Free Shame and the Captives by Thomas Keneally Page A

veranda, watching Duncan watch him. Now, coming back to the house, Duncan stopped at the veranda where Alice was hanging tea towels.
    â€œBy the way,” he said, “I showed him the shearers’ long-drop lavatory out the back there. He’ll be using it, not ours.”
    She ignored this remarkable detail of Duncan’s attempt to create a regime.
    â€œI’ve got your afternoon tea ready, Duncan.”
    She called him “Duncan” at his insistence, but rarely, because it offended some sense she had that he should merit more reverence. “Do you think I should take him some tea now?”
    â€œWell,” said Duncan after measured consideration, “I reckon you could. I’d come with you, but . . .”
    She said, “No, you sit and enjoy yours. I’ll handle it. They say the Italians are harmless.”
    She went inside with Duncan, poured boiling water into the teapot, and cut fruitcake for him. Then she fetched the same tray she’d served the lemonade on and considered it a second, wondering whether to put the Italian prisoner’s tea in a pannikin or a china cup. She grabbed a china cup in the end. She wondered whether Duncan might think this was too premature a kindness.
    She said, “I always hope that some German or Italian woman on a farm will give Neville a china cup to show him he’s human. That’s all.”
    â€œFair enough,” said Duncan, easily persuaded to be lenient. She put cake on a plate and added that to the tray, and started out from the back door carrying it. She felt she was engaged in a great inquiry. She was about to encounter and weigh strangeness.
    When she got down to the shearers’ quarters she saw the man in the burgundy shirt and pants busy inside, disposing his clothes in a doorless cupboard; hanging up the overcoat and jacket it was still too warm for him to need; and placing on a pine table, made from a butter box and set by the window, an Italian–English dictionary and a book in Italian entitled I Promessi Sposi .
    Alice announced herself from the doorway. “Tea!” she called. She stepped into the room, into the same shadows as he occupied. This was a further adventure for her, as everything is in the first meeting with novel people. She peered around. No smell of sweat from him yet. He had washed to come here, she thought. There was a vegetable and benign musk emerging from him when she’d expected somethingranker, hungrier, and tigerish. Duncan would make him sweat soon enough, though. Out in the paddocks.
    She made to place the tea down on the primitive table, and he moved both books and put them on his bed.
    â€œWell,” said Alice, who had no practice in remembering non-British names, “what is your name again?”
    â€œGiancarlo Molisano,” he told her too quickly for her to get it. Yet it sounded a melodic name on his lips. He clicked his boots in a way suited to a ballet, not like the Nazis in the pictures, softer and with less invasive intention. Then he stood to attention and saluted for just a second.
    â€œCould you say it slowly please?” she asked. “Slow-ly. And louder.”
    â€œGian-car-lo Mo-li-sa-no,” he repeated. Alice said, “John-Carlo.”
    â€œYes,” he said. “Sound like John, Missus ’Erman.” He was content with the approximation.
    She said, “I’m sure we can get you a little table and chair for the veranda so you could sit out there if you want. For the moment there’s tea and some cake here.”
    â€œKike?” he asked. The manner of his confusion interested her—the concerted seriousness of the face, the way the arched black-brown eyebrows set themselves in interrogative lines above his large, active eyes. His mouth, too, was long enough to allow the lips to express a knot of puzzlement at the center.
    â€œNo, no. Ca-a-ake!”
    It became apparent what she was saying and he