The Delinquents (18 page)
Now the Mad Mariner was wringing Brownie by the hand and saying:
‘Take care of her, Brown my boy.’
Which caused Brownie to burst out laughing, and the Mad Mariner dropped the straightforward manly tones and returned to normal and said:
‘Now be my guest everyone. We’ll nip up into the “Mayfair” and drink to the happy couple.’
It was ten o’clock the same night. The wedding reception was going apace—drinks in the bed-sit, food in the kitchen, dancing on the balcony, the last thanks to the taxi-driver from the next flat who had loaned his radiogram and records, brought his girl friend and joined the festivities. Everything was going well. Joey and the landlady’s daughter had not yet had the fight with which they always enlivened parties. The Mad Mariner had so far successfully been prevented from making a speech that started: ‘I knew these two dear young people when they were living in a cabin aboard the old
Dalton.’
Lola’s mother had delighted all who knew her by having one decorous sip of champagne and refusing hard liquor for the rest of the evening, and she and the Mad Mariner had just performed a Charleston that was considered a great triumph by one and all. Said the Mad Mariner:
‘Didn’t I say, Brownie boy, that I’d dance at your wedding when you and Lola were down in Melbourne—’
‘Have a drink bosun,’ said Brownie, wondering if there were any precedent for doping the best man’s grog.
Lola was standing by herself at the edge of the balcony, looking down at Elizabeth Bay. She was, for a moment, isolated in one of those little seas of silence that can close around one at a party. She was very happy and very tired. She had been up early; she had spent all the afternoon cleaning the flat, helping with the savouries and so on, and she had been rocking and rolling almost non-stop for a couple of hours. She bent down and pulled off the lovely wedding shoes. She felt the cool of the tesselated floor strike through her stockings, and she sighed blissfully.
Brownie came up to her and put his hand on her arm.
‘Let’s shoot through for a while,’ he said.
‘Where to?’
‘Anywhere—just to be alone together on our wedding day. Get into something comfortable and we’ll blow.’
Lola looked down at the crumpled golden sheath with love.
‘Oh, Brownie,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t take this off. I want to be buried in it.’
Brownie laughed. ‘O.K., but let’s go.’
So Lola slipped into comfortable scuffs and put Brownie’s duffle jacket across her shoulders and they went into the kitchen and told Mrs. Lovell they were going. She nodded.
‘A good idea,’ she said. ‘I’ll handle this crowd here.’
Once in the street they caught a taxi and then had no idea where they wanted to go.
‘I’ll run you down to the ferry and you can go across to Manly,’ said the taxi-driver. ‘That’s where all the lovers go, isn’t it, eh?’
He turned around and smiled at them.
‘Lovers!’ scoffed Lola. ‘We’re an old married couple.’
The taxi-driver’s smile broadened.
‘Lady,’ he said, ‘wipe the confetti out of your eyelashes.’
So they went to Manly where all the lovers go, but it was a little early in the season for lovers, and they strolled along in the darkness all alone, the way Brownie wanted it. They sat beneath the pine trees and looked out at the immensity of the Pacific, black that night because there was no moon, black with lines of white where the surf rolled shorewards. Lola turned round so that she could lean against Brownie and stretch her legs along the rest of the seat. He put his arms around her and drew her closer to him. She was silent for a while and then she said:
‘You know what, Brownie, we’ve got responsibilities now and, just think, you’re twenty-one, I’m nearly twenty.’
‘Well, I hadn’t noticed any actual senile decay.’
‘No, but no longer do we have the old teen-ager excuse.’
‘I was a teen-age werewolf.’
‘I just mean no one is going to feel sentimental about us any more.’
‘I never noticed anyone ever did.’
‘No, but we were a fashionable section of society and now we’re not. We’re old married squares.’
Brownie kissed the top of her head.
‘Feels good doesn’t it?’ he said.
‘You ridiculous boy, I’m trying to be serious.’
‘The young matron, of course.’
‘Yes, I am, and what I’m saying is we’re married, responsible people. You might be a father by this time next year. How do you feel about that? Scared, eh?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Darling Brownie, you’re never scared.’
Brownie rose to his feet and took her by the hand. Together they walked to where the edge of the surf hissed up along the sand. Far across the water, making for North Head, the lights of a steamer shone through the dark. They stood without speaking for a moment then Lola linked her arm through Brownie’s.
‘Oh, darling,’ she said, ‘it’s terrible to end this day. Why must we get tired? But I am tired, sweetheart, so take me home to bed.’
Brownie nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you home.’
And still looking out at the ship that glowed in the night he took a two-shilling piece from his pocket and flung it far into the surf.
‘The sea buys your gear,’ he said, ‘and the sea and I are going to look after you until the day I die.’
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