“There ain’t no work for you on New Year’s Day,” she said, “I can tell youse that for sure.”

“It’s in the cards,” I said in a long-suffering voice.

“Got it in one, princess!”

Turns out she wants culinary help, of course. The blokes are instructed to supply the booze, the girls in The House (plus Klaus) provide the food. Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz herself roasts a turkey—it’ll be dry and rubbery, I thought with a shudder. Klaus is down for roast suckling pig, Jim and Bob are doing the salads, weeny saveloys and weeny sausage rolls, Pappy has to come up with spring rolls and prawn toasts, and I am down for the desserts, all suitable to eat with the fingers. Eclairs, fairy cakes, lamingtons and Neenish tarts are my orders.

“Better add some of them grouse Anzac bikkies you make,” the old horror added. “I ain’t a great one for puddins, but I do like to dip a good crunchy bikky in me cuppa tea.”

I laughed. “Go on, you fraud! Since when have you drunk tea?”

“Two cups of it every New Year’s Eve,” she said solemnly.

“How’s Harold?” I asked.

“Harold’s Harold,” she said, pulling a face. “Lucky thing is that the job he’s gotta do for The House is comin’ up fast, so the cards inform me. The minute it’s done, out he goes.”

“No point in telling you that we’re losing Pappy as well as Toby,” I said, and sighed. “The House is falling apart.”

On came the searchlight in her eyes. “Never say that, Harriet Purcell!” she said sternly. “The House is eternal.”

Flo came in, yawning and rubbing her eyes, saw me and landed in my lap in one bound. “I’ve never seen her sleepy before,” I said.

“She sleeps.”

“Nor have I ever heard her talk.”

“She talks.”

So I wandered off downstairs, Flo with her hand in mine, to spend an evening only bearable because Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz had let me have my angel. When I brought her back shortly before nine o’clock (Flo doesn’t keep ordinary children’s hours, she seems to be up until her mother goes to bed—what would my own mother say about that?), Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz was sitting in the darkness of her room, not out on the balcony as is her habit in summer. The Glass was on the table before her, and it seemed to gather in every last particle of light from the street lamp outside, the bulb in the hall, an occasional headlight as some chauffeured Rolls delivered a client to 17b or 17d. The moment Flo saw her mother, she stopped absolutely still, the pressure of her hand in mine a silent command not to move. So we stood there in the gloom for what seemed like half an hour while that massive shape sat utterly still, its shadowy face a foot from the Glass.

Finally, with a sigh, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz leaned back in her chair, wiped her face with a tired hand. I led Flo forward softly until we reached the table.

“Ta for minding her, princess. I needed to scry.”

“Would you like me to switch the light on?”

“Ta. Then come back here for a minute.”

When I returned, Flo was sitting on her lap, looking sadly at the buttoned dress.

“It’s a pity you weaned her,” I found myself saying.

“Had to,” she answered curtly. Then she reached out to take both my hands and put them on the Glass, while Flo stared at them raptly, then transferred her gaze to my face in—wonder? I don’t know. But I stood there cupping the Glass, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. The surface is cool and sleek, that’s all.

“Remember,” Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz said, “remember that the fate of The House is in the Glass.” She removed my hands and put them together, palm against palm, fingers conjoined, the way angels’ hands are in paintings. “It’s in the Glass.”

Friday,

December 30th, 1960

Those bloody cards again! I’m not working New Year’s Day after all. Dr. Alan Smith is rostered for duty in Cas all day, so Ann wants to work. I’m not surprised. If he does a double shift in Cas, he’ll be buggered, he’ll need the haven Cas X-ray will be with Ann staffing it. Our junior’s on leave, so we have a temp in her place, a good girl. I wouldn’t have consented if Ann wasn’t up to the work, but she is, and I’ve done the pair a kindness, as they will be off duty together for two days straight after.

Sunday,

January 1st, 1961 (New Year’s Day)

1961 is almost twenty-four hours old, darkness has fallen. I have been entering this for a year now, and even though I’m so stonkered I can hardly move, I must get everything that’s happened today down in my book before the emotions fade. I have found that my exercise book is a sort of catharsis, in that writing doesn’t go round and round the way thinking about events does.

The New Year’s Eve party went off like the hydrogen bomb—a real ripper-ace shindig, as Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz described it, one arm around Merv, her face beet-red. Though she wasn’t drunk, she truly wasn’t. Just a little the worse for wear, that’s all. Terribly happy, I remember thinking.

The whole Cross came, some for a few minutes only, some for what promised to be perpetuity when I left at three o’clock, helped downstairs by Toby. My memories of it are hazy, I just see snatches, like Lady Richard’s arrival in a peroxided wig, five-inch heels and a red sequined tube of a dress split nearly to the top of both hips to reveal smooth, hairless white skin above filmy black silk stockings. His breasts were definitely not falsies, nor was there a sign of a bulge where a man should have a bulge. Pappy told me in a stage whisper that he’s rumoured to have gone to Scandinavia to Have The Works. If so, I whispered back, then his urinary tract must be a permanent disaster. Poor old Norm could only stay long enough to give me a sloppy kiss, but Merv used his seniority to hang on longer, flirted outrageously with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. Lerner Chusovich wasn’t happy about that. Nor, I noticed, was Klaus, who kept gazing at his landlady with naked lust. Jim gave me an expert kiss which I was turpsed enough to enjoy, but it made Bob furious, so I shoved Jim away and concentrated on Toby for the rest of the time. Our little altercation was forgotten, and his kisses, I remember, were right up there with Duncan’s, though I didn’t kiss him pretending he was Duncan. Toby is definitely Toby.

I passed out on my bed in all my party finery, and was woken about eight this morning by Marceline, whose stomach rules her podgy little life. Toby must have drawn my curtains, a blessing. I weaved out to put my coffee on, drank a good dose of Dexsal to settle my queasiness, and shut Marceline up with top-of-the-milk and a bowl of sardines which stank so much that I had to retch over my sink. Nothing came up, but I retreated to the bedroom until Marceline polished off the sardines.

Flo was on my bed, curled up asleep in the dimness. Angel, my angel! I hadn’t seen her or felt her. Things must have been pretty abandoned upstairs for her to seek me out. Or else Harold was in her mother’s bed. Oh, yes, he’d been there at the party, drinking brandy on the sidelines, watching Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz carry on with Merv, muttering, glaring at me, especially when I kissed Jim. “Whore,” his lips framed.

As soon as I thought my nausea was gone for good, I went back to the living room and opened my door wide to let in the fresh air, breathed it deeply. The world outside was absolutely silent. No washing flapped on the lines, no sounds of argument or frivolity issued out of 17d’s mauve lace windows, and from The House, utter stillness. I’d half expected to hear Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz bellowing for her angel, but she wasn’t. Fairly early morning on New Year’s Day must be the quietest moment the Cross experiences, I thought. Every Crossite is out for the count.

But I had to get Flo back upstairs in case her mother woke and became worried. So I went into my bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed and gathered Flo into my arms, put my cheek on her flyaway hair, cuddled and kissed her. When I was little, that was how Mum had always roused me, and I remember still how lovely it was to come up out of dreamland to hugs and kisses.