An Indecent Obsession by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online

couple there. Anyway, I wrote to a friend in Paris who owns the gallery I wanted for my debut, and since he rather fancied the idea of a holiday in Greece, he came down to see what I’d done. And he wasn’t impressed, that’s all. Very pretty, he said. Quite, quite charming, really. But no originality, no strength, no instinctive feeling for the medium. He then suggested I turn my talents to commercial art.’
    If the old man was moved by his son’s pain he didn’t show it, just sat there watching intently.
    ‘The army,’ he said finally, ‘will do you the world of good.’
    ‘Make a man out of me, you mean.’
    ‘To do that, it would have to start on the outside and work in. I mean that what’s on the inside has to have a chance to work its way out.’
    Neil shivered. ‘What if there’s nothing there?’
    And the old man had shrugged, smiled a small indifferent smile. ‘Then isn’t it better to know that there’s nothing there?’ he asked.
    Not one word had been said about his learning the family businesses; Neil had known any such discussion to be superfluous. In a way he felt his father wasn’t worried about the businesses; what happened to them after his own hands relinquished control did not concern him. Longland Parkinson was as detached from generational empire building as he was from wife and son. He didn’t demand that his son prove himself, felt no animosity toward a son who didn’t measure up; it wasn’t necessary for him to fuel his ego by demanding that his son be what he was himself, or achieve what he had achieved. No doubt when he married Neil’s mother he had known what sort of progeny she was likely to throw, and not cared; in marrying her he was thumbing his nose at the very society he aspired to enter by marrying her. In this as in everything, Longland Parkinson acted to please himself, fulfill himself.
    Yet as he sat watching his father, Neil had seen a fondness there, and a pity which had wounded to the heart. The old man simply didn’t think Neil had it in him, and the old man was a very good judge of character.
    So Neil had gone into the army, commissioned rank of course. On the outbreak of war he had been posted to an A.I.F. battalion and shipped out to North Africa, which he enjoyed immensely, feeling more at home there than he had in his native country, picking up Arabic with extreme ease and generally making himself useful. He became a very capable and conscientious soldier, and turned out to have a streak of extraordinary braveness; his men liked him, his superiors liked him, and for the first time in his life he began to like himself. There is a bit of the old man in me after all, he told himself exultantly, looking forward to the end of the war, seeing himself returned home seasoned, honed by his experiences to a fine sharp ruthlessness which he felt his father would instantly recognize and admire. More than anything else in life, he wanted those bird-of-prey eyes to look on him as an equal.
    Then came New Guinea, and after that the Islands, a kind of war far less to his taste than North Africa. It taught him that even while he had assumed his maturing process to be complete, he had really only been playing games. The jungle closed in on his soul the way the desert had freed it, drained him of exhilaration. But it strengthened him too, brought out a stubborn endurance he had not known he owned. He ceased finally to act a part, to care how he looked to others, too busy reaching into himself for the resources which would ensure survival for himself and his men.
    In a fruitless, extremely bloody minor campaign early in 1945 it had all come to an end. He made a mistake, and his men paid for it. All the precious hoard of confidence crumbled immediately, disastrously. If they had only held it against him, only reviled him for it, he could have borne it better, he told himself; but everyone from the surviving men in his company to his superior officers forgave him! The more they