Angel

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

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

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

Sunday,

January 10th, 1960

I haven’t told them yet. Still getting up the courage. When I went to bed last night—Gra

I haven’t quite made up my mind about Mrs. Delvecchio Schwartz, though I do like her very much. She reminds me of some of my more memorable patients, those who manage to stay with me for as long as I’ve been doing X-rays, maybe are going to stay with me for the rest of my life. Like the dear old bloke from Lidcombe State Hospital who kept neatly pleating his blanket. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was folding sail, and then, when I settled to talk to him, he told me he’d been bosun on a windjammer, one of the wheat clippers used to scud home to England loaded to the gunwales with grain. His words, not mine. I learned a lot, then realised that very shortly he was going to die, and all those experiences would die with him because he’d never written them down. Well, Kings Cross is not a windjammer, and I’m no sailor, but if I write it all down, someone sometime in remote posterity might read it, and they’d know what sort of life I lived. Because I have a fu

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

Friday,

January 15th, 1960

I still haven’t told them, but it’s going to happen tomorrow night. When I asked Mum if David could eat steak-and-chips with us, she said of course; best, I think, to wallop the whole lot of them at the same time. That way, maybe David will get used to the idea before he has enough time alone with me to nag and hector me out of it. How I dread his lectures! But Pappy is right, it is going to be easier to get rid of David if I don’t live at home. That thought alone has kept my course steering for the Cross, as the natives call it. Up at the Cross, to be exact.

I saw a man today at work, on the ramp leading from X-ray to Chichester House, which is the posh red brick building housing the Private Patients in the lap of luxury. A room and a bathroom each, no less, instead of a bed in a row of about twenty down either side of a whacking great ward. Must be awfully nice not to have to lie listening to half the patients vomiting, spitting, hacking or raving. Though there’s no doubt that listening to half the patients vomiting, spitting, hacking or raving is a terrific incentive to get better and get out, or else get the dying over and done with.

The man. Sister Agatha grabbed me as I finished hanging some films in the drying cabinet—so far I haven’t had one ponk film, which awes my two juniors into abject submission.

“Miss Purcell, kindly run these to Chichester Three for Mr. Naseby-Morton,” she said, waving an X-ray envelope at me.

Sensing her displeasure, I took it and hared off. Pappy would have been first on her invitation list, which meant Sister Agatha hadn’t been able to find her. Or else she was holding a vomit bowl or dealing with a bedpan, of course. Mine not to reason why—I hared off like the juniorest junior to the Private Hospital. Very swanky, Chichester House! The rubber floors have such a shine on them that I could see Sister Chichester Three’s pink bloomers reflected there, and you could open a florist shop on the amount of flowers dotted around the corridors on expensive pedestals. It was so quiet that when I bounded off the top step at Chichester Three level, six different people glared at me and put fingers to lips. Ssssssh! Oooooo-aa! So I looked contrite, handed the films over and tiptoed away like Margot Fonteyn.

Halfway down the ramp I saw a group of doctors approaching—an Honorary Medical Officer and his court of underlings. You don’t spend a day working in any hospital without becoming aware that the H.M.O. is God, but God at Royal Queens is a much superior God to God at Ryde Hospital. Here, they wear navy pinstriped or grey fla

This specimen wore grey fla

At lunch I quizzed Pappy about him, armed with my theory that he was an orthopod.

“Duncan Forsythe,” she said without hesitation. “He’s the senior Honorary Medical Officer on Orthopaedics. Why do you ask?”

“He gave me an old-fashioned look,” I said.

Pappy stared. “Did he? That’s odd coming from him, he’s not one of the Queens Lotharios. He’s very much married and known as the nicest H.M.O. in the whole place—a thorough gentleman, never chucks instruments at Sister Theatre or tells filthy jokes or picks on his junior resident, no matter how ham-fisted or tactless.”

I dropped the subject, though I’m sure I didn’t imagine it. He hadn’t stripped the clothes off me with his eyes or anything silly like that, but the look he gave me was definitely man-woman. And as far as I’m concerned, he’s the most attractive man I’ve ever seen. The senior H.M.O.! Young for that post, he couldn’t be more than forty.

Tonight’s wish: That I see more of Mr. Duncan Forsythe.

Saturday,

January 16th, 1960

Well, I did it at the di