Affection (18 page)

‘Yes, it’s this damned tooth. I’ll have to get it pulled today.’

‘Good-oh.’ He leaned back. ‘And it’s not all bad news. A new shipment of vaccine’s come in. One hundred doses. Enough to inoculate all the medicos and nurses in town plus Monteith, if we can find him. And the city fathers.’

‘The Mayor?’

‘And any passing Members of Parliament.’

‘You’re not going near Dawson with a needle.’

‘Turner’s already told me he’d be
vewy gwateful
for my help.’

I never knew whether to believe Humphry or not. Maria came back out.

‘Why don’t you take the day off?’ said Humphry. ‘You’ve earned a day off.’

I knew then that the pair had been talking while I washed.

But things had just become much more complicated, and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t afford to take that day off.

I grabbed my coat, felt for the purse and found it with a sense of regret, and Humphry gave me a lift to the Town Hall. My tooth behaved. I actually felt a little better for having slept.

I asked Turner if he’d heard from Dr Bacot yet.

‘Bacot sent me the rat this morning. By messenger.’

Well, there was a turn up. Perhaps it was an act of contrition.

‘Have you taken a look?’

‘Not yet.’ He would say nothing more on the subject until he’d seen for himself whether the rat had plague or not.

Turner had sent the boxes of serum to the ice works. He’d kept a dozen doses aside and placed them in his own ice chest, where he’d also placed Bacot’s rat.

‘So,’ he said, ‘tell me about last night.’

I told him, and showed him the contents of Mrs Gard’s purse. A brush, coins, the envelope. An almost empty small blue bottle of Evening in Paris. The envelope…Where was the letter that had been inside?

‘No suicide note?’ he said.

‘No.’

Turner was watching me carefully. ‘Suicides usually leave a note, or at least some clue as to why they did what they did.’

‘The envelope?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Not much of a clue without the letter.’

‘Perhaps.’

Turner opened the blue bottle of Evening in Paris. The scent struck me. I recognised it from church, her room, and her body.

‘Ever been to Paris?’ he said.

I shook my head. Turner sealed the bottle and put the items back. He passed the purse to me and I took it to my office.

I thought about placing it in the cupboard with Gard’s canvas bag, but couldn’t face that reunion of Mr and Mrs Gard. Instead, I put it in my drawer.

‘Come to my office,’ said Bacot. He shut the door behind me. ‘Drink?’

‘No.’

‘Sent the damned rat to Turner, didn’t he tell you? Nothing I could do with Mr Monteith, if you want to know. It’s not up to me to diagnose the damned disease is it? No.’

He poured me a drink anyway and I cradled it.

‘Plague hospital’s ready. Routh’s nitpicking. Can’t stand the man. Weak. And Turner, I’d rather not have anything to do with him. He’s unreasonable. Sneaky.’

He stared out the window.

‘What about Mrs Gard?’ I said.

He turned around and looked at me as if I was mad. ‘She can’t damned well stay here.’

‘What? I meant the dead woman from the wharves last night. The post-mortem?’

‘Oh, that.’ He searched his desk. ‘Did that first thing. Before all this.’ He found a sheet of paper and held it up to read.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Death is most definitely consistent with the poor woman being run over by a train. I’d say that finished her off.’

‘Finished her off?’

He put the paper down.

‘Well, I thought this was why you had asked for the post-mortem. Do you want to hear it or not?’

‘Sorry. Keep going,’ I said.

My tooth had started to complain and I took a sip of what might have been undiluted gin and swirled it around my mouth.

Bacot was rustling the paper. ‘The walls of the stomach were corroded and the mucous membrane had been entirely eaten away.’

I swallowed. The drink had made my eyes water. ‘What caused that then?’ I said, trying to catch my breath.

‘Could have been acid. Or caustic soda. Not unheard of.’ He held up a finger. ‘But it wasn’t. Indeed not. I found grey powder on the walls of the stomach. Maybe a teaspoon.’

I waited, but he wanted me to ask so I ventured, ‘Poison?’

He made a small, scoffing laugh. ‘Of course
poison. Rat
poison. No doubt about it. I told you there was a craze. The Mayor’s been giving the stuff away.’

‘Rough on Rats.’ And I felt in my pocket and
brought out the label of the poison packet I’d found in Mrs Gard’s room.

‘Yes, and never mind the blasted rats. Rough way to kill yourself. Which I suppose explains the injuries. Didn’t take enough of the poison, you’d look for something quicker too. Very uncomfortable.’

Dear God. I put the label back in my pocket.

‘A very persistent suicide.’

I had one more question. ‘Did you test for plague?’

‘Why?’

‘The woman had a room at the boarding house.’

‘Boarding house? What the devil are you talking about?’

‘The mother of the girl with plague. This is her. Mrs Gard. The suicide. She lived in the boarding house in Sturt-street.’

Bacot digested this for a moment. ‘Ridiculous. Only other things of note were unrelated,’ and he picked up the post-mortem report again. ‘Small kidneys. Some inflammation of the lungs. Syphilis.’

‘Syphilis? You must be mistaken. She was a married woman.’

He looked genuinely offended. ‘There’s no mistake.’ He passed me the sheet. ‘I see it quite often. Her husband, what’s he do?’

‘He was a ship’s steward.’

‘Well, then. He’s been playing up.’

I read the report through. It was thorough. ‘Well, there’s a chance…’ I began.

‘Yes, yes, all bloody right. It’ll have to be the kidney. The spleen’s pulp,’ and he stamped off. He returned with a specimen in a jar.

‘You test it. You’re the expert now. Nothing to do with me.’

I picked up the jar. ‘And the Gard girl?’ I’d been afraid to ask.

‘Gone. Last night.’

I felt a crushing weight on my soul. ‘Oh.’

‘Dr Routh’s problem now.’

The jar slipped and I just managed to catch it. ‘She’s alive?’ I put it back on the table with shaking hands.

He nodded curtly. ‘I wouldn’t be too hopeful, though. Anyway,’ he said, ‘your plague hospital appears to be open for business.’

I asked Humphry to step into my room. The lamps were lit. I closed the door.

I placed the Rough on Rats label between us on the table.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

‘It’s from Mrs Gard’s room. I’m wondering if it was in the envelope.’

‘What envelope?’

I pulled the purse from my drawer and put the envelope beside the label.

‘This is Mrs Gard’s purse.’

Humphry looked at me, frowning.

‘It’s all right. The police gave it to me. And this,’
I said, pointing at the envelope, ‘is the letter her husband asked me to give to her.’

He looked at the items and then looked at me as if I really had gone mad.

‘It’s simple.’ I picked up the label and plopped it in the envelope, and took it out again. ‘Her husband had sent her this label. That was his last letter to her. A poison label.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Humphry, clearly not seeing.

‘It’s a threat. Or a suggestion. He wanted her dead.’

‘The steward wanted to kill his wife,’ said Humphry, ‘so he sent her a letter with a label in it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes. That would certainly do me in.’ Humphry looked very closely at me.

‘Well, what would you do if you were quarantined on an island and wanted to kill your wife?’

Humphry reached forward and picked up the label and envelope. He seemed to be considering the question seriously. He held the items up to the light. ‘You say you delivered this letter to Mrs Gard.’

I nodded.

‘Presumably before the man was dead.’

‘Well, he gave it to me before he died, yes.’

‘And he didn’t know he was dying.’

‘Right.’

‘But he wanted his wife dead.’

‘Yes.’

‘And now she is.’

‘Yes.’

‘And their daughter has plague.’

‘That may have been a coincidence.’

‘I thought it may have been an Act of God.’ Humphry held the envelope up to the light again.

‘Not if Gard killed his wife. You see?’

‘It lets God off the hook? Is that what this is about?’ Humphry took the label and turned it blank side up. He then upended the envelope and tapped it.

‘What is it?’ I asked. He had his nose to the paper. He crooked a finger and pointed. I rubbed my eyes, but could see nothing.

‘Fleas,’ he said. He poked them with a finger. ‘Dead.’

I took a magnifying glass from my drawer. There were half a dozen black dots. Humphry might have then realised what that meant to me.

‘Ah, but it really doesn’t matter now though, does it?’ he said. ‘It’s probably just a coincidence.’

With Humphry almost anxious at my elbow, I went to Turner’s empty office and fetched some tweezers, collected a flea and cut it open with a scalpel on a glass plate. I slid it under the microscope. There were cells there, but they were so desiccated it was impossible to tell if any was plague bacterium.

How did the fleas get into the envelope? Did God, nature or Gard put them there? The fact remained that I’d delivered them.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ said Humphry, at my
shoulder. ‘What matters
now
is stopping the disease spreading.’

But I squeezed my head between my hands and felt the vortex grip me and drag me further down towards its fluttering core.

Willy and two other brats, Licked up all the Rough on Rats, Father said, when mother cried, Don’t worry, dear, they’ll die outside.

Anon

THE GARD GIRL HAD BECOME
the plague hospital’s first patient and starched nurses circled her bed and attended her every whimper.

‘She won’t last the week, you know,’ said Routh, who spent most of the time complaining about the facilities.

It was true, the tent made a poor hospital. It was cool at night and stifling during the day, but at this stage it was quiet. I thought Bacot, though, had done a good job in equipping it and the child was probably the best cared for plague patient in the colonies. Still, she suffered.

I sat with her at Three Mile Creek all that next night. Fever and spasms twisted her small body.

‘Mum–meee,’ she cried out, and I gave her a little ether and drained the buboes again, but it seemed to do
nothing to ease the pain that might well stop her little heart. It certainly put a strain on mine.

In the morning, though, she took some water.

I felt relieved enough to have breakfast. Routh brought his plate over and sat down with a wheeze beside me.

‘Word of advice,’ he said to his eggs. ‘Don’t expect them to be grateful. They’ll hate you for this.’

He brought a forkful of egg to his mouth and it slid off. He sighed and tried again. ‘They’ll hate you for trying to help them. Mark my words.’

‘Who hates me?’ I said.

‘Them,’ and he docked with the fork successfully, and then jabbed it in the air in the direction of town. ‘The public. If not yet, then they will. If we have more patients. And I dare say we will if this blasted Dr Turner has his way.’

He said this without looking at me. His face wobbled over the plate.

‘Why?’ I said.

‘Why? You saw what happened on the island. I’ve seen it before. Many times. No one likes being quarantined. Especially if they think they’re going to die. And the people you separate them from like it even less. Do you have a gun?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Word of advice,’ he said. ‘Get a gun.’ He took some bread and mopped up the rest of the eggs with it, shovelling the lot into his mouth.

‘Do
you
have a gun?’ I said.

He nodded, chewing, and gave me a wink. ‘And I suppose being stuck out here has its benefits,’ he said. ‘Dr Bacot has sent us a splendid cook.’ He rose and carried his plate back to the table where the food was laid out.

I took a sip of my tea and left before he returned.

Back in the near-empty ward, the child was still asleep, thankfully, and I watched for a time the painful rise and fall of her chest. A nurse sat beside her and I said I’d just lie down over there on that bed, and if I dozed off to wake me when the little girl stirred.

During the previous night, I’d tried to make sense of the chain of events that had brought her here.

Of all people, it was Gard who’d been ordered to help me move Storm. It was Gard I’d somehow exposed to the disease. I’d then delivered his fateful letter and transferred the disease as effectively as a rat. Despite Humphry dismissing the theory, I couldn’t see any other connection. The child caught the disease from the letter I’d delivered, and that same letter and the removal of her daughter – as well, perhaps, as news of Gard’s death – all this had caused Mrs Gard to take poison
and
throw herself on the railway tracks. A breeze brought a hint of Evening in Paris through the tent flap and a breath touched my cheek, in small puffs.

Humphry was shaking me. It took me some time to drag myself away from the blessing of sleep, and when I managed to sit, I had to hold my head in both hands.

Humphry was saying Maria had been worried and wanted to know if I was coming home. I nodded, and stood.

I went over to the girl. She was still asleep and her breathing much easier. I touched her forehead. Her fever had actually come down.

And so I went home. As I sat beside Humphry in his buggy, the sea air revived me and I told him my new germ theory – the one in which I was either God’s or Gard’s agent.

‘The way you describe it, it sounds more like a conspiracy than an Act of God,’ said Humphry. ‘But I’m sure there’s a more rational way of looking at it.’

‘Not this time.’

In morning light Humphry and I sat at the kitchen table as Maria filled the teapot from the steaming stove-black fountain.

‘How is the little girl?’ said Maria. She had one of those flat Irish voices, but I’d always found the lightness of it powerfully attractive. She didn’t look at me. She wore a blue winter dress, rather formal for indoors. As she stirred the pot I stared at her forearms. I hadn’t noticed before how brown they’d become. She must have been out in the vegetable garden.

‘Better,’ I said. I asked where Allan and the girls were.

‘School.’

I tried to think what day it was. Monday?

Maria, my wife, wore her long dark hair in a tight bun, French style. As she turned I noticed also that her face was brown and she looked healthier than I’d seen her for some time, although there were bags under her eyes. So she hadn’t slept much either. I scratched the stubble on my chin.

As she put the pot down between Humphry and me, she gave me a smile. When had I stopped noticing these things? Well, of course, I knew when. I turned to Humphry and said there must be many things waiting for us to do.

‘Should we be going?’

Maria paused at the cupboard.

‘Well, no,’ said Humphry. ‘Wouldn’t you know, there’s actually nothing to do at the moment.’

Maria brought over the good cups and saucers.

Humphry said, ‘Funny isn’t it how things run on and on at such a pace and then,’ he clapped a hand on the table rattling the cups, ‘it stops. Anyway, I don’t know about you, Lin, but I need this cup of tea.’

I saw them exchange a glance. I wondered about conspiracies. I knew they both thought I might be mad. And I knew why.

‘You’re right, I suppose. I need a wash anyway.’

‘Take the rest of the day,’ said Humphry. ‘Up all night tending the sick. Can’t be expected to work twenty-four hours a day. I’ll tell Turner.’

Yes, I said.

But the thought of being home alone all day with
Maria made me afraid. There were some things I couldn’t face.

There was another long silence as Maria spun the teapot left, then right, and poured. She leaned over me to do this and I could smell that womanly smell of soap from the laundry. Her brown jaw was firm, a small nose, an attractive wife.

She poured herself a cup and sat at the end of the table and we politely sipped our tea.

She had an aristocratic habit of crooking a little finger as she drank. I used to say that I rescued her from Inniskillen and she’d say I kidnapped her.

Our little joke.

She missed her family, of course she did, and I often wondered why she’d married me, against her father’s wishes, a young doctor from the colonies, but it seemed a long time ago and so far away. Four children ago.

‘I don’t know what the girl’s name is.’ I said this out loud. It had just occurred to me no one had told me, and it wasn’t on her paperwork. Just ‘Child: Gard’.

‘You know, I never thought to ask the mother,’ said Humphry, and I caught another fleeting look from Maria to Humphry.

I found myself staring at Humphry and he gave me a hard look back.

‘You look terrible, Lin,’ he said. ‘You never were a pretty chap, but by God you’re a sight. When was the last time you slept?’

‘You woke me up only hours ago.’

‘Did I? Well, don’t blame me for your appearance. Maria, what are you doing to care for this husband of yours?’

If that had come from anyone else Maria might have flown at him, but she simply laughed then, knowing Humphry. And I smiled to see it.

‘I think he’s having an
affaire de coeur
,’ she said, her eyes on me.

‘I suspect something like that, too. The hours he keeps.’

The laughter petered away, and Humphry said, ‘I have a better theory about the Gards. Want to hear it?’

I shook my head, looking at Maria, but she leaned forward and Humphry pressed on.

‘There’d be fleas on the quarantine station goats,’ he said. I shook my head again, but he said, ‘Listen, it’s actually along the same line as yours.’

Gard discovered the truth about his treacherous wife, he said.

‘Treacherous?’

Humphry looked at Maria. ‘Fallen,’ he said. Perhaps the men talked. There was little else to do. And when those sorts of men talked, it always turned to women.

Gard listened coolly, said Humphry, but he had a burning rage as he recognised the woman they bragged about. The next day he shot a goat for the camp and put some fleas into a bottle.

Humphry rubbed his hands together, pleased with his theory.

‘This is the best bit,’ he said.

That night, with Storm in a fever, he pressed the bottle to Storm’s thigh. Next day he recaptured some of them! It explained how Gard might have himself caught plague, said Humphry, if a flea escaped and bit him. Anyway, he put the fleas in the envelope with the poison label and had the honourable and reliable Dr Row deliver the message. It was cunning: a suggestion, a threat and an attempt at murder all in one. It worked. Mrs Gard, filled with remorse and guilt, took what Gard knew was at hand – Rough on Rats.

‘Why would she take what she feared?’ asked Maria.

‘The power of suggestion,’ said Humphry.

Listening to him, I wondered if Humphry wasn’t inviting me to question the absurdity of the theory. Maria, though, had a hand over her mouth, shocked and fascinated by Humphry’s story.

Humphry continued. The agony was too great and she took herself off to the rail yards and waited for a locomotive. Gard himself had by then succumbed to plague from the very fleas he’d enlisted as assassins.

Humphry slapped the table and sat back, pleased with himself and certain I would be comforted.

‘What about the child?’ I said. ‘The man wouldn’t put his daughter at risk, surely.’

‘He wasn’t thinking about his daughter,’ said Humphry, lighting a cigarette. ‘Only revenge. And if that’s the case, it shows you what a scoundrel the man was and that even death from plague was too good for him.’

I supposed it took the act out of God’s hands and put it in a man’s, which should have been some comfort to me. I told Humphry it was a good theory.

‘Good? It’s better than good. It’s damned perfect. If the man was still alive I’d shake his hand and put him on the end of a rope. I should have been a barrister.’ But he winked at me.

Maria poured more tea.

I said there were a lot of ‘ifs’ in his theory.

‘
Avec des “si” on mettrait Paris en bouteille
,’ said Maria.

‘What was that?’ said Humphry, looking from me to Maria.

‘With “ifs” one could put Paris in a bottle,’ she told him.

He picked up his tea and finished it. ‘Is that right?’ he said, looking at me. ‘Sounds a bit like “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”, and I can take a hint.’

‘No, it’s just an expression. Please don’t leave,’ said Maria.

‘I do have to go,’ said Humphry. I rose. ‘You’re staying,’ he told me.

‘I’ll see you out.’ I was too tired to argue.

When Humphry was gone I went out to the bathroom. The house was silent. There were things to be said. I watched her iron a fresh shirt.

I couldn’t find the words, somehow.

I stood at the door in my undershirt and trousers, braces hanging loose, and she turned and brought me the shirt, pressing it into my chest. I felt those cool
forearms against me and she was looking directly into my eyes.

‘Why don’t you go into the bedroom,’ she said. ‘And lie down.’

But I heard myself say, as if from a great distance, that I really had to get to work.

When I got to my office I laid my head on my desk and slept until well after noon.

My throbbing tooth woke me.

That afternoon I learnt from Turner that no one had claimed Mrs Gard’s body. Everyone had forgotten about her husband’s possessions, the bag in my cupboard, and I realised I still had her purse, despite my promise to return it to Moylan.

The newspapers that day had devoted just as many column inches to plague as to war. The first case of plague in the town was referred to as an ‘Unfortunate Occurrence’, but one not entirely unexpected. There was no mention of the girl’s parents, and her name wasn’t even published. The plague news from Sydney and Brisbane was more of a sensation, apparently.

The council had begun pouring more resources into sweeping the streets, fumigating sheds around the wharves, knocking on doors and inspecting sewers and back yards. The leaflets I’d composed and council had approved long ago were finally rolling off Willmett’s presses, more rats were being found and incinerated, ships fumigated and so much carbolic poured into
drains that the dead fish were again piling up along the Strand and not even the Chinamen could bury them all this time.

‘The town might be clean,’ said Humphry, ‘but it smells like death.’

Like a heavily laden steamer, McCreedy walked with an easy rolling grace.

I was startled, though, that he had managed to appear in the centre of my office without my noticing.

‘Sit, sit,’ he said, looking about the room as if for the first time.

‘I was about to come to your office.’ I rummaged around my desk.

‘Couldn’t wait all day. Let’s get the damned thing over with now.’

He came over to the desk and picked up a framed photograph.

‘Your girl?’ he said.

‘My wife.’

‘I didn’t know you were married.’

He sat in the chair across from me and leaned back, resting hands like twin spiders on his belly.

‘Well, I suppose that’s that then. I suppose she must have plague if she’s in the plague hospital,’ but the Mayor didn’t seem to enjoy his own joke. ‘This serum for the plague. It works?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve had it?’

‘Of course.’

‘And it’s being given to mayors. Well, well, this must be serious.’