ANTONIO
“This bloody Australia,” he said aloud, bitterly. “I should never have come.”
But there was no escape. He would have to marry her. It was his duty.
He looked about him and saw the country with its flat landscape, its clouds of flies that settled on the outside of screen doors, its merciless heat and its suspicious people. And he saw Ruth, a girl he had grown to despise…managia la miseria!
RUTH
The beating of her head against the crumbling bark of the tree almost lulled her at first…then a voice inside her put words to the rhythm and the pain: STUpid, Ugly, HOPEless, I HATE you, no-one could EVER love you, you might as well DIE.
Yes, the pain was good: sharp and clean. It spread down through her belly and her womb, right down to Antonio’s Seed.
NATALIE
She knew what would happen…Papa would plug in the electric clippers, and Chris would hunch his shoulders, flinch and pull away as the clippers buzzed and grabbed at the hairs on his neck…yet she jumped when Papa growled.
“Sit up straight!”
She wanted to put her hands over her ears, but she copied Mummy and pretended nothing was happening. She picked up a strand of wormy-wet spaghetti and dropped it into the bucket…it’s only a haircut, she told herself. He’s not murdering him.
