Women and War

by Janet Tanner

  ‘I’m not surprised, living in that squalid room,’ he said. ‘And that’s not all. If she escapes food poisoning she’s liable to get a dose of the clap.’

  ‘Red!’ she admonished. ‘ It’s nothing like that.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘If you ask me I think she has a growth – cancer. It doesn’t bear thinking about, she looks so bad.’

  ‘Where did you see her?’ he asked.

  She hesitated. As he had said he didn’t like her visiting Maggie in Darlinghurst, she went when she could sneak across town undiscovered and for some time she had been concerned by the look of Maggie. ‘You’re not eating enough – you look so thin!’ she had told her repeatedly and Maggie had just laughed and replied that if she was putting on weight like some people, then Tara would have something to chide her over.

  But today there had been no jokes. Tara had found her in bed, too weak to get up, and though her thinness was hidden beneath the tumbled sheets the dark circles beneath her eyes and the hollows in her cheeks were more noticeable than ever. Horrified, Tara had questioned her and for the first time Maggie had admitted just how ill she was.

  ‘Red, please!’ she begged now. ‘She needs medical attention – the best. If she doesn’t get it I dread to think what will happen to her.’

  He shrugged. ‘Maggie is not your problem, Tara.’

  ‘Red …’

  ‘And she is certainly not mine. Good God, if I was expected to help every sick down and out and whore in Sydney …’

  ‘Not every one. Just Maggie.’

  ‘If she has got cancer I doubt whether money would help anyway. It would just be wasted.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes.’ He reached out spreading his hand around the back of her neck and drawing her towards him. ‘Forget about Maggie and come here.’

  ‘But Red …’

  ‘Come here I said!’

  Obediently Tara tipped her face to his kiss, twining her arms around his neck and thrusting her breasts enticingly upwards. But inside a little knot of anger was growing. How could Red be so callous? To dismiss Maggie that way with less consideration than he would give to one of his dogs …

  His hands were on her breasts easing them out of her wrap and running down across her belly and, for a moment, she stifled a manic urge to thrust him away and scream her anger and disgust. But as his fingers moved downwards, lingering with long gentle strokes on the soft inner part of her thighs, she began to forget her anger as the first stirrings of desire sent weakness coursing through the deepest parts of her.

  How could he do this to her? she wondered. When she was hating him so, how could he make her feel so good? She moved her knees restlessly and he tugged at the sash of her robe, loosening it, then pushing the silk back over her hips.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, his voice vibrant with desire.

  She twisted round and half rose to turn back the sheet and get in beside him and as she did so the robe slipped back exposing one knee and thigh. Seeing it snapped her back to cold reality for it was as if she was seeing Maggie’s leg that day when she had told her to go to Red, that same day when she, Tara, had decided she would do anything to escape the fate that was stalking Maggie. An aching emptiness flooded through her and with it the compulsion – she must do something to help Maggie. Whatever Red said, she must!

  Automatically her body obeyed his dictates while her mind raced. Perhaps she had chosen the wrong moment. Perhaps afterwards she could try again. He had so much – surely he could not continue to deny Maggie just a little …

  The silk sheet slid sensuously across her back as he turned her, then his muscular bulk was towering over her, and she felt again the surger of inner weakness. As he thrust into her, her sensitized flesh rose to his and she moaned softly, unable to resist, unable even to keep her mind detached any longer. Red was power – power – and she was his! If he was cruel and hard it did not make any difference. It was him. And it was so good to be his woman – so good …!

  But afterwards, when she lay languorous and still sticky from the heights of passion, the wretchedness began to creep in again, a heaviness that began in the pit of her stomach then swelled like leavening yeast until there was no room within her for any other emotion.

  She must help Maggie. She would. Somehow, whatever it cost her, she could not allow Maggie to suffer and die. Throughout the weeks that followed Maggie was constantly on Tara’s mind and the first creeping anxiety turned gradually to frantic worry and then to despair. She had hated Red when he had said money spent on trying to cure Maggie would be wasted; but before long she was forced to admit that it would be a miracle if a cure could be found.

  Her later attempts to persuade Red to help had been no more fruitful than the first – Red was as stubborn as he was hard and nothing Tara could do or say could induce him to part with a single penny piece for Maggie – not her pleas, not her tears, not her wiliest wiles or her most ardent loving – and eventually the state of his temper when she raised the subject made her realize that it would be wise to allow it to drop for a while at least. But that did not mean she had abandoned Maggie – far from it. Tara’s determination to do the best she could for the friend who had taken the place of her mother burned more fiercely than ever and she made up her mind that if Red wouldn’t give her the money to help Maggie she would get it elsewhere.

  In spite of her spoiled status in Red’s household Tara had no access to ready cash – whatever she wanted he paid for, so she had to explore other avenues, and the one that came to mind first was her jewellery. During the five years she had been with him Red had showered her with gold and gems of every description – now she decided that if she were to sell a few he would never miss them.

  Sneaking away from the bodyguards one day she took them to a downtown jewellers and was shocked by how little she was offered for diamonds and sapphires she knew had cost Red thousands of dollars. But argument proved to be useless and Tara took what she could get and left. It was something for Maggie – enough to get her away, perhaps, to a doctor who could do something for her.

  But Maggie, when Tara told her this, only shook her head and laughed, a hollow parody of the shriek of merriment that had used to fill the apartment.

  ‘No point wasting good money on fancy doctors. Mac the Knife is good enough for me.’

  ‘He’s a drunken old fool!’ Tara had said hotly.

  Maggie’s face turned grey as a spasm of pain creased through her. ‘ Drunken he might be, but he’s no fool,’ she said as it passed. ‘I’ve trusted him since I was your age, Tara, and believe me there have been times when he’s saved my neck. If Mac says there’s nothing can be done, I’ll take his word for it.’

  ‘No!’ Tara urged desperately. ‘I can’t just let you get worse, Maggie, and not even try to do something for you! There must be a way! If you were rich …’

  Maggie smiled sadly. ‘Even the rich have to die, Tara.’

  ‘No!’ Tara could hold back the tears no longer; she threw her arms around her friend, burying her face in the now-scrawny breasts. ‘No, Maggie, no!’

  ‘Oh sweetheart!’ Maggie stroked Tara’s hair with a thin hand – she, who was sick, was the comforter now. ‘ I’m not afraid. But I don’t want to be carted off to some fancy hospital to die, I’d rather be here in my own home. And it’s not as if I’m alone. I’ve got Jack now.’

  Tara nodded silently swallowing her tears. Yes, at least Maggie had Jack. He would not have been Tara’s choice but who was she to judge? Jack was a seaman who had jumped ship. He and his mate, a big brawny Irishman named Mick O’ Neill, had visited Maggie one night and had grown friendly with her, attracted by the fact that she too was Irish. She had given them both a roof over their heads and then, as a relationship developed between her and Jack, Mick had moved on, while Jack had stayed to share her bed and her life. For a little while Maggie had become almost respectable. Jack had objected to her way of life saying he was no pimp and he would walk out
before he would take advantage of a penny piece she might have earned in that way, and Tara had teased her that after all this time she was actually going to settle down.

  ‘See how lucky I am, Tara,’ Maggie had said. ‘Having someone to spend my old age with. I never thought that would happen to me. I always thought that when I lost my looks I’d be alone.’

  But that had been before the illness struck her down – a pitifully short time before. Now it looked as though Maggie would not have an old age to spend with anyone or to be alone.

  Tara wept tears of frustration and premature grief, but nothing she could say would induce Maggie to change her mind. Not being allowed to pay for the best treatment for Maggie did not mean not being able to help her at all, though, and Tara was determined to remain firm on that point. All her life Maggie had lived from hand to mouth. Now she could not work there was no money coming in and none put by either, while Jack, though able bodied and willing, had been unable to find employment.

  ‘It’s not his fault, Tara,’ Maggie said. ‘There just aren’t enough jobs to go round any more – and Jack has to be careful he isn’t seen around the harbour. If they caught up with him and took him away from me now, I don’t know what I’d do.’

  Tara had turned away swallowing at the tears. Her mind was made up. She would make Maggie’s last weeks comfortable if it was the last thing she did. So a few more items of jewellery found their way into the downtown jewellers and a few to the pawnshop and Tara was able to buy the things she wanted for Maggie – some delicacies in a vain attempt to persuade her to eat, perfumed soap to try to wash away the smell of death, and a silk nightgown to replace the cheap art silk.

  ‘Oh Tara, all my life I’ve wanted a real silk nightgown!’ Maggie said when she saw it.

  Mac also had to be paid and the drugs that were needed to keep Maggie’s pain under control did not come cheap. And there had to be enough, too, when it was over, to bury her properly.

  All this had to be kept from Red and Tara planned her visits to Darlinghurst with military precision. At first, when she went only once a week, this was not too difficult but as Maggie’s strength failed Tara wanted to visit her more and more often. The house in Elizabeth Bay became like a prison to her and she paced the rooms, fretting and thinking of ways she could get over to see Maggie. Even when Red took her out she was preoccupied. There seemed something obscene about wining and dining at one of the clubs when her friend lay dying and the music and laughter echoed in her head like a manic nightmare.

  Red does not need me, she thought with a touch of bitterness. He almost ignores me when we are at the club – I’m nothing but an adornment to him. But Maggie …

  Maggie was always so pathetically pleased to see her. Her face was drawn and grey all the time now, the circles and hollows so pronounced they made Tara shrink inwardly just to look at them, and the lines of pain were clearly defined around her mouth. But when Tara came around the door her eyes always brightened, tiny twin orbs that no amount of suffering could extinguish. Tara did not stay long, she dared not if Red was not to become suspicious.

  They never talked now of Maggie’s illness or the fact that she was failing fast, but when Tara left Jack always walked to the end of the road with her so that he could tell her how the day had been.

  ‘It’s been terrible today,’ he said one night. ‘Maggie won’t give in – and she won’t let on to you how bad it is, either. But I don’t think Mac’s stuff is working properly any more.’

  Tara went cold. She had forced herself to come to terms with the fact that she was going to lose Maggie, but she could not face the thought of her suffering.

  ‘Oh Jack, what can we do?’ she groaned. ‘Isn’t there something stronger he can give her?’

  ‘If she has anything stronger it will hasten her death.’

  Tara’s eyes filled with tears. ‘God knows I don’t want that, but I don’t want her suffering either. She must have whatever it takes, Jack.’

  He nodded, a big man bewildered by the situation he found himself in – and by his own emotions.

  ‘Yes. I just didn’t feel it was my place to say so, Tara. After all I’ve only known her a matter of months while you …’

  ‘Jack!’ Tara caught his hands, looking up into his rugged, agonized face. ‘You have every right. You have been marvellous – not many would have done what you have done for their own wife. And you’ve made her happy in her last weeks. That’s worth a great deal too.’

  He bowed his head. ‘ I suppose I love her.’

  ‘You do.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, rough and unshaven. ‘ I’ll come again as soon as I can, Jack.’

  The next time was three days later and Maggie was worse. She lay seemingly not even aware that Tara had come, sunk into a world of pain and drugs. Tara sat beside her bed holding her hand, thin, veined, with traces of scarlet nail varnish still growing off the tips of her fingernails from the last time she had felt like prettying herself up.

  ‘Next time I come I’ll bring some stuff to get that red off your nails.’ Tara told her friend and Maggie seemed to rouse a little.

  ‘Still determined to make a beauty of me, eh, Tara? It will be an uphill task now!’

  ‘That’s rubbish and you know it. You’re as lovely as you ever were,’ Tara lied. ‘I’m going now but I’ll see you soon. Right?’

  ‘Right.’ And Maggie drifted off again.

  Tara’s eyes were full of tears as she left the apartment. Dimly she was aware of Jack following her down the stairs and out into the street.

  ‘I don’t think it will be long now,’ he said when they reached the street.

  She shook her head, looking at him through blurred eyes.

  ‘I don’t think it will. Oh Jack, I’ll miss her so!’

  He shuffled awkwardly. ‘How would I let you know, Tara, if …’

  ‘Ring me. The minute anything happens.’

  ‘But I thought …’

  ‘It won’t matter any more then, will it? He can’t prevent me coming to see her when she’s … And I have to know. I couldn’t bear it if I thought something had happened and I didn’t know.’

  ‘All right. I won’t stay talking tonight. I don’t want to leave her.’

  ‘No, you get back, Jack.’

  She pressed his hand and turned to walk away up the steep valley.

  There was a car parked opposite the apartment but she was too upset even to wonder what it was doing there. Cars, people – what did they matter when Maggie lay in that miserable room dying? She walked on, head low.

  And suddenly the quiet of the night erupted. Gunfire, sharp and cracking, seeming to go on forever. Roosting birds rising, flapping into the reverberating air. The roar of a revving engine, a car speeding past her, screaming around the corner on two wheels …

  Shocked, bewildered, she swung round.

  And then she saw him lying crumpled halfway up the stone steps.

  ‘Jack!’ she screamed.

  Her trembling legs carried her back down the alley, then she drew up short, cold through and through as she looked down at him.

  He was clutching his chest, his eyes, wide and surprised, staring back at her. Blood was pumping between his fingers. Then as she watched his body convulsed violently, his legs threshing out, head jerking back. And he was still.

  ‘Jack – for God’s sake …! What …? Why …?’

  But she knew. Even in that shocked moment when her body, cold and trembling violently, refused to obey her, even as her conscious mind ran in wild frightened circles, deep within she knew.

  This was Red’s doing. He had threatened her once that he would kill any man she tangled with. Now Jack was dead, gunned down by Red’s hired killers. Not for anything he had done but because of Red’s insane jealousy. She must have been seen with Jack. Red had had her followed and he had jumped to the wrong conclusion. And Jack, innocent of any crime but that of loving Maggie, had paid the price.

  ‘Oh my God, my God!�
�� she whispered, twisting this way and that, hands pressed to her mouth. What to do? What to do? Jack was beyond help. Any moment people would come – the police – and …

  Maggie. She must go to Maggie.

  She ran past the sprawled body, up the stairs, into the apartment. Maggie lay as she had left her, inert, sunk once more into coma. She had heard nothing. Well, thank God for that at least.

  Tara’s trembling legs would support her no longer. She sank down beside the bed, fumbling for her rosary. Maggie’s hand lay on the sheet. Tara took it and began to gabble the words that from her childhood had been comfort, refuge, salvation.

  ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee …’

  When the police came blundering into the apartment she was still there. They stopped in the doorway, shocked by the scene before them.

  ‘Oh Christ – what …’

  Tara got up slowly, stiffly.

  ‘It’s all right. She’s dead.’

  ‘Sorry, Miss, there’s been a shooting …’

  ‘I know,’ she said. Her voice was steady with conviction and with the determination which had grown during the last long minutes when she had sat here beside Maggie and known what it was she had to do. ‘I know all about it and I can tell you who was responsible. I can tell you everything.’

  When it was all over she knew she had to run. Throughout the trial they had afforded her ‘protection’ – keeping her at a ‘safe’ address with a police guard twenty-four hours a day. But they could not protect her forever.

  At night lying sleepless in her bed Tara lived and relived the scene in the court room on the last day of the trial and trembled.

  The trial had lasted for two weeks. Each day she had gone to the court because afraid though she was she could not stay away – she had to keep this last vigil for Maggie.

  She had thought that giving her evidence would be the worst part. She was wrong. That was relatively easy – a little like being on stage. Even answering the fierce and searching cross examination by Red’s counsel had not caused her any great distress. Trying to read the meaning behind his sharply phrased questions and staying one move ahead of him became a game and his inferences as to her morals and lifestyle failed to worry or embarrass Tara. No, it was afterwards when she took her place in the court room to listen to the remainder of the trial that the torment began.