The Gulliver Fortune Page 8

  "I don't know, Lewis. Quite a lot, but there's no point in kidding ourselves. There's more in there and they'll come again."

  "Yeah," Lewis wiped sweat and mud from his face and was surprised to see blood on his hand. "I got hit."

  Gee turned to look at him and grinned. His teeth were even and showed white against the skin of his face which was yellowed by the constant taking of atabrine. "You've got a scratch on your cheek. Probably one of your own shell cases. You were really pumping them out."

  "Mention me in despatches, will you, sir?"

  Both men smiled at the joke. They knew Gee would write no more despatches, no more letters home, and Lewis would win no more darts tournaments, hit no more jam tins with a .303 at four hundred yards.

  "They'll come around us if they've got any sense," Gee said. "They can get pretty close, over there and over to the right. I'll take the right with the Bren. See what you can do."

  Lewis nodded and wriggled around so that he sat with his back almost touching Gee's. It was early in the afternoon, night was many hours away. Too many, Gee thought. The rest of their unit was far down the track now, heading for Lae. Would there be stragglers who might come up behind the Japanese? No, they were the stragglers, limping back with two men wounded. Good men. After the battle on the ridge, which A Company had won, Captain Lipmann had given the officers the gist of the latest intelligence report. "Detached groups of Japanese hiding in the hills to the west. None between here and Lae."

  Gee was sceptical about intelligence reports; in his four years of war he'd found them wrong as often as not.

  "Got a smoke?" Lewis asked.

  "Sorry, I don't."

  "That's right. You don't. I forgot. Why's that? You don't smoke?"

  It was on the tip of Gee's tongue to say, "Because my mother told me not to," but he didn't.

  "Do you drink?"

  "Not much. But I wouldn't mind one now."

  "Bloody right." Lewis had filled the magazine of his rifle and had two more magazines, also full, ready to hand. "How many rounds have you got for the Bren?"

  Gee felt that the difference in rank between Lewis and himself had disappeared. He was glad of it. "About a hundred."

  "Think we've got any chance of getting them all?"

  Gee laughed. "No."

  "Didn't think so. Get a few, though."

  "Yes." Gee was tired; his shoulders slumped and he leaned back until he and Lewis were spine to spine. "There's one thing, Lewis," Gee said.

  "What?"

  "Sitting like this we can't possibly shoot each other."

  Both men laughed. Gee stared at the jungle growth, imagined he saw a movement, looked again and relaxed. Nothing. There was nothing to see. He could hear birds in the trees behind him and a light wind was moving the leaves. The quiet was welcome after the days of thumping mortars and steady rifle and machine-gun fire. An insect buzzed near his ear and settled somewhere, possibly on his helmet. It was peaceful and Lieutenant Gee, with time to spare and nothing better to do for the first time in years, remembered . . .

  It had been wet for weeks, and the rain didn't let up for his father's funeral. The cemetery was all puddles and grey, stony mud. His mother wore black clothes that day and for a time afterwards, he wasn't sure how long. Somehow, everything was different for him from that day. It wasn't that he missed his father; he scarcely knew him. It wasn't the moving house from Bellevue Hill to North Sydney, although that had brought changes. The new house was smaller and his life seemed to shrink too. His father had constantly brought people to the house, usually late at night. He had heard their noise from his bedroom. Now few people visited.

  "A gentleman, be a gentleman." It was a refrain he seemed to have heard from his mother for the next fifteen years. So he tried to be a gentleman. He attended gentlemen's schools and played gentlemen's sports. Trudie came to see him perform in the school swimming carnival, where he won three sprint races, and she took an interest in his golf. She bought him expensive woods and irons, and wouldn't hear of him joining any club other than Royal Sydney.

  "It's the club for gentlemen." she said. Trudie's cockney had long since been replaced by an accent she had acquired from listening often and carefully to clergymen and certain actresses in British films.

  "Yes, mother. But. . ." In fact he found other courses more interesting to play on and he did, while maintaining his membership at the gentlemen's club, where the course was still called a links. In fact, Stephen had already learned to conform to his mother's wishes on the surface, while going his own way. He had played some rugby on the quiet and enjoyed it. He studied classical piano but played jazz whenever he could. He left the house dressed like a gentleman, always, but often in his bag he carried what he called 'smarter togs'.

  He had few friends, none close. Trudie discouraged visits by other boys and forbade staying overnight at other houses. This restricted his opportunities for bonding. With no relatives in Australia, there were no country houses or sheep properties for him to visit, such as his schoolmates had and seemed to take for granted. Stephen went to organised camps in the mountains or by a lake where there was proper supervision and not much fun.

  It was in the matter of his career that he had his first direct confrontation with Trudie. She had been generous with money and praise all his life, and now she wanted her reward.

  "The law," she said. "You must study law. I want you to be a judge. You'd look wonderful in the robes and you have the brain for the job."

  It was true that Stephen was over six feet tall, with a long, wise-seeming face, and he had matriculated with honours in a range of subjects. He was a little weak in mathematics but none of the professions appeared closed to him. He had a place at St Pauls, the oldest and most Oxfordian of Sydney University's colleges.

  "I don't want to study law, mother. I want to study literature."

  "You mean read novels," Trudie snapped "You do too much of that already. It probably cost you a second class in mathematics."

  "No. I hate mathematics and I should hate law. I'd probably fail."

  The word brought Trudie up short. She couldn't recall hearing Stephen ever use it before. She certainly never used it herself. An instinct told her to go carefully. "You mean do an arts degree?"

  "Yes," Stephen said.

  "With what end in view?"

  "I don't know."

  It was 1932. The dole queues stretched along the streets and in some parts of the city more than half the shops and businesses were boarded up. Trudie's investments had been sound but even her returns had shrunk. She could feel the contraction of hopes and dreams around her. She looked at Stephen and saw the stubborn set of his long jaw. Suddenly, and with much alarm, she saw signs of Jack in him. She had a vision of Stephen defying her, refusing to go to university, taking to the track. "A compromise," she said. "Would you consider a compromise?"

  It was the first time Stephen could recall his mother backing down over anything. "I might."

  "You can study arts and law—do a combined degree. It'd take longer but when you've finished things might be better. There might be better prospects for . . ."

  "A lawyer?"

  Trudie smiled and reached up to pat his cheek. She was stylishly dressed, not yet forty, and with Stephen about to leave the nest she was contemplating the selection of a husband. It would take time and care and she didn't want the complication of a fractious son. "As a lawyer, or whatever your study of literature might fit you for." She sighed. "Though God alone knows what that might be."

  Though overindulged and overprivileged, Stephen was neither stupid nor unreasonable. "Right you are, mother," he said. "There's the small matter of a car to be settled."

  "At the end of your first year," Trudie said. "If you do well enough."

  Stephen did very well. To his surprise and his mother's gratification he did better in law than arts, and preferred wrestling with casebooks than novels and poems. He dropped arts and charged ahead in his legal studies, picking
up a prize or two each year. Trudie bought him a car which he drove carefully and well. He was drunk at the end of his second year and once or twice in the years following but he did not acquire a taste for alcohol. This was something Trudie watched for, knowing the signs so well. She bribed Stephen not to smoke until his twenty-first birthday with the promise of a better car, after she read that this was done in fashionable American circles. As a consequence, Stephen never acquired the tobacco habit.

  Usually, it was to America that Trudie looked for example and inspiration. She even considered moving to the States but gave up the idea when Stephen expressed no interest. Like many first-generation Australians, he was a passionate nationalist.

  "This is the greatest country in the world," he told his mother over dinner one night when he was taking a rare night off from study in his final year. "I'm so glad you and Dad decided to come here."

  "How did that come about, Gertrude?" The speaker was Alexander Courtney, a widower of fifty-five and manager of the bank that handled some, but by no means all, of Trudie's financial affairs.

  "My parents came out for the business opportunities," Trudie said. She had given such vague explanations for so long that she half believed them herself. Stephen, who had seen old photographs of young Jack and Trudie, suspected that there was more to the story than this, but he had never asked for details.

  "Ah, yes." Courtney folded his hands comfortably across his stomach. "Australia was doing wonderfully well before these socialists put their oar in. Don't you agree, Stephen?"

  Stephen smiled and took another spoonful of soup to avoid answering. He was amused by politics, amused by his mother's careful vetting of her suitors, amused by almost everything.

  The afternoon rains came. Stephen Gee and Private Lewis sat stolidly through the drenching, knowing that the hot sun would soon dry them and that conditions were the same for the Japanese. They covered the mechanisms of their weapons and waited. Soaking wet, skin itching and muscles cramping, Stephen began to think about the comforts of his prewar life and the discomfort of his 'problem' . . .

  After graduating with first-class honours and just missing the university medal, Stephen was articled to a prominent Macquarie Street firm where he performed with distinction. He moved back into his mother's house and continued to live with her for reasons neither of them quite understood. Trudie had not married Alexander Courtney or anyone else. She always found something to dislike about the men she met—their cigar smoking, throat clearing or eagerness to manage her money. She preferred to cook several times a week for Stephen, to attend to his laundry and to go to the theatre with him occasionally. She endured Shakespeare and enjoyed Noel Coward. She described herself as 'living quietly'.

  Stephen changed firms, attracted by an offer from a barrister who specialised in criminal cases.

  "I'm not sure that's the best move for your career," Trudie said. "Wouldn't something more commerical or even academic be better?"

  "Dull," Stephen said. "Working with Mr Easy could be fun."

  Geoffrey Easy was a law book and courtroom addict. He lived for his work and did nothing else. "Plenty of work about, young St Gee," he told Stephen. "As long as you're not too fussy."

  "It's just Gee, Mr Easy. Not St Gee. I feel I've had a rather fussy life so far and it's time for a change."

  "Spotted that in you, St Gee. Sort of thing I'm looking for. To start you off, I've got a brothel keeper here the police want to put in gaol. Most unreasonable. The lady's willing to pay a fine. See what you can do with it."

  Over the next few years Stephen defended madams, SP bookmakers, defaulting solicitors, violators of the liquor licensing laws and wealthy kleptomaniacs. Geoffrey Easy's practice was busy and chaotic, with a high turnover of staff. Easy gave alcoholic lawyers their last chance, often to his cost, and took chances with brilliant eccentrics. Stephen was a steadily good performer. He earned a lot of money and enjoyed the work. After he had successfully defended a newspaper publisher against a libel action, Easy took Stephen to dinner and then to a select brothel in Rose Bay.

  "No," Stephen said.

  "What d'you mean, no?" Easy pointed with his cigar at the blonde, the redhead and the brunette who stood in the middle of the tasteful room. They were young, elaborately made up and wore expensive clothes that accentuated their good figures. "These are the cleanest girls in Sydney. I've been coming here for years and never caught a thing. Well, small case of the crabs once, but . . ."

  "I'd rather not," Stephen said.

  Easy eyed him shrewdly. "How old're you, St Gee?"

  "Twenty-four."

  The redhead giggled.

  "Shut up," Easy growled. "It's just a matter of taking the plunge, boy. You couldn't get better swimming teachers than these lasses."

  Stephen shook his head miserably. Easy went up the stairs with the brunette. Stephen attempted conversation with the madam but soon ran out of things to say. Easy came down the stairs whistling; he gave a generous tip to the young woman who had taken custody of his and Stephen's hats and left an envelope on the highly French polished table by the door. Later, walking through the streets with Easy, Stephen admitted that he had never spent any time alone with a woman. "Except my mother," he added.

  Easy grunted. "And why's that?"

  Stephen shrugged. "Shy, I suppose."

  "Not a nancy boy, are you?"

  Stephen had drunk more and experienced more powerful emotions than he was accustomed to. He faced the 87 question squarely as he walked. He'd played sport with men, seen their bodies in the locker rooms. "No," he said.

  Easy walked on. He was a thin, small man, very spry and sure of himself. Stephen had to hurry to keep up. "I'll take your case, St Gee. You can buy women or you can meet 'em. I prefer the former but there's no accounting for taste. Leave it with me."

  That was how matters stood on 1 September 1939. Two days later Australia followed Britain in declaring war on Germany. On 10 September, Stephen St John Gee, ignoring protests from his mother and words of caution from his employer, joined the army.

  The rain stopped but water still fell heavily from the trees for many minutes. The sky remained overcast so the heating and drying Stephen had anticipated would not occur. It hardly mattered. He eased his back away from Lewis's and felt the soldier stir.

  "Nodded off," Lewis said.

  "You could've got nipped in the bud."

  It was an old joke but they both forced a laugh. Stephen stared at the path, which he knew was a mistake. That was not where they would come from. He almost wished they would hurry . . .

  Stephen was trained, commissioned and received his overseas posting all within six months. His mother pleaded with him to take a staff job, but he refused.

  "You're my only child," she said. "I don't want to lose you."

  He looked at her trim, well-dressed figure. She was forty-six but looked much younger. You could have had other children, he thought, and it's not my fault that you didn't. He kissed his mother goodbye, promised to write and boarded the ship. Trudie watched him until he disappeared from sight. She thought he looked smart in his uniform and she particularly liked to see him being saluted. She went home. For the first time since the last occasion when she'd dutifully kept Jack company while extracting some agreement from him, she got drunk. She slept and dreamed of her mother and felt sick when she awoke. The years began to show on Trudie's face from that day.

  Stephen wrote dutifully from Egypt, Greece and Italy. He wrote from London when he was there on leave. Trudie opened the mail from England nervously, fearful that he might encounter a member of his family from either side. But he never did. Her hopes rose a little when he wrote, in November 1944:

  Dear Mother,

  I appear to have survived the European war. I am being sent to New Guinea, which should please you as I will be able to get home on leave. I can't tell you much more on account of the censorship. I think Geoffrey Easy could probably establish that censorship is illegal, but there you are.


  You ask about promotion. No, I am a lieutenant still. It doesn't seem to come my way. Perhaps I will cover myself with glory in New Guinea and return home a captain.

  Your loving son,

  Stephen

  Trudie had her hair done a different way and bought some new clothes. Stephen took her out several times while he was in Sydney on leave. He had aged, grown thinner and acquired frown lines. Trudie painted artfully and fancied that they could almost be taken for lovers.

  "Can't be long, sir, can it?" Private Lewis asked.

  "No. Not long."

  "Got anything to write on? I'd like to leave a note for my missus and nipper."

  Stephen passed him his notebook and pencil. He could feel the movement of Lewis's back as he wrote. After what seemed like only seconds he heard the page being torn from the book.

  "Thanks. What about you? You got a wife?"

  Stephen smiled. "Yes, I have."

  He had met Tess in Wewak or, rather, she had met him. She was a nurse, Brisbane-born and three years older than he. She fixed her eye on the lieutenant on the day of his arrival at the base and her pursuit of him had been relentless. She had herself rostered to the medical inspection of Stephen's platoon and contrived a chance meeting in the canteen. The rest was child's play. Stephen had maintained his innocence of women while killing men in different parts of the world. Tess found this exciting and a boost to the strong attraction she felt for the tall, quiet man who carried books in his battle jacket pocket.

  Tess's comparative maturity reassured Stephen and made him less nervous. He talked to her about books and London and showed no great fondness for beer. These things made him unusual among soldiers. He had never been to Brisbane and she told him about the city. She talked well, making it sound like an exotic tropical creation, manmade. They began to spend their off-duty hours together, walking along the jungle tracks around the town and on the dark, mangrove-fringed beach.

  "I'd like to see Brisbane when this is all over," Stephen said one night as they sat on rocks by the water.