The Last of the Bonegilla Girls

by Victoria Purman

  ‘No, it is not,’ Iliana replied, embarrassed.

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘I do not talk to people here in Cooma. My family … it is all Italian. The boys in school, they speak English. You helped me. At Bonegilla.’

  ‘And I can help you more, if you’d like.’

  Iliana wasn’t sure how that would work when Frances was back in Bega and Iliana was in Cooma.

  ‘I like to hear what you are doing. All about your life here with your family. Cooma seems lovely.’

  ‘It is cold. Much colder than Bonegilla or even Italy.’

  ‘Bonegilla,’ Frances sighed. ‘That feels like a million years ago. Many things have changed since then, that’s for certain.’

  Iliana smiled. ‘Vasiliki has her baby.’

  ‘Yes. Aphrodite must be walking by now.’

  ‘Did you see it? Have you been in Melbourne?’

  Frances sniffed, looked down at her napkin, folded it into a neat square. ‘I was down in Melbourne for my brother’s wedding a year ago but I didn’t have time to see Vasiliki. Or Vicki, I should say. I can’t get used to calling her that.’

  ‘Tom is married?’

  ‘No, my oldest brother, Donald. Tom couldn’t make it back from London to be best man, unfortunately. He was preparing for a case.’

  ‘I forget you have two brothers.’ Iliana tried to lighten the mood with a laugh. ‘Having one big brother is enough trouble. Massimo wants to know everything that I am doing. All the time.’ Iliana reflected for a moment that this was something new. He never used to be so protective. There had been a time when he had not paid much attention to his siblings but since Angelo Zocchi’s death in the tunnels, he’d become cautious about everything.

  ‘You are all very close. I can see that.’

  Iliana laughed. ‘Massimo always wants to know. And he must know the news of you, too.’

  Frances jerked her head up to meet Iliana’s eyes. ‘He does?’

  ‘Yes. He remembers you. Your head. He feels sorry.’

  Frances gazed dropped to her plate. Iliana couldn’t wait any longer. She covered Frances’s hand with one of her own again. What could be troubling her, this lucky girl who had been to the important university to learn how to be a teacher? Who was so clever that she taught children how to learn? Who had been so kind when she’d taught them English in the mess?

  ‘Frances,’ she asked. ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘Oh, Iliana,’ Frances whispered. ‘Everything is an utter mess.’ She pushed her plate away and dropped her head to the table, cradling it in the crook of her elbow. Iliana waited, stroked her friend’s arm while her shoulders shook. She wished she had a pot of coffee on the stove so she could offer Frances a cup. She didn’t know what else to do but lay a hand on her friend’s arm.

  ‘You have come a long way to see me.’

  ‘I need a friend.’ Frances’s voice was muffled against the sleeve of her cardigan.

  ‘I am your friend,’ Iliana said. They held hands tight.

  Frances took a deep breath and looked up, shuddering as she tried to stop her sobbing. ‘The thing is, Iliana, I’m expecting.’

  Iliana tried to remember what that word meant and drew a blank.

  ‘A baby. I’m having a baby.’

  It took a moment for Frances’s words to sink in. A bambino? A baby?

  ‘But you have no husband.’

  ‘That’s right. That’s why I’m in a mess, Iliana.’

  Iliana made the sign of the cross and stared wide-eyed at her friend.

  ‘I didn’t know where else to go. I’ve had to leave my job in Bega, right in the middle of school term. I had to lie to everyone. Those lovely little children. I had to make up a story to explain, to cover up, so I told them my mother was ill and that I had to return to Bonegilla to care for her. But that’s all a big lie.’

  ‘Bella,’ Iliana soothed.

  ‘I can’t tell my parents and I can’t go back to Bonegilla. I have made a right mess of everything and I have nowhere to go. This is the closest place I could think to come. To you.’

  Iliana’s head swam with questions. ‘The father of your baby? Where is he? Will he get married to you?’

  ‘I had hoped he might … but no. I’ve been so stupid, Iliana. I’m not a silly girl. I’ve been to teachers’ college, for goodness sake.’ The tears streamed down Frances’s face and her mouth crumpled.

  Iliana didn’t know what to think. Frances had committed a sin before God. But wouldn’t God want her to help a friend who was alone and frightened?

  ‘You will stay here tonight,’ Iliana said. ‘Come, I’ll show you.’

  Later that evening, after minestrone soup and bread had been served for dinner, the table cleared and the dishes washed, Iliana’s two younger brothers were sent off to bed. Iliana had tucked Frances up in her own bed, and she’d remained there. When Iliana had checked on her, Frances had been fast asleep.

  Iliana’s parents joined her in the kitchen. Massimo insisted on being there too. To ease the shock of what she had to ask of them, Iliana had popped the cork on a bottle of homemade red wine, a gift to her father from some other Italians working on the Snowy, and it sat in the middle of the table along with four jam jars. Iliana father poured a slurp in each glass. They each took a sip.

  ‘You have something to tell us,’ Giuseppe said. ‘About her.’

  Her mother leaned forwards. ‘What is wrong with that Australian girl?’

  Iliana waited a moment until the wine had begun to work its magic on her nerves. Up until this moment, she’d been a child in her family. She’d never made decisions of her own. She had followed the wishes of her father and her mother, had dutifully obeyed them, had cooked and washed and cleaned alongside her mother, because that’s what daughters did. She had shed that skin now. Frances’s secret had changed her too, because she was going to ask something of her parents that she would never have dared just twenty-four hours ago.

  ‘Her name is Frances. She is the daughter of Mr Burley from Bonegilla, the camp director.’

  ‘Si,’ Giuseppe nodded, not oblivious to the fact that they had an important guest in their house. ‘She writes the letters to you.’

  ‘Did you know she was coming?’ Agata demanded.

  ‘Good question,’ Massimo asked. ‘What is she doing here in Cooma and why didn’t you tell us she was coming?’

  Iliana held up a hand to quieten her family. ‘Per favore. I didn’t know she was coming until I saw her at the front door today. If you will all listen instead of bombarding me with questions, I will tell you but please let me tell you everything. And you, Massimo. No interrupting.’

  He ran a hand through his hair, nodded his head in agreement.

  Agata sucked in a deep breath. ‘Is she in trouble?’

  ‘Yes, Mamma. She is in trouble.’ If they agreed to Iliana’s plan, they would see it with their own eyes sooner rather than later.

  ‘I knew it.’ Agata slammed her palm on the table. ‘A young girl with a suitcase and tears. It can only mean one thing. A woman knows.’ She crossed herself. Four times.

  ‘What trouble?’ Massimo looked confused.

  Iliana glared at him. ‘What other kind of trouble is there for a young woman with no husband, huh?’

  His eyes flashed.

  Iliana’s mother muttered a prayer.

  Iliana looked to her father. He considered his wine. ‘She is your friend, this Australian girl from Bonegilla?’

  ‘Yes, Papà. Frances was so kind to me. She taught me English every day in the mess. She became my friend and she didn’t care that I was Italian. Or Catholic. She stood up for me when I was called dago by some boys in Albury. She is a teacher now. Or, she was a teacher. She has had to leave her job.’

  ‘What about her family?’

  ‘She says she cannot tell her mamma and papà. She is ashamed.’

  The clock above the fridge ticked. Iliana looked over at the bottle of wine and wanted to gulp the wh
ole thing down.

  ‘What are you asking of your family, Iliana?’

  Iliana breathed deep. ‘I want Frances to be welcome here. Until the baby is born.’ It was hard to say but Iliana found her strength. ‘I want to be a friend to her.’

  Giuseppe thought long and hard. ‘Agata?’

  Agata chewed her lip. ‘But she is not married. What will people say when they find out what she has done?’

  Their father reached for his wife’s hand. ‘After all I’ve seen and lived through, I’m not going to judge this young girl. I’m not sure what is a sin and what isn’t any more.’ He turned to Iliana. ‘You tell your friend. What is her name?’

  ‘Frances,’ Iliana said.

  ‘Francesca,’ Giuseppe said with a smile. ‘That’s a good Italian name. We will not turn her away.’

  Iliana had never been prouder of her father.

  ‘But.’ And then his face became stern and he lifted a finger to point it in her direction. ‘You will never, ever do this to your family.’

  Iliana crossed herself. ‘No, Papà. Never.’

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  It didn’t happen easily or without its hurdles, but over the course of the next few months, Frances was slowly folded into the warm and loving arms of the Agnoli family.

  She really had been in a mess when she’d arrived in Cooma. The shame of her pregnancy had been burnt on her skin like scars and she’d felt as if she had nowhere else to turn. Frances hadn’t known what to expect when she’d arrived on their doorstep. She’d only been hoping for a short stay, perhaps a few weeks, while she could sensibly get her thinking straight and decide what to do. She had laid everything out to Iliana, reckoning it wasn’t possible to be more humiliated than she was. And when the Agnolis had agreed she could stay, she’d been so humbled that she’d taken to Iliana’s bed and sobbed herself to sleep.

  Iliana had sat by her side until she stopped crying.

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You say nothing. All our family is a long way away in Italy,’ Iliana had told her. ‘My nonna and nonno. My mother’s and father’s sisters. Our cousins. Being separated from family is hard. We don’t want that for anyone.’

  Agata had been cool and distant for many weeks and Frances understood. She’d seen how Iliana’s mother had struggled to reconcile the helpful and courteous young woman living in Frances’s room with the idea that she had been so careless as to get herself pregnant when she wasn’t married. Agata wore a gold cross around her neck and pressed her fingers to it every time Frances entered the room.

  She still couldn’t tell her own parents that she was pregnant. In a breezy, completely untruthful letter to them not long after she arrived in Cooma, she explained that she’d managed to find a job there. She wrote that she’d wanted to have an adventure and had landed in the mountains. Her parents hadn’t detected anything suspicious, at least they hadn’t hinted at it in their reply, and sent letters to a post office address she had given them. They hoped she was well, and that she might come back to Bonegilla in the school holidays for a visit.

  As her way of saying thanks, Frances had determined to make herself as useful as possible. She had saved a little money while she’d been teaching. She’d had high hopes for the overseas adventure she’d dreamed about since she was a girl that was now not to be, so had something to contribute to Iliana’s family in return for having her. It would never be enough to repay everything they were doing for her. Her debt to them was so much bigger than that. She made a point of helping in the kitchen whenever she was allowed. Iliana’s mother slowly warmed to her pleas to be taught how to cook real Italian food. She learned how to make pasta from scratch, with nothing but flour and eggs. She baked bread with Iliana. She practised Italian with them even though their dialect was unlike anything she had learned in college, and helped the family with their English. Within a few weeks, she had become an unofficial after-school tutor to Iliana’s two younger brothers, and before long they were excelling in all their subjects. He didn’t tell her, because he didn’t have the words in English, but she knew she had earned Giuseppe’s gratitude when Giovani and Stefano had brought glowing reports home from school.

  And Massimo?

  Frances didn’t dare talk to him, no matter how much she longed for a conversation. He had barely said a word to her in all the time she had been living in the Agnoli house, other than hello and goodbye and thank you when she set a plate in front of him for dinner. What must he think of her? She didn’t want to know. She couldn’t find out for fear it would be crushing. The boy who’d said goodbye to her all those years ago, the boy who’d given her the coin she still treasured, was now a man who couldn’t look her in the eye.

  The quickest flash of a smile from him over dinner was enough to last her a whole day of his absence. Knowing he was in the house, sleeping in the next room, put her on edge, the pull and push of wanting to see him and at the same time needing to hide her shame. He worked very long hours, both on the Snowy Mountains Scheme and for the Building Workers’ Industrial Union. When Iliana had told her about the man who’d died, she understood why. Her affectionate feelings for Massimo had been nothing but a childish fancy and she was far from being a child now. Perhaps that was why she had hung on to the idea. Imagining being with Massimo was so much more preferable to her reality with Gerald.

  When she was in bed at night, the house quiet, Iliana breathing softly beside her, she thought back on what had happened. She was a good girl, a sensible young woman. A trained teacher with plans to travel the world and see all the countries she’d studied in her atlas. How had it all gone so wrong?

  She had never set out to let things go so far with Gerald. When she had arrived at the small school in Bega for her first teaching position, she’d been bursting with excitement. It was her first job and those early months in the classroom had been exhilarating, exhausting and terrifying all at once. Corralling a classroom full of forty-five eight-year-old children was very different in practice to everything she’d learned at teachers’ college about being a high-school languages teacher, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and her first job placement by the department was in a primary school. She worked hard, sought out textbooks in the staffroom and asked for advice from the other teachers to try to understand some of the challenges she was facing, none of which was very helpful.

  ‘Don’t mind the Atkins boy. He’s a little thick in the head. He never follows instructions.’

  ‘That McDonald girl? Oh, she drifts off every now and then. Stares into space. I find a good smack across the head brings her back to the present.’

  Frances didn’t think smacking a child was ever a good idea, no matter how much her new principal enjoying swinging his cane on the soft palms of boys who’d transgressed the school’s rules and his own prejudices. Much to her regret now, she would never get to help little Stephen Atkins or find out how curly-haired Pamela McDonald fared because she’d ruined everything.

  She and Gerald had hit it off immediately. They were the two youngest teachers in the staffroom, both in their first teaching positions, so it seemed almost inevitable they would gravitate towards each other. Things became serious quite quickly, but they had to hide their growing relationship from their headmaster, who didn’t believe that staff, especially young women, should engage in such extracurricular activities. Frances had come to believe he didn’t like the idea of young women teaching at all. The clandestine nature of what she and Gerald were doing was perhaps what had made it more exciting than it might have been if they’d simply gone to the pictures or dances or milk bars like all the other young people in Bega.

  They were young and curious and kissing soon became something more.

  ‘I promise I’ll pull out just in time,’ he’d whispered, late one night in his bedroom in the house he shared with two other young men who worked at one of the local banks. He’d been next to her on his bed, his hand up her skirt and creeping up her thigh. ‘I prom
ise I’ll be careful, Frances.’

  When that time came, he didn’t, and she found she hadn’t wanted him to.

  It had been her first time and it was her biggest mistake.

  When she’d missed her period that first month, she had tried not to think about it. Perhaps her cycle had been disrupted by the excitement of her new job and all the anxieties that went along with having moved to a new place. When two months went by and she began to feel sick, not just in the mornings but all day, the feeling she’d had the first time she’d got drunk on gin, she knew. As soon as she could talk to Gerald alone, in the janitor’s storeroom at school once everyone else had left for the day, she broke the news to him. He was a decent chap. She liked him very much. Later she could admit to having harboured a faint hope that he might be overjoyed at the news and propose right there on the spot. That way, they could fudge the dates and recover from this mistake together. Such a plan meant she would still have to give up her job as soon as they were married. But at least she would be married.

  Her fantasy about what might happen had been fanciful.

  It turned out she didn’t know Gerald at all.

  He’d reacted as if she’d struck him on the cheek. ‘Well, that’s a blow,’ he’d blurted. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his suit coat, and lit one. He drew in hard and leaned back against a shelf full of rolls of toilet paper. He was smirking to hide his nerves. The light at the end of his cigarette shook harder with every drag he took.

  The smoke in the confined space made her stomach roil. ‘A blow? Are you saying that me being pregnant is a blow to you?’

  ‘Well, yes. It is rather. I don’t want to be stuck with a kid. Not at my age. C’mon, Frances. It’s not like this …’ He waved a hand between them. ‘It’s not like this was anything special. We were just a bit of fun, weren’t we?’

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ Frances said faintly. She clutched her stomach, tried to stop the sickness from rising up in her throat.