Bittersweet (13 page)

“Do I?” Edda stared at her half sister, frowning. Tufts was extremely pretty too, if one saw her without Kitty there to eclipse her. The same sweet face, straight nose, enormous eyes, domed forehead. Her colouring was more uniform, less striking than Kitty’s, and her dimples rarely showed, but minus Kitty she was a stunning girl. Why does the world never see it?

“Well, you can’t honestly mean Grace and Kitty are stupid or incapable,” Tufts said, puzzled, “because they’re not. They just burn for different things than you and I do.”

“Things like love,” said Edda, giving “love” an unpalatable inflection. “
Love!
Knuckling under to some man, is what it is.”

“I can understand why you dismiss it as that, Eds, but if nursing has taught you anything, it is surely that women and men are as differently constructed mentally as they are physically. I grow very tired of egalitarian generalisations — all men are not equal, nor are all women. Individualism should be prized.”

“Bravo, Tufts!” Edda cried, laughing. “Getting back to love, I’d sooner die than become a slave to it.”

“Harken back to your experiences nursing, please! Habit is what enslaves, Edda, and that can include love after it becomes
a habit.” Tufts poured boiling water into the teapot. “Habits can be almost impossible to break.”

“Oh, Tufts, you’re much wiser than I am! Dr. Finucan talks about hormones. Maybe you and I have a different concentration of them from Grace and Kitty? Or our brains developed in some different way? And what’s a habit, in a brain?”

Edda poured milk, Tufts stirred the teapot to speed up the infusion process. Then, cups brimming with steaming tea, they sat to enjoy this panacea for all woes.

“What brought this on?” Tufts asked, sipping.

“I took Jack Thurlow to see Grace today — what an insane idea! He made his fishing for an introduction sound like sheer curiosity, so I thought once he’d met her, he’d forget her.” Edda gave a wry laugh. “Wrong! Now instead of meeting Jack for a lovely ride on my days off, I’m doomed to go with him to Grace’s house and act as an unpaid gardener and skivvy.”

“That’s not why you’re so angry, Edda.”

“Have you seen Grace’s house?”

“Yes. Very tasteful. It surprised me.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that she must have spent every penny Bear has in the bank as well as her own five hundred? Maude bamboozled her into furnishing her house in a style she plain can’t afford!”

“I never thought … My mother is an awful woman,” Tufts said quietly, “we both know that. What was she out to do?”

“Get Grace into trouble with Bear, I imagine. Whenever she splurges on furniture for the Rectory, our gentle father grows less gentle, and makes it impossible for her to keep the item — she’s
obliged to return it. She assumed that Bear, a lower class than Father, would make Grace’s life very unhappy if she overspent.” Edda shrugged. “Well, Maude miscalculated. Bear would forgive Grace anything.”

“And thank God for it!” said Tufts roundly. “Her influence on Kitty has waned, of course, so she’s thirsting for revenge as well as other avenues of mischief-making. Grace and Bear is just a practice run, I think. Beware, Edda, you’re Mama’s main target, I’m convinced of it.”

“I’m inclined to agree, sweetheart, except that I’ve thrown off Maude’s authority over my life, such as it was. How can she hurt me, Tufts?”

“Once Grace tells her about Jack Thurlow, through him, is my guess. She’ll try to smear you.”

Edda laughed. “Well, if they start talking about me and Jack, they’ll stop gossiping about you and the doctors.”

Poor Edda! Tufts thought as she made her way down the ramp to Pathology, one of the larger shedlike buildings because it also housed the library and the new X-ray facility, a huge piece of equipment so heavy that it had had to be installed on specially strong foundations. As the more ordinary half of her set of twins, Heather/Tufts had escaped much that Kitty had suffered, and the same could be said for Grace in relation to Edda, who killed snakes with a chair leg and dared anything as well as being both glamourous and alluring. Yet it was Grace had found love, Tufts reflected: genuine love, the kind that lasted, the kind that
forgave all sins, contained no condemnation. No matter how many mistakes poor, silly Grace made, Bear would be there to pick up the pieces. Now, it seemed, when Bear wasn’t there to pick up the pieces, other men would volunteer, for the purest of reasons. Hooked on Edda’s line Jack Thurlow might be, but his alacrity in going to Grace’s rescue told Tufts that he wished Edda had need of him, wished Edda were just a little helpless.

Of course Edda didn’t see that; she didn’t want to see it. Edda prized her independence, her ability to take care of herself. Which ought not to make her less deserving of love, yet did. Some women were far more difficult to love. Poor Edda!

Only the night lights were on as Tufts let herself in to walk down the long internal hallway with doors opening off it to left and to right; all the way to the far end, where the hall finished at a red-painted door leading to Dr. Liam Finucan’s lair, his office. It too was dark; the pathologist had gone home for the night, the experiments were all hers. Well, not actually experiments … Tissue culture dishes, a lump of mammary tissue embedded in paraffin for sectioning, various histological stains to prepare … The routine stuff like urinalysis had been done by Liam’s one technician; that he managed to exist without a second technician was due to her, Tufts Scobie, who loved the exactitude of this kind of work and did it far better than the young man officially employed for the purpose.

Without turning on the lights she let herself through a side door in the office and emerged into the laboratory, where she threw some switches and blazed the room into glaring yellow relief. They had an automatic microtome blade sharpener, very
precious, and the blade on it was ready for use; Tufts went about the task of fixing the chunk of paraffin in place on the microtome base, prepared her stains, and settled to slicing, sliding and mounting the transparent sections of what had once been a woman’s breast, so absorbed that she neither saw nor heard anything in her vicinity.

“Thanks for that, Heather,” said Dr. Finucan’s voice.

She jumped, then beamed at him. “They’ll be ready on time.”

“I’d be willing to bet it’s a carcinoma,” he said.

“Oh, poor woman! She can’t be much past thirty, her children aren’t at school yet.”

Tufts slid off the tall stool and went back to the office, there to wait until the pathologist locked up the lab.

Like his surgeon confreres, Liam Finucan was a genuine asset to Corunda Base; like them, he could easily have carved a Sydney or Melbourne career with great success. However, his wife was a Corunda girl, and he had loved the place at first sight: its Old Country feel, the green of its grass, its rich European shrubs and flowers. Born and bred in Ulster of Protestant stock, he had taken medical degrees in London sufficiently good to earn him a post as a pathologist anywhere. He had worked with Sir Bernard Spilsbury! For someone who’d grown up in the religious wars of Ulster, Corunda was paradise.

It was probably the only good turn Eris had ever done him, to push Liam Finucan into choosing Corunda, but, he remembered, she’d been young and homesick, poor Eris. A beautiful girl, a beautiful woman, Eris had always been discontented. His area of
specialisation did not demand long hours away or great inroads on his personal time; in a way, he wished it had, for if it had, he could have remained blind to Eris’s dabblings in men. And the whole of Corunda knew.

Mostly he had coped by ignoring her affairs, only discussing them whenever she decided it was time to ask for a divorce. His refusals were not on account of religion, but grounded in compassion. If such were her nature, let Eris dabble in men, but it was not in her nature to suffer public humiliation, no matter how she begged for divorce. The scandal would wreck her. There was, besides, another aspect to Eris: the man she was wildly in love with this year would be dust and ashes the next. If he, Liam, deserted her too, she would perish in a world she was not equipped to inhabit. If she had had children, things would have been different, but she was barren; the number of men and her contraceptive ignorance proved it to a pathologist’s mind. Her philandering, thought Liam, was actually a desperate quest in search of a child.

At the moment things were worse than they had ever been. Corunda was not a bottomless pit of men, and Eris had run through those she fancied. A month ago she had secretly packed her bags and gone to Sydney, too rapidly for Liam to follow her. A technical desertion that gave him inarguable grounds for divorce. His private detective located her living with a man who ran a dairy farm at Liverpool, and Liam finally gave up the struggle.

“I saw Don Treadby today,” he said to Tufts.

“Shall I make us a cup of tea?”

“What liquor is to most houses, strong tea is to a house of healing,” he said with one of his rare smiles.

“It’s the caffeine and other whatsits in tea, especially as strong as we drink it. Sit down, close your eyes and count. I’ll be back in one shake of a dead lamb’s tail.”

“An apt metaphor for Corunda,” he called after her.

“Better alive than dead,” floated her voice.

She was back quickly, bearing the tea tray.

“What did Don Treadby have to say?” she asked, pouring.

“That it’s high time I bit the bullet and divorced Eris.”

“Well, unless you do the divorcing, it’s terribly sticky. You’re the injured party. Seems odd to me,” said Tufts, blowing on her tea to cool it, “that either marital partner can’t sue.”

Ordinarily fairly straight, his black brows flew into peaks. “Heather! You’d allow an
adulteress
to sue for divorce?”

“What a lot of tosh men do talk!” Tufts said crossly. “You say ‘adulteress’ as if adultery were on a par with murder — for a woman! I see it as an indication that the marital partner just turned out to be a terrible disappointment. In my opinion, your wife is sick. And if you were the adulterer, as a man the crime would be minor, have extenuating circumstances.” She leaned into him, eyes gone more golden in the dim light, and gleaming wickedly. “I mean, here you are, well after the dinner hour, closeted alone in your office with a twenty-one-year-old nurse! What do you think the gossip mills of Corunda would make of that?”

He laughed, teeth surprisingly white because his skin was darkish. “Cast not pearls before swine,” he said.

“Shouldn’t they be rubies?”

“And silk purses, not to say sow’s ears?”

They laughed together, minds attuned.

“You think I should divorce Eris, Heather, don’t you?”

“Yes, Liam, I do. You can afford to make her an allowance of some kind — perhaps not as much as she’d like, but under the law you don’t have to give her anything, do you, since she’s the guilty one? It’s still a man’s world.”

“But
you
are my friend?” he asked, suddenly serious.

“Yes, you fool of a man! It’s why we call each other by our Christian names — frowned on, except between good friends.”

The door opened and Matron strode in; both heads turned to gaze at her in, Matron saw at once, complete innocence.

“Working late, Dr. Finucan?”

“Actually, Matron, no. I did come to do some late work, only to find that Nurse Scobie had already done it.”

“Scobie is an excellent nurse as well as a superb path technician, Dr. Finucan, but she is on duty at six tomorrow morning in Women’s. I suggest you get some sleep, nurse, so I’ll bid you goodnight.”

Tufts rose at once. “Yes, Matron. Goodnight, sir.”

Nothing else was said until after Tufts was gone, then Liam Finucan spoke. “That was unkind, Gertie,” he said.

“Sometimes one has to be cruel to be kind, as well you know, Liam. Don Treadby says you came to see him this morning.”

“Jesus, is nothing sacred?”

“In Corunda? Absolutely nothing.” Matron fished in her immaculately starched pocket and produced cigarettes and lighter, selected a cork-tip and proceeded to kindle it. “Given
this new situation, Liam, you can’t afford to entertain trainee nurses in your office at all hours. If Eris’s solicitor got a whiff of it, you’d be in the soup — and so would Nurse Scobie.”

“I never thought,” he said dully.

She eyed him with some sympathy. “Yes, well, men tend not to think in certain circumstances, I find. Certainly I refuse to let your thoughtlessness ruin a wonderful nurse’s chances of a brilliant career. In future, Liam, you are never to be seen alone with Nurse Scobie, or have her do special work for you.”

“I never thought,” he repeated.

“Least said, soonest mended, old friend. Get your divorce from Eris, that’s first and foremost. You ought to have done it years ago, when you were a younger man and might have been an eligible mate for someone like Heather Scobie-Latimer. As it is, you’re forty-three years old and a bit frayed around the edges.” She stubbed out her cigarette and rose. “I may rely on your good sense, Liam?”

“Of course.”

After she had closed the door behind her, an image of Tufts appeared before Liam Finucan’s eyes; he closed them on the first real pain he had felt in many, many years. “God rot you, Gertie Newdigate!” he said aloud. “You’ve ruined something before it occurred to me to dream of it.”

Forty-three and a bit frayed around the edges — not the kind of lover for bewitching little Heather Scobie, so much was definitely sure.

S
everal weeks of working in Grace’s garden had reconciled Edda to the change in her relationship with Jack Thurlow, but not to the missed horse rides. In most ways the gardening was too similar to the physical tolls of nursing either to relax or refresh; the spine took the brunt, and all the crouching down exacerbated it. Nor, as digging hundreds of holes for daffodil bulbs proved, could gardening offer delight to the soul — no vista to thrill the eyes, no freedom for the soul. It was, besides, Grace’s garden, over which, swollen to toad proportions, she presided like, as Edda put it to herself, Lady Muck of Dunghill Hall.

Jack entered into the spirit of his good deed with energy and enthusiasm, apparently oblivious to Edda’s feelings or needs. A mere two visits saw Grace expecting them every time Edda had days off; worse, Jack assumed Grace was their only activity. So it was goodbye to Fatima, her friendship with Jack, those wonderful gallops, and a large measure of her privacy. It turned out too that Grace was a gossip and Jack enjoyed hearing it — Peace! cried Edda silently. Give me a little peace!

On the rare occasions when Bear was home, the atmosphere was light-hearted; Jack and Bear yarned together in that masculine world men seemed to prize so much — machines malfunctioning, a crop not prospering, finding decent work dogs, the unfairness of some judges at the stock shows — Corunda land subjects that Bear, with his extensive travels, was eminently qualified to discuss.

In fact, Bear was about as happy as a recently married man could be, and awaited the birth of his first child with a mixture of awe and a delightful dread.

“I honestly don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl,” he told Jack and the sisters-in-law over dinner, “because we’re going to have some of both. If my preferences are for a boy first, it’s to help Grace with the heavy work around the place.”

“They have to grow a little first,” said Kitty, who liked Bear very much.

“Oh, they do
that
overnight! I was chopping kindling and lighting the stove for my mum when I wasn’t much more than one year old,” Bear said cheerfully.

“Yes, but you won’t subject your children to the same kind of tyranny as your father did you,” said Tufts.

“I should hope not! That’s why I signed the Pledge early on — the drink really is a demon. But still, it doesn’t hurt children in a big family to help pitch in with the work. I reckon it’s better for them than too much pampering.”

“That,” said Grace, rising clumsily, “they won’t get, Bear my love. I’m too hopeless as a housekeeper.”

Edda looked up swiftly, but Grace had turned, removing her face from Edda’s probing glance. Oh, Grace, what are you doing now? She got to her feet and followed Grace to the kitchen.

“Why are you a hopeless housekeeper, Grace?”

“My word, Edda, you do pick up on every little thing!” Grace said defensively. “It’s nothing — just that I saw some gorgeous material for the lounge room curtains, and rather overspent my housekeeping allowance. Bear is so generous too.”

Horrified to hear herself yet unable to restrain herself, Edda imitated Maude Latimer and ground her teeth. “Oh, Grace! You can’t do that! Especially with a child due shortly, surely you can see that? Your house is finished, inside it’s far too nice for the neighbourhood, and there was nothing wrong with the old lounge room curtains. If your spending gets Bear into debt, he’ll have to put one of those awful little notices in the
Post
that Mr. Björn Olsen will no longer be responsible for his wife’s debts. Because if you keep spending money you don’t have, you leave Bear with only two alternatives — disavowing your debts or being declared bankrupt. And if Bear were declared bankrupt, every scrap of your precious furniture would go on the auction block, together with this house. Don’t you remember what Mrs. Geordie Menzies did to Geordie last year?”

The tears were rolling down Grace’s face. “I can’t see how it matters this once,” she said, digging for her handkerchief and mopping her eyes. “The lounge room
needed
new curtains!”

“Grace, you’re the one needs to change,” said Edda in a hard voice. “No more spending — and no running to Bear about this conversation of ours either. Cut your coat to suit your
cloth, I keep telling you.” A thought occurred. “Have you been entertaining Maude?”

“Sometimes,” Grace whispered.

“Then don’t. Refer her to me, I’ll put a flea in her ear!”

I must, thought Edda as she left in Jack’s car with Tufts and Kitty, scotch this relationship between my gullible sister and our frightful stepmother. She’s trying to break Grace and Bear up by pushing Grace into profligate spending.

Of course Jack had noticed something amiss; curious, that he, no blood relation, is the one who sees clearly … After Kitty and Tufts scrambled out of the back seat, he made no attempt to evict Edda. “Go on in, girls,” he said to them, “while I take Edda down to the river for a bit of a cuddle.”

“A cuddle!” she said in disgust, as they drove to the river and parked. “Still, it did the trick. How did I know things would change if I introduced you to Grace?”

“Not right now, Edda. Look at the night, you Philistine!”

And he had wanted to share it, wanted
her
to share it with him. Edda, you
are
a fool! The smell and sound as well as the sight of summer washed over her as she went and sat with Jack on a log, looking. The night was stunning, the light of the stars bled out of the sky by an immense round silver moon that poured invisible radiance across the rolling hills and struck the entire world to a glowing indigo.

“Feel better now you’ve seen this?” he asked, making a cigarette.

“Yes, and I thank you. You’re a funny blighter, Jack, I never know what makes you tick. But I did think your meeting Grace would change things, and I was right,” she said, wondering
why cigarettes had come to bore her. “Grace is such a helpless sort, though I didn’t realise until she married Bear that in our Rectory days I used to manipulate her like a puppeteer. But at least then she wasn’t in trouble, now she’s never out of it. You’re a part of keeping Grace on the rails, too. She used to spend her free time in the railway shunting yards. She met Bear there, they fell in love over steam locomotives. Silly, isn’t it? Anyway, Grace runs on rails. She can’t turn herself around unaided. And for reasons I can’t fathom, our stepmother is busy inserting herself into Grace’s life with disastrous effect.”

“What disastrous effect?” he asked, framing the moon in a diaphanous smoke ring.

“Oh, do stop doing that!” Edda snapped. “The last thing a perfect world needs is a man-made smoke ring! Have you no real appreciation for beauty?”

The smoke ring had been his overture to taking her in his arms and kissing her out of this obsession with Grace, but her reaction stopped him cold, desire shrivelled to nothing. Medusa the Gorgon snake lady, that was what they called her, and rightly so. Because Jack listened to gossip he heard all the tales of men patients falling in love with Kitty or Tufts, whereas they never fell in love with Edda. No one nursed better, could make a man feel more comfortable and special, yet she couldn’t inspire love of the man–woman sort. His own feelings for her were intensely physical as well as more cerebral, but he couldn’t even begin to convince himself that she cherished womanly feelings for him. Edda was like a glorious statue on a pedestal, and he suspected that she preferred her life that way.

“What disastrous effect?” he repeated.

“She has no money sense, she gets herself into debt.”

“Oh, I see. And your stepmother?”

“Is encouraging her tendencies. I have to stop it!”

They walked back to the car. “No doubt you will, Edda.”

She said nothing until the side gate of the hospital loomed, then gabbled. “Don’t play the gentleman, Jack, I can get out by myself. Are you going back to Grace’s tomorrow?”

“I’d planned to, since Bear is still in town. He and I are going to tackle that tree.”

She slid out of the car. “Good luck with it. I won’t be there, I’ve had enough of Grace for the time being, and Fatima is getting very fat from lack of exercise in Daddy’s stables. It’s back to the rides for me, they promote my health. Good night.”

And she was gone.

For a long five minutes he waited at the kerb, sure that she would change her mind, return to say she’d see him at Grace’s. But it was Liam Finucan leaned into the car.

“Could you drop me home, Jack?”

“Hop in. Now you’ve filed for divorce, what happens to the house? It’s too big anyway.”

“I’m selling it. There’s a nice wee house in the hospital grounds will do me. I’ll long-term lease it and do it up.”

“Sensible. Besides, I know you,” Jack said, smiling. “You want a little money to give Eris an allowance.”

The long face looked wry. “Och, poor soul! She can’t help her nature, Jack, and I’ve enough for my needs.”

“She put the hard word on me once, Liam. I said no.”

“She put the hard word on everyone with a penis, Jack.”

“And you’re well out of it.”

The one who suffered most from Dr. Finucan’s divorce was Tufts, who had no idea what had passed between Matron and Liam after she had been dismissed on that memorable night. When, on her next period in the pathology lab, she turned up eager to learn a new analytical technique he had promised to teach her, she found him seated behind his desk, and had to stand before him.
Carpeted?

No, not that. He wasn’t looking well, which worried her. The floppy hair hadn’t seen a brush and was at least partially blinding him, the gunmetal eyes were shadowed, and the sag of his cheeks cried fatigue. What on earth was the matter? Where was the crease that always lurked in the right corner of his mouth, made it so good humoured? Not there today. Nor was a certain softness Tufts had grown used to in his smile. Today, no smile.

“Sit down, Nurse Scobie,” he said, sounding wooden.

Puzzled, she sat, hands folded in her lap, eyes on him.

“This is very awkward,” he said after a pause, “and most likely not what Matron wants me to do, but I fail to see how I can cut off private tuition to a nurse as bright and eager to learn as you without an adequate explanation. Please believe that Matron is acting with your best interests at heart.”

The deep, Ulster-inflected voice ran down, though his eyes never left hers; he swallowed, collected himself, ploughed on. “I’ve told you that I am suing my wife for divorce on the
grounds of her constant adultery. This means I am the wronged party and will receive favourable treatment in court. However, my wife’s solicitors will try their hardest to drag me down to her level. If she can prove adultery against me, then her advantages in court will be the same as mine. Since I have never committed adultery, it behooves me to — er — keep my nose clean, Nurse.”

He ran down again, staring at Tufts painfully.

I must help him, thought Tufts. Otherwise he’ll pass out.

“You mean, Dr. Finucan, that you and I must never be alone together in circumstances that might make it possible for Mrs. Finucan to allege misconduct on our parts?” Tufts asked, voice steady and detached.

“That is Matron’s contention.”

“I agree with Matron.” Tufts began to get up from the chair. “From now on we must never be alone together, or call each other by our Christian names.” Her face became stern. “From now on I suggest that young Bill participate in your teaching sessions alongside me. You’ve fought against that because he’s not as quick on the uptake as I am, but perhaps that’s cruel to Bill, given his position on the staff. Whatever instruction you give me must be given to others at the same session.”

His eyes flared, looked suddenly fierce. “I am sorry, my dear — very sorry.”

“Pooh, nonsense!” she said lightly. “How long will it be?”

“Two years, apparently. The divorce courts are heavily over-subscribed, I have to wait my turn.”

“Oh, that is too bad! I had hoped we might return to normal before I qualify, but we won’t,” Tufts said sadly.

“I am afraid not, no.”

“May I go now, sir?”

“Yes, of course. I’ll block out a new roster for you and Bill, and one for the nurses.”

That awful woman! thought Tufts, marching down the ramp with an unapproachable look on her face. Playing up on such a decent chap, then destroying what little bit of innocent pleasure he has. For he
liked
our sessions together, I know he did!

An eternity of formal correctness is looming, and I am wild with rage at the very idea of it. No more cups of tea in the middle of the night, no more wordlessly understanding glances. I am being sent into an exile of the spirit. Oh, I know why Matron stepped in, and I’m glad she did. Otherwise Liam would be ruined, I would be ruined, and we’d both have to go. Liam and I have harmed no one, but now we are cut apart as finally as a butcher halves a hunk of meat. But there is one thing I am going to do, out in the open of his office or his lab — brush Liam’s hair. That Mason Pearson hairbrush cost me money, and I bought it to cure Liam’s blinding flop of hair. It will — if the brushing is twice daily and ruthlessly hard on his scalp. I have to bully those follicles into growing backward, not forward. And divorce or no divorce, I am going to do it!

Edda hadn’t gone to Maude about her encouraging Grace to spend money she didn’t have; she went to her father, a shrewder move.

After his daughters went nursing, the Reverend Thomas Latimer had gradually fallen upon more emancipated times.
Alone in the big Rectory with Maude after she had returned from her visit to the Blue Mountains, he began to sever those of his ties to her that he had never much liked, from her dominance over his daughters to his choice of hymns and sermons. And though he wasn’t wealthy, from his Treadby mother he had inherited sufficient to live on very comfortably. By nature he was a careful manager of money; Maude, for example, had only limited access to it. While he loved this second wife well enough, he was not blind to her faults. Maude’s interference in Grace’s financial affairs he interpreted, quite correctly, as a devious way of achieving what she had wanted for herself but was denied the funds to do so. Every time she went to Grace’s house she gazed around and congratulated herself on her power to tamper with those she disliked, even severely damage them.