'Hispano Suiza?' asked Dr Grigson (whose Daimler Benz sat quietly rusting in the shed beside which I stood). 'Did you say Hispano Suiza?' A shard of glass fell to the courtyard and shattered at my feet.
'I did, sir.'
The figure disappeared from the window and I went to stand at the back door. I heard footsteps descending the stairs at quite astonishing speed. Minutes later I heard high heels and the voice of my beloved echoing through the house.
I waited. No one came for me. Only after Annette Davidson, unprotected by cardboard, had released a loud cascade of urine into what had once been Ballarat's only upstairs water closet, was I able to make my presence known.
55
Dr Grigson was two days past his seventy-fifth birthday which he had celebrated alone. His hair was almost gone and his neck and spine had stiffened to such an extent that, in order to alter his point of view, it was necessary that he change the position of his tiny feet, which he did with small shuffling movements.
He had been washing his dishes and his rolled sleeves revealed skin of an almost unbearable limpidity, like a fish who has lived at such a remove from the sun that its internal organs are displayed beneath its transparent skin, a spectacle to make the sensitive squirm and turn away at such a display of the squishy vulnerability of life.
It was Annette (her bladder bursting) who had kept him from the motor car. She had taken him by his narrow shoulders and turned him in his tracks.
'I am sorry to be so blunt, Dr Grigson,' she said, 'but I need your toilet as a matter of some urgency.'
Dr Grigson found himself incapable of arguing with such firm resolve and, under the impression that his visitors had driven in an Hispano Suiza simply to make use of his water closet, led them to it without complaint.
'There is no hurry,' he told Annette as she closed the door, 'we will look at the car in a moment.'
By the time Annette had relieved herself and admitted me through the back door, Molly had made the nature of her business clear and was already locked away with Dr Grigson in the consulting room.
Very little had changed in the waiting room in thirty years. The roses and delphiniums still entwined on the carpet which, if threadbare in places, and faded everywhere, was spotlessly clean. The telephones and Remington typewriters and Graphaphone dictating machines lay ready for the use of secretaries who were now grandmothers, their generous bosoms soft pillows for the bumping heads of their daughters' children.
Phoebe was giggling.
'My God,' she whispered as Annette and I came up the stairs, 'what an extraordinary place. It's a museum.'
'What sort of doctor is he?'
Phoebe shrugged. We stood in the middle of the room. The ancient chairs had the appearance of valuable exhibits easily damaged by the simple demands of everyday life. We hesitated to sit on them.
The consulting room door opened. We had a brief view of the widow in her underwear. She scuttled behind the door as Dr Grigson emerged and shuffled mechanically, jointlessly, amiably across the roses and delphiniums.
He began to fuss at a large wooden filing cabinet whose small drawers were packed with musty filing cards. Long-bottled odours flooded gratefully into the room.
'Ah,' he said to me, 'the driver!' He nodded to me as a kindred spirit. 'Rourke,' he called out to Molly who was now safely tucked away behind the door. 'There were Rourkes at Creswick. Were you a Creswick Rourke?'
'Ballarat East,' said Molly in a wobbly falsetto that betrayed her state of undress. 'Mrs Ester's niece.'
'Ah, Mrs Ester, yes. Yes, yes.' He took out a grey card. 'Please help yourself to sweetmeats.' He offered the bowl of confections to me. I obliged by offering it to the two ladies while Dr Grigson shuffled back into his consultation.
The sweets had faded wrappers whose substance had long ago melted with what they were intended to contain. We chewed and made faces. I was spitting mine into my handkerchief when I was nearly discovered by the doctor as he scurried out again, turning head and body this way and that, but whether from curiosity or fear of attack was not exactly clear. He flung open a high glass-fronted cupboard and began sorting through cardboard boxes. The odours of perished rubber and elastic joined the must from the index cards in our wrinkled noses.
'I had the first automobile in Ballarat,' he said over his shoulder, 'a Daimler Benz. They thought I was crazy. When I recommended sewerage at a town meeting Harry Wall said he would throw me into it.'
He held up an astonishing elastic and metal contraption for the benefit of his audience.
'There,' he said, 'she's lucky. Or should I say, fortunate.' The distinction was obviously important in Dr Grigson's mind and he did not lower the contraption until I had smiled and nodded my head in agreement. Grigson, satisfied, returned to Molly who burst into tears the minute the door was closed.
'He's a quack,' Annette said. 'It's obvious. We should take her out of here.'
I was inclined to agree with her but one glance at Phoebe showed that she would have none of it. Annette quickly took the place beside her and left me to find less attractive accommodation.
56
Grigson placed Molly's hand on the velvet cushion and stroked it with his parchment-dry hands.
'There,' he said, 'does that feel better?'
'Yes, doctor,' she smiled through her tears. 'Oh yes, thank you.'
'We are only electricity,' the doctor said, and she did not doubt him. She gave herself to the belt and to the soothing strokes of the old hands which became inseparable in her mind. She closed her eyes. She multiplied some numbers, slowly at first.
'Of course,' Grigson said, 'it offends people to acknowledge it. It offends their primitive idea of themselves. It offends their religious principles. But if there is a god, perhaps', he smiled, 'he is an electric charge. And why not? The Ark of the Covenant was an electric generator, although I have been physically threatened for saying such a thing.'
Molly silently worshipped the electric god and begged its forgiveness.
'You are fortunate to find me still here,' he said, not for a moment stopping the stroking. 'I have been considering moving to Dubbo.'
Molly shuddered at the thought.
'The town has gone backwards. I blame it on the gold,' he said. 'A marvellous conductor. The best conductor of electricity known to man and they waste it on decoration. This was a city of great potential, built on gold, and the fools squandered it. There has been no progress, nothing. They would rather go to spiritualists, herbalists. There is no belief in science,' said Dr Grigson who had, just the same, borrowed the idea of the velvet cushion from a Chinese herbalist of my acquaintance.
'Rhinoceros horn, monkey foetus, snake livers,' he sighed. 'It is quite extraordinary. Which is why', he said, 'it is an especial pleasure to help someone in an Hispano Suiza.'
Molly was weak with relief and gratitude. She smiled at him dreamily. She would have offered him the car as payment.
'Would you like…'
'… a drive?' Grigson smiled. 'Would you offer?'
'Of course,' Molly said, arranging her stole. She could have sung. 'It would give me pleasure.'
'I can ask no other fee', the doctor said, 'than to drive around the streets of Ballarat in an Hispano Suiza.'
