Back of Sunset. Jon Cleary
men, wrinkled brown flesh bulging above trunks as vivid as native lap-laps, sat in a row, soaking up what each knew could be the sun of his last summer. Four New Australians, pale as waiters, approached the water warily; beside them the children giggled at their fear and rushed at the water in a flurry of bravado. Some young girls, lazy with sun and the awareness that their doting parents didn’t require them to work, lay stretched on the sand like novice whores; the pool attendant, young and poor and required to work, turned his back on what he couldn’t afford and spat spitefully at a seagull. On either side of the pool, along Seven Shillings Beach and round the point to Double Bay, expensive homes and apartment buildings crowded the hill: in some places the apartment buildings overhung the water’s edge, glinting in the sun like glass-fronted cliffs: a woman sunned herself on a tiny balcony like a gull on a ledge. Up on Point Piper Stephen could see the homes of the wealthy, big ugly homes huddled together like reclaimed tenements. Rona lived up there with her parents in a Tudor-style mansion that would have made any self-respecting Tudor welcome the block. Residents of Point Piper had contributed little to the architectural beauty of Sydney: the original builders had little if any taste, and the later arrivals had been concerned only with the address. The Goodyears had been among the later arrivals.
“In London I’ll have to start all over again,” Stephen said. “I don’t mean I’m going to miss just the sun and the swimming.”
“What do you mean then, for heaven’s sake?”
Stephen considered replying for a moment, then he shrugged and let it go. He was too tired for explanations, and for the argument that would probably follow; if Rona didn’t understand by now what he meant, then she never would. It was the difference between ambition, which was her cross, and a desire for security, which was his.
“Sometimes you can be so fantastically annoying.” Rona had gone to one of the most expensive and fashionable schools in Sydney: its pupils were recognisable by their complete unawareness of any but the most extravagant adjectives. “I don’t know how your patients can stand you at times.”
“I’m tired, that’s all,” he said, but he knew it wasn’t all. “I haven’t been to bed before two o’clock any morning this week. I’ll be glad when you’re on the plane for New Zealand on Monday. I’ll spend the next month catching up on my sleep.”
“Darling.” There was real concern in Rona’s voice. She could change abruptly like this, from a spoiled self-centred girl to one who was aware that all was not right in the world of others. She did voluntary hospital visiting, and some evenings Stephen had seen her burst into tears at the memory of some poor unfortunate she had visited in the afternoon. It was one of the things that gave hope for her in Stephen’s mind; one of the things that helped reduce the slight shame he felt in finding excuses for her occasional demanding behaviour. She looked at him with love. “You’re working too hard.”
Ah, that’s spoiled it, Stephen thought: she has completely overlooked that she’s had me playing it too hard, too. “Maybe I need a holiday.”
“Come to New Zealand with Mummy and me.” Mrs. Goodyear had come from Auckland twenty-five years before, an ambitious nurse who had chosen an easier and more profitable career and married a rising young doctor; now she went home each year to the hostile indifference of her relatives, the local girl who had made good and who now talked of Sydney as home, something the Aucklanders couldn’t forgive. “We shan’t have to spend all our time with the ghastly relations.”
Stephen shook his head. “I couldn’t take it.” He bent down and picked up his towel. “I’ll see you tonight at Palm Beach. I’ll be at St. Vincent’s all afternoon.”
He bent again and kissed her: she tasted of cream, bitter as aloes. “Darling, why don’t you give up some of your hospital appointments? You have enough to do in the practice.”
Here we go again, he thought; but he was too tired to argue. “I’ll think about it. See you tonight.”
“I’ll miss you.” Rona did love him: she was sincere enough about that. “I wish you were rich enough so we could both be parasites. Never separated, not even for an hour.”
He grinned, and pressed the scarlet-tipped fingers she held up to him. Then he left her and walked along the sand and up the steps to the dressing-rooms. Rona watched him go, loving him but irritated by him: he was nine years older than she was, but sometimes she felt he was as irresponsible as a child. No, perhaps not irresponsible; unambitious, that was more like it. And perhaps even that didn’t describe him. He had been ambitious enough when he had joined her father in the practice; or so her father had told her. She had been still at school then, although her own ambition had already begun to blossom even in the confines of the classroom and the dormitory: she had never been a good student, but she had seen no limit to the future: she had failed in Maths Two, in History, in Science, but at fifteen she had been one of the most brilliant snobs the school had ever turned out. Socially, the school knew its reputation would be safe with her.
No, it was not that Stephen was unambitious. It was rather that he was too insular in his ambition. It was the trouble with most Australians; she was never sure whether it was fear or smugness that made them satisfied with their own horizon. She and Stephen had discussed this, had argued about it, every week now for the past six months; and it had slowly dawned on her that it was going to be more difficult than she had realised to achieve her ambition. Her ambition, formed a long time ago, was to be the wife of a successful London surgeon, a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, a Harley Street name, perhaps even a consultant to the Royal Family. It had been purely fortuitous that the man most likely to help her succeed in her ambition was her father’s junior partner. It had been almost coincidental that she had fallen in love with him at the same time as she had nominated him as her means to her end.
And now Stephen, like a man who had suddenly looked up at the height of the tower from which he had boasted he would dive, had become cautious. Or afraid.
“Darling,” Rona said, seeing him disappear into the dressing-rooms, and something like tears, of pity, for Stephen or herself, she wasn’t sure which, welled behind the dark glasses. Too few people liked Rona, and she had only herself to blame: her heart was hidden behind dark glasses, as if the better emotions were something of which to be ashamed.
II
Stephen miraculously found a parking place right outside the building in Macquarie Street where he and Charles Goodyear had their rooms. He dexterously swung the Jaguar convertible into the space, and switched off the engine. Maybe this was going to be a good day after all: he was superstitious of such small portents: his life was signposted by doors opened at the right moment, letters of resignation mislaid and not posted in time, tax rebates arriving unexpectedly in the mail. He looked up at the sky: it was cloudless, another good sign. Then he wondered why he had been expecting a bad day, and could find no answer. His only conclusion was that over the past few months he must have begun to turn into a pessimist.
He ran a comb through his long dark hair, straightened his tie, then, carrying his hat, got out of the car and crossed to the front steps of the building. He had begun wearing a hat only in the last six months: preparing for England, he had remarked to Charles Goodyear; but he was still not used to it and he wore it on his hand as much as on his head. He wore a cream silk shirt, a blue silk knitted tie, a blue flannel suit and brown suede shoes; and he had enough vanity to think that he looked elegant and well-dressed. His father, who for years had worn the same old cardigan, whether reading alone, entertaining friends, or seeing patients in his surgery or on his rounds, would have laughed at the suggestion that a doctor’s dress could count as much as his potential ability. Yet Stephen knew it was so. Australians, who had once liked to boast of their being a pioneer nation, had graduated to the snobbery of dress. The men in Macquarie Street, with the exception of the politicians in Parliament House across the road, were as well dressed as the men in Harley Street and Park Avenue.
Stephen and Goodyear had a suite of rooms on the eighth floor: a waiting-room, a small office and a room for each of the doctors. It was possible to enter the office from the corridor without going