Penguin Books Australia

Shore leave, 1943

He wasn't sure that he'd remember the way to her house.

He'd had her address once, but he'd lost it long since, and as his ship came through the heads he struggled to recall the details – which tram, which suburb, which street? – that would lead him back to her.

In his memory she was sitting in her front room playing the piano. A finger of moted light streamed through the window and slanted across her back, illuminating her hair. Music was pouring out of her through her fine, strong arms and her vigorous fingers and the yellow ivory of the keys and the complex mechanics of hammers and felt and wire, the sound spilling out into the room and out into the street. For a few long moments he just stood there and watched her, her wavy brown hair, chestnut, glinting where the sun hit it, and the way her short-sleeved dress, sea-green it was or maybe aquamarine, sat so lightly on those brown arms of hers and hugged in to the curve of her waist and pulled tight over the globes of her bottom. And it wasn't just that he was a sailor and had been a long time at sea – there was something about this girl, this girl sitting on a hard bench playing the piano, that grabbed him and held him rooted to the spot. And then she'd turned, and seen him, and that, in a way, had been that.

Marina. That was her name. Marina.

He had three precious days of shore leave. As the fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour, he watched the late-afternoon light sparkling on the water, the dark-green foliage creeping down from the high escarpments to the little beaches, and felt glad to be alive. The harbour he remembered was still bustling with traffic – ferries and tugs and steamers and passenger liners – and the wharves were crammed with eager civilians, waving flags and streamers and cheering a welcome, while a thousand hungry soldiers and sailors released from the fighting jostled each other on deck for their first look at freedom.

'What are you going to do first?' yelled Lamb over the general hullaballoo.

'Let's get hammered.'

'Shouldn't we find a place to stay?'

'I don't care what we do. I just wanna get off this boat.'

'What do you reckon, Steady? Any ideas?'

'I've got somebody I need to look up,' Stead said.

'Hey, is she cute?'

'Does she have any friends?'

'None that'd wanna meet a bunch of ugly mugs like you,' Stead said.

'Oho, she's too good for us!'

'Then what's she doing with a guy like him?'

'Come on, Steady. Who's the dame?'

'Just a girl I used to know.'

'Girl in every port, huh?'

'This is Steady we're talking about.'

'At least tell us her name.'

But Stead wouldn't tell them any more. It had been five years since he'd seen her, and until recently he hadn't given her a moment's thought, but now that he was so close, he begrudged every second he was stuck on the ship completing his duties when all he wanted was to get ashore and see her.

And then at last, at last, the work was done, his feet were on solid ground and he was walking, almost running, down the street.

Somehow he found the way onto the right tram and rode, standing, through streets that still seemed untouched by the war. He'd seen so many ports devastated, but this one was still much as he remembered it, flashy and scrappy, a modern new-world city, young and raw. The light was so bright it clanged. The people, brown and tall and well-covered, spread themselves out, relaxed and easy, in a way that seemed to suggest the world of open space around them. The streets were wide and so was the sky, and the people took a lot of elbow room, but their voices emerged from mouths as tight as letterboxes.

The tram rocked and slid to a stop, rocked and slid, rattling him closer. What would she look like now? What kind of war was she having? He tried to imagine her doing factory work or decoding signals for the army – she was clever, she'd be good at that – but it was impossible. In his mind she was encapsulated in that golden time, sealed like a fly in amber in those last days before the war.

And now at last he was here, her stop, and he pulled on the cord and the bell rang and the tram slid to a stop and he jumped down to the ground, which seemed oddly and heavily still after months at sea, and walked briskly towards her street.

The street ran away down to the harbour, and from the top it seemed that you could step straight off the pavement and into the deep. At the end of the street, a boat slid across his field of vision.

He remembered the tree outside her house. It was blossoming now, and raucous with red, green and blue birds. He couldn't tell if the house had changed. He remembered the view through the front window, but not the house itself.

Lace curtains obscured his view now. Peering through them, he saw the good front parlour with its upright piano, although the room was smaller than he remembered, shabbier, more cramped. But hers. His heart lifted. A wireless was playing inside the house – someone was home. Could it be her?

He stepped up to the front door, and knocked.

A woman opened the door. She was thin and looked tired and grey – not her hair, but her complexion itself, as if she was weary down to the bone. But he caught the resemblance straightaway. It was in the shape of the eyes, and the bone structure too. For a moment he thought this must be her grandmother. But then, with a jolt, he realised it was her mother.

'I'm sorry to disturb you, ma'am. My name's Stead. I'm a friend of Marina's.'

Her eyes lit up with a terrible hope. 'Have you seen her? Do you know where she is?' she asked, taking a step towards him.