When at length there came a tapping at the door she did not hear, or the calling of her name. Clancy opened the door, stood staring at what could be seen from his position. Then he came slowly in. Now what he saw caused his breath to catch — the slight-spread ivory thighs, bare almost to the crotch, the outline of what lay beneath the tight-drawn silk there plain to see, above that the goblet of the navel in the strip of white belly revealed by updrawn shift, a small breast half-revealed, the other almost as evident under a slip of the flimsy kimono, the whole beautiful landscape made astonishingly vital by the slow rhythm of the breathing. Clancy stood with eyes popping, mouth agape as if his own breathing were suspended. A long long moment of complete enthralment. Then he started slightly, breathed deeply, swallowed, licked dry lips, began backing to the door. His breast was heaving and his voice husky as he called from outside, ‘Rifkah . . . Rifkah!’
She stirred, muttered — then sat up quickly, exclaiming, ‘Oh!’
He smiled weakly from the door. ‘What about your bath?’
Now she smiled, and stretched, murmuring, ‘Lil sleep.’ Rising with the kimono half-concealing her, she turned her back to don it.
As she tied the waist-band he came in. ‘Let me carry you?’
She smiled, took up the pyjamas, slipped into his arms. He tried to kiss her mouth, but was given her cheek. Undaunted, he hugged her to him as he went with her round and into a passage and along to the bathroom, murmuring, ‘I love you . . . I love you . . . I love you!’
Reluctantly setting her down in the white-tiled bathroom, breathless, he said, ‘There’s stuff there of Hanno’s to put on your feet . . . and slippers. Can I do your feet for you . . . after you’ve bathed?’ She nodded. ‘Well sing out when you’re ready. Don’t go to sleep again . . . in the bath . . . aheeeeaah!’
When she did call he was so close at hand he had to wait a decent interval before coming. He found her seated, in pyjamas and kimono, her feet bare. Scarcely with breath to say it he said, ‘Green suits you. I thought it would.’
He talked again about the clothes he would buy her, while he salved and bandaged her feet. Looking at the feet when he had done, squatting on his heels, he chuckled, ‘Like a Chinese bride.’ He looked up at her. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a Chinese woman with bound feet? They don’t do it any more, of course. But there’re still a couple of old girls hobbling round Chinatown here on child-sized feet. Strange customs people have, don’t they?’ He bent and kissed the feet, then put them into slippers.
He would have carried her again, but for her insisting on walking, clinging to his arm.
They went to the big dining-room, where the end of the great table was nicely set for them, with Hanno waiting to receive them, to place the chair for Missee-San. There was wine. Clancy tried to press her with it. She only sipped. There was the Japanese fish stew, which she said she liked, and proved her words by eating quite a lot. There followed pawpaw and cream.
After the meal they went to the drawing-room and sat before the radio. However, it was not long before she was nodding and blinking and asking to go to bed. He took her eagerly, refusing to let her walk this time, and setting her down on the bed, having helped her off with the kimono, looked as if he would be staying, the way he bent over her, clinging and kissing. She pushed him away, looking frightened, muttering, ‘No . . . no . . . pliss, Clancy, dear! I vont to sleep.’ He withdrew with a shaky smile, to which she responded, giving him her hand. He kissed the hand, then reached and pulled down the net, blew a kiss to her through it, and wishing her goodnight and sweet dreams, departed, putting out the light. She sighed, curled up like a child, in a moment was asleep again.
VI
In a great Malayan Chekka tree in that grave of the Vaisey-Delacy town house a Willy wagtail sang all night of gully-gully love — while the One responsible for the sweet madness sailed the sky, winking whenever he saw his victims, either as they strove together in thraldom, or if not yet come together in it, yearning, yearning. Igulgul winked at the white-roofed Vaisey-Delacy house, where out on the front steps, between the dragons, Clancy sat in pyjamas, sighing, absently swatting at mosquitoes mad for his fevered blood, staring at the silver smirk that gully-gullied him more and more. Twice he rose, and panting from the stress, went round the verandah with stealthy haste, only to have the seeming burning intention quelled at the door, where he hung with heart hammering so loud it was a wonder it did not rouse the house, let alone have so little effect on the sleeper within that her soft breathing did not falter — such breathing as to him must have meant so much more than rhythmical intake of oxygen, since after listening to it he came away shivering as if its suggestion of the soft ivory fleshscape had caused an earthquake in his own taut flesh.
At last he fell asleep in a deep canvas chair not far from her door, giving himself up to troubled dreaming of the wonder and the worry of it all — while Igulgul slid smirking down the sky, a-winking now at the Old One’s watery Shade soft-roaring out to join him down in that hole behind the horizon — and Kirrikijirrit sang and sang and sang — Kirri, kirri, ki-wirri-jittit . . . Sweet Pretty Plaything, Love!
He woke in heliotrope dawn, scratching at his myriad bites, rose quickly, went to the screened door. A soft voice called from within, ‘Goot morning!’
He rushed in, breathless, to seize her as she sat up to greet him, but just to hold her by soft shoulders and look into the pale blur of her face and breathe deeply the bed-warm female fragrance of her. He panted, ‘I thought . . . I mean I dreamt . . . you’d run away.’
She put her hands on his arms, perhaps deliberately to hold him at a distance, since there was no such excitement in her voice as his, but rather a dry wariness: ‘Vere vood I run avay?’
‘I don’t know. But you won’t . . . will you?’
‘You are vishingk?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Dreamingk is vishingk . . . zat is vot Freud say.’
‘Blow Freud! What do I want to wish you to run away for . . . when it’s been such a job to yard you?’
‘Yard me?’
‘Excuse the crudeness. But it’s a compliment, really. When I was about fourteen I had a chestnut filly. You remind me of her.’
She giggled, ‘A horse!’
‘She was very beautiful . . . and I loved her as . . . as if she was a girl. But I’m sorry if it sounds crude. I only mean I . . . I love you!’
‘Dear Clancy!’ she murmured, but held him off when he pressed. ‘Vait, vait! I vont to get up. I vood so much like a cup of tea.’
‘Right . . . right!’ he cried, stabbed a kiss at her, and went rushing out.
When he returned she was out on the verandah in the canvas chair, with kimono over pyjamas. Again he remarked on how well green suited her, and went on to talk about those clothes he would buy her today. She was inclined to protest; but he argued, ‘Even if I can’t take you to the altar in a veil and all those things, I want you looking like nothing they’ve ever seen in that old church. Old-man Maryzic’s a bit of a lad with the ladies, too . . . or used to be, they say.’ But mostly he was circumspect during the talk, the nervous bridegroom now, rather than the excited lover of earlier. He was even more so at breakfast, which they also had out on the verandah, off trays. He advised her to keep close to her room while he was away, in case some friend of his, having heard he was in Town, might call. Hanno would deal with such callers.
When at length he was ready to go to Town, he came and kissed her lightly, and as his last words said, even a little desperately, ‘Keep your fingers crossed!’
As expected, Dicky Doscas, Clerk of Courts, was in his office, and alone, since it was Saturday. He greeted Clancy in very friendly fashion, and, rather pointedly, asked after one he called Your Dad. However, he showed frank surprise and even consternation at mention of the Special Licence. ‘What’s this? Runaway marriage, or something?’
With obvious embarrassment Clancy said he’d met a nice girl and — well, he w
anted to get married without fuss.
‘With your mother away?’ Piggy eyes quizzed him.
When Clancy, swallowing and paling, avoided the eyes, Doscas demanded, ‘Is she coloured?’
Clancy looked quickly. ‘Oh, no!’
Still the eyes quizzed. ‘Do I know her?’
Again Clancy swallowed.
‘What’s her name?’
Clancy drew a deep breath before answering, ‘Rifkah Rosen.’
The huge body sagged in its outsize swivel chair to a wheezy sigh. ‘Ah . . . the Refugee-Jew Girl.’ Clancy blanched again. ‘The girl our Fairy Fay’s been writing about, eh?’
Clancy uttered a strangled affirmative. Dicky Doscas stared for a little longer at the drooping averted face, then drew a deep breath that blew him up like a toad again, swung in his chair to his vast cluttered desk, reached with a small fat hand into the seeming chaos of pigeon-holes and piled ledgers and official forms and tape-bound papers: ‘Well . . . I hope you’re doing the right thing, son.’ He got what he wanted with ease that was astonishing in the circumstances: a book of forms, a ledger, a receipt-book. ‘Three days before you can get married . . . cost you a fiver. Sign, eh?’
As Clancy signed, betraying his agitation with his clumsiness, Doscas remarked, ‘Very pretty girl, I hear.’
Clancy breathed, ‘Yes.’
‘Ah, well . . . so long’s it doesn’t land you in trouble.’
Clancy met the piggy eyes swiftly, fearfully. Dicky Doscas smirked. ‘I mean with your mother. Your Dad agreeable?’
Clancy gasped, ‘Oh, yes!’
Doscas chuckled flatly, ‘Well, he’d know a good filly when he saw one. Where’s she now? I didn’t hear about her coming on the train.’
Clancy said quickly, ‘Still down the Beatrice.’
‘You’ll be getting married down there, eh? Who’ll be doing the job? Let’s see . . . you’ve got two JP’s down there . . . Constable Stunke and Finnucane . . . no, three . . . there’s your brother Martin, now . . . but you’ll hardly be having him eh? . . . awaaaaah!’
Clancy blinked. ‘Old Shame-on-us, I guess.’
‘Then you’ll be having quite a party. Don’t forget to bring her to see me sometime.’ The fat hand was extended. ‘Well, son . . . all the best. From what Fay says, anyway, you’re getting something pretty good. Our own girls aren’t up to much when it comes to living in the bush. Strange that a Jewess should take to it like Fay says she has.’
Clancy said, eager now, ‘Don’t forget the Jews started as graziers . . . you know, old Abraham and Jacob and the rest in the Bible, with their flocks and herds. A lot of Eastern European Jews are farmers, too . . . and look what they’ve done to the deserts of Palestine.’
‘Yes, you’re right there.’
Clancy went on in the same tone, while the piggy eyes quizzed him: ‘There were some experts down our way looking over things for that Settlement Scheme . . . all agricultural scientists . . . could buy and sell us for knowledge of stock and land.’
‘Hmmm! Maybe this settlement business’ll be a godsend to the country.’ The moon-face rippled with a grin. ‘Anyway . . . you’ll be right, marrying into the family like . . . eeeeeesh!’
Clancy turned in departing, to say softly, ‘If you don’t mind keeping it dark . . . I don’t want the mob . . . well, you know what they’re like . . .’
‘Mum’s the word, son . . . mum’s the word!’
Round at the Catholic Church, Clancy was directed by the black gardener to Monsignor Maryzic’s quarters in the old Mission bungalow. As he went through the well-kept garden he had a glimpse of the sea beyond the cliff. The Mission schooner St Francis Xavier lay straining at anchor in the falling tide. Away in the western distance could be seen the backbone of Old Tchamala, seeming to be heaving as the rushing waters danced in mirage. Walking one verandah of the bungalow, clad in white cassock today and with breviary in hand, was Father Glascock, in from his mission station. Clancy raised a hand in slight greeting, which was answered with a movement of the breviary.
Clancy found the Monsignor in his study, reclining reading in a deep canvas lounge chair, with black cassock unbuttoned so as to expose bulbous hairy chest and rotund belly to the blast from a small fan humming on his littered desk. The old man looked up at the presence in his doorway. Clancy was standing slightly stooped, with hands hanging down clasped before him, in a proper reverential stance, which did anything but impress the archpriest, the way he pulled his glasses down his Slavic nose and stared with evident suspicion. Clancy cleared his throat: ‘Good morning, Monsignor.’
The old priest gave a slight heave of his massive body, but without changing position. ‘Goot morning, young man . . . and vot vood you be vonting?’
Clancy reached with the pious hands to clutch at the door-frame, swallowed. ‘My name’s Delacy.’
‘Zat I can see from your face. You haf come for me to baptise you?’
Clancy looked surprised. ‘Oh, no . . . you baptised me when I was a baby.’
‘So! Zen it is zat you are ashamed of your Christian name you cannot tell me?
When Clancy blinked, confused, the old man grunted, ‘But come in. Take seat.’ Then as Clancy seated himself circumspectly beside the desk, he went on: ‘Many people are ashamed of Christian name. Zey should not be. Ze fault is not of zem, but of parents and godparents. But in our Faith, of course, ve haf ze remedy . . . ze Confirmation Name of our own choosing, ze name of our Patron Saint. Who is your Patron?’
Clancy muttered, ‘Thomas Aquinas.’
‘Ah! And you have followed in ze steps of Ze Angelic Doctor . . . you are teacher and scholar?’
Quite at a loss, Clancy mumbled, ‘No, Sir.’
‘And mit vot name I baptised you?’
‘Clancy.’
The old man heaved a little. ‘Ah . . . so zat is your shame! Tell me . . . who wos zis Clancy I find so many people of zis county vont to name zere children for?’ A purely rhetorical question, since he who asked it went on immediately: ‘He is no prophet of ze Bible, no saint of ze Calendar. All I can find, mit mooch investigation, is a legendary character of ze bush, vun, Clancy of ze Overflow. Vy moost people inflict zere innocent little vuns so? And vorse and vorse it gets, zis misnoming. Now it is ze moving picture vich is ze inspiration. Last veek I am ask to baptise a baby girl as Greta. I ask ze parents and godparents, who is ze Bible heroine of zat name, who is ze female saint? Vot do zey answer? She is name from Greta Garbo.’ All this while the slaty blue eyes stared and stared out from under craggy Slavic brows, so that Clancy must lower his own. At last: ‘Vell, Clancy, my son . . . your business?’
Clancy fumbled for his Licence, mumbling, ‘I want to get married, Monsignor.’
‘A very natural vont in a young man. But vot is zis . . . a Special Licence. Marry in haste, zey do say, and repent at leisure. Rifkah Rosen. A Jewish name, I zink. Zis vood be ze young lady Fay McFee has made famous mit her pen?’
Clancy muttered, ‘Yes, Father . . . Monsignor.’
‘It is not alvays goot to be made famous by our talented Miss McFee.’ Clancy dropped his eyes again from the craggy stare. The old man asked, somewhat sharply now, ‘Vy haf you come to me to marry zis voman?’
Clancy swallowed. ‘You married my brother Martin . . . and my father, too.’
‘Zey marry Catholic girl.’
‘But Catholics can marry non-Catholics behind the altar, can’t they?’
‘It can be done, under certain conditions . . . but zese presume zat ze non-Catholic haf Christian belief.’ A tense little silence. Then: ‘I tek it zis voman is of Jewish Faith?’
Clancy nodded, breathing, ‘Yes.’
Now the old man’s fleshy ruddy face darkened, and his voice rumbled: ‘Zen how dare you, a Christian, ask a Christian priest to gif blessing of ze Church on union mit vun who rejects our Blessed Saviour?’ He dropped his slippered feet from the leg-extensions of the chair, thumping the floor hard, to sit up, glaring.
Clan
cy went red, dropped his eyes, fumbled with hands before him again. Silence till he got the courage to look up to meet the glare again.
‘Vell?’ demanded the priest.
Clancy swallowed. ‘Then . . . then it’s impossible?’
‘It is not impossible . . . it is simply unthinkable!’ The old man handed back the Licence.
Clancy, drawing a deep breath, turned away. He was at the door, when the archpriest called to him, ‘Vait!’
He turned. The old man asked, ‘You haf some special reason for coming to me, is it?’
Clancy blinked, nodded.
‘Vot is it?’ When Clancy swallowed and looked down, the priest added: ‘You are running avay from somezing?’ Clancy was silent, drooping, utterly miserable. ‘You are stealing zis girl avay from her people?’
Clancy muttered, ‘She has no people.’
‘She has a whole race of people.’ After another little silence, the Monsignor said, ‘Do you know zat Jews are more hard on intermarriage even zan ve . . . zat zere is no behind-ze-altar compromise . . . nuzzing but complete ostracisation?’
‘I . . . I don’t know much about it, Father.’
‘Do you know mooch about ze girl?’
Clancy roused. ‘Oh, yes! I’ve known her ever since she arrived in the country . . . more than six months ago . . . and have seen a lot of her. She loves this country . . . and wants to stay here. She’s not interested in the Jewish Settlement.’
The old man stared and stared. ‘Is it trouble about citizenship you vont to overcome mit marriage?’
Clancy blinked. ‘Yes, Father . . partly . . .’
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