Fresh iron entered my soul, I glared at him fiercely. “No, I will not!” I snapped. “Flo belongs to me, it’s what her mother would have wanted. I don’t care what I have to do to get Flo back, and that’s honest. But I will get her back! I will, I will!”
He leaped up from behind his desk, came around it and bent to kiss my hand! “Oh, what a bonny battler you are, Miss Purcell!” he cried. “This is going to be tremendous fun! I do like shaking the foundations of institutions! Now tell me the rest, because there is a lot more, isn’t there?”
I told him as much of the rest as I thought prudent. Yes, I liked him, but not enough to hand over
information about soothsaying and breastfeeding. Just about the bank books, the deeds to what seemed the whole of 17 Victoria Street, the lack of documents of any kind from wedding certificates to birth certificates to taxation returns. He loved it so much that he turned even more butcherish. I could see his mind working out a new recipe for sausage made of Child Welfare officials.
So we left it that Mr. Hush would take a personal interest in items like the search for a will, the effort to trace relatives, the Public Trustee, and any or all parties who might come sniffing around on the trail of truffles like a rather large and possibly illicit fortune.
Thus went my first brush with a law firm, if not with the Law. Between Willie’s withdrawal syndrome, Norm, Merv and detectives investigating murder, I must have considerably more experience of the Law than most girls my age who aren’t on the game.
It hadn’t occurred to me that the people with power over Flo would consider me an unsuitable custodian. That my age, my need to work to live and my unmarried state completely overrode abstracts like love. Which just goes to show how dense I am. The clues were all there in those women from the Child Welfare, more concerned with shoes than love. No, that’s wrong. Equating shoes with love.
All I know is that if I don’t get Flo home, she’ll die. Fade away, leaving those with power over her wondering what on earth had happened. Because they genuinely wouldn’t know.
Wednesday, January 11th, 1961 The inquest took place this morning. A nothing. All of us were called to testify. I’d worked from six until nine, raced into town in a taxi, then raced back to Queens in another taxi as soon as it was over. The tale I concocted for Sister Agatha was a police enquiry about anonymous letters, which she accepted without comment.
No, we hadn’t noticed any particular tension between Mr. Warner and his paramour, Mrs. ? Delvecchio Schwartz. Even Pappy couldn’t supply a first name. No, none of us had heard a thing. The absence of Chikker and Marge was duly noted, but the police were of the opinion that they weren’t involved.
Verdict: murder and suicide. Case closed. We could have Mrs. ? Delvecchio Schwartz’s body for burial. No cremation! Was that so they could dig her up again if fresh evidence came to light? Or some new investigative test? Yes, we decided.
Someone, possibly through the Missus, had got wind of the affair between Duncan and me, because Sister Cas had a few snide little pots at me. I played dumber than dumb. Let them fish to their hearts’ content, they have no hard evidence.
My credibility with Sister Agatha took another pounding when I had to tell her that I wouldn’t be in to work at all on Friday. A death in the family, I explained. I don’t think she believed me.
Friday January 13th, 1961
Battling to get someone buried on a Friday the Thirteenth told me why Sister Agatha didn’t believe me. The undertaker threw up his hands in horror at the very thought, but Toby and I, deputed to be the organisers, refused to budge.
What other day of the year would do for Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz than a Friday the Thirteenth? In the end the only way we could persuade the undertaker was to agree to have a minister of religion officiate, something we hadn’t thought she’d want. I think the man deemed us a nest of satanists-Kings Cross and all that, you know. Toby and I looked at each other and shrugged.
Maybe it would tickle the old girl no end to be buried with the Church of England rites. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, etc. Man that is born of woman-our minister wouldn’t hear of woman that is born of woman. What a strange world we live in. Riddled with what Pappy calls shibboleths.
You never saw a worse day for a funeral. Sydney bunged on a heatwave, so by nine o’clock it was over a hundred degrees, with a gale blowing from the west like a giant fan across the hobs of Hell. There were bushfires all over the Blue Mountains, so the air was brown, reeked of smoke, rained cinders. All of which petrified the minister, who was convinced that the Devil was laying on a grand reception for one of his most important earthly imps. The hearse left the funeral parlour without incident, followed by the mourners in two big black Fords-Pappy, Toby, Jim and Bob, Klaus, Lerner Chusovich and Joe Dwyer from the Piccadilly pub bottle department. And me, of course. Flo didn’t turn up, though we’d notified the Child Welfare. The Mesdames Fugue and Toccata and friends tacked themselves onto the cortege in a huge black Rolls they must have borrowed from a client; when we got to the graveside Norm and Merv were waiting, their police car parked ten yards away between a fallen angel and a rusty iron cross. When the Rolls pulled up, it disgorged Lady Richard on Martin’s arm, stunningly gowned in plain black shantung with a cheeky little black pillbox on his mauve hair, face webbed by a wisp of black net. Perfect! Everybody the old girl would have wanted there was there. Except for Flo.
We buried her in Rookwood, surely the world’s biggest, most neglected graveyard, literal square miles of it plonked in the middle of the Western Suburbs. Overgrown with weeds and long rank grass, dotted with scrubby bush, a few she-okes, gums and stringy-barks between sparse graves whose ruined headstones leaned at all angles except the vertical.
Toby, Klaus, Merv, Norm, Joe and Martin acted as pallbearers, heaved and shoved and grunted and groaned until they got the gigantic coffin onto their shoulders, then staggered under its enormous weight-it had to be lead-lined, of course, after such a long interlude in a morgue drawer-to the newly dug grave, where they lowered it amid “Shits!” and “Jesus Christs!” onto three four-by-twos laid across the cavity. The minister, who hadn’t really seen the coffin until now, stood there gaping while the undertaker had a muttered talk with the grave diggers to make sure they’d followed orders and had excavated a roomy enough final resting place.
The women stood on one side and the men on the other-it was an Australian funeral, after all. Jim stood with the men. Very brave we women looked, me in shocking pink, Pappy in an emerald cheong-sam, Bob in blue eyelet-embroidered organdie, Lady Richard in his shantung number, and the Mesdames dolled up to the nines in skin-tight black satin, black patent stilettos and dense black veils a la the House of Windsor. The men had all managed to find a tie somewhere (Martin’s looked like pea-and-carrot puke), though they’d had the sense to ditch their coats. They did wear black armbands.
How she must have wallowed in it! Just as the minister stood at the head of the grave to commence his obsequies, a hideously hot gust of wind shrieked down like a satanic huff, whipped his skirts up around his face and knocked his glasses off. He nearly landed on the coffin, a plain affair without a flower, let alone a wreath. We had agreed that Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz would not appreciate such traditional trappings as flowers, since apparently she had not yet properly Passed Over. The nightly gallops down the hall and booms of laughter had lost their novelty by the time we buried her. Nowanights we sort of rouse a bit, sigh, grin, and go back to sleep. The six men put the straps under the coffin, lifted it
enough for the terrified undertaker to slide the four-bytwos out, then lowered it with more “Shits!” and “Jesus Christs!” into the grave. Once it hit bottom, I stepped forward and dropped the wooden box on top of it. We’d decided that she’d want to have the blue bunny rug, the huge mauve crystal, the marble hand and arm, and the seven cut glass tumblers with her. No one tossed a clod of Rookwood’s dismal soil in; we just walked away and left the rest to the grave diggers, who had been standing b
y in awe.
“Me bloody back’s gone on me!” Merv whimpered. “Heavier in death than in life,” Klaus said solemnly. “Oh, potties! I’ve laddered my stocking!” Lady Richard moaned.
“At least she’s in the shade,” Toby said, pointing to a gum.
“Memorable!” Joe Dwyer said, wiping away tears. “Memorable! “
We all went home and had a party in Toby’s attic. I wonder who’ll bury Harold? Ask me do I care.
Saturday January 14th, 1961
I’m having a blue day. Understandable after yesterday. It strikes me as peculiar, that things should have worked out in such a way that we could bury Mrs.
Delvecchio Schwartz on a Friday the Thirteenth. The last one was May, and the next one isn’t until October. A sort of an omen, not unlike the appearance of Marceline in my life. Are events really random? I wish I knew.
Toby has disappeared to see if his shack at Wentworth Falls is in the middle of a bushfire, Jim and Bob have tooled off on the Harley Davidson, and Klaus has gone to Bowral with Lerner Chusovich, who felt a bit left out of things because they wouldn’t let him be a pallbearer. Such a thin, reedy man. Very shadowy and shy.
Pappy was home, so we had dinner together. This Monday she starts with the rest of the probationers at Vinnie’s. Thank God that Stockton has been removed from her equation. Or rather, thank Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz the phantasm. Pappy honestly does believe that the old horror materialises and talks to her, though I can’t believe it. Yes, I hear the gallops and the laughs, but I still think they’re something Flo is generating.
“Have you taken the Glass and the cards out?” Pappy asked.
“Good lord, no! They’re in the Tilsiter cupboard.” “Harriet, she wouldn’t like that. The Glass and the cards have to be handled, otherwise they’ll lose their power.” And nothing would do but that I dragged them out, put them on the table in their dirty silk covers, though I refused to scry or spread.
“I’ll handle them occasionally, but no more,” I said firmly. “She told me it was a racket, and all those books in her room tell me it is a racket.”
“Once upon a time it was,” said Pappy, unimpressed.
“But that was years ago, before she realised she had the power. The books are still there because she couldn’t throw anything out.”
“The books were up to date-it’s Flo who has the power.”
“Perhaps she kept them up to date as part of Flo’s inheritance,” Pappy said.
“Even a Flo has to crawl before she can walk. They’re there for Flo to study later.”
“What utter rubbish! I’m sure that Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz knew as well as I do that Flo will never read any more than she can talk,” I said. “As to the medium business, I’m hoping you can tell me how Flo and her mother worked.”
But Pappy says she can’t tell me because she doesn’t know, has never seen one of their sessions with a client. Nor, she added in haste (seeing the expression on my face), would any of the clients discuss the sessions. We’ve had Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s phone disconnected, and after several notes of desperate appeal from the clients were gathered off the floor in the front hall, we tacked a small note to the outside of the door saying that Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz had Passed Over. Which is the end of it. How ghastly, to think of one of those expensive ladies from Point Piper, Vaucluse, Killara and Pymble encountering someone from the Child Welfare or the Public Trustee on The House’s doorstep!
Pappy looks well, tranquil. She’s regained the lost weight, is up to the hard labour of nursing training.
Though a part of me wishes that she’d mention the lost baby or Ezra, if only to start unburdening herself, another part of me is very glad that she has apparently decided to consign the past to limbo.
Thursday, February 2nd, 1961 There are hidden forces at work! Look at that last word of my last entry, almost three weeks ago. Limbo. That’s where we live these days, in limbo. Over a month since Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz died, and still no word about anything. Flo may as well have disappeared off the face of the earth. Though not one single working day has gone by without my phoning to enquire about her, and the people on the Child Welfare switchboard must know my voice at least as well as they know their own, I am no closer to knowing where she is. Yes, Miss Purcell, Florence Schwartz is healthy and happy. No, Miss Purcell, it is not our policy to allow acquaintances to visit our children until their future welfare is assured … I am in danger of losing my patience, yet I can’t lose my patience. What if they keep a record of my calls, what if one day a sharp and nasty comment from me is used against me? They already hold my youth, my lack of money and my unmarried state against me. For Flo’s sake I must remain pleasant and only suitably concerned.
Oh, I wish love mattered to official worlds! But it doesn’t because it’s not a thing you can see, feel, or weigh. I understand, I do. It’s a lot easier to talk about love than put your back into it. From Mr. Hush I hear that so far no will has turned up, that Florence Schwartz’s birth is not listed with the Registrar General, that there are no records of anyone named Delvecchio marrying anyone named Schwartz. In fact Mr. Schwartz, that shy and shadowy Jewish gentleman, appears not to exist at all. Every Schwartz on the electoral rolls has been, or will be, contacted. New South Wales has been done, but no Schwartz will admit either to Flo or to Flo’s father. There is no death certificate for any Schwartz that fits Flo’s father! After talking to Pappy, Mr. Hush thinks that our Mr. Schwartz actually had a different name, under which he was born, married, and died.
The trouble is that Pappy went to Singapore for two years-the two years which matter to the mystery of Mr. Schwartz. She remembers that someone shy and shadowy moved into what later became Harold’s room, but he didn’t impinge on her and Mrs. Delvecchio, as she called herself then, never even mentioned him. When Pappy came home, there was Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz and newborn baby Flo. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser. Mr. Hush is enraptured.
The Public Trustee is now the guard dog of our limbo, but a most impersonal and indifferent guard dog. We have to pay our rents every four weeks by cheque or money order through the mail, quoting our Official Number. All of us understand that the guard dog is simply waiting for the incredible mess of Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s affairs to be sorted out before positive measures are taken. After all, there may be a will in some doddering solicitor’s ‘dusty files. We just wait in limbo for some sort of axe to fall.
In a funny way I’ve grown very close to Toby over these last few weeks.
Life’s going well for him. Thank God it is for one of us! He got his hotel contract, he’s actually found a gallery owner who doesn’t rape artists-very unusual, he assures me-and someone in Canberra is waffling about commissioning some paintings for the Australian embassies abroad. Therefore it doesn’t matter that the robots are about to take over in his factory. The best news is that, since he only pays three quid a week for his attic, he thinks he’ll be able to keep it on as well as his shack at Wentworth Falls. I keep pushing him to let me see this mountain retreat, but he just laughs and says not until after he’s put in the septic tank and connected up the toilet. Considerate chap.
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a long drop. There are great debates about what constitutes civilisation, but I know my definition-a flushing toilet and hot water laid on to kitchen and bathroom.
You’re deteriorating, Harriet Purcell, when all you can find to write about is sewerage.
I just hope that I’m not getting too dependent on Toby. As I’ve always fancied him, I’m a weeny bit afraid that my dependence might give him wrong ideas. He’s absolutely right when he says he doesn’t get on well with women. He’s so-Australian. Despite my Dad, Duncan and heaps of other blokes, there’s a streak of contempt for women in a lot of Australian men. Look at my big brothers. Typical. About as far from homosexual as men can get, yet if they want to talk seriously or have a wacko good time, they’ll choose men to do it with. Women, quote Gavin and Peter, can’t talk about
anything except clothes, kids, periods and home-making. I’ve heard them say so a million times. And while Toby doesn’t live in the way my Bros do, I always have a funny feeling that there’s only so much of himself that he’s prepared to share with any woman, even the pretty weird women of The House. I just can’t see Toby reduced to a quivering jelly over a woman. He’d hold something back.
The gallops and the laughs continue nightly.
Monday February 20th, 1961
I had dinner with Toby this evening, just cold ham, potato salad and coleslaw from my favourite delicatessen. Too muggy and sticky for hot food. We don’t talk a lot, it doesn’t seem necessary to avoid those abstracted silences that have to fall from time to time. When we did talk, it was mostly about Pappy, who is blooming at Vinnie’s. What we don’t talk about is my angel puss. Though he did tell me to go for it, I know that in his heart Toby doesn’t really approve of so much naked love and
passion. So I save all of that for the night marches after the first night march, that of Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, gets itself over and done with. Ten past three, on the knocker. The farther Flo drifts away from me, the harder I find it to go back to sleep, maybe because I’m up at half-past four anyway. So I lie there and think of her, try to send her mental messages of love and cheer, will some sort of apparition of myself to appear to her. Fanciful nonsense, but it comforts me, and if any of my thoughts get through, it would comfort Flo. I miss her so much!
This morning I gave up on bed, wandered out to put on coffee. Marceline, who always sleeps on the foot of my bed, is never proof against the prospect of food, so she got up too. Walking around hugging something soft and purring is armour against loneliness, I find. But after a while Marceline wanted to get down, and then the minute hand on the big old railway clock on the wall seemed to freeze, wouldn’t move. I’d look, half-past three. I’d look again an hour later, half-past three. Maybe I’m running at the speed of light. In desperation I sat down at the table and unwrapped the cards, found my book on the tarot. No, I wouldn’t spread. I’d simply start memorising the meanings of each card, right way up and reversed. Maybe if I know the meanings off by heart, if and when I do spread them, I’ll see a pattern. It is at least a mental exercise, something to occupy my mind. It’s been forever since I could read a book, nothing holds my interest. And the exercise did work, inasmuch as the next time I looked at the clock, it said four.