Bittersweet

by Colleen McCullough

  “Am I likely to miscarry again?” Kitty asked. “I’m still so shocked by the suddenness — it came out of the blue!”

  “There will be plenty of babies, I do assure you.”

  A verdict echoed by Tufts, very concerned. There was a new look in the lovely eyes, of bewilderment bordering on confusion. Whatever happened, Kitty mustn’t be let sink too far into the dumps! “Ned Mason’s right, women do lose a first child occasionally,” Tufts said firmly. “Take a good long rest, eat spinach, and try again. I guarantee you’ll sail through.”

  “Ned says I may have a wee fibroid.”

  “Oh, all of us have at least one of those.” Tufts snorted in derision. “You’re a registered nurse, Kitty, you know that’s true. Fibroids only become a dangerous nuisance much later.”

  “Charlie took it philosophically.” Kitty sounded a trifle critical, even resentful.

  “Charlie was broken-hearted, you goose! He just didn’t want to upset you more by showing it. Don’t sell his grief short because you can’t see past your own, Kits. He wept to me.”

  “Well, he didn’t weep to me.”

  “Then I admire his self-control. Of course he didn’t weep to you! He thinks too much of you to do that.”

  “Daddy says he and Charlie gave it a name — Henry — and buried it. I wasn’t even there.”

  “It” thought Tufts — oh, Kitty! Did Edda and I spare you too much as a child? No, of course we didn’t. But somehow things between you and Charlie never seem to go Charlie’s way, and it isn’t his fault, it’s yours.

  She left Kitty’s bed in Maternity and walked briskly to Charles Burdum’s office, her thoughts still dwelling on Kitty. They didn’t see much of each other, and Edda was in like case, but the bond between them was no weaker for that, and she knew that Kitty would look to her and Edda for the major part of her comfort during the weeks and months to come. That note of disapproval for Charlie in her voice! This was one of those times when to be a stiff-upper-lipped, aloof Pommy was a terrible handicap.

  Behind her worry for Kitty’s marriage something else nagged at her: what on earth could Charlie want to see her about? It wasn’t to do with Kitty; he was too punctilious to discuss his wife with her sister in the public arena of his office. What, therefore, was the matter?

  He looks, Tufts thought as he took some care in seating her, like a man whose world has ended. In some ways it has; yesterday he had seen the tiny coffin of his stillborn son put into a grave, with Henry Burdum’s aunts, grandfather and father the sole mourners. And Kitty griped at his lack of tears? What a business!

  “I want to talk to you about your future career,” Charles said.

  Surprised, Tufts blinked. “What is there to talk about? I have eight trainees to care for, next April five more will bring the number up to thirteen, and the year after, if statistics go on as they’re heading, will see as many as ten fresh trainees. That means that by 1934, or thereabouts, the Corunda School of Nursing will be significant, with unqualified women being phased out forever. It’s the Depression, of course,” she went on, “allied to the lack of young men — we are still feeling the effects of the Great War, and jobless young men can’t marry. As Sister Tutor, I’m only going to get busier and busier.”

  “True, but naturally you will have the aid of efficient and Tufts-chosen assistant Sisters Tutor,” Charles said mildly.

  “I shouldn’t need any assistant until the figures go above fifty,” said Tufts crisply.

  “And in the truth of that statement lies one of the main reasons why I want to deflect your career somewhat.”

  Tufts stiffened, seizing unerringly on one word. “Deflect?”

  “Your emotional attachment to Corunda Base makes you very suitable for what I want, but it’s also you yourself — who you are, what you are — and who and what you could become.”

  Her eyes held his sternly. “This sounds ominous.”

  “It isn’t. I have no intention of harming your career, far from it. In fact, I want to enhance it.” His private sorrow had vanished from eyes and face, and the film star appeal came out of nowhere; Tufts could feel his charm engulf her. “In spite of the Depression, things are looking up for Corunda Base,” Charles said, his assault prepared. “I know that hospitals used to be where sick people went while God made up His mind whether to take life from them or let them keep it. Of treatment there was precious little. But that is changing rapidly. These days we can actually intervene and save many patients who even ten years ago would have died. We can X-ray broken limbs, remove certain diseased organs from the abdomen — why, even routine transfusion of blood from one person to another is just around the corner! I see a modern hospital as a place where people go not only to have their lives saved, but their health preserved. And, Tufts, I know you feel the same way.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?” she asked. “Come on, Charlie, spit it out! You don’t need to woo me with patriotic speeches, you’re preaching to the already converted.”

  His face grew brighter, his eyes intense. “Tufts, I need a deputy superintendent, and I want that person to be you. You!”

  The chair fell over as Tufts scrambled to her feet, shocked; he was there at once, righting the chair, reseating her.

  “Charlie Burdum, you’re insane! I’m not even qualified as a matron, let alone a superintendent of anything other than nurse studies and hospital domestics,” she said, mouth dry, eloquent because eloquence was the only way to shut this steamroller of a man down. “You’re utterly deluded!”

  “Anything but,” he said, back behind his desk. “Consider it, please. You know as well as any other member of our family that I have political aspirations. It’s my intention to seek election to the federal parliament as member for Corunda, but not until at least 1933 or 1934, which gives me time. Entry into parliament means I’ll have to give up the hospital. Like any other crafty man, I’ll be able to preserve my fortune and commercial interests intact if I go about it the right way, but I can’t hold two jobs.”

  “Qualified men are to be found everywhere,” she said harshly. “Pick one now and train him up.”

  “I am picking one now — you. At this moment, and, I predict, for many years to come, there are no academic qualifications stipulated for a person superintending a general hospital — or any other kind of hospital, for that matter. Most of us have a medical degree because we soon learned after graduating that our skills were not directed at healing people, but at juggling money, functions and staff. Like your skills, Tufts, for all that you were also, apparently, a brilliant hands-on nurse. You will join me immediately as my deputy superintendent, and I’ll guarantee to teach you everything I know. I add that you will be able to carry on as Sister Tutor provided you have at least one assistant.”

  Tufts threw her hands in the air, at a complete loss — how did one reason with a closed mind? “Charlie, I beg you, listen to me! First and foremost, I’m a woman. Apart from Matron, by tradition a woman, women do not administer any kind of organisation, from business to health. The opposition will be huge! My sex will be used against me in the corridors of power both in Sydney and in Canberra, with the unelected civil servants my worst and most obdurate enemies. I have no university degrees of any sort — none! The state government will dismiss me.”

  He had listened, yet clearly didn’t hear. “Tufts, believe me, I’m well ahead of everyone concerned. I agree that you need tertiary qualifications, so I’ve arranged with my very good friend Professor Sawley Hartford-Smythe of the Faculty of Science to make sure you obtain those qualifications. You will undergo an intense and compressed course in medico-scientific subjects and graduate two years from when university goes up next February. That’s 1931, to graduate in November of 1933. You will also undergo intensive schooling in accountancy, which will equip you better for this job than a degree in Medicine, as you well know. I am loading you with work, but it isn’t as bad as it seems because much of what you have to learn is already learned. You’ll breeze thr
ough the science! Accountancy will be more foreign, therefore harder. You, Heather Scobie-Latimer, are my investment for the future.”

  Her breath had gone; Tufts stared at her brother-in-law in wonder. Could it possibly work? And why did this eminently well qualified and practical man assume it would work? Even though the core of him was raw and bleeding from the loss of his child, he was forging onward, always toiling for Corunda and its welfare. A university degree! She, a woman, would own a Bachelor’s degree in Science and a Charter in Accountancy! Attend conferences as a hospital executive. The joys of tutoring nurses were many, but Tufts had to admit that the vast challenge Charlie was throwing at her was infinitely more alluring.

  “Charlie, have you honestly thought this through?”

  “I’ve crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s, Tufts, you have my word on it,” he said. “Come, do it!” He chortled at a private vision. “Imagine being Liam’s boss!”

  “Old stick-in-the-mud that he is. He’d be more suitable.”

  “Were he, I’d have given him the job. No, m’dear, Liam is twenty years too old. I need someone young.”

  “I see that. Liam doesn’t like live patients, that’s why he chose pathology.” She gave a gasp and held out her hand to Charles across the desk. “Very well, Charlie. If you’re so set on a woman deputy, I’ll accept. You won’t desert me too soon, will you?”

  “I’ll never desert you, Tufts.”

  She raced back down the ramp to Pathology and burst into Liam Finucan’s office to find him immersed in a set of huge blueprints that outlined his new department, a building two storeys high. Charles’s scheme of things saw the ancillary medical services as more important than, for instance, rebuilding the wards or starting the new operating theatre block, simply because their current position in Corunda was very much an afterthought, yet their importance as diagnostic tools and treatments was exploding.

  So the new radiology department had gone up first; its carefully chosen chief, Dr. Edison Malvie, had gone on the staff before a single brick earmarked for radiology had been laid and the most modern diagnostic X-ray apparatus purchased, together with the latest ideas on lead shielding. Gone were the days of fuzzy films or uncertain readings; when all was up and running, Dr. Malvie vowed, neurosurgeons as august as those at Queens Square would perform no radiological tests Corunda Base did not.

  Which led to the bliss of a whole building entirely devoted to pathology, broken into its various disciplines. If Dr. Malvie was happy, his content was as nothing compared to Liam Finucan’s. The transfusion of blood from patient to patient, so very close, pointed the way to haematology as a segment of significant size — in fact, every segment of pathology was growing larger and more important. Hence his poring over blueprints for the new Pathology Department, and his blindness to what would ordinarily be so obvious: Tufts was bursting with news. However, she forced herself to listen to today’s bright ideas until he ran down, puzzled at Tufts’s rather lukewarm reaction.

  Once she told him her news, Liam sat back in his chair, the plans forgotten, and gazed at her. “Charlie’s trouble,” he said then, “is that he can never leave things alone. Status quo is an alien concept to him.”

  “Does that mean you think I should refuse?” she asked.

  “No! You can’t possibly refuse, the opportunity is genuinely ground-breaking — you did accept, I hope?”

  “Yes, but I can always change my mind. I am a woman!”

  “Are you still enamoured of a lifetime career in hospital work, Heather? You don’t plan on marriage?” he asked.

  “Definitely not,” said Tufts firmly. “Every time I see Grace or Kitty, I realise all over again that marriage would not suit me. And every time I see Edda I realise that I am not cut out for love affairs either. Too perilous, especially for a superintendent.”

  “Then you have two choices, Heather. To stick in the well-known mud of Sister Tutor, or jump into the utterly unknown mire of senior hospital administration. Your mind is very high quality — too high for Sister Tutor, I think, but I’m not you, and I do not presume to advise you,” Liam Finucan said, oddly formal.

  His thoughts were very different. What, he wondered, looking at her sweet face, might have happened had Gertie Newdigate not stuck her oar in, and I not had a wife to shed? Sixteen months of separation, right as the seed was germinating. Oh, Heather, we missed our chance!

  Not thoughts Tufts experienced as she stared at him, though a part of her did understand Matron Newdigate’s untimeliness. But, never having known any kind of intimacy with Liam before the long divorce exile, she had no idea what might have eventuated had there been no Eris Finucan. They were best friends, and they were also colleagues. In moving her qualifications up, Tufts was moving further into Liam’s world. And that was a lovely thought, no more.

  19

  Bear Olsen had found himself a routine that kept him out of the way of his wife and sons as much as possible; after trying to eat two slices of toast for his breakfast, he put his hat on his head, shrugged himself into his jacket, and went out the front door, down the path through the front gate and onto the street. There he turned to walk down the slope of Trelawney Way to Wallace Road, crossed it, and kept on going until he came to George Street, the main thoroughfare that bisected all Corunda City.

  Though Maboud’s general store sat on the corner, he went past it and trudged all the way down George Street to the main shopping centre, where some windows were fragmented with brown-paper bands glued across the glass to indicate permanent closure. No matter; he stopped to peer into every shop, open for business or defunct, down the north side as far as the last store, then back up the south side. Finally he arrived again at Maboud’s, with its newspapers, comic-cuts, magazines, packets of tea and tins of baking powder, sugar and butter and flour, women’s and men’s and children’s clothing, teapots and kettles and mixing bowls. Bashir Maboud, who liked him, always attempted to strike up a conversation, to which Bear made little or no response; then eventually he would return up the slope of Trelawney Way and let himself into his front yard again, having walked ten miles and spent the best part of the day in doing it.

  He had lost a great deal of weight, albeit he wasn’t yet emaciated; food didn’t interest him any more than his wife or sons did. From the moment he was back after his slow, clockwork progression, he sat in the garden upon an old park bench Jack Thurlow had brought home in happier days, his hat on the slats beside him, his chin sunk onto his chest. Not knowing what significance this action might have, Grace had puzzled as to why, from the time he started sitting there, he had reversed the bench so he sat with his back to the house and his family.

  After many fruitless attempts to get Bear interested in doing something — anything! — Jack had ceased to visit while Bear was at home; it was just too painful to see external events destroy such a good, decent, caring man. Jack visited while Bear walked.

  What did the family live on? Teeth clenched, Grace accepted the bare minimum from Charles to let her family subsist. Beg though he did, Charles couldn’t persuade her to take more, and she made it clear that what she did accept was for the sake of her sons. In return she insisted on making things for Kitty’s larder that a French chef would despise, like Anzac bikkies, lemon-curd butter and red, green and orange jellies.

  Bear’s mind was not a sluggish slough of self-pity; had it been, people like Grace, Edda, Jack and Charles might have worked to cure it. But what went on in Bear’s mind had neither purpose nor logic nor agony of any kind; it was a literal jumble of idle thoughts, stray little snatches of songs or wireless jingles, all run down so badly that even Bear, the owner of the thoughts, had no concept what they meant, how they were relevant to his existence. His image of self — of his body, even — was in the throes of disintegration, so that when Grace, as terrified as exasperated, cried out things to him like “Pull yourself together!” he had no inkling what she meant or why she was so upset. The shop windows with their criss-crossed brown-pap
er bands were something to look at, just as Bashir Maboud was someone who mouthed words; this last, vague, vestigial part of himself seemed a machine that had to be used up and worn out by walking and looking, walking and looking… When he sat, his back to the house, on his garden seat, he was so exhausted that of thoughts there were none at all.

  Charles Burdum and the Latimer GP, Dr. Dave Harper, came to see Bear several times; each visit saw Grace hanging on their opinions desperately.

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do,” Charles confessed to her. “However, his condition doesn’t seem to worsen. It’s three weeks since our last time here, but Bear is unchanged.”

  “He abrogated his responsibilities as a man, a husband and a father,” Grace said bitterly.

  “Abrogated is just a word, Grace. Blaming him isn’t going to improve anything, you know that. My dear, you’re so brave, so staunch! No one can criticise you, even for railing about Bear occasionally.” Charles patted her arm. “Chin up, Grace!”

  “We eat fish paste and home-made jam, but that’s a lot more than many families are eating, for which I thank you, Charlie,” said Grace, hating the faint patronisation but understanding she had no right to say so. “I also know that if you had your way it would be ham and steak. Well, I won’t take them. I’m grateful that you pay Bashir Maboud’s bills, but if Bear were in his right mind, he’d deplore any charity. I’m no leech.”

  “I admire your independence,” said Charles sincerely.

  “Supercilious bastard,” Grace muttered to herself. “All the world suffers, but not Charlie Burdum, cock of the walk.” A sentiment she repeated to Edda, who slapped her down by reminding her that Charles had seen his son stillborn. “Yours mightn’t eat ham sandwiches, but they’re healthy as cart horses fed on the best mash, so pipe down, Grace.”

  Edda was looking, thought the deeply unhappy and frustrated Grace, quite superb. They were twenty-five years old now, once considered past the peak of feminine attractiveness — but that was outmoded thinking. The longer, more shaped clothes of late 1930 suited Edda, whose height and suppleness carried them well: she was so — elegant! Red always became her, even the rather trying rust-red she wore today, a dress of thin, clingy crepe. No petticoat either, yet she contrived not to give the slightest impression of trollop. And she was growing her thick black hair long — why was she doing that?