Angel (24 page)

I turned to Pappy. “We’ll have to take him to Vinnie’s Cas straight away,” I said to her.

Pain and all, he reared up like a cobra. “I will not go to St. Vincent’s, it’s a Catholic hospital!” he hissed. “Then we’ll take you to Sydney Hospital,” I hissed back. “The minute they catheterise you, you’ll feel so much better that you’ll wonder why you didn’t seek help a great deal sooner.”

The vision of Harold being catheterised set Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz howling again. I rounded on her. “Will you get out of here?” I barked. “Make yourself useful! Find some old towels in case he lets go, then hail a taxi-move! “

Encouraging him to find his feet but taking his weight between us, Pappy and I got Harold sort of upright. His agony wouldn’t let him straighten up, nor would he remove his hands from his lower abdomen. By the time we got him downstairs, the taxi was waiting.

The junior resident and Sister Cas at Sydney Hospital just stared at Harold when told the nature of the emergency.

“Three weeks!” the junior resident exclaimed tactlessly, then quailed under the glares he got from Sister Cas, Pappy and me.

We watched Harold deposited in a wheelchair and whisked away, then went outside and caught the Bellevue Hill tram.

“They’ll give him the works,” said Pappy as we climbed aboard. “We won’t see him home until he’s had cystoscopes and IVPs and God knows what else.”

“You don’t think it’s organic either,” I said.

“No, he looks too well. His colour’s good, and his distended bladder is the source of his pain. You know what renal cases look like, or stones or pelvic cancers. He must have an electrolyte imbalance, but looking at him? It’s not organic.”

Oh, Pappy, I wish you’d do general nursing! But I didn’t dare voice that thought.

So for the time being, I’m free of Harold, though my worry has increased.

Some clinical instinct tells me that this hideously repressed man is edging toward the ultimate repression. Retaining his faeces isn’t enough for him any more, the pain and humiliation of that isn’t doing it for him, so he’s graduated to retaining his urine. But beyond urinary retention, the only thing left to shut down is life itself. Oh, God damn Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz for laughing at him! If she doesn’t learn to control herself, one

of these days he’s going to kill himself. Just pray he leaves it at that, doesn’t take Jim or Pappy or me with him. Yet how can any of us reason with a force of Nature like Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz? She’s a law unto herself. Amazingly wise, abysmally foolish. And if he does kill himself, she’ll be desolate, penitent, inconsolable. Why hasn’t she seen it in the cards? It’s there! It’s there! Harold and the Ten of Swords. The ruin of The House.

I invited Toby down for lunch today, and he actually came. He’d needed Saturday morning to buy specialised hardware for his shack, so he had to stay in Sydney because Nock & Kirby’s is the only place sells what he wants.

“Saturday’s dead anyway, so eat lunch before you hop on the train,” I said winningly.

The menu was shepherd’s pie made on tuna and mushrooms bound together with a fresh marjoram sauce, the potato topping I’d mashed with tons of butter and ground pink pepper, and I served a salad on the side, its dressing walnut oil shaken with water and old, nonastringent vinegar.

“If you keep on cooking like this, I might just have to marry you the minute I’m famous,” he said, mouth full. “This is good!”

“As you won’t become famous until after you die, I’m safe,” I said, smiling at him. “It’s fun to cook, though I suspect it wouldn’t be if I had to do it every single day like my mother.”

“I’ll bet she enjoys it,” he said, transferring to the easy chair opposite Marceline, who only got a grimace from him.

“If she does, it’s because she loves to see her men feeding their faces,” I said a bit tartly. “The menu’s pretty narrow-steak-and-chips, fish-and-chips, roast leg of lamb, stewed lamb neck chops, curried sausages, crumbed lamb cutlets, cooked prawns from the fishmonger’s, then start again-why don’t you like my beautiful Marceline?”

“Animals,” he said, “don’t belong inside houses.” “What a typical bushie you are! If a dog doesn’t work the stock properly, shoot it.”

“Terminal lead poisoning in the left ear is a good way to go,” he protested.

“No nonsense, over and done with in a second.”

“You’re a real loner,” I said, taking the chair with the cat.

“You learn to be when you don’t get your way all the time, and by all the time, I mean all the time, not occasionally.”

“She’ll turn to you, Toby, I know it,” I said warmly. “What are you talking about?” he asked blankly.

I looked blank. “Surely you know!” “No, I don’t.

Explain.”

ŤPappY. ť

His jaw dropped. “Pappy?”

“Yes, of course, you drongo, Pappy!”

“Why should Pappy turn to me?” he asked, frowning. “Oh, really! You may think you hide your feelings successfully, Toby, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that you love Pappy.”

“Naturally I love Pappy,” he said, “but I’m not in love with her-you’ve got to be joking, Harriet.”

“But you must be in love with her!” I said, confused. His eyes were turning red. “That’s bullshit.”

“Oh, come on, Toby! I’ve seen the pain in your eyes, you don’t fool me for a minute,” I floundered.

“You know, Miss Purcell,” he said, getting up quickly, “you may fancy that you’re a woman of the world these days, but in actual fact you’re blind, stupid, illogical and self-obsessed!”

With that parting shot, he stalked out, leaving me sitting with Marceline in my lap wondering what had hit me.

Something is happening to The House, I can feel it, and Toby is just one more symptom. I can’t get any sense out of Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz about either The House or herself, and since his return, Harold is right back in her good books. I suppose he never even knew how she laughed at him, he was in so much pain. When Sydney Hospital referred him to a psychiatrist, he took such umbrage that he signed himself out, came home instead. Oh, Duncan, I miss you!

I went home to Bronte, though I declined the lounge room couch. I’m working tomorrow, Boxing Day, because there are all sorts of sporting fixtures scheduled for the various grounds to the east of Queens, so we’ll have traffic accidents by the score and some victims of drunken brawls. I’m also on duty on New Year’s Day, though Ann Smith volunteered to take New Year’s Eve because her fiance is working Cas that night. New Year’s Eve is a shambles in every hospital Cas, though it’s worst at Vinnie’s because half of Sydney pays its annual visit to the Cross to get drunk, strew the streets with litter and vomit, keep Norm, Merv, Bumper Farrell and the rest of the Cross coppers frantically busy.

I gave Willie a bottle of threestar, Granny a stunning Spanish shawl, Gavin and Peter a macro lens for their Zeiss camera, Dad a box of Cuban cigars, and Mum some really pretty underwear (sexy but respectable). The family clubbed in and gave me a voucher to buy heaps of LP records at Nicholson’s. Greatly appreciated.

Wednesday, December 28th, 1960 Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz grabbed me on the way in this afternoon and invited me up for a Kraft cheese spread glass of brandy. Which irritated me.

“Why are you still using these?” I demanded. “I gave you seven beautiful cut glass tumblers for Christmas!” The X-ray vision isn’t so focused at the moment, she has more of a faraway look, so my question didn’t provoke a blaze from her inner lighthouse. “Oh, I couldn’t use ‘em!” she exclaimed. “I’m savin’ ‘em for best, princess.”

“Saving them for best? But I didn’t give them to you to put away!” I said despairingly.

“If I used ‘em, I might break one.”

“But that doesn’t matter, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz! If one breaks, I’ll replace it.”

“Can’t replace anything what’s broke,” she said. “The aura’s on the originals, princess, them’s the seven-good thinkin’, to make it seven, not six-what you touched and wrapped up so grouse.”

“I’d touch and wrap up the replacement nicely, too,” I said.

“Ain’t the same. Nope, I’m savin’ ‘em for best.”

I gave up, told her instead about my curious exchange with Toby. “I could have sworn he was in love with Pappy! “

“Nah, never has been. She brought ‘im home near five years ago for a quick nooky, then realised I was lookin’ for ‘im-saw ‘im in the cards. The King of Swords. Gotta have a King of Swords in The House, princess, but they’re a lot harder to find than the Queens. Men’re poor fish, ain’t often strong the way women are. But Toby is. Good bloke, Toby,” she said, nodding.

“I am aware of that!” I snapped.

“That youse are, princess, but not aware enough.” “Not aware enough?” I asked.

But she changed the subject, informed me that every New Year’s Eve she has a party. Quote, a rip-snorter of a bash. It’s become a Cross tradition, and everybody who is anybody at the Cross will be there for at least a part of the festivities. Even Norm, Merv, Madame Fugue, Madame Toccata, Chastity Wiggins and a few others of the “permanent” girls snatch the time to attend Mrs.

Delvecchio Schwartz’s New Year’s Eve party. I said I’d be there, but that as I have to work on New Year’s Day, I wouldn’t be able to get into the real swing of things.

“There ain’t no work for you on New Year’s Day,” she said, “I can tell youse that for sure.”

“It’s in the cards,” I said in a long-suffering voice. “Got it in one, princess!”

Turns out she wants culinary help, of course. The blokes are instructed to supply the booze, the girls in The House (plus Klaus) provide the food. Mrs.

Delvecchio Schwartz herself roasts a turkey-it’ll be dry and rubbery, I thought with a shudder. Klaus is down for roast suckling pig, Jim and Bob are doing the salads, weeny saveloys and weeny sausage rolls, Pappy has to come up with spring rolls and prawn toasts, and I am down for the desserts, all suitable to eat with the fingers. Eclairs, fairy cakes, lamingtons and Neenish tarts are my orders.

“Better add some of them grouse Anzac bikkies you make,” the old horror added. “I ain’t a great one for

puddins, but I do like to dip a good crunchy bikky in me cuppa tea.”

I laughed. “Go on, you fraud! Since when have you drunk tea?”

“Two cups of it every New Year’s Eve,” she said solemnly.

“How’s Harold?” I asked.

“Harold’s Harold,” she said, pulling a face. “Lucky thing is that the job he’s gotta do for The House is comin’ up fast, so the cards inform me. The minute it’s done, out he goes.”

“No point in telling you that we’re losing Pappy as well as Toby,” I said, and sighed. “The House is falling apart.” On came the searchlight in her eyes. “Never say that, Harriet Purcell!” she said sternly. “The House is eternal.” Flo came in, yawning and rubbing her eyes, saw me and landed in my lap in one bound. “I’ve never seen her sleepy before,” I said.

“She sleeps.”

“Nor have I ever heard her talk.” “She talks.”

So I wandered off downstairs, Flo with her hand in mine, to spend an evening only bearable because Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz had let me have my angel puss.

When I brought her back shortly before nine o’clock (Flo doesn’t keep ordinary children’s hours, she seems to be up until her mother goes to bed-what would my own mother say about that?), Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz was sitting in the darkness of her room, not out on the balcony as is her habit in summer. The Glass was on the table before her, and it seemed to gather in every last particle of light from the street lamp outside, the bulb in the hall, an occasional headlight as some chauffeured Rolls delivered a client to 17b or 17d.

The moment Flo saw her mother, she stopped absolutely still, the pressure of her hand in mine a silent command not to move. So we stood there in the gloom for what seemed like half an hour while that massive shape sat utterly still, its shadowy face a foot from the Glass.

Finally, with a sigh, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz leaned back in her chair, wiped her face with a tired hand. I led Flo forward softly until we reached the table.

“Ta for minding her, princess. I needed to scry.” “Would you like me to switch the light on?” “Ta. Then come back here for a minute.”

When I returned, Flo was sitting on her lap, looking sadly at the buttoned dress.

“It’s a pity you weaned her,” I found myself saying. “Had to,” she answered curtly. Then she reached out to take both my hands and put them on the Glass, while Flo stared at them raptly, then transferred her gaze to my face in-wonder?

I don’t know. But I stood there cupping the Glass, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. The surface is cool and sleek, that’s all. “Remember,” Mrs.

Delvecchio Schwartz said, “remember that the fate of The House is in the Glass.” She removed my hands and put them together, palm against palm, fingers conjoined, the way angels’ hands are in paintings. “It’s in the Glass.”

Those bloody cards again! I’m not working New Year’s Day after all. Dr. Alan Smith is rostered for duty in Cas all day, so Ann wants to work. I’m not surprised. If he does a double shift in Cas, he’ll be buggered, he’ll need the haven Cas X-ray will be with Ann staffing it. Our junior’s on leave, so we have a temp in her place, a good girl. I wouldn’t have consented if Ann wasn’t up to the work, but she is, and I’ve done the pair a kindness, as they will be off duty together for two days straight after.

Sunday,

January 1st, 1961 (New Year’s Day)

1961 is almost twenty-four hours old, darkness has fallen. I have been entering this for a year now, and even though I’m so stonkered I can hardly move, I must get everything that’s happened today down in my book before the emotions fade. I have found that my exercise book is a sort of catharsis, in that writing doesn’t go round and round the way thinking about events does.

The New Year’s Eve party went off like the hydrogen bomb-a real ripperace shindig, as Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz described it, one arm around Merv, her face beet-red. Though she wasn’t drunk, she truly wasn’t. Just a little the worse for wear, that’s all. Terribly happy, I remember thinking.