When Betty asked where they were going, Shorty said it was a surprise, but told her to wear her best dress. She put on a long silk frock, which she had brought to Vietnam in case she had to attend a function at the officers’ mess, which she’d imagined might be housed in a French colonial hotel, rather than a sandbagged hut. Her low neckline showed the rise of her breasts, which were paler than her arms.
Shorty was wearing his new suit. He felt it had absorbed clouds of cumin, and he worried people could tell the jacket was freshly cut, and there might still be threads hanging off the back. His perspiration would make his shirt smell, and the sweat would soak through to the jacket. He wished he hadn’t put on his suit, or even bought it.
Nashville had arranged Betty’s passage with the duty sergeant, but by agreement with the US Army, she wouldn’t leave the base until their transport arrived. Shorty waited with his hands in his pants pockets. Betty, who felt Shorty looked adorable in his suit, took out a cigarette.
‘When did you start that?’ Shorty asked.
‘I only smoke socially,’ she said, waiting for the guard to offer his Zippo.
Shorty kept a lookout for the jeep, but the only vehicle on the road was the US captain’s staff car. It drove right up to the gate. The guard saluted and raised the boom for the Captain, but Nashville stepped out, wearing officers’ whites, a cap, and a pistol in his belt.
Shorty was astonished.
Nashville saluted the guard and opened the back door of the Cadillac, took Betty’s hand and led her into the car. The driver was Simpson from Simpson, who was also in whites.
‘Where the fuck did you get all this from?’ Shorty whispered to Nashville.
‘Simpson had the Caddy washed,’ said Nashville, ‘and it happened to have the Captain’s uniforms in the back.
‘Also,’ said Nashville, ‘you said “where the fuck”.’
Betty and Shorty sat together in the back seat of the car, as if they were riding in a limousine, although Shorty had never been in a limousine. Betty’s dress rode up her thighs. Shorty lingered his hand on her knee.
‘You smell lovely,’ said Shorty.
She was wearing perfume from the American PX. Shorty wondered who had bought it for her.
They drove along the esplanade, watching old people miming tai chi forms by the water in the dusk. A cluster of women waltzed with the ghosts of men lost in the French war, while a ballroom-dancing teacher barked commands.
The Cadillac parked outside Le Boudin, as if every vehicle with Nashville inside had to stop there. Nashville got out, and opened Betty’s door.
Shorty realised Nashville was playing a joke, but this one wasn’t funny. How was Shorty going to explain to Betty why all the girls knew his name? They would take hold of his hands, rub his shoulders, wriggle onto his knee. Baby Marie would offer him boom-boom, as if they’d done it before.
He refused to get out of the car.
‘Trust me,’ hissed Nashville.
There was a puddle outside the entrance to Le Boudin. Nashville laid an army blanket over it, so Betty could cross.
Shorty knew he was defeated.
The gramophone in Le Boudin played ‘Les Sucettes’, which made Moreau chuckle. A huddle of diggers took no notice of anyone who wasn’t from their unit, who didn’t know what they had lost.
Tâm said good evening to Nashville, and waited to be introduced to Betty and Shorty. She was wearing a long black dress, which made Nashville want to tear it off. Moreau bowed to Betty.
‘Mademoiselle,’ he said, ‘enchanté.’
He kissed her hand, like a Frenchman in a movie.
Tâm led them to a stairwell behind the bar, and began climbing the stairs to Moreau’s apartment, where he lived with a woman no soldier had seen. There were no pictures of her in the dining room, although there was a framed photograph of two smiling children who could’ve been light Moroccan or dark Chinese. It sat inside a gold frame on a timber bookshelf, among the novels of Paul Féval, Gaston Leroux and Georges Simenon, all bound in leather. Below the ledge was a writing desk.
An oak table was covered with a stiff white cloth, and set with silverware. In the centre of the table was a candle in a wine bottle and a paper rose.
Nashville showed Betty and Shorty to their chairs.
‘Good evening,’ said Nashville, ‘lady and gentleman. On tonight’s menu, we have for entrée – as they say in la France – French onion soup. For main course – as they say in Troy, Tennessee – we have a choice of steak au poivre, or sole meunière made with locally caught flatfish.’
Shorty couldn’t speak.
‘The fish for me, please,’ said Betty, ‘and Shorty’ll have the steak.’
‘Of course, mademoiselle,’ said Nashville. ‘And would you like red or white wine?’
‘White, please,’ said Betty. ‘No, red.’
‘One of each?’ suggested Nashville.
Betty was uncertain.
‘It’s on the house,’ said Nashville.
‘But what if we don’t drink it all?’ asked Betty.
‘It won’t go to waste,’ said Nashville.
Shorty wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to know Nashville, or pretend he was a waiter. Nashville spread napkins on their laps, poured two glasses of water then left them alone. There were bubbles in the water. Shorty wondered if it was champagne.
Betty beamed at Shorty.
‘Is that your partner?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Shorty.
Then Nashville asked if he’d like to start with a beer, ‘as they say in Bendigo, Victoria’.
Betty blew a kiss across the table at Shorty.
‘Thank you, Sean,’ she said.
‘Enchanté,’ said Shorty. He thought it might mean ‘you’re welcome’.
The wine was brought to the table by Simpson from Simpson. He opened the white, poured a quarter of an inch into a glass and offered it to Shorty. It seemed a very small serving.
Shorty picked up the glass, threw back his head and downed the wine in a shot, as he had seen Moreau drink brandy. Simpson just stood there, as if waiting meant waiting around.
Eventually, Shorty took the bottle out of Simpson’s hands, and poured a glass for Betty. He gave her only a splash, as that seemed to be the thing to do in a French restaurant.
Simpson planted the white wine in a bucket of ice, and left the red standing on the table. It seemed to Shorty that Nashville had thought of everything except training Simpson to behave like a proper wine waiter. But Shorty didn’t want to embarrass Simpson, so he waited until he’d left the room before he put the red wine on ice too.
Tâm brought him his beer, in a glass. Shorty had never seen a beer glass in Le Boudin, or anywhere else in Vung Tau.
‘Is everything très bien?’ she asked Betty.
‘Oui, merci,’ said Betty.
Tâm took the red wine out of the ice bucket.
‘Je suis desolée,’ she said. ‘Simpson is an idiot.’
Shorty was careful not to watch her as she left.
Betty told Shorty about her work at the hospital, how it made her happy and broke her heart. The other nurses were wonderful to work with, and they were from all over Australia. She’d learned so much from them, and not just about medicine.
She couldn’t explain to Shorty, but she was thrilled by the physicality of fresh wounds, the sensuousness of damaged flesh. She had revelled in the act of repair. She felt it was perfect that a needle and thread could be used to mend broken skin as easily as to fix a button on a blouse, and marvellous that sewing was women’s work. But she’d cried quietly for Tommy Callaghan, because she recognised there were limits to the tasks her hands could perform.
Betty’s world had been so small before, she said, but now it was big enough to fit in everything. In Vietnam, she was learning who she really was, or perhaps who she could be. She felt she was a fireball of potential, she said, using words Dr Clarke had given her, one slow afternoon in the ward. She was determined not to let any of it go to waste.
She liked everyone in the hospital except Anderson the orderly, who was a pig of a man. Dr Clarke, she said, was a saint.
Shorty liked her description. A saint wasn’t the kind of man you messed around with. Saints weren’t interested in women. Except Roger Moore, and he wasn’t even real.
When the French onion soup arrived, steaming in a deep bowl, Shorty was surprised to find the bread already dunked in the broth. He generally preferred to do this himself. He hoped the soup wouldn’t be too oniony for Betty.
‘It’s delicious,’ she told Shorty, and he poured her another thimble of wine.
Betty’s fish was ‘beautiful’, she said.
Shorty felt he had eaten rashers of bacon in Australia that were thicker than his steak in Vietnam – yet Moreau’s chef had still managed to undercook it. Shorty was also disappointed in the pepper sauce, which wasn’t a real sauce from the bottle but some kind of gravy. The matchstick chips disappointed him, too. Shorty thought the French had a bit to learn from the Aussies about cooking fries.
But Betty said her potatoes dauphinoise were ‘wonderful’. She told Shorty they should take their R&C together in Saigon. It was known as ‘the Paris of the east’, said Betty, and she just adored French food.
‘We could get a hotel room,’ she said.
Shorty thought she meant two hotel rooms.
‘Together,’ she said.
‘There’s no need for that,’ he said.
Shorty realised it would save money, but expected they would be able to find somewhere reasonable if they looked hard enough.
‘I want to,’ she said. She slid her knee between his legs.
Shorty blushed and laughed. ‘That’s not what this is about,’ he said, gesturing at Moreau’s room.
‘I want to show you how much I love you,’ said Betty. ‘Shorty, every day I see boys dying’ – actually, she had only seen Tommy Callaghan – ‘before they’ve had a chance to live.’ She looked at Shorty gorgeously.
‘We’re not really in any danger in Vung Tau,’ he said.
Betty began to feel slightly irritated. ‘What I’m saying,’ she said, ‘is I don’t think we should wait. There’s no need. We’re both grown-ups, we’re in the army, and everyone around us is doing it.’
‘Are they?’ asked Shorty.
‘Well,’ said Betty, ‘some of the other nurses are.’
‘That’s pretty fast,’ said Shorty.
‘That’s what I’m saying,’ said Betty. ‘Everyone’s making the most of life.’
Nashville returned to offer desserts. The choice was crème brûlée or chocolate gâteau. Shorty thought the word ‘gâteau’ meant castle.
Nashville winked at Shorty over Betty’s shoulder. He also poured them full glasses of wine. That must be allowed after the mains are finished, thought Shorty. It’s so you don’t fill up on alcohol.
‘It’ll be lovely,’ said Betty. Her tongue touched her top lip.
‘But we always said . . .’ said Shorty.
Betty didn’t want to tell him what she’d learned: that the human body was just a breathing, eating, bleeding machine. It wasn’t sacred. It had been defiled. It was meat, that was all, and one day it would be dead meat, and the real glaring, blaring, screaming, gigantically obvious wrong thing wasn’t using your body for love or sex, it was men organising themselves to kill each other, and calling it war so it didn’t look like crime.
‘You don’t think it would spoil things?’ asked Shorty.
‘I think it will make them even better,’ said Betty.
After dessert, which Betty called ‘divine’, Simpson from Simpson brought the cheese board, with a knife that looked as if it were made to gouge the eyes out of birds.
Shorty didn’t much like strong cheeses, but Betty already seemed used to them.
‘In the corner of my room, there’s a spider as big as my hand,’ said Betty.
Shorty braced, as if he were about to leave the restaurant, run back to ALSG and chase it away.
Betty waved him down. ‘A year ago,’ she said, ‘I would’ve run off to ask the nearest man to bat it with a broomstick or catch it in a bucket. Now, I just lie in bed and watch it, as if it were a pattern on the wall.’
Shorty nodded, vaguely grateful.
‘I’m not scared of things any more,’ said Betty.
Tâm opened the red wine. Shorty checked his watch, but they still had an hour before curfew.
‘This has been the most wonderful meal of my life,’ said Betty.
Shorty suspected she had liked it because she had wanted to enjoy it. Anyone could tell the flavours were a bit much.
They had only drunk a glass each of the merlot when Tâm gave them cognac. On top of beer and wine, the brandy sent Shorty’s head spinning.
‘Monsieur et mademoiselle,’ said Nashville, ‘was everything to your satisfaction?’
‘It was perfect,’ said Betty.
‘If you’re all finished,’ said Nashville, ‘your car is ready to take you home. The slow route.’
On the way back through the bar, Betty kissed Moreau and Shorty shook his hand. Shorty kissed Tâm’s hand while Nashville brushed up against her ass.
Once Betty and Shorty were settled in to the Cadillac, Nashville drew a curtain to separate the back seats from the front. He pushed a tape into the eight-track, and the car set off in the opposite direction to ALSG.
Betty immediately kissed Shorty on the lips. He ran his hand over her breast in her dress. She took hold of it, and pushed it inside her bra. Shorty felt her nipple. Betty did not reach for Shorty, the way she did at the movies. Instead, she guided him to feel her.
She was wearing no underpants.
‘They spoil the line of the dress,’ she said.
Shorty wondered who had told her that.
Oh my God, thought Shorty, she wants to do it now, with Nashville in the car.
He kissed her and kissed her but whispered, ‘Not here.’
Betty became more insistent, with her hands and with her legs.
‘We should wait,’ said Shorty.
Betty slid her tongue into his ear.
Shorty didn’t push her away, but he kept a small but safe distance between the two of them until Betty let him do something he had never done before, and his finger sank inside her.
‘Another,’ she whispered.
He didn’t know what she meant, so she showed him.
‘Oh God,’ he said, imagining what she wanted him to imagine.
‘Ow,’ she said.
When he took out his fingers, there was blood. He wondered if this was her period.
‘There,’ she said. ‘It’s done. Now it doesn’t matter.’
She kissed him again on the lips, and loved him with her hand.
Simpson from Simpson circled the town until a moment before curfew, then delivered the couple back to ALSG. They were holding hands, but looking away from one another when Nashville opened the car door.
‘I trust you had a pleasant journey,’ he said.
Betty kissed Nashville on the cheek. ‘You’re a wonderful man,’ she told him.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Nashville.
Betty kissed Shorty in front of the guard. ‘Thank you for a lovely evening,’ she said to him.
There was blood under Shorty’s fingernails. He hid them in his pocket.
At the Grand Hotel, TJ Caution left five dollars in a glass beside a bed and walked down wooden stairs to the bar, where he bought his first bourbon.
He was still drinking twenty-two hours later, preparing himself for the murder to come.