Angel Read online

  “This,” he said, waving a graceful hand in the direction of the smiling Adonis, “is Nal. He’s being

  singularly difficult to seduce-I’m absolutely worn out from trying.”

  “How do you do?” asked the reluctant seducee in an Oxford accent before seating himself opposite me. “My full name is Nal Prarahandra, I am a doctor of medicine, and I am in Sydney for a week to attend a World Health Organisation congress.”

  He was so beautiful! I’d never thought of men as beautiful, but there isn’t another word that adequately describes him. His lashes were as long and thick and tangled as Flo’s, the brows above his perfectly arched orbits were drawn in as if with a charcoal pencil, and the eyes themselves were black, liquid, languishing. His skin shared Flo’s colouration too. The nose was high-bridged and faintly aquiline, the mouth full but not too full. And he was tall, broadshouldered, narrow-hipped. Adonis. I sat looking at him the way a country bumpkin looks at the Queen.

  Then he reached across the table, picked up my hand and turned it over to look at the palm. “You’re a virgin,” he said, but not out loud. I had to read his lips.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Toby had Martin rattling away in one ear, but his eyes were on me, and he looked angry. Then Pappy put her hand on his arm and he looked at her; the anger faded, he smiled at her. Poor, poor Toby!

  “Do you live in a suitable place?” he-Nalwhispered.

  “Yes,” I said.

  My hand was still in his when he stood up. “Then let us go.”

  And we went, just like that. I wasn’t even remotely tempted to wallop him, but I suspect Toby was. I suppose Toby was worried because I was leaving with a stranger.

  “What is your name?” he asked as we emerged into the lights and blare of the Cross.

  I told him, my hand still wrapped in his. “How on earth did you fall in with Martin?” I asked him as we crossed William Street.

  “This is my first day in Sydney, and everyone said I must go to Kings Cross.

  When Martin accosted me, I was contemplating an interesting window, and as I found him amusing, I consented to accompany him. I knew that he would lead me to someone I liked, and I was right,” he said, giving me a smile that isn’t quite as wonderful as Mr. Forsythe’s, I think because such amazing beauty isn’t suited to smiling.

  “Why on earth me?” I asked.

  “Why on earth not you, Harriet? You are not yet fully awake, but you have great potential. And you are very pretty. It will make me very happy to teach you a little about love, and you will endow my week in Sydney with memorable pleasure. We will not know each other long enough to feel true love, so when we part, we will do so as good friends.”

  I don’t think there’s much of Pappy in me, because I find that I don’t want to write down all the gory details.

  Except that he made love to me for the first time in the bathtub off the laundry-thank God I’d had time to paint it out with scarlet bicycle enamel! And that he was wonderful, tender, considerate, all the things everybody kept telling me I had to have in my first lover. He loved my breasts, and I loved his attentions to my breasts, but I suppose the best part was his sensuousness. He really made me feel that he was enjoying himself, yet his lovemaking was geared to me and my feelings. As I wasn’t ignorant about any aspect of the act, especially after nearly four months in The House, I daresay I could appreciate it and him a great deal more than virgins did in the old days. It must have been a shock to them!

  He moved in with me that night, and stayed in my flat for the whole week with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s blessing. The only landlady in Sydney so broad-minded, I reckon. When Flo came down on Sunday afternoon, her muteness fascinated him. I assured him that her mother says she talks to her, but he doubts that very much.

  “They may communicate on a different plane,” he said, having met Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz when she came to collect Flo after her two hours entertaining Harold. “The mother is an extraordinary woman. Very powerful, and a very old soul. Thoughts are like birds that can fly straight through solid objects. I think Flo and her mother speak without words.”

  Speaking without words. Well Nal, who is a psychiatrist, and I did a lot of that ourselves. Despite his

  alien way of looking at things, I liked him enormously, and I think he liked me for more than just sex. We did a lot of talking with words too.

  He taught me to cook two Indian dishes, a korma and a vegetable curry, taking care to explain that a real curry isn’t made on our “curry powder”

  because every dish requires a different selection of spices and herbs. On Sunday morning we went down to Paddy’s Markets and bought the mace, the turmeric, the cardamom, the cumin, the fenugreek, the garlic. I don’t think Indian food compares to Klaus’s Beef Stroganoff or Veal Piccata, but I suppose it takes a bit of time to tune the tastebuds to such foreign flavours.

  The one item we disagreed about is Pappy. Isn’t that peculiar? All he would say is that she is a typical halfcaste. Indians can be as prejudiced as Old Australians, it seems. Of course he’s very high caste, his father is some sort of maharajah. He told me that his bride has already been chosen for him, but for the time being she’s too young for marriage. I already knew the answer to the question I didn’t bother asking-that, after he married, he would still seek out women like me whenever he went abroad. Well, his ways are his ways. They’re not ours. No doubt his wife will think no worse of him, so how can I?

  Every evening he was waiting in Cas to walk me home, sitting on one of the hideous plastic sofas reading the Mirror until I came out and locked my door.

  Then he would take my bag and we’d leave, strewing a trail of delicious gossip behind us. Sister Cas works an early shift like Chris, but I’m sure that Sister Herbert, who’s in charge on the evening shift, reports all the news about us. Chris gave me some funny looks, but that little outburst of mine has improved our relationship no end. Chris is, besides, starting to go out with Demetrios. They’ll probably have very nice children, her stolid Pommy blood spiced with his Wogness. Provided that she doesn’t get cold feet. Sister Cas is looking down her nose at the pair of them and feeding Chris subtly poisonous remarks. If Chris marries, she’ll have to find another flatmate, won’t she?

  Nal flew out to New Delhi at the crack of dawn last Saturday. Somehow I couldn’t face the thought of spending the weekend alone at The House, so I retreated to Bronte and the lounge room couch until this morning. Mum eyed me sharply, but didn’t say a word. Nor did I.

  Coriander. I forgot coriander. A whiff of it just came stealing out from behind my screen. But Nal was right. We didn’t know each other long enough to develop a grand passion, but we did indeed part good friends, my first King of Pentacles and I.

  Tuesday April 26th, 1960

  I had an odd encounter with Toby this evening, the first time I’ve seen him since Nal and I left the Apollyon together.

  He’s been slogging away at a portrait of Flo for two months, and it’s been driving him mad with frustration. So when I saw him in the front hall, I asked him how it was going.

  “Oh, a thousand thanks for your highness’s interest!” he snarled. “Am I expected to kowtow to show you how terrifically grateful I am for the enquiry?”

  My head rocked as if he’d slapped me-what on earth was he angry about?

  “No,” I answered politely, “of course not. Last time we were talking, you weren’t happy about it, which is why you were looking for your mentor, Martin.”

  That good-mannered reply made him look ashamed of himself. He stuck out a hand. “Sorry, Harriet. Shake?” I shook.

  “Come up and see for yourself,” he said then.

  To my admittedly unschooled eyes, the portrait was stunning-also unbearably sad. My wee angel puss! Toby had succeeded in making Flo’s flesh tissue-thin without suggesting ill treatment, her face was just a frame for those huge amber eyes, and the whole background was peopled with shadows like ghosts forming out of a gre
y fog. Toby and I had never talked much about Flo, so to see that background came as a shock. Was her otherworldliness that obvious to everybody? Or was it just Toby, with the discerning eye of the artist?

  “It’s brilliant,” I said sincerely. “Last time I saw it, Flo looked as if she lived in a concentration camp. Now,

  you’ve managed to retain the essence without making her look abused.”

  “Ta,” he said gruffly, but he didn’t invite me to sit down or partake of coffee.

  “Is love fled?” he asked suddenly.

  “Yes, last Saturday.”

  “Broken-hearted? Want to cry on Uncle Toby’s shoulder?”

  I laughed. “No, idiot! It wasn’t like that at all.” “What was it like?”

  Toby, to ask something so personal? “Very nice,” I said. His eyes went quite red, his face twisted up ferociously. “You’re not hurt?”

  So that was it! God bless Toby, always protecting the women of The House.

  I shook my head. “Not a bit, cross my heart. It was a flutter, mate. A flutter I needed rather badly after years and years of David.”

  The anger rose even higher, he bared his teeth. “How can you call that a flutter?” he demanded.

  “Oh, honestly! You sound like someone in a Victorian novel!” I said, baring my own teeth. “I gave you more credit, Toby Evans, than to think that you subscribe to the double standard! Men can dip their wicks from their early teens, but women have to sit on it until they’re married! Well, get stuffed!” I yelled.

  “Keep your shirt on, keep your shirt on!” he said, getting over his anger, but not sure what his next mood was going to be. Or that was what I fancied. I might be wrong, I don’t know, it was all so strange, so unlike him.

  “I intend to keep all my clothes on, Mr. Evans!” I snapped. “A flutter with an Indian peacock does not mean that I intend to go flying with any Australian crows!”

  “Peace, peace!” he cried, holding both hands up, palms out.

  I was still smouldering, but the last thing in the world I ever want is to be at outs with Toby, his friendship is far too precious to me. So I changed the subject. “I know Ezra was going to ask his wife for a divorce two weekends ago,” I said, “but I haven’t seen Pappy to find out what the wife said.”

  His mood had gone from red to brown; now it went a sort of flat black.

  “Ezra didn’t turn up last weekend, so she doesn’t know how it’s going. Except that he phoned on Friday to say the wife was being very difficult, so he’d have to visit her again.”

  “Maybe she’s desperate enough to offer a bit of fellatio,” I said without thinking.

  Toby stared at me as if paralysed, then turned abruptly away from me, grabbed the bottle of threestar from the table, and poured himself a whole glassful. It was only as I went down the stairs that I realised he must have thought it was Nal informed me of that term, probably in practice. I’d understood for some time that for all his liberality, Toby was old-fashioned about women and their activities. In his catalogue I was a woman. Jim, Bob and Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz weren’t. Aren’t men peculiar?

  Friday April 29th, 1960

  I do like Joe Dwyer, who works the bottle department at the Piccadilly pub.

  Tonight I stopped in to buy a quart of threestar for my Sunday afternoon session with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. He wrapped it in a brown paper bag and handed it over with a big grin. “For the seeingeye tigress upstairs,” he said.

  I remarked that that sounded as if he knew the seeingeye tigress upstairs extremely well, which made him laugh. “Oh, she’s one of the great Cross characters,” he said. “You might say I’ve known her for at least a couple of lifetimes.”

  Something in his voice suggested knowledge in the biblical sense, and I found myself wondering how many of the elderly-and not so elderly-men Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz knows are past lovers. Whenever I see the shy, shadowy Lerner Chusovich, who smokes our eels and sometimes eats with Klaus, he speaks of our landlady with tender yearning. Why ever she might choose a man, it wouldn’t be for anyone else’s reasons. She is a law unto herself.

  As the upstairs toilet is in a separate room from the upstairs bathroom, I often use the upstairs bathroom because it has a shower head over the bath, and I prefer a shower to a bath any day. My odd working hours mean that when I need a shower, the rest of The House are either gone or immersed in the evening’s activities, so I don’t inconvenience a soul. Truth to tell, one bathroom

  isn’t enough for a four-storey house. No one goes down to the laundry.

  Get to the point, Harriet! Harold. The upstairs bathroom and toilet lie between Harold’s domain just above my living room and Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s bedroom and kitchen, which I’ve never seen because their doors are always closed. He seems to know when I’m coming, though I swear I’m silentfooted, nor do I arrive at the same hour thanks to Cas X-ray’s irregularities. But he’s always there in that hall, which is always plunged into darkness-the bulb seems to blow every day, though when I remarked on it to Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, she looked surprised and said it worked for her. Does that mean that Harold slips it from its bayonet when his antennae tell him I’m coming? It’s possible to see because the toilet light is always on and its door is always ajar, but the hall itself is pitch-black corners, in one of which he’s always standing when I come round the stairs. He never says a word, he just stands fused into the wall and glares his hatred at me, and I confess that I walk warily, ready to elude him if he goes for me with a knife or a bit of washing-line wire.

  Why don’t I content myself with a bath downstairs? Because there’s a stubborn streak in me, or maybe it’s more accurate to say that I’m more afraid of cowardice than I am even of Harold. If I give in and don’t have my shower, I’m telling Harold that I’m too frightened of him to invade his territory, and that gives him the advantage over me. It hands my power over to him. That can’t happen, I can’t let it happen. So I go upstairs for my shower, and I pretend that Harold isn’t there in the darkness, that I’m not the only target of the evil in him.

  Sunday May 1st, 1960

  The crystal ball was sitting uncovered on the table in the living room when I came in. Summer’s well gone, and the air has a nip in it, which I suppose is why Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz has removed herself from the balcony. Today it’s raining as well.

  Flo ran to hug me, face lit up, and when I sat down she chose my knee. Why do I feel as if she’s flesh of my flesh? I love her more and more as time goes on.

  Angel puss.

  “The Glass must be very valuable if it’s a thousand years old,” I said to Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz, who had the table set with our usual luncheon fare.

  “It’d probably buy me the Hotel Australia if I sold it, but no one sells a glass, princess. Especially not one that works.”

  “How did you come by it?”

  “Its last owner gave it to me. In her will. They get passed from one seer to another. When I go, I’ll be passing it on.”

  Suddenly Flo gave a convulsive leap, flew off my lap and dived under the couch.

  Not half a minute later, Harold sidled through the open door. How did Flo know he was coming? There’s nothing wrong with my ears, but I didn’t hear the softest scuff of a shoe.

  Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz looked at him with a face like thunder. “What the hell are you doing here?” she growled. “It ain’t four o’clock, it’s one o’clock.

  You ain’t welcome, Harold, so piss off.”

  His eyes were fixed on me, full of hate, but he swung them now to her and stood his ground. “Delvecchio, it is a disgrace!”

  Delvecchio? Was that her Christian name?

  She put the bottle of brandy down with a thump and turned her eyes to him, though I was sitting at the wrong angle to see what exactly they contained. “A disgrace?” she asked.

  “Those two disgusting sexual deviates on the floor above us have stolen the money out of the gas meter in the
bathroom!”

  “Any proof?” she asked, her bottom lip jutting out. “Proof? I don’t need proof! Who else in this house would do a thing like that? It was you asked me to go the rounds of the gas meters every Sunday!” His face twisted. “You’re too tall to get down that far, you said, but I’ve got duck’s disease!”

  Mirth rumbled, she looked at me. “He has too, princess. You know what duck’s disease is?”

  “No,” I said, wishing she wouldn’t joke at Harold’s expense.

  “Arse too close to the ground.” She heaved herself to her feet. “Come on, Harold, let’s have a look.”

  I knew it was pointless to try to persuade Flo to come out of her hiding place. Harold seemed likely to come back, and Flo would know that. Extrasensory perception. I’d read somewhere that it was being investigated. Bugger Harold! This was a ploy to spoil my time with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. Jim and Bob, stealing pennies from a gas meter? Ridiculous.

  A lot of things were telling me that this repressed and hate-filled elderly man was a maelstrom of negative emotions. Suddenly I remembered a lecture given by a psychiatrist. He’d talked of “mummy’s boys”-the single male who remained in the grasp of his mother until she died, when, doomed by his own inadequacies, he then fell into the clutches of another dominant woman. Was Harold a mummy’s boy? He fitted the picture. Only that didn’t explain the hatred for me. They were usually quite harmless people, and if one did become violent, the violence was sometimes directed at the dominant woman, more often at himself. According to the bloke who gave that lecture. Today indicated that Harold’s hatred was not purely for me. Today his targets were Jim and Bob. And Jim was another Queen of Swords.

  I could hear Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz returning because she was bellowing with laughter. “Ripperace!” she roared as she erupted into the room, Harold behind her with a face like flint. “Oh, it’s flamin’ terrific!” “What?” I asked dutifully.