The Touch

by Colleen McCullough

  “No, I want to learn how to turn steel on a metal lathe. No engineer worth his or her salt can design steel stuff without understanding what a metal lathe can and can’t do.”

  “I agree that shop-floor experience is essential.” He turned the corners of his mouth down, frowned into his own undrunk tea. “All right, I’ll talk to Angus. But I’ll also talk to the union leaders. They can exert more pressure on him than I can.”

  “That’s all I ask,” said Nell, rising to her feet.

  “How can I contact you?”

  “I have a telephone in my house. It’s in the Glebe. If the answer’s yes, you can come to dinner and eat healthy food.”

  “By the way, how old are you, Nell?”

  “Sixteen and—um—eight-tenths.”

  “Jesus!” he said, breaking into a cold sweat.

  “Stop panicking,” she said scornfully as she departed. “I can look after myself.”

  I’ll bet you can, he thought, watching her cab disappear down the road. Jesus! Jail bait, and he’d had her inside his house! Still, no one knew, so what had it mattered?

  And she was right, of course. Everyone in his electorate pitied him as a bachelor in a dreadful house, incapable of caring for himself. Hence the food he was always offered as he did his rounds. How could he explain to these people that the parliament put on a tip-top lunch every day it sat? That the Trades and Labour Council had food too? He would get into the grounds with a hoe and hire—for a decent wage—a desperately poor woman to clean for him. Set rat- and mousetraps, lay down poison for the cockroaches, and buy flypapers to twirl from the ceiling and trap the flies on their sticky, toxic surfaces. I don’t want to die before I’m forty, he said to himself, but I’ve noticed that my gut isn’t all it ought to be. If the place is cleaner, maybe I won’t get those bilious attacks. Nell Kinross, all of sixteen in years and all of sixty in sheer gall.

  THE ANSWER was yes, on one condition: that Nell rivet two steel plates together. If she could do that, then she could learn to work the metal lathe. Much though he hated to admit it, Angus Robertson announced that she could rivet well. But when she returned three days later for her lesson, she found the whole workshop idle.

  “Steam engine’s down,” said Angus Robertson with quiet triumph, “and our steam engineer’s crook.”

  “Dear, dear,” said Nell, walking across the floor to where the engine stood producing steam and brushing the three men around it aside to peer at it. “How crook? Not a fever, I hope?”

  “Nay,” said Angus, watching in fascination as she studied the governor assembly that regulated the amount of steam passing through the slide valve into the combustion chamber. “Rheumatics.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll bring you in some sachets of powder that you can pass on to him. Tell him to take one sachet three times a day and wash it down with plenty of water. It’s an old Chinese remedy for rheumatic pains and fevers,” said Nell, one hand groping for a tool that wasn’t there. “Pass me that socket wrench, please.”

  “Some Chinky poison?” Angus recoiled, gasping dramatically. “I’ll no’ give Johnny anything like that!”

  “Oh, rubbish!” snapped Nell, brandishing the wrench. “It’s mostly willow bark ground up with other beneficial herbs—not an eye of newt or toe of frog in sight!” She indicated the governor assembly with the air of someone who found it hard to believe that the problem hadn’t been solved. “The weights are cockeyed, Mr. Robertson. Two broken straps, which won’t take long to fix.”

  Within two hours the governor fly weights—brass balls the size of Ping-Pong balls—and the riser assembly were back in place, the straps holding the weights brazed on to the crown and riser. The balls spun out with centrifugal force, the slider valve opened to let sufficient steam into the combustion chamber, and the fly wheel began to turn, permitting all the machinery that the steam engine powered to work again.

  Bede Talgarth had turned up to watch; so had the junior partner of Constantine Drills, Mr. Arthur Constantine.

  “Is there anything she doesn’t know, or can’t do?” Arthur Constantine asked Bede.

  “I’m as ignorant about her as you are, sir,” said Bede with the formality suitable to an encounter between a capitalist and a socialist, “but I gather that her father is a hands-on sort of chap, and that she’s been his offsider since she was little. Professor Warren, who is Dean of Science, says that she’ll top her class so easily that it’s hardly worth examining her.”

  “A frightening prospect,” said Arthur Constantine.

  “No, a warning bell,” Bede said, “and it tells me that out there in the weaker half of our population there are women being wasted. Luckily most women are content with their lot. But Nell Kinross is a message that some women despise their lot.”

  “Then let them go nursing or teach school.”

  “Unless their talents lie in engineering,” Bede sniped, not because he was converted to women’s struggle for equality, but because he wanted to make this sleek man uncomfortable. He and his kind spent an increasing amount of their hours worrying about their workers, so why not add the spectre of women workers?

  “I suggest, Mr. Constantine,” said Nell, coming to join them, “that you invest in a new governor assembly for your steam engine. Those straps have been brazed up a dozen times, so they’re going to go again. It’s true that one steam engine can power all your machine tools, but only if it works. You’ve lost three hours of production today, and no manufacturer can afford that when he’s employing just the one steam engineer.”

  “Thank you, Miss Kinross,” Constantine said stiffly, “the matter will be attended to.”

  Nell winked at Bede and strode away in her overalls shouting for Angus Robertson, who scuttled to her side with the mien of one who had been bested—temporarily at least.

  Grinning, Bede decided to stay and watch Miss Kinross make even finer mincemeat of Arthur Constantine, Angus Robertson and the metal lathe, which she took to like a duck to water.

  There’s a certain poetry of motion about her, Bede thought; she moves with such certainty and fluid grace, expression rapt, oblivious to everything outside the sphere of what she’s doing.

  “I CAN’T get over how strong you are, Nell,” he said to her when he came to dinner at her house. “You heft steel around as if it weighed a feather.”

  “Lifting is a trick,” she said, unimpressed by this token of admiration. “You know that, you have to. You haven’t always worn the seat of your trousers shiny sitting on a parliamentary bench or negotiating with employers.”

  He winced. “What I really like about you,” he said, “is your tact and diplomacy.”

  The meal, he discovered when he arrived, was not a cosy tête-à-tête, but a cheerful, noisy repast shared by the three Chinese and Donny Wilkins. Delicious Chinese food, good company.

  Yet none of them is in love with her, he realized; they’re like brothers with a bossy older sister, though she’s the youngest.

  “I have a message from Angus Robertson,” he said when the meal was over and the “brothers” had gone to their books—final exams were looming.

  “Crusty old Scots engineer,” she said affectionately. “I brought him round, didn’t I? By the time I’d learned the lathe, he was eating out of my hand.”

  “You proved your worth in a man’s world.”

  “What’s the message?”

  “That your Chinese powders worked a treat. The steam man is back at work feeling a box of birds.”

  “I’ll drop Angus a line to tell the chap that he can buy more of the powders at a Chinese herbalist’s in the Haymarket. Though if he’s going to take them regularly, he should wash them down with milk rather than water. It’s terrific stuff, but it’s hard on the stomach. Milk is the answer to that for any medicine of any nationality that’s hard on the stomach.”

  “I’m beginning to think that for all your engineering skills, Nell, you’d make an even better doctor,” Bede said.

  She ushere
d him to the door, more pleased by that statement than by any compliments he had paid her. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Thank you for asking me,” he reciprocated, hopping down a step without trying to touch her. “After your exams are over and before you go back to Kinross, will you come to dinner at my house? Believe it or not, I’m a good cook when I have a reason to cook. In our family, all the children had to take a turn in the kitchen. The place will be cleaner, I promise.”

  “Thank you, I’d like to come. Just phone me through the exchange,” she said, and closed the door.

  He walked away toward Redfern thoughtfully, not sure of his feelings. Something about her attracted him strongly—that fearless, indomitable quality, perhaps. The way she went straight for what she wanted, yet never moved before the right time. I wonder does her father know that she hankers to be a doctor? Medicine is the most strenuously defended male bastion, probably because, when you think about it, medicine is a perfect career for a woman. But Sir Alexander wants her with him in the business, and he’s used to getting his own way. On the other hand, so is little miss Nell.

  THEY HAD no contact between that dinner and the end of the exams, which Nell flew through, even more confident because her “practical work” had been so varied and satisfactory. In one corner of her mind she was wondering whether her teachers would try to cut her down to size by marking her down, but if they did, she was prepared. She would subpoena her examination papers and insist that they be marked again by someone at Cambridge who did not know her sex. A court order would not please the faculty of Science or its engineering branch.

  But perhaps Professor Warren and his lecturers sensed how far this dreadful girl was prepared to go, or perhaps they longed for large donations from her father; whatever pushed them, pushed them to mark her fairly. Which, in a discipline like engineering, where the answers were mostly either right or wrong, meant that Nell topped her class with a frightening margin between her and Chan Min, who came second just ahead of Wo Ching. Donny Wilkins topped civil engineering and architecture, and Lo Chee topped mechanical engineering. Total victory for the Kinross students.

  Nell wrote to Bede at his home address and said that she was free to have dinner at his house if he still wanted to entertain her. Bede wrote back with the day and the time.

  One of the things about Nell that puzzled Bede was her reluctance to show off her wealth; when she turned up promptly at six o’clock two Saturdays later, she had caught the tram and then walked the several blocks from the shopping center. Yet she could have hailed a hackney outside her door and been driven to Arncliffe in comfort. Her dress was another grey cotton thing without shape, its hem a good four inches above her ankles—very daring had the dress been a scarlet one or even festive in a less damning color. No hat on her head—another solecism—no jewelry, and her habitual big leather hold-all that rested on a strap over her left shoulder.

  “Why are your dresses so short?” he asked, meeting her at the front gate.

  Nell was too busy looking at the acre of ground in delight. “Bede, you’ve weeded it properly! And do I see a vegetable plot in the backyard?”

  “Yes. I also hope you see that the pot belly has gone,” he answered. “You were right, I needed exercise. But why are your dresses so short?”

  “Because I can’t abide dresses that sweep the dirt,” she said with a grimace. “Soiling the bottom of one’s shoes is bad enough. Soiling something that one can’t wash every time it’s worn is even worse.”

  “Does that mean you wash the soles of your shoes?”

  “Of course, if I’ve been somewhere nasty. Think of what gets on them! The streets are slimed with spittle—mucus from some fellow blowing his nose with his fingers—disgusting! Not to mention vomit, dog turds and rotten garbage.”

  “I understand the spittle. We’ve had to introduce a fine for spitting in tramcars and train carriages,” he said, walking her down the path to the front door.

  “The curtains are clean, so are the windows,” she said, sounding pleased.

  Ushering her into the house wasn’t something he did with pride, as he hadn’t any furniture to speak of: one old sofa with herniating springs visible between its bottom and the floor, a bureau, and a big, battered old desk with a chair drawn up to it. The kitchen table, however, now boasted two wooden chairs, and the orange case had gone. The floors were either bare boards or cheap linoleum, but someone had scrubbed the fly dirt off the walls and there were no rat or mouse pebbles to be seen. Or any cockroach droppings.

  “Though I haven’t gotten rid of the wretched things yet,” he said, sitting her at the kitchen table. “They’re immortal.”

  “Try saucers of red wine,” said Nell. “They can’t resist it, and they drown in it.” She chuckled. “That would please the Temperance League, wouldn’t it?” A polite cough. “I presume you rent rather than own?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then try to persuade the landlord to fence the property with six-foot palings. Then you could keep a dozen chooks, have eggs from them, and at the same time have outer defenses against cockroaches. Chooks love to eat cockroaches.”

  “How do you know all these things?”

  “Well, we live in the Glebe, which is full of cockroaches. Butterfly Wing eliminates them with saucers of red wine and a backyard full of wandering chooks.”

  “Why don’t you wear a hat?” he asked, opening the oven door and peering inside.

  “Smells delicious,” she said. “I just hate hats, that’s all. They’re of no earthly use, and every year they’re getting uglier. If I’m out in the sun for long periods, I wear a Chinese coolie hat—it’s sensible.”

  “And, I noticed at Constantine Drills, overalls on the shop floor. It’s no wonder old Angus objected to you.”

  “The last thing any factory or workshop needs is some fool woman getting her skirt caught in a fly wheel. The overalls are not exactly come-hither, so what does it matter?”

  “True,” he admitted, tending pots on top of the stove.

  “What’s for dinner?” she asked.

  “Roast leg of lamb, potatoes and pumpkin roasted around the joint, some nice little butternut squashes, and murdered beans.”

  “Murdered beans?”

  “Cut into thin shreds. Oh, and gravy, of course.”

  “Bring it on! I could eat a horse.”

  The food was traditionally British, but very good; Bede had not exaggerated when he said he could cook. Even the murdered beans weren’t overdone. Nell tucked in and ate quite as much as her host did.

  “Do I have to save room for pudden, or can I have a second helping?” she asked, wiping the last of the gravy off her plate with a piece of bread.

  “I have to watch that pot belly, so it’s a second helping,” he said, smiling. “Judging from your appetite, you don’t suffer from a tendency to fatness.”

  “No, I’m like my father—on the skinny side.”

  After the meal was done and cleared away—he refused to let her wash or dry the dishes, said they weren’t going anywhere until he felt like doing them—he produced a good pot of tea and two porcelain cups and saucers with silver spoons. The sugar bowl was spotless and the milk chilly from incarceration in the new ice chest. Whereupon, with a plate of Mrs. Charlton the cleaning lady’s oatmeal cookies between them, they settled to talk about many things that always returned to his passion, socialism and the workingman. Nell often didn’t see eye to eye with him, and gave him good arguments, particularly about the Chinese. Time flew by unnoticed, for both of them were people who lived inside their minds, had suppressed what he would have called his carnal urges and she her romantic dreams.

  Finally, when he at least became aware that it was very late, he dared to bring up a subject he felt—the why eluded him—entitled to know about.

  “How is your sister?” he asked.

  “Very well, according to my mother,” Nell said, her face darkening. “You won’t know this, but Anna has take
n against me, so I haven’t bothered going home during the vacations, I’ve done practical work on the shop floor instead.”

  “Why should she take against you?”

  “That’s a mystery. You must understand that her thought processes are extremely limited and unpredictable. The newspapers at the time said that she’s slightly simple, but the truth is that she’s very mentally retarded. Her vocabulary consists of about fifty words, mostly nouns, an occasional adjective, a rare verb. That fellow could manipulate her as easily as he did his dog. Anna is very good-natured in almost all circumstances.”

  “So you believe it was Sam O’Donnell?”

  “Absolutely,” she said emphatically.

  “And the baby?”

  “Dolly. That’s what Anna called her, thinking her a doll. So my father registered her name as Dolly. She’s eighteen months old now, and—isn’t it ironic?—very bright. She walked early, talked early, and, my mother says, is beginning to be a trouble.” The darkness in Nell’s face grew more somber still. “I must go home on Monday, because something is going on that my mother isn’t willing to discuss in her letters.”

  “It’s a difficult burden to carry, isn’t it?”

  “An unusual one, at any rate. So far I haven’t been called upon to carry an ounce of it, but that isn’t right. Nor are other things I feel, but can’t tell you about because they aren’t facts, just instincts. I loathe instincts!” said Nell savagely.

  Its greenish glow enhanced by one of the new ceramic mantles, the gas light on the wall played on his thick, unruly mass of hair and turned its copper hue to old bronze. His eyes, as black as Alexander’s, were deeply set in their orbits and rather narrow; unfathomable, thought Nell, suddenly intrigued. One only knows what he is from what he says, never from how he looks, especially those enigmatic eyes.

  “You’ll grow more respectful of instincts as you get older,” he said, and smiled at her with white, even teeth. “You’ve built your world on facts—not unusual in a mathematician. But the great philosophers have all been mathematicians, so they have the kind of brain can conceive abstract ideas. Instincts are abstract emotions, but not entirely thoughtless. I always think of mine as based on events or experiences I haven’t consciously valued, yet somewhere deep down another part of me values them.”