Affection, p.12
Affection, page 12
I watched her when she had her back to me. Sometimes lately, staring at the bow of an apron, I could imagine that I didn’t know her at all. Once, a few days before, I couldn’t remember her name. I’d had to think back to when we first met. I’d been studying in Ireland, and had admired her riding. She taught French, she said. I thought she was frightfully aristocratic. Miss Maria Mahood.
Australians could ride, but it turned out most were a linguistic disappointment, and Mrs Linford Row had made a habit of voicing it, I suppose. It had been amusing at first.
Maria put breakfast in front of me.
I stared at the sausages and eggs. The toothache had returned and I wasn’t hungry.
‘Allan says you’ve been angry.’ Her voice was quiet, flat, uninflected.
I pricked the sausage and it spat at me. ‘Did he tell you why?’
She picked up a tea towel and stood over the tub, looking out the window. I watched her now in the light. ‘Perhaps if someone took the time to teach him how to shoot.’
I put down my fork. This was almost a conversation. ‘Are you suggesting I teach him how to shoot?’
She suddenly screamed, ‘As-tu perdu la tête?’ and rushed from the kitchen, throwing the towel to the floor as she ran.
Damn it! ‘It’s not me who’s out of his mind,’ I shouted back. I stood and followed her out the front door.
Maria was on the road, swearing at the man driving the nightsoil cart.
‘My children walk here, debile!’ pointing at the road. The man had stopped and was looking over his shoulder from my wife to the place on the road she pointed at. He then turned to me, shrugged, and drove off.
‘Va chez le diable!’ and lifting her skirts Maria turned and stormed past me.
I found my jacket and decided to get the devil away myself.
A breeze had sprung up and brought with it the smells of other breakfasts. A dog which had come out through a gate pattered happily beside me until I reached the top of Denham-street. The dog stopped at a telegraph pole and was left behind as I gave the Carbine its head, and in a moment of furious exhilaration I passed the nightsoil cart and executed a smooth sweep into Sturt-street.
I’d had one victory in council. The municipality had agreed to employ a team of workers to sweep Flinders-street daily. Sturt-street, though, which ran parallel to it, was still covered with the drying scabs of horse pats.
I dodged as many as I could, but couldn’t avoid the smell of rotting scraps from rubbish piled in back yards. Here in the ditch were paper bags and green beer bottles, and there a dead dog, black with flies. And another dead dog. If a shopkeeper didn’t move a carcass, it could stay there for days. Some of the more exceptional carcasses became landmarks by which people would be directed to some shop or other. They were particularly useful to strangers because few of the streets were signed.
The boarding house faced two streets and had wide iron-laced verandahs along each frontage. It would have been a handsome building if it hadn’t been painted green. Also in white lettering on a green board at the front was: Glendinning Townsville Boarding House.
I leaned my bicycle against the picket fence. The gate was open, the door wide for a breeze, the hallway empty, but I could hear creaks and the groan of water pipes.
I walked up the path and through the open door. On the hallway wall were some drab prints of Ireland. The front room had been set for breakfast. I followed the sounds of cooking to the kitchen, and knocked on the green doorframe.
A stout woman with grey hair appeared, holding a towel.
‘Take a seat,’ she said, and disappeared.
I stepped through the doorway.
‘Blimey,’ she said, from the stove. ‘I’ll be with you in a tick. Take a seat.’
I started to say something, but then decided to wait until she’d finished, and went back into the dining room, listening to the scrape of a frypan, more sizzling sausages.
A man shuffled into the room and looked at me with red eyes, nodded and took a seat at a corner table. He produced a bottle of beer from the folds of his coat and put it on the table, stared at the bottle for a moment, then opened it deftly with a flick of the wrist and perhaps a coin he had in his hand.
‘You one of mine?’ The woman I assumed was Mrs Glendinning was at the door. She looked me up and down. ‘You’re not, are you. If you’re after a room we’re full up.’
‘I’m looking for someone,’ I said.
‘You won’t find him here.’
‘If I told you who –’
‘Whoever it is, he’s not here,’ she said, and went over to her other guest, grabbed the beer bottle and strode with it back into the kitchen. The man at the table simply stared at the place where the bottle had been. The landlord taketh away. I followed Mrs Glendinning into the kitchen.
It seemed unlikely Walter Gard’s wife would still be here, or Gard would have known, surely. The Post Master had simply looked the name up in his directory.
‘I’ve a message to deliver, that’s all,’ I told Mrs Glendinning.
‘Is that right?’ and she poured the beer on to a pile of greasy plates in the sink.
I looked around at the kitchen’s turmoil. The floor looked as though it had been washed a few days earlier. The stove was clean, but a grey scum and beer foam lapped the plates in the sink. A rooster crowed loudly near the back door, which was open for the flies. A dog was sniffing at a large bucket of scraps and slunk away with a chop bone.
‘I’m not a constable,’ I said.
She looked me up and down, suspicious now I’d mentioned the police.
‘You got no business in here then.’
She stood in front of me, her hands twisting a filthy dishcloth into a rope, and I thought she was about to shoo me out like a child.
‘Mrs Gard?’ I said. ‘Is she still here?’
‘I already told you she’s not.’ She flicked the cloth, ‘Sorry,’ and turned away.
‘Mrs Glendinning, I’m the municipal health officer.’
Without turning she said, ‘Ah bloomin’,’ and threw the dishcloth on the floor, standing by the sink with her back to me. ‘You can’t close me down.’
I looked around the kitchen and thought I probably could.
‘I keep the place clean,’ she said, gesturing at the cracked floor. ‘You take a look. I do what I gotta. Oh bloomin’…’ She turned and her chin was wobbling.
‘I’m just here to deliver a message to a Mrs Gard.’
She didn’t seem to believe me. ‘I can’t…I don’t…’
She picked up the dishcloth and wiped her hands on it.
‘If you tell me she’s not here and I learn later that she is here,’ I said, ‘I’ll be back with a sanitation inspector.’
She threw the cloth down again.
‘Number eight,’ she gestured behind me with her chin. ‘Up the stairs. She won’t take kindly to someone visiting this early.’
She followed me out of the kitchen. The man who’d lost his breakfast drink had his head in his hands. I set my foot on the yellow stair runner.
‘Hope you are who you say you are,’ she said, but added, ‘Left at the top. Second door on yer right.’
I put my hand on the banister. A cockroach scuttled between my feet, hit the bottom board and then ran into the hall. Mrs Glendinning tried to tread on it and then followed it down the hallway stamping a foot. ‘Git. Go on, git yer little bugger. Bloomin’…’
I climbed the stairs.
Outside number eight I paused, trying not to breathe too hard, turning an ear towards the nicotine-stained door. The hallway smelled of tobacco and stale beer.
Someone was coughing, and I knocked. Silence. I knocked again and there was a muffled voice.
‘Mrs Gard?’ I said.
‘Who is it?’ A woman’s voice.
‘My name is Dr Row. Are you Mrs Gard?’
‘Why?’ The voice caught and there was a cough and then breathlessly, ‘Who’s this?’ louder, and I imagined both of us now pressing our heads together, a door’s thickness apart.
‘I have a message. From your husband.’
A long pause. ‘My husband?’
‘You are Mrs Gard?’
Another long pause. ‘Is he here?’
‘He sent a message.’
A cough. Then a child’s voice and the woman saying, ‘Shoosh,’ and then, ‘What’s the message?’
‘It’s in a letter.’
‘Slip it under the door.’
I stood back and looked at the thin gap beneath the door and took the letter from my pocket.
‘I can’t,’ I lied.
There was a curse and then the shuffle of feet, and eventually the scrape of a bolt being drawn and the door opened a few inches. Part of a face appeared, a pale blue eye, pale powdery skin, light red hair over a smooth white forehead.
She held out a thin hand. And then she opened her mouth and coughed.
I stood there, stunned, and watched her, the red hair tied back, her thin white neck, as her body shuddered.
‘Bad cough.’
She nodded.
She eventually raised her head, wiping her hand across her mouth, her eyes watering.
‘Mummy,’ from behind her.
‘I said shoosh.’
I tried to catch a glimpse of the little girl.
‘I’ve seen you before,’ I said.
Her eyes narrowed suddenly and she went to close the door again.
‘Wait. The letter.’ I held it out and she tried to snatch it, but I pulled it out of her reach.
‘I don’t know you,’ she said.
‘Church. We go to the same church.’
She seemed to relax a little, and looked me up and down. ‘How’d you know where I was?’ she said.
‘I found your address at the post office.’
‘Does he know I’m here?’
I shook my head. ‘He just gave me the letter.’
‘Where is he then?’
‘At the quarantine station.’
She screwed up her forehead. ‘Sick?’
‘No. No.’ Hadn’t she heard? She grabbed at the letter again and this time I wasn’t quick enough. I thought she’d close the door in my face, but she kept it open and held the letter up. Her pale red lips formed the words of her own name. Her skin was slightly freckled and dusty dry.
Then she slammed the door. Somewhere down the hallway, a man was shouting for someone to damned well shut up.
I stood there wondering if I should go, but I thumped the door again with the palm of my hand. It opened a fraction.
‘What?’
I didn’t know what. I could smell her scent.
‘I’m a doctor.’
‘So?’
‘I could examine you both.’
Her eyes narrowed again. ‘I have my bag,’ I added quickly, holding it up.
‘What for?’
‘Your cough. You sound ill. There’s medicine I could get for you.’
I had to press myself against the wedge of the door and lean close to speak with her. She kept hold of the knob, looking me up and down.
‘You don’t look like no doctor.’
I could see past her a narrow slice of room, a glimpse of her life, an impression of cobwebbed ceiling, bottles on a dresser, clothes on the floor, a doll. I couldn’t see the child.
Mrs Gard wore a dress so thin that the light from behind her seeped through, outlining a sliver of her body, her hip, the sketch of a breast pressed against the cotton.
‘I’m a doctor. With the council.’
‘I’m all right.’ She drew an arm across her nose and looked down at the letter again. ‘Don’t tell him I’m here.’
‘He’s your husband,’ I said.
She looked into my eyes and for a moment it seemed as if I was looking into the face of a drowning woman.
Then she shut the door.
‘Maybe I’ll see you in church?’ I called out, but there was no reply. Down the hallway someone started laughing.
I was still shaken when I walked through the door to Turner’s office.
‘Roll up your sleeve,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Come.’
He picked up a huge hypodermic syringe from an enamel kidney dish on his table and squirted a little yellow fluid into the air.
‘Haffkine’s serum.’
‘I’ve already had one.’
‘This one’s better. New batch just arrived. Twenty-six doses. Sleeve.’
He came around the table and plunged a hot steel ball into my arm.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘No need to blaspheme, Row. And don’t tell me that hurt.’
‘It bloody did.’
‘Nonsense.’
He put some blotting paper on the blossom of blood and I held it there, flexing my arm, trying to get the ball rolling. He went back to his laboratory to clean up, and appeared more excited than usual.
‘Why the rush?’ I said.
‘Just had a look at another rat,’ he said, and he pointed to the microscope. ‘Take a look.’
I knew what I’d see, of course. Nevertheless, when I took my eye away I felt a little out of breath.
‘Pasteurella pestis?’ I said.
‘No question. Not many, but enough.’ I thought he was about to applaud, but he wrung his hands together and said, ‘Coffee?’
He went through his coffee ritual.
‘As I say, only twenty-six doses. It’s nowhere near enough, of course. All medical staff, health officials and contacts? No. I’m hoping to get some dried serum, but we don’t have enough for an outbreak.’
‘I can give you your shot now if you like,’ I said.
‘Very kind, but I’ve done it myself.’
I inspected the wound and the bleeding had already stopped, but I pressed the paper to it again and rolled the sleeve down carefully.
‘No need to be alarmed, Row. That’s just a booster. More vaccine’s on its way from India,’ Turner was saying. ‘In all the Australian colonies there are only five hundred doses left. We’re lucky to get twenty-six, I suppose. Now,’ he checked his watch, ‘let’s go for a stroll.’
Turner was whistling a tune. It may have been ‘Annie Laurie’, but I couldn’t be sure. He may have been tone deaf. We stopped to watch a sea-eagle.
‘“A fing of beauty is a joy for ever”,’ he said.
I asked him if I should have my family vaccinated.
‘Do you have rats?’
‘No.’
‘I wouldn’t worry just yet. We need all the doses we have at the moment just for medical staff.’
The raptor made lazy circles as it followed Ross Creek west. Another joined it.
‘It’s quite a beautiful spot. From up here,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think?’
He waved his hand over the town. The tableau in front of us was more grey than green, the coastal plain stretching south into swamps and saltpans, a slate-grey sea, grey scrub rising to blue-grey mountains, and in the west smoke and dust to the horizon.
‘It’s not jolly old England though,’ I said.
‘No. Did I tell you – I was actually born in China.’
He started prattling on. His father was a missionary, and the family lived in Canton until his parents fell ill with some Oriental disease and they all moved back to London. Public school, University College Medical School, and then to Australia, for his health. He took a deep breath and slapped his thin chest.
‘And you believe you’ve come to the right place?’ I said.
‘Of course. What about you, Row?’
‘I’m a native, I’m afraid.’
‘I meant here. Why Townsville?’
‘You know why I’m here.’ I didn’t want to answer any more of Turner’s damned questions. ‘Maria’s health.’
‘She’s ill?’
‘You know what I mean.’ I snapped, I suppose, but Turner of all people should understand.
We walked in silence for a while. I gathered we were heading for the hospital. It was on the other side of the ridge that ran from Castle Hill towards the mouth of the creek. It was a good site for a hospital, away from the stench of the creek and its beard of swamps and bogs, the coastal waterholes, and the stagnant drains that criss-crossed the settlement. The sick convalesced on its screened verandahs with their backs to the town and had a splendid view of the sea if they could enjoy it.
We were too heavily dressed for the outing. Turner took off his pith helmet to wipe his brow and the wind caught his hair and blew it across his head. Everything he did seemed to be done with a boyish enthusiasm, a clumsy disregard for how it made him appear, a sort of guilelessness that I supposed would become either annoying or endearing.
‘What you gain from risking an adventure more often than not compensates for what you’ve left behind,’ he said. ‘In fact, the soul usually makes a profit on the deal. In my experience.’
‘You think I did the right thing? Coming north.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I’m not sure what I’m doing here,’ I heard myself say, before I could shut my mouth.
‘Well,’ said Turner, ‘it’s probably a question we should all ask ourselves from time to time.’
The chief surgeon, Dr William Bacot, was pacing the hospital corridor. He had his hands in his pockets and his head bowed as he marched towards us, but just before we collided he turned on his heel and went the other way.
I cleared my throat and he looked back over his shoulder, annoyance passing quickly, replaced by a tight, thin smile.
Bacot looked older than I, but younger than Turner. He must have been in his late thirties and had a long face and the professional man’s moustache: the carefully tended variety in the shape of bicycle handlebars, worn by the men he thought of as his peers. He also had a reputation for having a short fuse and I tried to avoid him.
‘Blasted suicides, you know. Should be a law. Well, I suppose there is, but who’s ever charged, eh?’
He led us down a long corridor, explaining how he was treating his second attempted self-poisoning for the week. Rough on Rats. Hadn’t we noticed?
No, I said. I read the list of registered deaths and hadn’t seen that many poisonings.
