“It must be great fun living here,” he said. “Lowbrow and highbrow.”

Well, he certainly wasn’t judgemental. “Yes, it is great fun,” I said.

“Tell me about it.”

Oh, really! How could I do that? Sex is behind everything that happens here, hadn’t he got that message from Madame Fugue? So I elected to tell him about the front ground floor flat.

“At the moment,” I finished, “we think we’ve actually found an elderly couple who aren’t in the business.”

“Too old, you mean?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised, sir,” I said chattily. “The women on the streets are pretty decrepit. The young and beautiful ones work in established brothels—the pay’s better, they live better, and there are no pimps to beat them up.”

His swampy green eyes held a mixture of amusement and sadness; I thought the amusement was on my account, but I wasn’t so sure about the sadness. Maybe, I decided, it was permanent.

He glanced at his very expensive gold watch and rose. “I must go, Harriet. Thanks for the coffee and the company—and the lesson about how the other half lives. I’ve enjoyed myself.”

“Thanks for the lift home, sir,” I said, and took him to the front door. After I shut it behind me I leaned against it and tried to work out what had just happened. I seem to have made a new friend. Thank God he’d made no advances to me! But I keep remembering the sadness in his eyes, and I wonder if all it is is a need to talk to someone? How strange. You don’t stop to think that maybe God the H.M.O. needs someone to talk to.

Monday,

April 11th, 1960

I saw Pappy again this morning, but this time she didn’t have to wake me up. I was lying in wait for her when she came in from her weekend rendezvous at Glebe, and dragged her into my place for a decent breakfast. She may be in love, but she’s even thinner.

Thinner, but idyllically happy.

“A good weekend?” I asked, handing her Eggs Benedict.

“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful! Harriet, I can’t believe it!” she cried, threw her head back and laughed delightedly. “My Ezra wants to marry me! Next weekend he’s going to tell his wife.”

Now why doesn’t that ring true? But I kept my face smiling and interested. “That’s marvellous news, Pappy.”

She yawned, frowned at the plate and pushed it away.

“Eat it!” I snapped. “You can’t live on hashish and cocaine!”

Cowed, she pulled it back and shoved the first forkful in her mouth listlessly. Then she started to eat with enthusiasm—my lessons with Klaus are bearing fruit. I sat down opposite her and leaned forward, feeling very uncomfortable but determined to say my piece. “Um, I’m very aware that what I’m going to ask you is rude and prying, but—” I floundered, not sure where to go next. In for a penny, in for a pound, Harriet—do it! “Pappy, you hardly know Ezra, and he hardly knows you. In fact, I gather that neither of you is capable of much logical thought from Friday night to Monday morning. Two weekends together, and he wants to marry you? On what sort of basis? That you don’t bat an eyelid about his little pharmaceutical recreations? I can see why he’d think you’re safer to be with than his nubile young students—you’re very much a woman of the world. You’re not going to dob him in to the Boys in Blue, even by accident. But marriage? Isn’t that taking two weekends a bit far?”

My scepticism didn’t offend her. I doubt it penetrated the fog. “It’s sex,” she said. “Men need sex to be truly in love.”

“That’s begging the question,” I objected. “You’re not talking about love, you’re talking about marriage. He’s a world-famous philosopher, you say. That means he has status in his bit of the intellectual empire, so he can’t possibly have avoided all the obligations things like tenure and university seniority demand. I’m not an academic, but I do know a bit about academia, and it’s pretty stuffy. If he dumps his wife and kids for you—” I broke down in a mire of my own making, just looked at her helplessly.

Her head shook back and forth slowly. “Dear Harriet, you don’t know anything,” she said. “There’s sex and there’s sex.”

“Oh, why all this harping about sex?” I growled. “Peculiar tastes don’t go with marriage, if that’s what you mean by sex.”

“You’re so young!”

I did my nana, started to yell. “Oh, for Chrissake, Pappy, I’m fed up with being dismissed as an ignoramus! I’m not sitting here quizzing you because I’m eaten up with sick curiosity! I simply want to know exactly why Ezra wants to marry you rather than go on having a wonderful weekend relationship! I know you, you’re not the type to hang out for a wedding ring, so why is he? It doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t fit!”

“Fellatio,” she said.

“Fell-what?” I asked blankly.

“Fellatio. I suck his penis until he ejaculates in my mouth. That’s every ordinarily sexed man’s dream,” she said, “yet few women are keen on doing it. Especially wives, who—just like you, really—don’t know about it until the husband asks for it. Then they’re outraged, think he’s some sort of pervert. Whereas I love fellating Ezra. His penis is perfect for me, small and always a little flaccid. And that’s why he wants to marry me. If I’m his wife, he can have fellatio every single day.” She sighed. “Oh Harriet, it would be lovely to be married to Ezra!”

My lower jaw was on the table, but I managed to grin. “Well, I daresay it’s an efficient method of birth control,” I said.

“Oh, we do it the accepted ways too,” said Pappy.

So there you have it. The recipe for married bliss.

Tuesday,

April 12th, 1960

Chris is pursuing a vendetta against Dr. Michael Dobkins, aided and abetted by Sister Cas. Turns out he’s the new senior registrar in Cas, but did Upstairs remove him after the kerfuffle with us? No! The fur flies regularly, and I predict that Dr. Dobkins is shortly going to decide that he’d be much happier at Hornsby Hospital, a lot closer to his home in Pymble than Queens is. I’d say Royal North Shore, posh and suitably huge, but it sticks to its own. Fellatio aside, men who irritate women in positions of power are stupid. Dobkins wasn’t wrong about our being bloody bitches, but stupid? He’s the stupid one.

Chris ticked me off in front of the junior because I was nice to Demetrios. I saw red and rounded on her, claws out.

“Listen, you bigoted bloody bitch, that’s a darned decent man with a brain in his head and a bright future! He fancies you, only God knows why, but you wouldn’t even spit on him simply because he porters patients and he’s a Wog! If I want to treat Demetrios like a human being, I will, and nothing you or Sister Agatha can say will stop me! What you need, Christine Leigh Hamilton, is a good fuck!”

I said it, I said it! The junior almost fainted, then fled to the darkroom voluntarily, and Chris stood gaping at me as if she’d been savaged by a guinea pig.

I waited for her to march me off to Sister Agatha, but this time she decided discretion was the better part of valour, said not a word, even to me. However, the next time Demetrios brought us a patient, Chris stared at him as if the scales had fallen from her eyes. She even gave him a smile. I’ll bet that tomorrow he gets offered a cuppa and a bikky.

Just call me Cupid.

Monday,

April 25th, 1960 (Anzac Day)

Almost two weeks, and my exercise book hasn’t been pulled out of my dilly-bag. We had to work today despite the public holiday, but there wasn’t much to do, and I knocked off on time.

When I came in my door I could still smell the spices—mace, turmeric, cardamom, fenugreek, cumin. Such exotic words. So I sat down at the table, had a bit of a weep at the silence and those smells, then dug out my book.