Informed that she was on three days off, Kitty Latimer promptly packed a suitcase, waved her sisters a merry farewell, and set off for Sydney. There she occupied a room at the Country Women’s Club and plunged into a happy frenzy of shopping, seeing films, and going to every play and exhibition Sydney was offering. Talking pictures were just coming in, and she wasn’t sure if she liked them very much—now that the mouths were uttering words rather than miming dramatic phrases echoed on a fancy blackboard, the actors seemed too stagey, too artificial, even too amusing—and did the men really have to wear so much feminine-looking makeup? If talking pictures were to survive, thought Kitty, the whole technique of making them would have to change.
However, at the end of her three days she installed herself in a first-class compartment on the Melbourne day train, as all through expresses had to stop in Corunda to drop their second locomotive; on a through express it was a three-hour journey that she loved, especially given the fact that she usually managed to keep the whole six-passenger compartment to herself.
But not, alas, today. Having settled in her window seat and suggestively pulled the corridor blinds down to semaphore a message that the compartment was full, Kitty kicked off her new pink kid shoes—they were pinching at the heels—and opened the romance novel she was reading with half her mind, thus leaving the other half free to wander in more unconscious realms. The last thing a nurse needed was grim reality in a book. Where Kitty was wiser than most was in understanding that her romance author undoubtedly, in her real life, knew all about grim reality.
The sliding door onto the corridor opened, a head poked in, then the door opened fully to admit a man.
“Oh, good!” he said, making for the other window seat.
Kitty lifted her head. “This is a nonsmoking compartment,” she said in freezing tones.
“I can read,” he said, pointing, then looked at her and stared in open rudeness. “Marion Davies!” he exclaimed.
“Piss off, you presumptuous little twerp!” Kitty snapped. “If you insist on coming in here, don’t you dare sit opposite me! Take a seat at the corridor end, keep your remarks to yourself, and leave me a little privacy. Otherwise I’ll call the conductor.”
A shrug; he threw his case up onto the overhead rack and sat down at the corridor end, but facing her. Deprived of a window, he looked at the NSWGR antimacassars shielding the velvet squabs.
Kitty returned to her book. Underneath her icy composure she was seething. How dared he! A dapper little chap, not above five feet four inches tall, wearing a pin-striped navy blue suit complete with waistcoat, gold watch, fob, and chain; a magnificent cabochon ruby ring adorned his left hand, another ruby was stuck in what looked like an old school tie, and his cuff links each bore a ruby. His feet, she noted in tickled delight, were sheathed in handmade shoes that bore distinct heels—he was extremely conscious of his diminutive size, then. I’ll bet he struts like a bantam rooster, she thought, assimilating all this with her unusually acute peripheral vision, the gift of three years as a nurse trained to see almost around corners. He has a Napoleon complex, or so the alienists are calling it, and doesn’t he love to strut, the little poseur?
His hair was thick, wiry, and curling, a genuine guinea-gold color also present in his brows and lashes, though as yet Kitty had no idea what color his eyes were, beyond some shade around tawny. Darkish skin that was already tanned, an extremely close shave, and a face she was obliged to admit she thought fascinating, though not because it awed or attracted her. Simply, it didn’t seem to know whether it was ugly or handsome, and changed while you looked at it. One visage had film star properties, as beautiful as the extras who adorned a film’s background crowds and eclipsed the leading man. Had he been taller and owned this face alone, he might have been a king or a president or the leader of a religious sect. As it was, his second visage negated any hope of being freely gifted with the world. This face belonged to a gargoyle or perhaps a castrated satyr; ugly and twisted, it had the power to turn the film star features into a sinister map as hard as heartless.
Whoever this man is, he frightens me, Kitty thought, her book unable to compete with such an authentic out-of-the-pages-of-history character. Yes, he was going to matter, if for no other reason than he’d die in the trying. Judging by the rubies, the gold, and the hand tailoring, a rich man—he’d be getting off in Corunda because those were Corunda pigeon’s-blood rubies, the world’s most coveted and expensive. And with that dipped-in-a-crucible-of-gold look to him, he’s a Burdum.
The penny dropped; with a great effort Kitty kept her eyes on her book and her breathing regular. Unless she was mistaken, this was Dr. Charles Henry Burdum, late of the Manchester Royal Infirmary, and going to Corunda to become superintendent of the hospital. Small fry! He could go to Bart’s or the Middlesex or Guy’s, so what has brought him to a place he doesn’t know from a bar of soap? He’s a Pommy, not an Australian, and I never saw a man less suited for Australian life. A wee bantam rooster . . .
After that initial exchange the three hours passed without a word; as was his wont, Sid the conductor arrived with five minutes to spare, took Kitty’s suitcase down and carried it along the corridor to the carriage door, where he waited, yarning to Kitty, whom he knew from many train trips. The dapper stranger was forced to carry his own bag and stand behind them as the two big locomotives pulled in, groaning and clanking, to stop at the station. Edda was there to meet her, talking to old Tom Burdum.
“Where did you get that dress?” Edda demanded, with no eyes for the man as Tom Burdum left her to hobble forward.
“Mark Foy’s. I found a gorgeous one for you, snake lady.” Kitty tucked a hand through her sister’s arm and led her away. “Turn back and take a squizzy at the chap old Tom is meeting.”
“Jeeeeesus! What a Little Lord Fauntleroy!”
“Bang on, Edda. I can’t be absolutely sure, but I’m willing to place a hefty bet that he’s Dr. Charles Burdum, therefore the new superintendent.”
“Corunda hasn’t been told a new one’s been appointed yet.”
“Then perhaps he’s come to inspect the place, with a view to declining.” Kitty skipped. “We shared a compartment and I had to put him in his place.”
“Oh! Did he actually put the hard word on you, Kits?”
“No. He called me Marion Davies.”
“That’s worse. Your reply was salty—or worse.”
“Just as salty as the Dead Sea. Pickled in brine! I told him to piss off. We rode the rest of the way in frigid silence.”
Edda had turned and was blatantly staring at the newcomer. “Well, he’s a Burdum, and he’s more conceited than Lucifer. What a face! Like Janus.”
“Yes, poor chap.”
“You feel sorry for him?” Edda asked incredulously.
“Very. Look at his handmade shoes, dear. Two-inch heels. He’s a living, breathing Napoleon complex. Gifted with everything except the height no man can bear to be without.”
“Yes, I see what you mean.” Edda brightened. “Still, if he does decide to take the job, he’ll probably settle down after the worst is over. So he doesn’t know you’re a nurse?”
“He has no idea.”
“What fun when he finds out!”
If Charles Burdum had been a shock to Kitty, it was as nothing compared to his effect on old Tom Burdum, who had been waiting ninety-five years for the appearance of a permanent heir. He had gone to the station expecting to meet someone who looked like Jack Thurlow; instead, he found a lordly midget whose suit had been tailored in Savile Row and shirt made by Turnbull & Asser. With a Balliol tie, no less! Though that Tom only discovered because he asked, expecting a joking answer. But not from this fellow, who oozed self-confidence, walked as if he had a poker rammed up his arse (so Tom told Jack later), and was very put out because the train conductor hadn’t lifted down and carried his suitcase.
“In Australia, conductors don’t,” said Tom, not knowing how else to disillusion him. “In Australia, no one waits on you.”
“He was quick enough to carry the little madam’s case!” Charles Burdum said in a clipped, not quite pear-shaped accent.
“Who, Kitty Latimer?” Old Tom chuckled. “A man would have to be dead not to want to carry Kitty’s case.”
“She told me to piss off—not the language of a lady.”
“Tch! I’m sure you deserved it, Charlie.”
“Don’t call me Charlie, my name is Charles.”
“If you stay in Corunda, it’ll be Charlie. Or Chikker.”
“What?”
“No airs and graces in this part of the world, grandson. I speak because someone has to, and I’d rather it were me than, for instance, your cousin Jack Thurlow. He’s my other heir, except that he doesn’t want to be the heir. You’ll inherit the title of leading light in Corunda—if you go about it the right way,” old Tom said, bidding a man load three suitcases into the back of his Daimler. “Do you have more luggage in the guard’s van? Yes? Then give the tickets to Merv here and he’ll collect and deliver them for you.” He waited while Charles found his luggage tags and handed them over, together with a five-pound note that had the man gobbling. “Tch!” said old Tom. “That was silly, Charlie! Never tip a man earning wages. I pay Merv well enough not to need tips. Now you’ve made him discontented with a very fair wage, all because where you come from, he wouldn’t earn a very fair wage, and would depend on tips to eke it out. Lesson number one.”
They settled in the open Daimler Tonneau, its canopy folded. “As Hannah, my wife, is also in her nineties, we haven’t put you up at our property, Burdumbo. You’re at the Grand Hotel on Ferguson Street—a hop, skip, and jump from the hospital as well as George Street, which isn’t a bad shopping center—even has a department store. Though be warned! If you want a really decent feed, go to the Olympus or the Parthenon. They’re both run by Greeks, and there’s nothing in it for quality—superb steaks!”
Old Tom rambled on as the big car, buffeted by a sharp wind, drove through a landscape that resembled an extremely untidy rural England—no neat barnyard complexes but plenty of tumbledown sheds, no stone fences but barbed wire strung between ugly posts, rounded hills crowned not with coppices but clumps of granite boulders. It was not the scorching semi-desert of his imaginings, but it wasn’t Europe either, even Greece or Majorca.
People were staring at him, though not in admiration. Some grinned openly, most just looked interested, the way they would at a zebra or giraffe. His great intelligence informed him this was chiefly because of his dress. A few locals did wear three-piece suits, but shabby and years out of date. Most, including old Tom, favored moleskin trousers, a shirt and tweed jacket, elastic-sided riding boots, and low-crowned, broad-brimmed felt hat. The women wore ghastly early-twenties, unfashionable clothes, while some, he noted in horrified fascination, actually strolled around town in men’s riding gear, right down to the elastic-sided boots and the broad-brimmed hat—and nobody seemed to think them peculiar! So where were the women like that ravishing girl on the train and the girl who met her? They had been dressed in the height of the mode! But his extensive tour revealed no women like them. Well, they had not been figments of his imagination, they did exist in this benighted town somewhere.
He was being shown everything, and had now reached the public buildings on Victoria Street, which ran parallel to George one block over. Town hall, municipal services, the hospital, St. Mark’s Church of England and Rectory—oh, would it never end?
Then his hotel finally appeared, one of those frightful Bournemouth or Bognor establishments constructed for the lower middle class who had saved all year to enjoy a week’s seaside holiday. Inside the Grand were rather inexpertly painted red columns, plush red wallpaper, wooden floors that echoed around immensely high ceilings, a dining room wherein he’d bet all soups tasted of potato and all meats of old fowl. Dear God! 11,000 miles for this?
Well, he knew why, but old Tom Burdum didn’t—nor would he. Of course he had no idea that Corunda contained people of Maude’s caliber, so thought the sly grins everyone gave him were due to his hand-tailored, dandified clothes. If he had been aware that all Corunda knew of Sybil the duke’s daughter before he arrived, he would have fled screaming, and Corunda would never have known him.
Toward the end of August 1929, when he did arrive in Corunda, Charles Burdum still hurt so badly that he was convinced no worse pain would ever be visited upon him. Though his smiles were broad and his manner cheerful, they hid a damaged soul. His old ambitions were dead; all he had salvaged were material possessions.
His love for Sybil had been genuine, as was her love for him. It hadn’t occurred to either of them that the duke might think a Charles Burdum wasn’t good enough to marry his daughter, but when Charles applied for her hand in marriage, so it turned out. Sybil would go to a husband with ancestors worthy of an eighth duke’s line; money and brains were insufficient, especially in a man so appallingly short in stature. The interview with the duke over, Charles was hideously conscious that of all the hurts it had produced, the one about his height had galled the most. Naturally, he knew the identity of Sybil’s ducally approved husband—six feet three inches tall—and blamed his failure on his lack of stature. If one found the right genealogical researchers, one could prove descent from William the Conqueror and Harold Godwineson.
His self-image shattered, his ego so mauled that he couldn’t bear to see all those smirking faces, Charles buried himself in Manchester’s illnesses. When that didn’t work, he bit the bullet and spent time in the City of London dealing with his fortune, then fled England. Not good enough, eh? Well, there was another place where he could make a splash—admittedly a smaller puddle, but he’d be a much bigger frog, and that appealed strongly to a very small man. Prime Minister—now that was a prize worth going after, even if it were only a colonial prime ministership. Canada hadn’t beckoned; his French was nonexistent, and Canada was so cold. Whereas in New South Wales he owned land, mineral wealth, family—why, he’d be Prime Minister of Australia in no time!
Upstairs in his hotel room, a gloomy cavern of browns and beiges and a horrible mustard yellow, he ran a bath and pulled on a robe. Of course there was no room service, but a word with the duty manager secured a pot of execrable coffee and a plate of ham sandwiches. The food was surprisingly good; the bread was home-baked, the ham sugar-cured and juicy. He ate hungrily, thinking, scheming, and all revolving around his observations of Corunda as well as old Tom’s comments.
In future, no Savile Row suits, no ruby accessories; instead, soft shirts complete with collars and cuffs. A diminished English accent, easy for a natural mimic like Charles; he’d find a voice that didn’t grate on idiotically oversensitive Australian ears! This afternoon he’d go to the shops and buy the right kind of apparel, then tomorrow he’d skulk around the town anonymously to do some research. If his plans were to succeed, he would have to know a great deal more about Corunda, its importance in the Australian scheme of things, its importance in its own eyes, and what its inhabitants expected of the men who led them, both publicly and politically.
He had automatically assumed that this massive ex-colony of Australia would differ little from England; to discover enormous differences was coming as a series of shocks that showed no sign of diminishing. This was a far different place that had evolved down very strange roads. People called Corunda “very English,” but to the very English Charles it was ugly, ramshackle, tasteless, and vulgar. How was he ever going to survive here if he took the superintendent’s position?
By the time that Tom and Hannah picked him up to go to dinner at the Parthenon—a Greek café!—he had made his preliminary decisions, the first of which was not to wear black tie. By now he was wondering whether there was ever a black tie dinner in Corunda. He was beginning to doubt it. However, the Greek café more than made up for the limitations of its food menu by serving Tom and his party a magnificent dry white wine and an even better red—Australian wines! But they were world class!
“Have the steak and chips, everyone does,” Hannah advised.
“I’m afraid I’m not in the habit of eating steak,” Charles said charmingly. “It’s considered crass in England. However, Grandmother, when in Rome I shall be a Roman, and try to acquire a taste for it. I suspect its lack of popularity in England is due to its astronomical price.”
“Then have the lamb cutlets, they’re local,” said Tom.
So Charles opted for the lamb cutlets, which would have been delicious had they not been so thoroughly cooked. The steak Tom and Hannah were eating with gusto, he noted, was also thoroughly cooked. Underdone was not on the menu.
Superb meat cooked to death, and deep-fried potatoes with everything. No sauces that take three days to make—even, I’ll bet, in Sydney’s top restaurants. Fried or grilled anything, but not real haute cuisine.
“Tell me about that ravishingly pretty girl on the train,” he said, having declined dessert, which consisted of an ice-cream sundae or a banana split. The coffee, he found, was drinkable if he ordered it Greek-style, brewed with the grounds in a small copper pot. How to get decent coffee? Though his meal with the Burdums told him that no one in Corunda drank coffee; they drank tea so strong it looked black, and this, apparently, the Parthenon made exactly the way the natives liked it. I am now marooned in an ocean of coal-tar tea, a substance I hate!
“Kitty Latimer,” said old Tom thoughtfully. “There are four Latimer girls, the daughters of our Church of England minister, Tom Latimer. Corunda, incidentally, is full of Toms. Down the road in Bardoo they’re mostly Daves, while out Doobar way they’re Bills. Corbi is solid Bobs. I’ve no idea why.”
“Kitty?” Charles prompted gently.
“Oh yes, Kitty. The Rector’s had two wives. His first one died giving birth to twin girls, Edda and Grace. That was Edda met Kitty at the station—tall, slinky girl. Maude Scobie was the second wife—she’d been Rectory housekeeper.” A dry chuckle escaped. “When Adelaide died, Maude married Tom Latimer quick as a wink. She gave birth to a second set of twins, Heather and Kitty. Odd, isn’t it? Off to the races only twice, but four fine fillies not even two years apart.”
“Is it a wealthy family?”
“Not really, though Kitty has more than the other three, thanks to Maude’s intrigues over a will.”
“Sounds a trifle unfair,” Charles ventured, tone casual.
“Oh, it was! Maude dotes on Kitty, but doesn’t care for the others the way a mother should. I’m not being malicious—it’s general knowledge from the West End to Catholic Hill.”
“The other three must loathe Kitty,” Charles said.
“Oh, no!” Hannah cried, and laughed. “You’ll never meet four sisters as devoted to each other as the Latimers. Why, I have no idea, but Kitty seems to be the one the others love and protect the most. They adore Kitty, absolutely.”
Time to ingratiate himself a little. “Grandfather, sir, you won’t be getting any bills from the Grand, for all you instructed them to send my expenses to you. I’m quite rich enough to pay my own way, and have told the Grand I’ll be paying.” He paused, shot old Tom a keen look out of eyes that were a muddy mixture of grey, green, and gold-brown. “One thing you could do for me is recommend a bank. I have a letter of credit on my London bank, but if I should take the Superintendency, I’ll need to transfer more funds and establish a solid financial reputation here. I hope, incidentally, that the local banks are modern enough to cable funds, even very large amounts?”
“We’ll see Les Kimball at the Rural Bank tomorrow afternoon,” Tom said warmly. “You may as well bank with the Rural, all the Burdums do—or have. It’s a modern establishment, the bank of the New South Wales Government. Is that what you want?”
“Thank you, yes.”
“I was under the impression that my son, Henry, remained a no-hoper after he left New South Wales,” old Tom said as he broached his third cup of tea.
Charles shrugged. “It would appear not, Grandfather. He founded an insurance company, became one of Lloyd’s underwriters, and married into the Lancashire plutocracy. As an only child, I inherited a fortune when he died—but, as you probably know, by then he had become what the English call eccentric, denied his wealth and family, and chose to live like a funded itinerant.”
“And your mother too is dead, I understand?”
“When I was born,” Charles said in a tone of voice that indicated he didn’t wish to talk about her. As if to soften this, he gave an irresistible smile and said, “Who will give me an honest assessment of the Corunda Base Hospital? I mean someone who knows the place inside out, has seniority yet no desire to be its superintendent, and isn’t afraid of treading on a few medical toes when he gives his opinions?”
“Liam Finucan,” said old Hannah instantly.
Old Tom nodded. “Yes, Charlie, he’s your man. I might be on the verge of ninety-six and long past serving on the Hospital Board, but I swear Liam is the only senior medical man situated to help you—and he will help you. He’s staff, a true pathologist with no private practice. Add, a Protestant Ulsterman who qualified in London—too good for Corunda, which got him because of his marriage to a Corunda girl. She was a trollop and they’re now divorced, but by nature he’s really a bachelor. I can arrange for you to see him tomorrow.” He frowned. “Can you afford a car?”
“I have a Packard in the process of being delivered to me from Sydney. It’s due to arrive early in the morning.”
“An American car rather than an English one?”
“I note your car is German, sir.” The face, such an intriguing blend of beauty and ugliness, creased up impishly. “I bought it due to its color—maroon, not the inevitable black.”
“I thought all cars had to be black!” said old Hannah, shocked.
“For which, blame Henry Ford.” Charles finished the last of his Hunter Valley claret and politely stifled a yawn. Time for bed.
When Charles met Dr. Liam Finucan the following afternoon, it would have been difficult for Kitty Latimer to have identified him as the same man were it not for his height. He was wearing moleskin trousers of the sort could double for riding breeches, a soft-collared white shirt with Balliol tie, a tweed jacket, elastic-sided boots (with built-up heels—cunning!), and a broad-brimmed felt hat. Only the tendency to strut hadn’t vanished, though he was trying to lessen it; these rude Colonials didn’t bother hiding their amusement at any kind of affectation, especially in a man, and they were as unkind as ruthless. The concept of masculinity, he was learning, was forged in hardened steel.
Dr. Liam Finucan, who had been in Corunda for eighteen years, fancied that Dr. Charles Burdum looked like a Burdum without the erosion of barbed wire and Solvol soap—a soft fellow, as the English were if their class was elevated enough. And he wore a ruby ring on his left little finger, a very strange, effeminate conceit in this part of the world. His eyes were the color of a British soldier’s Great War uniform, a coppery khaki more rust than green, and he was quite as ugly as he was handsome. However, Liam found him curiously likable, and had no axes to grind about the vacant superintendency, so cherished no preconceived resentments.
“If I’m to consider taking the job,” Charles said in the Grand lounge over drinks with Liam, “I need an unbiased report from someone who knows all the ins and outs. My grandparents say you’re my best bet, so here I am. What do you consider the allurements of this job as it’s being offered to me?”
“The run-down nature of the place,” Liam said without a moment’s hesitation. “Frank Campbell was a penny-pinching Scot who scrimped and cut corners on everything. All that’s carried Corunda Base through twenty-five years of his administration are the quality of the medicine and the nursing, both achieved against the odds. At the root of the trouble was the Hospital Board’s love of old Frank’s parsimony—wicked! It rejoiced in the fact that he fed the patients and staff alike on sixpence a day and made the nurses darn the linen on duty. For me, the pathologist, it meant a chronic shortage of reagents, chemicals, glassware, stains, equipment—you name it! I’ve found it much easier to get major apparatus because any man of enterprise can coax a willing donor into buying an automatic microtome blade sharpener or an imposing microscope. No, where the place has hurt the most has been in basic supplies, from toilet paper to scrubbing brushes and high-watt light bulbs. Do you know that babies are nursed on newspaper? Antimony is toxic! All to save the linen, not to mention the expense of laundering! While the Board members cheer Frank on! Weasels? I’d call them cockroaches!”
“Do they know the grisly details, or just the figures?”
“Just the figures, of course. The Reverend Latimer would’ve been horrified if he’d known the details. But he could have found out.”
“If it means extra effort, Liam, people won’t exert themselves.”
“The food is terrible, really terrible, yet out at Bardoo is a hospital farm and convalescent home that should be producing milk, cream, eggs, pork, and some vegetables in season. The convalescent side Frank turned into a boardinghouse, and the edibles that should have gone to the hospital kitchens he sold to local shops or suppliers. Digusting! Wicked!” The softly accented voice, modified by so long in Australia, had not so much risen, as hardened. “I tell you, Charlie, that man should rot in a worse hell than Lucifer could devise. He made a profit out of sickness and death.”
“By Jove!” Charles exclaimed, having no idea what phrase an Australian would use. “Is there State Government money as well?”
“Yes, of course, but I’d be willing to wager more was saved than ever spent. Frank was brilliant at fiddling the books, though he never took a farthing for himself. There have been dozens and dozens of bequests to the hospital—it’s a favorite charity. But nothing has ever been spent unless on a specifically named item.”
“This is wonderful!” Charles cried. “I’d envisioned years of fighting the faceless slugs of a civil service for the funds to make Corunda Base as modern as the Mayo Clinic, but now you tell me there’s actually money in the bank? How much? Six figures?”
“Seven figures,” Liam said with angry emphasis. “There are four million pounds residing in the Corunda branches of several big Australian banks. That’s why Frank Campbell was so hated—he was sitting on a fortune he refused to spend.”
Charles was gaping. “Four million? That’s impossible!”
“Not when you think about it,” Liam said flatly. “Take the Treadby ruby bequest. The patch ran out in 1923, but the bequest came into being in 1898—the first £100,000 in each year were to go to Corunda Base, and did. Not a single penny of it was ever spent, including the miserable interest the banks pay. All the result of a blazing row between Walter Treadby and his sons. Walter changed his will and died two days later, an after-effect of apoplectic tendencies that dumped the Treadby rubies in Frank Campbell’s undeserving lap for twenty-five years. Had Walter lived a further two days, he would have removed the new codicil from his will.”
The laughter broke through; Charles roared with it. “Never underestimate a tendency to apoplexy! Tell me of the Hospital Board.”
“The Board’s as bad as Frank was. Well, they’re Frank’s own creatures, he hand-picked them to obey his every dictate, and they did. For example, the nurses, always recruited from poor families—girls without any education or hope of registering later on, but splendid nurses he paid virtually nothing. The land is tax- and rate-free, the electrical power supply negotiated down to next to nothing, and the gas dirt cheap.”
“No wonder the Board never opposed him,” said Charles, tone tinged with admiration. “The man was a genius of sorts.” He looked suddenly cunning. “I don’t suppose you’d like to be the Deputy Super?” he asked.
“No, thank you!” Liam snapped. “I’ll gladly help you all I possibly can, Charles, but my ambitions are confined to having the best pathology department in the state, from analytical equipment to the breadth of its functions and facilities. I also want a radiologist in a separate radiology department, a staff appointment rather than a private practitioner. I have been used as the radiologist when I have neither the time nor the talent—I can see a break, but hairline fractures? I cringe. Erich Herzen is better, but he’s not trained, either. We need a true radiologist capable of more complex techniques, and we need an X-ray technician.”
“I see X-ray is a sore point, Liam, but I give you my word that when the dust settles, radiology will be a department of its own having nothing to do with pathology,” Charles said, smiling. “It also doesn’t escape me that this hospital has an excellent pathologist. Now tell me about the cheap nurses.”
This interview plus several more endowed Charles Burdum with a knowledge of Corunda Base Hospital that most of the men involved in the selection of a new Superintendent never expected or suspected. Charles acquired a reputation for uncanny shrewdness, and also took the job. The day after he was officially informed of his success, he started work; no pussyfooting around for the new Superintendent!
Between his arrival on the Melbourne day express and the notice of his appointment in the Corunda Post, three weeks had elapsed. During them, old Tom Burdum gifted his grandson with Burdum House, the mansion Henry Burdum, the founder of the family, had built on the heights atop Catholic Hill, which was Corunda’s best residential district. Charles staffed it at once from maids to groundsmen, pulled the dustcovers off the furniture, and then laid plans for a two-acre garden in the style of Inigo Jones. His maroon Packard had arrived together with two small flivvers for running around in when the big car was too ostentatious; and a carrier from Sydney delivered some ten huge trunks packed with belongings from England that apparently Charles could not live without. His ten thousand books, he told his grandparents, were crated and warehoused in London, but would not make the six-week sea journey until he converted one of Burdum House’s larger rooms into a proper library.
“I confess,” said old Tom Burdum to the Reverend Tom Latimer, “that my grandson Charlie is a bigger bite than I can comfortably chew. I’ve hung on grimly to reach this age in the hope that I’d live to set eyes on my Pommy grandson, who wasn’t in a hurry to come out. What I hoped was that he’d be more satisfactory than Jack Thurlow. Well, he is—but does he have to be so Pommy?”
“Tom, he is a Pommy,” said the Rector, “and he has no idea what that means. They have to arrive here before they understand Pommyness. Yet I don’t despair for him. He’s not as thick about the phenomenon of Pommyness as most Pommies are. In fact, I think when Charlie is told not to come the superior Pom over colonials, he will actually pipe down.”
“That’s perceptive of you, Rector.” Old Tom leaned back in his chair, a steaming cup of tea at his elbow and one of Maude’s butterfly cream cakes on a plate—delicious! “At first I didn’t think I could like him, but it turned out to be easy. He’s no slouch, my grandson Charlie! Jack looks and behaves right for Corunda, yet now I’m starting to get a feeling that Charlie may be righter in the long run.” The creased, incredibly old face broke into a wide grin. “The Pommyness means he has some ratbaggy notions that will have to be pounded out of him, but he doesn’t have any ironbound conviction that he’s better than the colonials just because he’s a Pommy. In fact, his background and education say he’d behave the same to Pommies as he does to us colonials.”
“You’re getting muddled, Tom, but I know what you mean,” said the Rector. “Eton, Balliol, and Guy’s put him a long way out in the forefront of society, even Pommy society. After all, he has the money to be a Prince of Wales playboy—Mayfair parties, horse races at Ascot, sunshine on the Côte d’Azur, skiing at Kitzbühl, et cetera. Yet he qualified in medicine and hasn’t known an idle day since his time at Balliol. I think your grandson Charles has a streak of the altruist in his nature. So, incidentally, does your other grandson, Jack, though in a different way.” A fierce frown descended on the Rector’s brow. “One thing they share in common is a reluctance to come to church.”
Old Tom burst out laughing. “Jack’s a lost cause, Rector, as well you know. However, I’m sure that when the novelty of his appearance in Corunda wears off, Charles will grace the Burdum pew in St. Mark’s. If he attended at the moment, he’d stir up a near riot—the whole town is dying to inspect him at close quarters, and where else than in the Burdum pew can the poor chap be imprisoned? Ask three of your own four daughters.”
Which left the Reverend Mr. Latimer without a word to say.
Of course every member of the Corunda Base Hospital staff was agog to meet the new Superintendent, who hadn’t worn the first set of creases into his starched long white coat or heated the leather seat of his office chair before he was in action, marching up and down the ramps, sidling into wards waving an airy hand to signal that he wasn’t really there at all, invading Matron’s sacrosanct areas and privileges, demanding the account books, bank books, and property portfolios from Secretary Walter Paulet, and even going so far as to sample the patients’ frightful meals.
“He’s a busy boy,” said Tufts to Kitty and Edda over hot bacon sandwiches in their cottage.
“Having little heart-to-hearts with your favorite medical man, Liam Finucan,” said Edda, chewing blissfully. “Oh, there is nothing like crisp bacon rashers on fresh white bread!”
“I freely admit that Liam is my favorite medical man,” said Tufts without resentment, “but since Kitty’s bantam rooster took over the coop, I scarcely see Liam. As you say, Edda, constant heart-to-hearts with the new Super.”
“I wonder when the spiffy new broom is going to get around to deciding what to do with his four newly registered sisters?” Kitty asked, basking in the distinction of having told the Great Man to piss off and leave her in peace. She’d also told him he was a presumptuous twerp! Since she had relayed the story to several nursing friends as well as to her sisters, it had become general gossip, though thus far Kitty had not been offered the opportunity to meet him in her hospital guise. In fact, his way of insinuating himself into hospital business without ever once introducing himself to his subordinates was seen as unorthodox and rude—but then, he was a Pommy and they were mere colonials!
Tufts was speaking; Kitty emerged from her brown study. “I imagine that we four junior sisters are pretty low on his totem pole,” Tufts said, licking her fingers. “Liam says he’s a master planner and formulating a new character for Corunda Base, which is why he’s to be found poking into forgotten corners. In fact, according to Liam, the man’s a powerhouse dynamo capable of rare analytical detachment and logical construction.”
“I knew a bacon sandwich would get more out of you than a whole syringe full of truth serum,” Kitty said smugly. “So the bantam cock is counting every feather in the henhouse?”
Edda smiled. “Matron must be foaming at the mouth.”
“Oh, he conquered Matron during their first five-minute talk,” Tufts contributed, enjoying her position as oracle even more than the lunch. “Apparently they see eye-to-eye about nursing and nurses, and matters domestic and culinary.”
“I heard a rumor that the fur is flying out at the convalescent home,” Kitty said.
“My darling sisters,” said Tufts, “there is so much fur flying in so many directions from so many pelts that the air is thick with it.” She dropped her choicest item. “We are to see Dr. Burdum himself at eight tomorrow morning. Lena, too.”
“Out of Limbo at last!” Edda cried.
“Yes, but up to Heaven, or down to Hell?” asked Kitty, face falling into a grimace. “I have an odd feeling about Dr. Burdum.”
“Well, it’s going to be difficult for you—how do you get back into his good books after telling him to piss off?”
The eyes flashed a sudden burst of violet. “Huh! He asked for it, the miserable little worm! If he offends me again, I’ll do worse than tell him to piss off.”
The four new Sisters, veiled yet still in aprons, presented their starched persons to Dr. Charles Burdum’s outer office at one minute before eight the next morning; they were apprehensive, but not frightened. Lena Corrigan suffered least, but no one envied her. To volunteer, especially once certified, to nurse mental patients was so extraordinary that there was little chance an enlightened hospital chief would refuse to employ her. The days of Frank Campbell were gone; Dr. Charles Burdum, even on such short notice, was proving himself a sensible and sensitive chief.
Cynthia Norman, who had been an assistant secretary with nostrils just above the level of the typists’ pool, and was now Dr. Burdum’s personally chosen private secretary, sent all four in together. The new Superintendent didn’t rise to greet them, nor bid them sit down; three stood facing his desk (which, noted Edda, had had its legs cut down), while the fourth turned her back on him to examine the titles of his many medical tomes. That it didn’t appear insolent was due to the crowded room.
Seated, he looked quite tall, a common trait in small men, whose trunks tended to be average in length; they lost height in their legs. Disproportionate, thought Edda, the tallest of them. How glad I am that I’m wearing two-inch heels on my shoes! Blocky heels on stodgy work shoes, but heels for all that, ha ha. Now why does he provoke that attitude in me? Not because he’s a Pommy, no. More because he’s so bloody sure of himself.
“Thank you for being so punctual, Sisters,” he said from his chair, “and forgive my not bidding you be seated. You won’t be here long.” A charming smile turned his face from gargoyle to film star. “Three out of four beginning nurse-trainees attained registration, and one superlatively good long-term nurse has been grandfathered in as registered, not before time.” Came a dazzling smile. “Don’t give me your names, I’ll work from my list. Sister Lena Corrigan?”
“That’s me,” said Lena. “I’m the grandfather.”
“A very youthful one. It says here that you want to nurse in the mental asylum—is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent, excellent!” he exclaimed, as if it really were. “You carry twenty years of general nursing with you, Sister, an incomparable asset for one who will assume command in the asylum just in time to ready the place as much as possible for the new psychiatrist I intend to appoint. There’s not much can be done for chronic epileptics, congenital dementias, and the like, but I do believe we’ll learn to treat things like mania and depression successfully in years to come. You will be the top-ranking deputy matron, but your title within the asylum will be Matron. Work on building the necessary additions to the asylum will start immediately, and the psychiatrist will arrive in the New Year. Is that satisfactory, Matron Corrigan?”
“I’m walking on air, sir. Thank you, thank you!”
“Then I’ll see you at two this afternoon for another talk.”
Face transfigured, Lena went out.
“Sister Edda Latimer?”
“Yes, sir.”
No film star for her! The gargoyle went on leering, forked tongue out. “I see that your preference is for Theatre work, but of course you know there are no vacancies at present,” Dr. Burdum said, sounding sorry for it.
“Yes, sir.”
“I haven’t been in the district long enough to gain any real impressions about the hospital’s adequacies as well as its more obvious inadequacies, so I can’t give you any idea as to whether I think there should be a second theatre, only that thus far things seem to say one theatre is plenty. With Sydney only three hours away, more complex forms of surgery are probably better done there apart from true emergencies.” The eyes, she saw, had changed from bright gold to a dull khaki; the gargoyle retracted his tongue and looked wry. “I can offer you work, Sister Latimer, but not theatre. The six until two shift on Men’s Two needs a second sister, so does the same shift on Maternity. Any preferences?”
“Thank you, sir, I’ll take Men’s Two,” said Edda, turned smartly, and walked out.
“Sister Heather Scobie?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Basically,” he said chattily, “you’re already sorted out as Sister Tutor, and have been doing sterling work in Domestic and Culinary as well. What I plan is to put Domestic permanently under a deputy matron who will also be responsible for nurses’ aides and porters. However, wardsmaids, porters, and aides from now on will be obliged to attend a course of instruction in hygiene and basic cleaning, will also be shown how to do their duties, and once a year attend another course. Sister Tutor will have charge of all instruction.”
“That’s a terrific idea,” said Tufts, beaming.
“Culinary is a different problem,” Dr. Burdum went on, “with some of the same elements. They too will need instruction in hygiene, for example. As everybody must know by now, feeding people is going to cost more than sixpence a day, but over and above that is the problem of decent cooking. Matron and I intend that Culinary will have its own deputy matron responsible for nothing else, but where should I start?”
“With an axe, sir,” said Tufts. “Matron Newdigate is a city person who wouldn’t know a shearers’ cook if she fell over him, but Dr. Campbell has always run Corunda Base on shearers’ cooks. Shearers, sir, work extremely long hours of extremely hard labor, and they’d eat anything. Sick people, on the other hand, find it hard to eat the tastiest food.” She shrugged. “I leave it up to your imagination, sir. Sack the cooks and get decent ones.”
“I will indeed. It goes without saying, Sister Scobie, that you are Sister Tutor and in charge of all hospital education.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Tufts, smiled at him, and left.
Three down, one to go, she who was still studying his books.
“Sister Katherine Treadby?”
She turned in a near pirouette, stripping his face of all ability to be either gargoyle or film star; it had been ironed free from all expression save amazement. “You!” he gasped.
“That depends who ‘you’ is, sir. However, I am certainly the ‘you’ belonging to Sister Katherine Treadby.”
“But your name is Kitty Latimer, you’re the Rector’s girl!”
“Yes, I’m that, too,” she said, thoroughly enjoying herself. “My legal name is Latimer, but since all four trainees who started nursing here in April of 1926 were blood sisters with the same surname—Latimer—three of us were given new surnames. Edda kept Latimer. Grace, who left to marry, became Faulding. Tufts—oops, I mean Heather—took Scobie, while I, the youngest by some minutes, became Treadby.”
He got to his feet and came around the desk, smiling at her in a way that left her feeling breathless, for the smile reached inside his eyes, an extraordinary rusty-khaki color that, she suspected, could dissolve and change the way a chameleon lizard changed the color of its skin. The shock of such an unexpected meeting with this woman who had haunted him, waking and sleeping, ever since he boarded that train weeks ago was profound; every vestige of good sense in Charles Burdum ceased to exist. All he could do was extend his hand and smile fatuously, lovestruck.
“Sister Treadby, then, if such be your name,” he said, and inched too close to her. “There is only one position I’d offer you—that of my wife. From the moment you snubbed me on that train, I’ve thought of nothing and no one else! I mean, look at us!” he cried, carving up the air with his left hand. “You’re the right size for me, you divine creature, and no word of Marion Davies will e’er pass my lips e’er again, I vow it on Guinevere’s grave! I adore you! I worship the ground you float above! I am your slave, your prisoner of love!”
Transfixed, Kitty stood listening in utter disbelief until he finished, when he, too, stood apparently transfixed, though by very different emotions. Her lips twitched, trembled; she fought to keep control of herself, but without success—it was the look on his face, which reminded her of Francis X. Bushman trying to convey undying passion in silence, waiting for the blackboard to appear on the film and tell his audience the words Dr. Charles Burdum was actually speaking.
She burst into peals of joyous laughter. “Go on, sport, pull the other one! I’ve never heard such a heap of tripe in all my born days—don’t tell me that Pommy women actually fall for that stuff! It’s so syrupy I want to puke!”
Mortification dyed his face a purplish crimson; for a few heart-pounding seconds he was literally powerless, had no idea what to do. He could reel off the names of a dozen women who’d melted into compliant puddles when he said such things to them—they were sincerely meant! And he had even proposed marriage! But this young woman derided him for being—being what? She was a woman, and women loved lavish compliments!
He retreated, but not unintelligently; finding a laugh in him somewhere, he gave it, stepped back in an easy way, and took hold of a chair. “Sit down, Sister,” he said. “Having crushed me so savagely, it’s the least you can do.”
“All right,” she said, and sat.
“To what did you object in my declaration?” he asked, his rump perched on the edge of his desk, which had been lowered, she noted. Oh, poor chap! The colonies aren’t doing well by you.
“Your question is a good example—so grammatically prim and proper! To an Australian ear it sounds stilted, false. Like the poetical declaration of love. It sounded hysterically funny to me.”
“Barbaric,” he muttered.
“Probably an apt description. Australia must be a shock.”
“How does one speak of love in Corunda, then?”
“Noah may have waxed lyrical around the time of the Ark, but not since in Corunda. You could experiment on a Toorak girl, she might nibble at your romantic bait, but few Australian women would. I mean, not out of the blue, sir! In a staff interview? It makes you look a dinkum ratbag! There’s not a woman born on the face of the globe doesn’t know that all men consider themselves her superior in every way, so when a man mouths syrupy, pukey rubbish to a woman, his sincerity is of the moment. Give him what he wants, and he’ll revert to his superior status immediately,” said Kitty coolly. “You might get away with carnations and chocolates, but Tennyson and tripe? Not in a fit! A local man would probably tell me I’m a grouselooking sheila, and leave the rest to—er—cozier circumstances. You, Dr. Burdum, dislike being laughed at as a figure of fun, so abandon the poetic imagery and silly waffle. Your ideas for the hospital are extra-grouse, sir, so you have a lot of local people on your side. But if they begin to see you as a two-bob Lothario, down you’ll come with a crash.”
The hideous humiliation was fading. Charles Burdum was big enough spiritually to forgive Kitty the dealing out of that shame; yet in a minute corner of his brain it was filed away with many other slights, injuries, and insults, some done in all innocence, though he didn’t interpret them that way, for he was the slighted, injured, insulted one. He had a failing he knew nothing of: the tendency to cherish grudges for a lifetime, their number inexorably increasing. For Charles Burdum was abnormally thin-skinned, and even the smallest of wounds festered.
At this moment, his mortification shrinking because he knew she hadn’t really meant her laughter spitefully, Charles gazed past his own lacerated hide to see that Kitty was far from indifferent to him: that she had protected herself from his magnetism with a shield of mirth. And she was so right! How could he have brought personal matters up during a professional interview? No, what he felt was far from one-sided, and what he had to do now was work to establish their relationship on a professional level—no intimate undercurrents! Wooing her would have to be postponed. She had to like him, but not as the wrong Charlie: he was Charles Burdum, not Charlie Chaplin.
Seating himself behind his desk, he regarded her with as much detachment as he could summon, given that he was absolutely mad about her, and always would be. Sybil? A very young chardonnay. Kitty was a vintage champagne, above all rivals. Even with that white-blond hair hidden, the frosty brows and lashes against the dark skin were striking, and on the train he hadn’t been able to look into her eyes long enough to see that their piercing blue was shot with lavender, a tiny touch of oriental cat. In fact, the name Kitty suited her, between the domed brow and the wide eyes, the permanent hint of a smile on her exquisite lips. In all his life he had never seen one so fair with skin so dark. Nor, he suddenly realized, had he ever seen eyes so angry. But that was ridiculous! What could such a beautiful woman have suffered, to be so angry at a compliment? Not an emotion he had expected to find, certainly. If anything, his fantasies had dwelled on how to satisfy what was bound to be a colossal conceit, queen of all she surveyed. Well, he had seen humor, rage, a scorpion’s sting, but no evidence whatsoever of conceit. What are you, Kitty?
“Have you a preference for one kind of nursing, Sister?”
“Yes, sir. Children’s.”
He tapped her file folder. “Yes, I’ve already noticed that your three years of nurse training have been heavily weighted in pediatrics. Sister Moulton speaks highly of you.”
“I can speak highly of her.”
“Would you like to continue nursing children?”
“Yes, sir, I would.”
“Matron recommends you for the charge position on the two to ten shift in Children’s. Would that suit you?”
“Yes, sir.”
The film star smile showed; she did not respond.
“Then the position is yours, Sister Treadby.”
“Thank you,” she said, got up, and left. Outside beyond Cynthia Norman’s office she leaned against the wall and sagged in mingled joy and sorrow. Joy, that she had a charge job on Children’s; sorrow, that things had gotten off to such a bad start with the new Superintendent.
Throughout the interview she had watched him, hawklike, her initial reaction to that ludicrous display of his peacock’s tail stored inside a separate box, its lid firmly closed until she had the leisure to open it and examine it free from other considerations. Somehow she sensed that he was a blend of sincerity and chicanery, though she had no idea what proportions they occupied in his makeup. So enormously attractive! And not too short for her; in high heels he would still top her by an inch or so. But terribly short children if they married! Virtual midgets.
Kitty was very confused, and every word he said only made her state worse. What was he like underneath the words? Intelligent, worldly, experienced. She had become conscious of a furious anger as the interview went on its brief way—because of her wretched face, he had automatically assumed that she was stuck-up, proud! Oh, how dared he do that to her? Another collector of art, it seemed, panting to display her beauty as his property by marriage. No, don’t open that box!
But how can I not? He has offered me all the traditional temptations of wealth, power, lifelong comfort—on no other evidence than my face! I loathe my face! He waffled on about love, but what can a man who judges a woman by her face possibly know of love? It says he’s superficial, a cool man at the core. Cool, not cold; he’s not indifferent to the suffering of others, just cool in that he never suffers wholeheartedly himself. A chilly analyst.
Kitty lifted her shoulders off the wall and found out that she could walk. But the contents of this morning’s interview she would keep to herself. If Edda and Tufts knew—!
In the meantime, Charles Burdum was coming to grips with the fact that Kitty and Heather—Tufts—were identical save for their coloring. Tufts had diminished the likeness, near-absolute when it came to physique and facial features. The obvious lack was at least one dimple, but the coloring was more than mere difference: it had an essence of the soul about it. Looking at Tufts, any perceptive person understood how profoundly a practical, orderly, and sweet disposition affected the dynamics of attraction. In Kitty the dynamo roared: in Tufts, the dynamo hummed. Never having been exposed to twins, Charles was fascinated. There was the other pair as well, Edda and Grace, who rumor said were more identical than Tufts and Kitty.
What was Kitty’s nature? There were mysteries, some of vital importance, but to whom could he turn for solutions?
The image of Edda rose up in Charles’s mind. Yes, Edda knew everything, she was the quartet’s natural leader according to the gossip grapevine. To Edda he must go, but he had learned from Kitty’s lesson. How do I approach Medusa? Never look into her eyes, they’ll turn you to stone! She wouldn’t like him, either, though that wasn’t as important as what she decided he meant to baby sister Kitty. Edda wasn’t selfish, she’d put Kitty’s wants and needs ahead of her own. Yes, he would have to go to Edda.
I am the victim of my time and my nationality, he thought. I am an Englishman, a bona fide member of the nation that rules the largest empire the world has ever known. Turn the globe of the world in any direction and the land on it blazes with the ruddy pink that is a geographer’s code for British Empire possessions. Only Antartica is without areas of pink, many of them huge, and in the case of the Australian continent, pink in entirety. But these people resent the pink; they would rather be the green of total autonomy, like the USA, I have to forget to be English, just as being English tends to make one forget Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, nominally a part of the ruling Great Britain. Except that everybody secretly has to admit the actual rulers and owners are the English.
He buzzed for his secretary. “Miss Norman, the three Latimer sisters. Do they live in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How do I contact one of them?”
“Usually by letter, sir, which you would give to me to put in the appropriate pigeonhole in the Sisters’ Office. If it is urgent, there is the telephone, though undoubtedly Matron would send a porter to fetch whoever is wanted.”
“I’ll write a letter. Thank you.”
He drew notepaper forward, frowning. Flimsy stuff of the cheapest kind. New stationery was on order from W.C. Penfold in Sydney, but until it arrived, he was limited to this—this—lavatory paper. Next week he was summoning the Hospital Board to its first meeting since he had taken over—what a circus that was going to be!
Edda found her letter when she returned to the cottage from her usual ride with Jack Thurlow, physically sated but more restless than she had been in a long time. Oh, what she felt for Jack still had the power to keep her tied to Corunda, but there could be no denying that his idiotic devotion to Grace and Bear annoyed her, even before the quarrel—he had been her exclusive friend, no matter what Grace alleged on that memorable day. Edda hadn’t spoken of it to Tufts or Kitty, thanking her lucky stars that their shifts hadn’t let her tell them what was happening to Grace in her Trelawney isolation—fancy imagining that her fellow housewives thought Jack was her lover! To Edda, so ludicrous it was laughable. Grace didn’t live in a vacuum; there were always nosy neighbors calling in to see her while Jack and Edda were working in the garden, and there could be no mistaking which twin was Jack’s inamorata, since they arrived and left in the same car and looked into each other’s eyes in a certain way. What Edda hadn’t begun to understand was the effect two babies and a largely absent husband had had upon her sister, who saw Edda’s glamour, clothes, free lifestyle, and easy camaraderie with men as proof that all those qualities of Edda’s had been utterly stripped from her, Grace. A sore jealousy had rubbed her so raw that a part of her began to hate the breezy, carefree, available Edda.
The fantasy of a Jack–Grace affair had broken on Edda as just that, a fantasy, but to discover that Grace firmly believed it existed in gossiping minds had first amazed Edda, then, after she pondered it, an attack of irritated pity had provoked her into taking the easiest way out—broadcast her affair with Jack for all to know. Jack hadn’t minded; Grace could relax, her Trelawney reputation pristine. That was how I saw it, ran Edda’s thoughts when she had a moment to let them dwell on Grace.
The quarrel itself could never have been foreseen by anyone with logic and good sense—no, that was wrong! It could not have been foreseen by anyone with the tiniest scrap of intelligence, let alone good sense. Wielding the hammer savagely, Grace had brought it down on Edda’s head blindly, destructively; the blaze in her eyes hungered to kill as does a mob, without reason. And after her own rage died, Edda found her concept of her sister so shattered that, if she could have found a way, she never wanted to see Grace again. Her fund of logic told her that whatever was wrong with Grace had very little, if anything, to do with her as a sister or even a mere human being, but her anger was so strong, so implacable, that she couldn’t forget or forgive. The injustice of Grace’s charges corroded and eroded her love to a point where it didn’t exist any more.
Which had made this winter finally passing the hardest one of Edda’s life, even including Kitty’s suicide attempts. Naturally Tufts and Kitty sensed that there had been a quarrel, but various attempts by either as well as both combined, whether addressed to Edda or to Grace, were met with an immovable stone wall. Neither Edda nor Grace wanted to speak about the breach, let alone heal it. And to Edda, the one unjustly accused and judged, the sheer magnitude of Grace’s insults eclipsed their relationship.
Kitty went to the Rector, who tackled Edda as the twin with an abiding capacity to see reason—and got nowhere. When he tackled Grace, his only reward was an hysterical outburst of sobs, copious tears, and utter lack of reason. When Maude inserted herself into the act on Grace’s side, Edda cut her dead and refused to visit the Rectory until Maude minded her own business.
In the end, Matron Newdigate stepped up to the breach, her trusty battle-axe sharpened, so the spies said, on Liam Finucan’s device that did the same for microtome blades; that he had been drawn into the fray was thanks to Tufts, who had seen a faint ray of light at the end of the Edda–Grace tunnel.
“This needs God,” she said to Liam, “and a feminine God at that. It has to be Matron.”
“But Grace hasn’t been a nurse in years,” he protested.
“The dragon is etched into Grace’s brain with a white-hot poker,” Tufts countered, “and Matron is the dragon to end all dragons.”
So Grace was summoned to see Matron just as if she were still a trainee nurse, and the moment she was seated, in walked Edda.
Neither twin suspected the ploy; nor was either twin courageous enough to storm out of Matron’s office in a huff.
“Sit down, Sister Latimer,” said Matron with great affability, “and bid your twin a good morning.”
An enormous weight fell from Edda’s shoulders. “Good morning, Grace,” she said, and produced a small stiff smile from paralyzed lips.
Grace’s was much larger; she knew whose fault the quarrel was, and hadn’t slept well in three months trying to find a way out of her dilemma that let her salvage at least a little pride. The trouble was that no way out could preserve her pride—oh, if only on that awful day Edda hadn’t looked so elegant, so—so soignée! But she had, and the wounding words had gushed out in a spiteful, petty torrent. How much she rued them! But pride was pride, insatiable.
Matron’s office saw Edda in a veil and without an apron, a cool effigy in green and white stripes, while Grace the married woman sat in her Sunday best: a flattering, waisted crepe dress in fuchsia pink, a smart straw hat to match, and navy blue accessories.
“You look trés chic, Grace,” Edda said.
“And you look like a sister—very intimidating.”
“So is this ridiculous spat finally at an end?” Matron asked with a smile.
“It is—if I apologize,” said Grace, “and I do, Edda, most sincerely. I put my foot in my mouth.”
“Excellent!” said Matron, beaming. “Your causes and effects have become so old they’ve grown whiskers. Which reminds me, Faulding, that you never did hand in that five-page essay on the fluid balance chart.”
The door opened; a wardsmaid wheeled in the tea cart.
“Ah, tea! Now we’ll drop formality and use Christian names.”
Grace gasped. “Matron! I couldn’t do that!”
“Nonsense! Actually I need you, Grace. The hospital under its new administration needs a voice in the Trelawneys, and I hear that yours is a very respected Trelawney voice.”
A flattered Grace blushed, eyes shining. “I’m the hospital’s to command, Matron.”
“Gertie,” said Edda, grinning. “The name is Gertie.”
The thin letter in a sealed envelope was in her pigeonhole, Sister Edda Latimer scrawled across it in near-black ink. Sent by the new Superintendent was Edda’s guess—interesting handwriting, very bold and executed with a broad nib. She opened it.
Blunt, yet to the point: an invitation to have a drink with him in the Grand lounge at six, after which, if she so desired, they could repair to the Parthenon to have dinner. She need not reply; if she was interested, he would be where he said at the stated time tonight, tomorrow night, and any other night.
He harbored no man–woman interest, Edda was certain of that; the stare they had exchanged early this morning was of the kind that passed between two warriors from rival tribes. No, he was after Kitty, that day at the train station had told her so, and now he had discovered that Kitty Latimer was Katherine Treadby, nursing sister. A complication, as was the fact that she had taken against him. He was the invading stranger, far too clever not to realize that before he could fix his interest with Kitty, he needed to know a lot about her. And she, Edda Latimer, was his carefully selected informant.
It would have to be tonight; tomorrow she was in theatre, and would remain on duty for seven days before her next leave. He’d known that, too, but not rammed it down her throat.
Having a mere £500 in the bank, Edda made all her own clothes, and lived so thriftily that she funded her wardrobe from her tiny earnings as a nurse. Fabrics, shoes, gloves, and bags had to be bought; dresses and hats she made, so extremely well that Corunda assumed she shopped in Sydney’s best fashion stores. She had just sewn the last bead on a dress of purplish grey in the latest style, hem below the knees and a suggestion of a waist, made more interesting at hem and sleeve edges by several thousand tiny purple glass beads; black kid shoes and bag, and a wisp of dark grey tulle sprinkled with the same purple beads on her head. Yes, that would do! Chic.
He was waiting at a secluded low table in the hotel lounge, no drink before him, and rose to his feet the moment he saw her crossing the room.
“A cocktail?” he asked, settling her in a big, low chair.
“Thank you, no. A glass of pilsener,” she said, removing her black kid gloves finger by finger, a fastidious task.
“Do many Australian women drink beer?” he asked, seating himself and waving at the waiter.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. It’s the climate. We drink thin German-style beers with a relatively high alcohol content, and we drink them icy cold. You’ll find no thick English ales served warm out here,” she said, finishing with the gloves. “As a bonus, I can tell you that Kitty drinks icy beer, too.”
“You’re awake on every suit,” he said, having given his order. “Did you not wonder if perhaps it were you I was interested in?”
“Not for a second. I’m far too tall.”
“Touché. You’re very exotic for Corunda, surely?”
“Someone has to be. As you get to know the Latimer sisters better, you’ll find that for two sets of identical twins, the similarities in each set are perfectly delineated in the one yet warped in the other, as in a sideshow hall of mirrors.”
“Tell me more,” he said.
“Take Grace and me. I’m very exotic for Corunda, whereas my sister is absolutely typical—a housewife and mother, always struggling to make ends meet but nonetheless enraptured by her role. With Kitty and Tufts, Kitty is the epitome of modern beauty, from the rosebud mouth to the huge, blind-looking eyes, while Tufts is a born spinster, as down-to-earth and unvarnished as spinsters get.” Edda picked up her tall glass of beer, its sides wet with condensation, and inclined it in his direction. “Here’s mud in your eye, Charlie.”
“Must everyone call me Charlie?” he demanded, irritated.
“Yes, as you’re not the Chikker sort. Charles is considered slightly effeminate by real men in this Year of Our Lord 1929—at least in this part of the world,” she said smoothly.
“Christ Jesus, you’re a bitch!”
“In England you’d have thought that, but never said it.”
“Triple distilled!”
“And proud of it.”
“I really don’t need cutting down to size, Edda, but perhaps you can explain why Englishness is so objectionable to almost all Australians, and what the word Pommy means?”
“No one knows why the English are called Pommies, they just are, but they’re disliked because this continent was a collection of British colonies until twenty-eight years ago, and we natives were despised. In fact, even now there is a Commonwealth of Australia, a great many Australians feel the country is still owned by the Bank of England and English companies. The plum jobs all go to Pommies, and the more English-inflected an Australian’s speech is, the better his or her chances to get ahead socially and financially. Australians educated at state schools are punished for speaking with a low-class accent—yes, you brought the class system with you, and it took root! Whether you wish to consider yourself by your nationality or as an individual, the answer is still Pommy,” said Edda, eyes gone white and staring. Then, as if annoyed at betraying so much feeling, she shrugged. “If you want to be liked in Corunda, Charlie, shed the Pommy as fast as you can.”
“Cigarette?” he asked, offering her his case.
“I don’t smoke. All four of us gave it up after a few weeks on the men’s ward.”
“The illnesses?” he asked, rather blankly.
A sour smile twisted her mouth, painted very red. “No! One thing a doctor never does is empty and clean the sputum mugs. If he did, he’d understand.”
An image of a sputum mug’s contents rose in his mind; he put his Scotch and soda (no ice) down hastily. “What do you want to do with your life?” he asked.
“Travel. Have mad adventures everywhere except Antarctica. That’s the continent most people on the top side of the globe always forget. I’m hoping to be classified as a charge sister—more money. My finances are negligible—church mouse poor.”
“Well, you are a church mouse, but I’ll see what I can do about the charge sister status.”
“In return for my feeding you information about Kitty?”
“Exactly,” Charles Burdum said, sounding unruffled. “I’d be extremely grateful for any and all information.”
The second half of Edda’s beer contained no magic; ignoring her glass, she leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs at the knee, and fixed her lupine eyes on the new Superintendent. The mockery had left them, and for some reason she seemed to have revised her original, rather contemptuous estimation of him; he listened intently to a superb raconteur narrating a well-loved story, only interrupting to walk with her two blocks to the Greek café for a steak dinner.
So Kitty was internally scarred, not a stuck-up local belle out to string a series of male scalps on her belt. Very much in love with her, Charles Burdum itched to meet this awful mother Edda so patently loathed. Maude Scobie Latimer. So wrapped in her ravishing child that she couldn’t see what adulation was doing to Kitty, too shallow to comprehend that some beautiful females yearned to be esteemed for something more enduring than their faces and figures. A cheese grater, and Kitty just ten years old! It hardly bore thinking of. The attempted suicide that only Edda and the Rector knew about . . .
Oh, my poor, darling Kitty! How much being a registered nurse must mean to you, and how little my declaration of love could possibly have mattered to you! It’s a manifestation of what you’ve spent your life running away from—I must have disgusted you. On no better basis than those looks of yours, I announced myself in love with you. If only I had known! How can I ever persuade you to love me after such a start to our relationship?
“If you love her, you’re going to have to convince her that how she looks is the least of your reasons for loving her,” Edda said as she and Charles parted. “That means earning her trust a crumb at a time, and don’t forget Tufts. You’ll have to earn Tufts’s trust as well.”
Tufts was already conquered, however, thanks to Liam Finucan. The pathologist couldn’t speak of the new Superintendent highly enough, especially to Tufts.
“He’ll work wonders, Heather, and finally this hospital will fulfill its potential,” Liam said to her, repeating the words often.
So when Kitty approached her seeking moral support, Tufts was not prepared to give it. “If he’s courting your attentions and you’d rather he didn’t, Kits, then use that salty tongue of yours and tell him to piss off. Personally, I deem him a fine man.”
“Yes, but that’s just it—I don’t know what I feel, or what I want!” cried Kitty on a wail. “I’ve never met such an obnoxious, conceited man in all my life, yet he does have an admirable side, and I sincerely believe he wants to give Corunda Base the chance it’s never had. But do I want to be his wife? Make his causes and ambitions mine?”
“That’s a big deductive jump, Kits, and cart before horse, too. You don’t have to become personally embroiled with him to like and admire him for improving Corunda Base, therefore I must conclude from the way you’re talking that you secretly hanker a little bit for Dr. Burdum,” said Tufts in the voice of reason.
“Should I do an Edda, and go out with him?”
“It would be far different, Kitty. Burdum took Edda out on a fishing expedition about you. Ask her! As she says, he’s not interested in her, she’s too tall.”
“Yes, and that’s one reason why I’m not interested in Dr. Burdum—he’s too short. The only sight that makes people want to laugh more than a tiny wife with a lanky husband is the sight of Tom Thumb and his wife—ludicrous!”
“Pride goeth before a fall,” said Tufts, chuckling. “Good, here’s Edda! Edda, tell Kitty about your evening with the Super.”
“Delighted to oblige,” Edda said, sitting down with a sigh. “One side of me mistrusts him—he’s a confidence trickster who could sell the proverbial coals to Newcastle, and it’s ineradicable because it’s at the core of him. He’s driven to big-note himself, blow a loud and brassy trumpet. At the same time I liked other aspects of him—chiefly his affection and concern for you, as well as his ideas about the hospital. If I had as much money in the bank as you do, Kitty, I’d bet it on my certainty that Charlie Burdum the Pommy wonder will be very good for Corunda.” She drew in her generous mouth, frowned. “As to whether he’ll be as good for you, sweetest little sister, I’m not sure. His intentions are noble, but there’s a chance that the most enduring love in Charlie Burdum’s life will always be Charlie Burdum.”
“You’re not helping me, Edda.”
“No one else can help, idiot! Go out with him! Until you do, you’re relying on other people’s judgments,” Edda said.
“She’s right,” said Tufts. “Go out with him!”
Since Corunda was already buzzing over Dr. Burdum’s taking Edda Latimer out for drinks and dinner, the sensation was electric when he took Kitty Latimer out for drinks and dinner. Did he intend to set the sisters up as competitors for his hand in marriage, or did he have more nefarious motives? “Charles” had gone by the wayside to everyone in the district; his name was now the slightly raffish “Charlie” and his image correspondingly reduced.
Kitty, Charles noticed, dressed differently from Edda, though both of them had turned heads when crossing the Grand’s lounge to him. Kitty’s style was fluffier—no sleek satins or metallic fabrics for Kitty, he concluded. Her chiffon dress was icy green in color, cunningly picked out with details in a darker emerald, and her kid accessories were navy blue; she wore no hat of any kind, the brilliantly flaxen curls cut short in a halo around that bewitching face. By the end of the evening Charles judged Kitty her own arbiter of fashion, and wondered where the Latimer girls got their dress sense, for Corunda definitely had none.
“Why are you the salty one?” he asked over beers.
“The face,” she said promptly. “I look as if butter would never melt in my mouth, so being salty takes people aback. I learned that early, and have never wished to unlearn it.”
“I hope you’re not going to force me to a long courtship.”
“I hope you don’t intend a courtship at all, Charlie.”
“Of course I do!” The gargoyle became the film star. “I have already told you how this must end—you as my wife.”
“What precisely gives you that idea? And don’t answer love—because that sort of instantaneous love is lust,” said Kitty, relishing her pilsener beer. “Using the word in its proper sense, there are only four people in the world whom I love.”
“And they are?”
“My three sisters and my father.”
“What about your mother?”
The perfect nose wrinkled. “I love my mother, but I wouldn’t step in front of her to take the bullet aimed at her.”
“Why is that, Kitty?”
The large eyes widened even more, giving them a look of wary and startled surprise. Then she laughed, a peal of amusement so infectious that those around them who heard it involuntarily smiled. “Idiot! Because she wouldn’t take the bullet meant for me. It’s a two-way street, Charlie.”
He winced. “Must I be Charlie, even to you?”
“Definitely. It turns you from a ponce into a man.”
He swallowed. “I take it that a Charles would never step in front of you to take the bullet?”
“He’d be too busy diving for shelter.”
“Whereas a Charlie might face the gunman?”
“He might.”
Time to change the subject. “I wish,” he said, eyes gone quite gold, “that this benighted town had a decent restaurant! And why the Parthenon over the Olympus, since they’re identical twins in all respects from Greekness to decor to menus?”
“Custom. Meaning not tradition, but patrons. The Olympus is closer to the Sydney–Melbourne road, and takes travellers as well as tourists. Haven’t you noticed Corunda’s tourists? It’s September, at the height of the spring flowering. The town is famous for its old world gardens. People flock here to see the azaleas and rhododendrons especially.”
“But they bloom consecutively, not together.”
“Here, due to some local climatic and soil peculiarities, they bloom together for twice as long. This is the peak week for synchronous flowering. After all, the world is upside-down.”
“I was wondering why the hotel is so jam-packed,” he said, face brightening. “Perhaps I can persuade the Grand to install a first-class restaurant.”
“Concentrate on the hospital,” was her advice. “You’ve moved into Burdum House now, so find yourself a chef who suits you. Then you can have poached whosits and braised whatsits as you wish.”
Horror was written large on his face. “I can’t entertain without a hostess!” he said blankly.
“Of course you can! As long as you have the staff to make sure things go smoothly, no one will find it odd. Posh Pommy punctiliousness isn’t practiced here, so the women needn’t leave the men alone over their port and cigars. It’s more common for the whole table to withdraw together—if there is any withdrawing. People here rather like to finish the evening still around the dining table.” She gave another of those infectious laughs. “Different places, different customs.”
“A man entertaining without a hostess,” he said slowly.
“Perfectly permissible in Corunda, though I daresay the Governor-General might object.”
He insisted upon returning her to her door at the end of the evening, no matter who saw them on the ramps, but though he took her hand and held it, he didn’t try to kiss her.
“You’ll be Mrs. Charles Burdum before the winter of 1930,” he said in a low voice, shadows filling the cavities of his eyes so that she couldn’t see what they held, “but I’ll temper my ardor for the time being because I can see that you don’t trust me an inch. What it is to be a Pommy! Good night.”