My Beautiful Enemy

by Cory Taylor

  ‘Are we ready for dessert?’ said Mrs Forbes.

  ‘Always ready for dessert,’ said Mr Forbes.

  I tried to help May and her mother with the clearing away but they told me to stay where I was so Mr Forbes and I could talk. He offered me a smoke and I thanked him. Then he offered to light it for me. We were both watching the match burn down in the ashtray when he started to speak.

  ‘I never wanted May to join the Land Army,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s back-breaking work. I didn’t want her to ruin her health.’

  ‘Actually he was scared I’d marry a farmer,’ May called out from the kitchen so we would know she was listening.

  Mr Forbes smiled for the first time since we’d sat down to eat. I took that as a sign he was starting to relax with me, that maybe I’d passed a test.

  ‘She’s as stubborn as a mule,’ he said.

  I tried smiling back at him but it was a waste of time because he was staring out into the trees.

  ‘Do you love her?’ he said.

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Yes.’ And I believed it as I said it, even if the next moment I was afraid that Mr Forbes might accuse me of lying.

  ‘You don’t sound too confident,’ he said.

  He finally looked straight at me, challenging me to convince him.

  I turned away and stared into the kitchen at May as she helped her mother. After a pause I turned back and faced Mr Forbes.

  ‘She’s a very special girl,’ I said. ‘I’m lucky I found her.’

  It seemed to satisfy him. He took a drag on his cigarette and held the smoke in for a while before letting it seep out through his teeth.

  ‘What are your plans then, Arthur?’ he said. ‘After the army.’

  I’d been expecting this question but I still didn’t have a ready answer. The truth was that I was less able to think about the future with every passing day. In this sense May’s plan to get married and start a family had nothing to do with me. I was essentially along for the ride.

  ‘He’s looking for a job,’ said May. She and her mother had returned with a cake on a platter and some matching plates. ‘Aren’t you Arthur?’ It was a statement rather than a question.

  ‘I will be,’ I said. ‘As soon as I get my discharge.’

  ‘I think he should go to work for Ian,’ said May. She sat down next to Mr Forbes and slipped her arm through his. ‘Even if he just starts out as a driver.’

  ‘Ian is in transport,’ said Mrs Forbes, smiling at me in her half-amused way.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘May told me.’

  ‘It’s certainly worth considering,’ said her father. Again he was staring out at the trees and I had the impression that most of the time he didn’t actually listen to May or her mother, that everything they said was just background noise to his private musings.

  ‘There are worse things than making a lot of money,’ he said. ‘But I’m sure you know that.’

  He made it sound so easy that I giggled. And that started May and her mother grinning as well, as if what Mr Forbes had said was a family joke they never failed to find amusing.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said.

  At which Mr Forbes reached out and slapped me on the arm in a chummy way.

  ‘He’s all right,’ he said, smiling in May’s direction but at the same time fluttering his eyelids so he couldn’t actually focus on her.

  ‘I told you,’ said May, wolfing down her cake.

  ‘You’ll make yourself sick,’ said her mother.

  ‘I have a craving for cream,’ said May, ‘anything with cream in it. I’m like the proverbial cat.’

  I exchanged a smile with Mrs Forbes across the table as she handed me a large slice of cake and cream.

  ‘May tells me you’re a country boy,’ she said.

  ‘I was,’ I said, reluctant to elaborate. The key to lying, in my experience, was to stick to generalities.

  ‘Was your father a farmer?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He did various jobs.’

  ‘How did you feel when your parents left you?’ she said.

  ‘Mother,’ said May, annoyed. ‘What kind of a question is that?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. I stared at the cake in front of me and took a deep breath before continuing. ‘I didn’t get on with my parents Mrs Forbes. We had very different ideas about life.’

  ‘Such as?’ said Mr Forbes. He too was happily spooning cake into his cavernous mouth.

  ‘They had very limited horizons,’ I said. ‘They tried to stifle my ambitions.’

  ‘Which were?’ Mr Forbes fluttered his eyelids at me.

  ‘When I was twelve years old I wanted to be a designer,’ I said.

  ‘What kind of a designer?’ said May’s mother.

  ‘I wasn’t sure,’ I said. ‘I liked to draw.’

  ‘And you don’t any more?’ she said.

  I looked up from my plate and saw that they were all watching me, waiting for me to trip myself up.

  ‘It was something I grew out of,’ I said, wondering if that was in fact the truth, or whether I’d given up out of shame.

  ‘Don’t you miss them?’ said Mrs Forbes.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said May. ‘Of course he misses them.’

  She had finished her cake and looked at me now with a half-smile just like her mother’s.

  ‘Maybe you can stop interrogating him now,’ she said, ‘and let me take him for a tour around the garden. We have things to discuss.’

  ‘Would you like some tea first?’ said Mrs Forbes hopefully.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Thank you. That was a lovely lunch.’

  May was already standing. She came around to my side of the table and took hold of my arm, dragging me to my feet. Her mother watched her, looking vaguely wounded.

  ‘I hope you can stay for dinner,’ she said.

  ‘We’re going out for dinner,’ said May. ‘I told you. We’re going dancing at The Dug-Out.’

  Mrs Forbes raised her eyebrows at May in a hapless way.

  ‘Of course you are,’ she said, giving in to her daughter’s superior talent for action and decisiveness.

  Once we were out in the garden May told me how well I’d done.

  ‘My mother sees the Errol Flynn resemblance,’ she said. ‘And my father, believe it or not, was on his best behaviour.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t look it,’ said May. ‘You look miserable.’

  ‘I haven’t even met Ian,’ I said. ‘How do you know he has a job for me?’

  ‘Because I asked him,’ she said, mocking my solemn tone.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he’s always on the lookout for good men.’

  ‘Who says I’m a good man?’

  She took hold of my hand and dragged me along a path through waist-high primroses and azaleas to the back boundary of the garden where she stopped and made me kiss her again.

  ‘Are you sure it’s what you want?’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said. I was afraid she was going to change her mind and abandon me.

  ‘I don’t want you to wake up one day and regret everything. By then it’ll be too late.’

  I kissed her again as hard as I could. ‘That is never going to happen,’ I said. ‘Without you I’m completely lost.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I knew I could trust you.’

  ‘I’ll do everything I can to make us happy,’ I said, putting my arms around her and holding her so tight that she complained she couldn’t breathe.

  ‘You’re going to squash the baby,’ she said.

  I let go of her. She held onto my hand, placing it on her belly.

  ‘It swims like a fish,’ she said.

  I kept my hand where it was and waited. Talk of the baby made me anxious and excited all at once. I meant what I said when I told her I’d work hard to make us happy, but I also feare
d that I would fail. I knew nothing about children, only what I’d learned from being a child myself.

  ‘I hope it’s a girl,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t care what it is,’ said May. ‘I love it already.’

  She lifted my hand to her breast and rested it there. And then she kissed me again.

  ‘Am I the first woman you ever kissed?’ she said.

  I blushed and smiled helplessly at her.

  ‘I thought so,’ she said.

  The Dug-Out was a servicemen’s club in Swanston Street. May wore a dress she’d made herself from shiny navy brocade. Apparently she’d already grown out of all her old dresses. I’d never seen her look so pretty. She had started putting her hair up in a new way that showed off her white neck. Actually it was painful how pretty she looked because I couldn’t help noticing the way other men kept staring at her with undisguised interest. It made me realise she was wasted on me. I didn’t look at women that way. I didn’t look at anyone that way. If a man caught my eye, say on the dance floor, or at the bar where we were lining up for a beer, I was careful not to stare. But that didn’t mean I didn’t see them. They were everywhere. The streets were full of men, all back from the war, suddenly let loose on the town to make up for all the time they’d lost. I went to bed each night with a head full of drink and catalogued the men I’d seen, comparing them all, unfavourably, to Stanley.

  On the second night May came to find me in the guest room and climbed into bed beside me. She was wearing only a sheer dressing-gown with nothing underneath it. I knew that because she took hold of my hand and pressed it between her legs. At the same time she reached down with her other hand and took hold of my cock.

  ‘Will it hurt the baby?’ I said, not quite knowing what she intended to do next.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ she whispered. ‘My parents are down the hall.’ I went quiet after that, and let her do whatever she wanted. I remember we’d both had a fair bit to drink and that may have helped us to enjoy ourselves. We ended up staying together for the whole night and waking up at dawn in each other’s arms. Before she left to go back to her own room May asked me what I’d been dreaming about.

  I told her I couldn’t remember, which was true.

  ‘You were talking in your sleep,’ she said. ‘Something about the moon.’

  And then it came back to me, how in my dream Stanley and I had been running through the bush, using the light of the moon to see by, when my father had suddenly appeared wearing his policeman’s uniform and carrying an enormous sack.

  ‘Actually,’ I told May. ‘It was about you. How you came into my bed with no clothes on and did things to me no lady should ever do.’ I tried to sound more carefree than I felt.

  ‘You’d know of course,’ she said. ‘From your vast experience of ladies.’

  ‘They’re queuing up,’ I said, mimicking the way Stanley talked. ‘Every day of the goddamned week.’ I even borrowed his accent because I liked the sound of it so much.

  May laughed and called me a liar, then she left me alone to sleep some more before breakfast. Except that I was already wide-awake, and in a high state of apprehension. It was as if I could see my whole future stretched out before me, nights in bed with May, days on the road in her brother’s trucks, birthdays and Christmases with May’s mother and father in their beautiful wedding-cake house. It was hard to know if it was a vision of paradise or something much more sinister. Either way it made me want to pack my bags immediately and flee.

  Of course I stayed, because there was breakfast to eat and small talk to be exchanged with Mrs Forbes, and then there was Mr Forbes’s standing offer to drive me to the railway station on his way to work so I could catch my train back to camp.

  May and I sat in the back seat of the Pontiac, while Mr and Mrs Forbes sat in the front. I don’t remember very much of what was said, only that I agreed to leave the wedding arrangements entirely to May and her mother.

  ‘Are you religious?’ said Mrs Forbes.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’re Anglican,’ she said.

  I could see Mr Forbes staring at me in the rear-view mirror while we were pulled up at some traffic lights. It was easy to tell that he didn’t really like me.

  ‘I can change,’ I said.

  May laughed and squeezed my hand and I squeezed hers back half-heartedly while the car took off again, its beautiful motor humming like a bass note.

  ‘You like that sound?’ said Mr Forbes.

  ‘Very much.’

  ‘I think you two are going to get along just fine,’ said Mrs Forbes, reaching across to give her husband’s knee a squeeze. Then she turned and offered me another one of her half-smiles.

  16

  Stanley was already out of the lock-up by the time I got back to Tatura. I saw him on morning roll call. He was standing with his mother, holding her arm as if she needed restraining. They listened while Hollows made a speech up the front of the assembly. He was standing on his podium and shouting into the stiff breeze.

  ‘Despite the war having ended last month,’ he said, ‘it will be many long weeks before any of you will be able to leave here, mainly because of the difficult situation that Japan now finds itself in as a defeated and occupied country. Bear in mind that Japan is now facing the coming northern winter without fuel, without basic infrastructure, without food supplies, and, crucially for you, without shipping.’ He went on to repeat his daily warning to the internees to remain patient and calm.

  After he’d finished speaking and dismissed the parade, Stanley’s mother seemed confused. It was only after Stanley shouted something at her in Japanese that she moved, but she appeared to have forgotten which direction to go in. Stanley allowed her to cling to his shirt-tails as they walked away, as if he was now the parent and she the child.

  Riley and I stood watching until the last of the internees had returned to their compounds to wait out another day.

  ‘Why is Stanley out of the lock-up?’ I said. ‘Perkins told me he had three weeks.’

  ‘His mother got him out,’ said Riley. ‘She said she’d do herself in if they didn’t let him go.’

  ‘Christ,’ I said. I remembered the letter Stanley had written to me explaining his secret mission. He’d told me there were things going on in the camp that I would never understand. It was suddenly very clear to me that this was true, that Stanley’s real life was hidden from me.

  ‘Why can’t they all just go home?’ I said, in an exasperated way.

  Riley glanced at me, uncertain whether to take me seriously or not. I was not given to expressing sympathy with the Japs, even if I sometimes felt inclined to.

  ‘Bloody good question,’ he said.

  ‘Is it true that Bryant’s going to marry one of them?’ I said. It wasn’t something I could ask Bryant to his face.

  ‘That’s just more of Bryant’s bullshit,’ he said. ‘He’s got two or three different girls convinced that he’s going to marry them and take them away from all this. You have to give him full marks for effort.’

  ‘Shouldn’t somebody let the girls know?’

  Riley laughed. ‘You volunteering?’

  When I told Bryant I was getting married he laughed. ‘Who to?’

  ‘My girl,’ I said.

  It was late. We were in our hut as usual playing cards and drinking. Donohue was there and so was McMaster.

  ‘I had a bet on you’d made her up,’ said Donohue.

  I went to my bunk and retrieved a photograph of May and her parents posed in front of the marzipan house. May had given it to me as a souvenir. On the back she’d written En famille at Chateau Forbes. Donohue inspected it for a moment then passed it to McMaster who peered at it over his glasses.

  ‘Just like I told you,’ said McMaster. ‘She’ll be the making of you.’ He looked up at me and smiled. ‘You’re doing the right thing.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. He seemed to have kept the fact of May’s pregnancy to himself, and for that I was grateful.

&n
bsp; Bryant snatched the photo out of his hand and took a close look at it.

  ‘I’m disappointed,’ he said.

  ‘Why’s that?’ I said.

  ‘You’re settling,’ he said. ‘Before you even know what’s available. It’s like buying a new car. You have to compare and contrast.’

  ‘I know quality when I see it,’ I said. I was feeling brazen because of the rum, and this was the first chance I’d had to even up the score with Bryant on account of all the stories he’d been spreading about Hanako and me. It didn’t matter that they were true.

  He laughed again, this time throwing his head back and holding his belly with his free hand as if it hurt him to laugh so hard.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I said.

  Bryant finished laughing and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his shirt. ‘Did you fuck her yet?’ he said.

  ‘Jesus Bryant,’ said McMaster.

  ‘Simple question,’ said Bryant.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I did.’ Because of a pressure that was building up behind my eyes I couldn’t see my cards any more. They were just a blur.

  ‘Good for you,’ said Donohue.

  ‘She any good?’ said Bryant. He slapped his losing cards down on the table then lit himself a fag.

  ‘None of your business,’ I said.

  ‘Fair enough,’ he said. He was smiling at me now with his eyes narrowed to keep the smoke out of them. ‘But on a scale of ten, what would you give her?’

  ‘Shut up Bryant,’ said Donohue. ‘Why can’t you just leave the kid alone?’

  ‘Because I don’t like to see him miss out on all the other fuckable women there are out there,’ said Bryant. ‘It’s a bloody tragedy.’

  ‘Nine,’ I said.

  ‘Liar,’ said Bryant. He stared hard at the family photograph again then handed it back to me. At the same time McMaster showed his hand with nothing in it. He’d been bluffing, which he was very good at. Nobody was better. Bryant flipped his hand over, a pair of threes.

  ‘The best fuck I ever had was Lizzie Randall,’ said Donohue. ‘She was twenty-nine years old and I was eighteen.’