1915 (14 page)

Now the man's voice came through clearly. “You're hard, Marge.” It was Frank Barton.

The woman spoke at length, but now it was her turn to bury the words in cloth, or have them sucked away by the drop, or whatever it was that took them out of understanding: possibly just lack of context on Walter's part, because clusters of enigmatic phrasing remained (had he heard everything, but none of it sense?):

“… walk instead of dancing …”

“… That's what I think. After that — a comrade …”

“… My kind of promise …”

Voices you might hear when passing a theatre on a hot summer's night …

“Bill.”

Then thunder on the narrow stairs (Frank) followed by a buffeting descent of wind (her): confusion that
swirled on the landing outside Walter's door. Unhesitatingly he knelt at the keyhole. Skirt, waist, back and dark head descended in hurried steps, but then side-on sped back. Yanked upwards? For a second the woman's midriff filled the view, a blue woollen jacket with a thick belt of the same material, and in place of the buckle a large button. Lit from below in the stairwell's pale electric light, the button stared at Walter like a large eye containing a single yellow spiricle.

Then she sank, and although the standing form of Frank momentarily intruded, Walter found himself staring directly into her face. She was actually embracing Frank's legs after an apparent drop to her knees, and guiltily Walter whipped his head aside. But she was oblivious to his spying. Young, with full lips and a broad chin, her repose might have been submissive, but no. It was both determined and surrendering, revealing the feminine gift of control in the midst of a sensual crisis. On her head sat a round black dish of hat with a rim as stiff as metal. When she intensified the embrace by hugging Frank's knees the rim carelessly dented.

With uncharacteristic force Frank said: “My room. Now.” Her eyes, such smoky glass, closed, rested, and she stood.

They left, but Walter stayed on his knees, wondering. A minute later doors rattled in the still corridor below and with short steps and stocky Nugget Arthur climbed the stairs to the roof.

 

In semi-darkness Walter poured water from the jug
on the bedside table and splashed his face. He damped a corner of the towel and wiped chest and underarms. Then he undressed and climbed into bed. He lay between cool sheets and shifted his hands (wincing) behind his head. Should he feel cheap for spying? He realized now why the powdered dame at the downstairs desk had engaged in mysterious eye-play with Frank, and why the youthful companion had been consigned to an attic. The hotel obviously was a place for assignations.

But he admired Frank and the woman. Suddenly Frank's whole life spread out for inspection, not in its details but in character. Occupation, drover; age, thirty-two; place of abode, Moree. Walter knew no more facts than these, yet a sense of dignity and drama, of adult passion, now attached to the couple. And Nugget aloft, smoking his pipe as the night slipped away, he too attained stature in the world of men and women.

 

Although the hotel served no evening meal its tiny dining room managed breakfast. Frank and Nugget arrived together, and lo! the manageress ushered in the smokey-eyed woman (no disapproval there). Frank leaned across:

“Wally, I'd like you to meet my fiancée, Marjorie Hicks.”

The breakfast passed like a convivial family gathering, with no hint of the night's secrets.

By eight thirty Walter had navigated Pitt Street as far as Martin Place. Along the way old men had shaken his hand, a greengrocer had given him an apple, and a
woman in a doorway had winked invitingly: the world loved his uniform. In Martin Place a newspaper seller ran across and waved a
Herald
under his nose, and he stumbled to the Quay immersed in war news.

“Hey soldier!” — another apple, which he noisily munched.

France — that's where they'd be in no time flat. He rolled the paper into a tight scroll and slapped it against the seam of his trousers. France: the satanic face of Robespierre, the fierce
Sans Culottes
and months with names like exotic fruit. Liberty, equality, fraternity … vaguely he glued together old injustices and this war, where the British forces were on the side of progress. He supposed the Germans were an
Ancien Regime
that must be struck down: only more vicious, more determined, rotten but not rotted. Not yet! Ha!

He reached the Quay in a fighting mood. The ferry was not due for another twenty minutes so he promenaded, using the
Herald
as a swagger stick.

“Who reaps the profit?
I'll tell you
.”

A man on a fruit box had gathered a crowd of a dozen or so where a street ran down from the Rocks.

“Nobody,” came a lame interjection from an onlooker in a canvas apron.

“Nobody? Do you believe that? Do you believe that?” cried the speaker in what seemed genuine alarm. Short, prominent-jawed, wearing thick spectacles and speaking in lisping but resonant accents, middle aged, a foreigner, he stepped down from the box which skidded and crashed behind him. “I'll tell you. It's the bosses who reap the profit. They build the guns, they make the ships, they fill brass shells with powder and put lead noses on them, but they aren't the one to stand up and shoot them off. Oh no. It's —” here he pointed
to Walter, “it's mother's sons like this lad.”

The man in the canvas apron clapped mockingly with cupped hands.

The speaker stepped down and threaded left and right to confront Walter while the spectators formed a ring.

“Who do you think you're fighting for?”

“It's
what
, not who.” The words came easily: the argument had been rehearsed with Tom Larsen. Walter struck a pose with hands on hips, towering above the speaker. “Liberty,” he extemporized, “equality, and fraternity. All that stuff.” The crowd laughed: he laughed with them.

“Look at the wealthy classes, the munitions makers, the clothing manufacturers, the food companies, even the boot polish and brass polish makers. How many of them are serving in your company?”

“Never counted 'em.” The crowd was his. “Wait a sec — we've got Arnotts' Biscuits. Colonel Arnott,” he informed the watchers.

“The boy's got bite.”

“What does it matter?” The speaker turned on them, the clowns: “I'll support this war,” he struck his own chest with an audible knock, “when
all
the people who own Australia are prepared to fight for Australia. Then I'll don the khaki.”

“They wouldn't have you, you're undersized.”

Three wheezing breaths and the man was off again. “The wealthiest should be put in the front ranks, the middle class next, and then the politicians, lawyers, sky pilots, and judges in that order. When that happens I'll be with you, brother.”

“Good on you,” said Walter. He had intended the comment to sound derisive, but it came out differently,
as if he believed the man had said something worthwhile. Damn. It was the wrong time to be serious, the wrong place, here by the water where the salt tang came loaded with fish smells, and on nearby ships flapped the toy flags of half a dozen nations.

As they talked the warm sun brightly intruded, and Walter found himself edged around until it struck him in the eyes. The crowd lost interest and sauntered off. Then Walter heard the man say: “
Don't go to hell
.”

They were alone: the moon-faced orator and the uniformed youth. And a strange thing happened.

It was exactly as if one of his childhood “staring attacks” had recurred, not engulfing him this time in a blank absence but creating two worlds, one of the street where brick and wood and water shone bright as crockery, the other of metaphor rushing vividly into reality. For it was all
as if:
as if he stood at the end of a chute down which four heavy weights, tombstones? yet also just the four words of the man trundled towards him, though so little time had passed that the two stood eye to eye: the fellow's finger still upraised, the rasping
hell
yet flying from his throat. As the weights waddled closer the sunlit morning darkened, the life of the city never paused but certainly it slowed … as it slows for a drunk man and enables his body to weave through complication. And it was with a drunk's happiness that Walter witnessed the deadly weights rumble harmlessly by, as he knew they would.

Nothing could touch him. He was charmed and blessed. His eye caught a placard where a fat John Bull's braces flew off as he carved a turkey called Labour. In the midst of foolish joy Walter grabbed the man by the shoulder, a padded hand-grip to retain his balance, and giggled. The speaker's flow had barely
been interrupted, but in puzzlement he slowed, losing his shrill conviction as the rehearsed words slid to a halt:

“Because if you go to hell you'll have gone there to give piratical, plutocratic parasites a bigger slice of heaven.” Then he said, “Oh dear,” and guided Walter to a seat on the upset fruit box. “Did I bother you?”

“Sorry, I wasn't listening.” The same words serving now as years before they had served as apology to the kindly Mr Dougherty at Mt Cookapoi school, when time and again the teacher had guided him back to the world of globes and atlases after a “little absence”.

“Take this,” the sweating man said. It seemed to be a biscuit or wafer (it was a business card). “I've a son in the army,” he sorrowfully admitted. There
were
crumbs on his sleeve. He munched a biscuit produced from the same pocket. “Keep an eye out for him. Pliz?” The thick yellow card read: “Miles Milojevic, teacher of languages”, and gave a Paddington address. “In the midst of difference,” lisped the foreigner, “we find affinity. I love my son and he loves me. We share the same ideals. He's not young, nor active. Why did he go?” Walter drew himself to his feet with the old man shaking his hand and clinging to his elbow. “I'm a Serbian, but all my life I've been against national frontiers. The whole muddle started with my country.” He seemed curiously proud of the fact. Then he brushed the front of Walter's tunic where crumbs could not possibly have flown. “Good luck, and trust to God for your safety.” He gave a sigh and began to gather his gear, ignoring Walter completely as if the particular case had no contribution to make to the general task resumed, nor ever had.

Walter wanted to grab the man and say, What does
it matter? What does any of it matter, all this to and fro when I'm about to dance across the water? But he only mumbled, “Oh, well …”, straightened his hat and set off.

 

On the ferry he stood near the bows where nobody else came, for balance holding the chugging craft's forward flagpole. He wondered when Frances would see him (or if), and whether the statue's pose he struck was what she might want of him, or whether he ought to loll in the shade, one leg nonchalantly on the rail prior to leaping ashore (forgetfully) at the last minute. Or else hide himself inside where the ladies sat, and disembark as a surprise. The tiled roofs of houses slid closer, dabs of smouldering paint on a hazy blue canvas. He concentrated his gaze on the bushy heights, not once consulting the wharf. He determined to find something of all-consuming interest up there, just an inch short of the skyline. His attention stayed aloft while the engine slowed, the boat bumped the piles, and the gangplank slapped palm-down demanding his springboard leap.

Even as he sped clear of the shed and slowed to a saunter he refused to be diverted from the long-distance objective. He would not turn, he told himself, before that waving fleck of blue off to the left actually spoke (sprinting closer, sweeps of white gesticulating). He mounted steps to a park and their paths intersected.

“Hey you!” — so different from the ladylike coo he expected that he dropped his guard as she landed at his side puffing, “Gosh didn't you see me?”

In the midst of his muttered hellos she pronounced:
“You
are
the handsomest man in uniform I've seen,” and without hesitation took his arm … took the uniform's arm. But a living limb was inside it, flexing, steadying, hard from work, driving itself to make her feel his strength, even though as they set off she was the one in charge. His tongue felt dry and wooden, drilled through the base and glued, like a toy cockatoo's.

“You're so much older,” she observed, and for fifty yards did all the talking.

“See the cat there under the oleanders …

“Guess which place is ours?” She slowed, hung back, and pointed so that her sleeve fell clear to leave an arm bare for his eye to align itself along. The pure fogged crystal of a fingernail wavered across three of four identical double-storied facades until, engrossed in an encounter of cheek against forearm Walter happened to make a movement something like a nod, and the arm fell away.

“Kitty kitty kitty?” Frances half-knelt to attract the cat but still with four fingers retained a hold on his arm. She had changed too, though he dared not say so. Her hair released from its schoolgirl's pigtail swayed across her back, and when she craned forward to softly snick her fingers the dark stream rushed over her shoulders parting left and right, leaving a glimpse of white neck.

“Pussy puss. Ah, you sweet careless darling. You don't like your mummy do you. You don't —” The cat arched its neck against a calf swathed in blue folds of dress. Tiny white flowers circled the hem, diving in and out. The nonsense she talked at first offended Walter because it seemed to exclude him. Then it thrilled him, because the pressure of her fingers
remained to show she had not, as it seemed, gone drifting away at the first sight of a ginger tom. Therefore the stock phrases of endearment, new to ears from a male-dominated household, quickly took on an edge of intimacy.

She was staring up at him: dark concerned eyes.