The Promise Ese (46)
“Main thing, don’t put pressure on her to come when you call, or vice-versa. Jansens did. It was right at the time of Hunt’s retreat from the Pole. He called, she went, but never again.” Impishly, G.E was flinging spanners in the works, sparks flying from his ‘man-to-man’ costume. “What?” Hector thought the slightly flowing air must have wafted falsehoods to his ears. “They had a time in Germany. I think he was what you might call ‘pushy’.” “When Hunt was near the Pole – she and Jansens?” “Apparently. She boasts about him to everyone. Hasn’t she mentioned him to you? “Yes, but…. Hunt away on his death march? I can’t believe it.” Hector clambered down the ladder in a flight of exasperation, incredulity rage and revulsion. Could she have really given herself to another man whilst Hunt was dying a slow and flesh-creeping death, side by side comrades, in excruciating despair? He the last to go, immobile in a threadbare tent beside serene, stiff cadavers? Could she have been so disloyal? Potts had a forthright, hard, iron-jawed face. Hector felt sure of attaching truthtelling to its brickish curves. He believed liars showed weasel in their lineaments. So believe, believe. Unfaithful to her husband? Yes! When he was away serving the Empire, serving her misplaced expectations, discovering new promontories, making history, making McMurdo sound his own, matching the Norskies step for step. Throughout the painful and fitful progress bearing the healthy, homely image of mother and son as his charm. Sustaining Hunt’s dedication to the task in hand. The family urge stung like hunger. Of course all Polar people knew it, all sailors knew it, all explorers anywhere knew it. Katherine would have known it yet she succumbed to lust and flattery. Couldn’t wait a few lousy months for his return? [never to be]. Only then, fair enough, abscond with Jansens, desert the family. But while he was dying? Hector determined to sit on the knowledge. A distorted image of scurvy-eaten skin, blizzard and ruddy angry skins weeping, initially plagued him. The heights of ecstasy to the depths of misery. The frozen and the hot. The honest and the perfidious – the red and the cruel white. – the green tent and the paisley chintz of some stuffy green beer-stinking hotel room. Katherine was there – her hair tossed like a mane [hats weren’t healthy, why hide from the sun], a basket loaded with paper parcels beside her, a sweet look on her flushed face and a skein of liquorice dangling from one hand like a snake. “My muscles are like wires now,” she said proudly, “ I almost jogged up the last hill.’ Hector kept mum, humouring her but inwardly seething. Loyalty, a virtue he valued beyond all others. What was the boy-scout law and how did it run, the loyalty clause? As loyal as a dog to its stick-wielding master, regardless of weals. Regardless of what he put you through. When, at nightfall, the fire sputtered in the huge old fireplace, when the candle flames danced in their customized fireproof, pewter sconces set overhead in the dark beams and the kettle lid rattled against the pummelling bubbles, Hector devised his punishment; as they lurked on the sumptuous leather couch, almost scorching themselves. An ex-comrade of his had been deceived and unmanned. Weak, undoubtedly, but deserving of some compensation. True was it, Katherine had continued her Spanish lesson immediately after receiving confirmation of Hunts end? She had fled the communications room on board ship, the ship steaming to meet him, tearful but well enough to learn a language with the horrified, sympathetic mugs of other studious passengers looking on! That was how the story went. It disgusted him but she probably classified it as an exhibition of strength. Now with a randy, pulcritudinous Katherine bursting from gin he could instigate the symbolic slap on the wrist. He could arrest her wandering hands. He could meet the fire with the ice. He could administer the retribution, the heavy floundering word, for he never forgave disloyalty. Even in his own marriage – he always loved Emily the most. In the middle of disputes, liaisons, he remained true to the spirit of their union. Rabbit saw something was up with him. Potts had ridden off without bidding her goodbye. When twosomes changed to threesomes the backstabbing kicked in, the bitching and the tale-telling. Alice Sorely-Sharpe had warned her that in spite of his reticence Potts could gossip as freely as anyone. So did it spell the end? His caressing started. He thought to be intensely gentle to double the impact of the schism when the chance arrived, the break, the carving up of her with the weapon provided by mother-nature to men for utilizing as they may. For love or for hurt. He suddenly yearned for Emmy, a woman who knew what wifeliness was or for Moony, a friend who knew what friendliness was. Why had he entangled himself with the self-indulgent, haughty and drunken chattel of Hunt? Why had Hunt? Did she think she could use them both as a ticket of passage to the South, as a one-way albatross air-line to the crisp white? They prattled in whispers for a while before Hector sought to hear the truth from her own lips. She replied to his question with “its none of your business”, feeling quite put out, heady with the plushness of their nest on the couch, yet displaying a sense of pique that quite satisfied Hector’s prying. Katherine decided to ignore her suspicions and give herself over to passion. The heat melded her into a succulent ball of flesh, needing to be re-formed and returned to human. Hector responded. Her tongue was not a tongue, it was a lash. Her fingers were as tools. “Rabbit’ he trundled her to the floor, feeling the delight of the overture to the act – they were growing into each other, but then he whispered something and rolled her over to her belly and suddenly pinioned her limbs. She could barely breath. He went in to her ramming from behind – her protestations muted by lack of air, by pain in her chest by pain in her rear-end, by the ignominy of the used, by the shock, by his insensible wild and vindictive, words. “Faithless whore! Grovel before the animalistic while your husband is dying!” Stop, let go but he wouldn’t. “Stop, not like that,” she wailed. He just plunged uncomfortably into her and barked spiteful, hurtful things until she understood. The dusty floor pricked her nostrils. The grief. She felt abject like an old nag being harassed and mutilated or a lioness or a cow, any old beast. Her body hurt. Mounted, mated. Like dogs in the street. “So midear, Antarctica is out of the question for you. Take one woman, and I’d have to allow wives and girls for all the crew. You should have bludgeoned Hunt into taking you, or the ‘ blue-gum’, anyone but the bringer of untold pleasures and thousandfold pain.” His voice cracked the thick air. She wondered if his face had suddenly sickened like Dorian Gray, shrivelled up. Way over the top. He ordered her to be sorry. “How can you blame me for Jansens,” she squeaked. And then the bringer of pleasure peaked and fell on her so her breasts were bruised by the floors iron-like wood. And he breathed crushingly but mercifully spent, tiredly into her ear his last word on the matter. “This is between you and your husband. At this moment I am the husband you should have had – the great hero.” “You men, you always stick up for one another.” He stood up awkwardly and strolled mysteriously to the corner of the room where a peculiarly large gramophone horn dominated. Patterned by the harsh imprint of woven carpet on one cheek, Katherine rose to her knees and clam-like bent at the waist dropped her head down and smoothed her sore face with her hands. Then she tidied her garments and sat on the couch, frightened of the fire. It mirrored the immeasurable burning round about her thighs and buttocks. She said quietly: “Men and huts. See what it does to you? Loyalty, huh. I know you all hated each other in those huts. How could it be otherwise? A microcosm of society – all the various ranks represented but admirably modified into a kind of puritanical community – clean up your own muck, lick your own plates, aid ones fellow men if he falls sick. Its time for the world to be told the truth about ‘men and huts’. How it changes them monstrously. Oh Hector, “ she moaned, humiliated, gin-soaked, in shock, hugging her knees. “Why did you for now I must stumble outdoors into the cold, into the ebony night…” Hector had anticipated rage. Yet Katherine seemed all squeezed out, resigned, fulfilled, in so much as her mind-print of Hector’s character head been proven right. Once a cad… She sighed over and over as she stuffed little articles into her haversack then without once turning her eyes towards him almost fell down the stairs out into never-never land, the outdoors ponderous under unbroken night cloud – the railway station a mile away. She could bunk down there on a waiting-room seat. He followed a little way until she threatened to scream, preferring to walk alone, feeling safer without him. Typical, she thought, not a single word of apology from him, not a gulp of emotion. The act, justified by the bond between men. Was it stronger than all other, stronger than their unorthodox love? Finally Hector, who still followed, lunged, grabbing at her. He begged her not to shriek on account of the neighbours becoming alarmed. “I will not allow you to disappear into the dark”, he commanded, “come back to the cottage.” “No, no au contraire I will beseech the neighbours to take me in. Tell them a tremendous rat frightened me, a fire-breathing rat with yellow fangs.” They scuffled on the chalky track for a moment. “Kiss me…what!” she panted, suppressing squeals. “You must be joking…” ‘ Gaily she mocked the menace of the skies, Turned to our cheery cabin once again…’ “Listen”. Hector held one of her hands firmly, buffing her knuckles in a regular motion like rocking an infant. “Listen,” he said again, embodying composure. “I’ll sleep down below, then tomorrow we’ll see.” “Well I know what I'll never see – Carps in heaven…brute! Anyway I’ve suffered my punishment, haven’t I, like a good girl.” She felt somewhat woozy but trudged obediently back to the cottage – “might burn down. We’ve left the fire unattended.” Her serviceable shoes marred the creaking stairs with a fresh chalk outline as each foot heaved its weight to oblivion. Exhaustion. Her mind churned. Hector refused to elaborate on the incident. Was he ashamed? He merely advised her to act responsibly when alone, hauled his sleeping-bag downstairs into the storeroom without further utterance and crammed it against some timber off cuts then coughed – the dirt in the room as thick as tilth. Once she was safe alone at the scene, Katherine immediately flicked through her notebook to Potts poem: ‘The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels in the marred shadow of your gift,’ and waited for the mouse to come and take its share and grow fat. It was free to eat every morsel. East
Go to part: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51
Copyright © 2002 June M Harcourt |