Kal (44 page)

She was a little surprised by the degree of pressure on her mouth. And she hadn't expected to be held quite so close. The whole length of his body was pressed against hers and his hand, in the small of her back, was suspiciously close to her buttocks. However, she didn't want to be considered a prude, so she suffered the brutality of his embrace.

But when her lips were forced apart and she felt his tongue thrust its way into her mouth, she started to pull away. There was no escape. He backed her against the embankment wall, one hand locked behind her head, holding her mouth against his. Then she felt his tongue circle hers, the tip of it flicking over her teeth, forcing itself along the soft inside of her lip. His tongue was everywhere. She was repulsed—it was detestable. With his other hand, he roughly pulled open her beautiful coat, exposing her silk-gowned body to his as he forced himself even closer. Then his hand was on her breast and, with horror, she felt the hardness of him pressing against her. She struggled with all her might, grunting with the effort, as she fought to be free of the sickening tongue and the loathsome erection.

The struggle only lasted a matter of seconds, although it felt longer to Meg.

‘Jesus Christ,' he exclaimed, finally allowing her to push him away, ‘what's the matter with you?'

She didn't answer but started walking back along the embankment as quickly as she could.

‘Good God, Meg, it was only a kiss.' He caught up with her but she didn't look at him. During the entire walk back to the ballroom she didn't look at him once.

Daily, ever since that night, Meg had thought of the
kiss. And the more she thought of it, the less repulsive it became. She explored her mouth, pushing her tongue along the soft inside of her lips, flicking the tip of it along her teeth and hard palate. The textures. The warmth and wetness. That's what he would have felt, she thought. With his tongue. Perhaps if he'd been a little more gentle. Perhaps if it had been a different boy, someone she genuinely liked. Peter perhaps. No, Peter would never kiss like that.

Meg looked across the table at David and Amy. They would kiss like that, she was sure of it. She felt a mixture of revulsion and envy.

The sorbet dishes were being cleared in preparation for the main course and Stephen had finally stopped talking long enough to tell the waiter which of the three wines he would prefer with his duck, when Meg dropped her napkin. She simply had to see if David and Amy were holding hands.

They were. Beneath the damask table cloth, fingers entwined, their hands rested together upon David's knee.

But there was something else far more shocking going on under the table. On Paolo's black-trousered thigh rested the delicate hand of Mary-Jane and the fingers were moving almost imperceptibly. She was feeling his flesh through the fine wool fabric of his evening suit.

Meg rescued her napkin and sat bolt upright, hoping that her face was not flushed. When she had recovered her composure she glanced at Mary-Jane. Sweet, innocent Mary-Jane—who would have thought it possible? She glanced at Paolo, but his face was unreadable as he examined the claret bottle the waiter was proffering. His thigh was being intimately caressed by the woman with whom he was obviously having a passionate affair and yet his face registered nothing. Meg was shocked but
excited. She sipped her wine and, under the pretext of savouring the flavour, ran the tip of her tongue over her teeth and inside her lips. As she did, she wondered what Paolo's tongue would feel like inside her mouth and she knew that, were Paolo to kiss her in such a way, she would not find it at all repulsive.

From that night on, Meg's feelings for Paolo became confused. She was jealous of the respect accorded him by her father. ‘A gifted scholar' was the term Paul Dunleavy applied to his protege. It hurt Meg that there was not the same display of pride or interest in her and as the months passed, her feelings towards Paolo became increasingly ambivalent. His company provoked a jealousy and anger which seemed to grow in direct proportion to the adolescent fantasies he aroused in her.

Paolo, in the meantime, was completely unaware of any difference in Meg's attitude towards him. He was deeply fond of his half-sister, admiring her good humour and her high spirits. But his concentration on his studies and the diversion of Mary-Jane Stewart left Paolo little time to note the change in Meg's disposition. Indeed, Mary-Jane Stewart left him little enough time even for his studies.

Mary-Jane Stewart, with the face of an angel, had a voracious sexual appetite and Paolo had been shocked when he had lost his virginity to her in the back seat of her father's imported Daimler. He wasn't in love with her but he was obsessed with her body. And of course her ready availability to a young man who had just discovered the joys of sex was impossible to refuse. She swore she loved him, but Paolo had his doubts, particularly when he noticed her studying the handsome young men on campus the way a hungry person might contemplate an attractive dinner menu.

When his end-of-term examination results revealed how adversely his work had been affected by Mary-Jane
and their activities, Paolo realised he must address the situation. But Mary-Jane did it for him. Unhappy at the prospect of seeing him once a week only as he had suggested, her attention wandered to the third-year dental student who captained the A-grade football team.

Paolo was not unduly heartbroken. By now his attention was very much taken up by the daily reports of the war and the part the Australians were playing in it.

 

‘I
WANT TO
go home, sir,' he said and he meant it. When he read of the relentless massacre of Australian forces in Gallipoli, Paolo felt guilty about his life of luxury in Boston. He must go home and join the army; he must fight alongside his countrymen.

As Elizabeth had predicted, her husband talked him around, but it took all of Paul Dunleavy's persuasive power and manipulation to simply convince the lad to finish his course.

‘Until the end of the year, Paolo, that is all. That is all I ask in return for the financial investment I have made in you …'

Of course, young Paolo had to give in to such emotional blackmail, Elizabeth thought, but he was so adamant about returning to Australia in December that she sincerely doubted her husband would be able to dissuade him when the time came. Much as she liked Paolo, Elizabeth was glad. Paul's obsession with the boy was unhealthy and disruptive. Elizabeth wanted her family back the way it used to be.

Paul Dunleavy had no doubts whatsoever that his son would remain in Boston. The boy was acting out of a sense of loyalty and responsibility in professing his desire to go home. They were admirable qualities, but when all was said and done, Paolo Gianni didn't even admit to being wholly Australian. America was his
home! He was a highly principled young man, and could not be bought in cold, hard cash, but he could most certainly be bought by America.

Paul held all the aces and he knew it. He'd been right to bide his time. The boy loved America and the way of life to which he'd become accustomed. The city of Boston had seduced him, Paul thought. Whether he was aware of it or not, young Paolo was a true Bostonian at heart. And well on the road to becoming a true Dunleavy.

‘Hitchie's here,' Rick Gianni announced to the weary men from C Company who sat slouched against the walls of the dugout having just been relieved after forty-eight hours in the line. ‘It's all right, Private,' he nodded to the young lad who hovered by the entrance, ‘let him in, he's one of us.'

The lad was newly arrived from Egypt, one of the reinforcements, insufficiently trained and very, very young. Were we that young? Rick wondered. Before the lifetime of the past three months, were we that young?

The lad stood aside and watched suspiciously as the bearded man with the dark, tanned face and the piercing eyes entered. The man carried a Turkish bandolier and a Mauser rifle and looked for all the world like a spy.

‘Hitchie!' The eyes of the battle-weary men lit up in an instant. Corporal HV Hitch was the 11th Battalion postmaster who lived in a small dugout behind battalion headquarters from which he dispensed the all-too-infrequent mail. He was not only popular as the sole link the men had with their homeland, he was also well respected as one of the army's most efficient snipers. His disguise as a local was at times too successful, however, and, legendary as his success was in dispatching Turkish snipers, he was all too often arrested by his own troops
as a spy and had to be identified and bailed out by a mate from the 11th.

Rick Gianni was doubly glad to see Hitchie, today of all days. Last night's raid had been a devastating one for the men of C Company, although the mission itself had been highly successful. A vital line of Turkish trenches had been captured and, even now, relief troops were consolidating the victory. Soldiers of the 11th Battalion were not only fighting off the Turks who were attempting to return, they were barricading the communication saps which led back to the Turkish position. But it was the men of C Company who had led the attack and suffered the heaviest losses and, right now, mail from home was just what they needed.

‘Gianni … Brereton … Salter … Brearley … Hayes … ' As Hitchie read out the names, the fresh-faced young private who had remained positioned by the entrance with his bayonet at the ready, convinced that these battle-fatigued men couldn't recognise a Turkish spy when they saw one, finally relaxed.

The letters were handed around to the dozen or so soldiers in the dugout and, when there was no response to a name, Hitchie pocketed the letter and said, ‘I'll try the beach,' but the men knew that many of the names would not be on the beach, where the medical tents, canteen and supplies had been set up.

There were two envelopes for Rick Gianni. One was addressed to ‘Enrico' and the hand was awkward. His uncle, Giovanni. The other was in a bold hand. ‘Rick Gianni' it said. His sister, Carmelina. It was the first letter he had received from her. She would be writing on behalf of his parents and he hoped that she hadn't told them of his change of name. Rico Gianni would not take kindly to his son calling himself Rick.

He opened Giovanni's envelope first.

Dear Enrico, I have made up a tune for ‘Kal', I hope you
will like it. It is a fine song and I look forward to hearing you sing it when you come home from the war. Which I hope will be very soon
…'

Rick smiled at the simplicity of the letter. He glanced around the dugout at the others. Now seasoned soldiers, they were young men who had grown old in battle. None of them would be coming home from the war ‘soon', he thought. Well, not alive anyway.

He noticed that Jack Brearley, who was squatting in the corner of the dugout, had opened his letter but was staring unseeingly at the pages. Jack had been in the forward party of the centre column, right beside the men when it had happened. Rick wondered whether he should say something. No, there was no need. Jack Brearley was tough.

He returned to his letter.

Everyone at home sends their love. Your mother and father are well. And Salvatore. And Carmelina who says she is going to write to you. If you could only see her, Enrico. She has grown into a beauty, your little sister. A black-haired beauty with all the fire of her father. The looks she gets as she walks down Hannan Street make Rico so mad he would kill every man in Kal if he could
.

Rick smiled. It was good to read of the people he loved, to escape the trenches just for a moment. To forget the horrors he had been through in this godforsaken place and return to the Kalgoorlie goldfields.

Following the landing at Gallipoli, British Commander-in-Chief Sir Ian Hamilton's instructions had been simple. The troops were to dig in. ‘You have got through the difficult business,' was his encouraging signal from the
Queen Elizabeth
. ‘Now you have to dig, dig, dig until you are safe.' So dig they did. The great holes torn out of the chalky soil by the shells from their own battleships formed a good basis for many of the
dugouts which would eventually reach a depth of thirty feet or more.

Three days after the landing, on the night of the 28th of April, the front-line troops were relieved. Whilst the battle raged on for the men of the 3rd Brigade, those of A and C Companies of the 11th Battalion who had led the attack, were instructed to rest for twenty-four hours on the beach where the stores were being unloaded and the wounded relayed back to the ships. Then, two days later on April 30th, the 11th Battalion was paraded. The tally showed 378 either killed, missing or wounded, 617 still in action.

Again, the orders from Sir Ian Hamilton were simple. The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps were to continue their advance. They must attack and overtake each of the Turkish positions. The fact that the Turks' elevated positions afforded them a vastly superior field of fire seemed immaterial to Sir Ian, and the fight to gain the higher ground became not only desperate but suicidal.

The men knew it. As they scrambled up out of the trenches and over the parapets they did so with the knowledge that they were going to die. Waiting for the signal to advance, many said goodbye to each other; many left farewell notes pinned with their daggers to the sides of the trenches, some even left their wedding rings. Then each man charged into the hail of gunfire to meet his death in his chosen way.

Some dodged and ducked as if they were on a football field. Evading the enemy and staying alive even a few minutes longer was a triumph in itself. Others roared their defiance as they ran. Being the first to fall was
their
triumph: the early fallen took the bullets for the men behind. And some simply blanked their minds, followed their bayonets and ran to their death in silence.

Through sheer determination, many made it to the
enemy lines. And once there, having survived that fearful distance, they threw themselves into the trenches and fought like tigers, each man seemingly with the strength of ten. They could see what they were fighting now. They were confronted with the flesh of their enemy and, after the helpless exposure of No-Man's-Land, there was a hideous relief in the thrust and twist of their bayonets.

Sometimes they won. Sometimes they lost. And when, with a sense of bewilderment, a man found himself alive after such a battle, he thought of his comrades who'd fallen beside him and prepared himself for the fact that tomorrow it would probably be him.

The wholesale slaughter continued until a brief respite was called on the 24th of May. A formal truce had been organised between the Turkish and British headquarters in order to bury the dead and a line was fixed midway between the two fronts. For nine hours from 7.30 am the Turks were to bury the dead on their side and the Australians and New Zealanders on theirs.

‘Jesus Christ!' Jack exclaimed to Tom as they surveyed the scene. ‘I thought Jacko the Turk was winning.'

The reaction was the same from all the Aussies. They had presumed they were the only ones being decimated but the hundreds of Turkish dead far outnumbered the Australians and New Zealanders.

‘G'day, Jacko. I'm Ben, this is me brother Bill.' The Brereton boys were shaking hands with a couple of young Turkish soldiers.

Rick looked around and noticed that many others were doing the same. Before long, the men of both armies were grinning and lighting each other's cigarettes and swapping souvenirs, displaying a camaraderie born of relief that, for a few hours at least, there would be no killing.

Then followed the gruesome business of collecting
the dead. The stench was horrific and the sticky, greenbacked flies which plagued the men in the trenches were clustered inches deep over the rotting corpses.

‘Give me a hand, Tom.' It was Jack Brearley who found Tony Prendergast. He'd been searching for him among the dead. Three days previously Jack had been beside Tony when he fell. At the time, amidst the cacophony of battle—the whistle of shells, the blast of dynamite and the constant crack of machine-gun fire—one explosion was no different from another. Some a little closer, that was all. But suddenly the Welshman running beside him had been flung four feet into the air and Jack had presumed he'd been blown to pieces. Dodging and weaving and yelling like a banshee, Jack had run on and lived through the charge.

Now, as he bent to pick up his friend, he noticed that Tony's right leg was several yards away from his body and that there was a tourniquet tied to the stump of his thigh. Jesus, Jack thought, how long had the poor bastard been conscious?

He heaved the body over his shoulders in a fireman's lift and, as he did, he heard a sound. The faintest, dry, husky whisper. ‘S'trewth,' Jack said to Tom Brereton, ‘he's alive.'

There were a number of men in Tony's condition. Men who, by all accounts, should have been dead. They were laid out on the beach to await medical attention and transferral to the ships but little hope was held for their chances. Most died as they lay there on the sand.

The doctor shook his head. ‘Don't reckon your cobber's going to make it, mate, I'd say my goodbyes now if I were you.' And he moved on to the next casualty.

Jack stayed for as long as he could, bathing Tony's face and keeping the flies away but, by the time he had to report for duty, the Welshman showed no sign of
regaining consciousness. Jack took the doctor's advice and said his goodbyes.

 

A
S SAPPING AND
tunnelling was the most effective method of gaining ground with minimum casualties, the men of Company C of the 11th Battalion, coming as they did from the goldfields of Western Australia, were inevitably detailed as tunnellers. Their digging and mining experience made them experts. The ‘saps' were deep, narrow trenches directed towards the enemy line. The Turkish army occupying the higher position, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, now affectionately known as the ANZACs, had literally to burrow forward in order to keep the distance of open attack to a minimum. The saps had various operational uses. A number of them might be linked to form a new front-line trench or, from the sap heads, tunnels might be dug and explosives placed under enemy lines. These ‘mines' not only inflicted damage, they created diversons during which the ANZACs stormed the Turkish trenches.

The men of the original 11th Battalion were by now under severe strain. Their numbers had been halved and their reinforcements were ill-prepared. Many of the recruits, newly arrived from Egypt, were picked off by sniper fire whilst training on the beach and never saw battle at all. Three months after the landing, the battalion found it necessary to shorten the hours of duty. Forty-eight hours in the line, the same in support and reserve.

‘Cripes, the brass is getting soft,' Tom Brereton remarked. ‘It's a bloody holiday.' But, despite the responsive laughter, the men of the original 11th were exhausted. Physically, mentally and emotionally.

Immediately following the forty-eight hour limit, orders came through that the battalion was to storm and capture the line of Turkish trenches directly in front of ‘Tasmania Post', as a section of the Allied trenches was
nick-named, and that C Company was to lead the attack.

‘Some holiday, you stupid geezer.' Jack punched Tom's arm. ‘They must have been bloody listening.'

‘Crikey, mate, it's an honour, can't you see that?' Tom rubbed his corked bicep. ‘It's a bloody honour. I can't wait, I tell you. I just can't wait.'

The cocky bravado of Tom and Jack invariably helped raise morale and soon the men of C Company were joining in their good-humoured larrikinism. It was the Aussie way of getting through the day. There wasn't much point in doing otherwise, most thought. No sense in dwelling on things you couldn't change.

The operational plan was basic. From each of the four sap heads, tunnels were to be dug and explosives placed beside the Turkish line. On the night of the 31st of July, when the signal was given, the Engineer Company was to detonate the explosives, and the men of C Company were to storm the Turkish trenches.

As the moon rose in the night sky, they waited. In the sap heads, the four columns of men, bayonets fixed, hearts pumping and bodies poised, waited for the signal. There it was. Behind them. The red flare glowing on the parapet of the Allied trenches. A second or so later, there was an explosion. Then another. A few more seconds. They waited for two more explosions, but they didn't come. The two centre mines had hung fire. No more time to waste. The order to advance was given and the four columns stormed over the parapets and charged across the intervening ground towards the enemy.

Jack Brearley was amongst the forerunners. A dozen or so men were in front of him and beside him were the Brereton brothers. Screaming like banshees, all three of them, as loud and as long as their lungs would allow. They always did. It was infectious. And Jack screamed along with them.

The landscape and the mass of charging men were suddenly illuminated as the Turks fired flares into the air in order to see and target their enemy's approach. The light was unreal. Vivid, cartoonlike, it etched and highlighted the madness of battle.

Closer and closer to the Turkish line. They were there now, ready to throw themselves upon Jacko Turk. In the light of the Verey flares they could see the enemy clearly. The Turks were in disarray. Some were fleeing, some falling to the flashing bayonets of the men of C Company who'd got there first. Jack and the Brereton brothers screamed even louder. Then the world exploded.