Several weeks of working in Grace’s garden had reconciled Edda to the change in her relationship with Jack Thurlow, but not to the missed horse rides. In most ways the gardening was too similar to the physical tolls of nursing either to relax or refresh; the spine took the brunt, and all the crouching down exacerbated it. Nor, as digging hundreds of holes for daffodil bulbs proved, could gardening offer delight to the soul—no vista to thrill the eyes, no freedom for the soul. It was, besides, Grace’s garden, over which, swollen to toad proportions, she presided like, as Edda put it to herself, Lady Muck of Dunghill Hall.
Jack entered into the spirit of his good deed with energy and enthusiasm, apparently oblivious to Edda’s feelings or needs. A mere two visits saw Grace expecting them every time Edda had days off; worse, Jack assumed Grace was their only activity. So it was goodbye to Fatima, her friendship with Jack, those wonderful gallops, and a large measure of her privacy. It turned out too that Grace was a gossip and Jack enjoyed hearing it. Peace! cried Edda silently. Give me a little peace!
On the rare occasions when Bear was home, the atmosphere was lighthearted; Jack and Bear yarned together in that masculine world men seemed to prize so much—machines malfunctioning, a crop not prospering, finding decent work dogs, the unfairness of some judges at the stock shows—Corunda land subjects that Bear, with his extensive travels, was eminently qualified to discuss.
In fact, Bear was about as happy as a recently married man could be, and awaited the birth of his first child with a mixture of awe and a delightful dread.
“I honestly don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl,” he told Jack and the sisters-in-law over dinner, “because we’re going to have some of both. If my preferences are for a boy first, it’s to help Grace with the heavy work around the place.”
“They have to grow a little first,” said Kitty, who liked Bear very much.
“Oh, they do that overnight! I was chopping kindling and lighting the stove for my mum when I wasn’t much more than one year old,” Bear said cheerfully.
“Yes, but you won’t subject your children to the same kind of tyranny as your father did you,” said Tufts.
“I should hope not! That’s why I signed the Pledge early on—the drink really is a demon. But still, it doesn’t hurt children in a big family to help pitch in with the work. I reckon it’s better for them than too much pampering.”
“That,” said Grace, rising clumsily, “they won’t get, Bear my love. I’m too hopeless as a housekeeper.”
Edda looked up swiftly, but Grace had turned, removing her face from Edda’s probing glance. Oh, Grace, what are you doing now? She got to her feet and followed Grace to the kitchen.
“Why are you a hopeless housekeeper, Grace?”
“My word, Edda, you do pick up on every little thing!” Grace said defensively. “It’s nothing—just that I saw some gorgeous material for the lounge room curtains, and rather overspent my housekeeping allowance. Bear is so generous, too.”
Horrified to hear herself yet unable to restrain herself, Edda imitated Maude Latimer and ground her teeth. “Oh, Grace! You can’t do that! Especially with a child due shortly, surely you can see that? Your house is finished, inside it’s far too nice for the neighborhood, and there was nothing wrong with the old lounge room curtains. If your spending gets Bear into debt, he’ll have to put one of those awful little notices in the Post that Mr. Björn Olsen will no longer be responsible for his wife’s debts. Because if you keep spending money you don’t have, you leave Bear with only two alternatives—disavowing your debts or being declared bankrupt. And if Bear were declared bankrupt, every scrap of your precious furniture would go on the auction block, together with this house. Don’t you remember what Mrs. Geordie Menzies did to Geordie last year?”
The tears were rolling down Grace’s face. “I can’t see how it matters this once,” she said, digging for her handkerchief and mopping her eyes. “The lounge room needed new curtains!”
“Grace, you’re the one needs to change,” said Edda in a hard voice. “No more spending—and no running to Bear about this conversation of ours, either. Cut your coat to suit your cloth, I keep telling you.” A thought occurred. “Have you been entertaining Maude?”
“Sometimes,” Grace whispered.
“Then don’t. Refer her to me, I’ll put a flea in her ear!”
I must, thought Edda as she left in Jack’s car with Tufts and Kitty, scotch this relationship between my gullible sister and our frightful stepmother. She’s trying to break Grace and Bear up by pushing Grace into profligate spending.
Of course Jack had noticed something amiss; curious, that he, no blood relation, is the one who sees clearly. After Kitty and Tufts scrambled out of the back seat, he made no attempt to evict Edda. “Go on in, girls,” he said to them, “while I take Edda down to the river for a bit of a cuddle.”
“A cuddle!” she said in disgust, as they drove to the river and parked. “Still, it did the trick. How did I know things would change if I introduced you to Grace?”
“Not right now, Edda. Look at the night, you Philistine!”
And he had wanted to share it, wanted her to share it with him. Edda, you are a fool! The smell and sound as well as the sight of summer washed over her as she went and sat with Jack on a log, looking. The night was stunning, the light of the stars bled out of the sky by an immense round silver moon that poured invisible radiance across the rolling hills and struck the entire world to a glowing indigo.
“Feel better now you’ve seen this?” he asked, making a cigarette.
“Yes, and I thank you. You’re a funny blighter, Jack, I never know what makes you tick. But I did think your meeting Grace would change things, and I was right,” she said, wondering why cigarettes had come to bore her. “Grace is such a helpless sort, though I didn’t realize until she married Bear that in our Rectory days I used to manipulate her like a puppeteer. But at least then she wasn’t in trouble, now she’s never out of it. You’re a part of keeping Grace on the rails, too. She used to spend her free time in the railway shunting yards. She met Bear there, they fell in love over steam locomotives. Silly, isn’t it? Anyway, Grace runs on rails. She can’t turn herself around unaided. And for reasons I can’t fathom, our stepmother is busy inserting herself into Grace’s life with disastrous effect.”
“What disastrous effect?” he asked, framing the moon in a diaphanous smoke ring.
“Oh, do stop doing that!” Edda snapped. “The last thing a perfect world needs is a man-made smoke ring! Have you no real appreciation for beauty?”
The smoke ring had been his overture to taking her in his arms and kissing her out of this obsession with Grace, but her reaction stopped him cold, desire shrivelled to nothing. Medusa the Gorgon snake lady, that was what they called her, and rightly so. Because Jack listened to gossip he heard all the tales of men patients falling in love with Kitty or Tufts, whereas they never fell in love with Edda. No one nursed better, could make a man feel more comfortable and special, yet she couldn’t inspire love of the man–woman sort. His own feelings for her were intensely physical as well as more cerebral, but he couldn’t even begin to convince himself that she cherished womanly feelings for him. Edda was like a glorious statue on a pedestal, and he suspected that she preferred her life that way.
“What disastrous effect?” he repeated.
“She has no money sense, she gets herself into debt.”
“Oh, I see. And your stepmother?”
“Is encouraging her tendencies. I have to stop it!”
They walked back to the car. “No doubt you will, Edda.”
She said nothing until the side gate of the hospital loomed, then gabbled. “Don’t play the gentleman, Jack, I can get out by myself. Are you going back to Grace’s tomorrow?”
“I’d planned to, since Bear is still in town. He and I are going to tackle that tree.”
She slid out of the car. “Good luck with it. I won’t be there, I’ve had enough of Grace for the time being, and Fatima is getting very fat from lack of exercise in Daddy’s stables. It’s back to the rides for me, they promote my health. Good night.”
And she was gone.
For a long five minutes he waited at the curb, sure that she would change her mind, return to say she’d see him at Grace’s. But it was Liam Finucan who leaned into the car.
“Could you drop me home, Jack?”
“Hop in. Now you’ve filed for divorce, what happens to the house? It’s too big anyway.”
“I’m selling it. There’s a nice wee house in the hospital grounds will do me. I’ll long-term lease it and do it up.”
“Sensible. Besides, I know you,” Jack said, smiling. “You want a little money to give Eris an allowance.”
The long face looked wry. “Och, poor soul! She can’t help her nature, Jack, and I’ve enough for my needs.”
“She put the hard word on me once, Liam. I said no.”
“She put the hard word on everyone with a penis, Jack.”
“And you’re well out of it.”
The one who suffered most from Dr. Finucan’s divorce was Tufts, who had no idea what had passed between Matron and Liam after she had been dismissed on that memorable night. When, on her next period in the pathology lab, she turned up eager to learn a new analytical technique he had promised to teach her, she found him seated behind his desk, and had to stand before him. Carpeted?
No, not that. He wasn’t looking well, which worried her. The floppy hair hadn’t seen a brush and was at least partially blinding him, the gunmetal eyes were shadowed, and the sag of his cheeks cried fatigue. What on earth was the matter? Where was the crease that always lurked in the right corner of his mouth, made it so good humored? Not there today. Nor was a certain softness Tufts had grown used to in his smile. Today, no smile.
“Sit down, Nurse Scobie,” he said, sounding wooden.
Puzzled, she sat, hands folded in her lap, eyes on him.
“This is very awkward,” he said after a pause, “and most likely not what Matron wants me to do, but I fail to see how I can cut off private instruction to a nurse as bright and eager to learn as you without an adequate explanation. Please believe that Matron is acting with your best interests at heart.”
The deep, Ulster-inflected voice ran down, though his eyes never left hers; he swallowed, collected himself, ploughed on. “I’ve told you that I am suing my wife for divorce on the grounds of her constant adultery. This means I am the wronged party and will receive favorable treatment in court. However, my wife’s solicitors will try their hardest to drag me down to her level. If she can prove adultery against me, then her advantages in court will be the same as mine. Since I have never committed adultery, it behooves me to—er—keep my nose clean, Nurse.”
He ran down again, staring at Tufts painfully.
I must help him, thought Tufts. Otherwise he’ll pass out.
“You mean, Dr. Finucan, that you and I must never be alone together in circumstances that might make it possible for Mrs. Finucan to allege misconduct on our parts?” Tufts asked, voice steady and detached.
“That is Matron’s contention.”
“I agree with Matron.” Tufts began to get up from the chair. “From now on we must never be alone together, or call each other by our Christian names.” Her face became stern. “From now on I suggest that young Bill participate in your teaching sessions alongside me. You’ve fought against that because he’s not as quick on the uptake as I am, but perhaps that’s cruel to Bill, given his position on the staff. Whatever instruction you give me must be given to others at the same session.”
His eyes flared, looked suddenly fierce. “I am sorry, my dear—very sorry.”
“Pooh, nonsense!” she said lightly. “How long will it be?”
“Two years, apparently. The divorce courts are heavily oversubscribed, I have to wait my turn.”
“Oh, that is too bad! I had hoped we might return to normal before I qualify, but we won’t,” Tufts said sadly.
“I am afraid not, no.”
“May I go now, sir?”
“Yes, of course. I’ll block out a new roster for you and Bill, and one for the nurses.”
That awful woman! thought Tufts, marching down the ramp with an unapproachable look on her face. Playing up on such a decent chap, then destroying what little bit of innocent pleasure he has. For he liked our sessions together, I know he did!
An eternity of formal correctness is looming, and I am wild with rage at the very idea of it. No more cups of tea in the middle of the night, no more wordlessly understanding glances. I am being sent into an exile of the spirit. Oh, I know why Matron stepped in, and I’m glad she did. Otherwise Liam would be ruined, I would be ruined, and we’d both have to go. Liam and I have harmed no one, but now we are cut apart as finally as a butcher halves a hunk of meat. But there is one thing I am going to do, out in the open of his office or his lab—brush Liam’s hair. That Mason Pearson hairbrush cost me money, and I bought it to cure Liam’s blinding flop of hair. It will—if the brushing is twice daily and ruthlessly hard on his scalp. I have to bully those follicles into growing backward, not forward. And divorce or no divorce, I am going to do it!
Edda hadn’t gone to Maude about her encouraging Grace to spend money she didn’t have; she went to her father, a shrewder move.
After his daughters went nursing, the Reverend Thomas Latimer had gradually fallen upon more emancipated times. Alone in the big Rectory with Maude after she had returned from her visit to the Blue Mountains, he began to sever those of his ties to her that he had never much liked, from her dominance over his daughters to his choice of hymns and sermons. And though he wasn’t wealthy, from his Treadby mother he had inherited sufficient to live on very comfortably. By nature he was a careful manager of money; Maude, for example, had only limited access to it. While he loved this second wife well enough, he was not blind to her faults. Maude’s interference in Grace’s financial affairs he interpreted, quite correctly, as a devious way of achieving what she had wanted for herself but was denied the funds to do so. Every time she went to Grace’s house she gazed around and congratulated herself on her power to tamper with those she disliked, even severely damage them.
But when an awesomely angry Rector put his foot down, Maude had no choice other than to obey; in her future dealings with Grace, she was informed icily, she would actively discourage the spending of money. Otherwise her own allowance would suffer.
Edda had a more difficult time persuading her father that he must not replace Bear’s £900 and Grace’s £500.
“Please, Daddy, don’t,” she begged. “Bear is too soft with Grace to hide the return of the money from her, so, knowing it’s there, she’ll spend it all over again. To be spendthrift is in Grace’s nature, so leave her husband to deal with it. If you want to help the Olsen family, then pay for their children to be well educated at a decent school. Look at what it did for us.”
And so the matter had been left.
A part of her disgusted that Grace had utterly ruined her relationship with Jack Thurlow, Edda visited Grace less and less as her pregnancy drew toward full term. Though, truth to tell, the fault lay with Jack, not with Grace. In succumbing to Grace’s wiles Jack was baring a secret self whom Edda found soft and weak; he was not at all the kind of man Edda had always thought him. Grr!
When Grace went into labor at the beginning of April 1928, she was huge and, according to obstetrical calculations, overdue. Trying to time his arrival to that of the baby, Bear was already in Corunda; it was the baby ignoring human schedules.
Because Maternity wasn’t busy, nor expected to be busy, Dr. Ned Mason had brought Grace in before her labor pangs even began. Her admission to Maternity acted like a cattle goad: no sooner had Grace unpacked her little suitcase and sat experimentally on the edge of her bed to test its comfort than her water broke. Aware of her identity and aware too that all her sisters were on duty elsewhere, Maternity Sister soothed Grace’s injured feelings as tenderly as competently. The water was cleaned up, a pretty nightgown found, and the company of a sweet West Ender nurse was designated to help her walk around.
“But I don’t want to walk, I want to go to bed!” she protested to Edda when Edda appeared in Theatre travelling scrubs, two masks around her neck. “Why won’t they let me go to bed?”
“Dr. Mason thinks you’re in for a long labor, Grace, which means hours and hours in bed. Now, while you still can, walk!”
Kitty and Tufts came in to hug, kiss, explain the walking all over again because Grace was being recalcitrant and refused to believe it helped. Edda muffled a sigh.
“Grace, you were a nurse yourself,” Kitty pointed out.
“Yes, but never on Maternity! Ow, ow, ow, it hurts!”
“Of course it hurts,” Tufts said, pushing Grace inexorably ahead of her. “You did do some anatomy and physiology, Grace, so you must remember Dr. Finucan’s explaining how a woman’s whole pelvis has to open up to let something as huge as a baby out—it’s amazing how much you open up, so yes, it hurts badly. You have to do a day’s work, darling, in really beastly circumstances, before you can expel a baby. Just remember that it’s the best work you’ll ever do because the end result is so wonderful—a healthy, full-term baby.”
“It’s got to be a boy!” Grace panted to Kitty hours later.
“Rubbish,” Kitty crooned, wiping Grace’s face. “What’s so special about having a boy?”
“All men want a son. Girls are a letdown.”
“Don’t wives’ wishes count? After all, they do the hard part.”
Grace made a contemptuous noise. “Who in her right mind would want a girl? Restrained, confined, sat on? If Edda had been a boy, Daddy would have beggared himself to send her up to university and let her do medicine. But Edda was a girl, so . . .”
“Yes, well, unfortunately we don’t have any choice in the sex matter, darling. Whatever emerges, boy or girl, is yours. Here, have a sip of water. You need more fluid.”
Bear had driven Grace to the hospital, and was allowed to see his weeping, tormented wife briefly once she was settled in. Then he was exiled to the father’s waiting room, where a prospective father paced, chain-smoked, tried to think of something other than the fate of his wife and child. If he had had company it would have been easier, but Grace’s baby came long after the September rush of babies conceived during the end/beginning of the year, when too much alcohol was drunk and too few precautions taken. Bear had to wait alone save for flying visits from Grace’s father and sisters.
Twenty-seven hours after labor had started, Bear learned that he was the proud father of a nine-pound baby boy in the absolute pink of health.
Grace was exhausted, but none the worse for her travail apart from stitches in a torn perineum. A boy! A boy with snow-white hair, brows, and lashes, and a long, strong body.
“Well, Grace, that’s the hardest day’s work you’ll ever do,” said Aunt Tufts, expertly holding the baby. “A very nice little chap, too! What are you going to call him, Bear?”
“Brian,” said Bear so quickly that Grace’s opinion was lost.
“Brian? I like it, Bear, but you’ve never mentioned it.”
“He was my favorite brother. Died in a pub brawl.”
If Aunt Tufts, the only family present, thought it macabre to name a child after someone killed in a pub brawl, she gave no indication of it. Smiling, she handed the bundle to Bear. “It is a fine name, manly and not open to playground persecution.”
“Exactly,” said Bear, gazing down at his progeny with awe and humility. “Grace’s names were all airy-fairy, but I’ll not have my boy saddled with a sissy name. Brian Olsen sounds good.”
“Oh, Bear!” cried Grace reproachfully. “I wanted something that sounds right with a knighthood. Sir Maximilian Olsen!”
“Maximilian is sissy,” said Edda, entering. “Brian? Ideal! Thank God there’s one member of the Olsen family with sense.”
To be the grandfather of a male child delighted the Rector, who had worked out how to help Grace without putting money in her purse. He paid for a scrubwoman to clean the house on Trelawney Way once a week, and come three times a week to do the worst job of all—wash the dozens and dozens of big terry-cloth “nappies,” as baby napkins or diapers were called. All Grace did was hose the solids from the dirty nappies, then dump them in the copper. The scrubwoman boiled them, rinsed them, and hung them out to dry on the clotheslines that now criss-crossed the backyard and turned it into a flapping jungle. The laundry was now a shed in proximity to the back door; what had been the laundry was a nappy-soak area.
Bear, Edda noticed now, was less eager to go out on the road than of yore. Part of that was due to his enchantment with his son, but a larger part of it was rooted in worry for Grace, who, despite so much house and laundering help, couldn’t seem to cope with her son’s advent. She was so well endowed with milk that she leaked it, and within a week of Brian’s birth was so revolted that she put him on a bottle, enduring milk withdrawal as the lesser evil. Dr. Mason roared in outrage, so did District Nurse, but Grace turned deaf ears. Changing his nappies revolted her, too, so she did it less often than she should have; the result was nappy rash so severe that all three of her sisters were forced to bully and badger her into the proper care. And in the end Grace got what she wanted from the Rector: full-time nursery help.
“Somehow,” said Edda wrathfully to Kitty and Tufts one day when baby Brian was three months old, “our artful sister has managed to wriggle out of every task she finds unpalatable. But this is the bitter end! It’s daylight robbery, I tell you! A full-time maid to make sure that Brian is clean and dry enough not to break out in not rashes, but sores! I am ropeable!”
“It just goes to show how much Grace must have hated nursing the sick,” said Kitty, eyes bright with tears. “Maude likes a dainty house, and passed that on to us. She’s not a nice person, but she never really treated any of us like a Cinderella. Maude’s tortures were all of the mind. And she got to Grace.”
“What Grace’s maternal conduct proves,” said Tufts firmly, “is that she hates messes, and that was there in her nursing, too. That she never neglected her patients the way she’s neglecting Brian was due to her fear of the ward sisters—she was more afraid of them than of cleaning up the messes. Now she has a baby incapable of producing anything but messes, and no one to terrorize her into cleaning them up.”
“Don’t forget the confusion,” Kitty said. “We’ve always known that Grace couldn’t organize a booze-up in a brewery, but with Mama and we three for sisters, she never had to organize anything. Now she’s responsible for running a home and a baby, and she’s too confused to know how to go about it. Father has stepped up to the breach, which was the worst thing could have happened—what about later on, when she has no father or sisters to help her?”
“Disaster,” Edda said hollowly.
“Too pessimistic,” said Tufts. “Someone will always step up to the breach to save Grace.”
“Why should they?” Edda asked, unable to see it.
“She’s every man’s dream woman—incapable of existing without a man to lean on.” Tufts snorted. “Come on, Edda, you know what I mean! Grace transforms herself into property that has to be managed by a superior being—a man. Everything she does tells men that she can’t look after herself. And they love that! Or a certain kind of man does, anyway. The Bears of this world.”
“Well, rather Bear than me!” said Edda savagely. “Why can’t she understand how comfortable her life would be if she organized it better? No one likes cleaning shit off baby wraps, but as it has to be done, just bloody do it! All that expensive furniture, yet her house smells like a cesspit!”
“Why so violent, Edda?” Kitty asked.
“Grace is pregnant again. When the new one is born, they’ll be fourteen months apart.”
Lavender-blue eyes collided with amber-gold ones: Kitty and Tufts exchanged a look of silent commiseration. Of course it hurt Edda more! She was Grace’s full twin. And, greatest misfortune of all, as controlled as Grace was disorganized. The flaws of a Grace lay very far from Edda’s heart.
If Kitty and Tufts had known the significance of one Jack Thurlow, what Edda was suffering would have made even more sense.