Redemption - Leon Uris [142]
On this last night before Auckland, Georgia’s dream was a throwback past horror. She flung her arm to defend herself and it banged against the mattress and abruptly ended her sleep. When she had gotten her whereabouts, she sunk back on the pillow and whispered a gentle curse. The voyage was all but done.
Georgia felt the seductive softness of her kimono and she smiled. Oh, Rory boy, Jesus damned, what have you done to me? She swung her legs off the bed and went to the mirror to touch up. She never wanted the lad to see her as if she had just come out of a steam bath. In the mirror Georgia could see through a porthole to the promenade deck. Rory stood motionless and featureless in the shadows. She began to tie her robe, then let it stay open for him to see what he would be wanting to see. She fixed on him, unseen by him, and luxuriated in just watching him.
Well, Georgia girl, she told herself, you are the queen of fools. For over twenty-eight years you’ve built a wall that was breached in a single moment.
Georgia had watched the ladies of the Territorial Force Reserve—the erstwhile “Daughters of the Regiment”—stalk and snare. Nurses were of low and middle station and here was a ripe moment to bag an officer, a future innkeeper or, by God, a colonel with a rose garden.
Soldier boys of all ranks either detested women or were overly sentimental about them. It wasn’t difficult to tell which was which. Her fellow Sisters chirped and giggled but seldom spoke of love. Love was the automatic marriage prize, was it not? Why did bright and capable women who had pulled themselves up by their bootstraps settle for clods or arrogant bores?
Well, who the hell are you to stick your nose up? Calvin Norman was a fine surgeon in the main military hospital in India. He was only in for one enlistment to secure a good reserve rank, gain some necessary military medical experience, and have excellent credentials when he returned to his native New Zealand.
Georgia became his chief assistant in the operating theatre and was duly impressed by the man’s skill. He also showed himself to be caring to his patients, a trait not often displayed. Georgia made a deliberate decision. Calvin Norman was a safe settlement and offered a comfortable life as far away from England as the planet afforded, as well as the family she craved. He was seduced and incredibly taken with her. Not the flaming love of her life, because that love was an illusion, but a gentle man who would not hurt her.
Well, old Calvin fooled her good and right, he did. He turned out to be the deadliest in a line of vipers and louts, comparable only to her dear father, Oliver Merriman.
Back in Christchurch and reigning as chief surgeon in the South Island’s premier hospital, Calvin had a lot of settling up to do. Bit by bit her husband’s pimply, pale-faced, humiliating childhood eked out. He was buffeted by a weakling boyhood in a wild land filled with ruffians who demonized his most formative years.
His long and bitter haul to the physician’s oath now afforded him authority. The bully boys all needed him, and their wives were payment on account for his past torment. He was consumed by an insatiable urge to conquest, to prove and reprove his manhood.
From the onset, with her becoming chief matron at the hospital, their union was in trouble. He was recalled to the Medical Corps with the fine rank of major long before the war started, and this was good for him, to get a head start in a career that could well end up in London.
Because Christchurch kept