The Gulliver Fortune Read online

  "If it's ever over."

  "Can't be long. We've dislodged the Japs from most places. They've lost their grip on the place and they're losing the people."

  Tess looked at him with surprise. "You mean the local people supported them?"

  "Some of them, yes. Why not? I can't see that we've ever done them much good."

  Tess thought him a most unusual man and never more so than when she finally got him into her tent. It took weeks of her cigarette ration to bribe the other nurses to keep clear for a couple of hours. She made tea while Stephen sat on her camp bed. She brought the mug of tea across and held it to his mouth. He put his hands up to take it but she shook her head. She moved so that his hands touched her breasts.

  "Please, Stephen. Touch me. I want you to."

  Tess's brassiere was in her locker; there was only the thin material of her nurse's dress between her body and Stephen's gently moving hands.

  "God," he said. "That's wonderful."

  "Inside."

  Clumsily he undid the buttons and opened the dress. Her breasts were high and firm. He put his hands on them and the nipples hardened. Tess put the mug aside and moved his head so that his lips brushed against her breasts. "I want to make love."

  "I can't," Stephen whispered. "I mean, I never have."

  Tess was delighted. She sat on the bed next to him and opened his shirt. She kissed his chest. "Lie back. Relax."

  Tess had had two American lovers in Brisbane, one officer and one enlisted man, one married and one single. She had learned a great deal from them, particularly ways of taking sex slowly and by degrees. Patiently and calmly she showed Stephen how to explore her body. He became erect and she slowed everything down, forcing him to concentrate on her reactions, not his. He was awkward and hurt her with his urgent fingers. She took his hand and guided it. Stephen felt as if he had doubled in strength and wisdom. They kissed and he moved on top of her on the narrow bed. She lifted her knees and spread herself.

  "Go deep, darling, and stop when I tell you."

  He entered her, plunged and exploded. He collapsed and put his face in her hair. "I'm sorry. I couldn't."

  She laughed and kissed him. "I didn't think so. Don't worry. Wait. You're still there. I can feel you."

  They made love twice more before her time of bought privacy expired. He held her and kissed her hard. "I love you."

  "Do you?" she said. "We'll see."

  Stephen St John Gee and Teresa Savage were married in Brisbane on 8 May 1945. They were on short leave and agreed not to complicate their service lives by making the marriage public. Stephen put off telling his mother and Tess had no close family to inform. They spent a week in Brisbane, with Tess showing her husband the sights. They stayed in a city hotel and made love every night and at least once during the day.

  "I've got a lot of time to catch up on," Stephen said.

  "I started well before you. That's not hard to tell, is it?" Tess lit a cigarette and waited for his reply.

  They were both naked on the bed. Their faces and arms were brown and there was a vee of tanned skin below their necks. Stephen kissed her on the point of the vee and went lower. Tess squashed out her cigarette. When they'd finished Stephen got a towel and wiped the sweat from their bodies. "I don't care how many men you've had," he said. "You brought me to life and I'll love you forever."

  She put her finger on his lips. "Don't say forever. It's bad luck."

  "There's no such thing."

  They walked around the city streets debating where Stephen would have his office and took taxis to the suburbs to plan where they would live. They drank beer and ate Chinese food and went dancing.

  "How is it you can dance and never got to know any girls?" Tess asked.

  "Lessons. I've had lessons in everything." Stephen turned her expertly to avoid a half-drunk American who was trying to put some vigour into his steps.

  "You're a good learner."

  Tess was dark with a round face, big eyes and a full mouth. Everything about her was generous and easy. She smoked a lot and drank much more than Stephen but he didn't care. They were happy. At the end of the week they returned to New Guinea and soon after Stephen's company was despatched south to participate in the mopping up of the Japanese units still active between Lae and Buna.

  The jungle seemed suddenly to have become quieter. The interval between the bird calls seemed unnaturally long. Stephen uncovered the Bren and checked the action. He adjusted the angle of the belt feeding into the breech and made sure that nothing would obstruct it.

  Lewis's voice was high and shaky. "See anything, sir?"

  "No." Stephen opened the notebook and began to write.

  "See anything?"

  "No." He wrote: 'Darling Tess'.

  "That's the bloody trouble, isn't it?"

  Stephen didn't reply. The pencil touched the paper again and the bullets hissed and thudded around him. The range was shockingly close; dirt and shredded leaves stung his face. He swivelled the gun in the direction of the fire and squeezed the trigger. A dozen bullets hit him like hammer blows. His finger locked the trigger onto automatic fire and the gun rattled on for seconds after he was dead.

  10

  Many times Georgia Gee had heard the story of her mother's arrival in North Sydney to introduce her to her grandmother. As Tess told the tale, it was a bright, sunny day and she had Georgia dressed in a yellow smock and a white sunhat. The child was not quite one year old.

  "You were gorgeous," Tess had said. "With your black curls down to here and those eyes. I didn't see how anyone could resist you."

  Tess had been two months pregnant when Stephen was killed. She went into a kind of trance when she got the news. The bloodstained notebook with 'Darling Tess' written in it was given to her and she wept over it for hours. She was discharged from the nursing corps, given her severance pay and found herself alone and pregnant in Brisbane. The shock took a long time to wear off; she knew nothing about Stephen's will and very little about his circumstances. She knew he had a mother alive but she did not know her address or even whether she lived in Australia. Stephen had been vague about such things.

  The war ended a few weeks after her discharge and the celebrations left her unmoved. She rented a room in the Fortitude Valley area of Brisbane and prepared for the birth of her child, doing all the things she'd learned about in her training, automatically, almost without thought. The doctor she consulted was helpful; he questioned her gently and learned that she had her marriage certificate and the official record of Stephen's death in action.

  "You'd be entitled to a pension," he said. "And other health benefits and such."

  A small flame of independence flared in Tess's mind. "I'm an ex-servicewoman. I can claim those things on my own account."

  "Only for yourself," the doctor said. "Not for your child. The child's father died for his country, and the country is grateful."

  "You could've fooled me," Tess said. She observed a very quick return to all the old ways—the end of a kind of civility that had operated in wartime. Louts made comments on her condition in the streets, women who had held jobs and achieved some pride were turning back into household drudges. The Americans with their free-spending easy ways left. It was all going to be the same again.

  But the doctor was persistent. He booked Tess into a hospital for her confinement and, among other arrangements, he saw to it that application papers for a service widow's pension were forwarded to her.

  "What the hell," Tess said, pouring herself a glass of stout. She had lost weight through the pregnancy and the doctor had recommended stout in moderation; Tess tended to double up on the doses. She filled in the forms and after she had written her name—'Teresa Gee'—on the back of the envelope, she took out a photograph of herself and Stephen standing by the Brisbane River and pointing to a spot in the trees high above the water. It was where they said they would build a house. A stranger had taken the picture of them and wished them luck. Tess wept as she looked at
the picture; tears fell on the sealed envelope. She finished the bottle of stout.

  Army and Repatriation Department wheels turned slowly. Not until after the birth of her child—a healthy, dark-haired girl weighing eight pounds whom she named Georgia—did she receive a response to her pension application. She was back in her room with the baby quiet in its bassinet when she read the letter.

  Dear Madam

  With respect to your application for a service widow's pension I regret to inform you that some complications have arisen. Although your marriage to Lt Stephen St John Gee is authenticated, the army received no notification of the marriage and you and Lt Gee were, technically, in breach of certain provisions of the Service regulations in not seeking official approval for your marriage.

  I have further to inform you that Mrs Gertrude Gulliver, of 4 Claremont Street, North Sydney, New South Wales, the mother of Lt Gee and sole beneficiary under the terms of his will, denies all knowledge of her son's marriage. She has announced her intention of seeking legal advice and it is the opinion of the Army and this Department that you should do the same.

  It is proposed that a hearing be held in Sydney at some time convenient to yourself, Mrs Gee and your legal representatives to resolve this matter.

  I await your further communications.

  The letter was signed by an official of the Repatriation Department.

  "Bastards!" Tess opened a bottle of beer and began to draft an angry letter in reply. She drank some beer and finished the letter. The baby slept on. Tess napped briefly and when she awoke she read through her letter and tore it up. She underlined the address given by the bureaucrat and spoke to Georgia, who woke up when she heard the bottle clink against the rim of the glass.

  "Time for you to meet your grandma," Tess said.

  But Georgia developed jaundice and associated illnesses and it was almost a year before Tess made the trip south. She bided her time, writing a few letters to the Army and the Department to keep her claim alive, but putting no faith in the results. She took part-time work in a hotel, leaving Georgia with a neighbour. She worked hard, drank a lot and firmly rejected all propositions from the pub's patrons. "I had a real man," she'd say. "A hero. None of you blokes measure up." It was an effective statement.

  "What was Grandma wearing when you showed up at her house?" Georgia would ask later, when what women wore was one of the most important things in her young life.

  "A silk dress," Tess would say. "A grey silk dress and white shoes."

  "Did she look like the Queen?"

  "No, she just looked elegant . . . fierce."

  Tess was over thirty when she rang the bell in Claremont Street; she'd lived all her life in the tropics and had been smoking and drinking for more than ten years. To Trudie Gee it must have seemed impossible that this woman could have claimed her son, whose smooth, boyish face looked out at the world from a photograph on the top of the highly polished piano he used to play. Stephen was eternally twenty.

  "I'm Tess Gee, and this is your granddaughter."

  Trudie tensed to slam the door against the creature, standing there in a cheap cotten print frock with a wild head of grey-streaked hair and too much lipstick. She glanced down at the child in the stroller. A pair of dark eyes looked up at her, a babyish smile, slightly sly, spread across the face, and Trudie saw the reincarnation of Jack Gulliver. She felt faint and leaned against the door jamb. Tess's strong arm steadied her.

  "You must come in," Trudie had said. "I'm sorry. This is a terrible shock."

  "We got along like a house on fire," Tess told Georgia. "She dropped all the nonsense about me not getting the pension. In we moved. We were on clover."

  "Why did she change her mind?" Georgia asked, although she'd heard the answer many times.

  The level in Tess's bottle would be well down by this time. She'd take another cigarette, light up, blow smoke and answer in her cracked, hoarse voice. "She reckoned you looked like your father's dad. I've seen the photos of him but I'm damned if I could see any resemblance. Still, it did the trick."

  Life was comfortable for Georgia in North Sydney. Her grandmother doted on her, bought her clothes and paid for her curricular and extra-curricular education. Sydney changed rapidly in the postwar years, especially for the affluent. They built tennis courts, installed swimming pools and hired talented European migrants as tutors for their children. By the time she was twelve Georgia could swim, dance, ride and play the piano. She was quick to grasp things and eager to learn more. Up to a point: her instructors agreed that she was adept but none thought that she would ever put in the work required to lift her performance to excellence. Trudie had no objections; she wanted accomplishment in her granddaughter, not brilliance. The brilliance, she determined, would be acquired through marriage.

  Tess found life less pleasing. "I hate this place," she complained to her cronies in the ladies' bar of the North Sydney Returned Soldiers' League Club. "I miss Brisbane."

  For an answer a finger would point out the window. "Sydney's got the best harbour in the world."

  "What good is it to me? I don't sail on it, and you can't bloody drink it." Liquids to drink had become the main focus of Tess's existence.

  "I could give you an allowance, Teresa," Trudie said. "You could buy a house in Brisbane if you're so fond of the place."

  Tess squinted through her cigarette smoke. "And leave Georgia with you, I suppose?"

  "Yes."

  "No chance."

  "Why? What's wrong with me?" The thought of having Georgia to herself excited Trudie so much that she temporarily forgot the modulation of her vowels and other careful speech habits she'd acquired over the years. The words came out roughly, but Tess didn't notice.

  "You're too lah-de-dah. No offence. But I want Georgia to know what life's really like."

  Trudie was amused by that, but didn't show it. If she only knew where I came from and the things I've done, she thought. "And what is life really like, Teresa?"

  "Up and down. Tell you what, though. If you could help me out a bit I could get a flat of my own in Sydney. Georgia could stay with you in the holidays and at weekends."

  Trudie's vowels were back under control. "That sounds like a nice arrangement."

  So Georgia became, and remained, a bargaining chip between her mother and grandmother. She went on to school at Abbotsleigh and lived her weeks with Tess in the flat in Milson's Point and spent holidays and most weekends with Trudie. It was a divided existence: North Sydney housed many people like Trudie who gave the appearance of having deliberately moved across the harbour to greater respectability. There, life was all table manners, clean clothes and polite outings. Like a lot of Milson's Point residents, Tess seemed to have just got off the ferry there on a whim and settled. She worked occasionally at a variety of jobs but her pension and the allowance from Trudie took away the necessity so that she stopped work when she pleased. She drank heavily and smoked every waking moment. Occasionally, prompted by something she overheard or by watching Ben Casey on television, she thought of going back to nursing, but she knew that she couldn't take the hours and the responsibility. A few drinks would remove the idea effectively.

  Georgia loved both women for different reasons. She admired her grandmother's calm and control and she liked her mother's affection and easy-goingness. In North Sydney she could be assured of money, plentiful food and taxi rides to her activities; in Milson's Point she had loud music from records and the radio, hasty snacks and ferry rides. Georgia saw the signs of the men who were around when she was not—socks, shaving soap, hand-rolled cigarette ends—and she knew her mother couldn't have consumed all the bottles on her own. She didn't mind. She seldom saw Tess under the influence and was never personally inconvenienced by any arrangements Tess might make with her friends. Besides, there was the hunger in her for knowledge of her father and her past, and Tess could almost always be persuaded to come up with the stories. Especially if she was well-oiled.

  "Was my father
good-looking?"

  "You've seen the photos. He was very good-looking."

  "Could he dance?"

  "He was a wonderful dancer and a terrible singer."

  "He looks too young to be a father."

  Trudie had no photographs of Stephen in uniform; all images of him dated from his days as a young lawyer about town. He looked impossibly young, even standing proprietorially beside his Austin Seven.

  "He was old enough to be a father and old enough to die for this country." Tess would start to cry at that point and Georgia would comfort her. It was a ritual. By the time she was sixteen, Georgia was sharing the beer and sherry with her mother. This interfered only slightly with her success at school: she was a prefect but did not display quite the steadiness required for the school captaincy. She did well at sports and, despite occasional sloppy essays and moments of inattention in class, matriculated with honours in English and history. Her grandmother had hopes of her following her father's profession but Georgia had an announcement to make at the small celebration Trudie organised when the examination results were announced.

  Only the three Gee women were present. It was December 1962 and hot. They sat under shade in the leafy yard of the Claremont Street house. Trudie had a gardener who tended the flower beds and trained the vines over the pergolas. They had coffee and cakes. Trudie ate nothing and took her coffee black. She was sixty-eight years old and still trim in a pink frock. She had protected her complexion from the Australian sun and it had stayed fresh, although somewhat doll-like. Tess, at fifty, had spread. She ate several cakes quickly.

  "I want to be a journalist," Georgia said.

  "A what?" Trudie gasped.

  "I want to travel all over the world and meet lots of famous people and write about them for the newspapers."

  "Terrific." Tess was wondering if she might take her coffee inside and pop something in it from her handbag to get it on its feet. "Great idea, kid. You do it. 'Scuse me, nature calls." She heaved herself up and walked into the house, balancing her cup and saucer.