by Joan Lingard
‘No, he can’t, can he?’ said Willa. He liked to be fed on demand, as his son did.
‘He doesn’t feel well if he doesn’t eat,’ said his mother.
‘Oh, and would you believe it, two nights later they went to yet another dance!’ said Willa.
‘God help us,’ said Bunty, ‘it’s a wonder their feet weren’t wore out!’
‘Tommy’s got good feet,’ said his mother.
The next night’s dance was held at Port Adelaide, halfway between Semaphore Anchorage and Adelaide. There were about 4,000 on the floor. A buffet was set out on the quay alongside the ships for those who were on duty on board. A dance band was in attendance and before long there was dancing in progress on the quay as well as in the hall. You may easily guess that there weren’t many left aboard! A fantastic evening was had by one and all.
Bunty began to sing ‘All the nice girls love a sailor’.
‘I want to hear what Tommy has to say.’ Ina glowered at her.
‘One thing, you don’t have to worry about your boy being eaten by crocodiles in Adelaide,’ said Bunty. ‘He’s obviously having a whale of a time instead! Get it?’ Neither Willa nor Ina laughed. ‘He’ll be coming back with a swelled head. As long as no other parts of him get swelled up.’
‘At times, Bunty, I think you need your mouth washed out with carbolic,’ said Ina. ‘That wasn’t a very nice thing to say in front of Willa. Or me, either,’ she added on reflection.
Willa had got up and put the letter on the table and turned her back on it. There were further screeds about the charms of Adelaide but she couldn’t care less about Adelaide. It could vanish into the bottom of the Pacific Ocean as far as she was concerned, taking its shingle-headed girls and punkahs with it. A quick spin of the globe showed her that it should be the Indian Ocean. Well, Indian Ocean, then. Either would do. There would be sharks hunting around in both, with wide open jaws and large teeth, ready to snap up tasty morsels. The globe showed her that Tommy was on the other side of the world now, as far away from her as he could possibly get.
‘Och, dinne take on, Willa hen,’ said Bunty. ‘He’ll just be having a wee bit of fun. You canne grudge him that, can you? What would you expect, with all that temptation lined up in front of him?’
Willa shrugged. She knew Tommy wouldn’t be lying in his berth reading a book while the others were out frolicking.
‘Any road,’ Bunty went on, ‘they’ll be on to the next place by now and have left the girls in Adelaide behind. He’s not going to be bringing one of them home.’
Willa knew that to be true but just the thought of him in the arms of a girl in a charming frock with sleek bobbed hair disturbed her. While he was dancing he would have forgotten her; and maybe even after he’d left the dance floor. She saw him dancing with a girl in a wispy-thin dress along the quay, leading her into the shadows, the strains of the band following them. She saw his hands moving down the girl’s back, his mouth closing in on her ear as he sang to her. I will be your sweetheart…She saw the girl arch her long slender neck and her carmine-red lips part…
Ina had been creaking about on her chair. Her stays were obviously bothering her. ‘I’m sure Tommy will remember he’s a married man.’
Bunty snorted.
‘Are you trying to say he wouldn’t?’ demanded his mother.
‘I’m not saying anything. I just ken men. Especially when they’re on the loose.’
‘I don’t know what’s got into you today, Bunty. You’re in a right funny mood and you’re being very annoying. I’m sure Willa thinks so and all, don’t you, Willa?’
‘I’m going to the library,’ Willa said. ‘Malcolm’s asleep. Can I leave him, Ina?’
‘Any time, dear, you know that. Don’t need to ask.’
‘I’ll chum you part way along the road, Willa,’ said Bunty. ‘I’m going up to the Infirmary to visit old Mrs McKinley. They’ve taken her in at last. She’s been waiting ages. They say there’s fifteen hundred on the waiting list.’
‘That’s a scandal,’ said Ina. ‘What’s she in for?’
‘She’s had her insides out so I said I’d visit her. She’s one of my regulars and she’s got nobody else.’
‘I wondered who the daffodils were for,’ said Ina. Bunty had left a bunch on the dresser. ‘I didn’t think they’d be for us.’
Bunty lifted the flowers.
Walking up the road she said to Willa, ‘I’m sorry if I annoyed you, love.’
‘It’s all right. I know what Tommy’s like. A girl in every port, isn’t that what they say?’ It was what her Aunt Lily had said the night before the wedding. ‘There’ll be temptation waiting for him every time they dock,’ Aunt Lily had added. She was a religious woman who liked to speak of sin and redemption. ‘He’ll come back to you, though,’ said Bunty.
‘I suppose.’
‘Of course he will!’
‘He’s got to come back to his mother, hasn’t he?’
‘I have riled you.’
‘It was the letter. Why does he send me a cutting like that?’
‘He doesn’t think, that’s why. He’s kind of naive. He’s having a good time so he’s going to let the world know. Men!’
Willa looked at Bunty. ‘You do seem to be in a funny mood today?’
‘I quarrelled with Harold last night.’
‘Mr Parkin?’
‘He wants me to marry him.’
‘But you don’t want to?’
‘No, and when I told him so off he went in the huff. Why can’t he just let things be? We’re doing fine as we are. Three months living together and I wouldn’t be able to stick the sight of him.’
‘I expect he’ll come back.’
Bunty sighed. ‘Anyway, talking of men, what about your Richard?’
‘He’s not mine.’
‘Mrs Cant said she’d seen you with him in the library.’
‘That means nothing.’
‘Not to Mrs Cant it doesn’t.’
‘I hope she doesn’t say anything to Ina.’
‘I warned her not to. I told her she’d just make trouble for nothing. It is nothing, is it?’
‘Of course it is. I’ve never done anything but talk about books with Richard, I swear I haven’t.’
‘I believe you so don’t get steamed up. But I think he’s fallen for you. Seriously. He came in to the shop the other day to buy a paper so I took him through to the back for a wee cup of tea. He couldn’t stop talking about you. He’s a right nice lad.’
‘Bunty, you know I’m married.’
‘Aye, I reminded him of that and he went away looking sorry for himself.’
‘He needs a job. He’s got nothing to do except read books.’
‘Of course I would understand if you were wanting a bit of excitement, with your man away so long. After all, you’re young and you’ve got feelings.’
They’d reached the Infirmary gate.
‘Give my best wishes to Mrs McKinley,’ said Willa.
Her steps began to quicken as she turned into George IV Bridge. Before going into the library she glanced around in case Mrs Cant might be loitering and would follow her in.
She saw him straightaway, at his usual table, with his exercise book open in front of him and his fountain pen in his hand. The sight reassured her. She smiled and he waved to her. She returned her borrowed books and went to the start of the shelves, hoping to find Persuasion. It was there. She was holding it in her hands when he joined her.
‘So it’s in today. How did you like Bliss?’
‘We could go for a cup of tea if you like and I’ll tell you then?’ She was looking forward to discussing it with him.
He said that he would like to. ‘Will we go and see if that Rebecca West book is in?’
They went right round to ‘W’ and found The Judge. Willa was spending less time browsing these days but she accepted that there wasn’t time for everything.
The nice librarian was on the check-out counter. ‘
Is that your husband home on leave?’
Willa found it an odd question. The woman must have recognised Richard, with him being almost a daily visitor to the library. Maybe the woman was just curious and wanted to draw her out. She blushed, anyway, and was annoyed with herself. ‘No, he’s still away. Richard’s a friend, a friend of the family.’
Richard was waiting for her outside on the pavement. They would have to stop doing this or else start being more careful. But how could she say that to Richard? It would imply that she was reading more into their meetings than existed. She was glad when they reached the café and were tucked away inside. She was sure Mrs Cant wouldn’t waste her money in cafés.
‘What did you think of Katherine Mansfield then?’
‘Oh, I liked her stories. They’re quite different, aren’t they.’ She often found it difficult to say exactly how she felt about a book.
‘Bliss is an interesting word, don’t you agree?’ he said. ‘I was discussing it with my mother.’
Willa looked at him with surprise. She couldn’t imagine Tommy discussing bliss with anybody! And certainly not with his mother.
‘And what did you think?’ she asked.
‘We decided it meant something even more than being happy. It’s like a state of complete and utter contentment.’
Willa was thinking that she’d had blissful moments with Tommy after he’d made love to her, but only after they were married. Before that, although she’d been carried away by his lovemaking, an edge of anxiety had hovered to trouble her. A worry that he might make her pregnant even though she was trying to take elementary precautions. A worry that he might get bored with her or think her cheap because she’d given in to him and dump her.
‘We agreed that our cat is in a state of bliss after he’s been fed and he’s sitting in front of the fire purring like a steam engine!’
Willa smiled at the image. Perhaps they should get a cat for Malcolm. It would be good for a boy to have an animal and a dog would be impossible in their cramped flat. She didn’t think Ina would agree, though.
‘By the way,’ said Richard, ‘my mother thinks you might like Willa Cather.’
‘You’ve told your mother about me?’ said Willa, alarmed.
‘You don’t mind, do you? I just said I’d met this nice girl in the library and we talk about books. My mother understands, since she likes to do that herself.’
‘You seem close to your mother?’
‘Oh, I am. I’m closer to her than to my father, I’m afraid. I’ve never been able to talk to him in the same way. He didn’t like it when I chose to do English Literature at university – he blamed my mother’s influence. He wanted me to go for law or medicine. Good old Edinburgh traditional professions!’
‘Are you the only son?’
He nodded. He told her he had an older sister who was married to a doctor and living in London. ‘She’s more conventional, like my father.’
‘Your mother’s not?’
‘Well, I told you – she’s a suffragette, a campaigner. Against all kinds of injustice.’
Willa murmured, to show approval, and wished she were more bold herself on that front. But her life didn’t seem to leave room for it.
‘She was at a meeting in the Central Halls last night about the pitiful conditions of the native people in some of our colonies.’
That made Willa feel slightly uncomfortable, though why it should she was not sure, for she had nothing to do with the natives in foreign lands herself. Perhaps it was because Tommy often made fun of the them. He didn’t ever refer to their conditions. His letters seemed to suggest that they were as happy as larks at being visited by the British Navy.
‘My mother says education is the answer.’
‘Your father doesn’t like her campaigning?’
‘Well, he’s not for injustice,’ said Richard awkwardly. ‘Don’t misunderstand me. But he hates her going on marches. She went to a big one in London and got herself locked up for the night. They had a huge row over that.’
‘Your mother can obviously stand up for herself though?’
‘Oh yes! She was wondering if you’d be interested in the movement? She says there’s still a lot to do until women under thirty get the vote.’
‘It’s difficult for me with the baby.’ She wondered what else Richard might have told his mother about his friend in the library. ‘So this writer?’ she prompted.
‘Willa Cather. She’s American.’ Richard opened his satchel and brought out a book. ‘My Antonia. My mother said you could borrow it.’
‘That’s kind of her,’ said Willa hesitantly.
She opened it and saw that his mother had written her name on the fly leaf. Arabella Fitzwilliam. She had a very fine flowing hand. It suggested confidence.
‘My Antonia is the story of a girl from Bohemia who goes to live in America. In the state of Nebraska.’
‘Sounds interesting.’ Willa had only ever read one novel set in America, and that had been Main Street, which Richard had recommended. ‘I’ll be sure to return it.’
‘Keep it as long as you like.’
‘I read quite quickly.’
‘I know that.’
He smiled and then he reached across the table and put his hand over hers. She felt a quick thrill at his touch. ‘You realise I’ve become very fond of you, don’t you, Willa?’
‘I’m married, Richard,’ she said in a low voice.
‘I know that. But we can be friends, can’t we? Good friends?’
‘We already are,’ she said and then, because the moment was seeming to become too intense, too difficult to hold, added, ‘Would you like to hear about Adelaide? I got another letter from my husband this morning.’
He removed his hand and she took the letter out of her bag. She had left the newspaper cutting with its description of dancing girls in gauzy dresses behind. She began to read.
On arrival at Semaphore Anchorage, all ships went alongside except for the Baltic cruisers and the Danae. The reason we were not able to go alongside was that a merchant ship was occupying our billet…
~10 ~
Melbourne, Victoria,
Australia
23rd March, 1924
Dear Willa,
We arrived in style, after proceeding up the Yarra River, escorted by aeroplanes soaring over our heads. People were not allowed on the pier while the ships were being secured but thousands were waiting outside the gates full of excitement at our coming. An Air Force guard of honour marched up to the pier and halted abreast the Hood, looking very smart in their blue uniforms. Admirals Field and Brand then landed and inspected the guard of honour. The weather was glorious.
The weather always seemed glorious in those far-off places. Everywhere but Edinburgh. Or so it seemed to Willa. Would one not tire of so much sun after a while? Maybe not. It was April but she was still wearing her winter coat buttoned up to the neck. A snell wind was coming in from the east blowing the rubbish up the gutters, overspill from the buckets. Some people – lazy lumps, Ina called them – would put them out before going to bed instead of getting up in the morning and then the cats were on them. You could hear them scrabbling about. Ina would never tolerate putting your rubbish out at night. They were up at seven, or, rather, she, Willa, was, for how could she let her mother-in-law do it? She humped the buckets down the stairs twice a week, hoping the lid wouldn’t spill off the top of the ash can.
She skipped quickly over the detailed descriptions of the streets and public buildings of Melbourne, wondering where Tommy got all his information from. There were masses of details such as that the streets were one mile long and a hundred feet wide. He couldn’t have gone out and measured them. They must be handed out pamphlets on arrival. Then her eye lit on the word ‘pleasure’ and that arrested her attention.
‘Is that a letter from Tommy?’ asked Ina, coming in with Malcolm in her arms.
Willa waited until her mother-in-law had removed her coat and hat and they’d put
Malcolm into his chair and given him a rusk to chew on. Ina had to lift a book from the chair before she sat down. She squinted at the spine, holding the book out from her body.
‘My Antonia. Doesn’t look like a library book.’ She turned it over.
‘A friend lent it to me.’ Willa put out her hand for it.
‘Pauline? Didn’t know she read much.’
‘No, it was someone else.’
‘You don’t see a lot of Pauline these days?’
‘She’s out half the time,’ said Willa. ‘Going to the pictures. And the dancing.’ Every Saturday night. The way she herself used to be. Sometimes on a Saturday evening she’d stand at her bedroom window and look down on the couples in the street below, walking hand-in-hand, making their way to the Palais. And envy them. Yes, she had to admit that she did. She felt she’d lost something she could never get back. That carefree walking, the anticipation, the sound of the big band striking up…
‘She always was a gadabout, Pauline,’ said Ina. ‘I’m sure her mother’s dying for her to get married and settle down. If she doesn’t watch it she’ll end up on the shelf.’
‘She’s only my age.’
‘Still. Your time can go past quick enough. And there’s fewer men round now, the war saw to that. She might find she’s missed the boat.’
Ina had opened the book and was frowning at the flyleaf. ‘Arabella Fitzwilliam. Fancy-sounding name. Where did you meet her?’
‘The library.’ Willa was sweating a little.
‘You’d like to spend your life there!’
Finally, Ina surrendered the book and Willa kept it on her knee, cursing herself for having been so stupid as to bring it into the kitchen.
Ina sat down and Willa went back to Tommy’s letter.
St Kilda is the pleasure ground of Melbourne. It has a very fine beach, and three excellent dancing halls, the ‘Carlyous’, the ‘Palais de Danse’ and the ‘Wattle Path’, all beautifully decorated (the Palace at the bottom of Leith Walk has nothing on them!), with excellent floors and first-class bands. The wattle, you might be interested to know, is a little yellow flower and looked upon as a national flower. Also to be found here is Luna Park, which is full of amusements. All places of entertainment have been thrown open to the squadron and are being well used. At night St Kilda is a blaze of light. Millions of brilliant lights illuminate the scene. Thousands enjoy themselves nightly.
