Free Bittersweet by Colleen McCullough Page A

gestates, bears, and suckles until they’re old enough to eat and drink. There are three boys between thirteen and sixteen, then a gap followed by three girls between six and nine. And Mikey, aged two.”
    “Why the gaps, Sister?” Tufts asked. “Was Vesper serving prison sentences?”
    Meg Moulton’s blue eyes grew round. “That’s a clever deduction, Scobie. Sergeant Cameron could make police enquiries.”
    “Are the boys in school?” Kitty asked.
    “No, definitely not.” Sister Moulton sighed. “Well, you have to know, and you’ve been nursing long enough not to be shocked. The headmaster of the Corbi school has lodged a complaint with Sergeant Cameron. The three little Vesper girls have all been interfered with by their father and their brothers.”
    “The youngest is only six,” Edda said, mouth dry, “and none has reached puberty.”
    “So Vesper must be aware that trouble is coming from all directions,” said Grace, who had grown enough not to cry. “He ought to be hanged!”
    “They won’t do that,” said Tufts, “but he will go back to jail for a long time.”
    Junior Sister poked her head around the door. “Michael Vesper is here,” she said.
    Room One was too tiny to have contained a full-sized bed, but Mikey Vesper was in a cot that accommodated him spaciously. Though Kitty knew his age, he did indeed look no more than half of it, and the abdominal distension that went with malnutrition gave a false impression of substance. He had a fine fair skin and curly brown hair; immense dark eyes set in an oddly elderly face told his story, for they were stern, intelligent, composed. Not a beautiful child, save for the eyes. A highly experienced nurse, Meg Moulton knew Mikey was one of those children with the power to haunt even waking dreams.
    Overlooked and underfoot in his own home Mikey might have been, but his sarcomatosis had thus far spared his brain, as Tufts and Kitty, sharing a long double shift, soon discovered. Both of them understood that Mikey was one patient who would be given as much opiate as he wanted to stem the intractable pain; addiction was not a consideration for a dying patient. And he was so grateful for a tiny drop of opiate! What must his agony have been like, month after month as the cancer spread, without anyone attempting to ease his torments? Morphine had him beaming — thank God he wasn’t one of those it nauseated! Not that he begged for more opiate; he saved the injections for real need, explaining to Grace in the middle of a wakeful night that if he was sedated all the time, he wouldn’t know all his lovely nurses the way he did. Kitty danced the Charleston for him while he laughed and clapped, Tufts danced the seven veils with Frank Campbell’s darned sheets, and Edda played tunes onmetal bowls and basins, singing nonsensical songs. Whatever his nurses did for him, Mikey loved.
    His only visitor was Maria, the middle Vesper girl, who would appear like a ghost out of nowhere to stand at the foot of Mikey’s cot and listen as he breathlessly regaled her with all the wonderful things his nurses were doing for him, from the needle pricks that eased his pain to the craziest Kitty song-and-dance. Not that Maria visited every day; perhaps one day in five. What she couldn’t possibly have mistaken was Mikey’s devotion to Kitty. Though he loved all four, Kitty held pride of place in his heart. What transpired between the two Vesper children remained private; the nurse on duty was almost inevitably Kitty, who respected their family ties by leaving them alone for fifteen minutes if Mikey was well enough; Maria’s visits always saw his condition improve.
    Sergeant Jim Cameron of the New South Wales Police Force had grown very interested in the Vespers, between Mikey’s neglect, the schoolteacher’s complaints that Bill Vesper and his sons were sexually molesting the Vesper girls, and his rooted conviction that Vesper was rustling fat lambs. Head of the Corunda