On their dresser lay a large Malay-style knife beside an empty teacup. Rufus has knives of all kinds spilling out of drawers, Leo explained. He grinned and his eyes glittered. Australian eccentricity was not like the worldly eccentricity of the Mortmains. And again, the idea of someone doing something literary on an extended basis was new to us as well.
Our bedroom looked out across a tree-lined street to the grassy embankment parkland and the narrow water of the Yarra itself. For people from New South Wales, and particularly from the great harbour of Sydney, the little Yarra is considered a joke, a river which runs with its bottom mud on top of the current. But its water was a pleasant blue that day, and when we arrived, eights and fours and scullers were practising on its surface, cutting even wakes as sharp as joy itself.
By the time the first of the Mortmains got home hours later, Leo and I were sitting, decorously reading books. It was Dotty, the sinewy Englishwoman, with her remarkable, slightly doleful green eyes and lustrous black hair. In ordinary weekday gear, she looked even more like an outdoors woman who had been rendered sinewy, as I would find, by a life of trekking and sailing far from Britain. Oh, she cried, setting down the string bag with groceries in it by her typewriter. This is your young wife, Leo? I couldn’t get enough time with her at the wedding.
Leo and I both stood up and advanced to the archway. She embraced me like a sister and asked us to sit down with her and have tea. We were drinking it when the front door opened, apparently of its own accord. We could see nobody there from where we sat, but Leo started chuckling. Come off it, Rufus! groaned Dotty Mortmain. But still no one appeared. Then there was a blur of white, which I worked out later was Lieutenant Commander Mortmain, in white shirt, shorts, socks and black shoes somersaulting into the room and ending on his knees at his wife’s chair. Instantaneously, he leapt from the floor to his feet, grabbed her black hair and improbably lifted her from her sitting position into the air, her feet off the ground, as he and she laughed wildly. It amazed me by being more like a circus act than something done by people sharing a flat, but Leo seemed used to this kind of behaviour, and laughed heartily at it. I suppose, by contrast, my own hilarity was a bit shocked.
Rufus Mortmain lowered his wife to the ground again. He bowed. And for the next trick, he announced, I shall throw a series of native knives at Captain Waterhouse and pin him to the wall by the hems of his shirt and pants. But maybe, first, let’s have a real drink to welcome Errol Flynn’s handsome bride!
I was naively delighted Leo’s colleagues saw the resemblance to the movie star too, and I found that strangely reassuring, a sign that the Mortmains and Doucette were not as different in perception from me as I had feared.
Rufus Mortmain – the name still amazes me with its wrong-headed exuberance – extracted a bottle of gin and one of whisky from the cupboard. Glasses were fetched, Leo going back to our kitchen to collect a couple. That was merely fair in terms of our semi-communal living. Dotty began clearing up some papers by her typewriter to make room for our drinking session.
Mortmain asked me what I would like. A little gin, I said.
Bravo! Mortmain cried, as if he knew that I wasn’t a drinker. He turned to Dotty. He said, And you? Light of my life, temple of my desire, companion of my mortal days?
Dotty said, Gin-and-it, thank you, sailor. You bloody reptile!
The two men drank whisky, and added a little water from the tap. Then Leo sat and took my hand and raised his glass. Darling Grace, he said, you know I can’t go on with all that palaver Rufus does, but I drink to you.
I sipped my gin and tried to look normal, but as it shuddered through my body, Dotty noticed and offered me some tonic water. That was better. I’ve liked gin and tonic since that day. But it wasn’t to be the only mystery to which Dotty would introduce me.
By the time we got to a second drink, Mortmain announced, To absent friends!
I hope you don’t mean that Irish chancer Doucette, snarled Dotty, her face narrowing and her eyes full of passion. I hope a Number 18 bus runs over that bugger.
Nor did she smile as she said it.
Ahem, murmured Rufus. Charlie Doucette is a sore point in our family.
Dotty shrugged. He is a madman born out of his time, she told me. I hope they’re not filling his mind with rubbish in London. They can dream up all sorts of things behind their desks. They find some eccentric like Doucette to try it out, and expect my husband to go along. It’s just not acceptable. I don’t know where in God’s name you’ve been last time you went…
Rufus interrupted her, and winked, and said to me, Dotty is just saying that out of piety. She knows where we were from her friend the Yank Colonel Creed, who’s quite keen on her.
Dotty took some more gin, shook her head and would speak no further.
Leo turned to me. Dotty… Mrs Mortmain… works for a Yank we know. Colonel Creed. Very smooth sort of bloke.
Rufus said, The Boss gives him a hard time. The Boss has a bit of a thing about Yanks. I have always found Creed one of the better ones myself.
Leo declared, He certainly seems to be trying to work with us now. But better not say any more.
Leo then smiled at me. He told me he had to go into the barracks the next day, and then to meetings, but would be back in the evening with Rufus. Dotty tossed her head. Altogether, she had made a fairly sombre drinking companion, and the more melancholy she became, the more wary Rufus Mortmain looked. It was clear Doucette and the present employment of Rufus himself was an issue of argument between them.
On my way to the toilet, I glanced out of our living room window across the river and the shunting yards to the browned-out city, and on a bench in the parkland across the road, I saw Susan Enright sitting wearing a hat and with her suitcase beside her. I called to Leo to come and see, and the Mortmains came as well. I said, That’s the woman I came down with from Sydney on the train. Mrs Enright.
Not Peter Enright’s wife? asked Mortmain. The poor lady has my sympathy.
What’s she doing down there? Dotty worried.
Rufus said, Obviously she caught Peter with his woman. He lives on the top floor. The almighty Director of Plans.
Leo murmured to me, Perhaps you and I should go down, Grace, and see if there’s anything she needs.
Dotty said, Shouldn’t you leave it to Enright himself? He might be out and she is waiting for him to come back with the key.
She could probably do with a drink while she’s waiting, said Rufus.
In the end, Leo and I insisted on going down together. We crossed the road to the bench she was sitting on by the river, and she turned to see who was coming. Hello, she called with a sort of manic gaiety. It’s Grace. And her gallant husband.
Leo asked could he help her.
No thanks. It’s very kind of you. I’m waiting here till I’m arrested for vagrancy. My husband won’t let me into my apartment, so it’s become a matter of shaming him.
Her voice was high-pitched.
Please let us give you a cup of tea or a drink, Leo suggested.
You can’t sleep here, Susan, I told her.
Maybe I could do an Ophelia in the waters of the Yarra, she suggested. Don’t worry, Grace. I have a room at the Windsor reserved very kindly for me by my treacherous spouse.
Could I get you a taxi then, Mrs Enright? asked Leo
Please, no! I am not your responsibility, young fellow.
We have a settee, I said, as a girl did if she came from the country, where accommodation was freely offered. Ours is the double apartment, number 5 and 6.