Life is the Destiny E-Book

Vivian Stuart

• Herausgeber: Jentas Ehf
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Historical Romance
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 345

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

INTRIGUE. TENSION. LOVE AFFAIRS: In The Historical Romance series, a set of stand-alone novels, Vivian Stuart builds her compelling narratives around the dramatic lives of sea captains, nurses, surgeons, and members of the aristocracy. Stuart takes us back to the societies of the 20th century, drawing on her own experience of places across Australia, India, East Asia, and the Middle East.    A story of love and heartbreak set in post-war Burma—it is the story of Vicky Randall and the three men who were to play an important part in her life . . . Henry O'Malley, a doctor and heroic survivor of imprisonment in Thailand; Alan Rowan, a Chindit whose love for her kept him alive through the war; and her husband Connor Daly, whom she loved but who considered their marriage a cage from which he had to be free.

Leseprobe

Life is the Destiny

The Unlit Heart

© Vivian Stuart, 1958

© eBook in English: Jentas ehf. 2022

ISBN: 978-9979-64-491-0

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

All contracts and agreements regarding the work, editing, and layout are owned by Jentas ehf.

Dedication

All royalties on this novel belong to the York Branch of the Burma Star Association, which has done me the honour of making me its President. I hope that, although a work of fiction, it may conjure up some of the memories shared by all those who served with the proudly remembered “Forgotten” XIV Army, to whom I very humbly dedicate it.

–––

Life is the destiny you are bound to refuse until you have consented to die.

Therefore, see without looking, hear without listening breathe without asking:

The Inevitable is what will seem to happen to you purely by chance;

The Real is what will strike you as really absurd;

Unless you are certain you are dreaming, it is certainly a dream of your own;

Unless you exclaim—“There must be some mistake”—you must be mistaken.

W.H. AUDEN.

“For the Time Being”: A Christmas Oratorio

1

I remember I awoke that morning with a sick feeling of impending disaster but for the first minute or two, when I raised myself on my elbow and looked round the room sleepily, everything seemed perfectly normal.

In the bed across the room from mine I could see the humped figure that was Connor, could hear the reassuring sound of his even breathing. It wasn’t until my gaze fell on the uniform which was lying on the chair that I remembered what morning it was and began to feel sick all over again. The lump I thought I’d swallowed came back into my throat once more and all but choked me. The two bright medal ribbons and the badges and the scarlet XIV Army flash which adorned the uniform were a mockery and I hated them. I even hated Connor at that moment because it was hurting me so much to leave him.

I got out of bed, flinging the bedclothes impatiently aside and padded barefoot over to the window to draw the curtains.

The sun came streaming in, the bright, pitiless Australian sun. From my vantage point at the window I could see right out across Sydney Harbour, could glimpse a span of the Bridge and see one of the busy little ferry-boats bustling across towards Circular Quay with its cargo of early-morning workers.

It was a sight that never failed to stir me but this morning, because I knew it was the last time I was going to see it for a long time, it made the lump in my throat so large that I couldn’t even pretend to myself that I’d swallowed it.

Behind me, Connor stirred and said plaintively without opening his eyes:

“Darling, why do you have to get up in the middle of the night?”

The injustice of his complaint rankled. I drew the curtains as far back as they would go, unkindly pleased when a shaft of sunlight fell across his face and made him screw up his eyes and mutter profanities beneath his breath.

I left him, went through into the kitchen and plugged in the coffee percolator. While I was waiting for it to heat, I switched on the radio and the cheerful voice of one of the commercial announcers informed me that it was seven o’clock and time for a Capstan.

Moodily I hunted round for one, thinking how untidy our living-room always looked when seen through newly-awakened eyes and reflecting, with a certain gloomy satisfaction, that Connor would have to do his own tidying up after today. And make his own coffee. . .

The percolator started to emit clouds of steam so I switched it off and poured out two cups, spooning in sugar and whipped cream with a lavish hand, because after today I shouldn’t have to worry about rations and the carefully hoarded black-market cream wouldn’t keep much longer anyway.

The coffee smelt heavenly and I selfishly stayed and sipped mine until the cup was almost empty. Then I topped it up and carried both cups into the bedroom.

Connor still lay inert, looking oddly young and thin and vulnerable, with the light stubble on his cheeks and the shadows under his eyes. His fair hair was ludicrously dishevelled and he appeared anything but glamorous yet somehow I couldn’t hate him any more. It wasn’t really his fault that we’d married in wartime and that I’d got to leave him. I could have got out of it if I’d tried. Only he hadn’t asked me to . . .

He sensed that I was looking at him and opened one eye. His hand, with its blunt, sensitive artist’s fingers, came out and caught mine and he drew me down beside him.

I tried to kiss him gently but it didn’t work and we were both rather breathless when the voice on the radio brought us back to earth and me to a guilty realization that there wasn’t much time left and I had an awful lot to do.

I said: “Here’s your coffee, darling,” and my voice cracked absurdly and I started to cry.

Connor sat up, both eyes open now. His eyes, in strange contrast to his fair hair, were incredibly dark. He didn’t speak, simply held out his hand and I put the cup into it. He drained it and gave me back the cup.

“Is there any more or have you drunk it all?” His tone was faintly querulous. I took the cup without answering and went out to the kitchen again, groping my way rather blindly. He called after me, in a more conciliatory tone: “And a cigarette, darling.”

“Haven’t you got any?”

“You know I haven’t. One of yours will do.”

He was wide awake now and I knew that he’d seen the uniform and had remembered what day it was too. I heard him whistling. Well, if that was the way he wanted it to be . . . but when I went back he stopped whistling and smiled at me apologetically.

“You know I mind this like hell, don’t you, Vicky?”

“Yes,” I said flatly. There wasn’t anything else to say. I did know. Only he hadn’t asked me not to go and he hadn’t ever explained why.

“It’s only ten past seven. You could come in here with me. It might make it easier to talk if I didn’t have to look at you.”

“All right.” His watch was five minutes slow but I didn’t argue. He moved, making room for me. It was easier, with my head on his shoulder and his arm around me.

He said gently: “I’ve never told you why I—why I let this happen, have I?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to?”

“Of course I do. Don’t you see, it’s not knowing why that—that makes it so hard to take? If I knew—”

He cut me short. “I don’t know whether I can tell you now. It could be a form of masochism only I don’t think it is. Of course it hurts my male ego that you’re in the Army, in the war and I’m not—I suppose it always has. At first it was one of your chief attractions for me. Seeing you in that uniform . . . I wanted to own you. I wanted like hell that you should love me and belong to me and tremble when I touched you. And you do, don’t you, even now? I can make you tremble, I can hurt you and make you cry. I have often. I could do it now.”

I drew away from him. “Oh, Connor don’t—”

“Don’t worry, I won’t.” He spoke angrily, resentfully. “It wouldn’t pay because I should hurt myself much more than I hurt you. I’m afraid I may be in love with you, Vicky. I never meant it to come to that—I tried like hell not to let it happen, you know, because I was afraid. I never intended to fall in love with you. I didn’t think there was any serious danger that I would—until a week ago. That was when I decided to let you go, for no better reason than because I’m scared stiff of loving you!” He spread his hands in an odd little gesture. “Do you understand, darling? I married you and I’m deliberately sending you back because I’m afraid, if I don’t, that I shall love you too much and not belong to myself any more. That’s the only reason. And I’m being honest, I’m telling you the truth.”

“Yes,” I said faintly, “I suppose you are.”

“Why do you take it like this?” he asked curiously. He raised his head and peered down at me but I kept my eyes shut. I knew that if I opened them he would see the tears and I couldn’t bear him to see how much I minded. But I suppose my lashes must have been wet or something because he suddenly started to kiss me in a frantic, pitying sort of way which hurt a lot more than his words had done. I steeled myself not to respond. After a while, he let me go and sat up to light the cigarette he had stubbed out, making a face at the taste.

Then he said: “I’ve laughed at you and teased you, I’ve made jokes about you and your uniform and your medal ribbons to my friends, so that they all think it’s awfully funny and they don’t take you seriously. They’re my friends and they aren’t in the war either. They think you belong to a kind of comic opera army because that’s the impression I’ve given them—deliberately! The trouble is I don’t think it myself. I wish to God I did.”

“Well, it is rather,” I said, on the defensive.

“Is it? How typically English you are! Damn you, Vicky, why do you have to be so English?”

“I don’t know. I thought I’d ceased to show I was English. You said you’d changed me.”

“Even your name,” Connor accused. “Victoria—I ask you! What could be more absurdly English than that?”

I didn’t answer. There was dance music on the radio and then it stopped and the familiar haunting throb of a guitar was followed by the deep, plaintive voice of one of the Inkspots . . . “Idon’t want to set the world on fire . . . I just want to start a flame in your heart . . .”

“That was all I wanted to do,” I mumbled into Connor’s broad, pyjama-clad shoulder. He affected not to hear me. He said: “Look, I’ll make breakfast while you’re showering, shall I?”

Without waiting for my response, he put his right leg across my knees and reached for the hideous artificial contraption that served him for a foot. I’d always strapped it on for him, since our marriage. He would never look at it, turning his head away as he always did, whilst I fumbled with the buckles with more than my usual awkwardness. He had lost his foot, ironically, at the very beginning of the war, when a truck bearing a squad of newly joined R.A.A.F. recruits had overturned in Pitt Street, pinning him beneath it. He hadn’t even been issued with uniform when the accident happened . . .

I looked up into his face. “It’s on, darling.”

Connor said, with fierce and unexpected abruptness:

“I shan’t be faithful to you. You don’t expect that, do you? As soon as you’re gone . . . it will hurt too much if I don’t, you see.”

“Do you want me to come back?” I asked bitterly.

“I don’t know.” He regarded me unsmilingly. “I’m afraid perhaps I do. Though it might be better for both of us if you didn’t.”

The Inkspots record was succeeded by Kenny Baker singing Paper Doll. After that, the announcer, aggressively cheerful, gave us a time check and besought us to buy somebody or other’s clocks which never lost a minute.

“Breakfast,” said Connor. “I’ll bring it to you.”

He went limping off to the kitchen. I heard him stumping about and cursing as he dropped a cup. Wearily I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Under the shower I didn’t feel quite so bad. I was dressed by the time Connor returned, carrying a tray with our breakfast on it. He looked me up and down sulkily.

“Surely there isn’t all that hurry? I thought you’d like your breakfast in bed.”

“Well, the transport’s coming at nine,” I defended.

We went into the living-room and I drew the curtains there so that we could look out over Elizabeth Bay. We had the table right under the window, because Connor liked to work there. It was piled high with his sketches and I took the tray from him so that he could lift them off. There was one of me amongst them but he quickly covered it up, pretending he didn’t know that I’d seen it. I put the tray down and went over and sorted through the pile of sketches until I found it. He watched me resentfully.

It was a good sketch, done presumably from memory, for I’d only worn evening dress once since we’d met. He had every detail of the dress right, even the intricate draping of the skirt.

We drew up our chairs and started to eat. Connor had made scrambled eggs and they were delicious, yellow and crisp, the toast swimming in butter. I wasn’t hungry but I forced myself to finish the enormous helping he had given me, aware that I should offend him if I didn’t.

Connor had a pencil in his hand and he scribbled as he ate, not looking at me or talking. He often worked at meals: his job at the Ministry filled his days and his own work, including the regularly commissioned newspaper cartoons which paid so handsomely, had to be done in his spare time, where and when he found it. I had learnt not to interrupt him on such occasions.

After a while, he finished the sketch, signed it with a flourish and held it out, smiling at me mockingly, as a small boy might smile at the dog to whose tail he is about to attach a tin can.

“There you are, Lieutenant—decorations and all. Pretty, isn’t it?”

“You should try and sell it,” I told him savagely.

“H’m, yes, that’s an idea. Caption it ‘Signs of Our Times’ or ‘The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Chucks the Grenade’. The Herald would love it.”

In the background, faint but insidious, the radio was crooning . . . “there’s a . . . small café . . . there’s a . . . wishing well . . .”

Connor said, exasperated: “Oh for crying out loud, Vicky, this is no time for sentimental music! Switch that infernal thing off.” He flung the sketch in the direction of the others. It fell on the floor. I got up to turn off the radio but I didn’t pick up the sketch. Connor looked hurt.

“Don’t you like it?”

“Did you mean me to?”

He came round and put his arms about me. His chin was rough against my cheek. “I’m sorry, Vicky. I wish for your sake that I could be different.”

“I probably wouldn’t love you if you were.” That was a lie, anyway. Or at least I thought it was. “Who will you—which of them will you take up with when I’ve gone?”

He shrugged and reached for the packet of cigarettes I had left on the table, offered it to me, his smile returning.

“I don’t know. Why worry? It doesn’t matter a damn who it is, just so long as I get you out of my system. I’m not going to belong to you, Vicky—you might as well face it. Have a cigarette?”

I took a cigarette and Connor leaned towards me to light it. I caught at his wrist, my fingers biting into the flesh.

“Why? Why won’t you belong to me? After all, you did marry me.”

“Ah!” His tone was dry. “I know I did, darling. It was a mistake, I’d no business to marry you. Only you wouldn’t have me any other way, would you? You were so damnably obstinate, you wore me down. Let go of my wrist, there’s a good girl—this match is going to burn me.”

I released his wrist, watching miserably as he lit his own cigarette with the dying match.

“So it’s my fault? That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is! The whole darned thing is your fault. You made me fall in love with you.”

“It wasn’t difficult.” I could not resist that.

He grinned. “No. I’m very susceptible to charm—and you’re very charming, Vicky. So very sweet and virtuous and charming—the last woman in the world, one would have thought, to want to go dashing about the Burma jungles, disguised as a soldier. In trousers”—there was a sneer in his voice—“good God—trousers!”

I was silent. We’d argued about my trousers before and it had got us precisely nowhere. They were practical for travelling and for the job we did. We all wore them, although we were issued with uniform dresses. In any case, I’d lost all my dresses ages ago.

I said, meaning it less as a threat than as a sop to pride: “I won’t come back to you, Connor, if you do take up with someone else.”

“Why on earth not?” he asked, surprised. “You love me, don’t you?”

“Not enough to take that.”

“What difference would it make? You know the sort of chap I am.” He was being deliberately offensive. “I’m not trying to put you in a cage, am I? For heaven’s sake, you’re free to do the same if you want to.”

“I didn’t marry you with the idea of its being a—well, a sort of temporary thing. I meant it to last, I—”

“Oh, I know you did. Well, you’ll have to alter your ideas, that’s all. Look at the chances you’ll have in Burma, with all the war-weary warriors returning from the fray. What about that bloke you used to talk of so incessantly when I first met you—the Chindit, Alan Whatsit? Won’t he be there when you get back? Or was he the one who was killed?”

“Alan was posted missing, believed killed. I told you that when I was chattering so incessantly about him.” I got up and began to pile up the plates and cups. My hands shook and I made a clumsy job of it. “If he hadn’t been—”

“You’d have married him instead of me,” Connor finished for me. “Or that’s what you’d have had me believe, isn’t it?”

“No. Of course it’s not. He didn’t ask me to marry him. And it’s not certain that he was killed—a lot of the men who were missing are turning up now. Alan may. It was never officially confirmed, he could have been taken prisoner.”

“Let’s hope he’ll turn up then,” said Connor indifferently. He lost interest in Alan Rowan. “I’m being beastly to you, aren’t I, Vicky?”

“Yes, you are. Oh, Connor”—I couldn’t help the plea—“do you have to be? We haven’t got long now and—”

Connor quoted mockingly: “He lived on a fairy’s kindness, till he tired of kicking her—then cruised his way back to the Army . . . only that’s a bit out, in our case. Because you’re cruising back to the Army, not me. Things should have been better arranged, shouldn’t they? Auden didn’t visualize a situation like ours, he—look, don’t take my cup away. I want some more coffee, darling.”

I poured it out for him in rebellious silence and then went to finish packing my kit-bags. These were of greenish canvas, with zip-fasteners, three of them, lined up in a neat row. I rolled my mack up and stuffed it in, then started filling the pockets of my greatcoat with things I’d need on the journey—cigarettes, matches, lipstick, powder compact, a comb, my tooth-brush. I put on water to boil for the tea for my flask. Flying the way we usually did, in service aircraft, you learnt to look after your own comfort. No one else did.

I got ham out of the fridge and started to cut sandwiches.

“Surely they’ll feed you, won’t they?” Connor asked.

“They may. I’m making sure. I’ve been had before.”

He looked puzzled. “Won’t you come down for a meal?”

“Tonight for dinner, I expect. I shouldn’t think before. That will be in Australia.”

“And then where?”

“On to Colombo. But we may come down at the Cocos. I believe we do.”

“Do you like flying?” Connor questioned curiously.

“No, not much. It isn’t awfully comfortable. Service aircraft mostly aren’t adapted for passengers. There’s nowhere to sit.”

Restless, he left me and went over to the bookcase. I let him hunt for a bit. Then I confessed: “I’ve packed it.”

Connor started to laugh. “Have you darling? Now isn’t that funny!”

“What’s so funny about it?” I demanded irritably.

“Only that I’d bought you a copy and hidden it in one of your bags. I thought it would remind you of me sometimes, when you wanted to remember me.”

I wiped my hands and felt about in the pockets of my greatcoat. “Here’s yours. You’d better have it back. You might want to remember me too—sometimes.”

“It’s possible,” Connor conceded. He opened the book and started to read, walking from window to door and then pausing to lean against the alcove which led into the tiny apology for a kitchen, still reading. He read beautifully, because he loved words and I reflected with a pang that, until I’d met him, I’d never bothered with the Elizabethan poets. Now they and the words they had written were a part of my life. They meant Connor to me: we had shared them, as other lovers shared music or dancing or drink.

Connor read: “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part—Nay, I have done, you get no more of me; And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart, that thus so cleanly I myself can free; . . .” he stopped then and looked at me, his dark eyes defiant. “That’s not to say I’m not sorry, Vicky—God knows I am. I wish I could take what you have to give me, I really do.”

I finished the sandwiches, wrapped them in greaseproof paper and stuffed the little package into my bulging greatcoat. Then I took the anthology from him and finished the verse. “Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, and when we meet at any time again, be it not seen in either of our brows that we one jot a former love retain. You didn’t read this one to me before, did you?”

He shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t have believed it if I had. I doubt if you do now. But honestly, darling, I opened the wretched book at random—it just happened that this one was staring me in the face. And you must admit that it’s singularly appropriate.”

“Very,” I agreed bitterly. “Well, I’m going to open it at random now.” My fingers were stiff and not quite steady and the close print blurred before my eyes. The pages fell open at the poem by Philip Sidney. I started to read: “Mytrue-love hath my heart, and I have his,” and then choked and couldn’t go on. Connor completed it for me, his tone cynical.

“That’s how you want it to be with us, isn’t it, Vicky? You want it to hurt! You want me to beg you to stay—you want me to tell you I can’t get on without you.”

“I want us to—to have a normal marriage,” I returned wretchedly. “Is that so much to ask?”

Connor took the book from me and replaced it in the bookcase. His back to me, he quoted softly: “Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing, and like enough thou know’st thy estimate; the charter of thy worth gives thee releasing; my bonds in thee are all determinate. For how do I hold thee but by thy granting? Oh, come off it, Vicky! Let’s not argue about this thing. The simple truth is that I’m not worthy of you, I never was and I never will be. You might as well face it, you know.”

He came over and took me in his arms. I tried to push him away but it was a halfhearted attempt—a gesture—and I didn’t really want it to succeed. It didn’t . . . but at least, this time, I didn’t cry.

He released me and looked at his watch.

“I’ll have to dress, if I’m coming down with you.”

“There’s no need. I’d prefer it if you didn’t.”

“Oh, all right, if you mean that. We’ll say our good-byes here, where it all began.”

“And where it’s ending.”

“That’s right,” he agreed, without rancour. For the first time I believed that he meant it. His taunt, a few minutes ago, had been justified. I hadn’t believed it, in my heart, till then. Now I stared at him, no longer ashamed of the tears that were blinding me.

Connor said angrily: “Oh for God’s sake, Vicky, don’t look at me like that! Anyone would think I’d killed you, the way you look. Don’t you see, won’t you try and see—I’m doing you a kindness really? It wouldn’t have worked, you and me, not for always. I admit I had a faint hope that it would, at the start. But it hasn’t and I’m letting you make a dramatic exit. It’s the best way. Play up to it, can’t you?”

“No,” I answered truthfully, “I can’t.”

I left him standing there and went to the bathroom to mop uselessly and ineffectually at my tear-blotched face. It was five to nine. When I came out Connor, in his dressing gown, was taking my bags out to the lift.

From the window, the Harbour looked blue and calm, the sunlight making the sails of a pair of little racing dinghies gleam and sparkle. In the street below an Air Force truck drew up and the driver got out slowly and glanced at the number on the block. I tapped on the window and he looked up, grinned and brought his hand to his cap in a sort of half-salute. He got back into his truck and I went, on dragging feet, into the bedroom to fetch my greatcoat. I put on my beret without glancing in the mirror. I had ceased to care how I looked.

Connor was waiting by the lift. He put his hands on my shoulders and stood looking down at me gravely.

“I’m sorry, Vick. I wish it hadn’t to be this way.”

I clung to him, wordless, hoping even then for a miracle. But of course it didn’t happen. Connor mumbled something about writing to me. Then he bent and his lips brushed mine gently, almost indifferently. It was a rotten kiss for the last one and it didn’t revive any memories. He said: “I’ve put For the Time Being in as well. You’ll find it when you unpack.”

Somebody on another floor rang the lift bell impatiently. Connor pushed me in, slammed the doors and went back into the flat. I was carried, unwillingly, up to the fifth floor and had to listen to the complaints of a fat Jewish refugee because I’d kept him waiting for the lift. In the mood I was in, I almost slapped his smug, fleshy face but somehow I managed not to. He didn’t wait to help me get my kit out but pushed past me when we reached the foyer, still grumbling under his breath.

The driver of the truck spotted me and came in to take the bags, glaring after the Jew. “Lousy so-and-so and us fighting the whole crook war for blokes like him! Wouldn’t it wilt you?” He was about eighteen, fair-haired and well-scrubbed, his tunic innocent of campaign ribbons. I shrugged and went out to stand blinking in the strong sunlight.

King’s Cross looked just as it always did—bright and colourful and a little raw. People in beach wraps jostled against me. I glanced up involuntarily and Connor waved from the window of the flat. He wasn’t watching as the truck pulled away from the pavement.

2

We came down at Learmouth about seven-thirty the following evening, having been held up in Perth over night with some sort of engine trouble.

There were nine of us in the R.A.F. Lancaster, including the crew—pilot, navigator and two air-gunners, one of whom was also the wireless operator. The other four were aircrew going, as I was, back to Burma. We’d had a couple of R.A.M.V.R. lieutenants with us as far as Perth, a cheerful, friendly pair who had organized a poker game to while away the time. I hadn’t joined in but had found their game entertaining to listen to and certainly preferable to my own thoughts.

They were all very nice to me but I was so numb with misery that I scarcely noticed their attempts to be kind. After we left Perth, one of the air-gunners brought me a blanket and I slept most of the afternoon, wrapped snugly in this, until he roused me for a mug of very strong, sweet thermos tea. The country below was unexciting in the extreme—mile after mile of desert scrub, flat, barren and featureless, devoid of any sign of human habitation and almost, it seemed, of life itself.

As we approached the coast, it became more interesting, the stunted scrub giving place to the olive green of gum trees and, here and there, peering out, I glimpsed a huddle of tin-roofed buildings and the flat white ribbon of a road running inland from the sea.

Learmouth—a code name for the Air Force station at Port Hedland—was just a bare landing field, with a control tower and met station and some huts for the accommodation of the ground staff. It was kept busy with aircraft in transit but, I was told, was generally considered to be a “pretty crook dump” by the men posted there. There was nothing at all for them to do when off duty and they never saw a white woman.

A tender took us to the officers’ mess and deposited us there in a cloud of choking dust. The C.O., in shirtsleeves, raised a languid hand in welcome and invited us to come in and have a drink. He sat up, looking shocked, when the pilot told him I was there.

“Stone the crows, we haven’t any accommodation for women here,” I heard him exclaim. “I suppose I’ll have to offer her my quarters and they’re in the devil of a state. Where is she?” His eyes passed over my face without interest.

Grinning, the pilot pointed to me. “Right here, sir.” He introduced us. The C.O. looked at my crumpled greatcoat and my slacks and my single pips and slowly got to his feet still rather at a loss.

“Oh, I see,” he said at last. He held out his hand. “Well—er—would you like to avail yourself of my quarters, Miss Randall? I’m afraid things are in a bit of a mess but at least you’ll have a certain amount of privacy. And we’ve got a meal laid on for you, of course.”

I accepted gratefully and went across with the Mess Corporal, a glum little man of few words who, however, looked after my comfort most efficiently and tactfully, even to the extent of brewing up some tea for me, whilst I waited for the bath water to heat.

“Dinner’s at half eight, miss. I’ll come over and get you.”

By the time, bathed and much refreshed, I returned to the mess, dinner had started. I sat down with a mumbled apology, conscious of the politely concealed stares which had greeted my arrival. The C.O. said: “You know you’re an object of great interest to us, Miss Randall. What do you do? I mean you’ve come from Burma, haven’t you? What were you doing in Australia if one may ask? Having some leave?”

I shook my head and explained as patiently as I could but he still looked mystified. It did sound a little crazy, I suppose—a unit of women auxiliaries who drove mobile canteens for the XIV Army had no place in the Australian scheme of things. And my uniform puzzled him, plus the fact that I held an Indian Army commission and ranked as an officer.

I told him that the unit had been formed originally in Rangoon when the Japs had launched their invasion of Burma and that it had been reformed and granted official status six months later, in Assam and added: “Our official title is Women’s Canteen Service (India)—the India in brackets. Two of us, a captain and myself, came over here to recruit Australian girls for the unit. We’re rather under strength.”

“Did you get many?” he asked, curiously.

“So many that we could hardly cope,” I assured him and a gleam of pride came into his eyes.

“Ah, you would—it’d be just the sort of thing to appeal to our girls. They won’t let ’em do much, over here. Old-fashioned attitude perhaps, but we don’t like to see women roughing it, as I reckon you’d have to.”

“No, not really. You get used to it. And all of us have lived in Burma or India. We knew what the conditions would be like before we started.”

“You’ve left it kind of late, haven’t you?” one of the others wanted to know. “The war’s just about over. Or at any rate we think it is.”

“We’re going to deal with the reception of repatriated prisoners,” I explained, “and many of our original crowd have husbands who are in the XIV Army or were taken prisoner and they’re packing up, in the hope that their husbands will be released. So we need another fifty girls to bring us up to full strength. The ones I recruited sailed from Sydney three days ago and the first batch, from Western Australia, will be in Bombay next week.”

They asked a few more questions and then started to talk of something else and I sat in silence, my thoughts miles away. I was wondering whether Connor was at the flat and, if he was, who he’d got with him. I tried to believe that he hadn’t meant what he’d said but, in my heart, I knew he had meant it. After his fashion, I thought miserably, Connor loved me. But that wasn’t enough. He was my husband but he didn’t belong to me . . .

The Air Force gave us coffee at ten and we took off again at half past. As the lights of the flare-path faded into the distance, we were alone, climbing swiftly into the darkness, leaving Australia behind.

We all settled down to try and sleep. Only I couldn’t, because reaction suddenly set in and, in the close, noisy, throbbing dimness of the cabin, I sat huddled in my blanket, weeping quietly and feeling more wretched than I had ever felt in my life. My marriage had lasted exactly six weeks, at least that wasn’t true—I’d only met Connor seven weeks ago and I’d had to spend a fortnight in Melbourne. We had actually lived together for three weeks, after getting married by special licence in a registrar’s office. I hadn’t even obtained official consent to my marriage, hadn’t yet notified the authorities that it had taken place. So far as the Powers That Be were concerned, I was still Second Lieutenant Victoria Margaret Randall, not Mrs. Connor Daly. But I had my marriage lines tucked into the breast pocket of my battledress . . .

A voice whispered hoarsely, out of the darkness:

“Not asleep, ma’am? Like a cupper?” It was one of the young air-gunners, his face a white blur close to mine. He thrust a mug into my hand and I saw the blurred face dissolve into a smile. “Cocoa,” he told me, “with a drop of rum in it. You’ll sleep all right if you drink that.”

I sipped the warm, strong-smelling liquid gratefully and, as the air-gunner had predicted, it sent me to sleep.

It was broad daylight when one of the crew shook me and told me to fasten my safety belt. I saw that we were circling a small island which I dimly realized must be one of the Cocos group. It consisted of a few palm trees, a sandy beach, a cluster of huts and a long airstrip stretching almost the length of the island. It was stiff with aircraft, mostly fighters, with a few Mosquitoes and Beauforts. The strip looked awfully small for a Lancaster and, as I glanced sleepily out of the cabin window, I was shocked into wakefulness by the sight of an ambulance hurtling along a rough track in the direction of the strip. This was followed, ominously, by a fire engine, the crew manning it in protective suits. I saw the reason a moment later—our undercarriage was apparently refusing to come down properly. The landing wheel on the port side was half-down, the other—on my side—wasn’t.

One of my fellow passengers, who wore pilot’s wings on his tunic, smiled across at me reassuringly and suggested: “Don’t worry, Miss Randall. These things happen occasionally. We’ll make it.”

I hoped fervently that he was right and managed to twist my lips into a shaky smile to show that I believed him.

There was a lot of low cloud and the air was bumpy. After our fourth circuit, I began to feel terrible. I clutched the arms of my seat and refused to look out, more pre-occupied, if the truth were known, with my fear that I should disgrace myself by being air-sick than with any thought that we might have to make a crash-landing. There was a curtained recess in the tail to which someone had attached a slip of paper with the cryptic announcement “In Use” pencilled on one side and “Vacant” on the other. I measured the distance between this and my seat apprehensively but didn’t move. If the need arose, I thought, I could probably get there in time.

After about ten minutes there was an audible gasp of relief from my fellow passengers and I glanced out quickly and saw that both wheels were down.

We lost height and landed quite smoothly, taxi-ing back to where the ambulance and the crash wagon were waiting. The crews eyed us with suspicion, mingled with disappointment and then got into their vehicles and drove off. Feeling stiff and horribly sick, I clambered down on to terra firma and stood there, swaying unhappily until the pilot who had earlier assured me that I needn’t worry, came and took my arm. He was a slight, dark-haired lad aged about twenty and he said paternally: “You’ll feel better when you’ve had some food. Come on.”

He guided my faltering footsteps in the direction of a tender. We all piled in and were bumped unceremoniously along a narrow, sandy track to a big wooden hut which stood by itself under a clump of depressed looking palm trees. The others tactfully let me have the washroom first and, after a wash in tepid, gritty water and a cigarette I felt, physically at any rate, ready for breakfast.

Our faulty undercarriage delayed us for nearly two hours and we sat around in the mess, talking and listening to the island guitarists, who were very good.

Sydney—and Connor—felt very far away, part of another and perhaps not very much better world. I was back in the familiar atmosphere of a British service mess, listening to British service slang, conscious once more of the sexless comradeship I had known in the jungle. These men, cut off from civilization on their barren little island were, like the men who had doggedly fought their way down into Burma, too intent on the job they had to do to treat me, purely and simple, as a woman. But they told me, with pride, that I was the first white woman to land at the Cocos since the war broke out.

“Quite an event, for us. It’s a pity you aren’t staying. Why don’t you, huh? We’d fix you a ride the rest of the way next week . . .”

“Someone ought to sabotage that undercart then you’d have to stay . . .”

I laughed and said I wished they would. We took an R.N. lieutenant-commander on with us to Colombo and he tried to make a date with me but I managed to lose him when we landed. The Y.W.C.A. gave me a bed for the night. Colombo was hot and airless, very crowded and too civilized to hold any appeal for me in my present mood.

I went on next day to Calcutta, in a Dakota of Transport Command—very comfortably, with half a dozen brass hats and their A.D.Cs—breakfasting in Bangalore and reaching our destination in the afternoon.