The Touch (69 page)

She was sitting on a bench outside the Gothic glory of the medical school eating a cheese sandwich lunch, in no mood for commingling or commiserating with her fellow female medical students, none of whom had done any better than she. And the male students, despite her dolling up to go to parties and balls, still tended to avoid her as an emasculating bitch. The news that she was worth a cool fifty thousand a year for the rest of her life had stirred some interest in the more predatory among them, but Nell knew exactly how to emasculate such importunate idiots. They had retired smarting; nor did it help her marks when an unmarried senior lecturer threw his hat into the matrimonial ring. Never mind, she had made it, and that was a great victory. She hadn’t failed a single year.

“I thought it was you,” said a voice as its owner sat down beside her with the thump of a heavy body.

The face Nell turned the intruder’s way was scowling, its eyes blazing. Then the eyes widened; Nell’s mouth dropped open. “Jesus!” she exclaimed. “If it isn’t Bede Talgarth!”

“The very same, and no pot belly,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was in the law library doing some reading.”

“Why? Are you doing Law?”

“No, just boning up for the federal parliament.”

“You’re in it?”

“Sure as eggs are eggs.”

“Your platform is lousy,” she said, swallowing the last of her sandwich and brushing the crumbs off her hands.

“You call one person, one vote, lousy?”

“Oh, that’s well and good, but inevitable, as you are aware. Women have the vote, and they will even in New South Wales by the time there’s another state election.”

“Then what’s lousy?”

“Total exclusion of colored and other undesirable races from immigrating,” she said. “Undesirable, indeed! And anyway, no one is really white! We’re pink or beige, so we’re colored too.”

“You’ll never give up on that, will you?”

“No, never. My stepfather is half Chinese.”

“Your stepfather?”

“Surely your head isn’t so far up your socialist arse that you failed to notice that my father died two and a half years ago?”

“I have a glass window in my stomach, so if I unbutton my coat I can see,” Bede said gravely. “Truly, I am sorry. He was a very great man. So your mother has remarried?”

“Yes. In Como, eighteen months ago.”

“Como?”

“Don’t you know any geography? The Italian lakes.”

“Then we meant the same Como,” he said smoothly; he had perfected the political sidestep. “Did it displease you, Nell?”

“Once it would have, but not these days. I can’t be anything but glad for her. He’s six years younger than her too, so with any luck she won’t be a widow for quite as long as most women are. She’s had a hard life, she deserves some happiness.” Nell giggled. “I have a half brother and a half sister twenty-four years younger than I am. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Your mother had twins?”

“Heterozygous twins,” said Nell, showing off.

“Explain,” he said, another political sidestep: you’re safe to profess ignorance if the matter is an esoteric one.

“Two different eggs. Identical twins come from one egg. I daresay she decided that at forty-plus she’d better reproduce in multiples. The next lot will probably be triplets.”

“How old was she when she had you?”

“Not far past seventeen. And yes, if you’re fishing for my age, I’ll be twenty-five on New Year’s Day.”

“I remember your age, actually. There I was, an up-and-coming politician, with an unchaperoned sixteen-year-old in my house.” He eyed her ringless fingers. “No husband? Fiancé? Boyfriend?”

“No bloody fear!” she said scornfully. “How about you?” That popped out before she could suppress it.

“Still an unattached bachelor.”

“Still living in that ghastly house?”

“Yes, but it’s improved. I bought it. You were right, the landlord sold it to me for a hundred and fifty pounds. And with typhoid, smallpox and the latest epidemic, bubonic plague, sewers are going in everywhere. So I’m on the sewer now. I grow the most magnificent vegetables where the long-drop used to be.”

“I’d love to see the improved version.” That popped out too.

“I’d love to show it to you.”

Nell got up. “I have to race over to Prince Alfred Hospital, I’m due to attend in the operating theater.”

“When do you graduate?”

“Two days from now. My mother and stepfather have come back from abroad for it, and Ruby’s coming down from Kinross. Sophia is bringing Dolly, so the whole family will be reunited. I can’t wait to see my wee brother and sister.”

“May I come to see the lady doctor graduate?” he called.

She turned her head to shout back. “My bloody oath!”

He stood watching her flying form diminish, its black academic gown flapping wildly. Nell Kinross! After all these years, Nell Kinross. He had no idea by how much her father’s death had enriched her, but at heart she was the worker to end all workers. A short, dark grey bag for a dress, black boots as clumping as any miner’s, hair screwed into a tight bun, not a scrap of rouge or powder on that creamy skin. His brows lifted, a rueful grin curled around his mouth; without realizing that he did, he put up a hand to rumple his auburn thatch—a gesture that told his fellow parliamentarians that Bede Talgarth was making a far-reaching decision.

Some people are utterly unforgettable, he thought, wending his way to the trams. I have to see her again. I have to find out what’s happened to her. If she’s just graduating in Medicine now, she must have finished her engineering degree—unless, as some of the more progressive dailies blatted, they had failed her at least once for every year of Medicine she’d done, something they did to women students.

Most of Nell had forgotten him a hundred yards beyond the bench, but he lurked at the back of her mind in some compartment that added a small, warm glow to her animus. Bede Talgarth! How right it seemed to resume a friendship that mattered, she admitted, a great deal more than she had realized.

THE OPERATION went on forever, but finally, a little after six, she was free to go to the hotel in George Street where her mother and Lee were staying. For once she took a hackney, kept yelling through the roof hatch at the driver to get a move on. How strict was Mum with her new babies? Would they still be up so that they could meet their sister, or would they be asleep?

Elizabeth and Lee were in the drawing room of their suite; Nell burst in, stopped dead. Was that Mum? Oh, she had always been beautiful, but not the way she was now! Like the goddess of love, radiating an assured, unconscious sexuality that was—was almost indecent. She looks younger than I do, thought Nell, a lump in her throat. This is the marriage of her heart, and she has bloomed like a dark and dusky rose. And Lee’s arresting handsomeness was more marked, though less epicene; his eyes, Nell noted, searched for Elizabeth all the time, weren’t content unless they rested on her. They’re like one person.

Elizabeth was coming to kiss her, Lee to hug her; she was put into a chair, given a sherry.

“I’m so glad you came back,” Nell said. “It wouldn’t have been the same if you weren’t here to see me graduate.” She gazed about. “Are the twins asleep?”

“No, we kept them up to say hello,” said Elizabeth, taking her hand. “They’re with Pearl and Silken Flower next door.”

They had been born eleven months after Lee and Elizabeth had married, and were now seven months old. Nell stared at them with such a rush of love that tears sprang to her eyes. Oh, the darlings! Alexander looked like both his parents, black hair with some of Lee’s straightness yet some of Elizabeth’s wave, an oval, ivory-skinned face like Lee’s, Anna’s grey-blue eyes fringed with her impossibly long, curly lashes, Elizabeth’s cheekbones and Lee’s fine, full mouth. Whereas Mary-Isabelle was the image of Ruby, from red-gold hair to dimples to wide green eyes.

“Hello, weeny brother and sister,” said Nell, kneeling. “I’m Nell, your biggest sister.”

They were too young to talk, but both pairs of eyes looked at her with intelligence and interest, both mouths opened to laugh, four chubby little hands clasped hers.

“Oh, Mum, they’re gorgeous!”

“We think so,” said Elizabeth, picking Alexander up.

Lee went to Mary-Isabelle. “This one’s Daddy’s girl,” he said, kissing her cheek.

“You weren’t concealing anything when you wrote that you had an easy birth?” Nell asked anxiously, doctor to the fore.

“Carrying them was difficult toward the end—I was so huge and heavy,” said Elizabeth, stroking Alexander’s flyaway hair. “Of course I had no idea that there were two of them. Italian accoucheurs are highly skilled, and I had the best. No tearing, nothing beyond the usual discomfort. I found it very strange—when you and Anna were born, I was unconscious, so there I was, going through what was, for me, a first labor. Such a surprise after Mary-Isabelle was born, when they told me there was another one to come!” Elizabeth laughed, squashed Alexander gently. “I knew I’d have an Alexander, and there he was.”

“While I was pacing up and down in the traditional way on the far side of the door,” said Lee. “I heard Mary-Isabelle cry—I’m a father! I thought. But when they told me about Alexander, I passed out.”

“Which one is the boss?” Nell asked.

“Mary-Isabelle,” the parents chorused.

“They’re very different in nature, but they like each other,” said Elizabeth, handing Alexander to Pearl. “Bed time.”

RUBY, SOPHIA and Dolly arrived the next day; Constance Dewy was too poorly to make the journey. At nine years of age Dolly had grown into her plain stage; that isn’t going to last, thought Nell. By the time she turns fifteen she’ll be a budding beauty, but her two and a half years at Dunleigh have done her the world of good. She’s more sprightly, more outgoing, more assertive, and yet she hasn’t lost her sweetness of nature.

Though she clearly liked Mary-Isabelle, at that first meeting Dolly gave her heart to Alexander. Because, Nell realized with aching breast, he had her real mother’s eyes, and something in the child remembered Anna’s eyes. Exchanging a glance with Elizabeth, Nell saw that her mother noticed it too. It’s in our very blood to recognize our mother, no matter how long ago and far away the memories are. She will have to be told soon, or some malign worm will wriggle there first. But she’ll be all right, will Anna’s Dolly.

Ruby hadn’t gone to seed after Alexander’s death; it would have seemed a betrayal. Though she dressed in the fashion, she contrived to make its basic ugliness elegant and soignée. With half the British Empire off to South Africa to fight the Boers—or it seemed like half—those who set the fashions appeared to suffer such guilt that even birds of paradise had turned into dabchicks. And skirts were shortening; Nell didn’t stand out so much these days, though, it had to be admitted, the shorter skirts looked far better on Ruby.

Change is in the wind, Nell thought; the new century is here, and within one or two years a woman medical graduate will be awarded an honors degree. It should have been me.

“You look different, Nell,” said Lee to her as they sat in the hotel lounge over coffee and after-dinner drinks.

“In what way? Scruffier than ever?”

His white teeth flashed—Jesus, she thought, he really is something to look at! Just as well my taste runs in another direction entirely.

“The spark’s rekindled,” he said.

“You are perceptive! Though it isn’t exactly rekindled—at least, not yet. I ran into him yesterday at uni.”

“Is he still a parliamentarian of the wrong persuasion?”

“Oh, yes, but federal. I tore into him about Labor’s anti-immigration of colored races platform,” she said with a purr.

“But that didn’t put him off you, did it?”

“I doubt anything could put him off anything if he gets his teeth stuck in. He’s a bit of a bulldog.”

“That should suit you. Think of the fights you’ll have.”

“After living with my mother and father, I’d prefer a life of peace, Lee.”

“They rarely fought, that was one of their problems. You’re Alexander’s spitting image, Nell, you’ll relish a fight. If you didn’t, you’d never have finished Medicine.”

“Point taken,” she said. “Do you and my mother fight?”

“No, we don’t need to. Especially with two babies in our nest, and another—one, I hope!—on the way. Barely, but she says it’s definite.”

“Jesus, Lee! Can’t you leave it inside your trousers for a while? She needs time to recover from bearing twins.”

He laughed. “Don’t blame me! It was her idea.”

Ruby was burbling to Sophia about Mary-Isabelle. “Another me!” she crowed. “I can’t wait to teach the scrumptious pet to call a spade a fucking shovel. My new jade kitten.”

“Ruby!” gasped Sophia. “Don’t you dare!”

NELL GRADUATED with two other women and a far greater number of men. Watching in decent obscurity, Bede Evans Talgarth waited until the new lady doctor had been hugged and kissed by her small crowd of relatives. If that was her mother, Nell certainly had not inherited the beauty or the cool, calm manner. And her stepfather, a striking man, wore his hair in a Chinese pigtail. If he had not, it would have been hard to tell exactly which touch of the tar brush he had. Each carried a baby, the mother a boy, the father a girl; two pretty Chinesey women in embroidered silk trousers and jackets stood nearby with two perambulators. And there was Ruby Costevan—how could he ever forget that day in Kinross? Picking Nell up off the floor and lunching with her and a millionairess, as Ruby had called herself. What fascinated him today was to hear Nell’s stepfather call her “Mum.”

They all looked expensive, but they didn’t have that high-society air that so many of the graduates’ parents exuded as they strutted with their round vowels and the Australian twang buried underneath. Words like “Mafeking” and “Uitlanders” came faintly to Bede’s ears; his lip curled. Second-hand jingoism. It was the Boers in the right of it. Why didn’t we in Australia have a revolution like the Americans and throw the British out? he asked himself. We’d have been a damned sight better off.