He went on to talk about Dorrigo’s family, but his knowledge—gleaned from what little Tom had written in his Christmas cards—was mostly out of date and only Miss Beatrice nearly falling out of the window while biting at the rushing air saved them from his embarrassment on discovering that Dorrigo’s mother was dead. He sat leaning forward in the car, strewn over the steering wheel like a gale-fallen tree trunk, his big hands moving incessantly up and down the wheel as if it were a fortune teller’s crystal ball and he was forever searching the long, straight, flat roads of Adelaide for something, an illusion that might help him live.
But there was little other traffic, and nothing other than the straightness and flatness and the heat waves rising up in distortions. Keith Mulvaney talked continuously, as if afraid of what silence might hold or what Dorrigo might ask, asking questions of Dorrigo that he immediately answered himself. His conversation returned frequently to a running battle he was having as an alderman on the local council over a proposal by the mayor to introduce a sewerage system. Dorrigo ended up staring out of his window, running his wet hand in the breeze while Keith talked, oblivious to this lack of interest, asking questions he would immediately answer, and every answer concluding with a smile that seemed to brook no disagreement. Like an occasional clarinet solo would come a periodic mention of Amy.
A modern woman. Very modern. Out and about. She does a terrific job. The war, though. Everything’s different now. It dissolves everything, this war. You never saw such things before the war. Did you?
Well—
No, I think not. It’s not just London being blitzed. No. Things that were a scandal a year ago no one thinks twice of anymore. I am a modern man. But I am so grateful to have some family to keep her in decent company.
Despite his fixed smile, he seemed utterly miserable.
The other night she was with a redheaded woman called Tippy. Can’t stand her.
Tippy?
Tippy, yes—you know her?
Well—
I ask you? It’s a name for a budgerigar. And I have this damn municipal conference and have to be gone for the night. In Gawler, hours away. Tonight. I am so sorry I can’t be with you. Unexpected—the mayor needs me to represent us. Why?
I suppose—
I have no idea why. Anyway, Amy will look after you. And, to be frank, I’m happy you’ll be looking after Amy. You don’t mind?
Answering was not the point and Dorrigo finally gave up trying.
Well, I am sure you’ll get some rest, anyway, said Keith Mulvaney. And a good bed, rather than an army bunk.
At the King of Cornwall Keith took Dorrigo to a room on the fourth floor. As they made their way up the grand staircase with its threadbare runner, they met Amy coming down, carrying a bag of dirty linen. Dorrigo felt a strange elation that was as inappropriate as it was undeniable. She glanced at her husband, a look in which Dorrigo glimpsed a complex mud of intimacies copyrightly invisible to the world—the shared sleep, scents, sounds, the habits endearing and frustrating, the pleasures and sadnesses, small and large—the plain mortar that finally renders two as one.
Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, ruby-gold in the atrium light. As he was introduced, complicity took hold before anything complicit had happened. In a glance he saw her face unnaturally glowing, a loose lock of hair landing like a trout fly in front of her right ear, and he understood that they had silently agreed to say nothing at that moment of the bookshop.
Well, Amy, said Keith, I hope you have some entertainment arranged for our guest.
She shrugged, and he was conscious of the slight roll of her breasts in her cornflower blue blouse.
Do you like Vivien Leigh? asked Amy. There’s a new Vivien Leigh movie in the city called Waterloo Bridge. Would you like to—
I’ve seen it, said Dorrigo, who had done no such thing and suddenly thought what a nasty man he was, his mind abuzz. Was he frightened of being with her? Was he trying to prove his power over her?
That’s a shame, said Keith. But I’m sure it’s not the only movie.
Dorrigo no longer understood himself, nor why he said such things. But he had said it, and then, equally unexpectedly, he heard himself say:
But I’d love to see it again.
Pushing away, pushing in: the pattern of so much that was to follow.
Amy shrugged once more, and Dorrigo Evans forced his eyes away from her and down the staircase until she re-entered his vision a floor below, the fingers of her extended hand running along the varnished bannister. His gaze followed her ponytail bobbing as she continued stepping down into the void.
10
OF THE MANY things Dorrigo Evans expected to happen that evening, he did not expect to be taken to a nightclub off Hindley Street. She said if he had already seen the movie, he would know what was going to happen next, and that would ruin everything. He was in uniform, she in an apricot oriental shirt and baggy black silk trousers. The effect was of something liquid. Her body seemed to him so definite and strong; when she moved, she glided.
The point is in never knowing, Amy said. Don’t you think?