An Indecent Obsession

by Colleen McCullough

  Someone did, but he was no one she knew, which meant she could sit back and enjoy the fifteen-mile drive in peace. By the time she arrived home the family would know she was back, of course; the stationmaster had welcomed her with open arms, found her the lift, and undoubtedly telephoned ahead that she was on her way.

  They were all gathered on the front verandah, waiting: her father growing stouter and balder; her mother looking exactly the same; her brother Ian a younger, slimmer edition of her father. There were hugs, kisses, much standing back to look, exclamations and sentences that never got finished because someone else interrupted.

  It was only after a fatted-calf sort of dinner that some semblance of normality returned; Charlie Langtry and his son went to bed, for their days began at dawn, while Faith Langtry followed her daughter to her bedroom, there to sit and watch her unpack. And talk.

  Honour’s room was pleasant and unpretentious; however, it was large and had had money spent on it. No particular skill with color or line had been applied when the money had been spent, but the big bed looked comfortable, so did the chintz-covered easy chair in which Faith Langtry sat. There was a highly polished old table with a wooden carver chair to serve as a work area, a vast wardrobe, a full-length mirror on a stand, a small dressing table, and one more easy chair.

  While Honour moved around between wardrobe, dressing table drawers and her suitcases on the bed, her mother sat fully absorbing her daughter’s appearance for the first time since her arrival home. Of course there had been periods of leave during the years in the army, but their lack of permanence, their atmosphere of urgency, had permitted no real and lasting impressions. This was different; Faith Langtry could look her fill without applying half her mind to what had to be fitted in tomorrow, or how they were all going to get through the next period of duty for Honour when it was bound to be dangerous. Ian hadn’t been able to go into the army, he was needed on the land. But when she was born, thought Faith Langtry, I never realized it would be my daughter I sent to a war. My firstborn. Sex isn’t as different or as important as it used to be.

  Each time she had come home they had noticed changes, from the atabrine yellow in her skin to the little tics and habits which branded her an adult, her own woman. Six years. God knows exactly what those six years had contained, for Honour had never wanted to talk about the war when she came home, and if asked, parried the questions lightly. But whatever they might have contained, as Faith Langtry looked at Honour now she understood that her daughter had forever moved farther than the moon from the place which had been her home.

  She was thin; that was to be expected, of course. There were lines in the face, though there was no sign of grey in her hair, thank God. She was stern without being hard, extraordinarily decisive in the way she moved, locked away without being withdrawn. And though she could never be a stranger, she was someone different.

  How glad they had been when she chose to do nursing rather than medicine! Thinking of the suffering that decision would spare their daughter. But had she done medicine she would have stayed at home, and looking at Honour now, Faith wondered if that might not have meant less suffering in the long run.

  Her service medals came out, and her decorations—how bizarre to have a daughter who was a Member of the British Empire! And how proud Charlie and Ian would be!

  ‘You never told me of your MBE,’ Faith said, a little reproachfully.

  Honour looked up, surprised. ‘Didn’t I? I must have just forgotten. Things were pretty busy around that time; I had to hurry through my letters. Anyway, it’s only recently been confirmed.’

  ‘Have you any photos, darling?’

  ‘Somewhere.’ Honour fished in the pocket of a case, and produced two envelopes, one much larger than the other. ‘Here we are.’ She came across to the second easy chair and sat down, reaching for her cigarettes.

  ‘That’s Sally and Teddy and Willa and me… That’s the Boss at Lae… Me in Darwin, about to take off for I can’t remember where… Moresby… The nursing staff on Morotai… The outside of ward X…’

  ‘You look wonderful in a slouch hat, I must say.’

  ‘They’re more comfortable than veils, probably because they have to come off the minute you walk inside.’

  ‘What’s in the other envelope? More photos?’

  Honour’s hand hovered as if not sure whether to take both envelopes away without revealing the contents of the second, bigger one; after a slight hesitation she opened it. ‘No, not photos. Some drawings of some of my patients from ward X—my last command, if I can put it that way.’

  ‘They’re marvelously well done,’ said Faith, looking at each face closely, but, Honour was relieved to see, passing over Michael as if he held no more significance for her than any of the others—but how could he? And how strange, that she had fully expected her mother to see what she had seen that first meeting in the corridor of ward X.

  ‘Who did them?’ asked Faith, putting them down.

  ‘This chap,’ said Honour, riffling through them and putting Neil on top of the sheaf. ‘Neil Parkinson. It’s not very good; he failed miserably when it came to drawing himself.’

  ‘It’s good enough for his face to remind me of someone, or else I’ve actually seen him somewhere. Where does he come from?’

  ‘Melbourne. I gather his father’s quite a tycoon.’

  ‘Longland Parkinson!’ said Faith triumphantly. ‘I’ve met this chap, then. The Melbourne Cup in 1939. He was with his mother and father that year, in uniform. I’ve met Frances—his mother—several times in Melbourne at one do or another.’

  What had Michael said? That in her world she met men like Neil, not men like himself. How odd. She might indeed in the course of time have met Neil socially. Had there not been a war.

  Faith leafed through the pile again, found the sketch she was looking for and laid it down on top of Neil. ‘Who is this, Honour? That face! The expression in his eyes!’ She sounded almost spellbound. ‘I don’t know whether I like him, but it’s a fascinating face.’

  ‘Sergeant Lucius Daggett. Luce. He was—he committed suicide not long before Base Fifteen folded up.’ Oh, God! She had nearly said he was murdered.

  ‘Poor chap. I wonder what could have led him to do that? He looks so—well, above that sort of thing.’ Faith gave her back the drawings. ‘I must say I like them much better than photos. Arms and legs don’t tell you nearly as much about people as faces do, and I always find myself squinting at photos to try to see the faces, and all I ever do manage to see is blobs. Who was your personal favorite among that lot?’

  The temptation was too great to resist; Honour found Michael and held the drawing out to her mother. ‘That one. Sergeant Michael Wilson.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Faith, looking at her daughter doubtfully. ‘Well, you knew them all in the flesh, of course. A fine chap, I can see that… He looks like a station hand.’

  Bravo, Michael! thought Honour. There speaks the wealthy grazier’s wife who meets Neil Parkinson at the races and knows her social strata instinctively, about as well as anyone can without being a snob. Because Mummy’s not a snob.

  ‘He’s a dairy farmer,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, that accounts for the look of the land.’ Faith sighed, stretched. ‘Are you tired, darling?’

  ‘No, Mummy, not a bit.’ Honour put the drawings on the floor beside her chair and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Still no sign of marriage?’ Faith asked.

  ‘No,’ said Honour, smiling.

  ‘Oh, well, it’s better to stay a spinster than to marry for the wrong reasons.’ This was said with a tongue-in-cheek demureness that made her daughter splutter into laughter.

  ‘I quite agree. Mummy.’

  ‘I suppose that means you’ll be going back to nursing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Prince Alfred again?’ Faith knew better than to ask if it was likely her daughter’s choice would fall on little Yass—Honour had always liked high-powered places of w
ork.

  ‘No,’ said Honour, and paused, unwilling to go on.

  ‘Well, where then?’

  ‘I’m going to a place called Morisset to train as a mental nurse.’

  Faith Langtry gaped. ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘But—but that’s ridiculous! You’re a senior sister! You can go anywhere after the sort of experience you’ve had! Mental nursing? Good God, Honour, you might as well have applied to become a prison wardress! The pay’s better!’

  Honour’s mouth set; her mother suddenly saw the best display yet of the power and determination which were so alien to her concepts of her daughter.

  ‘That’s one of the reasons why I’m doing mental nursing.’ she said. ‘For the last year and a half I’ve nursed men who were emotionally disturbed, and I found I liked that sort of work better than any other branch of nursing. People like me are needed—because people like you become horrified at the thought of it, among other reasons! Mental nurses have so little status it’s almost a stigma to be one, so if people like me don’t get into it, it will never move with the times. When I rang up the Department of Public Health to get some information about training as a mental nurse and said who and what I was, they thought I was some sort of crank! It took two trips in person to convince them that I, a senior nursing sister, was genuinely interested in becoming a mental nurse. Even the Department of Public Health, which administers all mental hospitals, thinks of it as becoming a madmen’s keeper!’

  ‘That’s exactly what you will be,’ said Faith.

  ‘When a patient enters a mental hospital he enters a world he will probably never leave,’ Honour tried to explain, her voice full of feeling. ‘The men I nursed weren’t as badly off as that, but there were still enough direct comparisons to make me see that people like me are needed.’

  ‘Honour, you sound as if you’re doing penance, or preaching conversion to some religion! Surely whatever happened to you during the war can’t have warped your judgment that much!’

  ‘I suppose I do sound as if I’m all fired up with a sense of mission,’ Honour said thoughtfully, lighting another cigarette. ‘But it isn’t so. Nor am I atoning for anything. But I won’t concede that to want passionately to do my bit to help lessen the plight of mental patients is an indication of mental instability on my part!’

  ‘All right, darling, all right,’ Faith soothed. ‘I was wrong to suggest anything of the kind. Now don’t get hot under the collar if I ask you whether you’re going to get anything concrete out of it, like another certificate?’

  Honour laughed, her indignation dead. ‘I’m very much afraid I don’t get a thing out of it, Mummy. There’s no proper course of instruction, no certificate, no nothing. Even when I’m finished my training I won’t be a sister again. I’ll still be plain Nurse Langtry. However, when I’m put in charge of a ward I understand my title becomes Charge Nurse Langtry—“Charge” for short.’

  ‘How did you find all this out?’

  ‘I went to see the Matron of Callan Park. That was where originally I thought I’d go, but after we’d talked for a while she said she strongly advised me to go to Morisset instead. The teaching’s just as adequate, it seems, and the atmosphere’s a lot better.’

  Faith got up and began to pace. ‘Morisset. That’s near Newcastle, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, the Sydney side of Newcastle. About sixty miles from Sydney, which means I’ll be able to pop off to Sydney when I need diversion, and I think I’m going to need all the diversion I can get. I’m not looking at this through rose-colored spectacles, you know. It’s going to be very hard, especially being a probationer again. But do you know, Mummy, I’d rather be a probationer and learning something new than stuck at P.A. as a senior sister, bowing and scraping to everyone from Matron to the HMOs to the Super, and having to leap some sort of rules and regulations hurdle every five minutes. I just couldn’t take the formality and the drivel after the sort of life I’ve led in the army.’

  Faith reached out for Honour’s packet of cigarettes, took one and lit it.

  ‘Mummy! You’re smoking!’ said Honour, shocked.

  Faith laughed until the tears came. ‘Oh, well, it’s comforting to know you still have some prejudices! I was starting to think I’d produced some sort of latter-day Sylvia Pankhurst. You smoke like a chimney. Why shouldn’t I?’

  Honour got up, went to hug her. ‘You’re quite right. But do sit down and be comfortable about it! No matter how enlightened one thinks one is, one’s parents are always godlike. No human failings, no human appetites. I apologize.’

  ‘Accepted. Charlie smokes, Ian smokes, you smoke. I just decided I was being left out in the cold. I’ve taken to drink as well. I join Charlie in a whisky every night before dinner, and it’s very nice.’

  ‘Very civilized, too,’ said Honour, smiling.

  ‘Well, I just hope it all turns out as you hope, darling,’ Faith said, puffing away. ‘Though I confess I do rather wish you had never been posted to a troppo ward.’

  Honour thought before she spoke, wanting her words to be telling. ‘Mummy, even to you I find I can’t talk about the things that happened to me while I was nursing troppo men, and I don’t think I ever will be able to talk about them. Not your fault, mine. But some things go too deep. They hurt too much. I’m not bottling them up, exactly. Just that no one could ever understand unless they knew the kind of world ward X was. And to try to explain with all the details I’d need to make you understand—I don’t have that kind of strength. It would kill me. And yet, this much I can tell you. I don’t know why I think so, but I do know that I’m not finished with ward X. There’s more of it to come. And if I’m a mental nurse, I’ll be better equipped to cope with what’s still to come.’

  ‘What could possibly come?’

  ‘I don’t know. I have some ideas, perhaps, but I don’t have any facts.’

  Faith stubbed out her cigarette, got to her feet, and bent to kiss her daughter tenderly. ‘I’ll say good night, darling. It’s so good to have you home! We worried a lot when we didn’t know where you were exactly, or how close you were to the lines. After that sort of worry, mental nursing’s a sinecure.’

  She went from Honour’s bedroom to her own, ruthlessly switched on the bedside lamp and flooded her sleeping husband’s face with light. He grimaced, grunted, and turned away from it. Leaving it on, she climbed into the bed and leaned heavily on Charlie’s shoulder, patting his cheek with one hand and shaking him with the other.

  ‘Charlie, if you don’t wake up, I’ll murder you!’ she said.

  Opening his eyes, he sat up, running his fingers through his almost nonexistent hair and yawning. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, knowing her too well to be annoyed. Faith didn’t wake a man up for the fun of it.

  ‘It’s Honour,’ she said, her face crumpling. ‘Oh, Charlie. I didn’t realize it until just now, when I was talking to her in her room!’

  ‘Realize what?’ His voice sounded wide awake.

  But she couldn’t tell him then, for the grief and the fear overcame her; she wept instead, long and bitterly.

  ‘She’s gone and she can never come back again,’ she said when she was able.

  He stiffened. ‘She’s gone? Where?’

  ‘Not bodily. That’s still in her room. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s her soul I’m talking about, whatever it is keeps her going. Oh, God. Charlie, we’re such babies compared to her! It’s worse than having a nun for a daughter—at least if your daughter’s a nun you know she’s safe, the world hasn’t touched her. But Honour’s got the footprints of the world all over her. And yet she’s somehow bigger than the world. I don’t know what I’m saying, it isn’t right, you’ll have to talk to her and watch her for yourself to see what I mean. I took up smoking and drinking, but I think Honour took up all the cares of the world, and that’s unbearable. You don’t want your children to have to suffer like that.’

  ‘It
’s the war,’ said Charlie Langtry. ‘We oughtn’t to have let her go.’

  ‘She never even asked us for permission, Charlie. Why should she? She was twenty-five when she joined up. A grown woman, I thought then, old enough to survive it. Yes, it’s the war.’

  2

  So Sister Langtry doffed her veil, donned a cap and became Nurse Langtry at the Morisset mental hospital. A huge rambling place of many buildings scattered over many acres, it lay in some of the loveliest country to be found anywhere: sea lakes to form a part of its boundaries, wild mountains behind it smothered in rain forest, fertile placid flatlands, and the coastal surfing beaches not far away.

  At first her situation was a little awkward, for no one at Morisset had ever heard of a general-trained sister giving up all that her career had gained for her to become a mental-nursing trainee. Many of her fellow trainees were at least as old as she was, some had been in the armed services during the war even, since mental nursing tended to attract women rather than girls, but her peculiar status set her apart. Everyone knew that Matron had told her she would be permitted to sit the charge nurses’ examination at the end of two years instead of three, and everyone knew that Matron not only respected but esteemed her. Gossip said she had done arduous nursing during the war, for which she had been made an MBE, and gossip it remained, for Nurse Langtry made no reference to those years whatsoever.

  It took her six months to show everyone she was not doing penance, was not snooping on behalf of some mysterious agency in Sydney, or was not a little mental herself. And at the end of those six months she knew she was very well liked by the charge nurses, for she worked hard and with superb efficiency, was never sick, and proved on countless occasions that her general nursing training could be a godsend in a place like Morisset, where the handful of doctors could not possibly keep an eye on every patient to detect the physical maladies which tended to compound the mental state. Nurse Langtry could spot an incipient pneumonia, knew how to treat it, and had a knack for transmitting her knowledge to others. She could spot herpes, tuberculosis, acute abdomens, inner and middle ear infections, tonsillitis and most of the other complaints which occasionally struck at the patients. She could also tell a sprain from a break, a cold from hay fever, a migraine from a tension headache. It made her very valuable.