Affection, p.16
Affection, page 16
‘Do you know where she is?’
She shook her head.
I looked at the clothes in disarray on the floor. ‘When was the last time you spoke to her?’
‘She keeps to herself and minds her own business. Haven’t seen her since day before yesterday,’ she said. ‘Her rent’s due.’ She shook her head. ‘Dead. Oh my gawd.’
I tried to help her up, but she brushed away my hand. She stood and straightened her dress and her hair.
‘It’s not proper for a man to be alone in a room with a married woman,’ she said. Was she talking about herself or my visit to Mrs Gard?
‘I told you, I’m a doctor.’ It seemed she didn’t believe me. ‘Why did you open the door?’ I asked.
‘Thought I heard a noise; thought she and her little one might have come back.’ But I suspected she was snooping.
‘Back from where?’
She stood and backed out of the room, her hands at her cheeks. ‘Oh gawd.’
I picked up the bag and followed her.
Downstairs, in the hallway, she turned to me and said, ‘Well, what did he die of then?’
I took a little pleasure in saying, ‘Plague.’
She stopped and fanned her breast. ‘Oh my gawd,’ she said. ‘And that’s his things?’ She pointed at the bag.
‘It’s been fumigated.’
‘I don’t want that here.’
I had no intention of leaving it with the woman.
‘When you see Mrs Gard, could you tell her to see me?’ I said. ‘Or I can come and see her. My office is at the Town Hall.’
I lugged the bag down the front steps to my bicycle. Mrs Glendinning followed.
‘What’s your interest in them then?’ she said. ‘Her and her husband. Were you his doctor?’
‘Yes.’ In a way.
‘So you’d know all about them then.’
‘I didn’t know him that well.’
She smiled, having caught me out.
‘You have no idea where she is?’ I said. She shook her head, determined not to tell me anything more.
I looked at my watch. ‘I’m late.’
‘Well that ain’t my fault.’
Balancing the bag as best I could on the front, I threw my leg over the saddle.
‘Hoy.’ Mrs Glendinning stood by the front gate, snapping the green tea towel at flies. ‘If you’re looking for trouble, you won’t find it here.’
But she was wrong.
Did digging up a man and taking his possessions make me a grave-robber? I felt like a villain. Sulphur had seeped from the fumigated bag and my clothing smelled of rotten eggs.
Back at the Town Hall it was still too early for most employees to be at work so I managed to get the bag into my office without attracting questions.
I stood over it, wondering what in the blazes to do with it now. It had to be concealed, of course. It already invited questions I couldn’t answer, like why I didn’t just throw the damned thing away. I told myself I was holding it for Mrs Gard and her daughter. I should have taken it back to the police station, I supposed, but I was still worried that the woman had phthisis and might easily pass it on to her little girl. And I didn’t want Moylan asking me any more questions.
There was only one place for it. I had a corner cupboard of the public-service type, large and strong and stacked deep with old reports and stationery and useless things requisitioned mistakenly by the gross.
It had hanging space and I managed, with some rearranging, to stuff the bag inside and close the door. I walked away and heard the door open, Poe-like, with a long moan. The bag slowly tumbled out. I put it back and this time locked the damned thing in.
I sat down to finish a report to council on what we’d found in the West Point grave, but then my tooth started throbbing.
A dog charged us and disappeared into our dust.
‘What’s the rush?’ I said.
‘No rush.’
We were still within the city limits. ‘The police will have us.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Turner.
He had the whip in hand, but just the sight of it seemed to have been enough to encourage Humphry’s horse to gallop. Allan sat between us with a hand on his hat and a wide grin.
Three children cheered as we flew past the last house.
Once out of the town, heading north, Turner let the horse find its own pace.
‘Beautiful,’ said Turner, looking around the countryside. ‘I never realised.’
The hard road had turned to packed sand, which cushioned the wheels and gave us a comfortable ride through a forest of creamy paperbark trees, past a lagoon of flowers and waterbirds. The sea sparkled through the trees on our right.
I’d never been out to the common, but I could see why people took the trouble.
‘Are you all right?’ Turner was looking closely at me.
‘Tooth,’ I said.
‘You really should get that seen to.’
We seemed to float over the sandy ridges above the sea. ‘I can see why it’s popular for picnics out here.’ I was starting to enjoy the expedition, despite myself.
‘You mean you didn’t bring a picnic?’ said Turner.
‘It didn’t seem appropriate when you first mentioned popping out to look at the plague hospital site.’
Allan had said nothing, but his grin couldn’t have been broader.
We arrived in a flourish, braking abruptly at the edge of a small clearing. The hot hush of the bush wrapped around us with a swirl of dust.
‘Here it is,’ said Turner. Here it was indeed. There was a surveyor’s peg with a yellow ribbon in the middle of a low flat hillock. Coarse brown grass crackled under our feet. Just ahead were dark green swamp trees marking the course of a creek.
‘When do we start hunting?’ said Allan.
In the back of the buggy was Turner’s butterfly net and a large sugar bag on the end of a pole.
‘Business first, then some fun.’
Turner and I paced the site, imagining the tents, while Allan explored the perimeter.
‘It’s a hike,’ Turner said. ‘But there’s not much we can do about that.’
Initially there’d be three tents: a ward, a surgery and staff quarters, as well as a privy. Then there’d be the well, waste pit, incinerator, all surrounded by a barbed-wire fence.
And then a cemetery.
Clouds of small insects fled from our feet and I could see Turner’s eyes flick over them. I pinched at the grass seeds burrowing through my socks. Allan was off at the far end of the site, poking around a dead tree.
We found the spot we were looking for in the north-western corner, below where the tents would be, flat and out of sight. Turner dug his heel into the ground.
‘Seems porous enough.’
Behind, the land dropped away into a paperbark swamp.
‘Do you think the water climbs this high when it floods?’ he said.
I said I didn’t think so. The gloom I’d lost briefly on the trip seemed to have caught me up.
‘Wait there,’ and Turner went to the buggy and fetched his butterfly net and the sack on the end of a pole.
‘What on earth’s that for?’ I said, pointing to the sack.
‘It’s a surprise.’
I called Allan over, Turner handed him the pole, and we headed off down into the thicker scrub.
The ground was muddier and carpeted with branches and leaves. It was even quieter down here, a hidden glade, full of biting things, no doubt.
‘This insect’s dead,’ said Allan, picking something from the tree bark.
‘It’s the skin of a cicada. It sheds its skin as it gets bigger and leaves it behind,’ said Turner. ‘Possibly Cyclochila australasiae.’
Allan appeared to be repeating the words under his breath. He pocketed the thing.
Turner showed us a cluster of brightly coloured beetles. He poked a finger at the metallic mass so it moved as one.
‘Tectocoris diophthalmus. See here, this one has eggs,’ and he put his finger near a beetle and pushed it back, revealing a tight cluster of tiny lavender eggs. ‘What do you make of that?’ he said.
‘A clucky hen,’ said Allan.
‘Maternal concern. Rare in insects. A quality that eludes even some human beings.’
It was airless in the hollow and things kept brushing my cheek.
A butterfly flickered past and off into the tree tops. Turner’s net twitched in his hand. There was another, closer, and the net snaked out from his body and swallowed the insect. He and Allan examined it carefully.
‘A Blue Tiger, Row.’
Fancy that.
There were more, I noticed, and Allan wandered further until he was out of sight.
‘Dad!’
I took a few hasty steps and my foot – boot, socks and all – plunged into mud.
‘For the love of God.’
‘Around here.’ Allan’s voice echoed through the trees. I hobbled over, annoyed.
And then I saw the butterflies. They were hanging in their thousands from the bush like glossy black fruit.
Turner was already there. ‘Here are your Tigers, Row.’
Allan took a step closer with his bag and they took flight, most of them, creating a black cloud around the bush. Turner then walked over and stepped into the vortex.
Where the man ended and the swarm began became blurred. He held his arms out and the butterflies settled on them like a black cloak and he turned slowly and faced me, a strange bird. The insects had also perched beneath the brim of his pith helmet, obscuring his face, and the effect was like a mourning veil and a little grotesque. And then he flapped his arms and they rose in a cloud and began circling again, and he stepped away.
Allan clapped, Turner bowed, and I tried to dislodge the mud from my shoe.
‘The survivors of your little pretties blown across the bay,’ Turner said. ‘Aren’t you glad you found out where they went to?’
‘Are you going to catch some?’ said Allan.
‘They’re not actually my cup of tea,’ said Turner.
I told Allan, ‘Dr Turner’s cup of tea is coffee.’
‘Very droll, Row.’
I left Allan with Turner and returned to the clearing. Then I climbed the bank. Halfway up I stopped and looked around, savouring the quiet. Tree trunks rose around me like the columns of a Greek temple.
My eye was drawn to a stick. It appeared to be moving. A sinuous shape. I couldn’t see the beginning or the end of the snake, but its body threaded through the litter on the slope. I turned and strode uphill. It was impossible to run. I didn’t dare look back. The bush became a thick tangle and swallowed me. I pushed, it grabbed, and then with a snap it let go and I stumbled into the clearing. I backed away, panting, checking myself for spiders.
The waterbag was cool and I drank from a tin mug, sitting on the buggy’s footplate. I’d removed my shoes and socks and cleaned them as best I could, scraping the mud with a stick and plucking at grass seeds. The insects hummed. A sea breeze blew at my back. It wasn’t such a bad place to be laid up, I thought.
I walked down to the sea, mindful now of snakes. The entire sweep of bay was in front of me. I traced the horizon from West Point to the tall ships and steamers at anchor in the middle of the bay, and then to the dark line of the harbour and the whitewashed houses at the foot of Castle Hill. The tide was out and I walked down on to the firm sand, filling my lungs with clean sea air.
There were worse places to die.
I found Turner up a tree.
He’d taken his jacket off and was lying along a branch like a stick insect, waving a bread knife in front of him and expressing his efforts with small grunts.
‘Hold the dashed thing still now, Allan. Almost there.’
Allan gazed up at the little man with his mouth open in serious concentration, steadying the open bag beneath Turner. Ants were swarming all over the Government doctor, biting his bare arms and face.
‘Uh. Uh. Hold it, boy. Up. Up. That’s it. Unh. Unh.’
Allan tightened his grip on the pole and the bag seemed to sway all the more.
‘Here we go.’ The small branch fell away and into the bag, remarkably. Allan lowered it to the ground.
‘Get that cord around the end, Allan.’ Turner dropped the knife and slapped the ants from his face, before pushing himself backwards along the branch. Within seconds he was on the ground and madly brushing his arms, head, and clothes.
Allan had removed the bag from the end of the pole and cut the twine that held it to a wire hoop, tying the open end with cord so the nest and the raging horde were sealed inside. He seemed to know what to do. Amazing. He was picking ants from his arms when Turner came over and slapped him on the shoulder.
‘Good show,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we damaged it at all.’
Turner’s face was a rash of bites and one of the Lilliputians clung to an eyebrow. He looked delighted.
‘Something Dodd had mentioned,’ he said. ‘A little surprise sometimes inside these nests. I’ve been keen to take a look.’
I noticed then that there were several butchered nests nearby, and ferocious ants everywhere.
Allan was holding out his hand. In the palm was something that looked like a coin or a flat nut, brown and round.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘I have no idea,’ said Turner. ‘The larvae of some moth, perhaps. Won’t know until it hatches.’
It just lay there. ‘Is it dead?’ I said.
Allan turned it over and pointed to where he said its little legs were.
‘It lives inside the ants’ nest, Dad.’
Turner said, ‘The ants might actually protect it from other predators. Remarkable.’
Allan put it back into a paper bag.
Turner said, ‘We’ll try to hatch one, and then we’ll see what sort of creature it is.’
‘We’re going to put it in this nest,’ said Allan, pointing at the bag, ‘and keep it in a cage in the back yard.’
I said, ‘Not in our back yard.’
Turner and Allan looked up at me, their faces scratched and bitten.
‘Those things bite,’ I said.
They glanced at each other.
‘Just don’t tell your mother.’
We pulled up outside my house and Allan furtively vanished around the back with the bag of ants. Turner had suggested making a cage of an old meat safe under the mango tree. It was somewhere even Maria avoided. The mesh on the meat safe would let the ants out, but trap anything that might hatch. The thought of it made me shudder.
Back at the Town Hall, the corridor was full of chatter and pipe smoke.
I escaped into my office and shut the door, wishing I could take a bath, knowing I should see the dentist. I’d just sat down when there was a knock at the door and Mr Willmett entered.
‘You look terrible.’
‘I think I’m coming down with something,’ I said. He looked startled and I said quickly, ‘Toothache.’
Willmett was elderly and always looked a little unkempt. His eyes were hooded so that he gave the impression that he was very tired and somehow doubted everything you were telling him.
It was Willmett though who, as head of the Townsville Joint Epidemic Board, had appointed me the board’s physician. It placed me in a difficult position. What the board decided often was at odds with what the council wanted, and I was first and foremost a council employee.
Willmett, with a foot in both camps, was my best ally. As an alderman he could speak his mind; as a council employee I had to be diplomatic. Fortunately, he backed everything I proposed.
‘The Mayor called an emergency council meeting this morning,’ he said. ‘He had someone chasing you all over town.’
My heart sank. I told him where I’d been.
‘Dr Turner put the wind up him last night,’ he said.
‘He told the Mayor he was going to have the town declared.’
‘I wish Turner would talk to me before he makes those statements. The Mayor’s saying that it’s Brisbane’s meddling. We need him for us, not against us.’
‘I tried to get Turner to wait.’
‘Well. The Mayor would like a word, anyway. When you’re ready.’
McCreedy’s door was open. I knocked anyway and heard the Mayor’s voice say, ‘Come in, Dr Row. Good of you to come so quickly.’
The curtains were drawn, the room dark, the way I, McCreedy, ghost moths and vampire bats seemed to like it. There was a little light behind me, and a small lamp on the mayoral desk. I found a seat and sat. A shape hovered in the corner, its single eye red in the dark.
‘You know Mr Dawson, I take it.’
The red eye glowed brighter as I heard Dawson draw on his cigar, the sound of a small creature having the life sucked from it.
‘Whisky?’ said McCreedy.
‘All right,’ I said. My tongue probed the aching tooth. The whisky might do it some good.
McCreedy stood and poured it himself, Northern style: no ice, no water. There was a glass only because good manners demanded one before noon and indoors.
The Mayor brought it over and watched as I sipped the warm fluid, sloshing it around. It was the good stuff. From Melbourne. I nodded gratefully. The pain actually subsided.
‘This plague issue, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.’
McCreedy lit a cigarette then and puffed before continuing, ‘We should get things sorted out. Nobody’s worried more about the welfare of this town than me. Except perhaps Mr Dawson here.’ The red eye glowed bright again. ‘You follow me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mr Dawson by the way is staying in Townsville for the duration of this…this issue. With Mr Philp not able to be here, well, he’s left it to Mr Dawson to keep an eye on things and report back to Parliament and such.’
That seemed unlikely. Even I knew Philp the businessman and Dawson the Labourite despised each other over just about everything, and especially the question of kanakas. I couldn’t see the Premier asking Dawson to keep his seat warm.
