GINNY GLOYNE COULD SAY THAT SHE FELT SAFE ENOUGH. Their Australian shores were protected by the Beauforts and the home guard was protecting the citizens. Bill, however, wasn't so lucky. He was his own guard. He was looking out for his own back. Ginny could scarcely imagine that.
It was usually during her shifts at the AWAS head office that she began to think of him. She was constantly surrounded by men in uniform who did nothing if not remind her of the one soldier she missed so much. She imagined him alone, trembling in the cold, his dreamy blue eyes dulled from the wear and tear of the jungle. Robert Dawes was always snapping his fingers in front of her eyes, telling her that all that paperwork wasn't going to file itself, and that wistful eyes didn't look good on her.
Banjo Paterson was doing a reading of THAT V.C. over the wireless when the mail boy came with a letter for her for the first time. Her mother was out tending to her roses and her father had been asleep in his armchair with his mouth hanging open — after a hard shift at the police station, not even the doorbell had roused him from his afternoon nap.
She giggled and bit her lower lip when she took the letter from the mail boy, thanking him and disappearing straight up to her bedroom without another word. Her pale blonde hair flew behind her like the silky white flag of surrender (Robert had once told her that her hair was like the silk they made stockings from) as she barrelled into her bedroom and tore open the seal.
Ginny,
Thank you for the cigarettes. Only the officers get Lucky Strikes, so it's sort of a luxury among us grunts. I've hidden them so I can make my own decision as to whether I want to share them out or not. I think I might, since everyone's been a bit down recently. Last Christmas we spent having the world lit up around us. We spent this Christmas on a Goddamn boat, singing carols from these little choir books like a thousand alter boys. New years was in hammocks. Roll on 1944. It's always fucking raining out here. The jungle is just as terrible as I remember it, if not, worse.
Unlike Leckie, I don't have a way with words. Sorry if this falls flat, you know I didn't finish high school. He found a Jap chest recently, and a pistol inside. I told him I'd give him just about anything for it, to which, he said fuck no, or something to that effect. As I write this, we haven't seen a Jap for two weeks, Leckie says, but nobody has really been keeping count. Two weeks of staying alive, I say.
Speaking of Leckie, some of the other guys who haven't had the good fortune of seeing your face keep asking me about you. They want to hear all the fine details, like what your laugh really sounds like and how many different colours there are in your eyes. I think they have all gone soft in the head after not seeing dames in so long. No matter how much I tell them to go fuck themselves, they keep coming back to hear about you again and again. Maybe they could benefit from a picture that would make them finally leave me alone.
