Women and War (43 page)

Over their drinks they chatted, the kind of small talk that people make when they have not seen one another for a very long while, when there is so much to tell but no recent base of intimacy. Tara said little. For once she could think of nothing to say.

When they were shown to their table she panicked again to see the array of silver laid out on the crisp white tablecloth.

Holy Mary, so many knives and forks! She had never seen so many! The menus came, huge leather-bound tomes hung with silk tassels, and when the waiter handed one, ready opened to her, Tara gazed at it in horror: It was all in a foreign language – French she guessed – and not a word of it made any sense to her.

The waiter hovered. ‘ Yes, madam?'

‘Oh, I don't know, it all sounds so nice,' she stalled.

‘Well I am having
Consommé Andaluz
followed by the
boeuf en croûte'
Alys said and Tara leaped in quickly.

‘I'll have the same.'

‘Thank you. What vegetables madam?'

‘Petit pois
and
champignons.
And perhaps some
haricots verts
.'

‘Certainly. And you, Madam?'

‘Yes – the same.'

The waiter completed the order and, to Tara's relief, some of the array of cutlery was whisked away. And, by having the same as Alys, she had not only saved herself from having to pronounce the unpronounceable, but she would also be able to see which knives and forks she used.

The soup arrived. Tara crumbled her roll feeling slightly smug. She had learned not to cut it by watching the Allingham family. And the soup spoon at least was clearly recognizable. Thank heavens Alys had chosen soup and not that peculiar looking thing Richard was eating – what was it, artichoke? She spooned some soup towards her, remembered that was incorrect and spooned it away.

By the time they had reached their main course Tara was feeling no more comfortable. How was it they all managed to converse so easily and eat at the same time, whereas she seemed to have her mouth full whenever a question was addressed to her? Trying to get rid of the food and answer without the silence between becoming embarrassing was almost choking her, and she had managed to bite a portion of her inner lip which was already swelling and making her taste blood.

But the other three seemed to be getting along famously, Tara thought, wishing she could feel as much at ease as they did. She tried to spear a pea and it hopped from her plate onto the clean, white tablecloth. Mortified she managed to roll it under her plate.

‘Tell us about the wedding – I'm longing to hear the details!' Alys said and Tara managed to swallow a mouthful and answer.

By the time dessert was finished and coffee had arrived, accompanied by a plate of tiny delicious petit-fours, the conversation had inevitably turned to the war.

‘So you are an AAMWS now, Tara?' Alys asked.

Tara drained the tiny bone china cup. ‘Yes. I'm expecting to have to go off on a training course and learn to march and salute and everything. I can't say I'm looking forward to it much.'

Alys laughed. ‘I don't suppose you are. We're really showing them, though, aren't we? I don't believe they thought we girls could be of much use in the war, but they are having to revise their opinions!'

‘I heard you were thinking of coming back to the Territory, Alys,' Richard said.

Alys popped a crumb of marzipan into her mouth. ‘ I'd like to get involved again. I feel a fraud, stuck here away from it all, but as things are …'

John took a pack of slim cigars from the breast pocket of his suit and offered them to Richard. ‘You know what I think you should do, Alys? You should join the AWAS. They are desperate for drivers and someone who knows engines as well as you do would be a tremendous asset.'

‘John!' Alys joked. ‘ I believe you are trying to get rid of me!'

‘You know that is the last thing I would want to do. I just think for your own sake you should put yourself first for once.' John turned to Richard. ‘It was a lucky day for me when she picked me up beside my broken down Buick – and not just because I was stranded in the back of beyond. She is a great girl.'

‘We are certainly aware of that,' Richard agreed – a little too readily, Tara thought.

‘I'd have thought that after what you went through you would want to stay as far away from the war as possible,' she said.

John drew on his cigar. ‘Just watch out for the convoys. One of these days you might see Alys driving a ten-ton truck.'

‘Oh John!' she laughed. ‘There's not much danger of that. You know how Mummy would react if I wanted to do something like that!'

‘You handle your mother all wrong,' he chided her. ‘ One of these days I shall speak to her about it – even if it does mean I am cutting my own throat.'

‘You'll do nothing of the sort!' Alys reached for his wrist, turning it over so that she could see the face of his watch. ‘And sorry as I am to say it, I really think I am going to have to break up this party. Mummy won't go to sleep until she knows I'm home and she does need her rest.'

‘Of course.' Richard raised his hand to call for the bill. ‘It's been a very pleasant evening. We've enjoyed it, haven't we, Tara?'

‘Very much,' Tara lied.

Outside the restaurant they said their goodbyes, Richard shaking John by the hand and repeating how good it had been to meet him.

‘And we shall be watching out for the convoys, Alys,' he said, smiling. ‘Remember, if you ever get to be an AWAS and find yourself in the vicinity of 138, let us know. It'll be a good long while before we are back in Melbourne, I'm afraid.'

As she slid into the passenger seat of the car beside Richard, Tara heaved a sigh of relief.

‘Nice bloke,' Richard said as he pulled out into the stream of traffic. ‘Much too old for her though.'

Tara glanced sideways at him but the shadows cast by the passing lights obscured his face and she could not tell what he was thinking.

Perhaps you are wrong, she told herself. Perhaps he doesn't have any thoughts about her beyond that he knew her in Darwin and saved her life. But certain little barbs still niggled at her, joining the one fact that she had known all along and which had been brought home to her more sharply than ever this evening.

Richard and Alys came from the same world. The same self-assured world of plenty and charm and grace.

Act her heart out though she might, Tara was uncomfortably sure she would never really be a part of it.

On a cold June afternoon Alys drove out to Buchlyvie. She found John in one of the sheds behind the main house trying to repair some farm machinery.

‘Goddam war and shortages,' he said, straightening up and aiming a kick at the offending contraption. ‘ It's busted now beyond repair if you ask me, but I suppose I've got no chance of getting hold of another.'

‘Goddam war and petrol rationing!' Alys rejoined. ‘ Do you know I've been riding around on a bike to save enough petrol to come out and visit you?'

He laughed, wiping his hands on a rag.

‘That I would like to have seen. Still, I guess two wheels are better than no wheels at all.'

‘And half a farrow will be better than none.'

‘You said it.' He tossed the rag into the corner of the shed. ‘Come on, let's go in and find something to drink. A nice hot cup of tea would hit the spot.'

‘I came to see if I could help, not interrupt you.'

‘Rubbish. Besides I won't need your help soon. It looks as if I shall be getting my Land Army girls.'

‘Good for you.' She followed him across the yard where the wind blew the dust in small cold flurries and into the house. John looked into the kitchen where Flora, the cook-house-keeper, was preparing the evening meal and asked her to make a pot of tea.

In the living room he subsided into a chair, propping his feet up on an ottoman. Dried mud kicked out from beneath the flat heels of his ankle high boots and fell onto the soft leather cover in a small avalanche and Alys smiled wryly.

This was a man's room, right enough. It was so many years now since a woman had lived in it that it had lost any leaning it might ever have had towards femininity. The furniture was square and functional with no frills and furbelows, the rugs, though clean, bore the scars of being walked over too many times in booted feet, the ornaments and pictures had been reduced to a bare minimum.

Two photographs only dominated the room, standing in their leather frames on the oak sideboard – one studio portrait of an attractive yet slightly drawn-looking woman with a small boy, the other of a young man in uniform. Beneath his slouch hat the young man's face shone with pride; the angles of the nose and chin, the mouth with its half-humorous twist, might almost have been those of a young John.

Seeing her looking at it he smiled faintly.

‘He's a good bloke, Stuart.'

‘Good looking too,' Alys said. ‘Like his father.'

‘Aa-ah. Better looking than his old man ever was.'

‘I don't believe that.'

‘With any luck you'll meet him one day. He's in the thick of it at the moment, though, in the Mubo area. Goddam war.' He was silent for a moment and with the ease of close friends Alys read his thoughts. A few minutes ago he had been complaining about the inconveniences of an unserviceable piece of machinery, whilst the reality of other, irreplaceable, losses lurked so threateningly close to home.

Flora brought the tea on a cane-edged tray and Alys poured. As she handed him his cup she felt John's eyes on her.

‘You remember I asked you once if you had ever been in love?'

‘Yes, I remember.'

‘That doctor we had dinner with in Melbourne – Richard Allingham. Was he the one?'

She experienced a slight sense of shock. It was more than four months since they had had dinner with Richard and Tara – how strange that John should hark back to it now. Besides which … Throughout that meal she had been aware of Richard, aware of the same attraction she had felt for him back in Darwin, but she had tried not even to think about it and had been quite confident she had been successful in concealing it. Now she felt a qualm of concern. Had she been that transparent?

John was looking at her steadily; she could feel his eyes on her face, repeating the question – was Richard the one she had been in love with? Alys shook her head, relieved that in all honesty she could say he was not. Though perhaps in other circumstances he might have been …

‘No, it was much longer ago than that. The man I was in love with was a racing driver.'

‘Ah – now I remember! The one who taught you to drive.'

‘That's right. He was killed. His name was Race Gratton.' The words flowed smoothly; to her surprise she found she could mention his name without pain.

‘That must have been bad for you.'

‘It was. I was there. And there was more.' Suddenly, she found herself wanting to tell him about it. ‘ I was pregnant. I had told him about it just before the race. I blame myself because I can't help feeling his mind was not completely on his driving. I still think – if only I had kept it to myself a little longer he might be alive today.'

‘It's no use thinking on those lines. We can all look back at events and think – if only this, if only that!' He drained his cup and set it down, looking at her steadily. ‘What happened to the baby?'

‘I lost it. They had sent me to Darwin to friends and I stayed there. I didn't want to come back here, ever.' She laughed lightly. ‘Yet you see – here I am!'

He reached over, taking her hand, and they sat for a few moments without speaking.

‘Life goes on I suppose,' she said. ‘I'm glad you weren't shocked, John.'

‘It takes a great deal more than that to shock me,' he said with a wry smile. ‘And yep, life goes on. One day, Alys, there will be someone else.' His eyes strayed to the photograph and she found herself reading his mind again with the ease that was almost disconcerting. He was hoping that maybe one day she and his son …

She stirred, setting down her own cup.

‘I'd better be getting back. This was only supposed to be a fleeting visit.'

He stretched. ‘And I suppose I'd better have another look at that damned plough. I'm glad you told me, Alys.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘So am I.'

On the drive back to Melbourne she felt curiously light-headed, and she knew it was partly because of sharing with John a part of her life which she had kept so very much to herself. But only partly. In a strange way it seemed suddenly that life had opened up again. Nothing had changed. There was still no one to fill the gap Race had left behind in her heart – no one she had any right even to think about in that way. Yet she could see the truth in what John had said. The wound was healing. One day there would be someone else.

She swung the Alfa Romeo through the gates of her home and realized with a slight shock that the drive was crowded. Beverley's car was there – no great surprise. Beverley often drove over in the afternoons. But what was Daddy's car doing home? And that grey Austin – Dr Whitehorn's car …

Alys manoeuvred between them quickly and skilfully. Then she braked to a halt and leaped out. Her legs seemed to have turned to jelly. In spite of the wintry weather the front door was not properly closed. Alys pushed it open and ran in.

The first sound she heard was Beverley's weeping and the jelly-like sensation spread from her legs to the whole of her body. The awful sound was coming from the drawing room. She ran towards it, then froze in the doorway at the tableau within – Donald Whitehorn standing as he always seemed to, back to the fireplace; Beverley hunched in a chair; her father in front of the window, staring unseeingly into space.

And on the chaise, Frances. A Frances who lay motionless without any of the twitches and jerks that had characterized her last months. A Frances whose face was waxy already, yellowish white apart from a livid discolouration around the forehead and eyes.