The Great Fire Read Online Free PDF Page A

side. Dench, a small man, had already registered the approach of Aldred Leith. Mumbling at Driscoll's ear, Dench let his glance wander on the stones and beaten earth of the path, among clustered azaleas, on a Nissen hut in the trees. Throughout the coming months of their acquaintance, Captain Dench never did look Major Leith in the eye.
    Driscoll stood. The expression 'stock-still' might have originated with him. Driscoll said, 'Fresh water,' and, as Leith came up, began to towel himself, currying with circular vigour the matted hair of chest and head. 'Never drank it. Never thought I'd swim in it.' Blew out his cheeks and spat. Under fizzing brows, the splenetic stare. 'Beats their flaming bathhouse, at any rate.' He told Leith, 'In Australia, we have the ocean.'
    Leith agreed. 'Very lucky.'
    'Too right there.' Buried his face in the rough stripes of the towel, hands pressed to eyes. 'Luckiest in the world.' The two men walked on. Dench, a sallow phantom, followed, coughing. 'You're Leith, are you. You just made it for lunch.' He said, 'We don't wait.'
    Leith was looking at a house among trees: the house, clearly, that Gardiner had praised. He had nearly forgotten the Driscolls, to whom Gardiner had attached a sense of struggle and whose impulse to resentment he did not understand. It would be pleasant, now, to see the house and, as he discovered, its enclosed garden, coming into view: a small plane of pebbles, into which a man in black was working concentric patterns with a long-handled brush.
    They stood at the negligible threshold.
    'You've seen your quarters.'
    'Yes.'
    'We had those plywood jobs put up right off. Bit of a walk down there, but you've got your comforts. We use this place once in a while as a mess. A bit of local colour. We like to be congenial.' Driscoll broke off to shout, 'Melb! Over here.'
    In red rayon, his wife was arriving.
    Mrs Driscoll was of middling height only, an illusory tallness being created by her large forcible head and martial shoulders, and by fluffed white hair that, upswept, made its contribution. Behind spectacles, at the centre of a thick lens, the eye shone, small, animate, and marble. To Leith, who went forward putting out his hand, she said, 'I'm sorry for you.' A piping voice, active with falsity. 'Arriving on such a humid day. We're just going to table. We put in a proper table, we don't eat off the floor. But I suppose you like things to be Japanese.'
    'I have no preference.'
    'I'm a decisive person myself.'
    As yet immune to her, Leith waited to perceive her effect. Driscoll himself, while maintaining drilled belligerence, showed some loss of patina. A partnership, but not an equal one.
    Dench had come back, carrying military clothing on a coat hanger.
    Melba was saying, 'We don't wait. We don't stand on ceremony here, no matter who. The parliamentary delegation left on Friday, now it's the university lot. To us, they're just people.'
    With Dench's help, Driscoll was struggling into his clothes.
    Leith was weighing the possibility of rooms in the town.
    The woman said, 'We don't go in for conversation here: we like plain talk. We Australians are easygoing.'
    Driscoll put in, 'We're a good-natured lot. Have our faults, like the rest of you. But the old heart's in the right place.'
    Beyond its partitions, the house opened on the garden of placed rocks and stunted trees. There was no view, or sense, of woods, hills, or far-off sea: distance had been conjured, and enclosed.
    'Their awful gardens.'
    He'd forgotten her.
    There was a small commotion of greeting, and Western men were seating themselves at a table. Finding a place on the long bench, Leith was relieved at the sight of a burly scholar he had met in Nanking, a historian named Calder — who, changing place, came to sit beside him, perhaps with a similar sense of deliverance. A short taste of Driscolls engendered solidarity.
    Calder said, 'So you got here.'
    'And just in time, I'm told.'
    Someone murmured, 'We don't wait,'