While Barbara explained, Major Harding appeared. He was in high spirits and had a big basket of food. “A celebration!”
“Whatever for?” Barbara asked.
“Our new American daughter!” he shouted, bowing low to Anne. “Oklahoma’s own!”
“How did you find out?” Anne asked suspiciously.
“Everybody in New Zealand knows! Boy, you got pull!” He showed her a telegram he’d received from the ambassador, REPRESENTATIVE HALLORAN OKLAHOMA DEMANDS IMMEDIATE PASSAGE STATES ANNE NEVILLE CHRISTCHURCH AND DAUGHTER. EXPEDITE.
Barbara took the telegram and studied it. It was so American. Somebody had known somebody and somebody had damned well better expedite. She liked the telegram. Sometimes things should be done that way. Expedite.
Major Harding was saying, “Now Anne, there’s going to be a lot about America you won’t like. We don’t treat our Negroes the way you do your Maoris. What I mean is …”
The girls interrupted, crying in unison, “America isn’t like the movies!”
“This isn’t a meeting of the Young Eagles Club,” Barbara teased.
“And even if your country is horrid, I’m going,” Anne announced firmly.
But a letter from Mrs. Bates indicated that Oklahoma, at least, would not be horrid. She wrote: “If you two had connived to win my heart completely nothing could have succeeded better than your two letters, Anne’s so afraid, Barbara’s so confident. When I finished them I felt I knew you both. I’m enclosing a picture of our house, because I’ve heard that many New Zealand girls have been deceived by Americans. I must warn you that we are not wealthy, but you and the baby need never want. Further, if this won’t make you ashamed of me, I think it would be best if we made believe that you and Dick were married. I don’t care a hang, but in some ways Oklahoma City is still a small town.” On the photograph was the added warning, “The porch has been torn down and the place doesn’t look quite so nice. No help.”
When Anne’s departure was imminent Major Harding presented her with a toy pistol. “You pack it this way, Babe,” he explained. He also taught her to snarl out of the corner of her mouth and said that when she met Mrs. Bates she was to drop her bags, extend her arms and shout in a clear voice, “Hiya, Toots!” But later that night Barbara heard Anne explaining to the major that “Oklahoma City is the petroleum center of the world. All the major companies have offices there, Texaco, Standard Oil, Shell.”
When Anne finally took the baby and left for America, Barbara experienced a dull heaviness of spirit. It was cruel, she thought, what had happened to her country. First the finest men had left for five years and now the finest girls were departing forever. There could be no healing the wounds New Zealand had suffered. The scars would grow shut. They might even grow smooth to the exploring finger, but the under-structure had been damaged. There could be no healing that.
It was while in the grip of such melancholy reflection that Barbara called Delia in Wellington, but a man answered the phone and reported that he had the room for the week-end, because Deel was up in Auckland seeing a troop ship off. Okinawa or some place like that, he guessed. Well, wherever the Yanks were going to hit next.
So Barbara composed a long letter, filled with information about Evelyn’s marriage and Anne’s departure for America. She concluded, “Now that war seems to be nearing the end they’ll surely find Cobber in one of the prison camps, and I want to tell you again, Deel, that you and Cobber are to live with us.” She added, “That will give Cobber time to find a job,” but the sentence seemed to harass old wounds, so she wrote the last page over again, omitting the gratuitous insult to Cobber.
To her surprise, Deel answered the letter in person. She appeared much thinner and yet more beautiful than ever. “I’m so glad you invited me down, Babs. It’s hell up there, waiting for news of your man.”
“I think Cobber’s all right,” Barbara assured her.
“I didn’t mean him. Joe’s at Okinawa.”
“You must forget these Americans, Deel.”
“How can I? I’ve never lived before.”
“Cobber’s going to be home soon.”
Delia brushed the hair back from her forehead and confessed, “How could I ever live with Cobber again? I can’t even remember him!”
Barbara sat with her sister and said, “That’s normal, in war, Deel. You know how much I loved Mark? I cannot even remember how he looked.”
For more than a week the two girls worked happily about the cottage, not thinking, not worrying. They simply did the chores of a house and gossiped. It was Delia’s opinion that Anne was the best off of the lot. “A home in America, a baby. And I’ll bet she’ll marry some Yank, too.”
“Do you think so?” Barbara asked.
“Sure. Those Americans are hungry to marry girls like Anne. Four of them have proposed to me.”
Then the rugged news from Okinawa began to appear in the papers, and the happy interlude at Ferrymead was ended. Deel wept and said, “If Joe’s killed I think I’ll die.” But he got through and on his battle leave finagled a ride all the way to Wellington, where Delia was waiting. When she left Christchurch she said, “I don’t know how this is going to end, but if Joe wants me to come to California as char lady in his restaurant, I’ll go.”
The cottage at Ferrymead seemed desolate now, with only Barbara and her infantile mother. The solitude was broken in the evenings by Major Harding, who brought food and cigarettes and a shawl for Mrs. Neville. Now Barbara started to study him with special care, for it was apparent to each of them that when his duty in New Zealand ended, he would ask her to go with him to America. It was not that they were in love, she reasoned. He had found comfort in the cottage, and when people were over thirty such comfort was almost more important than love.
She found John Harding to be a strange assembly of contradictions. He was less winning than Anne’s Dick Bates and much less revolting than Evelyn’s Max Murphy. He was an average American man, unsure of himself emotionally, afraid of women, yet completely enslaved by them. Sometimes the puzzled look on his face indicated that he knew she was making fun of him, and yet she liked him immensely, for he was also an average American in that he was both generous and kind. In fact they had a fight about presents from the PX. On one memorable evening she had come close to crying. It was over the nylons.
He had big-dealed six pairs and delivered them in a gift box. Barbara opened the package and studied the sheer beauty of stockings—like all New Zealand girls she had worn none for five years, despising the black cotton ones released by the Government—so she was keenly eager to accept them. But a galling phrase of Max Murphy’s haunted her and she said, “Sorry, John, but I’ve decided not to be a chocolate-bar beauty.”
Major Harding dropped the package and said, “That’s a hell of a thing to say!”
“I mean just that! You Yanks have been parading your PX stuff too long. Now you take these stockings …”
He grabbed her and pulled some papers from his pockets. “PX stuff, eh? Why, damn it, I spent six months getting these flown out here. And you’re going to take them!” He picked up the stockings and shouted, “I got them for you because I happen to love you.”
She kissed him and pushed the stockings away. “And I can’t accept because … well, I’m beginning to love you.”
He laughed and said he guessed he understood. He’d seen a hundred men fall in love with New Zealand girls, but he never thought it would happen to him. “The fools come down here on leave, and they’re big heroes. Everything is gook this and gook that. Then what happens?”
The major was very fond of hearing himself talk, especially when he could act out several parts, so Barbara asked, “What happens?”
“On the last week they come running to me and cry, ‘Major, can you wire the admiral for special permission for me to get married?’ ”
“And what do you say?” Barbara asked.
“I always pour it on. I ask, ‘You? Married to a gook?’ ”
“And they say?”
“They break down and say, ‘Major! I never knew what love was till I came down here.’ ” There was an embarrassed pause. Then he added with a rush, “I guess they’re getting even with me. Because I never knew what love was till I watched you and your sisters.”
“What do you mean?” Barbara asked, no longer teasing.
“I guess it’s what men think about when they think of marriage. People living together and not spending too much money and having a good, quiet time. You don’t see much of that in America, any more.”
Their courtship was interrupted by a cyclonic event which showed Barbara a new aspect of her major. The Japs surrendered, and although New Zealanders took the event rather casually, the Americans in the country—wherever more than two were gathered—touched off an epic celebration. Major Harding appeared with a nurse at Ferrymead and told Barbara that the nurse would take care of Mrs. Neville while they painted the town. They wound up at a café where three other Yanks were drinking bootleg whiskey, and the drunker the men got the more they insisted upon making heroic speeches. Major Harding’s was the best.
He addressed the crowd in the café and said, “You won your war in Europe. Very gallant. We won ours in the Pacific. Now I want every calendar maker here and abroad to print this day in red henceforth. Why? Not to please us. Oh, no! America don’t need to be soft soaped, but to remind all the bastards in the world that they can push New Zealand and America just so far.” He glared menacingly about the room for a challenger, but none appeared and he ended feebly, “Print the date in red, that’s all.”
“A lovely speech,” Barbara assured him.
But the Major felt that somehow his effort had fallen flat and he rose with a shout and cried, “I feel constrained to throw a bottle through the window,” and before anyone could stop him he had done just that. The police were called, but some New Zealand soldiers in the crowd said the major was all right, he’d pay.
Next day he appeared red-eyed at the cottage and asked, “Did I make a fool of myself last night?”
“No! I like you best when you’re all Yank.”
“In New York, too, they take a very dim view of bottles through windows.”
“Everyone forgave you.”
“I’m glad. Because the news has come, and I wouldn’t like to leave with people ashamed of me.”
“Are you leaving?” Barbara asked carefully.
“I’m sailing home next month.”
“You must be very happy.”
“I am. The admiral’s given me some leave. I’m going down to Queenstown to see the lake.” He blushed and added, “I was hoping you’d come along.”
Barbara evaded the fundamental question by pointing out that she could not leave her mother. “I’ve thought of that,” he said. “I’ve arranged for the nurse we had last night.”
Now there was no evading. “The real reason I said I wouldn’t go is that I’m the New Zealand girl who isn’t falling all over herself to run off with a Yank.”
The major blushed and said, “I’m sorry.” He was about to leave when an unfortunate break trapped Barbara and forced her to reconsider the whole question; for Delia arrived from Wellington with the news that Cobber Phil was being flown home from the Japanese prison in Malaya. The official list reported him as blind in one eye from beatings about the face and missing his left leg from gangrene. Delia was pale and immediately asked if Barbara would leave the cottage for a while until she’d had a chance to talk with Cobber. “Leave us alone for a couple of days.”
“What I was suggesting,” the major said. “I’ve asked her to come on down to Queenstown.”
In spite of her anxiety Delia could not forbear studying the American and she beamed her approval. “A fine idea, I think!” she said.
“And I’ve just said that I think Americans in uniform are disgraceful. They think any girl is dying to play around with them.”
“I’m sorry,” the major said. “As you know, that wasn’t my intention.”
He left at once and Delia said reproachfully, “You sure washed that up fine.”
“I meant to.”
“Well, I meant it when I said I wanted to be alone with Cobber.”
“What are you going to tell him?”
“Tell him? Nothing! I don’t owe Cobber anything.”
“But you do! He’s your husband.”
“Don’t be silly. He’s no more my husband than some boy I met five years ago.”
“The fact remains he’s married to you.”
“That doesn’t erase what’s happened, Babs. You may as well know it. I’m asking Cobber for a divorce.”
“You can’t!”
“Yes I can. Because I’ve found the Yanks are my kind of people.”
“But Cobber’s a sick man.”
“He’ll understand.”
“Deel, you can’t wash away responsibilities like that.”
“My responsibilities are with Joe. I’m going to California.”
“Deel, why do you suppose I’ve stayed here in the cottage year after year? Because this was my responsibility. You’d better find out what yours is.”
“And you’d better figure out what’s best for you, too. This major is crazy about you, Babs. You’d better go with him now, or it’ll be too late. I’ve seen girls in Wellington break their hearts. Too late.”
“I don’t run off with Yanks,” Barbara protested furiously.
“Well, ten thousand did, and they all have electric washers now.”
“That’s horrid!”
“And true. Why mutilate yourself, Babs? You love the guy …”
“Your American language sounds frightful, Deel.”
“It’s a language I like. I’m going to speak it the rest of my life.”
“By God! You must not do such a thing!”
The sisters argued for two days, and Delia convinced Barbara that she had no desire to be hard or to hurt Cobber or to behave immorally. She said simply, “It’s just that I’ve met the kind of man I can respect. The kind I want to live with.”
“But you must consider Cobber,” Barbara protested.
“I’ve thought it all out,” Delia assured her. “And I do wish you’d leave the cottage, because this is going to be difficult enough, without you here siding with him.”
And so, repelled by Delia’s actions, Barbara was driven to reconsider the invitation to Queenstown. She was not prepared to say that she wanted to marry the American, and yet she was eager to admit that knowing him had been most pleasant. His unfeelingness in bluntly proposing a nuptial flight was merely part of the superman attitude inculcated in all Americans by their prolonged stay among women who had been without men for years. She used one of Delia’s words: “He’s a dope, but he’s a kind and gentle dope.”
To her surprise she said to Delia, “But even if I did want to go down there and tell him I’ll marry him, how would I find him!”
“At the Kentish Arms,” Delia said.
“How do you know?”
“He told me.”
“Why?”
“Because I told him you’d change your mind.”
Delia bustled her sister onto the train, and as it pulled southward Barbara became aware of how exhausted the years had made her. Too, she had forgotten the great beauty of her land, and now she lay back and feasted on the swirling valleys, the wild ocean hammering at the coast, the towering glaciers reaching down from the sky. She felt, at times, as if all the agony of the preceeding years had been meaningful if such a land had been preserved. From time to time she would catch the eye of some New Zealand soldier who had fought long years across the desert and in the fjords, and she would know that he was thinking the same thoughts: here was the great land, here was the realm of beauty.
Then she would be jolted from her reverie by a tea stop, when a thousand berserk passengers would catapult from the train to grab massive cups of steaming tea accompanied by soggy biscuits. It was worth a
woman’s life to be caught in that hungry eruption, and once as Barbara was smashed back against the wall by a huge farmer coming home from market, she recalled wryly Max Murphy’s insolent description of a New Zealand tea stop: “Murder, with cream and sugar.” She laughed and admitted that even Max was right sometimes … “The drip.”
At Invercargill, cold and barren land’s end, she caught a bus which would take her to the magnificent uplands. Now she relaxed and fought against the thoughts that assailed her mind. “I am like a woman who has lost all shame and is chasing …” She halted that. She was not a woman without shame. She was a woman slowly falling in love with a strange man from an even stranger country. She was going to Queenstown to tell him so. That was all. “If Father could read the history of his daughters …” She halted that, too. Captain Neville knew war. He knew war at sea, where the greater agony comes before the ship sails. She thought, “I guess Pops would understand.” Then she sank back and watched the brooding valleys creep high toward the Alps. She would think no more. She was emotionally exhausted.
She was therefore unprepared for what she encountered at the Kentish Arms, for when she found Major Harding he was accompanied by a red-headed girl who had obviously come along for his last leave. And the girl was wearing nylon stockings.
There was a moment of shocked silence as Barbara and the major stood face to face. The red-head understood at once and asked apologetically, “Is this the lady you were telling me about?”
“Wait! Barbara!” the major cried.
He overtook her at the bridge where the tame trout come to feed, but she turned on him sharply and said, “Go away. I’ll leave on the morning bus.”
“She’s just a girl who’s worked at our office. She means nothing.”
“Just a pal!” Barbara cried.
“She’s not even sharing the same room with me.”
“But she’s wearing nylon stockings.”
“You wouldn’t take them.”
The scene was revolting to Barbara, but she was caught in its rising tempo, and to her own surprise she shouted, “You brassy conquerors! You conceited men who think every girl …”
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