I had on a brown pencil skirt and an apple-green blouse under a brown jacket, with a beret to match. I had thought I was smartly dressed. Seeing Phyllis, I realised I was not. Beneath my slip I was wearing scanties I had sewn from discarded flour bags that had been unpicked and boiled clean. Phyllis no doubt wore silk under those pyjamas, if she wore anything at all. Now I felt like a frumpish country girl come to be interviewed for the position of lady’s maid. I was tempted to drop into a curtsy, just to see what she would do.
The sick feeling was threatening my stomach. There were those, like Phyllis, who had the style and confidence that money and education brought, and those, like me, who did not. I had been raised in a tiny house in a dusty goldfields town by a widowed mother who took in lodgers and worked long hours dressmaking to support her three daughters during the Great Depression. I wondered if Phyllis had ever done a day’s work in her life.
I raised my chin and met her gaze squarely. I smiled and said hullo.
‘Meg,’ said Phyllis, smiling as if we were old friends. ‘I may call you Meg, mayn’t I? I feel that I know you so well. Tom has mentioned you often.’
She waved me inside, the diamonds on her left hand catching the light as she did so. I removed my hat and gloves and put them on a hall table. Following Phyllis down the passage, I saw a modern kitchen and a bathroom on one side, and a couple of bedrooms on the other. The lounge room was large and furnished attractively in light-coloured wood. Bright cushions had been tossed artfully around. The walls were a pale peach and the overall impression was light, modern and comfortable. The far wall was entirely glass, with full-length windows and French doors that opened onto a wide balcony overlooking the river.
‘What a lovely room,’ I said, and meant it.
To my surprise, Phyllis appeared genuinely pleased at the praise, flushing slightly and smiling.
‘I think it is comfortable and cheerful, which was what I wanted.’ She looked around her with satisfaction. ‘Tom loves it. He says it makes him feel peaceful. I suppose that’s why he spends a lot of his time here.’
It suddenly all seemed less delightful.
We went out onto the balcony where Phyllis had set up a small table with a prettily embroidered teacloth. There was a plate of teacakes on the table, together with plates, cups and saucers. All that was needed was the tea. Phyllis showed me to the chair with the best view of the river and disappeared into the kitchen. She returned a little while later with a silver teapot, which she placed on a trivet to draw.
Let the games begin. Although, of course, they already had begun, with the first mention of Tom’s name in the doorway. It was hardly a contest, and that I would lose was never in doubt, because Phyllis made me feel gauche and tongue-tied.
She chatted for a while about what she had been doing with Tom over the past weeks and on his birthday. ‘It was such a lovely evening. We all get on so very well. Pam Lagrange and I are so close. And I adore his father, George.’
The plate of teacakes was offered. I took one.
‘So, you are a stenographer.’ She stumbled over the word, as if it were foreign to her.
‘Yes. I work at Crown Law. For the Crown Prosecutor.’
‘Maurice Goodley? I know his wife Adele very well.’
‘She’s very stylish, isn’t she,’ I said with a polite smile. I disliked Mrs Goodley, who took pleasure in patronising me whenever she came to the office.
Phyllis poured tea into my cup, then milk.
‘I don’t know how you do it. Dealing with criminals, I mean. And with the police. The facts of some of the cases must be harrowing.’ She shuddered delicately. ‘You must have nerves of steel.’
‘It’s interesting work,’ I said. I loved my job, but I didn’t want to explain to Phyllis why it was so interesting. She would find some way of trivialising it. But she was looking at me as if expecting more, so I said, stupidly, ‘I feel as if I’m part of something important . . . being involved in justice, I mean.’
Phyllis smiled. ‘Really? I wasn’t aware stenographers played such a crucial role in the administration of justice. As for me, I’m just a lily of the field. I toil not, neither do I spin.’ She laughed, a high tinkling laugh like a bell. I wondered if she had practised to make it sound like that.
‘Of course, many of my friends work,’ she continued. Somehow she made it sound ever so slightly dirty, like a nasty habit they had taken up. ‘Some have done courses in shorthand and typing, like you. Others have joined the WAAAF or even the Land Army. I never really wanted to do anything like that. I’m deeply involved in many charities, of course. I sit on several committees – the Red Cross, for instance – and I help Tom with his US liaison duties wherever I can.’
‘I’m a volunteer Red Cross worker,’ I said, a trifle desperately. Phyllis made it sound as if I was shirking my war duties by merely working in a reserved occupation.
She smiled. ‘Your family? They’re from Perth?’
‘I was born in Kalgoorlie.’
‘Really? My father had a mine near Kalgoorlie, but I was born in Melbourne. We moved here when I was ten, when Father got involved in mining.’
She let slip that the school she’d gone to was the best girls’ school in Perth and she’d gone on to finishing school in France. Then she asked me what school I had attended.
‘Eastern Goldfields High School. I left when I was fourteen, to start my first job.’ There was no point pretending I was anything other than I was.
It was a mistake to admit it, though. I realised that as soon as I saw the triumph in her eyes as she smiled and raised her serviette to her lips with an effortlessly elegant gesture that I could never match. She didn’t ask me my age. Perhaps that was a sore point because I had calculated that Phyllis must be at least twenty-nine. It really wasn’t the thing for the woman to be older than the man, no matter what rank in society you occupied.
She moved on to the subject of Tom. She had met him at a party when he was nineteen. I imagined how alluring Phyllis at twenty-one must have seemed to the nineteen-year-old Tom. Somehow the thought of a love-struck young Tom made me feel very sad. That was the age Peter had been when we’d started seeing each other.
‘He’s brilliant, as you must be aware. They were desperate to keep him in England, but he insisted on coming back to Australia to join the regular army. That was a stupid waste of his talent. He joined the AIF as a private and was promoted through the ranks during his time in the Middle East.’
She offered me another teacake. I accepted and she took one, too. They were delicious. I supposed she had made them herself. I didn’t ask.
‘He was transferred to the Intelligence Corps when he came home from the Middle East. I believe he was in some special unit doing undercover work when he was captured. But that’s something he doesn’t talk about.’
My heart was thumping as I waited for her to continue.
‘General MacArthur thinks very highly of him. Dodie helped us get permission for Tom to return to Perth so he could recuperate from his wounds.’
She looked at me as she mentioned MacArthur, presumably to see how impressed I was. I smiled vaguely, as though I too were on speaking terms with the great general. Phyllis frowned a little. ‘I always call him Dodie. He’s a dear friend.’
She lifted the teapot and poured me another cup.
‘We were in despair when we heard Tom was missing in action – his parents and I. They were still recovering from losing poor Peter, of course.’
She tipped some milk into my tea and flicked me a glance. I sat very still.
‘For a month we didn’t know if he’d been captured or killed, then we heard he had been found and taken to the military hospital in Brisbane. I was almost mad with relief.’
She picked up her cup and sipped at her tea. I realised with a shock that her face had changed. It was softer somehow, and there was real pain in her eyes. I had not expected that.
‘I went to him immediately. You have no idea how terribl
e his injuries were. What you see, the hand and the face, that’s just a part of it. There was a bayonet wound too, and he was beaten very badly. His back is dreadfully scarred. I can’t describe how terrible it is. Don’t tell him I told you this because he hates anyone to know.’
So why are you telling me? I was suddenly angry, and forced myself to drink some tea. I needed to stay composed. Phyllis took another sip and resumed her story.
‘It was like raw meat when I saw him in Brisbane. I couldn’t look at it, I just cried. His back, his face, his poor hand . . . He was so beautiful, before.’ Her voice broke and she dabbed at her eyes with a lace-edged handkerchief.
‘You didn’t show him how you felt?’ I blurted out.
I could not imagine how someone like Tom – any man – would feel to see devastation in the eyes of the woman he loved, at the hideous scars war had left on his body. At a mess that couldn’t be fixed.
She turned to me. Her mouth was in a sulky pout and her blue eyes were narrowed. This was the face I knew. ‘I couldn’t lie to him, not when he was so ill. Tom treasures the truth above all else. You must know that by now.’
The calm demeanour reasserted itself.
‘He begged me not to leave him. He was utterly desperate. So I promised. And I keep to that promise. I will never leave him, Meg. We will be married as soon as the war is over. Perhaps earlier, now he’s not on the front line any more.’
Her gaze was fixed on me, forcing me to look at her, to meet her eyes.
‘Men find me attractive and I am asked out a lot, despite my being engaged.’ She waved her left hand and the diamonds flashed. ‘But Tom is my world and I am his. He relies on me completely. He loves me desperately.’
She put away the handkerchief. Now it’s coming, I thought.
‘Women still find Tom attractive. I think you might have a little crush on him yourself, Meg. Of course no one but me has any idea of what the actual damage is. Not just to his body. This war has affected him in so many ways. You cannot possibly know the pain he endures. He takes enormous doses of pain-relieving medication. Did you know that?’
I shook my head.
‘I thought not. He won’t let anyone but me see what he goes through. He can get terribly cranky when the next dose is due. You see the polite, delightful Tom. You see his sense of humour and his fine intellect. You have no idea what I see. He’ll never be what he was before.’
‘Will anyone?’ I said.
There was a little crease between her carefully plucked eyebrows and her eyes were dry now. She seemed not to have heard me. The unspoken question was in her face.
‘I like Tom,’ I said, keeping my voice steady and light. ‘We’re friends. We talk about Peter.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Phyllis. ‘Poor Peter.’ She looked down at her plate and started to crumble what was left of her teacake.
‘Meg, I do remember you. I remember your letter to Tom’s parents. I know you were friendly with Peter before he left, but you should know that you weren’t the only girl. Tom didn’t want me to tell you, but I think you need to know.’ Now she was looking at me with a hard, unwavering stare.
‘That’s not true.’ My voice was clipped and dismissive, but her wide blue eyes allowed me nowhere to hide.
‘They received letters from an English girl after his death. It seems as if he was just as serious about this girl as he had been about you, but she was actually there, able to be with him, if you get my meaning.’
I did. Suddenly my own plate was intensely interesting, but it was empty and there was no teacake to crumble. So I focused on the river instead. It isn’t true. I would have known.
‘Apparently there is a child. Oh, Meg, you have to understand, he was far from home, and in terrible danger. You can’t judge him.’
I looked up. She was still watching me closely, but I could see excitement flickering in her eyes. She was enjoying this. She really hated me. My friendship with Tom, and now the article in the Mirror, it must have hurt her pride dreadfully.
‘I don’t judge Peter,’ I said. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Be sensible,’ she said. ‘Accept how things are. Men are like that, you know. They’re weak. I’m not saying that Peter wouldn’t have come back to you, if he had lived. But he’s gone and you need to get on with your life. Find a new man. Maybe an American. Not Chad, obviously. And not Tom.’
Now we’re at the crux of it.
‘It’s silly to keep spending time with Tom. Articles like the one in the Mirror are embarrassing for him, and me, and for you. You’re a pretty girl and there are lots of fine men around. You’ll find someone who is right for you. It’s a fun place, Perth in wartime.’
Perth in wartime. It sounded like a song. She started to gather the tea things together. I was being dismissed.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Some men might be like that. But not Peter.
I would like to see the letters from the girl in England. I think there has been some sort of a misunderstanding.’
Her face hardened and for the first time she looked her age. ‘No. The letters are with his parents, and I don’t want to distress them any further.’
I let it go. For the time being.
Phyllis stood, and I stood too. It was clear that tea was finished. I asked where the bathroom was and she directed me down the hallway. She came with me as far as the kitchen, carrying the tea things. Through a doorway I saw a man’s shirt and trousers on the bed of what looked like a guest bedroom. I hesitated there a moment.
‘Oh, that’s Tom’s,’ Phyllis said, matter-of-factly.
‘His dressing room?’
It was rude to pry, but what the hell? This was Phyllis; she’d tell me whatever she wanted me to know.
‘No, it’s his bedroom when he stays over.’
She laughed at my expression. ‘Oh, Meg, don’t be naïve. Tom and I are lovers. We have been for years. But he can’t sleep in the same room with anyone any more. He has terrible nightmares. I can’t stand to hear him and he can’t stand to inflict them on me. He’s terribly proud.’
She had the concerned girlfriend look on her face again.
‘He wakes screaming nearly every night, wet through with perspiration, shaking terribly. My poor Tom. He never talks about what happened to him up there, but it never leaves him.’
My face must have betrayed me, because she said, sharply, ‘There’s no need to look at me like that. I suppose you think I should hold him close in the night and calm his fears. Well, it doesn’t work that way. Do try to grow up.’
It was when she saw me to the door that the lioness reappeared. The faint, superior smile was gone and with it her veneer of brittle politeness. Deep in her eyes I caught a hint of fear, but she was masking it well. She wasn’t masking her dislike.
‘I knew when I met Tom that I was going to marry him,’ she said, in a hissing whisper. ‘There have been other girls. Of course there have been, but I knew they wouldn’t last. He always came back to me. And then he asked me to marry him.’
The anger was clear in her eyes now. ‘Since he was injured I’ve looked after him, and it’s not been easy. He has problems someone like you couldn’t begin to deal with. I am not going to lose the man I love to some gold-digging little typist who left school at fourteen.’
What could I say? He had asked her to marry him; she had the diamond ring to prove it. His parents ‘relied upon her completely’. She was from the right social set. They had the same friends. All I had were memories of his brother, who was nothing like him in looks or in manner. And Phyllis had tried to take even those away from me.
We regarded each other for a moment, before I murmured, ‘Thank you for a lovely tea.’ I turned and made my way down the pretty stairs.
Seventeen
Chad thought the Mirror story was hilarious, and was laughing about it when he arrived to take me out that evening. Although I was worried about what Betty had told me, it had been too late to cry off. Anyway, I told myself that it was lik
ely Betty had exaggerated. Chad had always been a perfect gentleman to me and I wanted to think well of him. He was a highly decorated war hero and, more importantly, my mother adored him.
‘So, little Meg Eaton is in the Mirror. All the boys at the base want to meet you.’
‘It’s not funny, Chad.’ My voice was sharp. ‘It’s horribly embarrassing. And wrong. I hate the Mirror.’
He laughed again, more loudly.
Chad wasn’t good company that night. When we weren’t dancing he was fidgety and tense, one moment light-hearted, the next moody. He seemed to be talking nonstop, mainly complaining about the men at the base and about the Navy generally. And he had developed a twitch, like an elaborate wink of his right eye. It was very disconcerting, until I remembered that he was off on patrol the next day.
At around midnight we left the cabaret. We were waiting for the taxi in the darkness outside when he took my arm, pulled me close and leaned in for a kiss. I pulled away.
‘Come on, Meg. Just a kiss. Don’t be cold. I bet you’re not cold with Tom Lagrange. At least the Mirror doesn’t think so.’
His hot hands were all over my body. ‘It’s not like that with Tom. Stop it,’ I said as I batted them away.
‘Just a little kiss. What’s the matter? We had a good night, didn’t we? What’s wrong with you?’ I could hear the anger building in his voice.
He was determined to make me kiss him, and in the end I did. I had a sudden fear that if I kept resisting he would have forced me. His breath was foul.
When he dropped me home he asked me out again, but I refused. I said, truthfully, that my week was already full. I did not intend to accept any more invitations from him, but I didn’t tell him that.
The incident scared me, made me wonder again how good a judge of people I really was. But Chad had not been like that when I first knew him. Thinking back, it was clear that over the last few weeks he had become more unpredictable. He was calm and easy company one day, edgy and almost bitter the next. But he had always treated me respectfully before. It was likely that he was simply a good man who had been changed by the terrible experience of war. Like Harvey. I felt sorry for Chad, but given what Betty had said about him hitting Doreen, I did not want to spend time alone with him again.
A Stranger in my Street Page 18