Angel (31 page)

My lip curled. “Not in a fit, ace!” “Why, for God’s sake?” he demanded.

“Because I do not choose to. Why should I help you lot soften her up until she’s malleable enough to be sent back to Yasmar? Flo is mine. If her mother could speak, I know she’d say so. That’s why I’m applying for custody,” I said.

“You’re young and single, Miss Purcell. You’ll never get her.”

“So everybody says, but ask me if I care what everybody says. I’ll get Flo.” I smiled at her. “Won’t I, angel puss?”

Flo closed her eyes, stuck her thumb in her mouth and began to hum her tune through it.

They let me stay with her for half an hour, though Prendergast never let up on me, tried every way he knew to find out what I was hiding. Crafty bugger, he knows there’s a lot more to it than I’ll admit. Fish away, ace, fish away! You won’t crack me. I’m a big old gum tree, her mother said so.

When the secretary emerged from her cubbyhole to unlock the door for me, she handed me a sealed

envelope. “Dr. Forsythe asked me to give you this,” she said with total lack of curiosity. Like a patient on chlorpromazine. Well, maybe she is.

The note asked if I’d meet him in the coffee lounge underneath the railway station at Circular Quay at six o’clock. An hour hence. I decided to walk, just dream the miles away in a happy haze. No, I don’t have Flo yet, but at least I know where she is. After this, Child Welfare will know that I’m a force to be reckoned with, hur-hur-hur. Little Florence Schwartz wants me! Even if she’s sent back to a shelter, they won’t be able to keep me away from her. Dr. John Prendergast may be a nosy bastard, but his report is going to say unequivocally that Florence Schwartz is emotionally dependent on a twentytwo-year-old spinster who has to work for a living. Let the grey ghosts wrestle with that one!

Ripperace.

As I reached the rather dirty gloom underneath the Circular Quay railway station, I realised that all of this had happened on or next to the day that I looked into the Glass. Is that what scrying consists of? Could it be that the scryer doesn’t actually see things, but that the act of focusing all that mental energy into an object with exquisitely arranged molecules has the ability to change events? What a thought!

So when I entered the deserted coffee shop, my mind wasn’t on Duncan. In fact, for a moment I wondered what I was doing there. Then he came around the bulk of the Gaggia machine, gave me a smile of delighted pleasure, and held out my chair for me. The moment I

was seated, he picked up my hand and kissed it, gazed at me with so much love in his eyes that I melted. He can do that to me every time. Oh, why is he such a victim of convention?

“It’s a pity,” I said, still fizzing over Flo and the Glass, “that a man can’t cut himself in half. The half of you that the Missus wants, I definitely don’t want, and the half of you that I want, the Missus definitely doesn’t want. But I’ve decided that that is the whole problem with men as far as women are concerned. We only ever want about half a man.”

He wasn’t in the least offended. In fact, he grinned. “It’s wonderful to see you right back on form, my love,” he said tenderly. “If an eighth is all you want, then feel free to start dissecting immediately.”

I squeezed his hand. “You know I can’t. I have to keep my nose clean to get custody of Flo.”

Then we both realised that the waitress was standing patiently waiting to take our orders. Listening enthralled. “I beg your pardon, my dear,” he said to her, and ordered two cappuccinos. The girl shuffled away looking as if the Pope had granted her a private audience. Duncan’s good manners have the most extraordinary effect on women. Just goes to show we’re not used to being treated like delicate flowers.

I told him all about Flo and Dr. John Prendergast, and he did listen as if it really mattered to him. It can’t, I know that, except that I know he feels a great deal for me, and I suppose, feeling a great deal, it can matter.

“You have an air,” he said at the end of my tale, “of having just completed a walk across hot coals.” He studied the palm of my hand as if it held the answer to a riddle. “I wonder why I looked at you and loved you? A millisecond on a ramp, and I was done for. Is it because you belong to the world of Kings Cross? A denizen of an awful old house seething with cockroaches, a walker rather than a driver, a drinker of cheap brandy, a devotee of the bizarre, the tawdry, the frankly undesirable.”

“Your tongue, ace,” I grinned, “is touched with honey.” “No, it isn’t,” he said instantly, and bit my hand. “Let me come home with you and it’ll soon find the honey.” The cappuccinos arrived. Duncan smiled at the waitress and thanked her-two audiences with the Pope! “Why did you arrange this rendezvous?” I asked. “Just to see you on your own,” he answered. “Mr. Toby Evans seems to have moved into my territory.”

“No, he’s got his own territory,” I said, licking the fluff off my spoon. My happiness flooded back. “Oh, Duncan, the joy of finding my angel puss!”

“How are you off for money?” he asked. “Fine,” I said.

“If you need it, you know where to come.”

But he knows I can’t accept money from him. Still, it’s nice of him to offer.

I miss him, I’m never so conscious of it as when I’m with him again, even for a cappuccino at the Quay.

When I got up to go, I leaned across the table and kissed him hungrily, lips and tongue, and he kissed me

back, one hand brushing a breast. The waitress was looking at us as if we were Heathcliff and Catherine. “I’ll never be able to stay away from you,” he said.

“Good!” I walked out and left him to pay the bill. They were all waiting to hear about Flo when I walked in. As probationers don’t go on the wards for the first three months, our Pappy is home in the evenings too. She’d made a whole heap of Chinese food, which we carried up to Toby’s attic because it’s the biggest room in the house and the views are marvellous. Funny, that. Toby used to be quite frantic at the very thought of people invading him in case someone left the mark of a rubber heel on his white floor, or chipped the table, or anything. But these days he’s more amenable, maybe because we’ve imposed a few rules of our own, like all shoes off before we go up the ladder, and don’t offer to wash the dishes. Truth is, I suspect, that even Toby is missing Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, though we hear her every night.

Of course they know as well as I do that I’m actually not a scrap closer to getting Flo than I was before I found out where she is, but it makes such a difference to know where she is, and to know that we can all visit her. I checked that with Prendergast, who of course will be present to hear what’s said and see what we all look like,
etc.
But he won’t get any further with a one of them than he did today with me. Crossites are used to keeping secrets from officialdom. No one was surprised that our angel puss had gone through a plate glass window and no one was surprised that she’d survived it, though Bob cried terribly when I described the lacerations. She has a tender heart. Klaus thought it would be nice to bring his violin to the hospital and play for her-I didn’t tell him that I thought there might be objections. Once they hear that bow drawn across the strings, they’ll change their minds. I suppose it was the War ruined any chance Klaus had to make music his career, but the world’s loss is our gain, and he’s such a sweet chap, in love with his budgies. They’re all so nice.

What we don’t talk about when we’re together is the future. The Public Trustee, a bit bolder now that almost two months have passed without a will turning up, sent a fellow to inspect The House when only Pappy was home. Oh, the waste! he clucked when he realised that two flats and a room were untenanted.

And why were the rents so cheap? So we expect that in another couple of months, maybe sooner, strangers will move into the front ground floor flat, Harold’s room, and Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s quarters. How can you tell the Public Trustee about front ground floor flats at Kings Cross? There will be sailors everywhere again. Jim reported that she’d spoken to Joe the Q.C., whose considered opinion is that our rents can’t be increased without a lot of Fair Rent Board fuss, because the landlady herself had pegged them years ago. It’s more the thought of having people in The House who haven’t been hand-picked. I mean, the thing is that this is Kings Cross, so the flats aren’t really flats and the rooms are pretty awful. It’s under the lap! Now we’ve got the bloody Public Trustee peering up our skirts.

Once they take full control, there’ll be a major earthquake, and they’re likely to spend a good part of Flo’s bank book inheritance turning The House into something that fits the full meaning of the Act, whichever Act they decide is applicable. They’ll probably ban scribbling on the walls. When the rest departed, I lingered.

Toby hadn’t had a lot to say, just sat on the floor with his legs crossed and listened, his eyes going from face to face. They look redder than they ought to, a sure sign that something is on his mind or his temper’s ruffled. Some of it, I am convinced, is Flo. Oh, he was always kind to her, but she hasn’t the power over him that she has over the rest of us. Toby resists, which may be a part of that Australianness. Let a woman have power over him? Not on!

“Having second thoughts about keeping your room here?” I asked as he commenced to wash the dishes. His back was to me. “No.”

“Then what is biting you?” “Nothing.”

I went round the corner of the sink and leaned against the cupboard so I could see at least a profile. “Something is. Flo?”

He turned his head to look at me. “Flo’s none of my business.”

“And that’s the trouble. To the rest of us, she’s very much our business. Why isn’t she yours, an orphaned child?”

“Because she’s going to ruin your life,” he said to the sink.

“Flo could never do that, Toby,” I said gently. “You don’t understand,” he said through his teeth. “No, I don’t. So why don’t you tell me?” I asked. “You’ll be tying yourself down to someone who isn’t even the full quid. There’s something wrong with Flo, and you’re just the sort who’s going to spend the next twenty years worrying about her, dragging her to doctors, spending money you don’t have.” He let the water out of the sink.

“What about the bank books?” I asked.

“That was then. This is now. There isn’t a will, Harriet, and governments being governments, the kid will never see a penny of what her mother had.

She’s going to be a burden resting solidly on you, and you’re going to make yourself old before your time.”

I sat down in an easy chair, frowning. “So this is about me, not about Flo?”

“There’s only one person in this house I’d go to the wall for, Harriet, and that’s you. I can’t bear the thought of you turning into one of those drab, defeated women you see all over Sydney, with kids in tow and the old man at the pub,” he said, pacing.

“Ye gods!” I said feebly. “You mean its me you’re in love with? Is that why”

“You’re as blind as a fucking bat, Harriet,” he interrupted. “I can understand why you fell for Forsythe the big important bone specialist, but I can’t understand why you fell for Flo.”

“Oh, this is awful!” I cried.

“Why, because you don’t love me?” he demanded. “I’m used to that, I can live with it.”

“No, that you’re telling me this with no love,” I tried to explain. “This ought to be said in a mood I can respond to, but instead you’re pounding my head about a kind of love which has nothing to do with any grown man! I can’t explain Flo, Toby, I looked at her and loved her, that’s all.”

“And I looked at you and loved you that day you whopped David a beauty on the verandah,” he said, grinning. “And no doubt the big important bone specialist looked at you and loved you the first time he saw you.”

“He says so. It was on a ramp at Queens. So we all looked and loved. But it hasn’t got us very far, has it? The only one of us prepared to make the total commitment is me, but not to you and not to Duncan.” I got up. “It’s very mysterious, don’t you think?” I walked over to him, kissed the tips of my fingers and put them on his forehead. “Maybe one day we’ll manage to sort it out, ace, hur-hur-hur.”

Wednesday, March 15th, 1961 Two and a half months since Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz died, and nothing has been resolved. According to Mr. Hush, they will soon decide that she died intestate. The whole thing is going to have to go to some sort of

child court, because Mr. Schwartz doesn’t exist and nor, officially, does Flo.

Who continues to stay in the Queens Psych Pavilion being subjected to every kind of test there is from EEGs to batteries of neuropsychological investigations. None of which has told Prendergast and his professor a thing.

The EEGs are normal, have a beautiful, high-amplitude, properly modulated alpha rhythm that appears when Flo closes her eyes. They’ve had fun inventing IQ tests a mute but intelligent and hearing child can answer, except that she won’t. The only people she’s happy to see are visitors from The House.

Though every nurse and psychiatrist and therapist knows her very well by now, Flo refuses to chum up with anyone who isn’t from The House.

“Why are you continuing to keep her here?” I asked Prendergast today when I paid my call as soon as work was finished.

“Because she’s better off here than in a shelter,” he answered, frowning. “At least here she can have her visitors without a fuss. Though the real reason is that Prof Llewllyn and I think we may be looking at a case of what used to be called juvenile schizophrenia, but now is beginning to be called autism. She’s not the classical syndrome by any means, but there are characteristic signs. It isn’t often that we have a chance to keep a child as young as Flo for so longparents are always anxious to have them home, no matter how difficult they can be to handle. So Flo is a godsend to us.” He looked wistful. “We’d like to give her angiograms, put some air into her

brain to see whether she has a lesion in the word areas or some cortical atrophy, but the risks are too great.” “You’d better keep on thinking that!” I snapped. “Try using her as a guinea pig, and I’ll go to the newspapers!” “Peace, peace!” he cried, palms up. “We simply observe.”