Kal

by Judy Nunn

  As Jack and Salvatore ran out of the restaurant, men were extinguishing the flames which licked at the bodies of Rico and Harry. Others were fleeing the scene, shielding their wives’ eyes from the gruesome sight.

  Someone rolled Rico off Harry and the two men lay side by side, their dead eyes staring into the smoky night sky.

  ‘Papa!’ Salvatore ran to his father’s side.

  Jack stood on the steps and looked down at the bodies. Harry Brearley, his father, his one-time hero. A weak and greedy man, his dead face was now a mask of fear. And, beside him, the twisted face of Rico Gianni bore the hatred and triumph of a lifetime’s vendetta. They were the faces of Kal, Jack thought, and an unreasoning anger rose in him at the sheer senselessness of it all.

  He looked at the men gathered in the street. The same faces were all around him. Faces of greed, of fear and violence, bloodied, bruised and battle-scarred. What was wrong with them? he thought, the war was over! And, suddenly, he screamed it.

  ‘The war is over!’

  His voice rang out above the approaching clang of the fire trucks’ bells and the subdued mutterings of the crowd. People turned their attention from the bodies on the ground to the figure standing on the steps.

  ‘It’s Jack Brearley,’ several muttered and the crowd grew silent. Jack Brearley was Kalgoorlie’s hero.

  ‘The war is over!’ he screamed again. ‘What is wrong with this town? What is wrong with you people? We should be brothers! Look at them!’ He pointed to the corpses of Harry and Rico. ‘Didn’t we leave enough bodies over there?’

  The crowd parted to make way for Jack as he strode down the steps to stand on the pavement beside his father. Behind him, smoke billowed through the doors of the restaurant. The fire had reached downstairs, but no one heeded it.

  ‘This man is my father, Harry Brearley,’ Jack yelled. ‘He robbed this man, Rico Gianni, and Rico Gianni swore revenge. For nearly twenty years they’ve hated each other and now they’ve paid the price. Dear God, can’t we leave it here?’ He pointed at Rico. ‘I fought with this man’s son. We watched others die around us. Thousands of them!’ He looked about at the men. ‘You watched them too, Snowy. And you, Tom.’

  Jack walked amongst the crowd, pointing at the faces of diggers he knew. ‘And you. And you. And you. Those men died for this country—so that we could live in peace! And this is how we repay them? By killing each other? Aussies and Italians cutting each other up with broken bottles in a country that’s not at war?’

  The fire trucks had arrived now and firemen were unreeling hoses. Behind Jack, the fire roared and smoke belched out into the street but his rage rose above it all.

  ‘I’ve seen men kill. I’ve seen Turks, Australians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, all of them killing each other.’ There was no stopping him now, as his fury grew to fever pitch. ‘And they didn’t want to! Can’t you understand that? They didn’t want to kill each other! They did it because they had to. Because their countries were at war. Jesus Christ! What is it you men are fighting for? Does anybody know?’

  Amidst the chaos, the crowd of men stood silent. Jack’s chest was heaving now and he felt a stab of pain, but still he couldn’t stop.

  ‘You have your families and your friends and your freedom. You live in God’s own country, in a town that’s rich with gold. And what do you do? You create your own war! Shame on the lot of you!’ He wanted to strike every face he could see, to beat sense into every man there. ‘You make a mockery of the men who fought for your freedom. You make their deaths useless. You’ve forgotten them! This whole town’s forgotten them!’ The pain was stronger and breathing was suddenly difficult, but his fury was unabated. ‘You’ve forgotten them all, haven’t you, the boys who died over there? Shame!’ he yelled again with all the strength he could muster. ‘Shame on the whole bloody lot of you!’

  He gasped for the breath to go on, but there wasn’t any left. Inside his chest, iron fingers were closing into a fist.

  Jack clutched at his heart as he fell to his knees. Damn you! he thought. Damn the lot of you! And he fell unconscious in the dust beside his father.

  The men clustered around Jack amidst the smoke and confusion and the fury of the fire.

  ‘He’s alive,’ Snowy said, kneeling beside him. ‘Someone get the doctor.’

  Mad Tom took off at the rate of knots whilst several diggers lifted Jack gently from the pavement. Amongst them was Salvatore.Snowy couldn’t help it. The bloke was an Italian, he thought. What right did he have to carry Jack?

  Salvatore had registered the glance. ‘I’m Salvatore Gianni,’ he said.

  Rick’s brother, Snowy thought. Right. Fair enough. He nodded to Salvatore. And they carried Jack to Maudie’s.

  It was nearly three months after the terrible night of the fire that Briony visited Jack. Maudie showed the girl upstairs to the balcony where he was sitting in a rocking chair looking out over Hannan Street. It was late afternoon and the balcony was shaded from the heat of the January sun.

  ‘Maudie won’t let me out during the middle of the day,’ Jack complained. ‘Says the heat’s too tiring, It’s a bloody bore. She even bought me this rocking chair. The woman’s turning me into an old man.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Briony smiled. ‘You look well.’

  ‘You’re lying. I look bloody awful.’

  He did look gaunt. Thin and weak, she thought, but as roguish as ever. ‘I don’t tell lies, Jack. You look well for a bloke who nearly died. Very well, in fact.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he conceded. ‘Getting better by the minute too. I’ll be back at work by the time the renovations are finished. They’re looking good—did Maudie show you around?’

  ‘Tony did. Yes, they’re very impressive.’

  Jack gestured to a chair and Briony sat down. ‘Paolo tells me you’re leaving for Perth soon,’ he said. ‘To go to the university.’

  ‘In two days. I came to say goodbye.’ Briony looked over the balcony at the passing parade of Hannan Street. ‘I probably won’t be back.’

  ‘That sounds dramatic,’ Jack smiled. ‘What about your mum? And Paolo and Rosalina? You’ll want to see your family.’

  ‘Well, of course I’ll come back and see them now and then,’ she replied with an edge of irritation—she wanted Jack to take her seriously. ‘But you know what I mean. I’ll never come back to Kal. Not to live.’

  ‘I’ll bet you you do.’ He was grinning now and Briony felt well and truly irritated. ‘It’s in your blood. You and I were born here, we’re creatures of the place. You’ll be back, Briony—I’ll bet on it.’

  She shook her head. ‘Maybe you, not me. My father was Welsh and my mother was Italian …’

  ‘Exactly. And you were born in a humpy on the goldfields—a perfect product of Kal.’

  He was still grinning and Briony felt more annoyed than ever. He was patronising her, like Paolo sometimes did. ‘All the more reason to leave,’ she said, changing her tactics. ‘I can’t wait to get out of the place.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Jack waited patiently for her to latch onto another argument. He knew she would.

  ‘You have to admit, it’s no place for a woman,’ she said finally. She had him there, she thought.

  ‘Try telling that to Maudie,’ Jack answered, not letting her get away with a trick.

  ‘That was the old days,’ she said defensively. ‘When it was all a battle. It’s different now.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Jack was suddenly serious. ‘It’s still a battle and it always will be, this town. You were right that day when we talked, you and me and Paolo. Kal’s a greedy town, and it’s violent. But Paolo was right too. It’s human nature. And somehow Kal brings out the worst in us. But it can bring out the best too, Briony, and that’s what we should fight for. The men and the women.’ He smiled when he said it, but he was no longer making fun of her. Jack admired Briony.

  She was instantly mollified. Jack was her hero and she wanted his respect. There was a moment’s s
ilence.

  ‘Salvatore told me what you said to the men that night. He remembers every word.’

  Jack himself could remember very little, but he nodded. ‘I meant what I said.’

  ‘Salvatore reckons that you’ve changed this town—he says the men are still talking about that night.’

  Jack laughed. ‘Nothing will ever change this town.’ He looked out over the street. ‘Oh, it’ll grow. It’ll be a city thriving in the wilderness, just like Dad said. But it’ll never change. You’ve got to take the good with the bad in Kal. But it’s unique, Briony, you’ve got to admit that. And that’s what’ll bring you back.’

  TWO DAYS LATER, Briony looked out of the train window at the vast expanse of red dust and scrub. For several minutes, she watched the pipeline, until it disappeared into the sand. But it was still there. Whether you could see it or not, you knew it was still there.

  The train clacked rhythmically, mile after mile, and she thought of the pipeline, seemingly endless and indestructible. She thought of Kal behind her, where life was grinding remorselessly on. Kal was like the pipeline, she thought, unchanging, unrelenting. Even when you couldn’t see it, you knew it was there. You knew it would always be there.

  She thought of Jack. ‘You and I were born here,’ he’d said, ‘we’re creatures of the place.’

  She heard his voice. ‘You’ll be back, Briony. I’ll bet on it.’ She looked out across the endless red desert and wondered whether he was right.

  In 1788, Thomas Kendall, a naïve nineteen-year-old sentenced to transportation for burglary, finds himself bound for Sydney Town and a new life in the wild and lawless land beneath the Southern Cross.

  Thomas fathers a dynasty that will last beyond two hundred years. His descendants play their part in the forging of a nation, but greed and prejudice see an irreparable rift in the family which will echo through the generations. It is only when a young man reaches far into the past and rights a grievous wrong that the Kendall family can reclaim its honour.

  Port Jackson I believe to be, without exception, the finest and most extensive harbour in the universe and at the same time the most secure, being safe from all the winds that blow. It is divided into a great number of coves, to which His Excellency has given different names. That on which the town is to be built is called Sydney Cove. It is one of the smallest in the harbour, but the most convenient, as ships of the greatest burden can with ease go into it, and heave out close to the shore. Trincomale, acknowledged to be one of the best harbours in the world, is by no means to be compared to it. In a word, Port Jackson would afford sufficient and safe anchorage for all the navies of Europe.

  FROM THE RECORDS OF SURGEON GENERAL

  JOHN WHITE, 1788

  It was a moonless night, the night it happened. Which felt strange to young Thomas Kendall. The most successful forays for a warrener usually took place when the moon was full. Then the warrener could hunt out the burrows with ease, net the openings, send in the ferrets and set the lurcher on the rabbits, the dog, too, needing the light of the moon to pursue its quarry through the bracken.

  But tonight Thomas and his father were not hunting rabbits. They were not wearing their warreners’ smocks. And their lurcher, faithful old Jed, had been left at home.

  ‘It be a bigger prize we hunt tonight, Thomas,’ Jonathan Kendall had told his son, ‘and you must say naught to your mother.’

  Since the age of ten, Thomas had hunted with his father. He had learned how to press his ear to the earth and listen for the sounds of activity beneath the surface. He had learned to handle a shovel, to dig deep and fast, three feet in a matter of seconds, to get to the rabbit before the ferret moved off with it. And he had learned to huddle and gut his catch with swiftness and precision—the butcher was always pleased with the Kendall delivery. ‘A pleasure to see,’ he’d say, ‘rabbits hulked proper—no mess, good and neat.’

  Now, nine years on, young Thomas Kendall was a warrener as skilful as any on the Norfolk Brecklands. But this moonless night was different. As he crept along the banks of the Little Ouse River on the outskirts of the village of Thetford with his father and Bill ‘Ferret’ Bailey, young Thomas knew that a crime was about to be committed.

  Beneath his ragged overcoat, tucked in the crook of his arm, was a large cloth bag. ‘Hide it, lad, hide it,’ his father had said as he handed it to him, and Thomas had noted both Ferret and his father stuffing similar bags inside their coats. ‘Keep your eyes and ears open and your wits about you.’

  They turned away from the riverbanks and cut through a grove of birch trees. Was it poaching they were up to, Thomas wondered. But they hadn’t told him to bring his staff, he would need his staff if they were to go poaching.

  He was distracted by a badger. Apparently oblivious to the presence of the men, it trotted along beside them, head down, hindquarters swaying flirtatiously side to side like an overweight coquette. Thomas liked badgers. After several moments, however, the badger paused to listen, body motionless, nose twitching, aware of danger present. They left the animal behind and Thomas’s attention once more returned to the men. In the instant they broke out of the grove, he realised their intent.

  The road to Norwich was to their left. In the darkness ahead was Burrell and Sons Works, and to their right, surrounded by lavish trees and gardens, was the home of the Widow Pettigrew. A brief thrill of shock ran through Thomas. So that was it! They were about to go thieving.

  He said nothing as they straddled the low stone wall. He said nothing as they approached the house, keeping well under cover amongst the elms and oaks, maples and sycamores, but his mind was racing. This was a mad thing his father was contemplating. Was the widow at home tucked up in her bed? Were the servants in their quarters at the rear? There was no light visible, but that meant nothing. To rob this house was the action of a madman.

  Thomas had few misgivings about the robbery itself, the widow could certainly afford to be relieved of some of her possessions, and if these were his father’s instructions, Thomas was duty-bound to obey. But for the first time in his life he found himself questioning the wisdom of his father’s actions.

  ‘Saturday is the servants’ night off,’ Jonathan whispered, as if divining his son’s thoughts, ‘and the widow goes out to dine with friends in the village.’

  ‘I’ve watched her,’ Ferret added. ‘She leaves at dusk and doesn’t return till nigh on midnight.’

  They were around the side of the house where a large window-frame with small thick panes of glass was set into the knapped flintstone walls. Thomas watched with admiration as Ferret drew a cold chisel from his coat pocket and levered the window open with comparative ease. It was a skill born of long practice. Ferret was an expert, Thomas realised. Then, one by one, they clambered over the sill.

  Inside the widow’s house they crouched in the darkness while Jonathan struck the flint of his tinderbox and ignited three tallow candles. As the light filled the room each man stood, candle in hand, and looked about in silence.

  On the mantel stood an ornate porcelain vase, several fine china ornaments and a pair of silver candlesticks. In a glass cabinet were a silver salver, a cutlery service and a set of goblets. A carved wooden chest in the corner was opened and revealed sets of linen and lace—sheets, towels, tablecloths and napkins.

  ‘I told you so.’ Ferret was the first to speak. He grinned greedily, his yellow teeth gleaming triumphant in the gloom. ‘A haul fit for a king.’ He crossed excitedly to the fireplace. ‘Jonathan, look!’

  On the table by the open hearth stood an ivory snuff box, a hand-carved humidor, a brass pipe-rack and a pewter jug with matching tankard. All preserved in memory of the widow’s late husband who had died barely six months previously. Widow Pettigrew still wore black and, in church on Sundays, her mourning veil.

  ‘She’s even kept his coat,’ Ferret cackled as he dropped his own threadbare garment and donned the heavy wool greatcoat which was draped over the armchair. ‘A big man, old Pettigrew
,’ he added, the coat hanging off his scrawny frame.

  ‘We’d best get to work.’ Jonathan Kendall was already stuffing the silver candlesticks into his cloth bag. ‘Thomas lad, you go upstairs. The widow’s bedroom. It will be to the left.’ Thomas hesitated. ‘Ferret’s kept watch these past three Saturdays,’ Jonathan explained, ‘he says that the upstairs light in the room on the left is the last to be snuffed at night.’

  Thomas turned to do his father’s bidding.

  ‘Satin and lace and fine leather gloves fetch a good price,’ Jonathan instructed. ‘And feather bedding. And mind you check the dressing table,’ he added, ‘for that’s where she’ll be keeping her jewels and trinkets.’

  Holding his candle aloft, Thomas stepped out into the main hall and up the stairway, each wooden step creaking alarmingly. Turning left at the top, he crept to the door at the end of the corridor and gently turned the knob.

  As the door swung slowly inward, Thomas heard a noise. A noise he recognised. It was the noise he himself made when he was with Bertha in the little back room at the alehouse, passion mounting, nearing his release.

  The light of the candle illuminated the room and he saw them. The naked man, buttocks pounding. Grunting. The woman pinioned beneath, invisible but for her bare parted legs high in the air and her hands clutching at the man’s back.

  The scene froze for one shocked instant. Then the grunting stopped. The man turned. The woman screamed. And Thomas dropped his candle and ran.

  In the darkness he groped for the bannister railings and all but fell down the stairs. He heard the man in pursuit, saw the glow of candlelight ahead, thrust open the door to the lounge room and gasped, ‘Run! Run!’

  But Ferret and Jonathan had heard the commotion. Ferret was already halfway out the window and Jonathan, realising there was no time for all three of them to get out, grabbed his son. Together they pressed themselves against the wall by the door to the hall so when, with a howl of fury, the naked man appeared in the open doorway, he failed to see them in the half darkness.