Territory (4 page)

‘She's wonderful, isn't she,' Henrietta remarked, accepting the glass of punch Terence handed her. But she blinked rapidly, feeling the hot familiar sting in her eyes. She wanted to get away from ‘The White Cliffs of Dover', it had been one of their favourites and even now, nearly two years later, such reminders could reduce her to tears. A fact which Henrietta found embarrassing in public.

People were drifting back to the dance floor. Keeping a sharp lookout, Terence had noted two men making a beeline for Henrietta. ‘Would you like to duck outside for a bit of fresh air?' he said. ‘I could do with a smoke and it's stuffy in here.'

She smiled gratefully. How tactful of him, she thought, how sympathetic. And, just as the men arrived, one on either side of Henrietta, Terence took her hand and elbowed his way towards the main doors.

Once outside, he led the way down the several steps to sit on the low stone wall out the front of the hall.

‘Thank you,' she said, fumbling for the handkerchief in the pocket of her uniform.

‘What for?' He proffered his packet of Craven A but she shook her head.

‘I was a bit upset,' she said, briskly blowing her nose. ‘Terribly embarrassing, I'm sorry. Thanks for getting me out of there.'

‘I was getting you away from two blokes who were going to ask you to dance.'

Henrietta burst out laughing, it was the best remedy he could have offered to break through her brief maudlin bout.

He liked her laugh. It was open and honest, and he liked the genuine humour which shone from her clear
blue eyes. ‘Why were you upset?'

‘Oh,' she shrugged, tucking her hankie back in her pocket, ‘just the song. Reminding me of things. You know how it is.' It was time to change the subject.

‘What things? A boyfriend, I suppose.' He struck a match. ‘A great love?' he asked as he lit his cigarette. If there was any cynicism intended she couldn't read it from his tone, but the question was impertinent, she thought.

‘No,' she said, just a trifle brusquely.

But he didn't get the message. ‘What then? What did the song remind you of?'

The intensity of his interest unnerved her a little. ‘You're very persistent,' she said.

‘I'm a fighter pilot, I have to be.' His non sequitur puzzled her. ‘Our life-expectancy isn't rated very high,' he explained, ‘and I've learned to get to the point. I can't afford the luxury of taking months to get to know you, Henrietta—you don't mind if I call you Henrietta?' He didn't wait for a reply. ‘I want to get to know you now. I want to know everything about you.'

Henrietta had been sexually propositioned along similar lines on a number of occasions. ‘I'm going into battle, I may never come back …' But even as she'd felt for the young men, she'd never once been tempted to succumb. This was different, she thought. ‘Why?' she asked. ‘Why do you want to know everything about me?'

‘I'm not sure,' he said honestly enough, but even as he said it he had a feeling he did know why. He had a feeling that this was the woman he wanted to marry. He couldn't tell her that. It was madness. ‘But please let me know you, Henrietta.'

She looked away for a moment at the several other couples who had escaped the hall and were whispering quietly or embracing, heedless of those about them. ‘The song reminded me of my parents,' she said, ‘they were killed in the first heavy bombing.' September 10, 1940, she
could have said but she didn't. ‘Nearly two years ago now.'

She was glad of his reaction. He didn't say he was sorry he'd asked, he silently accepted the information and waited for her either to call a halt to the conversation or to continue. For some strange reason she continued.

‘We lived in Battersea,' she said. ‘The whole block was destroyed, razed to the ground. It was around midnight, and I would have been killed along with them if I hadn't been safely out of London for the night.'

Henrietta was surprised to hear herself say it without bitterness. There would have been a sarcastic edge to such a comment once. For a full twelve months she had felt shockingly guilty that she hadn't died with her parents. As if, by escaping their fate, she had deserted them. In fact, talking now to Terence Galloway, Henrietta was pleasantly surprised that she didn't feel at all emotional. It was quite liberating to simply state the facts to a person who was neither embarrassed nor dripping with concern for the tragedy of her life.

‘I wasn't driving trucks then,' she said. ‘I only did the occasional job for the war effort so that I wouldn't feel guilty about not helping. When the raid happened I was in Amersham with twenty children who'd just been evacuated. I was supposed to come back the same day but I missed the afternoon train to London and had to stay the night.'

‘That was lucky.'

‘Yes,' she said. He was right of course. For a long time she'd blamed herself for missing that train. ‘Yes, it was very lucky.'

He stubbed out his cigarette and rose. ‘Do you want to go back inside?'

Vera Lynn was singing ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square' when they returned. Then the band played a bracket of upbeat American swing numbers, and Henrietta was whisked off her feet by a succession of enthus
iastic Yanks. But Terence was waiting when, giddy with exhaustion, she finally refused all offers. ‘I'm sorry,' she panted to a disappointed GI, ‘I need to get my breath back, I really do.'

‘Punch?' Terence was holding a glass out to her.

‘Thank you.'

The last dance she reserved for him. At least he made sure that she did. He was by her side in an instant.

Vera Lynn was back on the stage.

‘
Goodnight sweetheart, 'til we meet tomorrow, goodnight sweetheart, tears will banish sorrow …
'

They swayed to the music, to the melody and the woman's glorious voice. There was no need to talk any more.

He'd told her about his father's cattle station as they'd sat drinking punch.

‘I thought they were called ranches,' she'd said.

‘That's in America.'

And when she'd asked if all Australians were such good dancers he'd said ‘No, probably not, but my sister Charlotte is and she taught me. She doesn't dance any more, though; they call her Charlie now and she musters cattle.' She hadn't really understood the comment but he'd grinned as he'd added ‘and she's bloody good with a rifle', and she'd thought how fascinating his family must be.

He'd asked her about her family too; she didn't sound as though she came from Battersea. Her mother was Irish, she'd said. She'd lived quite a lot of her early life in Ireland.

‘Ah, that explains it,' he'd said. He loved the slight lilt to her voice.

‘
Dreams enfold you, in my arms I'll hold you
…'

There was nothing more to say as they swayed to the music. There was no need for words.

‘
Goodnight sweetheart, goodnight.
'

Terence Galloway and Henrietta Southern were in love.
He walked her home to her grandmother's flat in nearby Chelsea and shook her hand as he said goodnight, although she wouldn't have minded at all if he'd kissed her. He was going away for a while, he told her, but when he returned may he call on her? Of course she said yes.

She thought, regretfully, that she'd never see him again. But two weeks later he was back. He took her out to lunch on the Saturday. To a little café in Soho an RAF mate had told him about that sold good food, and they talked. Or rather he did while she listened. He didn't talk of the war or the missions he'd flown, but of his home in Australia. The Northern Territory, he called it. She'd never heard of the Northern Territory. And the cattle station. ‘Bullalalla'. She thought it was a beautiful name.

‘You can travel a dozen countries at Bullalalla,' he told her. ‘You can gallop your horse across the the Pindan country where, at dusk, the spinifex glows red like fire. And you can look down into gorges hundreds of feet deep, and you can climb rocks the size of castles.' Her rapt attention drove Terence on. ‘In the wet season, when the rivers flood, all you can see for miles is green, and then the dry comes and whole riverbeds and lakes disappear.'

She looked as if she didn't believe him. ‘They do,' he insisted. ‘They just dry up. They burn to a crust, and you can drive a thousand head of cattle across something that was once an inland sea or a raging torrent of water.'

Never in his life had Terence waxed so poetic. But then never in his life had he needed to. Where had such passion come from? He really didn't know. But one thing he was sure of, he wanted this woman for his wife, and he needed to paint a picture she would wish to see.

On the Sunday afternoon they walked along the Chelsea Embankment. Holding hands. As if they'd known each other for a very long time. She looked at other couples holding hands. A soldier and a girl were embracing, clinging tightly to each other.

‘I'd like to meet your grandmother,' he said, surprising her.

 

‘Flight Lieutenant Terence Galloway,' he said. ‘How do you do, Mrs Southern.'

A very formal introduction, the old lady thought. There'd be a reason for that. Currying favour of course, but to what end? Any young Lothario out to bed the girl didn't need to seek the approval of an old woman. Henrietta was twenty-two years old, she'd make up her own mind.

‘How do you do,' she said, shaking his hand. She was in her favourite armchair by the window, overlooking the small park, her crocheted rug tucked about her knees. It was where she spent most of her time.

Henrietta had led Terence through the front door and up the stairs. ‘Grandma doesn't get around much these days,' she'd explained.

He was a handsome devil all right, Winifred Southern thought, Henrietta had said that he was. ‘Will you get the tea, Henrietta?'

‘Of course.'

As her grand daughter left the room, the old lady said, ‘I'm sorry we have nothing stronger, Lieutenant, I wasn't expecting you.'

‘Tea's fine, thanks.' She was tough, he thought, but he respected her for it. She didn't look at all like Henrietta. Small, and frail in body—well, she must be about eighty—she had white hair which would once have been black judging from the beady brown eyes which were studying him intently. Henrietta must have got her looks from her Irish mother.

‘How long are you stationed here?'

‘Not for much longer,' he said. ‘I've applied for a transfer to Darwin. The Yanks have set up bases there and the Dutch are sending forces from Batavia.'

‘Darwin?' she queried politely. ‘Where's that?'

‘The Northern Territory.' She looked a little blank. ‘The north of Australia,' he said, ‘we call it the Top End.'

‘Ah.'

‘Darwin was heavily bombed six months or so ago. In February.'

‘Who by?'

‘I beg your pardon?' He was confused by her question.

‘Who bombed Darwin?' Winifred Southern asked. Why in God's name would the Germans want to bomb northern Australia, she was wondering. What on earth could they gain by it?

For a brief moment he wondered at the stupidity of her question. Then he realised that civilians experiencing the horrors of the European war probably wouldn't even know that the battle had spread to the Pacific. And they probably wouldn't care if they did. Why should they? Their lives were being torn apart right here at home.

‘The Japanese,' he said, and added, not impertinently but with the vestige of a smile. ‘The Japs are in the war too, you know.'

‘Ah yes, of course.' She made no apology. ‘Here's the tea. Do sit down, Lieutenant.'

She was calling him Terence, by his request, when he left nearly two hours later, but for all the charm he'd laid on he wasn't sure if she liked him. She was certainly adding him up, trying to read his intent, which was what he'd expected. After all, Henrietta was the only family the old woman had.

‘When my son and his wife were killed,' she'd said in her brittle matter-of-fact way, ‘Henrietta was immensely strong. I was not well myself, I believe it was grief which brought about my physical decline.' She spoke of grief as if it was the croup, and Terence could imagine little affecting the old lady emotionally. ‘She came to live with me in order to look after me, and she devoted herself to her Red
Cross work. She was always a good driver. She drives trucks, you know.'

‘I know.'

‘Yes,' the old woman nodded proudly. ‘She does the work of a man. Devoted to it too, quite devoted.'

‘Well I wasn't any good at knitting socks and vests, Grandma,' Henrietta said lightly, wishing her grandmother would stop speaking about her as if she wasn't there.

‘A very strong girl, my Henrietta. Very strong. Very capable.'

Terence wondered exactly what sort of message the old woman was sending him. He was trying to read her, just as she was trying to read him. On the one hand she seemed to be telling him that she needed Henrietta to look after her, and on the other she was extolling Henrietta's virtues as one did a brood mare.

‘I shall be leaving for Australia within the month, Mrs Southern,' he said as he bade his farewell.

‘Shall you be paying a visit before your departure?' she asked. The beady brown eyes were asking ‘a visit not only to Henrietta, but to me'. The old woman knew that he wanted to marry her grand daughter, Terence could tell. Was she for him or against him? She was giving away nothing.

‘I most certainly shall.'

‘I look forward to that, Terence. Goodbye.' She shook his hand.

Henrietta took him downstairs and saw him to the front door.

Winifred returned her attention to the little park out the window. Well, his intentions were honourable, that was obvious, he wanted to marry the girl and take her to Australia. Young people moved so quickly these days, but then there was a war on, they had to.