Angel Read online

  “Ezra Pound-another Ezra!-had huge handwriting,” she said. “I wrote to him while he was in jail, and he answered me. Isn’t that amazing? I must show you his letter-written in pencil on a page torn out of an exercise book. His wonderful poetry! I’ve been trying to write a poem, but I can’t find the right words.”

  “You will, later. How was it?”

  She didn’t dodge the question. “Not too bad. I had a post-operative haemorrhage that kept me longer than usual. They treated me as if I had a fibroid tumour-that was the diagnosis on my chart. It’s a very well-run place. I had a private room, and they don’t let you see any of the other patients-very prudent. The food was good, and they were sympathetic to my going off meat.

  A dietician came and explained to me that I’d have to balance my food very carefully to get all the necessary amino acids-eggs, cheeses, nuts. So in future you won’t be able to rouse on me, Harriet, I’ll be eating sensibly.”

  All this was spoken in a gentle voice that utterly lacked any kind of vitality.

  “Harriet,” she said suddenly, “do you ever feel as if you’re nailed to the same spot by one foot only, going round and round?”

  “Of late, often,” I said wryly.

  “I’m so tired of going round and round.”

  I swallowed, tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t open up her wounds, yet might comfort her. In the end I just sat and looked at her, my eyes full of tears.

  “Can you teach?” she asked. “Teach? Me? Teach

  what?”

  “I want to sit for the nurses’ entrance examination, but I lack even elementary schooling. Funny, I can read and write like a real author, yet I can’t analyse or parse a sentence, I can’t add or subtract or multiply or divide beyond kindergarten level. But I’m fed up with being an aide. I want to do nursing,” she said.

  What a relief! Her words didn’t indicate a return to those hectic, men-by-thedozen weekends. Ezra may have almost killed her in one way, but in another he seemed to be freeing her.

  I told her I’d try, suggested that she go and see Sister Tutor at Queens for an idea of what the examination was going to demand.

  “Do you think Duncan would give me a reference?” she asked.

  “I’m quite sure he’d leap at the chance, Pappy.”

  She drew a breath, sighed. “Did you know that he offered to support me and my child? To give me enough money not to need to work, to educate it properly?”

  Oh, Duncan! How good and kind you are, and how cruel I am! “No,” I said, “he didn’t tell me.”

  “It upset him dreadfully when I refused. He didn’t understand.”

  “I don’t either,” I said.

  “It’s the father’s place to care for his child and its mother. If he isn’t willing to honour his moral and ethical obligations, no other man can take his place. If another man did, then in a court of law, lawyers could prove that that man was the father.”

  “The Law is a ass,” I said, disgusted.

  “I need to thank Duncan for everything he’s done. Ask him to visit me next time he’s here, please, Harriet?” “You’ll have to leave a note in his box at Queens. I broke it off with Duncan,” I said.

  That seemed to upset her more than dealing with her fibroid had. Nor could she grasp why I’d sent him packing. To her, I’d betrayed him, the finest man in the world. I didn’t try to explain my side of it. Why upset her even more?

  Wednesday, October 19th, 1960 I’m losing my enthusiasm for everything, including entering this book, though the finished ones seem to be safe in the ceiling.

  Harold’s back at his old tricks, and maybe because I’m missing Duncan so much, the crazy old bastard has won at least the battle, if not the war. I don’t go upstairs for a

  shower any more, I use the laundry bathroom. Oh, I just got to the point where my hair was standing on end and my flesh was crawling before I got to the top of the stairs. When I peered around the corner, the bulb would be out and the toilet door shut. Pitch darkness, and terrifying.

  “Whore!” he’d whisper. “Whore!”

  So I’m going to buy a shower head, some pipe and a couple of elbow joints and see if I can’t rig up a shower myself. I did ask Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz if she’d have one installed, but she has been in a peculiar mood lately too. I don’t think she even heard what I said. Malefic influences are at work, was all she would say, and that at a mutter. From which it’s obvious that lunches on Sunday are not happening. I still get Flo, which is the main thing. But Flo can’t seem to learn her alphabet.

  Toby is never here at weekends, too busy building his shack up at Wentworth Falls, and during the week he has his work cut out tutoring Pappy, who is determined to sit the entrance examination this year, at the end of November. I did try to tutor her, but I’m so good at maths that I can’t understand anyone who has trouble doing simple arithmetic. Not a born teacher, unfortunately. Toby, on the other hand, is proving wonderfully patient and considerate. I am delighted. The pair of them are spending hours together from Monday to Friday. She still looks all right, just quenched.

  Thanks to Klaus, I am now a very good cook of European food, and can make a few Indian and Chinese

  dishes, thanks to Nal and Pappy. Isn’t it funny, though, that I can’t be bothered cooking for myself? I save my talents for dinner guests, of whom there are very few. Jim and Bob, really. They come down on Tuesday evenings, sometimes with Joe the Q.C. and her friend Bert. I’ve found out their real names. Jim is Jemima, which I don’t blame her for hating. Fancy parents being inconsiderate enough to do that to a baby! Bob and Bert are both Robertas, and Joe is Joanna. After that awful business with the Boys in Blue, Frankie (Frances) moved away from the Cross, lives somewhere in Drummoyne these days.

  That’s because poor little Olivia was discharged from Rozelle into Callan Parkshe’s gone quite mad, poor soul, just drifts around in another world. But Frankie won’t abandon her, though her family has. Pathetic, isn’t it?

  When I had Norm to dinner-roast chook, roast potatoes, good old Aussietype vegies for Norm-I found out that word of the Frankie-Olivia outrage has filtered through the system, and our own Kings Cross coppers are as livid as they are mortified. Well, coppers are like any other large group-some good, some bad, some indifferent. Our own blokes leave the Lezes alone, don’t think any the worse of a girl for being a Lez any more than they think the worse of a girl for being on the game. They just keep the wowsers at bay. Seems to me that the wowsers generate the worst of vice simply by stirring people up against what is inevitable, while the politicians serve their own interests by sucking up to the

  wowsers. Beware of people who are addicted to power. In politicians, it’s ambition allied to no talent. They’re either failed lawyers or failed schoolteachers, with an occasional shop steward thrown in.

  Off your soap box, Harriet Purcell!

  I did mention Harold to Jim and Bob, who believe me. “You don’t think he’d take to haunting the laundry, do you?” I asked with a shiver.

  Jim considered it, shook her head. “No, I don’t, Harry. He seems glued to Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s floor, that’s where the centre of his universe is located. He wants to separate you from the old girl, that’s all. If he was really going to do you in, I think he would have tried already.”

  “He hates you too,” I said gloomily.

  “Yes, but that’s the wowser in him. Oh, he’s jealous of us, but he knows we don’t matter to the old girl the way you do.”

  What a splendid person Jim is! She sat there looking like whipcord and sprung steel, slim and muscular, that bony face very definitely more a man’s than a woman’s. No wonder the world sees her as a young man when she thunders through on her Harley Davidson with Bob perched on the pillion-a hell-for-leather chap out for a ride with his sweetheart. I can even understand why Bob’s parents, elderly and real bushies, have never woken up to the fact that Jim is a woman. So wise of them!

  Jim offered to help me install my
shower.

  Monday November 7th, 1960

  Well, I am now officially in charge of Cas X-ray. Chris left last Friday after a little party organised by Sister Cas, who in the old days would have been weepy and crotchety, but kept up a cheerful face because she confidently hopes to follow Chris’s example next year. Constantin (a chef at Romano’s restaurant) is still very keen on her. When Chris announced that a Happy Event was on the way, the little gaggle of technicians and sisters gooed and gushed, squeaked and giggled. Luckily a couple of multiple emergencies broke the party up, and we all went back to our work.

  I have a new technician to take my place-older and more experienced than me, but engaged to be married to a senior resident, so perfectly happy to be the middleman. Her name is Ann Smith and she’s facing a long engagement because Dr. Alan Smith (no name change necessary!) has to sort out his career preferences before they can tie the knot. But why me for the charge position?

  “Your work is excellent, Miss Purcell,” said Sister Agatha to me as I stood at attention in front of her desk. “I have decided to replace Miss Hamilton with you because you are efficient, very well organised, and you can think on your feet-an essential for good casualty work.”

  “Yes, Sister, thank you Sister,” I said automatically. “Unless-” and she paused ominously.

  “Unless what, Sister?” I asked.

  “Unless you are planning to be married, Miss Purcell.” I couldn’t help it, I grinned. “No, Sister, I can assure you that I am not planning to be married.”

  “Excellent, excellent!” And she actually smiled. “You may go, Miss Purcell.”

  It makes a difference to be in charge. Chris was a very good technician, but ran the place in a way I thought could be improved. Now I can do what I likeprovided that neither Matron nor Sister Agatha objects.

  What it does mean is that I now commence work at six in the morning, have the junior between eight and four, and Ann from ten onward in my old slot. I don’t think Ann was too pleased about that, but hard cack. If her hours mean that she will see less of her Alan, she’ll just have to lump it. See what a position of power does? I’ve turned into an unsympathetic bitch.

  Friday November 11th, 1960 (My Birthday)

  I overheard a wonderful little conversation between Matron and the General Medical Superintendent shortly after six this morning. God knows what the Super was doing in at such an hour, but Matron, of course, hasn’t got the words “off duty” in her vocabulary.

  “I would never have believed it of Dr. Bloodworthy,” she said stiffly just outside my door.

  Now what has Dr. Bloodworthy been up to? He is a pathologist whose specialty is blood-isn’t it odd how people with suggestive names espouse them completely? Like Lord Brain the neurologist.

  “It’s flaming hysterical!” replied the Super, clearly in fits of laughter. “Maybe it will teach all those old chooks in the Sisters’ dining room to mind their own business for a change.”

  “Sir,” said Matron in tones producing instantaneous icicles on all my equipment, “as I remember it, there were just as many old chooks in the Doctors’

  dining room. I believe, in fact, that Mr. NasebyMorton actually managed to lay an egg, which you put on your spoon and ran with all the way downstairs.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the Super spoke. “One of these days, Matron, I am going to have the last word! And when I do, I will not be an old chook! I will be cock of the walk! Good day to you, ma’am.”

  Ooooooaa! And poop to birthdays. I went to Bronte tonight.

  Wednesday, November 23rd, 1960

  I saw Duncan today. Professor Sjogren is over from Sweden, and gave a lecture on hypothermic techniques for contending with vascular anomalies in the brain.

  All of Queens above the domestic level wanted to go, but our 228

  lecture theatre only holds five hundred, so the competition for a seat was fierce.

  The old Swede is a great neurosurgeon with a worldwide reputation in pioneering this idea of freezing the patient to slow down heart and circulation before going in to clip the aneurysm or close the shunt or whatever. As technician in charge of Cas X-ray, I rated a seat, found myself wedged between Sister Cas and none other than Mr. Duncan Forsythe. Oh, it was agony! We couldn’t help but be in bodily contact, and my whole right side burned for hours after. He acknowledged me with a curt nod but no smile, then stared at the podium throughout when he wasn’t chatting to Mr. NasebyMorton on his other side.

  Sister Tesoriero, who runs Kids’ Bones, was on Sister Cas’s far side, and they were having their usual scrap. “I really work,” Marie O’Callaghan was saying, “whereas you ward charges are pure decoration. You run around peeing in the H.M.O.s’ pockets and giving them tomato sandwiches for their cuppa instead of the peanut butter the rest of the poor mortals get.”

  “Ssssh!” I hissed. “I’m sitting next to you-knowwho!”

  Sister Cas merely smirked, but Sister Tesoriero took a horrified look and shut up. Her darling Mr. Forsythe, chief of Kids’ Bones, might not approve of eating tomato sandwiches if he realised that the rest of the poor mortals got peanut butter. He was so nice.

  For a while I debated whether I could clap my hand to my mouth and bolt pretending I was sick on the

  stomach, but as we were in the very centre of the long wooden bench, I’d earn more attention than I would if I just endured it.

  I don’t think I heard a word of the lecture, and the second it was over I was up and ready to join the mass exodus. He’d leave with Mr. NasebyMorton by the far aisle, thank God. But he didn’t. He followed me, with the chief of cardiac surgery following him to continue their chat. Then he put his hands on either side of my waist, the idiot! Isn’t he aware that half the feminine eyes in any crowd are riveted on him? The touch was a caress, not a squeeze, and it all came back in a rush, those big, well-cared-for hands that could crunch through bone in one swoop yet were so reverent as they roamed my skin, so shiversome. My head spun, I staggered. Which was the best thing I could have done, looking back on it now. He could keep his hands there, steady me, even turn me so that he could see my face.

  “Thank you, thank you, sir!” I gasped, broke free and bolted to the Sisters Cas and Tesoriero, well ahead of me.

  “What was that all about?” Sister Cas asked as I reach them.

  “I tripped,” I said, “and Mr. Forsythe caught me.” “Half your luck!”

  sighed Sister Tesoriero.

  Half my luck, nothing. The bastard did it deliberately to see how I reacted, and I bloody obliged him.

  Sister Cas, who knows me much better, simply looked thoughtful. What was wrong with my face?

  Thursday, December 1st, 1960 Incredible to think that 1960 is almost over.

  Last year at this time I was still at Ryde Hospital, had just completed my exams, hadn’t yet seen the Royal Queens booth at Sydney Tech, let alone contemplated working there. Didn’t know Pappy, didn’t know about Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz or The House. Didn’t know that my angel puss existed.

  Ignorance is bliss, they say, but I do not believe that. Ignorance is a trap which leads people to make the wrong decisions. Harold and Duncan notwithstanding, I am so glad that when I emerged from my chrysalis, I became a big, handsome Bogong moth, not a frail butterfly.

  If it’s been a fairly decent sort of a day, I’m home by four or half-past.

  Today being only middling, I knocked off a bit after five, and so walked home with Pappy, who has just finished her exams. She thinks she scraped a pass, and I’m sure she has. There are never enough nurses, thanks to the grinding discipline, the hard labour and the obligation to live in a nurses’ home. It’s the last worries me the most; after all, as a nurses’ aide she’s been subjected to even more stringent discipline because aides are the lowest of the low. But how will Pappy manage to live in a weeny room if she’s at a hospital with a big home, or share a weeny room if she’s at a hospital less well endowed?

  “You
’ll keep your room at The House,” I said as we strode out.

  “No, I can’t afford to,” she said, “and quite honestly, dear Harriet, I’m not sure that I want to.”

  Oh, what is happening? Toby saying he’s going, now Pappy! I’m going to be left with Jim, Bob, Klaus and Harold. And two new tenants, one of whom will live next door to me. Without those floor-to-ceiling books, I’ll hear everything when I’m in bed-there is a sealedoff door between us with Victorian panels in it as thin as plywood. That sounds so selfish, and I suppose it is selfish, but no Pappy doesn’t bear thinking of. God rot Professor Ezra Marsupial! When she killed his child, she killed something in herself that has nothing to do with foetuses.

  “I think you should try to make the effort to keep a bolt-hole in The House,”

  I said as we crossed Oxford Street. “For one thing, you’ll never be able to take a twentieth of your books with you, and for another, you’re too old for all that jolly, giggly sort of communal life. Pappy, they’re babies!”

  Oh, what an unfortunate slip of the tongue! She ignored it.

  “I shall probably be able to rent something halfway between a shed and a cottage at Stockton,” she said. “I’ll keep my books in it, and spend my days off there.”

  I only heard “Stockton”. “Stockton?” I gasped.

  “Yes, I’m applying to go psychiatric nursing at Stockton,” she said.

  “Jesus, Pappy, you can’t!” I cried, halting outside Vinnie’s Hospital. “Psych nursing is bad enough

  everybody knows that the nurses and doctors are loonier than the patients, but Stockton is the dumping ground to end all dumping grounds! Out there in the sand dunes on the far side of the Hunter estuary, with all the aments, dements and biological nightmares-it’ll kill you!”

  “I’m hoping it will heal me,” she said.

  Yes, of course. It’s exactly what a Pappy would do. It’s so easy for Catholics, they can renounce the world, take the veil and enter a convent. But what can non-Catholics do? Answer: take the cap and go psych nursing at Stockton, a hundred miles to Newcastle and then catch the ferry to nowhere. She’s expiating her sins in the only way she knows.