The Widow & Her Hero (9 page)

On their dresser lay a large Malay-style knife beside an
empty teacup. Rufus has knives of all kinds spilling out of
drawers, Leo explained. He grinned and his eyes glittered.
Australian eccentricity was not like the worldly eccentricity
of the Mortmains. And again, the idea of someone doing
something literary
on an extended basis was new to us as
well.

Our bedroom looked out across a tree-lined street to the
grassy embankment parkland and the narrow water of
the Yarra itself. For people from New South Wales, and
particularly from the great harbour of Sydney, the little
Yarra is considered a joke, a river which runs with its
bottom mud on top of the current. But its water was a
pleasant blue that day, and when we arrived, eights and
fours and scullers were practising on its surface, cutting
even wakes as sharp as joy itself.

By the time the first of the Mortmains got home hours
later, Leo and I were sitting, decorously reading books.
It was Dotty, the wiry Englishwoman, with her remarkable
slightly doleful green eyes and her lustrous black
hair. In ordinary weekday gear, she looked even more
like an outdoors woman who had been rendered sinewy,
as I would find, by a life of trekking and sailing far from
Britain. Oh, she cried, setting down the string bag with
groceries in it by her typewriter. This is your young wife,

Leo? I couldn't get enough time with her at the wedding.
Leo and I both stood up and advanced to the archway.
She embraced me like a sister and asked us to sit down with
her and have tea. We were drinking it when the front door
opened, apparently of its own accord. We could see nobody
there from where we sat, but Leo started chuckling. Come
off it, Rufus! groaned Dotty Mortmain. But still no one
appeared. Then there was a blur of white, which I worked
out later was Lieutenant-Commander Mortmain, in white
shirt, shorts, socks and black shoes, somersaulting into the
room and ending on his knees at his wife's chair. Instantaneously,
he leapt from the floor to his feet, grabbed her black
hair and lifted her bodily from her sitting position into the
air, her feet off the ground, as he and she laughed wildly. It
amazed me by being more like a circus act than something
done by people one shared a flat with but Leo seemed used
to this kind of behaviour, and laughed heartily at it. I
suppose, by contrast, my own hilarity was a bit shocked.
Rufus Mortmain lowered his wife to the ground again.
He bowed. And for the next trick, he announced, I shall
throw a series of native knives at Captain Waterhouse and
pin him to the wall by the hems of his shirt and pants. But
maybe, first, let's have a real drink to welcome Errol
Flynn's handsome bride!

I was naively delighted Leo's colleagues saw the resemblance
to the movie star too, and I found that strangely
reassuring, a sign that the Mortmains and Doucette were
not as different in perception from me as I had feared.

Rufus Mortmain – the name still amazes me with its
wrong-headed exuberance – extracted a bottle of gin and
one of whisky from the cupboard. Glasses were fetched
Leo going back to our kitchen to collect a couple. That was
merely fair in terms of our semi-communal living. Dotty
began clearing up some papers by her typewriter to make
room for our drinking session.

Mortmain asked me what I would like. A little gin, I said.

Bravo! Mortmain cried, as if he knew that I wasn't a
drinker. He turned to Dotty. He said, And you, light of
my life, temple of my desire, companion of my mortal
days?

Dotty said, Gin-and-it, thank you, sailor. You bloody
reptile!

The two men drank whisky, and added a little water
from the tap. Then Leo sat and took my hand and raised
his glass. Darling Grace, he said, you know I can't go on
with all that palaver Rufus does, but I drink to you.

I sipped my gin and tried to look normal, but as it shuddered
through my body, Dotty noticed and offered me
some tonic water. That was better. I've liked gin and tonic
since that day. But it wasn't to be the only mystery to which
Dotty would introduce me.

By the time we got to a second drink, Mortmain
announced, To absent friends!

I hope you don't mean that Irish chancer Doucette,
snarled Dotty, her face narrowing and her eyes full of
passion. I hope a Number 18 bus runs over that bugger.

Nor did she smile as she said it.

Ahem, murmured Rufus. Charlie Doucette is a sore
point in our family.

Dotty shrugged. He is a madman born out of his time,
she told me. I hope they're not filling his mind with rubbish
in London. They can dream up all sorts of things behind
their desks. They find some eccentric like Doucette to try it
out, and expect my husband to go along. It's just not
acceptable. I don't know where in God's name you've been
last time you went.

Rufus interrupted her, and winked, and said to me,
Dotty is just saying that out of piety. She knows where we
were from her friend the Yank Colonel Creed, who's quite
keen on her.

Dotty took some more gin, shook her head and would
speak no further.

Leo turned to me. Dotty . . . Mrs Mortmain . . . works
for a Yank we know. Colonel Creed. Very smooth sort of
bloke.

Rufus said, The Boss gives him a hard time. The Boss has
a bit of a thing about Yanks. I have always found Creed
one of the better ones myself.

Leo declared, He certainly seems to be trying to work
with us now. But better not say any more.

Leo then smiled at me. He told me he had to go into the
barracks the next day, and then to meetings, but would be
back in the evening with Rufus. Dotty tossed her head.
Altogether, she had made a fairly sombre drinking companion,
and the more melancholy she became, the more wary
Rufus Mortmain looked. It was clear Doucette and the
present employment of Rufus himself was an issue of
argument between them.

On my way to the toilet, I glanced out of our living room
window across the river and the shunting yards to the
browned-out city, and on a bench in the parkland across
the road, I saw Susan Enright sitting wearing a hat and
with her suitcase beside her. I called to Leo to come and see,
and the Mortmains came as well. I said, That's the woman
I came down with from Sydney on the train. Mrs Enright.

Not Peter Enright's wife? asked Mortmain. The poor
lady has my sympathy.

What's she doing down there? Dotty worried.

Rufus said, Obviously she caught Peter with his
woman. He lives on the top floor. The almighty Director
of Plans.

Leo murmured to me, Perhaps you and I should go
down, Grace, and see if there's anything she needs.

Dotty said, Shouldn't you leave it to Enright himself? He
might be out and she is waiting for him to come back with
the key.

She could probably do with a drink while she's waiting,
said Rufus.

In the end, Leo and I insisted on going down together.
We crossed the road to the bench she was sitting on by the
river, and she turned to see who was coming. Hello, she
called with a sort of manic gaiety. It's Grace. And her
gallant husband.

Leo asked could he help her.

No thanks. It's very kind of you. I'm waiting here till I'm
arrested for vagrancy. My husband won't let me into my
apartment, so it's become a matter of shaming him.

Her voice was high-pitched.

Please let us give you a cup of tea or a drink, Leo offered.

You can't sleep here, Susan, I told her.

Maybe I could do an Ophelia in the waters of the Yarra,
she suggested. Don't worry, Grace. I have a room at the
Windsor reserved very kindly for me by my treacherous
spouse.

Could I get you a taxi then, Mrs Enright? asked Leo.

Please, no! I am not your responsibility, young fellow.

We have a settee, I said, as a girl did if she came from the
country, where accommodation was freely offered. Ours is
the double apartment, number five and six.

Look, said Mrs Enright, you're both very kind. But you
must please leave me free to humiliate the mongrel.

Perhaps because of the gin, the tension of my own
happiness, and certainly because of lack of experience, I
was suddenly moved to tears.

Please don't put yourself through this, I begged.

But in the end, we had to leave her there, and were both
very uncomfortable about it as we re-entered the lobby. Leo
kissed me on the forehead. Let's go to bed, he whispered.

Upstairs, abashed at the brush-off Mrs Enright had
given us, we said goodnight to the Mortmains, who
intended to stay up a little longer. We were half undressed
when our doorbell went. Leo put on a dressing gown and
answered it. It was Mrs Enright. I saw her over Leo's
shoulder. She was crying. I'm a weak woman. I will take
that settee your dear wife mentioned.

I found some sheets and blankets, as she stood in the
kitchen being introduced to the Mortmains. I quickly made
the settee for her. When I re-emerged, I found that she had
been induced to comfort herself with some gin.

Rufus told me, We'll point Mrs Enright in the right
direction. You must be tired after travelling last night.

I was awakened in the morning by the sound of angry
voices at our opened front door. Putting on a dressing
gown and going to check, I saw both Leo and Rufus in shirt
sleeves arguing with a man similarly half-dressed in
uniform but very angry. It was of course Major Enright.

Mortmain was saying, You surely couldn't expect us to
leave the poor woman in the open.

That's exactly what I expected you to do. She would
have got sick of it. As it is, you played right into the hands
of that mad woman. But you knew what you were doing,
too. I know you understood exactly what you were
doing.

Leo said he resented the accusation.

The woman had a perfectly fine room at the Windsor,
paid for by me. But you look out your window and you
think, Let's make a fool of old D/Plans. In civilian life,
you fellows would be little better than criminals, and I
know the way you think. God knows what your purpose
was in introducing that woman into your flat.

Mortmain declared with the calmest authority, and with
a certainty Dotty must have relished, that he and Leo were
both married men. I'd knock you down for what you have
said, he told the major, except you're beyond yourself. I ask
you to show a little restraint and dignity. We all have to sit
at the same planning tables for weeks and months yet, and
Colonel Doucette isn't even back.

Leo, of course, despite his role as an official hero, had a
temperament which would go a long way to make peace.
He said, My wife has just arrived from Sydney – by the
same train as your wife, in fact. I have to ask you not to
make a scene, sir.

I felt silk brush by me in a hurry. It was Susan Enright,
coming from the bathroom to join the conflict. She took up
a position in the middle of our living room, from where she
could lob her own high-calibre commentary over Leo's and
Rufus's heads onto her mad-eyed husband.

How dare you find fault with these decent men! she
raged. You're just embarrassed to be shown up as a skirt-
chaser in front of your brother officers. Yes, both their
wives are here, and you're offensive to them too. As for
your room at the Windsor, take your tart there and leave
me the flat. By the way, any chance of your being sent on a
suicide mission? I don't suppose so. Far too flabby
compared to these two.

You're making a fool of yourself, Susan.

Good. And you're playing me for one.

Suddenly, Enright began appealing to Leo and
Mortmain. You see, she doesn't mind using your flat as an
arena of battle. Well, I'm not biting today, Susan. Excuse
me. I shall see you at the office, gentlemen.

He turned on his heel, in a way which implied not a
retreat but a dignified withdrawal.

Coward, Susan yelled. Craven bastard! Back to your
whore.

His retreating steps could be heard on the stairs, and Leo
closed the door, shaking his head.

Mortmain said, The bugger needs a broken nose. I don't
think we should take that from anyone, Leo.

Leo looked at me. I'm sorry, love, he told me, as if the
madman at the door had soured everything.

Susan turned, taken out of herself by Leo's concern, and
came and hugged me. At that second, I began to resent
her.

She said, I'm not going to risk that you'll be bothered
any further. I'll go to his bloody room at the hotel.

We told her to stay for breakfast first. But Dotty was not
as warm towards her as the men. And later Dotty would
tell me she believed that from that day, Major Enright,
despite all conscious professionalism, at some level wished
them ill, and even wished them dead.

At morning tea time during that day's meeting, I
approached Major Enright to make the normal speech,
which would have consisted of: Sir, I don't care who you are.
I don't intend to stay in the army after the war, and so I don't
have to kowtow to anyone. I'm surprised a regular officer
would come to other officers' doors making the accusations
you did. And I won't have my wife upset by outbursts.

I had to queue – I saw Rufus giving him a bit of a shellacking
too. But Enright's face remained set though he was very
pale. He was probably copping mullock from his girlfriend as
well, and so he should.

Later, he came to Rufus and me voluntarily. He said, Unfortunate
scene this morning. That bloody woman has the power
to put everyone in the wrong. Sorry for anything untoward I
said. The woman knows I'm seeking a divorce, and that's that.
Divorce is a big enough disadvantage for a professional officer,
though many colleagues have remarked to me how inappropriate
a soldier's wife Susan makes. And of course, I overlook
anything extreme you might have said. Can we all be men
about this? And gentlemen as well?

That was as good as we could hope for. Rufus nodded with
a half-smile on his face. Later at lunch, he said to me, The
bugger only learned to talk like that from a West End play, on
secondment to British regiments in India. He gets it all out of
sequence, anyhow, and he gave himself away at the end by
pleading.

I wondered where he thought I learned to talk. But I think
he was saying the major's utterances were only skin deep. In
any case, we agreed, it was as good an apology as we would
get from Enright.

After Leo and Rufus had gone to work on the morning of
the confrontation between Major Enright and Leo and
Rufus, I decided to go into town by tram to look at Myers
and other department stores of Melbourne renown. You
cannot imagine the attraction of such an idea to someone
raised in the Braidwood and Canberra of the time. Captain
Foxhill had lined up a part-time job for me doing filing
for the Transport Corps at Victoria Barracks, where Leo
frequently did his afternoon gymnastics. But I did not have
to start for a few days.

I was thus able to leave Dotty to work on her mysterious
book, and would be able to return in the afternoon and
ask her, as if I routinely asked people this, How is your
book coming along?

Susan Enright, still on the premises, complicated all this
in a peculiar way. She asked if she could come to town with
me? She seemed quite cheery, ready for a day's window-
shopping after the scene with her husband that morning.
I couldn't say no, but from her typewriter, Dotty asked,
Didn't you say you intended to book into the Windsor?

Susan said she would collect her luggage after lunch.

I had expected to catch the tram, but as, wearing our
finest, we left the block of flats, a taxi appeared bearing its
great bladder of coal gas in a bracket on its roof. She
insisted we catch it, and when we reached Collins Street
and I offered, like the bumpkin I was, to pay the driver, she
cheerily permitted me to. In Myers, Buckley and Nunn,
Foy and Gibson, she entered into crazily jolly conversations
with girls in the jewellery and cosmetic departments
about what her habitual choices were in these matters. It
was as if she hadn't been rebuffed by her husband at all.
Or else she was confident her husband would take her
back. Again, girls from Braidwood didn't behave like that
in shops. You've got no idea what a constrained bunch
of people we country girls were, terrified that someone
would think us flash, or skites, or having tickets on
ourselves, all of which were the greatest crimes a person
could commit in the bush. But Mrs Enright was free of
such fears.

At lunchtime, she tried to talk me into a hotel dining
room instead of the cafeteria at Myers. She was rather
depressed that you couldn't get a drink at Myers. At least
the Windsor has a bar, she said.

We got home by tram at midafternoon and could hear
from the stairs Dotty still working, like a real writer in
Hollywood pictures, with a quite feverish clatter of keys.
I wondered whether we should go back and sit in the
parkland a while, lest we interrupt her. We'll just creep in,
Susan insisted. I must pack and get going.

That prospect of her going was so pleasant that I let
myself be talked into opening the door to our half of the
flat. Dotty, of course, looked up from her work. I'm just
creeping in to pack, Susan explained, moving in a stagy
creeping gait.

I said, Please don't let us disturb you, Dotty.

While Susan packed, I sat in a chair reading
Smith's
Weekly
and its rollicking attacks on Generals MacArthur
and Blamey. To them MacArthur was a poseur playing to
the American press in hope of the Republican Party
nomination for the presidency. The Australian General
Blamey was a well-connected tippler. Satire is its own
reward, and often it is outdone by reality itself – I realise
all that now. But
Smith's Weekly
was considered rather
seditious in the household I had grown up in, so I
enjoyed it all the more now. I was a little disturbed that
with Susan and me in the house, the pace of Dotty's
typing had fallen off. I began to doze and woke to see
Dotty standing over me.

How're the shops this dreary season?

They're flourishing, I told her. At least that's the impression
of a woman who's visited only two cities in her entire
life.

She smiled and yawned, and sat in the neighbouring
lounge chair.

Have you ever written any poetry? I don't mean about
flowers, or some ballad about rounding up cattle. I mean,
poetry
. I mean about loss and fucking and the misery of
children, and why chaps love war and are such deadbeats
in bed? Have you read
The Waste Land
?

Trying to appear at ease with her earthiness, I said no.
She tramped into her half of the apartment and came back
with a Penguin book.

Read that, Grace, she advised me. Image is everything,
so I'm afraid I'm not much of a poet myself. I'm good at
outrage, of course. I feel a lot of that. But when I was
young in London, and hanging round writers, I always
thought my style was pretty thin. A reviewer described my
novel as understated, as if it were a virtue.

What was your novel called?

Sweat
. It was about the lives of women in Malaya, or a
colony like it anyhow. They weep sweat from every pore, I
said. They shrivel and pretend it's a life. A film company
showed some interest in it, but then the war came.

I was fascinated by this.

Writing poetry is wonderful, she assured me. If the
beloved is away for a time, it's a sort of vengeance.

Against who? I asked.

Against the loss of time and beauty, Dotty told me. Or if
you want to look on it positively, you could say it was a
prayer for a golden world in which men loved women as
much as they say they do, and the other way round, in
which all wars are merry, and all children loved with equal
ardour. You are a sweet and beautiful child, Grace, full of
rejoicing. Poetry's about that too. But you haven't been
betrayed yet.

She sounded remarkably like Susan.

Surely you haven't been? I asked. Betrayed, I mean.

By Rufus? Oh yes. He does that, poor fellow, but men
are like dogs. When an arse is proffered, they can't turn
away. Pardon my putting it so simply. It is simple for them,
I'm afraid.

She lowered her voice. The sooner that tart gets out of
here, the better. Look, I don't mind showing you something
I dashed off today – it's not perfect, but it helps me stay
sane. Like some gin?

Surprisingly I found I would like some. But something in
me didn't want Susan to have any with me.

Maybe after our guest's gone.

Quite! Dotty whispered emphatically.

She went to her table and brought a page back. Officially,
she told me, I'm supposed to be writing a novel. Really, I
want to write about what a shambles the whole fall of Singapore
thing was, but the publisher says it would not be looked
on very kindly. So I'm trying to write simply about Englishwomen
on one of our overcrowded steamers to Australia.
Chaucer should have been there. He could have done justice
to it. In between, when the thing is seeking its way out of me,
I write about Rufus and myself. Despite what I say about
men and dogs, he does love me, you know. As far as his
sort of fellow possibly could.

She gave me the sheet. Don't feel you have to tell me
anything – whether it's good or bad. I know exactly how
good and how very bad it is.

What she gave me was entitled
Mercator's Projection
.
It read:

And in love's bed, caresses seemed
a holy vacuum.
Since lovers seek to force the air
from every cavity and intervening space.
Love's pressure is enormous,
the normal terms of gravity becoming trite.
But then, I catch his eye
and see the shoals and surfs
and archipelagos
which fill the other mind,
the tides that go on running
when his tide is spent.
The Projection of Mercator cannot save me
from concluding:
Love is the longest distance between two bodies.

I don't know why I was impressed. I thought until then
that poetry had died with Tennyson. And the remarkable
thing is, I remember understanding the meaning. I must
have felt the same thing she did, without knowing it. I
knew at once I wanted to write something like this myself.

At last, Susan emerged with her suitcase, and we saw her
into a cab, which Dotty was forced to ring for, using the
shared phone. We were delighted when she left, and then,
as if we'd known each other for years, we broke out the
sisterly gin.

I did not have an exact idea of the work Leo did at the
requisitioned boarding house and temperance hotel, and at
Victoria Barracks. Women were of course counselled even
by the
Women's Weekly
that they should not ask too much.
The women's papers, the motion pictures, novels, and even
the traditions inherited from mothers all underlined the
idea that we lacked a right to be too inquistive.

I knew, though, that Leo and Rufus worked together
literally, having desks in the same room at Radcliffe House.
While in that office, they were supposed to read the latest
files on new equipment, from groundsheets to spirit stoves
to weaponry. Leo told me this made pretty dry study, worse
– he said – than contract law. So Rufus and he developed
office games. Samples of commando daggers lay about the
office, some of them in filing cabinets. Leo or Rufus would
close and lock their office door and compete at hitting the
doorframe with knives. Only embeddings counted.
Bounce-offs were a crime. If a thrower hit either the
surrounding plaster wall or door itself, he lost all his points
acquired to that stage.

That was part of their éclat as well. Officers in D/Navy's
office or Major Enright's D/Plans were not permitted to
waste time on such knife play. They had to keep writing
reports and coming up with the correct admixture between
destination and plan and technology. But then they had not
personally invaded Singapore. They would tolerate the
heroes' games at great length, whatever spririt stoves or
groundsheets waited to be assessed and initialled.

When not employed on their files or their knife practice,
Leo and Rufus attended roundtable meetings at which questions
of equipment, transportation, tactics and strategy to do
with the coming huge operation in the Natunas were
discussed. These meetings were attended by Colonel Creed,
who remained an advocate for the idea of many well-
equipped operatives, landed from many US submarines,
undermining Japanese structures and lines of communication,
ships and airfields, transit of supplies, etc etc, in
Southeast Asia – which to us, of course, was Northwest Asia.

The idea that the Independent Reconnaissance Department
should build its own Indonesian, Malayan or Borneo
junks was still being discussed, and Mortmain in particular
made suggestions about the way that should be done, on
everything from the contour to fitting-out and the supply
of drinking water. I know now that the building of a
number of junks was begun in a Melbourne shipyard,
which was then afflicted with strikes, so that they would
never be finished.

In the afternoons, a succession of hefty NCOs kept up
the fitness of Leo Waterhouse and Rufus Mortmain and
others, introducing them to new methods of tripping,
knifing and incapacitating mortal flesh; and causing them
to climb ropes, run through mud and surmount improbable
barriers. They came back home to Dotty and me full of
muscular vigour, though, as Leo said, absolutely buggered.

They were about to truck us to a private abattoir in Fitzroy,
so that we could practise slitting throats on pigs, when a
corporal came running to us from a nearby office. There was
a call for Commander Mortmain. Rufus jogged double-time
across the parade ground to take it. By the time he got back
the truck was ready to leave for the abattoir. I was sitting in
the rear with a group of soldiers and sailors who were going
through the same training for perhaps the same purpose. His
monocle was glistening when he crawled aboard and sat
beside me. Aussie soldiers and ratings who hadn't seen him
earlier nudged each other and whispered, Cop the bloody
monocle on the Pom.

That was Mrs Enright, he whispered to me. Wants to shout
you and me a drink. To repay us for our kindness. Windsor bar,
five thirty.

He inhaled and the eye which did not have the duty of
bearing the monocle, arched.

She wants us to bring our wives? I asked.

I don't think that's the purpose, said Rufus, looking ahead.
I also think she knows you won't come, Dig. I feel I should go
out of politeness, don't you think?