Redemption - Leon Uris [141]
Or…do all men know a kind of sorrow as the lights offshore blink off? He had received letters from mates who had already left the country or joined the army. Some of these lads had left rotten lives in rotten homes, but they were homesick to a man.
So, maybe my fear isn’t fear at all, he reckoned. The porthole let in a quick sliver of light, which fell over Georgia, and he felt a burst of lust from his throat down to his stomach. He started out of his chair but settled back under the weight of more questions.
I understand something now that I never could quite get before, he thought. I often wondered why Conor was so torn to return to an Ireland that had been like the raw end of a whip to him all his life. The soul is planted in your village and never leaves it. Even though it is the army and Ireland, I can never really leave New Zealand.
Thinking of Conor as he did, his uncle’s death swept over him. He clamped down to head off an outpouring of sorrow. With each new deep and uttered sigh the hurt in his chest lessened. He stood quickly and shoved open the cabin door, hoping to see the passing ship. It was long gone. The water was smooth and the heavens put on a spectacular show. Conor had told him that standing the watch on the calm nights was the worst because you remembered all you had had and lost.
“I’ve lost her,” Rory spouted.
Conor had ached for Countess Caroline. Oh Lord, how he ached for her. Maybe it all has to do with the way I now ache for Georgia Norman.
Time and again of late when he went to her cottage past Taylor’s Mistake, he had longed to ride with her up in the hills and thrill her with what his life meant.
He fantasized about coming back from the war and telling the Squire to shove it up a round hole in his middle. He’d start off with a few acres and he’d look down on it from a hillock with an arm about Georgia Norman…Georgia Larkin. By Jaysus, I could take on the world with her. She’s a rock, and oh, what she’d do for her man. The wisdom of her, the spirit, the courage. And they’d be laughing half the night through.
Well, there it is, Rory boy. My woman, Georgia Larkin. Oh, the sound of it! I’m in love with her. The war has only begun and the South Island and Georgia are already together as a single thought.
Does the realization that you need someone necessarily mean you’re in love with her? he wondered. Isn’t that rather crappy of me? I mean, he thought, selfish. To even think about asking a woman to give up a marriage with a man who might deserve a second chance. To ask a woman to wait half of forever while you make your rounds of combat. Christ, Rory, get off it. It’s bloody awful selfish of you to think that way, and if you care that much for her you can’t ask her to chuck her life for you.
Forget my needs, he thought. Forget my fears. Forget it all. There is still this terrible, terrible feeing that makes me want to fall down and cry. I hurt, man! I hurt! I know what the fucking pain is. The fucking pain is that I might never see her again. The pain is…I’ll never touch her again. I guess this is the bloody hell of what this goddamned sonofabitching thing of love is. The pain is no less than the pain of Conor’s death.
All right, Rory, you’ve confessed to yourself. The situation is impossible. At daylight, when you say good-bye, act like a man. You be a good man to this woman. You do what is right.
Over the years, Georgia had mastered the abstruse art of controlling her nightmares. They were no longer the stuff of sweat and chills. When annoyance invaded, she’d wake up before the nightmare crossed into bedlam. As soon as she awakened, she quickly read the dream’s message. Most of them were very anxious. There would be burning or collapsing buildings or a variation thereof, or a threatening monster or a variation thereof, a flight to the edge of an abyss or a high structure and the beginning of a plunge.
Many times in the past months she reached across the