Pietro was in love. Or so he professed to Lucky. And for an innocent like Pietro who wore his heart on his sleeve, Lucky knew that it was serious business.

‘I admire your choice, my friend,’ he said. ‘She’s very pretty.’

Pietro flicked back his hair with a quick jerk of his head in the manner he’d recently adopted to conceal his self-consciousness, but secretly he was pleased. Lucky’s teasing, and his own acceptance of it, was a measure of their friendship. When any of the other men made fun of him, as they sometimes did, without malice, simply because his naiveté made him fair game, Pietro would walk away, flicking his hair back furiously in an attempt at bravado as he nursed his hurt. It was different with Lucky. He trusted Lucky.

‘But beware of the father.’ Lucky’s tone was still teasing and he rolled his bloodhound eye melodramatically in the way that always made Pietro laugh, but his warning was genuine. Why, he inwardly sighed, of all the girls in Cooma, did Pietro have to fall in love with Cam Campbell’s daughter? Not that it was really surprising, he supposed. Violet Campbell worked behind the counter of one of the busiest shops in town, she was eighteen, pretty and on constant display. Every young man for miles around was probably in love with Vi Campbell

‘Beware? Why beware, Lucky?’ Pietro had not met Violet’s father, but Violet herself had said that he was ‘a fine man’, those had been her very words. He was puzzled. ‘Why I must beware for Mr Campbell?’

Lucky decided to back-pedal. Pietro was an impressionable young man and it would be wrong to feed him preconceived notions about the man whose daughter he seemed bent on courting.

‘No real reason,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you will be fine.’

But he wasn’t going to get away with it that easily. ‘Why, Lucky? Why you not like Mr Campbell?’

‘Because he does not like me.’ Lucky decided to be truthful.

‘Why?’

‘Because I am a German.’

‘Ah yes.’ Pietro nodded, the answer was understandable. ‘Many Australian do not like the Germans.’ Then his face lit up. ‘But I am Italian.’

‘And he’ll like you, I’m sure.’ Perhaps he would, Lucky thought. Perhaps Cam Campbell’s intolerance was reserved purely for Germans. He doubted it, but he smiled his assurance anyway.

A thought occurred to Pietro. ‘Why you not tell him you are a Jew? You tell him you are a Jew, then he like you.’

Pietro’s logic sometimes escaped Lucky and he decided not to pursue it, just as he decided to stop worrying. There was little he could do about the current situation. Pietro was an immigrant, and whether it was Cam Campbell’s daughter he courted, or the daughter of any other local, he was bound to receive the same reaction. Even the most open-minded Australian men, Lucky had observed, developed instant double standards when it came to their daughters. But then wasn’t it the way with all fathers? If the girl was his daughter, he’d probably be the same.

Lucky’s mind jarred to a halt as he thought of Rachel. If she had lived, she’d be thirteen. A dangerous age, thirteen. Nearly a young woman. He tried to picture her but, as always, he couldn’t. If he’d had a photograph of her as a child, then perhaps he’d be able to imagine the girl she might have become, but as it was he could summon no image to his mind.

Lucky deeply regretted not having a photograph of his daughter. Not for maudlin reasons. He would not have wept over it – the time for weeping had long passed. But he would have liked to have had proof of her existence. Sometimes it seemed as if Rachel had never lived.

The only reminder Samuel Lachmann had of his past life was the single photograph he possessed of his wife: the photograph that his best friend Mannie had taken with such loving care. He no longer kept it in his wallet as he had in the early days – wallets were renowned for disappearing. Many a drunken night in a Cooma pub had seen a man divested of several weeks’ wages. At first the photograph had lived tucked into the frame of the shaving mirror which he’d hung on the wall of his one-man cabin. But when his natural desires had got the better of him and he’d started paying an occasional visit to the prostitutes who regularly came down from Sydney, it had felt wrong to return to the image of Ruth, so he’d put the photograph away in the top drawer of his lowboy. These days he rarely looked at it, even though, strangely enough, Ruth was on his mind more than she had been for years.

Lucky’s affair with Peggy Minchin was the first real relationship he’d had with a woman since his wife’s death over a decade ago, and it aroused in him many sensations that left him unsure. Was he in love with Peggy? Or was he in love with the feelings she evoked in him? He was a sensual man, he had had several casual affairs and many sexual encounters over the past ten years, and he had been content to do so. Now Peggy was reminding him there was far more to share with a woman than lust and the pleasure the female body had to offer. At night, he enjoyed the warmth of her in the bed as he drifted off to sleep, and in the morning, when he awoke early, he liked to watch her sleeping beside him. During the days they spent together, he delighted in her intelligence and conversation and the sheer happiness of her laughter. And when he caught her unaware, before she had time to look away and compose herself, he was moved by the undisguised love he saw in her eyes. But sometimes the strength of her love frightened him. Could he return it? Was he deluding them both and offering Peggy false hope in continuing the affair? He wasn’t sure whether his feelings for her were genuine or whether they were the result of the memories she evoked. Memories of a life shared with a woman he’d loved many years ago, in a different world when he’d been a different man. Lucky didn’t know what to do. Peggy Minchin’s love was a responsibility he was not ready for.

He envied Pietro. Love at first sight was so unquestioning and uncomplicated. ‘I love Violetta the moment I see her,’ Pietro had confided to him, and Lucky had recalled the day he’d introduced himself to Ruth on campus. ‘You’re Ruth Stein, languages,’ he’d said. ‘Samuel Lachmann, engineering.’ He’d held out his hand and the moment their eyes had met, he’d known she was the one.

 

‘Hang on a minute. You’ve given me too much.’

Pietro’s introduction to the woman of his dreams had been far more gauche. He’d been halfway to the door when she’d called out to him.

‘Is all right,’ he said, turning back.

‘No it’s not.’ The cash register resounded with a ting as she pressed the button and the drawer sprang open. ‘You gave me a quid, not ten bob,’ she said ferreting out the change. He must have got his notes mixed up, she thought, a lot of the foreigners did.

He cursed himself. He hadn’t looked at the note he’d given her, and there were at least half a dozen people waiting for her to serve them. It was a busy Saturday and the two other assistants, a young man and a young woman, were attending a horde of customers at the far end of the long wooden counter that stretched the entire length of the shop. He shouldn’t have bought anything, he thought as the panic rose, he should have just browsed through the catalogues like he normally did. He didn’t need two new pairs of trousers and he didn’t even know if they were his size. He’d pretended to check when she’d handed them to him, but he hadn’t really. He’d acted on impulse, just wanting to be near her, assuming that he’d be able to make a quick getaway in the general hive of activity.

‘Is all right.’ He started again for the door.

‘Don’t be silly, you have to take your change.’ Crikey, Snowy workers were rolling in it, she thought. Ten bob was more than a week’s wages to her.

Before he knew it she was around the other side of the counter and a dozen eyes were watching them.

‘Hold out your hand,’ she said, and automatically he did. ‘Seven and threepence from one pound …’ She placed a threepenny coin in the palm of his hand and started counting out the change. ‘Seven and six … eight shillings … nine shillings …’

Trying desperately to ignore the collective critical gaze of the other customers, he focussed upon his hand, and her fingers as they methodically placed the coins there. But her fingers were slowing down now and so was her voice. He knew she was challenging him to look at her, so he did. Breathlessly. He’d never been this close to her before. So close that he was mesmerised by the dusting of freckles across her finely shaped nose, he could have counted each individual one.

‘Ten shillings …’ Her eyes didn’t leave his and, as she gently pressed the final coin into his palm, she smiled.

Pietro’s heart skipped a beat. During all of the time he’d spent browsing in the shop, he’d never seen her smile that way at anyone else, he was sure of it. The sky-blue eyes that looked at him from beneath sandy lashes seemed to signal a promise, and the curl of the prettily shaped mouth a special invitation. He was so spellbound that he forgot to flick back his hair in a gesture of nonchalance.

It was Violet who broke the spell, snapping the ten shilling note she held between her fingers with all the expertise of a bank teller. ‘And ten bob makes one quid.’ She held it out to him and he took it.

‘Thank you,’ he said, flicking back his hair as he shoved the change into the pocket of his trench coat.

She smiled the smile he’d seen on many an occasion: bright, personable and efficient; she was popular with the customers, particularly the young men. She even flirted with them sometimes, so long as they weren’t rude. Just in fun, always proper, never letting things get out of hand. Then she said something, and Pietro wasn’t sure if he’d heard her correctly.

‘I knock off for lunch in half an hour.’ She said it under her breath, very quickly, and suddenly she was back behind the counter. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she was saying to the next customer in line.

‘You’re Italian, aren’t you?’ They were her first words half an hour later when she stepped out into Sharp Street where he was waiting by the open shop doorway in uncertain anticipation, still wondering whether he might have misconstrued what she’d said.

‘Yes.’ They moved away from the doors to make way for the steady stream of customers going in and out. ‘My name is Pietro Toscanini,’ he said.

‘Violet Campbell.’ She’d taken to calling herself Violet lately, but it had little effect upon the locals who all knew her as Vi. She held out her hand and he shook it. Violet liked the way European women offered their hands – she thought it was sophisticated – and these days she always initiated a handshake, even though most Aussie blokes thought it too forward. But then Aussie blokes had a lot to learn about manners. ‘I’ve seen you in the shop,’ she said. ‘Lots of times.’

She had. He’d been coming into the shop once a fortnight for nearly two months now, and she couldn’t fail to notice him: he was very handsome. He’d leaf through the catalogues on the stand near the door, or he’d peruse the merchandise on display. Behind the counter, samples of every grocery and hardware item in stock were exhibited on the myriad shelves that stretched the length of the shop from floor to ceiling. Other goods were displayed on the counter itself: jars of lollies, ladies’ handcreams, boxes of soap and candles, bottled sauces and tins of cooking oil were all carefully arranged between machines and apparatuses that sliced and chopped and measured and weighed. The shop appeared to sell every item imaginable.

‘Can I help you?’ she’d asked him once as he’d examined the jars of chutneys and pickles stacked on the end of the counter near the windows, but he’d given a quick shake of his head and returned to the catalogue stand. Another time, when he’d had his face buried in a catalogue, she’d called, ‘Want to order something? Need any help?’ But once again he’d given a shake of his head, and a minute or so later he’d left the shop. She’d come to the conclusion that he couldn’t speak English and that he was shy. A lot of the foreigners were like that, she’d found.

Then one afternoon she’d caught him out. During a moment’s respite in an otherwise busy day, she’d been sitting on a stool by the windows listing the items that were in short supply while Trish and Mick, her fellow assistants, had been looking after the several customers at the other end of the counter. Leaning on her elbows, twirling her copper curls between her fingers and intermittently chewing on the end of her pencil, she’d looked up and caught his eye. He wasn’t perusing the shelves at all – he was looking at her. And, as he’d guiltily averted his gaze, she’d realised that he had never really been perusing the shelves, that he’d always been looking at her. She was flattered. And from that day on she’d proffered him the brightest of smiles as soon as he’d arrived. ‘Hello there,’ she’d call, and he’d return a quick nod before diving for the catalogues. She’d never dared push any further, for fear of scaring him off. But when the workers came into town on the weekends, Violet always looked forward to seeing the handsome young foreigner. He was an admirer, one with far more taste than some of the others who made lewd remarks to which she never responded. He made her feel special.

‘Where you would like lunch?’ Pietro asked, and she looked blankly at him. ‘Is your lunchtime. You said.’

‘Oh, I’m not hungry; shall we go for a walk?’

It was a fine day in late March, but the heat of summer had gone, and Violet buttoned up the cardigan of her blue twin-set as they walked through the lunchtime crowd that thronged Cooma’s main street. She initiated the conversation with questions. Where was he based? she asked. Spring Hill, he said, he’d been working on the Snowy for nearly three months now. And where was he from? Milano, he said, a big city in the north of Italy.

He looked like a film star, she thought, dark-eyed and romantic, and she liked the way he flicked his hair from his face – it was debonair. She’d like to go to Italy, she said, she intended to travel one day. Heavens above, she’d never even been to Sydney, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

Centennial Park, just a block away, was crowded and Violet could see several people she knew, so she decided to head for the creek instead, where they could sit on the grassy bank overlooking the water. Pietro automatically followed her lead as she chatted away. Her family had a property near Adaminaby she said, as they turned down Bombala Street beside the park, but since she’d been working at Hallidays she lived with her aunt in town.

‘I like working at Hallidays. Mr Halliday’s a good boss, and it’s a very good store, one of the best in town. I get to meet so many interesting people.’ The smile she flashed him was a personal compliment. ‘I like living in Cooma too,’ she said, ‘it’s so cosmopolitan.’ It was a word she’d learned recently – her Auntie Maureen used it a lot – and Violet thought it sounded very sophisticated.

Pietro didn’t know what ‘cosmopolitan’ meant, but he nodded anyway. ‘Is nice place, Cooma,’ he agreed, enjoying her company and feeling more relaxed by the minute. He was proud to be seen with her. Several young men had called ‘G’day, Vi’ as they’d passed and he’d been aware of their admiring glances.

Violet’s prettiness had come as a surprise to everyone, especially her family. Throughout her childhood she’d been a freckle-faced tomboy who could outride and outrun every one of her male peers. And, as a late developer, with a chest as flat as a board at the age of sixteen, it had appeared she was destined to remain a tomboy. Then, shortly before her seventeenth birthday, she had blossomed, overnight it had seemed to her confused father. Already taller than average, her body had suddenly filled out to match her height until, like a healthy young mare, she was perfectly proportioned. Her face, too, had taken on a womanly glow, the Irish antecedents on her mother’s side clear in the colouring of her hair and skin. She was pretty rather than beautiful, but it was the bloom of youth and the sheer animal health of Violet Campbell that made her so attractive.

At the junction of Massie Street, as they neared the creek which meandered through town, a young woman crossing the road called, ‘Hello there, Vi.’

‘Hello, Grace,’ she called back. ‘That’s Grace Tibbert,’ she said, walking down the slope to where the bank was strewn with the early autumn leaf litter from the now bare-limbed trees. ‘She was two years ahead of me at school. She’s a receptionist at the Department of Main Roads now.’ Violet said it with the utmost respect.

‘Vi,’ Pietro said thoughtfully, as he took off his trench coat and spread it out on the grass for her.

‘Yes?’ She was so impressed by the offer of his coat that the response to her name was automatic.

‘People, they say Vi.’ He’d noticed that her fellow assistants and many of the customers at the shop also called her Vi.

‘Yes, but I prefer Violet,’ she said rather primly as she sat. ‘Thank you for the coat. Won’t you be a bit cold?’ He was in a short-sleeved shirt.

But he appeared not to hear. ‘Violet is more pretty,’ he agreed and he sat on the ground beside her. ‘In Italia we say Violetta.’

She was entranced, it sounded so beautiful. ‘Violetta,’ she said, but the way she said it, it didn’t sound beautiful at all. ‘Say it again.’

‘Violetta.’

Her intention to impress forgotten, Violet studied his mouth as he spoke the word. She loved the way his tongue seemed to rest on the ‘t’.

‘It’s much nicer than Violet,’ she said. ‘Say it again.’

‘Violetta.’ He sounded each syllable slowly.

She laughed, delighted. ‘Say something else in Italian,’ she urged, her eyes once again trained on his mouth.

Her enthusiasm was so beguiling that Pietro no longer felt in the least self-conscious. ‘Sei tanta carina, Violetta,’ he said softly. And, watching her eyes focussed on his mouth as he formed the words, he fell hopelessly in love.

‘What does it mean?’ Violet asked, breathless in her admiration. ‘What did you say?’ She thought that never, in the whole of her life, had she heard anything so romantic.

‘I say you are very pretty, Violetta.’

‘Oh.’ Her attention switching from his mouth to his eyes, she was taken aback by the intensity she saw there, and she found herself momentarily spellbound, just as Pietro himself had been in the shop. ‘Thank you,’ she said. Then, with an awkward laugh, she looked away, diverting her attention to the willows that graced the opposite bank, and the spell was broken. But not before it had been well and truly cast. Violet was feeling a little shaken.

‘Is true.’ Pietro’s confidence remained surprisingly intact. He was sorry if he’d embarrassed her but he’d been stating the truth.

‘Are your mum and dad still in Italy?’ She reverted to the safety of small talk.

‘They are dead. The war.’

‘Oh.’ She didn’t know what to say. She’d intended to ask about brothers and sisters as well, but now she didn’t dare – they might be dead too.

Realising he’d embarrassed her further, Pietro took up the baton. ‘Your family,’ he said, ‘you have brother? Sister?’

‘Two brothers,’ she said, smiling her gratitude. ‘They’re older than me, they help Dad on the property.’

‘Tell me of your property.’ Pietro hugged his knees to his chest and hunched forward eagerly, like a child awaiting a story, and Violet, once again on home ground, relaxed. Her family were cattle graziers, she said, they had been for generations, then she launched into a full account of her childhood.

He reacted in all the right places and in all the right ways. He was concerned to hear that she’d fractured her collarbone in her first gymkhana when she was ten years old, and impressed when she told him she’d got back on the horse and won the event anyway. ‘It was the way Dad taught us,’ she said with a touch of pride. And he laughed when she told him how she’d smuggled Beth, the blue heeler, into the house in the dead of night so that she could have her puppies on the sofa.

‘I was only six so I didn’t get into trouble,’ she said. ‘Dad actually thought it was funny, but Mum wasn’t too happy. A bitch having pups is pretty messy, I can tell you.’ She wondered briefly whether it was quite proper talking about birth to someone who wasn’t from the country, but she needn’t have worried.

‘I know this,’ he said, his laughter stopping abruptly. ‘I help my goat have her baby.’

‘Really?’ She was surprised. ‘You said you came from a big city.’

He was surprised himself. He’d forgotten about his goat’s baby, and the image that had flashed through his mind had startled him. His hand emerging from the animal’s womb, having turned the baby that had been pointing in the wrong direction. How had he known to do that? Who had taught him? His hand, covered in blood, the blood dropping scarlet onto the snow. It was an image he’d not seen before and he didn’t want to think about it. It was too dangerous. Automatically, his fingers strayed to his chest, and the strip of leather he could feel resting there beneath his shirt.

‘Before Milano,’ he said, ‘was farm. No matter. Go on,’ he urged. ‘Tell me more.’

She told him about the winter of ’49, when her father had been out rounding up stray cattle and hadn’t come home for nearly a week. ‘He was caught in a blizzard,’ she said. ‘Mum was really worried, but I knew he was fine. I’d only just turned thirteen, but I knew it. I was right, too. He’d been holed up in a cattleman’s hut living on rabbits. My dad’s a really good shot,’ she added boastfully, ‘and a week later he walked in the front door and said “bad weather up there”.’

Again, there was pride in her laughter, and Pietro noticed how much her father featured in her conversation. ‘You love your father very much,’ he said.

‘Oh yes, my dad’s my hero.’ Her dad had been her hero for as long as she could remember, which made the current rift between them all the more upsetting. ‘He’s a fine man,’ she added. She’d heard it said many times ever since she’d been a little girl – ‘he’s a fine man, your dad, Vi’ – and she’d always believed it. That’s why she hadn’t liked the glimpses she’d seen of him lately; she hadn’t found them fine at all.

‘And your farm,’ Pietro said, noticing that she’d become thoughtful. ‘You love your farm very much.’

She nodded, still distracted enough not to correct him. She would ordinarily have said, ‘We call it a property. Farmers grow crops – we’re graziers, we run cattle.’ She liked informing people of the difference.

‘Why you come to town?’ He could tell that he’d gained her attention with the question. He’d jolted her from her thoughts, and he hoped she didn’t mind. He hoped she didn’t consider him too inquisitive, but he was very interested in her story. ‘You talk much love of your father and your farm,’ he urged. ‘Why you leave? Why you come to live in Cooma?’

She hesitated. He’d not offended her by asking; she’d have liked to have confided in him. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, and it was the truth. What else could she say? ‘I don’t want a life like my mother’s.’? That’s what she’d thought at first. But then did she want a life like Auntie Maureen’s? That’s what her father most feared, she was sure of it, that she’d go the way of his own sister and leave the land. But she didn’t want to be a career woman like Auntie Maureen. She didn’t know what she wanted, it was too confusing. She only knew that she wanted her father to love her and to treat her the way he had when she was a child, instead of burdening her with his mistrust and suspicion.

‘You watch yourself, girl,’ he’d said to her, only last week, just before he’d headed home after the Cooma Show. He’d never called her ‘girl’ before, and he’d been even more aggressive than when she’d announced her intention to get a job and move into town. ‘It’d be just for a while, Dad,’ she’d said at the time, astounded by his belligerence. Fortunately her mum had intervened. ‘Be fair, Cam,’ Marge said. ‘You gave the boys time off when they finished school.’ He’d muttered something about it being ‘hardly the same’, but he’d had to give in. And then, when she’d been thrilled to see him in town for the Show, he’d been angry all over again. As if she’d done something wrong. ‘And I’ll tell you another thing,’ he’d said, ‘you keep away from Miss Minchin.’

Keep away from Miss Minchin? She wasn’t sure if she’d heard right. ‘Why?’

‘You just do like I say. You keep well away from her, girl, you hear me?’

‘But you always told me to listen to every word she said.’

‘Well, I changed my mind, didn’t I? I don’t want you hanging around her.’

‘But why?’

‘Because she’s not a good influence.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I bloody well say so, that’s why!’ And he’d stormed off without even a goodbye.

‘I suppose I just wanted a change,’ Violet said now, aware that Pietro was waiting for her to continue. ‘I’ll go home one day, it’s where I belong.’ But home to what, she wondered. She’d hated the several months after she’d left school. ‘You stay and help your mother, Vi,’ her dad had said at dawn as he and the boys had set off to work the property. And, along with the drudgery of cooking and cleaning, her mother had started her on an intensive course in book-keeping. ‘A bloke on the land needs a wife who can do the books, Vi,’ Marge had said, quoting her own mother-in-law. ‘Grandma Campbell taught me and now I’m teaching you. You’ll be running a property of your own one day.’ Marge was proud of her bookkeeping skills. The terror her mother-in-law had instilled in her long forgotten, Marge was proud to be a Campbell woman.

Violet had been shocked by the sudden change in her circumstances. It had seemed only yesterday she’d been treated like a son, accorded the respect of a son by her father, who’d loudly applauded when she’d outridden her older brothers. ‘That’s my Vi,’ he’d always boasted. But he no longer treated her like that. She was aware that she’d matured quickly, but that was hardly her fault. And while she enjoyed suddenly being attractive to boys and even occasionally flirting with them, she didn’t feel she’d done anything to warrant her father’s suspicion, and she wished that her mother would stop schooling her to be someone’s wife. Things were moving too fast.

‘I like working at Hallidays,’ she said brightly. She wished she could have spoken more openly to Pietro. It would be nice, she thought, to talk to someone other than Auntie Maureen, someone nearer her own age, but she didn’t know what to say. ‘It’s a very good store, one of the best in town. And Mr Halliday’s a very good boss.’

‘Yes. You say.’ She was changing the subject – he’d offended her. ‘I am sorry.’

‘Why?’

‘I ask too much questions.’

‘No,’ she said hastily; he looked so contrite. ‘No, it’s fine, honest.’ Then she had a sudden thought. ‘Do you know what the time is?’

Pietro looked at his watch. It was the first he’d ever owned and it had cost him a whole fortnight’s pay. He usually made a show of consulting it, hoping people would notice what a fine watch it was, but he didn’t this time. He’d offended her so deeply that she wanted to leave. He felt terrible, and automatically he flicked back his hair. ‘It is twenty minutes before one o’clock.’

‘Oh crikey, I have to go.’ She jumped up – she was only supposed to take half an hour for lunch and she was already ten minutes late.

‘Yes.’ Pietro stood, picking up the coat, looking away as he shook the grass from it, hoping that she wouldn’t notice how wretched he felt. He put the coat on. ‘I am sorry,’ he said again, giving another flick of the hair as he turned to her.

This time she didn’t find the action debonair at all. He believed that she was trying to get away from him, and the flick of his hair was an attempt to cover his embarrassment, she thought, taken aback by her own insightfulness.

‘I really am late, Pietro.’ It was the first time she’d attempted his name. She’d been too inhibited before – it was so Italian-sounding and she knew she’d get it wrong. But it didn’t matter now if she got it wrong, she wanted desperately to put him at ease.

Saying his name, however, was not enough. ‘Yes.’ His response was polite; it was plain he didn’t believe her.

Then Violet heard herself say, ‘There’s a dance at Dalgety Town Hall the Saturday after next, why don’t you come along? Do you like to dance?’

‘I like to dance very much.’ His smile was tentative, but hopeful.

Marvelling at her audacity, Violet continued, ‘I’m going with Trish and Mick. Trish and Mick work at the store, you would have seen them there.’ He nodded. ‘Well, Mick’s got a car and he’s driving us, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you came too.’ She had no right to make such an offer, she realised. Mick might well not wish for another passenger; after all, he didn’t even know Pietro.

‘No, is all right, thank you. I go with my friends Lucky and Peggy.’ Pietro couldn’t wipe the grin from his face. ‘Lucky and Peggy, too, like very much to dance.’ Confidence restored, he offered her his arm. ‘I can walk you to the shop?’ he asked.

She hesitated for only a moment. What the heck, why not? she thought. Let her be late for once – Trish and Mick sometimes took a full hour for lunch when Mr Halliday wasn’t there, so why shouldn’t she? Besides, she was interested in hearing about Lucky and Peggy. She accepted his arm. The Aussies never offered their arm, and it was such a stylish thing to do.

‘I’ve met Lucky,’ she said as, arms linked, they walked up the slope towards the street. ‘He’s been into the store with Miss Minchin a couple of times, he’s very nice.’

‘Yes, Peggy, she is his girlfriend. And Lucky, he is my very best friend,’ Pietro announced proudly. Anyone would be proud to have Lucky as his best friend.

Violet felt the vaguest sense of shock at the term ‘girlfriend’. ‘Girlfriend’ inferred that Miss Minchin and Lucky were a couple and, although she’d seen them together on several occasions, she had never considered them a couple. She’d simply been pleased that Miss Minchin, whose social life seemed to revolve around ladies’ committees, had a friend. She’d ignored the whispers that it was not proper Peggy Minchin be seen with that man, assuming the criticism was due to the fact that that man was a German. What was wrong with Miss Minchin having a friend who was a German? she’d wondered.

‘One bloke is as good – or as bad – as another, Vi,’ her father had said when the New Australians had first come to the area. ‘It’s not up to us to judge a person because they look or speak a bit different from us. Even the Germans,’ he’d said. ‘The war is over, and we’ve got to let bygones be bygones.’ It was one of the reasons why everyone said her father was a fine man, she’d thought at the time.

She now wondered briefly whether there might be another set of rules when it came to a ‘couple’. Could that perhaps be the reason for her father’s sudden disapproval of Miss Minchin? Violet was confused, both by the possibility of her father’s double standards and by the thought of Miss Minchin being someone’s girlfriend.

‘G’day Vi.’

‘Hello, Hazel.’ She returned the greeting of the middle-aged woman passing by, a friend of her Auntie Maureen’s. It was all too much to think about right now, Violet decided, she’d think about it later. But she noticed Hazel’s look at her arm curled through Pietro’s. Well, let Hazel talk, she thought, let them all talk. There was nothing wrong with accepting someone’s arm.

‘I’ll see you at the dance,’ she said as they arrived at the shopfront, ‘Saturday after next.’

‘Yes.’

‘Goodbye, Pietro.’ She said his name easily, without any inhibition, and as he smiled she noticed that he didn’t flick back his hair.

‘Goodbye, Violetta.’

She walked into the shop, and for the rest of the afternoon she thought about so many things, but mainly how handsome he was when he smiled.

 

‘You keep your hands off our women, you dirty Wog bastard!’

As the Aussie staggered past, punching wildly, the Pole stepped neatly to one side. He’d agreed to come out into the street rather than cause disruption at the dance, although he had no idea what he’d done wrong.

The night air stung with the spiky chill of autumn, and puffs of steam came out of men’s mouths as they gathered in the dim street. The nearby pub afforded no light, although the chinks beneath its doors and the soft glow through its windows signalled there was action in the back bar. The men could see plainly enough, though, by the light which poured through the open front doors of the Dalgety Municipal Hall opposite, where a local band from Cooma thumped out ‘The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B’ with surprising expertise.

The attractive colonial-style pub and the ugly squat stone building with DMH proudly inscribed above its door were the only two buildings of any note in Dalgety. Apart from a number of cottages and a small shop, there was nothing else. But as a river-crossing town on a major stock route, Dalgety’s pub and its old town hall saw a great deal of action. Tonight was no exception.

The Aussie lunged, and missed, again. Among the dozen or so men, several were trying to reason with their drunken mate while the others, although not bent on violence, looked at the Pole with venomous dislike.

‘Take it easy, Ken,’ one said.

‘Jesus, give it a rest, Kenny,’ said another. ‘He was just dancing, there’s nothing wrong with that.’

‘Nuthin’ wrong! He’s trying to pinch our women like all the rest of the bastards.’ A number of the men were clearly in agreement. ‘Come ’ere, you Wog prick, and fight!’ As he once more lurched forward, a friend grabbed his arm.

‘C’mon, mate, we’ll take you home.’

The well-meaning interference caught Ken off-balance and he sprawled heavily, face down, on the rough gravel road.

‘Oh shit!’ He scrambled to his knees, a hand to his bloodied nose. ‘Oh shit.’

Sergeant Merv Pritchard watched from the shadows of the Buckley’s Crossing pub. Well, hopefully that’d put an end to it, he thought. He hadn’t wanted to intervene unless it was absolutely necessary. No point in locking up Ken just for causing a disturbance. He was only like this when the grog was in him, and the Pole could obviously handle himself. Good of the bloke to step outside when he’d done nothing wrong, of course, but then that was the generally accepted rule. No fights inside. Even a bar brawl, it was understood, was to adjourn to the street.

Being a cop in the Snowy Mountains required a great degree of diplomacy, Merv had found. You couldn’t afford to throw your weight around needlessly, even if you had the muscle to do so. And big Merv Pritchard had more than enough muscle to down any bloke foolish enough to take him on. But the ten-man force stationed at Cooma was also required to police the smaller outlying towns and the mountain camps and, in such a male-dominated society, it would have been asking for trouble to come on too heavy. The whole area was a potential tinderbox of violence, and the coppers found it wiser to turn a blind eye to many an activity which elsewhere would have attracted police attention. Particularly gambling. The men needed to gamble, the coppers realised; it was their major form of entertainment. So the raids staged on the SP betting racket run out of the sports club in Cooma were purely for show, orchestrated well in advance and designed to cause minimal bother for all concerned. And the two-up games at the mountain camps, and the boxing matches and card games in which big money changed hands, were ignored unless violence came into play.

The coppers were also well aware that the men needed women, so a blind eye was turned to prostitution as well, so long as the girls weren’t too ostentatious. If prostitutes set themselves up discreetly in town for the several days of their stay and arrived and left the camps under the cover of darkness, they, too, were ignored for the most part. It was the pimps the coppers came down on hardest – they didn’t like the pimps, turning up with their caravans, a queue of men stretching for hundreds of yards waiting their turn. The pimps were the scum of the earth.

And as for the brawls … Well, you had to turn a blind eye to most of the brawls, Merv thought, watching Ken’s mates haul him to his feet. Men needed to get it out of their system. Strange, though, that it was the Aussies who caused the majority of the problems. The Aussies and the Paddies – the Irish, too, liked a bit of a stir. Jesus, you’d expect the Europeans’d be the ones to cause the trouble, wouldn’t you? But apart from the Yugoslavs, there was little to worry about. And even when the Serbs and the Croats had a go at each other they didn’t match the antagonism of the Aussies. Funny about that, he thought for the umpteenth time.

Merv kept his eye on the Pole as Ken was dragged away. He was pleased to see one or two of the men apologise. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he heard one of them say. But most of the others gave the Pole a dirty look as if it had all been his fault. When they’d shuffled off, he saw the Pole adjust his jacket and run a hand through his hair, preparing to return to the dance. Merv would have liked to have congratulated the man on his behaviour, but he decided against it. He’d seen the Pole’s acceptance of the situation. The Pole was a fit young man with the knowledge that he could defend himself against a drunk, but he had suffered Ken’s attempt to bully him as if it were his lot in life. As if it were something he was meant to endure. And Merv knew that this was the sort of man who would fear him if he were to step out of the darkness. He’d seen it often before, the panic in a man’s face when confronted by a uniform. A uniform was a reminder of a police state, or perhaps of something far worse, some hideous war experience beyond Merv’s comprehension. Unlike the Aussies, always quick to buck at authority and to whom a uniform could be like a red rag to a bull, Merv had found there were many New Australians who envisaged a policeman only as a persecutor. It was this element which required the greatest diplomacy of all, big Merv Pritchard thought as he watched the Pole walk back in to the dance.

Merv lit up a smoke. He could hear the murmur of men behind him in the pub. The odd guffaw of laughter, quickly stifled. It was ludicrous. They knew he was out here in the dark keeping watch on the dance and the general proceedings, and he knew they were in there drinking illegally. It was nine o’clock – they’d been illegally drinking for three hours, but Merv didn’t anticipate trouble. They’d be taking it easy by now, aware that there was no rush. It was the six o’clock swill that did it. Ever since the wowsers had forced early closing way back in 1915, men had been schooled to pour beer down their throats as fast as was humanly possible before the bars shut at six pm. It was why Ken, falling-down drunk as he usually was by six, especially on payday, had set out to pick a fight at the dance. It was why men went home and bashed up their wives. That was the aspect of police work that Merv hated the most. Domestic violence was a bastard to deal with, and in his opinion the six o’clock swill had a hell of a lot to do with it. There was talk of a change in the legislation, a call for later licensing laws and, as far as Merv was concerned, the sooner it came the better. In the meantime, the pubs managed to cheat. They had ‘cockatoos’ on the lookout, there was a secret knock on the door, a back room was reserved for after-hours drinking, and on it went. Yet another area the cops turned a blind eye to.

He glanced across at the town hall. A pretty girl had stepped outside. It was Vi Campbell, he realised. Jeez, who would have thought she’d turn into such a looker? And a bloke was with her. Handsome young bugger – Italian by the looks of it. Christ alive, she’d taken him by the hand! She was leading him down towards the river at the back of the town hall. Merv hoped there wouldn’t be any shenanigans – Jesus, what the hell would Cam have to say about that? He ground his cigarette butt out with the heel of his boot. Bit of a turn-up for the books, he thought; he’d never considered Vi that sort of girl. Despite her looks, she was still a baby at heart, an innocent young kid. At least that’s what he’d thought. Oh well, it was none of his business.

 

The night, though chilly, was clear and windless, and the light of the moon shone on the still, black water ahead as Violet and Pietro walked hand in hand down the rough track without talking.

‘The Snowy River,’ Pietro said when they arrived at the open grassy banks where graceful willows dipped their branches to the water’s edge. ‘She is so beautiful.’ He had adopted Lucky’s habit of referring to the river always in the feminine.

‘Yes,’ Violet agreed, and she slipped her hand out of his under the pretext of huddling her coat more firmly about her, although she wasn’t really cold. It had seemed perfectly natural to take his hand as they’d left the hall; after all, he hadn’t known where they were going. ‘This way,’ she’d said, when they’d decided to get away from the unpleasantness that had pervaded the dance. Now, standing alone hand in hand, she hoped he hadn’t found her too forward.

‘You are cold?’ he asked anxiously, and he started taking off his own coat.

‘No, Pietro,’ she laughed, her self-consciousness forgotten, ‘don’t you dare give me your coat, I’d feel terrible.’

Why would she feel terrible? he wondered, still poised with his coat half off.

‘I’m not cold,’ she insisted as she saw him hesitate. ‘Honest, I’m not!’

‘Very good.’ He shrugged his coat back over his shoulders and they stood in silence once more, looking at the river.

‘Does that happen very often?’ Violet asked after a moment or so.

‘What?’ he queried. He knew what she was referring to, but he wanted to buy a little time, to come up with the sort of answer Lucky might have. He’d been taken aback himself by the man’s aggression. Think you’re something, don’t you, mate, in your fancy clobber? That’s what the drunken Aussie had hissed at him, and Pietro had again wondered why his fine wool suit should receive such criticism, just as it had in Sydney. Well, you can go back to your own country, all of you Wogs, we don’t want you here, the Aussie had muttered before disappearing into the crowd.

Pietro had witnessed such antipathy before on several occasions, but it had never been so overtly directed at him, and he’d been bewildered: he didn’t know what he’d done to warrant it. Then, half an hour later, the same drunken man had forced the Pole, who had been dancing with an Australian girl, to leave the dance floor and go out into the street with him.

‘You know,’ Violet prompted. ‘People trying to pick a fight with you. Why did that bloke behave like that?’

‘He did not like I am with you.’ Pietro was aware that his reply sounded abrupt, and not at all the way Lucky would have put it, but he couldn’t come up with the right English words. He couldn’t even come up with a proper reason, he realised. Did the man consider him a threat? If so, why? He wished Lucky was with him, but Lucky hadn’t attended the dance; he’d already arranged to play chess with his doctor friend in Cooma, he’d said, and then he was dining with Peggy. Pietro had driven down to Dalgety with Elvio and Luigi Capelli in the brand new Chevrolet they’d bought in Sydney and of which they were inordinately proud. It was just as well he’d come with Elvio and Luigi, he now thought, the drunken Aussie was a bully and he would not have dared take on the Italian brigade. He’d hissed his insult privately to Pietro on the dance floor.

‘Oh, is that all?’ Violet was suddenly dismissive. Of course, that was it, she realised. ‘He was just jealous,’ she said. ‘A lot of the Aussies are.’

‘Why he is jealous?’

‘Because you New Australians have such good manners.’ She smiled, pleased that she’d sorted out the reason for the man’s venom, which she’d found disturbing. He was drunk and jealous, it was as simple as that. ‘Where did you learn to dance, Pietro? You’re a very good dancer.’

Pietro decided to put the incident behind him, for the moment anyway. If it didn’t bother her, then he would not allow it to bother him, although he felt the situation was not as simple as Violetta appeared to believe. He would discuss it with Lucky, he thought.

‘Sister Anna Maria, she teach me,’ he said.

‘A nun taught you to dance?’ She wondered if he was joking.

‘Yes. At the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Milano. Sister Anna Maria, she teach me many things.’

‘Oh.’ An orphanage, Violet thought, remembering that his parents had been killed in the war. She felt guilty. She shouldn’t have asked him questions.

But Pietro wanted to tell her about himself, as much as he was comfortable with anyway. He wouldn’t tell her about the farm and the goats though, that would be too dangerous.

‘Sister Anna Maria, she was like mother to me,’ he said. ‘And she was good teacher,’ he added earnestly. ‘I learn to read and to write at school. And Sister Anna Maria, she teach me to dance. And she teach me … how you say … good manners.’ He smiled. ‘She was very pretty, Violetta, like you.’

Pietro also remembered how, as a young boy, when he’d emerged from one of his fits, it had always been Sister Anna Maria comforting him, bathing his face and rocking him in her arms. In the early days Mother Superior had been cross with Sister Anna Maria for singling him out as her favourite. But when the doctor had diagnosed his epilepsy, Mother Superior had allowed Sister Anna Maria to pay him special attention, and so she had become the mother he had never known. He would have liked to have told Violetta all that, but he didn’t dare mention his fits – it might frighten her away. Or, worse still, talking about them might bring on a seizure, and he hadn’t had one since he’d been in Australia. So he told her about the convent instead, and the beautiful gardens he’d tended there, and Milano, a big city, he said, even bigger than Sydney. And he told her how, when he’d been working on the building site, he’d read in the newspapers that they were seeking workers in the Snowy Mountains of Australia.

‘So I come to Sydney,’ he said, ‘on a boat. A big, big boat.’ He held his arms out wide to signify just how big, and Violet laughed.

‘And then I come to Cooma.’ Pietro had not spoken at such length and with such enthusiasm for as long as he could remember; it was pouring out, he seemed unable to stop. ‘When I come here I am …’ he couldn’t think of the word ‘…confusione,’ he said in Italian before rattling on. ‘Where is this mountains, I think, where is this snow?’ He shrugged expressively, hands in the air, and, even in the dim light of the moon, his expression was so comical that Violet burst out laughing. He laughed along with her.

‘I am glad now I come here,’ he said, his burst of energy finally spent. He looked out at the river. ‘I love this place.’

‘I’m glad you came here too,’ she said.

He turned to her. She seemed to be hardly breathing, he thought as her eyes met his. Did she want him to kiss her? He would like to, very much, but did he dare? He wasn’t sure if he was good at kissing. There had only been that one time, with the prostitute in Milano, when his workmates had taken him to a brothel, insisting it was time he lost his virginity. He’d liked the prostitute, she’d been nice. And she’d called him her handsome boy. ‘Mio carino,’ she’d said and when he’d kissed her, clumsy in his excitement, she’d told him to go slowly. ‘Lento,’ she’d said, ‘lento.’ And when he’d slowed down, enjoying the feel of her mouth, she’d said, ‘buono, buono, mio carino.’ He’d liked kissing her, but when she’d guided him into her, everything had happened so fast. She’d felt indescribable, something he’d dreamed about, sinful as it was, and then suddenly everything had been over. He’d wanted to lie in her arms and feel her soft skin, but she’d jumped up from the bed and started washing herself with a flannel, and water from the basin on the wooden dresser. She hadn’t been unkind, just businesslike. ‘Non ti preoccupare, carino virgine mio,’ she’d laughed. She’d told him that it would be better next time, and then before he knew it he’d been outside in the street, his workmates thumping him on the back and congratulating him.

Violetta was still looking at him, she had remained motionless. She wanted him to kiss her, he was sure of it. He put a tentative hand on her shoulder. Still she didn’t move, and very slowly he brushed his lips against hers.

His mouth felt so soft, Violet thought. She’d wanted desperately for him to kiss her, but even as she’d willed it to happen, she’d hoped it wouldn’t be like the time with Craig McCauley. She’d been willing Craig McCauley to kiss her too, just so she could know what it was like. It had been three months ago, behind the pavilion hall during the school fundraising dance, and it had been horrible. He’d stuck his tongue in her mouth – halfway down her throat it had felt – and he’d grabbed at her breasts as he’d shoved her into the wall and ground his pelvis against hers. He’d been panting and sweaty and she’d felt his hardness sticking into her through her thin summer frock. She hadn’t been frightened. Only last year she’d gone to school with Craig McCauley, and she was sure she could still belt the living daylights out of him if she wanted to. So why didn’t she? she’d wondered as she put up with his mauling. Finally, she’d forced him away from her, and he seemed to come to his senses. ‘Sorry, Vi. Sorry,’ he’d panted before disappearing into the dark.

She’d thought about Craig’s kiss for the past three months. At night, in her bed, she’d rolled her tongue around her mouth imagining it was his and she’d been repulsed, but she’d also been fascinated. Was that what kissing was like? Real kissing that led to sex? The pursed-lips kisses she’d exchanged with boys in childish times, experimental to both parties, had never been like that. She remembered feeling his penis, hard against her, and, while that, too, repulsed her, she couldn’t get it out of her mind.

Now, she felt Pietro’s lips open slightly, and she opened her own in return, waiting for the tongue, not sure whether she dreaded it or wanted it.

Lento, Pietro thought, remembering the prostitute’s instructions, lento. And, without breaking the gentle rhythm of the kiss, he put his arms around her.

Violet’s eyes were closed, she felt as if she were floating, aware of nothing but the softness of their mouths and the warmth of his arms, and slowly her hands crept up to his chest.

Pietro was aware of everything. He was becoming aroused and he fought against it. He could feel the swell of her breasts beneath her coat, and he was careful to keep his groin away from hers so that she wouldn’t feel his erection. Finally he drew away; he must not allow things to go too fast, he must not frighten her.

She remained for a moment, eyes closed, lips parted. ‘Violetta,’ he murmured, softly stroking her hair.

Was it over? She opened her eyes. She wanted more. She had been prepared for the tongue, it would have been tender, like his lips; she would have welcomed it.

‘Is time we go back,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed.

He wanted to tell her he loved her, but he knew it was too soon to say the words, so he took her hand instead and they walked back to the hall.