Jon Cleary - The Climate of Courage

She smiled. “Is something the matter, then?”

“Yes. A girl as beautiful as you shouldn’t be unattached. I’m prying into your private affairs and I’m unashamed about it, but have you lost a man in the war?”

“No. I’m just unattached, that’s all.”

There was a faint note of bitterness in her voice, but he didn’t comment on it. He decided he was going to learn all there was to know about this girl, and there would be time. He grinned down at her, liking the way her cheeks shadowed with the dimples as she smiled back, and he thanked his luck that dear dumb Rita had had a date with her “ant.”

“In The Mood” finished, then there was “Dolores.” After that a girl got up before the band and wailed that she didn’t “Wanna Set The World On Fire”; and didn’t. Songs hadn’t been particularly inspired during the war, and everyone was still waiting for something resembling the great favourites that had come out of the last war. The dance tempo had become bouncier since Jack had last danced in Sydney, and the floor quivered like the bruised back of some great beast. A sailor and a girl, both chewing gum as if gasping for air, jived in a corner, completely isolated in their own little world of twisted limbs, vibrating muscles and communion of intellect. A girl and a soldier went by, he plodding in his heavy boots as if on a route march and she doing her best to avoid being crippled. By a doorway an Australian private and an American corporal were arguing, the Australian red in the face and the American looking as if he wanted no part of the argument.

After the fourth dance she said, “We’re supposed to circulate. We girls, I mean.”

“Do you really want to dance with someone else?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Would you like to take me home, or would that spoil your evening?”

“I haven’t eaten yet. Have you?”

“Then we’ll have dinner together at home. I’ll get my coat.”

By a miracle he managed to get a cab, and twenty minutes later they drew up outside the Bendixter home in a quiet street in Darling Point. They pushed open the big iron gates and walked up the drive. A line of poplars supported the night sky and behind the house there was the dark mass of other trees. The house itself shone faintly in the starlight, white and square like some huge tomb.

“Not a bad place at all,” said Jack. “What is it, a branch of Parliament House?”

“It’s nothing much,” said Silver, “but we call it home.”

Jack stopped and looked at the house. “It’s top heavy. It looks as if someone got big ideas only after the foundations were down.”

“Are you always so critical of the homes of girls you meet?”

“The only other girl I’ve taken home lived in a tent,” he said. “She was a Bedouin I met in Gaza.”

“I must be a disappointment. Your life’s been so full of romance.”

They went up the steps to a terrace and crossed to the front door. Silver took out her key.

“No butler?” said Jack. “Not even a maid?”

“Nobody at all. We have a cook and a maid, and a gardener who doubles as chauffeur. But they’re all down at our place at Bowral at present. They’ll be back to-morrow, when my mother comes home. In the meantime, there’s just my sister and me—and God knows where she is.”

Inside the hall, with the light on, Jack looked around at the sumptuous furnishings. “All this from a few mob of sheep, eh?”

“And timber and mines and shipping and a hundred other things.” She tossed her coat on a chair and led the way out to the back of the house. “My dad was a fine man, but he couldn’t help making money. He liked making it, but he made too much. In the end we were the only ones who knew how good and kind he could be. Nobody has any time for the rich in this country.” She looked back at him as they entered a large gleaming kitchen. “Or am I offending a member of the proletariat?”

“You’re talking to an ex-rich man’s son,” he said. “Your father would have known my old man. He was one of the biggest pearlers on the north-west coast”

“You lost everything only recently then?” she said. “Since the Japs came into the war?”

“No,” he said, and felt the old sadness even after twelve years. “He committed suicide when I was sixteen. Things just went wrong.”

She stopped and put her hand out.

He took it, and felt the warm sympathy in her fingers. He had noticed it several times in the hour he had been with her, a sudden softening in her that belied the polished sophistication of her looks. Being rich had spoiled her, he thought, but not entirely.

A long time later they were sitting in what Silver called the small living-room. It reeked of luxury, but on a small scale, and Jack felt at home. He lay sprawled on the lounge, his shoes off and his webbing belt thrown on the floor. She had taken his coffee cup from him and put it on a small table with her own. She lit a cigarette for him, lit another for herself, kicked off her shoes, sat down in a deep chair and drew her feet up under her.

“When did you last have some home life?”

“Too long ago. I’ll tell you about it some other time.” He waved his hand, throwing the subject away as if it were some foul thing that had unexpectedly clung to his fingers. “Sit over here.”

“There’ll be time for that later,” she said, and sat looking at him for a while. “You’d be handsome if it weren’t for that damned great broom under your nose.”

“This?” He fondled his moustache. “No other girl has complained.”

“Not even the Bedouin?” she said. “Why do you wear it?”

“Vanity. I liked to be noticed.”

She laughed, stubbed out her cigarette and slid off her chair on to the lounge beside him. “People notice you, all right. I saw you as soon as you came into the Buffet. I wondered how long it would be before you asked me to dance. If you hadn’t I’d have asked you.”

“You’d have circulated, eh?” he said, and kissed her.

Then her sister came in. “Don’t mind me, go right ahead! I shan’t peek.”

Silver drew back. “My sister has a one-track mind. Mamie, this is Jack Savanna.”

They were sisters, there was no doubt of that, though one was as dark as the other was fair. Mamie was not as tall as Silver, but her body had the same womanliness and her face the same good bonework. Even the eyes and mouths were alike. But there was a looseness about Mamie that wasn’t there in Silver; not only in the face and body, but one sensed it also in the character. Then he remembered it was Mamie Bendixter that Tony Shelley had known, and he was surprised at how glad he was. He pressed Silver’s arm and stood up.

“My!” said Mamie. “So big!”

“In his stockinged feet too,” said Silver. “Six feet three, all man, and I saw him first.”

Mamie smiled up at him: there were no dimples and her smile was somehow not as soft. “Silver has a complex about me. She thinks I want to get my claws into every man I see.”

“Don’t you?” There was no rancour in Silver’s voice: she sounded almost a little bored.

“Not all, sister dear,” said Mamie. “Only those with red blood in them.”

“We’ll take a blood test of him later,” said Silver. “Right now I’m just getting acquainted with his surface features.”

“And they’re not bad,” said Mamie. “Except for his moustache.”

Jack at last managed to get a word in. The only time he was defeated in conversation was when he was in the company of two females. It was gratifying to think that they might fight over him, but he had already made up his mind whom to crown the winner. He chipped in before Mamie began thinking she had got a foothold on him.