This Red Earth Read online

  Mrs Zoc points at the shelf full of six-pennies behind me through the lounge door and says: ‘You are reading these all the time. Why don’t you write one yourself? It will make the time go fast until Gordon comes home for you.’

  I look at the rainbow spines of my romances; the current one splayed open on the table by the wireless: The Thoroughbred. Will Joan Markham drown in the swollen river or will Douglas McRitchie reach her in time, and kiss her with actual lip contact? I laugh: ‘What on earth would I write about?’ A laugh that’s snipped off smartly by the fact that I can’t even write a proper letter to Gordon; couldn’t even find the words to tell him about Dad. About anything.

  Mrs Zoc shrugs but her eyes are full of fire again: ‘Write about love, bella.’ As if she does the same herself every Tuesday afternoon.

  ‘What’s that?’ Mum says, coming in through the kitchen.

  I sing over my shoulder: ‘It’s Mrs Zoc – she thinks I should have a go at writing a romance.’

  Mum frowns, and I’m sure the lines on her forehead have deepened over this past month. Lines that look sore. All she wants to see written is something from Dad. She says: ‘What are you doing home so early, Bernie?’

  I tell her: ‘I got the sack. Too slow.’

  And so I’ve got nothing better to do, have I. Might as well have a go.

  ‘How quickly do you think you might be able to send us the complete manuscript, Miss, ah, Brockley?’ says the gravelly voice on the end of the telephone line, a Mr Jacobs from Wonder Publications.

  You are joking. I’ve just walked in the door from overdue penance up at the Little Sisters of the Poor, making soup, carrot under my fingernails. Brockley. That’s me: Monica Brockley, concocted from my middle name and almost married one, because I didn’t imagine for a second … ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘The opening chapters you sent us are very promising. We would like to see the complete manuscript, your novel, ah, Paper Wings And Heart Strings.’

  ‘Er. Yes.’ Oh my blooping stars. There is no such thing. What have I done now? It was only a bit of distracting fun. I sat down to write about love all right, with every intention of rehashing the plot of one of the simplest, Dreams in the Dust – wild girl sets out to snare rich grazier but falls for poor man who turns out to be rich; lots of hand-feeding of lambs and panoramic outback landscapes while she’s being tamed. But then a flying boat zoomed over the top of the house from Rose Bay and I started romanticising about Rock instead, only I’ve called him Will Gordon, he’s on the plane to New Guinea and he hasn’t met me yet – because I’m the pilot, Miss Eugenia Frank, having some fun. Pretending I have nerves of steel. Gone to jelly now. ‘How, um, quickly might you want it?’

  Mr Jacobs grunts; clearly doesn’t like questions in reply, informs me gruffly: ‘As soon as possible. The company is expanding rapidly. This is an exciting time for Australian literature.’

  Literature? I almost laugh. We’re not discussing Penguin paperbacks here, nor Angus & Robertson’s actual respectable Australian literature – this is wonky type, cheaper than nasty newsprint paper, lolly-coloured covers stamped Complete Novel in case it’s not apparent in the reading, and I can’t imagine it’s very lucrative at any time. But I don’t laugh: this Mr Jacobs likes my two chapters! How long did they take me – just over a week? But a whole novel? Six-pennies are usually a hundred and something pages long, twenty chapters, eighteen blank ones in mine, so I can only tell him: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he grunts again, irritated, and then he says: ‘Well. Contact me again when your manuscript is complete.’ I open my mouth to give him a bewildered thankyou but he’s already said: ‘Good day, Miss Brockley.’ Clunk.

  I stare at the telephone for quite some time. The universe is expanding again, the earth is moving beneath my feet, but for the first time in my life it’s my universe. I’m going to do this. I’m going to write a novel. I’m going to write to Dad and tell him all about it – and he will be paralytic with laughter when he finds out I’ve made myself a pilot. Might be only talent for blarney, and maybe only a slim one at that, but it’s mine. And somehow, suddenly, I’m ready for anything. Ready for everything. Ready to order that magnolia shantung Mum’s had her eye on at Foy’s, for me, for my dress, for my wedding. Because I’m going to write a novel. I’m going to be a writer. Extravagant fiction today, cold fact tomorrow – Rock’s going to love this too, I know he will. How good is that? he’ll say, and he’ll lift me up and twirl me around in the air, for our happy beginning This is it, this is what I’ve been yearning for, all this time. This is the very end of my maybe.

  I run out the back. ‘Mum! Mum!’ She’s picking broad beans round by the shed and as she looks up I yell at her: ‘They like my story!’

  ‘Oh?’ Mum hasn’t read a novel in her life, I don’t think, but her face lights up as if I’ve won the Nobel Prize. ‘Oh, that’s marvellous, Bernie love!’

  ‘It is!’ I tear up the side path to yell it at Mrs Zoc too.

  I leap the little brick wall between our front yards and scream round to her door.

  Where I run smack bang into the rear end of a black suit, that turns and grabs me hard around the shoulders, growling: ‘What the–’

  I’m pinned with fright at his massive snarling face, bad breath steaming from a curled lip.

  His fists are cutting off the circulation in my arms as he spits: ‘Who are you?’

  The brim of his black fedora is shadowing his eyes; I think he must be a gangster. On Mrs Zoc’s doorstep? In my state of hyper-excitement, I’m sure I’ve crashed into the pages of a Chicago crime story. But I haven’t: his grip is hurting me, and I can hear the shriek in my protest: ‘Who are you?’

  Something about the menace of him relaxes and he releases my arms. ‘Detective Sergeant Price, Darlinghurst.’ He pulls his wallet from his suit coat and shows me what I suppose is proof of that.

  All I see is the word police. Something terrible has happened. ‘What?’ I demand of him. ‘What’s happened to Mrs Zoc?’

  ‘You know the person who resides in this house?’ His voice is as grim as the set of his mouth.

  ‘Of course I do,’ I answer him. ‘Mrs Zoccoli, I’m her neighbour. Please, what’s happened?’ What could have happened? She looked perfectly fine this morning when I saw her bringing in her sheets.

  His eyes narrow under their shadow. ‘You don’t follow the news?’

  ‘What news?’ I’ve hardly glanced at a paper or listened to the wireless for the past week; but this policeman pulls in his square chin, suspicious – of me? I try not to sound too impatient as I plead: ‘What?’

  He pauses for so long, eyeing me coldly, before he finally explains, in his flat constabulary drone: ‘Your neighbour has been arrested. She is an Italian citizen and, as Australia is now at war with Italy, she is an enemy alien and will be detained until such time as it may be established that she is not a danger to the Commonwealth.’

  ‘A danger to the Commonwealth?’ I look round him into her open door. This is too absurd, you couldn’t make it up. I stare at Mrs Zoc’s umbrella, there, hanging on the coat stand, where it always hangs. I can’t quite comprehend what Italy has to do with anything here. We’re at war with them now too? So what: no surprise. They’re fascists just like the Nazis, aren’t they? And the fascists are the reason the Zoccolis left Sicily. Shock makes me burst: ‘You can’t go around arresting people just because they’re Italian – and anyway, she’s Sicilian.’ As I’m sure she’s pointed out herself.

  But this Policeman Detective Price or whatever his name is doesn’t even blink as he enlightens me not one dot further: ‘Every unnaturalised Italian is or will be subject to police scrutiny, as will any sympathisers to the fascist cause.’ He gives me another long, cold stare before: ‘And your name is … ?’

  ‘Bernadette Cooper,’ I tell him, not withholding the dare in my tone: arrest me and you’ll find out how much of a fascist sympathiser Captain William Cooper’s daughter
is. I’m not even sure what a fascist is, apart from a bully. Bullies that need to be stood up to. I’d like to stand up to the one in front of me, but Mrs Zoc has just appeared behind his shoulder, walking towards us, another black-suited detective behind her; she’s carrying a biscuit tin, the one she keeps her milk money in, and a small green suitcase.

  ‘It is all right, Bernadetta. There is a misunderstanding.’ Her voice is steady but she looks pale, frail with fear. ‘If I am not back by six o’clock, please feed Piccolo for me.’ Her little grey tabby.

  ‘Of course I will,’ I promise as another black suit emerges from the side path. Three of them altogether, three big, broad men arresting one little old lady? This is not right. As they head up the path towards a big black sedan on the street I burst again, with dread: ‘Where are you taking her?’

  I am ignored as they usher Mrs Zoc into the back seat. She disappears between their shoulders and they drive away. I stare at the empty street, as if I could conjure Dad’s ute if I stare hard enough, as if I would chase gangster policemen in it, as if I could drive anyway. I try to catch and hold on to the idea that this is just a misunderstanding. Mrs Zoc is no fascist, and she’ll prove it easily. Her Marco fought in the Great War on our side, and left Sicily to get away from the Fat Head’s black shirts, as well as the Mafia. To be safe, you either had to join the Fascisti or go in with the Mafioso: not much of a choice. I don’t remember Mr Zoccoli much except for his waxed ringmaster moustache and matching ho-ho-ho laugh; I was only eight when he died, but I know Dad liked him, a great deal, and that’s proof enough for me. Mr Zoccoli was a fruit grower, who only wanted to set up his boys for the future – and finished himself off by achieving it, in Dad’s opinion. Those Zoccoli boys are North Queensland fruit barons today. And they will sort this ridiculous business out.

  I let myself back into the house with the key from under the rosemary pot and look for the address book in the drawer of Mrs Zoc’s telephone table. But it’s not there: she must’ve taken it with her. Not to worry, there won’t be many Zoccolis out of the Townsville exchange, will there, so I try the trunk telephonist at our exchange, who puts me through to another who tells me: ‘Yes, madam, there are two numbers: one for Zoccoli Brothers Pty Ltd at Horseshoe Lagoon and another at a residence in Shirbourne.’ Shirbourne – that’s where Armando’s new place is. He’s the eldest, Manny, in the midst of protracted marriage negotiations over a good Palermo girl whose father now wants to see photographs of the house before assenting – Stupido Siciliano if you ask Mrs Zoc. I ask the telephonist to try the Horseshoe one first, but there’s something wrong with the connection, the line must be down, she says; then she tries the Shirbourne one and comes back to me with: ‘I’m sorry, madam, that line is disconnected.’

  ‘That’s not right,’ I say. That can’t be right: the Shirbourne house is brand new and waiting for a wife.

  ‘I’m sorry, madam, is there another number you’d like me to try?’

  ‘No. Thanks.’ I hang up the phone and look up at the photo­graphs above the mantelpiece, her three sons, dreamy smiling eyes beneath their father’s ringmaster moustache, the gilt crucifix beneath them, a shrine to the loves of Mrs Zoc’s life. Piccolo meows and nudges my ankle, and as I glance down at him I see the calendar beside the phone says Friday June 14, when it’s really Thursday but Mrs Zoc cuts out all the thirteens, and my blood runs cold. The Zoccoli brothers: they’ve been arrested too, haven’t they.

  Yes, they have, I finally manage to get a straight answer more than twenty-four hours and a dozen telephone calls later from a peachy-faced constable at the police headquarters in Hunter Street, in town, with the unenviable job of fielding inquiries about disappearing Italian neighbours. Behind me is a carnival of fraying Latin tempers and threats of further arrests, and the young constable, no older than me, appears to have reached a place over the other side of exhaustion as he sighs: ‘I can’t say where they are being held, but the three Zoccoli men have been interned and their property confiscated due to the evidence against them.’

  Don’t bother asking what evidence; instead I lean on the counter, alert him to my credentials. ‘What about Mrs Zoccoli, their mother – where is she?’

  He tells my breasts: ‘I can’t say, miss. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Give me your best guess, then,’ I lower my voice: Come on, Johnny.

  But he repeats for my face: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say, miss.’

  Can’t sway him. Unbelievable. I’d tell him this can’t be legal, treating people this way, but as I’ve been told in no uncertain terms and several times over the last twenty-four hours – by Darlinghurst Police, Darlinghurst Gaol, Long Bay Gaol, Liverpool internment camp, Dad’s solicitor Mr McLean and the report in the Herald this morning – it is perfectly legal. Unnaturalised Italians have no rights – not to a lawyer, a visitor, a phone call, or even a charge. I don’t know what to do now, except silently curse the Zoccoli brothers for being either too stupido Siciliano or too busy to get themselves naturalised at the twelve-year eligibility mark, and I’m about to send myself back home again to stew when the constable pushes a small piece of notepaper across the counter with another heavy sigh.

  ‘Here – I’m not supposed to say this,’ he mutters under his breath as I look down at the note, two telephone numbers, ‘but try contacting the camp in Orange. It’s where all the prisoners from Sydney are being sent on to. The ones in Queensland, try Stuart Prison in Townsville.’

  Prisoners? Prison? This is wrong. I can accept the possibility that the brothers might have done something to warrant suspicion; they’re cheeky types. Tony’s got a black mark with the police – had to pay a fine once for calling out to a girl up at the Spot, but that was years ago. I can’t accept their mother being treated like a criminal on any account, though, not to mention deepening the frown lines on my own mother’s face. Mum is having several litters of kittens a minute. And for what? The Biggest Round-up of Aliens in the History of Australia, the Herald is calling it. And it certainly looks like it: half the coffee lounges from Foy’s down to DJ’s have closed until further notice, and the other half have signs in their windows like the one at our Niagara that reads in letters three inches tall: We are not Italians. We are Greeks and we are naturalised. Long live King George! There was no such carry-on against the Germans last September, was there. Why not? Maybe because, back then, Pig Face didn’t need a public distraction from the cold fact that our government is pouring rivers of our men and money into an army that remains idling in the desert waiting for the British to tell it what to do, while the British themselves have been busy getting chased off the Continent and calling it the Miracle of Dunkirk. And there’s an election due soon, isn’t there? Hope it’s set for after my twenty-first. I won’t be voting for the United Australia Party.

  ‘Miss?’ the young policeman pushes the slip of paper across the counter at me again, a plea in his eyes, weary glance at the mayhem going on behind me: Please, take it and go away.

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you,’ I slip it into my handbag as I call for calm from myself: I have work to do too now, don’t I. Keep my universe tight and trained around the task until further notice; before I win the Nobel Prize for Romance, I have to find Mrs Zoc.

  GORDON

  ‘She’s gone where?’ I ask Mrs Cooper, who doesn’t much sound on top of things. Mr Cooper has been sent to Palestine, Mrs Zoc has been interned, and I think she’s just said Bernie’s followed her to a camp in Orange. I’m feeling the distance something terrible.

  ‘To Orange, Gordon dear, on the train this morning.’ Mrs Cooper’s voice seems sad and tired. ‘Bernadette thought if she goes in person she’ll have a better chance of finding out if Emilia, if Mrs Zoccoli, is there.’

  I can’t follow what’s gone on, but I can hear in the way Mrs Cooper’s said Emilia, using her Christian name, that she’s very upset. So am I. Interned? What in blazes for? I ask her: ‘Do you want me to come home? Just say so and I will.’ Somehow get leave.


  ‘No!’ Mrs Cooper gives me one of her squawks, as Bernie calls them. ‘You can’t interrupt your career! This internment business will all blow over. It’s only a misunderstanding. It’s a madhouse here at the moment.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m sure it is.’ It is here in Rabaul too. France has signed an armistice with Germany, and since I got back into town last night I’ve not heard anyone talk of anything else. It means Germany and Italy control Europe north and south now, so why wouldn’t Germany want their piece of the Pacific back too? The Administrator has given orders to round up every last Lutheran missionary on the island and confiscate their Bibles just in case the Nazis aren’t clever enough to come up with a better disguise. I’m more worried at this moment that Bernie hasn’t written to me, though, shared none of her worries with me. But why would she, I suppose, when there’s nothing I can do to help from here?

  ‘Gordon,’ Mrs Cooper’s voice firms up and she sounds more herself, ‘you mustn’t get any ideas about doing anything other than what you are doing right now. You know Bill would not approve, and neither would your father. You must promise me you won’t do anything silly.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, I promise I won’t.’ I have no intention of taking up arms. Last night at the bar a few of the militia blokes seemed to have turned a bit enthusiastic for it, and it wasn’t just rummed-up talk. One of them, Sid Triscombe, who’s Johno’s CO in the Rifles, put the hard word on me about my national service. He’s also a veteran, with some old score. I told him I’d do my service when I’m back in town for more than five minutes. I don’t think the Department of Home Defence will disagree in the long run and I still haven’t heard anything from them to the contrary. The most important war service I have to perform is to keep on doing what I’m doing right now and find oil. If Australia ever got cut off from the high-grade British supplies from Malaya … that’s never going to happen, but –