Bittersweet

by Colleen McCullough

  The silence was succeeded by talk about many things, none of them political, some of them pertaining to philosophies, some to sex. Certainly he was starved for a candid friendship with a woman he could trust implicitly, and clearly until now that had been denied him. In her, Edda, he was beginning to feel a little of that implicit trust; she resolved always to say what she felt.

  “What prompted you to marry?” she asked.

  “Panic, combined with family expectations,” he said, and for a moment panic flared in his eyes. His mouth closed, stoppered.

  “No, tell me,” she said strongly.

  An apologetic smile, and he resumed. “I was psychically at my most confused, and I’d known Anne since early childhood — we were neighbours. Whatever I did, wherever I went, Anne was somewhere fairly close. Our schools were partnered in all social events, and we went up to university together. I did Law, she did Arts, then a secretarial course. We went to the same law firm, I as a junior at the bar, she as private secretary to one of the senior partners. Then she proposed marriage to me, I think because she was tired of waiting for me to do it. Our families were delighted. In fact, I was the only fly in the ointment! Also, I realised that if I wanted to keep my secret, I would have to marry. So we married. We were both twenty-three.”

  “And of course it was a disaster,” Edda said.

  “Frightful! I couldn’t manage to make love to her, and the only logical reason I could find was to keep insisting I felt too much her brother to be a husband. It dragged on for two years. Then she met someone else, and I gave her an uncontested divorce.”

  “I am so sorry!”

  “Don’t be. I kept my secret, even from Anne.”

  “Have you a lover?”

  This time his smile was rueful. “I dare not, Edda.”

  “I refuse to believe you avail yourself of rent boys.”

  “The rent boy… Why not be done with it and call him a prostitute? Have you ever looked into a rent boy’s eyes? Dead — so dead! One plumbs a pit, and wonders how he ever got started… No, not for me. I go abroad for a month, usually winter and summer.”

  “I wish you had room in your life for a best friend,” she said.

  The intensely blue eyes grew brilliant. “Would you work here in Melbourne to be my best friend?”

  “In an instant, though I know nothing about the law, which I suppose means I can’t be a satisfactory best friend.”

  That made him laugh. “My dear, the last thing one wants in a best friend is a mind tunnelled by the law.” He reached out to take her hands in his, holding her gaze with what she fancied was a kind of love. “For thirty years I’ve led a very lonely life, Sister Edda Latimer, but now I think I’ve finally found a friend with whom I can share all my secrets. A natural streak of paranoia has protected me from close friendships, but now — how odd! I don’t feel it.”

  “I’ll start making enquiries at the bigger hospitals tomorrow,” Edda said, wanting to weep, knowing she didn’t dare.

  “No, not yet!” he said sharply. “Do you believe that I have the influence to postpone the awarding of any hospital job for — say, another two or three weeks?”

  Bewildered, she frowned. “Yes, it’s Melbourne. You have the influence,” she said.

  “Then grant me two weeks of your time, starting early on Monday morning. Grant it to me not knowing what I want you for, just believe that at the end of it, the hospital job will be waiting for you,” Rawson said.

  “You may have your time,” Edda said gravely.

  He gasped, thumped his fists on his beautifully tailored knees, and squeezed her hands before releasing them. “Oh, well done! The mystery must remain, but I’ll explain enough for you to make plans. One floor down I own a guest flat. It’s much smaller than this one, but quite spacious for someone not making a home there. You will move into it tomorrow afternoon, and on Monday you will commence two weeks of living in it doing exactly as I bid you. Your sentence will be up on Sunday evening two weeks from tomorrow.”

  “Well, stone the crows!” she said, feeling some sort of exclamation was called for. “Two weeks of mystery labour for Sir Rawson Schiller coming up. I wonder what it can be?”

  “Time will tell,” he said, quietly chuckling. “I will only say that I have been visited by an inspiration. We have talked of shoes, ships, sealing wax, medicine, hospitals, courts, music, books and God knows what tonight, and out of the jumble has come a wonderful, beautiful idea. I do not believe that all men were created equal, otherwise why are there so many idiots around? But I do firmly believe that the world contains as many intelligent women as it does intelligent men.”

  “What do I say to Charles Burdum?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Anything you like that sits well with you. I presume he knows you’re applying for a position in Melbourne?”

  “As a matter of fact, he doesn’t. I’ve been here attending a seminar, and listening to the chatter over teacups inspired me with the Melbourne idea. I’ll tell him something to make him hope.”

  “Hope? Hope what?”

  “That his most disliked, uncomfortable sister-in-law will decide to live four hundred miles away in Melbourne. That would mean he stands a better chance of discouraging his wife from seeking the company of her sisters,” she said with a snap.

  “Oh, I see. A possessive husband.”

  “Very much so. And I’m the one who stirs the pot.”

  “Sometimes it can be more effective to stir the pot from a long distance,” he said slyly.

  She laughed. “Occasionally I see a glimmer as to why you’ve won so many court cases. Tell me why you need me for two weeks!”

  “No, and picking away at me won’t work either.” He changed the subject. “Interesting, that Burdum and I so detested each other. Like pouring water on phosphorus. However, our feelings won’t prevent our collaborating in the federal parliament. He’s bound to be a Nationalist Party man.”

  Edda’s brows rose. “Charlie, a Tory? Not in a fit! I don’t say he’ll join the Labor Party, but he’ll side with them on lots of issues. To a socialist he may be on the right, but to a conservative he’s definitely on the left.”

  Schiller looked astonished, then huffed in exasperation. “My instincts were correct, then. He’s one of those wretched fellows who thirst to tamper with the status quo. He probably thinks Jack Lang’s fiscal policy is the answer.”

  “Lots of people from all walks admire Jack Lang,” she said.

  “Then more fool they! When one borrows money, one is honour-bound to repay the loan at whatever interest rate was agreed upon.”

  “I don’t know enough to quarrel with you, Rawson,” she said, “so let’s agree to differ. Despite my complaints about Charlie, I owe him loyalty and support for reasons that have nothing to do with you, or Melbourne, or politics. It’s all to do with the love sisters have for each other — do you have sisters?”

  “No. I have an older and a younger brother.”

  She had to suppress a yawn. “Oh, I’m sleepy! May I go back to my hotel now, please?”

  “If you tell me what you like about Charles Burdum.”

  “That’s easy! His passion for people as thinking human beings rather than as mere ciphers on pieces of paper,” she said instantly. “He turned our district hospital from pathetic to the best in the state, not by massive retrenchment and huge upheavals, but by putting round pegs in round holes and square pegs in square holes. Discrimination on racial or sexual or religious or gender grounds is anathema to him, so Chinese and Catholics and women and homosexuals can find employment as equals with him. He’s arrogant and autocratic, yet his blindnesses are confined to the personal, as with his wife, of whom he’s over-possessive. He has a curious intellectual dichotomy — the mind of a stockbroker and a healer.”

  “You’d make a good advocate.”

  “Why, thank you, but hospitals are where my heart is.” She got up and began to prowl about the room taking in the titles of his books, while Sc
hiller watched her. Her figure was magnificent — nothing to excess, everything fused together by a grace of movement that contained nothing artificial — that was the nurse training, of course. And where had she bought her dress? No couturier would have cut that rich shot silk in such a way, but it was extremely clever and flattering.

  “Your library is heavily weighted in favour of the law,” she said, picking up her wrap and holding it out to him, “and you have no novels. That’s a shame. Almost all the great books of the world are novels, from Crime and Punishment to Vanity Fair. Surely you’re reading some of the new writers like William Faulkner and the not-so-new like Henry James?”

  “Legal minds are narrow, I freely admit it,” he said, taking the wrap and examining it. “Has no man given you a fur?”

  “I don’t take gifts from men.”

  “Your stole is beautifully made. By whom?”

  “By me. I’m too poor to buy the kind of clothes I like, so I make them.” She allowed herself to be wrapped up.

  “And you wouldn’t let me buy them for you?”

  “No, though I thank you if that was an offer. I dislike the idea of being kept by a man, including within marriage.”

  He sighed. “Then I’ll escort you home, Sister Latimer.”

  When Edda moved into Sir Rawson Schiller’s guest flat she found out her fate, far from anything she had imagined. Among the possibilities that had flitted through her mind were various kinds of work to do with health, hospitals, nursing, medical law suits; it occurred to her that perhaps he was on some charity board committed to a new approach to surgery, and wanted a theatre sister’s viewpoint; courses and curricula sprang to her mind, pet projects he might be helping with: round and round went her mind, to no avail.

  On Sunday evening she moved in and ate dinner upstairs with him; at the end of the meal he enlightened her.

  “I won’t see you at all until you’re done,” he said by way of introducing the subject, “because from tomorrow morning at nine o’clock you’re going to be head down, tail up, studying flat out for two weeks.”

  “Studying?”

  “Studying. Specifically, studying human anatomy, physiology, and the new science of organic chemistry cum biochemistry. Those three subjects, nothing else. Your doorbell will ring at nine and you will admit your tutor in all three disciplines, a chap you’ll call John Smith. It’s not his real name, but that doesn’t matter. He’s the best teacher in the business, I am assured. Today, Sunday, two weeks hence, you will sit an examination in each discipline. After which, we shall see,” said her tormentor, leaning back with his cognac balloon and smiling.

  “I would never have guessed,” she said slowly. “You thought of this last night, is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “And in the space of less than twenty-four hours you’ve set all this up, including John Smith the tutor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I quite see why they knighted you. Anything to get you off their backs! The knighthood makes you so expensive they’ve kicked you upstairs to a career in parliament, complete with blue-ribbon seat and the front bench.” Edda put her glass down, laughing hard.

  “And you, madam, are extremely clever,” he said. “Oh, I do hope you pass those examinations and Plan Schiller can proceed!”

  “I am Plan Schiller?”

  “Yes.”

  A purring sound erupted from her throat. “Fancy having a plan named in your honour! I’m also looking forward to the study.”

  Which was just as well; the amount of knowledge Edda was required to absorb was huge, but she was astonished to find how much of it she already knew from her nursing studies and her own driving curiosity to know more than was actually needed. John Smith was the epitome of his name, anonymous and undemanding of personal attention; provided she worked at what he gave her, he asked for nothing. He arrived at nine and went home at five, though she never found out where or to whom he went home. Edda’s meals were sent down from Schiller’s apartment, including lunch for John Smith.

  Every book and chart she needed had been supplied, blackboards and lecterns, models of molecules, brains, hearts, a skeleton. And Edda loved every moment of this strange, apparently purposeless two weeks, especially the last few days, when she felt able to pit her knowledge against John Smith’s.

  On the two-week Sunday she did three written examinations. The morning was given to biochemistry, the afternoon to physiology, and the evening to anatomy. Some of the questions were difficult, but when she finished anatomy at eight that evening, she felt she had done well at the same kind of examination a second-year medical student would have taken.

  A card arrived with her late supper.

  “I will leave you in peace until tomorrow evening, Monday, when I would be delighted to see you at my dinner table. R.S.”

  It took Edda all of the intervening hours to come down from the heights to which such a frenzied and passionate fortnight of study had lifted her, though why she decided to wear pillar-box red to dinner escaped her. It was such a triumphant colour, perhaps, and she felt as if she had survived some kind of test above and beyond mere examinations.

  “Pillar-box red,” said Rawson, taking her purse and gloves.

  “After post boxes and telephone booths, I imagine,” she said composedly, accepting a glass of sherry and sinking into a chair.

  “It suits you, but you already know that. You probably have too much red in your wardrobe, but that’s a symptom of not having enough money to indulge in things you won’t wear as often because they’re not your favourite colour.” He sat down where he could look at her directly. “I’d like to see you in electric blue, jade or emerald green, amber, purple, and a few interesting prints.”

  “When I’m a deputy matron and can afford to splurge.”

  “Affording to splurge might be arranged,” he murmured, “but I think I’ll save what I have to say until after dinner. That way, if you walk out on me, at least your tummy will be full.”

  “It’s a bargain. What are we eating?”

  “Crayfish and crab meat in an oriental sauce to start, then roast baby chicken.”

  A menu to which Edda did full justice, consumed with curiosity though she was. Afterward, settled in the library, he produced a sheaf of papers and waved them at her. “Congratulations, my dear,” Rawson Schiller said. “You passed all three subjects with high distinction.”

  Stupefied, all she could find to say was “What?”

  “I had those papers set and then had them marked by the chaps who set and mark the Medicine II papers at Melbourne University,” he said, sounding pleased with himself.

  “Medicine II?”

  “Yes. I saw no point in going ahead with my idea until I had discovered exactly what standard of knowledge you already possessed from your nursing career, so I entered into a conspiracy of sorts with some friends of mine up at the university in the Faculty of Medicine. Melbourne has an admirable record when it comes to admitting women students into Medicine, whereas Sydney, strangled by a Scottish faculty, has always been disgracefully opposed to women. Fascinating to think that senseless national bigotries belonging to the other end of the world should have so marred a whole university faculty as important as Medicine, yet that has happened, to Sydney’s lasting shame. But I digress.”

  Edda seemed to have gone beyond listening properly, her eyes fixed on Rawson’s face with a look in them he had never seen: of an unbearable pain unexpectedly resurrected, a pain against which she had no defences.

  So he hurried on, anxious to destroy the root cause of that pain, knowing he could — if she consented. “In February of next year, Edda, when university goes up, you have a place as a student in Medicine III allocated to you on the basis of these examinations. Here, in Melbourne. Commencing as a third-year student, you would have only four years of Medicine to graduate, which you would in November of 1935. After a year of internship, you would be given your licence to practise at the end of 1936. Think of it! That wou
ld make you a qualified doctor at the age of thirty-one, with years and years of fruitful work ahead of you.”

  Her body twisted convulsively, she began to get up, face a mask of terrified panic.

  “No, don’t!” he cried. “Hear me out, Edda, please!”

  “I can’t take charity, especially from a dear friend.”

  “This is not charity. It comes at a considerable price.”

  That stilled her, smoothed away the lines of anguish. “It comes at a considerable price? What price?”

  “I need a wife,” he said flatly. “That’s my price. Marry me and you can do Medicine, buy an electric-blue or a jade-green dress, wear furs — there’s no limit, I’m a very rich man. But I need a wife. Did I have a wife, I’d already be in parliament. Men my age who are bachelors are suspect, even if their reputations are unsullied. But I couldn’t find her, Edda, I just couldn’t. Until I met you. Sophisticated, intelligent, educated, understanding — even humane! For what it’s worth, you’d be Lady Schiller. Most women would kill for it, but it doesn’t impress you, does it?”

  Little trills of laughter began, a stream of small bubbles gathering speed and volume until finally Edda howled — or did she cry? Even she wasn’t sure.

  “It struck me too,” Rawson went on, determined to give voice to all his ideas while he had the courage, “that I find you very alluring. Perhaps at some time in the future, we might try for a child. I don’t know whether I could manage, but later on, when we are at peace with each other — and always provided that you were willing too — I would like to try. Nannies and nursery help would make it easier —” He thumped his brow with his fist. “I’m getting ahead of myself, these are things for the future, not now! Edda, marry me, please!”