Bittersweet (8 page)

The convulsion of grief didn’t last long. Finished with it, Kitty returned to Children’s, there to report to Sister Moulton that Michael Vesper had peacefully passed away. Dr. Faraday hadn’t done so, and that she had known somewhere deep down.

The Shire & City of Corunda paid for Mikey’s funeral, to which no member of the Vesper family came; Bill Vesper had been heard in his pub declaring that if the government had the power to abduct a man’s flesh and blood, then the government could pay to bury a man’s flesh and blood. The Reverend Latimer conducted a graveside ceremony attended by quite a few of the staff of Corunda Base. Enough money was donated to make sure that when the ground above Mikey Vesper had settled, he would have a memorial monument of grey granite carved with gilt letters. Somehow it was important that Mikey Vesper should go into a decent grave.

The story of Mikey Vesper got around Corunda after the little boy died, and contributed to the general loathing for Bill Vesper and his boys. Since Sergeant Cameron couldn’t persuade any one of the girls to lay charges of sexual molestation against her father and brothers, the situation continued to fester, yet at the same time slipped from the forefront of Corunda’s memory.

The fierce winter storm that had been threatening to break over Corunda’s head for three weeks eventually made up its mind to unleash its full fury at the end of June, and after dark had fallen.

Tufts was the only one of the four Latimers on duty, working Men’s One, the most neglected of all the wards.

Even Matron had been drawn into the strife between Dr. Frank Campbell and those members of Corunda Base’s staff who had anything to do with Men’s One; Men’s Two, smaller, suffered less in winter than Men’s One. Horrified that the steam line lost
too much pressure to heat Men’s One, Matron had installed two coke-burning heaters in the long ward, only to find that Campbell, tricked into buying the stoves because coke was so cheap, refused to buy enough coke to make the purchase worthwhile. And on the gale nights, like this one, both coke heaters had to be supplemented by steam, feasible if the left-hand radiators were shut off and all steam pressure sent to the right bank.

Matron arrived in the ward at nine to find no coke in the big scuttles and no fires in the heaters.

“Scobie,” she said to Tufts, her uniform screeching starch, “go to Dr. Campbell’s house, get him out of bed, and down here to me at once! Don’t just stand gawping —
do it
!”

Tufts did it. Amazing, she thought as she hustled Dr. Campbell along the ramp, the lengths a resourceful nurse will go to when she’s ordered to
do it
!

“Matron’s gone mad, you say?” the Superintendent asked.

“Stark raving, sir. Oh,
please
hurry!”

And indeed when Tufts and the Super reached Men’s One, Matron did look insane. The starch had given up and wilted, her veil was on the floor, and the fleshy fingers of both hands were curled into claws. “Miser! Skinflint! Despot!” she roared, grabbed Frank Campbell’s dressing-gown collar and lifted him off the floor. A skinny little man who had been a despot for twenty-five years, Campbell hung from Matron’s fist like a carcass in a butcher’s shop, paralysed with fear. This grizzle-haired scarecrow was a maniac!

“I have warned you before, Dr. Campbell, that I will not see men die of pneumonia because you refuse to heat the wards
properly! If coke is not provided and steam pressure kept up, I am going to see the Minister for Health in Sydney and tell him exactly what goes on in Corunda Base Hospital! It has taken me nearly eighteen months to get an appointment, but I finally have one, and when I see the Honourable Gentleman, I will produce filing cabinets full of your sins against humanity — men, women and children who are sick!”

There was more. Every man and nurse in Men’s One forgot why they were there, the patients sitting up in bed with eyes shining and their hearts, if not their bodies, warmed by Matron’s diatribe.

“Oh, it was wonderful!” said Tufts after waking her sisters up to tell them this glorious news. “Matron shook Frank like a terrier a rat — most of the time his feet were clean off the ground.”

“Matron has won the Battle of Men’s One,” said Edda, “but the big question is, has she won the war?”

Perhaps not, but there was a definite improvement in heating the wards, and the plumber got his plumber’s mate at last. Matron cancelled her appointment with the Minister for Health, wise enough to know that men will stick together. If she did nothing more for Corunda Base than ensure its inmates were warmer, she hadn’t spent her time there in vain. And she did one other thing, on the theory that at worst it could change nothing, but at best it could change everything. She bought a curse from an old gypsy crone the next time the gypsies arrived under the railway bridge. Oh, not a death curse! Just a curse that would see Frank Campbell pack his traps and move elsewhere.
Hell would be lovely, but unnecessary; Darwin or Bullamakanka would suffice.

That winter saw the last of the Vespers. When District Nurse Pauline Duncan drove out Corbi way in October of 1927, she found the dilapidated old house empty. Bill Vesper and his family were gone; where to, no one knew. All that remained was the grey granite memorial stone in St. Mark’s burial ground, with its bold, bright gilt letters saying this was the final resting place of Michael Vesper, aged two years. No one knew his birthday; none of the Vesper children was registered.

G
race was always in trouble. The longer her nursing career became, the more irritating things there were to remember, until eventually even the most basic precepts of nursing refused to be recollected.

“Explain the fluid balance chart to me, Nurse Faulding,” Matron commanded, brought in as a last resort.

“The fluid balance chart is kept to make sure that the intake of fluids is sufficient to balance output,” said Grace, rattling it off in that tone tells any teacher that the student is a parrot.

“To what does the fluid balance chart pertain?”

Grace looked blank. “The balance of fluids, Matron.”

“Even a blind man can see that, Faulding. What I mean is, to whom does the fluid balance chart belong?”

Grace looked blanker. “To the hospital, Matron.”

“Of whom is it a property?” Matron laboured.

“The hospital?” Grace asked doubtfully.

The mouth thinned to a lipless gash. “Given the quality of your three sisters, Faulding, I refuse to believe that you are thicker than two planks, but you certainly make my faith hard
work! The fluid balance chart is a property of something called a patient, and is indeed a record of how much fluid the patient to whom it belongs drinks as well as how much fluid he or she produces as, in the main, urine, but may also include —?”

“Uh — faeces?” Grace asked hopefully.

“Not if formed, Faulding. Fluids are liquids, not so? The chart should also include measurements of vomitus, blood, sputum and saliva, if in measurable quantities,” said Matron, who wasn’t enjoying herself. What Corunda Base needed was a Sister Tutor — badly! “Why is it necessary to keep a fluid balance chart?”

“Oh, that’s easy!” said Grace artlessly. “Dropsy!”

The starch in Matron’s uniform creaked dangerously. “Dropsy is part of the symptoms referred to as incipient kidney failure, Faulding — it’s just one aspect. You have not told me why it is necessary to keep a fluid balance chart, only that it may be an indication of kidney disease. What about liver disease? Ulcers? What do you do when a fluid balance chart says the patient vomits more than he or she urinates? Go back to the library and read, then write me a five-page essay on the fluid balance chart, Nurse.”

Dismay flooded into Grace’s expression; she swallowed. “Yes, Matron. I apologise, Matron.”

“Your apology is perfunctory, it has no meaning in the terms of this interview.” Matron’s short but well-manicured nails sat as belfries atop her steepled fingers. “It has not escaped me that most of your routine duties are sloppily performed. Where are you, Nurse Faulding? I cannot tolerate a wandering mind, and yours is as directionless as a cow’s tail in a plague of flies — here,
there, everywhere. It has to stop, do you hear me? For instance, do you
like
nursing? Or is nursing just something you endure so that you can continue to be with your sisters?”

And there it was, the question she had yearned to be asked, sure that when she was, all her doubts and problems would come pouring out. But
Matron
was doing the asking, and how could a lowly worm find words to tell such an exalted personage all about her petty woes? Grace swallowed convulsively, clenched her hands together, and looked down at them resolutely.

“Of course I like nursing, Matron,” she lied. “As you say, what I lack is the ability to rule my mind. It — wanders.”

“Then find that ability, Nurse. You are dismissed.”

It could have been worse, thought Grace, speeding down the ramps toward their house. Today was the commencement of three days off — bliss! The essay Matron had set her loomed; Grace gave a sniff. No, she wouldn’t spend her precious leisure in writing a punishment! It could be done on duty days — after all, no completion date had been mentioned.

With the first twelve months behind them, their house could now lay some claim to cottagey looks, as all four girls had strong, if different, home-maker tendencies. So they painted walls, hung pictures, “tarted up the outside” as Kitty put it, and created a cottage garden. Living in her private premises next door, Sister Marjorie Bainbridge certainly couldn’t complain that they thought of their accommodation with contempt. They lived a happy life.

Not that Grace was staying in this afternoon. Humming under her breath, she unearthed the shabby rust-red clothes she
wore to pursue her hobby, watching steam locomotives. The yards were too dirty for her to wear good things, and besides, she didn’t want to stand out; she wanted to blend in as much as a woman could under such odd circumstances. Ever since she had discovered steam trains at ten years of age, they had enchanted her; so much so, indeed, that her sisters’ teasing had no power to discourage her.

Dressed, hatted, gloved, Grace let herself out through the stipulated side gate into the park and made her way westward along Victoria Street. As she walked her mind dwelled upon its other preoccupation, the fashionable occult as alluringly portrayed in the magazines, whose famous clairvoyants predicted disasters that actually came true, and coincidentally threw out broad hints as to what the private lives of film stars were like. Not all her thoughts were wafty; Grace rather suspected that adulation and wealth, coming as it had to young and beautiful people, had pushed some into hedonistic excesses their fan clubs wouldn’t like.

Just beyond the last of Corunda’s row of public buildings on Victoria Street was a fence of iron spears that led to the shunting yards; twisting her slim body through a makeshift turnstile, Grace hurried on into the shunting yards themselves.

No one saw her. Each double line of standard-gauge track was concealed by rows upon rows of freight cars: coal trucks that brought gas-works coal and power-house coal from Wollongong, the slatted covered wagons that held tiers of fat lambs on their way to abbatoirs in Sydney or Melbourne, flat cars for machinery, ore trucks, every kind of rolling stock. Grace loved the smells:
rust, oil, coaly smoke, dried lamb droppings, hemp from sacking, metals, eucalyptus, tired grass.

The locomotive sheds loomed. She slowed down, looking for the best place today’s arrangement of freight wagons offered her, and found an ideal spot on a high shelf at the end of a slatted car. Scrambling up to sit on it wasn’t difficult; comfortably ensconced, Grace settled to enjoy the view in seclusion.

She was there to watch the locomotives, the great steam-powered engines that hauled every piece of rolling stock in and out of the yards, all over the rail network of New South Wales. Today there were five locomotives, an average number; Corunda was the peak of the southern line, so here an extra engine was attached to a train for the long haul uphill, or detached because the long haul was over. The other end of the peak and the other locomotive terminus was fifty miles closer to Sydney, but here in Corunda were the workshops and the permanent sheds, a thriving industry.

Exactly why the sight of a C-36 or C-38 steam locomotive so moved her, Grace had no very good idea. Simply that since her tenth birthday, when first she stood next to one, the sight of these vast iron mules, enveloped in smoke and steam, thrilled her. She would sit for hours just watching them, revelling in the power that pushed the drive rods to make the wheels go around — wheels taller than she was herself, capable of reducing her to mincemeat. The roars, clanks, hisses, and sliding flurries of puffs elated her, and when she watched one thump its way down the line giving off staccato bursts of inky black smoke, she yearned to be at one with it, feel its huge internal thrust.

Today, she soon realised, was going to offer her a special treat. Corunda had a turntable, a massive rotating iron wheel with a diameter longer even than a C-38 locomotive and tender, its single set of rails communicating with rails to either side of its circle. For running on rails set a rigid distance apart meant that a locomotive had a limited ability to turn itself; a gentle curve over several miles could see its direction change significantly, but the only way to change its direction without consuming miles was the turntable. The locomotive and tender were positioned on the turntable, which did the rotating.

Someone jumped up beside her; Grace twisted slightly to see a man in a three-piece suit, then, deciding he was there for the same reason she was, she forgot all about him in the excitement of watching an experienced train driver lock a gigantic locomotive exactly to the turntable rails.

“I wanted to be him when I was a little codger,” said the man on the shelf alongside her.

“Then why aren’t you?” she asked in a dampening tone as the turntable began to rotate.

“No union contacts in the railways.”

“Oh.”

Conversation died; they were too absorbed in the engines and their turntable gyrations. But finally it was over. Grace leaped down before the man could help her.

“That was bonzer,” he said, balancing on a rail and running his hat through his fingers by its brim. “Thanks for the company.”

“I could say the same. Sharing makes it more exciting.”

“Unusual thing for a young lady to enjoy.”

“I know. My sisters tease me perpetually.”

He laughed. “Can I ask a favour, Miss?”

“You
may
ask,” she said with delicate emphasis on “may”.

Whoever he was, he hadn’t received a proper education.

“Can I look at your face?”

Her turn to laugh. “You
may
,” she said, confronting him.

“No, I mean without that silly hat.” Surprised, a little flustered, she pulled the cloche from her head, her own eyes taking in the young man’s countenance: quite presentable but unusually fair, as if he’d been dipped in a bucket of frost, though his skin was tanned rather than a freckle-marred pink. As if, thought the fanciful Grace, his northern sun shone in cloudless skies and so demanded his ancestors have a more pigmented epidermis.
I have learned something!
she cried to herself. Some of the nursing tuition has soaked in after all.

“You’re lovely,” he was saying. “Where are you going? Can I walk with you? Swagmen lurk around the railway yards.” No one had ever called her lovely before, just “grouse” or a “humdinger”. He may not be educated, but he had finer feelings. In fact, thought Grace complacently, I doubt Kitty or Edda is called lovely. Sensing no danger in him, Grace smiled and nodded.

“Thank you, Mister —?”

“Björn Olsen. But you can call me Bear. Everybody does. Björn is Swedish for bear. What’s your name?”

“Grace Latimer. I’m a nurse at the hospital, where my name is Faulding to avoid confusion. There are four of us with the surname of Latimer, you see.”

Her feet felt light, as if the ground they trod were soft cloud; pleased to note that he was considerably taller than her own five feet seven inches, Grace entirely forgot reality. All she was conscious of was walking with Bear Olsen, of wanting to discover everything about him. And her heart floated in time with her feet, only differently, warm and glowing. How old was he? What did he do? He thought she was lovely, and his bright blue eyes caressed.

At the turnstile they passed into the back reaches of the park and found a seat in a deserted corner. Nobody was about on a Tuesday, it felt as if the whole world belonged to them, as if they were the sole people in it.

“You don’t mind if we sit here?” she asked anxiously.

“I’d rather take you somewhere I can buy you a cuppa tea and a scone,” he said, white teeth in a smile that revealed a chipped incisor. So endearing! “Isn’t there a hospital cafeteria?”

The eyes she turned on him were horrified, terrified. “No! Oh, no! You can’t come onto hospital property with me, it’s against the rules. I’d get into terrible trouble, and I always seem to be in trouble. I’m a trainee nurse of the new type, and the rules are iron. Iron!”

Slightly winded, he stared at her. The poor little beggar! “Sounds more like a jail than a job,” he said.

“It’s complicated,” she said miserably.

“Will you get into trouble if we meet at the Parthenon or the Olympus?” he asked.

“Oh, no, not at all,” she said, relieved. “Provided we don’t break the law, Matron doesn’t mind what we do when we’re out of uniform and off hospital property.”

“A convent, not a jail,” said Bear.

She giggled. “To some extent, yes, but no prayers.”

“Are you a Catholic?”

“No, my father is the Rector of St. Mark’s Church of England — staunchly Protestant, but rather High than Low.”

He looked blank. “Really?” he asked vaguely.

Only the lengthening shadows recalled Grace to the world; after agreeing to meet Bear for lunch at noon the next day in the tried-and-true environment of the Parthenon café she bolted, her hat still in one gloved hand, and her heart singing.

Bear Olsen! Several cuts beneath her, she was well aware of that, and didn’t care a fig. Bear had told her he was one of a type of man notorious for multiple girlfriends and even, in worst cases, bigamous wives. Yes, Bear was that seedy individual, a commercial traveller! Infidelity was easy when the job involved moving from place to place on a very large circuit that did repeat itself, but not quickly. Commercial travellers talked well, were always charming to women, and commonly held to be able to sell flames in Hell. Daddy would hit the roof if he knew about Bear, but Grace had no intention of telling him, let alone Stepmama. In her sisters she could put perfect faith: they’d never breathe a word, no matter what they privately thought. Edda for one would deem Bear not good enough. None of it mattered, however: Grace knew her fate. In a single afternoon she had fallen in love with Bear Olsen, and would marry him. Oh, not immediately, and not without opposition from her parents. But marry him she would!

He was a Perkins Man, which had to count for
something
. No lounge lizard with patent leather hair and a toothbrush
moustache, out to sell a dozen pairs of silk stockings to an Outback farmer’s wife, Bear Olsen! Perkins manufactured and marketed balms, tonics, liniments, ointments, lotions, emollients, aperients, antiseptics, elixirs, emetics, little blue liver pills and little mauve kidney pills, soaps, and a fizzy saline drink that either brought it all up or settled it all down. Everyone bought from the Perkins Man. Perkins products weren’t sold in shops but from door to door, so city and country knew the Perkins Man. Perkins horse liniment and Perkins ointment were by-words, and every house had a tin of Perkins saline powder. Children actually liked Perkins laxative liquor; as the alternative was castor oil, it was
very
popular. Grannies swore by the little mauve pills, poppas by the little blue pills, while everybody swore by the tonic, loaded with alcohol and creosote. After so long nursing, even Grace knew how momentous calling the doctor was. When people felt poorly, they dosed themselves, usually with something bearing a Perkins label. It was cheaper than the doctor, and nearly always just as effective.