The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower Read Free Book Online

herself. When he did speak it was only ever about work. Sometimes he disappeared for a few days without warning, but he never confided, when he came back, ‘I’ve been fishing,’ or ‘I’ve had a cold.’ He was a mystery to her.
    ‘A pound a week rise!’ Clare said, spreading the loose end of her plait like a fan. ‘Still, it’s not worth it if you don’t like him.’
    ‘Who said she didn’t?’ Stella Vaizey was cross. ‘Saying to talk it over with her family. He sounds avery nice man.’
    ‘I’ll go with him.’
    ‘Please yourself, Laura. I’ve got no desire to influence you one way or the other.’ Mrs. Vaizey’s interest in bridge outstripped by light-years any other feeling ever to have moved her.
    Clare went up another year at school.
    Mr. Shaw bought an almost defunct home-made chocolate factory not far from the site of his former business. (‘Might be able to look in and give old Jack a hand.’) He expected strenuousness from Laura and she, with mental energy to spare and practice in providing older people with what they expected, buried herself in her job daily. At the very beginning she had found it difficult to think of boxes with the respect due to saleable products, and she had a slight struggle even now to take chocolates seriously; but habit, which had, after all, accustomed her to her life, was training her. Money ,she began to think, with some reverence.
    ‘Those Americans are chasing us,’ Clare laughed, looking over her shoulder as she and her sister ran for the ferry. ‘Should we let them catch us?’
    ‘No!’
    In Sydney there were fifty uniformed Americans on leave to every woman, and the section of the population that felt inclined for exercise was able to indulge in a marathon game of chasings round the sunny streetsand beaches.
    On the ferry, uniformed boys asked, ‘May we sit and talk with you?’ and then with great politeness began to collect facts about the girls’ lives. Looking out at the harbour’s islands and bays, at the fleets of camouflaged ships, the white-painted hospital ships, the submarine boom across the entry to the inner harbour, they amiably described their own homes and families, speaking in Hollywood accents that made them seem like characters rather than people. But Clare often whispered, the warm resonance of her breath like a bee in Laura’s ear, ‘This one’s really lonely, not just kidding. Couldn’t we take him home?’
    Laura only had to look at her. They had never taken anyone home.
    At Manly Wharf, when they left the ferry, more than once they drank chocolate malteds or orange juice with some thin tanned American boy, his face and uniform without a single crease. And more than once, not exactly by arrangement, but not quite accidentally either, Laura met the same boy two or three weeks in succession. Leaves were short, however, and boys disappeared. That they disappeared from her life was probably opportune. ‘No,’ was all she could say to every effort to entertain, for she could not endure the thought of her mother’s supercilious, ‘A-soldier-who-picked-you-up-Laura?’
    Besides, her mother was right: nice boys wouldnever speak to strange girls in the street.
    Mr. Shaw was crestfallen never to find Jack Roberts in when he called at the old box factory. He had had a lot of time for Jack; he had liked their yarns about the black-market rackets Jack was in on, and it confirmed everything he knew and tickled him deeply to hear how not one honourable gentleman in the continent would refuse to pocket Jack’s bribes.
    The factory was unrecognisable now. Jack had knocked out walls left, right and centre. He had a swag of females, a packer, a delivery truck, and God knew what else. After wandering in a few times and standing round like a poor relation waiting for Jack, who never turned up, to turn up, Mr. Shaw gave these social calls away. The cheap little bits who worked for Jack sniggered and asked each other, ‘Who’s Dracula come to