Affection (13 page)

I must have left my door open. The curtains were still drawn and I was fumbling for the coat hook when a shape came out of the gloom.

I took a quick step back, ‘Get away,’ and I flapped my arms in front of my face.

‘Steady on,’ said Humphry, striking a match and lighting a cigarette. ‘Is that the way to treat a colleague?’

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ I was gasping.

‘I was looking for you. Anyway, I don’t have time to hang around while you dawdle in to work.’

‘I had business.’ I put my coat on the hook and straightened it while I recovered.

‘Who did you think I was anyway?’ said Humphry.

‘I’ve had bats in here before.’

‘Well, you keep it like a damned cave.’ Humphry came closer and lowered his voice. ‘I have good news and I have bad news.’

‘Well?’

‘It’s awaiting us in Turner’s office now.’

The northern stirp beneath the southern skies—I build a Nation for an Empire’s need, Suffer a little, and my land shall rise, Queen over lands indeed!

Rudyard Kipling, from ‘The Seven Seas’ (Song of the Cities), 1896

‘
TYPHOID
?’
SAID TURNER
.

Humphry rolled his eyes.

‘My opinion,’ said Routh.

‘Well, keep it to yourself,’ mumbled Humphry.

I’d followed him through the door, and he stood at the back of the room, leaning against the laboratory tables.

‘My opinion, Dr Humphry,’ Routh turned to him, ‘and it was confirmed yesterday.’

Turner was sitting behind his desk polishing his spectacles. It was stuffy in his office as we held another meeting of what Humphry had dubbed The Bubonic Society.

Turner was saying, ‘I don’t understand. Confirmed? Who confirmed it?’

‘The damned steward did himself, of course,’ said Routh, ‘when he died.’

‘He died?’ I was genuinely shocked. We’d taken samples. The man seemed to be recovering. It had been typhoid and we could have diagnosed it if I hadn’t thrown away the stool.

It was my fault.

‘Don’t suppose you could open the doors to the balcony, Dr Row?’ said Turner.

I walked over unsteadily and unlatched them. The hot stale air inside was as greedy to escape as the ballyhoo outside was to enter. I went back and sat heavily in the chair next to Routh.

Turner was saying, ‘I know he’s dead, Dr Routh. What makes you think typhoid killed him?’

‘I know typhoid when I see it, Dr Turner.’ Routh shifted in the chair.

Turner put his elbows on the table. ‘Well, you could have at least informed us when he got sick?’

‘For God’s sake, it’s an island. There’s no telegraph. No supply lighter since Friday. How in the blazes was I supposed to contact you? Smoke signals?’

Humphry laughed and Turner looked exasperated.

Routh blustered on. ‘I was there, I’m the doctor in charge and I did what I could. It was brought to my attention that he was sick on Friday, and in the space of two days he died. I couldn’t very well leave him and there was no boat until this morning anyway. So here I am.’

‘Yes, I do see. I am sorry.’ Turner patted down his hair. ‘And Mr Storm? How’s he?’

‘Storm? He’s –’

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Who died?’

‘The steward,’ said Turner. ‘Walter Gard.’

‘Gard?’ I fumbled for the edge of the table. ‘He wasn’t sick.’

‘Well, he’s dead now,’ said Humphry. ‘Something must have been bothering him.’

I stood. And then paced the floor, trying to grasp what had happened.

Turner had asked Routh again about Storm.

‘Fully recovered. Which proves my point, that it’s been typhoid all along. Look, Gard must have caught it from Storm. They’re both stewards, you know how those sort live aboard steamers, and I’m told he helped Dr Row here carry Storm when he was sick. Probably didn’t wash properly.’

My stomach lurched at the suggestion, probably true I realised then, that I might have had a hand in Gard’s death.

Turner said, ‘So tell me exactly what happened.’

Gard had died at five minutes to noon the day before. Sunday. The business sounded particularly harrowing.

Routh told us he’d had to administer opium because of the terrible ache of which Gard complained. The man was weak and tremulous and his tongue white and
furry. His nose bled freely at times and his stools were distinctly typhoidal in character.

‘When you say typhoidal, do you mean bloodied?’ interrupted Turner.

‘I mean typhoidal. The blood was dark and old at first and towards the end bright and fresh. There was some sloughing of the gut.’

‘Did you bring a sample?’

Routh nearly choked. ‘Of course not,’ looking around at Humphry and me as if Turner might have said something crazy, but Humphry was engrossed in the instruments and I continued pacing, wondering if I could have had anything to do with Gard’s infection.

Routh continued. The morning Gard had died, yesterday, he’d passed a quart of blood through the bowel and gone quite cold. His pulse weakened and he never rallied.

Poor Mrs Gard, I was thinking. He must have been dying when I was at her door telling her he wasn’t sick. I saw her face. My God. Her child.

‘What did you do with the body?’ said Turner, but we all knew there was only one thing that could be done.

‘Buried the poor bugger immediately.’

Routh, Captain Thompson, Dawson and Dunsford had apparently decided to keep the sudden death to themselves and a few of the other men. They were worried the women might become hysterical.

‘We decided Gard must be buried quietly and without delay.’

‘Even though you say the man died of typhoid and not plague?’ said Turner.

‘Now you’re cross-examining me as if I was some criminal. You’d have done the same. No ice. No
ice
! The body would start to putrefy within a day,’ said Routh. ‘The tent was full of flies as it was. And it was typhoid.’

Routh then apparently had the problem of giving the man a Christian burial. Although there were three ministers of religion, all refused to conduct the service because Gard was a Catholic.

‘Well then, it’s his own fault. Damned cheek to be a Papist on an island full of Protestants,’ mumbled Humphry from his corner.

I was thinking that Mrs Gard was Presbyterian. She was in my church. Gard was Catholic? I was astonished. Such mixed marriages were rare, but maybe not so much in the North, where men weren’t spoiled for choice.

Routh was saying that eventually one of the passengers, John Cook, who was also Catholic, volunteered to read the burial service, and Gard was interred in the cemetery while the clergy occupied the women with a Bible reading.

‘I suppose it’s too much to ask if he was buried according to the plague regulations?’ said Turner.

‘No. I said it was typhoid, not –’

‘It was septicaemic plague, you fool.’ Humphry didn’t turn around. ‘That’s the truth, though you don’t want to hear it.’

‘Yes, all right!’ Turner snapped.

Routh appeared to be trembling.

‘I’m actually glad you didn’t anyway,’ said Turner. ‘Bury him in lime, I mean.’

Routh blinked several times before he understood what Turner meant. ‘You can’t dig him up now.’

‘Wouldn’t have to if you obtained some serum as you were required to do in such a case.’

‘But as I said…’

‘And we’ll have to keep the
Cintra
passengers on the island. At least until I finish the post-mortem examination.’

‘Well,’ said Routh, ‘I’m afraid that really
is
impossible.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Why? The quarantine period is over. They’re all off today. Surely you realise that they’re on their way back to the mainland.’

‘Dash it,’ said Turner, jumping to his feet. ‘Humphry?’

Humphry had turned in surprise. We’d all thought the quarantine ended on Tuesday, the next day.

‘It’s a day early. Hang on.’ Humphry walked over to the table, counting his fingers. ‘Yes. Twenty-one days. Tomorrow.’ He stared at Routh, who squirmed in his seat and looked to Turner.

‘Twenty-one days, from the first day, is today,’ said Routh. ‘That was clear.’

‘But they didn’t arrive there until the evening of…’
said Humphry, adding up on his hand. ‘Anyway, you’re still a day short.’

‘Not if you count that first night at the Fairway Buoy,’ said Routh, a little uncertain now. ‘That was, strictly speaking, part of the quarantine period.’

‘No, it wasn’t. Who said that?’

‘It was agreed.’ Routh’s jowls shook.

‘I didn’t agree. Lin?’

I shook my head, hardly able to speak.

‘Well…’

Turner held up his hands. ‘All right. Let’s see if we can stop them. When do they leave?’

‘Six-thirty,’ said Routh. ‘This morning’s lighter. Some of them. Sent the launch back for the rest.’ He took out his watch. ‘They’d all be ashore by now.’ We looked at him in disbelief and his face was livid. ‘Well, I told you.’

There was a moment’s silence and Routh tried to excuse himself, but Turner asked him to please stay where he was.

‘How dare you!’ Routh suddenly screamed. ‘You’ve no right!
No right!
’ He got up too quickly, and his chair fell with a bang that made us all jump. He was shaking and pointed a finger at Turner. ‘I’ll not be bullied by you.
You
! Who…who gave you the right? I’m the medical officer in charge of the quarantine station. In
charge!
I’ll not be treated like this.
Not
–’ and half choking he turned and collected his coat from the door, fumbled for his hat and was gone.

‘I say.’ Turner had taken off his spectacles again and was examining them.

‘Man’s hysterical,’ said Humphry, picking up Routh’s chair and taking a seat. ‘Mad as a meat axe. Best he takes himself off and has a lie down.’

Turner wrapped the spectacles back around his ears. ‘What to do now?’

‘You’re not going to be able to stop them from coming ashore,’ said Humphry.

‘I think we should try, don’t you? We can get the police to help. We have the power under the Act to compel quarantine.’

‘We might need their co-operation,’ I said, still feeling winded by the revelation. ‘Later. I mean, if the passengers get sick. We’d need them to come to us to report it, wouldn’t we? Not enough police anyway to round them all up.’

‘Yes. I suppose you’re right. Now they’re ashore, who knows where they’ll go.’

‘The Adelaide Steamship office will have their addresses,’ I said.

Turner nodded. ‘Well. All right. Let’s say it’s too late now. The next thing we have to do is find out what killed Gard.’

‘It wasn’t typhoid,’ said Humphry.

‘Yes, but we still have no proof, thanks to Dr Routh, so we need to confirm it.’

We were all quiet. I supposed each of us was thinking about the business of digging up a man.

I still found it hard to visualise the fellow I’d spoken to only days before now lying in his coffin. I remembered his anxiety the last time I saw him, and wondered if that was a symptom. He hadn’t complained of any pain. He just wanted to get off the island, like the others.

‘I wonder if his wife’s been notified,’ I said.

‘That’s not our job, thankfully,’ said Turner. ‘That’s a matter for the police. It’s important we maintain a professional perspective, especially if it is plague.’

But I was still thinking of Mrs Gard, who’d already seemed unwell. And what of the daughter? The letter. Did the man have any inkling he was ill when he gave it to me? What the letter contained now seemed far more poignant. And the disease must have at least been hiding in his blood when he put that envelope in my pocket.

‘We’ll need the magistrate’s permission to exhume the body,’ Humphry was saying. ‘Once a man’s planted, it takes a lot of paperwork to dig him up again.’

‘And we must do it soon. The organisms won’t last long in the cadaver,’ said Turner.

‘Trouble might be the magistrate,’ said Humphry. ‘He might not allow it if it’s just to settle a medical disagreement. If that was the case, we’d be spending more time digging people up than putting them in the ground. I mean, he might get to know that Routh thinks it’s typhoid, and if Dawson gets wind of any exhumation, the bastard will try to stop it out of spite. I know him.’

I realised then that Dawson was off the island and probably plotting revenge.

‘This is far more serious than just a medical disagreement,’ said Turner.

‘Exactly, so let me handle it,’ said Humphry. ‘We’ll also need a grave-digging party.’

Turner sighed. ‘I do think it’s time we brought in the police.’

Humphry and I were alone in the hallway outside Turner’s office.

‘What was the good news?’ I said.

‘Eh?’

‘You said earlier there was bad news and good news. I hope the death of Gard was the bad news.’

‘Right. Well, we’re vindicated, aren’t we? Our decision to put them into quarantine –’

‘Your decision.’

‘Well, anyway, don’t you see? Dawson’s going to have to eat his words. He slandered us. I’m going to make sure he gets his comeuppance.’

‘If it’s plague.’

He slapped me on the shoulder. ‘I’ll put a guinea, no, two guineas, on it being plague.’

‘I’m not going to bet on that.’ I wasn’t sure if I wanted Humphry to be right or not. ‘Maybe Mr Dawson will take the bet.’

Humphrey clapped his hands together. ‘Now that’s a thought!’ he said. I watched him go, a stalwart of the
English Church, and I tried to fathom his contrary ambitions.

Just a few weeks before it had been as flat as a stove top. Now the sea was boiling again. Foam flew from the crests of short waves and a cold spray stung my eyes. The trade wind had returned overnight and at dawn was blowing steadily. I blinked back towards the pink rock of Townsville and thought that at least we were making good progress. Turner was a stoic on a bench. The two constables were coughing and cursing over the railing.

I went to join Humphry and the captain in the wheelhouse. They were singing ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, Humphry punctuating the heavy ship rolls with a deep loud baritone and offering his flask around. I started to wave it away and then changed my mind and took a sip. It warmed me, but I felt no better for what we were about to do.

We anchored at the quarantine station’s crumbling wharf again and made our way ashore, leaving the crew behind. Constables Clark and O’Donnell collapsed against their shovels when we reached the sand, the colour returning slowly to their faces. Turner was already fidgeting. He’d brought his net with him this time. The constables looked, but didn’t dare ask, probably imagined it had something to do with the body.

It had taken the rest of the previous day to get the order to open the grave and persuade Sergeant Moylan
to release two of his men and have them inoculated. All of the
Cintra
passengers were scattered. Even the kanakas had gone. Every soul had deserted West Point with due haste.

‘I’ve missed the old place!’ said Humphry. ‘The times we had here, eh?’