Redemption - Leon Uris [140]
That held true until he met Georgia Norman. When Sister Georgia unbuttoned her starched uniform, his approach was a smile and an attitude of kind humor and a flip now and then into sheer madness.
Georgia Norman’s difference did not take long to become apparent to Rory. It was not a contest of win or lose. Georgia enjoyed what she had going. She did not condemn herself because of her lamentable marriage or curse her husband or condemn herself for being so un-Christchurch-like. She was not awkward after lovemaking, like the usual refrains of “Now that you’ve seen me naked, please close your eyes while I dress.” Georgia liked herself and whatever she had been given. She was on the lookout for constant discovery or letting him in on places she had already been. She made a guy feel glorious, that’s what, as if he were the most wonderful chap she had ever seen.
And after—Rory liked the after. She’d simmer for a long time and whisper about pretty near anything and he found himself talking about God knows what and playing lightly at both the entrance and exit to lovemaking.
As the Taranaki lost contact with land, an unplanned and unknown phenomenon happened, triggered by the realization that these could be their last moments together, ever.
Whatever restraints there may have been, caused by age and circumstance, disintegrated in a violent implosion that burst open locked vaults in each of them, freeing a rush of exquisite realization. The intensity and desperate grasping for each other took them to somewhere new.
Daybreak found the Taranaki tied up at the Glasgow Pier dead across from the Wellington Rail Station. The moonstruck lovers held hands tightly on their balcony and looked down to the gangway where a line of travelers debarked and marched with their porters to the waiting train. Rory and Georgia thanked the master of their fate for granting them three more nights together.
On the final night out, the sea was extremely kind to them. They were allowed the most exhilarating sight of a fellow steamer passing in the opposite direction with cabin lights ablaze and a zephyr dimly blowing dance music from the ship’s lounge. Each vessel blew off fireworks of recognition, followed by the other ship’s being swallowed up by utter silence and darkness. The allegory was not lost.
Georgia lay tossed and disheveled on the bed in a most alluring way. Sailors at Uncle Wally’s always had something to sell from the Orient. Rory had bought her a forest green silk kimono, which now was flung askew so that the lyrical lines of her rounded body spoke a single word…woman. Aye, the robe had found itself to the right one.
Her rusty hair was kept at working lady’s length and made her whiteness seem touched by a perfect master. The flash of emerald, the high linen sheets intertwined, all made her no less in his eyes than an ancient goddess. He studied her from across the cabin, unblinking, as time seemed suspended. He was exhausted but had utter clarity. Rory could no longer hold back the tide of questions.
What was it that changed so abruptly the instant he tried to say farewell to her? The idea of fear came to him. Conor had told him never to stifle fear but to realize it, examine it, and gain control of it. That makes the man.
The fool is the one who lies to himself that he has no fear. Rory believed his bouts of genuine fear were few, once he stopped being afraid of his father. Now, it was not a fear of a mean person or suddenly being smashed up, but another kind of fear altogether. As the South Island left his sight, he became weak and dizzy. Jesus, he told himself, I’m afraid. For all the passionate desires to leave New Zealand, the actual moment of cutting the bind had sent him into a sweat.
He hid his feelings from Georgia. She should not see him frightened. As he brought himself under control, he thought, God knows the idea of battle is thrilling, not frightening. This long dream of Ireland after the war was nothing less than Homeric.
So, what’s to fear,