The Climate of Courage. Jon Cleary
shoulders. “There, how’s that? My God, you’re lucky, you know.”
He was, he knew that. Her bosom had deepened after the birth of the two children, but it was still firm and lovely. Her waist was slim and there was no thickening over the hips; they curved, then came in a smooth sweep to her long thighs. No birth wrinkles marred her stomach: her slightest movement brought exciting shadows to the firm modelling of it. And the face with its good wide bonework, short straight nose, dark sparkling eyes that could suddenly become lazy-lidded, all of it backed by the shining black hair, had remained vividly clear in his memory over the last two years. She wasn’t strictly beautiful, but she was Dinah and there was no one else. He was lucky, all right.
“There are a lot of men who would give their right arm to get into bed with a body like this,” she said.
“Good-o, try your luck some time. We’ll collect right arms.”
She had climbed into bed. “Come on! God, I’ve never seen a man so slow at getting into bed. Are you as slow as this in the Army? You must get in just in time to get up again for reveille.”
“I don’t have naked women in my bed in the Army.”
“It’s not making you move any faster now. Why the hell did I have to marry such a damned neat man? Drop your clothes on the floor and get in here quick!”
He got into bed and put his arms about her. There had never been anyone before her, and he was as excited now as he had been the first time. They had had no trouble discovering each other in those early days and their love-making had been successful from the start. But now he was trying to restrain himself. He hadn’t yet become accustomed again to the idea of having his wife beside him in bed each night. It was like a second honeymoon: everything, the smoothness, the intimacy, the claiming surrender, was still a little unbelievable.
But now he was beside her she had suddenly quietened down. “Darling, what is it about the job as a war correspondent?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t really want it, do you? Wouldn’t it be a good job?”
“Better than I’ve ever had before,” he said, and all at once was surprised how remote he felt from the newspaper office. Two years ago he would have been excited about the job, would have lain awake well into the night to talk with her about it. Now it was as if the job had been offered to someone else, someone he knew but wasn’t particularly interested in. “Remember how ambitious I used to be? This could be the answer. I might finish up famous, make a lot of money——”
His voice trailed off and after a while she said, “So what’s holding you back? Am I too dumb to see something?”
“No.” He grinned in the darkness and patted her shoulder; sometimes she was more of a child to him than the two youngsters in their rooms down the hall. “Though I don’t know if you’ll understand when I do explain it to you——”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m not dumb, just a little backward.”
But he hadn’t heard her. “I don’t know that I completely understand it, myself. Darl, I don’t want the correspondent’s job, because I want to prove myself to myself.” She made no comment and he went on, “I’ve been an officer now for nearly two years. In another month or so my third pip will be through——”
“Captain Radcliffe,” she said, testing it for sound. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I was going to surprise you. I know how rank-conscious you women are.”
“I’m just surprised you’re not a colonel by now. The Army doesn’t appreciate you like I do. I think you’re wonderful.” She moved closer to him, if that were possible. “The hope of the nation.”
“Thank you.” he said, and patted her shoulder again. “Trouble is, I don’t think I’m so wonderful. Darl, for two years now I’ve been responsible for other men and I still don’t know if I’m big enough for the responsibility. I’ve never been tested. Every time we were in action in the Middle East there was never a time when a decision rested wholly on me. There was always someone there who out-ranked me, and all I had to do was carry out their orders. And what I don’t like is that I was always glad they were there.”
“Is that something to be ashamed of?”
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I haven’t thought about shame, because no one else knows about it. But I worry—am I good enough to be responsible for the lives of other men?”
“The Army must have thought so.”
“One of the things you learn in the Army, darling, is that it is far from infallible. It has a greater talent for making mistakes than any other organisation yet devised. I could be one of its major mistakes.”
She was silent for a while, then she said, “How you feel—is it really so important?”
He said nothing for a while, wondering if she would understand when he did tell her. Women had a greater sense of responsibility than men, but they also had a different perspective. There were certain things that a man saw in himself, questions that worried him and had to be answered, that a woman could never take too seriously. Honour, for instance. Women had a sense of honour, but they were rarely foolish or heroic about it: they were not so afraid of the alternative, dishonour, because they had a greater armour against shame. Would Dinah understand, or think him a fool, playing up to some schoolboy code?
At last he made the confession: “It’s important to me, darl. More important than the job as a war correspondent. If I take that, I’ll never know if I had what it takes when the moment called for it. I don’t want to be a hero. I just want to know that I’m not a coward.” He turned and looked at the dark mass of her head on the pillow beside him; in the darkness he couldn’t see her face and (cowardly, he thought) it was better that way. “Do you understand what I’m getting at, darl?”
“Does a woman ever understand a man?” It was the answer he had half-expected. “I don’t want to understand it, darling. If it’s the way you feel, then it’s all right with me.” He could feel her fingers digging into his back. “I just don’t want to lose you, that’s all.”
“I could be killed just as easily as a war correspondent,” he said, and knew at once that he was being cruel; he ran his hands gently over her. “Don’t let’s think about that part of it, darl. I’m not going to shove my neck out to prove I’m not a coward. I’m not searching for physical courage, although I don’t know that I have an abundance of that, either. It’s something else again, something I’d like to know I had, even if I never have to use it but once.”
“I said it a moment ago, Vern. If it’s what you want, it’s all right with me. I told you a long time ago, all I want is for you to be happy. And that includes every way, In the Army or out of it.”
There was no answer but to kiss her, to draw her to him and take the love that he sometimes felt was more than he deserved. Life had been a long climb over the rocks before he had met her, and disappointment had lost its bitterness for him. When he had met her he had expected something to go wrong with their love as a matter of course, but it never had. It had been a long time before the surprise had worn off that she loved him completely and forever.
She murmured sleepily as he held her to him, and the bed creaked as she moved closer to him. Outside in the street some youths laughed as they came up the hill from the picture theatre, and in the Hastings’ house next door he could hear the phone ringing peremptorily but in vain. A car went swishing by and a cat cried mournfully at the night; the phone next door stopped ringing and the youths had gone on, and abruptly there was silence.
The sounds I’ve missed, he thought, and almost instantly fell asleep with his face buried in his wife’s neck.
Standing there in the bar, amid the loud foreign-sounding babble of the hundreds of anonymous voices and beneath the thick blue smoke climbing lazily to the ceiling like diaphanous vines, he thought