Читать книгу The Climate of Courage - Jon Cleary, Jon Cleary - Страница 8
ОглавлениеJACK WATCHED Vern Radcliffe board the tram, waved at him, then turned away with the feeling of being lost that had kept recurring ever since they had first landed back at Adelaide. Vern had asked him home for dinner, and he had almost accepted. But then he had recognised the invitation for what it was, sincere but a spur-of-the-moment thought; he had thought of Dinah sharing the moments with her husband after two long years, and so he had told Vern he had a date.
Well, he’d better see if he did have a date. He crossed the road to St. James station, lined up outside the phone box and ten minutes later was dialling a number, conscious of the thick stuffy smell of the box and the belligerently impatient queue outside.
“Rita? This is Jack here.”
“Jack? Jack who?” Her voice sounded the same, light and empty as her head.
“Jack Savanna. How many Jacks do you know? They had once lived together for three months, but now she had forgotten him. He grinned to himself and patted his bruised ego.
“Jack Savanna! Well, Ah declare! How you been, huh?” Her voice had changed, after all: it had crossed the Pacific. “Long time no see, Jack, honey.”
Why did I ring her? he thought; and thought what a trap was the telephone. In the old days, when one had to write a letter there was always time for a second thought. But now: two pennies in the slot, a spin of the dial, and bingo! Why had he called her? Rita, with the blank pretty face, the pretty blank mind and the beautiful body—yes, that was why he had called her. “I’ve missed you, too, Rita, honey. How about dinner to-night, and afterwards we can talk about old times, huh?”
“Ah gee, Jack honey, if I’d only known! But I already gotta go out—I’m gonna see”—he could hear her two-stroke brain changing gears—“my aunt.”
“Your ant? Are you interested in entomology now?”
She laughed, light and meaningless as a child’s bell. “Still the same old Jack! Still making with the big words.”
Serves me right, he thought, for having designs on her body. He hadn’t taken her mind into account, and he was beaten before he had started. Suddenly the box seemed more stinking and stuffy than ever. Abruptly he said good-bye, hung up and pushed open the door.
“You been long enough, dig,” said a sailor. “Who you been ringing, MacArthur?”
Jack hunched his shoulders. “Want to make something of it, matelot?”
“I gotta ring me sheila,” said the sailor, and skipped nimbly into the box. He grinned through the glass, then turned to the phone, a red-headed, broken-nosed, freckle-faced Romeo who was sure of his girl.
Jack walked past the other people waiting to use the phone and out into Elizabeth Street again. It was a mild night with light still in the sky behind the buildings on the west side of the street. Right above him a few stars, poignant as tears, looked down at the city. A plane appeared from behind the towers of St. Mary’s Basilica, a metal angel with winking red and green light, heading north; it passed over the harbour, suddenly an angel no longer but a small black fly caught in the tangled skein of the searchlights. I should be on that, he thought, getting out of this bloody unfriendly city. And then was angry at himself for being sorry for himself.
He looked about him, aware now of a change in the atmosphere of the city he had loved so well. There was that air of electric nervousness that came upon all cities at this time of day during the war. In London and Cairo and Berlin, and in all cities within reach of the bombers, there would be fear behind the nervousness; here in Sydney and in Melbourne, probably New York too and San Francisco, there was just the hope of a good time. Girls stood waiting for their men, looking at other men, wondering if they were better prospects than their date for to-night: modesty had become a wartime casualty and had been replaced by the roving eye and the calculating mind. Couples walked arm-in-arm out of the great green bed of Hyde Park, flushed with love-making and stained with grass juice. An American sailor, his arm about a brazenly successful girl, stood on the kerb waiting confidently for the cab that would come to him past all the hailing Australian arms. The city had changed all right.
He began to walk along Elizabeth Street, aimless and lost in the city that was his home, big Jack Savanna who was always so definite and self-possessed and impregnable. Then he heard the music coming across the park and suddenly he remembered the Anzac Buffet. There would be girls there, plenty of them, all dedicated to the enjoyment of the boys on leave. He turned and began to hurry across the park, almost as if he had to get there before the supply of girls ran out. He wasn’t drunk, he’d had only four beers with the boys in the Marble Bar, but he suddenly had the pleasant lightness of feeling, that warmth that makes the world a good place that must be enjoyed to the full, and his low mood of the last quarter-hour had suddenly gone like the last light of day behind the buildings across the street. He was determined to enjoy to-night.
He saw the girl as soon as he entered the large hall where the band was bouncing out Chattanooga Choo-Choo. She was sitting in a deep chair, turned away from him, and all he could see was the smooth blonde hair, almost silvery and suggesting metal in its polished sleekness. He stood for several minutes watching the blonde head, waiting for it to turn and let him see the face that went with it. He had seen plenty of girls who looked like Miss Australia from the back and like the wreck of someone’s grandmother from the front. To-night had suddenly become too good to spoil by being in a hurry. Then he saw an R.A.A.F. corporal coming from the other side of the room, heading for the blonde in the chair: the expression on the corporal’s face, the way he was smoothing his hair, the hand straightening his tie, told Jack that the girl could not be too bad. He had to take a chance, otherwise he might miss out and spend the rest of the night kicking himself.
He beat the corporal by a good two yards, without appearing to hurry, lazy and casual, the approach that had been so successful in the past. “Would you care to dance?”
She looked up at him, and he could guess at the disappointment of the corporal behind him. She was even better than he had expected, much better: with the all-out war effort, beauty standards had been raised in the leave centres. Perhaps her beauty had frightened away most of the other men, because a girl as good-looking as this must surely be booked for the night and she was just waiting for her boy-friend to arrive. Her face was an original one: nothing about it had been borrowed from film stars or cover girls or beauty salons. The bones were strong yet fine, and her skin glowed like a golden peach bursting with sun. Her mouth was heavy, but the lipstick covered only the natural outline of her lips: the passionate mouth couldn’t be wiped off with a handkerchief or a kiss. Her eyes were dark, too dark really for the colour of her hair, though the latter looked natural, and when she looked up at him they shone with a soft amused gleam under their heavy lids.
She nodded to the girl she had been talking to, and stood up. She was taller than he had expected, but not too tall; big though he was himself, he didn’t like women to look as if they could swing an axe or carry a banner at the head of an army.
The silver-haired girl was wearing a light grey jersey frock with short sleeves, and it showed off the deep tan she still retained from summer. It also showed off her body. With the blonde sleekness of her head and the deep tan he had somehow expected her to be the athletic type all the curves slim and firm and almost a little muscular. He had seen that type of girl in Russell Flint paintings and on the beaches, healthy and vital and always somehow a little disappointing, as if one knew all their passion had dried out with the exercise in the sun. But this girl was built like a woman, soft yet firm, and the sun had only kindled her passion.
“Do I pass?” She danced with a lazy sort of rhythm, as if her body was tired and she would rather be in bed.
He grinned, and they danced for a while, easily and well: they could have been old partners. “I’m Jack Savanna.”
“Silver Bendixter,” she said, and saw his eyebrows go up. “You have heard of me?”
“I used to read the Society columns in the Sunday papers in the Red Shield hut,” he said. “One read anything and everything in the Middle East.”
“Fame, fame.” She shook her head slowly and a lock of the blonde hair fell down. When she looked up again she was smiling and he was surprised at how soft and young-looking her face had become with its unexpected dimples. “Are you sure it was me you read about, or my mother or my sister?”
“It could have been all three. The Bendixters are pillars of Sydney Society, aren’t they?”
“Don’t sneer.”
“Forgive me. It’s my proletarian upbringing.” Then he said, “There was a fellow in our unit who knew you, or said he did. Tony Shelley.”
“A stinker, if ever there was one,” she said calmly. “A rat, and a friend of my sister.”
“I didn’t like him, either.” He twisted his head to look at the hand resting on his shoulder. “Are you engaged or anything?”
She held up bare fingers. “Or nothing. I’m completely unattached, if that will put your mind at rest. Were you thinking of proposing, or don’t the proletariat propose to pillars of Society?”
“Oh, we do, by all means. It’s the proletarian blood that keeps Society alive. But that wasn’t why I asked.”
She smiled. “Is something the matter, then?”
“Yes. A girl as beautiful as you shouldn’t be unattached. I’m prying into your private affairs and I’m unashamed about it, but have you lost a man in the war?”
“No. I’m just unattached, that’s all.”
There was a faint note of bitterness in her voice, but he didn’t comment on it. He decided he was going to learn all there was to know about this girl, and there would be time. He grinned down at her, liking the way her cheeks shadowed with the dimples as she smiled back, and he thanked his luck that dear dumb Rita had had a date with her “ant.”
“In The Mood” finished, then there was “Dolores.” After that a girl got up before the band and wailed that she didn’t “Wanna Set The World On Fire”; and didn’t. Songs hadn’t been particularly inspired during the war, and everyone was still waiting for something resembling the great favourites that had come out of the last war. The dance tempo had become bouncier since Jack had last danced in Sydney, and the floor quivered like the bruised back of some great beast. A sailor and a girl, both chewing gum as if gasping for air, jived in a corner, completely isolated in their own little world of twisted limbs, vibrating muscles and communion of intellect. A girl and a soldier went by, he plodding in his heavy boots as if on a route march and she doing her best to avoid being crippled. By a doorway an Australian private and an American corporal were arguing, the Australian red in the face and the American looking as if he wanted no part of the argument.
After the fourth dance she said, “We’re supposed to circulate. We girls, I mean.”
“Do you really want to dance with someone else?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Would you like to take me home, or would that spoil your evening?”
“I haven’t eaten yet. Have you?”
“Then we’ll have dinner together at home. I’ll get my coat.”
By a miracle he managed to get a cab, and twenty minutes later they drew up outside the Bendixter home in a quiet street in Darling Point. They pushed open the big iron gates and walked up the drive. A line of poplars supported the night sky and behind the house there was the dark mass of other trees. The house itself shone faintly in the starlight, white and square like some huge tomb.
“Not a bad place at all,” said Jack. “What is it, a branch of Parliament House?”
“It’s nothing much,” said Silver, “but we call it home.”
Jack stopped and looked at the house. “It’s top heavy. It looks as if someone got big ideas only after the foundations were down.”
“Are you always so critical of the homes of girls you meet?”
“The only other girl I’ve taken home lived in a tent,” he said. “She was a Bedouin I met in Gaza.”
“I must be a disappointment. Your life’s been so full of romance.”
They went up the steps to a terrace and crossed to the front door. Silver took out her key.
“No butler?” said Jack. “Not even a maid?”
“Nobody at all. We have a cook and a maid, and a gardener who doubles as chauffeur. But they’re all down at our place at Bowral at present. They’ll be back to-morrow, when my mother comes home. In the meantime, there’s just my sister and me—and God knows where she is.”
Inside the hall, with the light on, Jack looked around at the sumptuous furnishings. “All this from a few mob of sheep, eh?”
“And timber and mines and shipping and a hundred other things.” She tossed her coat on a chair and led the way out to the back of the house. “My dad was a fine man, but he couldn’t help making money. He liked making it, but he made too much. In the end we were the only ones who knew how good and kind he could be. Nobody has any time for the rich in this country.” She looked back at him as they entered a large gleaming kitchen. “Or am I offending a member of the proletariat?”
“You’re talking to an ex-rich man’s son,” he said. “Your father would have known my old man. He was one of the biggest pearlers on the north-west coast”
“You lost everything only recently then?” she said. “Since the Japs came into the war?”
“No,” he said, and felt the old sadness even after twelve years. “He committed suicide when I was sixteen. Things just went wrong.”
She stopped and put her hand out.
He took it, and felt the warm sympathy in her fingers. He had noticed it several times in the hour he had been with her, a sudden softening in her that belied the polished sophistication of her looks. Being rich had spoiled her, he thought, but not entirely.
A long time later they were sitting in what Silver called the small living-room. It reeked of luxury, but on a small scale, and Jack felt at home. He lay sprawled on the lounge, his shoes off and his webbing belt thrown on the floor. She had taken his coffee cup from him and put it on a small table with her own. She lit a cigarette for him, lit another for herself, kicked off her shoes, sat down in a deep chair and drew her feet up under her.
“When did you last have some home life?”
“Too long ago. I’ll tell you about it some other time.” He waved his hand, throwing the subject away as if it were some foul thing that had unexpectedly clung to his fingers. “Sit over here.”
“There’ll be time for that later,” she said, and sat looking at him for a while. “You’d be handsome if it weren’t for that damned great broom under your nose.”
“This?” He fondled his moustache. “No other girl has complained.”
“Not even the Bedouin?” she said. “Why do you wear it?”
“Vanity. I liked to be noticed.”
She laughed, stubbed out her cigarette and slid off her chair on to the lounge beside him. “People notice you, all right. I saw you as soon as you came into the Buffet. I wondered how long it would be before you asked me to dance. If you hadn’t I’d have asked you.”
“You’d have circulated, eh?” he said, and kissed her.
Then her sister came in. “Don’t mind me, go right ahead! I shan’t peek.”
Silver drew back. “My sister has a one-track mind. Mamie, this is Jack Savanna.”
They were sisters, there was no doubt of that, though one was as dark as the other was fair. Mamie was not as tall as Silver, but her body had the same womanliness and her face the same good bonework. Even the eyes and mouths were alike. But there was a looseness about Mamie that wasn’t there in Silver; not only in the face and body, but one sensed it also in the character. Then he remembered it was Mamie Bendixter that Tony Shelley had known, and he was surprised at how glad he was. He pressed Silver’s arm and stood up.
“My!” said Mamie. “So big!”
“In his stockinged feet too,” said Silver. “Six feet three, all man, and I saw him first.”
Mamie smiled up at him: there were no dimples and her smile was somehow not as soft. “Silver has a complex about me. She thinks I want to get my claws into every man I see.”
“Don’t you?” There was no rancour in Silver’s voice: she sounded almost a little bored.
“Not all, sister dear,” said Mamie. “Only those with red blood in them.”
“We’ll take a blood test of him later,” said Silver. “Right now I’m just getting acquainted with his surface features.”
“And they’re not bad,” said Mamie. “Except for his moustache.”
Jack at last managed to get a word in. The only time he was defeated in conversation was when he was in the company of two females. It was gratifying to think that they might fight over him, but he had already made up his mind whom to crown the winner. He chipped in before Mamie began thinking she had got a foothold on him.
“Silver and I have already discussed the moustache,” he said. “She also happens to have got her claws into me a couple of hours ago.”
The smile stayed around Mamie’s mouth, but died in her eyes. My God, he thought, she’s a mean, vicious, dissipated bitch; I can believe everything they say about her. Without getting her name in the papers for anything more notorious than having lunch at Prince’s, she had become a legend of sin in Sydney. Her own circle had known her for years, and cab drivers too, and the odd anonymous men she had picked up off the streets: in the last two and a half years, with men talking among themselves as they did, she had probably become known to half the Army. Navy and Air Force. She read his mind and the smile widened, completely shameless.
“You’ve heard of me, have you, Jack?”
“He’s in the same unit as Tony Shelley,” said Silver. “Dear drunken, perverted Tony.”
“That’s what we call him,” said Jack. “Pervy B. Shelley.”
For a moment Mamie looked as if she were going to stay and fight. The smile changed almost to a snarl and the eyes thinned dangerously. Then suddenly she changed the whole expression to a yawn. “I’m tired. I’ve been out with a Navy type who’s been at sea for ten months, so he said. You’ll be around again, Jack, or are you staying the night? Good night, then, and don’t sleep in Mother’s room. She’s coming home to-morrow.”
Then she had gone and the room seemed cleaner and fresher. Jack sat down and began to draw on his boots.
“Going?” said Silver. “Did that bitch of a sister spoil things for you?”
“I don’t like her,” he said, buckling on his belt. “But she didn’t spoil things. She just somehow made me see you in a new light.”
“Better or worse?”
“Better. I’ll be back again. I’m going to spend the rest of my leave with you. Do you work at all?”
“Since the Japs came into the war, yes. I’m secretary to a doctor friend of ours in Macquarie Street. Some people wouldn’t call it war work, but it depends on the way you look at it. Sid Hugo is overworked, like all doctors now, and I do my best to help him.” She had spoken a little forcibly, but suddenly she smiled and made a deprecating gesture. “I’m sorry, I’m always defending myself. It’s a habit of the conscientious rich.”
“Lunch to-morrow, then.” They were at the front door now and he took her in his arms. “Is Silver really your name?”
“Don’t you like it?” And when he nodded, she said, “Dad was nicknamed Silver, because of his hair and, I suppose, because of his money, too. When I came along and had hair exactly like his——” She looked up at him, frankly pleased. “I’m glad you like it, Jack.”
“It suits you.” He kissed her, and was aware of the passion in her. The night hadn’t ended as he’d originally planned, but he had no regrets. The future, compared with the prospect of a few hours ago, looked better than to-night could ever have been. It was the first time he could remember meeting a girl and thinking beyond the next morning. “Good night, Silver.”
It seemed that he had been saying good night to women and leaving them all his life and would be for ever. Even when he had been living with Rita they had both known that one night he would walk out and not come back. He could not do without women, but for as long as he could remember he had been frightened of their hold on him.
He had even been frightened of his mother’s hold on him. Tenuous yet strong, like the line a fisherman holds. She had played him as one plays a fish: several times he had tried to escape, but she had always known how to bring him back.
“I wasn’t cut out to be a mother, Johnny,” she had said once, “but that doesn’t mean I want to forget I am one.”
“You’re all right,” he had said, knowing he was expected to say something. She had been a vain woman and would have liked him to say she was a wonderful mother: she was greedy for any sort of praise, even when she knew it wasn’t true. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to make the lie an extravagant one. “When is Dad coming home?”
“Next week.” She had turned to him, giving him the smile he had seen her give his father when she wanted something. “And I wouldn’t mention that Mr. Garry and Mr. Phillips have been coming here, Johnny. Your father sometimes misunderstands things, sees them in the wrong light. So we shan’t mention them, shall we?”
He had loved his father as he had never been able to love his mother. Big Pat had had boats going out of both Thursday Island and Broome, and had spent his time between both places, with four visits a year to Sydney. Then he would come down for a fortnight each time and be like a north-west storm, a Cocky Bob, blowing through the house. He had built a house on Thursday Island for them all, but Jack had been there only twice and his mother never at all. The house had never been a home, just an outpost where Big Pat slept and drank and (as his son learned later) pined in secret. The four visits a year to Sydney were like four Christmases to Big Pat’s son.
Then Big Pat had come down from Broome on one of his visits and had arrived a day earlier than expected. He had called for Jack at school, persuaded the master to let him go early, and they had caught a cab and gone home, both of them happy as schoolboys, flushed with the thought of the fortnight ahead.
“We’ll surprise your mother,” his father had said, and he had seen no danger in it because he knew both Mr. Garry and Mr. Phillips were out of town. “She’s probably in the middle of her afternoon beauty sleep. We’ll sneak in and scare the daylights out of her. Cripes!” He slapped Jack’s knee, almost breaking it. “You’ve got no idea how I like coming home to you two! One of these days you’ll find there’s no feeling like returning home.”
But his mother hadn’t been having her beauty sleep. She was in bed, all right, but there was a man with her, someone he had never seen before. His father had said nothing intelligible, just let out a roar of animal rage, and plunged into the room, slamming the door after him. Jack had stood for a moment, sick and frightened, then he had turned and walked slowly down the hall to his room.
From the window there a few minutes later he had seen the stranger staggering down the drive, his clothes hanging on him in shreds, his hands to his broken bloody face, never looking back, an adulterer who hadn’t known what had hit him. Five minutes later Big Pat had come into his son’s room.
“I was wrong, son,” he had said, and, unbloodied and unscathed, he had looked more broken than the man who had just gone stumbling down the drive. “You can’t win, after all.”
Then he had gone downstairs and locked himself in his study and begun to drink. Two hours later, when they heard the shot and Jack had burst the door in, he was dead. Big Pat lay among a litter of bottles and photographs and letters, and in a pool of blood that spread to touch the bottles and stain the photographs and letters. Jack would never forget that sight of the wreckage of his father’s life.
His mother had looked in the room past him and then, the only womanly decent thing she had ever done, she had fainted. He had closed the door quietly on his father, stepped over his mother with only a hateful glance at her and left her to the care of the gardener and his wife, and had walked out of the house and down the road to the home of the doctor who had brought him into the world. Old Dr. Cotterell, who had known what was going on, had opened the door and from the look on Jack’s face had guessed at tragedy. But his guess had been only half right. He had cried out in shock and grief when Jack told him Big Pat had killed himself and not his wife.
Jack had never gone back to his mother. At first, out of remorse, she had come pleading to him to return; then after a while her vanity had got the better of her again and she gave up chasing him. Big Pat had died in a hurry, without expecting to, probably without meaning to, if he hadn’t been so blind with anger or sorrow or drink or perhaps all three. When it came time to settle his affairs it was found he had over-expanded and in doing so had borrowed right and left. He had left little but goodwill and a fleet of half-paid-for luggers that added up only to a man’s dreams. In solid cash they meant very little.
Jack’s mother had married again, not Mr. Garry nor Mr. Phillips nor the bloody stranger but a French woolbroker, and had gone to live in Paris. Whether she was still there, he didn’t know nor care. Whatever the Germans did to her couldn’t be worse than what she had done to his father.
And so because of his mother and because he would always remember his father’s last words—you can’t win—he had spent his life running away from women. Well, not running away from them immediately, but only when he had begun to fear they were getting a hold on him.
Good night, Silver, and she had five more days in which to strengthen her hold on him. For she did have a hold on him, he admitted, even after only four hours and two kisses. And sitting on the ferry edging its way past the wartime boom defences in the outer harbour, going over to Manly where an understanding cousin had lent him his flat for the eight days of his leave, he further admitted that perhaps this time he wouldn’t be so keen to run away. The war, that had ruined so many futures, had begun to make him think of his.
This return to Sydney, to the welcome that wasn’t there for him, had made him realise for the first time just how lonely he was. His father had been right, there was no feeling like returning home. But one needed a welcome, if the feeling was to mean anything.
They had lunch the next day at Prince’s. They sat close to a table that was fast becoming famous as the command post of certain American war correspondents covering the New Guinea front, and behind a table that was already famous as the command post of a genteel lady who covered the Society front. Gay young things were being industriously gay, keeping one eye on each other and one eye on the door in case a photographer appeared. Matrons pecked at their food like elegant fowls, also eyeing each other and waiting the advent of a photographer. Two suburban ladies from Penshurst, having a day out in Society, sat toying with their food and wishing they had gone to Sargent’s, where they could have had a real bog-in for less than half the price. Aside from Jack and the American correspondents, there were only one or two other men in the place, and they looked as uncomfortable as if they had been caught lunching in an underwear salon. Australian men still hadn’t learned to be at ease when outnumbered by women.
Silver told Jack she had to go to a meeting that night. “It’s some sort of bond rally that my mother has organised for business girls. David Jones’ have lent their restaurant. Everyone has tea and sandwiches, then this war hero gets up and says something. After that, the idea is that the girls all rush up and buy war bonds.”
“I thought they’d rush up and lay themselves at the feet of the war hero. It has better possibilities, I mean as a spectacle.”
“Well, anyway, that cuts out dinner to-night,” she said. “Unless you want to wait until after the meeting.”
“I’ll come along and eat tea and sandwiches. Maybe afterwards, just to set the girls an example, I’ll rush up and throw myself at the war hero.”
That evening, shortly after the stores had closed, he met her outside David Jones’. They went into the big gleaming store and, in a lift crammed with chattering females who looked with an appreciative eye on Jack and a critical one on Silver, they went up to the restaurant floor.
As soon as they entered the large high-ceilinged restaurant Jack saw the war hero. “You mean he’s the one who’s supposed to inspire these girls to save their money for war bonds? He’s never saved a penny in his life! I’ve kept him in spending money ever since we joined the Army on the same day.”
“Who is he?” said Silver. “My mother’s a bit on the vague side. She couldn’t remember his name.”
But before Jack could tell her, the war hero had broken away from the group around him and come plunging towards them. “You old bastard, Savanna! What are you doing here?”
“After you speak, I get up and say a piece,” said Jack. “They want the girls to get both sides of the question. You, you bludger!” he said elegantly, and shook his head disgustedly. He turned to Silver. “This is Sergeant Morley, V.C. Miss Bendixter.”
He was glad to see that Silver remained cool and didn’t gush. “My, we are honoured to-night. A real live V.C. winner.”
“I’ll say this for him,” said Jack. “Most of them don’t stay alive.”
Greg Morley’s black eyes were bright with light and his thin face was flushed under its tan. He’s just like a big kid, thought Jack. Even the thin brown face had a suggestion of boyishness about it: the features seemed thrown together above the mobile mouth, as if they had never settled into a mature countenance. He was good looking, but in a way one could never remember: there was a suggestion of impermanence, of possible change, about his face, as if when one saw him next he might have changed beyond recognition. And his face, like a young boy’s, showed every emotion.
“I’m glad I stayed alive for this,” he said, throwing an arm towards the room, laughing with a mouthful of bright white teeth. “I’m lapping it up! You should have been a hero, Jack.”
“God forbid,” said Jack. “Is Sarah here?”
“She’s over there with the mob,” Greg said. “I’ve got my own bodyguard of Army Public Relations blokes, War Loan johnnies, a photographer from D.O.I. The works, all for Greg Morley!”
“What are you going to talk about to-night?” said Silver.
“God knows.” Greg couldn’t have been more cheerful: he wasn’t a modest hero to be frightened by public adoration. “They’ve written it for me. All I have to do is deliver it.”
“What are you doing next week?” said Jack. “Hamlet?”
But Greg couldn’t be dented. “Come and meet Sarah and the old duck who’s organising this. You’ll love her, Jack. Doesn’t know a bee from a bull’s foot about the war, but you’d think she was Lady Blamey.”
“My mother,” said Silver with mock reverence, but Greg had already left them, plunging back towards his bodyguard and the centre of interest. One of the bodyguard detached himself from the group and came towards them. He ignored Silver and looked up at Jack.
“What are you doing here?” He was a lieutenant with neat wavy hair, a soft round face and an air of authority he was just trying out. “This is a bond rally for business girls, not the Anzac Buffet. You won’t find what you’re looking for here.”
“When you speak to me address me by my rank,” said Jack, and wondered how many bonds it would sell if he smacked the lieutenant here and now. In the past he had several times felt like hitting officers, but had been restrained by second thoughts for which he had later despised himself. But if this officer went too far, there mightn’t be a second thought this time. “And speak to me again like you just have, and I’ll drop you down the lift well. Pips or no pips.”
The officer’s round face seemed to get even rounder, and his air of authority almost choked him. “What’s your name and Army number? I’ll fix you, my friend——”
Jack looked down at him from his full height, past the bristling moustache that stuck out like the horns of an angry bull. “Just step aside, mister, and allow me to escort Miss Bendixter through to join her mother.”
The lieutenant stepped back, his mouth open but empty of words, and Jack and Silver moved on across the room. “You would have hit him, wouldn’t you?” Silver said. “Or thrown him down the lift well.”
“Certainly. Don’t you think he asked for it?”
“I suppose so. But here! Do you always choose such crowded places for your assassinations? And when you’re with your lady friends? I felt a little like some floosie from Paddington”
He stopped and looked down at her. “For that last remark, I should drop you down the lift well. I don’t know why, but one thing I hadn’t expected from you was snobbishness.”
She said nothing for a moment, and he thought she was going to walk away from him. Then she put her hand in his and suddenly he was aware of a new intimacy between them. It was as if they were old lovers who had patched up a quarrel, and there was none of the awkwardness that would have been natural in view of their short acquaintance. “I’m sorry, Jack. That was something I should never have allowed myself even to think. My apologies to the girls in Paddington.”
Then a grey-haired handsome woman, better dressed than anyone else in the place, came steaming towards them. “Silver! My God, I thought you were never going to arrive!” She looked up at Jack. “So this is our war hero! So big and handsome, too! We should sell a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of bonds to-night. I wish all our heroes were like you. What did you win?”
“The Melbourne Cup,” said Jack. “Only man ever to do it. It’s always been won by a horse before.”
Silver patted her mother’s arm. “This is not the war hero, darling. This is Jack Savanna.”
“Oh, he’s with you?” said Mrs. Bendixter, and it was a long time since Jack felt he had been so neatly dropped over-board. Mrs. Bendixter looked about her. “Then where is he? You’d think he’d be on time, even if he is a hero. Have you seen Smithy?”
A small pony-faced woman materialised out of nowhere. She wore an expression of dedicated enthusiasm: the war had been the first cause big enough in which to lose herself. When peace came she would need rehabilitating as much as the men who had fought on the battle fronts.
“You wanted me, Mrs. Bendixter?” Even her voice was enthusiastic, a thin reedy trumpet blowing the national anthem. “Such a crowd! We should sell enough bonds tonight to buy at least one bomber!”
“All we need,” said Jack. “One more bomber, and the war is won.”
He felt Silver kick his leg and when he looked down at her she was frowning severely at him. But Miss Smith’s attention had been hauled in by Mrs. Bendixter.
“Where’s this war hero, Smithy? We must get started soon. We have to go on to a bridge party after this for the war widows——”
“Orphans,” said Miss Smith, glowing with charity. “And it’s not a bridge party, it’s a musicale.”
“A musicale? Well, that’s good. I can doze off. My God, I’m so tired!” Mrs. Bendixter put a hand to her forehead, suffering from war fatigue. “Well, where is this man? Hasn’t he turned up yet?”
“He’s here, Mrs. Bendixter! You’ve already met him. Sergeant Morley, the thin dark boy——”
“The boy with those lovely teeth! Why didn’t someone say so? My God, if I wasn’t here to organise things, they’d never get started!” Mrs. Bendixter turned round as a newspaper photographer came up. “Hallo, you’re from the Sunday Telegraph, aren’t you? Take me full face this time. Last week I was in profile and I looked like General MacArthur.”
Then Greg Morley came back, dragging a pretty girl with honey-coloured hair after him. “You remember Sarah, Jack! Look after her, will you? I’ve got to go up and do my act now.”
Then he had gone plunging away, surrounded by his bodyguard, the whole group moving towards a platform at the end of the hall, headed by Mrs. Bendixter with Miss Smith in close tow.
“Looks like Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort,” said Jack. “Is there no band?” Then he took Silver’s arm. “Sarah Morley, this is Silver Bendixter.”
Sarah smiled and shook her head in wonder. “Your mother puts up with this sort of bedlam often?”
“Every day,” said Silver. “She loves it.”
“So does your husband,” Jack said to Sarah. “Look at him up there. Clark Gable never felt more at home.”
Greg was up on the platform, beaming round at the thousand or more girls below him. Mrs. Bendixter was speaking, reading from a typescript that Miss Smith had shoved into her hands, but she was standing too close to the microphone and her voice was just wave after wave of almost unintelligible blasts. Nobody minded, because nobody had come to listen to Miss Bendixter anyway. And Jack somehow felt sure that Greg at the microphone would be as practised as any crooner.
“His life is complete,” Sarah Morley said. “He’s waited all his life for these past few days.”
“I suppose you’ve been besieged by the newspapers?” said Silver.
“And radio, and the newsreels, and the magazines, and war loan committees. It’s like being married to a public property, a new statue or something.” There was no spite or rancour in Sarah’s voice it was as if she had succeeded in detaching herself completely from the whole business. She looked at Jack. “The surprising thing is, he’s terribly modest with me about it all. He hasn’t told me a thing about what he did to get the V.C All I know is what I read in the papers. Was he really as brave as they said?”
“He was.” There was no mockery now in Jack’s voice: he had seen the incident and he knew Greg deserved the honour he had got. “We’d been held up for an hour by these two machine-gun posts. They had us as nicely taped as I ever hoped to be taped. We were stuck behind some rocks on the bank of the Litani River.” As he spoke the whole rocky sunbaked Syrian countryside came back to him, and he felt suddenly nostalgic. The campaign had been tougher and more important than the outside world, for some political reason, had been told. The Vichy French had fought with the same whole-hearted hatred as the Germans had in the Western Desert. But after the armistice, camped among the olive groves in the shadow of the sharp-ridged mountains, bathing in the warm Mediterranean, loving the dark-eyed Lebanese beauties, when one could get them away from their hawk-eyed parents. Syria had become the first piece of territory worth fighting for that they had so far met. Jack had liked Syria and one day hoped to go back. “I didn’t see Greg start out, I don’t think any of us did, but the next thing we knew he was across the river and going up the opposite bank. He took those two machine-gun posts on his own. He threw in grenades and then went in and used his bayonet. We were still on the other side of the river and it was like sitting in the dress circle watching a film, the sort of film that excites you but that you don’t believe in. When he’d finished he stood up, grinning all over his face just like he is now, and yelled back at us, ‘Righto, what are you bastards waiting for?’ It’s the first and only time I’ve ever heard a man cheered while we were in action. Yes, Sarah, he was really brave.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “It makes me feel better for him.”
“What do you mean?” said Silver.
“Nothing,” Sarah smiled, her grey eyes looking a little tired. “It’s been all a little confusing these past few days, married to Public Hero Number One.”
“It can’t have been much of a reunion for the two of you,” said Silver. “I mean, no privacy. So little time to yourselves.
“It’s been like spending our honeymoon on Central Station,” Sarah said. “I’m afraid to take my clothes off for fear the doorbell will ring again.”
“That wouldn’t worry Greg, would it?” said Jack. “He’d welcome them all, naked or not.”
Sarah nodded. “He was interviewed the other day by the Herald in his underpants. He was never what you’d call self-conscious. I must have had a too modest upbringing, like to be fully dressed in front of strangers. Anyhow, we’re escaping for a couple of days. We’re going up to Katoomba to-night.”
Greg had now begun to speak. Just as I thought, Jack said to himself. Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Richard the Lion-Heart, all rolled into one. You’d think he’d been doing it all his life. Listen to the microphone technique, better than I could ever use it and I’ve had years of practice. Look at the charm flowing out like syrup out of a barrel. And just the right touch of modesty to season the devil-may-care attitude. I like the bastard and I admire him, but in a moment I’m going to be sick right in the middle of Mrs. Bendixter’s bond rally.
“I’m going downstairs for a breath of air,” he said. “I don’t want any bonds to-day, thank you.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Silver. “We can go and have dinner now.”
“What about helping your mother?”
“She won’t need me. It was just in case the hero was unmarried. Sometimes I’m expected to find him a girl, or in the last resort go out with him myself. But Greg’s all fixed.” She smiled at Sarah. “Have a nice second honeymoon, Sarah. No photographers or visitors.”
“Take your clothes off and leave them off,” said Jack.
Sarah smiled at them. “I’ll do my best. And thank you. I’ll say good night to Greg for you.”
They left Greg and his bated-breath audience and went down in the lift and out into Elizabeth Street. The air was pleasantly cool and the crowds in the streets had thinned out. A breeze came across the park, brushing the leaves like a restless child, and the moon struggled to free itself from a net of clouds.
“Sarah looked rather tired,” said Silver, “as if she’s been under something of a strain.”
“Living with Greg under any circumstances would be a strain on a woman.”
“Sometimes you sound as if you don’t like him.”
“I do like him.” He had come to cherish the friendship of several of the men in the last two years, particularly Greg and Vern Radcliffe. He had been self-sufficient before the war, having no close men friends and needing none. But of late, knowing these men in arms with him, exchanging confidences with them, having them sometimes depend on him, he had become aware of a feeling of selflessness that had given him more pleasure than he could remember in his dealings with men before. At one time he had laughed at the Australian religion of mateship, the spirit of fraternalism that was evident in so many movements in the country’s history. If he hadn’t yet succumbed to it completely, he had at least stopped laughing. He had recognised it as one of the few things of constant value in a world of changing values. “I have a great affection for the irresponsible bastard. But that’s his trouble, he’s too irresponsible.”
“You sounded like a good responsible type to-night, when you were going to sock that officer.” She stopped walking and stared at him, then she moved on again. “I believe you would have, too. You’re a queer mixture. Jack. Sometimes you sound too cynical to care about anything. And other times——” She made a hopeless gesture with her hand. “Remind me to think twice if ever you ask me to marry you.”
“I’ve never asked anyone yet,” he said.
“Oh, pardon me for being so forward!” She had regained her poise, was cool and slightly mocking again. “I’m so used to being asked, I just take it for granted.”
He grinned, losing his dark mood. “Let’s have dinner, before I take to beating you. I’m a patient man——”
“Like hell, you’re patient,” she said, and put her arm in his and smiled up at him: the dimples took all the cool mockery out of her face and made her young and lovely. He pressed her arm tightly against his body, feeling it like a soft link in a chain she was winding about him, and they walked up through the cool electric night, on the verge of love in the city that was just experiencing its first epidemic of lust.
When they had finished dinner she looked at her watch. “It’s still only twenty-past eight, a young night. What would you like to do now?”
“Go to bed with you,” he said, and somehow succeeded in making the words not so brutal and vulgar and selfish.
“With anyone else, that could have spoiled a lovely evening.” She reached across the table and put her hand on his: in the pressure of her fingers he could feel her desire answering his. “But I’m not going to any cheap hotel room. I’m not like my sister. I have a distaste for the sordid.”
“I have the loan of a flat at Manly.” He signalled for the waiter and tipped that surprised worthy as liberally as any American who had come into the place: everyone benefited from love, even waiters. “We’ll go down to the Quay and catch a ferry.”
He kissed her as they rode on the outside of the ferry, with the cool breeze stirring her hair like wisps of spun silver, and with a quartet at the rear of the ferry serenading the moon with the Maori Farewell. Behind them the city was dark in its brown-out, and as they crept out past the defence boom he had a sudden shivering feeling of unreality. His arm tightened about her.
“It’s hard to believe,” he said. “In Alex and Haifa and Beirut, yes. But not here.”
“I get scared stiff at times,” she said. “What if we should lose the war?”
The ferry was rolling now, meeting the swell coming in through the Heads. They were on the lee side of the boat, looking back up the moonlit harbour. Other ferries, dark as their own, crept like cats from shore to shore. Against the far stars the Bridge was like some great night-beast in mid-leap. Only an occasional shaded car light showed, peering furtively, then quickly disappearing. Then ahead of them they saw the dancing tops of the pine trees that identified Manly.
“Don’t let’s talk about losing,” he said. “There are more important things to think about to-night.”
“Spoken like a true man,” she said, and kissed him lightly.
