Affection (12 page)

Turner was whistling a tune. It may have been ‘Annie Laurie’, but I couldn’t be sure. He may have been tone deaf. We stopped to watch a sea-eagle.

‘“A fing of beauty is a joy for ever”,’ he said.

I asked him if I should have my family vaccinated.

‘Do you have rats?’

‘No.’

‘I wouldn’t worry just yet. We need all the doses we have at the moment just for medical staff.’

The raptor made lazy circles as it followed Ross Creek west. Another joined it.

‘It’s quite a beautiful spot. From up here,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think?’

He waved his hand over the town. The tableau in front of us was more grey than green, the coastal plain stretching south into swamps and saltpans, a slate-grey sea, grey scrub rising to blue-grey mountains, and in the west smoke and dust to the horizon.

‘It’s not jolly old England though,’ I said.

‘No. Did I tell you – I was actually born in China.’

He started prattling on. His father was a missionary, and the family lived in Canton until his parents fell ill with some Oriental disease and they all moved back to London. Public school, University College Medical School, and then to Australia, for his health. He took a deep breath and slapped his thin chest.

‘And you believe you’ve come to the right place?’ I said.

‘Of course. What about you, Row?’

‘I’m a native, I’m afraid.’

‘I meant here. Why Townsville?’

‘You know why I’m here.’ I didn’t want to answer any more of Turner’s damned questions. ‘Maria’s health.’

‘She’s ill?’

‘You know what I mean.’ I snapped, I suppose, but Turner of all people should understand.

We walked in silence for a while. I gathered we were heading for the hospital. It was on the other side
of the ridge that ran from Castle Hill towards the mouth of the creek. It was a good site for a hospital, away from the stench of the creek and its beard of swamps and bogs, the coastal waterholes, and the stagnant drains that criss-crossed the settlement. The sick convalesced on its screened verandahs with their backs to the town and had a splendid view of the sea if they could enjoy it.

We were too heavily dressed for the outing. Turner took off his pith helmet to wipe his brow and the wind caught his hair and blew it across his head. Everything he did seemed to be done with a boyish enthusiasm, a clumsy disregard for how it made him appear, a sort of guilelessness that I supposed would become either annoying or endearing.

‘What you gain from risking an adventure more often than not compensates for what you’ve left behind,’ he said. ‘In fact, the soul usually makes a profit on the deal. In my experience.’

‘You think I did the right thing? Coming north.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I’m not sure what I’m doing here,’ I heard myself say, before I could shut my mouth.

‘Well,’ said Turner, ‘it’s probably a question we should all ask ourselves from time to time.’

The chief surgeon, Dr William Bacot, was pacing the hospital corridor. He had his hands in his pockets and his head bowed as he marched towards us, but just
before we collided he turned on his heel and went the other way.

I cleared my throat and he looked back over his shoulder, annoyance passing quickly, replaced by a tight, thin smile.

Bacot looked older than I, but younger than Turner. He must have been in his late thirties and had a long face and the professional man’s moustache: the carefully tended variety in the shape of bicycle handlebars, worn by the men he thought of as his peers. He also had a reputation for having a short fuse and I tried to avoid him.

‘Blasted suicides, you know. Should be a law. Well, I suppose there is, but who’s ever charged, eh?’

He led us down a long corridor, explaining how he was treating his second attempted self-poisoning for the week. Rough on Rats. Hadn’t we noticed?

No, I said. I read the list of registered deaths and hadn’t seen that many poisonings.

‘Ah, that’s because they usually have to find something else to finish the job. A gun, a rope.’

‘I have noticed a few gunshots.’

‘Rough on Rats,’ spat Bacot. ‘There you go.’

A trolley hummed past on rubber wheels.

I said, ‘So, there could be an epidemic of poisonings and they wouldn’t show up on my weekly lists.’

‘There certainly is an epidemic.’ He stopped and looked at us. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I wanted to discuss preparations for the plague,’ said Turner.

‘Plague,’ he snorted and we followed him into a large room at the end of the corridor. ‘I suppose you’ll want coffee.’

Turner smiled.

The window in Bacot’s office was open. A draught that ran the length of the building was expelled here, so that the window appeared to be trying to swallow the curtains. I could see Kissing Point and West Point, the sea in between, salted with whitecaps.

I envied Bacot. He’d been given a small garrison up here and managed to fortify it so that, although he was hounded occasionally by Humphry, he was left for most of the time to run his own show. He had a staff of doctors and the most coveted collection of single women in the town. He was living in a detached house nearby, but there were never any of those sorts of rumours about him.

Bacot called a nurse to bring coffee and slumped into his chair with the window at his back.

‘I’m busy,’ he said. He tipped his head back and shut his eyes, waving a hand around his office. It was cluttered with papers; some had blown on to the floor and were making a scratching sound. To be fair, he’d probably been working all night. He never slept, I heard.

‘What we really wanted was your opinion,’ said Turner. ‘About the plague hospital.’

He snapped his head forward again. ‘Not here, you don’t.’

‘No. It needs to be further out of town.’

Bacot leaned back again and looked at us both with suspicion.

Turner continued, ‘We’re considering Three Mile Creek instead of the quarantine station for an isolation hospital.’

Bacot spun in his chair and looked up the coast. He spun back to Turner.

‘A rough drive.’

‘Better than the six miles by launch to West Point,’ I said.

Bacot stared at me, probably wondering what I was doing there. He’d refused a position on the Epidemic Board, and may not have known or even cared that I’d taken it up.

‘Yes. Tents, I assume,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ said Turner.

The surgeon shrugged. ‘All right. What’s it to do with me?’

‘It would have a lot to do with you,’ said Turner. ‘I presume, if it comes to the worst, some plague patients would first arrive at this hospital and after being diagnosed would need to be transferred to Three Mile Creek. We have to make sure that is done as quickly and efficiently as possible to spare the patients further discomfort and to protect them, and the staff and the other patients here, of course.’

‘I won’t be treating plague patients here.’

‘You might have no choice. We won’t know who has plague until they’re diagnosed. It’s reasonable
to assume some sick people may turn up at this hospital.’

Bacot made an exasperated sound and shook his head, looking at us as if we were idiots. ‘It won’t come to that.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ said Turner. ‘If it does come to that, Dr Row here, Dr Humphry and myself are to be responsible for making the official diagnoses. We’ll have the power to compel infected people to go to the plague hospital –’

‘And that will make you all very popular,’ he snorted.

‘…and to use force if necessary.’

Turner stood then and opened his medical bag, taking out a syringe and a small corked bottle.

‘Arm or thigh?’

Bacot stared and gave a short laugh. ‘What?’

‘Haffkine’s serum. We have to inoculate everyone who’ll be dealing with plague patients.’

‘Not me.’

‘Especially you,’ and Turner produced a copy of the plague regulations, putting it on the table and pointing to the paragraph on the protection of staff.

‘I’m not having you give me that jab,’ said Bacot, watching Turner draw the fluid up into the syringe.

‘Would you rather Dr Row?’

‘God, no.’

‘I had a rat brought to me this morning,’ said Turner. ‘It had plague.’

Bacot drummed his fingers on the desk, staring from the syringe to me.

‘Nonsense,’ he said.

‘Are you frightened of a little injection?’

The nurse arrived just then with coffee in china cups and looked startled by Turner’s needle. It was quiet for a moment except for the rustling papers and the flapping curtains.

‘Oh, all right.’ Bacot took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeve of his left arm and Turner, with more care than he’d used on me, pushed the needle under the skin.

Bacot was determined not to wince. ‘Damned waste of time,’ he muttered, as Turner put a wad of cotton on the wound and removed the needle.

‘Hold it there.’ Turner packed the syringe away, and Bacot sat.

‘What if people don’t want to go to this…this isolation hospital at Three Mile Creek?’

‘I hope by then everyone will be clear as to why it’s necessary,’ Turner said, picking up his coffee.

‘I’m not clear.’

‘About what?’

‘As to why it’s necessary.’

‘To stop the spread of infection.’

‘It wouldn’t work.’

‘It’s the law.’

Bacot spun his chair around again to look out the window, still grasping his arm. ‘I heard about the commotion at West Point.’

‘We’ll be asking for police assistance. But I believe all reasonable people will understand.’

Bacot turned back to Turner and gave another short snorting laugh.

‘Glad I’m not in either of your shoes,’ and he examined the cotton and rolled his sleeve back down.

Turner stood. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’

We shook hands and turned to leave. Turner reached the doorway and turned around. ‘One more thing.’

Bacot had just brought his cup to his lips.

‘I’d like you to be in charge of the plague hospital.’

There was a long pause before Bacot said, ‘I’m sorry, what authority did you say you had here?’

‘I’m the government medical officer for north and central Queensland. The Queensland Government’s given me the authority to make these arrangements. I’m not ordering you to take this on, but you’re the only man with the administrative experience to run a hospital. In fact, the Central Board of Health’s already approved your appointment.’

‘You’re joking.’ Bacot put his cup down with a clatter, spilling quite a bit, a brown stain spreading.

‘No.’

Bacot smiled uncertainly. ‘Impossible.’

‘Why?’

‘I have a real hospital to run.’

‘You’re the best man for the job.’ Turner turned to me. ‘Dr Row?’

‘No question.’

Bacot came around his desk looking ferocious.

Before he could say anything, Turner held up his hand and said, ‘There’s more money. You’ll have to use some of the hospital staff, but I have two hundred pounds for wages, supplies and equipment.’

Bacot was breathing heavily and stopped quite close to Turner’s face. ‘Two hundred pounds?’

‘From the Central Board of Health. The money’s been approved. It can be wired to you immediately. We’re pushing this through quickly, because of the emergency. You’ll buy the supplies you need yourself. Brisbane is taking this very seriously. All you have to do is set up the hospital. You can have someone else there to run it day to day. If you like.’

Bacot said nothing so Turner continued. ‘I expect it’ll be a matter of keeping an eye on things. As I said, the government doctors – that is Dr Row here, Dr Humphry and myself – will be taking full responsibility.’

Bacot rubbed his forehead hard. ‘So I can put a superintendent in there?’

‘You have a budget. It just needs to be organised. As you say, it might not come to human cases.’

‘It won’t, you know.’ He turned around and went back to his chair, and Turner and I departed.

I waited until we’d left the hospital grounds. ‘Was that an ambush?’

‘That’s a colourful expression. Completely inappropriate.’

‘You’d appointed him before you saw him.’

‘It’s his own fault if he didn’t see this coming. The facts are laid out. I’m sure he’ll be happy to do his duty.’

‘I’m not completely sure that he’ll see it your way.’

‘What?’

I held up my hands. ‘You might have handled him better. The man’s highly strung. Those facts are laid out, too, if you’d cared to ask. It could have gone badly, that’s all.’

‘Really?’ said Turner. He looked at me with genuine surprise.

I told Humphry later about the incident. His admiration for Turner seemed to be growing. I also told him Bacot’s theory of a poison epidemic. I had to re-examine my lists.

‘It sounds about as far from an Act of God as you can get,’ said Humphry.

Exactly. Poison would mitigate
against
an Act of God. I could never be sure that someone hadn’t taken poison and then, their reason impaired, gone out into a thunderstorm or fallen down a well.

‘Or got hit by a buggy,’ said Humphry.

Every suspected Act of God would need an autopsy.

The town was whistling and clanging as we descended into it, the bells at the fire station ringing non-stop.

‘What’s going on?’ Turner’s pace quickened.

We were a block away from the main street when a small dog tore out of a lane in front of us, eyes white and ears flat, its tail sprung beneath the body. A lean
kangaroo dog followed and caught up with it easily in the middle of the road and they both went tumbling in the dust. The smaller beast cowered, dropping what it had in its mouth. The large dog went to snatch it, but the small one changed its mind and took hold of an ear. There was a distressing howl, a blur of teeth and dust. A man appeared with a whip and the big dog loped off. The other one reclaimed its soggy grey prize and fled, the rat’s tail swinging from its jaw.

Turner wanted to find more rats and I left him at the Town Hall. I did need to see a dentist.

I’d put it off too long, dreading it. But when I arrived at the shop the barber who, I’d been told, ‘pulled teeth painlessly’ had closed for the day to celebrate the great British victory in South Africa, and the damned tooth had stopped aching anyway. I wandered back to my office, relieved.