An Indecent Obsession

  Yet he never doubted the existence of the unspoken understanding between them; had she not shared it, and acquiesced to it, she would have disabused him immediately, feeling it to be her duty to do so.

  The only child of wealthy, socially prominent Melbourne parents, Neil Longland Parkinson had undergone the peculiar genesis of that time in that country, Australia: he had been molded into a young man more English than the English. His accent held no single trace of his Australian lineage, it was as pear-shaped and upper-crust as any accent that ever belonged to an English noble. He had gone straight from Geelong Grammar School to Oxford University in England, taken a double first in history, and since his Oxford days he had spent no more than months back in the land of his birth. It was his ambition to be a painter, so from Oxford he gravitated to Paris, and then to the Greek Peloponnese, where he settled to an interesting but undemanding life enlivened only by stormy visits from the Italian actress who functioned as his mistress but would have preferred to be his wife. Between these exhausting bouts of emotional stress he learned to speak Greek as fluently as he spoke English, French and Italian, painted frantically and thought of himself far more as an expatriate Englishman than as an Australian.

  Marriage had not entered his plans, though he was aware that sooner or later it must; just as he was aware that he was postponing all decisions about the future course of his life. But to a young man not yet into his thirties there had seemed all the time in the world.

  Then everything changed, suddenly, catastrophically. Even in the Greek Peloponnese murmurs of war had been sounding for some time when a letter had come from his father: a stiff, unsympathetic letter to the effect that his days of sowing wild oats were over, that he owed it to his family and his position to come home immediately, while he still could.

  So he had sailed for Australia in the latter part of 1938, arriving back in a country he scarcely knew to greet parents who seemed as remote and devoid of love for him as Victorian gentry, which happened to be exactly what they were—not Queen Victoria, but the State of Victoria.

  His return to Australia coincided with his thirtieth birthday, milestones which even now, over seven years later, he found hard to remember without a fresh upsurge of the awful terrors which had plagued him since last May. His father! That ruthless, charming, crafty, incredibly energetic old man! Why hadn’t he sired a whole quiverful of sons? It didn’t seem believable that he had produced only one, and late at that. Such a burden, to be Longland Parkinson’s only son. To want to match, even to surpass, Longland Parkinson himself.

  It was not possible, of course. Had the old man only realized it, he was himself the cause of Neil’s failure to measure up. Deprived of the old man’s working-class background with all its attendant bitterness and challenge, saddled with his mother’s refined preciousness into the bargain, Neil knew himself defeated from the time when he became old enough to form opinions about his world.

  He was into his teens before he realized that he cared for his father a great deal more than he cared for his mother. And that in spite of his father’s indifference to him, his mother’s cloyingly brainless protectiveness. It had been an enormous relief to go away to boarding school, and set a pattern which he was to follow from that first term at Geelong Grammar until the day of his thirtieth birthday. Why try to struggle with a situation that was manifestly impossible? Avoid it, ignore it. His mother’s money had been settled on him at the time of his majority, and was more than enough for his needs. He would live his own life, then, far from Melbourne and parents, carve his own kind of niche.

  But the imminence of war had destroyed all that. Some things could not be avoided or ignored, after all.

  His birthday dinner had been a splendid affair, very formal, the guest list liberally sprinkled with ladylike young debutantes his mother considered eligible contenders for marriage to her son. There were two archbishops at the board, Church of England and Roman Catholic, one minister from the state legislature and one from the federal, a fashionable medical practitioner, the British High Commissioner and the French ambassador. Naturally his mother had been responsible for all the invitations. During the meal he scarcely noticed young ladies or important personages, indeed was hardly conscious of his mother. All his attention was focussed on his father, sitting at the far end of the table, wicked blue eyes forming irreverent conclusions about most of the guests. How he could divine so accurately what was going on in his father’s head Neil didn’t know, but it warmed him deliciously and made him long for an opportunity to talk with the little old man who had contributed nothing to his son’s appearance save the color and shape of his eyes.

  Later Neil had understood the magnitude of his own immaturity at that relatively late stage in his life, but when his father had linked an arm through his as the men finally rose to join the ladies in the drawing room, he was simply absurdly pleased at the gesture.

  ‘They can do without us,’ said the old man, and snorted derisively. ‘It’ll give your mother something to complain about if we disappear.’

  In the library full of leather-bound books he had never opened, let alone read, Longland Parkinson settled himself into a wing chair, while his son chose to subside onto an ottoman at his feet. The room was dimly lit, but nothing could disguise the signs of hard living in the old man’s seamed face, nor diminish the laceration of a gaze that was fierce, stone hard, predatory. Behind the gaze one could see an intelligence which lived quite independent of people, emotional weakness, moral shibboleths. It was then Neil translated what he felt for his father in terms of love, and wondered at his own contrariness; why choose to love someone who did not need to be loved?

  ‘You haven’t been much of a son,’ the old man said without rancor.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘If I’d thought a letter would bring you home, I’d have sent it a long time ago.’

  Neil spread out his hands and looked at them; long, thin-fingered, smooth as a girl’s, having the kind of childishness which only comes from never putting them to work that had soul-deep meaning and importance to the brain controlling them; for his painting had not meant that to him. ‘It wasn’t your letter which brought me home,’ he said slowly.

  ‘What was it, then? War?’

  ‘No.’

  The wall sconce shining behind his father’s head lit up its pink hairless dome, threw all the shadows forward onto his face, in which the eyes burned but the hard gash of a mouth remained resolutely closed.

  ‘I’m no good,’ said Neil.

  ‘No good at what?’ Typical of his father, to interpret the statement dynamically rather than morally.

  ‘I’m a rotten painter.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was told so, by someone who does know.’ The words began to come more easily. ‘I’d accumulated enough work for a major showing—somehow I always wanted to start with a bang, no single work hanging here, a couple there. Anyway, I wrote to a friend in Paris who owns the gallery I wanted for my debut, and since he rather fancied the idea of a holiday in Greece, he came down to see what I’d done. And he wasn’t impressed, that’s all. Very pretty, he said. Quite, quite charming, really. But no originality, no strength, no instinctive feeling for the medium. He then suggested I turn my talents to commercial art.’

  If the old man was moved by his son’s pain he didn’t show it, just sat there watching intently.

  ‘The army,’ he said finally, ‘will do you the world of good.’

  ‘Make a man out of me, you mean.’

  ‘To do that, it would have to start on the outside and work in. I mean that what’s on the inside has to have a chance to work its way out.’

  Neil shivered. ‘What if there’s nothing there?’

  And the old man had shrugged, smiled a small indifferent smile. ‘Then isn’t it better to know that there’s nothing there?’ he asked.

  Not one word had been said about his learning the family businesses; Neil had known any such discussion to be su
perfluous. In a way he felt his father wasn’t worried about the businesses; what happened to them after his own hands relinquished control did not concern him. Longland Parkinson was as detached from generational empire building as he was from wife and son. He didn’t demand that his son prove himself, felt no animosity toward a son who didn’t measure up; it wasn’t necessary for him to fuel his ego by demanding that his son be what he was himself, or achieve what he had achieved. No doubt when he married Neil’s mother he had known what sort of progeny she was likely to throw, and not cared; in marrying her he was thumbing his nose at the very society he aspired to enter by marrying her. In this as in everything, Longland Parkinson acted to please himself, fulfill himself.

  Yet as he sat watching his father, Neil had seen a fondness there, and a pity which had wounded to the heart. The old man simply didn’t think Neil had it in him, and the old man was a very good judge of character.

  So Neil had gone into the army, commissioned rank of course. On the outbreak of war he had been posted to an A.I.F. battalion and shipped out to North Africa, which he enjoyed immensely, feeling more at home there than he had in his native country, picking up Arabic with extreme ease and generally making himself useful. He became a very capable and conscientious soldier, and turned out to have a streak of extraordinary braveness; his men liked him, his superiors liked him, and for the first time in his life he began to like himself. There is a bit of the old man in me after all, he told himself exultantly, looking forward to the end of the war, seeing himself returned home seasoned, honed by his experiences to a fine sharp ruthlessness which he felt his father would instantly recognize and admire. More than anything else in life, he wanted those bird-of-prey eyes to look on him as an equal.

  Then came New Guinea, and after that the Islands, a kind of war far less to his taste than North Africa. It taught him that even while he had assumed his maturing process to be complete, he had really only been playing games. The jungle closed in on his soul the way the desert had freed it, drained him of exhilaration. But it strengthened him too, brought out a stubborn endurance he had not known he owned. He ceased finally to act a part, to care how he looked to others, too busy reaching into himself for the resources which would ensure survival for himself and his men.

  In a fruitless, extremely bloody minor campaign early in 1945 it had all come to an end. He made a mistake, and his men paid for it. All the precious hoard of confidence crumbled immediately, disastrously. If they had only held it against him, only reviled him for it, he could have borne it better, he told himself; but everyone from the surviving men in his company to his superior officers forgave him! The more they told him it wasn’t his fault, that no one was perfect, everyone made a blue sometimes, the more depressed he became. Having nothing to fight against, he faltered, broke down, and stopped.

  In May of 1945 he was admitted to ward X. On his arrival he was weeping, so immersed in his despair that he neither knew nor cared where they put him. For several days he had been permitted to do as he pleased, and all he pleased to do was huddle inside himself, shake, weep, grieve. Then the person who had hovered greyly in the background began to intrude upon his misery, make an irritating nuisance of herself. She stuck herself onto him, bullied and even forced him to eat, refused to admit there was anything different or special about his plight, made him sit with the other patients when all he wanted to do was to shut himself inside his cubicle, gave him jobs to do, needled and poked him into talking, first about anything, then about himself, which he infinitely preferred.

  Returning awareness stirred sluggishly at first, then seemed to leap. Things not directly concerning himself impinged upon him; he began to see his fellow patients, and to notice his surroundings. He started to be interested in the phenomenon of ward X, and in Sister Honour Langtry.

  She had acquired a name and an identity within his mind. Not that he always liked her at first; she was too matter-of-fact and unimpressed by his uniqueness. But just as he had decided she was a typical army nurse, she began to thaw, to reveal a softness and a tenderness so alien to most of the experiences of the last few years that he would have drowned in it had she let him. She never, never did. Only when he deemed himself cured did he begin to understand how subtly she had chivvied him along.

  He had not needed to be shipped to Australia for further treatment. But he wasn’t shipped back to his unit, either. Apparently his CO preferred that he remain where he was; the division had been laid off active duty for the moment, so he wasn’t needed.

  In many ways his continued enforced rest in ward X delighted him, since it kept him near Sister Langtry, who these days treated him more as colleague than as patient, and with whom he was establishing the foundations of a relationship having nothing to do with ward X. But from the time when he considered himself cured and ready to resume duty, doubt had begun to gnaw at him. Why didn’t they want him back? He found the answer for himself— because he couldn’t be trusted any more, because if for some reason the war flared up again, he would not prove equal to command, more men would die.

  Though everyone denied it, Neil knew that was the real reason why after almost five months he still remained a prisoner of ward X. What he couldn’t yet understand was that his neurosis lingered on, showing itself chiefly as an extreme self-doubt. Had the war flared up again, he would probably have been returned on probation to duty, and would probably have done very well. Neil’s tragedy was that the war really had ended, and there was no more active duty.

  He leaned across to read the name on the papers lying on Sister Langtry’s desk, and grimaced. ‘A bit of a slap in the eye, isn’t it, getting him at this late date?’

  ‘A shock, yes. A slap in the eye remains to be seen. Though he doesn’t strike me as the troublesome type.’

  ‘There we agree. Very bland. He reminds me a bit of a cliché-ridden parrot.’

  Startled, she turned from the window to look at him; Neil wasn’t usually so obtuse about men, nor so critical.

  ‘I think he’s quite a man,’ she said.

  An unexpected and inexplicable irritation rushed up and out, surprising him as much as it did her. ‘Why, Sister Langtry!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you attracted, then? I wouldn’t have said he was your type at all!’

  Her frown became a laugh. ‘Not on me, Neil! It’s unworthy of you, my dear friend. You sound exactly like Luce, and that isn’t a compliment. Why be so hard on the poor chap?’

  ‘I’m just jealous,’ he said flippantly, and drew his cigarette case out of his pocket. It was plain heavy gold, expensive-looking, and bore his initials in one corner. No one else in the ward smoked tailor-mades, but at the moment no one else in the ward was an officer.

  He flipped the case open and offered its contents to her, lighter ready in his other hand.

  She sighed, but took a cigarette and held it while he lit it. ‘I should never, never have let you talk me into sneaking a smoke with you while I’m on duty,’ she said. ‘Matron would hang, draw and quarter me. Besides, I’m going to have to throw you out in a tick. I’ve got to plough through Michael’s papers before Colonel Chinstrap arrives.’

  ‘Oh, God! Don’t tell me we’ve got to put up with him tonight!’

  She looked amused. ‘Well, actually it’s me has to do any putting up with, not you.’

  ‘And what brings our stalwart chief so far down the compound after dark?’

  ‘Michael, of course. I rang and asked him to come, because I have no instructions about Michael. I don’t know why he’s here in Base Fifteen or why he’s been slotted into X. Personally, I’m mystified.’ She sighed suddenly, and stretched minutely. ‘Somehow it hasn’t been a very nice day today.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, no day in X is ever a very nice one,’ Neil said somberly, leaning to tap his cigarette into the spent shell case she used as an ashtray. ‘I’ve been moldering in X for nearly five months, Sis. Others seem to come and go, but here I sit like a lily on a dirt tin, a permanent fixture.’

/>   And there it was, the X pain, in him and in her. So galling to have to watch them suffer, to know she was incapable of removing the cause of their suffering, since it was rooted in their own inadequacies. She had learned painfully that the good she did them during the more acute stage of illness rarely extended to this long-drawn-out period of almost-recovery.

  ‘You did have a bit of a breakdown, you know,’ she said gently, understanding how futile a comfort that must sound. And recognizing the beginning of an oft-repeated cycle of conversation, in which he would castigate himself for his weaknesses, and she would try, usually vainly, to point out that they were not necessarily weaknesses.

  He snorted. ‘I got over my breakdown ages ago, and you know it.’ Extending his arms in front of him, he clenched his fists until the sinews knotted, the muscles shaped themselves into ridges, unaware that it was when she watched a small display of physical power like this that she felt a sharp jerk of attraction to him. Had he known it, he might have nerved himself to make a positive move toward cementing his relationship with her, kissed her, made love to her; but in almost all circumstances Sister Langtry’s face never betrayed her thoughts.

  ‘I may not be any good as a soldier any more,’ he said, ‘but surely there’s something useful I could be doing somewhere! Oh, Sis, I am so terribly, terribly tired of ward X! I am not a mental patient!’

  The cry moved her; their cries always did, but this man’s especially. She had to lower her head and blink. ‘It can’t be too much longer. The war is over, we’ll be going home soon. I know home’s not the solution you want, and I understand why you rather dread it. But try to believe me when I say you’ll find your feet in seconds once the scenery changes, once you’ve got lots to do.’