, Cam. Your daughter's married to an Italian whether you like it or not, and she's going to have a baby. You welcome that boy into this family, and you start showing off around every pub in town about how your little girl's been married for three months and how proud you are. And you make sure everyone knows the very date she married, because when she starts to show I won't have people saying that my daughter had to marry because she got into trouble. Do you hear me?'

He certainly heard her. He'd never heard her so loud and clear in the whole of their marriage. Cam had always ruled the roost and Marge had always run the house, just as the Campbells had done for generations. But not this time. This time it was her call and there was little he could do about it, because she was right.

‘How do I explain why she kept it a secret?' he asked sulkily.

‘She didn't. We knew all the time. Vi was being romantic – everyone knows what Vi's like. So she eloped and then she came back and told us. And she wanted to keep it a secret for a while because she likes a bit of drama – that's what you say, Cam. Tell it all around town, go on a pub crawl. Tell them in Jindabyne and Dalgety and Berridale too, and you be sure you tell your mates in Cooma. You can make a joke of it, if you like – you're good at that.'

He was, Marge thought, and he'd get it right. Cam was good at bullshit. It was a term she never used, but it was spot on. She'd check the story with Maureen, she thought. Something sounded very fishy. Why would Violet get married without telling her own mother? The girl had obviously feared her father's reaction; maybe she'd seen through Cam's ‘all men are equal' ravings – that was bullshit too.

Cam had wandered off, thoroughly chastened, and Marge had rung Violet and told her to bring her husband home for the Sunday roast.

 

‘I am most sorry, Mr Campbell,' Pietro said, rising from the sofa as Cam and the boys appeared.

‘Over and done with, son,' Cam muttered, ‘let bygones be bygones,' and he shook the Italian's hand. Dave and Johnno looked on, mystified – they knew nothing apart from the surprising fact that their little sister had married an Italian without telling anyone. ‘These are my boys,' Cam loudly announced. ‘Dave and Johnno, this is Pietro.'

These were not boys, Pietro thought, these were giants.

Sandy-haired and freckle-faced, Dave and Johnno had their father's powerful build, but they towered over Cam.

‘G'day, Pietro,' they both said, and one by one they shook his hand vigorously.

‘Gedday, Dave, gedday, Johnno.' Pietro returned their handshakes with equal force.

‘You want a beer, Pietro?' Cam asked, as Marge appeared with a couple of bottles and glasses.

‘Yes, I like beer very much, thank you, Mr Campbell.'

Cam caught his wife's glance. ‘I think under the circumstances, we should make it Cam, son,' he said and he busied himself with the beers, avoiding whatever look Vi might have been giving him.

But the awkwardness soon dissipated – Dave and Johnno, blissfully unaware of the sequence of events, made sure of that.

‘Oh come off it, Mum,' Dave said, when Marge told Violet to set the dining room table, ‘Pietro's one of the family, isn't he? What's wrong with the kitchen?' The dining room, like the front room, was for bunging it on, and besides, it was Sunday – the Sunday roast wouldn't be the same in the dining room.

It seemed to be the general consensus of opinion and, although Marge had been trying to do things ‘the European way' in deference to Pietro, she was quite relieved. It meant she didn't have to be running from room to room with the food.

Lunch was a raucous affair, the boys downing their beers and spearing meat from the huge platter onto their plates with their forks. Pietro had never seen men eat so much meat.

‘Want some more spuds, Pietro?' Johnno slid the bowl of roast potatoes across the table.

‘Thank you, yes.'

Marge was about to pass him the serving spoon, but Pietro speared a potato with his fork the way he'd seen the others do; he was determined to fit in. Ah well, she thought, it was probably a good sign.

Dave was keen to know how Violet and Pietro had met.

‘At Hallidays,' Violet said. ‘It was love at first sight.' There was no conscious attempt at exaggeration on her part; it was the way she remembered their meeting. ‘I thought he looked like a film star. And he does, doesn't he,' she said proudly.

With all eyes upon him, Pietro was plainly embarrassed, so the boys didn't take the mickey out of him like they normally would have.

‘Why'd you keep it a secret, Vi?' Johnno asked.

‘You know me.' She shrugged, and her smile was teasing. ‘I like a bit of drama.'

That's what Mum had said, Johnno thought. Jeez but Vi lived in a world of her own.

Dave was thinking exactly the same thing. He'd given up trying to figure out his sister, but he'd been keen to meet the Italian; he was very protective of Vi and very much the big brother. Pietro seemed like a nice bloke, though, and Vi was obviously happy, so good on 'em both, he thought. Hell, like Dad's always said, one bloke's as good as another. Bit weird, though, he thought, having an Eyetie in the family.

‘You work for Kaiser, don't you?' he asked.

‘This is true.'

‘What's it like, Pietro, working for the Yanks?' Johnno stopped midway through piling a third serve of meat onto his plate. ‘They say they're real slave drivers.'

‘No, they are good. And they pay good too.'

The rest of the main meal was given over to a discussion about Kaiser and its radical work methods. The boys were fascinated; even Cam, who had remained relatively silent, found himself interested in what the Italian had to say, and Pietro felt relaxed as he answered their questions. Violet was as pleased as punch.

Then, as Marge dished out the apple crumble and ice cream, the conversation turned to the Cooma Show. It was well over a month away yet, but the Show was the most important event on the yearly calendar and always came up for heavy discussion.