Affection (15 page)

McCreedy was in no mood for small talk. He was dressed in a blue suit, his collar stiff, but his necktie loose. He’d just come from dinner. I realised I hadn’t had a bite since breakfast.

‘Just the facts, gentlemen,’ he said, sitting noisily opposite Turner.

Turner explained the exhumation of Gard, the examination of fluids taken from the body, the identification of the plague bacterium. He showed an astonished and pale McCreedy the sketch he’d made.

‘There’s no doubt,’ said Turner.

The Mayor looked for a long time, bringing his face closer and then further away from the drawing as if it were an optical illusion. He was probably a little drunk.

‘Mr Dawson says it was typhoid. He was adamant. Told me that Dr Routh confirmed typhoid,’ the Mayor said, and I suddenly knew with whom McCreedy had shared dinner.

‘We found no typhoid bacterium in the sample we took from Gard’s body,’ said Turner. ‘Just plague.’

McCreedy opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. He looked at the sketch again and frowned.

‘Could there have been some mistake? If Storm had plague, as you say, he got better.’

Turner said, ‘I can tell you that typhoid did not kill Mr Gard. We would have found the bacterium. So
something else killed him and we found plague bacillus in his organs, in great quantities.’

‘All right, all right,’ McCreedy said. ‘What now?’

Turner stroked his beard. ‘I’d have liked to have traced all the contacts. Impossible, apparently.’

‘We have the tightest plague controls in the colony,’ said McCreedy, ignoring what Turner was saying and looking over at me. ‘The fact that the damn thing’s not in the town is testimony to that, isn’t that right, Dr Row?’

I still felt uncomfortable that Dawson and McCreedy had been having dinner.

‘I mean, we’ve done our best to protect the town and it seems to be working. This is just proof of that,’ said McCreedy. ‘You follow me?’

Turner was gazing out into the dark and appeared to be thinking aloud.

‘This may be two separate cases. I can’t say where Gard contracted the plague bacillus: it may have been directly from the other steward, but more likely on the ship. A virulent bacillus, considering how rapidly the disease took hold in the end. Septicaemic certainly.’

‘So?’ said McCreedy. ‘The man was in quarantine.’

‘So, it’s an example of how cases can pop up anywhere at any time, seemingly unrelated. It’s just a matter of time, I’m afraid, before there’s a case right here.’ Turner pointed into the night.

‘Well,’ said McCreedy, slapping both hands down on both thighs and standing, ‘I’m not sure what else I can do.’

‘We can all do more to
prepare
.’

McCreedy spoke as if he were in chambers. ‘I’ve just said, we
are
prepared. No town is better prepared. Dr Row has seen to it. We’ve swept Flinders-street from end to end. Fifteen hundred horses a day going up and down the main street, you follow me? A man can cross it now without having to scrape his shoes clean on the other side. We’ve flushed drains and sloshed so much carbolic acid around I don’t think there’s a germ alive. So many ships have been fumigated one actually caught alight.’

‘I was in Chinatown yesterday…’ said Turner.

‘Didn’t know we had a Chinatown,’ said McCreedy, with a chuckle, looking at me for some reason and winking.

‘Flinders-lane, I think it’s called,’ said Turner.

McCreedy’s face swiftly changed and flashed annoyance. ‘What the devil were you doing there?’

‘I’ve not seen conditions like that since I visited Shanghai.’

Turner could not have chosen a worse comparison. McCreedy stiffened.

‘Should plague take hold in this town, and today I believe that is more likely than it seemed yesterday, it will be conditions like those in that squalid street which will give it a home.’

McCreedy mustered his height and weight. ‘I told you what we’ve done. I’ll not be told how to run my town.’

‘Plague is at the door, Alderman McCreedy. You might think the main street is clean. I don’t – not enough to stop the disease. And despite what you say, in my time here I’ve seen a great deal of rubbish piled up, not just in Flinders-lane but everywhere behind the main street. Drains choked by rubbish. Dogs fighting over rats. Just yesterday there were children sliding down Denham-street on the slime left behind by the nightsoil cart. I counted nine horse carcasses on the town common alone. It’s all perfect cover for rats and disease. I’ve looked at Dr Row’s correspondence book. There are many things he has suggested which you have not done.’

McCreedy gave Turner a vicious look and strode to the door, before turning. ‘I’ll not be lectured –’

‘And I’m going to urge the Home Secretary to declare Townsville an infected port.’

McCreedy took a step back towards Turner. ‘What the devil are you talking about?’

‘It’s enough to have one confirmed plague death. I plan to send a telegram tomorrow.’

‘You’ll bring this town to a standstill.’

‘Plague is directly associated with the sorts of unsanitary conditions I’ve seen here. Filth and overcrowding. If you don’t move to clean the town up now, there will be no trade,’ said Turner. ‘And if it gets a foothold, nobody will want to build railway lines up here. To Bowen or Charters Towers or anywhere else. Do you follow me?’

I could have throttled Turner myself. McCreedy stood at the door with his mouth hanging open. He looked at me, and I looked at Turner.

‘Perhaps, Dr Turner, if the council had some time?’ I said, wondering how in the hell this mild man could turn so caustic.

‘Time’s run out,’ Turner said.

‘Another day?’ I said. I was trying to be conciliatory, on behalf of the council more than McCreedy.

Before Turner could reply the Mayor shook his head and said, ‘I’ll not be bullied or blackmailed,’ a hoarse whisper. He gave me a furious look and left.

Turner went back to his table. I closed the door. If anything he looked pleased with himself, but he apparently didn’t like the look on my face.

‘Calm down,’ he said.

‘Calm down? My God, are you crazy? That was the Mayor. He’s trying to help.’

‘No, he’s not.’ Turner looked at me as if I was the crazy one. ‘Not at all. He’s acting as if it’s a political scrap rather than a mortal danger. We have no time for tact.’

I threw up my hands and left Turner with his bacteria. Of course, Humphry would have applauded him, but Humphry enjoyed pointless acts of bravado himself.

I thought about finding Humphry as I had promised, to tell him what he said he already knew, that Gard had the plague. But I was tired and angry.

Out in the street I felt my cheeks still burning. A couple of drunks were singing their way down east Flinders-street and bats were diving through the darker edges of a galaxy of insects around the lamplight. One creature making a meal of another.

I walked my bicycle around the spinning circle of moths and started up Denham-street. In the dark beyond the lamplight I could hear the drunks laughing. Shapes flickered around my head and my unreasonable instincts told me that there was, indeed, danger in the dark.

Liphyra brassolis: The moth butterfly

…
He climbed the tree and started chopping at a branch with a small axe.
Oecophylla smaragdina
had made a nest by sewing the leaves together with the silk of their own young, which they held and used like darning needles. The nest was in turmoil when it came down, the ants swarming at us, rising on their hind legs and spitting. Seizing a pair of scissors and mindless of the ants biting his arms, he cut open the nest, showing me something the size and colour of a halfpenny. This turned out to be the armoured and flattened larvae of our
Liphyra brassolis
which lives inside the ants’ nest and, unlike any other caterpillar I know, eats the ant grubs, its head safe from what must be daily attack underneath its burnished copper back. I remembered Dr Turner saying ‘Heads or tails?’ and made as if to flip the thing, which then was still a mystery, a good puzzle for Mr Darwin, and an eloquent example of God’s hand in nature if ever one was needed
…

Observations of My Father
(unpublished), Dr Allan Row (1948)

THE FAT BLUE GRUB
of Gard’s canvas bag rested against my legs.

Boots at the bottom, clothing, letters and postcards tied with a bootlace, a pipe, tobacco, buttons, razor and strop. I knew this without opening it. Every man’s life could be boiled down to these mundane things.

But I owed the man something, I felt. He had helped me carry Storm; he tried to warn me. He put his trust in me and perhaps I’d let him down. I felt a certain amount of responsibility for his death. There you go.

The man who spoke over Gard’s grave had, it seemed, delivered his personal effects to the police station, and Sergeant Moylan had duly locked them in the cell they used for such things. They had been fumigated with the rest of the
Cintra
luggage.

A dead man’s kit is a heavy burden. It might have sat immoveable for days or weeks or years with all the other abandoned possessions the police collect, until someone claimed it or it was dragged out and burned.

Moylan had been surprised when I mentioned that Gard had a wife in town, surprised I knew where she lived, but he’d offered me the bag, probably relieved to be rid of it.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he had said then, as he dragged it from under the bunk.

‘Yes.’

‘You knew her?’

‘No. I delivered a message. From her husband.’

‘Poor woman.’

I nodded.

‘It’s a terrible thing.’

Moylan was sitting on the bunk with a suitcase on each side and scratching his mutton chops.

‘Would you mind asking the poor soul if she’d like a visit from Father Walsh?’

I had said I would ask, of course, not wishing to cloud the issue by telling him what I knew: that she wasn’t Catholic, that she might be ill, that she had a child, that I might have broken quarantine by delivering the letter, that I might have been partly responsible for her husband’s death.

I had picked up the bag and tested its weight. It wasn’t much to show for a life.

I’d managed to balance it across the handlebars of the Carbine,
corpus delicti
, to Glendinning’s Boarding House. The place was quiet. I met no one on the stairs.

And so, resting the bag against my leg, I knocked on number eight.

‘Mrs Gard?’

There was no answer and no movement. I knocked again.

‘Mrs Gard. It’s Dr Row. Please open the door.’

But it was quiet and I sensed only space within. The canvas bag slumped slowly to the floor in despair and I kicked it away with childish anger. And then, feeling bad, I bent to pick it up and found myself face to face with the door knob.

I put my hand on it, it turned and I pushed. The door opened. When I let go, it swung fully in of its own accord, revealing a slice of dingy room.

‘Mrs Gard?’

But she wasn’t there. I dragged the bag through and toed the door closed behind me before I’d fully considered my actions.

I set the bag against the end of the iron bed. There was clothing on the floor. One door of a wardrobe was open and some dresses hung limply. The room was hot and heavy with her scent, but I resisted opening the window for air.

I felt like a thief and wondered if I was now adding to the woman’s woes by violating her life.

On a washstand was a jug and cracked basin, a washer still wet. Red hairs clung to a comb. I picked it up and put it down. On the dresser were some creams, a bottle of Eno’s Fruit Salt, no jewellery.

There was a pencil in my pocket and I was looking about for paper when I realised how stupid I was being. I shouldn’t be in the room, no matter the urgency of the news. But what to do?

Should I leave the bag or take it with me and try again later?

If I left it and Mrs Gard came back and saw her husband’s things, what would she think? That wouldn’t do.

If I could find some innocent piece of paper I could slip a note under the door.

I was reaching for the knob, suddenly anxious to leave, when there was a light knocking. I froze, mortified, the knob turned and the door opened towards me. I thought of jumping into the cupboard; ridiculous. There was no time.

Mrs Glendinning saw the bag against the end of the bed and put a hand to her breasts.

‘So sorry…’ I began, and at the sight of me she recoiled, her eyes wide.

She mouthed the words, ‘Jesus Mary and Joseph,’ but nothing came out and if she hadn’t reached out then and clutched at the doorframe she’d have fallen back into the hallway.

I led her to the edge of the bed and closed the door again. She was gulping and I hoped I hadn’t killed her, too.

After a minute or so the colour came back to her face.

‘I’ve brought her husband’s things,’ I said, trying to sound official, pointing at the bag. ‘The door was open.’

‘Wasn’t,’ she said, gasping and wiping a tea towel over her face, ‘when I come in.’

‘I came to drop off her husband’s things,’ I said again.

She took a deep breath. ‘Her husband’s
things
?’

‘He’s dead.’

She looked at me as if I might have killed him. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

She shook her head.

I looked at the clothes in disarray on the floor. ‘When was the last time you spoke to her?’

‘She keeps to herself and minds
her
own business. Haven’t seen her since day before yesterday,’ she said. ‘Her rent’s due.’ She shook her head. ‘Dead. Oh my gawd.’

I tried to help her up, but she brushed away my hand. She stood and straightened her dress and her hair.

‘It’s not proper for a man to be alone in a room with a married woman,’ she said. Was she talking about herself or my visit to Mrs Gard?

‘I told you, I’m a doctor.’ It seemed she didn’t believe me. ‘Why did you open the door?’ I asked.

‘Thought I heard a noise; thought she and her little one might have come back.’ But I suspected she was snooping.

‘Back from where?’

She stood and backed out of the room, her hands at her cheeks. ‘Oh gawd.’

I picked up the bag and followed her.

Downstairs, in the hallway, she turned to me and said, ‘Well, what did he die of then?’

I took a little pleasure in saying, ‘Plague.’

She stopped and fanned her breast. ‘Oh my gawd,’ she said. ‘And that’s his things?’ She pointed at the bag.

‘It’s been fumigated.’

‘I don’t want that here.’

I had no intention of leaving it with the woman.

‘When you see Mrs Gard, could you tell her to see me?’ I said. ‘Or I can come and see her. My office is at the Town Hall.’

I lugged the bag down the front steps to my bicycle. Mrs Glendinning followed.

‘What’s your interest in them then?’ she said. ‘Her and her husband. Were you his doctor?’

‘Yes.’ In a way.

‘So you’d know all about them then.’

‘I didn’t know him that well.’

She smiled, having caught me out.

‘You have no idea where she is?’ I said. She shook her head, determined not to tell me anything more.

I looked at my watch. ‘I’m late.’

‘Well that ain’t my fault.’

Balancing the bag as best I could on the front, I threw my leg over the saddle.

‘Hoy.’ Mrs Glendinning stood by the front gate, snapping the green tea towel at flies. ‘If you’re looking for trouble, you won’t find it here.’

But she was wrong.

Did digging up a man and taking his possessions make me a grave-robber? I felt like a villain. Sulphur had seeped from the fumigated bag and my clothing smelled of rotten eggs.

Back at the Town Hall it was still too early for most employees to be at work so I managed to get the bag into my office without attracting questions.

I stood over it, wondering what in the blazes to do with it now. It had to be concealed, of course. It already invited questions I couldn’t answer, like why I didn’t
just throw the damned thing away. I told myself I was holding it for Mrs Gard and her daughter. I should have taken it back to the police station, I supposed, but I was still worried that the woman had phthisis and might easily pass it on to her little girl. And I didn’t want Moylan asking me any more questions.

There was only one place for it. I had a corner cupboard of the public-service type, large and strong and stacked deep with old reports and stationery and useless things requisitioned mistakenly by the gross.

It had hanging space and I managed, with some rearranging, to stuff the bag inside and close the door. I walked away and heard the door open, Poe-like, with a long moan. The bag slowly tumbled out. I put it back and this time locked the damned thing in.

I sat down to finish a report to council on what we’d found in the West Point grave, but then my tooth started throbbing.

A dog charged us and disappeared into our dust.

‘What’s the rush?’ I said.

‘No rush.’

We were still within the city limits. ‘The police will have us.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Turner.

He had the whip in hand, but just the sight of it seemed to have been enough to encourage Humphry’s horse to gallop. Allan sat between us with a hand on his hat and a wide grin.

Three children cheered as we flew past the last house.

Once out of the town, heading north, Turner let the horse find its own pace.

‘Beautiful,’ said Turner, looking around the countryside. ‘I never realised.’

The hard road had turned to packed sand, which cushioned the wheels and gave us a comfortable ride through a forest of creamy paperbark trees, past a lagoon of flowers and waterbirds. The sea sparkled through the trees on our right.

I’d never been out to the common, but I could see why people took the trouble.

‘Are you all right?’ Turner was looking closely at me.

‘Tooth,’ I said.

‘You really should get that seen to.’

We seemed to float over the sandy ridges above the sea. ‘I can see why it’s popular for picnics out here.’ I was starting to enjoy the expedition, despite myself.

‘You mean you didn’t bring a picnic?’ said Turner.

‘It didn’t seem appropriate when you first mentioned popping out to look at the plague hospital site.’

Allan had said nothing, but his grin couldn’t have been broader.

We arrived in a flourish, braking abruptly at the edge of a small clearing. The hot hush of the bush wrapped around us with a swirl of dust.

‘Here it is,’ said Turner. Here it was indeed. There was a surveyor’s peg with a yellow ribbon in the middle
of a low flat hillock. Coarse brown grass crackled under our feet. Just ahead were dark green swamp trees marking the course of a creek.

‘When do we start hunting?’ said Allan.

In the back of the buggy was Turner’s butterfly net and a large sugar bag on the end of a pole.

‘Business first, then some fun.’

Turner and I paced the site, imagining the tents, while Allan explored the perimeter.

‘It’s a hike,’ Turner said. ‘But there’s not much we can do about that.’

Initially there’d be three tents: a ward, a surgery and staff quarters, as well as a privy. Then there’d be the well, waste pit, incinerator, all surrounded by a barbed-wire fence.

And then a cemetery.

Clouds of small insects fled from our feet and I could see Turner’s eyes flick over them. I pinched at the grass seeds burrowing through my socks. Allan was off at the far end of the site, poking around a dead tree.

We found the spot we were looking for in the north-western corner, below where the tents would be, flat and out of sight. Turner dug his heel into the ground.

‘Seems porous enough.’

Behind, the land dropped away into a paperbark swamp.

‘Do you think the water climbs this high when it floods?’ he said.

I said I didn’t think so. The gloom I’d lost briefly on the trip seemed to have caught me up.

‘Wait there,’ and Turner went to the buggy and fetched his butterfly net and the sack on the end of a pole.

‘What on earth’s that for?’ I said, pointing to the sack.

‘It’s a surprise.’

I called Allan over, Turner handed him the pole, and we headed off down into the thicker scrub.

The ground was muddier and carpeted with branches and leaves. It was even quieter down here, a hidden glade, full of biting things, no doubt.

‘This insect’s dead,’ said Allan, picking something from the tree bark.

‘It’s the skin of a cicada. It sheds its skin as it gets bigger and leaves it behind,’ said Turner. ‘Possibly
Cyclochila australasiae
.’

Allan appeared to be repeating the words under his breath. He pocketed the thing.

Turner showed us a cluster of brightly coloured beetles. He poked a finger at the metallic mass so it moved as one.

‘
Tectocoris diophthalmus
. See here, this one has eggs,’ and he put his finger near a beetle and pushed it back, revealing a tight cluster of tiny lavender eggs. ‘What do you make of that?’ he said.

‘A clucky hen,’ said Allan.

‘Maternal concern. Rare in insects. A quality that eludes even some human beings.’