The Glitter Game

by Judy Nunn

  Paul was glad he hadn’t won the Best Actor Logie. When Barbie arrived on his doorstep that night she admitted to him that she wouldn’t have had the courage to come to him if he’d won. She’d been watching the ceremony on television and when he lost she’d picked up the car keys, walked out of the house and had driven straight to the Regent. If he’d won … well … he wouldn’t have needed her.

  Barbie had never seen Paul cry. Not really cry. He put his elbows on the table, his hands over his face and gritted his teeth to stifle the noise. It was the very lack of sound that moved Barbie more than anything. Could this be her show pony, Paul? Why was he being so quiet?

  ‘Come home, Paul.’

  She was standing beside him and he suddenly clutched at her, sank his head into her breast and let out a howl of anguish. He needed her, he wailed. Oh God, how he needed her!

  Barbie smiled. Yes, that was more like her Paul. He stank of Jack Daniel’s but he’d be fine in the morning.

  ‘Come home.’

  Liza left the television industry altogether.

  After the initial shock of Edwina’s death, all she’d felt was anger at the sheer waste. How could that silly little bastard Davey honestly have thought there were thousands of newspapers exposing Edwina’s sordid secret sitting in a warehouse just waiting to hit the stands the following morning?

  Good God! Liza hadn’t breathed a word of it to anyone, let alone sold the story. Now Edwina was dead and the whole sordid truth had been made public.

  All Liza had wanted was her career back. And it was rightfully hers to demand — she hadn’t even considered her threat as blackmail. If Edwina had come halfway Liza would have taken her secret to the grave.

  But Edwina had been intractable. She had met Liza’s request with an icy smile. ‘I’ll send Davey to the foyer,’ she’d said. ‘He’ll be only too happy to relay any message you may have, Liza.’

  And Liza had burned. Oh no you don’t, you don’t send me your lackey. I’ll make you sweat the night out for an insult like that. You fraud.

  The fact that Edwina was a fraud was the biggest insult of all to Liza. Rosa’s bitchy disclosure that afternoon in her office all those months ago had been the greatest shock of Liza’s life.

  She’d lain awake most of that night trying to come to terms with the fact that Edwina Dawling was a man. It explained everything, of course — Edwina’s mystery, the importance of Davey in her life. But did it explain the strange attraction that Edwina held for women? Did it explain the affiliation Liza had felt, and which she knew was reciprocated, that first day they lunched at Darling Harbour? She and Edwina had recognised a common bond that day, a bond of style, ability, strength and, unbelievable as it now seemed, femininity. Liza had felt her anger grow. How dare this vulgar fraud cheat her way into Liza’s esteem when few real women could?

  It was only after Edwina’s death that Liza came to terms with the truth, that there was no need to take Edwina Dawling as a personal insult. No one could have known, no one. And Liza realised that Edwina was just as fascinating and just as alluring in death as she had been in life.

  During Davey’s trial, when the truth of the Rosa Glassberg murder came to light, Liza finally wrote her story on Edwina. Davey himself was quoted in the story as saying that Edwina had been living on borrowed time since Rosa’s death, and that her madness was self-devouring so Liza had felt vindicated enough to write it.

  Her tribute to Edwina Dawling was the last television story that Liza Farrelly ever wrote. Liza thought the article was the least she could do — she wouldn’t admit that it was something she needed to do. Then she left television altogether.

  Alain King didn’t. The challenge of churning out successful television soap remained the motivating force in his life.

  And true to that purpose, the week after the Logies it was storylining as usual. He’d called a special meeting with Evan Ryan, Jim Avalon and Chris Natteros.

  ‘Now, how are we going to use this?’ he said. ‘Transvestite. Great storyline.’

  Evan was innocent enough to nod; he could see the possibilities. Chris and Jim were appalled at Alain’s lack of taste.

  ‘Why don’t we get an Edwina look-alike and bring her in as her own sister?’ Alain continued. ‘Well, his own sister,’ he laughed.

  Alain had pressed the button for Evan. ‘Yes, yes,’ Evan cried, lights flashing. ‘But six months later we find that it’s not his sister, it’s really him. Only he faked his own death so that he could go away and have a sex change and come back and no one would know it was really him.’

  ‘My idea exactly, Evan, well done.’ Alain turned to Jim and Chris. ‘Get on to the casting agents. We’re looking for an actor who looks like Edwina.’

  Chris wondered about returning to the theatre then remembered Helen, the kids, and his whopping salary. He nodded.

  Jim grinned. ‘What about an actor who looks like Edwina would have looked if she’d had plastic surgery to not look like herself?’

  Alain knew Jim was sending him up but it didn’t worry him. This was hot, they were firing, and the challenge was being met.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ He nodded to Wendy who was taking notes. ‘Get Tim Arnold in here. We’ll start a nationwide hunt for the right actress — the right height, the right colouring and one who’s willing to have plastic surgery to look like Edwina.’ Alain walked to the drinks cabinet. ‘It’ll be bigger than Gone With The Wind! Wendy, we need more ice.’

  Read on for an extract of

  Elianne

  Available November 2013

  CHAPTER ONE

  1964

  Some people didn’t like the smell. Some people found it overly rich and cloying, some even used the term ‘sickly’. But they were strangers, visitors from the city.

  There had always been visitors to the mill. Overseas dignitaries, politicians, even the odd prime minister had enjoyed the lavish garden parties and general hospitality f on offer at Elianne. At times there might be dozens of them, strolling about the grounds of The Big House, or lolling in the wicker chairs on its broad verandahs and upper balconies, while the more active opted for tennis and bowls on the grass courts and greens.

  In earlier times, before dirt tracks became accessible roads, and before motor vehicles were the ready form of transport, guests would stay for days on end. The arduous trip by horse and carriage demanded its reward, and Elianne had much to offer – not least of which was the mandatory trip to the nearby mill. The intrepid would climb to the lofty heights of the lookout tower and drink in the panorama of cane fields, stretching like a vast green ocean to the horizon while those without a head for heights would be taken on a tour of the massive metal complex with its varying levels and intricate steel walkways, its giant vats and machines and eighty-foot-high ceiling, and they would marvel at the magnitude of its scope and industry.

  During the crushing season, from mid-year until December, the cacophony of heavy machinery was overwhelming as the mill’s giant rollers and presses smashed and mashed and ground the cane through every stage of its transition to raw sugar. Nothing was wasted. The fibre that was left from the crushing was burnt in the furnaces to generate steam power; the mud filtered from the cane through the presses was returned to the field as fertiliser; and after the painstakingly long crystallisation process, the molasses residue was mixed in with the stock feed or sent to the distillery for the making of rum. The whole exercise was highly efficient as men and machines went about their tasks with precise teamwork.

  The mill was a busy, buzzy place during the crushing season, like a beehive where each worker knew precisely the purpose he served. The men took pride in the fact they were Elianne workers. They thrived on the noise and the industry and the smell of the mill, the very smell that some of those from the city professed to find ‘sickly’.

  Kate and her brothers loved the smell of the sugar mill. They found the toffee-scented air heady and intoxicating. It was the smell they’d grown up with, all three of t
hem. It was the smell of home.

  I’ve missed it, Kate thought, breathing in the richness as she wandered through the cathedral-like metal maze, where the giant mechanical monsters now sat eerily silent. Even during the slack season the smell is here, she thought, it’s always here. It’s been here for as long as I can remember.

  She hadn’t realised how much she’d missed the mill and the plantation over the past year. She’d been too distracted. Her life had undergone such a radical change. She remembered how she’d anticipated with relish every homecoming from boarding school in Brisbane. Every end-of-term holiday, every long weekend had seen her eagerly embrace the familiarity of her childhood. The cane fields shimmering in the heat; the smell of the mill and the easy friendship of the workers, so many of whom were like family; the horse races with her brothers along dusty dirt roads; swimming in the dam and the way, knees clutched to chests, they ‘bombed’ each other off the end of the jetty; tin canoes and excursions up and down the river; laden mango trees climbed to see who could shake down the most fruit; and on and on it went, the list was endless.

  But this homecoming was different. Something had changed. After a year at university, this homecoming had taken her by surprise. It was more intense, more meaningful. The past seemed more precious than ever, as if she were somehow threatened with its loss. Perhaps it’s because I’m different, she thought. Perhaps it is I who has changed, and things will never be the same again. The notion was disturbing, even a little sad, but also strangely exciting.

  Although the mill appeared deserted, Kate was aware she was not alone. The gentle clink of tinkering could be heard as here and there mechanics cleaned and serviced the machinery. But the delicacy of the sounds only served to highlight the stillness. At least it seemed so to Kate. She loved the mill most of all during the slack season when it lay dormant, quietly exhaling its treacly breath, biding its time before the next crushing frenzy.

  ‘Buongiorno, Kate. Welcome home.’

  The voice that jolted her from her reverie came from behind the massive filter press nearby; it belonged to Luigi Fiorelli. He rose to reveal himself, burly, grease stained and good natured as always.

  ‘Is good to see you,’ he said with a huge grin and a wave of the grimy rag he held in his hand.

  ‘Good to see you too, Luigi.’ She smiled and returned the salute.

  ‘How you like it down South, eh? You have good time down there?’ His tone was highly sceptical. During his eighteen years in the southern cane fields of Queensland, Luigi had travelled no farther than Bundaberg, on the other side of the river just fifteen miles from Elianne. He hadn’t even made the trip to Brisbane, which, although two hundred and forty road miles to the south, was easily accessible by both rail and road. He didn’t like big cities, he said, which was perhaps an odd remark from one who’d been brought up in the backstreets of Naples. But then his brothers, also Neapolitan by birth, were of exactly the same mind. The Fiorellis stuck to their farms and to Elianne, never travelling any further afield than Bundaberg. Why bother, they would say, and many felt the same way. Bundaberg, affectionately known to all as Bundy, had been successfully servicing the area for nigh on a hundred years.

  ‘Yes, I had a very good time down south, Luigi,’ Kate replied. ‘I like university very much.’

  ‘Si, si, sure, sure, university is fine, very good, but Sydney …’ Luigi was now openly scathing ‘… you don’ like Sydney! You can’ tell me you like Sydney, Kate.’

  The thought was clearly anathema to Luigi, but Kate made no reply, maintaining instead an enigmatic silence.

  Luigi Fiorelli had emigrated from Italy with his three older brothers in 1946, following the war. His brothers had become market gardeners, starting out with tomatoes and zucchinis, and also tobacco, or ‘tabac’ as they called it. Over time, and with application to the all-powerful Colonial Sugar Refinery, they had converted their modest acreage to cane, but twenty-two-year-old Luigi had followed an altogether different path. A skilled mechanic, he had applied for a position at Elianne. He was forty now, and one of the estate’s senior overseers, responsible for the repairs and maintenance of all mill machinery. He preferred to do more than supervise, however, and was invariably to be found in his overalls working alongside those under his command. ‘How a mechanic is to be a mechanic without he get his hands dirty, eh?’ he would say. Luigi’s command of English had improved immeasurably over the years, but his accent and disregard for syntax hadn’t changed very much.

  The Fiorelli brothers and their families remained inextricably linked to Elianne. Luigi, his wife and two teenage children lived on the estate in one of the many comfortable cottages made available by the company to the mill’s most valued employees. The three older brothers, now independent growers and each also with a family, relied upon Elianne for the crushing of their cane, delivering it to the collection points each season, from where it would be taken by cane train to the mill.

  The mill was essential to the livelihood of the entire district. The estate itself was home to many, and for some, like Luigi, it was their whole world. Kate’s continued silence, which appeared a comment in itself, now plainly shocked him.

  ‘You don’ say to me I am wrong, Kate. A girl like you who is born right here at Elianne? Your ancestors who build this place,’ he stretched out his arms as if to embrace the mill and all it stood for, ‘how you can like Sydney? Is not possible.’

  Kate laughed. ‘I’m ashamed to admit, Luigi, that yes, I like Sydney very much.’ Her eyes, beguilingly green and mischievous at the best of times, held a cheeky challenge as she added boldly, ‘In fact I love Sydney.’ She clutched a dramatic hand to her heart. ‘I love everything about Sydney.’ She enjoyed teasing Luigi, whom she’d known as a colourfully avuncular figure all her life, but there was nevertheless a touch of defiance in her statement. Such a comment, even in jest, would annoy her father immeasurably, and indeed others of his ilk. Like many powerful businessmen, particularly those in the sugar trade, Stanley Durham did not see eye to eye with the politics of the South. Queenslanders were a breed apart, he believed, and needed a different set of rules to live by; they always had.

  ‘Oh, this is most terrible.’ Realising he was being teased, Luigi joined in the joke, pounding his forehead with the butt of his hand in typically Italian fashion. ‘You turn into a Southerner. Mamma Mia, what we tell your papa?’

  ‘I suggest we keep it our little secret, Luigi.’

  ‘Very good, very good,’ an exaggerated shrug of resignation, ‘I say nothing to Stan that his daughter is a traitor.’

  ‘Yep, best we keep Stan the Man out of it I reckon.’

  Kate blew him a kiss, and Luigi saluted her once more with his oil rag. He watched as she turned, flicking her auburn hair back like a horse might its mane. Then she walked out of the mill with that easy, confident stride of hers. There was still the tomboy in her, he could see that, still the physical assurance that she could outride, outswim and outrun many a male her age. Growing up in a man’s world she’d always been competitive, never one content to sit among the women on the sidelines of life. But he’d recognised the change in her the moment he’d seen her enter the mill, well before he’d made his presence known. No more the lanky teenager, Kate Durham had become a woman.

  He plonked himself down on the wooden crate and resumed his work. The fact was hardly remarkable, he told himself. Kate would be eighteen in mid-January, barely one month away. But the change was confronting nonetheless. It wasn’t just the way her body had matured, which was to be expected – there was a sexual awareness about her, he could sense it. She’s probably lost her virginity in Sydney, he thought disapprovingly. Luigi’s own daughter, Paola, was just three years younger than Kate and he dreaded the prospect of her falling for some lusty young buck after nothing but sex. Paola would marry when she’d met the right man, and she would be wed a virgin; he’d kill any bastard who attempted to deflower her.

  Luigi wondered how Stan would react if he di
scovered his daughter was no longer a virgin. Indeed he’d wondered from the outset why Stanley Durham had allowed his daughter to travel so far afield for her education. Surely Kate could have gone to university in Queensland. She would still have been away from home of course, that was unavoidable, but at least she wouldn’t have been influenced by the decadence that abounded in the south. Sydney was a den of vice; everyone knew that.

  Luigi had never voiced such misgivings, however – it was hardly his place to do so. He and Stan were friends certainly, but Luigi Fiorelli, an intelligent man, was well aware there were limitations attached to such a friendship. Ah well, he now told himself, it is none of my business, and he shrugged and got on with his work.

  Stanley Durham made a point of initiating close ties with his workers, particularly his key employees, who called him by his first name. Those of long standing like Luigi were indeed considered friends, and often asked up to The Big House, although such offers were never extended when visiting dignitaries were ensconced there.

  Stan chose not to play ‘the Boss’ among the general hierarchy of Elianne, but rather the skipper of the team. His workers called him Mr Stan to his face, but he was indirectly referred to by all as Stan the Man, a term which rather pleased him, for he saw himself as a man’s man and a leader of men. But if the truth were known ‘Stan the Man’ was just another term for ‘the Boss’, because that’s exactly what Stan Durham was. He was very like his grandfather, who had built Elianne out of nothing; in fact Stan the Man was Big Jim Durham all over again.

  Kate set off at a leisurely pace on the mile-long walk to The Big House. The day promised to become a scorcher, but at the moment a mild breeze alleviated the discomfort; even at its most intense, the weather was never as oppressively humid as it was further to the north, where the swelter of the tropics could be overwhelming. In any event, Kate loved the heat of midsummer. Many from the South considered it insufferable, but personally she couldn’t understand how others could withstand the cold as they did. Sydney’s climate was supposedly temperate and yet she’d found the winter quite uncomfortable. She dreaded to think what a Melbourne winter would be like, or worse still a Tasmanian one.