Bittersweet

by Colleen McCullough

  “No, Matron, you don’t. I understand, and am delighted.”

  “Good!” Matron eased a little in her chair. “Would you be interested in the position of Sister Tutor?”

  Tufts swallowed. “That would depend, ma’am.”

  “Upon what?” The voice was icy.

  “Upon the amount of authority the position carries. If I can carve out a training system that satisfies the Nursing Council yet incorporates various aspects that stem from my own deductions, then I am interested. I would also block out an entirely new educational syllabus that goes beyond Nursing Council ideas of what a nurse needs to know. Naturally I would present all my work to you and the new superintendent before submitting it to Sydney, but what I couldn’t undertake is to be an automaton who obeys someone else’s schemes.” The wide gold eyes held an obdurate look. “You see, ma’am, I have my own schemes.”

  For a moment Matron Newdigate didn’t answer, the starch of her dress creaking a little more than usual — a sign that she was breathing hard. Finally the words came, measured and detached. “I think, Sister Scobie, that if you didn’t have your own ideas, I would not be offering you this position. It is a senior one carrying a deputy matron’s rank, so I could justify the importation of a Sister Tutor from Sydney or Melbourne. However, a person from Corunda is preferable if a suitable one can be found, and I believe you are eminently suitable. I agree to your terms.”

  “Then I accept the post.” Tufts rose to her feet smoothly. “Thank you, Matron. Er — there is one other thing.”

  “Pray enlighten me, Sister.”

  “I will need to confer privately with Dr. Liam Finucan a very great deal. Unless, of course, you plan to use a different medical man to give the lectures and do some teaching?”

  “It will be Dr. Finucan, and I have no objection whatsoever to your being closeted alone with him. These days he’s a perfectly respectable single man — and your colleague,” said Matron, secretly loving this clever, slightly dangerous young woman.

  “Good,” said Tufts, and departed.

  She found the other two junior sisters in the cottage, drinking tea with Lena Corrigan. Though Sister Marjorie Bainbridge had been given the title of Home Sister and moved into a flat in the newly building nurses’ home, no one from Matron down had bothered to move the Latimers out of their original housing. They now possessed the whole of it, and a degree of comfort that the denizens of the new nurses’ home would never know. The reward of the pioneers.

  “I have a definite new job,” Tufts said, accepting a cup.

  They all looked interested, but Kitty got in first. “What?”

  “Sister Tutor, with deputy matron’s status.”

  “Stiffen the snakes!” Lena said on a gasp. “That’s the absolute and utter grouse, Tufts. Glorious!”

  Amid hugs and choruses of congratulations, Tufts told the tale of her interview, with a smiling Edda the quietest — oh, not from anger or disappointment, they all knew; it came from an extra joy. Rank and importance for women meant much to Edda.

  “Lena, I know the Rectory Anzacs are tastier than arrowroot bikkies, but you’re not drinking tea with us just to dunk an Anzac or see what colour Edda’s lipstick is today — you have news too,” Tufts said, on her second cup of tea and third Anzac biscuit.

  “Correct as always, Miss Myrna Loy. She’s the film star Men’s has decided you resemble, Edda, by the way. Kitty is always Marion Davies, but you wobble around a bit —”

  “Get on with your news, Lena,” said Tufts with a growl.

  Lena’s hands flew up in surrender. “All right, all right! I saw Matron too, and I’ve got a promotion too. After nearly twenty years classified as nursing help —”

  “I hope Frank Campbell is burning in Hell!” Kitty snarled.

  “— Matron has managed to what she called ‘grandfather me in’ as an officially registered nurse. I’m Sister Corrigan, and I’m going where my heart lies — the asylum, as deputy matron in charge.”

  That provoked a fresh outburst of triumphant joy; yet one more victory for women, and so well deserved! This time, however, their descent from the heights was tempered with dismay, though all of the Latimers knew their concern was wasted.

  “Lena, after three years I know how much you love nursing in the asylum, but now you’re officially registered, and with your fund of knowledge, you can pick your kind of patient,” Edda said, eyes gone dark grey with anxiety. “Are you sure that being there a thousand per cent of your time won’t drive you around the bend too? There’s nothing can be done for mental cases, and psychiatrists are no help. All they do is observe and catalogue the forms dementia takes. Mental nursing is physically dangerous, but it’s far more dangerous to the spirit. Think of the frustration!”

  A wiry woman in her mid-thirties, Lena Corrigan had a mop of dark red, curly hair, and eyes of much the same colour; she was the widow of a man who had been fonder of the bottle than his wife, and had no children. More than that bare outline the Latimers did not know; she was proud and embittered, Lena Corrigan.

  “Lord bless you, Edda, I know the pitfalls,” Lena said, her patience intact because she knew Edda’s protest was genuinely felt. “Loonies fascinate me, I suppose that’s the crux of it, and now Frank Campbell’s gone, the asylum stands a chance of a psychiatrist and some treatment. Mental nursing won’t always be a lost cause. I know it attracts some people who are definitely loonier than the patients, but it’s not an irrefutable law. If I can’t do anything else, I’m going to keep detailed notes on every single case — one day observations like mine will be seen as important.” The fiery eyes glowed redly. “I’m in on the ground floor, just as I have been as a nurse who scraped an education. And I thank you for the help, especially from Edda and Tufts. You girls can teach.”

  “Deputy matron in charge,” said Kitty. “Many congratulations, Lena, and at least you’ll be paid well at last.” Suddenly she jumped. “Oh! Listen, girls! Mama told me a rumour yesterday.”

  “About what?” Edda asked, sounding bored.

  “Our new superintendent.”

  “Of course! Daddy’s on the Hospital Board!” Tufts cried.

  “Who? What? Where? When? Why? And how?” Lena asked.

  “I knew you’d all prick up your ears at that!” Kitty said on a chuckle. “No, he’s not Jack Thurlow, Edda.”

  “Take a running jump, Kits. Who?”

  “Maude says he bears a famous Corunda name, and it is not Treadby. His name is Dr. Charles Henry Burdum, he’s thirty-three years old, and until this job came up he was the superintendent of a large sector of the Manchester Royal Infirmary,” said Kitty.

  “Stone the bloody crows!” said Edda on a gasp, then frowned. “That’s rot, Kitty. ‘Superintendent of a large sector’ indeed! You mean he was one of half a dozen deputy supers swanning around one of Europe’s most prestigious hospitals.” She gurgled in her throat. “Superintendent of bed pans and urine bottles!”

  “Mama said he was ‘high up’ — whatever that means.”

  Lena waved her hands about. “Oh, Edda, shut up! What I want to know is, which Burdum is he? A Corunda Burdum, or some ring-in from the Old Country with the same name? As far as I know, old Tom Burdum has no heirs except Grace’s Good Samaritan and Edda’s riding companion, Jack Thurlow.” She emphasised “riding”.

  Kitty gave a shiver of delicious anticipation and settled to tell the rest of her tale secure in the knowledge that she had hooked her audience completely. “He’s the son of old Tom’s son, would you believe? I mean, the whole of Corunda knows Tom and son Henry had a shocking quarrel sixty years ago, and that Henry left not only Corunda, but also New South Wales, as it was then — no Commonwealth of Australia sixty years ago! Henry went to England, and never communicated with old Tom. About twenty years ago old Tom was notified that Henry had been killed when two trains collided in Scotland — dozens of people died, it seems. The letter to old Tom said Henry was a bachelor with no issue.”

  “Yes,
and all Corunda knows that was what soured old Tom on the world, especially after Jack Thurlow let him down,” Lena said.

  “Well,” said Kitty triumphantly, “the letter from Scotland was wrong! Not long after he had arrived in England, Henry married a well-off widow and didn’t need old Tom’s money. He founded a successful insurance underwriting company, while his wife’s family made big bikkies milling cotton textiles. A son, Charles, was born thirty-three years ago. The wife died in labour with him, and Henry went quite crazy in a harmless way. It was left to the mother’s family to care for the boy, Charles.”

  “But surely old Tom wouldn’t have been misled about Henry’s death? That’s ridiculous,” Edda said.

  “I gather the train accident was a shambles, and while the authorities found identification on Henry’s body, they found no evidence of a wife or son. With the wife dead and her family estranged from Henry, no one suspected he was on the train. The boy’s name of Burdum didn’t arise during his minority, at least in a way that was noticed. Simply, after some stipulated waiting period produced no answers about Henry, the authorities assumed that old Tom in Corunda was his next-of-kin, and notified him. In the meantime, Henry’s son, Charles, lived and prospered in Lancashire. He went to Eton and Balliol College at Oxford, then took a medical degree at Guy’s.” Kitty looked rather naughty. “It turns out that Mama already knew most of the story — she did quite a lot of research on Dr. Charles Burdum when she first heard of him a couple of years ago.”

  “Piffle!” said Tufts. “Maude would have spread the story.”

  “No, she decided to sit on her knowledge — guess why?”

  “Too easy,” said Edda with a sneer. “Maude earmarked the rich doctor as your future husband, Kits.”

  “If there was a prize for instinct, Edda, you’d win it,” Kitty said, sighing. “You’re undoubtedly right.” She brightened. “Anyway, we have plenty of time. Cables may fly the aether in an hour, but it still takes six weeks to sail from Southampton to the east coast of Australia, and first the Board has to offer the job to a Pommy — that wouldn’t be popular, were his name not Burdum.”

  Grace’s reaction was similar when Edda called the next day; for the moment she was standing by for Theatre, which wasn’t busy, and Grace was on the telephone party line into the Trelawneys, so could be visited. As a new mother, Grace craved company — why was it her lot to conceive if Bear so much as took his trousers off?

  The side of Edda that loved her twin utterly was very happy to know that Grace’s impulsive marriage had worked so well; they were as content a couple as one could find, devoted to each other, fretting when they were apart, wrapped in their two sons, Brian and John. Brian had been born on 2nd April 1928, and John fourteen months later on 31st May 1929. Though Grace hadn’t managed to produce twins, she had produced her two children close enough together in age to suggest that they would enjoy an unusual bond of affection as they grew up. Certainly Brian, a frost-fair mite who walked and talked early, was passionately attached to his wee brother, now two months old, equally fair and equally forward. Of course there were those who predicted that this closeness in age would lead to lifelong brotherly hatred, but that was people.

  Corunda had replaced district nurse Pauline Duncan with a fearsome dragon, Sister Monica Herd, who combined visits to the district’s housebound invalids with visits to new mothers. An import from Sydney who revelled in driving miles to see the sick, Sister Herd was exactly who Grace needed, just as the ward sisters had been in her nursing days. In other words, Sister Herd frightened the living daylights out of Grace, who cleaned up baby-messes at once and didn’t allow the nappy situation to deteriorate as it had during Brian’s diaper days. The prize Sister Herd dangled was a fully toilet-trained child at nine months: Grace worked with feverish zeal to achieve this freedom, terrified of Sister Herd’s visits — oh, that tongue! A whiplash soaked in acid.

  “Bear’s due for another raise in pay,” said Grace over tea and pikelets served with jam and whipped cream. “Honestly, I’m so lucky! My boys are well ahead of anybody else’s the same age, I live in a nice house, and I have a good, teetotal husband — oh, how most husbands drink! The housekeeping money goes in beery urine.”

  Edda nodded absently, used to this patter. But she was never proof against her nephews — pray that at least one of them has a bit of Edda in him to stiffen all that sweetness and light! Bear and Grace are fine as long as things are fine, but how would they cope if disaster struck? Then she shook herself and admitted that the other part of her love for Grace rather purred at the prospect of a very small and transient misfortune for them. That was the part of Edda didn’t love her sister wholeheartedly; it loved, yes, but with qualifications and quantifications that grew every time she realised afresh how incompetent Grace was, how stupid. And how weak Bear was with her, the fool.

  Even to having children, for heaven’s sake! Bear had told her, man-to-man (and what does that say about you, Edda?) that he feared he and Grace were the kind who made a baby nearly every time they — well, did it.

  “So I’m not going to do it until we can afford another one, and especially until Grace has had a good rest. That means,” said Bear earnestly, “being abstemious while little John grows a whole lot more. When he’s two, we’ll go back to it.”

  “Have you discussed this with Grace?” Edda asked, winded.

  “She’ll like it. Oh, she loves me and — um — it. But a few minutes of pleasure can be followed by two years of mess and upheaval, and, well, Grace doesn’t thrive in chaos.”

  “Most of the chaos,” Edda said tartly, “she causes herself! But you do whatever you think you must, Bear.”

  She had left the subject severely alone thereafter, but if Bear and Grace truly were living without it, the chaos was no less. Grace just plain couldn’t organise herself.

  “What are you going to be when you grow up, Brian?” Edda asked the child, perched on her knee.

  “A train driver,” he said solemnly, eating his pikelet with jam and cream. “Big locomotives, but.”

  She burst out laughing. “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “Bear and I take them both down to the shunting yards when he’s home,” said Grace. Her glance slewed sideways, grey and cunning. “What about you and Jack?” she asked.

  “What about us?” Edda countered, making Grace work for it.

  “Well, you’re an item, you have been for years. But you never seem to push things along, do you?”

  “I don’t want to — push things, as you phrase it, Grace. I don’t want a husband or children.”

  “Well, you jolly well should!” said Grace crossly. “Don’t you realise how awkward you’re making life for me?”

  Edda’s eyes were always a little strange, but sometimes they could grow uncomfortably dangerous, as they did now while she stared at her twin. “How have I made your life awkward, dear?” she cooed dulcetly.

  Grace shivered, but a lifetime of Edda made it possible for her to stick to her guns long enough to fire the round she had always intended to fire. “People gossip about Jack Thurlow and me,” she said grittily, “and I dislike it. There’s nothing going on between us because he’s your friend, not mine. Now people are saying I made up the romance between you and Jack to hide my own involvement with him. That you and Jack are my lie!”

  With a kiss for Brian’s cheek, Edda put the child down and rose to her feet. “Hard cack, Grace!” she snapped. “If you think for one moment that I’m going to marry Jack Thurlow just to make your life more endurable, then you’ve got another thing coming! Try looking after yourself, then you won’t need Jack.”

  At the corner of Trelawney Way and Wallace Street an irate Edda, not looking, stepped into the road amid squealing brakes.

  “Jesus, Edda, I nearly hit you!” Jack Thurlow was saying, his face white. “Get in, woman.”

  “Going to see Grace?” Edda asked, strangely unshaken.

  “I was, but I’d rather see you
. Busy?”

  “I have to be near a phone, so how about my hospital home?” She laughed. “When I think of how Matron went on about men on the premises when we started training over three years ago! Now that we’ve turned into sisters, she can’t say a thing.”

  They had been lovers for a year, and it had been good for Edda, who had done a copious amount of research before setting off down her primrose path to Sin. From Polynesian, Indian, Chinese and various other sources she had worked out her personal “safe” period for sexual intercourse, and adhered to it inflexibly. Luckily her menstrual cycle was clockwork regular, so the “safe” segment ought to be sufficient. Thus far it had worked, which gave her additional faith in it, but no amount of physical desire in the world, she vowed, would see her break that schedule. She had also armed herself with a dose of ergotamine tartrate to dislodge an early foetus, and more than that she couldn’t do.

  “I’m chuffed,” she said, putting the kettle on.

  He gave her that wonderful smile. “Why, exactly?”

  “Why do you suppose we drink so much strong tea?”

  “Habit. It’s a drug within the bounds of the law.”

  “Very true!”

  “Why are you so chuffed, Edda?”

  “We’ve managed to throw so much dust in Corunda’s eyes that the whole town is convinced you’re sleeping with Grace.”

  “Shit!” He sat up straight, face suddenly angry. “I might have known! Grace? Grace is a duty, not a thrill!”

  Finished making the tea, Edda sat down. “What I’ve never really worked out,” she said as she poured, “is why Grace became your duty. She’s not your relative.”

  “It’s impossible to explain to someone as efficient and well organised as you, Edda,” he said, clearly at a loss. “Grace is one of those people who can’t manage —”