Angel by Colleen McCullough
She’s even invented a special sort of filing system, which made me smile to myself when he told me about it. What a way to ensure your own indispensability! The poor man can’t find a thing without her.
It’s just over five weeks since he knocked on my door with that invitation to dine at the Chelsea, and he’s changed. For the better, I flatter myself. The laugh comes easier and those dark, muddy green eyes aren’t as sad as they were. In fact, his looks have improved so much that Sister Cas is going around remarking that she always knew Mr. Forsythe was a handsome man, but she’d never noticed just how handsome. He’s blooming, simply because someone esteems him as a man. Unlike the habitual philanderers, he’s not conscious of his attractiveness to women, so he thinks that capturing me is miraculous.
Anyway, as long as Cathy Forsythe doesn’t get wind of me, I keep hoping everything stays as it is. Only my exercise book is suffering, and that’s a small price to pay for the love and the company of a very desirable, terrifically nice man.
Friday July 22nd, 1960
I’ve finally seen Toby. It’s worried me that he’s kept himself completely invisible. When I’ve gone up the stairs to Jim and Bob and Klaus’s level, his ladder has always been pulled up to the ceiling and his bell’s been disconnected. Jim and Bob haven’t changed toward me, though there’s a certain sorrow present for my obtuseness in choosing a man, and Klaus continues to tutor me in the kitchen every Wednesday night. I can now fry and grill as well as braise and stew, but he won’t teach me how to make puddings.
“The stomach has a separate compartment for desserts,” he said earnestly, “but if you train that compartment to close down now, dear Harriet, you will benefit when you get to my age.”
I suspect, however, that he hasn’t managed to close his own dessert compartment down, judging by his figure. I didn’t go up to see Jim and Bob or Klaus tonight, I went up to see if Toby’s ladder was down. And it was! What’s more, the bell was back on its string.
“Come up!” he called.
He was wrestling with a vast landscape he couldn’t fit on his easel, and so was attacking it on a makeshift frame-painted white, of course-rigged on top of the easel. I’d never seen him paint anything like it before. If he did a landscape, it was always some blast furnace or dilapidated powerhouse or smoking slag heap. But this was a stunner. A great valley filling up with soft shadows, sandstone cliffs reddened by the last light of the sun, a hint of mountains that went on forever, endless still forests.
“Where did you see that?” I asked, fascinated.
“Up the other side of Lithgow. It’s a valley called the Wolgan, cut off all around except for one four-wheeldrive track that winds back and forth down a cliff and ends at a pub that’s a real relic. Newnes. They used to mine oil shale there during the War, when Australia was desperate for fuel. I’ve been spending every single weekend up there, doing sketches and watercolours.”
“It’s a beauty, Toby, but why the change in style?” “There’s a contract being let for paintings in the foyer of a new hotel in the City, and this is the sort of stuff the management is looking for, so Martin says.” He grunted. “Usually the hotel’s interior designers have a graft going with some gallery owner, but Martin wangled me a chance at it. He can’t landscape, he’s purely a portrait man when he isn’t into cubism.”
“Well, I think this one should hang in the Louvre,” I said sincerely.
He flushed and looked quite absurdly pleased, put his brushes down. “Want some coffee?”
“Yes, please. But I really came to ask if we could make a date for you to taste my newfound culinary skills,” I said. “And disturb you when the boyfriend might turn up? No, thanks, Harriet,” he said curtly.
I saw red. “Listen, Toby Evans, the boyfriend doesn’t intrude unless I want him to intrude! I don’t remember that you had much to say about Nal apart from an intolerant attitude toward my levity, but the way you’ve cut me since Duncan arrived in my life, you’d think I was having an affair with the Duke of Edinburgh!”
“Come on, Harriet,” he said through the screen, “you know why! The House grapevine says that he’s not the sort of bloke who visits girls who live in Kings Cross. Unless, that is, they’re working girls like Chastity and Patience.”
“Toby, you’re a bigot! I wouldn’t touch a man who patronised the Mesdames Fugue and Toccata!”
“Dirty water’s dirty water.”
“Don’t be crude! And you’re begging the question. What about dear Professor Ezra Marsupial?”
“Ezra doesn’t slum it here. Pappy goes to his place. And just who is your lordly bloke, anyway?”
“Do you mean The House hasn’t informed you of that snippet?” I asked sarcastically. “He’s an orthopod at Queens.”
“A what?” he asked, arriving with the coffee. “An orthopod is an orthopaedic surgeon.”
“But Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz called him Mister, not Doctor.”
“Surgeons inside their own hospitals are always called Mister,” I explained.
“Though you didn’t hear that from our landlady. I introduced Duncan to her as Doctor.”
He wasn’t rattled, simply lifted his brows. “Then I must have heard it from Harold,” he said, sitting down. “Harold?”
“What’s peculiar about that?” he asked, surprised. “I often stop to have a word with Harold, we usually come in about the same time. And he’s the biggest gossip in The House, he knows the lot.”
“I’ll bet he does,” I muttered.
Because Toby’s good opinion matters to me, I tried to explain why I was involved with Duncan, tried to make him see that it isn’t immoral, even if it is illicit. But he retained his scepticism, I couldn’t dent it. Bloody men, with their double standard! Tainted by the venom of a snake like Harold Warner, no doubt. He was one who wouldn’t ignore the chance to make trouble for me with those I love. Oh, but it hurts when Toby condemns me unjustly! He’s so decent and straightforward himself, so incapable of being underhanded. Why couldn’t he see that my own openness about my affair with Duncan was evidence that I too am not underhanded? If it were up to me, the whole world could know. It’s Duncan wants to keep our secret so his precious Cathy isn’t embarrassed.
I changed the subject back to the painting on his easel, very glad that his absences weren’t on my account. Truth
to tell, it is Pappy’s plight drove him up the other side of Lithgow. Then he floored me by telling me that he’d bought a piece of land on the wrong side of the tracks at Wentworth Falls, and was building a shack on it.
“You mean that you’re going to leave The House?” I asked.
“Next year I’ll have to,” he said. “Once the robots take my job, I’ll be back to living from hand to mouth if I stay in the City, whereas if I’m living in the Blue Mountains I can grow all my own vegetables, keep fruit trees, buy cheaply because prices are much lower. And if I get the hotel contract, I’ll be able to build a decent house, own my own place free and clear.”
I just wanted to cry, but I managed to smile and tell him how happy I was for him. Damn and blast Pappy! This is all her fault.
Wednesday, August 24th, 1960 Oh, dear. A whole month since the last entry.
But what is there to write when life has settled into a routine and nothing comes along to disturb it? I suppose I’ve become a Crossite, and what used to knock me sideways doesn’t have that capability any more. Duncan and I are as settled as an old married couple, though we haven’t lost our enthusiasm for bed. For a while he tried to persuade me to increase his visits by adding Tuesday and Thursday
evenings, but I stood firm. Even idiots as myopic as Cathy F do have eyes.
Absences during the week above and beyond what she’s used to might start her wondering about Duncan’s sudden passion for golf at the Lakes, a lot closer to Queens than to Wahroonga, his excuse for choosing to play on a links where he’s not known.
Maybe I’m just a little tired of the furtiveness, but my instinct for selfp
Today has seen a tidal wave on the Cas X-ray pond. Chris and Demetrios are getting married, and she’s absolutely ecstatic about it. All of Cas has seen the engagement ring, a very nicely unusual cluster of diamonds, rubies and emeralds that belonged to the prospective groom’s mother. Such is hospital snobbery that our humble Greek porter, having caught himself a senior X-ray technician, is now spoken of as “up-and-coming”. Helped by Chris’s raves about the motor mechanics course and the garage, which Demetrios has put a down-payment on.
Shrewdly chosen, because it’s on the Princes Highway in Sutherland and there’s no competition within cooee. He’s bound to do well. Poor old Sister Cas has bitten the
bullet nobly, which is smart of her. She’s talking about moving into the Nurses’
Home until she finds just the right one to share a flat with. And there’s the agreeable prospect of being Chris’s bridesmaid. Chris asked me to be a bridesmaid too, but I declined tactfully, said that I’d come to the wedding. Then I teased Sister Cas by saying I used to be a champion basketball player, so I intended to outmanoeuvre the competition and catch the bride’s bouquet. Dr.
Michael Dobkins is staying at Queens. Once Demetrios came on the scene, Chris forgot all about her feud, and Sister Cas has decided that he’s worth keeping because he’s so alert and competent.
Well, well. Even if she dies tomorrow, Chris isn’t going to die wondering.
Demetrios struts around the place like a turkey cock, and Chris has a new facial expressionthe “I know what it’s like to have a good fuck” look. I was right, it has done her the world of good.
The wedding’s set for next month, and will be a Greek Orthodox ceremony.
Chris is busy taking lessons from the priest, and will, I suspect, end up more orthodox than the orthodox. Converts are usually a pain in the arse.
Sunday September 11th, 1960
I was seeing Duncan out this afternoon, Flo clinging to my leg, when Toby came clattering down the stairs. The moment he saw us he propped, the debate clearly written
on his face-so far he’s managed to avoid meeting Duncan. But then he shrugged, kept on coming down. It’s always hard for a short man to have to look all that way up as he sticks out his hand for the introductory shake, but Toby did his duty, tried to look a very tall man’s equal.
As he made his escape out the door, he flung a question at me. “What’s the matter with our Pappy? She looks terrible.” Then he was gone.
I don’t see much of her, is the trouble. But tomorrow morning I’m going to get up early and tackle her.
Monday September 12th, 1960
Toby was right, she looks terrible. I don’t think she’s any thinner-that would be hard without going to complete bones-but she seems to have lost substance.
Her beautiful mouth is dragged down at its corners, and her eyes flicker nervously here and there, won’t settle on anything. Including me.
“What’s wrong, Pappy?” I asked.
She panicked. “Harriet, I’ll be late for work, and I’ve been in so much trouble with Sister Agatha for monthsI look tired, I’m not applying myself to my job properly, I tend to be late or absent on Mondays-if I don’t go now, I’ll be in the soup!”
“Pappy, I will undertake to visit Sister Agatha this morning and tell her any tale that comes into my mind
you’ve been run over by a bus, or abducted into the slave trade, or you’ve had this man stalking you for months and it’s affecting your work-‘I’ll fix Sister Agatha, you’ve got my word on it. But you’re not moving from this room until you’ve told me what’s the matter, and that is that!” I said fiercely.
Suddenly Pappy bowed her head, covered her face with her hands and wept so desolately that I found myself crying too.
It took a long time to quieten her. I gave her brandy, helped her to an easy chair and half-lay her in it with her feet up on a low stool. Until this moment I had always gone a little in awe of Pappy, so much older, more intellectual, more experienced, more loving and giving. Too loving and giving, I realised now. All of a sudden I felt myself her equal because I understood that I owned heaps of something she utterly lacked-commonsense.
“What is it?” I asked gently, sitting beside her, holding her hand strongly.
She gazed at me out of blurred, drowned eyes. “Oh, Harriet, what am I going to do? I’m pregnant!”
Funny, that. When a girl is filled with joy, she always says she’s going to have a baby. But when she’s filled with horror, she says she’s pregnant. As if the phrase she chooses is an emotional and cerebral distinction between a lovely fact of life and a much dreaded disease. I looked into her ravaged face with overwhelming sadness: there, but for the grace of a considerate man, go I.
“Does Ezra know?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Does Ezra know?” I repeated.
She swallowed, shook her head, tried to wipe away the fresh tears with her hand.
“Here,” I said, giving her another handkerchief.
“I tried everything,” she whispered dully. “I threw myself down the stairs. I beat my stomach against the corner of my table. I gave myself a douche with ammonia, then I tried to push a soap-and-water douche right up. I bought some ergotamine tartrate from a wardsman, but it just made me vomit. I even resorted to melting hashish with cheese on a piece of toast and eating that, but it made me sick too. I’ve tried everything, Harriet, everything! But I’m still pregnant.” Her face became a mask of terror. “What am I going to do?”
“Sweetie, the first thing you have to do is tell Ezra. It’s his child too. Don’t you think he has a right to know?” “Harriet, I was so happy! What am I going to do?” “Tell Ezra,” I insisted.
“I was so happy! This is going to spoil it. He wants an emancipated sexual partner, not more babies.”
“How far gone are you?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. Almost twenty weeks, I think.” “Oh, God Jesus!
You’re halfway there!” “Nothing shifted it, nothing!”
“You don’t want it, obviously.”
Pappy began to shiver, then the shivering turned to shaking. “Yes, yes, I want it! But how can I have it, tell
me that? Ezra can’t help me, he’s already got seven children! His wife refuses to give him a divorce, even though she knows all about me. How can I possibly tell him?”
“It takes two to make a baby, Pappy. You have to tell him! No matter how many children he already has, he’s got to answer for this one too, it’s his responsibility.” I gave her more coffee laced with brandy. “Why have you kept this to yourself for so long? Surely you knew that we’d all stick by you.”
“I-just-couldn’t get the words out, even to Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz,” she whispered, mopping the tears. “I must have skipped two periods before I even began to suspect. Then I counted, but I must have been too far gone already for things like the ergotamine to work. Oh, Harriet, what am I going to do?” came that cry.
“First off, you’re going to phone Ezra at the University and tell him that you have to see him here today. After he knows, we’ll take it as it comes,” I said, more optimistically than I felt.
When she refused, I marched to the phone in my bedroom which Duncan insisted I have installed, called Sister Agatha and told her that Pappy was so ill neither of us would be in to work, then I located Ezra and ordered him to report in one hour. Had it been Pappy, he might have argued, but listening to my strange voice and the iron in it, he said he’d come.
Pappy fell asleep while I tried to
represents true emancipation of the female, I thought. Which is why, now that it’s with us in all its awesome fact, it’s so decried, so impossible to get. It’s in the hands of mostly men. Some religious bodies call it evil, and those hypocritical bastards of politicians have fled screaming. But men won’t be able to control its distribution much longer. The Pill is going to belt the balls to the women’s end of the court. The Pill is Power.
I did understand, however, that Ezra isn’t one of The Pill’s opponents. As Pappy works in a hospital, he probably assumed that she had access to it. He’s not a health worker, how would he know how hospitals operate? But he should have asked her. Maybe he had. She’d told me once that she always used a diaphragm. But the pair of them spent each weekend they were together expanding their emotions with hashish and cocaine. Probably they hadn’t been as careful as they thought during a session of ordinary intercourse. Oh, Pappy, you should have stuck to fellatio!
I let her sleep for half an hour, then roused her and told her to have a shower, get ready for Ezra.
“I’m all swollen from crying,” she objected.
“The sleep dealt with that, now you have to deal with Ezra,” I said, adamant.
“I’m sorry I didn’t confide in you, Harriet, but the words kept getting stuck in my throat. I couldn’t get them out. And I kept telling myself, if I don’t say a word to anyone, it will go away-if I wait a little longer, it won’t exist. Isn’t that strange? You’d think that anything
so unwanted would vanish from sheer despair. But not it. Not it.”
“Then you definitely don’t want to go on with the pregnancy,” I said, helping her down the passage.
“I wish I could! Oh, how much I wish I could!” she cried. “I want it because I love him so much, and this is his child. I want it because I’d like to have a child to live for. But it’s utterly impossible. How would I support myself? They don’t give unmarried mothers anything, Harriet, you know that.”