The Climate of Courage. Jon Cleary
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