I grinned at him over Phyllis’s shoulder, turned and walked to the door. Outside I merged into the crowd, but managed a quick peep through the window as I walked away. Tom was talking earnestly to Phyllis and had his hand over hers, which was outstretched on the table. I wished him luck.
Mike didn’t expect a kiss goodnight, but he asked if he could see me when he got back to port in April – he was leaving in a few days for a two-month underwater tour in the Indian Ocean. I said I would like that, because we did have a lovely evening. He was smart as well as funny and we laughed a lot. When he smiled, attractive crinkles appeared at the side of his eyes. Although I had met a lot of men in the past few weeks, I had begun to worry that no man other than Tom could really interest me, and it was a relief to discover that I was attracted to Mike. I thought it was a shame I wouldn’t see him again for such a long time.
So, it was surprising and irritating to find a letter waiting for me when I returned home from work the following day. The envelope was expensive parchment and was addressed to ‘Miss Margaret Eaton’ in fine handwriting. It was an invitation to tea at a very exclusive Mount Street address.
Dear Meg, I would be delighted if you could join me for tea on Saturday afternoon at four o’clock. I am sure that we have much to discuss and it would be so good of you to spare me the time. With best wishes, Phyllis Gregory.
Fifteen
The evening was not going well. We were in a small restaurant on Stirling Highway and had just finished our main course. Harvey was looking at me with a gaze that was a bit wet and a bit excited and (to me) a whole lot scary, given what I was intending to tell him. It had been so much easier when he was overseas. I chewed my lip anxiously, hoping he wouldn’t see the distress in my eyes and trying not to see the hope in his.
Harvey had grown up in the months he’d spent fighting in New Guinea. His broad, good-natured face was harder, more lined. His eyes seemed sadder and there was a grimness about his mouth that I had not seen before. It didn’t suit him. I wondered if he had been drinking before he came to pick me up, because his voice sounded rather thick and his speech rambled more than I remembered. He hadn’t mentioned one bad thing that had happened to him up there. If you believed Harvey, New Guinea was all larks and music and mates. But since he had arrived to take me out he had been smoking constantly, almost feverishly, much as Tom did, and he rarely met my eyes. Now he was telling me jokes.
‘You know, the mosquitoes are getting so fussy now – because there are so many of us up there – they lift the identification tags to check a chap’s blood group before biting him.’ He laughed and I forced a smile in response.
‘We get the Japanese radio station up there. There’s a show called Zero Hour, fronted by a Jap sheila called Tokyo Rose. It’s amazing how she knows our units and their locations. She even names officers, and it’s all wrapped up in stupid propaganda. I do enjoy the music, though. She plays all the latest hits.’
I was nervous, and not really paying attention. I suspected Harvey was nervous too. As he spoke I let my gaze wander around the room.
With a start, I recognised the lean, dark-haired man at a table in the corner. It was definitely Tom, even if he was half hidden behind a newspaper. A cup of coffee was on the table in front of him. I hadn’t seen him come in. Was this a coincidence? I hadn’t told him where we were going; I hadn’t known myself.
‘Your letters are tops, Meg.’
I turned to look at Harvey, smiling wanly. How was I going to do this? I supposed that scenes such as this were going on all over Australia, all over the world. I glanced over at Tom again, before forcing my attention back to Harvey.
‘Dad’s going to make me a partner in the shop after the war, you know. It’s a good little earner. I’ll be well able to support a wife and family.’
I felt my eyes widen in horror.
‘Gee, you’ve got beautiful eyes, Meg. I’ve never seen eyes like yours. That clear green colour. I thought of your eyes when I was on patrol . . . they gave me courage,’ he said.
It was such a lovely compliment. I smiled at him, and then remembered he’d talked about a wife. And a family. My heart started to race and I found my gaze dragged back to where Tom was sitting, immersed in his newspaper.
I worried at my lip.
‘You’re not listening to a word I’m saying.’
I couldn’t look at him. Why was Tom here?
‘Meg,’ Harvey’s voice was louder. ‘What is so interesting about the chap in the corner?’
My attention was jolted back to Harvey. ‘Nothing. What chap? I don’t know.’
‘You’ve hardly bothered to disguise the fact that he’s the only person in this room you’re interested in. You’re certainly not interested in me, that’s for sure.’
Had I been that obvious? I shook my head and reached my hand towards him. He leaned over, grabbed my hand and pulled me awkwardly across the table.
‘What is it?’ he said in a low, bitter voice. ‘What is it you’ve been trying to spit out all night? Is it him? I thought it was too good to be true. That you’d wait for me. All around me the blokes were losing their girls. It got so they didn’t want to get a letter from home. But your letters never changed. What’s changed now, Meg?’
His grip was hurting and my hip was jammed against the edge of the table. I winced, trying to pull away.
‘Is there a problem?’
Tom’s low voice cut through the restaurant hubbub. When had he come over? I had the feeling that time was playing tricks on me.
‘Tom, go away,’ I said, trying without success to pull my arm from Harvey’s grasp.
The noise around us faded as people turned to watch. I could handle Harvey, for heaven’s sake. Harvey looked at Tom and then at me. His expression was that of someone who had just worked something out. He let go of my arm.
‘So he is the reason you’ve gone so cold all of a sudden,’ he sneered. ‘A captain, eh. Better than a poor old private.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not what you think.’ Why did my voice sound so small and pathetic? ‘This is Captain Lagrange. He’s Peter’s brother. You remember Peter, he’s the chap I was with in 1940, the pilot.’
‘He’s dead. He died before we started going out.’
Harvey’s voice was flat and cold and suddenly I hated him.
‘You and I never went out, Harvey. Not seriously. I wrote to you because we’re always being told to write to soldiers, and because I like you. But it was never serious. Ever. You made that up in your head.’ I hated to hear the shrillness in my voice.
Harvey flinched. He looked at Tom and his face became hard and fixed. His lips rose in a snarl.
‘And now you’re rooting the dead chap’s brother? There’s a word for girls like you.’
Tom moved quickly and without any warning. All at once he was behind Harvey and his left arm was tight around Harvey’s neck. He grabbed the collar of Harvey’s shirt with his right hand and twisted it so that it was choking him. Still holding the twisted collar, Tom pulled Harvey up, until he was almost out of his chair.
‘Apologise to her,’ Tom said, very softly. He looked like a stranger; his eyes were cold and his face was hard.
He tightened his grip. Harvey was gasping for breath and his gaze was darting around as his face became a dark mottled red.
‘I’m sorry, Meg,’ Harvey said in a hoarse whisper.
Tom didn’t release him, though.
Around us the other diners were watching, their expressions a mixture of horror and excitement. A pair of waitresses hovered anxiously by the doorway.
‘Let him go, Tom,’ I whispered urgently. ‘Please let him go. He apologised.’
Tom released his grip and lowered Harvey into his seat, before finally letting go of his shirt.
‘She was my girl,’ said Harvey. He sounded unsure and defeated.
Tom’s lips were pulled into a thin, hard line. He looked at my arm, which was red where Harvey had gripped it. Harvey
flicked me a quick look, before getting unsteadily to his feet. Tom made a movement and Harvey froze, half out of his chair. He looked at Tom and shook his head firmly.
‘I won’t do anything, sir,’ he said, standing almost to attention.
Then he turned to me. His voice was still raw, but he seemed calm now. ‘Meg, this evening hasn’t gone the way I wanted it to. Not at all. If you want the truth, you’re not what I remembered either. I suppose it’s hard to keep things up when we’re so far apart. How about we both sleep on it and meet up tomorrow after you finish work?’
He glanced towards Tom. ‘Without him. We can discuss it sensibly. I’ve a fair notion of what you’re going to say, so don’t lose sleep. Someone told me you were going to break up with me and I suppose it’s been gnawing away at me all day.’
‘I’m so sorry, Harvey,’ I said.
‘I heard that you’d been out and about dancing with all sorts of chaps. Americans. I didn’t want to believe it.’
He nodded towards Tom. ‘At least he’s not a Yank. No offence, sir. There was no need to protect her. I’d never hurt her. She’s tops. Sometimes her letters were all that kept me going. I just lost it when she kept looking at you. I’ll settle the bill on my way out.’
Tom inclined his head briefly, but said nothing. As Harvey moved away he knocked his chair, and I jumped involuntarily. How could I be afraid of Harvey? The incident had shaken me, that was all.
As the people around us returned to their conversations, Tom sat down opposite me.
‘How dare you follow me here,’ I hissed. ‘What did you think? That Harvey would attack me? Really, Tom, I can fight my own battles.’
His dark eyes watched me steadily. ‘I got worried when he grabbed your arm. My upbringing, I suppose. I can’t stand by if a woman is being manhandled. What makes you think I followed you?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ I muttered. ‘It seems too coincidental.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Dessert?’
‘No,’ I said, too loudly. ‘No, thank you,’ I added in a softer voice.
‘Coffee?’
He was holding his mouth very tightly and somehow I knew he was furious.
‘He really wouldn’t have hurt me,’ I said.
‘He was hurting you. He had your arm and you were in pain. Meg, things can get out of hand quickly. Harvey had a look on his face that I didn’t like. Have you ever been assaulted? Ever?’
‘No.’
‘You get to recognise it, the look, I mean. And he had it.’
I shook my head. Harvey wasn’t violent, he was sweet and gentle.
‘He’s a trained soldier now, Meg. He’s killed men in combat. He’s seen men killed, seen mates killed. He’s not who he used to be. And I’m pretty sure he was drinking before he got here. Drink makes a man unpredictable.’
He ran his good hand through his hair, before patting his breast pocket in search of his cigarettes. His hands were shaking. He shook out a cigarette and put it in his mouth.
‘He probably primed himself with some Dutch courage because he suspected your news wouldn’t be good.’
‘So men who go to war are brutalised? Sweet men like Harvey become the sort of men who can hurt women?’
He lit the cigarette. As he inhaled, some of the tension left his face. ‘In a way. It affects everyone differently. He’s still part of the violence; it’s close to the surface with him. He has to go back into that hell up there when his leave is up.’
He laughed a little, mirthlessly. ‘And although he was fearing the worst, he was probably still hoping you were sweet on him. Imagining what was going to happen after you left here together.’
I flushed and he smiled slightly.
‘When the war is over he’ll lose some of the easy brutality. But he’s never going to be the man he was before all this.’
‘And that’s the same with you?’ I was thinking of how easily he had incapacitated Harvey and the expression on his face when he did so.
Tom flinched and gave me a dark look. ‘Very much so. You don’t know me, Meg. Not really. If you knew the things I’ve done . . . I try to tell myself that the man who did those things wasn’t really me.’ There was a chilling intensity in his voice and he spoke very softly. ‘Because if that is who I am, then you should get up now and run away as fast and as far as you can.’
Even though I knew Harvey and Tom and the other men I’d been spending time with over the past few weeks had almost certainly killed people, I had never really considered what that must do to them. No wonder they never wanted to talk about combat; they were probably trying to forget the terrible things they’d had to do. I could imagine wanting to distance yourself from such things, but I doubted that they would ever really escape the memories.
‘Tom, that man isn’t you,’ I said, trying to be understanding but merely sounding nervous instead.
‘I’ve upset you. I’m sorry,’ he said, with an anxious smile.
I shook my head and he smiled more easily. ‘The poets of the Great War understood all this,’ he said. ‘If I go back to my studies I think I’d like to do work on Owen, Sassoon, Brooke, Rosenberg, Gibson and the others. Do you know any of their work?’
‘No,’ I said, then, tentatively, ‘I’d like to read them. Have you got a book you could lend me?’
He smiled again. ‘Several. I’ll bring you some. So, coffee?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d like some coffee, please.’
They said the veterans of the Great War were never the same afterwards. I had seen Tom when he went for Harvey and there had been murder in his eyes. That had scared me as much as Harvey’s actions. Perhaps even Peter would have been a different man, if he had returned.
‘It’s horrible,’ I said, after the waitress had left with our order, ‘that good men can be so changed by war.’
Tom sighed. ‘War forces you to make choices which in any other situation you would never have to make. Those choices can be extremely difficult to deal with later, when you are no longer in the extreme of battle.’
He withdrew into his own thoughts.
‘None of the men ever talk about it,’ I said. ‘You never talk about it. I want very much to understand.’
‘It’s probably impossible to understand if you haven’t been through it,’ he said, watching me closely. ‘They’re not taking prisoners up there in New Guinea. Neither side is.’
‘So, if you come across a wounded enemy soldier . . .’
‘No prisoners.’
‘But we can’t do that.’ I was horrified. ‘Surely we can’t. We Australians – we’re better than that.’
‘There are reasons. When we realised what they –’ He broke off.
‘What reasons? What are the Japanese doing?’
‘There are reasons, Meg.’
‘Poor Harvey, how could he be prepared for anything like that?’
Tom shrugged.
‘Or you. You said you missed being part of it. How could you miss that?’
‘I miss the mateship. The friendships that are forged are like nothing else. Some of the individual acts of bravery are astonishing. I miss doing something worthwhile.’ He held my gaze. ‘It has to be done, Meg. I really believe that. No matter what the cost, we have to win this.’
He shook his head, as if to clear it, and dragged deeply on his cigarette. ‘But, yes. It’s horrible. And it could be years before it’s finished, before men like Harvey can go back to normal life.’
And it was those at home who were going to have to pick up the pieces when it was over. Just like after the Great War. Like my mother, forced to cope with a broken husband who drank too much and died too young. Or my friends’ mothers who had to care for men who had been gassed, or wounded, or who had simply lost their nerve after being buried alive in mud or suffering too long in intolerable conditions.
We were both sitting in deep thought when the waitress came with our coffee. She mus
t have thought us a morose pair. Tom smiled charmingly and apologised for the earlier fuss. She blushed and said that it was no problem, but shot a dubious look at me, obviously blaming me for the entire incident. She was right about that, so I kept my head down.
‘I was a coward,’ I said, once she had gone. ‘You were right, I should have been clearer in my letters to Harvey. But I didn’t want to hurt him. He was so far from home and seemed so lonely.’
Tom made a small sound, like a snort. ‘Meg, don’t be naïve. Harvey knew it was a long shot that someone like you would wait for him. Or be interested in him at all.’
‘Someone like me?’
‘A girl as good-looking as you.’
I turned in my seat and eyed Tom with feigned surprise. He laughed.
‘Yes, Meg, I think you’re a looker. Don’t get too excited, though. I think that about a lot of girls . . . It’s more than just looks with you, though.’
I let that remark pass without comment. But I was shaken, even if I tried not to show it. I decided to change the subject.
‘Tom, why did you come home from Oxford? Rather than join up in England, I mean.’
‘Because I’m not English. I wanted to fight beside Australians. Patriotic of me, eh? All I hope now is that it’s over before Teddy turns eighteen.’
‘Teddy? Oh, that’s right, you have another brother. How old is he?’
‘He’s fifteen and desperate to join up before it’s all over. He’s already decided on the Navy. You’d like Teddy. He’s more like Peter, blue-eyed with sandy hair and freckles. Very likeable, uncomplicated. All he wants is to spend his time sailing or at the beach. It drives my parents crazy.’
I laughed. ‘I wouldn’t have picked you and Peter as brothers.’
‘Peter and Teddy take after my mother. They’re the English gentlemen. I’m more like my father. Dark Irish, pure Galway. They were a gloomy, brooding lot, those Irish ancestors of mine. I’m afraid I’ve inherited the tendency.’
Peter was never an English gentleman. He was a scruffy, sandy-haired Aussie larrikin and he was lovely. I said nothing, stirring my coffee. Then I laughed at a childhood memory that popped up out of nowhere.
A Stranger in my Street Page 16