Redemption - Leon Uris [143]
You’ve got the rest of your life, Georgia Norman, to dream about why you fell in love with this Larkin bloke…but why the hell did you risk this trip to Auckland and start to turn loose everything you’ve so far been able to hold inside?
Rory lad had at last broken her cycles of fear. He inflicted no harm, only grace. She had ridden the wild stallion and she knew she’d never have that ride again. Hot and wet and wild and you’re smarter than to put a collar on a young rover just as he begins his roving, she mused.
How many times, Georgia girl, have you sat on the edge of a wounded soldier boy’s cot and cooed at his faded brown, cracked photograph of a girl whose looks you could hardly make out? The soldier boy had all but forgotten what she really looked like, just as you have forgotten what your dead soldier boy looked like.
Nice chipper lad, he was, Lieutenant Sidney…Sidney…Sidney Clarkeson. First man you weren’t frightened of. Through his innocent ways you learned the splendid skill of controlling a man. Face it, Georgia, you weren’t all that keen for the marriage. You were sorry he was blown up in battle and you wept sincerely over his remains. But the ache passed too quickly, and you realized it. It might not have been love at all, just a lack of fear.
As other chaps came along, four or five in all, you enjoyed the hell out of men, but the instant that look of possession came into their eyes you moved away quickly.
That look…that look…wasn’t your tour of service all about that look of Oliver Merriman’s? Your daddy had status, that’s what, a clerk and manager for five barristers in Lincoln Inn…as respectable as a middle-class Englishman could aspire to be.
Oh, that sotty bastard! In his cups, he had held her up by her long red hair when she was thirteen and spat on her and slapped her and hurled her against the wall screaming, “Whore!”
Her mom quivered nearby, saying nothing. Mom had taken Oliver Merriman’s rage a hundred times saying nothing. Her two older sisters had fled with early pregnancies into marriages in hell.
Oh, Mr. Merriman, the pastor gooed and gushed, and his lovely ladies…if only his flock had the character of that exemplary family!
By the age of fifteen, appearing advanced for her years, Georgia found refuge in Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service and never looked back. She had strong hands, powerful drive, absolute nerve under bloody conditions, and a range of humor and kindness. Most of all, she was a model of perfect and absolute competence.
Despite Oliver Merriman’s shadow and the sickening experiences of her mother and sisters, Georgia wanted her men—but no man’s cock would reduce her to bondage. She kept firmly in control, never too emotionally involved, and determined to be self-sustaining. No one would control her, not for a blink.
Georgia buddied with them all, from beer with the enlisted lads to elite waltzes at the officers’ club. And then she made her Faustian bargain with Calvin Norman.
Rory, still motionless, remained on the promenade deck. Like all captains and kings, colonels and maharajahs, sisters and sweethearts, wives and workwomen, Rory was going to spend the second half of his life trying to get over the first half. Some never do. Would she? How many elders had she met still battling their childhood and their parents? God Almighty, wait till the Irish lassies, let alone the girls of Paris and London, get their hands on that one.
If Georgia had one absolute answer, it was that she knew this night was the end between herself and Rory. Put it to him gently. He will soon forget what you look like, anyhow.
The Taranaki greeted a relentless dawn oozing through a permanent mist as she slid along the line of hills toward Auckland, each crowned with an impossible Maori name generally beginning with a W.