Bittersweet (35 page)

“That was the best coffee I’ve ever had,” she said then.

“Not exactly a tall order to fill,” said he, smiling. “I happen to like good coffee.”

A silence fell then, so comfortable and familiar that Edda ended in thinking she had known him for all eternity; why that was, she hadn’t the remotest idea. Every scrap of her understood why Charlie had escaped this man’s company the minute that manners said he could leave; to Charlie, this relatively young knight was a bigot with no time for the working man. Edda translated this as envy for Sir Rawson’s height and properly Australian-type aristocracy. Arch-conservatism
did
suggest a bigot, but Edda was not convinced Rawson was one. Simple answers couldn’t solve the riddle of such a complex man, of that she was sure.

The silence was succeeded by talk about many things, none of them political, some of them pertaining to philosophies, some to sex. Certainly he was starved for a candid friendship with a woman he could trust implicitly, and clearly until now that had
been denied him. In her, Edda, he was beginning to feel a little of that implicit trust; she resolved always to say what she felt.

“What prompted you to marry?” she asked.

“Panic, combined with family expectations,” he said, and for a moment panic flared in his eyes. His mouth closed, stoppered.

“No, tell me,” she said strongly.

An apologetic smile, and he resumed. “I was psychically at my most confused, and I’d known Anne since early childhood — we were neighbours. Whatever I did, wherever I went, Anne was somewhere fairly close. Our schools were partnered in all social events, and we went up to university together. I did Law, she did Arts, then a secretarial course. We went to the same law firm, I as a junior at the bar, she as private secretary to one of the senior partners. Then she proposed marriage to me, I think because she was tired of waiting for me to do it. Our families were delighted. In fact,
I
was the only fly in the ointment! Also, I realised that if I wanted to keep my secret, I would have to marry. So we married. We were both twenty-three.”

“And of course it was a disaster,” Edda said.

“Frightful! I couldn’t manage to make love to her, and the only logical reason I could find was to keep insisting I felt too much her brother to be a husband. It dragged on for two years. Then she met someone else, and I gave her an uncontested divorce.”

“I am so sorry!”

“Don’t be. I kept my secret, even from Anne.”

“Have you a lover?”

This time his smile was rueful. “I dare not, Edda.”

“I refuse to believe you avail yourself of rent boys.”

“The rent boy … Why not be done with it and call him a prostitute? Have you ever looked into a rent boy’s eyes? Dead — so
dead
! One plumbs a pit, and wonders how he ever got started … No, not for me. I go abroad for a month, usually winter and summer.”

“I wish you had room in your life for a best friend,” she said.

The intensely blue eyes grew brilliant. “Would you work here in Melbourne to be my best friend?”

“In an instant, though I know nothing about the law, which I suppose means I can’t be a satisfactory best friend.”

That made him laugh. “My dear, the last thing one wants in a best friend is a mind tunnelled by the law.” He reached out to take her hands in his, holding her gaze with what she fancied was a kind of love. “For thirty years I’ve led a very lonely life, Sister Edda Latimer, but now I think I’ve finally found a friend with whom I can share
all
my secrets. A natural streak of paranoia has protected me from close friendships, but now — how odd! I don’t feel it.”

“I’ll start making enquiries at the bigger hospitals tomorrow,” Edda said, wanting to weep, knowing she didn’t dare.

“No, not yet!” he said sharply. “Do you believe that I have the influence to postpone the awarding of any hospital job for — say, another two or three weeks?”

Bewildered, she frowned. “Yes, it’s Melbourne. You have the influence,” she said.

“Then grant me two weeks of your time, starting early on Monday morning. Grant it to me not knowing what I want you
for, just believe that at the end of it, the hospital job will be waiting for you,” Rawson said.

“You may have your time,” Edda said gravely.

He gasped, thumped his fists on his beautifully tailored knees, and squeezed her hands before releasing them. “Oh, well done! The mystery must remain, but I’ll explain enough for you to make plans. One floor down I own a guest flat. It’s much smaller than this one, but quite spacious for someone not making a home there. You will move into it tomorrow afternoon, and on Monday you will commence two weeks of living in it doing exactly as I bid you. Your sentence will be up on Sunday evening two weeks from tomorrow.”

“Well, stone the crows!” she said, feeling some sort of exclamation was called for. “Two weeks of mystery labour for Sir Rawson Schiller coming up. I wonder what it can be?”

“Time will tell,” he said, quietly chuckling. “I will only say that I have been visited by an inspiration. We have talked of shoes, ships, sealing wax, medicine, hospitals, courts, music, books and God knows what tonight, and out of the jumble has come a wonderful, beautiful idea. I do
not
believe that all men were created equal, otherwise why are there so many idiots around? But I do firmly believe that the world contains as many intelligent women as it does intelligent men.”

“What do I say to Charles Burdum?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Anything you like that sits well with you. I presume he knows you’re applying for a position in Melbourne?”

“As a matter of fact, he doesn’t. I’ve been here attending a seminar, and listening to the chatter over teacups inspired me
with the Melbourne idea. I’ll tell him something to make him hope.”

“Hope? Hope what?”

“That his most disliked, uncomfortable sister-in-law will decide to live four hundred miles away in Melbourne. That would mean he stands a better chance of discouraging his wife from seeking the company of her sisters,” she said with a snap.

“Oh, I see. A possessive husband.”

“Very much so. And I’m the one who stirs the pot.”

“Sometimes it can be more effective to stir the pot from a long distance,” he said slyly.

She laughed. “Occasionally I see a glimmer as to why you’ve won so many court cases. Tell me why you need me for two weeks!”

“No, and picking away at me won’t work either.” He changed the subject. “Interesting, that Burdum and I so detested each other. Like pouring water on phosphorus. However, our feelings won’t prevent our collaborating in the federal parliament. He’s bound to be a Nationalist Party man.”

Edda’s brows rose. “Charlie, a Tory? Not in a fit! I don’t say he’ll join the Labor Party, but he’ll side with them on lots of issues. To a socialist he may be on the right, but to a conservative he’s definitely on the left.”

Schiller looked astonished, then huffed in exasperation. “My instincts were correct, then. He’s one of those wretched fellows who thirst to tamper with the status quo. He probably thinks Jack Lang’s fiscal policy is the answer.”

“Lots of people from all walks admire Jack Lang,” she said.

“Then more fool they! When one borrows money, one is honour-bound to repay the loan at whatever interest rate was agreed upon.”

“I don’t know enough to quarrel with you, Rawson,” she said, “so let’s agree to differ. Despite my complaints about Charlie, I owe him loyalty and support for reasons that have nothing to do with you, or Melbourne, or politics. It’s all to do with the love sisters have for each other — do you have sisters?”

“No. I have an older and a younger brother.”

She had to suppress a yawn. “Oh, I’m sleepy! May I go back to my hotel now, please?”

“If you tell me what you like about Charles Burdum.”

“That’s easy! His passion for people as thinking human beings rather than as mere ciphers on pieces of paper,” she said instantly. “He turned our district hospital from pathetic to the best in the state, not by massive retrenchment and huge upheavals, but by putting round pegs in round holes and square pegs in square holes. Discrimination on racial or sexual or religious or gender grounds is anathema to him, so Chinese and Catholics and women and homosexuals can find employment as equals with him. He’s arrogant and autocratic, yet his blindnesses are confined to the personal, as with his wife, of whom he’s over-possessive. He has a curious intellectual dichotomy — the mind of a stockbroker
and
a healer.”

“You’d make a good advocate.”

“Why, thank you, but hospitals are where my heart is.” She got up and began to prowl about the room taking in the titles of his books, while Schiller watched her. Her figure was
magnificent — nothing to excess, everything fused together by a grace of movement that contained nothing artificial — that was the nurse training, of course. And where had she bought her dress? No couturier would have cut that rich shot silk in such a way, but it was extremely clever and flattering.

“Your library is heavily weighted in favour of the law,” she said, picking up her wrap and holding it out to him, “and you have no novels. That’s a shame. Almost all the great books of the world are novels, from
Crime and Punishment
to
Vanity Fair
. Surely you’re reading some of the new writers like William Faulkner and the not-so-new like Henry James?”

“Legal minds are narrow, I freely admit it,” he said, taking the wrap and examining it. “Has no man given you a fur?”

“I don’t take gifts from men.”

“Your stole is beautifully made. By whom?”

“By me. I’m too poor to buy the kind of clothes I like, so I make them.” She allowed herself to be wrapped up.

“And you wouldn’t let me buy them for you?”

“No, though I thank you if that was an offer. I dislike the idea of being kept by a man, including within marriage.”

He sighed. “Then I’ll escort you home, Sister Latimer.”

When Edda moved into Sir Rawson Schiller’s guest flat she found out her fate, far from anything she had imagined. Among the possibilities that had flitted through her mind were various kinds of work to do with health, hospitals, nursing, medical law suits; it occurred to her that perhaps he was on some charity
board committed to a new approach to surgery, and wanted a theatre sister’s viewpoint; courses and curricula sprang to her mind, pet projects he might be helping with: round and round went her mind, to no avail.

On Sunday evening she moved in and ate dinner upstairs with him; at the end of the meal he enlightened her.

“I won’t see you at all until you’re done,” he said by way of introducing the subject, “because from tomorrow morning at nine o’clock you’re going to be head down, tail up, studying flat out for two weeks.”

“
Studying?
”

“Studying. Specifically, studying human anatomy, physiology, and the new science of organic chemistry cum biochemistry. Those three subjects, nothing else. Your doorbell will ring at nine and you will admit your tutor in all three disciplines, a chap you’ll call John Smith. It’s not his real name, but that doesn’t matter. He’s the best teacher in the business, I am assured. Today, Sunday, two weeks hence, you will sit an examination in each discipline. After which, we shall see,” said her tormentor, leaning back with his cognac balloon and smiling.

“I would never have guessed,” she said slowly. “You thought of this last night, is that so?”

“Yes.”

“And in the space of less than twenty-four hours you’ve set all this up, including John Smith the tutor?”

“Yes.”

“I quite see why they knighted you.
Anything
to get you off their backs! The knighthood makes you so expensive they’ve
kicked you upstairs to a career in parliament, complete with blue-ribbon seat and the front bench.” Edda put her glass down, laughing hard.

“And you, madam, are extremely clever,” he said. “Oh, I do hope you pass those examinations and Plan Schiller can proceed!”

“I am Plan Schiller?”

“Yes.”

A purring sound erupted from her throat. “Fancy having a plan named in your honour! I’m also looking forward to the study.”

Which was just as well; the amount of knowledge Edda was required to absorb was huge, but she was astonished to find how much of it she already knew from her nursing studies and her own driving curiosity to know more than was actually needed. John Smith was the epitome of his name, anonymous and undemanding of personal attention; provided she worked at what he gave her, he asked for nothing. He arrived at nine and went home at five, though she never found out where or to whom he went home. Edda’s meals were sent down from Schiller’s apartment, including lunch for John Smith.

Every book and chart she needed had been supplied, blackboards and lecterns, models of molecules, brains, hearts, a skeleton. And Edda loved every moment of this strange, apparently purposeless two weeks, especially the last few days, when she felt able to pit her knowledge against John Smith’s.

On the two-week Sunday she did three written examinations. The morning was given to biochemistry, the afternoon to physiology, and the evening to anatomy. Some of
the questions were difficult, but when she finished anatomy at eight that evening, she felt she had done well at the same kind of examination a second-year medical student would have taken.

A card arrived with her late supper.

“I will leave you in peace until tomorrow evening, Monday, when I would be delighted to see you at my dinner table. R.S.”

It took Edda all of the intervening hours to come down from the heights to which such a frenzied and passionate fortnight of study had lifted her, though why she decided to wear pillar-box red to dinner escaped her. It was such a triumphant colour, perhaps, and she felt as if she had survived some kind of test above and beyond mere examinations.

“Pillar-box red,” said Rawson, taking her purse and gloves.

“After post boxes and telephone booths, I imagine,” she said composedly, accepting a glass of sherry and sinking into a chair.

“It suits you, but you already know that. You probably have too much red in your wardrobe, but that’s a symptom of not having enough money to indulge in things you won’t wear as often because they’re not your favourite colour.” He sat down where he could look at her directly. “I’d like to see you in electric blue, jade or emerald green, amber, purple, and a few interesting prints.”