‘Poor bloke,’ Jake said when he was gone. ‘She has him wrapped around her little finger, and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it. She’ll be the ruination of him. He adores her, and I honestly don’t think she could give a hoot. He’s the third of my mates whose heart she’s shattered.’
‘Oh,’ Merryn said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Is she that bad?’
Jake’s face broke into the smile she saw when she first met him. ‘Yes, she is...but what’s say we forget about them. It’s us I’m more interested in.’ He made a mock bow, and Merryn’s heart skipped another beat. ‘May I have the pleasure of dancing with the prettiest girl in the apple sheds?’ He pulled her close as though she may make a run for it, but that was the furthest thing from Merryn’s mind.
Later, when she was lying in bed, she remembered how they danced. How she nestled her head against his warm chest—the smell of him. His laughing eyes when he said how lovely she looked. How he undid the ribbon holding her ponytail, whispering in her ear that the glow from the lanterns played on her hair like sun on a field of corn.
She remembered, too, her moment of falling in love. How a shiver rose from her groin and rippled through her body. She remembered his gentle eyes and found it hard to imagine him as a soldier.
There had been boyfriends before, but this was unlike anything she had ever known.
Even after such a short time, she was aware of that. She was in love, head over heels, totally and completely in love.
It was just on dusk when Jake arrived back at the Bottom Pub to collect Merryn for dinner. He was wearing long cotton trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, compulsory antimalarial dress for the army, his brown lace up shoes polished to a high sheen. Together they walked down the stairs to the veranda and sat at a rickety table in the corner. Across Fairfax Harbour, the evening light closed down over the horizon. And as it did, a cool breeze shifted the plants on the edge of the porch.
After a few moments of awkward silence, Jake stood up to go to the bar. ‘The usual?’ he asked.
Merryn nodded. ‘Yes. With ice please.’
‘Lovely dress,’ he said a short time later, returning with their drinks, ‘red suits you.’
‘Thank you.’
Jake sat down again and lifted his glass. ‘Cheers.’ He eyed her warily over the rim. Merryn left her glass on the table. Watching him shift in his chair and frown slightly, she thought it was as if he was struggling to come up with an explanation for what he had done. To Merryn, no explanation would be enough.
‘Why did you come, Merryn?’ he eventually asked.
She stared at him angrily for a long moment, her mind floundering in search of appropriate words. She very much wanted to ask. ‘Who seduced whom? Where? How?’
‘Why did it happen, Jake?’ is what she finally said.
The question hung between them.
‘Not again Merryn. Don’t beat yourself up like that.’
‘How, Jake?’
‘I told you in my letter. It just happened. I didn’t mean it to...’
‘You must’ve been looking for it. Otherwise things like that don’t just happen.’
‘I was missing you.’
Merryn looked away and then swivelled back. ‘Christ, Jake! Give me a break. You’d think you could come up with something better than that. Surprise. Surprise. I was missing you too. The difference being, I didn’t screw around.’
Jake looked at her, taken aback by her uncharacteristic choice of words. ‘Jees, Merryn...don’t.’ He tried to calm her down, at the same time looking around to see if anyone had heard. Fortunately, the only other couple—down the far end of the veranda—were deep in conversation. ‘You didn’t answer me before,’ he went on edgily. ‘Why? I mean, why for God’s sake did you come? Surely you knew it was going to make it worse for you.’
‘When are you getting married?’ she asked, ignoring his question.
‘In a few weeks time. Before it shows.’
‘Where?’
‘The chapel at Karu Barracks.’
Merryn’s eyes widened. ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Karu... where we were going to get married?’ She glared. ‘How could you, Jake?’
He took a mouthful of beer, spilling some of it onto the wooden table. ‘Yes, Merryn, that’s where all officers get married, if they don’t go back to Australia, that is.’
He drew a circle over and over in the spillage before finally picking up a South Pacific Lager coaster and covering the mess. Merryn watched the coaster seep up the liquid, as though it was a sponge in tannin water.
‘Will she have it here or go back to Australia?’
Jake gave a small cough and fiddled with his glass. ‘Her parents want her to go back to Brisbane. They still have a house there, and Mrs. James will go with her. I’ll take leave.’
‘Oh!’ was all Merryn could think of to say. Then she had to ask the question, the question that had haunted her since she first found out, the question she most wanted to know the answer to. ‘Do you really love her, Jake?’
Jake leaned forward, letting his gaze drift past her head—to a point where the veranda met the garden, and then brought it back. ‘Yes, I do, Merryn. In any case that doesn’t come into it. There’s the baby and...’ his voice trailed off.
‘You loved me, Jake. And what about ...?’
He cut her off before she could go on. ‘We did the right thing. You know that. In any case, maybe we haven’t really been in love for ages...perhaps it’s just that...well...we’ve known each other for so long. Perhaps we mistook friendship for love.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘What about when we first made love, Jake? At Duntroon! Remember what it was like? After the ball. You said you knew it then too. Was it like that with Amanda, Jake? Like in the clubhouse?’ She knew she was ranting; her voice was shrill, not like hers at all, but there was no way she could contain it.
Suddenly, she looked away with her mind reeling back to the carefree days when Jake first went to Duntroon. To the first time they made love. When she came down from Wattle Creek to go to the Queen’s Birthday Ball as his date. How he had hidden a candle and a blanket in the small clubhouse down by the river. How he laid the lifejackets gently on the floor, placing the blanket on top. And when she lay beside, him she remembered, too, how he ran his fingers along her naked body and how a shiver rose from her belly and rippled through her being. Looking at him now, she remembered what he had said—exactly as he said it.
‘As long as I live I will never see anything so beautiful.’
With the candlelight throwing a shadow on his bare skin, a voice had warned her, told her that if she went ahead with this there would be no return. Yet another voice whispered. Is this not what you’ve wanted from the first time you saw him amongst the apple trees? What you’ve dreamed about ever since. It is not something you will regret.
And it wasn’t something she regretted, even now. For it was at that moment she found true happiness.
Jake put his hand under the table to find her hand. She moved hers away out of his reach and held her brandy glass tight with the other. A young Papuan shuffled onto the veranda and hung a hurricane lantern from the rafters. Merryn watched him go inside again and return with a mosquito coil, placing it on