Affection (11 page)

‘Why don’t you go home?’ he said.

I didn’t know. I said nothing.

He stood and disappeared inside, and then reappeared dragging some cleverly folded contraption, something that turned into a hinged box on legs, perhaps a portable meat safe. Turner lit a carbide lamp and its white light filled the length of the balcony. He put it carefully in the box and rolled a sheet of calico down over the front.

The light challenged the street lamps and black things came out of the night.

‘It’s easier to hunt, Row, if you get your quarry to come to you.’

Something large passed in front of my face and I flapped a hand to brush it away.

‘Be still,’ said Turner. I saw he had a small net in one hand. I looked to where I thought he was looking. ‘See it?’

‘No.’

‘Here it comes.’

A big dark shape flitted from the dark and startled me again. It beat its wings near the calico and retreated and then came back, a moth the size of a small bird. It made swift attacks and then rested on the cloth, its dark wings casting a frightening shadow into the street. Slap. Turner suddenly had it under the net and it struggled violently. With one hand he found his killing jar and lifted the lid, then grabbed the net and moth all together and held it over the top as if cooking it. The moth stopped moving. Gas from the jar.

‘Got him,’ he said, removing the moth and holding it up to the light on the palm of his hand. ‘Isn’t he a beauty?’

The creature was like a japanned chest spattered with white and yellow paint.

‘Dead?’ I said.

‘“I went to heaven”,’ he said, turning it over, ‘“Twas a small town.”’

I yawned and shook my head. He put his great moth on the table and turned his attention to some smaller insects swarming over his trap.

‘Allan’s a bright boy,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Enjoying the North? Your family?’

I pushed my seat back and made to move. I shouldn’t have stayed so long.

‘It’s hotter than I thought it would be.’

Slap.

‘It’s difficult to know how things will turn out.’

I watched as Turner put another fluttering animal over his jar of death, and then tipped it on to the table where it lay still.

‘I was very sorry about Lillian, you know.’

My heart stopped. The crowd was louder. Turner was holding up a pair of tweezers.

‘
Micro-Lepidoptera.
These small moths, Row, are exquisite. The smaller they are, the more intricate the patterns and the more subtle the colours. See?’

He brought the tweezers to my face.

Lillian, my daughter, had been nearly three.

She’d been running a fever all night and had a sore throat the next morning.

‘Shall we take her into the hospital, Linford?’

‘For a sore throat?’

I waited. That night I saw her tonsils swollen, the left one covered with a white membrane.

I bundled her up and took her across the bay then. The small Dunwich launch had struggled against the tide and the darkness.

Turner was holding something beneath my nose. I raised my spectacles to see it, a moth flecked with grey.

‘Difficult not to damage them,’ he was saying. ‘This is probably a species new to science.’

He gassed it and put it at the end of a row of little dead bodies. A cheer rose from a hotel down the street.

‘I suppose a lot can happen to us all in a year. Here we are, for instance. Who’d have thought it a year ago?’

He slapped his net over another insect and dispatched it in one smooth movement, the fragile little body exposed on the table.

‘Steamships,’ Turner was saying. ‘I suppose it’s not such a coincidence really. Steamships are spreading plague and doctors. One causes the other, and here we are. Nine hundred miles from Brisbane.’

‘Fate,’ I managed to say.

‘Fate? I don’t think so.’

The air was a rich soup of insects, beer fumes, and the sound of men getting drunk.

There was a plop in the dark beyond the lamp and a large green frog suddenly jumped into the light, looking up at the carbide lamp and the meals flying around it. The frog lunged and then immediately seemed to have trouble trying to swallow whatever insect it had caught. It closed its eyes and gulped.

‘He’s eating your specimens,’ I said.

‘There’s enough for everyone.’

Turner leaned forward and appeared to be looking at something on my face. I brushed my cheek.

‘What do you mean, “fate”?’ he said.

I felt exhausted. ‘Serendipity. I suppose.’

He nodded to himself.

‘Maria is well?’ He’d asked me all this before.

‘It’s been difficult.’

Turner picked up a magnifying glass and studied his new collection. He showed me his small drying box, how he pinned them out, and a collection of tobacco tins in which he mailed his specimens, packed with cotton and sealed tight, to the museum in Brisbane.

Another giant moth thumped against the sheet and the frog lunged at something just beyond the light. There was laughter from the street. We sat quietly for awhile, the three of us, watching the crowd of insects around the sheet, waiting for something to suggest itself and be swallowed.

Congratulations on your heroic defence of Mafeking and the dear old Flag. Invite you to visit Townsville at your earliest convenience.

Telegram to Col. Baden-Powell from the Mayor, 19 May 1900

MARIA WAS A STRANGER
to me.

I knew she was watching, though.

I sometimes tried to catch her eye but was never quick enough. After a while, it became normal, this circling.

I was at the table. She was at the stove, stabbing the grate with a poker.

A coal fell to the floor and she flicked it expertly back with her fingers.

‘
Maudit!
’ Ladies never swore, and if they did it was never in English.

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.’