The Climate of Courage

“Gee, that’s wonderful, Daddy,” said Jill, and hastily swallowed a lump of meat. “My, won’t the girls at school like this! Someone glamorous in the family!”

“Thank you,” said Dinah. “Let me tell you, when I was in the chorus I was called glamorous, seductive——”

“Ah, you’re all right, Mum,” said Michael. “But being a chorus girl isn’t like being a war correspondent.”

“I told one of the nuns the other day that my mother had been a hoofer,” said Jill. “She said she’d say a rosary for you.”

“That’s nice,” said Dinah. “Tell her in return I’ll put on my tights and do a bit at the school concert.” She stabbed at a piece of kidney. “A hoofer!”

Michael was looking at his father. “Where will you go, Dad? Up to New Guinea? Will you get your name on your stories? Heck, I hope there’s a war on when I grow up——”

“If there is,” said Dinah, “I’ll see you get a nice soft cop in a reserved occupation.”

She said it without any particular emphasis, but Vern looked along the table at her. She smiled at him, a smile as unreadable as a chorus girl’s. “Go on, darling. Did you take the job?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“Ah, ’struth!” Michael carved at the air with his knife, disgusted with a father who didn’t recognise opportunity when it knocked. “Someone else will get it if you don’t hurry up! I bet everyone on the paper wants——”

“Don’t you want it, Daddy?” said Jill.

She was eleven, small but well-built, with her mother’s feature’s and her father’s colouring, but with the temperament of neither of them. She already had all the poise that Vern had spent years trying to acquire; a trick of retiring into herself that made her completely beyond and independent of what went on about her; and an intelligence that sometimes dismayed Dinah.

Vern looked at her, aware that, with her uncanny sense of feeling, she knew something was troubling him. “I don’t know. It’s not something I can just say yes to, just like that——”

“I could,” said Michael. “Ask me.”

Dinah was the first to admit that her brain was little better than a chorus girl was required to have, but like her daughter she could sense when anything was worrying Vern. “Righto, Michael, we’ll ask you when you leave school, in six or seven years’ time. Now get on with your eating and let’s forget all about the glamour.”

Michael grinned, his blunt dark face suddenly like his father’s. “Ah, you’re only jealous. How’d you like to be a lady war correspondent?”

“I’d rather be top of the bill at the Tivoli,” said Dinah. “And by golly, I would have been if it hadn’t been for you two coming along.”

“Other women have had babies and continued their theatrical careers,” said Jill. “Even hoofers.”

“When you’re married and going to have a baby,” said Dinah, “let me see you do the can-can.”

Vern again felt the sudden warmth that had come over him several times in the two days since he had arrived home. The children had developed amazingly in the two years he had been away, and his pride in them was like a heady tonic. But what pleased him more was the intimate, almost adult relationship they had with their mother. That, he realised, had come about because of his absence: she had encouraged it, perhaps unwittingly, to make up for what she had missed by his being away. The family seemed to have become tighter knit while he had been away, and yet he didn’t feel out of it. Dinah had kept him a part of it, and he looked along the table at her now and loved her more even than in the lonely moments overseas.

Later when they were going to bed she took off all her clothes and stood in front of the big wardrobe mirror. She turned side on and patted her stomach. “Think I’ve got fat while you’ve been away? I went on a diet when I knew you were coming home, even did exercises. Hoofer’s exercises.”

Vern hung his trousers in the closet. “The belly’s all right, but I detect a slight droop in the bosom.”

“What do you expect at thirty-two? You wanted to marry a thirty-six inch chest. I remember distinctly that was the first thing you said to me after you’d asked my name. You said I had a magnificent chest.”

“And I remember you shoved it out a little more.” Vern had sat down and begun to take off his shoes and socks. “I had to stand back to make room.”

“Well, the older I get, the tireder I get holding it up. But while you’re home I’ll make a special effort.” She drew back her shoulders. “There, how’s that? My God, you’re lucky, you know.”

He was, he knew that. Her bosom had deepened after the birth of the two children, but it was still firm and lovely. Her waist was slim and there was no thickening over the hips; they curved, then came in a smooth sweep to her long thighs. No birth wrinkles marred her stomach: her slightest movement brought exciting shadows to the firm modelling of it. And the face with its good wide bonework, short straight nose, dark sparkling eyes that could suddenly become lazy-lidded, all of it backed by the shining black hair, had remained vividly clear in his memory over the last two years. She wasn’t strictly beautiful, but she was Dinah and there was no one else. He was lucky, all right.

“There are a lot of men who would give their right arm to get into bed with a body like this,” she said.

“Good-o, try your luck some time. We’ll collect right arms.”

She had climbed into bed. “Come on! God, I’ve never seen a man so slow at getting into bed. Are you as slow as this in the Army? You must get in just in time to get up again for reveille.”

“I don’t have naked women in my bed in the Army.”

“It’s not making you move any faster now. Why the hell did I have to marry such a damned neat man? Drop your clothes on the floor and get in here quick!”

He got into bed and put his arms about her. There had never been anyone before her, and he was as excited now as he had been the first time. They had had no trouble discovering each other in those early days and their love-making had been successful from the start. But now he was trying to restrain himself. He hadn’t yet become accustomed again to the idea of having his wife beside him in bed each night. It was like a second honeymoon: everything, the smoothness, the intimacy, the claiming surrender, was still a little unbelievable.

But now he was beside her she had suddenly quietened down. “Darling, what is it about the job as a war correspondent?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t really want it, do you? Wouldn’t it be a good job?”

“Better than I’ve ever had before,” he said, and all at once was surprised how remote he felt from the newspaper office. Two years ago he would have been excited about the job, would have lain awake well into the night to talk with her about it. Now it was as if the job had been offered to someone else, someone he knew but wasn’t particularly interested in. “Remember how ambitious I used to be? This could be the answer. I might finish up famous, make a lot of money——”

His voice trailed off and after a while she said, “So what’s holding you back? Am I too dumb to see something?”

“No.” He grinned in the darkness and patted her shoulder; sometimes she was more of a child to him than the two youngsters in their rooms down the hall. “Though I don’t know if you’ll understand when I do explain it to you——”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m not dumb, just a little backward.”

But he hadn’t heard her. “I don’t know that I completely understand it, myself. Darl, I don’t want the correspondent’s job, because I want to prove myself to myself.” She made no comment and he went on, “I’ve been an officer now for nearly two years. In another month or so my third pip will be through——”

“Captain Radcliffe,” she said, testing it for sound. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I was going to surprise you. I know how rank-conscious you women are.”

“I’m just surprised you’re not a colonel by now. The Army doesn’t appreciate you like I do. I think you’re wonderful.” She moved closer to him, if that were possible. “The hope of the nation.”

“Thank you.” he said, and patted her shoulder again. “Trouble is, I don’t think I’m so wonderful. Darl, for two years now I’ve been responsible for other men and I still don’t know if I’m big enough for the responsibility. I’ve never been tested. Every time we were in action in the Middle East there was never a time when a decision rested wholly on me. There was always someone there who out-ranked me, and all I had to do was carry out their orders. And what I don’t like is that I was always glad they were there.”

“Is that something to be ashamed of?”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I haven’t thought about shame, because no one else knows about it. But I worry—am I good enough to be responsible for the lives of other men?”

“The Army must have thought so.”

“One of the things you learn in the Army, darling, is that it is far from infallible. It has a greater talent for making mistakes than any other organisation yet devised. I could be one of its major mistakes.”

She was silent for a while, then she said, “How you feel—is it really so important?”

He said nothing for a while, wondering if she would understand when he did tell her. Women had a greater sense of responsibility than men, but they also had a different perspective. There were certain things that a man saw in himself, questions that worried him and had to be answered, that a woman could never take too seriously. Honour, for instance. Women had a sense of honour, but they were rarely foolish or heroic about it: they were not so afraid of the alternative, dishonour, because they had a greater armour against shame. Would Dinah understand, or think him a fool, playing up to some schoolboy code?