Strange Lives: Australia, Tahiti, Brazil, Italy

By Tibor Timothy Vajda

A tangled web.

Irish migrant, Neil Gilmore marries Rosemary, who agrees to have five children, as Neils forbear had.

A doctor finds out that Neil is infertile and persuades Rosemary to have IVF. This is against Neils religious beliefs. So he is not told. Rosemary gives birth to five boys after regular IVFs using the same donor, who doesnt know about his own role.

Neil finds out the truth. He fights for the annulment of his marriage. He is kidnapped in Brazil and two people are murdered. The church shows Neil an alternative.

He couldnt forgive or forget her.

The young wife of an elderly businessman leaves him and escapes to South America. The man plans revenge.

Parallel lives.

A Rome businessman fathers twin boys to a single Sicilian woman. He takes away one of the boys; marries another woman and they adopt the boy who never learns about his twin brother. The boys lives will cross with tragic consequences.

The perfect crime.

Sean Larkin, an athletic champion, meets the manageress of a jewellery shop by chance. She refuses to cooperate to rob the shop. Acting alone, Sean plans the perfect crime. . .

Crossroads.

An American woman writer has unexpected sexual adventures on her holiday in Australia.

Rainy night.

Tragic life and death of a Sydney man used as a scapegoat by everybody all his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456778781

Tibor Timothy Vajda

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tibor Timothy Vajda was born in Budapest, Hungary. He emigrated with his family to Australia in 1956 and settled in Sydney. After an internationally successful clinical and academic career in Oral Implantology and Biomedical Engineering (1962-1993) he turned to full-time writing. He uses the information he absorbed in five languages during his frequent round the world trips. By 2011 Vajda published eleven books and more than three dozen short stories in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. He has received several Awards in Short Story competitions.

Book preview

© 2011 Tibor Timothy Vajda. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 6/9/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-7877-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-7878-1 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Grateful thanks to my wife Eva for her untiring help and Penelope Grace for her assisting in editing.

In memory of my beloved son, John.

Contents

A tangled web.

The Kimberleys – W.A.

He couldn’t forgive or forget her.

Sydney

Parallel lives.

Italy

The Perfect crime.

Sydney

The Accidental Preacher.

Sydney

Crossroads.

Sydney.

Rainy Night.

Sydney

 A tangled web.

The Kimberleys – W.A.

ONE

William grew up working for Kenneth Glover, whose family owned all the land in the Kimberleys in Western Australia. William’s life took a turn when he was building a dam. In amongst the rubble that his spade dug up he noticed one bit of rock that looked different and found a piece of fuzzy crystal which he thought may have been a diamond. He wasn’t sure but for safety’s sake he didn’t tell anybody about his find. He kept the crystal in his pocket, wrapped in a dirty handkerchief.

After some soul searching he did show the crystal to his sick son Albert when there was nobody around. Albert had been injured by a work accident and had difficulty breathing so he spent his days lying on the porch of their humble cabin. Though Albert could hardly see, he told his father to keep his find a secret and only show it to Maurice Bent who travelled around the townships regularly, selling everything from boots to frying pans.

Maurice made a meagre income from his business as his poor customers bought only cheap, absolutely necessary items and bought even those on credit. However, Maurice was still a businessman and grabbed an opportunity when he stumbled on one.

It could be a raw diamond crystal, he said to Gilmore. "Where did you find it? Did you tell anybody about it? You didn’t? Good, let it be our secret. You can trust me. Next week I have to go to Perth and I’ll ask an expert to have a look. Keep your fingers crossed. It could be our lucky strike. There could be other stones like it in the area. That could mean big money, but only if nobody else finds out about it.

Some people would kill to get raw diamonds like this! I’m not kidding you. Be very careful. I’ll let you know what’s happening in a fortnight when I come this way next. Just keep mum and hide anything else you find in the same place.

The two weeks until Maurice Bent returned passed slowly for William. He was daydreaming about the chances he had if the crystal he found will prove to be diamond indeed.

He thought that like in a fairytale, the Gilmore family’s history of poverty and misery will turn into a bad dream. While working with his spade, looking out for any further lucky finding, he recalled the Gilmore family’s sad past as he learned at family gatherings.

William Gilmore was born in County Cork, Ireland in 1861 during the potato famine. He was the fifth son, the youngest child of Joseph Gilmore and Mary McGhee, who died giving birth to him.

After the struggles of his early life William married Amelie Burke before they left Ireland on a ‘tramp steamer’ where they were hired for the voyage to Australia as deckhand and kitchen maid.

In Australia they settled in Kununurra in the Kimberleys on the property belonging to the Glover family. They rented one acre of land on an annual basis and lived in a one-room shack that belonged to the Glovers. The wheat they grew on this one acre had to pay for all their living expenses.

William Gilmore junior was born in Kununurra in 1892 and at the age of 19 he married Claire McPherson, a local girl. They had one son Albert, born in 1912 who married Maureen O’Hara, and two children, Jonathon, born in 1932 and Neil born in 1933.

They were in luck. The Perth jeweller confirmed that the find was indeed a diamond. The jeweller told Maurice that a foreign company, DeBeer, was looking for land. He suggested Maurice contact them and try to make some business arrangements with them on the promise of delivering them a new diamond field.

Camouflaging the real reason for their interest, DeBeer bought a large section of the land from Kenneth Glover that included the dam where William used to work. Maurice was included in the contract as the ‘finder’ with a 25% interest in the company. He kept his word to William and made him an equal partner.

The original dam area proved to be rich in various diamonds and DeBeer developed there one of the largest diamond mines in the world.

After William Gilmore and Albert had both died, Albert’s two sons, Jonathon, the older, and Neil, the younger became rich. Later when Jonathon died as a bachelor in a car accident, Neil inherited all revenue from the diamond mine. That made him a multi-millionaire.

Neil lived the life of the very rich. He travelled around the world, had a yacht moored in Perth on the Swan River, had a large clearing made for a landing field for his Piper Cherokee private plane and built a ‘castle’ in the area.

The ‘Argyle’ Mine soon became the world’s largest single producer of diamonds. The Argyle name was derived from the tartan pattern of the Clan Argyle in Ireland. Within a short period 520 employees operated the mine, most of whom were based in Perth. They worked two weeks in 12 hour shifts then spent two weeks at home, after open pit mining started. The Kimberley Special Pink Diamonds were much sought after throughout the world. Neil Gilmore, a minority holder, was one of the directors. His diligence and agile brain had a disproportionally significant input into the organization and development of the mines.

Neil married Rosemary Cavanagh from Kununurra, the village the Gilmores came from. He had only one regret: after two years of marriage they still had no children. Neil was keen to have a large family. He wanted not less than five children, as his great-grandparents had.

The Gilmores were popular in Broome, particularly in Catholic social circles, after Neil gave $ 2 million for the reconstruction of the old Catholic Church. They were deeply religious and never missed Sunday Mass. Neil and Rosemary asked Father Benedetto to pray for them to have children, and he always advised them to have patience and to pray to Saint Mary for help.

When they were alone with Neil - and that happened often - Father Benedetto asked Neil why the deeply religious Catholic Neil was not influencing his wife to convert to Catholicism?

Neil’s answer was, I know ‘there is no salvation outside the Church’. My wife belongs to the Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she believes in Jesus. She is a much better person than I am. Somebody can be a Catholic in spirit. His answer confirmed his deeply religious conviction but also confirmed that he could inwardly disagree with religious dogma.

The other person who was involved in their problem in having children was Doctor Silvio Taranto. Doctor Taranto migrated from Italy with his parents in the 1930s and they settled in Broome, Western Australia. Because Silvio wanted to become a medical practitioner and there was no university medical school in Western Australia at the time, he left his parents temporarily and moved to Sydney to his mother’s brother until he finished his schooling. He graduated in Sydney at the Medical Faculty of the Notre Dame University, where he finished first in his class.

Taranto was advised to specialise, get higher qualifications, earn more money than the GPs did, but his standard answer was, I wanted to become a doctor to be able to help people, not to make money.

Doctor Taranto attended Postgraduate Master of Surgery and Doctor of Philosophy Courses at the Broome Campus of the Notre Dame University to widen his medical knowledge but remained a GP and was known for being available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week when there was an emergency.

Doctor Taranto became the Gilmores’ family doctor after he attended Albert and every member of the family was always seeking his advice in every health problem they had.

It was natural for Rosemary Gilmore to turn to Dr Taranto and ask for his advice in her quandary of not getting pregnant after two years of happy marriage. Taranto took ovum and sperm samples from Rosemary and Neil to find out what the problem could be.

After receiving the laboratory results, Taranto called in the Gilmores together and told them that there was definitely nothing wrong with Rosemary’s ova and Neil’s sperm were healthy too but it seems that his sperms were ‘lazy’ to swim up in the fallopian tube.

He advised them to have patience and regular exercises for Neil. It will come, just be patient, he told them.

You are just like Father Benedetto, burst out Neil. To Taranto’s question what he meant by that, Neil explained that Father Benedetto’s advice was also patience, patience.

By the way, how come we never see you at Sunday mass? asked Neil.

Because I’m not Catholic, I’m Jewish. Didn’t you know, Neil?

But you look like a typical Italian. Aren’t all Italians Catholics?

"I’m a Jew but not an observant Jew. Nobody ever saw me in the synagogue either and probably everyone who visits me takes it for granted that I’m Catholic. They never asked and it doesn’t bother me. To me all people are equal. If they have a problem, I treat them. I don’t care about their religious affiliations.

"By the way I can teach you something on the subject. My name Taranto is the name of a town in Italy. Jews in Italy did not have family names until the 19th century, only first names. A new law made it compulsory for the Jews to adopt family names, so they adopted the names of the towns where they lived. That’s how my family became Tarantos.

Father Benedetto is a good friend of mine. He gave you the right advice. Patience.

TWO

The next year, 1956, brought great changes worldwide. The Hungarian anti-Russian revolution was followed by movements of large masses to other countries from Hungary, Romania, East Germany, even from some Asian countries. About 200,000 Hungarians flooded Austria and all sorts of nationalities entered Hungary. They usually moved on to Austria, Italy, France or England.

The situation demanded international agreements and the Inter-Governmental Agency (ICEM) was set up with headquarters in Vienna. They organized the flow of refugees to receiving countries like Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Venezuela, France, Italy and Switzerland, which had strict quotas. The Consuls of the various countries had long rows of applicants waiting to be questioned by the Consular officials every day.

Quickly printed Application Forms were asking for the personal data of the applicants, their schooling, trade qualifications, marital status, etc. People filled out the forms in the waiting rooms, in the staircases, asking each other about the meaning of certain questions and were guessing what would be the right answer to help them to be accepted. Applicants who happened to speak the required language were helping the Consuls during the interviews. There were many misunderstandings on account of unsatisfactory translations by the amateur interpreters and the ambiguities of some of the Application Forms drawn up in a hurry.

Those who left wives and children at home, wanting to emigrate alone, were told by the Consul to return again with their families.

While during the consular interviews the applicants’ religion was apparently disregarded, further steps in the acceptance process were organized by centres of religious groups. There were separate compulsory medical examinations for each religious group and those centres also distributed tickets for temporary accommodation and for the railway transport taking the refugees away from Austria on their way to their new homeland. These centres also distributed money, food and clothing.

Twenty-five-year-old Steven Biro, a Hungarian-Jewish architect went through the above process and was accepted by the Australian Consul. His profession and his satisfactory knowledge of English helped him through faster than usual during the consular interview. Biro left Vienna on the 15th January 1957 and embarked in Genoa on the Flaminia refugee transport ship the following day.

During a storm, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, one of the propellers of the ship broke down and the Italian ship limped into Freemantle, disrupting its original plan to sail to Melbourne. The dazzling sun of Western Australia was the first impression