Angel

by Colleen McCullough

  Miss Smith and the junior can cope, it’s quiet in Cas. And yes, I know that I am inconveniencing you, Sister, but it is no more than an inconvenience. This hospital will not cease to function at optimum level because I will not be here.”

  She gobbled just like the Missus. “You are impertinent, Miss Purcell!” was the best retort she could muster.

  “No, Sister Toppingham, I am not impertinent. I am merely doing the unpardonable by sticking up for myself,” I said.

  Sister Agatha reached for a register. “You may go, madam. I assure you that I will not forget this.” Ooooooaa! I’ll bet the old bitch won’t forget it either.

  Ah, but it felt good as the Purcell worm turned over! Mr. Hush’s mood was little better than Sister Agatha’s. His face looked as if he’d just discovered that the meat chiller had died a minute after he closed the shop for a long weekend.

  “I went to see Child Welfare yesterday,” he said, “with a view to lodging a formal application to adopt Florence Schwartz. I’m afraid that their reaction was more adamantly against you than I had expected, Miss Purcell. Simply, they informed me that you are not morally fit to have charge of a child.”

  “Morally fit?”

  “That is the term. Morally fit. First, there is the matter of the two houses of ill fame which flank your late landlady’s premises, in which you intend to rear the child, who is debatably her heir. Secondly, one of the Child Welfare officers interviewed Mrs. Duncan Forsythe. Apparently there is a rumour about you and Dr. Forsythe going about, and this officer was apprised of it by a Queens friend. Mrs. Duncan Forsythe left you without a feather to fly with.” His face indicated that the meat was badly off. “I’m very sorry, but that is the situation.”

  “The bitch! I’m going to kill her,” I said slowly.

  He looked at me sympathetically. “I agree that it would do your heart good to kill her, Harriet, but it won’t help Flo, now will it?” The knives came out, he selected one sharp enough not to cause me too much pain. “Child Welfare also notified me that Flo is about to be discharged from Royal Queens. The diagnosis is a nonspecific form of autism, which means that she will be sent to an appropriate institution.”

  “Stockton,” I said hollowly.

  “Highly unlikely. Child Welfare is conscious that Flo has a group of regular visitors who are based in Sydney. I imagine she will be sent to Gladesville.”

  “Exit Flo, neatly pigeonholed.” I looked straight at him. “Mr. Hush, I don’t care what Child Welfare say, I want that formal application lodged. And every time I’m turned down, lodge another one. For years, if necessary. When Flo is a grown woman, I want her to know that I tried and tried and tried. I f she’s still alive, which I doubt. That’s the real tragedy.”

  I walked home across the Domain, kicked my shoes off, peeled my stockings off and felt the tough, springy grass fight my feet. Oh, why had I publicly humiliated the Missus? Dragged her out of her car under the Mesdames’ noses, chucked her back in after I’d said my piece? Shown her just how small and petty she is? Well, she’s had her revenge.

  Except that I think she’d have done the same even if I hadn’t flown up her. But I am going to get the Missus, oh yes. Starting next week. Since I’ve already been judged morally unfit, what does it matter if I have gentlemen visit my flat?

  I’ll ring Duncan up at home and invite him over for the entire night. If you want to play dirty, Mrs. Forsythe, you’re going to find out how dirty dirt can be. Cockroaches … I’ll catch a giant mortuary jar full of them and let them loose in your poncy little Pommy car. Huge ones that fly, hur-hurhur. I’ll picket the next Black and White Committee meeting with a big placard that says MRS.

  DUNCAN FORSYTHE DOESN’T GIVE HER HUSBAND ANY NOOKY AND THAT’S WHY HE’S

  TAKEN UP WITH A MORALLY UNFIT GIRL YOUNG ENOUGH TO BE HIS DAUGHTER.

  Nice thoughts. They carried me as far as Woolloomooloo, where I put my shoes on and stopped thinking of things to do to the Missus that I know I can’t because they’ll rebound on Duncan. However, the cockroaches are feasible. And the invitation to Duncan to spend a night in my arms is a definite. Even better, I’ll curse her. B.O. and halitosis. Intractable thrush.

  Heaps of weight no matter how she starves herself. Wrinkles. Swelling of the feet and ankles so gross that it flops over the edges of her shoes and wobbles.

  Conjunctivitis. Dandruff. Worms that lay their eggs in the anus so she has to pick her bum in public. Oh, yes! Sicken slowly, Mrs. Forsythe! Die of thwarted vanity! May all your

  mirrors crack when you look in them, may your haute couture clothes turn into hessian bags and plumber’s boots.

  That got me as far as the McElhone Stairs, where, halfway up, I stood and cried. Flo, my Flo! Angel puss! How am I ever going to get you home again?

  I was still crying when I let myself in the door, where even through the grey wall of tears I could see how much the scribbles have faded. She’s going away from me, I’ll have to sit on the sidelines of her institutionalised life, breaking my heart because I can’t spend all day every day there with her. I’m young, poor and unmarried. I have to work. I have to go tomorrow and apologise to Sister Agatha. God rot you, Mrs. Duncan Forsythe, with your spiteful barbs.

  You’re in the process of ruining more lives than your spineless mug of a husband’s.

  I threw myself onto my bed and howled myself to sleep, woke up after dark.

  17d’s windows glowed iridescent mauve, the usual chatter and laughter floated down, and one screaming fight between Prudence and Constance, who never can get on together. Good luck to you, ladies, I thought as I dealt with my indignant cat. There are worse ways to make a better living. A lot worse ways, Mrs. Bloody Duncan Parasite Forsythe.

  Well, it will have to be the kidnap, a flight to somewhere like the Northern Territory, where men are men and women are in short supply. A terrible wrench. I can’t even tell Mum and Dad what I’m planning, nor contact them after I find a place to live. Flo and I must

  disappear off the map. Tell one person a secret, and it’s no longer a secret. I’ll have to empty my bank account in cash, hide it in a bag under Flo’s pinny.

  Drab clothes. We’ll have to look as if we’re on the breadline. Flo’s own, stuff is perfect, but I’ll have to rat around in the cast-offs at the Salvos or St. Vincent de Or-joke, hur-hur-hur. Yes, I can do it. Why? Because I’m smart enough to keep track of all the threads in a tissue of lies. My husband deserted me-that’s a good, standard story. Australia’s chocka with deserted wives. Buy wedding ring. My poor wee daughter misses her daddy so much that she won’t talk. No, that doesn’t sound right-why would she miss a bastard who did the dirty on her mum? She doesn’t talk because a bit of her brain went wrong after her daddy hit her in a drunken rage. Yes, that sounds convincing. Marceline! My poor old boy had trusted me with his angel puss-how can I let him down? But I have to-cats don’t travel. Or do they? If Marceline has her canvas shopping bag, maybe she will travel. I’ll do a dummy run to the Blue Mountains with her. If she copes with that, then I’ll take both my angel pusses to the Outback.

  … This is written later, much later. It must have been nearly midnight when I stopped pacing up and down, plotting and scheming, working out the logistics. I hadn’t eaten, but I wasn’t hungry. Didn’t feel like coffee or tea, didn’t feel like a snort of the old threestar. Felt like something Marceline sicked up, actually. At least I don’t have to worry any more about Harold and my diaries. The old ones are back in the Tilsiter cupboard.

  As I went to the table the Glass caught my eye-well, it’s the most eyecatching thing in the whole room. Sitting in its usual spot, glowing pinkly.

  Fraud of a thing. Oozing drama. I was debating whether to scry before I went to bed, instead of after the old girl wakes me up with the nightly gallop and guffaw. Maybe if I did that, the Glass would work for me? Bugger it, no! I sat down with a flop and vowed that never again would I abase myself before a hunk of silicon dioxide. Plain old melted sand.


  So I sat there and thought about how horrible everybody had been to me today. Worse by far, they’d been terminally horrible to Flo. And all angryhorrible, not flat-anddepressed horrible. Angryhorrible’s unbearable without a head to wallop or some balls to knee. Don’t think those awful Child Welfare females don’t have balls. They do, and just as big as any other species of rat.

  I looked at the Glass, and a weird thought popped into my mind. What is the matter with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz? If that’s her upstairs every night, then she’s still haunting the earthly plane. In which case, why is she letting them kill her angel puss? Why has she left such a mess behind? She must have known that she was leaving a mess behind! Therefore she must also have left an answer. She was very stupid about some things, but she was also very clever.

  Only two clues given to me: that the fate of The House is in the Glass; that it depends on the Glass. Would she have believed in herself and her powers so ardently that she assumed I’d

  see everything revealed in the Glass? She put my hands on it, sort of blessed me. But I can’t see a thing in the Glass! I’ve been trying for a month, and nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  I glared at the thing fiercely, at its dreamy pink upsidedown rendition of my room. The fate of The House is in the Glass. It all depends on the Glass. I grabbed it and did the unspeakable, freed it from its base by lifting it in both my hands. When I put it down, it started to roll. I steadied it. No vibrations, no peculiar electrical thrills. It’s just a very heavy blob of pressure-liquefied silica.

  The table evidently sloped toward the side away from me, so I shoved the butter dish behind my nemesis and halted it, transferred my gaze to its base.

  The small circle of padding between it and the black wood isn’t silk, it’s velvet, the pile squashed and shined by the weight of the Glass itself.

  Oh, Harriet Purcell, you drongo! How could you be so thick? The answer has been sitting here for four months! I lifted the base and began to pick at the fabric where it overlapped the wood in a tiny roll, freeing it a weeny bit at a time because the glue was very efficient. But the glue didn’t go under the ball, it only held the edges down. And there, beneath the velvet, was a folded piece of paper resting in a shallow cavity that she must have gouged for it with a chisel. A cheap, printed will form of the kind one buys from a newsagency or a stationer’s. Diabolical. The time she must have spent devising this final riddle, taking a punt on her whole world, including

  her angel puss. She didn’t even hedge her bets, she put it all on the nose. My nose for a mystery, a puzzle. She wasn’t even fair about the two clues. The fate of The House wasn’t in the Glass, it was under the Glass. One tiny little word.

  If she’d used the correct preposition, I would have found the will in a day, maybe less. But no, not her. That was too simple, too tame.

  The will wasn’t very long. It said that all her goods and properties and moneys were bequeathed to Flo Schwartz, her only child, to be held in trust during Flo’s minority by her dear friend Miss Harriet Purcell of the same address, who was at liberty to dispose of all income as she wished. And that she consigned the care and custody of Flo Schwartz, her only child, to the said Miss Harriet Purcell, being of the opinion that the said Miss Harriet Purcell would rear Flo as she would want. It was signed Harriet Purcell Delvecchio Schwartz, and there were two witnesses. An Otto Werner and a Fritz Werner, neither of whom I knew from a bar of soap. Brothers? Father and son?

  Harriet Purcell! Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz had been born a Harriet Purcell.

  The missing generation. But if from Dad’s lot, then he wasn’t told about her.

  That’s possible, if from her birth she looked wrong. Nineteenth century parents were very odd about offspring who looked wrong-would bundle them away to a home, hide them as if a disgrace. It’s highly possible that she’s a close relative-Dad’s sister? He was born in 1882, and she would have been born around 1905. Or what if

  she’d been born around 1902, while Dad was in South Africa fighting in the Boer War? Dad has twin sisters born later than he, in 1900-a great embarrassment, he always says, laughing. What if, after Auntie Ida and Auntie Joan, there was another daughter? Who looked wrong, and was hidden away?

  This is one mystery I’d be willing to bet will never be solved, though it does answer the riddle of why she was called by the family curse name. An onion, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. Layer upon layer, and at the core, a childhood she never mentioned to any of us in The House, even Pappy.

  I didn’t whoop, yell, scream or holler. Too much has happened to believe this is real. I’ll wait until I can show the will to Mr. Hush tomorrow morning.

  Wednesday, April 5th, 1961

  I woke at six, feeling very strange. If the author of all the above agony galloped and guffawed at ten past three last night, I didn’t hear her. My first chore was to telephone Sister Agatha’s office and say that I wouldn’t be in to work today.

  No, no reason, sorry, Miss Barker. Private affairs. Then I pottered around in a delicious daze, gave Marceline extra top-of-the-milk, had several cups of coffee, some scrambled eggs and toast, and got dressed in my new fawny-pink autumn outfit, just out of Lay-by. Every so often I unfolded the will and verified that it did

  indeed say all those wonderful things. It does. It does, it does!

  I was on the doorstep of Partington, Pilkington, Purblind and Hush before Miss Hoojar arrived to open the premises. When she told me disdainfully that Mr. Hush was too busy to see me today, I said I’d wait anyway. Half a minute, a quarter of a minute, I don’t care, but I am seeing him! I said. So I sat down in the reception area, kept peeking at the will, hummed a tune, flapped magazine pages loudly, and generally made such a nuisance of myself that when Mr.

  Hush came through the door at ten o’clock, Miss Hoojar was ready to throttle me.

  “Miss Purcell refused to leave, Mr. Hush!” she bleated.

  “Then Miss Purcell had better come in,” he said, sighing, resigned to butchering scrag end of neck instead of fillet steak. “I can’t give you long, I’m in court most of today.”

  In answer, I handed him the will.

  “Well, strike me pink and turn me blue!” he said after a quick perusal.

  “Whereabouts did this turn up?”

  “I found it last night, sir, hidden beneath the base of Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s favourite ornament.”

  “Is Harriet Purcell really her name?” he asked, eyeing me as if he suspected me of forgery. Then he subjected the will to a minute examination. “It looks genuinesame handwriting as the bank books, dated a year ago. Do you know the witnesses?”

  I had to say no, I didn’t, but that I’d ask around. “Does it matter?” I asked tensely. “Is anyone going to argue about it? Contest it?”

  “My dear Harriet, I would think that everybody is going to greet the mysterious appearance of this document with a sigh of relief. It is the lady’s only existing testament, and in it she acknowledges Flo as her child and unequivocally consigns custody of Flo to you. At law, her commands are our commands.”

  “But Child Welfare aren’t going to change their opinion of me, are they, Mr.

  Hush?”

  “Very likely not,” he said placidly. “However, the will lifts the responsibility of Flo from their shoulders. They aren’t the arbiters of Flo’s destiny any longer-and for that, they’ll be very, very glad. I might add that the will also endows you with financial independence. You’ll be able to live very comfortably on the estate’s incomes, so you won’t need to work. You’re set.”

  Then he cleared his throat in a suspicious manner. I gave him all my attention. “As there is no executor named, you’ll have to decide who you want to handle matters. You can avail yourself of the Public Trustee, or, if you prefer, I can handle probate. I should warn you that the Public Trustee moves at the pace of a tortoise, and that its fees are quite as hefty as those levied by a private firm.”

  My cue! “I’d prefer that you handle everything, Mr. Hu
sh.”

  “Good, good!” The scrag end of neck had clearly turned into fillet steak. “You’ll appreciate that I’ve had occasion to talk to the Public Trustee about the estate. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz has over one hundred and ten thousand pounds deposited in savings accounts all over Sydney. The source of these funds has baffled the experts, who cannot prove that they represent earned income. Naturally everybody is aware what goes on in 17b and 17d, but both establishments enjoy virtual immunity from, um, official attention, and the experts have had to take the word of their proprietresses that they pay thirty pounds per week in rent. 17a and 17e, though mere .

  rooming houses, also pay thirty pounds a week. That yields one hundred and twenty pounds a week. A good lawyer can argue it is spent upon upkeep, utilities and rates, as all four places are in tiptop conditionsomething Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s own house does not experience, as I understand. The taxation johnnies are in a tizz-wozz, but unless concrete evidence appears, all they are entitled to do is tax the interest and the rents. If Taxation does decide to challenge, a good team of barristers can tie the case up in court for decades. I will, of course, put you in touch with a firm of accountants and financial managers who can advise you what to do with Flo’s principal-it earns mere pennies in savings accounts, brrrr! Birdwhistle, Entwhistle, O’Halloran and Goldberg are the best.”

  So that’s what you were after, Madame Fugue! You were fishing to see how much I knew. But don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe with me. We can’t have all those

  industrialists and politicians and bankers and judges deprived of the opportunity to get rid of their dirty water in pristine premises, now can we?

  Um, thirty quid a week? In a pig’s eye! Three hundred, more like. But, be warned! I am going to drive a hard bargain on Flo’s behalf, dear Mesdames. My name isn’t Harriet Purcell for nothing.