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( Chapter Eleven: ❛ MARINE'S BEST FRIEND ❜ )
DECEMBER, 1943
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GINNY HAD TO STAND AND BRACE HERSELF OUTSIDE HER FRONT DOOR, inhaling deeply to preserve her composure. Both her parents had already settled down for the evening, she expected, and herself and Bill were about to enter the lion's den. She swiped her hands over his shoulders to rid them of gathered dust and reached up to smooth his wavy hair back with her hand, where she caught a knot that tugged his head back. He looked down his nose at her, asking, "What'cha gonna do if they hate my guts?"
"I'll tell them I'm a grown woman and I'll do what I like," she said, trying to radiate little to no concern despite the trepidation she was feeling beneath her façade. She straightened his collar, "They can take a walk."
She knocked on the door with as much confidence as she could muster, and her mother answered, wearing the yellow rubber washing-up gloves that she herself had been wearing that one time Bill knocked on her door. The look on the woman's face was one of confusion and surprise when she saw her daughter standing alongside an American that afternoon. "Mother," she declared, holding her head up, "This is Bill. It's his last day in Melbourne today. I told him he could come to our house for a farewell dinner, so we bought a ham."
"Ma'am," was all Bill said, holding up the ham that he had been carrying sort-of awkwardly.
Rather than suddenly reeling off all the reasons why Ginny shouldn't have been fraternising with a Yank, the ham preoccupied the thoughts of her mother. Her eyes the size of dinner plates, she gasped, "Where on Earth did you get this? It isn't black market, is it? I would have sold an arm for something like this a week or so ago," she took the ham from the American and smiled gently, "Why thank you, Bill, this is ever so generous of you. My name's Annie — I'm Ginny's mother. Head on in and make yourself comfortable."
Like a proper solider, Bill nodded. She noticed his hands clamped together behind his back, and he stood straighter than she'd ever seen him before. Where had all the lethargy of the real Bill Smith gone, and who had he been replaced with? He exclaimed, "Thank you kindly," before passing both women and heading inside as if it were his own home. Ginny feared that he'd meet her father as soon as he entered the living room, and wouldn't have any support from her whilst the enounter happened.
In his absence, her mother's leer was stern, cool and sharp blue eyes like daggers dipped in ice. She hadn't seen her mother look like this since Violet Memory Day when Ginny got chewing gum stuck in her hair. She crossed her arms, and her yellow washing-up gloves reflected the setting sunlight offensively into her daughter's eyes. She said warningly, "I hope you've got your head screwed on properly, Ginny. You told us this would never happen. You told us we didn't have to worry about these Yanks worming their way into our lives. Your father is going to be less than amused with welcoming someone like this man into his midst. Where did you get him from?"
"He's a friend of Jackie's," the blonde responded, and Annie scoffed as if to say: of course he is. Ginny looked up at her mother, her eyes filled with stars and hope and shielded by rose-tinted glasses in favour of the Americans and the glamour of it all. She gushed, "I think he might carry a torch for me, mum, but he's stoic. I don't think he'd tell me even if he did."
Her mother lofted a brow. "And how old is this man?"
"Twenty-one."
"Parents?"
"I don't know about his mother," she admitted earnestly, "He's never mentioned, but his father's a veteran from the First World War."
"Has he been checked for syphilis?"
Her cheeks reddened profusely with the classing blush that she hadn't donned for a while. "Mother!" she chided, glancing around to see if anyone had heard, as they were still stood on the front porch.
When her daughter tried to duck past to get inside, Annie reached down and grabbed her daughter's wrist, hissing through gritted teeth, "Virginia, how on Earth are you going to explain this to your father?"
"It would be nice to get to know an American soldier," Ginny defended, sifting through the numerous arguments she'd already formed days prior for when the dispute actually occurred, "We're fighting with them, not against them. He needs to stop treating them like they're the enemy. Bill's going to be sent away soon, and I said he could do with a hot meal before he goes. I'll cook, if you like, I don't even mind. Or, I can just ask him to go back to the MCG —"
"No, Ginny," her mother sighed in defeat, letting go of her daughter's arm, "There's not much we can do now, is there? He's already inside, so we might as well. We'll show him how the Aussies do it, shall we?"
"Oh mama, thank you," Ginny gushed in a sudden change of attitude, cracking a silver-screen kind of smile and hugging her mother tightly around the waist for a moment or so. Over the moon, she slipped past and into the house, her mother following shortly in tandem with another roll of her eyes.
Luckily, when they entered the living room, there was a lack of Sam Gloyne; only Hoosier, who was cradling Otto like one would a baby. He cooed at the sheltie, too, and laughed when it went to lick his face. When he looked up, he saw Ginny, and smiled. "I looked after a dog, y'know, on Guadalcanal," he announced, "It was only for a couple of days, and he didn't have a name or nothin', but he looked awful like your Otto. There was this one night when the Japs lit up the sky like the Fourth of July, and that little scamp came running into our foxhole, scared out of its mind. I scooped him up and held him 'til it was all over."
"Well, our Otto's taken very kindly to you," Annie speculated, gliding towards the kitchen to remove her yellow washing-up gloves and put them on the side, "Forget man's best friend — Marine's best friend!"
"He takes very kindly to anyone who gives him a shred of attention," Ginny interjected, almost challenging her mother, who ignored her comment. She scratched gently beneath Otto's chin and played with him endearingly, speaking in a baby voice. Hoosier watched her, his eyes focussing closely on her smile. After a moment, she looked up at him and asked those words that watered flowers: "Want Coffee?"
Hoosier chuckled. "Always."
Herself and Bill stayed based down in the living room that evening, where Ginny sat in her father's cushy armchair and the American man sat opposite her, sipping his coffee and relishing in the bitter taste of the brew and the sight of the laughing blonde which would haunt him for months after his departure from Melbourne. They talked about a medley of different things, mainly Bill recalling various stories from Guadalcanal about him his buddies, some that she'd heard before, and some that she hadn't.
Despite the fact that he spent the entire afternoon at their house, Bill didn't properly encounter her father until he sat down at opposite him for dinner. Sam had spent all evening doing police write-ups in his study, and needless to say, was rather shocked to see a man in a Marine uniform sitting beside his daughter at the dinner table that evening, and a meal of roasted ham with Annie's staple root vegetables.
There was an uncomfortable air of tension that hung over the table for the duration of the dinner, and it weighed on Ginny's shoulders slightly. She exchanged a glance with her mother, who shrugged with a don't look at me, I didn't bring him home sort of look. Ginny's brow crumpled in annoyance. The average age of marriage in girls these days was twenty, and everyone else started dating at thirteen. She had done none of those things and yet she still wasn't let off the hook. You can do both of those things, just not with Americans, her father would probably say. She glanced at him.
Sam sliced into the cutting of ham on his plate and stuck it into his mouth in a manner that seemed almost annoyed, his voice offending the silence, "You're a Marine, then."
Duh! Ginny wanted to pull a face and roll her eyes. Bill, who'd wanted to do the same, nodded instead. "Am indeed."
"So you've seen action."
"I have, sir." Hoosier responded, his voice more slight than usual. The way he said it made her want to interrupt, and to tell her father to stop pushing it. No man liked to talk about their battle experiences — no Aussie, no American, and Bill Smith, she knew, would be no exception. "Guadalcanal, almost a year ago, now. It was a four month long battle in the dark n' the rain."
"And did you win?"
"We did," Bill nodded, shifting uncomfortably in his seat, "But the Japs put up a good fight."
"You know, — I'm sure Ginny has mentioned — they don't actually let our Aussie boys leave the home front like they do your Yanks," her father mentioned, waving his fork along with the cadence of his voice. "Instead of being able to fight for their country like their fathers before them, they have to stay back and look after us here in Melbourne. It all poses the same question: shouldn't it be the other way around?"
Bill swallowed and responded scathingly, "You'll have to ask Roosevelt, sir."
There was a certain amount of jibe in his voice that, if her father had actually been listening, he could have noticed. There was a razor-sharp edge of sarcasm rooted beneath the nonchalant façade that Ginny certainly hadn't missed, and she looked between the two men, moderately alarmed that her father may just end up snapping his cap at Bill's response. They were all dancing on eggshells, and she wanted nothing more than for the ground to swallow her whole.
She finished her mouthful and interjected before her father could fire up a response to try and provoke Bill any further, feeling the blush in her cheeks also rise to the occasion. She hastily claimed, "Bill's from Loogootee in Indiana," to try and stimulate a newer, better path of conversation that she hoped her mother would help her with.
If she'd have known it was going to be this much effort, she would have let Bill take her back to the MCG for the night, or something. In Bill's eyes (and to an extent, Ginny's too), a cricket stadium full of Marines was more appealing than sitting at a dinner table opposite a police officer and his meek wife. She could see why her father was acting so unreasonable, but she didn't know why her mother wasn't coming to her aid with the backup that she'd initially been expecting.
Instead, her mother was just another set of eyes to hone in on her like a submarine scope, until: "Is that in the east?"
"Midwest." Bill corrected.
"Ah," responded her mother, ducking her head in a meagre nod down towards her dinner. To fill the uncomfortable silence, she added, "this sure is a nice ham you brought home."
And they all hummed in agreement.
"Oh Bill!" Ginny huffed exasperatedly as they retreated upstairs afterwards, hiding her face in her hands and cringing horribly. She wanted nothing more than to bite down on something and scream! "That was appalling! I'm sorry about my parents being absolute blighters tonight. They're so not used to the idea of young women these days being all footloose and fancy free. I think they expected me to marry some hometown boy like Gordon. I think they still expect that."
She swung her bedroom door open and stormed inside, sitting down on her single bed with a squeak! and folding her arms over her chest like a petulant child. Hoosier chuckled, closing the door behind her. He would have flicked on the light switch, but she didn't have blackout curtains so the Melbourne sunset poured through the window pane and illuminated a certain spot parallel to her window with a peachy glow. It was enough to light up the whole room.
Hoosier milled around in that patch of peach, his fingers grazing against the trinkets that lay scattered over every surface, inspecting framed photographs and other assorted postcards. His tow blonde hair turned a soft orange in the sunlight. She admired the beauty of what she was beholding. Never had she ever met a man who so often looked prettier than she did.
Without turning around, he asked absentmindedly, "So, you gonna, uh . . . write to my sorry ass when I'm out there, or somethin'?" As he traced his fingers over a photograph tucked into the corner of her mirror, one of herself and Gordon when they were young, standing either side of a sandcastle on a beach.
She unwound her hands from around her body and reached down to unbuckle her oxfords, watching her inspect the photograph. "That depends," she responded smugly as her fingers made short work of the metal buckles above each ankle, "will you respond?"
He turned around just in time to watch her slip off her leather heels, revealing the attractive curve of her ankle and her milky pale calves and skins. Not looking her in the eye, he shrugged, "Dunno."
"Then you have my answer." She scoffed. Why would she bother writing to him if he didn't even care enough to send anything back? She wasn't the Cheer-Up Society.
There was a beat of silence, and then Bill said, "So you . . . wanna write down your address for me or whateva?"
She rolled her eyes at him. Of course she was going to write anyway — besides, letters didn't take too long to compose, and it wasn't as if she was going to spend hours slaving over a desk deciding which word to use to describe Melbourne post-Yank. Monotonous? Tranquil? the possibilities were endless. She joked, "If you think for one second I'm going to want to see you once all this war business is over, you're wrong."
"Okay," he responded flatly. "So what'cha gonna send me? Cigarettes? Photographs?"
This elicited a volley of a laugh from Ginny's chest, but part of her wanted to cry. How else am I supposed to convey that I will miss you so terribly that my heart will split in two? Her smile faded almost as quickly as it began. "I never had anyone to worry about in this war," she admitted airily, standing up from her bed with another squeak, "and now I do. I have you. Poor me."
He looked down at her when she met him in the square of orange sunset that filtered into her room, blue irises swallowed by his blown pupils. "Christ, it's hot in here," he muttered out of the blue, tugging at the collar of his khaki uniform to expose more of his neck than usual, "Is the window open?"
She reached up to help him undo the tie that he'd been tugging at, her pale hands bathed in orange light before her eyes. She pulled the creamy silk back through the loop, concentrating more on the tie than the man wearing it, for certainly if she looked up, she would have swooned. As she was doing so, she could feel him reaching for the valley of the front of her dress where the buttons lined. He fiddled for the top one for a second before she asked in a breathy voice, "What're you doing?" almost absentmindedly, almost not.
"I'm taking off your clothes," he responded lowly, "If that's alright with you?"
Ginny Gloyne was everything that came under the word purity. Even her hair was as silver as a dove and as soft as its feathers. Even her name, Virginia, was an ode to this. Theoretically, Bill represented everything she stood against — a dirty, sweaty soldier from across the Pacific sea, a Yank who'd probably use her to take out the frustration he'd pent up from being away from his secret apple-pie girlfriend back home for so long. She wanted to convince herself of all those things, and that she ought to save herself for marriage, but the moment was everything she'd ever wanted.
She didn't know whether it was just the sunlight that painted them in one hundred shades of orange or not, but her whole body felt like it was absolutely on fire with fancy. Her words sort of left her in the moment, but she managed to utter a dreamy, "Yes," before letting him swiftly work down the buttons and let her dress slip over her pale shoulders and to a pile on the floor around her ankles.
Thereafter, Ginny Gloyne was lifted of her oh-so precious chastity. She'd never forget that night and his his hand in her hair and his blue eyes like glowing sapphires in the dark, luxuriously heavy American voice and the callous touch of his hand against her soft skin.