Angel

by Colleen McCullough

  Sunday,

  January 1st, 1961 (New Year’s Day)

  1961 is almost twenty-four hours old, darkness has fallen. I have been entering this for a year now, and even though I’m so stonkered I can hardly move, I must get everything that’s happened today down in my book before the emotions fade. I have found that my exercise book is a sort of catharsis, in that writing doesn’t go round and round the way thinking about events does.

  The New Year’s Eve party went off like the hydrogen bomb-a real ripperace shindig, as Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz described it, one arm around Merv, her face beet-red. Though she wasn’t drunk, she truly wasn’t. Just a little the worse for wear, that’s all. Terribly happy, I remember thinking.

  The whole Cross came, some for a few minutes only, some for what promised to be perpetuity when I left at three o’clock, helped downstairs by Toby. My memories of it are hazy, I just see snatches, like Lady Richard’s arrival in a peroxided wig, five-inch heels and a red sequined tube of a dress split nearly to the top of both hips to reveal smooth, hairless white skin above filmy black silk stockings. His breasts were definitely not falsies, nor was there a sign of a bulge where a man should have a bulge. Pappy told me in a stage whisper that he’s rumoured to have gone to Scandinavia to Have The Works.

  If so, I whispered back, then his urinary tract must be a permanent disaster.

  Poor old Norm could only stay long enough to give me a sloppy kiss, but Merv used his seniority to hang on longer, flirted outrageously with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. Lerner Chusovich wasn’t happy about that. Nor, I noticed, was Klaus, who kept gazing at his landlady with naked lust. Jim gave me an expert kiss which I was turpsed enough to enjoy, but it made Bob furious, so I shoved Jim away and concentrated on Toby for the rest of the time. Our little altercation was forgotten, and his kisses, I remember, were right up there with Duncan’s, though I didn’t kiss him pretending he was Duncan. Toby is definitely Toby.

  I passed out on my bed in all my party finery, and was woken about eight this morning by Marceline, whose stomach rules her podgy little life. Toby must have drawn my curtains, a blessing. I weaved out to put my coffee on, drank a good dose of Dexsal to settle my

  queasiness, and shut Marceline up with top-of-the-milk and a bowl of sardines which stank so much that I had to retch over my sink. Nothing came up, but I retreated to the bedroom until Marceline polished off the sardines.

  Flo was on my bed, curled up asleep in the dimness. Angel puss, my angel puss! I hadn’t seen her or felt her. Things must have been pretty abandoned upstairs for her to seek me out. Or else Harold was in her mother’s bed. Oh, yes, he’d been there at the party, drinking brandy on the sidelines, watching Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz carry on with Merv, muttering, glaring at me, especially when I kissed Jim. “Whore,” his lips framed.

  As soon as I thought my nausea was gone for good, I went back to the living room and opened my door wide to let in the fresh air, breathed it deeply. The world outside was absolutely silent. No washing flapped on the lines, no sounds of argument or frivolity issued out of 17d’s mauve lace windows, and from The House, utter stillness. I’d half expected to hear Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz bellowing for her angel puss, but she wasn’t. Fairly early morning on New Year’s Day must be the quietest moment the Cross experiences, I thought. Every Crossite is out for the count.

  But I had to get Flo back upstairs in case her mother woke and became worried. So I went into my bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed and gathered Flo into my arms, put my cheek on her flyaway hair, cuddled and kissed her. When I was little, that was how Mum had always roused me, and I remember still how lovely it was to come up out of dreamland to hugs and kisses.

  She was wet. Oh, angel puss, no! How am I going to manage to get my kapok mattress flopped over the line? was my first reaction. But Flo didn’t smell of urine, and it didn’t feel like urine, which doesn’t dry stiff and hard like Flo’s pinny. She hadn’t stirred, despite the hugs and kisses. Neither she nor her mother had dolled up for the party, and looking at that snuffbrown fabric, I couldn’t see what she was soaked in. I just knew that unique smell. Oh, God!

  Quick! Pull the curtains!

  Blood. She was wet with blood. My skin squeezed up tight and prickling, but I kept my head, went over her slowly and carefully, lifted the pinny up, peeled the shabby bloomers down to inspect her pubes. Please, God, no! Not that, not that! I was saying over and over, my hands shaking in time to my body.

  No, nothing. It wasn’t her own blood covered Flo from the soles of her feet to her hands-her hands were thick with it, thick. At that moment she woke, gave me a sleepy smile, and put her arms around my neck. I lifted her off the bed and carried her into the living room, where Marceline, having left no scrap in her bowl, was sitting washing herself.

  “Darling, play with Marceline,” I said through an awful crawling numbness, and put Flo down beside the cat. “I have to pop outside for a minute, angel puss, so I need you to stay here and mind poor Marceline. Make sure she’s a good girl.”

  I took the stairs five at a time, bounded in one leap across the hall and charged into the room, stopped still

  as a statue. The blood was a lake that covered the floor under and all around the table, jellified where the lino was buckled into depressions, a thin sheet coating the crests. Someone had tidied up, the party debris was all dumped in the far corner, though the table was piled high with empty dishes and the carcass of that inedible turkey. My eyes took it all in, I didn’t seem to miss a thing. The blood hadn’t spurted to spatter the walls, but in one place there was a lot of blood on the wall-the wall Flo was currently using for scribbling. It was smeared with great browning whorls of blood, held the imprint of a tiny hand here and there. Bloody little footprints crossed the unmarred lino between the edge of the lake and that section of wall, footprints going to the wall, returning to the lake. Crayons couldn’t express her feelings. Flo had fingerpainted in the blood.

  Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz lay face down beside the table, dead. Not far from her was Harold Warner, sagged back on his haunches, his hands around the butt of the turkey carving knife where it met his belly, his head flopped down to rest its chin on his chest, as if he contemplated his own undoing.

  My mouth opened and I howled. I don’t mean that I wept or I cried or I screamed-I made animal noises of horror and despair at the top of my lungs, and I kept on making them.

  Toby was the first there, and Toby took over. I suppose he deputed someone to call the police, because I faintly heard him barking orders to people in the doorway, but

  he never left me. When I couldn’t howl any longer he guided me out of the room and shut its door. Pappy, Klaus, Jim and Bob were huddled together in the hall, but of Chikker and Marge from the front ground floor flat there was no sign.

  “I’ve called the police-Toby, what is it?” Pappy cried. “The ruin of The House,” I said through chattering teeth. “The Ten of Swords and Harold. He was here to bring The House down. That was the job he had to do, and if she never knew it from the cards, she saw it in the Glass because I was there when she did. She knew, she knew! But she submitted.”

  “Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz and Harold are dead,” Toby said.

  By the time he got me outside onto the path, every window in 17d was gaping wide, had a head sticking out.

  “Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz is dead,” he had to say several times before he got me inside my flat.

  Flo was drawn up into a compact cluster of limbs on the floor, curled around the purring Marceline. Toby took one look at her, cast me a horrified look, then went for the brandy bottle.

  “No!” I gasped. “I never want to see that stuff again. I’m all right now, Toby, truly I am.”

  The morning passed in a parade of people, starting with the police. Not my friends from the Vice Squadthese were strangers in plain clothes. Because Toby had taken charge and he refused to leave me, all the activity 251

  seemed to happen in my livin
g room. But before they came Pappy took Flo away to give her a bath and change her clothes, while I went to the laundry for a shower, changed my party dress for something sober. Sober.

  What concerned the police most was Flo’s fingerpainting. It seemed to fascinate them, whereas the crime was clearly run of the mill. Murder and suicide, plain as the nose on your face. They questioned every one of us, looking for motive, but none of us had noticed any change in the behaviour of either Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz or Harold. I had to tell them how he had stalked me, about his emotional and mental instability, the urinary retention, his refusal to consult a psychiatrist when one had been recommended. Chikker and Marge in the front ground floor flat had decamped, all trace of them gone, not even a fingerprint left behind. But the police weren’t interested in them, that showed clearly, though word had gone out to pick them up for questioning. As they were right under the room where it happened, they might have heard it.

  “What’s obvious,” said the sergeant to Toby, “is that the kid watched the whole thing. Once we get her story, we’ll know.”

  I butted in. “Flo can’t talk,” I said. “She’s a mute.” “You mean she’s retarded?” the seargeant asked, frowning.

  “On the contrary, she’s extremely intelligent,” I answered. “She simply doesn’t talk.”

  “Is this your opinion too, Mr. Evans?”

  Toby confirmed that Flo didn’t talk. “She’s either superhuman or subhuman, I’m never sure which,” he added, the bastard.

  On the tail of this, Pappy reappeared with Flo, clad now in a clean snuffbrown pinny, her feet bare as always. The two coppers stared at my angel puss as if she was a freak, and I could see what they were thinking as if they spoke out loud: she looks like any other fiveyear-old girl, but underneath, she’s a monster.

  Yes, Flo is five years old. Today is her birthday and I have her present all wrapped up in a cupboard-a pretty pink dress. It’s still there.

  Then we got down to the brass tacks of official enquiries, namely, were there any relatives? Each of us had to answer no, we didn’t think so. Even Pappy, who has been in The House by far the longest, had to say that no relative had ever shown up, at least as far as she knew. Nor had Mrs.

  Delvecchio Schwartz ever mentioned any relatives.

  Finally the sergeant shut his notebook and got up, thanked Toby for the brandy pick-me-up-ta much, mate, greatly appreciated. You could see that they were glad they’d had a man to talk to, that they hadn’t had to deal with a parcel of very strange females on a social basis. Because there was a social element-the job’s a dirty one, but a good bloke’s easy to get on with.

  At the door the sergeant turned to me. “I’d be grateful if you could mind the little girl for an hour or so,

  Miss Purcell. It’s going to take that long for the Child Welfare to get here.”

  I could feel my eyes widen. “It’s not necessary to summon the Child Welfare,” I said. “I’ll be looking after Flo from now on.”

  “Very sorry, Miss Purcell,” he said, “it doesn’t work that way. Since there are no known relatives, little Florence”-Florence?-“is now the responsibility of the Child Welfare. If we’re able to trace a relative, then she can go to that person if she’s wanted, and in cases like this, the person almost always says yes. But if we can’t trace any relatives, then Florence Schwartz becomes a ward of the State of New South Wales.” He put on his natty plain clothes copper trilby and left, his constable behind him.

  “Toby!” I gasped.

  “Pappy, take Flo and Marceline into the bedroom,” Toby said, and watched until she’d obeyed orders.

  Then he took my hands, sat me in an easy chair and perched on its arm just the way Duncan used to. Used to. Past tense, Harriet, past tense.

  “He can’t have meant that,” I said.

  I’ve never seen Toby so stern, so merciless, so cold. “Yes, Harriet, he did.

  He meant that Flo is probably without kith or kin. That her mother died in what he presumes was a drunken brawl with her nutty lover, who was not Flo’s father. That he personally believes Flo is a grossly neglected child from a very bad home. That he also believes Flo is queer in the head. And that, as soon as he gets back to headquarters, he’s going to tell Child Welfare all of it, and recommend that Flo is taken into State custody as of this moment.”

  “He can’t, he can’t!” I cried. “Flo couldn’t survive outside The House! If they take her away, she’ll die!” “You’ve forgotten the most important factor, Harriet. Flo was there in that room when it all happened, and she used the blood to scribble on the wall. That’s an indictment,” Toby said harshly.

  My beloved friend, to talk like this? Is there no one to take up the cudgels in her defence except me? “Toby, Flo is just five years old!” I said. “What would you or I have done at that age, in those circumstances? Be fair! There aren’t any neat statistics to govern such things! All her life she’s been allowed to scribble on her mother’s walls. Who knows why she used the blood? Maybe she thought it would bring her mother back to life. They can’t take Flo away from me, they can’t!”

  “They can, and they will,” Toby said grimly, and went to the stove to put the kettle on. “Harriet, I’m playing the Devil’s advocate, that’s all. I agree with you that Flo can’t thrive away from The House, but no one in authority is going to see it in that light. Now go and get Pappy and Flo. If you won’t drink brandy, tea’s the next best thing.”

  They took Flo away from me about noon, two women from Child Welfare.

  Decent enough women-it’s an awful job. Flo refused to co-operate in any way, even after I suggested that they call her Flo, not Florence. I’m willing to bet that Flo is what her birth certificate saysif she has one. Knowing Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, Flo mightn’t. Angel puss, angel puss. She wouldn’t let either of the women put a hand on her, nor did she waver as the pair of them coaxed, cajoled, persuaded, pleaded. All Flo did was hang onto me like grim death and press her face into my lap. In the end they decided to sedate her with chloral hydrate, but she vomited it up every time they tried, even when they pinched her nose.

  Jim and Bob had come down by this, though I wished they hadn’t. The woman in charge looked them up and down as if they were scum, made another black mark in her book about The House, which only had one proper bathroom and toilet to serve four floors. And why was Flo barefooted? Didn’t she have shoes? That seemed to worry both of the invaders a lot. When, after the fourth lot of chloral hydrate, Flo left my protection and ran about the room like a bird that’s flown inside and can’t get out, crashing into the walls, the stove, the furniture, I did my block and went for Child Welfare with my fists. But Toby grabbed me, forced me and Jim to stay out of it.

  Eventually they decided to give her an injection of paraldehyde, which never fails to work. Flo collapsed, they picked her up and carried her out with me trailing them, Toby hanging onto me.

  “How will I find her?” I asked outside. “Telephone Child Welfare”

  was the answer.

  They loaded her into their car, and the last I saw of my angel puss was her still, wee white face as they drove away.

  All of them wanted to stay and keep me company, but I didn’t want company, least of all Toby’s, the most persistent. I shrieked at him to go away!

  go away! until he went. Pappy crept in a little while later to tell me that Klaus, Lerner Chusovich and Joe Dwyer from the Piccadilly bottle department were upstairs in Klaus’s room, wanted to know how I was, what they could do to help. Thank you, I am all right, I don’t need anything, I said. My nose was still full of the sweet, sickly smell of paraldehyde.

  About three I went into the bedroom to phone Bronte. Mum and Dad would have to be told before the story appeared in the papers, though I suppose a drunken murder and suicide at Kings Cross on New Year’s Eve wouldn’t rate more than a small paragraph ten pages in. When I lifted the receiver I discovered that the phone was dead-it had been pulled out of the jack on the skirting board
. Toby when he put me to bed last night, probably.

  The moment I plugged it in, it started to ring.

  “Harriet, where have you been?” Dad asked. “We’re frantic!”

  “I’ve been here all along,” I said. “Someone disconnected my phone.

  Though it sounds as if you already know about it.”

  “Come home now” was all he said-a command, not a request.

  I told Pappy where I was going, and hailed a taxi on Victoria Street. The driver gave me a queer look, but didn’t say a word.

  Mum and Dad were at the dining table, alone. Mum looked as if she’d been crying for hours, Dad suddenly looked his age-my heart twisted because I could see he’s almost eighty years old.

  “I’m glad I don’t have to tell you,” I said, sitting down.

  They were both staring at me as if at a stranger; it’s only now, writing this, that I realise I must have looked as if I’d broken free of a coffin. Horror does that.

  “Don’t you want to know how we know?” Dad asked then.

  “Yes, how do you know?” I asked dutifully.

  Dad took a letter from its envelope, handed it to me. I took it and read it.

  Beautiful copperplate handwriting, absolutely straight across the unlined, expensive paper with professionally torn edges. The script and stationery of someone ultra-genteel.

  “Sir,

  “Your daughter is a whore. A common, vulgar trollop unfit to inhabit this world, but not welcome in the next. “For the past eight months she has been carrying on a sordid sexual affair with a married man, a famous doctor at her hospital. She seduced him, I saw her do it on Victoria Street in the dark. How she led him on! How she paraded her charms! How she wormed her way into his life and affections! How she cheapened him! How she brought him down to her own level and rejoiced! But a decent man can’t satisfy her. She is a Lesbian, a valued member o f that society o f filthy deviants who inhabit her house. The doctor’s name is Mr. Duncan Forsythe.

  “A Concerned Citizen.”