Part 4 (1/2)

She obeyed him rather gratefully, and began rubbing at the cutlery and plates, but the towel only seemed to make them wetter. It did not matter. Nothing did. While Mamma was sitting in the saloon, listening to men express their ideas. Particularly those of Father's friend Aleko. Mamma grew still watching the little black tufts of hair on the backs of Aleko's fingers.

Gilbert Horsfall's hands were blond, s.h.i.+ny, hairless as he plunged and re-plunged them in the sink. They were scarcely human.

*Do you like doing it?' she murmured.

*Do I like?' as he flipped his hands he flicked back water into the sink. *You gotter do it here. Australians are supposed to be useful.'

*We didn't have to. So I never learned.'

*Thought your people were supposed to be commos.'

*They had their ideas. There was always someone, someone else to do the things like was.h.i.+ng up.'

*I wouldn't do any b.l.o.o.d.y was.h.i.+ng up if you didn't have to stay on the right side of the old girl.'

Across the distance separating them they stood looking at the charred ruin of the Apple Betty. Nothing had ever looked so extinct.

Gilbert Horsfall grabbed a fork and stabbed at it. *b.l.o.o.d.y well burnt out!' he cried.

It made her giggle in spite of her deep melancholy.

*Extinct-like that Greek volcano you were telling me about.'

The charred pudding, the volcano, reminded them of more important matters, for they began drifting by common though silent consent towards the exercise. Mrs Bulpit was commanding in what had been, was still in fact, the warrant officer's bedroom.

*There!' she exclaimed, staggering back from tucking in a stray end of sheet between the mattress and a narrow bed. *n.o.body could find fault with that.'

A veil of perspiration streamed over her suetty face as she stood admiring her handiwork. She looked quite religious.

Till snapping out of her trance, *I think we'll agree to call it a day. Thanks for the was.h.i.+ng-up, Gilbert-Ireen,' she leered as she lumbered out.

But popped back to remind, *I hope you're not mischievous children. No pillow-fights!'

After that she could be heard in the kitchen extracting the pudding from its aluminium armour, and removing her mouth from a bottle, it sounded.

The children were left to face the details of an oppressive present and a frightening, larger-than-life future.

There was no tune to Gilbert's whistling as he tore himself out of his clothes. Eirene did not know what to do, say, or where to look. She continued standing beside what Mrs Bulpit had ordained as her bed. She did in fact slightly glance in her ally's direction. In his nakedness he had his back to her, b.u.t.tocks tensed, ribs in each case visible. He was skinnier than she would have imagined. Then he began putting on these old pyjamas with stripes of washed-out blue on them, and tying a string round his middle.

He asked, *Aren't you going to undress?' though still with his back to her.

*No,' she replied.

He got into bed, pulling the sheet over his head.

*We didn't last night, Mamma and I.'

*You'll be smelly if you don't, two nights running.'

She took off her shoes and stood them together as neatly as Aunt Cleone would have demanded. She pulled off her stockings, rolling each into a ball before sticking them in her empty shoes. She too took off her dress, folded and hung it over the foot of the bed. After this there was nothing to prevent her getting between Mrs Bulpit's damp grey sheets.

She should have felt safely sandwiched, and the surrounding silence saved her from further depredations, if it had not been for a distant crash.

*What is it-Gilbert?' she asked.

*Possums.' His mouth made a big round O through the sheet.

*They must be huge.'

*Some of them are,' the sheet veiling his face quivered with suppressed sn.i.g.g.e.rs, before he s.n.a.t.c.hed it off.

*Gotter turn the light out!'

He tore across the room in the washed-out pyjamas, the legs and sleeves of which were by now too short.

Then darkness rushed at them. It swallowed the leaning warrant officer, the pieces of Bulpit furniture, and anything as personal as the hopes and fears of those temporarily living there.

A violent plunk of springs told Eirene Sklavos that Gilbert Horsfall must have landed back on his bed. The distance separating them stretched even wider than before. The rough sheets were sawing at her. The bloodspot on the finger she had p.r.i.c.ked with a fork swelled against the darkness and swelled, becoming-was it? The head of that old man a tank had crushed outside the Royal (or National) gardens. Swelling and spilling. The old man's b.l.o.o.d.y brains.

*Tell us something.'

Gilbert's voice had roughened in an attempt to become a man's. She recognised the tone. It was that of the men Mamma enjoyed talking to. Holding her head on one side. You tried out your head in imitation against the rough, damp, Bulpit pillow.

*I haven't anything,' she murmured back across the darkness lying between them.

*You had plenty when we were talking before.'

*That was then.' She heard herself mewing into the pillow.

*What's up?'

She couldn't tell him. She hardly knew.

The darkness was rocking, not so much the boat carrying her back to a war, but the motions of the dance she was dancing in the patisserie in Alexandria. Mamma hated this officer, but her body could not refuse to dance.

*You're a sooky sort of girl,' Gilbert Horsfall was complaining.

All the girls he had known were crowding in on her through the darkness, long-legged yellow-haired English girls, cold and perfect Miss Adams said she loved the daffies in spring time at Home. Some of Gilbert's girls wore lipstick. They were women in front.

*I can't help it,' she mewed worse than ever.

They entered the worst silence of all. Was any of it happening to them? The war, Australia, this vast Bulpit room with iron beds clamped to opposite walls.

*Why don't you come over?' he twittered.

Why should she? It made her raise her head against the pillow. Others always came to Mamma. This boy with the hoa.r.s.e voice and shrunk pyjamas. Gilbert Horsfall's wriggly torso. Who knew about bread and dripping. She snorted slightly, licked her lips. She had never felt so tall and slender. Her strength was returning.

*Not if you're afraid,' he said, *but you needn't worry about her. She's as safe as a lead sinker once she's under the brandy.'