Affection (17 page)

I opened the thin curtains and more light fell on the open suitcase, the wardrobe, the dresser still crowded. There was the smell of scent as before.

‘What are we looking for?’ said Humphry.

‘A letter.’

I opened a drawer of the dresser. Humphry started picking at the clothing on the floor. He plucked up a thin dress, the one she wore in church.

‘Who lived here?’ said Humphry. ‘If we’re becoming so intimately involved. Or should I guess?’

I went back to a drawer I’d just rifled and found a framed wedding photograph lying flat.

The couple didn’t look happy, but who did in wedding photographs. She had sad eyes. His crooked face looked rugged, almost handsome.

I handed it to Humphry, and he stared at it for a while.

‘That fellow looks familiar.’

‘The steward on the
Cintra
.’

‘The one who died or the one Dawson’s buying drinks for?’

‘The dead one.’

He put the picture face down on the bed and we fumbled through clothing, as ineptly as men do. The room rustled with our awkward, furtive violations.

‘I’m assuming,’ said Humphry, ‘that this is also the room the child was staying in.’ He picked up the doll.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Where’s the mother?’

‘Up at the hospital.’

He sat on the bed and took out his flask. ‘This isn’t one of your Acts of God, I hope.’

Humphry started tapping his foot. I searched. The voices downstairs rose and fell.

‘Did I tell you I nearly became a priest?’ Humphry said.

It was such an unexpected confession I stopped what I was doing and looked at him.

‘I wanted to know why my parents died,’ he said.

He used the toe of his shoe to push the suitcase backwards and forwards.

‘Died in a fire when I was very young. But I was old enough to ask why.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

He took a sip from the flask and offered it to me. I shook my head.

‘My sister pulled me out through a window and we watched the house go up together, a big roaring fire, in
the middle of the night. It was exciting, you know. I didn’t understand.

‘Anyway, later a priest came along and told me it was God’s will. And I believed him. You tell a child something like that and it makes an impression. I became quite religious. We’d moved in with my father’s sister and they wondered if I had a calling. I started studying for the priesthood.’

I resumed looking through the last drawer.

‘And then,’ said Humphry, ‘I had a kind of epiphany, although it probably occurred to me a little slower than that. Over months or years. But I realised that everyone I knew had had some awful tragedy in their life. Parents, brothers, sisters, children died or were terribly maimed by this or that disease and this or that accident. What I’d experienced wasn’t that special. I concluded that the whole thing, the human condition if you like, must have all been a terrible accident. Don’t you think it’s a miracle any of us live to old age at all? Anyway, lost my vocation, became a doctor.’

I looked around the room we’d sacked.

‘And that’s the end of the story,’ said Humphry.

She must have thrown it away.

And then I saw the scrap of cardboard. I picked it up and brushed the lint off, turned it over and over. It was the front of a box of poison.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said aloud.

‘Sometimes there is nothing left to understand,’ said Humphry. ‘Things are as they seem. A house burns
down, people die. Happens every damned day. If anything, God’s only acting when he spares us, not when he kills us. Horrible deaths and sudden accidents are natural. Nature is chaotic. It’s working against us. That’s my theory.’

I looked at the label.
Rough on Rats
. The company’s motto was engraved beneath a picture of a supine rat:
They’ll die outside
. I slipped it into my pocket.

The whisky flask sighed, and then Humphry was saying, ‘You shouldn’t take these things so personally. It’s not healthy for a doctor.
You
should have been the priest.’

On an impulse, when we left, I took the doll.

We returned to the Town Hall and met McCreedy in the hallway.

I moved aside to let him pass, but when he saw me, he flew at me. He thrust his fist with a crushed piece of paper in my face and I flinched.

‘Who on
earth
does he think he is?’ he said. ‘Have I shown him anything but courtesy since he arrived? Have I? By God! I’ll not be lectured like a child.’

Even Humphry was too surprised to retort. McCreedy looked at his fist and then tried to straighten the bit of paper, which I took to be a telegram. His hands were shaking, he couldn’t manage it, and he held it out to me again.

‘Declared.
Might as well close the damned port for God’s sake!
’ He was choking. ‘This is
exactly
what I asked
you
to
deal with. The man’s out of control. And he has the audacity to go running to the Home Secretary telling him
I’m
the troublemaker.
Me?
’ He flung the words around the hallway and I felt the building itself grow tense, listening. ‘What did I ask you to do, Dr Row? Well?
What did I ask you
?’ he screamed.

‘I –’

‘
Keep the damned man under control. Didn’t I tell you that?
’ The Mayor took a few moments to get himself together. ‘Your fault, you follow me? By God, wait until Dawson hears this,’ and he stormed off.

My face was burning, my throat tight.

‘What was that about?’ said Humphry.

I croaked, ‘Turner’s done something.’

‘Again? I might just stick around here today. Could be interesting.’

Still shaken, with Humphry following me, I went straight to Turner’s office. He was at his table, writing.

‘You had a chat with the Mayor. I could hear him from here,’ he said without looking up.

‘He’s a little upset,’ I said, and took a seat.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you close the port?’

He looked at me. ‘They’re not fumigating the ships. They’re not following regulations. I’ve just quarantined a few ships, that’s all.’

‘How many?’

‘All the ones that haven’t been fumigated.’

‘How many is that?’

‘All of them.’

Humphry clapped his hands together.

‘Did you send a telegram to the Home Secretary?’ I said.

‘The Mayor’s been very uncooperative about it all, as you know. And now we have a human case of plague in town. There’s no time for dilly-dallying. One of those ships was carrying lumber from McCreedy’s mill. It could also be carrying rats. But I think that’s what really upset him, having his dashed wood delayed. That, and the telegram he’s received back from the Home Secretary I suppose.’

He walked over to a boiling beaker and prepared three cups with a splash of essence.

‘Coffee?’

‘What did the telegram say?’ I said.

‘Oh, I don’t know. The Mayor wouldn’t show me. Just kept ranting. Perhaps there was a threat in there that if he didn’t pull up his socks the council would be stood down. But I’d just be guessing. Sugar?’

I tried to fathom the depth of trouble I might be in. Perhaps my loyalties should have been with my employer. Perhaps I’d aligned myself too closely with Turner. Well, too late now. I heard Turner place the cup on the table in front of me. I heard Humphry unscrew the lid of his flask and pour some whisky into his coffee. I felt as if I’d stepped into a vortex – so many Blue Tigers that they were dragging me down.

‘I could have dealt with it,’ I said.

‘The man still doesn’t appear to appreciate the gravity of the crisis. The plague’s here now. People will die. How many people die rests directly on our shoulders and the Mayor’s. If certain things aren’t done immediately, we’ll all be culpable to some extent for these deaths.’

Amen.

Shall we never more behold thee; Never hear thy winning voice again – When the Springtime comes, gentle Annie, When the wild flowers are scattered o’er the plain?

‘Gentle Annie’, by Stephen C. Foster

THERE WAS A LOT TO DO
now that the city had its first human case of plague, but I decided to go for a walk. I needed composure.

I had expected Mrs Gard to still be at the hospital.

She was gone.

‘You let her go?’ I asked Bacot, who sneered and brushed past me. The nurse said no one had seen Mrs Gard leave. She hadn’t been officially admitted anyway. Her little girl was still alive, fighting her own demons, alone in her empty ward. The door had been locked during the night.

I went to the boarding house, but there’d been no sign of the woman.

When I returned to the Town Hall I was told Turner
had gone to Three Mile Creek, so I went to my room and laid my head on my desk for a moment.

I woke much later and went to find Turner. He was standing in the middle of his office, looking at something on the floor. I followed his gaze and there between us was a black bat.

‘I’ll have someone throw it out,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Turner. ‘Leave it.’ He knelt and teased the dead creature on to the palm of his hand. He brought it suddenly up to my face and I flinched – but saw it was just another blasted moth! An enormous thing, its muddy wings wider than the spread of his hand.

‘Another
Coscinocera
,’ said Turner. ‘See the sheen on its wings? That’s from the tiny scales, the
lepido
, which give the name to the order Lepidoptera.’ He looked at me. ‘Moths and butterflies.’

‘I know.’

‘Are you all right?’

I nodded. Books and papers covered Turner’s desk, but he found a clear corner for the thing.

‘I’ve been thinking about the
Cintra
steward, the one who died, and his daughter,’ said Turner. ‘About the coincidence of their relationship, how they can both become infected from apparently different sources.’

I nodded wearily and sat, my head bowed. That indeed was the question. I should have told Turner earlier.

‘You struck up some sort of friendship with the steward, didn’t you?’

I nodded again. He knew. ‘I wouldn’t say friendship.’

‘You spoke with him, though. Several times.’

‘Yes, yes.’ I stared at the floor.

‘You knew him well enough to pay a visit to his wife. To break the news.’

Moylan had no doubt been asking questions of Turner, about me.

‘Someone had to,’ I said. ‘I was concerned. He mentioned his wife.’

‘It’s important we tell each other what we’re doing during this business.’

‘I thought it was a personal matter.’

‘Personal missions can complicate our job. We must remain objective and detached because our actions, however seemingly innocuous, have consequences.’

I nodded, knowing what he was about to say next.

‘She’s dead.’

My head snapped up. ‘Dead?’ It wasn’t what I’d expected. ‘She can’t be?’ I sat there, unable for a moment to understand what he meant. ‘You are talking about the girl?’

‘Her mother.’

‘What?’

‘Sergeant Moylan telephoned. They’ve just found her body at the wharves.’ He was watching me closely.

‘My God. It was only last night…’ That I’d examined Mrs Gard. ‘It was…’ After she’d learnt her daughter had plague.

Turner stood. He went to make coffee. The smell of it charged the room and made me feel sick.

‘What was her reaction,’ said Turner, ‘when you told her her husband was dead?’

‘I didn’t get a chance to tell her.’

‘The sergeant said you did.’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t see her until last night. She was in shock. Her daughter.’

I was a living curse to that family.

There was a tinkle of metal on china. Images came to me: the canvas bag, the empty room, the face of Mrs Gard at the door, Gard in his grave. A little girl screaming. I needed to put them into an order that made sense, because at the moment none of it did.

Turner brought over the coffee, bitter and black.

‘How did she die?’ I said.

‘The sergeant didn’t say. He wants to see you.’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘Now?’

‘Now-ish. At the sugar wharf. In my experience police like to inconvenience doctors whenever they can. We can keep him waiting, I think.’

I pushed my coffee aside and stood, a little dazed. ‘I’ll go now.’

‘I’ll come.’

But I shook my head.

It was dark by then. I found a cab and rode across the Victoria Bridge, past the hotels leaning on each other in Palmer-street, towards the wharves where Moylan was
waiting. At some point the road ran out and slivers of steel flashed by in the lamplight as I bumped across the railway shunting yards.

There were lanterns ahead, moving about. I could see a blue light and part of the police wagon, a few dark figures against it.

I told the driver to stop and wait for me, and the man took out his pipe and settled back without complaining.

One of the lanterns came bobbing over and Sergeant Moylan, his face inscrutable in the light, led me to a patch of ground lit by the police-wagon lamps.

There was clothing piled carelessly on the tracks. He pointed, unnecessarily.

‘We haven’t moved her.’

I looked up and down the line. A locomotive was stopped a hundred yards away. I walked over the rough ground. There was an oily smell of industry. The wind ruffled the skirts and hair.

I bent over the body and put my finger to the strands of hair and gently moved them aside. Her frightened white face stared up at the stars. I saw an arm and a leg oddly placed amongst the material.

It was only then that the odours of violent death, the distinct combination of faeces and blood, hit me. I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and held it over my face as I reached for the clothing.

‘Wagon will be here soon to take her away,’ said Moylan.

I gently lifted the skirt. There seemed to be an
immense amount of material about the woman. Even in the poor light I could see the lower torso had been twisted completely around. The steel wheels had severed her head without moving it more than a few inches. Black blood was spattered delicately across the pale rise above the bodice.

I stood.

‘Seen enough then?’ said Moylan.

Another vehicle clattered out of the night, the horses greeting each other with snorts.

I nodded.

‘Good-oh.’ The sergeant held a lantern up to my face. ‘It
is
Mrs Gard?’

‘Yes.’

He seemed to be weighing it up.

‘You see, we found a purse. Name was on an envelope. Mrs Walter Gard, it said. And you’d come to collect her old man’s things.’

I nodded.

‘Don’t go away,’ and he went off to talk with someone.

I felt tired to my bootlaces. I could have dropped to the ground there and slept. Well, not there exactly.

When Moylan came back, he asked me what was Mrs Gard’s reaction to the news her husband had died?

I said I never got the chance to tell her.

He rubbed his head hard at this.

‘Are you telling me you never told her her husband was dead?’

‘She was out.’

‘But you knew who she was. You just identified her.’

‘I saw her at the hospital last night,’ I said, explaining that her little girl was brought in sick.

‘Sick.’

I nodded. I said that I understood she’d been out of town.

‘But she must have known by today. It wasn’t exactly a secret. Someone must have told her. You can’t live in this town and have your husband die and no one tell you about it for days.’

I wasn’t going to argue that point. There was Mrs Glendinning and her lodgers, after all. He didn’t ask me about Gard’s belongings. I didn’t tell him I’d entered her room.

‘Right,’ he said, closing his notebook. ‘Suicide. Poor thing.’ We looked over to the locomotive.

Two men walked into the lights carrying a stretcher.

‘We’ll need a post-mortem examination,’ I said.

‘Post-mortem?’ He pointed at the body. ‘She lay down there and along comes that loco.’

‘Her sick daughter,’ I said. ‘She has the plague. Need to check.’

Moylan rubbed a hand over his face and nodded, as if I’d confirmed his fears that this case was never going to be as simple as it seemed.

‘I’ll have this one taken to Bacot then,’ he said.

‘And just one more thing. The envelope. Can I see that as well.’

I followed him to the police wagon. He thrust Mrs Gard’s purse at me. ‘It’s in there. You keep it safe, mind, and return it to me tomorrow.’

I escaped to the cab. Moylan called after me. ‘And even if you
don’t
find anything more, I’d appreciate you telling me.’

The driver tapped out his pipe and opened the door. God knows what he made of the scene. I eased into the cab’s seat made soft by thousands of weary bodies.

On the way back, I opened the purse in the dark and sensed her presence again. I felt around and found the stiff envelope, took it out and held it up so the light from the cab lamp fell across it. It was the same one – the name on the front – torn open now, and empty.

I put it back and snapped the purse shut.

I closed my eyes and it wasn’t Mrs Gard’s face that haunted me. It was my own daughter’s.

Lillian was lying before me on the operating table, her chest fluttering, a rasping noise coming from the tube that protruded grotesquely from her throat.

It had taken all night to reach Herston. My little girl was by that stage delirious, her neck swollen so much she was wheezing. I was frantic throughout the nightmarish journey up the Brisbane River, first by boat and then by carriage. I had to keep telling myself that the new anti-toxin would save her. We just had to get to the children’s hospital.

I was so relieved I was crying as I carried Lillian’s feverish little body into the diphtheria ward. The doctor on duty gave her the serum and we waited. He was kind and reassuring, but as the hours crept by I became more frightened. Her breathing laboured. When her lips turned lavender we could wait no more. The membrane had spread down her throat and was strangling her.

I held her hand on the operating table and spoke gently, sang the songs she liked,
Hey diddle diddle the cat and the fiddle
, although I knew she was in another place by then, away from the pain.
The cow jumped over the moon
. Her little hand occasionally flexed and I had the impression she was squeezing my fingers, reassuring me.
The little dog laughed
.

The operation ended. Lillian breathed in liquid rasps.

Dr Turner put his hand to her forehead.

The look on his face told me.

And the dish ran away with the spoon.

Her heart failed that day. Sunlight and the drone of insects filtered through the boards. I was holding her hand when she died.

I went home to Dunwich sitting with her small coffin, thinking of her mother.

Maria woke me by shaking me by the shoulder. The sun was already up.

‘Blast.’

There was some hot water in a kettle in the wash
room and I made a puddle in the sink, washing and then shaving.

I heard voices. Humphry was on the front verandah.

‘A fine view,’ called Humphry. ‘I could sit here all morning. In fact, I think we should.’

‘We’d better get going,’ I shouted.

‘I’m not going anywhere until we’ve had tea. Maria’s making it now.’

He had sunk into a wicker chair when I came out and sat on the day bed. The harbour twinkled and from this distance seemed quite benign.

Maria brought tea.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Humphry, ‘let’s stay here and drink Maria’s splendid tea all morning.’

‘You’d be very welcome, Ernie,’ she said.

Ernie? When had Humphry become Ernie?

‘What sort of wild evening did you have, Lin?’ said Humphry. ‘You look a little peaked and pale.’

‘I went to see a body at the wharves.’

Humphry sat up a little. ‘Anyone I know?’

Maria had gone back inside. I whispered, ‘Mrs Gard. The room we searched.’

‘Plague?’

‘No. Suicide. Apparently.’ I remembered the purse. It was in my coat. My coat was where? Hanging on the hallway peg. I wondered what Maria would think if she’d seen it.

Humphry sipped his tea and pulled a face.

‘Sounds like you have a story to tell me.’

‘Not just now.’

‘Well, I have a story for you.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out a piece torn from
The Northern Miner
.

A sensation was caused in town yesterday when it was reported that a plague-stricken rat had been captured in the vicinity of the Queen’s Park Hotel, North Ward. The excitement was further intensified when the news was circulated that Mr Monteith, a well-known local British Association football player, had been bitten on the hand by the rat. It appears that a number of lads were chasing the rat, all eager to obtain the coveted sixpence, and several men also became engaged in the lark. Monteith seized the rat, when it turned and bit him on the knuckle of the forefinger of the right hand. He became alarmed, and went to Dr Bacot, at the Hospital, who cauterised the wound and allowed Monteith to leave. The rat was also sent to the Hospital to be analysed, and Dr Bacot made an examination of it and discovered as the result a quantity of plague bacillus. No steps have been taken for the isolation of Monteith.

‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake,’ I said.

‘I thought you’d be amused.’

‘I’m flabbergasted.’

‘Me, too.’

‘A plague rat. Why isn’t the man quarantined?’

‘Oh that? I’m just worried Monteith didn’t get his sixpence. He certainly earned it.’

Another case of plague would suit Humphry, I thought.

‘Blast Bacot,’ I said. ‘What’s he think he’s doing?’

‘I should think he’s going out of his way to annoy Turner. Don’t worry about him. That microscope of his is a hundred years old and I doubt he knows what plague looks like.’ The wicker creaked. Humphry coughed. ‘Turner seemed worried about you.’