Just South of Rome (10 page)

She walked on enjoying the burn of the mid-morning sun on her bare shoulders. She was wearing a light cotton shift with shoestring straps, and the heat’s caress through
the dress’s thin fabric was more than pleasurable. It was sensual, somehow arousing – a little erotic even. She smiled and quickened her pace, chastising herself. Good God, girl, is there anything these days that
isn’t
arousing, that you
don’t
find erotic? Pull yourself together and stop thinking about sex.

Luigi Fiorelli was wrong in his reasoning. Kate had not lost her virginity in Sydney. But she had come very close to it, and she certainly intended to do so upon her return in the New Year.

Now as she strode down the road and past the stables, she thought of Jeremy, recalling with fierce clarity that night he’d first kissed her. It had been nearly three months earlier, and the first real kiss she’d ever known. She’d considered herself quite an experienced kisser, but she’d obviously been wrong, for this was something entirely different. This was not the experimental brush of teenage lips at school dances in Brisbane, nor was it the clumsy fumbles of local boys, easily fought off, in the back row of Bundaberg’s Paramount picture theatre on a Saturday afternoon. This was the tenderest exploration of mouths. She could still recall her wonderment at the fact that she hadn’t found his tongue repulsive. She could relive, and had done many times, every moment of her surrender to an intrusion that was at first shocking, then fascinating, then amazing as in her boldness she’d parted her lips that little bit more, allowing him easy access, even flickering her own tongue over the delicate tips of his teeth.

She could have given herself wholly to him in the back room of that poky East Sydney flat while the party raged next door. And indeed in a way she had given herself to him. The promise had been there – they’d both recognised it. But Jeremy had not rushed her. Twenty-year-old Jeremy, a second-year Arts student, mature and experienced, but also infatuated, was, Kate knew, not after a one-night stand. Jeremy wanted a full-on affair and aware
she was a virgin he had no wish to frighten her. He’d been content to bide his time. Over the ensuing weeks, he’d progressed a little further – his lips travelling down her neck; his hand straying lightly over her breast, sending shivers through her body – never too invasive, but steadily more intimate. To Kate, however, it was the indelible memory of that first kiss that remained the true turning point. She’d made her decision. Jeremy would be the man to whom she would surrender her virginity.

The week before her return to Queensland for the Christmas holidays she’d visited a doctor and put herself on the contraceptive pill for that express purpose.

‘I’ll see you in the New Year,’ she’d whispered as he’d kissed her goodbye at the train station, and they’d both known exactly what she meant.

Having passed by the cookhouse and mess hall, and then the bakery, Kate reached the village green, with Elianne Hall to her right. The estate’s village green and hall had been social centres throughout the whole of her childhood, as they had throughout the childhoods of many of her contemporaries, and also those of generations past.

She came to a halt, once again chastising herself, but this time in a more serious vein. I really must put Jeremy and sex out of my mind, she thought crossly. She’d been away from Elianne for close on a year and yet her head was full of the impending loss of her virginity. If she went on like this she’d ruin her entire holiday.

She sat on the hall’s front step, Cobber flopping contentedly at her feet, Ben as ever wandering off to explore. Looking out across the village green she recalled the many fetes and picnics, where teams of small children had competed in every imaginable event contrived to excite and enthral the young. Workers’ children of all colour and creed: Australians, Italians, a few Kanakas and Chinese, English, Scots, here and there the odd Scandinavian and German, here and there several Torres Strait Islanders. She
could see them all now, herself included, running themselves ragged in three-legged races, staggering clumsily about in hessian sacks and hauling on twenty yards of rope as if their lives depended upon winning the tug o’ war.

The same fetes and picnics and parties continued to this very day. The numbers had dwindled somewhat of late, but Stan the Man insisted tradition be upheld. She’d been home for just one week, and on the Saturday following her arrival there’d been a pre-Christmas picnic attended by at least twenty families. She and her younger brother Alan, who was home from boarding school, had handed out the presents and the toffee-apples, while Neil, soon to turn twenty, the oldest of the three and heir apparent, had awarded the prizes, a job that had always been the domain of their father. These days, however, Stanley Durham, while remaining as dominant a figure as ever, preferred to sit on the sidelines like a benign monarch, surveying his realm, his subjects and his family with pride.

The Durham siblings, although no longer among those youngsters so fiercely competing, had shared in the recognition, and taken pleasure in the knowledge that some things hadn’t changed, and some things probably never would. Kate smiled now as she recalled their exchange. Not one word had been spoken, but the glances they’d shared had said everything. They’d been children again: ten or eight or six, no matter, the two-year age difference between each of them had never formed a barrier. Throughout the whole of their childhood, they’d been the three musketeers, and she, in the middle, had been the lynch pin. Kate loved her brothers dearly.

And as for the hall, she thought, turning to look over her shoulder, well the hall hasn’t changed one bit. The building indeed seemed to belong in a time warp – it had been the same for as long as she could remember.

Elianne Hall, as it was grandly known, was really just a vast timber-framed building with a tin roof, but for the
mill’s workers and extended family it had been a vital hub for generations. Here every form of festivity had taken place, concerts and parties for all occasions, along with birthdays, weddings and wakes. The hall also served as a Sunday school, and not only for the workers’ children. Attendance by the Durham siblings had been mandatory.

Again Kate wondered why everything seemed so poignant. Is it just because I’ve been away so long? she asked herself. Or is it because I’ve changed? Everything else appears to have remained much the same. It must surely be me.

She stood. Time to go home. She was hungry now – she’d skipped breakfast for an early-morning walk down by the river.

Cobber, who’d been dozing in the sun, stretched and joined her as she set off. Ben was nowhere in sight, but she didn’t need to call him. Within minutes he’d appeared and was racing on ahead.

Across the village green, she could see several girls around fifteen years of age wending their way homewards along the rough bush track. They were animatedly chattering as they returned from their morning stints at Elianne’s cattle yards and dairy a half a mile away. Kate gave them a wave and they waved back. She knew each one of the dairymaids: two were the daughters of the dairy farmer himself, and the third was the butcher’s daughter, who was earning extra money during her school holidays. Their fathers were not seasonal itinerate workers, but lived on the estate running their businesses year-round as many did.

During the crushing season, several hundred mill and field workers were employed at Elianne, the cookhouse working round the clock to provide dawn breakfasts, packed lunches, smokos, evening meals and shift dinners for the hundred or so accommodated in the single men’s barracks. Throughout the slack season, however, Elianne remained a self-sustaining village catering to the families
who lived on the estate. It boasted a general store, a bakery, and a butcher’s shop that was regularly supplied with fresh meat from the nearby piggery and cattle slaughter yards.

With only two thousand acres of the property under cane, the majority of the mill’s produce came from local farmers, some of whose children worked on the estate alongside others who travelled by foot or bicycle from the settlement of South Kolan, only two miles away. Given the affordability of vehicles and the easy access of modern roads, there were also those who now commuted from Bundaberg, but despite the changes wrought by progress, Elianne remained a community, and a vibrant one at that. Elianne was a family to which people were proud to belong.

Kate walked on down the road, passing the attractive cottages of South Mill Row with their front verandahs and pretty little gardens. One of these was home to Luigi Fiorelli and his family. There were several such rows of cottages on the estate, but the others offered far more basic accommodation than those of South Mill Row, which were reserved for the permanently employed and most valuable of workers. Indeed, the hierarchy of Elianne could be immediately detected in the architecture of the housing allotted its employees. To the north of the mill were the single men’s barracks, to the east and the west the rows of rudimentary cottages reserved for married workers, and then there was South Mill Row. After that there followed a further distinctly upwards curve, for the homes allotted to Elianne’s senior staff were a different matter altogether. There were at least a half a dozen of them dotted about the estate, gracious affairs of striking design: stilted wooden, Queensland-style houses with broad verandahs, perfectly suited to the climate.

None, however, was as grand as Durham House. Always referred to simply as The Big House, the Durham family home was nothing short of magnificent. The Big
House appeared three stories high, but it wasn’t really, this was just an illusion. The attractive white-painted lattice work flanking the broad stairs that led up to its first-floor verandah masked only storage space and a laundry, for this house too stood very tall on its stilts. Its elevation gained impressive views on all sides both of the river a quarter of a mile away and also of the plantation. From the balconies of The Big House the cane trains could be regularly observed during the crushing season, even at night, lights gleaming in the distance, feeding the hungry mill the hundred and fifty tons of cane it devoured every hour.

Painted white with railings of green, and surrounded on all sides by wooden verandahs and upper storey balconies, the house lounged in its landscaped gardens and tennis courts like an indolent giant. It was too huge and too opulent to be elegant, but also too beautiful to be crass, the finishing touches of oak doors and wooden-framed French windows saving it from even the harshest of critics. Hilda Durham had seen to that.

Stan the Man had had the house designed along the lines of the original Elianne House, built by his grandfather in 1890, which, since the death of old Big Jim Durham twelve years previously, had served as home to Ivan Krantz and his family. Ivan was the estate’s managing accountant and company secretary. The only adjustment Stan had made to the original design of the house, or so he’d said at the time, was to quadruple the size of the place and add another storey with balconies.

‘The same only bigger,’ he’d assured his wife shortly before Neil was born. Hilda had loved the old house. In fact, she’d loved Elianne House far more than the modern residence Stan had had specially built as their marital home. ‘We’ll need the extra space with family on the way,’ he’d insisted, when she’d queried whether the size he envisaged might be a little vulgar, ‘and of course
there are always the visitors. We must be able to accommodate our visitors in style. They expect it my dear, just as they did in Big Jim’s time.’

It had been Hilda who had had the final say, however, particularly with regard to the interior. The grand oak staircase leading to the upper floor had become a principal feature, as had the wooden panelling in the main dining room and the various sitting rooms. Doors with frosted-glass panels featuring original designs, crystal chandeliers, wall-bracket light fittings of brass, lead-light and stained-glass windows, together with Hilda’s personal selection of objets d’art and paintings had completed the final touches. Stanley Durham very wisely never questioned his wife’s taste.

Kate bounded up the front steps three at a time, the dogs flopping on the verandah, they were not allowed inside the house.

The family was having morning tea in the smaller downstairs drawing room as she’d presumed they would be. Or at least as she’d presumed her mother would be. Hilda insisted upon morning and afternoon tea being served in the front drawing room. Even if no one else attended, and they very often didn’t, Hilda would quite happily sit there, sipping away at her tea and nibbling at her cake or scones. She never demanded anyone join her; the ritual was all she required.

To Kate’s surprise, everyone was there, her father lounging in his favoured armchair, her mother perched as always in her carver at the table and Neil and Alan seated on hardback chairs demolishing the slices of sponge cake that young Ivy the maid had just passed around.

‘Morning all,’ Kate said, looking a query from one to the other. She hadn’t expected to see her brothers.

Hilda signalled Ivy to fetch a fresh pot of tea and Stan signalled his daughter to sit.

Kate did so. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Dad’s called a family meeting,’ Alan replied with a typically nonchalant ‘don’t ask me’ shrug.

‘What about?’

‘Change.’ Neil dived in diplomatically before Alan could offer another careless shrug. His younger brother’s nonchalance had a way of irritating their father. Placing his side plate on the table and giving his mouth a perfunctory dab with his linen napkin in order to appease their mother’s constant plea for good table manners, he stood. ‘Dad decided to leave it a week or so for you two to settle back in before calling this meeting to discuss some developments undertaken by Elianne Pty Limited.’ Neil’s address to his siblings was solemn and Kate and Alan exchanged looks. Home being ‘Elianne’ and the family business ‘Elianne Pty Limited’ Neil was wearing his ‘Company Hat’. Normally they would have teased him about it, but not today, not in front of their father.