Angel (11 page)

When I got outside, I found that one of those March storms had built up and was about to burst. Of course I

had my brolly, but a look up and down South Dowling Street revealed that all the taxis had decided to get off the road before the deluge broke. It was either walk home, or sleep on a plastic sofa in Cas, and I didn’t think Matron would approve of the latter.

Someone came out of the Cas pedestrian door just as a huge gust of wind howled down to send leaves, bits of paper and tin cans flying. I didn’t bother to look until whoever it was stood so close to me that I realised it must be someone I know. Mr. Forsythe, no less! He gave me that dazzling smile and pointed with the tip of his big black ebony-handled umbrella toward the H.M.O.s’ parking area. All the Rollses and Bentleys had gone, leaving a Mercedes from the 1930s and a sleek black Jaguar saloon. His, I took a private bet with myself, was the jag.

“It’s going to pour in a minute, Harriet,” he said. “Let me drive you home.”

I dared to give him a proper smile in reply, but I shook my head emphatically. “Thank you, sir, but I’ll manage.” “It’s no trouble, truly,” he persisted, then gave a hoot of triumph when the heavens opened and the rain bucketed down. “You can’t possibly wait for a bus in this, Harriet, and there isn’t a taxi for miles. Let me drive you home.”

But I wasn’t going to budge. Hospitals are seething hotbeds of gossip and we were standing in a very public place, people coming and going constantly.

“Thank you, sir,” I said firmly, “but I stink of vomit. I’d prefer to walk.”

My chin was up, my mouth was down. He gazed into my face for a moment, then shrugged and put up his umbrella, which had a silver band around its handle engraved with some message from Geoffrey and Mark. Off he ran to the black Jaguar. Good guess, Harriet! A 1930s Mercedes was the sort of car a psychiatrist or a pathologist drove. Orthopods were orthodox. As the black Jaguar swished by me I could see the blur of his face behind the fogged window, and a hand giving me a wave. I didn’t return it. Instead I waited a bit longer, then put up my brolly and started the three-mile plod home. Better this way. Much better.

Between Cas and cooking, I haven’t had the energy to write in my exercise book for a long time. But tonight something happened which I can’t get out of my mind, so maybe if I write it down, I can banish the ghosts and get some much-needed sleep.

Jim summoned me to an emergency meeting upstairs in their flat, which is a curious mixture of frilly Bob and unvarnished Jim. I’ve known for ages that the Harley Davidson motorbike chained to our plane tree on Victoria Street belongs to Jim, so it wasn’t a surprise to find Harley Davidson posters plastered on the walls. They are always at me to come to their meetings, a regular event, but I’ve resisted them until tonight-sheer cowardice, I admit. I just didn’t think I wanted to get mixed up too closely with a group of women who mostly seem to have men’s names-Frankie, Billie, Joe, Robbo, Ron, Bert and so on. I love Jim and Bob because they are a part of The House and Mrs.

Delvecchio Schwartz has told me sternly that Lezzos have a hard row to hoe (her metaphors are always wonderful, but I never know when she’s pulling my leg, the old horror). When Jim begged me to come tonight, I understood that I was on trial, so I went.

Much to my surprise, Toby was there. So was Klaus. No Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, however. There were six women I didn’t know. One, who was introduced to me as Joe, is a barrister-a Q.C., in fact. That’s awesome, to get to the top of the legal tree in a skirt. Or rather, a tailored suit. Stop it, Harriet!

This is not the time to digress. I think my idle remarks are because I’m dodging having to put the subject of the meeting on paper.

The players in the drama weren’t present-Frankie and Olivia. I gathered that Frankie is a bit of a Lesbian idol, very dynamic and attractive, also very masculine. She had just taken up with Olivia, who is nineteen, very pretty, and from a stinking-rich family. When Olivia’s father found out about his daughter’s sexual inclinations, he didn’t just hit the roof, he set out to teach her a lesson. So he pulled a few strings that saw Frankie and Olivia snatched off the footpath where they were walking their dog and hauled to the holding-cells in a

cop shop somewhere on the outer rim of Sydney. There they were raped nonstop by a dozen of the Boys in Blue all last night, then this morning at dawn they were chucked onto the road outside Milson’s Point station, their dead dog too. Both of them are in the Mater Hospital, brutally damaged.

I sat there feeling so sick that I thought I’d have to excuse myself and lose my dinner, but pride kept my gorge down, I hung on. After one look at my face, Toby transferred himself from the far side of the room and sat down on the floor next to me, sneaked his hand out to grab mine. I clenched it like grim death. Joe the Q.C. was talking about legal action, but Robbo said that Frankie refused to give evidence, and poor little Olivia was going to be transferred to the acute psych unit at Rozelle as soon as she was physically well enough to be discharged from the Mater.

After the anger and the bluster died down, they started to talk about what it was like to be a Lez, probably because I was there. Robbo said that she’d once been married and had a couple of kids, but her husband divorced her citing a female co-respondent, and she isn’t allowed to see her children unless she can prove that she isn’t a “corrupting influence”. Two of them had been sexually assaulted by their fathers as young children, one’s mother had “sold” her to a rich old man whose preference was for anal sex with little girls. They all bore some sort of scars, physical or psychic. Jim and Bob were tame compared to the rest. All Jim had suffered

was to be thrown out by her parents because she liked to wear men’s clothes.

Bob’s parents, who live in the bush, have no idea that Jim is a female.

Afterwards Toby took me up to his garret and fed me coffee laced with brandy while I shivered like an old soldier with a bout of malaria.

“I didn’t know it was a crime to be a Lesbian,” I said after the hot liquid settled my stomach and steadied my thumping heart. “I know it is a crime for a man to be a homosexual, but someone told me that when the legislation arrived for her consent, Queen Victoria struck out the clauses affecting women, refused to believe women could be homosexual. But if Frankie and Olivia were arrested, it must be a crime.”

“No, you’re right,” he said, refilling my mug. “It’s not a crime to be a Lez.”

“Then how could it have happened?” I asked.

“Under the lap, Harriet. Secretly. You won’t find Frankie and Olivia on the cop shop books. Some copper big-wig obliged Olivia’s daddy. I imagine the idea was to show Olivia what a good man could do, but it got out of hand.

Probably after Frankie started in on the rapists. She’s not the sort to knuckle under, even in a situation like that.”

He’s so detached, Toby. I suppose all good artists are, they watch the world looking for subjects.

I’m not an ignoramus about the more repellent side of life. No one who’s worked in a hospital for over three years can be. But you never really hear the full story,

especially in disciplines like X-ray, where the patients come in for their tests and then go somewhere else, and we’re rarely unbusy enough to have the time to listen to a patient’s story. When we meet for lunch or at a party or have a moment to talk among ourselves, it’s always the hot item on the gossip grapevine that’s discussed. The horror’s in seeing what comes in, what’s been done by another human being. No, I’m not an ignoramus. But I’ve been sheltered. Until I moved up to the Cross, into The House.

Tonight has been a blinding enlightenment. I can never think the same about people again. Publicly one thing, behind closed doors something very different. Dorian Gray everywhere. I don’t know who on earth Olivia’s father is, but I’ve grown up enough tonight to think that he is at peace with himself, that he blames it all on Frankie and his daughter. And I can’t bear to think of the people who prey on little children! It is a terrible world.

Friday,

April 1st, 1960 (April Fool’s Day)

I got home fairly early tonight, and for once Pappy was at a loose end. I don’t know where she was last Monday night when Jim and Bob held their meeting-I hardly ever see her now that I’m in Cas X-ray. Toby offered to take us to Lorenzini’s, a wine bar at the end of Elizabeth Street in the City.

“They gave me two bits of news at work this arvo,” Toby said as we walked down the McElhone Stairs to Woolloomooloo, which is the shortest route to Lorenzini’s. “One good and one bad.”

I asked when Pappy didn’t. “What’s the good news?” “I’ve been given a hefty pay rise.”

“So what’s the bad news?”

“The company accountants sat down and did some calculations,” he said, pulling a face. “The result is that from early next year I’m out of a job, along with almost everybody else. Between pay rises, strikes, shop stewards calling go-slows, and investors who want to see a big return for their money, the company’s decided to replace men with robots. The robots can tighten nuts and shove parts together twenty-four hours a day without needing meal breaks or to go to the dunny.”

“But robots cost a fortune,” I objected.

“True, but the accountants worked out that they’ll pay for themselves pretty quickly, and after that, with no human staff, it’ll be beer and skittles for the investors.”

“That’s terrible!” Pappy gasped. She was always militant about crimes against the workers. “It’s disgraceful!”

“It’s just the way of the world, Pappy, you ought to know that,” Toby lectured. “There’s a bit of right on both sides. The bosses try to exploit us, and we try to exploit the bosses. If you want to blame anyone, blame the boffins who invent robots.”

“I do!” she snapped. “Science is what’s wrong!”

I contributed my mite by saying that I thought what was really wrong were human beings, who can bungle a booze-up in a brewery.

There are always more young men at Lorenzini’s than available women, so we soon lost Pappy, who has probably slept with the entire male complement anyway. Toby found a small table with two chairs down the back, and we sat in pleasant silence watching the eddies and swirls as people table-hopped madly.

Poor Toby! It must be frightful to be in love with someone like Pappy.

We hadn’t been there long when there was a stir at the door and about a dozen people entered, almost all young girls. Pappy came flying over to us, eyes wide.

“Harriet! Toby! See who’s just come in? That’s Professor Ezra Mar-mumblemumble, the world-famous philosopher!”

I tried to make her repeat what was undoubtedly a peculiar name, but she was already gone to join the crowd around Professor Ezra Marsupial? Yes, Marsupial sounds good. A bit long in the tooth for Lorenzini’s, I thought, when the crowd parted and the Prof emerged like the sun from behind a cloud.

He isn’t going to win any Mr. America contests, for sure. His face was ugly, he was a skinny, weedy little man, he grew his hair very long and combed it sideways to conceal his baldness, and he wore the sort of clothes you see on authors of important non-fiction books if they have their photos inside the back cover-tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, Aran sweater, corduroy trousers, a pipe in one hand. As the night was humid and hot, he must have been stewing like a casserole.

I can never work out how Pappy does it. The Prof was three-deep in female students, all at least ten years younger than Pappy, some of them as pretty as film starlets. Yet within two minutes, Pappy had managed to oust the girls and was sitting at his right hand, her adoring face turned up to his, some of her thick, glossy black hair straying over his hand. Maybe it’s the hair. She’s the only woman I know with long hair, and they do say men love it.

I sniffed. “That,” I said to Toby, waving my hand to indicate the Prof, “is the Knight of Cups reversed.” Toby stared at me in surprise. “Are you taking lessons from the old girl?”

I said no, but she’d seen him in Pappy’s cards. “She’s an old villain, too, pretended to me that the Knight of Cups reversed is just what Pappy needs. I know the court card only reveals the person, that it’s the other cards fill the person out and show how the person relates to someone else, but Mrs.

Delvecchio Schwartz lied to me. She could see as clear as crystal what sort of bloke Pappy’s new man is, and she saw something else that really upset her.

But she wouldn’t say a word to me about it. I don’t remember what the cards were that followed the Knight of Cups, but I went out and bought a book on the tarot and looked him up, even if I couldn’t put the whole picture together.”

“I thought the knights were young men. He’s fifty-odd.” “Not necessarily,” I said, showing off my newfound knowledge. “They can be called knaves as well as knights.”

He leaned back and looked at me through half-shut eyes. “You know, princess, there are times when you remind me awfully of our landlady.”

I took that as a compliment.

When Pappy and the Prof got up together and departed, leaving his students looking as if they were contemplating suicide, Toby and I decided to go home too. We weren’t far behind them, but when we emerged onto Elizabeth Street there wasn’t a sign of them. I didn’t want Toby to follow me down to my flat in case Pappy and the Prof were in her room, but he insisted on accompanying me.

Oh, good! No light under Pappy’s door, no cackles of carnal content. Perhaps the Prof had a lair of his own, considering his liking for droves of nubile students.

Toby and I had coffee and talked about the brothels on either side of 17c. He had names for all the whoresChastity, Patience, Prudence, Temperance, Honour, Constance, Verity, Columba-and he had christened the proprietress of 17d Madame Fugue, the proprietress of 17b Madame Toccata. In fact, given that the love of his life was probably in bed with a bald old coot with tickets on himself, Toby was in excellent form, had me laughing until the tears came. He disapproved of so much pink and dismissed my bead curtain as a subconscious wish to be shut up in a harem, but I enjoyed myself.