Silver Wattle by Belinda Alexandra

place and the pauses in his speech and the twist in his spine put him well beyond retirement but he was the only doctor Mother trusted, having brought not only Klara and myself into the world but her as well.
    ‘He may act like a stablehand but he cures like the hand of God,’ she said.
    After examining Mother, Doctor Soucek spoke with Milosh and me in the drawing room.
    ‘I cannot find a physical cause for the pains,’ he said, casting his eye over Milosh. ‘It would seem to me that they are due to anxiety and a lack of exercise.’
    ‘Whenever they can’t find a physical cause they put it down to nerves,’ Milosh said to me after Doctor Soucek had left.
    If Mother was feeling anxious, I had no doubt who was the cause of it. But Milosh surprised me. The weather had turned bitterly cold and Mother could not walk outside. So every morning and afternoon, he would link arms with her to stroll around the house.
    ‘I feel like a tourist in my own domain,’ Mother laughed.
    Milosh laughed too. I would never like him, let alone love him as much as I had loved my father. But I was glad things had improved between them.
    By Christmas, Mother was feeling better and Milosh remained attentive. He also taught Klara to play chess and me how to dance the Viennese waltz without becoming dizzy.
    ‘Don’t trust him,’ Aunt Josephine warned me when I went to visit her on New Year’s Day. ‘He’s just worked out which side of the bread is buttered and has decided to be more pleasant. Paní Benova couldn’t keep him in the same style as your mother does and he knows it. You and Klara will inherit your mother’s house and fortune. We may not yet have the vote in this new republic, but we are still the mistresses of our property—married or not.’
    I turned away. I never liked to talk about inheritances or wills. I could not imagine life without Mother. I wanted her to live forever.
    Aunt Josephine, in her efforts to introduce me to the world of independent women, arranged for us to take typing lessons in the spring together. It was a strange exercise as neither of us needed to work, but Aunt Josephine was fascinated by women who were ambitious to improve their place in the world through means other than marriage. So once a week, under the pretence of sewing together, Aunt Josephine and I travelled over the Charles Bridge to the medieval streets of Stare Mesto where we joined the typing class at the back of a leather-goods store. While Klara produced beautiful music under the guidance of paní Milotova, Aunt Josephine and I sat in a cramped room with the ambitious daughters of shopkeepers and postmistresses and learned to touch type. I was amused by my aunt who, having lived the privileged existence of an upper-class lady, was so enamoured of women who worked for their living.
    I enjoyed the lessons and the chatter of the girls before class, even though our instructress, paní Sudkova, was a tyrant. At first, her cold stare made me so nervous that when she looked over my shoulder, my fingers slipped and I ended up with a jam of keys all trying to print at the same time. ‘You must train your fingers to press and lift independently,’ she said, raising her thick eyebrows and slapping my wrist with a ruler. ‘And strike the keys harder.’ Nonetheless, once I sped up to twenty words a minute, I found myself looking forward to the classes. There was something about the rhythmic clack of keys striking the platens and the ‘ding’ of the bells when the students reached the end of a line that was hypnotic. It was not long before I progressed from drills to typing letters.
    Summer that year was more pleasant than the previous one had been. There was no sign of paní Benova, although Aunt Josephine was adamant that Milosh was only being more discreet. Mother, however, was much happier. Her stomach pains disappeared and she and Milosh attended summer balls and parties together. Aunt Josephine and I graduated from secretarial school