Oh, Pappy, I wish you’d do general nursing! But I didn’t dare voice that thought.

So for the time being, I’m free of Harold, though my worry has increased. Some clinical instinct tells me that this hideously repressed man is edging toward the ultimate repression. Retaining his faeces isn’t enough for him any more, the pain and humiliation of that isn’t doing it for him, so he’s graduated to retaining his urine. But beyond urinary retention, the only thing left to shut down is life itself. Oh, God damn Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz for laughing at him! If she doesn’t learn to control herself, one of these days he’s going to kill himself. Just pray he leaves it at that, doesn’t take Jim or Pappy or me with him. Yet how can any of us reason with a force of Nature like Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz? She’s a law unto herself. Amazingly wise, abysmally foolish. And if he does kill himself, she’ll be desolate, penitent, inconsolable. Why hasn’t she seen it in the cards? It’s there! It’s there! Harold and the Ten of Swords. The ruin of The House.

Saturday,

December 10th, 1960

I invited Toby down for lunch today, and he actually came. He’d needed Saturday morning to buy specialised hardware for his shack, so he had to stay in Sydney because Nock & Kirby’s is the only place sells what he wants.

“Saturday’s dead anyway, so eat lunch before you hop on the train,” I said winningly.

The menu was shepherd’s pie made on tuna and mushrooms bound together with a fresh marjoram sauce, the potato topping I’d mashed with tons of butter and ground pink pepper, and I served a salad on the side, its dressing walnut oil shaken with water and old, non-astringent vinegar.

“If you keep on cooking like this, I might just have to marry you the minute I’m famous,” he said, mouth full. “This is good!”

“As you won’t become famous until after you die, I’m safe,” I said, smiling at him. “It’s fun to cook, though I suspect it wouldn’t be if I had to do it every single day like my mother.”

“I’ll bet she enjoys it,” he said, transferring to the easy chair opposite Marceline, who only got a grimace from him.

“If she does, it’s because she loves to see her men feeding their faces,” I said a bit tartly. “The menu’s pretty narrow—steak-and-chips, fish-and-chips, roast leg of lamb, stewed lamb neck chops, curried sausages, crumbed lamb cutlets, cooked prawns from the fishmonger’s, then start again—why don’t you like my beautiful Marceline?”

“Animals,” he said, “don’t belong inside houses.”

“What a typical bushie you are! If a dog doesn’t work the stock properly, shoot it.”

“Terminal lead poisoning in the left ear is a good way to go,” he protested. “No nonsense, over and done with in a second.”

“You’re a real loner,” I said, taking the chair with the cat.

“You learn to be when you don’t get your way all the time, and by all the time, I mean all the time, not occasionally.”

“She’ll turn to you, Toby, I know it,” I said warmly.

“What are you talking about?” he asked blankly.

I looked blank. “Surely you know!”

“No, I don’t. Explain.”

“Pappy.”

His jaw dropped. “Pappy?”

“Yes, of course, you drongo, Pappy!”

“Why should Pappy turn to me?” he asked, frowning.

“Oh, really! You may think you hide your feelings successfully, Toby, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that you love Pappy.”

“Naturally I love Pappy,” he said, “but I’m not in love with her—you’ve got to be joking, Harriet.”

“But you must be in love with her!” I said, confused.

His eyes were turning red. “That’s bullshit.”

“Oh, come on, Toby! I’ve seen the pain in your eyes, you don’t fool me for a minute,” I floundered.

“You know, Miss Purcell,” he said, getting up quickly, “you may fancy that you’re a woman of the world these days, but in actual fact you’re blind, stupid, illogical and self-obsessed!”

With that parting shot, he stalked out, leaving me sitting with Marceline in my lap wondering what had hit me.

Something is happening to The House, I can feel it, and Toby is just one more symptom. I can’t get any sense out of Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz about either The House or herself, and since his return, Harold is right back in her good books. I suppose he never even knew how she laughed at him, he was in so much pain. When Sydney Hospital referred him to a psychiatrist, he took such umbrage that he signed himself out, came home instead.

Oh, Duncan, I miss you!

Sunday,

December 25th, 1960 (Christmas Day)

I went home to Bronte, though I declined the lounge room couch. I’m working tomorrow, Boxing Day, because there are all sorts of sporting fixtures scheduled for the various grounds to the east of Queens, so we’ll have traffic accidents by the score and some victims of drunken brawls. I’m also on duty on New Year’s Day, though Ann Smith volunteered to take New Year’s Eve because her fiancé is working Cas that night. New Year’s Eve is a shambles in every hospital Cas, though it’s worst at Vinnie’s because half of Sydney pays its annual visit to the Cross to get drunk, strew the streets with litter and vomit, keep Norm, Merv, Bumper Farrell and the rest of the Cross coppers frantically busy.

I gave Willie a bottle of three-star, Granny a stunning Spanish shawl, Gavin and Peter a macro lens for their Zeiss camera, Dad a box of Cuban cigars, and Mum some really pretty underwear (sexy but respectable). The family clubbed in and gave me a voucher to buy heaps of LP records at Nicholson’s. Greatly appreciated.

Wednesday,

December 28th, 1960

Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz grabbed me on the way in this afternoon and invited me up for a Kraft cheese spread glass of brandy. Which irritated me.

“Why are you still using these?” I demanded. “I gave you seven beautiful cut glass tumblers for Christmas!”

The X-ray vision isn’t so focused at the moment, she has more of a faraway look, so my question didn’t provoke a blaze from her inner lighthouse. “Oh, I couldn’t use ‘em!” she exclaimed. “I’m savin’ ‘em for best, princess.”

“Saving them for best? But I didn’t give them to you to put away!” I said despairingly.

“If I used ‘em, I might break one.”

“But that doesn’t matter, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz! If one breaks, I’ll replace it.”

“Can’t replace anything what’s broke,” she said. “The aura’s on the originals, princess, them’s the seven—good thinkin’, to make it seven, not six—what you touched and wrapped up so grouse.”

“I’d touch and wrap up the replacement nicely, too,” I said.

“Ain’t the same. Nope, I’m savin’ ‘em for best.”

I gave up, told her instead about my curious exchange with Toby. “I could have sworn he was in love with Pappy!”

“Nah, never has been. She brought ‘im home near five years ago for a quick nooky, then realised I was lookin’ for ‘im—saw ‘im in the cards. The King of Swords. Gotta have a King of Swords in The House, princess, but they’re a lot harder to find than the Queens. Men’re poor fish, ain’t often strong the way women are. But Toby is. Good bloke, Toby,” she said, nodding.

“I am aware of that!” I snapped.

“That youse are, princess, but not aware enough.”

“Not aware enough?” I asked.

But she changed the subject, informed me that every New Year’s Eve she has a party. Quote, a rip-snorter of a bash. It’s become a Cross tradition, and everybody who is anybody at the Cross will be there for at least a part of the festivities. Even Norm, Merv, Madame Fugue, Madame Toccata, Chastity Wiggins and a few others of the “permanent” girls snatch the time to attend Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s New Year’s Eve party. I said I’d be there, but that as I have to work on New Year’s Day, I wouldn’t be able to get into the real swing of things.