“Huh,” Murdoch said. “Up to form, I guess.”
He turned and extended his hand to Marika, ignoring the outraged glance bent on him by the girl in the front seat. She stepped lightly from the car, followed closely by Radinski, smoothing the creases out of his trousers. Her fingers in Murdoch’s were slim and cool. He raised his glance to her face; the fear that Randolph had noticed had been chased away by the flush of excitement. Her soft mouth was gently opened over her teeth, and her eyes were fastened on the doorway of the hall. What a nice kid, he thought.
“Look out for that bottle of steam, Thora,” he admonished his partner. “We’ve got to have something to drink the toasts with. Here—give it to me, and I’ll plant it under a hedge, before we go in.”
“Water it, and it might grow into two,” Linda Spain suggested gaily. She laid her hand on Randolph’s arm as he paid the cab-driver. “We’ll just wait inside for you, Kerry. Come on, Ran, the music’s just started again!” She held out a hand to Marika. “Come, Marika? Come on, Thora—he’ll be all right!”
“I’ll wait for him,” Thora replied, looking darkly at Radinski’s girl. “You go on in.”
Charlesworth caught their eyes as soon as they entered the hall. He waved to them, pointing downwards at the seat beside him. They made their way to him, threading amongst a jam-packed mob of dancers that crowded the slippery floor; he and his wife were spread out on as much of a form as they could cover, and had their coats along the rest of it. After they had performed brief introductions Linda Spain grabbed Randolph by the hand.
“Come on, Ran,” she said. “Our dance!”
It was a waltz, the music soft and frankly suggestive. There were so many on the floor that none could do more than march slowly round to the throbbing beat, but no one seemed to be worried about it. Randolph looked across Linda’s dark head for faces he might recognize.
Murdoch and his partner were just in front of him. They had come in and, faced with the impossible task of fighting their way across the floor, had joined in the throng of dancers. The girl’s back was towards Randolph; she was blonde and thin, with sharp shoulders rising from the ruched taffeta round her chest. Her shoulder-blades moved slightly under their pale skin like embryo wings as she weaved with Murdoch through the crowd. She was of a pattern with all the girls in the hall, as though, with them, she had been stamped, living and already clothed, from an endless sheet of flesh and hair and cloth and cosmetics, dabbed at the end of the line to make them blonde or brunette or red-heads. Almost uniformly, they wore their hair frizzed and curled at shoulder length, with high pompadours and bangs held in position by carelessly displayed pins and clips, ribbons and artificial flowers; their frocks of taffeta and velvet and net were frilly and over-decorated. Most of them chewed gum, their jaws moving rhythmically to the beat of the music.
Only this woman Linda, who moved so effortlessly in his arms, was different, Randolph thought. He looked down at her head, which was resting against his chest, her eyes closed so that her dark lashes lay startlingly outlined against her powdered cheeks. Her dark hair, just beneath his nose, gleamed in the subdued light, fresh and sweet-smelling. A thin tingle of desire for her itched through him. He tightened his arm round her waist, pressing her against him.
Her eyes opened and she looked up at him. She sighed with content, wriggling in the fold of his arm, and he felt the hand he held press harder in his own.
God, he thought, if only a man had a car!
He looked towards the door, thinking of going outside. Murdoch shuffled across the line of his vision, piloting his partner dexterously. She lay against his chest, her eyes closed, just as Linda did, but Murdoch was staring over her head at someone else. Randolph followed his gaze to the slight figure of Marika, slim and upright in the loose circle of Radinski’s arm.
She’s different, too, he thought idly. Her hair was different, silken and fair and plain, with just the suspicion of a wave disappearing into the small knot on her slender neck. Her make-up was only a suggestion on her face, instead of a mask; her pale-green frock was no more expensive than any other in the hall, not half as expensive as some, but it was simple and fresh, without frills and fussiness.
Instead of leaning against Radinski, eyes closed, drugged by the music and his proximity like every other girl on the floor, she held herself erect, so that she looked almost into his face. They were talking, and a lively expression chased over and over her face, her eyes crinkling and her lips curling enchantingly as she spoke. Randolph shifted his glance off her, thinking, as Murdoch had thought, What a nice kid!
As he looked away, Murdoch did the same, and their eyes met. For some reason, Murdoch flushed deeply and slid his eyes away from Randolph’s. Randolph grinned. It looked like developing into an interesting night.
It was late when they got back to Riverslake, almost two o’clock. There had been no pairing off after the dance, except that Charlesworth had walked home early with his wife, whose mother lived close to the dance-hall. The girl Thora, who had stuck all night like a burr to Murdoch, watching every move he made, was dropped first. Murdoch said a brief good night to her at the front gate of her home, and returned to the taxi surlily quiet. Radinski conducted Marika to the rear entrance of the Hotel Acton, where she worked, and returned even more quickly, almost surprising Linda Spain, who the moment they disappeared had laid her lips hungrily against Randolph’s in the darkened back of the car. He said a brief good night to her on the veranda steps, outlined in the headlights of the taxi which was turning in front of the Spain’s house.
“When are you coming over again, Ran?” she whispered, holding his hand against her side. “Before the week-end?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t feel like standing outside Spain’s bedroom window talking to his wife. “Maybe.”
She stood and watched his spare figure until he climbed into the taxi.
When they reached Riverslake, Radinski thanked them for the evening and hurried off to his hut. Murdoch and Randolph walked together through the quiet camp.
“Come in and have a snort, Kerry,” Randolph suggested, at the door of his hut. Murdoch stood beside him, a dark shadow in the moonlight, the silver of it lining his shoulders and the fuzz of his fair hair. He seemed not to have heard, so Randolph spoke again.
“I’ve got a bottle of steam if you’d like a snort, Kerry.”
“Steam?” Murdoch echoed with a jerk. “Bit late, isn’t it?”
“Bull!” Usually, any time was the time with Murdoch. “It’s only about two. Come on in, you jerk—another fifteen minutes won’t make that much difference!”
Randolph turned and walked softly along the corridor to his room. Murdoch, after looking up and down the path in front of the hut, followed him.
It was close inside. Randolph turned on the light and threw open the little window. The room, as always, was spotlessly clean, and bare of anything that was not strictly useful. The air, warm and lifeless, was sharply sweet with the scent of lemons. Murdoch picked one up and pressed its cool, aromatic rind against his forehead, and then his nostrils, sniffing strongly.
“By God, Thora got my goat tonight!” he said suddenly. “You’d think we were damn well married.”
“She loves you,” Randolph said sardonically. “The poor girl.”
“Bull!” Murdoch retorted. “She’s just after a good time, that’s all. If it wasn’t me, it’d be someone else.”
“You underrate your charm.”
“Ar—break it down!” Murdoch picked up the glass of wine that Randolph placed before him. “Still, it was a good night, tonight. It’s usually a good turn down at the Causeway, even if the blokes do get a bit molo and want to fight. Better than the hops they put on up at the Albert Hall.”
“Why?” Randolph demanded. “Why better? Better music, you mean?”
“No, not that. I don’t know what it is exactly, b
ut it’s something.”
“You know where you are—that’s what it is,” Randolph said, deciding for him. “No flaming frills. If you don’t like the dancing, you can get into a fight, or anything you fancy. That what you mean?”
“Yeah, I guess so. At Albert Hall, the sheilas’ll be in it, all right, but you’ve got to ask them, nice and pretty. Down the Causeway, they chuck it at you.”
“Watch me duck!” Randolph held his glass up, between the light and his tired eyes. It glowed with the same clear beauty that never failed to arouse a strange appreciation in him. Melted rubies at a dollar a bottle—the red light that went so well with the Causeway set-up.
“Linda was in good form tonight,” he said casually, because behind his indifference, he tingled to remember her body pressed against his, in the dance-hall and afterwards in the taxi. She had laughed and joked and enjoyed herself with the curiously girl-like simplicity that was so strangely touching in her; but the body that clung against his while they danced, and the hand that held his and the dark eyes that stared into his own were those of a woman.
“She’s good company when she likes.”
“She’s a noisy bitch at times,” Murdoch said. “She gets on my nerves. How are you going with her?”
“I’m going all right. I like her, and she likes me.”
“That all? You’re a cagy beggar!”
“Of course that’s all. You seem to forget that she’s a married woman.”
“She does, too, sometimes! God, Bob, I know what she’s like—I had my turn!”
“Yeah—you had your turn.” And old Silver, and God only knows who else. And that’s what I’ve fallen for. Randolph paraded all he had heard of Paul Spain’s wife, but it made no difference. Only one thing mattered, and that was Paul Spain. If it hadn’t been for him—if she had married some heel, it would not have mattered. But not Paul.
It was quiet in the room, and in the hut, and in the whole camp that seemed to breathe gently round them in slumber. Only the ticking of his alarm-clock measured the silence, and he looked at it. A quarter past two. In three hours, it would shatter his sleep, dancing and chattering on the table until he leaned out and silenced it with an oath—then, while he dressed, stupid with sleep, it would take up its measured ticking again and watch him, secure in the knowledge that as much as he hated it, he would never harm it. “You bastard,” he said to it, under his breath, and as plainly as if it had opened its lid and spoken, the bland face and the monotonous tick answered him, You bastard.
“Anyway, it was good of her to lend Slim and Betty that room,” he said. “God knows what they would have done if she hadn’t come across.”
“She’s got two that they never use, so it wouldn’t hurt her,” Murdoch said.
“Still, it was good of her. If all the people with spare rooms would let them out at a decent rental, the housing shortage’d disappear overnight.”
“It’s six for her and half a dozen for them.”
“How? She doesn’t need the dough.”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know. I reckon we ought to warn poor old Slim.”
“For God’s sake, talk sense!” Randolph said curtly. The heat in his voice caused Murdoch to regard him closely with narrowed eyes. “You make her out a harlot—most likely, half of what you say went on between you and her was bull!”
“We’ll see,” Murdoch said briefly, and dismissed the matter of Linda Spain. “Felix had a good time, didn’t he? Poor little beggar—a twopenny hop like that, and you’d think it was a slap-up ball at the Trocadero or something, the way he lapped it up.”
“I’m glad,” Randolph remarked.
“Yeah. But it makes you think.”
“Think what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Murdoch poured himself another glass of wine and stared into it for a moment. “We could do more for them than we do. See—I’ve known him for nearly a year, and it’s the first time I’ve bothered to take him anywhere with me. You could sort of ease them into a lot of things, if you took the trouble. I reckon we should take him out with us again, soon.”
“Marika enjoyed it, too,” Randolph observed casually. “She told me that it’s the first dance they’ve been to since they came to Canberra.”
“She’s a honey!”
“Yeah—Felix thinks so, too.”
There was something in Randolph’s tone that raised Murdoch’s eyes quickly, but only for a moment. He decided to give the moment no more significance than he had already unwittingly done.
“I noticed.”
“How much do you like her, Kerry?” Randolph asked evenly.
“What’s it to you?”
“Mama Kasnik asked me.”
“Oh, did she? I like her enough.”
“Enough for what—marriage?”
“Don’t be Uncle Willie!”
“I’m not being silly. Felix does.”
“I should worry about Felix.”
Randolph shrugged. “A moment ago, you were talking about helping him,” he said. “That’s one way you could do it.”
“What’s that?”
“By laying off his girl.”
“Don’t give me that stuff,” Murdoch said with brutal candour. “All’s fair in love and war!”
“This isn’t war, and I don’t think it’s love,” Randolph said dryly.
“You’d know. Anyway, if she goes for me more than Felix, I should squawk.”
Randolph shrugged again. The whole trend of the conversation was distasteful to him. He had poked his nose into Kerry’s business, and had achieved just the result he thought he would.
“Well, you know the score, anyway.”
“Yeah, I know the score.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you, if Mama Kasnik hadn’t asked me to—you realize that, don’t you? The old girl’s worried.”
“She needn’t be,” Murdoch said shortly. “We’ll do any worrying that’s to be done.”
Then do it and be damned to you, Randolph thought. He was swamped in a sudden revulsion from the problems crowding in on him, a longing to cut through the tendrils of love and of duty and of pity that, insidiously as ever, had entwined him. He, too, wanted at that moment to hurt someone and not to care if they recovered from the hurt. I should worry, he thought, if this bloke gets off with some Balt’s girl.
“Anyway, it won’t worry me much which way the cat jumps,” he said. He laughed shortly. “I won’t be here to see it land!”
If he had thought to shock Murdoch, he was disappointed.
“What, you leaving the Territory?” Murdoch demanded, but without surprise. He had lived and worked too long amongst men who were continually on the move, who changed jobs and packed up and shifted camp in the twinkling of an eye, to regard Randolph’s intended move as anything but the normal thing.
“Yes. I’ve had it.”
“Where for—are you going back to the Snowy? If you are, I might come with you now the cold weather’s just about over. I feel like a change.”
“No, not the Snowy,” Randolph said. “Maybe Queensland.”
“Hell, you’ll fry!” Murdoch looked at him speculatively. “You don’t belong in these damn camps. I dunno why you don’t take up teaching again. That’s your lurk.”
“I don’t know, either,” Randolph said.
“Well, why the hell don’t you?”
“I’ve got to find out something.” Randolph walked over to the little window. The drink he had taken during the evening had loosened the guard he habitually put on his tongue, and he was prepared, almost eager, to discuss with Murdoch what at other times he would not have talked about to himself. He felt suddenly that the sharing of his problem might somehow ease the burden of carrying it.
“I think I might have been kidding myself for a few years,” he said thoughtfully. “
Since I left the west I’ve thought that I was chasing something. Maybe all the time I’ve been running away from something else.”
Murdoch stared at his back, comprehension struggling in his eyes. “What could you be running away from?” he asked.
“I don’t know, properly. Perhaps the feeling that I’ve failed, or that the world’s failed; that no one can do anything about it, and that if we grab what we can, we’ll die having had something.” Randolph turned away from the window and walked back to the table. “Screwy, isn’t it?” He filled Murdoch’s glass again, and corked the bottle. “Throw that down and hit the hay.”
“So what are you going to do about it—go back to teaching?” Murdoch ignored the glass on the table. “That’s what you want to do, isn’t it?”
“What I want to do, what I ought to do!” Randolph said with sudden, suppressed fury. Why the hell can’t I be like you, or Bellairs, or any other bloody clot who knows what he wants to do and does it, good, bad or indifferent? Why?
The heat of anger left him as suddenly as it had come, because he was too tired to sustain it, tired with the work and drink and thought of the day, and the threat of the morning that would come again in so few hours.
“I don’t know, Kerry,” he said. “Maybe it is. It’s like I said, I don’t know if I’m running away from or after.”
“You gnash your blasted gums too much about it. You worry about it and you don’t mean to do anything about it.” Murdoch said flatly. “You want to make up your mind and dice whatever you don’t want. Otherwise you’ll end up in the rat-house.”
“Or I’ll end up in the rat-house,” Randolph agreed. He laughed. “You’ve got something there, Kerry. Call it a day, eh? I don’t know how I’m going to work tomorrow.”
“You will. When are you shoving off?”
“No hurry—I’ll wait until the pay period runs out.”
“I might go with you. I feel like a change, another camp, another hostel somewhere else. It does you good, and I’ve been in this dump long enough.”
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