Flanagan kissed her gently. Her hair against his cheek made him remember Teresa, the fiery touch of an angel's wing. "I told you how I started thinking of myself as dead. You've stopped that, Annie. Just being with you stopped it."
That was better. He was back to fifty percent Frank Flanagan again.
"Will you promise me not to die, Frank?"
"I'll try not to."
"I'm serious. In a better world I think we could love each other. I think we could love each other forever. Take me now, take me with love or without love. I'm too Irish not to want to seal this thing between us in the deepest, truest way."
"It's with love, Annie. So help me. Real love."
Fifty percent or less for that one. His kiss was at least eighty percent apprentice seducer. Sincerity was impossible with this need, this hunger roaring in his body.
The Pacific's surf crashed in the twilight. The vast ocean's emptiness lapped at their bodies as they caressed each other, "Frank, Frank," Annie whispered. Was she speaking to him or to that other Frank, the Australian soldier who was perhaps dreaming of her under Egypt's desert moon?
Trapped between desire and honesty, Flanagan struggled to care. He admitted to himself that he did not know much about love. He only knew the depth of his longing to cup his hands over Annie Flood's young breasts, to let his lips rove up and down her trembling body. He only knew that this made the death toward which he might be sailing in two weeks more bearable. It almost made it unimaginable.
Temporary lovers, they lay between two emptinesses between the Pacific's silence and the parched stillness of the deserted interior of this strange, accidental continent. He saw how her Irish blood and its sense of exile redoubled her already profound, exposed Australian loneliness, a killing loneliness only women could transcend with the mystery, the power of their bodies, their caring hearts. Loneliness that a sailor who has known the loneliness of the sea could meet with his own longing.
Women, woman, Flanagan thought. Was there any creed, any doctrine, any priest, bishop, or pope, any god who could deny him this consolation, this hope, this fulfillment? He flung his defiance into the emptiness around them. A defiance infused with an incongruous gratitude that was almost a prayer.
Song Of The Kookaburra
Fairy Hill. If anyone aboard the Jefferson City found out that was his destination, it would finish his Navy career.
Lieutenant Robert Mullenoe guided his borrowed car up the wrong side of the winding road to the sprawling mansion on the crest of the ridge. A white-haired butler who looked imperious enough to command a battleship emerged through huge double doors. "Leftenant Mullenoe, I assume," he said, with what seemed like a glare of disapproval.
He led Mullenoe into the house and down a hall lined with portraits of men and women who stared down on the common herd with regal disdain. Mullenoe's sense of unreality approached hallucination.
The final portrait was a younger man in a naval officer's uniform. His expression struck Mullenoe as devious. There was a subtly mocking smile on his lips, more mockery in his clever eyes. The painting had a black silk ribbon around its frame.
The butler opened French doors at the end of the hall. Mullenoe found himself looking down on a formal garden. Rich summer sunshine played over sculpted hedges and thorny bushes and shiny-leafed trees. Big black birds flitted through the trees, calling to each other with a sound that was a pretty good imitation of a laughing hyena. Were they trying to tell him something? On a bench at the head of the garden, wearing a blue silk dress, Christine Wallace sat with three Airedales at her feet. The dogs rose simultaneously, their hair bristling, growls rumbling in their formidable chests. "Baldur, Undine, Siren," their mistress said. "Stop being silly beasts."
She smiled at Robert Mullenoe. "How delightful to see you again, Leftenant."
The formal words, spoken in her soft contralto, struck Mullenoe in the center of his body with the impact of an eight-inch shell. For a moment his solar plexus ceased to exist. What was happening to him? Mullenoe — the swordsman of the class of '31, the man who vowed he would never marry until someone pressed a shotgun to his head —in this condition? It was unthinkable. But it was happening, whether he thought about it or not.
They drank champagne in the garden, and he got to know Baldur, Undine, and Siren. They were all thoroughbreds. Christine Wallace bred dogs and horses at Fairy Hill. It was her grandfather's house, she explained. She was trying to keep up a tradition she had inherited from him. But the war made it difficult. "I think traditions are important, don't you? Australians tend to laugh at them. I gather Americans do too," she said. "Do you know Yeats's poem 'A Prayer for My Daughter'? I've always admired those lines where he hopes her bridegroom brings her to a house where all's accustomed, ceremony Mullenoe had never heard of William Butler Yeats, but he confessed to a grudging acceptance of the value of tradition. He kept expecting a half dozen other guests to arrive at any moment. Not until the butler announced dinner did he realize they were dining alone. They sat down in a wood-paneled room beneath a big old-fashioned brass chandelier. The table could have easily seated fourteen. Unlike the Hollywood version of such dinners, they did not sit at opposite ends. There were two places set on opposite sides in the center. The butler and a maid served them.
She talked about her family. She had barely known her father. He had been killed in France in World War I, when she was five. Her mother had never married again.
"I'm surprised you married a military man."
"At least half my friends had lost fathers or older brothers in France in the last war. Almost two thirds of our expeditionary force became casualties."
He was staggered by her calm acceptance of this horrendous statistic. He had never encountered the kind of courage she displayed. She did more than endure pain and defeat. She purified it, exalted it.
What was he doing here? Mullenoe wondered. Did he really think he could replace that lost aristocrat in the black-ribboned portrait in the hall?
"How did you meet your husband?"
"Oh, he arranged it, I imagine. I was part of his plan, you see.”
"What sort of plan?"
"His father had become an admiral through force of character and courage. Napier proposed to do it the easy way — with a rich wife."
"You weren't in love with him?"
"I loved him a great deal. But I gradually discovered he didn't love me. I don't know what he loved exactly. An idea of himself, I think. I'd as soon not try to put it into words."
"But you're still mourning him?"
"I tried to take the same approach as the Navy. Patience. Eventually, Napier was going to come round. He'd be a superb officer like his father. If I persisted in loving him he'd—"
She stared down at her soup plate. "Lately I've wondered if we both may have been wrong. Love doesn't change much, I'm afraid. We shall never know now."
"I disagree — about love not changing much."
She knew exactly what he meant. He watched her weighing in her soul the possibility of believing again, hoping again. She raised the crystal wineglass to her lips. A crest of some sort was engraved on the rounded side.
"It is rather extraordinary. Our meeting this way."
"I think you should know something else. We didn't fight our ship at Savo Island. We ran out on the Canberra. And on the Quincy and Astoria and Vincennes. I had nothing to do with the decision. But I think you should know what happened."
She looked dazed, disbelieving. "Should I?" she murmured.
"I want you to know it."
For a moment she was as still as the aristocrats hanging in the hall. Mullenoe heard the clink of a distant dish in the pantry, the muted mocking call of the kookaburras outside.
"I'm glad you told me," she said.
His brain barely functioning, Montgomery West danced with Claire Carraway in the faded ballroom of the Wentworth Hotel. It was a farewell party for Bob Hope's troupers before they took off for the Army camps and naval bases in Queen
sland, Australia's far north. West's nemesis, Charles Benbow, had twisted his arm to show up and mollify Claire. He had not had to twist terribly hard.
At the moment, West's mollification program was getting nowhere. Claire was pouting. That red kissable mouth became babyish, petulant, which somehow only made it more kissable. The rest of Claire was equally enticing. A lot of it was showing in the cleavage of her Dior gown.
"You'd only be gone two weeks," Claire said. "Don't they ever give you time off?"
"In two weeks we'll be ready to sail. We may leave even earlier. We may be back in the Solomons in two weeks."
"Monty, aren't you carrying this hero stuff a little too far? I saw pictures of that ship. What would have happened to you if you were in that bow?"
"I'd be dead."
"It doesn't make sense to risk that — unnecessarily."
Like most people in Hollywood, Claire was incapable of saying the word death.
The band was playing "Sentimental Journey." Claire moved a little closer to him. West struggled to control the explosions she set off in various parts of his body. He was like a ship being straddled by enemy guns. Nothing was going to save him but an all-out effort at damage control.
A photographer suddenly skittered around them. "Hey, Lieutenant West, Miss Carraway, give us one for the home folks," he said.
Claire beamed, West forced a smile. "What paper are you with?" he asked.
"Paper? I work for M-G-M. On loan to the war effort."
"Where are you going to publish that picture?"
"Who knows? We give it to the wire services. I'd figure maybe five hundred papers."
West began composing a letter to Ina Severn, trying to explain why he was dancing with Claire Carraway. She's an old friend. I wanted to see if I could resist the temptation. Oh, yeah.
Bob Hope twirled past them with busty singer Frances Langford. "Hey, Lieutenant," he said, "is it true that powdered eggs ruin your virility?"
"I wouldn't know," West said.
"Neither would I," Claire said.
"Wow. We've got to work that into the act. Are you coming to Queensland with us?"
"Sorry. The captain says I've got a war to fight."
"Didn't the Japs just shoot off the most important part of your ship?"
"I'm beginning to think that's not the only thing they shot off," Claire said.
"Isn't she something?" Hope said. "I heard she wore out four Australian lifeguards and a kangaroo last night. If you ignore the signals she's sending, Monty, I'm never going to touch powdered eggs again."
An hour and several drinks later, West sat at the table watching Charles Benbow dance with Claire. The band was playing "Thanks for the Memory." West was beginning to think the music had been selected with diabolic intent. He had to remind himself that Hope was identified with the song since he warbled it to Shirley Ross in the Big Broadcast of 1938.
Benbow danced Claire over to the table and sat down with them. "Can't talk him into it, eh?" he said.
"He's too busy being a hero," Claire said. "He doesn't even 'predate my traveling twelve thousand miles to see him."
She was getting drunk. That ought to be a good thing, but it was actually bad, because it made West remember nights when he and Claire had both been drunk and liquor reduced love to several delicious varieties of lust. He did not want to remember lust, he wanted to banish it from his body, from the globe. He tried to remember tender moments with Claire, moments when they almost regarded each other as lovers. But he was afraid to look at her. Instead he kept staring at the shallow, shifty side of Charles Benbow's face. How could Ina Severn have such deplorable taste in men?
Under the table, a hand began moving across his thigh. Claire smiled at him. On the bandstand, they had persuaded Bob Hope to sing "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." The ironic words slithered around the room. Perspiration oozed down West's forehead. "Is it that hot in here?" Claire said, giving him her Barbara Stanwyck smile, while her hand continued to wander.
"Let's not put up with it for another moment," Charles Benbow said. "I've got a lovely little house on the cliff overlooking Manly Beach. We can be there in twenty minutes."
"Why not?" Claire said, standing up. "One thing I know about the lieutenant here. He loves to watch the dawn creep across the ocean. He gets positively mystical about it."
"Surely they can spare you until morning, West old man?" Benbow said.
Montgomery West knew exactly what was going to happen. Benbow would disappear. He and Claire would be alone listening to the song of the islands. Why not? West thought. Why not act like a heel? Considering his past record with women, he unquestionably qualified as one. Where did he get the absurd idea that falling in love would change him? Did he really think he would stop wanting other women? Did he expect love to persist at a distance of six thousand miles? He was not only a heel, he was a naive heel. But before the night was over, he would not be a frustrated one.
"Let's go," he said.
"Hey, you wanna be my sheila?" Mess Steward Willard Otis said, slipping his hand under the blonde's sweater. He had forgotten her name. They had been drinking shandy, which was lemonade with ale in it, for a couple of hours in Hyde Park, listening to some digger military band. Now it was getting dark. It was time for the action to begin. In a couple of hours the park would be crawling with sailors and sheilas, which was digger for chippie.
"Sheila's my name, you bloody aboriginal." She giggled.
"What the fuck's an aboriginal?"
"They live in the never never. The outback. They're black like you. They were here before we came."
"Hey that ain't our gig. We ain't Indians. We're Negroes. N-e-g-r-o-e-s. From Africa by way of the U.S.A. There ain't no body in the United States who don't come from somewhere else 'cept the Indians, and them dudes got wiped out by the U.S. Cavalry a hundred years ago. But Negroes are special, baby. We the only Americans who really know how to give a girl a good time."
"Yeah," said Mess Steward Cash Johnson, who let Willard do the talking. So far they had scored on every liberty. Aboard ship everyone called Willard Motormouth. But the digger chippies lapped up the line of shit he put out. There were times when Cash was sure he was dreaming. White pussy free of charge!
"I want a drink of something stronger than this bloody shandy," Sheila said. "Right, Rosie?"
"Yeah."
"Where you want to go? We got plenty of do-re-mi,"
Willard said. "You like Lennon's? That's where our buddies hang out."
"Piss on that bloody ocker," said Rosie. "He stopped giving my old man credit last month."
"You pick it out. We don't care," Willard said.
They wandered out of the park down into Woolloomooloo.
"Let's go in there," Sheila said, pointing to a bar with blackout curtains down. It was named Dunne's Den. The minute they stepped in the door, Cash Johnson smelled trouble. There were no sailors in sight. Only digger shipyard workers. The biggest motherfuckers he had ever seen.
Cash had heard on the grapevine that the diggers were starting to growl about the way the Americans were grabbing all the women in sight. It figured they would be twice as surly about Negroes getting their piece of the action. The stuff about aboriginals had a bad sound to it.
But Willard Otis had drunk a lot of shandy and he was not going to let anyone push him around. He spent too much time on the ship eating dogshit from Chief Steward's Mate Davis and shoveling horseshit to officers like Lieutenant Wilson Selvage MacComber. Willard bellied up to the bar and threw five dollars on it. "Hey, man, give us four gin fizzes," he said.
The bartender served the drinks and Willard handed them out to Cash and Sheila and her friend Rosie. "What do you do on your ship?" Sheila asked.
"Hey, we fire the guns," Willard said. "We the best shots on the old Jaybird. Cash here's got him three Jap destroyers and a battleship. I got about six cruisers."
"Yeah," Cash said, noticing and not liking the way the Australians were listening
to them.
"How many battleships did you say you got, mate?" asked a digger with a jaw about a foot wide. He was around forty years old, with a mouth full of big yellow teeth. Cash thought he looked as mean as any redneck he had ever seen in South Carolina.
"Hey, we don't keep track, actually. They sink so fast," Willard said.
"I think you're full of dingo shit. I've been putting your fucking ship back together. It looks to me like the Japs did all the shooting."
The whole barroom was listening now. Cash Johnson grabbed Otis's arm, trying to stop him. But shandy plus gin meant Motormouth was out of control.
"What the hell do you know about it, man? You're punchin' rivets at double overtime while we're up Ironbottom Sound maybe gettin' our asses blown off."
"You fucking woolly-headed bastard! I lost a brother on the Canberra."
"We know all about them guys. They forgot to shoot back at Savo Island."
"What did you say?"
"Hey, don't listen to him," Cash said. "He's drunk, you know?"
"I ain't too drunk to recognize a guy whose mamma musta made it with a fuckin' elephant," Willard said.
In South Carolina no black man in his right mind ever played the dozens with a white man. It could lead to murder. These diggers were no different. Why couldn't Willard see that? Willard could not see anything while his mouth was moving.
The digger came at Willard with a roar that reminded Cash of fourteen-inch Japanese shells going over the Jefferson City. Willard was an asshole, but he was his shipmate and Cash had to stand by him. As the digger grabbed Willard by the neckerchief and started slinging him through the front window, Cash whipped his shin out of his back pocket and slipped it into the digger's big belly. He sliced him from the side, not too deep. He didn't want to kill him, just make him let go of Willard.
"Come on," Cash yelled and they got out the door and down the street with the whole barful of diggers after them, screaming they were going to cut off the most valuable parts of their anatomy. They barreled into the heart of Woolloomooloo yelling, "Jefferson City. General quarters. Man the fuckin' battle stations!"
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