He was sceptical—well, he’s a surgeon. They don’t have any flights of fancy, at least about things like telepathy and extra-sensory perception. You need a psychiatrist for that, and maybe one from Asia somewhere into the bargain.

Harold, however, got short shrift today. Flo hadn’t been in my flat more than half an hour when Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz thundered through the door, still open.

“Oh, there you are, angel!” she squeaked in an artificial voice, as if she’d been searching The House high and low. She then propped like a hammy comedian and pretended she hadn’t seen a man until that very millisecond. “Oho! The King of Pentacles!” she bellowed, and grabbed the bewildered Flo. “Come on, angel, don’t be a nuisance. Give ‘em some privacy, hur-hur-hur.”

I cast her a glance which informed her that it was the worst performance I’d ever seen, and said, “Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, this is Dr. Duncan Forsythe. He’s one of my bosses at Queens. Sir, this is Flo’s mother and my landlady.”

The old horror actually dropped him a curtsey. “Tickled to meet youse, sir.” Flo tucked under one arm, she marched out with another hur-hur-hur.

“Ye Gods!” said Mr. Forsythe, staring at me. “Is she Flo’s biological mother?”

“She says she is, and I believe her.”

“She must have been menopausal when she had the little thing.”

“Didn’t even know she was up the duff, she told me.”

Which were the last words spoken for at least an hour. Oh, he is a lovely man! We fit together so well.

“You’ll have to stop thinking of me as Mr. Forsythe and calling me sir,” were the first words spoken after that hour. “My name is Duncan, which you must already know. I’d like to hear it from your lips, Harriet.”

“Duncan,” I said. “Duncan, Duncan, Duncan.”

That led to another interlude, after which I heated up the lamb neck chop casserole I’d made this morning, and boiled some potatoes to go with it. He ate as if he was starving.

“Don’t you mind my being married?” he asked as he sopped up the gravy dregs with a piece of bread.

“No, Duncan. I realised yesterday that you’d thought it out before you arrived. It doesn’t matter a bit to me that you’re married, as long as it doesn’t matter to you.”

But of course it does matter to him that he’s married, as he proceeded to explain to me at greater length than I honestly cared to hear. What a burden guilt can be. The truth lies in the fact that he sought me out—his wife is a cold fish, and to her, he’s a meal-ticket. That’s what a lot of doctors are to the women who marry them. I knew from listening to Chris and Sister Cas that he’d married a classmate of Sister Cas’s—the prettiest and most vivacious nurse of her year, just as the Duncan of those days was the most eligible and attractive bachelor registrar at Queens. Added to which, his family is quite sinfully wealthy. Old money, Sister Cas contributed, sounding awed. Old money is awesome in a country that only started yesterday, though I don’t think that the Australian definition of old money is the same as the English one.

He and Cathy had been happy enough for the first few years, while he was establishing his specialist practice and she was having their two boys. Mark is thirteen, Geoffrey eleven. He loves them dearly, but he sees hardly anything of them, between the miles and miles his Jaguar clocks up and the long hours in operating theatres, consulting rooms, wards and Out Patients. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why on earth they all seemed to live way up on the North Shore when so often their hospitals are at the opposite end of Sydney, and their rooms have to be in Macquarie Street, convenient neither to hospitals nor residences. The H.M.O.s at Vinnie’s Hospital, which is convenient, are mostly Catholics or Jews who sensibly live in the Eastern Suburbs.

But I didn’t say any of it because my why is not the reason Duncan would give me. My why is that their wives love the upper North Shore. They cluster between Lindfield and Wahroonga, where they can drive their smart little British cars safe from the worst traffic, can congregate for bridge, solo, committee meetings and tennis. Their children go to posh private schools in the area and there are heaps of trees, snatches of real forest. The upper North Shore is idyllic for a wealthy wife.

Anyway, Cathy Forsythe sounds like a right bitch to me, though Duncan defended her staunchly and blamed his infidelity on himself. And perhaps—entirely subconsciously!—a weeny bit on me.

“You’re a witch, my dark darling,” he said, holding my hand across the table. “You’ve cast a spell on me.”

How to answer that? I didn’t try.

He carried my hand to his lips and kissed it. “You don’t know what it’s like to be too successful,” he said, “so I’ll tell you. The very last thing the people who love you understand is that you enjoy the work for the work’s sake. You’re caught up in an image which belongs to everyone but you. Even with the work, half of it consists in keeping other people happy, of not creating an adverse ripple on the big hospital pond. My uncle is Chairman of the Hospital Board, which has been a damned nuisance over the years. I was content as a junior H.M.O.—I had more time for research and more time for my patients. But as the senior on Orthopaedics, I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of my time in meetings—hospital politics are like any other form of politics.”

“That must be a terrible bog,” I said warmly, tickled that he hadn’t crawled to Unk after all. Duncan Forsythe is exactly what he appears—a thoroughly nice, decent, educated, brilliant man. “Never mind, Duncan. You’re welcome at 17c Victoria Street whenever you can spare the time.”

That wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear, of course. He wanted me to tell him that I loved him madly, would shift mountains for him, wash his socks, give him fellatio. Well, I’d wash his socks and I’m into semi-fellatio, if that’s the correct term for not quite all the way. But I am not sure that I want to hand him the key to my soul. I pity him deeply and I like him enormously and I adore our lovemaking and we have an extra bond, professional companionship. But love? If it’s the key to my soul, not love.

After he left about nine o’clock tonight, I sat for an hour just thinking about us, and at the end of it I still wasn’t sure that I love him madly. Because I’m darned if I’ll give up my freedom for him. It’s as I told Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, I don’t want to live in a posh house and play Missus Doctor.

A re-read of Saturday night’s entry tells me how quickly my attitude has changed. Then, I saw it as having to be love. Now, I see it as everything except love. What’s swung me around over a mere twenty-four hours? I think it has to be listening to him talk about his life and his wife. She wangled him the senior post!

Monday,

May 30th, 1960

He picked me up at the Cleveland Street lights tonight as I walked home in the dark, but though he gave me that melting smile and his eyes shone, I could tell at once that his mind wasn’t on lovemaking. Which made me feel a little better about us; clearly I was more to him than a female body he happened to fancy.

“I don’t have very much time,” he said as he drove, “but I realised today that I’ve made no effort to care for you, Harriet.”

What an odd thing to say! “Care for me?”

“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.