Leon Uris (32 page)

Rory Larkin had confused himself grandly. When one contemplates the unknown and is about to set sail into it, he conjures up certain images accompanied by certain sensations. As the images became stripped by reality, Rory found himself dangling in a strange place. The unknown was not unfolding as his mind’s eye had seen it.

After Conor’s death at Lettershambo Castle in Ireland, Rory had a clean rationale for bolting New Zealand. He became so anxious to get off the South Island and enlist in the army, he could have run atop the water like Jesus.

Then came a jolt, an unexpected reaction. He was unable to say good-bye to Georgia Norman. He certainly had not expected the sudden fierce chill that all but immobilized him. His mind stumbled about trying to understand what was happening.

He stood at her cottage door, dumblike, and saw a peculiar look on her face as well, and he began shaking. When he tried to speak he found himself twisting back tears. He walked back into the parlor and slumped.

“I’ve an idea,” Georgia said quickly. “Why don’t you enlist in Auckland? I’ll go with you on one of the coastal steamers. That way we can have a final fling at sea.”

Smashing idea! Or maybe, commuting a sentence? At any rate, Uncle Wally Ferguson was the man. Wally knew all the captains and half the crews.

Rory pondered with Wally about the chances of the
Squire chasing him down. He was still several months shy of twenty-one and a member of an essential wartime industry. No, Liam Larkin would not run after his son. It was a matter of stiff-spined pride. He’d not look for Rory to bring him back, nor would he wish him well.

This journey had been on Rory’s mind long before the war. It would eventually find its way to Ireland. The name
Larkin
entering Ireland was bound to set off alarms.

Eight years back, a certain Horace Landers owned land adjacent to Liam Larkin’s growing sheep station. When the price was right, the Squire acquired it and Landers retired in England. Rory had grown up with the Landers kids and knew their kitchen as his own. If and when there were future inquiries about Rory’s origins, he felt he could easily deal with them by using the name of the departed Landers family.

The idea of the steamer to Auckland was filled with excitement and mystery and would give Rory some space to examine his conflicting sentiments.

The once small but opulent fleet of passenger boats only did an overnight to Wellington these days. When the Wellington-Auckland railroad opened in ’09, most travelers opted for the speedier nineteen-hour overland route.

Uncle Wally did have just the boat. The
Taranaki
was a coastal freighter with special passenger accommodations for four nights at sea, and it just happened to be in port. The old triple-screw steam turbine held the Lord Nelson Suite, the finest high-Victorian accommodation afloat in these waters. Once a man left Christchurch booked into the Lord Nelson, it was not necessarily with his wife. As the sheepmen prospered, the Auckland run was made idyllic, anonymous, and pricey…with service such that guests would not have to leave their staterooms. Privacy was assured so that those who wished were the first to board and the last to debark.

Mr. and Mrs. R. Landers were slipped onto the
Taranaki
several hours before general boarding and were whisked to and ensconced in the Lord Nelson Suite.

Even the strongest of lovers who love one another half of forever, like Rory’s mom and dad, are overtaken by a repetition, a pattern of steady comfort, a constant value, a level of satisfaction. If they are smart enough, they can reignite when a drift starts.

For Rory Larkin, who was young but wise in the ways of women, some were more exciting than others, but each adventure had a sameness to it…the hunt…the victory…the escape. If you stay too long, he learned, the very thing that brought you together starts to pull you apart. Better to spit it out early on and save a lot of grief down the line.

That held true until he met Georgia Norman. When Sister Georgia unbuttoned her starched uniform, his approach was a smile and an attitude of kind humor and a flip now and then into sheer madness.

Georgia Norman’s difference did not take long to become apparent to Rory. It was not a contest of win or lose. Georgia enjoyed what she had going. She did not condemn herself because of her lamentable marriage or curse her husband or condemn herself for being so un-Christchurch-like. She was not awkward after lovemaking, like the usual refrains of “Now that you’ve seen me naked, please close your eyes while I dress.” Georgia liked herself and whatever she had been given. She was on the lookout for constant discovery or letting him in on places she had already been. She made a guy feel glorious, that’s what, as if he were the most wonderful chap she had ever seen.

And after—Rory liked the after. She’d simmer for a long time and whisper about pretty near anything and he found himself talking about God knows what and playing lightly at both the entrance and exit to lovemaking.

As the
Taranaki
lost contact with land, an unplanned and unknown phenomenon happened, triggered by the realization that these could be their last moments together, ever.

Whatever restraints there may have been, caused by age and circumstance, disintegrated in a violent implo
sion that burst open locked vaults in each of them, freeing a rush of exquisite realization. The intensity and desperate grasping for each other took them to somewhere new.

Daybreak found the
Taranaki
tied up at the Glasgow Pier dead across from the Wellington Rail Station. The moonstruck lovers held hands tightly on their balcony and looked down to the gangway where a line of travelers debarked and marched with their porters to the waiting train. Rory and Georgia thanked the master of their fate for granting them three more nights together.

On the final night out, the sea was extremely kind to them. They were allowed the most exhilarating sight of a fellow steamer passing in the opposite direction with cabin lights ablaze and a zephyr dimly blowing dance music from the ship’s lounge. Each vessel blew off fireworks of recognition, followed by the other ship’s being swallowed up by utter silence and darkness. The allegory was not lost.

Georgia lay tossed and disheveled on the bed in a most alluring way. Sailors at Uncle Wally’s always had something to sell from the Orient. Rory had bought her a forest green silk kimono, which now was flung askew so that the lyrical lines of her rounded body spoke a single word…woman. Aye, the robe had found itself to the right one.

Her rusty hair was kept at working lady’s length and made her whiteness seem touched by a perfect master. The flash of emerald, the high linen sheets intertwined, all made her no less in his eyes than an ancient goddess. He studied her from across the cabin, unblinking, as time seemed suspended. He was exhausted but had utter clarity. Rory could no longer hold back the tide of questions.

What was it that changed so abruptly the instant he tried to say farewell to her? The idea of fear came to him. Conor had told him never to stifle fear but to realize it, examine it, and gain control of it. That makes the man.

The fool is the one who lies to himself that he has no fear. Rory believed his bouts of genuine fear were few, once he stopped being afraid of his father. Now, it was not a fear of a
mean person or suddenly being smashed up, but another kind of fear altogether. As the South Island left his sight, he became weak and dizzy. Jesus, he told himself, I’m afraid. For all the passionate desires to leave New Zealand, the actual moment of cutting the bind had sent him into a sweat.

He hid his feelings from Georgia. She should not see him frightened. As he brought himself under control, he thought, God knows the idea of battle is thrilling, not frightening. This long dream of Ireland after the war was nothing less than Homeric.

So, what’s to fear, lad? Fear of the unknown? Well, not fear, just anxiety…normal curiosity speeded up. Rory was an independent entity, he knew that.

Or…do all men know a kind of sorrow as the lights offshore blink off? He had received letters from mates who had already left the country or joined the army. Some of these lads had left rotten lives in rotten homes, but they were homesick to a man.

So, maybe my fear isn’t fear at all, he reckoned. The porthole let in a quick sliver of light, which fell over Georgia, and he felt a burst of lust from his throat down to his stomach. He started out of his chair but settled back under the weight of more questions.

I understand something now that I never could quite get before, he thought. I often wondered why Conor was so torn to return to an Ireland that had been like the raw end of a whip to him all his life. The soul is planted in your village and never leaves it. Even though it is the army and Ireland, I can never really leave New Zealand.

Thinking of Conor as he did, his uncle’s death swept over him. He clamped down to head off an outpouring of sorrow. With each new deep and uttered sigh the hurt in his chest lessened. He stood quickly and shoved open the cabin door, hoping to see the passing ship. It was long gone. The water was smooth and the heavens put on a spectacular show. Conor had told him that standing the
watch on the calm nights was the worst because you remembered all you had had and lost.

“I’ve lost her,” Rory spouted.

Conor had ached for Countess Caroline. Oh Lord, how he ached for her. Maybe it all has to do with the way I now ache for Georgia Norman.

Time and again of late when he went to her cottage past Taylor’s Mistake, he had longed to ride with her up in the hills and thrill her with what his life meant.

He fantasized about coming back from the war and telling the Squire to shove it up a round hole in his middle. He’d start off with a few acres and he’d look down on it from a hillock with an arm about Georgia Norman…Georgia Larkin. By Jaysus, I could take on the world with her. She’s a rock, and oh, what she’d do for her man. The wisdom of her, the spirit, the courage. And they’d be laughing half the night through.

Well, there it is, Rory boy. My woman, Georgia Larkin. Oh, the sound of it! I’m in love with her. The war has only begun and the South Island and Georgia are already together as a single thought.

Does the realization that you need someone necessarily mean you’re in love with her? he wondered. Isn’t that rather crappy of me? I mean, he thought, selfish. To even think about asking a woman to give up a marriage with a man who might deserve a second chance. To ask a woman to wait half of forever while you make your rounds of combat. Christ, Rory, get off it. It’s bloody awful selfish of you to think that way, and if you care that much for her you can’t ask her to chuck her life for you.

Forget my needs, he thought. Forget my fears. Forget it all. There is still this terrible, terrible feeing that makes me want to fall down and cry. I hurt, man! I hurt! I know what the fucking pain is. The fucking pain is that I might never see her again. The pain is…I’ll never touch her again. I guess this is the bloody hell of what this goddamned
sonofabitching thing of love is. The pain is no less than the pain of Conor’s death.

All right, Rory, you’ve confessed to yourself. The situation is impossible. At daylight, when you say good-bye, act like a man. You be a good man to this woman. You do what is right.

Over the years, Georgia had mastered the abstruse art of controlling her nightmares. They were no longer the stuff of sweat and chills. When annoyance invaded, she’d wake up before the nightmare crossed into bedlam. As soon as she awakened, she quickly read the dream’s message. Most of them were very anxious. There would be burning or collapsing buildings or a variation thereof, or a threatening monster or a variation thereof, a flight to the edge of an abyss or a high structure and the beginning of a plunge.

Many times in the past months she reached across the bed when ugliness came in her sleep and she felt something sublime, beyond any measure she had ever experienced. It was Rory Larkin. The inner message quickly let her know she was safe and the full message let her know that this man would protect her. She’d never been protected before, and she wondered why it was a wild colonial boy as unlikely as Rory Larkin who now offered it to her. This sense of great comfort he provided was no less puzzling than the first mesmerizing sight of him, months earlier, with a body full of cracked ribs.

On this last night before Auckland, Georgia’s dream was a throwback past horror. She flung her arm to defend herself and it banged against the mattress and abruptly ended her sleep. When she had gotten her whereabouts, she sunk back on the pillow and whispered a gentle curse. The voyage was all but done.

Georgia felt the seductive softness of her kimono and she smiled. Oh, Rory boy, Jesus damned, what have you done to me? She swung her legs off the bed and went to the mirror to touch up. She never wanted the lad to see her as
if she had just come out of a steam bath. In the mirror Georgia could see through a porthole to the promenade deck. Rory stood motionless and featureless in the shadows. She began to tie her robe, then let it stay open for him to see what he would be wanting to see. She fixed on him, unseen by him, and luxuriated in just watching him.

Well, Georgia girl, she told herself, you are the queen of fools. For over twenty-eight years you’ve built a wall that was breached in a single moment.

Georgia had watched the ladies of the Territorial Force Reserve—the erstwhile “Daughters of the Regiment”—stalk and snare. Nurses were of low and middle station and here was a ripe moment to bag an officer, a future innkeeper or, by God, a colonel with a rose garden.

Soldier boys of all ranks either detested women or were overly sentimental about them. It wasn’t difficult to tell which was which. Her fellow Sisters chirped and giggled but seldom spoke of love. Love was the automatic marriage prize, was it not? Why did bright and capable women who had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps settle for clods or arrogant bores?

Well, who the hell are you to stick your nose up? Calvin Norman was a fine surgeon in the main military hospital in India. He was only in for one enlistment to secure a good reserve rank, gain some necessary military medical experience, and have excellent credentials when he returned to his native New Zealand.