The Ladies of Missalonghi (12 page)

The fixity of Drusilla’s silent regard had passed from shock to doubt, from unwillingness to listen to a distinct desire to hear more. And by the end of this impassioned speech, even Octavia was visibly wavering. Perhaps had it been the old Missy sitting there destroying the old order, they might have dismissed what she said without a qualm; but this new Missy possessed an authority which lent her words the ring of unequivocal truth.

“Look,” Missy went on more quietly, “I can sell your shares in the Byron Bottle Company for ten pounds each, and I know that kind of opportunity is as rare as hen’s teeth, because I was there when Uncle Billy and Uncle Edmund were talking about it, and that’s what they said. They didn’t know I was listening, otherwise they’d not have said a word of it. They spoke of you as they think of you, with utter contempt. Believe me, I did not misinterpret what I heard, and I do not exaggerate. And I made up my mind that there was going to be an end to it, that I was going to see that you and Aunt Cornelia and Aunt Julia got the better of them for once. So give me your shares and let me sell them for you, because I’ll get you ten pounds each for them. But if you offer them to Uncle Billy or Uncle Herbert or Uncle Maxwell, they’ll bully you into signing them away for nothing.”

Drusilla sighed. “I wish I didn’t believe you, Missy, but I do. And what you say comes as no surprise, deep down.”

Octavia, who might have battled on in blind loyalty, instead decided to switch allegiances; for she was a little bit of a child, and craved firm direction.

“Think what a difference a Singer sewing machine would make to you, Drusilla,” she said.

“I would enjoy it,” admitted Drusilla.

“And I must confess I would enjoy having a hundred pounds all of my own in the bank. I would feel less of a burden.”

Drusilla capitulated. “Very well, then, Missy, you may have our shares to sell.”

“I want Aunt Cornelia’s and Aunt Julia’s as well!”

“I see.”

“I can sell their shares for the same amount of money, ten pounds each. But like you, they must be prepared to give me their shares without one word to Uncle Billy or any of the others – not one word!”

“Cornelia could certainly do with the money, Drusilla,” said Octavia, feeling more cheerful every moment, and consigning her male relatives to limbo because it was better to do that than grieve over their perfidy, bleed from their hurtfulness. “She could afford to have her feet done by that German bone specialist in Sydney. She does so much standing! And you know how desperate Julia’s case is, now that the Olympus Café has put in that extra room out the back, with marble-topped tables and a pianist every afternoon. If she had an extra hundred pounds, she could afford to make her tea room even swankier than the Olympus Café.”

“I’ll do my best to talk them into it,” said Drusilla.

“Well, if you do talk them into it, they have to be here at Missalonghi on Sunday afternoon at five o’clock, with their shares. All of you will have to sign a Power of Attorney.”

“What’s that?”

“A piece of paper that authorises me to act in your name.”

“Why at five o’clock on Sunday?” asked Octavia.

“Because that’s when my friend Una is coming to witness the signing of the documents.”

“Oh, how nice!” Inspiration struck Octavia. “I shall bake her a batch of my plain biscuits.”

Missy grinned. “For once in our lives, Aunt Octavia, I think we can treat ourselves to a slap-up Sunday high tea. We can have plain biscuits for Una, of course, but we’ll have fairy cakes and melting moments and cream puffs iced with toffee, and –
lamingtons
!”

No one gave her any argument about that menu.

When Missy arrived at the Byron railway station at six o’clock on Tuesday morning, she carried forty shares in the Byron Bottle Company, and four duly signed and witnessed Powers of Attorney. Una, it turned out, was a proper Justice of the Peace in spite of her sex (she said it happened in Sydney from time to time), and had fixed a most official-looking seal to the documents.

She was waiting on the platform, and so was Alicia. Not together, for Alicia was at the engine end, where the first class carriages would stand, and Una was at the guard’s van end, where the second class carriages would stand.

“I hope you don’t mind travelling second class,” said Missy anxiously. “Mother has been most generous, I have ten shillings for my expenses and a guinea for the specialist, but I don’t want to spend any more of it than I can help.”

“Darling, my first class days are long over,” soothed Una. “Besides, it’s not a terribly long journey, and at this time of a cold morning, no one is going to insist that the windows be opened to let in the soot.”

Missy’s eyes encountered Alicia’s; Alicia sniffed and deliberately turned the other way. Thank heavens for that, thought Missy unrepentantly.

The rails began to hum, and shortly afterwards the train came in, a huge black monster of an engine with a stubby stack clunking past in torrents of grimy smoke and fierce gushes of thick white steam.

“Do you know what I like to do?” asked Una of Missy as they found themselves a couple of vacant seats, one a window.

“No, what?”

“You know the overhead bridge at the bit of Noel Street near the bottling plant?”

“I do indeed.”

“I love to stand right in the middle on top of it, and hang over the edge of the parapet when a train goes underneath. Whoosh! Smoke everywhere, just like descending to hell. But oh, such fun!”

And so are you fun, thought Missy. I’ve never met anyone like you, nor anyone so full of life.

By the time the train drew into its terminus at Central Station, the hands of the platform clock said twenty minutes to nine. Her appointment in Macquarie Street was for ten, but Una said that left them plenty of time for a cup of tea in the railway refreshment rooms. Alicia swept by them in the main concourse; she must have been lurking in wait just to do it, for the first class passengers were normally well ahead of those at the back of the train.

“Isn’t that the famous Alicia Marshall?” asked Una.

“Yes.”

Una made an untranslatable sound.

“What do you think of her?” asked Missy, curious.

“Obvious and flashy, darling. Keeps all her goods in the shop window, and you know what happens to goods in shop windows, don’t you?”

“I do, but tell me in your own words.”

Una giggled. “Darling, they
fade
! Constant exposure to the glaring light of day. I give her another year at most. After that, no amount of lacing her stays tighter will keep her figure trim. She’ll grow enormously fat and lazy, and she’ll develop the most dreadful temper. I believe she’s going to marry a mere lad. Pity. What she needs is a man who will make her work very hard, and treat her like dirt.”

“Poor Little Willie is too limp, I fear,” sighed Missy, and had no idea why Una found that remark so exquisitely funny.

In fact, Una laughed in fits and starts all the way down Castlereagh Street on the tram, but she refused to tell Missy why, and by the time they reached the building on Macquarie Street where the specialist had his rooms, Missy had given up.

At ten on the dot, Dr. George Parkinson’s haughty nurse took her into a room plentifully endowed with movable screens of terrifying cleanliness and whiteness. She was directed to remove all her clothes, including her bloomers, place an indicated white wrap around her scrawny person, and lie down on the couch to wait for Doctor.

What an odd way to meet anyone, she couldn’t help thinking when Dr. Parkinson’s face loomed over hers; she was left to wonder what he looked like when the hairy caverns of his nostrils were not his most prominent feature. With his nurse in silent attendance, he thumped her chest, stared at her pitifully under-developed breasts with the rudeness of utter indifference, listened to her heart and lungs through a far sleeker stethoscope than Dr. Hurlingford’s, took her pulse, stuck a spatula down her throat until she gagged dangerously, felt both sides of her neck and under her chin with impatient hard fingers, then went rolling round her flinching belly with his palms.

“Internal examination, Nurse,” he said curtly.

“Pee ar or pee vee?” asked Nurse.

“Both.”

The internal examinations left Missy feeling as if she had undergone some sort of major operation without benefit of chloroform, but there was worse to come. Dr. Parkinson flipped her over onto her front and then went poking and prying along the cordillera of her backbone until, somewhere around the spot where her shoulder blades stuck out like pathetic wings, he grunted several times.

“Ahah!” he exclaimed, striking treasure-trove.

Without any warning, Missy was grabbed around head and heels and hips by doctor and nurse combined; what they did was over so quickly she had no positive idea what they did, except that there came the sound of a grinding, sickening crunch all the more horrifying because she heard it inside her ears as well as outside them.

“You may get dressed now, Miss Wright, and then go through that door,” ordered Dr. Parkinson, and went through that door himself with his nurse still in attendance.

Shaken and diminished, Missy did as she was told.

The right way up he turned out to have a very pleasant face, and his light blue eyes were kind and interested.

“Well, Miss Wright, you may return home today,” he said, fingering a letter that lay on his desk along with quite a number of other papers.

“Am I all right?” asked Missy.

“Perfectly all right. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your heart. You’ve got a badly pinched nerve near the top of your spine, and those vigorous walks of yours kinked it into a vigorous protest, that’s all.”

“But – I couldn’t breathe!” whispered Missy, aghast.

“Panic, Miss Wright, panic! When the nerve kinks the pain is very severe, and it is just possible that in your case it inhibits some of the respiratory musculature. But there’s really no need to worry. I manipulated your spine myself now, and that should fix it up as long as you slow down the pace of your walking a little when you’re going some distance. If it doesn’t clear up, I suggest you rig yourself up a sort of chinning bar, have someone tie a couple of house-bricks to each of your feet, and then try to lift yourself up to your chin on the bar against the weight of the bricks.”

“And there’s nothing else wrong with me?”

“Disappointed, eh?” asked Dr. Parkinson shrewdly. “Come now, Miss Wright! Why on earth would you prefer to have heart trouble instead of a kinked spinal nerve?”

It was a question Missy had no intention of answering aloud; how could one die in John Smith’s arms of a kinked spinal nerve? It was as romantic as pimples.

Dr. Parkinson sat back in his chair and regarded her thoughtfully, tapping his pen on the blotter. It was obviously his habit to do this, for the blotter was pocked with many little blue dots, and at times, perhaps from boredom, he had begun to join up the more scattered dots into a meaningless cat’s cradle.

“Periods!” he said suddenly, apparently feeling he ought to cheer her up a little by investigating every avenue. “How often do you have a period, Miss Wright?”

She blushed, and hated herself for blushing. “About every six months.”

“Lose much?”

“No, very little.”

“Pain? Cramps?”

“No.”

“Hmmmm.” He began to join up some dots. “Headaches?”

“No.”

“Are you a fainter?”

“No.”

“Hmmmm.” He pursed his lips so successfully that the top one actually managed to caress the tip of his nose. “Miss Wright,” he said at last, “what really ails you can only be effectively cured if you find yourself a husband and have a couple of babies. I doubt you’d ever have more than a couple, because I don’t think you’ll fall easily, but at your age it’s high time you got started.”

“If I could find someone willing to start me, Doctor, believe me I would start!” said Missy tartly.

“I beg your pardon.”

At this precise and uncomfortable moment Dr. Parkinson’s nurse thrust her head around the door and wiggled her brows.

He rose immediately, semaphored away. “Excuse me.”

For perhaps a minute Missy sat immobile in her chair wondering whether she ought to get up and tiptoe out, then she decided she had better wait for a formal dismissal. Dr. Neville Hurlingford’s name leaped at her from the top of a letter on the desk, midway between a constellation of joined dots and a globular cluster of unjoined dots. Quite independently of her brain, Missy’s hand reached out, picked up the letter.

“Dear George,” it said,

“Odd that I should have to send you two patients within the same week, when I haven’t sent you any in six months. But such is life – and my practice – in Byron. This letter is to introduce Missy Wright, a poor little old maid who has had at least one attack of chest pain and breathlessness following on a long, brisk walk. The single attack witnessed was rather suggestive of hysteria except that the patient was grey and sweating. However, her return to normal was dramatically sudden, and when I examined her not long afterwards, I could find no sequelae of any kind. I do indeed suspect hysteria, as her life’s circumstances would make it a most likely diagnosis. She leads a stagnant, deprived existence (vide her breast development). But to be on the safe side, I would like you to see her with a view to excluding any serious illness.”

Missy put the letter down and closed her eyes. Did the whole world see her with pity and contempt? And how could pride contend with so much pity and contempt when it was so well-meaning? Like her mother, Missy was proud. “Stagnant”. “Deprived”. “A poor little old maid”. “With a view to excluding any serious illness”, as if stagnation and deprivation and old maidenhood were not serious illnesses within themselves!

She opened her eyes, surprised to discover that they contained not one tear. Instead, they were bright and dry and
angry
. And they began searching through the litter on Dr. Parkinson’s desk to see if among the pieces of paper there might be at least the start of a report on her condition. She found two reports, neither distinguished by a name; one had a list of findings on it that all said “normal”, the other was a technical litany of disaster, all to do with the heart. And she discovered the beginning of a letter to Dr. Hurlingford.