Angel. Colleen McCullough

I reckon.

      As soon as she let my eyes go, my medical training clicked in. Acromegaly? Cushing’s Syndrome? But she didn’t have the huge lower jaw or the jutting forehead of the acromegalic, nor did she have the physique or hairiness of a Cushing’s. Something pituitary or midbrain or hypothalamic, for sure, but what, I didn’t know.

      The fashion plate nodded politely to Pappy and me, brushed past us and departed with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz in her wake. Because I was standing in the doorway, I saw the visitor reach into her bag, withdraw a thick wad of brick-coloured notes—tenners!—and hand them over a few at a time. Pappy’s landlady just stood there with her hand out until she was satisfied with the number of notes. Then she folded them and slipped them into one pocket while the fashion plate from Sydney’s most expensive suburbs left the room.

      Back came Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz to throw herself onto a mate of the four chairs inside, bidding us sit on two more with a sweep of a hand the size of a leg of lamb.

      “Siddown, princess, siddown!” she roared. “How the hell are youse, Miss Harriet Purcell? Good name, that—two sets of seven letters—strong magic! Spiritual awareness and good fortune, happiness through perfected labour—and I don’t mean them lefty politicians, hur-hur-hur.”

      The “hur-hur-hur” is a kind of wicked chuckle that speaks volumes; as if there is nothing in the world could surprise her, though everything in the world amuses her greatly. It reminded me of Sid James’s chuckle in the Carry On films.

      I was so nervous that I picked up her comments about my name and regaled her with the history of the Harriet Purcells, told her the name went back many generations, but that, until my advent, its owners had all been quite cuckoo. One Harriet Purcell, I said, had been jailed for castrating a would-be lover, and another for assaulting the Premier of New South Wales during a suffragette rally. She listened with interest, sighed in disappointment when I finished my tale by saying that my father’s generation had been so afraid of the name that it didn’t contain a Harriet Purcell.

      “Yet your dad christened you Harriet,” she said. “Good man! Sounds like he might be fun to know, hur-hur-hur.”

      Oooooo-aa! Hands off my dad, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz! “He said he liked the name Harriet, and he wasn’t impressed by family claptrap,” I said. “I was a bit of an afterthought, you see, and everybody thought I’d be another boy.”

      “But you wasn’t,” she said, grinning. “Oh, I like it!”

      During all of this, she drank undiluted, uniced three-star hospital brandy out of a Kraft cheese spread glass. Pappy and I were each given a glass of it, but one sip of Willie’s downfall made me abandon mine—dreadful stuff, raw and biting. I noticed that Pappy seemed to enjoy the taste, though she didn’t glug it nearly as fast as Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz did.

      I’ve been sitting here debating whether I might save a lot of writer’s cramp by shortening that name to Mrs. D-S, but somehow I don’t have the courage. I don’t lack courage, but Mrs. D-S? No.

      Then I became aware that someone else was on the balcony with us, had been there all along but stayed absolutely invisible. My skin began to prickle, I felt a delicious chill, like the first puff of a Southerly Buster after days and days of a century-mark heatwave. A face appeared above the table, peering from around Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s hip. The most bewitching little face, chin pointed, cheekbones high beneath the orbits, flawless beige skin, drifts of palest brown hair, black brows, black lashes so long they looked tangled—oh, I wish I was a poet, to describe that divine child! My chest caved in, I just looked at her and loved her. Her eyes were enormous, wide apart and amber-brown, the saddest eyes I have ever seen. Her little pink rosebud mouth parted, and she smiled at me. I smiled back.

      “Oh, decided to join the party, have youse?” The next moment the little thing was on Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s knee, still with her face turned to smile at me, but plucking at Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz’s dress with one tiny hand.

      “This is me daughter, Flo,” said the landlady. “Thought I had the Change four years ago, then got a pain in the belly and went to the dunny thinkin’ I had a dose of the shits. And—bang! There was Flo, squirmin’ on the floor all covered with slime. Never even knew I was up the duff until she popped out—lucky I didn’t drown youse in the dunny, ain’t that right, angel?” This last was said to Flo, who was fiddling with a button.

      “How old is she?” I asked.

      “Just turned four. A Capricorn who ain’t a Capricorn,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, casually unbuttoning her dress. Out flopped a breast which looked like an old stocking with its toe stuffed with beans, and she stuck its huge, horny nipple in Flo’s mouth. Flo shut her eyes ecstatically, leaned back into her mother’s arm and began to suck away with long, horribly audible slurps. I sat there with my mouth catching flies, unable to think of a thing to say. The X-ray vision lifted to focus on me.

      “Loves her mother’s milk, does Flo,” she said chattily. “I know she’s four, yeah, but what’s age got to do with it, princess? Best tucker of all, mother’s milk. Only thing is, her teeth are all in, so she hurts like hell.”

      I went on sitting there with my mouth catching flies until Pappy said, quite suddenly, “Well, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, what do you think?”

      “I think The House needs Miss Harriet Purcell,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz with a nod and a wink. Then she looked at me and asked, “Ever think of movin’ outta home, princess? Like into a nice little flat of your own?”

      My mouth shut with a snap, I shook my head. “I can’t afford it,” I answered. “I’m saving to go to England on a two-year working holiday, you see.”

      “Do youse pay board at home?” she asked.

      I said I paid five pounds a week.

      “Well, I got a real nice little flat out in the backyard, two big rooms, four quid a week, electricity included. There’s a bath and dunny inside the laundry that only you and Pappy’d use. Janice Harvey, me tenant, is movin’ out. It’s got a double bed,” she added with a leer. “Hate them piddly-arse little single beds.”

      Four pounds! Two rooms for four pounds? A Sydney miracle!

      “You stand a better chance of getting rid of David living here than at home,” said Pappy persuasively. She shrugged. “After all, you’re on a male award, you could still save for your trip.”

      I remember swallowing, hunting desperately for a polite way to say no, but suddenly I was saying yes! I don’t know where that yes came from—I certainly wasn’t thinking yes.

      “Ripper-ace, princess!” boomed Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, flipped the nipple out of Flo’s mouth and lumbered to her feet.

      As my eyes met Flo’s, I knew why I’d said yes. Flo put the word into my mind. Flo wanted me here, and I was putty. She came over to me and hugged my legs, smiling up at me with milky lips.

      “Will youse look at that?” Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz exclaimed, grinning at Pappy. “Be honoured, Harriet. Flo don’t usually take to people, do you, angel?”

      So here I am, trying to write it all down before the edges blur, wondering how on earth I’m going to break it to my family that, very shortly, I am moving into two big rooms at Kings Cross, home to alcoholics, prostitutes, homosexuals, satanic artists, glue-sniffers, hashish-smokers and God knows what else. Except that what I saw of it in the rainy dark I liked, and that Flo wants me in The House.

      I’d said to Pappy that perhaps I could say that The House was in Potts Point, not Kings Cross, but Pappy only laughed.

      “Potts Point is a euphemism, Harriet,” she said. “The Royal Australian Navy owns Potts Point whole and entire.”

      Tonight’s wish: That the parents don’t have a stroke.