An Indecent Obsession (32 page)

Even with the swollen relic of tears on her face, she looked very remote. ‘I’m going to nurse at Callan Park. Since you’re from Melbourne, you may not know that Callan Park is a big mental hospital in Sydney.’

He was shocked, then saw that she really meant it. ‘God, what a waste!’

‘Not at all,’ she said crisply. ‘It’s useful and necessary work. I badly need to continue doing something useful and necessary. I’m lucky, you see. My family has sufficient means to ensure that when I’m old and unable to work, I won’t be on the breadline. So I can please myself what I do with my life.’ Her congested eyelids lifted, the cool eyes looked him over. ‘But you? What are going to do, Neil?’

That was that, then. Exit Neil Parkinson. Her voice, her look, her manner all said that he would not be welcomed into her life after war.

‘Oh, I’ll be off to Melbourne,’ he said easily. ‘What I would really like to do is return to the Greek Peloponnese—I have a cottage near Pylos. But my parents, particularly my father, aren’t getting any younger—nor am I getting younger, for that matter. So I fancy it will be Melbourne rather than Greece for me. Besides, Greece would have meant painting, and I’m only a competent painter, nothing more. That used to hurt, oddly enough. But it doesn’t now. It seems a minor consideration. I’ve learned so much during the last six years, and ward X has rounded off my education beautifully. I’ve got my priorities right these days, and I know now that I can be an active help to the old man—to my father. If I’m to follow in his steps, I’d better start finding out how the family businesses are run.’

‘You’ll be busy.’

‘Yes, I will.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Will you excuse me? If we’re really moving out of here soon I have a great deal of packing to do.’

She watched the door shut behind him, and sighed. If Michael had done nothing else for her, he had at least shown her that there was a vast difference between affection and love. She was fond of Neil, but she certainly didn’t love him. Steady, reliable, upright, courteous, well-bred Neil, willing to yield up everything he was to her. A very good marriage prospect. Handsome, too. Stuffed with all the social graces. To prefer Michael to him was not sensible. But what she prized in Michael was his self-containment, that air which said no one could ever turn him from his elected path. An enigma he might be, but not knowing him had not prevented her loving him. She loved his strength. She didn’t love Neil’s willingness to subjugate his own wishes before hers.

Odd that Neil should seem so much better in himself these days, though he must know she had decided there was no future in a relationship with him after the war. And it was a relief to find him not upset by that decision, not sounding as if he felt rejected. The knowledge that she was hurting him had been there ever since the incident in the dayroom, but so much else had happened she hadn’t thought very much about how Neil must be feeling. Now was about the time her guilt would have turned in on itself to plague her, and it seemed not necessary after all. His fondness for her showed again today, but there was no sign of bitterness, of hurt. And that was such a relief! To have given expression to her grief at last, and now to find Neil was whole in spite of her conduct; today was the first good day in weeks.

3

It was an odd week which followed. Normally when the occupants of one place for months or years prepare to leave it, there is a distracted flurry of activity, worries about everything from pets to vehicles. The quick disintegration of Base Fifteen was not like that. Its inhabitants had been steadily whittled down for months anyway; all that remained was a nucleus which would be shelled out swiftly and competently. No one was encumbered by the kind of baggage which usually clutters up a life, for in essence Base Fifteen was minus clutter. The country around it did not abound in desirable handcrafts, hand-made furniture or any of the other impedimenta collectors had accumulated in the war theatres of Europe, India, the Middle East, North Africa. A lot of the sisters found themselves the recipients of shy gifts from their men, mostly small things made in the ward, but on the whole the inmates of Base Fifteen would depart with no more to ship than what they had brought with them when they arrived.

A target time to be ready was posted, and adhered to with the easy discipline of trained personnel; it came and it went, but Base Fifteen remained. No one had expected it to be any different. The target date was actually a warning bell, at the sound of which everyone had to be prepared to evacuate at once.

Matron fussed and clucked, mosquito nets less important than the schedules and timetables she carried everywhere with her to consult during interminable briefings of her nurses, all of whom could cheerfully have strangled her. Now that Base Fifteen was ending, what the nurses really wanted to do was spend the maximum amount of time with their patients.

Ward X lay fairly much outside the main area of activity, down in its little afterthought building far away from the other inhabited wards, with its tiny complement of five patients and one lone nurse. And among its tiny complement there was more awkwardness than joy, sudden silences which were hard to break, forced cheerfulness when things became too unbearable, and a rather chilling loss of rapport. Sister Langtry was absent quite a lot, unwillingly pressed into service on various Matron-inspired subcommittees to handle the evacuation. And the five patients took to haunting the beach all day, for the old official times governing its use had gone by the board.

Sorrowfully Sister Langtry realized her patients had decided to do without her where possible, even had she more time to spend with them. Neil seemed to have forgiven her, the others had not. And she noticed that a certain polarization had come into being among them. Nugget had shifted himself away from the rest, filled with a new purpose and a happy optimism which seemed to be a combination of rejoining his mother and reorganizing his civilian life to encompass a career as a doctor. His aches and pains had quite vanished. Neil and Matt were inseparable; she knew Matt leaned on Neil heavily, unburdening himself about the many problems he would have to face. Which left Michael to concentrate on Benedict, as indeed he always had. They too were inseparable.

Benedict, she thought, was not well, but what she could do about it she didn’t know. A talk to Colonel Chinstrap had got her predictably nowhere, yet he had been willing, even eager, to do what he could to procure a military pension for Matt in spite of the hysterical tag on his history. When she begged the colonel to consider shipping Ben straight into a proper psychiatric unit for further investigation, his attitude was unyielding. If she had no more to base her suspicions on than a vague disquiet, he said, what did she expect him to do? His examination of Sergeant Maynard had revealed no deterioration. How to explain to a man who was a competent enough neurologist but had no interest in mental disorders without organic foundation that she wanted to call a man back who was slipping away? And how did one call him back? That was what nobody in the world knew how to do. Ben had never been an easy patient to contend with because of that very tendency to shut himself away; what worried her was that without the security of ward X about him, Benedict would accomplish the ultimate in disappearing acts, and swallow himself up. So Michael’s attachment to him she viewed as a godsend, for he did have more success with Ben than anyone else, including herself.

Watching them all more or less doing without her, she began to understand better what was happening to them, and to herself. The overemotional interpretation she had put on everyone’s conduct including her own since Luce’s death was fading; that outburst in the sisters’ sitting room, she realized, must have done her a great deal of good. Without consciously knowing it, the inhabitants of ward X were all relinquishing their ties to each other; the family unit that had been ward X was falling apart right along with Base Fifteen. And she, as its mother figure, was probably more sensitive and more hurt by what she saw than her men, her children. Odd, that as her strength waned theirs appeared to be growing. Was that what mothers did? Tried to hold a family unit together when the natural reasons for its existence had ceased?

They are going back to a different world, she thought, and I’m sending most of them back equipped to deal with it. Or I’m trying. So I mustn’t cling, I mustn’t let them cling. I must let them go with as much grace and dignity as I can possibly muster.

4

And then it began, with a roaring of trucks and a huge wind-like stirring. Luckily the monsoon had not yet arrived in force, and it looked as if evacuation would be completed in plenty of time to avoid being rained out.

Apathy changed to euphoria, as if now that it was actually here, people could bring themselves to believe in it; suddenly home was not a dream, it was a coming reality. Cries rose and fell on the air, shrill whistles, cooees, snatches of song.

Iron-disciplined sisters found themselves caught up in a mood they could not control, were subjected to hugs, kisses, fabulously exotic Hollywoodish embraces, sometimes tears, and turned one and all into adorably confused women. For them it was parting of great moment, the end of the high point in their lives; they were all unmarried women, most of them halfway at least toward retirement, and in this most difficult, isolated place they had put forth their very best, a vital part of a great cause. Life would never again hold quite so much of everything; these boys were the sons they never had, and they knew themselves worthy mothers of such sons. But now it was all over, and while they had to thank God for that, they knew nothing ever again could equal the pleasure and the pain and the heights of these last few years.

Down in X the men waited that final morning clad in full uniform instead of what was clean and came first to hand; their tin trunks, kit bags, packs and haversacks lay in mounds on the floor, and that same floor was assaulted for the first time in its memory by the heavy pounding of many pairs of boots. A warrant officer came, gave Sister Langtry last-minute instructions as to where she was to bring her enlisted men for embarkation, and supervised the removal of extra kit which the men would not normally be expected to carry.

As she turned away from the front door after the warrant officer left, Sister Langtry saw Michael alone in the dayroom, making tea. A quick glance down the ward assured her no one was watching; the rest of them apparently were out on the verandah waiting to be waited on.

‘Michael,’ she said, standing in the dayroom doorway, ‘come for a walk with me, please. There’s only half an hour left. I should very much like to spend ten minutes of it with you.’

He considered her thoughtfully, looking much as he had that afternoon he had arrived, jungle-green trousers and shirt, American gaiters, webbing, tan boots polished until they shone, brass glittering, everything neat, pressed, and worn so well.

‘I’d like that too,’ he said seriously. ‘Just let me drop this out on the verandah first. I’ll meet you at the bottom of the ramp.’

I wonder if he’ll appear with Benedict in tow? she asked herself as she stood in the watery sun at the bottom of the ramp. See one and you saw the other.

But Michael was alone, and fell into step alongside her. They paced down the path which led to the beach, stopping just short of the sand.

‘It came too quickly. I’m not ready after all,’ she said, looking at him a little guardedly.

‘Nor am I,’ he said.

She began to babble. ‘This is the first opportunity I’ve had to see you alone since—since Luce died. No, since the verdict came in. That was awful. I said so many awful things to you. I want you to know I didn’t mean them. Michael, I’m so sorry!’

He listened to her quietly, his face sad. ‘There’s nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who ought to be doing all the apologizing.’ Seeming to deliberate within himself, he went on slowly. ‘The others don’t think so, but I feel I owe you some sort of explanation, now that it doesn’t matter much any more.’

All she heard was the last little bit. ‘Nothing matters much any more,’ she said. ‘I’d like to change the subject, ask you about home. Are you going back to your dairy farm right away? What about your sister and your brother-in-law? I’d like to know, and we don’t have much time.’

‘We never did have much time,’ he said. ‘Well, I have to get my discharge first. Then Ben and I are going to head for my farm. I’ve just had a letter from my sister and they’re counting the days until I can take over again. Harold—my brother-in-law—wants to get his old job before too many soldiers are demobbed.’

She gaped. ‘Ben and you? Together?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ben and you.’

‘That’s right.’

‘In God’s name,
why
?’

‘I owe it to him,’ said Michael.

Her face twisted. ‘Oh, come off it!’ she snapped, rebuffed.

He set his shoulders. ‘Benedict is alone, Sis. He doesn’t have anyone at all waiting for him. And he needs someone with him all the time. Me. It’s my fault, I wish I could make you see that! I have to make sure it never happens again.’

Her torment became bewilderment; she stared at him and wondered if she would ever begin to get to the bottom of the mystery that surrounded Michael. ‘What are you talking about? What never happens again?’

‘I said it before,’ he said patiently. ‘I think I owe you an explanation. The others don’t agree. They think you ought to be kept right out of it forever, but I want to tell you. I understand why Neil’s so set against your knowing, but I still believe I owe you an explanation. Neil wasn’t with you that night, I was. And it entitles you to an explanation.’

‘What explanation? What is all this?’

There was a big petrol drum lying on its side just where the path petered out; he turned, put one foot up on it, gazed down at his boot. ‘It’s not easy to find the right words. But I don’t want you to look at me the way you’ve been looking at me ever since that morning, not understanding. I agree with Neil, telling you isn’t going to change anything, but it might mean that the last time I ever see you, you won’t be looking at me as if half of you hated me and the other half was wishing it could hate me too.’ He straightened, faced her. ‘This is hard,’ he said.