An Indecent Obsession

by Colleen McCullough

  ‘Once,’ said Michael. ‘It didn’t go anywhere, though. In all honesty I don’t think Sergeant Daggett was a proper homosexual, sir. He was a mischief-maker, that’s all.’

  ‘Are your own leanings homosexual, Sergeant?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Do you dislike homosexuals?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve fought alongside and under the command of them, sir. I’ve had friends who were inclined that way, one very good friend especially, and they were decent blokes. That’s the only thing I ask of anyone, that he be a decent bloke. I reckon homosexuals are like any other group of men, some good, some bad, and some indifferent.’

  The QM smiled faintly. ‘Have you any idea why Sergeant Daggett had his eye on you?’

  Michael sighed. ‘I think he got at my papers and read them, sir. I can’t think why else he would have looked at me twice.’ He stared very directly at the QM. ‘If you’ve read my papers, sir, you’ll know this isn’t the first time I’ve been involved in trouble about homosexuals.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It’s very unfortunate for you, Sergeant. Did you leave Sister Langtry’s room at any time during the night?’

  ‘No, Sir.’

  ‘So after the incident in the bathhouse you never saw Sergeant Daggett again?’

  ‘No, sir, I never did.’

  The QM nodded, looked brisk. ‘Thank you, Sergeant. That will be all.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  After Michael had gone Captain Penniquick gathered all the papers concerning the death of Sergeant Lucius Daggett into one sheaf, pulled a fresh piece of paper into the middle of his desk, and began to write his report to the super.

  6

  Though Base Fifteen was still three or four weeks away from its appointment with extinction, for the five patients and one nursing sister of ward X all sense of belonging to any kind of community ceased upon the death of Sergeant Lucius Daggett. Until the result of the inquiry they walked on eggshells around each other, each so conscious of the huge unspoken undercurrents which sucked and thundered through the ward that anything more than a bland contact with the others could not be borne. The general misery was a palpable thing, the individual miseries touchy and secret and shaming. To speak of it was impossible, to generate a false gaiety equally so. Everyone simply prayed for an innocuous finding at the end of the inquiry.

  Not so immersed in her own troubles as to lose sight of how fragile these her men were, Sister Langtry watched for the slightest sign of breakdown in any and all of them, including Michael. Strangely, it didn’t appear. Withdrawn they were, but not from reality; they had withdrawn from her, flung her into a chilly outer orbit where she was merely called upon to do unimportant things, like get their early morning tea, get them out of bed, get them through the cleaning, get them down to the beach, get them into bed. Courteous and deferential they always were; truly warmly friendly, never.

  She wanted to beat her fists against the wall, cry out that she didn’t need punishing like this, that she too suffered, that she wanted, needed desperately, to be drawn into the circle of their regard, that they were killing her. Of course she couldn’t do that, didn’t do that. And since she could only interpret their reaction in the light of her own guilt, the path her own thoughts trod, she understood very well what they were too basically kind to tell her in so many words. That she had failed in her duty, and so failed them. Madness, it must have been madness! To have so lost all regard for what was the right thing to do for all her patients that she had spiritually abandoned them for the sake of her own physical gratification. The balance and insight which would normally have assured her this was far too simple an assumption had entirely deserted her.

  Honour Langtry had known many different kinds of pain, but never a pain like this, all-pervasive, self-perpetuating, asphyxiating. It wasn’t even that she dreaded walking into ward X; it was the bitter knowledge that there was no longer a ward X to walk into. The family unit was broken.

  ‘Well, the verdict’s in,’ she said to Neil on the evening three days after Luce’s death.

  ‘When did you hear?’ he asked, but as if it didn’t really interest him very much.

  He still came for those private little chats with her, but a chat was all it could be. Banal observations about this and that and the other thing.

  ‘This afternoon, from Colonel Chinstrap, who stole a march on Matron. Since she told me later, I got it twice. Suicide. The result of an acute depressive state following an acute burst of mania—claptrap, but convenient claptrap. They have to put something impressive down.’

  ‘Did they say anything else?’ he asked, leaning forward to ash his cigarette.

  ‘Oh, we’re none of us too popular, as you can imagine, but no blame is attached to us officially.’

  He kept his voice light as he asked, ‘Did you get your knuckles rapped, Sis?’

  ‘Not officially. However, Matron had a few words of her own to say on the subject of my taking Michael to my quarters. But luckily my blameless reputation stood me in good stead. When it came right down to it she just couldn’t imagine me hauling poor Michael off with any but the purest of motives. As she said, it merely looked bad, and because it looked bad, I let the whole side down. I seem to have been letting whole sides down all over the place lately.’

  During the past three days his imagination had played indescribable tricks, visualizing her with Michael in any one of a thousand different ways, by no means all to do with sex. Her betrayal ate at him, try as he would to be dispassionate, and so understand. There wasn’t the room for understanding when he had also to accommodate his own torment and jealousy, his own unshakable determination to have what he wanted, what he needed, in spite of her obvious preference for Michael. She had turned to Michael without thinking of any of the rest of them, and he couldn’t seem to forgive her. Yet his feelings for her were as strong, as intense as ever. I am going to have her, he thought; I will not give her up! And I am my father’s son. It has taken this to make me see how much I am my father’s son. It’s a strange sensation. But it’s a good sensation.

  She, poor lost soul, suffered so. He couldn’t take any pleasure in witnessing that, nor did he wish it upon her, but he did feel hers was a case where to suffer would eventually lead her back to the place where she had once been, where he, Neil, belonged rather than Michael.

  He said, ‘Don’t take it so hard.’

  She thought he was referring to her rapped knuckles, and smiled wryly. ‘Well, it’s over and done with now, thank God. It’s a pity that life with Luce wasn’t more pleasant. I never wished him dead, but I did wish we didn’t have to put up with his living presence. Only now it’s some kind of hell.’

  ‘Is that really to be laid at Luce’s door?’ he asked; perhaps now that the verdict was in they could both relax enough to begin communicating again.

  ‘No,’ she said sadly. ‘It has to be laid at my door. At no one else’s.’

  Michael tapped. ‘Tea’s made, Sis.’

  She forgot where the conversation with Neil might have been leading, and looked straight past Neil to Michael. ‘Come in for a moment, would you? I’d like to talk to you. Neil, will you hold the fort? I’ll be down shortly, but you might like to pass on the news to the others.’

  Michael shut the door behind Neil’s back, his face a mixture of unhappiness and dread. And discomfort. And fear. As if he would rather be any place on earth than standing in front of her desk, her desk.

  In that she was correct; he would rather have been anywhere else than there. But what she saw in his face was on his own behalf, not anything to do with her. And yet everything to do with her. He was terrified of breaking down in front of her, aching to spill all the reasons for his pain to her; but that would be to lift a floodgate which must remain closed. It was all gone, and perhaps it had never been, and certainly it could never be. A chaos. A confusion more desperate than any he had ever known, while he stood there and
longed for things to be different, and knew things could not be different. Sorrowing for her because she didn’t know, agreeing that she couldn’t be permitted to know, fighting himself and what he wanted. Knowing that what she wanted could not make her happy. And continuing to learn as he watched her face that he had hurt her very cruelly.

  Some of this showed on his face, too, while he stood in front of her desk, waiting.

  And suddenly it literally blazed in her, that look of his, set fire to a store of wounded pride and pain she had scarcely known she possessed.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake will you get that bloody look off your face?’ she cried, her voice a quiet scream. ‘What on earth do you think I’m going to do to you, get down on my bended knees and beg for a repeat performance? Well, I’d rather be dead! Do you hear me? Dead!’

  He flinched, whitened, set his mouth, said nothing.

  ‘I can assure you, Sergeant Wilson, that the thought of any personal relationship with you is the farthest thing from my mind!’ she went on feverishly, like a lemming to the killing sea. ‘I simply called you in here privately to inform you that the verdict on Luce’s death is in, and it’s suicide. Along with the rest of us, you’ve been completely exonerated. And now perhaps you’ll be able to stop this nauseating display of self-recrimination. That’s all.’

  It had never occurred to him that the largest part by far of the hurt he had inflicted upon her was due to what she saw as his rejection of her. Horrified, he tried to put himself in her place, to feel that rejection as she was feeling it, a purely personal thing all tied in with her womanhood. Had he valued himself more, he might have understood sooner, better. But to him, her reaction was almost inconceivable; she was interpreting the whole thing in a way he could not. Not because he wasn’t sensitive, or perceptive, or involved with her. But because where his mind had been dwelling since Luce’s death was so divorced from the personal aspects of what had happened in her room. There had been so many other considerations to torment him—and so much to do—that he hadn’t stopped to think how his behavior looked to her. And it was too late now.

  He seemed ill, grief-stricken, curiously defenseless. And yet, Michael as always, still his own man. ‘Thank you,’ he said, without irony.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I won’t look at all.’

  She transferred her gaze to the papers on her desk. ‘So am I sorry, Sergeant, believe me,’ she said with cold finality. The papers might have been written in Japanese for all the sense she could make of them. And suddenly it was just too much to bear; she looked up, her heart in her eyes, and cried, ‘Oh, Michael!’ in a very different tone of voice.

  But he had already gone.

  It took her five minutes to get moving, the reaction was so devastating. She sat and shook, her teeth chattered, she wondered for a moment if she might truly be going mad. So much shame, so little self-control. It had not occurred to her that she could possess such a huge blind urge to hurt anyone she loved, or that the knowledge she had succeeded in hurting could be so comfortless and intolerable. Oh, God, dear God, she prayed, if this is love, heal me! Heal me or let me die, for I cannot live with this kind of agony one minute more…

  She went to the door of her office, reaching to unhook her hat, then remembered she had to change back into boots. Her hands were still trembling; it took time to lace the boots, do up the gaiters.

  Neil appeared as she bent over in her chair to pick up her basket.

  ‘You’re going off now?’ he asked, surprised and disappointed. After that promising final remark of hers before Michael had appeared he had been hoping to resume where they had been cut off. But as usual Michael took precedence over him.

  ‘I’m awfully tired,’ she said. ‘Do you think you can manage without me for the rest of the evening?’

  It was gallantly said, but he only had to look at her eyes to see that there was very little between gallantry and despair. In spite of himself he reached out, took her hand and held it between both his own, chafing the skin to instill in it a little warmth.

  ‘No, my very dear Sister Langtry, we can’t possibly do without you,’ he said, smiling. ‘But we will, just this once. Go to bed and sleep.’

  She smiled back at him, her comrade of so many months in X, and wondered where her burgeoning love for him had gone, why Michael’s coming had so abruptly snuffed it out. The trouble was she had no key to the logic behind love, if key there was, if logic there was.

  ‘You always take away the pain,’ she said.

  It was his phrase he used of her; her saying it affected him so powerfully he had to remove his hands quickly. Now was not the time for him to say what he longed to.

  Taking her basket from her, he ushered her out of the ward as if he were the host and she a visitor, refusing to give the basket back until they reached the bottom of the ramp. And then he stood until long after her grey shape flickered and vanished into the darkness, looking up at the darkness, listening to the soft dripping of condensation on cooling eaves, the vast chorus of the frogs and the endless murmur of the surf far out on the reef. There was a downpour in the air; it would rain before very long. If Sis didn’t hurry she’d be wet.

  ‘Where’s Sis?’ asked Nugget when Neil sat down in her chair and reached for the teapot.

  ‘She’s got a headache,’ said Neil briefly, avoiding eye contact with Michael, who sat looking as if he too had a headache. Neil pulled a face. ‘God, I loathe being mother! Who is it has milk again?’

  ‘Me,’ said Nugget. ‘Good news, eh? Luce is properly dead and buried at last. Phew! It’s a relief, I must say.’

  ‘May God have mercy on his soul,’ said Benedict.

  ‘On all our souls,’ said Matt.

  Neil finished his chore with the teapot, and began pushing the various mugs down the table. Without Sis there was little joy in late tea, he reflected, staring at Michael because Michael’s attention was on Matt and Benedict.

  With a great show of importance, Nugget produced a very large book, spread it out where there was no danger of spilling tea on it, and began on page one.

  Michael glanced at him, amused and touched. ‘What’s that in aid of?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what the colonel said,’ Nugget explained, one hand extended across the open book with the reverence of a holy man for his bible. ‘There’s no reason why I can’t go to night school to get me matriculation, is there? Then I could go to university and do medicine.’

  ‘And do something with your life,’ Michael said. ‘Good on you and good luck to you, Nugget.’

  I wish I didn’t like him through every moment of hating him, thought Neil; but that’s the real lesson the old man wanted me to learn out of the war—not to let my heart stand in the way of what has to be done, and to learn to live with my heart after it’s done. So Neil was able to say very calmly, ‘We’ve all got to do something with our lives when we’re out of the jungle greens. I wonder how I’ll look in a business suit. I’ve never worn one in my life.’ Then he sat back and waited for Matt to respond to the deliberate stimulus.

  Matt did, quivering. ‘How am I going to earn a living?’ he asked, the question bursting from him as if he had never meant to say it, yet had been thinking of nothing else. ‘I’m an accountant, I’ve got to see! The army won’t give me a pension; they reckon there’s nothing wrong with my eyes! Oh, God, Neil, what am I going to do?’

  The others were very still, everyone looking at Neil. Well, here goes, he thought, as deeply moved by Matt’s cry as the others, yet filled with a purpose that overruled his pity. Now isn’t the right time and place to go into specifics, but there’s been enough groundwork laid for me to see if Mike gets the message.

  ‘That’s my share, Matt,’ Neil said positively, his hand on Matt’s arm firmly. ‘Don’t worry about anything. I’ll see you’re all right.’

  ‘I’ve never taken charity in my life, and I’m not about to start now,’ s
aid Matt, sitting straight and proud.

  ‘It is not charity!’ Neil insisted. ‘It is my share. You know what I mean. We made a pact, the lot of us, but I have yet to contribute my full share.’ And he said this looking not at Matt but at Michael.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ said Michael, who knew immediately what was going to be demanded of him. In a way it came as an exquisite relief to have it asked of him rather than to have to offer it. He had known the only solution for some time, but he didn’t want it, and so had not found the strength to offer it. ‘I agree with that, Neil. Your share.’ His eyes left Neil’s stern unyielding face, rested on Matt with great affection. ‘It’s not charity, Matt. It’s a fair share,’ he said.

  7

  Sister Langtry beat the rain. It came cascading down just as she let herself in her door, and within minutes every kind of living small creature seemed to materialize out of it: mosquitoes, leeches, frogs, spiders reluctant to wet their feet, ants in syrupy black rivers, bedraggled moths, cockroaches. Because her two windows were screened she usually did not need to pull the net down around her bed, but the first thing she did tonight was to tug it free of its ring and drape it down.

  She went to take a shower in the bathhouse, then wrapped herself in her robe, packed her two pathetically thin pillows against the wall at the head of her bed, and lay back against them with a book she hadn’t even the strength to open, though sleep felt far away. So she put her head back and listened instead to the ceaseless hollow roar of rain on an iron roof. Once it had been the most thrilling and wonderful sound in the world, during her childhood days in country where rain was the harbinger of prosperity and life; but here, in this profligate climate of perpetual growth and decay, it meant only an external deadening to everything save what went on in her mind. You couldn’t have heard anyone speak unless he shouted in your ear; the only voices you really heard were those which chattered on inside your head.