Affection, p.15
Affection, page 15
‘Oh Jesus Christ and all the saints, what’dya do that for ya idiot?’ said Clark.
‘You’re the idiot. I stopped pushin’ back there,’ said O’Donnell.
‘Just tip it forward,’ I suggested, and Clark put his foot to the top and pushed. Gard’s body fell stiffly face first out of the box and into his grave, letting out a sound as if he’d been punched in the stomach. The box remained standing at one end.
‘Oh Christ,’ Clark said and danced away again holding his arms over his head. His mate just stood there gaping, mesmerised by the scene.
Humphry then rose stiffly from his own grave and staggered over. He looked down at Gard’s body. ‘Good job.’
He noticed I still had hold of the empty whisky flask and he snatched it away and shook it. ‘You lot’ve been going at it a bit, haven’t you?’
Turner ignored him and continued packing his bag. Humphry went to the foot of the grave, put his shoe on the exposed end of the upright coffin, and said, ‘You finished here?’
I nodded, and he kicked. The coffin toppled in and the sound roused O’Donnell from his coma. With a sudden, manic energy the constable began shovelling dirt back into the grave.
‘Where’s that lazy mate of yours?’ said Humphry looking around.
I crouched next to Turner. ‘What do you think?’
He snapped his bag shut. ‘I think we should reserve our judgment until we see what little nasties have been eating Mr Gard.’
The wind made for a miserable trip back, the SS Teal at full throttle because the captain knew our business and, I supposed was anxious to be rid of us. Humphry slept the entire trip, or pretended to, opening his eyes only to transfer himself from the launch to the police wagon.
The wagon dropped Turner and me at the Town Hall, and no sooner had our feet hit the ground than O’Donnell flicked the reins and was off, pulling so hard the vehicle lurched dangerously in a half-circle, spraying gravel. It disappeared at a gallop, the constables anxious to get to the Shamrock with the pound Turner had slipped them. Humphry had said he’d make sure they didn’t waste it, and Turner and I were left outside the Town Hall in the twilight with the dust settling on our shoes.
There was still a small crowd of late shoppers in the street and being set down by the police was enough to get tongues wagging.
A few watched us closely, men dressed in black suits, handkerchiefs poking from the top pockets, starched collars and ties, civilisation out of context, I thought. They probably all knew who we were, but they couldn’t have guessed where we’d been or what Turner had in his bag. Still, I started to worry and hurried us inside just the same.
In his office, Turner set up his kerosene stove and started organising his autoclave. I wiped the microscope with a rag dipped in alcohol. Turner was fastidious and it took a good half-hour to have everything ready.
He removed the gland, already looking brown and dry, from the jar. He placed it on the metal tray and took a scalpel to it, smearing fluid and tissue on a slide and placed that under the lens. He twiddled a screw, adjusting the lamp, and stood back.
‘There you are, Row. Tell me what you see.’
I bent down and put my eye to the piece. ‘I’m not sure…’ I adjusted the screw.
‘You’re too close again. Take your eye back a bit.’
Then the squat oval rods were suddenly in focus.
‘Well?’ he said.
‘Pasteurella pestis,’ I said, but my voice was croaky. There was a cold significance, of course, in seeing the devil in a man rather than a rat. The hairs stood on the back of my neck.
Turner took a look.
‘Quite a few. They’re alive. The grave isn’t as cold as they say.’
He was excited and my next thought was that it was good news for Humphry: he’d been vindicated. But, of course, something sinister was happening. We were heading into a new world and this capering disease was coming with us. We could even see it, but it acted with indifference, as if nothing had changed since the Middle Ages.
It was already dark outside. Steam from the autoclave and boiling beakers filled the room.
‘Now. We have to sketch what we see.’ Turner had placed a pencil and paper beside the microscope and started drawing. It looked like something a child would do.
Afterwards, we cleaned everything carefully and scrubbed ourselves raw with phenol. There was so much alcohol and steam in the room I felt light-headed. The rag, the syringe, the soupy remains of the steward, all went to the incinerator out the back. Then we sent for the Mayor.
McCreedy was in no mood for small talk. He was dressed in a blue suit, his collar stiff, but his necktie loose. He’d just come from dinner. I realised I hadn’t had a bite since breakfast.
‘Just the facts, gentlemen,’ he said, sitting noisily opposite Turner.
Turner explained the exhumation of Gard, the examination of fluids taken from the body, the identification of the plague bacterium. He showed an astonished and pale McCreedy the sketch he’d made.
‘There’s no doubt,’ said Turner.
The Mayor looked for a long time, bringing his face closer and then further away from the drawing as if it were an optical illusion. He was probably a little drunk.
‘Mr Dawson says it was typhoid. He was adamant. Told me that Dr Routh confirmed typhoid,’ the Mayor said, and I suddenly knew with whom McCreedy had shared dinner.
‘We found no typhoid bacterium in the sample we took from Gard’s body,’ said Turner. ‘Just plague.’
McCreedy opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. He looked at the sketch again and frowned.
‘Could there have been some mistake? If Storm had plague, as you say, he got better.’
Turner said, ‘I can tell you that typhoid did not kill Mr Gard. We would have found the bacterium. So something else killed him and we found plague bacillus in his organs, in great quantities.’
‘All right, all right,’ McCreedy said. ‘What now?’
Turner stroked his beard. ‘I’d have liked to have traced all the contacts. Impossible, apparently.’
‘We have the tightest plague controls in the colony,’ said McCreedy, ignoring what Turner was saying and looking over at me. ‘The fact that the damn thing’s not in the town is testimony to that, isn’t that right, Dr Row?’
I still felt uncomfortable that Dawson and McCreedy had been having dinner.
‘I mean, we’ve done our best to protect the town and it seems to be working. This is just proof of that,’ said McCreedy. ‘You follow me?’
Turner was gazing out into the dark and appeared to be thinking aloud.
‘This may be two separate cases. I can’t say where Gard contracted the plague bacillus: it may have been directly from the other steward, but more likely on the ship. A virulent bacillus, considering how rapidly the disease took hold in the end. Septicaemic certainly.’
‘So?’ said McCreedy. ‘The man was in quarantine.’
‘So, it’s an example of how cases can pop up anywhere at any time, seemingly unrelated. It’s just a matter of time, I’m afraid, before there’s a case right here.’ Turner pointed into the night.
‘Well,’ said McCreedy, slapping both hands down on both thighs and standing, ‘I’m not sure what else I can do.’
‘We can all do more to prepare.’
McCreedy spoke as if he were in chambers. ‘I’ve just said, we are prepared. No town is better prepared. Dr Row has seen to it. We’ve swept Flinders-street from end to end. Fifteen hundred horses a day going up and down the main street, you follow me? A man can cross it now without having to scrape his shoes clean on the other side. We’ve flushed drains and sloshed so much carbolic acid around I don’t think there’s a germ alive. So many ships have been fumigated one actually caught alight.’
‘I was in Chinatown yesterday…’ said Turner.
‘Didn’t know we had a Chinatown,’ said McCreedy, with a chuckle, looking at me for some reason and winking.
‘Flinders-lane, I think it’s called,’ said Turner.
McCreedy’s face swiftly changed and flashed annoyance. ‘What the devil were you doing there?’
‘I’ve not seen conditions like that since I visited Shanghai.’
Turner could not have chosen a worse comparison. McCreedy stiffened.
‘Should plague take hold in this town, and today I believe that is more likely than it seemed yesterday, it will be conditions like those in that squalid street which will give it a home.’
McCreedy mustered his height and weight. ‘I told you what we’ve done. I’ll not be told how to run my town.’
‘Plague is at the door, Alderman McCreedy. You might think the main street is clean. I don’t – not enough to stop the disease. And despite what you say, in my time here I’ve seen a great deal of rubbish piled up, not just in Flinders-lane but everywhere behind the main street. Drains choked by rubbish. Dogs fighting over rats. Just yesterday there were children sliding down Denham-street on the slime left behind by the nightsoil cart. I counted nine horse carcasses on the town common alone. It’s all perfect cover for rats and disease. I’ve looked at Dr Row’s correspondence book. There are many things he has suggested which you have not done.’
McCreedy gave Turner a vicious look and strode to the door, before turning. ‘I’ll not be lectured –’
‘And I’m going to urge the Home Secretary to declare Townsville an infected port.’
McCreedy took a step back towards Turner. ‘What the devil are you talking about?’
‘It’s enough to have one confirmed plague death. I plan to send a telegram tomorrow.’
‘You’ll bring this town to a standstill.’
‘Plague is directly associated with the sorts of unsanitary conditions I’ve seen here. Filth and overcrowding. If you don’t move to clean the town up now, there will be no trade,’ said Turner. ‘And if it gets a foothold, nobody will want to build railway lines up here. To Bowen or Charters Towers or anywhere else. Do you follow me?’
I could have throttled Turner myself. McCreedy stood at the door with his mouth hanging open. He looked at me, and I looked at Turner.
‘Perhaps, Dr Turner, if the council had some time?’ I said, wondering how in the hell this mild man could turn so caustic.
‘Time’s run out,’ Turner said.
‘Another day?’ I said. I was trying to be conciliatory, on behalf of the council more than McCreedy.
Before Turner could reply the Mayor shook his head and said, ‘I’ll not be bullied or blackmailed,’ a hoarse whisper. He gave me a furious look and left.
Turner went back to his table. I closed the door. If anything he looked pleased with himself, but he apparently didn’t like the look on my face.
‘Calm down,’ he said.
‘Calm down? My God, are you crazy? That was the Mayor. He’s trying to help.’
‘No, he’s not.’ Turner looked at me as if I was the crazy one. ‘Not at all. He’s acting as if it’s a political scrap rather than a mortal danger. We have no time for tact.’
I threw up my hands and left Turner with his bacteria. Of course, Humphry would have applauded him, but Humphry enjoyed pointless acts of bravado himself.
I thought about finding Humphry as I had promised, to tell him what he said he already knew, that Gard had the plague. But I was tired and angry.
Out in the street I felt my cheeks still burning. A couple of drunks were singing their way down east Flinders-street and bats were diving through the darker edges of a galaxy of insects around the lamplight. One creature making a meal of another.
I walked my bicycle around the spinning circle of moths and started up Denham-street. In the dark beyond the lamplight I could hear the drunks laughing. Shapes flickered around my head and my unreasonable instincts told me that there was, indeed, danger in the dark.
chapter nine
Liphyra brassolis: The moth butterfly
…He climbed the tree and started chopping at a branch with a small axe. Oecophylla smaragdina had made a nest by sewing the leaves together with the silk of their own young, which they held and used like darning needles. The nest was in turmoil when it came down, the ants swarming at us, rising on their hind legs and spitting. Seizing a pair of scissors and mindless of the ants biting his arms, he cut open the nest, showing me something the size and colour of a halfpenny. This turned out to be the armoured and flattened larvae of our Liphyra brassolis which lives inside the ants’ nest and, unlike any other caterpillar I know, eats the ant grubs, its head safe from what must be daily attack underneath its burnished copper back. I remembered Dr Turner saying ‘Heads or tails?’ and made as if to flip the thing, which then was still a mystery, a good puzzle for Mr Darwin, and an eloquent example of God’s hand in nature if ever one was needed…
Observations of My Father (unpublished), Dr Allan Row (1948)
THE FAT BLUE GRUB of Gard’s canvas bag rested against my legs.
Boots at the bottom, clothing, letters and postcards tied with a bootlace, a pipe, tobacco, buttons, razor and strop. I knew this without opening it. Every man’s life could be boiled down to these mundane things.
But I owed the man something, I felt. He had helped me carry Storm; he tried to warn me. He put his trust in me and perhaps I’d let him down. I felt a certain amount of responsibility for his death. There you go.
The man who spoke over Gard’s grave had, it seemed, delivered his personal effects to the police station, and Sergeant Moylan had duly locked them in the cell they used for such things. They had been fumigated with the rest of the Cintra luggage.
A dead man’s kit is a heavy burden. It might have sat immoveable for days or weeks or years with all the other abandoned possessions the police collect, until someone claimed it or it was dragged out and burned.
Moylan had been surprised when I mentioned that Gard had a wife in town, surprised I knew where she lived, but he’d offered me the bag, probably relieved to be rid of it.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he had said then, as he dragged it from under the bunk.
‘Yes.’
‘You knew her?’
‘No. I delivered a message. From her husband.’
‘Poor woman.’
I nodded.
‘It’s a terrible thing.’
Moylan was sitting on the bunk with a suitcase on each side and scratching his mutton chops.
‘Would you mind asking the poor soul if she’d like a visit from Father Walsh?’
I had said I would ask, of course, not wishing to cloud the issue by telling him what I knew: that she wasn’t Catholic, that she might be ill, that she had a child, that I might have broken quarantine by delivering the letter, that I might have been partly responsible for her husband’s death.
I had picked up the bag and tested its weight. It wasn’t much to show for a life.
I’d managed to balance it across the handlebars of the Carbine, corpus delicti, to Glendinning’s Boarding House. The place was quiet. I met no one on the stairs.
And so, resting the bag against my leg, I knocked on number eight.
‘Mrs Gard?’
There was no answer and no movement. I knocked again.
‘Mrs Gard. It’s Dr Row. Please open the door.’
But it was quiet and I sensed only space within. The canvas bag slumped slowly to the floor in despair and I kicked it away with childish anger. And then, feeling bad, I bent to pick it up and found myself face to face with the door knob.
I put my hand on it, it turned and I pushed. The door opened. When I let go, it swung fully in of its own accord, revealing a slice of dingy room.
‘Mrs Gard?’
But she wasn’t there. I dragged the bag through and toed the door closed behind me before I’d fully considered my actions.
I set the bag against the end of the iron bed. There was clothing on the floor. One door of a wardrobe was open and some dresses hung limply. The room was hot and heavy with her scent, but I resisted opening the window for air.
I felt like a thief and wondered if I was now adding to the woman’s woes by violating her life.
On a washstand was a jug and cracked basin, a washer still wet. Red hairs clung to a comb. I picked it up and put it down. On the dresser were some creams, a bottle of Eno’s Fruit Salt, no jewellery.
There was a pencil in my pocket and I was looking about for paper when I realised how stupid I was being. I shouldn’t be in the room, no matter the urgency of the news. But what to do?
Should I leave the bag or take it with me and try again later?
If I left it and Mrs Gard came back and saw her husband’s things, what would she think? That wouldn’t do.
If I could find some innocent piece of paper I could slip a note under the door.
I was reaching for the knob, suddenly anxious to leave, when there was a light knocking. I froze, mortified, the knob turned and the door opened towards me. I thought of jumping into the cupboard; ridiculous. There was no time.
Mrs Glendinning saw the bag against the end of the bed and put a hand to her breasts.
‘So sorry…’ I began, and at the sight of me she recoiled, her eyes wide.
She mouthed the words, ‘Jesus Mary and Joseph,’ but nothing came out and if she hadn’t reached out then and clutched at the doorframe she’d have fallen back into the hallway.
I led her to the edge of the bed and closed the door again. She was gulping and I hoped I hadn’t killed her, too.
After a minute or so the colour came back to her face.
‘I’ve brought her husband’s things,’ I said, trying to sound official, pointing at the bag. ‘The door was open.’
‘Wasn’t,’ she said, gasping and wiping a tea towel over her face, ‘when I come in.’
‘I came to drop off her husband’s things,’ I said again.
She took a deep breath. ‘Her husband’s things?’
‘He’s dead.’
She looked at me as if I might have killed him. ‘Oh dear.’
