Thursday,

February 2nd, 1961

There are hidden forces at work! Look at that last word of my last entry, almost three weeks ago. Limbo. That’s where we live these days, in limbo. Over a month since Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz died, and still no word about anything. Flo may as well have disappeared off the face of the earth. Though not one single working day has gone by without my phoning to enquire about her, and the people on the Child Welfare switchboard must know my voice at least as well as they know their own, I am no closer to knowing where she is. Yes, Miss Purcell, Florence Schwartz is healthy and happy. No, Miss Purcell, it is not our policy to allow acquaintances to visit our children until their future welfare is assured…I am in danger of losing my patience, yet I can’t lose my patience. What if they keep a record of my calls, what if one day a sharp and nasty comment from me is used against me? They already hold my youth, my lack of money and my unmarried state against me. For Flo’s sake I must remain pleasant and only suitably concerned. Oh, I wish love mattered to official worlds! But it doesn’t because it’s not a thing you can see, feel, or weigh. I understand, I do. It’s a lot easier to talk about love than put your back into it.

From Mr. Hush I hear that so far no will has turned up, that Florence Schwartz’s birth is not listed with the Registrar General, that there are no records of anyone named Delvecchio marrying anyone named Schwartz. In fact Mr. Schwartz, that shy and shadowy Jewish gentleman, appears not to exist at all. Every Schwartz on the electoral rolls has been, or will be, contacted. New South Wales has been done, but no Schwartz will admit either to Flo or to Flo’s father. There is no death certificate for any Schwartz that fits Flo’s father! After talking to Pappy, Mr. Hush thinks that our Mr. Schwartz actually had a different name, under which he was born, married, and died.

The trouble is that Pappy went to Singapore for two years—the two years which matter to the mystery of Mr. Schwartz. She remembers that someone shy and shadowy moved into what later became Harold’s room, but he didn’t impinge on her and Mrs. Delvecchio, as she called herself then, never even mentioned him. When Pappy came home, there was Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz and newborn baby Flo. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser. Mr. Hush is enraptured.

The Public Trustee is now the guard dog of our limbo, but a most impersonal and indifferent guard dog. We have to pay our rents every four weeks by cheque or money order through the mail, quoting our Official Number. All of us understand that the guard dog is simply waiting for the incredible mess of Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s affairs to be sorted out before positive measures are taken. After all, there may be a will in some doddering solicitor’s dusty files. We just wait in limbo for some sort of axe to fall.

In a funny way I’ve grown very close to Toby over these last few weeks. Life’s going well for him. Thank God it is for one of us! He got his hotel contract, he’s actually found a gallery owner who doesn’t rape artists—very unusual, he assures me—and someone in Canberra is waffling about commissioning some paintings for the Australian embassies abroad. Therefore it doesn’t matter that the robots are about to take over in his factory. The best news is that, since he only pays three quid a week for his attic, he thinks he’ll be able to keep it on as well as his shack at Wentworth Falls. I keep pushing him to let me see this mountain retreat, but he just laughs and says not until after he’s put in the septic tank and connected up the toilet. Considerate chap. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a long drop. There are great debates about what constitutes civilisation, but I know my definition—a flushing toilet and hot water laid on to kitchen and bathroom.

You’re deteriorating, Harriet Purcell, when all you can find to write about is sewerage.

I just hope that I’m not getting too dependent on Toby. As I’ve always fancied him, I’m a weeny bit afraid that my dependence might give him wrong ideas. He’s absolutely right when he says he doesn’t get on well with women. He’s so—Australian. Despite my Dad, Duncan and heaps of other blokes, there’s a streak of contempt for women in a lot of Australian men. Look at my big brothers. Typical. About as far from homosexual as men can get, yet if they want to talk seriously or have a wacko good time, they’ll choose men to do it with. Women, quote Gavin and Peter, can’t talk about anything except clothes, kids, periods and home-making. I’ve heard them say so a million times. And while Toby doesn’t live in the way my Bros do, I always have a funny feeling that there’s only so much of himself that he’s prepared to share with any woman, even the pretty weird women of The House. I just can’t see Toby reduced to a quivering jelly over a woman. He’d hold something back.

The gallops and the laughs continue nightly.

Monday,

February 20th, 1961

I had dinner with Toby this evening, just cold ham, potato salad and coleslaw from my favourite delicatessen. Too muggy and sticky for hot food. We don’t talk a lot, it doesn’t seem necessary to avoid those abstracted silences that have to fall from time to time. When we did talk, it was mostly about Pappy, who is blooming at Vinnie’s. What we don’t talk about is my angel. Though he did tell me to go for it, I know that in his heart Toby doesn’t really approve of so much naked love and passion. So I save all of that for the night marches after the first night march, that of Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, gets itself over and done with. Ten past three, on the knocker. The farther Flo drifts away from me, the harder I find it to go back to sleep, maybe because I’m up at half-past four anyway. So I lie there and think of her, try to send her mental messages of love and cheer, will some sort of apparition of myself to appear to her. Fanciful nonsense, but it comforts me, and if any of my thoughts get through, it would comfort Flo. I miss her so much!

This morning I gave up on bed, wandered out to put on coffee. Marceline, who always sleeps on the foot of my bed, is never proof against the prospect of food, so she got up too. Walking around hugging something soft and purring is armour against loneliness, I find. But after a while Marceline wanted to get down, and then the minute hand on the big old railway clock on the wall seemed to freeze, wouldn’t move. I’d look, half-past three. I’d look again an hour later, half-past three. Maybe I’m running at the speed of light. In desperation I sat down at the table and unwrapped the cards, found my book on the tarot. No, I wouldn’t spread. I’d simply start memorising the meanings of each card, right way up and reversed. Maybe if I know the meanings off by heart, if and when I do spread them, I’ll see a pattern. It is at least a mental exercise, something to occupy my mind. It’s been forever since I could read a book, nothing holds my interest. And the exercise did work, inasmuch as the next time I looked at the clock, it said four.

I wrapped the cards up again and took the silk off the Glass, drew it closer. Suddenly I remembered a tiny series of events that concerned the Glass, mostly I think because of Flo’s face. Very early last year, when Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz thrust the Glass at me and invited me to touch it. Flo had gasped, her face a study in awe and amazement. It hadn’t really been significant at the time, but I understood now that I must have been the first person Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz had ever let touch the Glass. Then around about the same time I’d become involved with Duncan, she said something to me about everything depending on the Glass. Just what, I can’t remember, though it will be in one of my exercise books. But I do recall very clearly what she said on that last evening when Flo and I had walked into the front room to find her in the darkness communing with the Glass.