The Widow & Her Hero (8 page)

Later, after everyone had left, Lord Gowrie got one of
the Asian atlases from the Government House library, and
Lord Gowrie and Charlie Doucette and Leo ended up with
it spread on the floor, recounting their dartings back and
forth, Subar to Bukum, Pandjang to Pompong.

By the time we were finished, Leo told me, we'd pretty
well managed to amaze even ourselves.

How I loved him for choosing a sherry at Melbourne's
Government House instead of asking for beer. He really
was just a boy from the bush, a Grafton boy, despite the
fact that he also lived in the Solomons amongst the colonial
administrators and their children. They were the bush
gentry in places like that, their civic dignity paper-thin and
under threat from marital or alcoholic scandal. Leo was
therefore fascinated by real gentry, the members of English
or Anglo-Irish ennobled clans who produced a governor-
general in the family like the king of spades out of the
magician's hat, yet who had never mentioned it before.

I'm sure if I showed Rachel some of Leo's occasional
scribblings on events like the first wonderful day back in
Melbourne, she would point out that I get one mention
from Leo and Doucette gets so many. I notice it myself. But
this was a statement of the preoccupations of that day of
glory, that hour, that martial – not marital – moment.
Doucette was
there
, and so was triumph, and triumph is a
two-dimensional condition. That's why Leo wanted me
there, to add an element. A man, a woman and a hotel
room, the simplest joy. The young Leo would not have
wanted to hear me talking like that, of course. But it's
longing and misery that are three-dimensional.

Even as he remembered the evening, and relayed it to me
(without any of the geographic details of the mission)
during our honeymoon, Leo runs the risk of looking from
the perspective of the present like a stooge of Empire. But
it was not about Empire. It was about Doucette and Rufus.
And apart from that, it was
his
region the Japanese had
taken,
his
island childhood in the Solomons they'd tried to
annul. Yet it has to be admitted that the concept of Empire
was not offensive to him, or to any of us. He – like me –
had made our school procession to country showgrounds
to celebrate Empire Day. The Empire was a system as
eternal and fixed in structure and God-ordained as the
solar system. Besides, nine-tenths of all we made went to
feed, clothe and steel the Empire. But that aside, it was
something more ancient and eternal still that drove Leo.
Something mythic or chemical or cellular or all three in Leo
and his friends. The summit of their lives had so obviously
been that liquid darkness in which they had affixed their
limpets!

That was so clear that I did not question or feel particularly
threatened by it. It would be Mortmain's wife Dotty
who would try to make me more discontented at that
reality than I had so far thought to be.

Dotty Mortmain, black-haired, pretty, watchful and
lithe, came up with her monocled husband Rufus
Mortmain to the wedding, all the way from Melbourne.
She was tall for a woman, coming to Rufus's shoulder.
Other visitors included Major Doxey and Foxhill in his
tartan pants, and above all Doucette. Thus I clapped eyes
on the man, not as egregiously handsome as Leo, far more
compact and neat-featured but endowed with an extraordinary
presence, a teasing mixture of reticence and
command that even I noticed. They were all in dress
uniform and had brought their swords to make an
archway for us from the door of the Anglican Church in
Braidwood when we emerged married. There was a reception
at the Braidwood School of Arts, with a keg of beer
laid on by the owner of the Commercial Hotel to honour
my father's local importance.

I was in a daze but remember pretty Dotty Mortmain,
smelling of cloves, lavender and gin, asking me softly what
I thought of Doucette. Dotty Mortmain seemed an exceptional
woman to me, from a wider and more diverse
world, and such a couple as she and monocled Mortmain
did not exist in Braidwood or in any other place I had ever
been. You'll have no trouble from other women, Dotty
told me, with that connubial knowingness I had seen in
some wives. Leo is utterly under an enchantment. Just
remember bloody Doucette is your rival. Look at him
smile. He's quite a smiler. I've known the bugger since we
met in Singapore.

Leo and I travelled to Sydney and stayed at the
Commonwealth Hotel, where I put into action without
fear the tenets of my mother's manual. I thought I'd be the
master, Leo told me with a lusty smile. I find I'm the
pupil.

We visited all the sights, catching the Manly ferry, and
then going by train to the Carrington in the Blue Mountains,
the traditional hotel of the newly married then. It
was all marvellous. I can say that without quaver even to
my knowing, slightly mocking granddaughter, although the
sex was not utterly without fear. As in all great arenas,
courage had to be acquired through repetition. But we
were set on an excellent, happy marriage. I suppose that
part of the test is I barely remember the conversations we
had. All was a golden, unified sphere of delight and very
ordinary reassurances to each other that we had never been
happier.

One day when we could contemplate being on less than
intimate physical terms for some hours and went walking
in the luxuriant dampness of the Jamison Valley, Leo told
me that he might be sent on operations again, and suggested
therefore that we should try stratagems to avoid the
conception of a child. He felt that was only fair to me, he
said. There were moments when, swept away, we risked
conception anyhow. Within nine days of the wedding,
however, he went to Melbourne, and I prepared to follow
him.

It was Dotty Mortmain who told me after I arrived in
Melbourne as a young bride that the wondrous Doucette
had gone to look at new gear and wonder-weapons in
London. She said that we could enjoy our husbands'
company as long as he stayed there, so she did not wish
him a speedy return.

But more of her in a while, because what happened to
me on my train journey down would have something to do
with Dotty. For a country girl like me the journey from
Sydney to Melbourne was considered significant travelling.
It was, after all, nearly six hundred miles, a distance which
in Europe would have placed the traveller in another
country. The trains were crowded with troops, American
and Australian. But I, being an officer's wife, had a sleeping
compartment, which I shared with another wife, seemingly
unhappy and older, who had obviously, like Dotty, passed
through the veil I had not yet breached between girl- and
womanhood. She was probably in her mid-to-late thirties,
and I noticed she was very pretty in a slightly hawkish way.
I knew her husband was a major from the fact that the
nameplate on her bunk said
Mrs Major Enright,
in the
same way that mine said
Mrs Captain Waterhouse
.

As the train rollicked south-west through endless
pastures, I could hear her weeping during the night in the
bunk above me. I was very grateful that I was married to
Leo, because I knew he would never give me any need to
weep the sort of tears Major Enright's wife was shedding
loudly and without any embarrassment.

For lack of a standard rail gauge between Victoria and
New South Wales, we all had to be dragged from our bunks
in the small hours, and given a cup of tea, and then told to
get down on Albury station and sit in the first-class lounge.
This was a primitive room – hard benches around a coal fire
even in summer. Or else we could go to the refreshment
room, while the broad gauge (5 foot 3 inch) train from New
South Wales was emptied and shunted out, and the (4 foot
8½ inch) standard gauge train from Victoria took its place.

My cabin companion chose neither of the proffered
options, and I found the waiting room very uncomfortable,
and the refreshment room full of soldiers calling for beer at
four thirty in the morning. She sat on one of the station's
benches and began smoking with a vengeance. Innocently,
I asked her was she well. Once I did, the tears dried, as if
she had been waiting all night for me to say something like
this. She set her face as if she had at last decided on some
solution to her grief.

I was just making up my mind to start a plain conversation
with her, something about, It's an endless journey, isn't
it? when she offered me a cigarette from her silver case. I
said no thanks.

She told me to take a seat beside her if I wished to. She
said, I'm sorry I was such a grump at the start of the trip.
You would have guessed. It's always men. Those absolute
buggers. Enjoy being young, anyhow. Once you show the
slightest flaw, you can expect to weep a great deal.

It's just as well I have flaws to start with, I told her. I was
probably annoyingly blithe, like most people in love. I was
amazed myself about the perfection of things with Leo,
what a bright companion he was, what a dazzling man.

Oh, we're all amazed, dear. At first, they mimic our
needs, but they don't really feel them, or meet them or give
a damn.

These were, I realise, not particularly original ideas
about men, but you have to remember the time. I had never
heard them uttered before except by racy, world-weary
women in films. They weren't the sorts of things my
mother had ever said – somehow I felt naively certain of
that. She pulled out a silver flask and unscrewed the cork
with the hand which held the cigarette. Gin, she told me.
Do have some.

I smiled so that she wouldn't think me rude. Look,
thanks. I've had gin once before, and I don't think Albury
station's the right place for a second try.

Fair enough, she said. She took a long swig herself. But
the time might come, she said, gasping with pleasure, when
you'll find it's good at any hour, and absolutely anywhere.
You see, I have to brace myself for a fight. My husband
wrote me a letter a week ago, telling me that there was no
place for me in his flat in Melbourne, that another woman
has taken occupation. He was so sorry. He intends to
marry this other tart. I sent him a telegram, telling him
to cut out the nonsense and that I was coming anyhow.
He sent me a reply that addressed nothing.
If you have to
come, I'll meet you at the station
. That's the other thing I
didn't mention. They're bloody cowards. Oh, they'll charge
a machine-gun for you. But the idea of a scene, especially a
scene witnessed by other men . . . that's what terrifies
them.

She adopted a gruff male voice.
I can stand anything
except screaming women
, she mimicked.

She snorted. Well, all that rough soldiery hanging round
the refreshment room are going to see a major subjected to
quite a scene at Spencer Street Station.

I thought, Leo and I will have to be subjected to that as
well.

The woman looked up at me with her stricken eyes.
I apologise in advance, she told me. But I'm a woman
fighting for her life.

I've got very little experience at any of this, I said, but it
might shame him if you appealed to him. To his better
nature.

No, she told me. None of us must ever do that. That
puts you at their mercy. Look, I'm sorry to load you up
with this utter shit!

I told her not to worry. A new train came into the station
to take us on to Melbourne, and Victorian Government
Railways conductors began yelling at the soldiers in the
refreshment rooms to leave their beer and get aboard. Mrs
Enright and I had to sit up, in an admittedly comfortable
carriage, all the way to Melbourne, as the summer sun
came up over the mountains to the east of the rail line. We
were not alone. There were three officers in our compartment.
Everyone tried to sleep, but only Mrs Enright, helped
out by her gin, managed it. It was not a graceful nap,
however, for her mouth opened and she began snoring. I
gave her a nudge to save her from unconscious embarrassment.
You might well say I was a bit priggish to do that. I
had an innocent assumption that decent women were too
angelic to snore. Again, that's the way we were. We were
closer to Jane Austen than to Madonna or Julia Roberts.

When Mrs Enright woke up properly, and everyone definitely
abandoned their attempts at sleep, the youngest of
the officers, a freckled young man of about twenty-one
years, spoke to her across the compartment.

Mrs Enright. I'm Lieutenant So-and-so. I attended a
party at your place in Sydney. How is your husband?

Mrs Enright gave him a washed-out, How are you?

That was one of the best parties I've ever been to, the
young officer said like a schoolboy.

She nodded. He could tell she didn't want to talk.

I hope I didn't interrupt your sleep.

It's quite all right, she said. But she closed her eyes again.

Later, when our train came seething into Melbourne,
and I got down onto the long platform, I saw Leo running
towards me, and from the corner of my eye snatched a
glimpse of Mrs Enright met by an older-looking officer. She
allowed him to scrape his lips across her cheek, and she
went off unhappy-looking, but without creating the scene
she had promised. I think it was the meeting with the
young officer, who'd been to her party, which made her
think how momentous and final it would be to stage a
brawl in front of officers. Yet I did ask myself why she had
made my journey miserable and had not then punished the
cause as promised.

I walked that platform with Leo, the blue and red ribbon
of the Distinguished Service Order on the chest of his lightweight
uniform, like the most blessed woman at the centre
of the warring world. Now that he had grown a moustache,
he looked like the film actor Errol Flynn, everyone
said so, except younger, and somehow more serious. He
was also heavily tanned, in exactly the way that made it
seem he'd faced danger in places none of the other soldiers
on the platform could imagine. For women have our part
in relishing the warrior myth, the place in the legend that,
although I did not know the details, I knew Leo had
achieved.

Indeed, women could feed the immolatory furnaces too.
In Braidwood in 1916, my mother confessed to me once
that one night on a dare she had handed a white feather to
a farmer's son who had not yet volunteered. He had gone
to France in 1917 and not survived the year. It was her
greatest sin, she said, and she told me lest I repeat it. My
adoration on Spencer Street Station might itself have
contributed an ounce more to Leo's willingness to extend
the range of his heroism and the scope of the Doucette
legend.

Ahead I could see sallow-looking Major Enright, talking
hard to his wife and trying to hurry her off the platform
and away to a sullen breakfast somewhere. Mrs Enright
hung back like a four-year-old being dragged. It was true
what Susan Enright had said. An army major was frightened
of a scene, and the bodies of both Enrights were full
of tension. Whereas Leo and I were side-by-side, walking
in casual lockstep, my shoulder against his upper arm,
hip to hip, at prodigious, godlike leisure. I was amazed and
delighted at how bodies could send a promise to each other
through fabric. Also, I felt beautiful at his side. Effortless
Gene Tierney and the inwardly radiant Merle Oberon had
nothing on me. And I had no sense at all that I would ever
be punished for the glory of that instant. That's why ecstasy
is ecstasy – it carries with it the idea that it will easily
outlast all the rest.

On our way to the car and driver Major Doxey had
loaned him, Leo told me again – as if it might be a problem
– that we were billeted to share a big apartment with the
Mortmains. It would prove to be a pleasant, white, art
deco block of flats just by the river in South Yarra. Our
place had plenty of space, considering the way people were
living then. As Leo had promised by letter before my move,
there were two smaller flats between which the wall had
been knocked down, so that you could move from living
room of one to living room of the other, and each half-flat
had its bedroom.

The Mortmains were easy to live with, he reported. Dotty
Mortmain had published a novel. Neither of us had ever
before met anyone who had published a novel. The only
trouble was, Leo reported, that sometimes she gave Rufus
the rounds of the kitchen, and Lieutenant-Commander
Mortmain might come creeping into our side of the flat
begging for sanctuary and a drink. Leo hoped I wouldn't
find that a problem.

Nothing was a problem that morning. It was a late
summer's day, the humidity was low, and even that
contributed to the perfection of things.

On arrival, I saw that the table in our living–dining
room had nothing on it, but I could see through the
archway the Mortmain table on which lay two dumbbells,
newspapers, a number of stacked books, and a big typewriter.
Leo saw my glance and said, Dotty works for the
Yanks three days a week. The rest of the time, she does her
own work. Something literary. They'll be in later today.
Look at the knife.