The Climate of Courage

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 for a while, easily and well: they could have been old partners. “I’m Jack Savanna.”

“Silver Bendixter,” she said, and saw his eyebrows go up. “You have heard of me?”

“I used to read the Society columns in the Sunday papers in the Red Shield hut,” he said. “One read anything and everything in the Middle East.”

“Fame, fame.” She shook her head slowly and a lock of the blonde hair fell down. When she looked up again she was smiling and he was surprised at how soft and young-looking her face had become with its unexpected dimples. “Are you sure it was me you read about, or my mother or my sister?”

“It could have been all three. The Bendixters are pillars of Sydney Society, aren’t they?”

“Don’t sneer.”

“Forgive me. It’s my proletarian upbringing.” Then he said, “There was a fellow in our unit who knew you, or said he did. Tony Shelley.”

“A stinker, if ever there was one,” she said calmly. “A rat, and a friend of my sister.”

“I didn’t like him, either.” He twisted his head to look at the hand resting on his shoulder. “Are you engaged or anything?”

She held up bare fingers. “Or nothing. I’m completely unattached, if that will put your mind at rest. Were you thinking of proposing, or don’t the proletariat propose to pillars of Society?”

“Oh, we do, by all means. It’s the proletarian blood that keeps Society alive. But that wasn’t why I asked.”

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.

“Silver and I have already discussed the moustache,” he said. “She also happens to have got her claws into me a couple of hours ago.”

The smile stayed around Mamie’s mouth, but died in her eyes. My God, he thought, she’s a mean, vicious, dissipated bitch; I can believe everything they say about her. Without getting her name in the papers for anything more notorious than having lunch at Prince’s, she had become a legend of sin in Sydney. Her own circle had known her for years, and cab drivers too, and the odd anonymous men she had picked up off the streets: in the last two and a half years, with men talking among themselves as they did, she had probably become known to half the Army. Navy and Air Force. She read his mind and the smile widened, completely shameless.

“You’ve heard of me, have you, Jack?”

“He’s in the same unit as Tony Shelley,” said Silver. “Dear drunken, perverted Tony.”

“That’s what we call him,” said Jack. “Pervy B. Shelley.”

For a moment Mamie looked as if she were going to stay and fight. The smile changed almost to a snarl and the eyes thinned dangerously. Then suddenly she changed the whole expression to a yawn. “I’m tired. I’ve been out with a Navy type who’s been at sea for ten months, so he said. You’ll be around again, Jack, or are you staying the night? Good night, then, and don’t sleep in Mother’s room. She’s coming home to-morrow.”

Then she had gone and the room seemed cleaner and fresher. Jack sat down and began to draw on his boots.

“Going?” said Silver. “Did that bitch of a sister spoil things for you?”

“I don’t like her,” he said, buckling on his belt. “But she didn’t spoil things. She just somehow made me see you in a new light.”

“Better or worse?”

“Better. I’ll be back again. I’m going to spend the rest of my leave with you. Do you work at all?”

“Since the Japs came into the war, yes. I’m secretary to a doctor friend of ours in Macquarie Street. Some people wouldn’t call it war work, but it depends on the way you look at it. Sid Hugo is overworked, like all doctors now, and I do my best to help him.” She had spoken a little forcibly, but suddenly she smiled and made a deprecating gesture. “I’m sorry, I’m always defending myself. It’s a habit of the conscientious rich.”

“Lunch to-morrow, then.” They were at the front door now and he took her in his arms. “Is Silver really your name?”

“Don’t you like it?” And when he nodded, she said, “Dad was nicknamed Silver, because of his hair and, I suppose, because of his money, too. When I came along and had hair exactly like his——” She looked up at him, frankly pleased. “I’m glad you like it, Jack.”

“It suits you.” He kissed her, and was aware of the passion in her. The night hadn’t ended as he’d originally planned, but he had no regrets. The future, compared with the prospect of a few hours ago, looked better than to-night could ever have been. It was the first time he could remember meeting a girl and thinking beyond the next morning. “Good night, Silver.”

It seemed that he had been saying good night to women and leaving them all his life and would be for ever. Even when he had been living with Rita they had both known that one night he would walk out and not come back. He could not do without women, but for as long as he could remember he had been frightened of their hold on him.

He had even been frightened of his mother’s hold on him. Tenuous yet strong, like the line a fisherman holds. She had played him as one plays a fish: several times he had tried to escape, but she had always known how to bring him back.

“I wasn’t cut out to be a mother, Johnny,” she had said once, “but that doesn’t mean I want to forget I am one.”

“You’re all right,” he had said, knowing he was expected to say something. She had been a vain woman and would have liked him to say she was a wonderful mother: she was greedy for any sort of praise, even when she knew it wasn’t true. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to make the lie an extravagant one. “When is Dad coming home?”

“Next week.” She had turned to him, giving him the smile he had seen her give his father when she wanted something. “And I wouldn’t mention that Mr. Garry and Mr. Phillips have been coming here, Johnny. Your father sometimes misunderstands things, sees them in the wrong light. So we shan’t mention them, shall we?”

He had loved his father as he had never been able to love his mother. Big Pat had had boats going out of both Thursday Island and Broome, and had spent his time between both places, with four visits a year to Sydney. Then he would come down for a fortnight each time and be like a north-west storm, a Cocky Bob, blowing through the house. He had built a house on Thursday Island for them all, but Jack had been there only twice and his mother never at all. The house had never been a home, just an outpost where Big Pat slept and drank and (as his son learned later) pined in secret. The four visits a year to Sydney were like four Christmases to Big Pat’s son.

Then Big Pat had come down from Broome on one of his visits and had arrived a day earlier than expected. He had called for Jack at school, persuaded the master to let him go early, and they had caught a cab and gone home, both of them happy as schoolboys, flushed with the thought of the fortnight ahead.

“We’ll surprise your mother,” his father had said, and he had seen no danger in it because he knew both Mr. Garry and Mr. Phillips were out of town. “She’s probably in the middle of her afternoon beauty sleep. We’ll sneak in and scare the daylights out of her. Cripes!” He slapped Jack’s knee, almost breaking it. “You’ve got no idea how I like coming home to you two! One of these days you’ll find there’s no feeling like returning home.”

But his mother hadn’t been having her beauty sleep. She was in bed, all right, but there was a man with her, someone he had never seen before. His father had said nothing intelligible, just let out a roar of animal rage, and plunged into the room, slamming the door after him. Jack had stood for a moment, sick and frightened, then he had turned and walked slowly down the hall to his room.

From the window there a few minutes later he had seen the stranger staggering down the drive, his clothes hanging on him in shreds, his hands to his broken bloody face, never looking back, an adulterer who hadn’t known what had hit him. Five minutes later Big Pat had come into his son’s room.

“I was wrong, son,” he had said, and, unbloodied and unscathed, he had looked more broken than the man who had just gone stumbling down the drive. “You can’t win, after all.”

Then he had gone downstairs and locked himself in his study and begun to drink. Two hours later, when they heard the shot and Jack had burst the door in, he was dead. Big Pat lay among a litter of bottles and photographs and letters, and in a pool of blood that spread to touch the bottles and stain the photographs and letters. Jack would never forget that sight of the wreckage of his father’s life.

His mother had looked in the room past him and then, the only womanly decent thing she had ever done, she had fainted. He had closed the door quietly on his father, stepped over his mother with only a hateful glance at her and left her to the care of the gardener and his wife, and had walked out of the house and down the road to the home of the doctor who had brought him into the world. Old Dr. Cotterell, who had known what was going on, had opened the door and from the look on Jack’s face had guessed at tragedy. But his guess had been only half right. He had cried out in shock and grief when Jack told him Big Pat had killed himself and not his wife.

Jack had never gone back to his mother. At first, out of remorse, she had come pleading to him to return; then after a while her vanity had got the better of her again and she gave up chasing him. Big Pat had died in a hurry, without expecting to, probably without meaning to, if he hadn’t been so blind with anger or sorrow or drink or perhaps all three. When it came time to settle his affairs it was found he had over-expanded and in doing so had borrowed right and left. He had left little but goodwill and a fleet of half-paid-for luggers that added up only to a man’s dreams. In solid cash they meant very little.

Jack’s mother had married again, not Mr. Garry nor Mr. Phillips nor the bloody stranger but a French woolbroker, and had gone to live in Paris. Whether she was still there, he didn’t know nor care. Whatever the Germans did to her couldn’t be worse than what she had done to his father.

And so because of his mother and because he would always remember his father’s last words—you can’t win—he had spent his life running away from women. Well, not running away from them immediately, but only when he had begun to fear they were getting a hold on him.

Good night, Silver, and she had five more days in which to strengthen her hold on him. For she did have a hold on him, he admitted, even after only four hours and two kisses. And sitting on the ferry edging its way past the wartime boom defences in the outer harbour, going over to Manly where an understanding cousin had lent him his flat for the eight days of his leave, he further admitted that perhaps this time he wouldn’t be so keen to run away. The war, that had ruined so many futures, had begun to make him think of his.

This return to Sydney, to the welcome that wasn’t there for him, had made him realise for the first time just how lonely he was. His father had been right, there was no feeling like returning home. But one needed a welcome, if the feeling was to mean anything.

They had lunch the next day at Prince’s. They sat close to a table that was fast becoming famous as the command post of certain American war correspondents covering the New Guinea front, and behind a table that was already famous as the command post of a genteel lady who covered the Society front. Gay young things were being industriously gay, keeping one eye on each other and one eye on the door in case a photographer appeared. Matrons pecked at their food like elegant fowls, also eyeing each other and waiting the advent of a photographer. Two suburban ladies from Penshurst, having a day out in Society, sat toying with their food and wishing they had gone to Sargent’s, where they could have had a real bog-in for less than half the price. Aside from Jack and the American correspondents, there were only one or two other men in the place, and they looked as uncomfortable as if they had been caught lunching in an underwear salon. Australian men still hadn’t learned to be at ease when outnumbered by women.

Silver told Jack she had to go to a meeting that night. “It’s some sort of bond rally that my mother has organised for business girls. David Jones’ have lent their restaurant. Everyone has tea and sandwiches, then this war hero gets up and says something. After that, the idea is that the girls all rush up and buy war bonds.”

“I thought they’d rush up and lay themselves at the feet of the war hero. It has better possibilities, I mean as a spectacle.”

“Well, anyway, that cuts out dinner to-night,” she said. “Unless you want to wait until after the meeting.”

“I’ll come along and eat tea and sandwiches. Maybe afterwards, just to set the girls an example, I’ll rush up and throw myself at the war hero.”

That evening, shortly after the stores had closed, he met her outside David Jones’. They went into the big gleaming store and, in a lift crammed with chattering females who looked with an appreciative eye on Jack and a critical one on Silver, they went up to the restaurant floor.

As soon as they entered the large high-ceilinged restaurant Jack saw the war hero. “You mean he’s the one who’s supposed to inspire these girls to save their money for war bonds? He’s never saved a penny in his life! I’ve kept him in spending money ever since we joined the Army on the same day.”

“Who is he?” said Silver. “My mother’s a bit on the vague side. She couldn’t remember his name.”

But before Jack could tell her, the war hero had broken away from the group around him and come plunging towards them. “You old bastard, Savanna! What are you doing here?”

“After you speak, I get up and say a piece,” said Jack. “They want the girls to get both sides of the question. You, you bludger!” he said elegantly, and shook his head disgustedly. He turned to Silver. “This is Sergeant Morley, V.C. Miss Bendixter.”

He was glad to see that Silver remained cool and didn’t gush. “My, we are honoured to-night. A real live V.C. winner.”

“I’ll say this for him,” said Jack. “Most of them don’t stay alive.”

Greg Morley’s black eyes were bright with light and his thin face was flushed under its tan. He’s just like a big kid, thought Jack. Even the thin brown face had a suggestion of boyishness about it: the features seemed thrown together above the mobile mouth, as if they had never settled into a mature countenance. He was good looking, but in a way one could never remember: there was a suggestion of impermanence, of possible change, about his face, as if when one saw him next he might have changed beyond recognition. And his face, like a young boy’s, showed every emotion.

“I’m glad I stayed alive for this,” he said, throwing an arm towards the room, laughing with a mouthful of bright white teeth. “I’m lapping it up! You should have been a hero, Jack.”

“God forbid,” said Jack. “Is Sarah here?”

“She’s over there with the mob,” Greg said. “I’ve got my own bodyguard of Army Public Relations blokes, War Loan johnnies, a photographer from D.O.I. The works, all for Greg Morley!”

“What are you going to talk about to-night?” said Silver.

“God knows.” Greg couldn’t have been more cheerful: he wasn’t a modest hero to be frightened by public adoration. “They’ve written it for me. All I have to do is deliver it.”

“What are you doing next week?” said Jack. “Hamlet?”

But Greg couldn’t be dented. “Come and meet Sarah and the old duck who’s organising this. You’ll love her, Jack. Doesn’t know a bee from a bull’s foot about the war, but you’d think she was Lady Blamey.”