Dark Clouds on the Mountain

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John Tully. Dark Clouds on the Mountain

DARK CLOUDS ON THE. MOUNTAIN

Prologue. Salamanca Place, Hobart, Tasmania. Near Ma Dwyer's Blue House. Winter 1948

I. South Hobart, Autumn 1991

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Epilogue. Cornelian Bay Cemetery, Hobart. Spring 1991

Aldo Martinuzzi. Born in Trieste, italy, 23 April 1925. Died in Hobart, 18 July 1948. Beloved husband of Dawn, Proud father of Giacomo

Notes

Author's Note

Acknowledgements

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John Tully has lived and worked in Melbourne for 25 years, but still sees himself as a Tasmanian expatriate. He visits his home state as often as possible to go walking in the mountains and to see old friends. He works as an academic at Victoria University in Footscray but 'in another life' he earned his living as a rigger in construction and heavy industry.

Tully is the author of a number of non-fiction and fiction books, including a short history of Cambodia and a forthcoming social history of the world rubber industry. He is an avid reader of historical works and crime fiction and believes that the latter is a much underestimated genre. His other hobbies include cycling and walking his beloved golden retriever. He lives with his wife in Melbourne's inner west and has three grown-up sons.

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The back room was Spartan, with a clutter of papers strewn over an ancient couch with the springs poking out. They spilled off the table too and out of a tall writing case that stood next to the stairs leading to the first floor. The white paint on the walls had faded to a dull grey and there was old lino on the floor. That had been there all those years before, Jack was sure. There were mounds of newspapers too, some still tied up in string from the printers. Jack had seen the paper, Workers Action, sold on street corners by earnest young men and women in all weathers. He had to give it to them for dedication. When he was on the beat, he'd watched one of them once - a tallish, well-built young man with thinning hair and a goatee - outside the ANZ bank. Patrick Banning, or something, they called him. Banning would have been lucky to sell half a dozen copies in an hour. Must have been due to the 'false consciousness' of the Hobartian proletariat, Jack had sneered. His daughter sometimes brought copies of the paper home and left them lying round, perhaps deliberately to annoy him. (She didn't know that he read them secretly and would have been surprised at his knowledge of the arcane world of the Australian revolutionary left.)

There was a large poster of Che Guevara on one wall with the slogan, smash capitalism emblazoned across the bottom in flaring red letters. A bust of Karl Marx peeped from behind the papers on the table. Another poster proclaimed that israel is occupied palestine. Bishop saw it and raised his eyebrows; he probably thought he'd jackpotted. Calvert sat facing them, crossing one blue-jeaned leg over the other fastidiously, an ironic smile tugging the corner of his mouth, his green eyes level. There was a faint smell, a hospital kind of smell, about him. Chloroform? Strong disinfectant, something like that, Jack mused. Maybe he was one of those obsessive-compulsive types; he certainly looked pretty scrubbed and pink; perhaps he was a chemistry student? If so, Jack hoped he didn't have a penchant for the 'TNT' -Transnational Terrorism' - that Bob Santamaria was always wittering on about in that 'Point of View' program on television. But the young man also smelled of strong tobacco, Drum, thought Jack, with a sudden deep craving; but no, the boy had gone one better, it was that lung-busting White Ox!

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