SIXTEEN

If Carlo felt the arrangements about painting the portrait had been settled, he soon discovered it was premature. Their private meeting after Thompson had left them alone seemed to consist of problems, beginning with a dispute over whether he could work as a prisoner-of-war for her husband, while finding time to complete a portrait of her. In this discussion, she asked him to drop the label ‘Miss Tiffany’, and he admitted it had been a tactic, trying not to upset Mister Thompson more than necessary. Although she smiled at this remark he had a restless night, and when they met again the next day, after she’d suggested they think about it overnight, Tiffany seemed to be even more uncertain.

“Do you really wish to do it?” It came as an initial disturbing question from her, the moment they were alone again.

“Very much.”

“Are you sure? Not ‘just thinking about it’, like you said yesterday?”

He tried to explain. “I could see your husband was against it. Hence my rant.” It produced no reply, so he hesitated then asked, “Has there been some sort of change overnight, Tiffany?”

“He thinks you only want to do this for one reason, to avoid any hard work. So please tell me the truth.”

“The truth is I grew up on hard work, but I really miss painting. I would have been at the Villa Medici in Rome, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but I won a scholarship there. Instead I was hijacked for the army and then captured. That’s the absolute truth. I’ll do my share of hard work when this is over, but I would like to paint you first.”

“He says you should be working like all the others, and painting me in the odd moments.”

“I think that might produce a very odd portrait,” said Carlo, at the point of giving up.

He saw the comment made an impact on her, but tried not to hope any longer. This had begun to feel like the prelude to another disappointment—the locked doors of the Medici over again. Would bloody-minded Tommo prevail? It seemed so, for Carlo was ordered to spend the day at work with the group repairing the cattle yard. He found himself cutting and hammering timber all day, sleeping that second night on the blanket that provided little comfort from the steel springs, with nothing resolved. He tried not to feel frustrated or disappointed, lying awake thinking about Tiffany, regretting that for one so young, rich and good looking, she seemed surprisingly timid and insecure.

But he was proved wrong. After two more days at the cattle yard and queued up with the other workers to be taken there for a third by truck, Carlo was abruptly ordered to wait. The truck arrived to take the others and he sat wondering what would happen next. Half an hour later Tiffany arrived to collect him in her MG sports car. He learned she had confronted Thompson. He later found out it had incited a row that had raged half the night.

“Where are we going?” he asked her.

“You’ll need paints and brushes,” she said. “I’ve talked to a shop in town and they’re expecting us. Do you want an easel?”

“If possible.”

“Anything is possible!” She sounded eager but clashed the gears as they moved off. “Sorry. I didn’t have much sleep. Tommo took some convincing about this. He wasn’t in the best of moods. Can you drive?”

“I’ve driven trucks at home. But I’ve got no licence for here.”

“Then we’ll stop at the house,” she decided. “I’ll rest for an hour to avoid any major traffic calamity. You could do with a shower and change of clothes.”

“What clothes?”

“They belong to my cousin.” She glanced at him. “They should fit, he’s about your size. He’s in New Guinea, fighting the Japanese.”

She drove the short distance to the homestead, where the interior was even more impressive than he’d imagined. There was a spacious entry hall, with a polished rosewood floor and Kirman carpets. A young housemaid was dusting, smiling at Tiffany and giving him a glance as Carlo followed her up a wide staircase. The top floor contained several large bedrooms with balconies and a corridor that led to a secluded wing with other rooms—one of them completely empty.

“This was to be a nursery if we ever had children. I thought it might make a suitable studio, Carlo. How do you feel about that?”

He felt almost speechless. For the first time he began to accept this was no longer an illusion. He’d been wrong. She was young and certainly beautiful, but not insecure.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked. He became aware he was staring at her. “I look a mess now, but I’ll rally after a short kip.”

“You look like a princess,” he replied. “A tired princess but I can’t wait to start putting you on canvas. Does that sound crazy?”

Tiffany Watson had an enchanting smile. “It sounds exciting,” she said.

The town was different to places this size in Italy, the wide streets typical of country Australia, she told him. There was a century old court house, a fine council chambers, and a dominating hotel that instantly took Carlo’s attention with its impressive architecture and ornamental upstairs balconies.

“Che meraviglia,” he murmured.

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“Very fine. The hotel.”

“You see lots of them in country towns,” Tiffany said, “from the days people travelled by horse and buggy or humped their swags…”

“Humped swags?” he asked, mystified.

“Carried belongings on their backs. They’d stop here to quench their thirst, at least the white men did. Not the women. They drank in a back room.”

“That seems strange.”

“We were second class citizens in those days. Still are in some places. The Aborigines were not allowed in those pubs at all. If you’re going to ask why, it was the colour of their skin.”

“It seems hardly fair,” Carlo said. “Weren’t they here first?”

“That’s right,” she smiled at him. “It takes a visitor from Italy to remind us of our bigotry.”

“I enjoy being called a visitor instead of a dago or a wop.”

“That’s the sad and stupid idiolect of today’s true bigots,” he heard her say quietly. He didn’t fully understand what it meant, but felt he knew which bigot she was referring to as they parked and went inside.

The art shop was small but surprisingly well stocked. There were a selection of easels, a wide variety of different sized boards and canvas, as well as oil paints in every colour. There were also frames, plain and ornamental, to be found in a storeroom behind the main shop. The owners were an elderly man and his middle-aged daughter, eager to oblige their well-known customer.

Tiffany no longer looked tired, he realised. The restful hour had made a difference. She seemed fresh and eager, introducing Carlo simply as an artist friend. She chatted with the owners while he roamed the store to pick out what he needed. He knew he was arousing their curiosity but felt at ease in this familiar surrounding. Her cousin’s clothes were a perfect fit and he was not only refreshed from the rare luxury of a hot shower, but amazed at the events of the morning. First the room she’d cleared to be their studio. Then the startling sight of a small bedroom next door with its own bathroom.

“Who for?” he’d asked, until remembering the ambiguities of the English language. “I mean for whom?”

“For you,” was the astounding answer. After three years of life in army tents and filthy prison camps, with just the few weeks of shipboard solace, the thought of this comfort was beyond belief. But would it be allowed? The idea of Thompson agreeing to this was surely impossible.

She’d noticed the gleam of hope and saw how it faded. There’d be some protests she told him but promised it was his room until the portrait was done.

“He’ll hit the roof,” Carlo said. This was one of the few colloquialisms he knew, and it made her smile.

“He might,” she’d agreed, “but you must let me handle that. I want the portrait to be a success and I think that is best achieved by providing you with some modest comfort.”

He chose his purchases carefully, filling a basket with the equipment and all the paints he needed, then picking out an easel. Tiffany meanwhile had found an expensive frame but Carlo advised this could wait.

“We’re going to need it so why wait?” she asked.

“For a start, we haven’t settled on the size yet. But most of all, we must be sure you approve of the portrait when it’s finished. We can bring the result back to be framed. But only if you really like it.”

“I already know I’ll like it,” she asserted, so eager that he made no further comment. She bought it, not realising the pressure this assurance had on him. Tiffany signed a cheque for the amount and the owners carried the purchases to the car wishing him loads of good luck. More pressure, he thought. ‘The news will be all over town if I fail.’ But he accepted their cordial handshakes with a smile.

He was silent on the return trip, trying not to visualise headlines in the local newspaper: ‘Eyetie flops with his portrait of Miss Watson.’ Conscious of his silence but not knowing the cause of it, she turned on the car radio to hear an orchestra playing Moonlight Serenade followed by Chattanooga Choo Choo.

“Glenn Miller,” he said, surprising her. “I heard his records on the ship. My friends in the wireless room were fans.” Seeing her look puzzled he added, “It was a special hideaway. They made me an honorary member.”

She was intrigued, eager to know more. He told her of the night the first officer had rescued him from injury by the marine guards and the way Ted and the other two naval officers had all become friends. How they had deemed him a ‘mate’ and made a pact to meet up after the war. He began to find her increasingly easy to talk to, a keen listener, amused at how they’d smuggled him into their private space as a patient, sympathising at the dreadful conditions in the depths of the vessel.

She was normally a fast driver in the sports car, but he soon realised she had reduced speed in order to hear more. It was the first time they’d spoken of his past, or of almost anything excepting the portrait and this suddenly created a new affinity between them. For him it was a relief from stress, for her it was a rare experience. There were not many people Tiffany could converse with apart from her husband; listening to these parts of Carlo’s life in northern Italy was like hearing about another world. She encouraged him with lots of questions and he found he was comfortable responding with the answers.

“When did you start to paint?” she asked. He told her of his mother’s life as an artist and teacher and the fierce battle between his parents, how he had almost settled on a life between working on their vineyard and in his attic studio after hours.

“You grew up on a vineyard!” She looked startled and quickly said under no circumstances should he let her husband know about it. When he asked her why not she seemed to become slightly evasive, saying Tommo had a particular interest in his few acres of grapes. That was when Carlo took the hint, changing the subject to make her laugh with his story about Gushing Gaston, the headmaster who’d unsuccessfully lusted after his mother. He also described his embarrassing live model test at the Villa Medici (without mention of Silvana) and the surprise at being awarded the scholarship—until the day it ended in disaster.

“What a disappointment,” she sympathised on hearing how Mussolini’s declaration had led to the locked gallery doors. A short time later she said his seizure by the Blackshirts and being forced to join the army was really terrible.

“Not the luckiest days of my life,” he agreed. “I felt on the top of the world, then down in the gutter. I was a lousy soldier, and not very dismayed to be taken prisoner,” he admitted, surprising himself by how much he felt able to confide in her.

There was much more she wanted to know but by now they had passed the main homestead and were approaching the POW barracks. It was empty with all the others still out in the fields at work, so she waited in the car while Carlo went to collect his few belongings. A duty guard came to ask her why a prisoner-of-war, this captured enemy soldier, was being allowed to leave like this? She promptly said Carlo Minnelli was an artist and hardly deserved to be called an enemy soldier. He would now be billeted at the main homestead to do some painting at her own request.

The guard was a new employee and unimpressed. “Does your hubby know of these arrangements?” he asked her.

Tiffany, who disliked the expression ‘hubby’ as much as she resented the condescension, suggested if he wanted to keep the job he’d best remember she, not her husband, was the owner of this place. And if he had a problem with that, he could pack his bags. Carlo emerged in time to hear this and to see the guard make a stammering apology. When they drove off she was smiling broadly. “I think that sorted him out,” she said.

“Beautifully,” Carlo answered. It was clear they’d made a lot of progress since her diffidence of the previous days.

“He was like the white men drinking in the front room, believing women like me should be in the back parlour.”

“A paid-up member of the misogynist society.”

“Absolutely.” She was clearly pleased at the accord. “In these country areas there are lots of those. My father was one. I’ll tell you about it someday, when we know each other better.”

Progress indeed, he thought. The brief journey back to the house was made in relaxed silence. Carlo carried the purchases up to the studio, then she helped him arrange the adjoining bedroom and its connecting bathroom. It felt unreal after so long to be doing simple things like placing his toothbrush and paste on his own private wash basin. It was a joy to just look around his tiny kingdom and contemplate the prospect of washing with soap beneath a shower where he could turn on a tap for hot water. And to think he’d be able to use gentle rolls of toilet paper and not have a black bum from pages of the daily newspapers. Mundane treats, but sheer luxury to Carlo; he could only wonder how long he might enjoy this opulent alternative?

Perhaps it was the guard’s intervention but as he distributed his sparse belongings in the room, he remembered a vital and critical fact. Thompson did not yet know about these arrangements, unless it had been discussed and agreed during their previous sleepless night. But he doubted that. Her bull-necked husband almost certainly did not know about the studio or the nest next door. What did the British call it? A pad, that was the word. So what was likely to happen when Tommo Thompson, pugilist and a former prison turnkey found out, not just about the studio, but about the pad? Tiffany seemed unconcerned, or at least made no mention of it. By now Carlo knew her well enough to be sure if this had been agreed with her husband, she would’ve said something.

While he tried to set up the studio, she went downstairs and returned with a tray containing coffee plus a lunch of tasty tomato and cheese sandwiches. The maid who’d been dusting in the hall that morning arrived with two chairs for them, this time acknowledging him with a shy nod. She and Tiffany had a brief discussion outside the room while he adjusted the easel. He heard nothing of the exchange, except Tiffany’s one word, danke, as the girl left. From that he assumed she was German.

“Do you have many staff?” he asked while they sat eating. The bread was soft and fresh, a stark contrast to yesterday’s stale POW offering.

“Just Sigrid. I don’t need a house full of servants. She’s rather special.”

“From overseas?”

“Germany. She’s Jewish. Her parents were arrested on Kristallnacht, and have never been heard of since. She came here as a refugee. I hope she’ll think of this as home in time, because everyone in her family has vanished.”

“Poor girl. Has she been with you long?”

“Since my father died. Nearly two years now. He arranged her passage to Australia on one of those big liners that became hell ships like the Dunera, filled with people just desperate to get away from Hitler.”

“We heard talk of those concentration camps, ever since the Nazis came to power.”

“I hate the bloody Nazis. What’s it like in Italy for Jewish people?” she asked.

“There’s never been any real problems or vocal anti-Semitism. But my mother thinks it’s likely because of the Berlin agreement. She says Mussolini’s raving mad for making us allies with Hitler.”

“Your mother sounds nice. Would I like her?”

“I think you would. Not my father. He’s right-wing, a devoted fascist.”

“That tells me you dislike his politics. But do you also dislike him?”

“Sometimes I do…it’s not easy.” He told her about his last birthday party and the evening after it. “Watching him go upstairs to that room where he’d slept alone for so long, I think we all felt sorry for what had happened.”

He told her of the secret portrait of Salvatore and the time he’d spent on it. How it had been the painting that helped him gain the scholarship, the best work he’d done, and how he’d wanted his father to see it, but it was locked up in the Villa Medici until the end of the war.

There were lots of questions Carlo wanted to ask her but felt they could wait; he wanted to avoid being too intrusive. It was Tiffany who wished to talk more about his life in Lombardy and she brought the conversation back to his years with his father on the family vineyard.

“I don’t think we’ll mention that to Tommo,” she said, “he’s always on the search for people with experience of vines, but you mustn’t work for him.”

Carlo was about to ask the reason for this when she said, “I think I’d better tell you now, we’re going to have some aggravation this afternoon. My husband is not going to be pleased. But whatever happens, it’s much better if he does not know anything about your family vineyard.”

“Will it make a difference?” Carlo was puzzled.

“Perhaps not. It’s just best for him not to know.” As if to convince him she said, “The vines on this property are not mine, Carlo, and the less said about your past experience, the better. Will you trust me on this?”

It felt like some sort of conspiracy, but he had to trust her and assured her he would. She thanked him and went to collect her camera, for he’d spoken of wanting to begin by taking a few photos of her. After this he did a rough pencil sketch. As the time passed he began to notice her change of happy mood to a feeling of unrest. It soon became more noticeable, a strained afternoon with a heightening tension. The easy pleasure of their shopping jaunt and her relaxed enjoyment of the day seemed to fade into awkward silences. It began to affect him; their conversation became stilted, as if they both felt they were waiting for something unpredictable, like a storm. Neither of them, least of all Carlo, could have foreseen the violence of that storm when it happened.

His arrival home was marked by a loud and cheerful tooting of the horn in the Buick but within moments this transformed into a vocal rage and then a violent physical assault. Carlo had never seen fury like it. Tommo was at first incredulous, then fiercely angry at being told about the studio. But that was nothing compared with what happened when he came upstairs to see the neat and adjacent bedroom.

“Who the fucking hell decided this?” he bellowed, and without waiting for an answer he slapped Tiffany’s face with such force it almost knocked her over. Then he grabbed her, not to save her from falling, but so he could punch her with his closed fist. “You must be raving bloody mad,” he viciously spat the words at her, along with a stream of saliva. He kept on hitting her and as Carlo tried to prevent this, Thompson swung and belted him with a wild blow that knocked him right across the room and crashing against the easel. He was there in a flash, holding the tripod threateningly above Carlo as though to impale him with it. Instead he turned and hurled it through the window. Glass shattered and flew everywhere, with Tiffany frantically trying to shield her eyes and dodge the lethal slivers.

Yelling more abuse at her, Thompson lashed out and hit her again, then went into the bedroom and smashed that window as well, throwing Carlo’s bag and contents outside, then ripping the quilt and sheets off the bed to hurl them in the same direction. All the while he kept shouting abuse at Tiffany, calling her a cunt, a dirty bitch, a stupid spoiled slut, hitting her continually, all his feverish malevolence focussed entirely on her. Carlo made another attempt to stop him, only to be sent reeling again as Thompson dealt him another savage blow. He then resumed his attack on his wife, this time shaking her body ferociously while he continued his stream of abuse at her. She was hurt and screaming out for help, until everything abruptly changed.

As Tiffany managed to break free of him, Carlo saw Thompson stagger as though he’d been hit. Trying to understand what happened, he managed to get to his feet and saw Sigrid was in the room with a canister, spraying the contents of it in Thompson’s face. He reeled, clawing at his eyes as if he was blind. Still dazed, Carlo realised Thompson was now almost helpless, his abuse becoming incoherent, his hands trying to protect his face as the spray tormented his eyes. He swayed and stumbled, still shouting angrily. Carlo could just make out the torrent of vitriol now directed at Sigrid.

“Stop it you little German bitch or I’ll kill you,” he screamed, but she took no notice, charging at him with the spray and getting dangerously close. He tried to grab her but over-reached and fell backwards to land heavily on the floor. She gave a shout of triumph. “I should’ve used this when you tried to rape me,” she yelled back at him. Carlo saw her toss the metal canister aside and pull out another from inside her dress.

The fresh spray engulfed Thompson, but he got to his feet, blundering forward and trying once more to reach her. That was when Tiffany tripped him and he crashed to the floor again. She snatched the spray from Sigrid and stood over him to direct a gust into his face. He was gasping for breath and unable to get up this time.

“Call the police,” she said to Sigrid.

“I have.” Carlo heard her reply to his surprise. When on earth had that happened, he wondered? Everything had seemed a blur to him from the first of Thompson’s blows.

“Did he really try to rape her?” he asked Tiffany.

“A week ago,” she said. “That was why we got these.” She gave him the canister. “If he even moves, give him another dose. Don’t let him get up.”

She left them alone for a few moments and returned with a length of thin chain and a padlock. Thompson was too weak to prevent her from securing it tightly around his legs. A surprisingly short time after this, they heard the approach of police sirens.