It’s just as well I have flaws to start with, I told her. I was probably annoyingly blithe, like most people in love. I was amazed myself about the perfection of things with Leo, what a bright companion he was, what a dazzling man.
Oh, we’re all amazed, dear. At first, they mimic our needs, but they don’t really feel them, or meet them or give a damn.
These were, I realise, not particularly original ideas about men, but you have to remember the time. I had never heard them uttered before except by racy, world-weary women in films. They weren’t the sorts of things my mother had ever said – somehow I felt naively certain of that. She pulled out a silver flask and unscrewed the cork with the hand which held the cigarette. Gin, she told me. Do have some.
I smiled so that she wouldn’t think me rude. Look, thanks. I’ve had gin once before, and I don’t think Albury Station’s the right place for a second try.
Fair enough, she said. She took a long swig herself. But the time might come, she said, gasping with pleasure, when you’ll find it’s good at any hour, and absolutely anywhere. You see, I have to brace myself for a fight. My husband wrote me a letter a week ago, telling me that there was no place for me in his flat in Melbourne, that another woman has taken occupation. He was so sorry. He intends to marry this other tart. I sent him a telegram, telling him to cut out the nonsense and that I was coming anyhow. He sent me a reply that addressed nothing. If you have to come, I’ll meet you at the station. That’s the other thing I didn’t mention. They’re bloody cowards. Oh, they’ll charge a machine-gun for you. But the idea of a scene, especially a scene witnessed by other men… that’s what terrifies them.
She adopted a gruff male voice. I can stand anything except screaming women, she mimicked.
She snorted. Well, all that rough soldiery hanging round the refreshment room are going to see a major subjected to quite a scene at Swanston Street Station.
I thought, Leo and I will have to be subjected to that as well.
The woman looked up at me with her stricken eyes. I apologise in advance, she told me. But I’m a woman fighting for her life.
I’ve got very little experience at any of this, I said, but it might shame him if you appealed to him. To his better nature.
No, she told me. None of us must ever do that. That puts you at their mercy. Look, I’m sorry to load you up with this utter shit!
I told her not to worry. A new train came into the station to take us on to Melbourne, and Victorian Government Railways conductors began yelling at the soldiers in the refreshment rooms to leave their beer and get aboard. Mrs Enright and I had to sit up, in an admittedly comfortable carriage, all the way to Melbourne, as the summer sun came up over the mountains to the east of the rail line. We were not alone. There were three officers in our compartment. Everyone tried to sleep, but only Mrs Enright, helped out by her gin, managed it. It was not a graceful nap, however, for her mouth opened and she began snoring. I gave her a nudge to save her from unconscious embarrassment. You might well say I was a bit priggish to do that. I had an innocent assumption that decent women were too angelic to snore. Again, that’s the way we were. We were closer to Jane Austen than to Madonna or Julia Roberts.
When Mrs Enright woke up properly, and everyone definitely abandoned their attempts at sleep, the youngest of the officers, a freckled young man of about twenty-one years, spoke to her across the compartment.
Mrs Enright. I’m Lieutenant So-and-So. I attended a party at your place in Sydney. How is your husband?
Mrs Enright gave him a washed-out, How are you?
That was one of the best parties I’ve ever been to, the young officer said like a schoolboy.
She nodded. He could tell she didn’t want to talk.
I hope I didn’t interrupt your sleep.
It’s quite all right, she said. But she closed her eyes again.
Later, when our train came seething into Melbourne, and I got down onto the long platform, I saw Leo running towards me, and from the corner of my eye snatched a glimpse of Mrs Enright met by an older-looking officer. She allowed him to scrape his lips across her cheek, and she went off unhappy-looking, but without creating the scene she had promised. I think it was the meeting with the young officer, who’d been to her party, which made her think how momentous and final it would be to stage a brawl in front of officers. Yet I did ask myself why she had made my journey miserable and had not then punished the cause as promised.
I walked that platform with Leo, the blue and red ribbon of the Distinguished Service Order on the chest of his lightweight uniform, like the most blessed woman at the centre of the warring world. Now that he had grown a moustache, he looked like the film actor Errol Flynn, everyone said so, except younger, and somehow more serious. He was also heavily tanned, in exactly the way that made it seem he’d faced danger in places none of the other soldiers on the platform could imagine. For women have our part in relishing the warrior myth, the place in the legend that, although I did not know the details, I knew Leo had achieved.
Indeed, women could feed the immolatory furnaces too. In Braidwood in 1916, my mother confessed to me once, one night on a dare she had handed a white feather to a farmer’s son who had not yet volunteered. He had gone to France in 1917 and not survived the year. It was her greatest sin, she said, and she told me lest I repeat it. My adoration on Swanston Street Station might itself have contributed an ounce more to Leo’s willingness to extend the range of his heroism and the scope of the Doucette legend.
Ahead I could see sallow-looking Major Enright, talking hard to his wife and trying to hurry her off the platform and away to a sullen breakfast somewhere. Mrs Enright hung back like a four-year-old being dragged. It was true what Susan Enright had said. An army major was frightened of a scene, and the bodies of both Enrights were full of tension. Whereas Leo and I were side-by-side, walking in casual lockstep, my shoulder against his upper arm, hip to hip, at prodigious, godlike leisure. I was amazed and delighted at how bodies could send a promise to each other through fabric. Also, I felt beautiful at his side. Effortless Jean Tierney and the inwardly radiant Merle Oberon had nothing on me. And I had no sense at all that I would ever be punished for the glory of that instant. That’s why ecstasy is ecstasy – it carries with it the idea that it will easily outlast all the rest.
On our way to the car and driver Major Doxey had loaned him, Leo told me again – as if it might be a problem – that we were billeted to share a big apartment with the Mortmains. It would prove to be a pleasant, white, art deco block of flats just by the river in South Yarra. Our place had plenty of space, considering the way people were living then. As Leo had promised by letter before my move, there were two smaller flats between which the wall had been knocked down, so that you could move from living room of one to living room of the other, and each half-flat had its bedroom.
The Mortmains were easy to live with, he reported. Dotty Mortmain had published a novel and travelled a lot, so was very interesting. I had never before met anyone who had published a novel. The only trouble was, Leo reported, that sometimes she gave Rufus the rounds of the kitchen, and Lieutenant Commander Mortmain might come creeping into our side of the flat begging for sanctuary and a drink. Leo hoped I wouldn’t find that a problem.
Nothing was a problem that morning. It was a late summer’s day, the humidity was low, and even that contributed to the perfection of things.
On arrival, I saw that the table in our living-dining room had nothing on it, but I could see through the archway the Mortmain table on which lay two dumb-bells, newspapers, a number of stacked books, and a big typewriter. Leo saw my glance and said, Dotty works for the Yanks three days a week. The rest of the time, she does her own work. Something literary. They’ll be in later today. Look at the knife.