Angel (18 page)

“Yes, care for you. Or perhaps it would be better to ask how you care for yourself.”

The penny dropped, the lightbulb went on. “Oh!” I said. “Oh, that! I’m afraid I haven’t given it a thought. My career as a mistress is barely off and running, you know. But I ought to be safe enough for the moment. I’m due for my period tomorrow, and I’m as regular as clockwork.”

I could hear his sigh of relief, but having been reassured, he said nothing further until I ushered him into my flat. There he picked Marceline up and cuddled her, then put his little black bag on my table. Until he did, I hadn’t noticed him carrying it, that’s how he affects me.

He unearthed his stethoscope and sphygmomanometer, listened to my lungs and heart, took my blood pressure, inspected my legs for varicosities, pulled my lower eyelid down, looked carefully at the tips of my fingers and the colour of my ear lobes. Then he took his prescription pad out of the bag and wrote on it rapidly, tore the top sheet off and handed it to me.

“This is the best of the new oral contraceptives, my darling Harriet,” he said, tucking everything back inside the bag. “Start taking it the moment you finish your next period.”

“The Pill?” I squawked.

“That’s what they call it. You shouldn’t have any problems, you’re in the absolute pink of health, but if you get any pain in the legs, shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea, swelling of the ankles or headaches, go off the medication at once and let me know the same day,” he ordered.

I stared down at the illegible writing, then at him. “How does an orthopod know about The Pill?” I asked, grinning.

He laughed. “Every sort of medical man from psychiatrist to gerontologist knows about The Pill, Harriet. As every specialty sees some side of unwanted pregnancies, we’re all breathing sighs of relief at this little beauty.” He took my chin in his hand and gazed at me very seriously. “I don’t want to cause you any more trouble than I need to, my dearest love. If I can’t do more for you than prescribe the most effective contraception yet devised, I have at least done something.”

Then he kissed me, told me he’d see me next Saturday at noon, and left.

How lucky I am! There are single women travelling all over Sydney in search of a doctor reputed to prescribe The Pill. It’s very much with us, but only if we’re married. But my man wants to care for me properly. In some ways I do love him.

It had to happen sooner or later. Though Pappy knew I had a boyfriend, his identity remained a mystery until early this morning. She came in the front door around six, just as Duncan was leaving. Of course he didn’t recognise her, just smiled and stood aside courteously, but she knew exactly who he was, and came straight to my flat.

“I don’t believe it!” she cried. “Neither do L”

“How long has this been going on?” “Two weekends in a row.”

“I didn’t realise you knew him.” “I hardly do know him.”

A funny conversation for two good friends to have, I thought as I made us some breakfast.

“Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz told me that the King of Pentacles had arrived, and Toby told me that you had acquired a lover, but I never dreamed of Mr.

Forsythe,” she said.

“I didn’t dream of him either. Still, it’s nice to know that The House’s grapevine isn’t as efficient as I thought it was. Toby told me I was a fool, since when I haven’t seen so much as his back going up the stairs, and Mrs.

Delvecchio Schwartz approves after barging in to meet him,” I said, giving Marceline her top-of-the-milk.

“Are you quite well?” Pappy asked, eyeing me doubtfully. “You sound awfully detached.”

I sat down, hunched my shoulders and looked at my boiled egg without a shred of appetite. “I’m well, but am I good? That’s the real question. I don’t know why I did it, Pappy! I know why he did it-he’s lonely and afraid, and he’s married to a cold fish.”

“He sounds like Ezra,” she said, gobbling up her egg. I didn’t like that comparison, but I understood why she made it, so I let it pass. Half-past six on a dark winter’s morning is no time to quarrel, especially after each of us had spent two days of illicit love with a very much married man.

“He hasn’t done this sort of thing before, so why he picked me is a mystery.

He’s in love with me-or he thinks he is-and when he turned up here out of the blue, I didn’t have the heart to turn him down,” I said.

“You mean you’re not in love with him?” she asked, as if that was a worse sin than Sodom and Gomorrah had ever dreamed of.

“How can you love someone you hardly know?” I countered, but that was the wrong thing to say to Pappy, who definitely didn’t know Ezra at all.

“All it takes is a glance,” she said rather stiffly.

“Does it? Or is that what my brothers call elephant love? I’ve really only got my mother and father to gauge, and they’re very much in love. But Mum says they built it, that it took years, and it keeps getting better.” I looked at her, feeling helpless. “I can look after myself, Pappy, it’s him I’m worried about.

Did I start something he’s going to have to do all the paying for?”

Her exquisite face went suddenly hard. “Don’t feel too sorry for him, Harriet. Men have all the advantages.” “You mean that Ezra is still dickering with his wife.” “Eternally.” She shrugged, looked at my egg. “Do you want that? Eggs are the perfect protein.”

I shoved it across the table. “It’s all yours, you need it more than I do. You sound a bit disillusioned.”

“No, I’m not disillusioned,” she sighed, dipping a finger of toast in the runny yolk as if it interested her far more than the subject of our conversation did. “I suppose I just assumed that Ezra would be able to start committing himself to me utterly. I love him so much! I’ll be thirty-four in October-oh, it would be so nice to be married!”

I hadn’t realised she was quite that old, but middle thirties accounted for it, all right. Pappy is suffering from the Old Maid Syndrome. Going from many men to the only man hasn’t rewarded her with the safety and security she craves. Oh, please, please, God, don’t let the Old Maid Syndrome happen to me!

This evening when I walked upstairs to the bathroom to have my shower, I decided that it isn’t a sort of hopeful attack of imagination, it’s real. Ever since Duncan entered my life, Harold has given up stalking me. The light in the hall is always on, and he’s nowhere to be seen. I don’t hear the sound of socked feet whispering on the stairs behind me, nor is he outside the door when I leave Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s living room. In fact, the last time I encountered him was that day he called me a whore. Is that what it takes to discourage these psychopathic types? The advent of a powerful man?

I am neglecting my exercise book. This is number three, but it isn’t filling very fast since Duncan entered my life. I never understood how much of one’s time a man can occupy, even if he’s only part-time. He’s worked out how to see the most of me. On Saturdays I’m a golf game that extends late enough to incorporate a “drink with the boys” in the club house after eighteen holes. On Sundays he comes in the morning and stays until Flo comes down-yes, she does cramp his style a bit, but I refuse to put his needs ahead of Flo’s. I’m a session catching up with his records for a part of that, and then I’m either an emergency operation or some sort of meeting.

I can’t believe that his wife doesn’t smell a rat, but he assures me that she’s completely unaware anything unusual is going on. Her own schedule, it seems, is fairly hectic. She’s a bridge fanatic, and Duncan loathes the game, won’t play it. I daresay when your other half is

seemingly considerate of your own interests, it’s easy to lull your suspicions. But she can’t be very bright, his Cathy. Or maybe she’s just terribly selfish? There have been some illuminating confidences, like the separate bedrooms (so he doesn’t wake her up when he’s called out in the middle of the night) and the fact that she’s relegated him to what she calls the “boys’ bathroom”. He hates “her” bathroom, which is attached to “her” bedroomwall to wall mirrors. Apparently she’s one of Sydney’s best-dressed women, and now she’s pushing forty, she keeps an eye on everything from crow’s feet around the eyes to any thickening in her waist. She’s almost as addicted to tennis as she is to bridge because it keeps her figure trim.

And if her photo is in the weekend society pages of one of the newspapers, she’s in seventh heaven. That’s why he can’t be with me on Saturday evenings-she needs him to squire her out to some black-tie function or other, preferably one where the photographers and journalists who feed the society pages are hovering.

What an empty life. But that’s only me talking. To her, it is exactly the life she dreamed of living since her schooldays, I imagine. Heaps of money, two handsome sons who sound as if she’s kept them very young for their ages, a divine house way out in the Wahroonga backblocks, where the ground covers two acres, there’s a swimming pool, and she can’t see the neighbours. She has a gardener, a slushie to scrub the floors, vacuum, wash and iron, a woman who comes in to cook on the evenings she expects Duncan home, a Hillman Minx car, and unlimited

accounts at the best department stores and Sydney’s two fashion salons. How do I know all this? Not from Duncan, but from Chris and Sister Cas, who admire Cathy Forsythe with heart and soul. She’s got what women yearn for.

As for me, I suppose you might say that I’m happy to take Cathy Forsythe’s leavings. The part of Duncan she most definitely doesn’t want is the part of him that I appreciate. We do a lot of talking, he and I, about everything from his fascination with sarcoma to the private secretary in his Macquarie Street rooms, Miss Augustine. She’s into her fifties, another old maid, and she treats Duncan like her only begotten son. A model of efficiency, tact, enthusiasm, you name it.

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.

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.”