Angel Read online

  “The buggers pinched the pennies out of the bathroom meter all right, but not by bustin’ the padlock, oh no! They used a hacksaw and cut through the hinges on the back of the penny door. Looked perfect! What really kills me is that the buggers went to so much trouble for the sake of about two bob in pennies.”

  “Delvecchio, I insist that you evict those women!” Harold cried.

  “Listen, ace,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz through her teeth, it ain’t Jim and Bob, it’s Chikker and Marge in the front ground floor flat. Gotta be.”

  “They are respectable people,” Harold said stiffly. “Grow up, dickhead!

  Don’t you hear him beatin’ the shit outta her every Fridee night after he comes home turpsed? Respectable, my arse!” Her shoulders shook. “Fancy takin’ so much trouble for a few pennies! Can’t pin it on ‘em, either. What’s more, I don’t wanta pin it on ‘em. At least they ain’t on the game, and apart from Fridee nights, they’re good tenants.”

  “I must take your word for that,” said Harold, who obviously didn’t care a hoot about Chikker and Marge. “However, I insist that you get rid of that pair of Lesbians! Riding a motorcycle, indeed! They’re disgusting, and you are a fool!”

  “And you,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz conversationally, “couldn’t organise a free fuck in 17d! Piss off! Go on, piss off! And don’t bother comin’

  back at four. I ain’t in the mood.”

  His dismissal seemed to fall on deaf ears; he was too busy glaring at me.

  And I, uncomfortably aware that I really ought not to be listening to any of this, was staring intently into the huge crystal ball and its upsidedown view of the room.

  “Training another charlatan?” Harold sneered.

  Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz didn’t answer. She simply picked him up by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and threw him out of the door as if he weighed nothing. I heard the crash of his landing, almost jumped up to see if she’d hurt him, then subsided. If she had, he might calm down a bit.

  “Piss off, you fuckin’ little turd!” she yelled into the hall, then sat down beaming in content. Then, to the couch, “Youse can come out now, Flo, Harold’s gone.”

  “Why is she so frightened of him?” I asked, sipping brandy while Flo, on her mother’s lap, drank from the breast.

  “I dunno, princess.”

  “Can’t you persuade her to tell you?”

  “She don’t want to. And I ain’t sure I wanta know.” “He-he wouldn’t interfere with her, would he?” I asked.

  “No, Harriet, he wouldn’t do that. I ain’t stupid, honest. It’s spiritual.”

  “I didn’t realise anybody in The House minded Jim and Bob.”

  “Harold minds everyone.” “Is he a mummy’s

  boy?”

  The X-ray vision flared into action. “Now ain’t you the cluey one? Yeah, as a matter of fact. She was what I call a professional invalid-lay in bed while Harold waited on her hand and foot. But when she died, he was like a chook with its head cut off, didn’t know what to do. Worse, she left everything she had to a cousin in the Old Country she hadn’t seen since they were children.

  The cousin sold up the house, and Harold had nowhere to go. He’d spent every penny he earned on the selfish old cow. So when he come to me askin’ for a room, I felt sorry for him. One of the other chaps what teaches at his posh private school useta be a tenant here ages ago-that’s how Harold knew about The House. I turned up the cards, and they said he had an important job to do for The House, so I took him in. Then,” she said, leering, “I found out he was an old maid in more than his manners-yep, a virgin! Take me word for it, princess, you gotta have a virgin before you die.”

  I wanted desperately to tell her that I thought Harold was a very sick man, but these days my tongue tends to get me into hot water, so I bit it and said nothing, even about the way he stalked me and looked at me. Instead I said, “You’re very tired of him.”

  “Fed up to the back teeth, princess.” “Then why don’t you get rid of him?”

  “Can’t. The cards still say he’s got an important job to do for The House, and they ain’t to be disobeyed.” She topped her glass up, took a bite of bread-andeel, and

  said, mumbling, “So the King of Pentacles went home to Curry Land?”

  “Eight days ago. I spent last weekend at Bronte.” “Lovely lookin’ bloke!

  Reminded me of Mr. Delvecchio, only Mr. Delvecchio was an Eyetie, didn’t have a touch of the tarbrush like your bloke. But proud and handsome! King of the world, that was Mr. Delvecchio.” She sighed and sniffled. “I useta lie in bed and watch him strut around like a rooster.” One of her pale eyes mocked me, the other closed speculatively. “Was your first King of Pentacles a nice hairy man?”

  “No. He was more like an ivory sculpture.”

  “Pity. Mr. Delvecchio was smothered in hair. I useta comb his chest, and as for the you-know-where”-she laughed hugely-“tangles ‘n’ snarls, princess, tangles ‘n’ snarls! A regular jungle. I useta love prowlin’ through it! Combed it with me tongue.”

  Somehow I kept my face straight. “How long ago was that?”

  “Oh, seems like a hundred years! About thirty, really. But, aaaah, I remember him like it was yesterday! Youse always does remember your men like that, you’ll find as they start addin’ up. Yeah, like yesterday. That’s what keeps youse young.”

  “There were no children?” I asked.

  “Nah. Ain’t that peculiar? A nice hairy man like that, and no children. I’d say it was me. Flo come on that hormone stuff.”

  “What happened to Mr. Delvecchio?”

  She shrugged. “Dunno. He just up and left one day. Never even packed a port. I waited a few days, but he never come back. So I turned up the cards and they said he’d gone for good. The Tower. The Lovers reversed. The Hanged Man. The Nine of Swords. The Four of Wands reversed. Ruin of the house, y’know. But the Queen of Swords-me-was well placed, so I got over it. I saw him in the Glass once, a long time after. He looked real well and happy, and he was surrounded by kids. When we was first together, he gave me a blue bunny rug for the son we never had. Oh, well!”

  The story moved me unbearably, though she didn’t tell it with a shred of regret or selfpity. “I’m so sorry!” I said. “No need, princess. There’s a time for things to be over, is all. You know that after your week with the ivory statue.”

  “Yes, I suppose I do.” “Is your heart

  broken?” “Not even dented.”

  “So there youse are. The sea is chocka with fish, me young Harriet Purcell.

  Youse ain’t the sort to get a broken heart, you’re the sort will break ‘em. Youse ain’t like me, but that bit is. Life’s just too good and the sea’s too chocka with fish for the likes of us, young Harriet Purcell. We’re unbreakable.”

  Willie’s tipple had long ceased to taste revolting, but the truth is that the more of it I drink, the better I like it. So I was well enough away by this to go on asking questions. “Did you and Mr. Delvecchio divorce?”

  “Wasn’t necessary.”

  “You weren’t officially married, you mean?”

  “That’s as good a way of puttin’ it as any.” Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz refilled our glasses.

  “But you and Mr. Schwartz were married.”

  “Yeah. Funny, ain’t it? And in plenty of time for Flo. I was at that age.

  Y’know, you’re gettin’ on in years and suddenly feel a bit chilly without a husband to warm the feet.”

  “Was Mr. Schwartz like Mr. Delvecchio?”

  “Total opposite, princess, total opposite. That’s the way it oughta be. Never repeat your mistakes! Never pick the same sorta bloke twice. Variety is the spice of life.” “Was Mr. Schwartz handsome?”

  “Yeah, in a poetic sorta way. Dark eyes but real fair hair. A nice face, fresh and young. Flo looks sorta like her daddy.”

  A deliciously muzzy feeling was crawling inside me, and perhaps because of it, as I squint
ed at Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz I suddenly saw how she must have looked thirty or forty years ago. Not beautiful, not pretty, but very attractive. Men must have felt like Sir Edmund Hillary on top of Mount Everest when they scaled her heights.

  “You were extremely fond of Mr. Schwartz,” I said. “Yep. You always are of the ones what won’t make old bones,” she said tenderly. “Mr. Schwartz didn’t make old bones. He was twenty-five years younger’n me. A lovely Jewish gentleman.”

  I gaped. “And he died?”

  “Yep. Just never woke up one morning. A real grouse way to go, princess. A dicky heart, they said at the inquest. Maybe it was. But the cards said if it hadn’t been that, it woulda been something else. A bus or a bee sting. Youse can’t escape the old gent with the scythe when it’s your time to go.”

  I pushed my glass away. “If I don’t go now, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, I’ll start wuddling my merds.” Then I thought of one more question. “Harold called you Delvecchio. But that’s not your Christian name. What is, if I may ask?”

  “Seems a funny way to describe a first name when most of the world ain’t Christian,” she said, grinning. “I dropped me first name donkey’s years ago. Me magic’s in Delvecchio Schwartz.”

  “Is my magic in Harriet Purcell?” I asked.

  She pinched my cheek. “Dunno yet, princess.” A stretch. “Oh, what a relief!

  No fuckin’ Harold this arvo!” I went downstairs, fell on my bed and slept for two hours. When I woke a while ago, I felt wonderful. Today I learned heaps about my landlady. Flo? Hormone stuff? Darn! I didn’t ask.

  Wednesday, May 11th, 1960 A poor old boy came in late this afternoon with crush injuries to both legs from just below the pelvis. One of those insanely freaky accidents that aren’t even supposed to happen at all. He’d been walking along minding his own business when a block of concrete fell off an elderly factory’s cornice. If it had hit him, there wouldn’t have been enough of him left to scrape up, but what hit him was the sheet of iron attached to it just far enough from the ground when it met it to squash his legs flat, and then, rebounding, to release him, let the ambulancemen rush him to Queens.

  There was no hope for him, of course, not at his age. Eighty.

  I was returning from the female staff room to my own domain when Sister Herbert, on evening shift, grabbed me and asked me if I was busy. I said no.

  “Look, the place is a shambles and I’ve got more nurses coming any minute, but I need someone trained to see what’s bothering my poor old boy in Seven.

  He’s terribly distressed, he won’t settle, and I don’t want him pegging out unhappy. We’ve done what we can-he’s going to meet his Maker tonight for sure, but he keeps crying for someone called Marceline. I can’t bear the thought that we’re not making his last moments what they should be, but I can’t spare anybody to talk to him. He insists he’s got no family or kin-oh, he’s fully conscious, it’s that sort of shock. Could you talk to him for me?” Off she dashed-the place really was a shambles.

  He was so sweet, the poor old boy, and scrupulously clean. They’d taken his false teeth, so he smiled at me gummily, clasped my hand. The drips, the cradle, the

  monitors didn’t seem to impinge on him. All he could think about was Marceline. His cat.

  “I won’t be home to feed her,” he said. “Marceline! Who will look after my angel puss?”

  The words hit me like a ton of bricks. His angel puss. My heart always aches for the old and forgotten-there are so many of them around the inner city, living in those dreary, neglected terraced houses between Royal Queens and the Cross. BOARD AND LODGING, MEN ONLY the handlettered cardboard signs say, and men like my poor old boy eke out an existence in a tiny room a thousand times over. Subsisting on dignity and the smell of an oil rag, or else sodden with drink. Eating in the soup kitchens, resigned to their solitude. And here was this one, dying before my eyes, with no one to care for his angel puss.

  A fourth-year nurse arrived not five minutes after me, and between us we managed to convince him that I would feed his cat, care for her until he came home. Once he believed us, he closed his eyes and drifted contentedly away.

  I borrowed Chris’s canvas shopping bag and a supply of safety pins, walked up to Flinders Street, found the house, knocked. When no one answered I pushed the front door open and started knocking on every door inside.

  Absentee landlord because no one in authority challenged me. An old boy with a bad case of the shakes and enough alcohol on his breath to make my head spin pointed toward the backyard, such as it was. A mean little rectangle full of junk. And there, sitting on the

  skeleton of a gas stove, was my poor old boy’s angel puss. A skinny tortoiseshell cat which stood up and mewed at me plaintively.

  I held out my hand. “Marceline? Are you Marceline?” She jumped down, came to rub around my legs purring loudly. When I put Chris’s bag flat on the ground and lifted one edge of it to make a cave, the cat calmly walked inside it, and when I set it on its flat bottom and began to shove safety pins in it to close it, the cat just kept on purring. So I carried my burden home with no trouble except the fear that Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz would refuse to let me keep Marceline angel puss. No one else has a pet except Klaus, who keeps two budgies in a cage and lets them fly around his room.

  She knew what was in the shopping bag, though it neither moved nor emitted a meow. How does she know? Because she sees it in the cards or the Glass.

  “You keep it, princess,” she said, waving a dismissal.

  I didn’t tell her that Marceline was an angel puss. That I had brought the animal home as an omen.

  When I undid the shopping bag, there was Marceline in its bottom, paws tucked under, snoozing. Maybe my poor old boy had some reason on his side, to be so attached to this only other living thing in his life. Marceline was special. I fed her on smoked eel, which she devoured ravenously, and when I pointed to the partially open window, she stared at me solemnly, then waddled to it with distended belly, jumped to the sill, and vanished.

  I wonder will I still have a cat in the morning?

  Thursday May 12th, 1960

  Yes, I still have a cat. When I woke, Marceline was curled on the foot of my bed.

  I picked her up and examined her closely for fleas, sores, mange, but she was as scrupulously clean as her old boy. Just skinny, probably because he couldn’t afford to feed her lavishly. We breakfasted together on scrambled eggs and toast-she certainly isn’t a fussy eater. She does like top-of-the-milk, however.

  That should put weight on her. There’s no problem in The House about keeping a window open; to get into our backyard, you have to scale a sixty-foot cliff.

  Though why would you bother, when the front door’s always open?

  My poor old boy had met his Maker at about the same time as I appropriated his angel puss from the house on Flinders Street.

  As I would have to take Marceline to the vet’s for worming and maybe spaying, I kept Chris’s canvas shopping bag, gave her a new and nicer one I bought on my way to work.

  Saturday May 14th, 1960

  Would you believe it? David Murchison turned up not long after I got in from the vet’s. My poor old boy had certainly spent what he could on his angel puss, because the vet told me that she was already spayed. All I had to pay for were worming and yeast tablets, plus a couple of injections for feline fevers. Five bloody quid! So when David turned up on my doorstep, my mind was on my expensive cat and what a good lurk vets have.

  When he saw Marceline curled up in my lap, David shuddered and made no attempt to come closer to me than the other side of the fireplace, where (on another meter, more pennies!) I had the gas fire going. Winter’s around the corner.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked with a moue of distaste.

  “From heaven, I suspect,” I answered. “I’m just back from the vet’s, and I can tell you that her name is Marceline, she’s spayed, and she’s about three years old.”

  His only response was a
noise of revulsion, but he sat down opposite me in the other easy chair, stared at me out of the blue eyes I used to think so divine, and steepled his fingers.

  “I hear you have a new girlfriend,” I said chattily.

  His skin flushed, he looked annoyed. “No, I do not!” he said with a snap in his voice.

  “Broke your mould, did she?”

  “I am here,” he said stiffly, “to ask you to change your mind and come back to me. Rosemary was a rebound, that’s all.”

  “David,” I said patiently, “you’re out of my life. I don’t want to see you, let alone go out with you.” “You’re cruel,” he muttered. “You’ve changed.”

  “No, I haven’t changed, at least not where you’re concerned. But I am a different person. I’ve gained the courage to be direct and the hardness not to relent when people play on my sympathy. You may as well get your bum off my chair and piss off, because I don’t want you.”

  “It isn’t fair!” he cried, hands unsteepled. “I love you! And I’m not going to take no for an answer.”

  Right, Harriet Purcell, bring out the Big Bertha cannon. “I am not a virgin,”

  I said.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. I am not a virgin.” “You’re joking! You’re fabricating!”

  I laughed. “David, why can’t you believe the truth?” “Because you wouldn’t! You couldn’t!”

  “I bloody could, and I bloody did. What’s more, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.” Fire the ten-ton shell, Harriet! “Added to that, he wasn’t precisely a white man, though he was a beautiful colour.”

  David got up and left without another word.

  “So,” I said to Toby later, “I’ve finally got rid of David for good, though I suspect it was more because my lover was an Indian than because I’ve had a lover.”

  “No, a bit of both,” Toby said, grinning. “The silly clot! He ought to have seen the writing on the wall years ago. It’s women who choose their mates. If a man’s interested, he simply has to wait around with his cap in hand until she makes up her mind. And if she decides to give him the royal heave-ho, that’s too bad. I’ve seen it happen from dogs to dicky-birds. As for spiders”-he shuddered-“the ladies eat their mates.”