Spearfield's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

swagger.”
    She knew there was no swagger in her tonight. “Are you married?”
    He shook his head. “I got close a couple of times. But they were both homebodies, a girl in Friendship and one in Kansas City. If I’d married either of them and settled down and then one day come home and complained I’d got itchy feet, she’d have gone out and bought ajar of Foot Balm. I don’t think you’d do that.”
    She didn’t answer that. What he had described would have fitted her own situation; there were two lovers back home in Sydney who had not understood why she had refused the security each had offered her. Even her father, the onetime drifter, the political bum, had hinted he would like her to settle down, be near him whenever he wanted to call on her.
    â€œWhere do you live? I mean here in Saigon?”
    â€œI thought you’d never ask.” Then he looked at her seriously. “Are you sure you want to come with me?”
    She smiled, put her hand on his; she was full of such affectionate gestures. They were a weakness: men read more into them than she intended. “Tom, I don’t think you really want to go to bed with me. You’re scared.” She saw his eyes narrow, as if he had been hit; she was instantly sorry, for she did not like hurting people. She lifted his hand, kissed it as a penance. It was always the same: she dug her own quicksands, trying to compensate for her mistakes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
    He had a two-room apartment in a dilapidated villa ten minutes by taxi from the restaurant. A French lawyer had owned the villa, but that had been in the days of French Indo-China; a dead flame tree stood in the front garden like a shattered memorial to what had once been. All the windows were covered with thick wire mesh and a guard, a young Vietnamese, stood at the front gates, a rifle slung over his shoulder.
    â€œThe other guys who live here are chopper pilots, Americans. A couple of times the VC came around with their calling card. Grenades. You scared?”
    She smiled and suddenly he laughed, the first time she had heard a full laugh from him. He put his arm round her and they went upstairs to his apartment. She looked around it, but there was nothing in it to identify him. She wondered if all the other rooms in his drifter’s existence had been as bare.
    She was surprised at his technique in bed; she had expected him to be smoother. He had apparently learned to make love at an unarmed combat school; he reduced foreplay to a ten-second dash. She rolled out from beneath him.
    â€œI’m not an obstacle course. God knows, I’m trying to make myself easy for you. Here, let me show you . . .”
    â€œI don’t like the woman on top.”
    â€œThat’s just American male chauvinism.”
    â€œWhat about Aussie men?”
    â€œThey’re different. They just think it’s pervy for the girl to be on top. Lie still!”
    But it wasn’t satisfactory at all. The love-making was more acrobatic than passionate; like a couple of kangaroos trying to be human, she thought. She lay back after it and stared at the stained and cracked ceiling. Neither of them said anything and after a while she got up and dressed. He still lay in bed, watching her.
    â€œThat’s ruined everything, hasn’t it?” he said at last.
    â€œBetween us? Not necessarily. I just don’t think we’ll be going to bed again, that’s all.”
    â€œI’m out of practice. I haven’t had a woman since I came out here. I don’t fancy the bar girls, getting the clap—”
    â€œGet dressed and take me back to the Continental. I don’t like wandering around on my own at night.”
    He was not the sort to make conversation to cover awkward silences. They sat without talking during the taxi ride back to the hotel, but when they reached it he got out and paid off the taxi