Читать книгу Bird of Paradise - Rosemary Esmonde Peterswald - Страница 10

It was just on dusk when Jake arrived back at the Bottom Pub to collect Merryn for dinner. He was wearing long cotton trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, compulsory antimalarial dress for the army, his brown lace up shoes polished to a high sheen. Together they walked down the stairs to the veranda and sat at a rickety table in the corner. Across Fairfax Harbour, the evening light closed down over the horizon. And as it did, a cool breeze shifted the plants on the edge of the porch.

After a few moments of awkward silence, Jake stood up to go to the bar. ‘The usual?’ he asked.

Merryn nodded. ‘Yes. With ice please.’

‘Lovely dress,’ he said a short time later, returning with their drinks, ‘red suits you.’

‘Thank you.’

Jake sat down again and lifted his glass. ‘Cheers.’ He eyed her warily over the rim. Merryn left her glass on the table. Watching him shift in his chair and frown slightly, she thought it was as if he was struggling to come up with an explanation for what he had done. To Merryn, no explanation would be enough.

‘Why did you come, Merryn?’ he eventually asked.

She stared at him angrily for a long moment, her mind floundering in search of appropriate words. She very much wanted to ask. ‘Who seduced whom? Where? How?’

‘Why did it happen, Jake?’ is what she finally said.

The question hung between them.

‘Not again Merryn. Don’t beat yourself up like that.’

‘How, Jake?’

‘I told you in my letter. It just happened. I didn’t mean it to...’

‘You must’ve been looking for it. Otherwise things like that don’t just happen.’

‘I was missing you.’

Merryn looked away and then swivelled back. ‘Christ, Jake! Give me a break. You’d think you could come up with something better than that. Surprise. Surprise. I was missing you too. The difference being, I didn’t screw around.’

Jake looked at her, taken aback by her uncharacteristic choice of words. ‘Jees, Merryn...don’t.’ He tried to calm her down, at the same time looking around to see if anyone had heard. Fortunately, the only other couple—down the far end of the veranda—were deep in conversation. ‘You didn’t answer me before,’ he went on edgily. ‘Why? I mean, why for God’s sake did you come? Surely you knew it was going to make it worse for you.’

‘When are you getting married?’ she asked, ignoring his question.

‘In a few weeks time. Before it shows.’

‘Where?’

‘The chapel at Karu Barracks.’

Merryn’s eyes widened. ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Karu... where we were going to get married?’ She glared. ‘How could you, Jake?’

He took a mouthful of beer, spilling some of it onto the wooden table. ‘Yes, Merryn, that’s where all officers get married, if they don’t go back to Australia, that is.’

He drew a circle over and over in the spillage before finally picking up a South Pacific Lager coaster and covering the mess. Merryn watched the coaster seep up the liquid, as though it was a sponge in tannin water.

‘Will she have it here or go back to Australia?’

Jake gave a small cough and fiddled with his glass. ‘Her parents want her to go back to Brisbane. They still have a house there, and Mrs. James will go with her. I’ll take leave.’

‘Oh!’ was all Merryn could think of to say. Then she had to ask the question, the question that had haunted her since she first found out, the question she most wanted to know the answer to. ‘Do you really love her, Jake?’

Jake leaned forward, letting his gaze drift past her head—to a point where the veranda met the garden, and then brought it back. ‘Yes, I do, Merryn. In any case that doesn’t come into it. There’s the baby and...’ his voice trailed off.

‘You loved me, Jake. And what about ...?’

He cut her off before she could go on. ‘We did the right thing. You know that. In any case, maybe we haven’t really been in love for ages...perhaps it’s just that...well...we’ve known each other for so long. Perhaps we mistook friendship for love.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘What about when we first made love, Jake? At Duntroon! Remember what it was like? After the ball. You said you knew it then too. Was it like that with Amanda, Jake? Like in the clubhouse?’ She knew she was ranting; her voice was shrill, not like hers at all, but there was no way she could contain it.

Suddenly, she looked away with her mind reeling back to the carefree days when Jake first went to Duntroon. To the first time they made love. When she came down from Wattle Creek to go to the Queen’s Birthday Ball as his date. How he had hidden a candle and a blanket in the small clubhouse down by the river. How he laid the lifejackets gently on the floor, placing the blanket on top. And when she lay beside, him she remembered, too, how he ran his fingers along her naked body and how a shiver rose from her belly and rippled through her being. Looking at him now, she remembered what he had said—exactly as he said it.

‘As long as I live I will never see anything so beautiful.’

With the candlelight throwing a shadow on his bare skin, a voice had warned her, told her that if she went ahead with this there would be no return. Yet another voice whispered. Is this not what you’ve wanted from the first time you saw him amongst the apple trees? What you’ve dreamed about ever since. It is not something you will regret.

And it wasn’t something she regretted, even now. For it was at that moment she found true happiness.

Jake put his hand under the table to find her hand. She moved hers away out of his reach and held her brandy glass tight with the other. A young Papuan shuffled onto the veranda and hung a hurricane lantern from the rafters. Merryn watched him go inside again and return with a mosquito coil, placing it on the floor.

‘Don’t do it to yourself, Merryn,’ Jake said gently. ‘It was all so long ago.’

‘Not that long, Jake!’

And I waited, didn’t I? Till you came home from Vietnam. Worried myself sick, farewelled two of your slaughtered mates in flag-draped coffins at the Anzac chapel at Duntroon. Held their distraught wives in my arms. Wrote every day. Spoke up at a rally, saying how proud I was to have a boyfriend serving in Vietnam. Even had an egg thrown in my face. And for what? This?

‘Maybe we left it too long before we got engaged,’ Jake said, as if reading her thoughts.

Merryn fingered the lemon in her glass and brought it to her mouth, the bitterness of the fruit suiting her frame of mind. ‘Does Amanda know I’m here?’ she asked.

Jake played with his thumbnail and looked away. ‘Yes, she does,’ he eventually said, turning around. His eyes had difficulty holding hers, and he gave a nervous cough. ‘Well, not exactly,’ he stammered, ‘I told her I was meeting a mate of my sister. A childhood friend.’

Merryn looked aghast. ‘Come on, Jake, you can’t be serious. A childhood friend? And I haven’t seen Prue in years. You don’t even talk to her.’ She shook her head in amazement. ‘You mean to say you didn’t tell Amanda we were engaged?’

A pause. He squirmed in his chair. ‘It just never came up.’

Merryn glared at him, forgetting her intention to keep calm. ‘Didn’t come up. Crikey, Jake, shouldn’t you have made it come up?’

Silence. Finally he said, ‘I was going to tell her. Then she got pregnant and things kind of changed...’

‘Surely someone at Karu Barracks would have known of our engagement?’

‘There’s no one there who I’ve served with before.’

‘How convenient!’

Now she wished she’d insisted on putting the engagement notice in the army newspaper. At the time, it seemed an unnecessary expense. She remembered the moment he produced the ring. Although it was taken for granted they would marry one day, they didn’t actually get engaged until last year. For straight after graduation, Jake’s mother had died suddenly after suffering a stroke. Not long afterward, his father passed away too, although he had been sick for some time. Everyone thought the shock of his wife’s death sent him into a downhill spiral. Jake had been devastated for months, and although Merryn didn’t know his parents all that well, as they had moved to Far North Queensland ten years previously, she was extremely sad for him. Later that year, Merryn had gone overseas. After that, Jake got posted to New Guinea for the first time, followed by Vietnam. For his R&R leave, they’d taken a tiny log cabin, with a jetty and a small rowboat, hidden away at Wangi on the shores of Lake Macquarie. Later, in his letters, he told her that’s what kept him going as he crouched in the jungle stalking the dreaded Vietcong.

‘Dreaming of that cottage and you,’ he had written.

With their feet dangling in the warm waters of the lake, he produced the ring from his pocket. He’d bought it in Singapore on his way home. Absently, Merryn rubbed the spot on her finger where he had placed the diamond that evening. She thought of the succulent blue swimmer crab they caught in the lake and how they cooked it over a campfire and how they sat at the small table under the weeping willow tree, eating the crab and sipping champagne. How they took the rowboat out to the small island in front of the cabin and made love in the moonlight. And how when he finished his tour of duty, they did it all again. Same cottage. Same island.

‘How old is she?’ Merryn asked.

‘Nineteen.’

‘Nineteen?’

‘Yes. Nearly twenty.’

She pushed her empty glass at him for a refill.

‘Sure you want another? We’ll have wine with dinner.’

‘I’ve never been more sure in my life, thank you very much.’ She was surprised at the fervour of her own voice. ‘And make it a big one please.’

She watched his retreating frame. One day, lazing on a deserted beach, she had drawn a line about his naked body on the sand. ‘How tall are you?’ she asked.

‘Six foot one,’ he told her. ‘Well, six foot and a half to be precise, but why worry about half an inch?’

She drifted with the memory, and then came back again when she found herself staring absently at her reflection in the mirror. None of this is happening, she told herself. I’ll wake up soon and still be engaged. Jake still loving me!

‘Here,’ he said, his voice gently brining her back. He handed her a brandy.

For some time she fondled the cool glass between her fingers before taking a sip. ‘Will you come back here after the baby?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Jake said. ‘It depends. Amanda’s not all that happy here...feels she’s missing out on things back home. Maybe when she’s had the baby she’ll like it more. In any case I’m only here for another year or so, then I’m hoping for a posting as General Robertson’s aide de campe in Sydney.’

Merryn raised an eyebrow. ‘Robertson? How d’you know you’ll get that? I thought you’d have to be recommended.’

‘Amanda’s father, Colonel James, said he’d put in a good word for me. His father was one of Robertson’s groomsmen... and then...well...there’s Vietnam and here.’

He’s got it all worked out, Merryn thought. Right down to the last detail. Lifting her head, she gazed along the veranda, now noisy with couples and a rowdy group of sweaty men in khaki shorts and open-necked shirts, no doubt in the midst of a lengthy session of after work drinks. In the dining room, candles burned on the tables. She suddenly decided getting drunk in a strange place with a man who no longer loved her wasn’t such a good idea after all.

‘I’d like to eat now, if that’s okay,’ she said, looking towards the dining room. ‘I feel a bit faint. Maybe it’s the long flight... the brandy...or possibly the heat! In any case, I’d better have something solid.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Jake said, scraping his chair back on the wooden boards. After helping Merryn to her feet, he picked up their drinks, carrying them along the veranda to the dining room.

Covered in a bright oilcloth, with a red candle burning in the centre, the table Jo showed them to a few minutes later had a view of the street below and beyond that to the water.

For some time after Jo left, they sat in stranded silence before Jake waved a hand for the waitress.

‘How about a wine? Chianti perhaps?’

‘No thanks,’ Merryn said. ‘The brandy will do.’

‘The roasted spatchcock’s good,’ the young blond waitress, dressed in a pale yellow pinafore, informed them cheerfully, passing out the menu handwritten on blue paper. She stood back, biro poised over notepad. ‘They’re just new on the menu.’ She pointed to the top of the page. ‘Number three.’

For some time, Merryn sat staring at the words in front of her. By studying them, she was able to avoid talking.

‘It comes with sweet potato chips,’ the waitress added, urging her to make a decision.

‘Fine,’ Merryn said with little enthusiasm. ‘I’ll have that then.’

She noticed Jake ordered his favourite—steak, medium rare with chips.

Jake eyed Merryn uneasily. He did feel guilty, and for a moment at the airport he had a slight regret, but all in all he was happy with the decision he had made, despite knowing how much that had hurt Merryn. Occasionally he’d allowed himself to wonder: what if there hadn’t been a baby on the way? What if Amanda wasn’t the colonel’s daughter? Would it have made any difference? In a way, he was lucky. For a mate of his, Simon, got kicked out of the army for getting a senior officer’s daughter pregnant. At least the colonel hadn’t done that. Mind you, if he knew Jake had been engaged at the time—well, that could be a different kettle of fish. ‘Look,’ he wanted to say, ‘some things just happen. I didn’t set out for it to happen. It wasn’t deliberate. It’s not so simple.’

But instead he said, ‘I go out on an army exercise on Monday. To Milne Bay on the eastern tip. I’m sorry I won’t be here to settle you in to your flat. I’ve promised Amanda I’ll spend the day with her tomorrow. We’re going on a picnic to the ruins at Idler’s Bay beach.’

An image formed in Merryn’s mind of naked bodies on the sand. The matter of factness of his tone annoyed her more than anything else.

‘How nice,’ she said.

‘I’ve organised an army driver to collect you from here. I also told him you’re my sister’s friend.’

‘Is that what you told Phillip?’

‘No, Phillip’s different. He wouldn’t tell anyone. He’s been my batman and driver since I first arrived...last posting that is.’

Instantly Merryn’s eyes shaded over, and she glanced away. Jake had told her Phillip had once saved his life. Up until now she hadn’t put two and two together. She was to have joined him on that posting. Then he got hepatitis slogging it up the twelve thousand odd feet of the Hindenburg Wall near the West Irian border and was sent home to Sydney. On recovering, rather than being posted back to New Guinea, he was seconded to Vietnam.

Merryn could remember the letters he wrote to her at that time in New Guinea, when he was on another patrol in the Southern Highlands at Lake Kutubu. Army patrols, he’d said, were all to do with showing the flag and a bit of nation building, at the same time discovering new routes, drawing up maps, and gathering vital information on tribal customs and numbers in remote villages. He told her how they plodded through the green hills of the Tari Valley, a fresh red scar leading from one village to the next. How a crowd of villagers would follow them for some miles, yodelling and chanting until they reached the edge of their land, where gradually the people of the next village would take up the chant. What had fascinated Merryn most were his vivid descriptions. He seemed to love what he was doing so much. The land, he told her, was rich and mostly cleared, interspersed with vegetable gardens and copses of trees that had been harvested for firewood for more generations than any could remember. The villages were mostly only a few thatched huts built around a patch of hard trodden earth. The smell of unwashed bodies and the smoke of cooking fires permeated the air.

When he and Merryn discovered New Guinea was the only place that would give Merryn a chance to get her flying hours up, he’d applied for a posting to the Pacific Island Regiment again. When the official notification had finally come through, they’d both been so over the moon that they went out to celebrate at a their favourite seafood restaurant. It was then that they decided to get married at Karu Barracks and have their honeymoon in the Trobriand Islands.

‘Yes, I thought Phillip knew,’ she said, glancing sideways at Jake.

‘He’ll tell no-one.’

Merryn narrowed him in her sight. ‘Actually I don’t give a stuff who he tells. As a matter of fact I might just tell everyone myself.’

She spoke loudly enough for heads to turn at the other tables. Jake was worried and lowered his voice.

‘Please, Merryn...’

Why should she keep quiet? Merryn wondered. What was in it for her? Yet if she was going to start a new life here on her own, what was the point of telling anyone? Having them feeling sorry for her. Wondering what went wrong? Wanting to know what happened? The gory details. As it was she would have enough on her mind already, starting a new job in this strange country, without adding any further complications.

Her expression softened a fraction. ‘What will you pay me to keep quiet?’ she asked, half jokingly.

A pause. He studied her for a long moment. When he spoke, there was a hard edge to his voice. A man cornered. ‘There’s always the baby.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I could tell...your mother...and...your sister...’

Merryn could feel the night air suddenly chill her skin, and she shivered. For a second, she drew in a breath as though she was drowning. She wrestled with astonishment and serious rage. How had it come to this? This was a new Jake—a Jake she knew nothing about. She looked at him, and in his eyes she could read he meant what he said. A bitterness rose in her throat, and she swallowed hard, yet the taste remained. He had her over a barrel and he knew it.

After a timeless minute or so, she pushed her chair back and stood up, moving from the dining room to the edge of the veranda—where across the road a small group of Papuans sat in a circle around a youth playing a guitar. She placed her elbows on the railing and leant her chin on her clenched knuckles. For some time this is how she stood, her back to Jake. Around her the dank night thickened. In the distance, the sound of the sea lapping on the shore got louder. Perhaps the tide was on the turn.

She never wanted to give the baby away. Yet Jake convinced her it was the best thing to do. Being a Catholic, there was no way Merryn could entertain the idea of an abortion. And yet, as she knew, if the powers that be had found out about the baby, Jake would have been kicked out of Duntroon, cruelling any chances of a career in the Australian army, and that career was what he wanted more than anything else. More than a baby.

Changing careers was not an option, he told her. And if he did, where would they get the money to live on? he asked not unreasonably, with Merryn pregnant and unable to work for long and then a baby to feed. Unless he became a builder’s labourer or something—or applied for a job in the public service, which he would hate.

‘Do you know what it is?’ he had said, holding her in his arms and running a finger along her chin. ‘It’s just bad timing. That’s what it is. Another few years and it would be wonderful, darling. Then we’ll have hordes of the little buggers...a rugby team at least.’

So in the end, Merryn told her mother and Amy she was going on a working holiday to Perth. And that’s where their son was born seven months later. The working holiday was not a complete lie, for during that time she kept the wolf from the door by landing a job as a receptionist in a small hotel in Subiaco belonging to the parents of one of the apple pickers Merryn had worked with in Tassie. And as she was positioned behind a large reception desk, they let her keep working right up until near the time she was due. In return, they gave her board and meals with a little money left over for the essentials. Jake came to visit when he could, which wasn’t often, as cadets didn’t get much leave from Duntroon. Each time he came, Merryn tried to talk him into keeping the baby. She would stay in Perth and wait until he graduated. They could get married then.

However, in the end, worn down by his gentle persuasion and conscious of her total love for him, she gave in and signed the adoption papers, convinced she was doing the right thing for the baby’s prospects. And theirs. For Jake kept assuring her they would have plenty of time for more babies in the future.

And of course there was time, for Jake. But not with her.

Merryn, too numb to think, had held the tiny bundle cocooned in a bunny rug in her arms for just a few hours after he was born. I can’t do this. It’s as simple as that, she had thought, playing with his little fingers and toes. But then when the time came for him to go, she had gazed into his beseeching little eyes as if in a trance. Vaguely she remembered handing him over to a kindly nun from the convent orphanage, with the most incredible eyes, the colour of a sea before a storm, who she later discovered was Sister Bernadette.

It was a month later when Jake, seeing how much Merryn was suffering, admitted he may have been wrong. Perhaps they should have held on to the baby, got married, and kept it a secret from the army. However, the time in which Merryn had to change her mind was up. It was too late then. There was no turning back.

Despite her pleadings to the convent, which ran the orphanage and organised the adoption, no one would tell Merryn where her baby was. Had he been adopted out? Or was he still in the orphanage waiting to go to new parents? Once she had even flown to Perth and gone to the convent. And as she waited for the door to open, she had seen a file of tiny boys, dressed all in grey, come out of the orphanage next door and enter the intricately carved doors of a stone church. For a moment, she stood rooted to the brick pavers of the porch, watching them march like little soldiers. Left. Right. They looked so rigid. Not giggling, pushing, and shoving like little boys should. Just as they entered the church, the door to the convent was opened by a decrepit stooped over nun, her head nearly reaching the floor, a walking stick in her right hand. She lifted her head as much as she could, which wasn’t far, just enough for Merryn to see into her kindly shrunken eyes. When Merryn told her that she wanted to see Sister Bernadette, she asked for Merryn’s name and if she was a relation. When Merryn said she was an old friend, the nun gave her a gentle smile.

‘I’ll ask if she can see you.’ She squinted her eyes. ‘She may be in chapel, but you can wait in here.’ Beckoning for Merryn to follow, she opened a set of double doors to a parlour.

After she left, Merryn heard her shovelling down the corridor and the tap tap of her walking stick disappearing in the distance. The parlour was a long narrow room with high cathedral ceilings, gleaming parquetry floors and cut glass windows overlooking a cobbled courtyard with a couple of wooden benches placed against the far wall—where an iron gate opened to the forecourt of the church. Along the side of the room were rows of hardback chairs, almost as though it was set up for a meeting. For nearly an hour Merryn waited, pacing up and down, picking up a copy of the Catholic Weekly and then the Advocate, which she thumbed through. Unable to concentrate, she put them back down again. She wondered if she’d been forgotten. Perhaps the old nun had got distracted. Just when she was about to go to the door to see if anyone else was around, she heard the sound of feet padding down the hallway. But it wasn’t Sister Bernadette who entered the room. It was the Mother Superior.

‘Sister Bernadette is unavailable,’ she said, gliding across the parquetry to Merryn. ‘I recognized your name. Maybe I can help you?’ When Merryn explained why she had come to see Sister Bernadette, an even sterner look came over the nun’s severe face. Feeling her face burn, Merryn felt as though she was back in primary school being scolded for bad behaviour.

‘Well, perhaps you should have thought of that then,’ the nun said, appearing to lack any compassion whatsoever. ‘Before you did what you did with the young man...and before you signed the adoption papers. There’s absolutely nothing we can do at this stage. We are sworn to secrecy.’ She stood up and went to the window. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go or I’ll be late for Benediction. I can see Father O’Leary has just arrived.’

‘But can’t you at least tell me where he is? Is he in the orphanage? Or has he gone to a family? Is he happy?’

A pause. ‘As I have said, we are sworn to secrecy.’

With one hand placed on the brass cross of her thick wooden rosary beads tied around her waist, she then moved swiftly towards the door, her habit flailing around her body as though she was a black bird flapping its wings. Holding the door handle, she turned and held Merryn’s desperate gaze.

‘If you like you can join us in the chapel,’ she said, her voice softening a smidgen. ‘Maybe you could light a candle for him and say a prayer.’ She looked at her watch. ‘The service will start in five minutes.’

A few minutes later, Merryn sat in a wooden pew in the hugely ornate church, having lit a small white candle and placed it in the holder by the altar. Is this how her son would end up? she wondered as she stared at the little boys sitting in front of her. Surely not. She hoped desperately that he was out in the world somewhere with a kind family. Before the little boys filed back down the aisle, where they would have had to pass in front of Merryn, the Mother Superior ushered her outside. It was then that Merryn’s eyes met Sister Bernadette’s for just a moment, and in those eyes, she thought she could see a look of great empathy. Hurriedly she rummaged in her bag for a pen and a piece of paper, quickly writing her address down.

‘Just in case,’ she whispered, handing Sister Bernadette the piece of paper and at the same time looking around to see if anyone was watching. Fortunately, the Mother Superior was deep in conversation with Father O’Leary, and the other nuns were walking back to the convent.

For months after that visit, Merryn had fallen into a deep depression. Eventually, however, she came to terms with the fact her son was gone for good. Yet there had not been a day before or since when at some stage she didn’t think of those beseeching little eyes and wonder about him. Who did he look like? And if he was with a family, was it a good family? Did they love him? Cherish him? Would they tell him he was adopted? And if they did, would he wonder who his real parents were? And why those cruel parents had given him away?

Not long after that visit to the convent, Merryn received a Christmas card and a short note from Sister Bernadette. She wrote in a chatty sort of way, almost as though the mail was being censored, talking about life in the convent and how she loved teaching the little children in the orphanage. And how she was praying for Merryn each day, particularly at Christmas time. Merryn had answered in much the same vein, hoping to build up confidence. This is how it went on each year, with Merryn careful not to overstep the mark, for she was sure the nun would have passed on any news if she could. Last Christmas, she told Merryn the Mother Superior had sadly passed away. Merryn wondered if this was a good omen. In any case, she took the bull by the horns and asked Sister Bernadette if she could please tell her anything about her son. It was not as though Merryn wanted to turn up on the doorstep demanding the little boy back. It was just that she wanted to know he was okay. See him. Just once. Even from a distance. She knew she had signed papers giving her rights away and she shouldn’t be hounding the convent, but it was her only chance. When she didn’t hear back, she wrote again, this time telling her how she and Jake were going to be married.

Now she had received that last letter—telling her not to write anymore. It was as if Merryn had definitely overstepped the mark, which she knew she probably had.

She imagined her mother’s heartbroken face if she ever found out Merryn had given her grandson away, a grandson to take the place of the only other male in the family. Her father. And what would it do to her beloved sister, Amy? Shatter the belief she had in her big sister forever. For after their father was tragically killed, when crop dusting, Merryn had tried to fill the huge void he left behind by helping Amy with her homework and driving them both to school in the old Holden Ute, singing all the way at the top of her voice to try and lift Amy’s spirits.

And then at school, Merryn would take her lunchbox and sit with Amy during recess, even if that meant Merryn missed out on netball practice. For although Merryn was hurting as much as Amy, perhaps even more so, she felt as the eldest, it was her duty to ensure her little sister got through that dreadful time, even giving the school bully, who called Amy a sis for crying, a black eye down behind the toilets, which his parents reported to the headmaster. Two days later the headmaster summoned both Merryn and the bully to his office. However, looking at the size of the bully and then Merryn, he told the boy’s parents it must have been an unfortunate accident. Why else would a boy that size let himself be bashed up by a mere slip of a girl? Later, in the playground, the headmaster gave Merryn a conspiratorial wink as he walked past. To this day, Merryn felt that the dreadful anger she had felt inside must have given her a supernatural strength to do such a thing.

As it was, Amy had been devastated when Merryn left to go to Perth on a supposed working holiday, but by then she was two inches taller than Merryn and could drive herself along the winding dirt road to the school in Musellbrook. When she’d first found out she was pregnant, Merryn had thought of telling them. Yet even though she was desperate for some emotional support, Merryn knew her mother would have been mortified. How could she hold her head high at Mass each Sunday, let alone with her friends? And if Merryn had told Amy, it would have put too much pressure on her to keep it a secret. Merryn had landed herself in this mess. She had to accept her lot and get on with it. Perhaps, if her father had been alive, it might have been different.

Yet despite all this, Merryn felt it wasn’t just the fact she got pregnant that would now shatter her mother and Amy, but that she gave the baby away without consulting them. That’s what would kill them both. If they knew they hadn’t been given a chance to make that baby part of their lives, to celebrate every birthday, every Christmas. For as it was, Merryn had done that on her own, even hanging a Christmas stocking over the fireplace of whatever house she lived in and awaking on the seventh of September each year and saying: ‘Happy Birthday, my darling. Wherever you are.’

Sometimes Jake was there. Sometimes he wasn’t. And even when he was there, he wasn’t really part of the celebration. It was almost as if he wanted to pretend it didn’t happen. Yet on the perimeter of Merryn’s mind, her son was always there, hovering in the shade, waiting to come out into the sunshine.

A presence at her shoulder brought her back to where she stood on the veranda.

‘Come inside,’ Jake said. ‘The mozzie coil’s burnt out. You’ll get bitten.’

As if in a daze, she followed him to the dining room where they sat down again. Eyeing him across the table, Merryn mulled over his threat. For some time, they sat staring at each other.

‘Oh Jake,’ she eventually said. ‘You’ve really turned into a bastard, haven’t you?’

For a second she wondered if Vietnam hadn’t got to him after all. Had the atrocities he’d seen and been part of warped his mind? Changed his personality?

Jake felt a slight panic. Somehow he’d imagined Merryn would be okay about what had happened by now. He was surprised at how angry she still was. Normally, she was so mild.

He gave a tight smile. ‘I’m sorry...’

‘Forget it, Jake.’

Merryn knew she should get up and go. Leave him to contemplate his threats. She couldn’t, for it was as though she was glued to her seat. Waiting to see what else he had in store for her.

All of a sudden his hand reached across the table. ‘I was only joking, Merryn...of course I wouldn’t tell. By the same token, it’s probably best if we both forget we were ever engaged, don’t you think?’

Merryn didn’t move and she didn’t say anything. For what was there to say? Of all the things she had expected, the threat he had made was not one of them. And he didn’t appear to be joking when he said it.

‘Thanks,’ she murmured absently, when a basket with a small spatchcock, crisped to the colour of leatherwood honey, was placed in front of her. Suddenly she had little appetite.

‘Did you hear me?’ Jake asked, after the waitress had also placed a sizzling steak on a steel platter nestled into a piece of wood carved in the shape of a cow before him.

‘Yes, I did,’ Merryn murmured. She fiddled with the chicken, putting only the tiniest morsels of flesh in her mouth. ‘No, Jake,’

she said. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.’ She tried to contain the anger that the burning in her eyes betrayed.

‘Thanks,’ he muttered. Then he threw her a quizzical look. ‘But as I’ve asked you umpteen times, why on earth did you have to come and put yourself through all this?’

Merryn stared into Jake’s eyes. She felt an urge to scream, to yell at him, to blast words into the air, let the other diners hear. Embarrass him. Instead she spoke softly with gritted teeth.

‘You know as well as I do. Because despite what’s happened, I can’t get my flying hours up anywhere else. It’s just unfortunate this is where you are, Jake.’

‘I see.’

‘Well, I’m glad for small mercies.’

Chagrined, he looked away, and then turned back. ‘I’m sorry, Merry...really I am ... but it’ll work out. Maybe you’ll meet someone else soon and forget about me.’

She flinched as he used his pet version of her name. ‘Do me a favour, Jake. Please never call me Merry, ever again. You’re the only one that calls me that. And yes, you’re probably right. It was all some ghastly mistake, and we’ll both live happily ever after.’

He looked as though he was about to say something, and then thought better of it. Merryn pushed her plate aside, stood up, and went to the restroom. When she returned, he was smoking a cigarette. She picked up the engraved leather and gold case she’d given him for a Duntroon graduation present and knocked a cigarette out.

‘Thought you’d given up?’

‘I had. But I’ve taken it up again. Listen,’ she said, stifling a strained yawn, ‘I’m tired...it must be jet lag. Reckon I’ll take this back to my room and smoke it there.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re exhausted. Can’t say I blame you. It’s a bloody long trip. You go back up. I’ll just finish my drink.’ Then he thought better of himself. ‘Would you like me to see you to your room?’

For a moment she stood staring at him. Here he was, offering to see her to her room, like a good gentleman should. Had he already persuaded himself she was just a friend of Prue’s? A childhood friend he’d been saddled with to look after. Had he convinced himself that’s all she’d ever been to him? Forgotten how they loved? Didn’t he realise what he’d done to her? Did he think it was that easy?

She picked her key off the table. ‘C’mon, Jake...don’t try being the gentleman now. I’m quite capable of walking up by myself, thank you very much. Go get your beauty sleep...so you’ll be bright and cheery for Amanda tomorrow.’ She raised her voice. ‘We don’t want you looking haggard for your brand new fiancee, do we now?’

Jake lifted his hand in a sign of silence. ‘Please, Merryn! Shush...someone will hear.’

‘Well we can’t have that, can we?’ She turned to walk away, and then swivelled back on him. ‘I wish you all the best, Jake.’ She gave a tight unpleasant smile. ‘Sorry I wasn’t enough for you. I hope you find what you’re looking for with Amanda.’ She moved towards the veranda, throwing words over her shoulder. ‘Have a happy life, Jake. Fare thee well, as Bob Dylan would say. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.’

She knew she was being an absolute bitch, but she couldn’t help herself. And didn’t he deserve it?

In the wake of her outburst, the silence in the room fell like a cushion. Heads lifted, and curious eyes followed her path.

‘Mind your own bloody business,’ Jake wanted to say as the eyes now turned accusingly on him. Instead, ignoring their stares, he jumped up and went after Merryn, catching her halfway down the veranda. He put a hand on her shoulder.

Angrily, she shoved it off and fumbled inside her bag. ‘Here... you might as well have this.’ She held out her engagement ring. ‘It’s not much use to me now. Maybe you can give it to Amanda. Or have you already given her one? I believe Moresby’s a bit short on jewellery stores. But no doubt her daddy organised that too, or did you order it by catalogue? Angus and Coote?’

She shoved the ring into the palm of his hand.

‘Keep it, Merryn. I don’t want it. It’s yours.’

‘Fine lot of use it’ll be to me unless I just happen to find a fiance a bit short on cash...”don’t worry about the engagement ring...I’ve already got one.” Probably gives me more chance of snaring someone, now that I think of it.’

For a moment Jake stood there, jiggling the ring from one hand to the other. Again he tried to give it to her, but she turned her back on him and went to go. ‘Come on, Merryn,’ he pleaded. ‘Please don’t be so bitter.’ He touched her on the shoulder. ‘I’m a bastard. I know. But I didn’t mean to hurt you. Really I didn’t. It’s just that...well...life changes course without one really knowing. Don’t you reckon it’s best we found out now...and not later? What if we got married and then found out?’

She swung around. ‘Best you found out, Jake. And yes! You are a bastard—a right proper one if you must know.’ She was really worked up now unable to contain her trembling mouth. She put a knuckle to her top lip.

‘Does it help,’ Jake said, ‘that I really care about you, despite what’s happened ... and...?’ He trailed off not sure what to say next.

Some sort of caring, Merryn thought, when you’ve just threatened to tell the whole world how I gave up my child.

‘I don’t know,’ she said wearily. ‘And quite frankly, Jake, I couldn’t give a shit.’ Her voice sounded foreign as though she was listening from far away.

For a moment they stood staring at each other. She could smell the frangipani on the edge of the veranda, the oil from the hurricane lantern, the dead mosquito coil, the cigarette he had smoked.

He wiped his palms down the side of his trousers. He dropped his eyes and slowly raised them again. ‘I truly am sorry, Merryn.’ He gave her a small smile and held her gaze. ‘I’ll come and see you when I get back. And...’ he hesitated, ‘well, good luck in your new job. Now you’re here I hope it works out for you. I’ve asked Alastair Mackenzie at Karu to give you a call whilst I’m away. He also thinks you’re just Prue’s friend.’ He appealed to her with his eyes. ‘Please don’t tell him anything different. He’ll take you to dinner at the Mess ... or the movies...or whatever you’d like.’

Merryn breathed in sharply. She reached up and grabbed a flower off the frangipani tree, crushing it into little pieces. After a moment, she watched the pieces flutter to the street below as though they were tiny snowflakes dropping on the parched earth. She lifted her face and looked him in the eye. ‘Gosh, Jake! You’ve certainly got yourself in a twist here, haven’t you? Why couldn’t I just have been an old girlfriend?’

He paused and shuffled his feet, staring down to the street as if mesmerized by the chards of frangipani. Then he shifted his gaze to Merryn. ‘I thought of that. But it seemed easier this way. We’re bound to come across each other, and well, I still want to see you...as a friend. I didn’t think Amanda would understand. Or her parents. You know...carrying on with her when I was already engaged. Besides,’ he paused, clearing his throat, ‘you know what it’s like. Once you start a lie, you’re sort of caught, aren’t you?’ He flicked a finger at a mosquito on his arm. ‘In any case, I thought you’d prefer it this way. It may be awkward otherwise.’

‘Did you think I’d prefer it, Jake? Or are you scared you’ll be kicked out of the army if the truth comes out? They do that you know. Remember Simon? Look what happened to him.’ A pause. ‘In any case perhaps you could have asked me, Jake. What I’d have preferred, seeing as having been engaged to you wasn’t one of the options? Would you like to be an old girlfriend, Merryn? Or would you prefer to be an old family friend? My sister’s friend?’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just that...’

Merryn cut him off. ‘It’s okay, Jake,’ she snapped. ‘Forget it, but thanks all the same, I don’t need any Alastairs. I’ll be fine. After all, I’ve been looking after myself back home for the last three months. And when you were in Vietnam.’ She paused and gave a tight smile. ‘But what if Alastair inadvertently finds out who I really am? What if I have too much to drink and forget and tell him? A bit of a risk, isn’t it, Jake?’

He looked at her long and hard. ‘I trust you, Mer.....’

‘No, you don’t, Jake. Why else would you threaten to tell Mum and Amy about the baby?’ Merryn’s voice cut the air, sharp and shrill. Jake looked around to see if she’d caught anyone’s attention. Thankfully the wind had come up, rustling the overhanging trees and cushioning the sound.

He moved towards her. ‘Merry...’

‘I’ve already said...don’t call me Merry. Just don’t, okay... if there’s anything I feel less like at this moment of my life, it’s merry...thanks to you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jake said with a sad sort of smile, ‘but make sure you’re careful. Moresby’s a rough world out there. The crime’s getting worse. And Alastair’s nice. You may even like him. He’s Scottish, and a lot of fun.’

Merryn started laughing, and then cut it off. ‘Just great, Jake. Trying to match me up already. Maybe we could have a double wedding.’

Abruptly, she swung around and strode away, face set hard as stone. At the door to the stairs, she paused, but didn’t turn back, instead took hold of the handle.

‘You bastard,’ she said. But whether she said this aloud or to the millions of voices inside her head she could not be sure. Leaving the door ajar, she went up the stairs to her room.

Jake watched her go, and then stood up and went to the bar to get another drink.

Back in her room, Merryn grabbed her towel and robe and headed along the veranda to the bathroom. Although it wasn’t long since she’d had a bath, she was desperately hot and worked up, with a splitting headache. Maybe a cool shower would calm her down.

Greater than her anger with Jake was anger at herself. Jake was right; she shouldn’t have come. Yet she could hardly go home now and give up her dream of getting her commercial pilot’s licence, let Barty Harmon at BOPAIR down, and tell her mother she was right.

No, she would just have to brave it out. Get on with it and stay clear of Jake, hopefully not too hard to do if he was away on patrol or at Karu Barracks and she in town. In a tiny compartment of her mind, she had held on to the faint hope that once he saw her he would realise what he had done. What he was giving up, missing out on, that the memories of their years together would bring him to his senses. But now that seemed like a hopeless, pathetic dream.

It felt like a long, long time since she’d drawn a proper breath when she stepped into the shower and let the water thrash against her face. She was annoyed with herself for getting so upset. She had always prided herself on being in control. Back at Musellbrook, she became school captain, voted in by her peers. At first she thought it might have been because they felt sorry for her when her father had died. But then her friend Betsy had told her it was because the rest of the school felt she was a natural leader, always in control, but still able to muck around and have fun with the other kids. What if Betsy had just been party to that outburst?

The ache in her head eased a little, but not much. How can you go from loving someone to hating them in such a short time? Easy. And a bit of hatred never hurt anyone. Or did it? Anyway was it really hatred she felt? Or was it just an awful gut-wrenching emptiness? Again, she wondered why she shouldn’t tell everyone who she really was. Surely it would come out anyway at some point in time. For a few moments, she mulled this over, but in the end decided to go along with Jake’s charade. If she blew his cover, it would only antagonise him and destroy any remote chance of getting him back. But the way she felt now, there was no way in the world she wanted him back. Not that it was probable she could. For apart from anything else, what about the new baby? He was unlikely to leave Amanda in the lurch, even if he’d done much the same to Merryn. Not only would there be Amanda to contend with, but there’d also be her parents, particularly the colonel. Either way, Jake’s career would surely be in tatters.

But in the end, after standing under the shower for a full five minutes, she decided to see how things panned out. Go along with him for now. She always had a hankering to be an actress. Maybe this could be her chance. It would be interesting to see how Jake handled it all. No doubt he’d be watching her every move if their paths crossed, as they surely would. Terrified she might blow it. And if she did, would he tell her mother and Amy? Or was that just an idle threat? Yet in the right circumstances, all of us are capable of the most awful things. In the right circumstances, all of us are capable of the most awful thoughts, too. Would it not have been better for Merryn if Jake had been killed in the war? Could she have accepted that more? At least she wouldn’t have to see him with another woman. Watch that woman have his child. Perhaps a crocodile could devour him on the army exercise he was going on, leaving Amanda stranded at the altar, holding the bundle so to speak. God, how I hate that woman, she thought bitterly. And I haven’t even met her.

Turning the shower off, she walked from the cubicle. The steam had made a mist on the mirror. When she wiped away a patch of dampness, she could vaguely make out her face— eyes sunken, red rims, dark circles, hair wet seaweed. ‘It’s like watching the sun playing on a field of golden corn,’ she remembered Jake saying, as he took her hair in his hands and caressed her face. A face of angular features, nose slightly too long. ‘A noble nose,’ he said. She had always been reasonably happy with her face. Compelling is how she had been described once. Not beautiful—just compelling. Her sister Amy was beautiful. She looked at her rejected body. Legs tight and muscled from days on the netball court. Coupling the fullness of her breasts in her hands, she pinched her nipples, now rosy after the shower.

From the rack on the wall, she took down her robe and covered her naked body, walking back to her room where she turned the fan on for a short burst. Then suddenly feeling cool, she switched it off and went to the window, peering out between the louvres. Through the gaps drifting over the charcoal sky, she could see the moon. As a child she loved to make out the face on the moon. Tonight no face was obvious. She breathed in the warm air, noticing how it had its own perfume, a mixture of wood smoke, dry grass, and honeysuckle.

Down below, in what Jake had told her was the snake pit, a bar for long socked Papuans and expats—where Errol Flynn once drank and brawled, came a racket from stoned patrons spilling out into the street. A little while later there was a wild commotion. When she peered down, she saw a group hurling rocks at each other, yelling and cursing in pidgin. Although glad her room was up three flights of stairs, she would have preferred something more secure than louvres. She stepped to the door, pulling the safety chain over, poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the shelf, and took two aspirin and a malaria pill. Moments later she crawled under the mosquito net and lay down on the white cotton sheets. Above her head, the huge fan whirred below the ceiling. For a while she toyed with the idea of getting out of bed and turning it off. With it on she was almost too cold. Yet with it off she knew she would find the heat oppressive. It either seemed to rotate full blast or not go at all.

In the end she decided to leave it be. Pulling the sheets closely around her body, she stared at the wall, mesmerised by a small gecko scuttling up and down. Suddenly, she realised she was weeping, tears running down her cheeks onto the pillow. She lifted the sheet and wiped them away. For some time she lay there, still as a statue, gazing up at the mosquito net.

Reunions should not be like this. No way. Normally they were the times she loved most. When Jake would come home from an army exercise, put his key in the door, and bound up the stairs two at a time, taking her in his arms. Later, after they had made love, he would open a bottle of champagne and help her set up the fondue, which they both adored.

The most poignant reunion of all had been when he came back from Vietnam.

The light from the window at Sydney airport had shone on the face of the toddler cradled in its mother’s arms. A small boy, with tight red curls framing his impish freckled face, tugged at the young woman’s cotton skirt and pointed through the window to where a large Qantas plane had just landed.

‘Daddy, Daddy,’ he called out. Swivelling around, he eyed Merryn with glee. ‘My daddy is on that plane. He’s been away at the war. He’s bringing me a present. Mummy said so.’

Merryn crouched down on her haunches and held out her hand. ‘Is that so? Well, young man, you’re a lucky boy. I wonder what your present will be. Have you asked for something special?’

‘Oh, yes,’ the little boy answered, his blue eyes animated by the light shining through the windowpane, his face breaking into a huge grin. ‘A helicopter. Just like the one my daddy’s flown in the war.’

Embarrassed, the mother turned around and looked at Merryn. Leaning down, she took hold of the young boy’s hand. ‘Not a real helicopter, Robbie. A pretend one.’

‘You said it was a real helicopter.’ The boy had sounded cross then, the beaming smile of minutes before replaced by the crabby scowl of a child let down by adults once again.

Merryn had thrown the mother a sympathetic smile and said to the boy. ‘Well, Robbie, whatever kind of helicopter it is, I’m sure it will be a good one.’

It was then that she looked aside quickly, for fear her eyes would give her away. She remembered thinking of what it would be like if she was standing there with a little boy’s hand in hers—a little boy much the same age as the one in front of her. Waiting for Jake. A little boy pointing and saying. ‘My daddy’s on that plane. He’s bringing me a present.’

She remembered how she fiddled with her engagement ring on her finger, rubbing the stone against the fabric of her shirt, and then how all of a sudden one emotion was replaced by another. For now she saw in the far corner of the terminal a group of protestors, banners in one hand and loud speakers in the other. She remembered wondering if Prue was there— because last she’d heard, Jake’s sister was one of the main agitators in the antiwar movement causing havoc up and down the country. Straining her eyes, she was unable to make her out. She recalled the anger she felt. That this was not what it should be like. How she felt like walking over to the group and giving them a piece of her mind. Telling the idiots what she thought of them. Did they reckon these poor fellows getting off the plane had any say in the damn war? Did they ask to go? Leaving behind young families like the one in front of her. Lord, the baby in its mother’s arms couldn’t have been much more than a few weeks old when the father left twelve months ago. The war was not of their making. Particularly the national servicemen who were unlucky enough to be born on the wrong day of the year. A day that saw them called up, sent to Kapooka or other such training camps, where their hair was hacked off in a basin cut, after which they were bellowed at—and then humiliated on the parade ground by a fearsome sergeant major, whose job it was to turn them from callow youths into hardened soldiers ready for war.

That fate was not supposed to have befallen them.

Jake was different to a certain extent, for he’d chosen the army as a career. The young national servicemen hadn’t. Yet even Jake hadn’t been prepared for the slaughter and carnage. On his R&R leave, some of the things he told Merryn made her blood curdle. Not that he filled her in on all the gory details, but she got the gist. In the last couple of months—before he came home—she had the distinct impression it was getting him down, particularly since he’d lost a couple of soldiers in his company. What had really upset him more than anything else, though, and Merryn too, was when his great friend Harry Scott was decapitated by a landmine, with Jake just a few feet away.

‘The plane’s stopped,’ the little boy at Sydney airport had cried out excitedly. He ran to the window and placed his nose on the glass, and then turned to his mother and pointed in glee. ‘Look Mummy! Is that Daddy at the window? Waving?’

Or was it Jake? It was difficult to see. Yet with the thought it could be Jake, Merryn had felt a ripple of excitement scuttle through her body, all other thoughts forgotten. He was home. At long last he was home. Everything would be all right. The world would be a brighter place.

Yet the moment she saw him walk through the door of the terminal, he somehow looked different. It was hard to put a finger on it. Running forward, she had almost jumped at him, throwing her arms around his neck. She remembered the warmth of his lips on hers, the look of happiness on his face. But when she stood back to give him a good going over, she realised how much weight he had lost. Moreover there was something in his eyes—something she had not seen before. Not really a sadness, for he was smiling so much you couldn’t have said that.

When she lay beside him that night at the Coogee Bay Hotel, where they’d taken a room as a treat, with the sound of the waves crashing on the beach opposite, she realised what it was. The young man she had seen off to the war on HMAS Sydney, with the Salvation Army serving tea and scones, had disappeared. In his place was a battle-weary soldier. Hardened by what was asked of him to do. Hardened, too, by what he had seen and what he had lost.

She had rolled over then, stretching out her hand to touch his back. He didn’t move. Only the gentle sound of his breathing disturbed the stillness in the room. She remembered how she placed her fingers upon her breast, to where not long before his lips were pressed. How she had waited so long to have him lie beside her, to feel the warmth of his body next to hers, to know that he was finally safe. With her. Forever. To know, too, that their future life together had just begun.

If only she had known then what she knew now? Although in a way she was glad she didn’t. Yet thinking back, had Jake already started to pull away from her whilst he was in Vietnam? Is that when the change really occurred? Had she been too blind to see? And if she was being brutally honest, maybe she had changed too. When he’d come back from the war, she was more independent— No longer the young girl waiting on his every word and reliant on him for everything. Perhaps he didn’t like that.

She sat up and scrambled out from under the mosquito net, taking a Kleenex from the box on the table next to the window. When she opened the shutters, she noticed that the street below was now quiet. Maybe the police had come and sent the rock throwers on their way. For some time she stood staring out into the dark night. A little later, how long she wasn’t sure, she closed the shutters, crossing the floor to clamber back into bed. Yet it was to be many hours before she finally fell asleep, for a huge wind came up from the water, rattling the shutters and thrashing the trees outside her window. In the distance, she could hear the waves tumbling on the shore. The gusts of wind were so strong that she thought for a moment the whole building would be blown away. However, after what seemed like an eternity, it finally died down, and she fell into an exhausted sleep.