Angel (8 page)

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.

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!”

He turned to grin at me, eyebrows wriggling-so attractive! “You talk as if you read books,” he said, folding a laboratory filter paper, inserting it into a glass laboratory funnel, and spooning powdery coffee into it. I was fascinated, not having seen him making coffee before. The screen was shoved out of the way for a change-it must have got a mark on it.

The coffee was brilliant, but I thought I’d stick to my new electric percolator. Easier, and I’m not all that fussy. Naturally he’d be fussy, it’s in his soul.

“What do you read?” he asked, sitting down and throwing one leg over the arm of his chair.

I told him everything from Gone With The Wind to Lord Jim to Crime and Punishment, after which he said that he confined his own reading to tabloid newspapers and books on how to paint in oils. He suffered, I discovered, a huge inferiority complex about his lack of formal education, but he was too prickly about it for me to attempt any repair measures.

Artists traditionally dressed like hobos, I had thought, but he dresses very well. The slag heap in a thunderstorm had received his attentions in clothes the Kingston Trio wouldn’t have been ashamed to perform in-crew-neck mohair sweater, the beautifully ironed collar of his shirt folded down over it, a pair of trousers creased sharp as a knife, and highly polished black leather shoes. Not a skerrick of paint on himself, and when he’d leaned over me to put my mug down I couldn’t smell a trace of anything except some expensive piney-herby soap. Obviously tightening nuts in a factory paid extremely well. Knowing him a little bit by now, I thought that his nuts would be perfect, neither too loose nor too tight. When I said that to him, he laughed until the tears ran down his face, but he wouldn’t share the joke with me. “Have you met Harold yet?” he asked later.

“You’re the second person tonight to put that question to me,” I said. “No, and I haven’t met Klaus either, but no one asks if I’ve met him. What’s so important about Harold?”

He shrugged, didn’t bother to answer. “Pappy, eh?” “She looks terrible.”

“I know. Some bastard got a bit too enthusiastic.” “Does that happen often?”

He said no, apparently oblivious to the hard stare I was giving him. His face and eyes looked concerned but not anguished. What a good actor he was! And how much it must hurt him to have to endure that kind of rejection. I wanted to offer him comfort, but that tongue of mine has developed a habit lately of getting too tied up to speak, so I said nothing.

Then we talked about his life in the bush following his dad around, of this station and that station out where the Mitchell grass stretches to infinity “like a silver-gold ocean”, he said. I could see it, though I never have. Why don’t we Aussies know our own country? Why do we all have this urge to go to England instead? Here I am in this house stuffed with extraordinary people, and I feel like a gnat, a worm. I don’t know anything! How can I ever grow tall enough to look any of them in the eye as equals?

Wednesday, February 17th, 1960 My goodness, I was in a self-abnegatory frame of mind last night when I wrote the above! It’s Toby, he has that effect on me. I would really like to go to bed with him!

What’s the matter with Pappy, that she can’t see what’s right under her nose?

Well, I did it at last. I’ve had the family to dinner in my new flat. I invited Merle too, but she didn’t come. She rang me in January while I was still in Chests, and I had to have a junior tell her that I couldn’t come to the phone, that staff are not allowed to receive private calls. Apparently Merle took it as a personal rebuff, because whenever I’ve phoned her at home since then, her mother says she’s out. The trouble is that she’s a hairdresser, and they seem to spend half their lives on the phone making personal calls. At Ryde the policy wasn’t so strict, but Queens isn’t the same kind of institution. Anyway.

I’d wanted to have Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz and Flo to dinner as well, but that lady just grinned and said she’d come down later to say hello.

It wasn’t a huge success, though on the surface it was smooth enough. We had to wedge up at the table, but I’d grabbed extra chairs from the front ground floor flat, which is vacant again. Two women and a man who said they were siblings had rented it, but I tell you, men are not fussy when it comes to getting rid of their dirty water. The prettier of the two “sisters” made Chris Hamilton look like Ava Gardner, and both of them stank of stale, horribly cheap scent over the top of their B.O. The “brother” just had B.O. They were doing a roaring trade until Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz rang the Vice Squad and the paddy wagon arrived. There’s an American aircraft carrier in port, and when I pushed the front door open on Thursday night, I saw sailors from arsehole to breakfast-sitting on the stairs, leaning against Flo’s scribbles in the hall, spilling into Pappy’s hall and trooping by the dozen to the upstairs toilet, which was flushed so often that it took to groaning and gurgling. Mrs.

Delvecchio Schwartz was not amused. The “brother” and his “sisters” were hauled off to the pokey in the paddy wagon, and the sailors scattered far and wide at the sight of the Boys in Blue behind Norm and his sergeant, a hugely beefy bloke named Merv. Good old Norm and Merv, stars of the Kings Cross Vice Squad!

It really hurt that I didn’t dare tell this story to the family.

As I haven’t met Klaus yet, let alone started to learn to cook, I cheated and imported all these delicious foods from my favourite delicatessen. But they didn’t like any of it, from the macaroni salad to the dolmades and the shaved ham. I’d bought this divine orange liquer gateau for pudding, skinny layers of cake separated by thick layers of aromatic butter cream. They just picked at it.

Oh, well. I daresay steak-and-chips followed by Spotted Dick and custard or ice-cream with choccy syrup are

what they dream of when their tummies rumble in the middle of the night.