The Naked Country

by Morris West

  His face was troubled. His eyes fell away from hers. Her heart went out to him in his humiliation and perplexity but she still pressed him brutally.

  ‘Neil, answer me one question. Do you love me?’

  ‘You know I love you, Mary. But…’

  He could not complete the sentence. The single word hung between them like a suspended chord of music – minor music lost and plaintive. She knew it was no use hurting him or hurting herself any more. Everything had been said. The rest was postscript and dispensable.

  She stood up, took his face between her hands and kissed him full on the lips. There were tears in her eyes but her voice was steady.

  ‘I love you, Neil. Not as much as I did. Not as much as I could. But wherever I am, whatever happens, there’ll still be a corner of my heart that belongs to you. Goodbye, darling.’

  She turned away and he sat like a stone man, watching her go. With her hand on the door-knob, she turned back:

  ‘I almost forgot to tell you – I decided before I came – I’m staying with Lance. I’ll be running Minardoo from now on.’

  Before he had time to think, he was half-way out of his chair, and the words were on his lips:

  ‘Are you going to – tell him about us?’

  For a long moment she stared at him, shocked, silent and contemptuous, then she opened the door and walked out into the sunlight. Neil Adams sat down heavily at his desk, buried his face in his hands, and for the first time in his life found grace to be ashamed of himself.

  Three days later, Lance Dillon lay behind white screens and wrestled with the black imps of despair. Bellamy had given him the verdict, calmly, precisely. Then, wise fellow that he was, had left him to digest it in privacy. His first reaction was to reject it utterly. He was getting stronger every day, healing as a healthy man should. A fellow was half-way into the grave when he could not sit a horse and plug round the herds and hold a yearling under the iron for a mere five seconds.

  Then cold reason told him that Bellamy had no cause to lie. He knew better than any the loads a man had to carry, with the bankers yapping at his heels every step of the way. If Bellamy said it, it was true. If it were true, he was a cripple for life, and this was a cruel country for the halt and the maimed.

  Then the whole hideous irony of it broke on him. He had survived so much – hunger, thirst, the spears of the black hunters, the terror of death in a dark place. Now he was reduced to this – a young-old man, nursing his heart in the shade, while herds wheeled under the whips and came thundering home through the paper-barks. It was too much for one man to take. Soft curses came bubbling out of his lips. Tears forced themselves out from his shut lids and trickled down the raw new skin of his cheeks.

  Then Mary came in, an unfamiliar figure in jodhpurs and a starched shirt. Her hair wind-blown, her face tinged brown from the afternoon sun. She kissed him lightly on the forehead, wiped the tears from his cheeks and sat down beside the bed. She said gently:

  ‘So Bellamy told you?’

  ‘Yes…’ He caught at her hands and his voice broke in desperate appeal. ‘I can’t take it, Mary. It’s too much. I can’t…I can’t…!’

  ‘Listen to me, Lance!’ The command in her voice checked him abruptly. He stared at her, puzzled, vaguely afraid. ‘You’re going to take it: because it isn’t half as bad as it looks. When you’re out of here, we’re going back to Minardoo. We’re going to run it together.’

  ‘Together?’ The word seemed unfamiliar to him. ‘You – you don’t know anything about the cattle business, and besides, we’re broke…flat broke.’

  For the first time she smiled at him, an odd, secret smile.

  ‘No, Lance. We’re in business. I’ve got us a three-year extension and some extra working capital to get us going again. You know where I’ve been this afternoon? Down at the stockyards watching an auction.’

  ‘My God, Mary!’ Panic made him seem for a moment like his old self. ‘You didn’t buy anything?’

  ‘No.’ She patted his hand in maternal assurance. ‘But I learned a lot. I’ll learn more and quicker as time goes on… If you want me to, that is.’

  He stared at her, unbelieving.

  ‘You…you’ve changed, Mary. I don’t know how, but you’ve changed.’

  Her face clouded. The sparkle went out of her voice. She nodded slowly.

  ‘Yes, Lance. I’ve changed. I’m going to tell you how and why. I want you to listen. Afterwards, you will tell me what you want to do.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ He frowned, searching her face with troubled eyes.

  ‘I’m going to try to make you understand. Before all this happened, I was going to leave you.’

  ‘Leave me?’ It was a high note of panic. ‘You mean for good?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He closed his eyes and grappled with the thought. When he opened them again, she saw that he understood. He said gravely:

  ‘I don’t blame you. I know I didn’t give you much of a life.’

  ‘It wasn’t the life, Lance. It was you I wanted.’

  ‘I know that, too. It – it was in the cave…I was waiting to die. Everything seemed suddenly futile. Except you. Did I make you very unhappy?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was sparing him nothing. ‘You made me want someone else.’

  ‘Did you find him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you…?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh!’

  The word came out on a long whisper of weariness. He closed his eyes again and lay back on the pillow, his head turned away from her. He asked dully:

  ‘Do I know him?’

  ‘It was Neil Adams.’

  ‘I should have guessed that.’

  ‘He saved your life when he could have let you die.’

  ‘I suppose I should be grateful.’ There was no anger in his voice, only a dull recognition of fact. ‘Why are you telling me now?’

  Her eyes were still closed so that she could read nothing of his feelings, but she went on, calm and unhurried, piecing out the theme she had lived and dreamed for days and sleepless nights.

  ‘Because I’ve learnt something, Lance – and I think it’s important to both of us. You can’t live in this country with a lie. Even if you live alone, you’ve got to face the truth or go mad because the lie festers up and eats at you like a tropical ulcer. When you’ve heard me through you may not want me any more. I can take that. I’ll go away and start a new life of my own. If you do want me, just as I am, I’ll stay and try to make you a good wife, and build you a good property. But not with a lie, Lance. Not with a hate buried somewhere in either of us. We’ve got to look at each other and see everything, the good, the bad, the failures, the virtues, and say: “I’ll take it, just as it stands!” No recriminations, no afterthoughts! If we come together again I want to try to have a child. If we can’t make one of our own, I want to adopt one and rebuild our love around it.’

  ‘Do you think you can, after all this?’ His eyes were still closed. There was no more animation in his voice.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve got to be honest about that too. I think it’s possible, I think we need to try, both of us. Everybody makes mistakes. The lucky ones make them before they’re married and start fresh from there. Others spend their lives regretting the mistakes they didn’t make – and that’s a kind of lying too. People like us – what do we do? Throw it all down the drain and start again? Or take a good long look at the truth and admit that every man’s got a streak of the beast in him and every woman a touch of the tart.’ For the first time her voice wavered and the tears began prickling at her eyelids. ‘I can’t say it any other way, Lance. I’ve used up all the words. I’m sorry, deeply sorry. But I’m not going on being sorry all my life, with every act and every word a repetition of guilt. I want to live again and laugh, and sing sometimes and go to bed happy. There’s a bit of the whore in me. And more than anything else, I want to be able to say one day: “I love you”…and to hear you sa
y it to me. That’s all, Lance…. If you’d like some time to think, I’ll go away and…’

  ‘No, Mary!’ His hands reached out across the coverlet and caught at her wrist. She looked up and saw that his eyes were open. They were grave and hurt, but not bitter. He said soberly:

  ‘I don’t know if it will work any more than you do. But a man who’s come back from the dead like I have, ought to know the value of what he’s got. I’m hurt, shamed too. I’ll admit it. If I weren’t tied to this bed, I’d take you out and thrash you…and Mister bloody Adams too. But even while I was doing it, I’d know you were a better man than both of us, Mary Dillon! I need you, girl, more than I ever did. I’m no damn good to any other woman. Maybe it’s a rough justice that you should be saddled with me. I’d – I’d like to give it a try.’

  ‘On those terms?’

  A ghost of a grin brightened his sunken eyes.

  ‘I’m too tired to think of any others.’ His eyelids drooped and he lay back on the pillows, all the strength drained out of him. They did not kiss. There was no gesture of reunion, but the slight tightening of his grasp on her wrist before he released her. Already he was on the borders of sleep and she was glad for him. Tomorrow would be time enough to care.

  She walked out on to the veranda and watched the sun go down, a glory of gold and purple and crimson behind the ramparts of the naked country.