The Ladies of Missalonghi by Colleen McCullough
“What do you think of her?” asked Missy, curious.
“Obvious and flashy, darling. Keeps all her goods in the shop window, and you know what happens to goods in shop windows, don’t you?”
“I do, but tell me in your own words.”
Una giggled. “Darling, they fade! Constant exposure to the glaring light of day. I give her another year at most. After that, no amount of lacing her stays tighter will keep her figure trim. She’ll grow enormously fat and lazy, and she’ll develop the most dreadful temper. I believe she’s going to marry a mere lad. Pity. What she needs is a man who will make her work very hard, and treat her like dirt.”
“Poor Little Willie is too limp, I fear,” sighed Missy, and had no idea why Una found that remark so exquisitely funny.
In fact, Una laughed in fits and starts all the way down Castlereagh Street on the tram, but she refused to tell Missy why, and by the time they reached the building on Macquarie Street where the specialist had his rooms, Missy had given up.
At ten on the dot, Dr. George Parkinson’s haughty nurse took her into a room plentifully endowed with movable screens of terrifying cleanliness and whiteness. She was directed to remove all her clothes, including her bloomers, place an indicated white wrap around her scrawny person, and lie down on the couch to wait for Doctor.
What an odd way to meet anyone, she couldn’t help thinking when Dr. Parkinson’s face loomed over hers; she was left to wonder what he looked like when the hairy caverns of his nostrils were not his most prominent feature. With his nurse in silent attendance, he thumped her chest, stared at her pitifully under-developed breasts with the rudeness of utter indifference, listened to her heart and lungs through a far sleeker stethoscope than Dr. Hurlingford’s, took her pulse, stuck a spatula down her throat until she gagged dangerously, felt both sides of her neck and under her chin with impatient hard fingers, then went rolling round her flinching belly with his palms.
“Internal examination, Nurse,” he said curtly.
“Pee ar or pee vee?” asked Nurse.
“Both.”
The internal examinations left Missy feeling as if she had undergone some sort of major operation without benefit of chloroform, but there was worse to come. Dr. Parkinson flipped her over onto her front and then went poking and prying along the cordillera of her backbone until, somewhere around the spot where her shoulder blades stuck out like pathetic wings, he grunted several times.
“Ahah!” he exclaimed, striking treasure-trove.
Without any warning, Missy was grabbed around head and heels and hips by doctor and nurse combined; what they did was over so quickly she had no positive idea what they did, except that there came the sound of a grinding, sickening crunch all the more horrifying because she heard it inside her ears as well as outside them.
“You may get dressed now, Miss Wright, and then go through that door,” ordered Dr. Parkinson, and went through that door himself with his nurse still in attendance.
Shaken and diminished, Missy did as she was told.
The right way up he turned out to have a very pleasant face, and his light blue eyes were kind and interested.
“Well, Miss Wright, you may return home today,” he said, fingering a letter that lay on his desk along with quite a number of other papers.
“Am I all right?” asked Missy.
“Perfectly all right. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your heart. You’ve got a badly pinched nerve near the top of your spine, and those vigorous walks of yours kinked it into a vigorous protest, that’s all.”
“But – I couldn’t breathe!” whispered Missy, aghast.
“Panic, Miss Wright, panic! When the nerve kinks the pain is very severe, and it is just possible that in your case it inhibits some of the respiratory musculature. But there’s really no need to worry. I manipulated your spine myself now, and that should fix it up as long as you slow down the pace of your walking a little when you’re going some distance. If it doesn’t clear up, I suggest you rig yourself up a sort of chinning bar, have someone tie a couple of house-bricks to each of your feet, and then try to lift yourself up to your chin on the bar against the weight of the bricks.”
“And there’s nothing else wrong with me?”
“Disappointed, eh?” asked Dr. Parkinson shrewdly. “Come now, Miss Wright! Why on earth would you prefer to have heart trouble instead of a kinked spinal nerve?”
It was a question Missy had no intention of answering aloud; how could one die in John Smith’s arms of a kinked spinal nerve? It was as romantic as pimples.
Dr. Parkinson sat back in his chair and regarded her thoughtfully, tapping his pen on the blotter. It was obviously his habit to do this, for the blotter was pocked with many little blue dots, and at times, perhaps from boredom, he had begun to join up the more scattered dots into a meaningless cat’s cradle.
“Periods!” he said suddenly, apparently feeling he ought to cheer her up a little by investigating every avenue. “How often do you have a period, Miss Wright?”
She blushed, and hated herself for blushing. “About every six months.”
“Lose much?”
“No, very little.”
“Pain? Cramps?”
“No.”
“Hmmmm.” He began to join up some dots. “Headaches?”
“No.”
“Are you a fainter?”
“No.”
“Hmmmm.” He pursed his lips so successfully that the top one actually managed to caress the tip of his nose. “Miss Wright,” he said at last, “what really ails you can only be effectively cured if you find yourself a husband and have a couple of babies. I doubt you’d ever have more than a couple, because I don’t think you’ll fall easily, but at your age it’s high time you got started.”
“If I could find someone willing to start me, Doctor, believe me I would start!” said Missy tartly.
“I beg your pardon.”
At this precise and uncomfortable moment Dr. Parkinson’s nurse thrust her head around the door and wiggled her brows.
He rose immediately, semaphored away. “Excuse me.”
For perhaps a minute Missy sat immobile in her chair wondering whether she ought to get up and tiptoe out, then she decided she had better wait for a formal dismissal. Dr. Neville Hurlingford’s name leaped at her from the top of a letter on the desk, midway between a constellation of joined dots and a globular cluster of unjoined dots. Quite independently of her brain, Missy’s hand reached out, picked up the letter.
“Dear George,” it said,
“Odd that I should have to send you two patients within the same week, when I haven’t sent you any in six months. But such is life – and my practice – in Byron. This letter is to introduce Missy Wright, a poor little old maid who has had at least one attack of chest pain and breathlessness following on a long, brisk walk. The single attack witnessed was rather suggestive of hysteria except that the patient was grey and sweating. However, her return to normal was dramatically sudden, and when I examined her not long afterwards, I could find no sequelae of any kind. I do indeed suspect hysteria, as her life’s circumstances would make it a most likely diagnosis. She leads a stagnant, deprived existence (vide her breast development). But to be on the safe side, I would like you to see her with a view to excluding any serious illness.”
Missy put the letter down and closed her eyes. Did the whole world see her with pity and contempt? And how could pride contend with so much pity and contempt when it was so well-meaning? Like her mother, Missy was proud. “Stagnant”. “Deprived”. “A poor little old maid”. “With a view to excluding any serious illness”, as if stagnation and deprivation and old maidenhood were not serious illnesses within themselves!
She opened her eyes, surprised to discover that they contained not one tear. Instead, they were bright and dry and angry. And they began searching through the litter on Dr. Parkinson’s desk to see if among the pieces of paper there might be at least the start of a report
“Dear Neville,” the letter said,
“Thank you for referring Mrs. Anastasia Gilroy and Miss ? Wright, whose Christian name I am afraid I do not know, as everyone including yourself seems to add a ‘y’ to her marital status and leave it at that. I am sure you will not object if I send you my opinion about both patients in this one” –
And there it ended. Mrs. Anastasia Gilroy? After sifting through a few of the non-Hurlingford faces in Byron, she came up with a sickly-looking woman of about her own age who lived in a rundown cottage beside the bottling plant with a drunken husband and several small, neglected children.
Was the second clinical report about Mrs. Gilroy, then? Missy picked it up and tried to decipher the jargon and symbols which filled the top half of the sheet. Though the bottom half was clear enough, even to her.
It said, “I can offer no course of treatment able to change or modify this prognosis. The patient is suffering from an advanced form of multiple valvular disease of the heart. If no further cardiac deterioration takes place, I give her six months to one year of life. However, I can see no point in recommending bed rest, as I imagine this patient would simply ignore the directive, given her nature and home situation.”
Mrs. Gilroy? If only there was a name on it! But it would be hers, saved to put in with the letter to Dr. Hurlingford. There were no other reports amid the confusion. Oh, why wasn’t Missy Wright’s the bad report? Death, snatched from her, seemed suddenly very sweet and desirable. It wasn’t fair! Mrs. Gilroy had a family who needed her desperately. Where Missy Wright had no one to need her desperately.
Voices sounded on the other side of the door; Missy folded up the report still in her hand neatly and swiftly, and stuffed it into her purse.
“My dear Miss Wright, I am so sorry!” cried Dr. Parkinson, breezing in with sufficient flurry to send the papers on his desk flying in all directions. “You can go, you can go! Leave it a week before you go back to see Dr. Hurlingford, eh?”
Sydney was warmer and moister than the Blue Mountains, and the day was fine and clear. Emerging onto Macquarie Street with Una at her side, Missy blinked in the brightness.
“Nearly half past eleven,” said Una. “Shall we go and sell our share certificates first? The address is in Bridge Street, which is only round the corner from here.”
So they did that, and it was remarkably easy. However, the small office and its surly clerk offered no clue as to the identity of the mystery buyer; the most intriguing aspect of the sale was that they were paid in gold sovereigns rather than in paper money. And four hundred gold coins were very heavy, as Missy discovered once she had put them in her bag.
“We can’t walk far loaded down like this,” said Una, “so I suggest we lunch at the Hotel Metropole – we’re only a hop skip and jump away from it – then catch a tram back to Central and just go tamely home.”
In all her life Missy had never eaten in a restaurant, even her Aunt Julia’s tea room, nor had she ever been inside the Hurlingford Hotel. So the opulent vastness of the Metropole staggered her, with its crystal chandeliers and marble columns; it also reminded her of Aunt Aurelia’s house, because it was beautifully greened and silenced with potted Kentia palms. As for the food – Missy had never tasted anything as delicious as the crayfish salad Una ordered for her.
“I think I might be able to get fat, if I could eat food like this every day,” said Missy ecstatically.
Una smiled at her without pity, but with a great deal of understanding. “Poor Missy! Life has passed you by, hasn’t it? Now me, life ran over like a through train. Bang boom crash, and there’s our Una flat on her face in the water. But cheer up, darling, do! Life won’t always pass you by, I promise. You just hang onto the thought that every dog has its day, even the bitches. Only don’t let life run you over, either – that’s equally hard to deal with.”
Wanting to tell Una how very much she liked her, but too inhibited to do so, Missy sought around for an acceptable topic of conversation. “You haven’t asked me what the doctor said.”
Una’s bright blue eyes gleamed. “What did he say?”
Missy sighed. “My heart is as sound as a bell.”
“Are you sure?”
Knowing exactly what Una was implying, she smiled. “All right, yes, it is a bit affected. But not by a disease.”
“I think it’s the worst disease in the world!”
“Not in a doctor’s book.”
“If you like John Smith so terribly much, why don’t you show him you like him?”
“Me?”
“Yes, darling, you! You know, your real trouble is that you’ve been brought up – along with that whole town – to think that if you don’t look and act like Alicia Marshall, no man could ever be interested. But my dear, Alicia Marshall does not slay every man who meets her! There are many men with more taste and discrimination than that, and I happen to know that John Smith is one of them.” She smiled impishly. “In fact, I think you’d suit John Smith extremely well.”
“Is he married?”
“He was at one time, but he’s respectably single now – his wife died.”
“Oh! Was she – was she nice?”
Una thought about that. “Well, at any rate I liked her. There were plenty who didn’t.”
“Did he like her?”
“I think he probably liked her well enough in the beginning, but not nearly well enough in the end.”
“Oh.”
Una commandeered the bill and would hear none of Missy’s protests. “Darling, your transactions this morning have been quite without personal reward, where mine have netted me one hundred wonderful pounds that I intend to fritter away like a king’s mistress. Lunch is therefore my treat.”
A very exclusive-looking dress shop occupied the corner where they waited for the tram, but to Missy’s surprise, Una displayed no interest.
“First of all, darling, a hundred pounds wouldn’t buy the smell of an oil rag in there,” she explained. “Besides which, their clothes are as deplorably dull as their prices are deplorably expensive. No red dresses! It’s far too respectable a shop.”
“One day I shall have my scarlet lace dress and hat,” said Missy, “no matter how unrespectable I look.”
“So I don’t have heart trouble at all,” said Missy to her mother and aunt. “In fact, my heart is perfect.” Both the big pale faces turned anxiously to Missy fell instantly into repose.
“Oh, that is good news!” said Octavia.
“What is the matter, then?” asked Drusilla.
“I have a pinched nerve in my spine.”
“Good heavens! Does that mean there’s no cure?”
“No, Dr. Parkinson thinks he may already have cured me. He almost screwed my head off, there was a horrible sort of crunch, and I should be quite well from now on. He referred to what he did as a manipulation, I think. But if I do get more attacks, I have to get you to tie two bricks to each of my feet, and I have to hang in the air with my chin resting on a bar!” She grinned. “The mere thought is enough to cure any complaint!” Only with a hefty swing did she manage to deposit her handbag on the table. “Here’s something a lot more important – look!” And she withdrew four neatly wrapped cylinders. “One hundred pounds for you, Mother, all in gold. And the same for Aunt Octavia, Aunt Cornelia, and Aunt Julia.”
“It’s a miracle,” said Drusilla.
“No, it’s a little tardy justice,” contradicted Missy. “You will buy that Singer sewing machine now, won’t you?”
Prudence warred with desire in Drusilla’s breast until she declared a temporary truce with the outcome undecided. “I said I would think about it, and I will.”
When bedtime came around Missy found herself sleepless, despite t
By midnight her plan was all worked out, and her mind was made up. She would do it, and she would do it tomorrow. After all, what did she have to lose? If her scheme did not bear fruit, she would simply have to continue for the next thirty-three years as she had gone on for the last thirty-three years. Certainly it was worth a try.
Somewhere in her suddenly sleepy brain a little thought was spared for John Smith, the unsuspecting victim. Was it fair? Yes, came the answer. Missy turned over and went to sleep with no further misgivings.
Drusilla elected to bear the four hundred pounds into Byron without assistance, and set off the next morning at nine o’clock, the heavy burden of her bag seeming as a feather. She was very happy, not only for herself, but for her sisters also. In the last few weeks more good fortune had come her way than in the last almost four decades, and she was beginning to dare to hope that the good fortune was a trickle building into a rivulet rather than a splash draining into the sand. But it cannot be for me alone, she vowed. Somehow I must ensure it embraces all of us.
While Octavia pottered happily in the kitchen, Missy quietly packed her scant clothing into the battered carpetbag which served all the ladies of Missalonghi on the rare occasions a bag was needed. On the top cover of her bed she left a note for her mother, then she let herself out of the front door, walked down the path to the gate, and turned left, not right.
This time she didn’t timidly explore the start of the descent into John Smith’s valley; she walked down it with decision and purpose, using a strong stick and the carpetbag to keep her balance on the treacherous rubble. At the bottom of the landslide the going became easier as the road plunged into the forested flanks below the cliffs. It was not nearly as cold as she imagined it might be, for the ramparts far above took the brunt of the wind; down on the valley floor, all was still and calm.