The Climate of Courage

“I’ll come along and eat tea and sandwiches. Maybe afterwards, just to set the girls an example, I’ll rush up and throw myself at the war hero.”

That evening, shortly after the stores had closed, he met her outside David Jones’. They went into the big gleaming store and, in a lift crammed with chattering females who looked with an appreciative eye on Jack and a critical one on Silver, they went up to the restaurant floor.

As soon as they entered the large high-ceilinged restaurant Jack saw the war hero. “You mean he’s the one who’s supposed to inspire these girls to save their money for war bonds? He’s never saved a penny in his life! I’ve kept him in spending money ever since we joined the Army on the same day.”

“Who is he?” said Silver. “My mother’s a bit on the vague side. She couldn’t remember his name.”

But before Jack could tell her, the war hero had broken away from the group around him and come plunging towards them. “You old bastard, Savanna! What are you doing here?”

“After you speak, I get up and say a piece,” said Jack. “They want the girls to get both sides of the question. You, you bludger!” he said elegantly, and shook his head disgustedly. He turned to Silver. “This is Sergeant Morley, V.C. Miss Bendixter.”

He was glad to see that Silver remained cool and didn’t gush. “My, we are honoured to-night. A real live V.C. winner.”

“I’ll say this for him,” said Jack. “Most of them don’t stay alive.”

Greg Morley’s black eyes were bright with light and his thin face was flushed under its tan. He’s just like a big kid, thought Jack. Even the thin brown face had a suggestion of boyishness about it: the features seemed thrown together above the mobile mouth, as if they had never settled into a mature countenance. He was good looking, but in a way one could never remember: there was a suggestion of impermanence, of possible change, about his face, as if when one saw him next he might have changed beyond recognition. And his face, like a young boy’s, showed every emotion.

“I’m glad I stayed alive for this,” he said, throwing an arm towards the room, laughing with a mouthful of bright white teeth. “I’m lapping it up! You should have been a hero, Jack.”

“God forbid,” said Jack. “Is Sarah here?”

“She’s over there with the mob,” Greg said. “I’ve got my own bodyguard of Army Public Relations blokes, War Loan johnnies, a photographer from D.O.I. The works, all for Greg Morley!”

“What are you going to talk about to-night?” said Silver.

“God knows.” Greg couldn’t have been more cheerful: he wasn’t a modest hero to be frightened by public adoration. “They’ve written it for me. All I have to do is deliver it.”

“What are you doing next week?” said Jack. “Hamlet?”

But Greg couldn’t be dented. “Come and meet Sarah and the old duck who’s organising this. You’ll love her, Jack. Doesn’t know a bee from a bull’s foot about the war, but you’d think she was Lady Blamey.”

“My mother,” said Silver with mock reverence, but Greg had already left them, plunging back towards his bodyguard and the centre of interest. One of the bodyguard detached himself from the group and came towards them. He ignored Silver and looked up at Jack.

“What are you doing here?” He was a lieutenant with neat wavy hair, a soft round face and an air of authority he was just trying out. “This is a bond rally for business girls, not the Anzac Buffet. You won’t find what you’re looking for here.”

“When you speak to me address me by my rank,” said Jack, and wondered how many bonds it would sell if he smacked the lieutenant here and now. In the past he had several times felt like hitting officers, but had been restrained by second thoughts for which he had later despised himself. But if this officer went too far, there mightn’t be a second thought this time. “And speak to me again like you just have, and I’ll drop you down the lift well. Pips or no pips.”

The officer’s round face seemed to get even rounder, and his air of authority almost choked him. “What’s your name and Army number? I’ll fix you, my friend——”

Jack looked down at him from his full height, past the bristling moustache that stuck out like the horns of an angry bull. “Just step aside, mister, and allow me to escort Miss Bendixter through to join her mother.”

The lieutenant stepped back, his mouth open but empty of words, and Jack and Silver moved on across the room. “You would have hit him, wouldn’t you?” Silver said. “Or thrown him down the lift well.”

“Certainly. Don’t you think he asked for it?”

“I suppose so. But here! Do you always choose such crowded places for your assassinations? And when you’re with your lady friends? I felt a little like some floosie from Paddington”

He stopped and looked down at her. “For that last remark, I should drop you down the lift well. I don’t know why, but one thing I hadn’t expected from you was snobbishness.”

She said nothing for a moment, and he thought she was going to walk away from him. Then she put her hand in his and suddenly he was aware of a new intimacy between them. It was as if they were old lovers who had patched up a quarrel, and there was none of the awkwardness that would have been natural in view of their short acquaintance. “I’m sorry, Jack. That was something I should never have allowed myself even to think. My apologies to the girls in Paddington.”

Then a grey-haired handsome woman, better dressed than anyone else in the place, came steaming towards them. “Silver! My God, I thought you were never going to arrive!” She looked up at Jack. “So this is our war hero! So big and handsome, too! We should sell a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of bonds to-night. I wish all our heroes were like you. What did you win?”

“The Melbourne Cup,” said Jack. “Only man ever to do it. It’s always been won by a horse before.”

Silver patted her mother’s arm. “This is not the war hero, darling. This is Jack Savanna.”

“Oh, he’s with you?” said Mrs. Bendixter, and it was a long time since Jack felt he had been so neatly dropped over-board. Mrs. Bendixter looked about her. “Then where is he? You’d think he’d be on time, even if he is a hero. Have you seen Smithy?”

A small pony-faced woman materialised out of nowhere. She wore an expression of dedicated enthusiasm: the war had been the first cause big enough in which to lose herself. When peace came she would need rehabilitating as much as the men who had fought on the battle fronts.

“You wanted me, Mrs. Bendixter?” Even her voice was enthusiastic, a thin reedy trumpet blowing the national anthem. “Such a crowd! We should sell enough bonds tonight to buy at least one bomber!”

“All we need,” said Jack. “One more bomber, and the war is won.”

He felt Silver kick his leg and when he looked down at her she was frowning severely at him. But Miss Smith’s attention had been hauled in by Mrs. Bendixter.

“Where’s this war hero, Smithy? We must get started soon. We have to go on to a bridge party after this for the war widows——”

“Orphans,” said Miss Smith, glowing with charity. “And it’s not a bridge party, it’s a musicale.”

“A musicale? Well, that’s good. I can doze off. My God, I’m so tired!” Mrs. Bendixter put a hand to her forehead, suffering from war fatigue. “Well, where is this man? Hasn’t he turned up yet?”

“He’s here, Mrs. Bendixter! You’ve already met him. Sergeant Morley, the thin dark boy——”

“The boy with those lovely teeth! Why didn’t someone say so? My God, if I wasn’t here to organise things, they’d never get started!” Mrs. Bendixter turned round as a newspaper photographer came up. “Hallo, you’re from the Sunday Telegraph, aren’t you? Take me full face this time. Last week I was in profile and I looked like General MacArthur.”

Then Greg Morley came back, dragging a pretty girl with honey-coloured hair after him. “You remember Sarah, Jack! Look after her, will you? I’ve got to go up and do my act now.”

Then he had gone plunging away, surrounded by his bodyguard, the whole group moving towards a platform at the end of the hall, headed by Mrs. Bendixter with Miss Smith in close tow.

“Looks like Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort,” said Jack. “Is there no band?” Then he took Silver’s arm. “Sarah Morley, this is Silver Bendixter.”

Sarah smiled and shook her head in wonder. “Your mother puts up with this sort of bedlam often?”

“Every day,” said Silver. “She loves it.”

“So does your husband,” Jack said to Sarah. “Look at him up there. Clark Gable never felt more at home.”

Greg was up on the platform, beaming round at the thousand or more girls below him. Mrs. Bendixter was speaking, reading from a typescript that Miss Smith had shoved into her hands, but she was standing too close to the microphone and her voice was just wave after wave of almost unintelligible blasts. Nobody minded, because nobody had come to listen to Miss Bendixter anyway. And Jack somehow felt sure that Greg at the microphone would be as practised as any crooner.

“His life is complete,” Sarah Morley said. “He’s waited all his life for these past few days.”

“I suppose you’ve been besieged by the newspapers?” said Silver.

“And radio, and the newsreels, and the magazines, and war loan committees. It’s like being married to a public property, a new statue or something.” There was no spite or rancour in Sarah’s voice it was as if she had succeeded in detaching herself completely from the whole business. She looked at Jack. “The surprising thing is, he’s terribly modest with me about it all. He hasn’t told me a thing about what he did to get the V.C All I know is what I read in the papers. Was he really as brave as they said?”

“He was.” There was no mockery now in Jack’s voice: he had seen the incident and he knew Greg deserved the honour he had got. “We’d been held up for an hour by these two machine-gun posts. They had us as nicely taped as I ever hoped to be taped. We were stuck behind some rocks on the bank of the Litani River.” As he spoke the whole rocky sunbaked Syrian countryside came back to him, and he felt suddenly nostalgic. The campaign had been tougher and more important than the outside world, for some political reason, had been told. The Vichy French had fought with the same whole-hearted hatred as the Germans had in the Western Desert. But after the armistice, camped among the olive groves in the shadow of the sharp-ridged mountains, bathing in the warm Mediterranean, loving the dark-eyed Lebanese beauties, when one could get them away from their hawk-eyed parents. Syria had become the first piece of territory worth fighting for that they had so far met. Jack had liked Syria and one day hoped to go back. “I didn’t see Greg start out, I don’t think any of us did, but the next thing we knew he was across the river and going up the opposite bank. He took those two machine-gun posts on his own. He threw in grenades and then went in and used his bayonet. We were still on the other side of the river and it was like sitting in the dress circle watching a film, the sort of film that excites you but that you don’t believe in. When he’d finished he stood up, grinning all over his face just like he is now, and yelled back at us, ‘Righto, what are you bastards waiting for?’ It’s the first and only time I’ve ever heard a man cheered while we were in action. Yes, Sarah, he was really brave.”