Kal

by Judy Nunn

  Ira was very impressed. ‘I didn’t think things like that happened any more.’

  Paolo and Ira quickly discovered they shared a mutual passion for learning. They stimulated each other’s intellect and, despite utterly dissimilar personalities, genuinely liked each other.

  Ira was a dour-looking young man. Dark, pensive and given to heavy cynicism, which Paolo reasoned was mainly for self-protection, he nevertheless found people deeply interesting and his shrewd observations always came as a surprise from one who appeared so melancholic and introverted. His Russian parents had fled European persecution to arrive in New York in 1894 and Ira had been born one month later. His mother had been as sick as a dog during the ocean crossing, he said, and swore that as a result he couldn’t even catch a Manhattan ferry. ‘So many things happen in the womb, Paolo. Amazing.’ And Paolo didn’t know whether he was joking or not. With Ira it was often hard to tell.

  Mostly they met at the library, or walked along the river or through the parks. Ira didn’t care to keep company with anyone, even Paolo, on campus.

  ‘It would mean I’d have to associate with those other friends of yours,’ he explained, ‘and they don’t like me.’ When Paolo started to protest, he smiled that gloomy smile of his. ‘I don’t like them either, believe me; I far prefer to be on my own. And we can always meet and talk elsewhere.’

  Paolo asked Ira home to the Dunleavy house in Commonwealth Avenue but he refused. ‘I’d rather not,’ he said, but he wouldn’t explain why.

  When, after he’d been attending Harvard for several months, Paul Dunleavy asked Paolo if he’d acquired any special friends, the boy was quick to answer. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘one really good mate. Ira Rubenstein. He’s a funny bloke though. Private. Sort of—’

  ‘He’s a Jew.’

  It wasn’t a question and the tone was accusatory. Paolo was taken aback.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Paul realised the boy was shocked by his brusqueness. Not that he’d meant anything by it of course. He had nothing against Jews himself, but it simply wasn’t to Paolo’s advantage to befriend a Jew at Harvard. What gain could there be in such a friendship?

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Paolo,’ he said, his voice mellow, his smile benign, ‘I have absolutely nothing against the Jewish community, but you must be aware that, besides your degree, there are other advantages to be gained from Harvard, not least among them the cultivation of valuable friends.’

  He went on about the importance of making connections with old Bostonian families, meeting sons of influential men who could advance a young man’s career, but Paolo had stopped listening. He was studying Paul Dunleavy closely, suddenly aware that he was seeing the man clearly for the first time.

  Why did he feel such disillusionment? Paolo wondered. This was a world he had never known, a world where people behaved in a fashion foreign to him; he had no right to criticise. But he couldn’t help it. He had recognised, and with a strong sense of disappointment, that there were flaws in the benefactor he had so unquestioningly admired.

  Ira Rubenstein’s name was never mentioned again and, a year later, when Paul displayed his open approval of the other friendships his son had forged, Paolo simply neglected to mention that Ira Rubenstein remained his closest friend.

  WHEN PAOLO PASSED his second year at Harvard, once again with flying colours, a lavish family dinner was held in his honour at the stylish new Copley Plaza Hotel. Built barely two years previously, the Copley Plaza was the gathering place for Boston’s urbane society.

  ‘Invite your friends,’ Paul insisted, and Paolo couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if he were to ask Ira—but of course Ira wouldn’t come even if he did. To appease the family, Paolo asked Stephen Sanderson and David Redmond instead. He also invited Mary-Jane Stewart, the pretty young arts student who was in love with him.

  The current object of David Redmond’s desire, a saucy redhead called Amy, was also in attendance and Meg found herself seated beside Stephen Sanderson, squirming in the knowledge that he obviously presumed he was her date. Her father did little to discourage the young man’s misconception.

  ‘Stephen Sanderson’s mother is one of the Saunders girls, Elizabeth,’ he’d said to his wife as they’d dressed for dinner. ‘It would be an excellent match.’

  Elizabeth felt for her daughter as she watched Meg’s discomfort—the Sanderson boy certainly was pompous for one so young—but then, she thought, one couldn’t always marry for love. Meg could do a great deal worse.

  Between tightly polite responses to Stephen’s monologue, Meg was casting surreptitious glances at Mary-Jane and Paolo, both of whom were in conversation with her father. She wondered whether they were sleeping together. Yes, of course they were, she decided. Mary-Jane’s manner to her host had all the deference of youth to middle-age but, when she turned her attention to Paolo, she couldn’t disguise the glow in her eyes. She was a woman in love. Fascinated, Meg looked for similar signs in Paolo but couldn’t see any. If he was in love then he was cleverly concealing the fact. But then it was often difficult to tell what was going on in Paolo’s mind, Meg thought; that was what made him so very attractive.

  She turned her attention to David and Amy. No guesswork needed there, they were definitely sleeping together. Meg thought their behaviour most unseemly, it was quite obvious they were holding hands under the table. Did they have to be so blatant? But, despite her disapproval, she was fascinated. The lust between them was palpable.

  More and more these days Meg found herself wondering what it would be like. When she felt her breasts she wondered what it would be like if the hand caressing them was a man’s hand. She had even touched herself intimately between her legs and wondered what it would be like to feel a man inside her. Then, quickly, guiltily, she had stopped.

  A month previously, late at night, after the freshmen’s ball, Meg had received her first sexual kiss. She hadn’t particularly liked the young man but he was a Harvard sporting hero and when he’d asked her to walk along the embankment she couldn’t resist being seen leaving the ballroom on his arm. She’d expected to be kissed, of course. She knew she looked beautiful in her pink silk gown. And the full-length, fur-trimmed evening coat she had gathered about her for the chilly walk to the embankment made her feel very sophisticated and fashionable. A recent birthday gift from her mother, the coat was the most expensive and chic item of apparel Meg had ever owned.

  A romantic moment overlooking the Charles River was exactly what Meg anticipated so, when he took her in his arms, she tilted her head back, closed her eyes and waited for the gentle meeting of lips she had experienced several times before with Peter, the very nice boy who always contrived to sit beside her during lectures.

  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 w
ith 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 aroun
d 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.