Bittersweet (16 page)

“I see,” said Edda, drawing on a pair of red kid gloves. She was looking particularly attractive in one of the newer styles, waisted and longer, in the same stunning red. Nor was she
wearing a hat, preferring to let the world see her black hair immaculately waved in the new fashion, curling at its ends. The outfit had struck Grace like a hammer, made her feel dowdy, parochial, the housewife-mother-of-two, stuck in a dreary rut.

Edda’s bag was black patent leather with a big red kid bow across its front; she clipped it under her arm and turned on one fashionable black patent heel. “A ridiculous conversation, Grace, that I am hereby terminating. Your trouble, sister, is that you’re spoiled and indulged by two men, to one of whom you have no legal claim. If they didn’t run after you, you’d be much better off.”

Grace opened her mouth, burst into tears, and howled; so did Brian, equally noisily. Edda stalked to the door.

“Another thing,” she said, opening the door. “Choose your audience. The only thing this bout of waterworks does for me is make me want to smack you — hard!” And she was out, she was gone.

At the front gate she began to tremble, but there were too many curtains pulled part-way back to emulate Grace. Chin in the air, Edda walked down the street looking as if she owned it, only then remembering that she hadn’t told Grace about Dr. Charles Burdum, who Corunda gossip said was taking over the hospital.

Only Tufts weathered those confused, uncertain weeks between the death of Dr. Francis Campbell and the appointment of the new General Superintendent, for she floated above an opalescent haze of happiness nothing had prepared her for. On the surface,
her new position as Sister Tutor wasn’t very demanding, as she would have a mere eight trainees under her wing, but she also saw that she could train the West Enders left until time eliminated them; some at least would repay the effort. That Matron had given her leeway to implement her ideas was wonderful, for there were yet other areas where a Sister Tutor’s hand could make vast differences. No one could work at Corunda Base for three years and be unaware how indifferent the domestic and culinary staff were to the purposes of a hospital. Tufts wanted to change that too, make the wardsmaids understand what a germ was and where it lurked, make the cooks and kitchen staff proud to serve tasty meals that earned them praise from all who ate them. Domestic and Culinary came under the care of a deputy matron of retirement age, Anne Harding, one of those relics of a bygone era all institutions seem to harbour in dark and dusty corners. Well, all of it had to change. No more feeding everybody for sixpence a day. Only how was she going to go about dragging Domestic and Culinary into the twentieth century?

If a secret glow of warmth cocooned her heart, that was because she was back on the old terms with Liam Finucan, who had suffered the sixteen months of his divorce suit as unobtrusively as possible, and emerged at its end legally severed from his faithless wife and under no obligation to pay her something known as alimony. That in spite of the judicial ruling he did pay Eris a small allowance was not symptomatic of weakness but of compassion; he couldn’t live with the thought that a partner of fifteen years left the union without the prospect of living any better than her man-friend-of-the-moment decided.

“I’m glad you pay her something,” Tufts said as she bustled around the pathologist’s office. “Oh, Liam, what a mess you’ve let this place become! You didn’t used to be so untidy.”

“I missed my chief assistant, even if she was never official. I could have murdered Gertie Newdigate,” he said, watching her.

Tufts giggled. “Gertie! The name doesn’t suit her one bit.”

“No, but it probably pushed her into an early dragonhood.”

“What’s the lab like?”

“In fine form. After you left I buckled down and taught Billy to be a much better technician than he was. Now I have a second technician, Allen, who’s better trained and qualified.”

“So all I have to do is sort out your office.”

“Yes.” The dark grey eyes gleamed. “I saved it for you.”

“Big of you. Well, come on, man, chop-chop! Sort all these files into alphabetical order and then we’ll look at them, decide if the labels are the right ones, and
then
file them.”

“You’re a lot bossier, Heather.”

“Tufts, not Heather. And as I’m now a sister, of course I’m bossier. You and I have to produce training schedules of all sorts, but we can’t do that until your office is in order.”

He hadn’t changed a bit, she concluded as the shambles disappeared before a formidable new organisation — far more profound than any he had ever practised before. Necessary, if either of them was to be able to put an unerring finger on a file or book or paper without hesitation. The hospital carpenter, who had a lot of free time, suddenly found himself busier than he had been in years; Tufts commissioned him to make proper drawer units for all Liam’s assortment of records. Since the job appealed
to him and he liked Dr. Finucan, the carpenter unfurled the wings of a talented cabinet-maker, and dowered Liam’s office with quite beautiful cabinetry, all stained a matching pale mahogany.

“Which means,” said Tufts with huge enthusiasm, “that when I’m finished with your office, it will look far spiffier than the Superintendent’s. I like that, so you’re going to cough up for a Persian carpet on the floor and some prestigious etchings on the walls. I’m sending your books to a good binder — they’ll look spiffy leather-bound and gilt-lettered.”

As each directive was issued he nodded mutely, then obeyed it; she had that effect, Sister Tutor.

Who doted publicly on Liam Finucan, with curious consequences. Even including the sixteen-month hiatus of a divorce that severely curtailed their personal relationship, Liam and Tufts had been such good friends and colleagues for so long that the entire staff of Corunda Base
knew
there was nothing shady going on between them. “The Experiment” was a good example. Tufts had found two other men on the staff whose hair flopped in their eyes and blinded them, and bought each one a Mason Pearson hairbrush. Then every morning she attacked the floppy lock, assaulting the scalp and its follicles so ruthlessly that, as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, the hair began to grow in the opposite direction. Each man’s lock was measured with calipers on the first of the month and the measurements entered in a journal, together with photographs. And by winter of 1929, The Experiment had succeeded — each man’s lock of hair no longer blinded him. Her two other guinea-pigs were given
Sister Tutor’s blessing and dismissed, but Liam never was. Tufts got a kick out of the project, and saved her most difficult problems or questions for hairbrush time. People viewed it as an intrinsic part of a very special, completely Platonic friendship.

Interestingly, the one name never mentioned on the gossip grapevine was Tufts Scobie’s. Given that she was quite stunningly pretty, her Diana-the-Goddess image puzzled people on early contact, but longer acquaintance showed them it was part of her mystique.

The man who understood Tufts’s nature best was Liam Finucan, who loved her with every particle of his being, and never thought of her as Tufts. Perhaps it was his forties endowed Liam with the wisdom never to declare his love, or perhaps it had all to do with a unique sensitivity of the soul; whatever the root cause was, he loved in the complete silence that doesn’t give itself away even by a fleeting look or a tiny yet betraying gesture. Liam and Heather were absolute best friends.

The winter months of 1929 saw Corunda Base Hospital in a worse state of flux than anyone remembered, for the Board was engaged in a storm of cables with Manchester and Dr. Charles Burdum. No new superintendent was contemplated for the moment.

The junior sisters — even Tufts, with a firm job offer — were in a state of Limbo, a name given it by Edda because it was good and blessed, but had no God; the Superintendent was hospital God.

Uncertainty over their futures hovered perpetually — would the new Super be another Frank, or his opposite? It began to seem to Edda that she would be leaving for parts unknown, especially given the shattering quarrel with Grace, who was behaving like someone Edda had never met — indeed, Grace
refused
to meet! Oh, to think that my
twin
sister damns me as a trollop! Unconscionable! She’s turned into a fishwife who’d burn me as a witch!

Superintendent Francis Campbell had been a conservative stick-in-the-mud whose sole venture into nursing training, the Latimers, had been virtually forced upon him; repercussions, like the West Enders now starting to train and register in the new way, had annoyed him greatly. What he visualised was a grossly increasing budget for nurse wages and salaries in years to come. Yes, as trainees they were paid a pittance, but they had to be housed, fed, taught and supervised, and when they achieved their registrations they cost far more than old-style West Enders. Almost his last thought before dying was that the eight trainees beginning were all West Enders: his cheap nursing asset was no more. How
dared
West Enders do this? Good-for-nothing trollops! He might have gone on in this vein, had he not died instead.

Dr. Campbell’s tenure of the chief hospital position far pre-dated the Great War, and many of the new techniques and treatments had passed him by; those that had not been forced upon him by his two senior surgeons, three senior physicians, his anaesthetist, and that perennial nuisance, Ned Mason the obstetrician, were not adopted. Such as the appointment of a
radiologist whose job would have been to run a proper X-ray department containing the very latest X-ray equipment, and a psychiatrist for the asylum. As far as Dr. Frank Campbell was concerned, the main function of his hospital was to keep its costs right down and incur no new expenses in the name of Medical Progress. Pah! Hospitals were places to die in. If you didn’t die, you were lucky. Treatment only slowed the dying down.

To compound the woes of the new junior sisters, Matron and her two deputies spent the rest of that winter of 1929, until September, in getting their records and arguments into an order that would impress the new superintendent; he would see the nursing department as a collection of disciplined individuals able to spare him much time and energy when it came to every aspect of nursing’s nature. The hospital Secretary, Walter Paulet, was similarly closeted with his accounts department; rumour had it tearing their scant hair out by its roots over the lack of system in Frank Campbell’s paperwork. Somehow when they were reduced to black figures on white paper, Dr. Campbell’s machinations to feed everyone for sixpence a day looked — well, rather appalling.

But, as luckily is the way with most institutions, Corunda Base Hospital itself continued to function on doctors, nurses, domestic staff, food preparers and ancillary staff in the same old way, so that the patients lived (or died) in relative ignorance of the drama going on at an executive level. Indeed, it was a rare patient even knew that a hospital had executives.

I
nformed that she was on three days off, Kitty Latimer promptly packed a suitcase, waved her sisters a merry farewell, and set off for Sydney. There she occupied a room at the Country Women’s Club and plunged into a happy frenzy of shopping, seeing films, and going to every play and exhibition Sydney was offering. Talking pictures were just coming in, and she wasn’t sure if she liked them very much — now that the mouths were uttering words rather than miming dramatic phrases echoed on a fancy blackboard, the actors seemed too stagey, too artificial, even too amusing — and did the men really have to wear so much feminine-looking make-up? If talking pictures were to survive, thought Kitty, the whole technique of making them would have to change.

However, at the end of her three days she installed herself in a first-class compartment on the Melbourne day train, as all through expresses had to stop in Corunda to drop their second locomotive; on a through express it was a three-hour journey that she loved, especially given the fact that she usually managed to keep the whole six-passenger compartment to herself.

But not, alas, today. Having settled in her window seat and suggestively pulled the corridor blinds down to semaphore a message that the compartment was full, Kitty kicked off her new pink kid shoes — they were pinching at the heels — and opened the romance novel she was reading with half her mind, thus leaving the other half free to wander in more unconscious realms. The last thing a nurse needed was grim reality in a book. Where Kitty was wiser than most was in understanding that her romance author undoubtedly, in her real life, knew all about grim reality.

The sliding door onto the corridor opened, a head poked in, then the door opened fully to admit a man.

“Oh, good!” he said, making for the other window seat.

Kitty lifted her head. “This is a non-smoking compartment,” she said in freezing tones.

“I can read,” he said, pointing, then looked at her and stared in open rudeness. “Marion Davies!” he exclaimed.

“Piss off, you presumptuous little twirp!” Kitty snapped. “If you insist on coming in here, don’t you dare sit opposite me! Take a seat at the corridor end, keep your remarks to yourself, and leave me a little privacy. Otherwise I’ll call the conductor.”

A shrug; he threw his case up onto the overhead rack and sat down at the corridor end, but facing her. Deprived of a window, he looked at the NSWGR antimacassars shielding the velvet squabs.

Kitty returned to her book. Underneath her icy composure she was seething. How dared he! A dapper little chap, not above five feet four inches tall, wearing a pin-striped navy-blue suit complete with waistcoat, gold watch, fob and chain; a
magnificent cabochon ruby ring adorned his left hand, another ruby was stuck in what looked like an old school tie, and his cuff links each bore a ruby. His feet, she noted in tickled delight, were sheathed in hand-made shoes that bore distinct heels — he was extremely conscious of his diminutive size, then. I’ll bet he struts like a bantam rooster, she thought, assimilating all of this with her unusually acute peripheral vision, the gift of three years as a nurse trained to see almost around corners. He has a Napoleon complex, or so the alienists are calling it, and
doesn’t
he love to strut, the little poseur?

His hair was thick, wiry and curling, a genuine guinea-gold colour also present in his brows and lashes, though as yet Kitty had no idea what colour his eyes were, beyond some shade around tawny. Darkish skin that was already tanned, an extremely close shave, and a face she was obliged to admit she thought fascinating, though not because it awed or attracted her. Simply, it didn’t seem to know whether it was ugly or handsome, and changed while you looked at it. One visage had film star properties, as beautiful as the extras who adorned a film’s background crowds and eclipsed the leading man. Had he been taller and owned this face alone, he might have been a king or a president or the leader of a religious sect. As it was, his second visage negated any hope of being freely gifted with the world. This face belonged to a gargoyle or perhaps a castrated satyr; ugly and twisted, it had the power to turn the film star features into a sinister map as hard as heartless.

Whoever this man is, he frightens me, Kitty thought, her book unable to compete with such an authentic out-of-the-pages-of-history
character. Yes, he was going to matter, if for no other reason than he’d die in the trying. Judging by the rubies, the gold and the hand tailoring, a rich man — he’d be getting off in Corunda because those were Corunda pigeon’s-blood rubies, the world’s most coveted and expensive. And with that dipped-in-a-crucible-of-gold look to him, he’s a Burdum.

The penny dropped; with a great effort Kitty kept her eyes on her book and her breathing regular. Unless she was mistaken, this was Dr. Charles Henry Burdum, late of the Manchester Royal Infirmary, and going to Corunda to become superintendent of the hospital. Small fry! He could go to Bart’s or the Middlesex or Guy’s, so what has brought him to a place he doesn’t know from a bar of soap? He’s a Pommy, not an Australian, and I never saw a man less suited for Australian life. A wee bantam rooster …

After that initial exchange the three hours passed without a word; as was his wont, Sid the conductor arrived with five minutes to spare, took Kitty’s suitcase down and carried it along the corridor to the carriage door, where he waited, yarning to Kitty, whom he knew from many train trips. The dapper stranger was forced to carry his own bag and stand behind them as the two big locomotives pulled in, groaning and clanking, to stop at the station. Edda was there to meet her, talking to old Tom Burdum.

“Where did you get that dress?” Edda demanded, with no eyes for the man as Tom Burdum left her to hobble forward.

“Mark Foy’s. I found a gorgeous one for you, snake lady.” Kitty tucked a hand through her sister’s arm and led her away. “Turn back and take a squizzy at the chap old Tom is meeting.”

“Jeeeeesus! What a Little Lord Fauntleroy!”

“Bang on, Edda. I can’t be absolutely sure, but I’m willing to place a hefty bet that he’s Dr. Charles Burdum, therefore the new superintendent.”

“Corunda hasn’t been told a new one’s been appointed yet.”

“Then perhaps he’s come to inspect the place, with a view to declining.” Kitty skipped. “We shared a compartment and I had to put him in his place.”

“Oh! Did he actually put the hard word on you, Kits?”

“No. He called me Marion Davies.”

“That’s worse. Your reply was salty — or worse.”

“Just salty as the Dead Sea. Pickled in brine! I told him to piss off. We rode the rest of the way in frigid silence.”

Edda had turned and was blatantly staring at the newcomer. “Well, he’s a Burdum, and he’s more conceited than Lucifer. What a face! Like Janus.”

“Yes, poor chap.”

“You feel sorry for him?” Edda asked incredulously.

“Very. Look at his hand-made shoes, dear. Two-inch heels. He’s a living, breathing Napoleon complex. Gifted with everything except the height no man can bear to be without.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.” Edda brightened. “Still, if he does decide to take the job, he’ll probably settle down after the worst is over. So he doesn’t know you’re a nurse?”

“He has no idea.”

“What fun when he finds out!”

If Charles Burdum had been a shock to Kitty, it was as nothing compared to his effect on old Tom Burdum, who had been waiting ninety-five years for the appearance of a permanent heir. He had gone to the station expecting to meet someone who looked like Jack Thurlow; instead, he found a lordly midget whose suit had been tailored in Savile Row and shirt made by Turnbull & Asser. With a Balliol tie, no less! Though that Tom only discovered because he asked, expecting a joking answer. But not from this fellow, who oozed self-confidence, walked as if he had a poker rammed up his arse (so Tom told Jack later), and was very put out because the train conductor hadn’t lifted down and carried his suitcase.

“In Australia, conductors don’t,” said Tom, not knowing how else to disillusion him. “In Australia, no one waits on you.”

“He was quick enough to carry the little madam’s case!” Charles Burdum said in a clipped, not quite pear-shaped accent.

“Who, Kitty Latimer?” Old Tom chuckled. “A man would have to be dead not to want to carry Kitty’s case.”

“She told me to piss off — not the language of a lady.”

“Tch! I’m sure you deserved it, Charlie.”

“Don’t call me Charlie, my name is Charles.”

“If you stay in Corunda, it’ll be Charlie. Or Chikker.”

“
What?
”

“No airs and graces in this part of the world, grandson. I speak because someone has to, and I’d rather it were me than, for instance, your cousin Jack Thurlow. He’s my other heir, except that he doesn’t want to be the heir. You’ll inherit the title of leading light in Corunda — if you go about it the right way,” old
Tom said, bidding a man load three suitcases into the back of his Daimler. “Do you have more luggage in the guard’s van? Yes? Then give the tickets to Merv here and he’ll collect and deliver them for you.” He waited while Charles found his luggage tags and handed them over, together with a five-pound note that had the man gobbling. “Tch!” said old Tom. “That was silly, Charlie! Never tip a man earning wages. I pay Merv well enough not to need tips. Now you’ve made him discontented with a very fair wage, all because where you come from, he wouldn’t earn a very fair wage, and would depend on tips to eke it out. Lesson number one.”

They settled in the open Daimler Tonneau, its canopy folded. “As Hannah, my wife, is also in her nineties, we haven’t put you up at our property,
Burdumbo
. You’re at the Grand Hotel on Ferguson Street — a hop, skip and jump from the hospital as well as George Street, which isn’t a bad shopping centre — even has a department store. Though be warned! If you want a really decent feed, go to the Olympus or the Parthenon. They’re both run by Greeks, and there’s nothing in it for quality — superb steaks!”

Old Tom rambled on as the big car, buffeted by a sharp wind, drove through a landscape that resembled an extremely untidy rural England — no neat barnyard complexes but plenty of tumbledown sheds, no stone fences but barbed wire strung between ugly posts, rounded hills crowned not with coppices but clumps of granite boulders. It was not the scorching semi-desert of his imaginings, but it wasn’t Europe either, even Greece or Majorca.

People were staring at him, though not in admiration. Some grinned openly, most just looked interested, the way they would at a zebra or giraffe. His great intelligence informed him this was chiefly because of his dress. A few locals did wear three-piece suits, but shabby and years out of date. Most, including old Tom, favoured moleskin trousers, a shirt and tweed jacket, elastic-sided riding boots and low-crowned, broad-brimmed felt hat. The women wore ghastly early-twenties, unfashionable clothes, while some, he noted in horrified fascination, actually strolled around town in men’s riding gear, right down to the elastic-sided boots and the broad-brimmed hat —
and nobody seemed to think them peculiar!
So where were the women like that ravishing girl on the train and the girl who met her? They had been dressed in the height of the mode! But his extensive tour revealed no women like them. Well, they had not been figments of his imagination, they did exist in this benighted town somewhere.

He was being shown everything, and had now reached the public buildings on Victoria Street, which ran parallel to George one block over. Town hall, municipal services, the hospital, St. Mark’s Church of England and Rectory — oh, would it never end?

Then his hotel finally appeared, one of those frightful Bournemouth or Bognor establishments constructed for the lower middle class who had saved all year to enjoy a week’s seaside holiday. Inside the Grand were rather inexpertly painted red columns, plush red wallpaper, wooden floors that echoed around immensely high ceilings, a dining room wherein he’d bet
all soups tasted of potato and all meats of old fowl. Dear God! 11,000 miles for
this
?

Well, he knew why, but old Tom Burdum didn’t — nor would he. Of course he had no idea that Corunda contained people of Maude’s calibre, so thought the sly grins everyone gave him were due to his hand-tailored, dandified clothes. If he had been aware that all Corunda knew of Sybil the duke’s daughter from before he arrived, he would have fled screaming, and Corunda would never have known him.

Toward the end of August 1929, when he did arrive in Corunda, Charles Burdum still hurt so badly that he was convinced no worse pain would ever be visited upon him. Though his smiles were broad and his manner cheerful, they hid a damaged soul. His old ambitions were dead; all he had salvaged were material possessions.

His love for Sybil had been genuine, as was her love for him. It hadn’t occurred to either of them that the duke might think a Charles Burdum wasn’t good enough to marry his daughter, but when Charles applied for her hand in marriage, so it turned out. Sybil would go to a husband with ancestors worthy of an eighth duke’s line; money and brains were insufficient, especially in a man so appallingly short in stature. The interview with the duke over, Charles was hideously conscious that of all the hurts it had produced, the one about his height had galled the most. Naturally he knew the identity of Sybil’s ducally approved husband — six feet three inches tall — and blamed his failure on his lack of stature. If one found the right genealogical researchers, one could prove descent from William the Conqueror
and
Harold Godwineson.

His self-image shattered, his ego so mauled that he couldn’t bear to see all those smirking faces, Charles buried himself in Manchester’s illnesses. When that didn’t work, he bit the bullet and spent time in the City of London dealing with his fortune, then fled England. Not good enough, eh? Well, there was another place where he could make a splash — admittedly a smaller puddle, but he’d be a much bigger frog, and that appealed strongly to a very small man. Prime Minister — now that was a prize worth going after, even if it were only a colonial prime ministership. Canada hadn’t beckoned; his French was nonexistent, and Canada was so
cold
. Whereas in New South Wales he owned land, mineral wealth, family — why, he’d be Prime Minister of Australia in no time!