Drusilla sighed. “I wish I didn’t believe you, Missy, but I do. And what you say comes as no surprise, deep down.”
Octavia, who might have battled on in blind loyalty, instead decided to switch allegiances; for she was a little bit of a child, and craved firm direction.
“Think what a difference a Singer sewing machine would make to you, Drusilla,” she said.
“I would enjoy it,” admitted Drusilla.
“And I must confess I would enjoy having a hundred pounds all of my own in the bank. I would feel less of a burden.”
Drusilla capitulated. “Very well, then, Missy, you may have our shares to sell.”
“I want Aunt Cornelia’s and Aunt Julia’s as well!”
“I see.”
“I can sell their shares for the same amount of money, ten pounds each. But like you, they must be prepared to give me their shares without one word to Uncle Billy or any of the others – not one word!”
“Cornelia could certainly do with the money, Drusilla,” said Octavia, feeling more cheerful every moment, and consigning her male relatives to limbo because it was better to do that than grieve over their perfidy, bleed from their hurtfulness. “She could afford to have her feet done by that German bone specialist in Sydney. She does so much standing! And you know how desperate Julia’s case is, now that the Olympus Café has put in that extra room out the back, with marble-topped tables and a pianist every afternoon. If she had an extra hundred pounds, she could afford to make her tea room even swankier than the Olympus Café.”
“I’ll do my best to talk them into it,” said Drusilla.
“Well, if you do talk them into it, they have to be here at Missalonghi on Sunday afternoon at five o’clock, with their shares. All of you will have to sign a Power of Attorney.”
“What’s that?”
“A piece of paper that authorises me to act in your name.”
“Why at five o’clock on Sunday?” asked Octavia.
“Because that’s when my friend Una is coming to witness the signing of the documents.”
“Oh, how nice!” Inspiration struck Octavia. “I shall bake her a batch of my plain biscuits.”
Missy grinned. “For once in our lives, Aunt Octavia, I think we can treat ourselves to a slap-up Sunday high tea. We can have plain biscuits for Una, of course, but we’ll have fairy cakes and melting moments and cream puffs iced with toffee, and – lamingtons!”
No one gave her any argument about that menu.
When Missy arrived at the Byron railway station at six o’clock on Tuesday morning, she carried forty shares in the Byron Bottle Company, and four duly signed and witnessed Powers of Attorney. Una, it turned out, was a proper Justice of the Peace in spite of her sex (she said it happened in Sydney from time to time), and had fixed a most official-looking seal to the documents.
She was waiting on the platform, and so was Alicia. Not together, for Alicia was at the engine end, where the first class carriages would stand, and Una was at the guard’s van end, where the second class carriages would stand.
“I hope you don’t mind travelling second class,” said Missy anxiously. “Mother has been most generous, I have ten shillings for my expenses and a guinea for the specialist, but I don’t want to spend any more of it than I can help.”
“Darling, my first class days are long over,” soothed Una. “Besides, it’s not a terribly long journey, and at this time of a cold morning, no one is going to insist that the windows be opened to let in the soot.”
Missy’s eyes encountered Alicia’s; Alicia sniffed and deliberately turned the other way. Thank heavens for that, thought Missy unrepentantly.
The rails began to hum, and shortly afterwards the train came in, a huge black monster of an engine with a stubby stack clunking past in torrents of grimy smoke and fierce gushes of thick white steam.
“Do you know what I like to do?” asked Una of Missy as they found themselves a couple of vacant seats, one a window.
“No, what?”
“You know the overhead bridge at the bit of Noel Street near the bottling plant?”
“I do indeed.”
“I love to stand right in the middle on top of it, and hang over the edge of the parapet when a train goes underneath. Whoosh! Smoke everywhere, just like descending to hell. But oh, such fun!”
And so are you fun, thought Missy. I’ve never met anyone like you, nor anyone so full of life.
By the time the train drew into its terminus at Central Station, the hands of the platform clock said twenty minutes to nine. Her appointment in Macquarie Street was for ten, but Una said that left them plenty of time for a cup of tea in the railway refreshment rooms. Alicia swept by them in the main concourse; she must have been lurking in wait just to do it, for the first class passengers were normally well ahead of those at the back of the train.
“Isn’t that the famous Alicia Marshall?” asked Una.
“Yes.”
Una made an untranslatable sound.
“What do you think of her?” asked Missy, curious.
“Obvious and flashy, darling. Keeps all her goods in the shop window, and you know what happens to goods in shop windows, don’t you?”
“I do, but tell me in your own words.”
Una giggled. “Darling, they fade! Constant exposure to the glaring light of day. I give her another year at most. After that, no amount of lacing her stays tighter will keep her figure trim. She’ll grow enormously fat and lazy, and she’ll develop the most dreadful temper. I believe she’s going to marry a mere lad. Pity. What she needs is a man who will make her work very hard, and treat her like dirt.”
“Poor Little Willie is too limp, I fear,” sighed Missy, and had no idea why Una found that remark so exquisitely funny.
In fact, Una laughed in fits and starts all the way down Castlereagh Street on the tram, but she refused to tell Missy why, and by the time they reached the building on Macquarie Street where the specialist had his rooms, Missy had given up.
At ten on the dot, Dr. George Parkinson’s haughty nurse took her into a room plentifully endowed with movable screens of terrifying cleanliness and whiteness. She was directed to remove all her clothes, including her bloomers, place an indicated white wrap around her scrawny person, and lie down on the couch to wait for Doctor.
What an odd way to meet anyone, she couldn’t help thinking when Dr. Parkinson’s face loomed over hers; she was left to wonder what he looked like when the hairy caverns of his nostrils were not his most prominent feature. With his nurse in silent attendance, he thumped her chest, stared at her pitifully under-developed breasts with the rudeness of utter indifference, listened to her heart and lungs through a far sleeker stethoscope than Dr. Hurlingford’s, took her pulse, stuck a spatula down her throat until she gagged dangerously, felt both sides of her neck and under her chin with impatient hard fingers, then went rolling round her flinching belly with his palms.
“Internal examination, Nurse,” he said curtly.
“Pee ar or pee vee?” asked Nurse.
“Both.”
The internal examinations left Missy feeling as if she had undergone some sort of major operation without benefit of chloroform, but there was worse to come. Dr. Parkinson flipped her over onto her front and then went poking and prying along the cordillera of her backbone until, somewhere around the spot where her shoulder blades stuck out like pathetic wings, he grunted several times.
“Ahah!” he exclaimed, striking treasure-trove.
Without any warning, Missy was grabbed around head and heels and hips by doctor and nurse combined; what they did was over so quickly she had no positive idea what they did, except that there came the sound of a grinding, sickening crunch all the more horrifying because she heard it inside her ears as well as outside them.
“You may get dressed now, Miss Wright, and then go through that door,” ordered Dr. Parkinson, and went through that door himself with his nurse still in attendance.