Amnesia (11 page)

“Pardon me,” she said. She knew her scanty line was showing through the silk.

“Two,” Hank said to the head waiter.

But it was at Doris the waiter looked. She was south Brissy rubbish. How dare she even breathe his air?

She smiled right in his sour old face. You are a coward, she thought, you will not turn a Yank away.

He didn’t either. He told the waitress number 23. Then Doris and her handsome fellow were led through The Society’s crowded downstairs room.

They made a strong impression. Why wouldn’t they? Doris had gravy mix on her legs, and spit-smeared makeup. She followed the waitress
along the hall and up the stairs and of course it was a second-best room, with one table of Australian NCOs and, in a far corner, two plain American servicewomen in mufti, poor things, she pitied them.

Hank was not intimidated by anything. He announced they would sit by the curtained window i.e. not where they were put. He held out Doris’s chair and waited for her to be comfortable before he took his place.

“It’s lovely,” she said.

He was incredibly handsome, with full lips and straight white teeth. He sat so square and broad, a lifeguard she thought.

“I must look awful,” she said.

“You are perfect,” he said, and he touched her cheek where the horrid spit had been.

“Well,” she said, “you’re not so bad yourself.”

“I’m no angel, baby.” But his voice was so light and its inflection so tentative she laughed. He smiled too, and narrowed his eyes so that her tummy went quite strange. His eyes were pale and clear as water with no stones or pebbles or specks or flecks or injuries of war.

“You have lovely teeth,” she said, which was much too fast of her.

“All the better to eat you with.” As a joke, he bit his own hand and then showed her the bright red teeth marks embedded in his skin.

“You’re a strange one.”

“Well thank you, ma’am,” he beamed at her, and took her fingers and kissed the inside of her wrist so gently that she had to snatch it back.

“Whoa, Dobbin.”

“Sing for me,” he said. And she might have (why not? who would ever ask her such a thing again?) but there came a great roar of men from the street below, as if a wicket had just fallen at the Gabba.

Immediately he drew the curtain back. She whispered you were not allowed to do that after dark but he said it was a brownout not a blackout. Someone shouted to close the curtain. He said, not quietly, that the Australians were always in a panic. She was more frightened of what was about to happen in the dining room than in the street and was slow to understand the scene below on Queen Street which was turbulent with pushing men.

She watched two American officers enter the street from the front door of the restaurant.

The first was knocked to the ground. She saw. The second was lifted into the air, his napkin or handkerchief still in his hand as he was passed like a side of butchered beef, over the heads of the crowd and thrown on the footpath on the other side. The Aussies made a circle around him then kicked his face.

There were now three, four, five circles in the crowd. An American would come walking down the street, the Aussies would grab his arms and legs and throw him up in the air to get him to a clear space to bash him more. Throughout there was a loud hammering, like blows on bone. Doris finally understood it was a mob hammering on the restaurant door.

“We can’t stay here,” she said.

Hank sat down. He did not seem to realise that the Aussies were coming in to get the Yanks and kill their whores, to break them limb by limb.

“They’ll murder us.” She took his hand and pulled him up. He looked furious but he did allow her to lead him past the coat rack where she had the nous to grab an Aussie slouch hat. She pulled him down the stairs and through the stinking kitchen and out into a slippery laneway where the air was rank with fat and blood.

Beyond the alley was Queen Street and a howling mob.

“Come on,” she said, but now he had his arms around her and was pushing her stomach with his thing.

“Songbird,” he said. “Sing to me.”

“Jeez,” she said, “lay off, will you?”

She got the slouch hat onto his head and his situation seemed to dawn on him. He set the hat, tipping it back in the style favoured by the Aussies.

They were saved by the brownout and the happy coincidence that the northbound tram was tipped over just as they left the lane. There was such confusion. The American military police brought out their shotguns. All she could think was they had to get home, south Brissy, somewhere safe. She heard the first blast, then the second. She would have settled for a pillbox but it seemed every pillbox was occupied by men and women doing what she had never done, and would not do, no matter what she drank. She knew girls who had a “bit of a pash” in a pillbox but she had never anticipated the stink.

“They’ll kill you,” she said, but he wanted to pash into her there and then. He was strong and persistent, persuading her down into a lane, still very gentle with his mouth—soft little puffy kisses all around her neck. “Sing to me,” he said, his hard arms around her, those mad kisses on her throat. She sang “Danny Boy” for fear. “Don’t stop,” he said, “don’t stop.”

He was doing what she did not know.

“Don’t stop. Keep singing.”

He had to let her go to fiddle with her bra and she slipped free and ran, unhooked, with her shoes in her hand, down Queen Street, thinking God Jesus let there not be broken glass. The tram for south Brissy was already rolling when she leapt aboard, and he was right behind her, she heard him, laughing like a drain.

The man and girl plonked down together on the bench, she in disarray, he laughing hopelessly, and the whole tram went silent on her and judged her for a tart. She folded her hands in her lap, covering her ring finger, pretending to herself they were engaged, going to live in Deetroit, no longer Doris Crook, something better, safer, clearer, richer, thank the Lord he behaved himself. He put his arm around her shoulder and that is how it happened, when they arrived in Stanley Street and she saw, a cricket-pitch length from the tram’s running board, the thirteen front steps of her home, that she was still holding Hank Willenski’s hand.

OUR SOLE RESPONSIBILITY
to our ancestors, I had written, is to give birth to them as they gave birth to us. The houses in south Brissy were wrapped with skirts of lattice, as secret as a veil. Doris’s mother had her bedroom up there overlooking Stanley Street. Yes, it was the noisy side, but she could be out of bed in a jiffy when the front gate clicked. You could rely on her being up there, waiting, the electric flex already wrapped round her hand.

The house was twelve feet off the ground and all the underneath was latticed too. If it had not been for the brownout the street would have looked so lovely—sky deep, black blue, and the latticed houses glowing like golden lanterns in the honeysuckle air, and if you shut your eyes and hid the trams and the pub and the shunting train and the drunk peeing by the lamppost you could almost think Woolloongabba was beautiful.

She brought Hank Willenski home, not knowing what else to do. When she jumped off the moving tram, she knew she would get caught. She did not doubt she’d get roared up. She wished for nothing better than the flex across the legs. The American was right behind her as the tram rolled on, its wheels screaming worse than nails on a blackboard.

She was for it now. Thank God.

“Home,” she said, quite loudly. She could make out his teeth. “My dad will have waited up,” she said.

She put her finger to his lip to show he must not kiss her.

He bit her finger, hard.

“That wasn’t funny.” Why was she whispering? She wanted to get caught.

“Sing me a song.”

He got her around the waist and lifted her up in the air and she grabbed at the fence and felt the splinter drive into her injured finger. Why did she not scream? He had her over his shoulder. He was passing through the gate. Her mother would hear the latch.

But then she was out of sight, dragged underneath the house. There was stuff lying everywhere, snakes in bottles, axes, preserved quince, dead marines. She thought, he’ll trip and fall.

“Let me down,” she said, “I’ll help you do it, honest.”

He set her down very slowly but then he was at it again, kissing her on the neck, holding her hands together tight, pushing his thing against her.

“I’ll show you,” she said. Show what? Show where? She was embarrassed by the smell of her home. Nightsoil and honeysuckle, dirt and gas. He kicked the preserves and she heard a bottle crack and the smell of sugary peach juice making witch’s pudding with the dirt.

“No, I’ll show you,” he said.

And then he pushed her down so hard she fell. No glass. No cuts. Thank God, she thought. He had shoved her head onto the chopping block without knowing what it was. She felt the cold air between her legs. He was pushing and breaking and her tummy was filled with hurt but she dared not scream. His hands around her neck. He said, “You better sing.” He was kneeling behind her, evil thing.

She could no longer breathe but she did “Danny Boy.” The air came through the words and the air was ripped-up rags. His hands were large and very strong and she finally understood, without a doubt, he would kill her when he’d finished.

He clamped her windpipe. He shivered like a horse. The thing inside her was in spasms, like a cat dying from a hammer blow. And then
he
screamed, right in her ear.

Later she would know he had driven a broken preserve bottle into his knee and leg. But she was free. He was off her. She fled.

For once in all its history, Stanley Street was quiet.

“Mum,” she cried from the front gate. She heard a slamming door upstairs, thank God.

“Ma’am?”

In the street, against the lamppost she saw them, a black man with a hire-girl. Even at this voltage it was clear. The soldier left the girl. He crossed the tracks, his hand held out towards Doris. He looked drunk.

“Mum,” she wailed.

It was the very same GI who had arrived so sweetly at her door. He stood before her, swaying.

“Miss, what happened?”

“Are you going to do her or me?” said the hire-girl. It was Glennys Craig who had been the fastest runner in the grade.

“He’s in there,” Doris said. “Under the house.” The black soldier looked at Glennys Craig and then at Doris. Then, as the front door of the house yawned open, the soldier opened his wallet and gave the prostitute some bills.

“You’re a mug,” said Glennys Craig, and teetered off into the dark. The lights behind the lattice came on, one by one, and suddenly, in the midst of the brownout, the whole of 825 Stanley Street was a wooden lantern and the pansy window-dresser was sprinting—him at his age—turning on the lights as he passed each switch and Doris’s mother was behind turning them all off.

“Now all the world can see,” the mother said when she arrived out in the street. She flashed her Eveready torch over the stunned black face and then across the parachute-silk dress which was marked with blood and spunk and woodchips from the past.

As the girl began to vomit on her shoes, Doris’s mother confronted the American soldier who, drunk or not, was clearly the same fellow she had already turned away. He stood the same, shoulders back, squared off, his cap in one hand, explaining.

“Just go,” said Celine’s grandmother. “Before you get your balls cut off.”

CELINE ROSE FROM
the battered leather club chair. She returned my pages to the floor without saying what she’d read. She was not finished, that was clear. I watched as she chose a poker and, like a blacksmith, brought down a rain of blows upon a log already sheathed in glowing red and orange scales. How far had she got? Sparks glinted in her eyes.

I had done an extraordinarily professional job, but clearly she was not considering that. She blew the ash from her fingertips and pulled the kimono tight around herself and retreated to the hallway. Then I heard her retching in the bathroom, vomiting.

So she had reached that part. I was so sorry. But I would seem to be a hypocrite to say so. I returned to my seat and waited to be abused but I certainly did not expect her to return with a rifle at her hip.