The Gilded Madonna by Garrick Jones (ebook reader for comics TXT) 📕

I don’t understand it or want to accept there could be something more than cold, hard facts in life.”

We’d been leaning on the railing next to the pier at Woolloomooloo, watching the ferries ply their way across the harbour while Harry ate his lunch.

“I’m thirsty,” I said.

“You’re a grown-up. Do what you like. But I think more beer in the middle of the day is not going to solve anything, Clyde. However, the Café de Wheels does very good spiders … what flavour do you fancy?”

The spider, a bottle of carbonated soft drink poured over a scoop of vanilla ice cream in a tall sundae glass and then variously eaten with or sucked up through a straw, was one of my favourite non-alcoholic drinks. On a hot day like today, it was the perfect suggestion to replace a schooner of God’s gift to man.

“Ginger beer, please.”

Harry returned five minutes later with two tall milkshake glasses, mine frothing pale brown at the top, his yellow-gold. “What’s yours?” I asked.

“Passiona,” he replied. “I know you find it too sweet, but I love the flavour of passionfruit in any way I can get it. Now tell me about Johnny.”

I’d already told him about our group “No Holes Barred” and how I’d met Billy, Johnny, and finally Sonny Mullins. It had been Billy who’d brought us together as a group. Unknown to us all, he’d been misbehaving with us individually for a few months, until one day, in a cheap hotel in Alexandria, where we were enjoying five days furlough, he’d suggested we play truth or dare by spinning a bottle, which Billy artfully manipulated to point at him. His dare had been for us to play strip poker. We’d all had a skinful, so, for a bit of fun, we’d all agreed. He’d lost every hand in a short period of time, which had left him sitting cross-legged on the floor, stark naked, twanging his erection with his thumb, while the rest of us had looked at one another tentatively, wondering who’d make the first move.

Thereafter, for the following three months, we’d got together in pairs, threesomes, and sometimes, on the odd occasion we could manage it, all together as a group. I’d grown very fond of Johnny, much to Billy’s chagrin, because he’d been besotted with me from day one. I cared for him very much, but Johnny Edgar had been an early version of my Harry. Had he lived, perhaps he’d have been the first and only man I’d fallen in love with.

The week before Johnny had died, I’d had a terrible stomach bug and had been in the sick tent with “sand poisoning”, as we called it. Delhi belly, the Scours, it had all sorts of names, but was a mild form of dysentery, caused by some bug—shigella, from memory. I’d been back on my feet for the first time on the day Johnny was to move out, so the last time I’d seen him was my quick hello while he’d been sitting on the jerrycan, cracking jokes about the C.O.’s water supply.

I’d got my marching orders the next day to ship out to Malta to begin guerrilla training at the British base in Golden Bay, and while walking up the gangplank onto the steamer, I’d learned of what had happened to Johnny and his men, just twelve hours earlier. I remembered standing on the deck of the ship, Billy on the dockside, his face streaked with tears, waving a sheaf of papers in this hand, miming that he’d write. It was the last time I’d seen him for nearly four years.

I went over and over my recollection of that last week before Johnny’s death with Harry. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing that sprung to mind that linked anything untoward to Johnny or anything I’d done or said to anyone that involved or was about him.

Nothing.

*****

I called past the Boomerang theatre on the way back to the office, pleased Harry had talked me out of that second beer, because I knew myself well enough that a third would have been on the counter in front of me before he’d had a chance to intervene.

The manager of the cinema told me the usher I wanted to speak with had a day off. Wednesdays were quiet as a rule. So I went to the man’s flat. No one was home, so the moment I arrived at the office I called Craig and asked whether he’d seen him. Craig told me he often came in on Wednesdays to use the steam room late in the afternoon and then hung around to talk with his friends when they started to trickle in from work after five o’clock. I told him I’d call past for a swim and would explain why I’d disappeared so unceremoniously on Boxing Day. I also thanked him for taking the leftover food to my flat.

Tom was busy on the phone in Harry’s office when I went to look for him. He waved and signalled he’d come see me when he’d finished. I could tell by the look on his face it was one of those tiresome callers—most likely a man who’d lost his dog and wanted me to find it, or someone who wanted me to read their new novel and publish a review for it in the newspapers I was contracted to write for. I didn’t do other people’s literature. I kept thinking it would lay me open to criticism if I ever got my own Australian war story of the century further than the twenty or so pages I’d written over the past year.

Instead I phoned Luka.

“Hello, Clyde. How are you?”

“Shaken. I opened your envelope.”

“Are we still friends?” he said after a short pause.

“Yes, we’re still friends, Luka. I don’t particularly want to talk about it over the phone, but I can’t say that what you wrote didn’t shake me to the core. I don’t understand, and I’m not sure that now’s the right time to spend my