The Climate of Courage. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ then turned away with the feeling of being lost that had kept recurring ever since they had first landed back at Adelaide. Vern had asked him home for dinner, and he had almost accepted. But then he had recognised the invitation for what it was, sincere but a spur-of-the-moment thought; he had thought of Dinah sharing the moments with her husband after two long years, and so he had told Vern he had a date.

      Well, he’d better see if he did have a date. He crossed the road to St. James station, lined up outside the phone box and ten minutes later was dialling a number, conscious of the thick stuffy smell of the box and the belligerently impatient queue outside.

      “Rita? This is Jack here.”

      “Jack? Jack who?” Her voice sounded the same, light and empty as her head.

      “Jack Savanna. How many Jacks do you know? They had once lived together for three months, but now she had forgotten him. He grinned to himself and patted his bruised ego.

      “Jack Savanna! Well, Ah declare! How you been, huh?” Her voice had changed, after all: it had crossed the Pacific. “Long time no see, Jack, honey.”

      Why did I ring her? he thought; and thought what a trap was the telephone. In the old days, when one had to write a letter there was always time for a second thought. But now: two pennies in the slot, a spin of the dial, and bingo! Why had he called her? Rita, with the blank pretty face, the pretty blank mind and the beautiful body—yes, that was why he had called her. “I’ve missed you, too, Rita, honey. How about dinner to-night, and afterwards we can talk about old times, huh?”

      “Ah gee, Jack honey, if I’d only known! But I already gotta go out—I’m gonna see”—he could hear her two-stroke brain changing gears—“my aunt.”

      “Your ant? Are you interested in entomology now?”

      She laughed, light and meaningless as a child’s bell. “Still the same old Jack! Still making with the big words.”

      Serves me right, he thought, for having designs on her body. He hadn’t taken her mind into account, and he was beaten before he had started. Suddenly the box seemed more stinking and stuffy than ever. Abruptly he said good-bye, hung up and pushed open the door.

      “You been long enough, dig,” said a sailor. “Who you been ringing, MacArthur?”

      Jack hunched his shoulders. “Want to make something of it, matelot?”

      “I gotta ring me sheila,” said the sailor, and skipped nimbly into the box. He grinned through the glass, then turned to the phone, a red-headed, broken-nosed, freckle-faced Romeo who was sure of his girl.

      Jack walked past the other people waiting to use the phone and out into Elizabeth Street again. It was a mild night with light still in the sky behind the buildings on the west side of the street. Right above him a few stars, poignant as tears, looked down at the city. A plane appeared from behind the towers of St. Mary’s Basilica, a metal angel with winking red and green light, heading north; it passed over the harbour, suddenly an angel no longer but a small black fly caught in the tangled skein of the searchlights. I should be on that, he thought, getting out of this bloody unfriendly city. And then was angry at himself for being sorry for himself.

      He looked about him, aware now of a change in the atmosphere of the city he had loved so well. There was that air of electric nervousness that came upon all cities at this time of day during the war. In London and Cairo and Berlin, and in all cities within reach of the bombers, there would be fear behind the nervousness; here in Sydney and in Melbourne, probably New York too and San Francisco, there was just the hope of a good time. Girls stood waiting for their men, looking at other men, wondering if they were better prospects than their date for to-night: modesty had become a wartime casualty and had been replaced by the roving eye and the calculating mind. Couples walked arm-in-arm out of the great green bed of Hyde Park, flushed with love-making and stained with grass juice. An American sailor, his arm about a brazenly successful girl, stood on the kerb waiting confidently for the cab that would come to him past all the hailing Australian arms. The city had changed all right.

      He began to walk along Elizabeth Street, aimless and lost in the city that was his home, big Jack Savanna who was always so definite and self-possessed and impregnable. Then he heard the music coming across the park and suddenly he remembered the Anzac Buffet. There would be girls there, plenty of them, all dedicated to the enjoyment of the boys on leave. He turned and began to hurry across the park, almost as if he had to get there before the supply of girls ran out. He wasn’t drunk, he’d had only four beers with the boys in the Marble Bar, but he suddenly had the pleasant lightness of feeling, that warmth that makes the world a good place that must be enjoyed to the full, and his low mood of the last quarter-hour had suddenly gone like the last light of day behind the buildings across the street. He was determined to enjoy to-night.

      He saw the girl as soon as he entered the large hall where the band was bouncing out Chattanooga Choo-Choo. She was sitting in a deep chair, turned away from him, and all he could see was the smooth blonde hair, almost silvery and suggesting metal in its polished sleekness. He stood for several minutes watching the blonde head, waiting for it to turn and let him see the face that went with it. He had seen plenty of girls who looked like Miss Australia from the back and like the wreck of someone’s grandmother from the front. To-night had suddenly become too good to spoil by being in a hurry. Then he saw an R.A.A.F. corporal coming from the other side of the room, heading for the blonde in the chair: the expression on the corporal’s face, the way he was smoothing his hair, the hand straightening his tie, told Jack that the girl could not be too bad. He had to take a chance, otherwise he might miss out and spend the rest of the night kicking himself.

      He beat the corporal by a good two yards, without appearing to hurry, lazy and casual, the approach that had been so successful in the past. “Would you care to dance?”

      She looked up at him, and he could guess at the disappointment of the corporal behind him. She was even better than he had expected, much better: with the all-out war effort, beauty standards had been raised in the leave centres. Perhaps her beauty had frightened away most of the other men, because a girl as good-looking as this must surely be booked for the night and she was just waiting for her boy-friend to arrive. Her face was an original one: nothing about it had been borrowed from film stars or cover girls or beauty salons. The bones were strong yet fine, and her skin glowed like a golden peach bursting with sun. Her mouth was heavy, but the lipstick covered only the natural outline of her lips: the passionate mouth couldn’t be wiped off with a handkerchief or a kiss. Her eyes were dark, too dark really for the colour of her hair, though the latter looked natural, and when she looked up at him they shone with a soft amused gleam under their heavy lids.

      She nodded to the girl she had been talking to, and stood up. She was taller than he had expected, but not too tall; big though he was himself, he didn’t like women to look as if they could swing an axe or carry a banner at the head of an army.

      The silver-haired girl was wearing a light grey jersey frock with short sleeves, and it showed off the deep tan she still retained from summer. It also showed off her body. With the blonde sleekness of her head and the deep tan he had somehow expected her to be the athletic type all the curves slim and firm and almost a little muscular. He had seen that type of girl in Russell Flint paintings and on the beaches, healthy and vital and always somehow a little disappointing, as if one knew all their passion had dried out with the exercise in the sun. But this girl was built like a woman, soft yet firm, and the sun had only kindled her passion.

      “Do I pass?” She danced with a lazy sort of rhythm, as if her body was tired and she would rather be in bed.

      He grinned, and they danced СКАЧАТЬ