Beneath the Southern Cross

by Judy Nunn

  ‘Red!’ he yelled. ‘Red, get back here for Christ’s sake! I won’t hurt you, I promise.’

  He spent several frantic minutes searching. Each time he came near, Kitty ducked under the water and held onto the rocks.

  Jim was terrified. What if she drowned? They’d all seen him leave that coffee house with her. All those loony, arty types she mixed with, she’d told them he was taking her for a drive to the beach. If her body was washed up in the morning, he’d be in deep trouble. ‘Oh shit,’ he muttered.

  ‘Red!’ he yelled. ‘Red, where are you?’ But there was nothing out there. Nothing but blackness. And a sudden fork of lightning. ‘Oh shit.’ Well, they didn’t know his name, did they; none of that crazy mob knew who he was or where he came from, they probably wouldn’t be able to trace him.

  He gave up and headed back to the car. There was a rumble of thunder and the rain started. ‘Oh shit.’ He’d only gone to the place because a mate of his had said that if you bought one of the crazy sheilas a beer and a meal, more often than not they’d sleep with you. Oh shit, he hoped she wasn’t dead.

  Kitty watched him staggering over the rocks. She hauled herself out of the water and spent several minutes dragging off her sodden boots. Avivid streak of lightning forked the sky, the storm was overhead now. She walked around the point to where she could see his car, her clothes clinging uncomfortably to her body. The headlights were on. The car reversed, turned, and was gone.

  It was a long way home to Randwick, and as Kitty walked, barefoot and bedraggled, through the pelting rain, thunder bellowing and lightning cracking all around her, she decided that she’d learned a lesson.

  She moved out of the Randwick house the following day and into an upstairs bedsit in East Sydney. She had just enough money for one week’s rent. Five days later she got a job on Smith’s Weekly.

  ‘You’re Tim Kendall’s daughter, aren’t you?’ she was asked at the job interview. Damn, she thought, she’d wondered why her application had been so readily accepted.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and had nearly walked out of the interview.

  ‘Good bloke, your dad.’ Ned Clarke had only met Tim Kendall the once, but everyone knew Tim Kendall was a good bloke.

  ‘Yes.’

  She hadn’t walked out. And she was glad that she hadn’t. She liked Smith’s Weekly. She admired the newspaper’s satire and irreverence. Humour, she thought, that was the way to reach the people.

  A week or two after she began work her father turned up at the bedsit.

  ‘I was pleased to hear that you’re working.’ Tim sat awkwardly on the mothy little sofa. Why the hell was she in a place like this when she could come home and live in comfort? He didn’t understand, but he knew better than to ask. And where on earth was the bed? He was probably sitting on it, he thought, and shifted uncomfortably. ‘Ned tells me you’re doing a good job.’

  ‘So that’s how you found me.’

  ‘Yes. Ned telephoned, said he’d taken you on.’ He didn’t tell her how humiliated he’d felt having to ask a man he barely knew for his own daughter’s address. But Kitty knew.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I would have got in touch with you soon, honestly I would.’ She would have too. Damn Ned. He’d been only too quick to pick up the telephone, trying to ingratiate himself with the almighty Tim Kendall.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She plonked herself down on the sofa beside her father and gave him a heartfelt hug.

  Encouraged by her display of affection, Tim threw caution to the wind and dived right in. ‘Why, Kitty, for God’s sake? Why?’

  She heaved an inward sigh, he was going to ask all those questions again, the ones she couldn’t answer. Certainly not without hurting him anyway.

  ‘Why can’t you come home? Or if you want to live on your own, why can’t you let me get you a decent flat?’

  Tim was frustrated by her silence, and an edge of irritation crept into his voice. ‘How long is this going to go on, this search for whatever it is you’re after? Good God, girl, you’re only a couple of years off thirty, you’ve got to grow up sometime.’

  Exasperated, Kitty got up from the sofa.

  ‘What the hell is it you’re looking for?’ Tim demanded.

  I don’t know! she wanted to yell. Maybe myself! ‘I can’t come home, Dad,’ she said evenly. How many times did she have to say it? ‘And I don’t want you to get me a flat.’

  ‘Well what am I supposed to do then?’ Tim’s helplessness was making him angry. ‘Just sit around and let my daughter live in a pigsty?’

  You can let your daughter live her own life. ‘I’m earning good money now, Dad, I’ll get a better place soon.’

  Tim rose to leave. ‘You’re making a big mistake, Kitty, there’s so much I could do for you.’

  It’s my mistake, let me make it. ‘I know, Dad, and thanks for the offer.’

  She went downstairs with him and hugged him goodbye in the street. ‘I’ll ring once a week, I promise, and I’ll come and see you more often.’

  ‘Good girl. Your mother’ll be pleased.’

  Surprisingly enough, Kitty knew that her mother’s questions would be much easier to field. Ruth would be interested in one thing, and one thing only. Was there a prospective husband on the horizon? ‘Do you have a young man?’ she could hear her ask. ‘You must bring him home, we’d like to meet him.’

  Her father’s questions were always the difficult ones. God, if only she knew what it was she was looking for, what it was she was doing with her life.

  Her work at the newspaper did interest her, very much, but it was not enough. Kitty still didn’t know where she belonged. She got on well with her workmates at Smith’s Weekly and enjoyed the camaraderie over a few beers on Fridays, but she soon drifted back to the freedom of her Push friends. It had remained an empty existence, however. Until she met Arturo.

  ‘I want to bring a friend over for dinner, Mum.’

  She telephoned her mother the day she and Artie moved into the new flat. It was three months to the very day since they’d met, and they’d made love on the carpet amongst the milk crates and cardboard boxes. Afterwards she’d said, ‘Who will we call?’

  Sitting naked on the floor, they’d both looked at the telephone. Their very own phone. Neither of them had had their own telephone before. She picked up the receiver.

  ‘The first call, who will it be?’

  ‘Your parents,’ he said. She looked surprised. ‘I would like to meet your parents.’

  There was a moment’s hesitation on the other end of the line. Was her mother holding her breath, Kitty wondered.

  ‘A male friend?’ Ruth asked tentatively.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re seeing someone?’ There was eager anticipation in her voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh darling, I’m so glad. Tim,’ Kitty heard her mother call to her father, ‘Tim, Kitty’s bringing a young man over for dinner.’ Then, into the phone, ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Well, no, I thought tomorrow, Sunday, if that’s all right.’

  ‘Yes, of course it is, darling.’

  ‘He wants to meet you.’

  Artie was sitting behind her, cradling her between his thighs, fondling her breasts, nuzzling her neck with his lips, and he could hear clearly the reaction on the other end of the line.

  ‘He wants to meet us.’ Ruth’s hand over the receiver was ineffective. ‘She said he wants to meet us.’ Then back into the phone, ‘Well, how delightful, and of course we’d love to meet him. What’s his name, dear?’

  ‘Arr-turr-o Fa-rrr-ine-lll-i.’ Kitty dragged out the name, rolling her r’s outrageously. Artie nudged her to stop.

  ‘Oh.’ Quite a long pause, then, ‘He’s an Italian, is he?’

  Kitty couldn’t resist. ‘No, he’s a Scot.’ Artie jumped to his feet and she looked up at him. He was shaking his head vigorously. ‘Oh, what does it matter anyway,’ she said, as much to him as to her mother. ‘You’ll meet him tomorrow. Seven o’clock a
ll right?’

  ‘Yes. Seven o’clock will be fine.’

  ‘That was cruel,’ he said when she’d hung up.

  ‘I don’t think so. Better for her to be prepared. Mother hates surprises.’

  Kitty was right, Artie realised, the instant he met Ruth Kendall.

  ‘Arturo, isn’t it? How nice to meet you.’ She was poised, impeccably dressed and coiffed, and quite beautiful. Artie could see where Kitty got her looks. But she was, without doubt, a woman to whom surprises were not welcome. She had definitely prepared herself.

  ‘How do you do, Mrs Kendall,’ he said.

  Her husband stood beside her. So this was Tim Kendall, Artie thought. The labourer’s son who had become a self-made millionaire. Artieadmired such men.

  ‘My friends call me Artie, Mr Kendall,’ he said.

  ‘G’day, Artie. Call me Tim.’ Tim offered his hand. ‘Artie, just as well, eh, mate? Can’t get my tongue around those Italian names.’

  Kitty sensed her mother cringe a little, and she agreed with her. Her father was playing hail-fellow-well-met. It was fake and, in its own way, more hypocritical than her mother’s distant charm. Tim was out to prove he was a good all-round bloke with not a discriminatory bone in his body. Which Kitty knew to be untrue: Tim Kendall was as suspicious of foreigners as the next person.

  ‘I think Arturo’s a beautiful name,’ she said.

  Her father ignored her. ‘Come on in, Artie, do you want a beer?’ Handsome bugger, Tim thought, but the bloke was as dago-looking as his name. Why the hell couldn’t she have found an Aussie?

  Despite Tim’s hearty attempt at mateship, it was Ruth who put Artie at his ease. Throughout dinner she encouraged him to talk about himself, and guilelessly he did. He told her about his family. His father was a stonemason, he said, from Tuscany. And his grandfather, and his grandfather’s father.

  ‘I am a disappointment to my family,’ he said. ‘I decide to emigrate. But I have four brothers who continue the family tradition, so …’ He shrugged and added with a smile, ‘There must always be one black sheep, yes?’

  Kitty was unusually quiet, studying her mother and father. Ruth was being charming and gracious, obviously thankful for Artie’s good manners, but praying that her daughter was not seriously interested in him. And Tim, having let his wife take centre stage, was sizing up the Italian, finding him foreign and unacceptable, Kitty could tell. Oh, in the workplace her father would be the most racially tolerant of men, Tim Kendall was a good bloke, everyone knew that. But his daughter going out with a dago? That was something altogether different. Kitty could sense her father’s antagonism, and she felt an overwhelming desire to shock.

  ‘Arturo and I are living together,’ she declared, when the maid brought the dessert.

  There was a stunned silence. Her father stared at her and her mother glanced at the maid to see if she’d heard. She had.

  Artie was annoyed with Kitty. They’d agreed that they would wait until her parents had accepted him before telling them the truth.

  ‘Is that so?’ Tim turned to Artie, unable to disguise his hostility, not even trying to.

  ‘I would like very much to marry your daughter, Mr Kendall,’ Artie said.

  Tim couldn’t trust himself to answer. Did the boy think that made things better, his daughter marrying a dago? Over his dead body!

  ‘Over my dead body!’ It was Kitty who said it. She, in turn, was annoyed with Artie. Why was he playing her parents’ conventional games, why did he feel the necessity of mentioning marriage? They’d never spoken of it, she didn’t believe in marriage. ‘We’re not getting married,’ she said to her parents, ‘we don’t believe in it.’

  ‘I do,’ Artie said.

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since always.’

  It went downhill after that. Tim glowered, Kitty sulked, and Ruth bravely behaved as if nothing had happened. Artie would have preferred to discuss the whole situation openly. Marriage, ethnic integration, why couldn’t they discuss it all like civilised people? But he was hardly in a position to make such a suggestion, and he must not rush them, he thought, he must give them time. He decided it was probably wisest to retreat.

  ‘I think perhaps we will leave now, Mrs Kendall,’ he said when she offered coffee. ‘It is Monday tomorrow and we both start work early. Kitty?’

  ‘Yes, let’s skip coffee.’ She jumped up from her chair. ‘Thanks for dinner, Mum, it was wonderful as usual.’ She kissed her mother on the cheek, didn’t look at her father. ‘Bye,’ she said, and left the three of them sitting at the table.

  Artie hastily rose. He thanked them both, Tim gave a brusque nod in return, and Ruth saw him to the front door.

  Kitty was waiting outside. They caught a taxi back to the flat in Leichhardt and Kitty tried to argue all the way, Artie refusing to join in.

  ‘You didn’t tell me you wanted to get married.’

  ‘I did not know until tonight.’

  ‘Oh rubbish, you only said it because it was the conventional thing to say under the circumstances.’

  ‘Perhaps. I am a conventional man.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to get married, I can tell you that right here and now. And I never will.’

  ‘Fine,’ he shrugged, ‘then we will not marry.’

  He was obviously not going to be drawn into an argument, so Kitty turned her hostility upon her parents instead.

  ‘They behaved just the way I expected them to,’ she said, then started to systematically tear them apart. Her mother was a snob to whom nothing but appearances mattered, but her father was much worse. Her father was a bigot who pretended not to be.

  ‘Good old Tim Kendall,’ she said, ‘a bonza bloke! Everybody’s mate! The working-class boy who made good, but never forgot his roots! Well, bully for him, he’s the biggest hypocrite of them all.’

  Artie paid off the taxi and she was still berating her father when they entered the flat.

  He turned the lights on to reveal the chaos—they hadn’t finished unpacking the previous day.

  ‘He disappointed you,’ Artie said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your father. He disappointed you.’

  ‘No,’ she said defensively, ‘I knew he’d behave like that.’

  ‘But you hoped that he would not.’

  Kitty’s lower lip quivered a little, suddenly she wanted to cry. It was true. She’d been disappointed. Her heart had sunk the moment her father had gone into his ‘g’day mate’ act. Kitty loved her father dearly, and she had hoped that he would recognise her love for Arturo. She had hoped that he would genuinely welcome him into the family.

  Artie put his arms around her. ‘Poor Kitty,’ he said, ‘you have got yourself all worked up …’ she sniffled against his shoulder, ‘… and for no reason at all.’ She raised her head, about to argue the point. ‘No, no,’ he saidquickly, ‘I will not fight with you. But I will talk with you if you wish.’

  They did. Around midnight Artie opened a bottle of red wine. By then he’d convinced her that her father was not really a bigot.

  ‘Your father is afraid. He fears that which isdifferent,’ Artie had explained, recalling Rube’s words at Bonegilla and how, time and again, they had proven to be so true. ‘But he is a good man, he will learn to accept me in time. And I do not need to be Italian for him to dislike me.’ He laughed at her puzzled expression. ‘I am your lover, Kitty, every father is jealous of his daughter’s lover.’

  He’d defended her mother too. He had found Ruth a most gracious woman, he said. ‘You must learn acceptance yourself, Kitty. You too must accept that which isdifferent in others.’

  It was then he had suggested they share a bottle of wine, and she sat on the bed as he opened it, waiting, impatiently, for him to continue.

  ‘Your mother and father were trying hard in their own ways tonight. You must accept that your mother’s social graces are important to her. And you must accept that it is important to your father that he is—how di
d you say it?—a bonza bloke. It is the way they wish others to perceive them, there is nothing wrong in that.’

  He poured the wine and joined her on the bed. ‘And I must accept that which is different in you.’ He smiled. ‘The way you initiate sex, and the way you say “fuck”.’

  ‘I don’t say “fuck” any more.’

  ‘I appreciate that.’

  ‘And what is different in you that I must accept, Arturo?’ She rolled over on her stomach and looked up at him as he leaned back against the bedhead.

  ‘Everything,’ he laughed. ‘And you do. It is what I most love about you.’

  They talked until four in the morning. Then they made love and slept for two hours before getting up to go to work.

  Artie was right. Kitty not only accepted, unequivocally, his differences, she loved him for them. She loved his dark, foreign looks and his accent. She loved the Italian music he played, and the pasta he ate, and his passion for conversation and sex. Never in her life, she thought, had she met a person as vibrant, and as honest, as Arturo Farinelli.

  But she was well aware of the malice they attracted as they walked down the street. The Australians didn’t like seeing an Aussie girl with a dago. And she could feel the animosity when they walked into one of the Italian restaurants which they regularly frequented. The Italians didn’t like seeing one of their kind with his arm around an Australian woman.

  Artie turned a blind eye. He said he didn’t notice it any more, and that it didn’t bother him. So Kitty did the same. She ignored the hostility. It was difficult for her at first. At first she felt belligerent, she wanted to confront those who sneered at them. ‘What’s your problem, mate?’ she wanted to demand. ‘Spit it out, what don’t you like?’ But she resisted the urge. And eventually, like Artie, the prejudice which confronted them daily ceased to bother her.

  It was then that Kitty realised she had learned another lesson in acceptance. She had learned to accept herself. No longer did she need to shock and to make statements. No longer did she need to search amongst the bohemian fringe for a reason as to her existence. The very life she now led made a statement.