Angel

by Colleen McCullough

  on my shoulders for forty years and have blood tests once a month? Bugger that!”

  “There are careers and careers,” she smirked. “Venus is in the tenth house too, and your Moon’s in Cancer. Saturn’s on the cusp of the second and third houses, means you’ll always look after them what can’t look after themselves.”

  She sighed. “Oh, there’s lotsa stuff, but none of it’s worth a tuppenny bumper compared to your perfect quincunx between the Moon and Mercury!”

  “Quincunx?” It sounded absolutely obscene.

  “That’s the aspect will do for me,” she said, brushing her hands together in huge satisfaction. “You gotta look at everything in a chart before the quincunx makes sense, but the way your stars have progressed since you was born says the quincunx is it.” The X-ray vision eyed me again, then she got to her feet, went inside and opened the fridge. Back she came with a plate holding chunks of what looked like horizontal sections through a snake. “Here, have some, princess. Smoked eel. Very high brain food. Klaus’s mate Lerner Chusovich catches ‘em and smokes ‘em himself.”

  The smoked eel was delicious, so I tucked in.

  “You know a lot about astrology,” I said, chewing away.

  “I should bloody hope so! I’m a soothsayer,” she said. Suddenly I remembered the bluerinsed lady from the upper North Shore, the several others I had encountered in the front hall, and a lot of things fell into place.

  “Those prosperous-looking women are clients?” I asked.

  “Bullseye, ace!” She speared me on those icy searchlights yet again. “D’you believe in the hereafter?” I thought about that before I answered. “Only maybe. It’s a bit hard to believe in the reason and justice behind God’s immutable purpose when you work in a hospital.” “This ain’t about God, it’s about the hereafter.”

  I said I wasn’t sure about that either.

  “Well, I deal in the hereafter,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. “I cast horoscopes, deal out the cards, scry into me Glass”-she said it with a capital letter”communicate with the dead.”

  “How?”

  “Haven’t got a clue, princess!” she said cheerfully. “Didn’t even know I could until I was past thirty.”

  Flo climbed onto her lap for some mother’s milk, and was put down gently but firmly. “Not now, angel puss, Harriet and I are talking.” She went to the little cupboard and brought out a very heavy object covered with dirty pink silk, put it on the table. Then she handed me the deck of cards. I turned them over expecting to see the usual hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades, but these were pictures. The one on the bottom showed a naked woman surrounded by a wreath, all of it brightly coloured.

  “That’s the World,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. Underneath was a card showing a hand holding a chalice which poured out thin streams of liquid. A dove with a small circular object in its beak hovered upside down over the chalice, on which was written what looked like a W.

  “The Ace of Cups,” she said.

  I put the deck down very gingerly. “What are they?” “A tarot pack, princess.

  I can do all sorts of things with it. I can read your fortune if you like. Ask me a question about your future, and I’ll answer it. I can sit down all by meself and deal out a gypsy spread to get the feel of what’s happening in The House, to the people in my care. The cards have mouths. They speak.”

  “Rather you to hear them than me,” I said, shivering. She went on as if I hadn’t interrupted. “This is the Glass,” she said, whipping the dirty pink silk off the object she’d taken from the cupboard. Then she reached across the table to take my hand, and put it on the cool surface of that beautiful thing.

  Flo, standing watching, suddenly gasped and fled to hide behind her mother, then peered at me from around that bulk with wide eyes. “Is it glass?” I asked, fascinated at how it held everything inside it-the balcony, its owner, a plane tree-but upside down.

  “Nope, it’s the real thing-crystal. A thousand years old. Seen everything, has the Glass. I don’t use it much, it’s like a fit of the dry horrors.”

  “Dry horrors?” How many questions were there to ask?

  “The gin jitters, the whisky wackos-delirium tremens. With the Glass, youse never knows what’s gunna come screamin’ up to push its face against the inside of the outside. Nope, I use the cards most. And for me ladies, Flo.”

  The moment she uttered Flo’s name, I knew why I was being made privy to all this. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, for what reason I had no idea, had decided that I must be told about this secret life. So I asked the ultimate question.

  “Flo?”

  “Yep, Flo. She’s me medium. She just knows the answers to the questions me ladies ask. I wasn’t born with the gift meself-it just sorta snuck up on me when I was-oh, Harriet, desperate for money! I started the fortune telling as a racket, and that’s honest. Then I discovered I did have the gift. But Flo’s a natural. Scares the bejeezus outta me sometimes, does Flo.”

  Yes, and she scares the bejeezus out of me too, though not with revulsion. I could believe it all. Flo doesn’t look as if she belongs to this world, so it isn’t much of a surprise to find that she has access to another world. Maybe it is her natural one. Or maybe she’s an hysteric. They come in all ages, hysterics. But knowing, I simply loved Flo more. It answered the riddle of the sorrow in her eyes. What she must see and feel! A natural.

  After drinking a full glass of brandy, I got down the stairs rather clumsily, but I didn’t flop on my bed to sleep it off, I wanted to get all this down before I forgot it. And I’m sitting here with my Biro in my hand wondering why I’m not outraged, why I’m not of a mind to give Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz the sharp edge of my tongue for exploiting her weeny daughter. I do have a sharp edge to my tongue. But this is so far from anything I know or understand, and even in the short time I’ve

  lived here, I’ve grown a lot. At least that’s how I feel. Sort of new and changed.

  I like that monstrosity named Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, but I love her child.

  What stills the sharp edge of my tongue, Horatio, is the realisation that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than Bronte’s philosophy ever dreamed of. And I can’t go back to Bronte any more. I can never go back to Bronte.

  Flo the medium. Her mother had implied that she herself communicated with the dead through the Glass, but she hadn’t really described Flo’s mediumistic activities as concerned with the dead. Flo knows the answers to the questions “me ladies” ask. I conjured up visions of “me ladies” and had to admit that they didn’t look like women chasing beloved phantoms. All different, but none with that air of unassuaged grief. Whatever drove them to seek help from Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz was, I somehow knew, connected to this world, not the next. Though Flo was not of this world.

  Perhaps in the beginning, when it was a racket to earn the money she was desperate for, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz valued money. I imagine it bought her The House. But these days? In that bare, bleak, awful surrounding? Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz doesn’t give tuppence for comfort, and nor does Flo.

  Wherever they dwell, it isn’t among pretty dresses and comfy couches. I can even understand why Flo is still feeding off the breast. It’s a link with her mother she needs. Oh, Flo! Angel puss. Your mother is the whole of your world, its

  beginning and its end. She’s your anchor and your refuge. And I am honoured that you’ve welcomed me into your affections, angel puss. I feel blessed.

  Monday February 8th, 1960

  I started in Casualty X-ray this morning, I must confess not quite such an eager beaver as I used to be. My life is getting a weeny bit complicated, between nymphomania and soothsaying. Though I’m not sure that confining one’s sexual activity to the weekend qualifies as nymphomania. However, within ten minutes of starting, I forgot that there was any other world than Cas X-ray.

  There are three of us-a senior, a middleman (me), and a junior. I’m not sure that I like Christine Leigh H
amilton, as my boss introduced herself. She’s in her middle thirties, and, from overhearing the occasional conversation between her and Sister Cas, she’s just starting to suffer what I call the “Old Maid Syndrome”. If I’m still single when I hit my middle thirties, I will cut my own throat rather than go through the Old Maid Syndrome. It arises out of spinsterhood and contemplation of an old age spent living with another female in relative penury unless there’s money in the family, which there usually isn’t. And the chief symptom is an overwhelming determination to catch a man. Get married. Have some babies. Be vindicated as a woman. I sympathise, even if I’m determined not to

  contract the malady myself. I’m never sure which drive is uppermost in the O.M.S.-the drive to find someone to love and be loved back, or the drive to achieve financial security. Of course Chris is an X-ray technician, so she’s paid a man’s wage, but if she went to a bank and asked for a mortgage so she could buy a house, she’d be turned down. Banks don’t give mortgages to women, no matter what they’re paid. And most women are paid poorly, so they never manage to save much for their old age. I was talking to Jim about it-she’s a master printer, but she doesn’t get equal pay for equal work. No wonder some women go funny and abrogate men altogether. Bob is a secretary to some tycoon, isn’t exactly overpaid either. And if you work for the Government, you have to leave when you get married. That’s why all the sisters and female department heads are old maids. Though a very few are widows.

  “If it wasn’t for Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, we’d lead a dog’s life,” Jim told me. “Running scared of being found out and evicted, not able to afford to buy a place. The House is our lifeline.”

  Anyway, back to Chris Hamilton. The trouble is that she’s not a mantrap.

  Blocky sort of figure, hair she can’t do a thing with, glasses, the wrong make-up, grand piano legs. Which could be overcome if she had any sense, but she doesn’t. Man sense, I mean. So whenever a man, especially one in white, enters our little domain, she simpers and rushes around and turns cartwheels trying to impress him. Oh, not the New Australian porters (they’re beneath her notice), but even the ambulancemen get cups of tea and coy chats over the bikkies. If we’re not busy, that is, give her her due. Her best friend is Marie O’Callaghan, who happens to be Sister Cas. They share a flat together in Coogee, are both middle-thirties. And they both have the Old Maid Syndrome!

  Why is it that women aren’t deemed real women unless they’ve got a husband and kids? Of course if Chris could read this, she’d sneer and say it’s all very well for me, I’m a mantrap. But why are we categorised like that?

  The junior is very shy and, as usually happens in a busy unit, spends most of her day in the darkroom. Looking back on my own training, there were times when I thought I was better qualified to work for Kodak than in X-ray. But somehow it all evens out in the end, we do get enough experience with the patients to pass our exams and turn into people who send the junior to the darkroom. The trouble is that it’s a question of priorities, especially in Cas, where you can’t make mistakes or have ponk films.

  Five minutes hadn’t gone by before I realised that I wasn’t going to have it all my own way in Cas X-ray. The Cas surgical registrar came in accompanied by his senior resident, took one look at me and started laying on the charm with a trowel. I don’t know why I have that effect on some doctors (some, not all!), because I honestly am not after anything in a white coat. I’d rather be an old maid than married to someone who’s always rushing off on a call. And all they can talk about is

  medicine, medicine, medicine. Pappy says I’m sexy, though I haven’t got a clue what that term means if Brigitte Bardot is sexy. I do not wiggle my bottom, I do not pout, I do not give men languishing glances, I do not look as if I haven’t got a brain in my head. Except for Mr. Duncan Crawler Forsythe on the ramp, I look straight through the bastards. So I didn’t do a thing to encourage that pair of doctors, but they still dawdled and got in my way. In the end I told them to piss off, which horrified Chris (and the junior).

  Luckily a suspected fracture of the cervical spine came in through our double doors at that moment. I got down to business, determined that Chris Hamilton wasn’t going to be able to lodge any complaints about my work with Sister Agatha.

  I soon discovered that I wouldn’t have time to eat lunch with Pappy-we eat on the run. By the time I’d been in the place four hours, we’d had three suspected spinal fractures, a Potts fracture of tibia, fibula and ankle bones, several comminuted fractures of the long bones, a fractured rib cage, a dozen other oddments and a critical head injury who came in comatose and fitting and went straight on up to neurosurgery theatre. Once she got over her miff at the way that couple of eligible doctors had behaved, Chris was smart enough to see that I wasn’t going to be a handicap when it came to the patients, and we soon had a system going.

  The unit was officially open between six in the morning and six in the evening. Chris worked the early

  shift and knocked off at two, I was to start at ten and knock off at six.

  “It’s a pleasant fiction that we ever knock off on time,” Chris said as she buttoned her coat over her uniform about half-past three, “but that’s what we aim for. I don’t approve of keeping the junior any longer than necessary, so make sure you send her off at four unless there’s a huge flap on.”

  Yes, ma’am.

  I finally got off a bit after seven, and I was tired enough to think of hailing a taxi. But in the end I plodded home on foot, though people are always saying that Sydney isn’t a safe city for women to walk in after dark. I took my chances anyway, and nothing happened. In fact, until I reached Vinnie’s Hospital, I hardly saw a soul. And so to bed. I’m buggered.

  Tuesday February 16th, 1960

  I finally saw Pappy tonight. When I pushed the front door open I nearly knocked her over, but it can’t have been an important appointment, because she turned and walked to my flat with me, came in and waited while I made coffee.

  Settled in my own easy chair, I looked at her properly and realised that she didn’t look well. Her skin had a yellow tinge and her eyes looked more Oriental than usual, with black rings of fatigue under them. Her mouth was all swollen, and below each ear was an ugly bruise. Though it was a humid evening, she kept her cardigan on-bruises on the arms too?

  Though I’m a terrible cook, I offered to fry some sausages to go with the coleslaw and potato salad I can’t get enough of. She shook her head, smiled.

  “Get Klaus to teach you to cook,” she said. “He’s a genius at it, and you’ve got the right temperament to cook well.”

  “What sort of temperament cooks well?” I asked. “You’re efficient and organised,” she said, letting her head flop back against the chair.

  Of course I knew what was wrong. One of the weekend visitors had been rough with her. Not that she would admit it, even to me. My tongue itched to tell her that she was running a terrible risk going to bed with men she hardly knew, but something stopped me, I let it lie. Though Pappy and I were better friends in many ways than Merle and I had been-oooooo-aa, that’s an interesting tense!-I had a funny feeling that there were fences I’d be wise not to try to peek over. Merle and I were sort of equals, even if she had had a couple of affairs and I hadn’t had any. Whereas Pappy is ten years older than me and immensely more experienced. I can’t summon up the courage even to pretend that I’m her equal.

  She mourned that we weren’t seeing much of each other these days-no lunches, no walks to and from Queens. But she knows Chris Hamilton, and agrees that she’s a bitch.

  “Watch your step” was how she put it.

  “If you mean, don’t look at the men, I’ve already taken that point,” I answered. “Luckily we’re awfully busy, so while she bustles around making a cuppa for some twit in white pants, I get on with the work.” I cleared my throat. “Are you all right?”

  “So-so,” she said with a sigh, then changed the subject. “Um, have you met Harold yet?” she asked very casually.
The question surprised me. “The schoolteacher above me? No.”

  But she didn’t lead the conversation down that alley either, so I gave up.

  After she left I fried myself a couple of snags, wolfed down potato salad and coleslaw, then went upstairs looking for company. Starting at ten means not getting up early, and I had enough sense to know that if I went to bed too early I’d wake with the birds. Jim and Bob were having a meeting, I could hear the buzz of voices through their door, a loudly neighing laugh which didn’t belong to either of them. But Toby’s ladder was down, so I jingled the bell he’s rigged up for visitors, and got an invitation to come on up.

  There he was at the easel, three brushes clenched between his teeth, four in his right hand, the one in his left hand engaged in scrubbing the tiniest smidgin of paint on a dry surface. It looked like a wisp of vapour.

  “You’re a southpaw,” I said, sitting on white corduroy. “You finally noticed,” he grunted.

  I supposed that the thing he was working on was an excellent piece of work, but I’m not equipped to judge. To me, it looked like a slag heap giving off steam in a thunderstorm, but it caught the eye-very dramatic, wonderful colours. “What is it?” I asked.

  “A slag heap in a thunderstorm,” he said.

  I was tickled! Harriet Purcell the art connoisseur strikes again! “Do slag heaps smoke?” I asked.

  “This one does.” He finished his wisp, carried his brushes to the old white enamel sink and washed them thoroughly in eucalyptus soap, then dried them and polished the sink with Bon Ami. “At a loose end?” he asked, putting the kettle on.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.” “Can’t you read a

  book?”

  “I often do,” I said a little tartly-oh, he could rub one up the wrong way!”but I’m working in Casualty now, so when I get off duty I’m in no fit condition to read a book. What a rude bastard you are!”