The crystal ball was sitting uncovered on the table in the living room when I came in. Summer’s well gone, and the air has a nip in it, which I suppose is why Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz has removed herself from the balcony. Today it’s raining as well.
Flo ran to hug me, face lit up, and when I sat down she chose my knee. Why do I feel as if she’s flesh of my flesh? I love her more and more as time goes on. Angel.
“The Glass must be very valuable if it’s a thousand years old,” I said to Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, who had the table set with our usual luncheon fare.
“It’d probably buy me the Hotel Australia if I sold it, but no one sells a glass, princess. Especially not one that works.”
“How did you come by it?”
“Its last owner gave it to me. In her will. They get passed from one seer to another. When I go, I’ll be passing it on.”
Suddenly Flo gave a convulsive leap, flew off my lap and dived under the couch.
Not half a minute later, Harold sidled through the open door. How did Flo know he was coming? There’s nothing wrong with my ears, but I didn’t hear the softest scuff of a shoe.
Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz looked at him with a face like thunder. “What the hell are you doing here?” she growled. “It ain’t four o’clock, it’s one o’clock. You ain’t welcome, Harold, so piss off.”
His eyes were fixed on me, full of hate, but he swung them now to her and stood his ground. “Delvecchio, it is a disgrace!”
Delvecchio? Was that her Christian name?
She put the bottle of brandy down with a thump and turned her eyes to him, though I was sitting at the wrong angle to see what exactly they contained. “A disgrace?” she asked.
“Those two disgusting sexual deviates on the floor above us have stolen the money out of the gas meter in the bathroom!”
“Any proof?” she asked, her bottom lip jutting out.
“Proof? I don’t need proof! Who else in this house would do a thing like that? It was you asked me to go the rounds of the gas meters every Sunday!” His face twisted. “You’re too tall to get down that far, you said, but I’ve got duck’s disease!”
Mirth rumbled, she looked at me. “He has too, princess. You know what duck’s disease is?”
“No,” I said, wishing she wouldn’t joke at Harold’s expense.
“Arse too close to the ground.” She heaved herself to her feet. “Come on, Harold, let’s have a look.”
I knew it was pointless to try to persuade Flo to come out of her hiding place. Harold seemed likely to come back, and Flo would know that. Extra-sensory perception. I’d read somewhere that it was being investigated. Bugger Harold! This was a ploy to spoil my time with Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz. Jim and Bob, stealing pennies from a gas meter? Ridiculous.
A lot of things were telling me that this repressed and hate-filled elderly man was a maelstrom of negative emotions. Suddenly I remembered a lecture given by a psychiatrist. He’d talked of “mummy’s boys”—the single male who remained in the grasp of his mother until she died, when, doomed by his own inadequacies, he then fell into the clutches of another dominant woman. Was Harold a mummy’s boy? He fitted the picture. Only that didn’t explain the hatred for me. They were usually quite harmless people, and if one did become violent, the violence was sometimes directed at the dominant woman, more often at himself. According to the bloke who gave that lecture. Today indicated that Harold’s hatred was not purely for me. Today his targets were Jim and Bob. And Jim was another Queen of Swords.
I could hear Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz returning because she was bellowing with laughter. “Ripper-ace!” she roared as she erupted into the room, Harold behind her with a face like flint. “Oh, it’s flamin’ terrific!”
“What?” I asked dutifully.
“The buggers pinched the pennies out of the bathroom meter all right, but not by bustin’ the padlock, oh no! They used a hacksaw and cut through the hinges on the back of the penny door. Looked perfect! What really kills me is that the buggers went to so much trouble for the sake of about two bob in pennies.”
“Delvecchio, I insist that you evict those women!” Harold cried.
“Listen, ace,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz through her teeth, “it ain’t Jim and Bob, it’s Chikker and Marge in the front ground floor flat. Gotta be.”
“They are respectable people,” Harold said stiffly.
“Grow up, dickhead! Don’t you hear him beatin’ the shit outta her every Fridee night after he comes home turpsed? Respectable, my arse!” Her shoulders shook. “Fancy takin’ so much trouble for a few pennies! Can’t pin it on ‘em, either. What’s more, I don’t wanta pin it on ‘em. At least they ain’t on the game, and apart from Fridee nights, they’re good tenants.”
“I must take your word for that,” said Harold, who obviously didn’t care a hoot about Chikker and Marge. “However, I insist that you get rid of that pair of Lesbians! Riding a motorcycle, indeed! They’re disgusting, and you are a fool!”
“And you,” said Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz conversationally, “couldn’t organise a free fuck in 17d! Piss off! Go on, piss off! And don’t bother comin’ back at four. I ain’t in the mood.”
His dismissal seemed to fall on deaf ears; he was too busy glaring at me. And I, uncomfortably aware that I really ought not to be listening to any of this, was staring intently into the huge crystal ball and its upside-down view of the room.
“Training another charlatan?” Harold sneered.
Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz didn’t answer. She simply picked him up by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and threw him out of the door as if he weighed nothing. I heard the crash of his landing, almost jumped up to see if she’d hurt him, then subsided. If she had, he might calm down a bit.
“Piss off, you fuckin’ little turd!” she yelled into the hall, then sat down beaming in content. Then, to the couch, “Youse can come out now, Flo, Harold’s gone.”
“Why is she so frightened of him?” I asked, sipping brandy while Flo, on her mother’s lap, drank from the breast.
“I dunno, princess.”
“Can’t you persuade her to tell you?”
“She don’t want to. And I ain’t sure I wanta know.”
“He—he wouldn’t interfere with her, would he?” I asked.
“No, Harriet, he wouldn’t do that. I ain’t stupid, honest. It’s spiritual.”
“I didn’t realise anybody in The House minded Jim and Bob.”
“Harold minds everyone.”
“Is he a mummy’s boy?”
The X-ray vision flared into action. “Now ain’t you the cluey one? Yeah, as a matter of fact. She was what I call a professional invalid—lay in bed while Harold waited on her hand and foot. But when she died, he was like a chook with its head cut off, didn’t know what to do. Worse, she left everything she had to a cousin in the Old Country she hadn’t seen since they were children. The cousin sold up the house, and Harold had nowhere to go. He’d spent every penny he earned on the selfish old cow. So when he come to me askin’ for a room, I felt sorry for him. One of the other chaps what teaches at his posh private school useta be a tenant here ages ago—that’s how Harold knew about The House. I turned up the cards, and they said he had an important job to do for The House, so I took him in. Then,” she said, leering, “I found out he was an old maid in more than his manners—yep, a virgin! Take me word for it, princess, you gotta have a virgin before you die.”
I wanted desperately to tell her that I thought Harold was a very sick man, but these days my tongue tends to get me into hot water, so I bit it and said nothing, even about the way he stalked me and looked at me. Instead I said, “You’re very tired of him.”
“Fed up to the back teeth, princess.”
“Then why don’t you get rid of him?”
“Can’t. The cards still say he’s got an important job to do for The House, and they ain’t to be disobeyed.” She topped her glass up, took a bite of bread-and-eel, and said, mumbling, “So the King of Pentacles went home to Curry Land?”
“Eight days ago. I spent last weekend at Bronte.”
“Lovely lookin’ bloke! Reminded me of Mr. Delvecchio, only Mr. Delvecchio was an Eyetie, didn’t have a touch of the tarbrush like your bloke. But proud and handsome! King of the world, that was Mr. Delvecchio.” She sighed and sniffled. “I useta lie in bed and watch him strut around like a rooster.” One of her pale eyes mocked me, the other closed speculatively. “Was your first King of Pentacles a nice hairy man?”
“No. He was more like an ivory sculpture.”
“Pity. Mr. Delvecchio was smothered in hair. I useta comb his chest, and as for the you-know-where”—she laughed hugely—”tangles ‘n’ snarls, princess, tangles ‘n’ snarls! A regular jungle. I useta love prowlin’ through it! Combed it with me tongue.”
Somehow I kept my face straight. “How long ago was that?”
“Oh, seems like a hundred years! About thirty, really. But, aaaah, I remember him like it was yesterday! Youse always does remember your men like that, you’ll find as they start addin’ up. Yeah, like yesterday. That’s what keeps youse young.”
“There were no children?” I asked.
“Nah. Ain’t that peculiar? A nice hairy man like that, and no children. I’d say it was me. Flo come on that hormone stuff.”
“What happened to Mr. Delvecchio?”
She shrugged. “Dunno. He just up and left one day. Never even packed a port. I waited a few days, but he never come back. So I turned up the cards and they said he’d gone for good. The Tower. The Lovers reversed. The Hanged Man. The Nine of Swords. The Four of Wands reversed. Ruin of the house, y’know. But the Queen of Swords—me—was well placed, so I got over it. I saw him in the Glass once, a long time after. He looked real well and happy, and he was surrounded by kids. When we was first together, he gave me a blue bunny rug for the son we never had. Oh, well!”
The story moved me unbearably, though she didn’t tell it with a shred of regret or self-pity. “I’m so sorry!” I said.
“No need, princess. There’s a time for things to be over, is all. You know that after your week with the ivory statue.”
“Yes, I suppose I do.”
“Is your heart broken?”
“Not even dented.”
“So there youse are. The sea is chocka with fish, me young Harriet Purcell. Youse ain’t the sort to get a broken heart, you’re the sort will break ‘em. Youse ain’t like me, but that bit is. Life’s just too good and the sea’s too chocka with fish for the likes of us, young Harriet Purcell. We’re unbreakable.”
Willie’s tipple had long ceased to taste revolting, but the truth is that the more of it I drink, the better I like it. So I was well enough away by this to go on asking questions. “Did you and Mr. Delvecchio divorce?”
“You weren’t officially married, you mean?”
“That’s as good a way of puttin’ it as any.” Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz refilled our glasses.
“But you and Mr. Schwartz were married.”
“Yeah. Funny, ain’t it? And in plenty of time for Flo. I was at that age. Y’know, you’re gettin’ on in years and suddenly feel a bit chilly without a husband to warm the feet.”
“Was Mr. Schwartz like Mr. Delvecchio?”
“Total opposite, princess, total opposite. That’s the way it oughta be. Never repeat your mistakes! Never pick the same sorta bloke twice. Variety is the spice of life.”
“Was Mr. Schwartz handsome?”
“Yeah, in a poetic sorta way. Dark eyes but real fair hair. A nice face, fresh and young. Flo looks sorta like her daddy.”
A deliciously muzzy feeling was crawling inside me, and perhaps because of it, as I squinted at Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz I suddenly saw how she must have looked thirty or forty years ago. Not beautiful, not pretty, but very attractive. Men must have felt like Sir Edmund Hillary on top of Mount Everest when they scaled her heights.
“You were extremely fond of Mr. Schwartz,” I said.
“Yep. You always are of the ones what won’t make old bones,” she said tenderly. “Mr. Schwartz didn’t make old bones. He was twenty-five years younger’n me. A lovely Jewish gentleman.”
I gaped. “And he died?”
“Yep. Just never woke up one morning. A real grouse way to go, princess. A dicky heart, they said at the inquest. Maybe it was. But the cards said if it hadn’t been that, it woulda been something else. A bus or a bee sting. Youse can’t escape the old gent with the scythe when it’s your time to go.”
I pushed my glass away. “If I don’t go now, Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, I’ll start wuddling my merds.” Then I thought of one more question. “Harold called you Delvecchio. But that’s not your Christian name. What is, if I may ask?”
“Seems a funny way to describe a first name when most of the world ain’t Christian,” she said, grinning. “I dropped me first name donkey’s years ago. Me magic’s in Delvecchio Schwartz.”
“Is my magic in Harriet Purcell?” I asked.
She pinched my cheek. “Dunno yet, princess.” A stretch. “Oh, what a relief! No fuckin’ Harold this arvo!”
I went downstairs, fell on my bed and slept for two hours. When I woke a while ago, I felt wonderful. Today I learned heaps about my landlady. Flo? Hormone stuff? Darn! I didn’t ask.