Monday
Ken has been staying—well, not staying exactly, just throwing me on the bed at every opportunity and then falling asleep afterwards like a child. He comes to see me whenever he can fit me in between traipsing back and forth to munitions factories, then heading back to barracks. Since the Jap submarine attack last month we are truly at war—rumour has it that the subs were carrying bombs aimed at the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Just imagine—those massive concrete pylons bombed, falling into the harbour. I remember the first time Ros and I went on a ferry underneath it as children, not long after it opened, how looming and immense it looked. Our necks were bent right back, we glided under its monstrous weight, open-mouthed. The Sydney Harbour Bridge falling down—it would be like the sky falling!
All the time I wonder if those midget submarines are prowling beneath the surface of the ocean, dark and fast as a shark. How do they see down there on the bottom, where everything is cold and fleet?
Ken said this morning that maybe one or two subs might get through but the Japanese couldn’t send the entire navy to mount an attack.
‘It’s too far,’ he said, ‘and they’d use their whole navy. Don’t worry, Kathy, no slanty-eyed bloke is going to climb in the window. Anyway, if one does, the Australian army is personally here to protect you.’
And then he tickled me so hard I thought my stomach would burst from laughing. ‘Oh, stop, please!’ I pleaded, again and again. He finally relented and kissed me instead—he didn’t have a French letter but we decided to risk it. We’ve been doing that a lot lately, and I have never missed a period—Ken knows how to calculate the right days—I am always on time and there are plenty of ‘safe’ days. I would do it EVERY day if I could—I love ripping off my clothes and lying length to length, toe to toe. I love sinking into him, the wet pulse at my centre, the curling dance of our tongues. I am transfixed by the sensation of him inside me, the bloom of him slipping sweet and hard. His skin is always so deliciously warm—he seems to have a body temperature at least ten degrees higher than anybody else. Sleeping with him is like sleeping with a furnace—I am forever flinging the bedclothes off, even though it is the middle of winter. He is lit by life, that’s my theory anyway—a boy aflame!
I am going to meet his parents this week—I’ve already met his sister, Gloria, whom I didn’t like very much I’m afraid. She’s the superior sort, hardly says a word but still manages to convey the impression that she finds you wanting. She is what Atpay would call a ‘type’—or what Mum would call a ‘little miss’—anyway, the sort who always turns me into a blabbering fool—I rush to fill up the silences instead of staying silent and composed like her. She’s very beautiful (looks a lot like Ken) and does some modelling work and a bit of typing and lives at home with her parents. Anyway, we’re going to dinner there on June 8—we’re going to stay the night since it’s hard getting around at night now, and besides, Ken has to be at a factory out that way early the next morning. BUT we won’t be sleeping in the same bed, he says—his mother will make up the spare bed in Gloria’s room and Ken will stay in his old room. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, the floorboards won’t creak when you sneak down the hall,’ Ken said. ‘How do you know?’ I said. He just smiled and tapped the side of his nose.
June 9 I’VE BEEN BOMBED!!!!!
Writing this down straightaway, before I forget anything! Have just rushed in—it’s two o’clock in the afternoon and I’ve been trying to get home to write this for hours!! I’VE BEEN BOMBED!!!! TRUE!!!!
Here’s everything, from scratch. 4.30 pm yesterday afternoon—Ken arrives to take me to his parents before it gets too dark. Quickly make love before we go (hair mussed up, lipstick awry, worry all the way on the bus that his parents will be able to tell straightaway that we have just done it).
Very nervous about meeting them—but you know how within seconds of meeting someone you know whether everything is going to be okay or not—well, within seconds I knew everything was going to be fine. His mother, Betty, has a kind face—she’s surprisingly plump and pretty looking—rosy cheeks and dark hair all fluffed out around her head—not what I expected at all. She seemed too young to be Ken’s mum, and kind of the wrong shape and look altogether—I was expecting an older version of Ken and his sister Gloria. (They both look like their dad.) Anyway, Ken’s mum was practically flirting with Ken, her own son, laughing at his jokes and being all coy and girly. I couldn’t believe it! She acts like she thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread, but it obviously gets on Gloria’s goat—as it would on mine if I was his sister. (I’VE BEEN BOMBED!! I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE IT!!!)
Anyway—God, I have to write all of this down so I remember everything EXACTLY. Well, Ken’s dad was a surprise too—sort of weak and wishy-washy, stoop-shouldered—the opposite to his son in every way, who is all big-chested confidence and self-possession. His dad, Ernest, kind of sat there and disappeared into the background, hardly contributing anything to the conversation, just smoking cigarette after cigarette and drinking endless bottles of beer. He looks like Ken and Gloria though, which seems to be about the only thing they have in common—except he is a washed-out version of them, insipid, like a photographic negative of a gloriously coloured photo.
Well, for dinner we had a roasted rabbit with all the trimmings, and beer for all of us, which left me feeling quite tipsy. Talked mostly about Ken’s work in the munitions factories and his plans for after the war (he wants to go to Europe to study). ‘All my life I’ve wanted to see Paris,’ said Mrs Howard. And Mr Howard made the only funny remark of the night: ‘The question is, does bloody Paris want to see you?’ I laughed but Mrs Howard looked offended and I lowered my eyes—Ken kicked me under the table. After that Mr Howard didn’t say another thing all night!
After dinner we sat around the piano, which Gloria played, and Ken and I and Mrs Howard sang. Ken’s got quite a good voice, and I love singing, even though I’m not very good. I love the way it makes you feel like you have just run up a good hill, all that air and energy and rush. I sang my tuneless heart out and even Gloria smiled at me. When she started playing ‘Abide With Me’ all the others packed it in, but I love hymns too, so we did ‘Rock of Ages’ and lots of others till Gloria said she’d had enough. It made me quite like her—that, and the fact that I could imagine how she felt having a mother who so clearly preferred her brother to her.
Anyway, the kitchen for a cup of tea before bed, listening to the radio for the latest war news (the boy from the flat next door, who Gloria and Ken grew up with, has just been killed in Singapore), and then bed. Gloria and I went to the bathroom to wash our faces and change into our nightgowns, then I gave Ken a chaste kiss goodnight and he whispered, ‘See you later, beautiful.’
No late-night confessions from Gloria just a curt ‘Goodnight, Kathy’, lights out, and before long some breathing that suggested she was asleep. (Although on those occasions when I’ve feigned being asleep, for one reason or another I can never work out how to breathe properly, having never had the chance to monitor my own breath when I am asleep!) How long was I supposed to wait? Minutes? Hours? I lay in bed trying to work out if it was safe to creep down to Ken’s room, but when Gloria started snoring (politely, femininely) I took my chance.
Now—here comes the BOMB!! What happened was that I crept out of bed as quietly as I could and opened the door—which creaked like a door in a horror movie. Bloody hell, I thought, poised on the threshold, waiting for Mrs Howard to rush up the corridor. When no one came I left the door ajar and made my way along the walls in the dark, praying that I would feel the doorway soon. Ken was right though—the floorboards didn’t creak.
Luckily Ken’s door didn’t creak either as I opened it and he was waiting for me in the dark. He had my nightdress up over my bottom and his hands on the curve of my naked buttocks within moments. I straddled him, my hair brushing his face, the smooth cups of his palms resting gently on each curved globe of flesh. ‘A perfect fit,’ he said, breathing into my mouth. He slid into me and just at that EXACT MOMENT there was this god-almighty crash and the wall above the bed fell down and this shell came through the wall and skidded right across the floor, right through the wall of his parents’ bedroom, right through another two internal walls before coming to rest – unexploded!!!—on the communal stairs. A Japanese shell!! IN ROSE BAY, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA!!! We didn’t know what was happening—for one wild frantic moment I thought my father had come to smash down the door—Ken and I were covered in broken bricks and dust but we were in one piece, not a scratch, standing there in our nightclothes, speechless. I can’t remember getting up from the bed, walking to the door—I remember everyone standing in the corridor, me suddenly crying, wondering if I had been smote by God, Ken telling me to shut up, me crying harder because he had never ever spoken cruelly to me before, his mother coming up and clinging on to him, shrieking hysterically, his father limping because his foot had somehow been crushed by falling debris. Gloria was there too and then all the air-raid wardens from the area, trying to work out how to move the shell so it wouldn’t explode. And Ken shouting at me, ‘It’s not a bloody bomb, for God’s sake! Everybody calm down, bombs fall through roofs, they don’t come through walls!’
But I was terrified another one was coming and I didn’t know where to go—did the flats have an air-raid shelter? Where was it? It was after midnight but everyone in the block of flats was up, gibbering, crying, wringing their hands. Then we were all herded off to a shelter somewhere, but I had recovered my wits enough by then to watch the air-raid wardens carrying the unexploded shell out, down the stairs, cradling it tenderly. I wanted to go somewhere, hide in the earth, cover myself with the safest dirt. We were all being told to keep calm, to follow instructions, not to panic. ‘A bomb!’ people kept repeating and air-raid wardens kept saying, ‘There is no bomb! Keep calm!’ and the children were crying, along with their mothers, every one of us wishing to live, wishing to evade extinction. By then I was angry with Ken—how was I to know it wasn’t a bomb? How am I supposed to know the difference between a bomb and a shell? He was being the Big Leader, explaining to everyone in the shelter that it was probably a shell from the Japanese subs that have been around; we would have to wait to learn whether there was any serious damage. Then of course everyone was convinced that when the sun came up we would find Sydney in ruins, the Bridge gone, the Town Hall smashed. How many submarines were there? How many shells? We passed the hours scaring ourselves out of our wits, but then morning came, and as the hours passed, good news—no one killed, perhaps half-a-dozen shells at the most, only one exploded.
I’ve only just got back here now, the newspaper confirming all this under my arm, Ken gone off in a huff after I refused to kiss him goodbye.
And of course Mr and Mrs Howard could not have cared whether their favoured son was entertaining twenty prostitutes in his bed! They wouldn’t have known which door I came out from in all the chaos, and frankly I don’t think they would have cared if I was dead or alive. Mr Howard’s gone off to hospital to have his foot dealt with, and right at this moment I don’t care whether I see Ken Howard ever again. I just remembered something else he said: ‘Stop being a drama queen, Kathy! Hose it down for God’s sake, you’re hysterical!’ All my life people have been telling me to hose it down—you’re too dramatic! Too stuck-up! Too pretty, too sensitive! Well, now I know what people mean—I’m too much myself. Ken wants me to be someone else, someone I’m not.
I’ve been bombed, Ken Howard. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Wednesday
Mum is putting the weights on Ros and me to come home. ‘I can’t sleep at night for worry,’ she said but then Dad got on the phone. ‘The bloody Japs couldn’t hit a target if you paid them, Kath. You’re as safe as houses—your mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’ Ros has just been here for dinner and both of us want to stay in Sydney—she’s seeing some fellow who’s on the same course as her, but the main reason she wants to stay is university. She tried explaining to me St Thomas Aquinas and his arguments for the existence of God, but it struck my head like complicated maths and I soon tuned out. She’s always been good at maths, Ros—as well as everything else—and now she has this new sophisticated glow about her, as if she could tell the world a few things. She says she is never going to get married.
She already knows all about Ken but when I told her about the bomb and being in his bed, the first thing she said was: ‘I hope you’re using reliable contraception, Kath. You do know about diaphragms, don’t you? I can give you my doctor’s name if you like.’
She has tried to press this once before, when I told her about losing my virginity. There is nothing starry-eyed about my sister—I want to talk about love and roses and all she wants to talk about is sperms meeting eggs.
Speaking of which … I think that is Ken at the door.
Should I let him in?