Affection, p.7
Affection, page 7
‘Bread and corned beef? I think it’s rather good,’ said Turner.
‘You’ll be sick of it soon enough.’
The lunch dissolved, Turner thanked the Mayor for his hospitality and Humphry took him to his new office.
‘It won’t be easy,’ I said. ‘Dealing with the council.’
‘I’ll manage. How are you managing?’
‘The Mayor’s stubborn.’
He seemed to be examining my face. ‘I meant your family.’
I said, ‘The summer was very hot. My wife is tired. I’m hoping the winter will suit her better.’
Turner had been given a bare room that still smelled of ink and dust. It was across the hallway and down from my own.
McCreedy had been generous to Turner. Large glass doors opened out onto a balcony over Flinders-street. The office was spacious. Someone had wasted no time in looting it.
‘I’ll find you some furniture,’ I said.
‘How far away are your rooms, Dr Humphry?’ said Turner.
Humphry went over to the glass doors.
‘Down the street,’ he said, pointing. ‘The post office is next door here. You’re only a block from your hotel. You can just see the top of the Bellevue. The Prince of Wales is in front, around the corner there.’
Turner undid the latch of the door. It opened with a kick on to the small balcony.
‘And a gas lamp, right outside,’ Turner said. ‘How wonderful.’
He gazed up at Castle Hill, and when he turned around I noticed the man looked delighted. He clapped his hands like a child and Humphry caught my eye.
‘Well,’ said Turner, ‘there’s a lot to do. Tell me everything.’
chapter four
The plague scare has many advantages over the war-fever. Kipling hasn’t made any great songs about it. It doesn’t move any great crowd of idiots to sing patriotic songs every five and a half minutes. It leads to cleanliness.
The Bulletin, 31 March 1900
THE WIND HAD SPRUNG TO TWENTY-FIVE knots overnight and now overtook the launch, pushing the smoke in front of us so that if anyone had taken a daguerreotype at that time it might look like this: a small grey boat appearing to go backwards through a grey sea. That illusion and the sensation of the engine made me queasy. I studied the horizon, looking beyond the activity on board, the crew tending the ropes, Humphry his flask.
Turner was standing on the bench seat with his back to me, his head over the side and eagerly facing forward, and if he had a tail it’d be hitting me in the ear.
He’d insisted on an early start and, in spite of Humphry, had managed to arrange things so that when I arrived at the Government wharf in the dark, the SS Teal was already belching loudly.
‘A telegraph to the Board of Health,’ Turner explained. ‘And one back to the port office.’
More surprising was the appearance from the shadows of Humphry’s buggy.
‘Just don’t say a word to me until sun-up.’
The dawn touched the whitecaps turning them pink, and they chased each other over the sea like galahs. The Teal rolled heavily and for the first time since I’d come north, I shivered. Behind me, Castle Hill sat on Townsville, a granite paperweight lit pink by the rising sun. Ahead was the deep blue strip of Magnetic Island.
I’d never been there. I didn’t even feel a morbid attraction to the place. All quarantine stations were alike on their glum islands. West Point would be more desolate than most because the regulation quarters, stores and sheds were carried away or wrecked by a cyclone in ’96.
The island heaved above the waves before us, a natural gaol where people who arrived by a ship carrying some fever or other were left for a quarantine period to sicken, recover or die.
During the previous two weeks, Humphry had come to my office to tell me stories that I didn’t want to hear. He’d sit on the other side of my desk and say things such as ‘They’re sending a petition to the Home Secretary.’
I’d been making a list of hygienic household practices: the importance of light, fresh air, sealing food scraps, poisoning rats, and the like. Humphry had a knack of interrupting when I was busy.
‘Every one of them signed it,’ Humphry continued. He rustled a sheet of paper loudly.
I gave up. ‘What’s that?’
‘The petition. Look here. They’ve spelt your name wrong.’
I looked. Humphry held up three ink-smudged sheets of paper pinned together and jabbed a finger at it. I squinted from my side of the desk.
‘They sent you a copy?’
‘Hell no,’ he said. ‘This is the original. I promised I’d take it to the post office.’
I put my pen in its stand and sat back.
‘They asked you to take a petition that demands your dismissal and just, what, pop it in the mail?’
‘Your dismissal too. But no, of course they didn’t ask me. It was the bloke who runs the supply lighter who begged me to post it for him, with the other mail.’
Humphry had then just come back from giving the Cintra passengers another check-up.
‘Saved him the trip from the wharf,’ he said. ‘And he did give me a lift over and back, so it was the least I could do.’
I leaned across and snatched the petition from his hands and began to read it through.
‘You’re breaking the law, interfering with the mail,’ I said. ‘You know that?’
‘Not at all. I’m still on my way to the post office.’
‘You’re going to post it?’
‘I haven’t decided. I might. Might even sign it myself.’
I sighed. Even the Methodist ministers had signed it. I handed it back to him.
I heard no more about it after that, but it added to my growing anxiety about the island. I was in a difficult position and Humphry wasn’t helping. He liked to poke sticks into wasps’ nests and didn’t seem to care if other people got stung.
It was hard to avoid him. Given the nature of our jobs, Humphry the Queensland Government doctor and I the municipal one, our paths crossed when it came to the public health of Townsville, so it seemed sensible to work together.
That’s what Humphry said.
The difficulties we would face in trying to protect Townsville from the plague had by then begun to appear in an acute form at West Point and we should have learned our lessons there.
The first problem was Dr Routh, the quarantine station’s medical officer.
He’d been thrown from his buggy at Hermit Park three weeks earlier, cracking his head and three ribs. Quarantine station duties were normally a doddle, but then The Lady Norman arrived from the Solomon Islands with a load of kanakas infected with measles. The Cintra arrived soon after. Routh had to move out there, to his horror, where the white passengers imagined they would be ravished, murdered and eaten in their sleep. Although they were well provisioned with newspapers and tobacco, the Cintra passengers never ceased complaining.
There wasn’t a murmur from the kanakas.
The only person relieved of company on West Point was the sick steward, Storm. Soon after his arrival, he had his own tent ringed by barbed wire to form a regulation compound twenty yards square with yellow quarantine flags sprouting from each corner.
‘See,’ Humphry told me, after his first visit, before Routh was dispatched. ‘Anyone who wants the North to separate from the rest of the colony only has to get plague and we could peg it out tomorrow.’
There was some confusion about the laws under which the Cintra passengers now lived. The quarantine station was provisioned and run under the Health Act, but convention also allowed Captain Thompson to maintain the law of the sea, and it was convenient, because of the lack of any other authority on the island, for him to divide them into steerage and saloon, and organise quoits and religious classes.
Dawson and Dunsford had apparently wanted some decision-making collective, but Captain Thompson, to his credit, said he’d consider that mutiny.
The kanakas had moved into the most habitable buildings by the time the Cintra arrived, of course, so the white passengers were given tents and removed themselves as far away as they could which, said Humphry, the kanakas must have considered a blessing.
Dawson particularly resented his incarceration and sent telegrams daily, via the supply lighter, protesting to the Premier that conditions were terrible, there was no plague, and demanding to be freed to appear before the railway hearing. Mr Philp never replied, and somehow Humphry knew all about that as well.
So we arrived at West Point after dawn. The wind on this side of the island curled around and beat the sea into short meringue peaks. A broken wharf struck out uncertainly from the beach and with the crew all the time worried about hitting a reef, we tied up at an unlikely-looking pylon halfway along.
I couldn’t see much beyond the beach, apart from some drifting smoke.
Because there had been no way of contacting the station, no one knew we were coming, but two men, who must have seen the boat approaching, appeared on the bank above the beach.
‘I hope the natives are friendly this time,’ said Humphry as we picked our way across the shambles.
The wharf groaned and shuddered where it leaned against the Teal and the Teal against it, like a pair of drunks. I was in the lead, followed by Humphry and Turner, jumping over gaps of churning grey-green water. To anyone on shore it might have looked comical: grown men playing hopscotch.
When I reached the end I saw that one man had gone and the other had come down to meet us. He stood at the end of the jetty with his hands clasped behind his back.
‘Mr Gard, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Yes sir, Dr Row.’ But he didn’t look happy to see me. He didn’t look happy at all.
Turner was still picking his way. We each carried black medical bags.
‘Three doctors,’ said Gard. ‘One doctor’s enough bad news, isn’t it? Not sure what they’ll make of three.’
‘They don’t have to make anything of it,’ said Humphry, pushing past him and taking a steep path up the bank.
I followed, reaching the top and seeing Humphry trudge on along two wagon tracks that wound through the dry, low scrub. I looked back. We’d left the crew smoking and the launch looked particularly ugly beside the broken wharf. The mainland was a line of blue and brown.
I cleaned the salt from my spectacles as I waited for Turner.
Gard beside me said, ‘What’s the chance of going ashore today then?’
‘Quarantine ends in a week’s time. I doubt that’ll change.’
Gard shook his head. ‘They’re not going to be happy with that news, you know.’
Turner arrived at the top of the bank.
‘My word,’ he said, looking about before following Humphry.
I started to follow Turner, but Gard suddenly grabbed my arm.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘they’re getting more fidgety each day. Some people have been stirring them up.’
‘Dawson?’
‘And others. And seeing how Storm’s better…’
‘That’s what we’re here to find out.’
‘Well, I’m just saying they won’t be pleased to see you. Or him.’ He nodded at Humphry’s back. ‘It’s been three or four weeks since some of these people left Brisbane or wherever, you see what I’m saying? Could be trouble.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
He shrugged. ‘Just saying be careful.’
‘Thanks for the warning.’ I started walking.
‘Me, I’m busting to get off this island too. You a married man, Dr Row?’
I ignored him.
‘You know what I mean?’
I caught up with Humphry.
The wooden buildings we passed might have been the bones of some giant saurian, picked over and scattered. The area was flat for maybe a hundred acres and then rose suddenly into dense bush. There was a racket of birds, but also a sort of peaceful charm to the place.
Gard began chattering aimlessly, pointing things out. The grass, he said, was kept trim by goats. They shot a few goats for meat, but they were too fast to catch for milking. Over there were two mighty stands of bamboo beneath the hill. That’s where kanakas buried their dead. On the other side of the clearing was the white man’s graveyard.
‘Years since it’s been used.’
Charming, as I said. A building slumped exhausted on the ground beside its stumps and looked as if it had been long abandoned by flesh. The roofs of the huts were a patchwork of badly fixed, dull and rusted iron sheeting.
A couple of black faces looked out from holes where the windows had been.
‘Ain’t them who’ll be causing you any trouble. Whatever Mr Dawson says, they’re all too lazy to butcher us in our sleep. Wouldn’t like to get too close to any of them but. There’s your disease carriers.’
Old large paperbarks had been left standing through the site and a few other smaller trees and shrubs grew here and there, thickest on the sea side.
Humphry nodded towards Turner who’d wandered off the track.
‘Man could be mad,’ he said.
Turner started plucking at some leaves, and as if to prove Humphry’s point he came towards us with his hand out, two green leaves on his palm. He poked them with his finger and one moved. He turned it over.
‘It has legs,’ I said.
‘A leaf with legs,’ said Humphry. ‘My word.’
‘Look how well camouflaged this caterpillar is. This is the leaf from the same tree. Almost identical. Dashed hard to see.’
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘Don’t recognise the species. A moth or butterfly, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this one.’ He pulled from his bag an empty bottle with a cork and popped the caterpillar and leaf inside.
‘In case she gets hungry,’ he said.
Quite.
We walked on.
The trees opened out and there was a building ahead. As we came closer I saw it was better kept than the others.
‘That’s the surgeon’s cottage,’ Gard told me. ‘Dr Routh sleeps in there. Seems he has visitors though.’
Three men were standing casually about the front as though they’d posed themselves there a minute earlier. One of them was standing in a flower bed and leaning against the stairs. The other man might have been the one who’d left Gard at the beach.
‘I didn’t know doctors got up so early,’ said the tall man as we approached. Dawson wore braces over a woollen undershirt. He hadn’t had the chance to shave or wash, but he’d acknowledged a sort of formality by wearing his hat and fiddling with an unlit cigar.
Humphry ignored them, marched up the stairs on to a porch, and banged the flat of his hand against the wall. ‘Wakey wakey.’
‘The doctor might not be in,’ said Dawson. His friends tittered.
Humphry just sighed at the coarse unpainted boards under his hand and then banged them hard three times.
‘Dr Routh?’
‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Who’s that?’ came Routh’s voice from the belly of the cottage. Humphry kicked the bottom of the door, it banged open and he vanished inside.
Dawson turned his glare to Turner and me. I’d just put my foot on the bottom step to follow Humphry when Turner said, ‘You’re Mr Anderson Dawson.’
Turner walked over and introduced himself, extending a hand. Dawson stopped chewing his cigar when Turner said ‘Jeffewis’. I wondered if the doctor had the short man’s inclination for picking fights.
‘Have we met?’ said Dawson.
‘Brisbane. British Medical Association. Amalgamation dinner?’ Dawson shrugged and Turner said, ‘January?’
‘I don’t recall.’
‘You probably had more important things on your mind.’
Dawson finally accepted Turner’s hand. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘The Government’s given me the job of making sure northern and central Queensland don’t catch plague,’ said Turner.
‘Who sent you?’
‘Mr Foxton.’
‘And you’ve come here to look at Storm?’
‘Yes.’
‘All the way from Brisbane?’ Dawson looked confused, as if Turner had appeared on the scene out of context, which I suppose he had. ‘You’re English.’
‘Quite.’
‘Turner. Name does ring a bell.’
‘Parasitic anaemia.’
‘You’ve been hounding the Government.’
‘I wouldn’t say hounding. I’ve brought a condition that’s affecting scores of children to its attention. It requires a scientific approach –’
‘Science,’ interrupted Dawson, taking the cigar from his teeth. ‘Science needs evidence, proof. Am I right?’
‘You are.’
‘That’s good. That’s very good.’ He glared at me then.
Humphry appeared at the cottage door with Dr Routh at his heels. Routh’s big moustache dragged the eyes down his face.
‘This is Dr Turner,’ said Humphry to Routh.
‘Yes, of course, how are you?’ but he clearly didn’t know who Turner was.
Humphry told Turner, ‘And this is Dr Routh, the medical superintendent.’
They shook hands and Routh winced.
‘Are you all right?’ said Turner.
‘Had a fall. I’ll be right. Well, what’s all this then?’
Turner explained who he was and what he wanted to do, and Routh seemed actually to brighten at the prospect of professional support.
‘Good. Good. You’re very welcome. Let’s get you some breakfast.’
‘Do you have coffee?’ said Turner.
‘Coffee? No.’
I think Routh was about to invite us inside, but Dawson said, ‘Follow me,’ and he popped the cigar into his mouth, turned and left. Dunsford and the other man followed.
‘Oh all right, if you like,’ and Routh followed. ‘Coffee. Now there’s something.’
I caught a glimpse of tents. Wood smoke from breakfast fires hung about the trees. Dawson stopped at a campfire where a large kettle hung from a tripod over the coals. A man stood as we approached and used a stiff length of wire to pick the kettle up and put it on the ground. He took several careful hand measures of tea and threw them in before sitting down again.
