JON CLEARY
Back of Sunset
To the
ROYAL FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE OF AUSTRALIA its doctors, nurses, pilots and radio operators
Contents
About the Author
“There goes the Iberia,” Rona said. “Lucky devils, all those people on it.”
“They’re heading for an English winter.” Stephen McCabe lay flat on his back on the sand, his eyes shut against the glare of the October sun.
“There’s more to life than climate,” Rona said, sitting up and staring out at the big white liner as it moved slowly down the harbour.
“Is that an advertising slogan? Maybe the British Travel Whatever-it-is could use it.”
“I wish you would be serious occasionally,” Rona said, still gazing out at the ship. “You can be so fantastically annoying at times.”
Stephen didn’t open his eyes, but he knew the slight frown that would pass across Rona’s face as she spoke. He knew every expression that accompanied every inflection of her voice; I know her too damn’ well, he thought, and knew what a burden knowledge could sometimes be.
Rona Goodyear was twenty-two and beautiful enough to take her looks for granted; she needed no more reassurance than the honesty of her own mirror could give her. She had no conceit at all about her beauty; it was one of the points Stephen liked most about her. She had thick auburn hair, cut short, green eyes and the bonework in her face was almost fragile: it was the sort of face on which suffering, if ever she had to bear it, would show plainly and ugly, like a scar. She had the sort of complexion that went with red hair and green eyes, pale and smooth as snow; her complexion had the impermanent look that snow had and you felt it was too perfect to last. Each time she came here to the pool, or went riding with Stephen in the open Jaguar, she smothered herself in cream and wore dark glasses. Now, too, she wore a large straw hat that, made originally for a peasant in some Malayan rice paddy, was now high fashion on Sydney beaches.
Stephen had opened his eyes and was watching her. “You’ll look even better in England. No sun to worry about.”
“I know,” said Rona, smiling at him from under the shade of the big hat, her eyes blind behind the dark glasses and the smile only on her lips. “It’ll be absolutely wonderful not to have to worry about freckling.”
“I don’t think I’ll look so hot without a tan. I’m not the pale type.”
“Darling, the girls in London will fall all over you, with or without your tan.”
“Still, when I’m lying in some Mayfair boudoir, all skinny and white, I’m going to miss all this.” He moved his head, taking in all the pool. “There’s something in my blood that needs sun. I’m a King’s Cross Neapolitan.”
He stood up, brushing the sand from his trunks and body. He was tall, over six feet, and his height made him seem thinner than he actually was. His physique was the type that never carried much surplus weight; when he was old, if he lived so long and sometimes he doubted it, he would have the thin look he associated with ancient greyhounds or Tibetan seers. His face, too, was lean and long, with the bones very prominent, as if the skin were stretched too tightly over it; they were strong bones and gave a look of strength to his face that was not always apparent in the set of the mouth, nose and eyes. His eyes were dark blue, almost black, a trifle saturnine but not without kindliness; they looked tired now and a little worried. His hand rested for a moment on the long scar on the outside of his thigh; it was the relic of the one time in his life when he had been in real danger, when he was fourteen and a shark had made a pass at him while he swam one dusk in the surf at Coogee. He was in no danger now, but the scar was a reminder of the past, and in the last few weeks the past had been coming back to him, sweetly painful at times like a grief that had not been an utter loss.
“I’m going to miss all this,” he said again, and suddenly sounded irritable, almost afraid.
“You won’t miss it,” Rona said. “Not really, darling. Not when we’ve got everything we want in London.”
“No,” he said, and looked about him again. “I had to work my way up to all this. I’ve got used to it.”
Redleaf Pool basked in the quiet of Friday morning. On the hill behind it, hidden by the trees and the houses, trams and cars went by in a rush: now and again there was the yelp of a horn or the scream of brakes, like the cries of animals trapped in a circus whose main ring was New South Head Road. There were no more than fifty people in the pool enclosure; these were the lucky ones, the well-to-do, the pensioners and the unemployed. Young mothers in bright swim-suits