The Climate of Courage. Jon Cleary
what I read in the papers. Was he really as brave as they said?”
“He was.” There was no mockery now in Jack’s voice: he had seen the incident and he knew Greg deserved the honour he had got. “We’d been held up for an hour by these two machine-gun posts. They had us as nicely taped as I ever hoped to be taped. We were stuck behind some rocks on the bank of the Litani River.” As he spoke the whole rocky sunbaked Syrian countryside came back to him, and he felt suddenly nostalgic. The campaign had been tougher and more important than the outside world, for some political reason, had been told. The Vichy French had fought with the same whole-hearted hatred as the Germans had in the Western Desert. But after the armistice, camped among the olive groves in the shadow of the sharp-ridged mountains, bathing in the warm Mediterranean, loving the dark-eyed Lebanese beauties, when one could get them away from their hawk-eyed parents. Syria had become the first piece of territory worth fighting for that they had so far met. Jack had liked Syria and one day hoped to go back. “I didn’t see Greg start out, I don’t think any of us did, but the next thing we knew he was across the river and going up the opposite bank. He took those two machine-gun posts on his own. He threw in grenades and then went in and used his bayonet. We were still on the other side of the river and it was like sitting in the dress circle watching a film, the sort of film that excites you but that you don’t believe in. When he’d finished he stood up, grinning all over his face just like he is now, and yelled back at us, ‘Righto, what are you bastards waiting for?’ It’s the first and only time I’ve ever heard a man cheered while we were in action. Yes, Sarah, he was really brave.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “It makes me feel better for him.”
“What do you mean?” said Silver.
“Nothing,” Sarah smiled, her grey eyes looking a little tired. “It’s been all a little confusing these past few days, married to Public Hero Number One.”
“It can’t have been much of a reunion for the two of you,” said Silver. “I mean, no privacy. So little time to yourselves.
“It’s been like spending our honeymoon on Central Station,” Sarah said. “I’m afraid to take my clothes off for fear the doorbell will ring again.”
“That wouldn’t worry Greg, would it?” said Jack. “He’d welcome them all, naked or not.”
Sarah nodded. “He was interviewed the other day by the Herald in his underpants. He was never what you’d call self-conscious. I must have had a too modest upbringing, like to be fully dressed in front of strangers. Anyhow, we’re escaping for a couple of days. We’re going up to Katoomba to-night.”
Greg had now begun to speak. Just as I thought, Jack said to himself. Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Richard the Lion-Heart, all rolled into one. You’d think he’d been doing it all his life. Listen to the microphone technique, better than I could ever use it and I’ve had years of practice. Look at the charm flowing out like syrup out of a barrel. And just the right touch of modesty to season the devil-may-care attitude. I like the bastard and I admire him, but in a moment I’m going to be sick right in the middle of Mrs. Bendixter’s bond rally.
“I’m going downstairs for a breath of air,” he said. “I don’t want any bonds to-day, thank you.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Silver. “We can go and have dinner now.”
“What about helping your mother?”
“She won’t need me. It was just in case the hero was unmarried. Sometimes I’m expected to find him a girl, or in the last resort go out with him myself. But Greg’s all fixed.” She smiled at Sarah. “Have a nice second honeymoon, Sarah. No photographers or visitors.”
“Take your clothes off and leave them off,” said Jack.
Sarah smiled at them. “I’ll do my best. And thank you. I’ll say good night to Greg for you.”
They left Greg and his bated-breath audience and went down in the lift and out into Elizabeth Street. The air was pleasantly cool and the crowds in the streets had thinned out. A breeze came across the park, brushing the leaves like a restless child, and the moon struggled to free itself from a net of clouds.
“Sarah looked rather tired,” said Silver, “as if she’s been under something of a strain.”
“Living with Greg under any circumstances would be a strain on a woman.”
“Sometimes you sound as if you don’t like him.”
“I do like him.” He had come to cherish the friendship of several of the men in the last two years, particularly Greg and Vern Radcliffe. He had been self-sufficient before the war, having no close men friends and needing none. But of late, knowing these men in arms with him, exchanging confidences with them, having them sometimes depend on him, he had become aware of a feeling of selflessness that had given him more pleasure than he could remember in his dealings with men before. At one time he had laughed at the Australian religion of mateship, the spirit of fraternalism that was evident in so many movements in the country’s history. If he hadn’t yet succumbed to it completely, he had at least stopped laughing. He had recognised it as one of the few things of constant value in a world of changing values. “I have a great affection for the irresponsible bastard. But that’s his trouble, he’s too irresponsible.”
“You sounded like a good responsible type to-night, when you were going to sock that officer.” She stopped walking and stared at him, then she moved on again. “I believe you would have, too. You’re a queer mixture. Jack. Sometimes you sound too cynical to care about anything. And other times——” She made a hopeless gesture with her hand. “Remind me to think twice if ever you ask me to marry you.”
“I’ve never asked anyone yet,” he said.
“Oh, pardon me for being so forward!” She had regained her poise, was cool and slightly mocking again. “I’m so used to being asked, I just take it for granted.”
He grinned, losing his dark mood. “Let’s have dinner, before I take to beating you. I’m a patient man——”
“Like hell, you’re patient,” she said, and put her arm in his and smiled up at him: the dimples took all the cool mockery out of her face and made her young and lovely. He pressed her arm tightly against his body, feeling it like a soft link in a chain she was winding about him, and they walked up through the cool electric night, on the verge of love in the city that was just experiencing its first epidemic of lust.
When they had finished dinner she looked at her watch. “It’s still only twenty-past eight, a young night. What would you like to do now?”
“Go to bed with you,” he said, and somehow succeeded in making the words not so brutal and vulgar and selfish.
“With anyone else, that could have spoiled a lovely evening.” She reached across the table and put her hand on his: in the pressure of her fingers he could feel her desire answering his. “But I’m not going to any cheap hotel room. I’m not like my sister. I have a distaste for the sordid.”
“I have the loan of a flat at Manly.” He signalled for the waiter and tipped that surprised worthy as liberally as any American who had come into the place: everyone benefited from love, even waiters. “We’ll go down to the Quay and catch a ferry.”
He kissed her as they rode on the outside of the ferry, with the cool breeze stirring her hair like wisps of spun silver, and with a quartet at the rear of the ferry serenading the moon with the Maori Farewell. Behind them the city was dark in its brown-out, and as they crept out past the defence boom he had a sudden shivering feeling of unreality. His arm tightened about her.
“It’s hard to believe,” he said. “In Alex and Haifa and Beirut, yes. But not here.”
“I get scared stiff at times,” she said. “What if we should lose the war?”
The ferry was rolling now, meeting the swell coming in through the Heads. They were on the lee side of the boat,