The Son Read Online Free

shouldn’t judge his friends by what the cousins said about them. If the war had been lost it was because of people like them, small-time profiteers who thought only of themselves and didn’t care about their country.
    That too was disturbing.
    Then, in late January – just before Tết , Vietnamese New Year – something nastier happened. The cousins’ shop in Marrickville was broken into, with considerable damage. The cousins wrote immediately to Mrs Tran, and while they didn’t accuse Eric directly, they blamed his friends, who were questioned by the police. While there was no evidence that any of them were involved, some of them had been in trouble before. The whole episode had become very unpleasant, with the cousins asking for compensation and doing their best to make her feel responsible. That was when she decided to come out.
    â€˜And you went to stay with them. That can’t have been pleasant either.’
    â€˜I didn’t have much choice. I don’t know anyone else in Australia, my relatives are in the United States, and – well, I felt I owed it to them, as well as to Eric, at least to come out and find out what had happened.’
    Her arrival hadn’t helped much. The cousins by then were so set against Eric that they wouldn’t let him into the house at first, when he called round to see her. She had to go for a walk in the street to talk to him. Eric indignantly denied anything to do with the break-in. He said they were maligning his friends, just because they didn’t like the look of them.
    She believed him. About his friends she wasn’t so sure, when she went to see him in Cabramatta. Some of them did fit the cousins’ description – brash, untidy, boastful, with long hair, tattoos, the lot! And the language to go with it.
    â€˜I know Vietnamese can be a pretty earthy language, but it was all a bit much! And the house was full of silly posters and anti-communist slogans. Down with the Viet Cong, Reconquer the south, Fight for a free Vietnam, that sort of thing. But they didn’t look like criminals, just brash and boastful and uncertain of themselves. They were friendly enough when Eric told them who I was.’
    Eric also took her to the restaurant where he worked, in the centre of Cabramatta. It was large and looked well-run. The owner wasn’t there but Eric appeared to fit well into the place. That wasn’t what worried her.
    What did worry her was all that rabid anti-communist talk.
    â€˜We’ve always been anti-communist, Mr Quinn. Anything else would be unthinkable for people like us. After what they did, after what we’ve been through. And we never tried to hide it from Eric – on the contrary, we wanted him to know what we left behind, why we felt the need to leave Vietnam. So he could understand why his mother had died. So he wouldn’t blame her, or us, for taking that risk.’
    â€˜But we didn’t hate the communists. I don’t hate them, not for the war; they suffered enormous sacrifices for it, just as we did. I can even understand why they wanted to conquer the south. It’s for what they did afterwards that I can’t forgive them. The repression, the vindictiveness, the mindless arrogant orthodoxy – of course I blame them for what happened to Hien, but I can equally blame your country for refusing to take her, when she could have left in safety. David’s death was just an accident of war. But try explaining that to a boy who lost both parents because of them. All I did was reinforce his hatred.’
    She shook her head. ‘We’ve never taken part in anti-communist activity among the refugee communities. There aren’t many Vietnamese refugees in Britain – there’s not as much scope for it there as here or in America, and in any case it’s such a waste of time. There’s nothing more pathetic than those emigré groups wallowing in nostalgia and