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.Flo could have worn a pretty new dress every day for a week on what they must have cost her mother.I’ve learned a great deal about Flo this afternoon.That she doesn’t speak, at least in my presence, but that her mind is clear, alert, intelligent.We pleated cardboard into grooved trays, then I asked her to pick out all the green crayons, which she did.Then I told her to arrange them in gradations of colour in a tray, and watched her deciding whether a greeny-yellow one belonged with the greens.We sorted out the reds, the pinks, the yellows, the blues, the browns, the greys, the purples andoranges, and she was never wrong.It wasn’t difficult to tell that she was enjoying herself very much, because after a while she began to hum a shutmouthed tune, a pretty melody unshaped by lips or tongue.Not once did she try to scribble on my walls, though I had wondered.We sat down on two chairs and ate potato salad and coleslaw and shaved ham, we drank lemonade, then we lay down together on my bed and had a nap.Whenever I moved about, she hung onto my leg and moved with me.I have never been as happy as I was this afternoon, being with Flo, getting the feel of her world.While her mother, that astonishing mass of contradictions, cavorted upstairs on a bed with a very sick man.What did Flo do on other Sunday afternoons? For this tryst with Harold was a weekly event; Mrs.Delvecchio Schwartz had indicated that.The Ten of Swords, the Queen of the same suit, the death.I returned Flo when I heard her mother bellowing for her angel puss.The wee child trotted along with her hand in mine, greeted her mother with no visible sign of resentment at being abandoned for two hours.I left them, my mind whirling, my heart aching.As I shut their door I glanced along the lightless hall which ran toward the back, feeling a prickle of terrible fear.And there was Harold standing in the dark, giving nothing of his presence away.I had a fancy that he had managed to fuse himself into the wall, scribbles on his bottom half, dingy cream on his top half.Our eyes met and my mouth went bone-dry.The hate! It was palpable.I couldn’t get down the stairs fast enough, though only his eyes had acknowledged me.And now, even though it’s high time I was in bed, I’m sitting here at my table studded with goose pimples.What have I done to that awful little man to earn such hatred? And who is the relevant Queen of Swords? Mrs.Delvecchio Schwartz, Pappy, Jim or me?Wednesday, March 2nd, 1960 The best thing about using an ordinary exercise book as a diary is that you don’t have blank pages reproaching you because you haven’t entered it faithfully.All I do is write in the date and start my entry right after the one before, even if it was a fortnight ago.I’m onto my second fat book already.Though my door has a mortice lock, I can pick it myself when I forget my key, so anybody with a smidgin of resource can do the same.Therefore I am hiding my finished exercise book(s) in the back of the cupboard where I keep my hunk of Tilsiter cheese.My theory is that no one, even Harold, could summon up the strength to stick his or her head inside that cupboard to hunt for anything.The pong is unbelievable! I manage to confine the stench to the interior of the cupboard by wadding up the door with plasticine, and the door bears a warning underneath a radioactive symbol and a skulland-crossbones: BEWARE OF THE CHEESE! This achieves twopurposes.One, unpicking the plasticine is laborious, so I don’t eat Tilsiter more than once a week-once I start eating it, I can’t stop.Two, my finished exercise book(s) will be safe.I make sure by embedding a hair in the plasticine, a ruse I saw in a whodunit film.The exercise book in current use goes everywhere with me, be it to Queens or the shops.One cannot be too careful with anything that contains secrets.An odd thing happened at work today.There was a big flap on in Cas-a twenty-seater plane crashed on the Mascot runway, so half went to St.George and the other half came here, the living and the dead.I hate burns.Everybody does.Six of the passengers and the two pilots went straight through Cas to the morgue, but two of the passengers were still alive when I left.Oh, the stench!Like charred roast meat, and impossible to get rid of, which meant that the other Cas patients became restive and afraid, the nurses were scared as nurses rarely are, and the sisters couldn’t be in enough places at one and the same time.Chris was off at a meeting Sister Agatha had called, and the junior was tidying up the darkroom while I mended sandbags-we weren’t busy for a change.And in walked Mr.Duncan Forsythe! I was sitting at our lone desk in the patient waiting area plying my needle, didn’t look up for a moment.When I did, my mouth fell open.Such a smile he was giving me! He really is a very goodlooking man.I managed a polite grimace and got to my feet with my hands behind my back like an obedientinferior in the presence of God.Chin and tummy tucked in, feet at attention.After a couple of years of hospital work, it comes naturally.All he wanted was the phone-the ones in Cas were running hot because of the crash, he explained.I indicated ours and stood, still at attention, while he told Switch to page his team of underlings to meet him in Chichester Four.After he replaced the receiver I expected him to depart, but he didn’t.Instead, he sat on one corner of the desk swinging one leg and staring at me.Then he asked me my name, and when I told him, he repeated it.“Harriet Purcell.It has a nice, old-fashioned sound.” “Yes, sir,” I answered, stiff as a post.Green eyes are mysterious.In romantic novels they’re always the colour of emeralds, but in my experience they’re more of a swampy green, changeful.My eyes are black, you can’t easily tell the pupil from the iris, which I daresay is why I like his eyes so much-different from mine, but not opposite.He continued to sit looking at me, quietly smiling, for long enough to make me feel the skin of my face heat up, then he slid off the desk and wandered to the door in that wonderfully absent way surgeons do, as if external forces propel them from place to place.“Goodbye, Harriet,” he said as he went out.Phew! He must be six-three, because I have to look up.Oh, what a lovely man! But Mrs
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