View from the Beach

by JH Fletcher

  EIGHTEEN

  Ruth had read about such things but had never dared dream they might happen to her. Out Of The Depths achieved the instant success, critical and commercial, that made both book and author a household name in Britain and Europe.

  The extent of its success surprised the publishers almost as much as Ruth herself. Out Of The Depths was a quality book and everyone knew that quality books didn’t sell. Out Of The Depths did.

  Richard wrote from London.

  ‘It seems to have struck a chord in the readers. I believe they relate to the characters because they themselves are coming out of the war and need something to give them hope. Life in Britain is as drab and depressing as it was during the war. There seems nothing to look forward to. I believe that’s why people who have never read a literary work in their lives are buying Out Of The Depths. It has a lot in common with A Farewell To Arms, published after the First World War, and we all know what that did for Hemingway’s career.’

  Ruth was stunned. Even, to some extent, uneasy. She suspected that Out Of The Depths might become the standard by which all her later work would be judged.

  ‘I may come to hate it, in time,’ she told herself.

  She would have liked to talk to Dougie about it but could not. Their relations were once again at a low ebb. He had tolerated her writing a book. A bit barmy, perhaps, but nothing to get excited about. He had not even minded too much when it was published. Surprised, sure, and made no attempt to hide it, but it did not threaten him. Its runaway success did. Suddenly his wife was famous and that he couldn’t handle. Worst thing of all, the fact that she had chosen to publish the book under her maiden name.

  ‘Mine not good enough for you?’

  It was not that. It was as though the book had nothing to do with him, not even with Ruth as his wife. It was too personal to share even with someone else’s name. At heart, it seemed, she was still a Ballard.

  ‘Can’t say I reckon much to it,’ he told a mate in the pub.

  Like being stuck in the eye with a sharp stick.

  He took refuge in sulks and a succession of jokes with their teeth in, designed to hurt. And did.

  No, Ruth couldn’t talk to him about how vulnerable the book’s success had made her. She couldn’t talk to anyone. Instead tried to keep it to herself but that didn’t work, either. Eventually she wrote to Richard.

  There had been a lot of correspondence between them but she had been careful to avoid anything of a personal nature. Now she told him everything. How she felt threatened by success and her husband’s reaction to it.

  It was the first time she had told him she was married.

  After she had posted the letter she regretted it and spent the next weeks dreading his reply. Which, when it came, was affectionate, with no hint of recrimination.

  It was not uncommon, he wrote, for one partner to feel threatened by the success of the other. It had to do with the fear of being left behind, of no longer being good enough. With love, he told her, it would pass.

  With love.

  Which Ruth had never had to give. She had hoped that it would grow but it had not. Even sympathy had been blunted by Dougie’s ways. Richard wanted her to go on a tour of England and Europe. It would be good for sales, would establish her internationally as an author of the first rank.

  She told herself it was out of the question. Dougie was hard enough to handle now; tell him she was planning to traipse off around Europe for a couple of months and he would go ape. There were other reasons for saying no but these she would not examine too closely, fearful of what she might find.

  Instead she buried herself in her work. No danger, now, of a second book being turned down by the publishers. She discovered what it was to be a valuable commodity. Yet what the publishers would have been happy to accept, Ruth would not.

  Nothing she produced was good enough to satisfy her. The months passed and ideas refused to flow. I am a one-book writer, she told herself despairingly. I am finished almost before I’ve started. Even that did not please Dougie, who seemed to be building a career out of resentment.

  ‘Dunno what you think we’re going to live on, you don’t buckle to.’

  Not on his earnings, that was sure. The way Out Of The Depths was selling shortage of cash was not a problem but she did not tell him so.

  ‘Time you chucked up this nonsense, got a proper job,’ Dougie said.

  Until Ruth, sick of his sniping, wrote to Richard and said yes. Yes, she would come. Yes, she would do the tour. Yes, she would take her chances on what the future might bring.

  Six weeks later, to Dougie’s incoherent rage, she set off for Sydney, where she would pick up the flying boat to England.

  In a moment of spite, to pay him back for hurting her, she told him how much it was going to cost.

  ‘Three hundred and twenty quid?’ His eyes popped in their sockets; she thought he was going to hit her. ‘You lost your marbles, or what?’

  She did not tell him the publishers were picking up the tab for it, afraid he might expect them to provide him with a ticket, too.

  He refused to come to the station to see her off and she was glad. Her parents, to her private amazement, came instead.

  ‘We wanted you to know how proud we are of you.’

  Her father was such a reticent man, suspicious of any expression of emotion. She would have said he’d have swallowed his teeth before saying such a thing and valued it accordingly.

  She looked at them. He was string bean thin, eyes faded beneath the brim of his bush hat, hands large and bony; her mother, as ever, dumpy, subdued, anxious. She remembered how at the beginning of the war she had seen them disappearing from her as the train pulled out. Now they really were disappearing as she left them to go into a world so much wider than anything they had known. By her choice, what was more, and she would have expected them to resent it. Yet…

  We wanted you to know how proud we are of you.

  Tears overflowed, healing pain, so that she found herself wishing that Dougie had been there after all. She clung to them in turn, could push no words through her constricted throat, knew that words did not matter. Her tears spoke for her.

  She climbed aboard, waved from the window as the train pulled out. They were gone.

  Ruth had made up her mind to forget the past, the pain of that desperate march through the jungle, above all what had happened at the end of it. The past was past and must remain so.

  When she arrived in London, she found it could not be done. Almost the last memory she had of Richard was making love and the emotions it had kindled in her. From the moment she saw him again that memory was uppermost in her mind. Neither of them spoke of it, even their eyes did not speak of it, yet she knew with absolute certainty that he remembered it, too, as clearly as she did, wanted it as much.

  London was less drab, more prosperous than she had expected. In every other way she disliked it. She had so looked forward to exploring the ancient city, the cathedrals and monuments, bridges, castles and lanes, to feeling the weight of the past upon her, ponderous and profound. Yet now found it merely uncomfortable. The parks were lovely, she walked to and fro in them for two days, free from crush and pandemonium, but for the rest it was too big, too crowded, too impersonal. She wondered how anyone could live there.

  Of course, she told herself, I am not here on holiday. I am here to work.

  Work she certainly did. She appeared on radio, was interviewed by newspapers and magazines. Some of the interviewers resented her as an oddity, a colonial — and a woman — who could write. She discovered she could live with that, could even refer wryly to it in the various speeches she was called upon to give. There were book signings, literary luncheons, she thought she would be happy never to see another canape as long as she lived, she appeared on ‘In Town Tonight’ and ‘Pathe News’. She had no time or energy to think about Richard or her own feelings at all.

  His firm had rented a small house for her on the outskirts of London
, beside the Thames in a place called Barnes. The weather was fine and when she got up in the morning, before the hurly burly reclaimed her, she sat on the verandah of the house looking out at the water, smooth as oil, as it flowed past. Those moments of tranquil contemplation awoke in her for the first time a feeling for this ancient land, the strength and character underlying the turmoil. Several people had suggested she should stay on; for the first time she began to think she might.

  There would be huge advantages in doing so. London was at the centre of the world in a way that remote Australia could never be. Harald Arness, an agent who was a leading figure in the London literary scene, talked to her about a stage version of Out Of The Depths, wanted her to write the script for it. It offered her the chance to move into another medium entirely but would be possible only if she stayed.

  ‘You must,’ Harald told her. He waved a manicured hand. ‘My dear, how can you even think of burying yourself in the bush when you have the whole of London at your feet?’

  Two days before leaving for Paris on the next leg of her tour she had dinner with Richard.

  ‘It’s a temptation,’ she said, ‘but people like Harald aren’t really my sort.’

  ‘If anyone can put you on the map he can.’

  Ruth was unsure whether she wanted to be put on the map. ‘He talks as though there’s nothing back home but bush fires and kangaroos.’

  ‘You are a major talent,’ he told her seriously. ‘You want to achieve your true potential, you’ll find it much easier in London than in Australia.’

  ‘I’m an Aussie, not a Pom. I need Australia under my feet if I’m going to do anything worthwhile.’

  Yet she was painfully unsure. What was there at home, after all? Dougie, who had rights and would be loud in defence of them. Her parents and friends, dear though they were, who would never understand. In London terms, there was no denying it, Australia was a village. And yet …

  They left the restaurant, walked back to her house. For the first time she asked him in.

  He came willingly enough. Ruth sensed that the rest of the evening was in her hands. They could have a drink together, chat about the rest of her tour, exchange ideas for future work. Or they could do other things. Her choice could influence the course of both their lives forever.

  It was not a question of what she wanted; she had known that from the moment she had come ashore from the flying boat and seen Richard’s tall figure waiting for her on the jetty. She had responsibilities. To Dougie and herself. To her work. Perhaps even to Richard. It’s not what I want, she thought, but what is right. How can I be sure of that?

  She led him upstairs. It was an upside down house, the upper level living room with a verandah overlooking the river. Richard was taken aback by the sudden vista of water flowing past the plate-glass windows that ran the length of the house.

  ‘It’s nice, isn’t it?’ she said.

  He stared out at the sinuous flow of the river. ‘A lot better than nice.’

  Ruth fixed them a drink then came and stood at Richard’s shoulder. He said something so softly that she could not catch the words.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A long way from Burma.’

  It was the first time either of them had referred to the past.

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘You’re not saying you enjoyed it?’

  ‘It had its moments.’

  They stood side by side, as close as possible to each other without actually touching, while they remembered those moments. One of the moments, in particular.

  Just one word, Ruth thought, that’s all it will take. But could not bring herself to say it.

  It was only the second time they had been alone in a room together yet they had been through so much that Ruth felt she had known him forever. Memories of that earlier room peopled the space around them. Silence hung between them. No, she thought. It isn’t right. Deliberately she turned away.

  ‘Drinks,’ she said.

  The fragile moment shattered. She saw him come back from wherever he had been, the dancing natives of the hilltop village or the room in the fort after the ordeal had finally ended.

  They sat down, sipping their drinks. Richard said, ‘Harald Arness is right. You should stay.’

  Through the window Ruth could see the river, feel the vastness of the city around her. Beyond the city the little island, beyond that Europe. Paris, where she was going next, then Schwarzbruchen in the far south of Germany.

  Her ancestors had come from this land. There should have been some instinctive tie drawing her back but there was not. It was alien country. Great for a visit or for a holiday, but to settle in permanently …

  She knew what she was risking by saying no. If she did not grab the chance it would be gone. Not only that. If she rejected Richard now she would be turning her back on all her hopes of future happiness.

  She had no choice. ‘I can’t do it.’

  They both knew she was talking about more than just staying in England.

  ‘You have commitments in Australia,’ he said. ‘I understand.’

  I don’t want your understanding. She wanted to scream the words in his face. You are a fighter. I saw you in the war. So fight now. If you care.

  But the war was over. She saw resignation in his face and knew that this time there would be no fighting. She had rejected him and he would accept it.

  He finished his drink and left in silence. One long, searching look and he was gone.

  Next morning, very early, he phoned. ‘I need to see you.’

  ‘Where?’

  He named a cafe near his office. She was there before him, heart beating, blood tingling. She had been wrong; he was going to fight after all.

  When Richard arrived he looked pale, as though he had not slept. They sat side by side at the plastic-covered table, not looking at each other. Behind them a hot water urn hissed.

  He said, ‘Tomorrow you’ll be gone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want you to know how much the last two weeks have meant to me.’

  She nodded dumbly, unable to speak. I shall hear him out, she thought.

  ‘Last night I said you should stay.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s the right career move for you.’ The words wrenched from him. ‘You know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like Harald Arness said, the openings are here, not in Australia.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’d be mad to turn your back on them.’

  She had resolved to hear him out but could no longer bear it. ‘We’ve discussed all that.’

  He stared at her, silent in his turn.

  ‘Why did you ask me to meet you here?’

  A long pause. He played with his coffee spoon.

  ‘Why, Richard?’

  ‘Because I want you to stay,’ he said.

  ‘The right career move?’ Scornfully.

  ‘No!’ Suddenly he was fierce. ‘Because I want you.’ He hesitated. Said simply, ‘Because I love you.’

  In the open at last.

  Presently she asked, ‘Are you sure?’

  He tried to laugh, a rusty, painful sound. ‘I was sure even in that damn jungle.’

  ‘You never wrote.’

  ‘Because the war made everything different. I wasn’t sure how I would feel in peacetime. How either of us would feel. You never talk about your marriage,’ he said. ‘Why is that?’

  Because it was a mistake. She came close to saying it; finally, did not. ‘Nothing to say.’

  He watched her. Nodded, as though she had confirmed a secret suspicion. ‘There is nothing back there for you, nothing.’

  She could have wept because he was right, because he was wrong. ‘I have to be there. I told you.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘In England the artist is restricted by what’s gone before. People see everything through impressions laid down over centuries. O
ther people’s ideas. In Australia everything is new. We’ve the chance to develop our own ideas, our own culture. I want to be a part of that.’

  ‘An Australian school of letters?’

  She shied from the pretentious description. ‘I want to do something that’s never been done before. There’s a bloke called Nolan painting in Australia at the moment. He did some covers for an arts magazine just after the war. They reminded me of something my Aunt Dorrie said about an artist she knew, how the colours vibrated in the air. I want to do that, to explore beyond the limits of what’s known. Australia’s great for that. The unknown’s on your doorstep. In England …’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll never do it here.’

  ‘You’re a European,’ Richard said. ‘These ideas you talk about are part of you, too.’

  ‘But there I shall be able to use them. Here they’ll use me. Strangle me, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Wretchedly she sipped her coffee. How she longed for him to persuade her she was wrong to think of going back to Dougie, whom she would never love. Who, she feared, no longer loved her in any way she could recognise as love. As an artist she remained convinced that she could not survive apart from the land that had bred her yet wished so much that she might be wrong.

  ‘I remember every yard of that infernal jungle,’ he told her. He smiled. ‘Sister Rogan thought we were irresponsible to have got ourselves in such a state.’

  They laughed together, warmed by memories that had nothing to do with Sister Rogan.

  ‘She was right,’ Richard said. ‘I seem to remember I proved that.’

  Her fingers played with his. Careful, her mind warned, careful. But she had to respond to what she recognised was an advance of sorts. ‘It didn’t matter. I told you at the time.’

  ‘You are leaving tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want —’ But could not bring himself to spell out what.

  She remembered him as a man afraid of nothing. He had no business being diffident now, of all times.

  ‘What do you want?’