sticks.
Whither Mrs. Hansen in due course went, to resign herself to middle age and to accuse her neighbours for many years to come—the virtuous along with the guilty—of ‘carrying on with the Yanks during the war.’
‘Most great lovers if they lived today would be considered juvenile delinquents—Helen of Troy was just twelve years old when she ran away with Paris.’
Havelock Ellis makes this wise observation. Nobody has ever tried to excuse Helen and Paris. They were great lovers. This is the end of the matter. Of Lola and Brownie, Lola was the only one who had characteristics tending to delinquency. She had an inherited love of change and excitement, which so far she had managed to sublimate by sitting alone in hotel rooms reading historical novels and all the poetry she could procure. Her mother could go to a party leaving her tucked up in bed and know that she would be there, asleep, with her head pillowed on an open book, at one, two or three in the morning, whenever the party ended. It was very convenient.
‘You wouldn’t know she was in the place,’ her mother could say; and she felt, and all her friends felt, that surely no mother could ask for more. But adolescence came and stirred her body and tugged at her mind, and she knew she was lonely. And now the stage was set for trouble, for Lola had nourished her mind and her heart on dreams and had an innocent ruthlessness about converting her dreams into reality (and, oh, dear social worker, of all things beware the adolescent dreamer with a bit of guts). She wanted to be loved. Now she began casting Brownie in the rôle of lover, but she was physically immature, and had no real notion or fear of the tumult in the body of the boy.
She was sitting on a cross branch of their favourite frangipani tree down by the river when Brownie asked her:
‘Will you go steady with me?’
And she said:
‘I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. You may have my hand to kiss,’ and she put out her hand, feeling like Napoleon’s Josephine.
Had she merely said ‘O.K.,’ Australian style, it would have been months before Brownie would have plucked up the courage to kiss her; but now he took the fragile Eurasian hand in his and, instead of kissing it with the courtly flourish her books had taught her to expect, he turned it over and suddenly kissed it hard on the palm. She snatched it away and they faced one another, their eyes dilating. Brownie felt that he would choke, that he would never breathe smoothly again. Then he put his hands up and at last lifted her hair away from her neck.
‘Your neck,’ he said, almost with wonder. ‘It’s warm, darling. It’s so soft and warm.’
He began to kiss her then wildly all over the face and neck and the childish pointed breasts. She began to tremble, but made not one move to repulse him.
‘Don’t be frightened, darling,’ he was saying. ‘Don’t be frightened. Look I won’t hurt you. I’ll take you home now. Don’t shake, darling, don’t tremble. Oh, darling, don’t be frightened of me. I wouldn’t hurt you. You’re so special. You’re such a special little thing.’
He lifted her out of the tree and it was the lightness of the small quivering body in his arms that undid them both and brought their childhood to an end there in the night amongst the long grass and the fallen flowers of the frangipani.
That was when Brownie was a month off fifteen—a big boy, almost six feet tall, who had worked like a man in every school holiday since he was twelve. What are we to do with the great overgrown lads whose bodies are a torment to them? Do the social workers and clergymen, well meaning though they be, really think youth clubs, organized sport, fretwork classes are of any use? Come now! Lola had no faith in the Boy Scouts, the young Liberal Movement, choir practice, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, cold showers (always supposing you could get a cold shower in Bundaberg), or these healthy outside