Redemption - Leon Uris [209]
“How do you know?” Rory asked.
“Someone in the Marines told me about them. He served up in the Northwest Territory of India. They’re fierce fighters.”
“What is life without secrets?” she asked.
“You got secrets?” Chester asked Shaara. Shaara giggled.
“No secrets.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”
“Do we have secrets from each other?” Jeremy asked “I mean the five of us?”
The discussion slowed as the pipe went around one more time and everyone had got the notion he was in a dream in this place. How many hours on the battle line would be spent with memories of this? Too bad all the poor blokes drinking that rat poison in the old city couldn’t have just a scent of this. They had it because the five of them cared for one another enough to keep the secret. Indeed, Villa Valhalla was a great secret the gaffer squad hid from the entire Anzac corps.
“We’re all secret people,” Johnny said. “There is the Johnny Tarbox who wants to be your friend and opens up enough to let you in. But the friendship only rises so high or falls so deep. Johnny lets you know what he wants you to know and hides what he doesn’t want you to know. And Johnny tries to make you think he is what he isn’t. We all put on a show, don’t we? God, what did you put in this pipe tonight, Sonya? I’m really floating. Where did those damned words come from?”
“Deep inside,” Modi said. “Yes, we all have secrets.”
They looked from one to the other, not with suspicion but faced with a sudden fact that they knew each other and loved each other for a certain reason, because they had to take on a war together, but there was so very much one would never confide with the others. Trust? Good lord, no question that each trusted the other with his life, but not his secrets.
They all reclined on the pillows and felt what they needed to feel, a woman who pretended she cared for him. She had her secrets as well, but each man was adrift in his own buried thoughts.
The center court was afloat with scented fumes and quivering lights and one could hear the wail of the muezzin from the minarets calling the faithful to prayer, or suddenly smell the aromas from the cargoes of coffee and spices from the single sail feluccas…and the singsong of a hundred thousand far-off voices…
And soft silk pillows and wispy curtains and a woman to hold…a woman to hold…a woman to hold…
Either Chester and Shaara fell in love or were gob-smacked with exotica. They both knew they were playing but knew of nothing happier to play.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who holds the secret of us all? The doors inside the men were steel, clanged shut where secrets remain secrets.
Each man, no matter how floaty and brotherly he was of the moment, understood he must hang on to his secrets. He must never tell them about the ugly side that would change him in their eyes.
All of them had declared to the others their braveries, conquests, strengths, and all that was necessary to make them seem tall. They were reluctant to spell out their evils. Some of their evils were unknown even to themselves. No matter how potent Sonya’s drug, they could never admit cowardice or moments of humiliation.
Yet they held a five-man confessional…all of it unspoken, unadmitted, the conversation that never took place.
You know, mates, I’ve bragged about my mother being this beautiful actress and song-and-dance queen, famous in her own right. Well, that’s a fucking He. My mother was a mining-camp whore. She damn near killed my father, first with her pussy, then she stabbed him with a knife when she was caught. She ran off with a pimp to the mining fields of Nevada. I got one Christmas card and one birthday card from her in my life. So, old Johnny Tarbox became the dandy, the Serjeant Major of the New Zealand Honor Guard. It was a fast and easy way to get the sheilas to spread their legs. I wanted the married ones, that’s what. When I pumped them and they’d scream with passion, I wanted to choke them…to break their necks. I saw my mother twenty times, creeping in to our caravan when