The Big Fellow, page 8
“It’s all right, honey. Nothing really in all this to write down as a casualty. Ever hear the old saying the bohunks have at home—‘More was lost on Mohacs field’?”
His protective tenderness as they trudged along in the dark, making much of her bruised arm, his way with the sleepy owners of the pub (“You’re sure the right sort to come to in a jam, you people”), the look in his eyes when he had stolen along the veranda to her room with some liniment, the fluttering in her own heart—curiosity, fear, the thrill of the unknown—as she accepted his view that the war gave sanction to just such unexpected interludes …
No real feeling had been awakened in her till then. Afterwards her one impulse had been to cling to him, to make him aware of what their coming together meant to her, to arouse in him a passion as intense as her own. How often she had staged accidents and injuries to see if she could bring a flash of real concern to his eyes!
They had lunch on the outskirts of Brentford, for Donovan had insisted on the picnic nature of the trip. While the girl spread the cloth, he boiled a blackened billy, brought chicken and salad from the car’s boot, and settled himself comfortably with the battery wireless to listen in to the first race at Eagle Farm. The creek bubbled gently over the worn stones, an occasional truck clattered along the road above them, a summer drowsiness rose from the warm earth that smelt of ants and bleached grass. Words had never come easily between them, but they were conscious of the sense of sympathy that had always held them together as they lay on opposite sides of the spread cloth. A sympathy that was yet shot with little doubts and uncertainties. It was not till they had finished eating that Donovan turned off the wireless.
“Peter tell you he was leaving me?”
“No: is he?”
“Seems so. Chosen a bad time for it, the young defaulter, at least for me. Session ending, conferences looming ahead. He was just beginning to get the run of things, too. I was depending on him a lot.”
“Peter never tells me anything,” said Sheila, looking away. “The only person he really opens out to is Aunt Judy. She’s taken to mothering him now.”
Her voice had a touch of acid in it. Aunt Judy—the woman who stood out from the other aunts because she could imagine her as a rival. Aunt Judy must be nearly forty, Sheila knew, but there was such a spring about her that she always seemed to belong to her own generation. Donovan looked at her closely, as if half suspecting, half hoping, there had been some lovers’ quarrel between her and Peter that might be patched up.
“Oh well, if he hasn’t broken from the whole family …
“I don’t think he’s likely to. Apart from Aunt Judy, there’s Uncle Hugh.”
“That’s so. He’s got it into his head that the only career worth a damn lies in medicine. Even though it’ll take him another three years to complete his course.”
He went on, dark and moody, to enlarge on the way Peter had disappointed him. He had looked forward to making openings for Peter, giving him the benefit of his own experience. There was an emotional rumble in his voice; now, the girl felt, he was working his way around to her own defection. She watched him across the cloth, wary, defensive. He had always, he was saying, thought of the adoption of Peter, when his mother died, as the payment of an old debt.
“There’s not many men who’ve given me a leg-up since I was a youngster, but his father was one of them. Came across me at the right time. I was a bull-headed young tough then, throwing my weight about; he showed me how I could do something better for the other fellows than keeping the two-up ring for them on Sunday mornings. Threw down a challenge to me I couldn’t help taking up—more than that, stood over me till I did. In a little while he had me acting as union agent for Golconda, and from then on I was jake. Yes; never needed another touch of the spur. I didn’t treat him too well when he came a cropper himself later on; we just didn’t click, and maybe I’d the grudge against him you always feel for people who’ve done you a good turn; but it’s been on my mind ever since. I can’t forget that if it hadn’t been for Peter’s father I’d be swinging a pick in the stopes now or maybe hunting a new prospect with a swag in the dry country. I’d have bent over backwards to give Peter a good start in life, but if he wants to go off on his pat now—well, that’s all there is about it. The only thing you can do for a young fellow like him is to leave him alone.”
The girl was silent. She had heard it all before, and it meant very little to her. Once she had suspected an old love-affair between her father and Peter’s mother, but something he had said casually had dispelled that notion. Donovan sat up suddenly now and looked at her, a quirk of humour in his eyes.
“Never been anything between you and Peter, has there, Sheila?”
“Anything?” she parried. “No, nothing serious.”
“I’d a notion once that you two would make a match of it.” “Oh, well,” she admitted lightly, “I suppose I was a bit goofy on Peter when I was fifteen or so.”
“That all?”
“All as far as I’m concerned. I can’t answer for Peter. Of course, I’m fond of him—isn’t everybody? But when you’ve grown up with a boy you just take him for granted. The lights don’t go up and the band start playing when he comes into the room.”
“No,” he said dryly, “I guess not. If that’s what you’re looking for.”
He rose to his feet and went over to stamp out the embers of the fire. When he came back he stood for a while, looking at her uncertainly; then on an impulse he put his hands on her shoulders.
“Set on going, aren’t you, Sheila?”
She said soberly, “It would be the end of me, dad, if I couldn’t.”
“Well, I guess that settles it. I’ll miss you, God knows, but I’m not going to make a song about it. And don’t let any other tongues wagging keep you lying awake. You won’t, of course: you and me—chips of the one block of granite. But, remember, if anything goes wrong—well, I’m your father, Sheila, and a cable will bring me into action, pronto.”
The girl was so taken aback that tears sprang to her eyes. It was a relief, and yet it was somehow dispiriting. So this was all it amounted to, this emotional conflict she had brooded on for days with mingled dread and expectation! It was always the same: you worried about the opposition you might have to meet if you went your own way, and then you found that other people’s wills were not nearly as relentless as your own. The big scenes never really came off.
“Thanks, dad,” she said giving his arm a squeeze. “I knew you’d make it easy for me. You always have.”
The cheerful flatness of her voice chilled him a little. He stood looking down at her bent head.
“Gammon!” he said lightly. “What you’ve always known, Sheila, is that you could get what you wanted by driving straight for it and brushing aside anyone who stood in your way. Isn’t that so?”
“Perhaps it is. It’s a lesson I’ve got from you, dad.”
“Yet you’ve been inclined to carry a chip on your shoulder,” he could not help saying. “No need for that, was there?”
She turned to gather up the cloth.
“I had too many loving relations round me when I was a youngster. I suppose I couldn’t help reacting against them. Yet I seem to remember that a word from you could always stop me, dad, when I was on the point of flying into a tantrum.”
“Growing up isn’t easy,” was all he said.
He left her in the car outside the big military building that stood bleak and forbidding in its bare grounds, dominating a gravelled parade-strip, a dozen rows of Nissen huts and a clutter of workshops. It was merely a routine inspection he was on, he told her: she would be bored by the details of it; he wouldn’t keep her waiting more than half an hour.
But it was plain, he saw when he entered the grounds, that preparations had been made for his visit, and that those in charge of the institution would not willingly let him go till they had found out the purpose of it. Its head, Captain Jordan, was a thickset little man of over fifty who had once been a teacher, had served in two wars, and now carried about with him a hint of both schoolroom and parade-ground. His steel-grey eyes were set in a face that had the toughness of tanned leather, and he received Donovan with the dry deference of one who was supreme in his own little world but knew the limits of his authority. There was a defensive shortness in his comments as he showed Donovan over the roomy lounge, the library, the bare dining-room with its rows of trestle tables, finally taking him out on the veranda where a hundred or more of his charges were drawn up in their suits of grey holland. They peered up at their visitor curiously, exchanging furtive grins as they stood at ease.
She’s waiting there, Donovan was thinking. Is she wondering why I came? No one could ever bluff her.
He addressed a few words to the boys in his deep, booming voice, and watched them dismiss. All around him he was conscious of a feeling of curiosity and suspicion. The name of Brentford had cropped up in letters to the newspapers during the last fortnight because of the escape of two prisoners on parole; there had been arguments as to whether discipline had been too harsh or too lax. One writer had complained that the food was bad and that there was not enough religious instruction, another that the youngsters were treated like convicts. The fuss stirred up in the world outside was reflected in the jittery atmosphere of the place.
Turning aside Jordan’s suggestions that he should look over the huts and the cookhouse, Donovan asked to see some of the records. As they sat together in the hot little office at the end of the veranda he could feel Jordan’s eyes on him, puzzled, distrustful, slightly belligerent.
You’ve been in power only a few weeks, they said. Why has my little show been picked out for this visit? Just chance, is it, or is something brewing because of that shindy in the papers? If there are to be any changes in the set-up I’ve a right to know.
Donovan remained aloof and inscrutable. It was only after he had examined a score of cards, grunting at Jordan’s comments and explanations, that he said casually, “Got a youngster named Farelli here, haven’t you?”
Jordan gave him a quick look as if at last some light was beginning to be thrown on the purpose of the visit.
“That’s so. Not been here more than a few months. Three-year term.”
“What’s he like? Difficult?”
“Oh, no. Not as much as some. Too shrewd a character for that, I’d say.”
“Shrewd?”
“Well, perhaps it would be more charitable to say intelligent. That is, if you wanted to be charitable.”
The dryness of the tone irritated Donovan. His own voice had a snap in it: “What d’you mean by that? All I want is to get a line on his character.”
Jordan hastened to appease him. He hadn’t really had time to study the boy, he said.
“What I meant to suggest was that he’s a bit more slick and sophisticated than most of the young fellows here. Got a lively tongue in his head and can influence those older than himself. Comes from Sydney, I think: probably spent a good deal of his youth hanging round the joints at King’s Cross. Where he shows his shrewdness is in his capacity to make adjustments; no likelihood of him banging his head against a brick wall if he can find a way of going round it.”
Donovan’s eyes were on the boy’s card, and he seemed to be only listening with one ear.
“H’m. Better ask someone to bring him up and let me have a look at him.”
He affected to treat the matter as a whim of no importance that had just crossed his mind. Taking out his watch, he glanced at it and paced to the window, looking out to where Sheila was nodding at the wheel of the car, her head propped on her arm, her red beret a blur against the glass like a crushed strawberry. He was still standing there when Jordan appeared again, the young fellow in his wake.
“This is Farelli, Mr Donovan. It was his card caught your eye, wasn’t it?… Weren’t on parade, were you, Farelli?”
“No, sir. Doing fatigue in the cookhouse.”
Even in the solid dungarees that hung loosely on his slim figure there was a singular attraction about the young fellow. His stance had an easy grace; his features were clear-cut and regular, the long lashes that drooped over his dark eyes giving him a look of innocence. The only thing that disturbed this impression was his faint, uncertain smile. It was at once nervous and knowing; it hovered like a subtle shadow over his olive face.
A heavy silence filled the room as Donovan sat down at the table again and took up the boy’s card. Turning from the window he had received a shock that jolted an old memory into life, giving him a feeling that an encounter of the past was being repeated, an encounter in which he had come off second best, in spite of the passion driving him and the power that lay in his hands. So strongly was he affected that he smelt the mud of the drying soak, the sweat of his horse as he slipped from the saddle, the smoke of the cooking-fire. It had been at the end of a long ride that he had come upon the boy’s father, squatting by the flap of his tent mending a broken hobble-chain, a faint whine in his voice as he confessed that the girl who had run off with him had gone. And there had been nothing for it but to swing into the saddle again, leaving the fellow untouched. It was a defeat that had led to other defeats, that had remained as a source of humiliation in his core even when he thought he had forgotten about it.
Looking at the card, he said abruptly, “Come from Sydney, do you?”
“I did. A little over a year ago. That’s my home—as far as I ever had a home.”
“H’mph, that’s the pathetic touch, I suppose—shouldn’t have thought you’d find it work in this place. I didn’t have much of a home either at your age—felt freer without one. Know anyone up here?”
“My mother came up to see me. About three days ago. She told me—”
“It doesn’t matter what she told you … Ever been in trouble before?”
“No, sir. Never.”
“Never been found out, eh? Well, you can’t expect that sort of immunity to last. And if you’ve never had a home you ought to find this a pretty good one. A good one for teaching a young fellow elementary things about life and about himself. They’ve got to be learnt, in a place like this one or outside, or he won’t have a very happy future.”
He was exasperated by something he saw in the boy’s eyes, a secret understanding, even a hint of amusement, a recognition that all this official bluster did not mean very much, that there were influences working for his good and that he was on his way to freedom. Donovan was angry at having committed himself as far as he had done. It was not merely the triumph in the boy’s eyes: it was the look on Jordan’s leathern face.
So this is what you’ve come for, that look said. No need for me to worry. Personal matter, after all.
Chapter VIII
Kitty Donovan was both puzzled and disturbed by the casualness with which Macy accepted the idea of Sheila’s going off into a world of men, Americans at that, with no one, as she put it, to stretch out a hand to her if she was in trouble. It seemed as if there was something perverse in his easy indifference. She would have expected him to be more upset than she was herself by Sheila’s announcement; yet there he was, teasing the girl at table about her itch to get into uniform again, cracking jokes about the fussiness of Flo and Sandra, encouraging her to take her family as lightly as for a long time she had taken her religion.
It was almost as if he had put the notion of going away into her head. She herself was not conscious of any deep emotional pangs at the thought of parting with Sheila; there had never been the close bond between them that united her to Kevin, and the girl’s offhand treatment of her was sometimes humiliating; but the easiness with which Macy took the affair touched a nerve in her. Did the breaking up of his home mean nothing to him? And had he really fallen for Sheila’s argument that this was merely an extension of the job she had been carrying out during the war?
“You know quite well what’s at the back of her mind,” she protested.
He was good-humoured, but impenetrable.
“Maybe I do. It was bad luck she ever met the fellow—I’ve always admitted that. But what’s the use of raising Cain about something that can’t be altered? Is it likely that anything either of us could say would do more than put her back up?”
Kitty could only reply with a touch of sentimental self-pity, “Oh, God knows, I never expect Sheila to take any notice of me! She thinks I’m an old trout who belongs to the days of her grandmother. But it’s different with you, Macy. A word from you was always enough to turn her in another direction from the one she was going.”
He looked sceptical.
“Was it? I’ve never seen it work out that way.”
“And it isn’t as if there wasn’t plenty to occupy her here,” Kitty went on. “If she’d given half a thought to the matter she’d have realized the weight of entertainment that was falling on me and the way I’d need her help. I suppose all young girls these days feel they must be earning a living of their own, but she could have found half a dozen ways of doing that here. People are already asking what call she had going half-way round the world for a job when her father’s head of the State.”
“People? What people? Who the hell would know of this move of hers outside the family?
