Silver Wattle (20 page)

‘We will hold hands to create an unbroken circle of power,’ Madame Diblis said. ‘Uninvited spirits can come through the door I open to the other world. Sometimes they come because they wish to do harm. It is important then that you keep holding on to me and to each other no matter who arrives to speak.’

I shivered when Madame Diblis blew out the candles and we sat in the darkness with no light coming through the curtains. Madame Diblis began an incantation in Latin. After a while she said in English, ‘Spirits, come forth if you are willing. Is there anyone who wishes to speak to Esther?’

My legs became heavy and my head drooped. I thought I was on the verge of dozing off, but then my arms became leaden and it was difficult to continue to hold on to Esther and Madame Diblis.

‘Who is there?’ asked Madame Diblis.

The chill in the room bit at my skin and I shuddered.

‘Who is there?’ Madame Diblis asked again. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I became aware of somebody leaning over me. I wanted to turn and see if it was a trick performed by an accomplice of Madame Diblis but I could not move. A hand touched my shoulder.

‘Miss Rose,’ whispered Madame Diblis. ‘There is a presence near you. They wish to tell you something.’

I tried to grip harder on to Esther and Madame Diblis but I could no longer feel them.

I heard piano music. It was a piece I recognised for Klara played it often. Bach’s Prelude No 22 in B flat minor. Pictures whirled around my mind of places and people I had never seen: young girls in lacy white dresses; a fluffy dog; a river. I found myself before our country house in Doksy. Its white walls and red roof stood out against the sky and the enormous beech and oak trees that surrounded it. The scent of pines tickled my nostrils. It was summer and the shutters were open to the breeze. I walked through the doorway and into the house, shivering when I left the sunshine for the shade. There was a staircase in the foyer. The stone was worn at the centre from years of occupants making their way up and down the steps. I floated up the stairs towards a room decorated with olive and cream furniture. A young woman was sitting by a piano. She wore a gold dress with a white collar and banana-shaped sleeves. Around her neck dangled a filigree medallion with a centre of blue crystal. At first I thought it was Klara because of the dark hair and the slim figure, but the woman looked up and I knew it was not my sister. It was Emilie.

‘Ota,’ she said, tears of joy filling her eyes. ‘My darling Ota. I’ll wait for you until the end of time.’

Blackness covered my vision. Pain seared through my shoulder. Hands touched my face. I felt a towel being pressed to my forehead. Esther’s voice was close by my ear. ‘Wake up, Adela.’ Gradually I came to and I saw Esther and Madame Diblis crouched over me. The curtains were open and the afternoon light poured into the room.

‘You are too open,’ Madame Diblis scolded me. ‘You did not tell me that you had the gift too. You can’t go channelling spirits unless you know how to guide them.’

‘I see them,’ I told her. ‘But they usually don’t speak to me.’

‘You come back to me and I will teach you how to communicate with the afterworld properly,’ she said. ‘It is a dangerous gift if you don’t know how to use it.’

Esther and Madame Diblis helped me to sit up and then lifted me to a standing position. I felt like a newborn calf with my weak legs splaying in all directions.

‘That spirit came from a long time in the past,’ Madame Diblis said, while Esther smoothed down my hair and handed me my purse. ‘She had to draw a lot of power from you to speak. She wanted to tell someone that she still thinks of them.’

My head ached so much I thought it was going to explode. Esther tugged at her hat and I noticed the butterfly brooch on the rim.

‘Louis didn’t appear?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Madame Diblis. ‘Come back next week and we will try again.’

Out in the dirty street, prostitutes and pimps stared at us. Esther’s shoulders heaved. She was crying.

‘Esther?’

She shook her head and dabbed her eyes with her gloves.

‘Let’s go to a teahouse,’ I suggested. ‘We could both do with a warm drink.’

We sat in the teahouse in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. I could see from her pinched mouth that Esther was disappointed she had not been able to speak with Louis. I felt terrible and did not know what to say. My mind drifted to Aunt Emilie. ‘Ota,’ she had said. ‘My darling Ota.’ There had been longing in her eyes.

Mother had said that Aunt Emilie went insane after an affair with a scoundrel. I calculated dates in my head. Uncle Ota had started his odyssey the year of Emilie’s death. Was my kind, generous uncle the villain my mother had mentioned? Was that the falling-out she had talked about before her death? I could not imagine Uncle Ota being anything other than a gentleman. But I knew that I would not be able to see him in exactly the same way until I found out for sure.

A
s promised, Doctor Page discharged Klara from Broughton Hall on her birthday. Uncle Ota, Ranjana and I arrived in the morning to pick her up. I did not have enough money for a new dress for both of us, so I had bought Klara a periwinkle frock with a plisse frill at the neck and had smartened a dress I had by adding a sash and dyeing my shoes pink to match.

Ranjana and Uncle Ota waited in the reception room while I helped Klara into her new clothes in her ward. My fingers trembled from the excitement that she was coming home.

‘Here we are,’ I said, walking into the reception room with Klara.

Ranjana rose from her chair. ‘You look beautiful,’ she said, kissing Klara.

I studied Uncle Ota. I was convinced he had stared at Klara so intensely when we arrived in Australia because of her resemblance to Emilie. I had not gone back to Madame Diblis. All I had achieved was to upset Esther and maybe I had even disturbed Emilie. I could not see that any good would come of going again, although I was curious about Uncle Ota’s side of the story. But he had gotten past the shock of the similarities between Klara and Emilie. He did not have stars in his eyes when he saw Klara in the reception room. He embraced her like a father hugging his daughter.

‘Thank God, you are well again,’ he said.

The admissions nurse handed Uncle Ota the discharge forms. I looked to the ward doors, hoping that Doctor Page would arrive to see us off. Unless Klara became sick again, which I would pray to God every day that she would not, this would be the last time we would be at Broughton Hall.

‘That’s all,’ said the nurse, taking the forms from Uncle Ota. She glanced at me and her eyes gleamed. She was glad to be seeing the last of me.

‘Well, you are off now,’ said Doctor Page, walking into the reception area and smiling at Klara.

He shook Uncle Ota’s hand and told Ranjana that Klara needed adequate rest and quiet.

‘Thank you so much!’ I said, handing Doctor Page a package wrapped in tissue paper. ‘This is something from Klara and me.’

Doctor Page opened the paper to find a mud-woman embracing the moon. His face brightened. ‘I don’t have a female figure in my collection, would you believe?’ he said with a smile. ‘She’ll cause jealousy among the mud-men, no doubt.’

‘We didn’t know how to thank you,’ I told him. ‘You have been so good to us.’

‘You’ve been supportive,’ Doctor Page said. ‘Your sister’s recovery has as much to do with you as it does with me.’

His eyes settled on my face in such a pleasant way that I was overcome by shyness. The thought that I would never see him again left me feeling flat despite my joy at Klara’s recovery. I had looked forward to seeing Doctor Page on my visits to Broughton Hall.

Uncle Ota guided Ranjana and Klara towards the door. Doctor Page stepped forward to open it. An old man in pyjamas and a dressing gown was returning from the garden. We stood aside to let him pass.

The man puffed and panted. ‘Good weather today,’ he said to Doctor Page. ‘It will be clear tonight. You’ll see the Milky Way and the Clouds of Magellan as if they were in your own sitting room.’

Uncle Ota looked at Doctor Page, his interest sparked.

‘Mr Foster is an astronomer,’ Doctor Page explained. ‘He told me how to build my own telescope.’

‘Truly?’ asked Uncle Ota.

Doctor Page laughed. ‘My father and I are quite obsessed. We sweep the sky every night hoping for a comet.’

‘Would you and your father like to give a talk to a social group of ours?’ asked Uncle Ota. ‘They’d be very interested.’

My heart leapt at the thought of Doctor Page coming to our house, but he blushed and shifted his feet.

‘Perhaps you can’t meet with patients after they have been discharged?’ I said, trying to ease his embarrassment and hide my disappointment at the same time. Why should he feel awkward about the invitation?

Doctor Page shook his head. ‘As long as we are not treating a patient there is no problem with seeing them or their family outside of the clinic.’ He glanced at me. ‘I would be delighted to come. My father would too.’

I was glad he seemed easier about the invitation and wondered if he would bring his fiancee. I was fascinated by the idea of the woman who held Doctor Page captive.

‘Good,’ said Uncle Ota, pulling a notepad from his pocket and scribbling down our address. ‘How about Tuesday week?’

A fortnight later, Doctor Page and his father arrived at our home. Doctor Page Senior jutted his chin out and scanned the curiosities in the parlour as a soldier might study the landscape for signs of the enemy. The turn of his mouth was grim and his hair, shirt and jacket were fastidiously neat. I had overheard the ward nurse say that Doctor Page’s father was the most famous surgeon in Sydney. I glanced at his pale, tapered hands. They were not hands one expected to belong to such a solidly built man; they were as delicate as Klara’s and only slightly larger.

‘I am very pleased to meet you,’ said Doctor Page Senior, when his son introduced us to him. He had a well-modulated voice but there was a hint of tension in it. ‘Tonight we should be able to see the Milky Way from Scorpius to Orion in its entirety,’ he continued. ‘Centaurus is one of the most spectacular constellations. It’s too far south to be seen from the northern hemisphere.’

‘The Aborigines regard the Milky Way as a river in the sky world where all the bright stars are fish and the smaller ones are water lilies,’ Doctor Page said, winking at Klara.

‘I like that,’ said Klara. ‘It makes me think Mister Rudolf might be there.’

‘Well, let’s get started, shall we?’ said Uncle Ota, helping to pick up the boxes the Pages had brought with them and leading them to the front of the gathering.

The audience was transfixed by the talk on how the Pages had built their own telescope. While Doctor Page Senior discussed the mechanics of mirror-making, his son spoke about the history of telescopes. He had an obvious regard for Galileo, who stood up to the Holy Roman Church in defence of his scientific theories about the universe.

‘The professor who lectured me in psychiatry often quoted Galileo,’ Doctor Page told us. ‘“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.”’

I saw Doctor Page Senior stiffen. He disapproved of something. Was it psychiatry or Galileo?

When the formal lecture was over, the doctors invited the audience to look through the telescope at Rigel in Orion and Alpha Centauri. When it was my turn to peer through the telescope, Doctor Page adjusted it for my height. ‘Rigel is the seventh brightest star and is supposed to represent Orion’s, the hunter’s, left foot,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you would have liked Orion. The legend has it that he wanted to kill all the animals in the world and, to prevent that happening, a scorpion bit him. After his death he was placed in the sky.’

‘You are interested in legends then?’ I asked Doctor Page, stepping aside so the next guest could look through the telescope. ‘Isn’t that unusual for a scientific man?’

‘It’s through science that we understand the workings of life,’ Doctor Page answered. ‘But it is through legends and stories that we understand the meaning.’

Klara placed a record on the gramophone. The shimmering notes of
The Blue Danube
floated about the room. I wanted to know Doctor Page better. I was intrigued by him. I had spoken with him in his capacity as Klara’s doctor but I wanted to discover more about his mind.

Afterwards, there was supper and Esther’s delicious walnut cake. Everyone grouped together into more intimate conversations.

I saw Doctor Page heading in my direction. He had two cups of tea in his hands and I assumed he was making his way towards one of the other guests. But to my surprise he stopped in front of me. ‘Black with a slice of lemon and a pinch of sugar,’ he said, handing me the cup and saucer.

‘How did you know how I like my tea?’ I asked, taking it from him.

‘I’m a psychiatrist,’ said Doctor Page. ‘You’d be surprised how much I know about you by the shape of your face.’

‘Truly?’ I asked. ‘You can tell how I like my tea from the shape of my face?’

Doctor Page’s smile beamed brighter. ‘No, I asked your aunt how you take it.’

I laughed along with Doctor Page but felt foolish, although I was sure he had not intended his joke to demean me. I could feel my face turning red so I diverted the conversation. ‘I am embarrassed when I think of myself bursting in on you in the men’s ward,’ I confessed to him. ‘I should apologise for that.’

‘Please don’t,’ he said. ‘You can’t imagine how glad I am that you did. It showed you cared about your sister. A lot of patients are taken to Broughton Hall by their relatives and just left there.’

‘The quote you gave from Galileo,’ I asked him. ‘Is that how you feel about psychiatry? That you help people find the truth within themselves?’

Doctor Page took a sip of tea. ‘The human mind is so complex,’ he said. ‘I once had a patient who believed he was a haemophiliac although there was no physical evidence to support it. He cut himself on a piece of wire one day. It was the most superficial of wounds and yet he bled to death. Psychiatry is a fascinating subject but I’m not sure I’m doing anyone any good.’