CHAPTER 9

HER CAR TURNED out to be a stately Bentley, old but highly polished, maroon with black trim. It was parked in the hotel garage.

“Our house is too big for just mother and me,” she said after they had gotten into the front seats, “so we decided to close it up for the duration. I still use the library and the tennis courts. Do you play tennis?”

“Not much.”

Somehow he had never thought of Australians as rich people. Wealthy women had always intimidated him, maybe because those he had known had been so willful. She drove through city streets to a highway which wound up a hill.

“What do you do when you’re not running ships and reading history?”

“For the last three years, nothing much. My hobby used to be sailing.”

“Mine too. We have marvelous sailing here. Our boat is laid up for the duration, but I can always borrow a dinghy. I wish you were going to be here longer.”

He was beginning to lose his hopes for getting her into bed. Somehow she seemed almost too classy for screwing, which he guessed was his problem, not hers.

“I wish I had met you sooner,” he said. “I’ve just spent three weeks with not much to show for it.”

“You must have had a lot of time to write letters home to your wife.” She looked closely at him.

So she too had seen his wedding ring, and of course he had seen hers—its diamond kept flashing like a neon light.

“Are you by chance making judgments?” he asked.

“I wish I still could do that. The war makes it difficult.”

“That’s honest.”

“You sound a little surprised,” she said.

“Maybe I am. Somehow I mostly feel like I’m playing parts instead of myself.”

“I try not to do that anymore. I did for a long time.”

“When I first put on this uniform it seemed like something for a part in a play with a complicated script. It’s hard to learn the captain’s part, even though I’ve already been at it for several years. Maybe someday I’ll get it right.”

“In the service I guess everybody has to play a sort of role.”

“I don’t think the other officers on my ship are trying to be anyone but themselves. Sometimes I wish they would. Hell, I have trouble even when I’m ashore. I keep wanting to be Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart. With you I was Ronald Coleman. Couldn’t you tell?”

“I guessed it was something like that,” she said with a smile. “So what’s this real self you’re apparently trying to hide.”

“The last one I remember was a college boy and of course I can’t be that anymore. I’ve played one part or another so long that I have the terrible feeling that if I took off the costume and the makeup there might be nothing but air underneath.”

“I think that’s called being young,” she said. “Just how old are you?”

“Twenty-four. I keep having to apologize for that.”

“And I sometimes feel I should apologize for being as old as I am. Women are supposed to stay in their twenties forever. You’re young but you’re old enough to quit playing a part, especially when you’re ashore. The empty uniform, the costume full of air. It’s not entirely an original idea, but you seem to have taken it a step farther than most. You can drop the act with me, Yank.” She smiled when she said it.

“Here we are,” she said after a few minutes of silence, and turned into a gravel driveway which led through spacious lawns to a big house with white pillars which gleamed in her headlights. “Now don’t tell me it reminds you of ‘Gone With The Wind.’ That’s what all the Yanks say.”

“It reminds me of ‘Gone With The Wind.’” A small challenge.

“Well, it’s not gone yet but it’s going fast. A lot of winds are starting to blow in Australia. I’d say we’ve been becalmed too long.”

“You’re not exactly a tinhorn patriot, are you?”

“I even hate this country, until I get to America or Europe. Then I love it.”

She left the car under an old-fashioned porte cochere, then fumbled in her black leather bag for a key, opened a heavy front door and flicked on a light in a foyer as large as a living room but the furniture was covered by sheets, giving it a spectral air. Picking up a telephone on a wall box, she turned a crank and said, “Henry? It’s me. I’ll be in the library for a while. Everything’s all right.”

Hanging up the receiver, she said, “Henry’s the caretaker. Once I forgot to tell him I was here and he called the police.”

He followed her through bigger and bigger rooms, the furniture all shrouded with sheets, except for the library. It was a large high-ceilinged room, the walls filled with books except for the space occupied by five large family portraits. One of these was of a doughty old admiral with white sideburns and the other was of a dashing young commander, both in dress blues with medals and swords.

“Your father and husband?” he asked.

“No, my grandfather and father when he was young. Since we’ve been married, Pete hasn’t been around here long enough to get hung.”

In a small brick fireplace, paper and logs waited on polished brass andirons. Taking a match from her purse, she lit them. It was not cold but the room was damp enough to make the flames feel good. Touching a revolving section of bookshelves on the opposite side of the room, she revealed a bar with a small sink and refrigerator.

“You sure have a classy place here,” he said.

“Humphrey Bogart! Stop it! What do you want to drink?”

“A splash of Scotch on the rocks, with soda.”

He sat down on a leather couch.

Striding toward him, she astonished him by suddenly tickling him under his arms and all over his chest, pushing him down on his back.

“Hey, stop it, cut it out, I hate to be tickled—”

“Is that the voice of the turtle coming out of his shell at last?”

“You’re damn right.”

“Now I’ll get you your drink. If I catch you acting again, you know what to expect.”

She handed him his drink. “You remind me quite a lot of Edward.”

“Edward?”

“My first husband. He was killed just about a month after this war started.”

“I’m sorry …”

She sat beside him on the couch.

“We all are, except maybe Edward. He had strong feelings about reincarnation. He wanted to come back as a dolphin. Who knows, maybe he did. Look, we better get down to the boring business before we start drinking and talking and so forth. What books do you want?”

“These are all too beautifully bound—”

“Only the classics and the law books. There’s plenty of current stuff on the bottom shelves. Look, if you’re not in the mood I’ll make a proper selection for a ship’s library tomorrow before I go to Sydney. Henry can pack them and bring them down to your ship.”

“I’d be grateful. All our men—”

“Where is your ship berthed and what’s her name?”

“Thompson’s yard, the Y-18.”

“Your books will be there tomorrow afternoon. I hate it when ships just have numbers, don’t you? It makes them sound like prisoners.”

“Our men call her the Lucky Eighteen. She survived a hit by a Jap plane.”

“A gas tanker? I’d say she is lucky. Were you aboard?”

“I’m replacing the skipper who was killed and his replacement. He got smart and got himself transferred.”

“No wonder you feel you have to put on an act all the time. You must be terrified.”

“Maybe it’s just that simple.”

“People usually play parts for the same reason they tell other kinds of lies, because they feel the truth wouldn’t be good enough. Edward played the part of the carefree, devil-may-care young pilot, but he’d been afraid to fly even in civilian life. He took pilot training just because he thought this war had to be won in the air.”

“A brave guy—”

“By definition, all brave men have to be actors, don’t they?”

“I don’t know. Maybe some really aren’t afraid of dying.”

“Or want to die. But of course they have to lie about that … Anyway, I cannot imagine you wanting to … I’d say you were chock full of life. So was your little friend … oh, sorry … didn’t mean to sound snotty. Truth is, I was feeling pretty low when I saw you two last month. You made me remember that life isn’t always so bad … I like you. You’re no stuffed shirt or an empty one. And I must say that your shoulders don’t look as though they’re all padding.”

She was drinking her Scotch fast, he noticed, and she poured herself another before he had half-emptied his glass.

“It’s not true that you’re nothing but air underneath,” she added, her face flushing. “I think I know a man when I see one.”

Leaning toward her, he kissed her. Her hands went to his back and dug into his shoulders, but she soon pulled back.

“This is what you want from me, isn’t it? This is why you came to my table?”

“Do you want me to start acting again?”

“I think you’re shocked that I’m not. I’ve been alone a long time too.”

He kissed her again, or she kissed him—he wasn’t sure who started first, but they quickly got together on it.

“Take your clothes off,” she said, stepping back. “I feel more than air in that uniform.”

“Here?”

“There’s a good bed in the next room, but I love to shock all the people in those family pictures. That’s perverse of me, isn’t it?”

Instead of undressing herself, she unbuttoned his shirt and unbuckled his belt, kneeling to help him out of his pants.

“You too,” he said, feeling embarrassed.

“After I undress you, you can have a go at me. That’s the way I like it.”

She was, of course, a little crazy, but he wished more women were capable of her kind of craziness. She said she had not known a man for almost a year and he soon believed her. The discovery that at least some women found wartime celibacy as tortuous as men did surprise him. He thought briefly of Sally, could not imagine her so hungry. This was no time to think of her.

He and Teddy never did get to the bedroom. The leather couch and the floor were enough, and she seemed to take continuing delight in performing before the disapproving faces of her ancestors.

When they were both exhausted, she mixed fresh drinks and quickly dressed.

“I’m sorry, but I have to be getting back,” she said. “Mother’s nurse goes off at midnight and I have to be there.”

“I’d like to see you again? I may be here two or three days.”

“I’ve got to stay in Sydney for a week, and I’m afraid I’m something like your pretty friend. I too still have a regular chap.”

She looked so stately and aloof as she climbed into her Bentley that what had just passed between them seemed a fantasy. She also set a speed record of some kind, driving him back to the St. George Hotel. Australian women … hot and cold …

When he stopped at the desk of the hotel to get his key, the clerk handed him a note: “Mr. Simpson asked you to return to your ship as soon as possible. Urgent.”

It took Syl twenty minutes to get a taxi. When he arrived aboard the Y-18 he found Simpson lying in his bunk reading the Bible.

“What’s the trouble, Mr. Simpson?” Syl said. “What’s so urgent?”

“I’m sorry to say that some of your policies have borne the inevitable fruit, captain. The police called. Our whole liberty section is in jail. There was a fight up in that house of theirs. The place was completely wrecked. Some of the cops are in the hospital.”

“Where are Mr. Buller and Cramer?”

“In jail, where they should be. May I give you a little advice, captain?”

God, he was an insufferable little son of a bitch. “Go to it, Mr. Simpson.”

“Leave the whole bunch there. They’re not worth a damn anyway—they’re every reject from the whole fleet. Let the lawyers figure out what to do with them. Ask headquarters for a whole new crew and just sail.”

“Don’t you think I ought to hear their side of it?”

“Ain’t you tired of their lies? They wrecked a house. Beat up local cops. Let ’em pay for it.”

“Where are they being held?”

“The main station house, the police captain said. His name is Lambert. He said he wants to see you as soon as possible.”

Lambert turned out to be a small, fairly dapper policeman and surprisingly reasonable.

“We had a bit of trouble, skipper, but I admit that it was not one hundred percent your men’s fault,” was the way he began when Syl entered his office.

“What happened?”

“It’s an old story for us. Your men had some girls in that house. The girls went there of their own accord, but some of our men who just came back from Africa didn’t like it and broke in. Your men had a right to defend themselves, but when the police arrived they had a fight too. Property damage, some broken heads, I don’t know how bad yet. Three of our men are in the hospital and two of yours.”

“Do you have their names?”

Lambert consulted a note on his desk.

“Buller and Cramer, an officer and a CPO. I understand they were the worst. Or from another point of view the best. They fought like bloody lions.”

“What are the charges?”

“Plenty could be drawn up, skipper. Your boys could charge ours with breaking and entering, assault and maybe attempted murder. The damage to the house could be put off on those who broke in. On the other hand we can charge your boys with resisting arrest and creating a bloody riot, even when we got them away from our troops.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“It would take months for the lawyers and courts to sort it out. Some of your men told us your ship is about to sail to the Philippines. Is that right?”

“I don’t know where we’re going, but we’re getting ready to sail.”

“Well, take your men and get ’em out of here. If you restrict them to the ship until you’ve left Australia, we’ll forget the whole bloody mess. Your men in the hospital will be your problem. We won’t press charges if you don’t.”

“That sounds good, but I better talk to Mr. Buller and Chief Cramer first …”

Bruised and battered, Cramer and Buller greeted Syl enthusiastically and quickly accepted Lambert’s deal.

When a police truck brought the crew of the Y-18 back to their ship early in the morning, they looked like men who had just lost a battle, hardly like the sailors who were supposed to be getting ready for one. Their uniforms were dirty and torn. Black eyes appeared to be contagious, as were swollen noses, cut cheeks and bandaged hands. Looking sullen and depressed, they lined up on the well deck in front of their commanding officer.

“All right, men,” Syl began, “the less said about this whole mess the better. All hands except last night’s duty section are restricted to the ship until we sail. We should be out of here in about three days. The past is past, but I warn you, don’t foul up again. We have a long long one ahead of us. Dismissed.”

The men gave a ragged cheer. For a short time, at least, the Y-18 was almost a happy ship.