Harriet Purcell, you’re a novice in the love department, what gives you the right to speculate? Hurry up, King of Pentacles number one! I need a basis of reference.

Thursday,

April 7th, 1960

Ooooo-ah! That dolt Chris Hamilton made a right mess of our busy but placid little world today. I wish the hell she’d give Demetrios a proper look-over instead of snapping at the poor chap every time he pushes a patient in.

We nearly had a death on our hands this morning, and that is the most awful thing that can happen. A suspected fracture of the skull decided to develop acute swelling of the brain while we were X-raying him. I found myself pushed aside by an unknown registrar, who acted very promptly and had the patient off to neurosurgery theatre in a trice. But ten minutes later he was back to look at Chris and me more coldly than Matron can.

“You bloody bitches, why didn’t you see what was happening?” he snarled. “That man coned because you left it too late to call for help! You stupid bloody bitches!”

Chris put the cassettes she was holding into my hands and stalked to the door. “Kindly accompany me to Sister Toppingham’s office, Doctor,” she said in freezing tones. “I would be grateful if you repeated your remarks to her.”

Sister Cas rushed in a minute later, eyes out on stalks. “I heard!” she cried. “Oh, he’s a bastard, Doctor Michael Dobkins!”

The junior had flown off to neurosurgery theatre with the X-rays and I had no patient on my hands, so I stared at her with a few ideas germinating in my head. “They know each other, don’t they?” I asked. “Chris and Dr. Dobkins, I mean.” Since she and Chris shared digs, I figured she’d be privy to the dirt.

“They certainly do,” she said grimly. “Eight years ago, when Dobkins was a junior resident, he and Chris were so wrapped in each other that Chris rather took it for granted they were engaged. Then he dumped her, no explanation. Six months later he married a physio with a company director father and a mother on the Black and White Committee. As she was still virgo intacta, Chris couldn’t even threaten to sue him for breach of promise.”

Well, that would do it, all right.

Chris came back with Sister Agatha and Dr. Michael Dobkins and I had to give my version of the incident, which tallied with Chris’s. As a result of my testimony, the Super, the Clinical Super and Matron appeared in that order, and I had to retell the story to three very disapproving faces. Chris had charged Dobkins with unprofessional conduct, namely hurling unpardonable epithets at female staff. Surgeons do it in the operating theatre all the time, but surgeons have to be allowed their little foibles. Dr. Dobkins, a mere senior registrar, is supposed to sit on his feelings.

The worst of it is that it ought never to have happened. If Chris had kept her head and kept the tempest local—maybe hauled Dobkins into a private corner and chewed his arse off for bad manners—then Upstairs would never have got into the act. As it is, she switched on a million-watt searchlight that has hampered our work and called our integrity into question.

By the end of the afternoon, it was Dobkins on the carpet, not us. The patient had coned—his brain had suddenly swollen until its vital centres in the brain stem were squashed against the surrounding bony ridges—but a gigantic subdural haematoma had been successfully aspirated in neurosurgery theatre and the patient had survived intact thanks to the proximity of Cas and resuscitation equipment. The judgement delivered from Upstairs and relayed to us by Sister Agatha was that we had not been derelict in our duty.

Chris knocked off looking like Joan of Arc at the stake, left me to finish what was a rather awful day.

It was nearly nine o’clock when I searched South Dowling Street for a taxi. Not a one. So I walked. At the Cleveland Street lights, a sleek black Jaguar slid into the kerb beside me, the passenger’s door opened and Mr. Forsythe said, “You look very tired, Harriet. Would you like a lift home?”

I threw caution to the winds and hopped in. “Sir, you’re a godsend!” I said, snuggling into the leather seat.

He flashed me a smile, but said nothing. However, at the next big junction he automatically turned into Flinders Street, and I realised that he had no idea where I lived. So I had to apologise and tell him that I lived at the Potts Point end of Victoria Street. Shame on you, Harriet Purcell! What’s happened to Kings Cross? He apologised for not asking me where I lived, drove down to William Street and backtracked.

As we purred into that visual cacophony of neons I said, “Um, I really live at Kings Cross. The Royal Australian Navy owns Potts Point whole and entire.”

His brows rose, he grinned. “I wouldn’t have picked you as living at Kings Cross,” he said.

“And just what sort of person does live at the Cross?” I growled.

That startled him! He took his eyes off the road for long enough to see that I looked militant, and tried to mend his fences. “I really don’t know,” he said pacifically. “I suppose I suffer all the misconceptions of those whose only acquaintance with the Cross is via the yellow press.”

“Well, the postie did tell me that the whores next door have their mail addressed to Potts Point, but as far as I’m concerned, sir, Victoria Street is Kings Cross from end to end!”

Why was I so angry? It was me who mentioned Potts Point first! But he must be very well house-trained, because he didn’t try to justify himself, he just fell silent and drove to my directions.

He pulled into the section the parking police keep reserved for august clients of 17b and 17d; the caduceus on the Jag’s back bumper is protection from parking tickets absolutely anywhere.

Then he was out and around to open my door before I could find the right handle. “Thank you for the ride,” I muttered, dying to get away as quickly as I could.

But he stood looking as if he had no intention of moving. “Do you live here?” he asked, waving at our cul-de-sac.

“The middle house. I have a flat.”

“It’s charming,” he said, waving that hand about again.

I stood beside him desperately trying to think of something to say that would tell him I appreciated his kindness but was not going to ask him in. But what came out was “Would you like a cup of coffee, sir?”

“Thank you, I would.”

Oh, shit! Praying that no one was about, I pushed the front door open and headed down the hall, hideously conscious of him behind me taking in the scribbled walls, the tatty lino, the fly-poop on the naked lightbulbs. Things were in full swing at 17d next door as we hit the open air; the faint sounds of whores working hard were quite as audible as Madame Fugue having a screaming fight with Prudence in the kitchen, her subject a graphic description of what a girl had to do to please a gentleman with rather peculiar tastes.

“Don’t fuckin’ piss before you go in when they want to be pissed on, and drink a gallon of fuckin’ water!” was the crux of the matter.

“An interesting altercation,” he said, as I wrestled with the old mortice lock.

“It’s a very high-class brothel, and so’s the one on the other side of us,” I said, flinging the door open. “Patronised by Sydney’s highest and finest.”

He confined his next remarks to my flat, which he called pretty, charming, homey.

“Sit down,” I said, a little ungraciously. “How do you take your coffee?”

“Black, no sugar, thank you.”

At which moment came the sound of a violin playing what I now could identify as Bruch.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“Klaus upstairs. Good, isn’t he?”

“Superb.”

When I emerged from behind my screen with two mugs of coffee, I found him sitting in an easy chair, very relaxed as he listened to Klaus. Then he looked up and took the mug with a smile of such genuine pleasure that my knees turned to water. I felt less afraid of him, could sit down with reasonable composure. Hospitals condition more lowly staff to regard H.M.O.s as beings from another planet—beings who didn’t visit the Cross unless they were patronising the Mesdames Fugue and Toccata.