1915 (17 page)

Walter, even if he had chanced to study Frances's face during these minutes, would not have dared to read in it the intentions that were forming. They
matched too closely his own desires. And Frances would have been offended if someone, her mother, say, or the observant Diana, somehow had peered into her head and declared, “Why Franny, those thoughts you're having. They only prove your cruel streak.” Instead she pictured one or the other performing such an action, but with the declaration ending differently: “Why, Franny, see? You can be happy after all.”

 

Walter had never eaten a meal like it. Nor had Billy, yet he navigated his way through the two different kinds of fish, adroitly plonked crab mayonnaise in the right place, never once dipped an elbow in the bowl of mysterious sauce, and through it all fired conversational rounds to gents and ladies alike, keeping the whole table hopping until, with the distribution of champagne glasses but before the appearance of the wine, they all felt tipsy, and the lightning bolt that had caused Harry to upset his soup seemed to sizzle harmlessly away. Frances was back in circulation, smiling at everyone. Walter had decided that her withdrawal from the chatter was somehow related to him. Was she working out how to say No to his suggested walk?

Mrs Reilly was on her feet, her fizzing glass upraised. “Here's to dear friends.” Walter struggled to join the rest but Billy grunted: “It's for us.”

“Harry?” His job was to circle the table filling glasses for the toast. At Billy's shoulder he said, “I envy you your great opportunity,” but at Walter's said nothing.

“Let us pledge our thoughts to those in uniform.”

“Walter and Billy,” they mumbled, “Billy and Walter.”

“To your safe return.”

“Shouldn't we do ‘the King'?” asked Sharon.

When that was done Billy said, “All right, Wal, say something.”

“Me?” He stood. The glass trembled in his hand. He placed it carefully on the table, then shifted it slightly to match the damp ring of its previous resting place. When he looked up, there was Frances, her dark eyes encouraging him, and her smile. “When we decided to have a try for the war, Billy and I, we didn't expect a spread like this … I think it is the greatest opportunity for a chap to make a man of himself, those that come back from this war will be men of the right sort that anyone would be proud of. And we'll be back. I didn't tell you,” he said in an aside to Billy to which they all listened in silence, “but Ethel had a vision where we came back safe and sound.”

“That's my cousin,” Billy announced. “She's got the gift of seeing into the future.”

Walter resumed his seat. Speeches were not supposed to peter out like that, but what could he say? Frances's encouragement had started him off, but then the same warmth made him tongue-tied. Mrs Reilly looked furious.

“Billy, would you like to say a few words?”

“I couldn't add to what Wally said.”

“I'd like you to.”

Billy drained his glass, took a bottle from Harry, then waved bottle and glass together in invitation: “All right, on your feet Wally, let's toast 'em.” He delivered a rambling “thank you” which finished with a large wet kiss for Mrs Reilly, and made her happy.

“Franny?”

Frances left the room and returned with two neatly wrapped brown-paper parcels tied in blue string and topped by a plain white card.

“Goodness me,” said Billy.

Frances set the presents before them and gave each a kiss. Walter's was perfunctory, he thought, whereas when she dipped to peck Billy's cheek he grabbed her arm and she lingered a second longer, not seeming to mind at all.

They had been given Vest Pocket Kodaks — “As small as a diary and tells the story better,” said Harry.

“Hey, Diana, boo!” said Billy, pretending to take a snap. Diana covered her face with a napkin.

“Take my picture later?” Frances asked Walter.

“Too right!” She had said it: never a doubt — she had agreed to step out with him, alone.

 

As they drained their glasses, each happily, mockingly toasting the rest, it was plain to Frances that Diana had fallen for someone at the table. After Billy's joke her cheeks stayed flushed, and she concentrated on the tabletop as her fingers tilted knives and spoons one way and another to catch the light. It cheered Frances to wonder who. Not Billy (absurd thought). Robert? Throughout the meal she had hardly eaten, and when the soup spilled to freckle her lap she had seemed not to notice, although obedient to instinct she had stood, stared, and cleaned up.

Of course — Walter was Diana's type. He knew all about science, he was sensitive and charmingly withdrawn. Frances imagined them bursting with
things to say to each other. There — with a kind of hot defiance Diana conquered her hesitation and stared at him. He was engrossed in side-talk with Robert — about the highest peak in the Andes, the acreage of the pampas, the width of the
Rio Plata
at the mouth: all the dull facts Diana loved. Robert let drop that his fiancée Rosa had a fierce serve at tennis, a slight but beguiling cast in one eye, a low laugh, and liked to drink rum and water. Walter as he listened displayed a profile which Frances herself found heart-catching, so why shouldn't her friend? It was etched in bronze, having the self-contained seriousness of a medallion. Diana could feast herself on such involvement with impunity. He would never look up. Not for minutes. Nor did Frances mind. It focused her feelings to have a rival: it even helped create them. She felt as if she really had made a choice, and it was the correct one.

Diana said, “Golly, such a lot of water.”

“You can't see the other side.”

“What about the Australians who went?”

“That was to Paraguay, up-river.”

“I don't know why anyone would want to leave Australia, not for there. You make it sound so empty and fierce.”

Diana was going well. She and Walter were exchanging nods. Diana had not even blushed. Then with a shock Frances saw the truth.

Billy said: “We're going, we're leaving Australia. I'm glad. I'm sick of it. Anything for a change, what do you say … Diana?”

Poor Diana. She would not look at him, but coloured to the roots of hair which showed black against an unfading rush of mercurochrome red. So it was Billy. Poor Diana — Billy himself saw it happen. He saw the
pretty, plump face reveal its secret. He turned to Sharon: “I can't say I'll be at all sorry to see the last of these shores.”

“Not the ‘last', I hope.”

Then Billy peeped back at Diana. She fumbled with her untouched plate and muttered:

“I'll give Helen a hand.” A fishknife wallowed to the floor.

“No —” Mrs Reilly would help.

Diana shot a mute appeal to Frances:
What should I do now? Save me!
She had burned beyond redness and was dried of colour, staring at her friend from a face with the dusty pallor of a rockmelon, craning down to retrieve her knife, thus keeping childishly hidden from Billy's sight.

“Nobody's said a word about the army,” said Frances in a loud voice. “Excuse me Billy, but we're all dying to hear about it. Walter? Don't you feel like heroes already, so splendidly outfitted? You'll have Robert on your tail in no time.”

Sharon wickedly flicked her eyebrows: “And Harry.”

“No,” said Mrs Reilly in all seriousness. “Harry's doing important work.”

“The Wool Clip,” Harry announced with gravity, and it seemed he had already shorn, baled, pressed, railed and shipped the nation's wealth with his own bare lanoline-shiny hands. Or was about to.

“Walter?” His attention was still with Robert, who was answering an earlier question about the mode of constructing tennis courts in Santa Fe province.

“Packed earth,” Robert informed the expectant silence.

Walter sipped his champagne before speaking. If he
looked not quite in touch, if he looked as gummy and dazed as he felt, he did not care. He had been correct after all to feel that yesterday and all today he had been travelling towards the centre of a vast wheel: here he was only a breath away from the nucleus. If he were to reach out, and if Frances from her end reached too, they would touch. And there it would be, the point from which all directions radiate.

“Army life is a killing bore,” said Diana, having been brought up in barracks. She was now recovered. She turned to Frances (her oblique way of saying
Thanks
): “Believe me.”

 

Walter rolled a piece of bread into a ball as he spoke: “Nobody talks about the war at camp, not the war proper. We don't know where we're going, or when.”

“We just want to be in it,” Billy told them, “for the hell of it.”

Sharon at his elbow wailed in mock distress: “I was born the wrong sex.”

“You're at the camp all day and you feel you've never been anywhere else,” said Walter, flicking the pellet of bread at Billy.

“It's like he says.”

“There's a chap there who cleans horses' teeth with powder.” The others were eating again. Helen brought on plates the size of oval windows around which bright painted flowers struggled to escape from slabs of cold beef, turkey, ham and veal. “I've never seen horses so pampered.”

“Hear that?” Billy stropped the hairs of his arm with a flattened hand. Under the regular slap ran a
continuous whisper: “Grooming.”

“It's the Indian Army influence,” said Robert, whose family fortune was partly based on the remount trade.

“Things are — the other way around — at the top end of the world,” said Billy. He had almost said
arse over tit
. “They put the horses under cover at night. In France,” he addressed Sharon, “there's snow and ice.”

“Who's the officer with the red face and white moustache?” asked Mrs Reilly. “I once met your commanders at the Benedettos'. I couldn't talk — nor could he. Would anyone like mustard?”

Mrs Reilly was sure the war would soon be over. Harry had said so.

“Correct?” She passed him the mustard pot.

“Tah, yes.” Harry foresaw an armistice with territorial concessions to follow, and rather thought the Germans might come off best. He'd known some German woolbuyers — very go-ahead — and had a high opinion of German steel, ships, business methods. The nation abounded in
ad infinitums
. He was sure that German efficiency, their hatred of waste, their love of tying loose ends would not allow things to drag on.

“They're very thick on the ground in South America”, said Robert, and went on to describe a scheme involving dirigibles mooted by a neighbour of his future father-in-law, a “Herr Schreiner”. Robert thought the scheme would be ideal for Australia — he enthusiastically described a time when ships of the air would carry station wool to Sydney in time for the sales, irrespective of floods, or carry fodder in drought time to starving flocks … he went further, predicting that by 1930 the large outback stations would each have their own garage for 'planes and dirigibles, and
the ladies' hack would have given place to the monoplane, and the horse, “our dear old friend,” would have been relegated to the pasture to be fattened for beef, in the same way as the bullock of today.

Mrs Reilly wistfully observed: “And you could bring this about all on your own, couldn't you.”

“He's got his father's head for business,” said Harry, and asked: “Did you like them, the Germans over there?”

“Schreiner couldn't stomach British superiority. I wanted him to teach me how to fly his plane, but he wouldn't. He used to come over Rosa's
estancia
at sunset, clattering away like some kind of insect.”

“Don't mistake
me
,” said Harry, “I'm British to the bootstraps.” And certainly his defence of Germans was unlike him. Only a few months ago he had constantly run them down. Frances said:

“Why the change?”

“No change.”

“Fibber.”

“Now look!”

“Mum, Harry didn't post my letter to Walter,” (a vengeful whisper). Harry tipped back on his chair and said to Robert: “I don't like them, honest, as a race they're a bunch of upstarts. One individual, perhaps two. That's all I meant.”

“As a race they sound all right,” said Walter, “but we're going to have to handle the individuals.”

“They're such sticklers for what they want. I wouldn't take them lightly,” said Robert.

Sharon said: “Remember when the Archduke came out here? We went to the station to see his train coming through from Narromine, and an officer with the party — such a handsome boy — was disgusted
because the Duke wouldn't eat anything he'd shot, but insisted that the whole lot be stuffed.”

“But you would have been only a child then, Sharon,” said Mrs Reilly. She mouthed some rapid arithmetic. “You would have been only three — four? It was in '93.”

They all looked at Sharon, who unblushingly replied: “They — held me up — my parents. It was when we lived in Orange.”

“But it's good that you have some German friends,” said Mrs Reilly to Harry. “I think it's awful just to hate on principle, otherwise we'll end up like the Irish.” Though her husband had once shared her bed, he had never shared her background.

“Oh
friends
,” echoed Frances, still keeping her voice low, by that means attempting to hold the dispute, like a twisted napkin, out of sight at their end of the table. Still in an undertone she said to her mother, “I think Harry wants the war to end quickly so he won't have to go.”

“Unfair!”

Low voices or not, everyone heard. Billy said, “The army's not desperate. They're turning men away. Even if
you
wanted to go,” he threw a pitying glance at the golden-haired heir to the Gillen acres, “they'd have to think twice.”