Angel

by Colleen McCullough

  “You have an air,” he said at the end of my tale, “of having just completed a walk across hot coals.” He studied the palm of my hand as if it held the answer to a riddle. “I wonder why I looked at you and loved you? A millisecond on a ramp, and I was done for. Is it because you belong to the world of Kings Cross? A denizen of an awful old house seething with cockroaches, a walker rather than a driver, a drinker of cheap brandy, a devotee of the bizarre, the tawdry, the frankly undesirable.”

  “Your tongue, ace,” I grinned, “is touched with honey.” “No, it isn’t,” he said instantly, and bit my hand. “Let me come home with you and it’ll soon find the honey.” The cappuccinos arrived. Duncan smiled at the waitress and thanked her-two audiences with the Pope! “Why did you arrange this rendezvous?” I asked. “Just to see you on your own,” he answered. “Mr. Toby Evans seems to have moved into my territory.”

  “No, he’s got his own territory,” I said, licking the fluff off my spoon. My happiness flooded back. “Oh, Duncan, the joy of finding my angel puss!”

  “How are you off for money?” he asked. “Fine,” I said.

  “If you need it, you know where to come.”

  But he knows I can’t accept money from him. Still, it’s nice of him to offer.

  I miss him, I’m never so conscious of it as when I’m with him again, even for a cappuccino at the Quay.

  When I got up to go, I leaned across the table and kissed him hungrily, lips and tongue, and he kissed me

  back, one hand brushing a breast. The waitress was looking at us as if we were Heathcliff and Catherine. “I’ll never be able to stay away from you,” he said.

  “Good!” I walked out and left him to pay the bill. They were all waiting to hear about Flo when I walked in. As probationers don’t go on the wards for the first three months, our Pappy is home in the evenings too. She’d made a whole heap of Chinese food, which we carried up to Toby’s attic because it’s the biggest room in the house and the views are marvellous. Funny, that. Toby used to be quite frantic at the very thought of people invading him in case someone left the mark of a rubber heel on his white floor, or chipped the table, or anything. But these days he’s more amenable, maybe because we’ve imposed a few rules of our own, like all shoes off before we go up the ladder, and don’t offer to wash the dishes. Truth is, I suspect, that even Toby is missing Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, though we hear her every night.

  Of course they know as well as I do that I’m actually not a scrap closer to getting Flo than I was before I found out where she is, but it makes such a difference to know where she is, and to know that we can all visit her. I checked that with Prendergast, who of course will be present to hear what’s said and see what we all look like, etc. But he won’t get any further with a one of them than he did today with me. Crossites are used to keeping secrets from officialdom. No one was surprised that our angel puss had gone through a plate glass window and no one was surprised that she’d survived it, though Bob cried terribly when I described the lacerations. She has a tender heart. Klaus thought it would be nice to bring his violin to the hospital and play for her-I didn’t tell him that I thought there might be objections. Once they hear that bow drawn across the strings, they’ll change their minds. I suppose it was the War ruined any chance Klaus had to make music his career, but the world’s loss is our gain, and he’s such a sweet chap, in love with his budgies. They’re all so nice.

  What we don’t talk about when we’re together is the future. The Public Trustee, a bit bolder now that almost two months have passed without a will turning up, sent a fellow to inspect The House when only Pappy was home. Oh, the waste! he clucked when he realised that two flats and a room were untenanted.

  And why were the rents so cheap? So we expect that in another couple of months, maybe sooner, strangers will move into the front ground floor flat, Harold’s room, and Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s quarters. How can you tell the Public Trustee about front ground floor flats at Kings Cross? There will be sailors everywhere again. Jim reported that she’d spoken to Joe the Q.C., whose considered opinion is that our rents can’t be increased without a lot of Fair Rent Board fuss, because the landlady herself had pegged them years ago. It’s more the thought of having people in The House who haven’t been hand-picked. I mean, the thing is that this is Kings Cross, so the flats aren’t really flats and the rooms are pretty awful. It’s under the lap! Now we’ve got the bloody Public Trustee peering up our skirts.

  Once they take full control, there’ll be a major earthquake, and they’re likely to spend a good part of Flo’s bank book inheritance turning The House into something that fits the full meaning of the Act, whichever Act they decide is applicable. They’ll probably ban scribbling on the walls. When the rest departed, I lingered.

  Toby hadn’t had a lot to say, just sat on the floor with his legs crossed and listened, his eyes going from face to face. They look redder than they ought to, a sure sign that something is on his mind or his temper’s ruffled. Some of it, I am convinced, is Flo. Oh, he was always kind to her, but she hasn’t the power over him that she has over the rest of us. Toby resists, which may be a part of that Australianness. Let a woman have power over him? Not on!

  “Having second thoughts about keeping your room here?” I asked as he commenced to wash the dishes. His back was to me. “No.”

  “Then what is biting you?” “Nothing.”

  I went round the corner of the sink and leaned against the cupboard so I could see at least a profile. “Something is. Flo?”

  He turned his head to look at me. “Flo’s none of my business.”

  “And that’s the trouble. To the rest of us, she’s very much our business. Why isn’t she yours, an orphaned child?”

  “Because she’s going to ruin your life,” he said to the sink.

  “Flo could never do that, Toby,” I said gently. “You don’t understand,” he said through his teeth. “No, I don’t. So why don’t you tell me?” I asked. “You’ll be tying yourself down to someone who isn’t even the full quid. There’s something wrong with Flo, and you’re just the sort who’s going to spend the next twenty years worrying about her, dragging her to doctors, spending money you don’t have.” He let the water out of the sink.

  “What about the bank books?” I asked.

  “That was then. This is now. There isn’t a will, Harriet, and governments being governments, the kid will never see a penny of what her mother had.

  She’s going to be a burden resting solidly on you, and you’re going to make yourself old before your time.”

  I sat down in an easy chair, frowning. “So this is about me, not about Flo?”

  “There’s only one person in this house I’d go to the wall for, Harriet, and that’s you. I can’t bear the thought of you turning into one of those drab, defeated women you see all over Sydney, with kids in tow and the old man at the pub,” he said, pacing.

  “Ye gods!” I said feebly. “You mean its me you’re in love with? Is that why”

  “You’re as blind as a fucking bat, Harriet,” he interrupted. “I can understand why you fell for Forsythe the big important bone specialist, but I can’t understand why you fell for Flo.”

  “Oh, this is awful!” I cried.

  “Why, because you don’t love me?” he demanded. “I’m used to that, I can live with it.”

  “No, that you’re telling me this with no love,” I tried to explain. “This ought to be said in a mood I can respond to, but instead you’re pounding my head about a kind of love which has nothing to do with any grown man! I can’t explain Flo, Toby, I looked at her and loved her, that’s all.”

  “And I looked at you and loved you that day you whopped David a beauty on the verandah,” he said, grinning. “And no doubt the big important bone specialist looked at you and loved you the first time he saw you.”

  “He says so. It was on a ramp at Queens. So we all looked and loved. But it hasn’t got us very far, has it? The only one of us prep
ared to make the total commitment is me, but not to you and not to Duncan.” I got up. “It’s very mysterious, don’t you think?” I walked over to him, kissed the tips of my fingers and put them on his forehead. “Maybe one day we’ll manage to sort it out, ace, hur-hur-hur.”

  Wednesday, March 15th, 1961 Two and a half months since Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz died, and nothing has been resolved. According to Mr. Hush, they will soon decide that she died intestate. The whole thing is going to have to go to some sort of

  child court, because Mr. Schwartz doesn’t exist and nor, officially, does Flo.

  Who continues to stay in the Queens Psych Pavilion being subjected to every kind of test there is from EEGs to batteries of neuropsychological investigations. None of which has told Prendergast and his professor a thing.

  The EEGs are normal, have a beautiful, high-amplitude, properly modulated alpha rhythm that appears when Flo closes her eyes. They’ve had fun inventing IQ tests a mute but intelligent and hearing child can answer, except that she won’t. The only people she’s happy to see are visitors from The House.

  Though every nurse and psychiatrist and therapist knows her very well by now, Flo refuses to chum up with anyone who isn’t from The House.

  “Why are you continuing to keep her here?” I asked Prendergast today when I paid my call as soon as work was finished.

  “Because she’s better off here than in a shelter,” he answered, frowning. “At least here she can have her visitors without a fuss. Though the real reason is that Prof Llewllyn and I think we may be looking at a case of what used to be called juvenile schizophrenia, but now is beginning to be called autism. She’s not the classical syndrome by any means, but there are characteristic signs. It isn’t often that we have a chance to keep a child as young as Flo for so longparents are always anxious to have them home, no matter how difficult they can be to handle. So Flo is a godsend to us.” He looked wistful. “We’d like to give her angiograms, put some air into her

  brain to see whether she has a lesion in the word areas or some cortical atrophy, but the risks are too great.” “You’d better keep on thinking that!” I snapped. “Try using her as a guinea pig, and I’ll go to the newspapers!” “Peace, peace!” he cried, palms up. “We simply observe.”

  I feel permanently tired, impotent, despondent. My work hasn’t suffered because I won’t let it suffer, but the truth is that I am fed up with hospitals.

  The discipline, the rituals, the constant battle with the women in authority. If you want to fart, you have to get permission. And Sister Agatha keeps a vigilant eye on me thanks to Harold and his letter. No one has ever unearthed a shred of evidence to confirm the rumoured affair between Duncan and me, but they’re dying to. For what purpose, I have no idea. I can’t be sacked for it, and Duncan can’t be made suffer for it. What the place needs is a new scandal with some meat to it, but so far Queens is being unusually well-behaved on the scandal front.

  Sister Cas and Constantin are engaged, though they’re not planning on marrying before the end of the year. Something to do with Constantin’s opening a restaurant in Parramatta, where it can have a decent parking area and offer a menu suitable for the Parramatta populace, a pretty steak-and-chippy lot. Nice.

  Naturally the whole place knows that I visit a child in the Psych Pavilion every day, though no one has managed to find out quite why. Gossip is rife among the

  sisters, including those in psych nursing, but no one’s got wind of my custody application.

  Which is going nowhere very fast. I have a weekly chat on the phone with Mr.

  Hush, who keeps warning me that even after all the hearings about Flo are over and she’s slipped into an official pigeonhole, I can’t expect to get custody. I’m punting on Dr. John Prendergast’s report, but Mr. Hush doesn’t think it will have the weight with Child Welfare that I want it to. If Flo ends up diagnosed as a juvenile schizophrenic, they may send her to-of all places!-Stockton. This, despite the fact that her psychiatric history has rendered her unadoptable or fosterable! You’d think they’d grab at my offer, but no. I’m too young, too poor and too unmarried. It just isn’t fair.

  “Harriet,” Mr. Hush said to me this afternoon, “you have to understand the official mind. To decide in your favour in the matter of Florence Schwartz would require a kind of wisdom and courage that official bodies don’t dare possess. It all boils down to the art of keeping the nose clean. They’re too aware that if someone having an axe to grind got hold of such an unorthodox adoption or fostering, there could be a terrific stink, and they’d be blamed. So they will not run the risk, my dear. They simply won’t.”

  Ducky. Just ducky. She’s sitting there in her heavy duty restriction harness living from visit to visit, and there’s nothing I can do to get her out. Oh, but there have been some wild schemes chasing through my head! The first was to propose marriage to Toby, but that didn’t last 319

  much longer than the lightbulb flashing on. If Toby condoned a child, the child would have to be his and only his. And a son, not a daughter. I love the man in so many ways-he’s straight as an arrow, brilliant, going places, great fun to be with, and very attractive. Parttime, terrific. Full-time, a pain in the arse.

  Then I had another brainwave which I’m still mulling over. I could kidnap Flo and skip the state, eventually skip the country. Australia is a very big place. If the pair of us headed for Alice Springs or the Katherine and I worked as a domestic in some Outback motel, no one would question Flo. She’d simply spend her time playing in the dust with the Abo kids, who wouldn’t mind her muteness in the least-would probably read her thoughts the way her mother had. She’d be a part of a spiritual commune, and when I was off duty, she’d be with me. The scheme has its points.

  I have the tarot pack off by heart, though I still haven’t tried a spread. That’s just an idle remark intended to branch me away from what I’m now going to say. That my hands aren’t quite steady, that my eyes are scratchy, that I feel as if the machinery of my body is wearing out or running down. Ridiculous, I know. It’s a mood, it will pass. Oh, if only something would happen!

  I still gaze into the Glass every night after Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz wakes me up at ten past three. It was a lovely theory I had when Duncan found Flo, but events haven’t confirmed it. So I must assume that Duncan’s finding Flo that day was a coincidence.

  Friday March 24th, 1961

  Something odd happened this evening. When the door bell rang shortly after six, I went to answer it because none of the men were home. And there on the verandah stood Madame Fugue from 17d. Oh, dear! What is her proper name?

  “How nice to see you,” I said, compromising. “Nice to see you too, dahling,” she cooed. “Would you like to come in? Have a coffee?”

  She said no, she had to get back next door before business got too brisk, but she was, um, wondering, um, if, um, we had any, um, plans for the vacant rooms? “Some of my girls are interested,” she concluded.

  How peculiar! Jim and Bob arrived on the Harley Davidson at that moment, and joined me as I was explaining to Madame that the Public Trustee was in control of things, and we hadn’t heard yet when they were planning to rent out the vacant premises.

  “Fuckin’ old women!” she said, and departed, leaving a strong aroma of Patou’s joy behind her.

  “Business must be good,” I said to Jim. “I believe that stuff costs more than diamonds or truffles.”

  “Well, she was wearing plenty of diamonds, too, unless you think her earrings and pendant are hunks of bottle,” said Jim.

  “It isn’t fair, is it?” asked Bob a little wistfully. “Good girls like you and camp girls like me are lucky if we get a two-bob box of Black Magic chocolates.”

  I grabbed at the door knob in shock. “Bob! Do you mean to say that Jim gives you a whole box of Black Magic choccies?”

  Bob leered to show her Dracula canines. “Jim loves me.”

  “Well, I’m seriously thinking of asking Madame Fugue for a few tips o
n how to get started in the game,” I said. “The game’s one way to earn a decent-oops, indecentliving at home! It would also provide Flo with heaps of uncles.”

  Jim was frowning, but not at the banter. “You know, Harry, that was a very odd thing for the Madame to do. She has to know that it isn’t in our power to rent rooms. I wonder what she was really after?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” I said.

  Bob suddenly whooped with laughter. “I wonder what the Child Welfare would say if they knew about 17b and 17d? Ooooooo-aa!”

  But they know about 17b and 17d, of course they know. Jim was right, however, Madame Fugue’s appearance was peculiar. What could she have been fishing for? Though I suspect that Child Welfare wasn’t as shocked by the brothels next door as Miss Arf-Arf was on her second visit when she saw the winged phallus embroidered on the inside thigh of Jim’s jeans. Whereas she was hugely impressed by Lady Richard, on Jim’s arm. Alone among us, Lady Richard has gone into traditional formal mourning for Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. Still in black, though shortly, he announced, he would be able to wear lilacs and greys. Even, if the occasion warrants it, white.

  Tuesday April 4th, 1961

  Mr. Hush’s secretary phoned me at work this morning and asked if I could be in his chambers at two o’clock. Not a request, my instincts said. A summons.

  Which meant that I had to see Sister Agatha and inform her that I’d have to leave Cas X-ray early. It wasn’t a particularly busy day, but that, of course, isn’t relevant.

  “Really, Miss Purcell,” Sister Agatha began in peevish tones, “this downing tools and flying off at a moment’s notice has become a rather nasty habit of yours lately. It isn’t good enough.”

  “Sister Toppingham,” I said stiffly, “you exaggerate. The occasions when I have taken time off work this year amount to three. January the second, January the eleventh and January the thirteenth. I did attend a funeral on that Friday the Thirteenth, as a matter of fact, however inappropriate you may consider the date. I did not ask to be paid for any of those absences, and I am not asking to be paid for the two hours you will lose from me this afternoon.