“You’ll keep your room at The House,” I said as we strode out.

“No, I can’t afford to,” she said, “and quite honestly, dear Harriet, I’m not sure that I want to.”

Oh, what is happening? Toby saying he’s going, now Pappy! I’m going to be left with Jim, Bob, Klaus and Harold. And two new tenants, one of whom will live next door to me. Without those floor-to-ceiling books, I’ll hear everything when I’m in bed—there is a sealed-off door between us with Victorian panels in it as thin as plywood. That sounds so selfish, and I suppose it is selfish, but no Pappy doesn’t bear thinking of. God rot Professor Ezra Marsupial! When she killed his child, she killed something in herself that has nothing to do with foetuses.

“I think you should try to make the effort to keep a bolt-hole in The House,” I said as we crossed Oxford Street. “For one thing, you’ll never be able to take a twentieth of your books with you, and for another, you’re too old for all that jolly, giggly sort of communal life. Pappy, they’re babies!”

Oh, what an unfortunate slip of the tongue! She ignored it.

“I shall probably be able to rent something halfway between a shed and a cottage at Stockton,” she said. “I’ll keep my books in it, and spend my days off there.”

I only heard “Stockton”. “Stockton?” I gasped.

“Yes, I’m applying to go psychiatric nursing at Stockton,” she said.

“Jesus, Pappy, you can’t!” I cried, halting outside Vinnie’s Hospital. “Psych nursing is bad enough—everybody knows that the nurses and doctors are loonier than the patients, but Stockton is the dumping ground to end all dumping grounds! Out there in the sand dunes on the far side of the Hunter estuary, with all the aments, dements and biological nightmares—it’ll kill you!”

“I’m hoping it will heal me,” she said.

Yes, of course. It’s exactly what a Pappy would do. It’s so easy for Catholics, they can renounce the world, take the veil and enter a convent. But what can non-Catholics do? Answer: take the cap and go psych nursing at Stockton, a hundred miles to Newcastle and then catch the ferry to nowhere. She’s expiating her sins in the only way she knows.

“I understand completely,” I said, started walking again.

Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz was lurking in the front hall when we came in, greeted us in the most peculiar way. “Oh, do I need the pair of youse!” she exclaimed, looked agitated and worried, then had to muffle a laugh.

The laugh calmed me immediately—Flo was all right, then. If something had happened to Flo, there would have been no laugh.

“Well?” I asked.

“It’s Harold,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. “Can youse take a squizzy at him, Harriet?”

The last thing I wanted to do was to take a look at Harold, but this was definitely a medical request. In medical matters, I outrank Pappy in our landlady’s eyes.

“Of course. What’s the trouble?” I asked as we ascended.

Whereupon she clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a guffaw, then waved the hand about and burst into a huge bellow of mirth. “I know it ain’t funny, princess, but Jeez, it is funny!” she said when she could. “The funniest thing I seen in years! Oh, Jeez, I can’t help meself! It’s fuh-fuh-funny!” And off she went again.

“Stop it, you old horror!” I snapped. “What’s wrong with Harold?”

“He can’t pee!” she yelled, in fits once more.

“I beg your pardon?”

“He can’t pee! He—can’t—pee! Oh, Jeez, it’s funny!”

Her mirth was so infectious that it was an effort to keep my face straight, but I managed. “Poor Harold. When did this happen?”

“I dunno, princess,” she said, wiping her eyes on her dress and revealing an amazing pair of pink bloomers almost down to her knees. “All I know is that he’s been hoggin’ the dunny lately. I thought it was the constipation—keeps it all bottled up, does Harold. Anyway, Jim and Bob complained, Klaus complained, and Toby just gallops down to the laundry dunny. I told Harold to take some Epsom salts or cascara or something, and he turned all huffy. It’s been goin’ on for days! This arvo he forgot to bolt the dunny door when he come in, so I barged in to give ‘im a piece of me mind.” The laughter threatened, she suppressed it heroically. “And there he was standin’ in front of the dunny, floggin’ his poor old dingus and cryin’ like his heart was broken. Took him ages to come clean—you know what an old maid he is. He—can’t—pee!” Off she went into another convulsion.

I’d had enough of her. “Well, you can stand there howling your head off if you want, but I’m going to see Harold,” I said, and marched up to his room.

I’d never seen it before, of course. Like its owner it was drab, neat and utterly lacking in imagination. A silver-framed photo of an old and haughty woman with spite in her eyes stood on his fireplace mantel; on each side of it was a posy of flowers in matched little vases. So many books! Beau Geste. The Scarlet Pimpernel. The Prisoner of Zenda. The Dam Busters. The Wooden Horse. The Count of Monte Cristo. Tap Roots. These Old Shades. The Foxes of Harrow. All the Hornblower novels. An extraordinary collection of derring-do, knights in shining armour and the kind of romantic fantasy I’d finished with by the time I was twelve.

I smiled at him and said a soft hello. The poor man was sitting hunched on the side of his single bed; when I spoke, he looked at me with pain-racked eyes. Then when he realised who it was, the pain vanished, was replaced by outrage.

“You told her!” he shrieked at Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, who was standing in the doorway. “How could you tell her?”

“Harold, I work in a hospital, that’s why Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz told me. I’m here to help you, so come on, no nonsense, please! You can’t manage to urinate, is that right?”

His face was twisted, his arms were clasped protectively across his belly, his back was bent like a bow, he trembled very finely, rocked back and forth. Then he nodded.

“How long has it been going on?” I asked.

“Three weeks,” he whispered.

“Three weeks! Oh, Harold! Why didn’t you tell anybody? Why didn’t you see a doctor?”

In answer he wept, his dam broken, the tears sliding sparsely from beneath the bottom rim of his glasses like juice being squeezed from a dried lemon.

I turned to Pappy. “We’ll have to take him to Vinnie’s Cas straight away,” I said to her.

Pain and all, he reared up like a cobra. “I will not go to St. Vincent’s, it’s a Catholic hospital!” he hissed.

“Then we’ll take you to Sydney Hospital,” I hissed back. “The minute they catheterise you, you’ll feel so much better that you’ll wonder why you didn’t seek help a great deal sooner.”

The vision of Harold being catheterised set Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz howling again. I rounded on her. “Will you get out of here?” I barked. “Make yourself useful! Find some old towels in case he lets go, then hail a taxi—move!”

Encouraging him to find his feet but taking his weight between us, Pappy and I got Harold sort of upright. His agony wouldn’t let him straighten up, nor would he remove his hands from his lower abdomen. By the time we got him downstairs, the taxi was waiting.

The junior resident and Sister Cas at Sydney Hospital just stared at Harold when told the nature of the emergency.

“Three weeks!” the junior resident exclaimed tactlessly, then quailed under the glares he got from Sister Cas, Pappy and me.

We watched Harold deposited in a wheelchair and whisked away, then went outside and caught the Bellevue Hill tram.

“They’ll give him the works,” said Pappy as we climbed aboard. “We won’t see him home until he’s had cystoscopes and IVPs and God knows what else.”

“You don’t think it’s organic either,” I said.

“No, he looks too well. His colour’s good, and his distended bladder is the source of his pain. You know what renal cases look like, or stones or pelvic cancers. He must have an electrolyte imbalance, but looking at him? It’s not organic.”