Affection, p.2
Affection, page 2
I’d wandered down to the foyer in a daze and hesitated at the heavy glass and bronze revolving doors that opened to the city of Brisbane.
It was past noon and the Ann Street trams were filling with office workers going home for Saturday lunch. A motorcar flashed by in a blue cloud and across the street were the brightly modern display windows of a new department store.
Two women arm in arm went out through the doors, letting in the sickly odour of burnt gasoline. Not even the smell of blood brings back so vividly that je ne sais quoi of Belgium, of ambulances steaming in the mud. I looked for a seat.
The Board of Medical Health is a brick nest of bureaucrats and I found a hard bench in its colonial foyer. I picked up a magazine from a pile in front of me, pretending I had some business there, and closed my eyes for a minute, breathing deeply. The feeling passed. I could hear across the hallway that the young men were finishing typing, scraping chairs and clearing their desks for the weekend.
It fell quiet after a short time and I opened my eyes and found I had a Medical Gazette in my hand, and so I thumbed it while I took my breather, realising I needed something to eat, wondering what else I should do with my time in the city, not really reading.
When I felt better, I looked up to find that the clerks had already vanished. I stood, and with the magazine still in hand walked across the hall. I poked my head inside, ready to beg a light if asked, but the typing pool was deserted.
I walked in and looked around. The desks were in neat rows, swivel chairs and overflowing ashtrays. I spotted a telephone near the door and ambled over to it, examining it as if I had a particular interest in the damned thing. I looked over my shoulder before taking the earpiece off its cradle, and in a world of electric humming a voice asked to whom I wished to be connected. I asked if there was a number listed for an A.J. Turner, doctor.
There was. But there was no answer at his surgery.
Well.
Would I like to be connected to his home?
He has a number at home?
It’s listed; he’s a doctor, said the woman.
Well, so was I, but I asked politely to be connected.
I waited and heard a woman’s voice, a long way away, saying she’d take the call.
Mrs Turner? I said. Was Dr Turner there?
Dr A. Jefferis Turner couldn’t come to the telephone, she said, but who was I and what was it that I wanted?
When I told her she seemed unsurprised, though I couldn’t have expected her to remember me. She said she’d ask the doctor and I imagined him bent over one of his trays in a parlour patiently listening to Hilda relay my questions. After a pause, and some repeating, she told me Dr A. Jefferis Turner was not free today, but would be free tomorrow.
I said I was in town only for a few hours, but not to worry, I would…I heard some discussion in the distance. She said Dr Turner would meet me tomorrow at my residence.
‘But I live in Moreton Bay,’ I said.
Yes.
So I gave instructions, the ferry time, she passed them on, and I heard her voice fade until there was just the crackle of the wire, and after a minute the operator asked me if I’d like to be reconnected. I told her I’d hang up, and placed the earpiece back in its cradle feeling vaguely foolish.
And here we were.
There were now low, grey clouds flying over Moreton Bay and the whole damned Asylum for Inebriates felt as bleak as it could manage as we walked across the compound from Block F back to Block B, where by chance Turner found someone he seemed to know sitting on the verandah with a rug over his knee.
The sight of this frail old man might have saddened Turner, but he didn’t show it. Anyway, the old man was one of my happy ones and a very good bluff, saying ‘There you are,’ but there was little substance after the introduction. The old man, a former doctor himself, hid his own confusion well. He posed a few testing questions about the care of his horses, but his humour trickled away when he learned we had failed to bring a bottle for which he’d apparently asked.
Turner spent a good half an hour by his side, managing to get him talking about some ancient and amusing treatment for dengue, and I was happy to see the old man on relatively firm ground.
Then, having satisfied himself that his old friend was in good hands – mine – Turner accepted an invitation to coffee in my office.
‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘How vewy appwopwiate.’
My office and surgery was a free-standing building distinguished from the others by having its own garden, Maria’s handiwork. The red and yellow cannas tried hard to be cheerful.
We left our hats and his net by the door.
Inside it was just a little less grey. I showed him around, but there was not much to see. A humble surgery, a dispensary, and then my office. Along one full wall of the office was a bookcase. Amongst the reports and books of previous medical superintendents, the medical books and temperance texts, were some novels, which Turner was now surveying. For some reason he went straight to Great Expectations and took it down. He must have seen the silver flask hidden behind it, but he replaced the book and kept browsing without a word.
I felt compelled to explain that I sometimes took Dickens down when the weather closed in during winter and read it by a fire, just for atmosphere, this was that sort of place; ‘…for the night-wind has a dismal trick of wandering round and round a building of that sort, and moaning as it goes; and of trying, with its unseen hand, the windows and the doors; and seeking out some crevices by which to enter.’ That sort of thing.
He seemed amused.
On such occasions I’d take the flask and risk a nip, I said, a little cheer-me-up.
He nodded.
As it happened, just as we took our seats by the window, the sun came out and spoilt the splendidly grey scene. Just offshore was Peel Island, the lazaret and the old quarantine station. It occurred to me that I should invite the Home Secretary to inspect it, but I suppose he never had any serious intentions for it. On a day like today it was a bleaker version of Dunwich, if that was possible.
I made coffee and we watched the traffic out on Moreton Bay, more barges than steamships and even fewer sails nowadays. It was mid-May and the bay was simmering under the south-easterly trade.
I told him that it must have been this time of year when he, Dr Alfred Jefferis Turner, then the Government’s agent, crossed these waters heading northward on what he would later dismiss as our ‘little adventure’.
‘You know, you’re right, Row. I can just see myself out there now, about where that steamship is, looking back to Brisbane and thinking, hooray! Off hunting again.’
The way he said ‘hooway’ made me smile. And I remembered ‘hunting’ was a Turnerism for any project from netting butterflies to performing autopsies. Or, in the case to which he referred, chasing the plague.
‘I’m sure you can manage them,’ said Turner. ‘We managed up North.’
I looked at him, searching his face for irony. He just blinked.
‘It was a catastrophe,’ I said.
‘Your hindsight’s worse than your eyesight.’
‘You’re saying I’m wrong?’
‘Catastrophe’s a strong word. The War was a catastrophe. Tell me it was worse than that.’
I went to get more coffee and placed the cups carefully on the rickety table by the window.
‘It just so happens that lately I’ve had the opportunity to visit Townsville,’ Turner said.
‘My God. Why?’
‘Hesperiidae.’
Of course.
‘There were gaps in my collection of skippers,’ he said.
I told Turner I’d be happy to put the whole Northern experience in one big gap, cover it in quicklime, and stamp it down with the heel of my boot.
‘Have you had any medical treatment since the War?’
‘I know what you’re getting at.’
‘For the gas I meant. But no matter.’
He wanted me to ask about his trip, I suppose. ‘It’s a funny thing,’ I said, ‘but quite by coincidence a man who said he worked for the Howard Smith Company was here a few years back. Said he was a steamer captain. I asked what ship he’d captained, wondering if it was one I’d been on, and he mentioned the Leura. I don’t believe he was a captain at all, of course, probably some engineer or steward. But he said he remembered very well the Government doctor on board in 1900 when the plague was prowling up and down the coast. He described you.’
‘Oh yes?’ Turner looked out through the big panelled windows. ‘I remember that trip very well. You know, Row, I have an unrequited love for the sea. I love the sea; it despises me. Always puts on a show when I’m about in boats. Had the most awful trip back from Home after the War. I believe I’ll take the train to the next war. Much more civilised.’
Afterwards, I walked him back to the ferry.
We crossed the compound to the shore, where small hard waves were slapping the rock wall. As we waited Turner spied a gnarled tree in the cemetery and cut to it.
Casuarina equisetifolia. It was his curse on me that I knew its name. I hated the she-oaks; they picked up a breath of wind and moaned about it. In a gale they sounded like the pits of hell. I’d been meaning to have this one felled for firewood.
‘Cemeteries are marvellous spots for moffs,’ he said, circling the tree. I cleaned my glasses. He wanted me to ask, but I wasn’t going to be tricked into any more lectures about blasted insects so I said nothing, walking over to the grave.
Even on a dull day it shone with flowers. I crouched beside it. A few had turned brown and I tossed them away.
I heard Turner walk up behind me.
‘You think I’ve been here too long, don’t you,’ I said.
‘It’s not for me to say.’ But of course he couldn’t resist saying, ‘There are moments in our lives when we’re given the chance to stay or move on. Sometimes we let those moments pass. It’s not easy, either way.’
We shook hands at the jetty as it started to rain.
‘Why don’t you and Maria come to Highgate Hill one evening? You’ll be in the city for a while and there’ll be no excuse. Hilda would be delighted to meet you.’
‘I haven’t decided if I’ll accept the job yet,’ I said.
‘No?’
‘It was your recommendation, wasn’t it?’
There were small drops on his glasses and he took them off to wipe them.
‘Perhaps it was. The Premier did ask me a few days ago if I knew anyone who was as stubborn as me and who knew as much as I did about epidemic disease.’
‘And you said no, of course.’
‘Very good, Row.’
‘And you mentioned my name nevertheless.’
‘I couldn’t think of anyone else. He didn’t mention the job he had in mind, by the way. A remarkable coincidence, don’t you think?’
I tried to work up some anger, but he was smiling now and I supposed I should be flattered.
‘Whatever you decide, come into town. I’ll show you your moff,’ and he saluted this time with his net, turned and hurried up the gangway.
The rain trickled down inside my collar and I shivered. As the ferry kicked up a stink and pulled away, I saw Turner continue forward. He was soon separated from the other passengers. The ferry swung in a circle before lurching towards the far shore and as it turned I saw the doctor standing near the bow, a hand on the railing, looking like a small Captain Ahab off to catch his big fish with a butterfly net.
And I had the image again of Dr Alfred Jefferis Turner twenty years younger leaving this bay, the trade wind behind him, the palm of God gently coaxing the steamship Leura like a migrating Blue Tiger, a giant Nymphalidae, past Cape Townshend northwards up the Queensland coast for His purposes, inexorable and perhaps fatal for fragile Lepidopterae.
townsville
autumn, 1900
chapter one
Drunkenness is a very great evil unquestionably, and it is very common in the North. Men, and even women, go recklessly on, drinking whatever comes in their way, and consequently suffer untold misery. How much happier and better off they would be if they kept sober and drank only West End Beer.
Advertisement, The Northern Miner
IT HAD BEEN A NORTHERN summer that had driven even the fish to despair. The mackerel had washed up dead in vast runs along the Strand and the old Chinamen were out on the beach every morning reading the fish calligraphy before loading them into carts for burial in market gardens at Kissing Point.
The smell of fermented sugar and spilled molasses, the tang of explosives and sweet dead things from Ross Creek hung about east Flinders-street in dark swarms.
I leaned my bicycle against a hitching rail. A couple of horses were letting themselves be eaten by flies outside the offices of the shipping companies as I waited for someone to come along and open up.
Punctuality, Humphry had pointed out, was a vice in the North and I’d have to change my ways. But I hadn’t yet kicked the habit of my thirty-six years so I spent my time worrying a loose rock on the road. A few birds were snapping up the insects that hung over horse pats in the street and a dog explored rubbish in an open drain. I picked up the rock and threw it, but the dog simply ambled over to sniff.
It was well past nine when a man came along and opened the door of the Adelaide Steamship Company office. I followed him in and sat on the wooden bench just inside, already worn out by the day.
A number of other clerks arrived and started moving between machines and tables with papers. A telegraph chattered every so often, someone was using a typewriter and had trouble finding the keys, and there was the sound of a rubber stamp. No one spoke, and they ignored me as the temperature climbed.
When the manager finally came over and asked if he could help, I introduced myself. Dr Linford Row, the municipal medical officer. I was waiting for a colleague who’d telephoned him the day before. We were due to go aboard the Cintra and examine a patient, I said. The suspected case of plague?
The beat of the office stopped; even the telegraph was silent.
The manager chewed an arm of his spectacles and looked about the room, ‘And where is Doctor Humphry?’
He was to meet me here. At nine.
‘It’s almost ten,’ said the manager.
Perhaps I could collect the list of passengers and the medical report wired from Mackay so we could leave as soon as Dr Humphry arrived?
He chewed for a while and then told me that the Townsville municipality had no authority over the port and he would prefer to wait for the district medical officer before handing over any sensitive company information.
I had no idea if that was true, so I sat down. The office went about its business, the slow percussion of machines composing a sort of languid marching tune.
It was stupefyingly hot and I began to feel drowsy.
Truth be told, some part of me welcomed the plague. It had crept out of China and had touched the Pacific islands and was now steaming up the coast from Sydney. It would give me something to do.
Plague! I could have yelled, though even panic appeared to be too much of an effort here. I watched the clerks and waited for Humphry.
The shipping office was tucked away safely in the centre of town, but out on Cleveland Bay the SS Cintra rested fitfully, its fifty-two passengers and dozen crew probably anxious, perhaps frightened, and no doubt scared the whisky would run out.
Those aboard the Cintra had already had an adventure of sorts. One of the crew had fallen sick out of Rockhampton and when the ship arrived in Mackay, the medical officer there had diagnosed plague.
The news was taken calmly. It had been expected, after all, following the Sydney outbreak. The Mackay passengers had been promptly quarantined in the local gaol and the rest sent on to Townsville. The Queensland Government had asked for confirmation before considering pratique. And that was Humphry’s job.
In fact, the whole colony was waiting for news on the plague and the African War, while I waited for Dr Ernest Humphry.
So when the door swung open and Humphry stepped inside, I didn’t get up.
He looked around and seemed surprised to see me sitting there.
His suit was crumpled and his moustache wild. I pointed to the clock behind the counter.
‘Good Lord,’ he said, and he sat down heavily beside me and winced. He took a silver flask from inside his jacket and offered it to me. I pushed it back and he took a nip.
As casually as I could, I went to the counter. I caught the manager’s attention again and he came over, chewing his glasses, determined to outdo me in nonchalance.
‘Doctor Humphry would like to see the passenger list and medical report,’ I said. ‘When you’re ready.’
He tapped the lenses against his teeth, click click, and looked at Humphry, who had his eyes closed, and then at me before fetching the report as well as two sheets of paper with the list of names in blue carbon-copy ink.
I sat back down next to Humphry and put them in front of his face. He waved them away.
‘Just tell me.’
I began paraphrasing the medical report. ‘The steward’s name is Storm.’
‘His name is Storm?’
‘That’s what it says.’
‘I suppose that’s appropriate.’
‘Sickened on April the twentieth. Syphilis in the secondary stage and an illness that might be the first stages of plague. Some swelling of the glands in the groin, lethargy, brain fever.’
‘Brain fever,’ snorted Humphry. ‘That’s a medical report?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’
‘I don’t know.’ He sighed. ‘Who’s on board then?’
I ran a finger down the passenger list. ‘A few Townsville-ites.’ Some names looked familiar; most were probably from Charters Towers. ‘Here are three ministers of religion.’ I recognised a name. ‘Methodist.’
‘What a comfort they must be.’
