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  “I understand completely,” I said, started walking again. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz was lurking in the front hall when we came in, greeted us in the most peculiar way. “Oh, do I need the pair of youse!” she exclaimed, looked agitated and worried, then had to muffle a laugh.

  The laugh calmed me immediately-Flo was all right, then. If something had happened to Flo, there would have been no laugh.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “It’s Harold,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. “Can youse take a squizzy at him, Harriet?”

  The last thing I wanted to do was to take a look at Harold, but this was definitely a medical request. In medical matters, I outrank Pappy in our landlady’s eyes.

  “Of course. What’s the trouble?” I asked as we ascended.

  Whereupon she clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a guffaw, then waved the hand about and burst into a huge bellow of mirth. “I know it ain’t funny, princess, but Jeez, it is funny!” she said when she could. “The funniest thing I seen in years! Oh, Jeez, I can’t help meself! It’s fuh-fuh-funny!” And off she went again.

  “Stop it, you old horror!” I snapped. “What’s wrong with Harold?”

  “He can’t pee!” she yelled, in fits once more. “I beg your pardon?”

  “He can’t pee! He-can’t-pee! Oh, Jeez, it’s funny!” Her mirth was so infectious that it was an effort to keep my face straight, but I managed. “Poor Harold. When did this happen?”

  “I dunno, princess,” she said, wiping her eyes on her dress and revealing an amazing pair of pink bloomers almost down to her knees. “All I know is that he’s been hoggin’ the dunny lately. I thought it was the constipation-keeps it all bottled up, does Harold: Anyway, Jim and Bob complained, Klaus complained, and Toby just gallops down to the laundry dunny. I told Harold to take some Epsom salts or cascara or something, and he turned all huffy. It’s been goin’ on for days! This arvo he forgot to bolt the dunny door when he come in, so I barged in to give ‘im a piece of me mind.” The laughter threatened, she suppressed it heroically. “And there he was standin’ in front of the dunny, floggin’ his poor old dingus and cryin’ like his heart was broken. Took him ages to come clean-you

  know what an old maid he is. He-can’t-pee!” Off she went into another convulsion.

  I’d had enough of her. “Well, you can stand there howling your head off if you want, but I’m going to see Harold,” I said, and marched up to his room.

  I’d never seen it before, of course. Like its owner it was drab, neat and utterly lacking in imagination. A silver-framed photo of an old and haughty woman with spite in her eyes stood on his fireplace mantel; on each side of it was a posy of flowers in matched little vases. So many books! Beau Geste. The Scarlet Pimpernel. The Prisoner o f Zenda. The Dam Busters. The Wooden Horse. The Count o f Monte Cristo. Tap Roots. These Old Shades. The Foxes o f Harrow. All the Hornblower novels. An extraordinary collection of derringdo, knights in shining armour and the kind of romantic fantasy I’d finished with by the time I was twelve.

  I smiled at him and said a soft hello. The poor man was sitting hunched on the side of his single bed; when I spoke, he looked at me with pain-racked eyes.

  Then when he realised who it was, the pain vanished, was replaced by outrage.

  “You told her!” he shrieked at Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, who was standing in the doorway. “How could you tell her?”

  “Harold, I work in a hospital, that’s why Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz told me.

  I’m here to help you, so come on, no nonsense, please! You can’t manage to urinate, is that right?”

  His face was twisted, his arms were clasped protectively across his belly, his back was bent like a bow, he trembled very finely, rocked back and forth. Then he nodded.

  “How long has it been going on?” I asked. “Three weeks,” he whispered.

  “Three weeks! Oh, Harold! Why didn’t you tell anybody? Why didn’t you see a doctor?”

  In answer he wept, his dam broken, the tears sliding sparsely from beneath the bottom rim of his glasses like juice being squeezed from a dried lemon.

  I turned to Pappy. “We’ll have to take him to Vinnie’s Cas straight away,” I said to her.

  Pain and all, he reared up like a cobra. “I will not go to St. Vincent’s, it’s a Catholic hospital!” he hissed. “Then we’ll take you to Sydney Hospital,” I hissed back. “The minute they catheterise you, you’ll feel so much better that you’ll wonder why you didn’t seek help a great deal sooner.”

  The vision of Harold being catheterised set Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz howling again. I rounded on her. “Will you get out of here?” I barked. “Make yourself useful! Find some old towels in case he lets go, then hail a taxi-move! “

  Encouraging him to find his feet but taking his weight between us, Pappy and I got Harold sort of upright. His agony wouldn’t let him straighten up, nor would he remove his hands from his lower abdomen. By the time we got him downstairs, the taxi was waiting.

  The junior resident and Sister Cas at Sydney Hospital just stared at Harold when told the nature of the emergency.

  “Three weeks!” the junior resident exclaimed tactlessly, then quailed under the glares he got from Sister Cas, Pappy and me.

  We watched Harold deposited in a wheelchair and whisked away, then went outside and caught the Bellevue Hill tram.

  “They’ll give him the works,” said Pappy as we climbed aboard. “We won’t see him home until he’s had cystoscopes and IVPs and God knows what else.”

  “You don’t think it’s organic either,” I said.

  “No, he looks too well. His colour’s good, and his distended bladder is the source of his pain. You know what renal cases look like, or stones or pelvic cancers. He must have an electrolyte imbalance, but looking at him? It’s not organic.”

  Oh, Pappy, I wish you’d do general nursing! But I didn’t dare voice that thought.

  So for the time being, I’m free of Harold, though my worry has increased.

  Some clinical instinct tells me that this hideously repressed man is edging toward the ultimate repression. Retaining his faeces isn’t enough for him any more, the pain and humiliation of that isn’t doing it for him, so he’s graduated to retaining his urine. But beyond urinary retention, the only thing left to shut down is life itself. Oh, God damn Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz for laughing at him! If she doesn’t learn to control herself, one

  of these days he’s going to kill himself. Just pray he leaves it at that, doesn’t take Jim or Pappy or me with him. Yet how can any of us reason with a force of Nature like Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz? She’s a law unto herself. Amazingly wise, abysmally foolish. And if he does kill himself, she’ll be desolate, penitent, inconsolable. Why hasn’t she seen it in the cards? It’s there! It’s there! Harold and the Ten of Swords. The ruin of The House.

  Saturday December 10th, 1960

  I invited Toby down for lunch today, and he actually came. He’d needed Saturday morning to buy specialised hardware for his shack, so he had to stay in Sydney because Nock & Kirby’s is the only place sells what he wants.

  “Saturday’s dead anyway, so eat lunch before you hop on the train,” I said winningly.

  The menu was shepherd’s pie made on tuna and mushrooms bound together with a fresh marjoram sauce, the potato topping I’d mashed with tons of butter and ground pink pepper, and I served a salad on the side, its dressing walnut oil shaken with water and old, nonastringent vinegar.

  “If you keep on cooking like this, I might just have to marry you the minute I’m famous,” he said, mouth full. “This is good!”

  “As you won’t become famous until after you die, I’m safe,” I said, smiling at him. “It’s fun to cook, though I suspect it wouldn’t be if I had to do it every single day like my mother.”

  “I’ll bet she enjoys it,” he said, transferring to the easy chair opposite Marceline, who only got a grimace from him.

  “If she does, it’s because she loves to see her me
n feeding their faces,” I said a bit tartly. “The menu’s pretty narrow-steak-and-chips, fish-and-chips, roast leg of lamb, stewed lamb neck chops, curried sausages, crumbed lamb cutlets, cooked prawns from the fishmonger’s, then start again-why don’t you like my beautiful Marceline?”

  “Animals,” he said, “don’t belong inside houses.” “What a typical bushie you are! If a dog doesn’t work the stock properly, shoot it.”

  “Terminal lead poisoning in the left ear is a good way to go,” he protested.

  “No nonsense, over and done with in a second.”

  “You’re a real loner,” I said, taking the chair with the cat.

  “You learn to be when you don’t get your way all the time, and by all the time, I mean all the time, not occasionally.”

  “She’ll turn to you, Toby, I know it,” I said warmly. “What are you talking about?” he asked blankly.

  I looked blank. “Surely you know!” “No, I don’t.

  Explain.”

  ŤPappY. ť

  His jaw dropped. “Pappy?”

  “Yes, of course, you drongo, Pappy!”

  “Why should Pappy turn to me?” he asked, frowning. “Oh, really! You may think you hide your feelings successfully, Toby, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that you love Pappy.”

  “Naturally I love Pappy,” he said, “but I’m not in love with her-you’ve got to be joking, Harriet.”

  “But you must be in love with her!” I said, confused. His eyes were turning red. “That’s bullshit.”

  “Oh, come on, Toby! I’ve seen the pain in your eyes, you don’t fool me for a minute,” I floundered.

  “You know, Miss Purcell,” he said, getting up quickly, “you may fancy that you’re a woman of the world these days, but in actual fact you’re blind, stupid, illogical and self-obsessed!”

  With that parting shot, he stalked out, leaving me sitting with Marceline in my lap wondering what had hit me.

  Something is happening to The House, I can feel it, and Toby is just one more symptom. I can’t get any sense out of Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz about either The House or herself, and since his return, Harold is right back in her good books. I suppose he never even knew how she laughed at him, he was in so much pain. When Sydney Hospital referred him to a psychiatrist, he took such umbrage that he signed himself out, came home instead. Oh, Duncan, I miss you!

  Sunday December 25th, 1960 (Christmas Day)

  I went home to Bronte, though I declined the lounge room couch. I’m working tomorrow, Boxing Day, because there are all sorts of sporting fixtures scheduled for the various grounds to the east of Queens, so we’ll have traffic accidents by the score and some victims of drunken brawls. I’m also on duty on New Year’s Day, though Ann Smith volunteered to take New Year’s Eve because her fiance is working Cas that night. New Year’s Eve is a shambles in every hospital Cas, though it’s worst at Vinnie’s because half of Sydney pays its annual visit to the Cross to get drunk, strew the streets with litter and vomit, keep Norm, Merv, Bumper Farrell and the rest of the Cross coppers frantically busy.

  I gave Willie a bottle of threestar, Granny a stunning Spanish shawl, Gavin and Peter a macro lens for their Zeiss camera, Dad a box of Cuban cigars, and Mum some really pretty underwear (sexy but respectable). The family clubbed in and gave me a voucher to buy heaps of LP records at Nicholson’s. Greatly appreciated.

  Wednesday, December 28th, 1960 Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz grabbed me on the way in this afternoon and invited me up for a Kraft cheese spread glass of brandy. Which irritated me.

  “Why are you still using these?” I demanded. “I gave you seven beautiful cut glass tumblers for Christmas!” The X-ray vision isn’t so focused at the moment, she has more of a faraway look, so my question didn’t provoke a blaze from her inner lighthouse. “Oh, I couldn’t use ‘em!” she exclaimed. “I’m savin’ ‘em for best, princess.”

  “Saving them for best? But I didn’t give them to you to put away!” I said despairingly.

  “If I used ‘em, I might break one.”

  “But that doesn’t matter, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz! If one breaks, I’ll replace it.”

  “Can’t replace anything what’s broke,” she said. “The aura’s on the originals, princess, them’s the seven-good thinkin’, to make it seven, not six-what you touched and wrapped up so grouse.”

  “I’d touch and wrap up the replacement nicely, too,” I said.

  “Ain’t the same. Nope, I’m savin’ ‘em for best.”

  I gave up, told her instead about my curious exchange with Toby. “I could have sworn he was in love with Pappy! “

  “Nah, never has been. She brought ‘im home near five years ago for a quick nooky, then realised I was lookin’ for ‘im-saw ‘im in the cards. The King of Swords. Gotta have a King of Swords in The House, princess, but they’re a lot harder to find than the Queens. Men’re poor fish, ain’t often strong the way women are. But Toby is. Good bloke, Toby,” she said, nodding.

  “I am aware of that!” I snapped.

  “That youse are, princess, but not aware enough.” “Not aware enough?” I asked.

  But she changed the subject, informed me that every New Year’s Eve she has a party. Quote, a rip-snorter of a bash. It’s become a Cross tradition, and everybody who is anybody at the Cross will be there for at least a part of the festivities. Even Norm, Merv, Madame Fugue, Madame Toccata, Chastity Wiggins and a few others of the “permanent” girls snatch the time to attend Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz’s New Year’s Eve party. I said I’d be there, but that as I have to work on New Year’s Day, I wouldn’t be able to get into the real swing of things.

  “There ain’t no work for you on New Year’s Day,” she said, “I can tell youse that for sure.”

  “It’s in the cards,” I said in a long-suffering voice. “Got it in one, princess!”

  Turns out she wants culinary help, of course. The blokes are instructed to supply the booze, the girls in The House (plus Klaus) provide the food. Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz herself roasts a turkey-it’ll be dry and rubbery, I thought with a shudder. Klaus is down for roast suckling pig, Jim and Bob are doing the salads, weeny saveloys and weeny sausage rolls, Pappy has to come up with spring rolls and prawn toasts, and I am down for the desserts, all suitable to eat with the fingers. Eclairs, fairy cakes, lamingtons and Neenish tarts are my orders.

  “Better add some of them grouse Anzac bikkies you make,” the old horror added. “I ain’t a great one for

  puddins, but I do like to dip a good crunchy bikky in me cuppa tea.”

  I laughed. “Go on, you fraud! Since when have you drunk tea?”

  “Two cups of it every New Year’s Eve,” she said solemnly.

  “How’s Harold?” I asked.

  “Harold’s Harold,” she said, pulling a face. “Lucky thing is that the job he’s gotta do for The House is comin’ up fast, so the cards inform me. The minute it’s done, out he goes.”

  “No point in telling you that we’re losing Pappy as well as Toby,” I said, and sighed. “The House is falling apart.” On came the searchlight in her eyes. “Never say that, Harriet Purcell!” she said sternly. “The House is eternal.” Flo came in, yawning and rubbing her eyes, saw me and landed in my lap in one bound. “I’ve never seen her sleepy before,” I said.

  “She sleeps.”

  “Nor have I ever heard her talk.” “She talks.”

  So I wandered off downstairs, Flo with her hand in mine, to spend an evening only bearable because Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz had let me have my angel puss.

  When I brought her back shortly before nine o’clock (Flo doesn’t keep ordinary children’s hours, she seems to be up until her mother goes to bed-what would my own mother say about that?), Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz was sitting in the darkness of her room, not out on the balcony as is her habit in summer. The Glass was on the table before her, and it seemed to gather in every last particle of light from the street lamp outside, the
bulb in the hall, an occasional headlight as some chauffeured Rolls delivered a client to 17b or 17d.

  The moment Flo saw her mother, she stopped absolutely still, the pressure of her hand in mine a silent command not to move. So we stood there in the gloom for what seemed like half an hour while that massive shape sat utterly still, its shadowy face a foot from the Glass.

  Finally, with a sigh, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz leaned back in her chair, wiped her face with a tired hand. I led Flo forward softly until we reached the table.

  “Ta for minding her, princess. I needed to scry.” “Would you like me to switch the light on?” “Ta. Then come back here for a minute.”

  When I returned, Flo was sitting on her lap, looking sadly at the buttoned dress.

  “It’s a pity you weaned her,” I found myself saying. “Had to,” she answered curtly. Then she reached out to take both my hands and put them on the Glass, while Flo stared at them raptly, then transferred her gaze to my face in-wonder?

  I don’t know. But I stood there cupping the Glass, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. The surface is cool and sleek, that’s all. “Remember,” Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz said, “remember that the fate of The House is in the Glass.” She removed my hands and put them together, palm against palm, fingers conjoined, the way angels’ hands are in paintings. “It’s in the Glass.”

  Friday December 30th, 1960

  Those bloody cards again! I’m not working New Year’s Day after all. Dr. Alan Smith is rostered for duty in Cas all day, so Ann wants to work. I’m not surprised. If he does a double shift in Cas, he’ll be buggered, he’ll need the haven Cas X-ray will be with Ann staffing it. Our junior’s on leave, so we have a temp in her place, a good girl. I wouldn’t have consented if Ann wasn’t up to the work, but she is, and I’ve done the pair a kindness, as they will be off duty together for two days straight after.