An Indecent Obsession (12 page)

Going home didn’t appeal to them, Michael knew, but he said nothing, just marched shoulder to shoulder with her across the compound.

It occurred to her that he was nice to walk with. He didn’t bend his head down to her deferentially as Neil did, nor posture like Luce, nor skulk like Nugget. In fact, he took it quite naturally and companionably, almost one man to another. Which sounded odd, perhaps, but felt
right
.

‘Do you have a civilian occupation, Michael?’ she asked, turning away from the direction of ward X to take a path which led between two deserted wards.

‘Yes. Dairy farmer. I’ve got three hundred acres of river flat on the Hunter near Maitland. My sister and her husband are working it for the duration, but they’d rather be back in Sydney, so when I get home I’ll take over. My brother-in-law’s a real city bloke, but when it came to the pinch he decided he’d rather milk cows and get woken up by roosters than wear a uniform and get shot at.’ Michael’s face was faintly contemptuous.

‘Another bush bunny for X! We’re in the majority, then. Neil, Matt and Nugget are city, but now you’re here, that makes four bush bunnies.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘My father’s got a property near Yass.’

‘Yet you ended up in Sydney, like Luce.’

‘In Sydney, yes. But not like Luce.’

He grinned, gave her a quick sideways glance. ‘I beg your pardon, Sister.’

‘You’d better start calling me Sis the way the rest of them do. Sooner or later you will anyway.’

‘All right, Sis, I will.’

They climbed a small undulating rise, sandy yet spidered with long rhizomes of coarse grass, dotted with the slim neat boles of coconut palms, and arrived at the edge of a beach. There they stopped, the breeze tugging at Sister Langtry’s veil.

Michael pulled out his tobacco makings and squatted down on his heels the way all country men do, so Sister Langtry knelt beside him, careful not to get her duty shoes full of sand.

‘It’s when I see something like this I don’t mind the Islands so much,’ he said, rolling a cigarette. ‘Isn’t it amazing? Just when you think you can’t take another day of mossies, mud, sweat, dysentery and triple dye, you wake up and it’s the most perfect day God ever put upon the earth, or you see something like this, or something else happens that makes you think it isn’t really so bad after all.’

It was lovely, a short straight stretch of salt-and-peppery sand darkened near the water where it was wet from the retreating tide, and absolutely deserted. It seemed to be one side of a long promontory, for it ended against sky and water to the left, and to the right petered out in a mangrove flat reeking of decay. The water was like a thin wash of color laid on top of white: glassy, palest green, profoundly still. Far out was a reef, and the sea’s horizon was hidden by the white spume fans of surf breaking.

‘This is the patients’ beach,’ she said, sitting back on her heels. ‘In the morning it’s out of bounds, which is why there’s no one here. But between one and five each afternoon it’s all yours. I couldn’t have brought you here then, because between one and five it’s out of bounds to all females. Saves the army having to issue you with swimming costumes. The orderlies and the other noncom staff use it too, the same hours. For me it’s been a godsend. Without the beach to divert them, my men would never get well.’

‘Do you have a beach, Sis?’

‘The other side of the point is ours, though we’re not as lucky as you. Matron’s down on nude bathing.’

‘Old killjoy.’

‘The MOs and officers have their own beach too, on our side of the point, but cut off from us by a little headland. The officer patients can swim there or here.’

‘Do the MOs wear costumes?’

She smiled. ‘I really haven’t thought to inquire.’ Her position was uncomfortable, so she used a glance to her watch as an excuse to get to her feet. ‘We’d better head back. It’s not Matron’s morning for rounds, but I haven’t taught you yet how to drape your mosquito net. We’ve got time for an hour’s practice before your lunch comes.’

‘It won’t take an hour. I’m a quick learner,’ he said, reluctant to move, reluctant to break the pleasantness of this truly social contact with a woman.

But she shook her head and turned away from the beach, obliging him to follow. ‘Believe me, it’s going to take you much longer than an hour. You haven’t tried anything until you’ve tried to drape your net the right way. If I knew exactly what it portends, I’d suggest to Colonel Chinstrap that he use the Matron Drape as a test of mental aptitude.’

‘How do you mean?’ He caught up with her, brushing a little sand from his trousers.

‘Certain X patients can’t do it. Benedict can’t, for instance. We’ve all tried to teach him, and he’s very willing to learn, but he just can’t get the hang of it, though he’s intelligent enough. He produces the most weird and wonderful variations on Matron’s theme, but do it her way he can’t.’

‘You’re very honest about everyone, aren’t you?’

She stopped to look at him seriously. ‘There’s no point in being anything else, Michael. Whether you like it or not, whether you think you fit in or not, whether you belong or not, you’re a part of X now until we all go home. And you’ll find that in X we can’t afford the luxury of euphemisms.’

He nodded, but said nothing, simply stared at her as if her novelty value was increasing, yet with more respect than he had admitted yesterday.

After a moment she dropped her eyes and continued to walk, but strolling along rather than striding out at her customary brisk pace. She was enjoying the break from routine, and enjoying his rather unforthcoming company. With him she didn’t have to worry about how he was feeling; she could relax and pretend he was just someone she had met socially somewhere.

However, all too soon ward X came into sight around the corner of a deserted building. Neil was standing outside waiting for them. Which vaguely irritated Sister Langtry; he looked like an overanxious parent who had allowed his child to come home alone from school for the first time.

2

In the afternoon Michael went back to the beach with Neil, Matt and Benedict. Nugget had refused to come, and Luce was nowhere to be found.

The sureness with which Matt moved had Michael quite fascinated, discovering that a small touch on elbow or arm or hand from Neil was all Matt needed to navigate; Michael watched and learned, so that in Neil’s absence he could substitute competently. Nugget had informed him in the bathhouse with much technical detail that Matt was not really blind, that there was nothing at all wrong with his eyes, but to Michael his inability to see seemed absolutely genuine. A man feigning blindness would surely have groped, stumbled, play-acted the part. Where Matt did it with dignity and understatement, his inner self uncorrupted by it.

There were about fifty men scattered up and down the sand, which could have absorbed a thousand men without seeming crowded. All were naked; some were maimed, some scarred. Since there were noncom staff admixed with systemic convalescents after malaria or some other tropical disorder, the three whole healthy-looking men from ward X were not entirely out of place. However, Michael noticed that conviviality tended to confine itself within ward groups: neuros, plastics, bones, skins, abdominothoracics, general medicals; the staff element congregated together too.

The troppos from X shed their clothes far enough away from any other group not to be accused of deliberate eavesdropping, and swam for an hour, the water as warm and unstimulating as a tepid baby’s bath. Then they spread themselves on the sand to dry off, skins powdered with rutile-bearing grains like tiny elegant sequins. Michael sat up to roll a cigarette, lit it and handed it to Matt. Neil smiled faintly but said nothing, merely watched the sure hands as Michael embarked upon making one for himself.

A nice change from camp, Michael was thinking, staring out across the water with eyes narrowed against the glare, watching the thin blue streaks of his smoke hover for a moment before being taken by a breath of wind and swirled into nothing. Nice to witness a different family than the battalion, though this was a much closer-knit family, gently ruled by a woman, as all families ought to be. Nice to have a woman around, too
.
Sister Langtry represented his first more than transient contact with a woman in six years. One forgot: how they walked, how they smelled, how different they were. The sensation of family he felt in X stemmed directly from her, the figurehead of whom no one in X, not even Luce, spoke lewdly or with disrespect. Well, she was a lady, that was true, but she was more than a lady. Ladies with nothing to back up a set of manners and attitudes than more of the same had never interested him; Sister Langtry, he was beginning to see, had qualities he felt he shared, most men shared. Not afraid to speak her mind, not afraid of men because they were men.

At first she had put his back up a little, but he was fair enough to admit the fault lay in him rather than in her; why shouldn’t women have authority and rank if they could cope with it? She could, yet she was a womanly woman, and very, very nice. Without seeming to exert any obvious wiles, she held this motley collection of men together, no doubt about that. They loved her, really loved her. Which meant they all saw sex in her somewhere. At first he hadn’t seen sex, but after only one day and two private talks with her, he was beginning to. Oh, not throwing her down and having her; something more pleasant and subtle than that, a slow and delicious discovery of her mouth, her neck and shoulders, her legs… A man switched off when he was unable to avail himself of anything save the guilty misery of masturbation, but having a woman around all day started the juices flowing again; his thoughts began to stir beyond the level of an unattainable dream. Sister Langtry wasn’t a pinup poster, she was
real
. Though for Michael she did have a dreamlike quality—nothing to do with the war, or its scarcity of women. She was upper crust, a squatter’s daughter, the kind of woman he would never have met in the ordinary sequence of civilian life.

Poor Colin, he would have hated her. Not the way Luce hated her, because Luce wanted her at the same time, and loved her to boot. Luce could pretend to himself that what he felt for her was hate because she didn’t want him back, and he couldn’t understand it. But Colin had been different. Which had always been Colin’s trouble. They had been in it together since the beginning. He had gravitated toward Colin very soon after enlisting, for Colin was the sort of bloke other blokes picked on, not really understanding why he irritated them, just lashing out because the irritation was perpetually there; like horses pestered by flies. And Michael had a strong protective streak which had plagued him since early childhood, so that he had always accumulated lame ducks.

Colin had been girlishly skinny and a little too pretty and a demon soldier, as handicapped by the way he looked and how he felt as Benedict probably was. Burying the butt of his cigarette in the sand, Michael rested his eyes thoughtfully on Benedict. There was a lot of trouble packed down inside Ben’s narrow frame, torment and soul-searching and a fierce rebellion, just as there had been inside Colin. He would have bet any sum an onlooker cared to name that Ben had been a demon soldier too, one of those unlikely men who were the picture of mildness until battle euphoria got into them, when they went mad and behaved like ancient heroes. Men with much to prove to themselves usually were demon soldiers, especially when spiritual conflicts gingered up the mixture of troubles.

Michael had started in pitying Colin, that protective instinct very much to the fore, but as the months went on and one country succeeded another, a curious affection and friendship had grown between them. They fought well together, they camped well together, and they discovered neither had a taste for whoring or getting blind drunk when on leave, so that to stick together at all times became natural, welcome.

However, proximity can blind, and it blinded Michael. It was not until they reached New Guinea that he fully came to understand the extent of Colin’s troubles. The company had been saddled with a new noncommissioned officer, a big, confident, rather blustering regimental sergeant major who soon displayed a tendency to use Colin as his butt. It hadn’t worried Michael too much; he knew things could only go so far while he was there to draw a line over which no one stepped. The RSM had got Michael’s measure too, and wasn’t about to step over the line. So the pinpricks directed at Colin were minor, confined to comments and looks. Michael waited placidly, knowing that as soon as they went into action again the RSM would see a different side to the flimsy, girlish Colin.

Therefore it came as a complete shock to Michael one day to discover Colin weeping bitterly, and it had taken much patient probing to learn what the problem was: a homosexual overture from the RSM which tormented Colin on many levels. His inclinations lay that way, he confessed. He knew it was wrong, he knew it was unnatural, he despised himself for it, but he couldn’t help himself, either. Only it wasn’t the RSM he wanted; he wanted Michael.

There had been no revulsion, no outraged propriety on Michael’s part; only an enormous sorrow, the tenderness and pity long friendship and genuine love permitted. How could a man turn away from his best mate when they’d been through so very much together? They talked for a long time, and in the end Colin’s confession had made no difference to their relationship, save perhaps to strengthen it. Michael’s preferences didn’t lie in that direction, but he could feel no differently toward Colin because his did. That was life, that was men, that was a fact. The war and the existence it had forced upon him had meant Michael had learned to live with many things he would have rejected outright when a civilian, for the alternative to living with them was literally to die. Choosing to live simply meant learning tolerance; so long as a man was let alone, he didn’t inquire too closely into the private activities of his fellows.

But it was a burden to be loved as a lover; Michael’s responsibilities toward Colin had suddenly multiplied. His very inability to return Colin’s love the way Colin wanted it returned laid additional care upon Michael, increased his urge to protect. Together they had seen death, battle, hardship, hunger, loneliness, homesickness, illness; too much by far to abandon. Yet to be unable to return love fully was a burden of guilt only to be expiated in what help and service he could permit within the bounds of his own nature. And Colin, though the ultimate joy of a sexual relationship was always unattainable, bloomed and brightened immeasurably after that day in New Guinea.