Spearfield's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

driver.
    â€œIt’s goodnight here, Tom, not up in my room. Tonight was my fault as much as yours.”
    She had the sense of guilt that she always had when she allowed a man to make love to her; she hadn’t entirely thrown off the influence of the nuns at the convent. She had been in love, or imagined herself to be, with each man at the moment; afterwards she had not been disillusioned with the man but with herself. She had been looking for love, not falling in love; the men had not been to blame for falling short of her dreams. She had never believed that sex was a way of leading to love; she knew enough to be able to separate sensation from emotion. But, like her mother, she was a romantic and tonight, suddenly and (she thought) inexplicably, she had felt romantic. And all Tom Border had wanted was a roll in the hay.
    â€œI’m going into the bar.”
    â€œDon’t get drunk on my account, Tom.”
    He smiled, the old Tom Border again: withdrawn, watchful. “Just a glass of Budweiser, to remind me of home. Goodnight, Cleo old girl. Like you say, it was nobody’s fault.”
    She was about to say, That wasn’t what I said; but didn’t. Never argue about your mistakes, her father, the politician, had said.
    â€œI’ll see you tomorrow, Tom.”
    IV
    She dreamed that night of her home street in Coogee back in Sydney, with black-clad corpses lying in the roadway and faintly familiar figures (boys she had once known?) standing over them with guns. She woke in a sweat and it took her a long time to go back to sleep again. She wondered if dreams like this had first started the GIs on the need to get stoned.
    In the morning she learned that Tom had gone up to Danang. She wondered where he would go from there and hoped he wouldn’t go looking for the worst of the war. Not with only three weeks to go before he went home for a visit to the farm outside—where was it? Where the only excitement was an occasional tornado.
    She felt a sense of loss and wondered why: for God’s sake, she hadn’t been in love with him! The loudspeakers on the Continental terrace were playing a Rolling Stones number, 2000 Light Years From Home, Mick Jagger sending his comfort on a nice safe plastic disc. She got up and went looking for more evidence of what had happened at An Bai yesterday. But she might just as well have gone looking for true love amongst the bars.
    She asked to see General Brisson and was told he was up-country; that afternoon she saw him in his Jeep going down Tu Do Street. She tried to find out which company from what regiment had gone into An Bai yesterday; but even that information wasn’t available. It took her two days to write her story and she had the sense not to cable it; she went down to the post office and mailed it special delivery. Then she went back to the Continental and waited; at night she had more nightmares, but after three nights they were gone; put away at the back of her mind for future torture. She was relieved and pleased that she did not feel she needed an opium pill.
    She found after a day or two that she was also waiting for Tom Border to come back. But he didn’t and at the end of the week she learned he had been wounded in a Marines action up beyond Danang, not badly but enough to have him sent out on a plane going to Tokyo. She felt annoyed that he had gone without saying goodbye to her; but she went up to her room and wrote him a short note. She said she hoped he wasn’t badly wounded and would soon be well enough to go on drifting. She did not know where to send the letter and she would not go to the press office to ask the address of the head office of the chain of newspapers he represented. In the end she addressed it simply: Tom Border, care of Friendship, Missouri.
    Next day she got a cable from the Sydney Morning Post recalling her.
    V
    â€œThey won’t print my story, Dad—that’s why I’ve