Affection (23 page)

She let me examine her and she appeared well, if a little listless. She had neither fever nor swellings and she probably should have been discharged days ago. I’d resisted Routh’s attempts to transfer her to the public hospital. She had nowhere to go but the Townsville orphanage, and I was trying to put that off for as long as possible. At Three Mile Creek, Humphry, Turner and I could look in on her. She was also better fed.

I stood and waved goodbye. She returned the wave. It lifted my heart and broke it at once.

On our way back to town I thought of Mrs Duffy in church. We’d shared the same back pew, but we spoke only about the weather. I realised that of the back-pew sitters, two were dead. Was
that
a pattern? Kerr had wondered aloud if the end of the world was coming, and I supposed it had, a chain of personal apocalypses for the Gard family, Mrs Duffy, even her dog.

I didn’t know what to think. In fact, in my misery, I didn’t want to think about it at all.

We rattled along the coast, and I noticed the sea breeze had dropped completely.

Turner suddenly left the road, taking a track through one of the low coastal dunes on to the beach, a childish risk, the horse straining as the wheels sank into the soft sand, until we reached the wet shoulder where the sand was firm and smooth. Humphry’s horse snorted with delight at the water and drew us suddenly into the wash. Turner had some difficulty steering him back, and
eventually let the horse have his way. The hooves splashed through the shallows, one wheel throwing sea water so a rainbow chased us.

After awhile Turner managed to steer the horse back on to the dry sand and we stopped.

The sea was smooth and gasped slightly as it pushed up the sand. Magnetic Island lay deep blue on the horizon, and the water was a glass green near the shore, so clear you could see the bottom. Gulls foraged through the line of rubbish and dead fish were strung along the high tide mark. Swirls farther out marked where fish fed near the surface and more gulls floated above them. There was nothing more peaceful, and all I wanted to do then was to lie down on the sand and close my eyes, listening to the sounds of nothing civilised, just the gentle rocking of nature taking a breather.

I said this to Turner, who didn’t reply; probably he wished the same thing and if we both wished it, it might come true and that wouldn’t do.

‘Sleeping well?’ Turner broke the silence.

‘Yes.’

He looked like an Englishman from the Raj. The pith helmet was actually bigger than his head. There was a puffiness, a redness about the cheek, the skin sagging slightly.

‘What are you looking at?’ he said.

‘Sleeping well?’

He flicked the reins, but the horse didn’t respond.

He let them hang limply in his hands. ‘You are not responsible.’

‘I thought I should have been able to help,’ I said.

‘I don’t mean the Gard child.’

I knew what he meant.

‘Your daughter.’

I stiffened, nevertheless.

‘Her death,’ he said.

The small unbroken waves hissed in their run up the sand and recoiled as if touching a hot stove.

My mind screamed,
Stop
! but Turner of course would never be able to stop.

‘Diphtheria is a cruel disease, Row. Lillian died terribly. Nothing could be done. We must face the truth as we find it.’

I was unable to speak.

‘It’s not your fault,’ he said.

A laugh slipped from my mouth then. Didn’t he know?

I swung down from the buggy and fell to my knees. I wanted to show the eminent Dr Turner my theory, but I couldn’t find a stick. I wandered about, determined to show him what seemed clear to me.

If I had a stick I could trace a line in the sand, from the night I told Maria we should wait, to the day Mrs Duffy’s dog died, and through all the horrors in between. The dog’s fate was sealed more than a year before Mr Duffy slid the bullet into the chamber.

Turner was saying, ‘Your family needs you, Row. More than this town does.’

I looked down at my boots and saw that they were under the water.

‘That’s funny,’ I said. I didn’t believe Turner was listening.

‘Don’t you see what you’re doing to Maria?’ he was saying. ‘She’s lost a daughter and now she believes she’s lost a husband.’

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ I told the gulls.

‘
I
could have been at the hospital sooner, too. Each of us could have done more, perhaps.’

For God’s sake, stop.

‘We could all blame ourselves,’ I heard him say. ‘But we don’t, because we did what we could, and in the end we have a greater responsibility to the living.’

Do you think I don’t know that? I could have screamed. If I was deluded, I could be cured. The grief of a rational man is endless.

‘Many parents lose children, Row. Others aren’t blessed with children in the first place. Whose loss is greater?’ I heard him say.

The water lapped my knees and had soaked my trousers to the waist, but I couldn’t feel it. I turned away from the buggy and looked out to sea.

My grief would not be shared.

I stood there for some time, between two worlds. Turner politely waited.

‘Can you swim, Dr Turner?’ I said, after awhile.

‘Of course not.’

My feet took me back to the buggy and I pulled myself, dripping, back up beside Turner, who got the horse going again. We rode in silence.

I laid my head down slowly on my office table. The comforting smell of polish and the pressure against my cheek eased the tooth a little. The cupboard appeared from the gloom, leaning against the wall, as indifferent as a sarcophagus to the secrets it held inside.

I heard knocking, but I had no desire to move.

‘You the doctor?’

I lay still.

‘I said, are you the doctor?’ It was the rasping voice of a man who worked in dust. With great effort I raised my head. The man was standing in the doorway.

‘What do you want?’ I said.

‘I want a doctor.’

‘Are you sick?’

He shook his head. ‘My son.’ He took a few uncertain steps forward.

I leaned across the table, lit the lamp and found my spectacles. I saw large hands holding a battered straw hat.

‘Broke his leg a few days back.’

‘I’m not the doctor you need.’ My body gave one sudden, violent shudder. ‘I can’t help you with a broken leg.’

‘Dr Bacot at the hospital fixed him two days ago, but he got worse and now Bacot says to see the doctor at the council and here I am.’

‘Bacot sent you?’ I looked down at the sand and the puddle of sea water under the chair.

‘Says if my son’s got a fever you was the bloke to see.’

‘I thought you said he had a broken leg?’

‘He does. And now he’s got fever.’ The man took another step towards my table.

I shook my head.

‘Cockerill’s the name.’ He stuck out a large brown hand and, feeling numb and cold, I stood and reached across the table to have my hand wrung. He pointed over his shoulder. ‘Sulky’s out front.’

A crease from the middle of his forehead to the top of his nose that was so deep I could have sutured it. He fidgeted with his hat, but his gaze was steady. Fever following a broken leg was a bad sign. Why couldn’t the blasted surgeon deal with this?

‘What did you tell Dr Bacot?’ I said. ‘About the fever.’

‘Just that he was red flaming hot. I’d been taking a look at the leg like he says to, but it wasn’t red or oozing, no more than it was before. I told him the boy’s tongue’s got this white stuff over it and he had the aches and the chills. He says to come here. You are a doctor, aren’t you?’

I stood, wearily found my bag and coat, and followed him down to his sulky. He glanced at my sopping gritty trousers, but didn’t say a word.

I kept my eyes closed against the dust and the sun, appreciating the heat for once. He had the horse at a round gallop all the way.

Truth never needs violence to compel blessings. This Plague farce can only be kept up by tyranny and violence.

Point 24 of ‘Twenty-five Reasons Why The Australian Epidemic Is
Not
Plague!’ by Dr. T.P. Lucas MRCS Eng., LSA Lond., FRSQ

HIS HOUSE WAS ONE OF
the small cottages along the road that led out of town to Charters Towers. The plants closest to the road, dead and live, always had a light grey dusting. Most yards, like Cockerill’s, were treeless and the ground too hard for much to survive the long dry season.

Inside it smelled stale; a house of men. Cockerill junior was lying on his bed, his shirt soaked from neck to navel. He was conscious and as soon as he saw us asked for water.

‘How old?’ I said, as Cockerill senior lifted his son’s head and helped him drink from a tin mug.

‘Oh,’ he stared up at the wall, ‘about twenty-five.’

‘What happened to his leg?’

‘Slipped in the flaming yards and an old steer stood on it. Bacot set it here. Seemed all right, but this morning he was like this.’

I lifted the sheet from the lower end of the bed. Bacot had done a good job with the splint and bandage.

‘Did the bone come through the flesh?’ I said.

‘No. I seen worse. Bacot said he’ll keep his leg.’ He was trying hard to keep the concern from his voice. ‘He will, won’t he?’

I peeled back the bandage and poked at the flesh around the broken tibia. It was chaffed and bruised where the hoof had struck it, and sticky with sweat, but it looked fine. The bone had cracked but held together. I lifted the sheet further, and stopped.

At the groin was a hard purple boil, about the size of a small chicken’s egg. I raised the sheet still further and there was the same on the other thigh.

‘How long has he had a fever?’

‘I told you, just this morning. Said he wasn’t feeling right last night but, you know, he’s got a broken leg. Takes time.’

‘You haven’t washed him.’

‘I’m not his flaming mother, God rest her. He’s only been laid up a couple of days.’

‘So you haven’t noticed this lump before?’

He came to my shoulder.

‘What’s that?’ he said.

‘Let’s go into the kitchen for a minute.’

Cockerill, to my surprise, looked relieved when I told him.

‘Christ,’ he said, sitting in a kitchen chair and rubbing the top of his head hard. ‘You know, I was worried he’d lose his leg.’

‘It’s not blood poisoning.’

‘Christ.’ He ran his fingers through his matted hair and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Don’t know what I’d do if he’d lost the leg.’

‘I’ll have to do a test. On that boil.’

‘What sort of test?’

‘A test for plague.’

He nodded. ‘Why didn’t Bacot see that when he was splinting it?’

Good question. ‘Did your son have a fever before he broke his leg?’

‘No.’

‘Dizziness? Headache?’

‘Well, he was slacking off a bit that morning but he’d had a few the night before. Listen. You sure it’s plague? I know someone who says they’d told him he had it, but he didn’t. Says he wasn’t any sicker than when he had dengue and some doctors, and I’m not saying who mind you, were making a few quid from it.’

I said I was paid a salary, not a commission, and didn’t charge fees. I tried to explain that some people with plague were simply sicker than others. Some became very ill indeed, some recovered.

‘Yeah, but my son’s a strong bloke, wouldn’t you say?’

‘He looks strong.’

He nodded. ‘Too right. Do what you like. Long as he keeps his leg.’

Junior called out, ‘Dad?’

‘Hold yer flamin’ horses,’ he yelled back. He said to me, ‘How long will this take then, this test?’

‘I just need to take some blood from your son and see if there are any germs in it.’

‘He stays here.’

‘For now.’

‘He ain’t going nowhere.’ He nodded to himself.

‘Not at the moment.’

I had Cockerill hold his son down and the pair seemed to know the drill, but junior still bellowed when I sent the needle home.

We trotted back in a sullen silence, long shadows stretching ahead of us. My trousers had almost dried, but they were stiff from the sea water. I had to stretch my legs and pluck the material away from my thigh occasionally to ease the chafing. Cockerill seemed to be getting annoyed with my fidgeting.

I saw the barber shop and on impulse told Cockerill to stop and let me out. He looked me up and down as I got off and then he simply turned his sulky around.

I sat in the barber’s chair with a weary resignation. The man, who also claimed to be a dentist, bent over me. He smelled of talc and cloves. His own teeth seemed to be in good shape.

‘Too many sweet things, Dr Row.’

‘It’s one of the molars on the left…’

‘I see it.’

He whipped a blunt chisel and a small hammer from some hiding place under his apron, and he had it in my mouth. The blow sent a shock of pain through my head and I saw stars.

‘Just a tap to loosen it,’ I heard him say.

The black mist started rolling across the ceiling and receded.

‘Whisky working yet?’

‘Ung.’ Perhaps he’d hoped to knock me out.

‘Keep your mouth open,’ and he turned away. I allowed myself to relax a little and in a blur he had a knee on my chest and a shiny pair of pliers disappeared into my mouth. He gave a fierce sideways wrench and then a mighty tug, dragging my head up near his chest. There was a deafening crack.

We both fell back.

My mouth filled with blood. As the ceiling reappeared through the black mist I saw that he was bending over me, panting, to display the gleaming molar. It was huge. He was obviously pleased with himself, although his smile faded as he looked into my face.

‘Bite on this,’ he said, putting a wad of cotton into the hole in my mouth. He wound the chair up and I could see my pale, shocked reflection in the mirror. I leaned over a bucket he’d placed on the floor beside the chair
and let blood dribble into it. I stayed bent over, sure I would vomit.

‘Thought you might faint on me there, doctor,’ I heard as the nausea came and went.

‘I think you broke my jaw,’ I tried to say.

I told myself, as the pain spread around my head to the back of my neck, that I’d seen worse days.

Turner was gone. Everyone was gone. I lit the gas lamp in Turner’s laboratory, my jaw pumping pain. I prepared a slide, hardly able to see through the microscope lens.

The barber had sold me a bottle of whisky for rinsing and swallowing. It had had little effect, so I searched Turner’s pharmacopoeia and found some laudanum.

I spat out the bloody wad of cotton and placed three drops on my tongue, and then went to the basin and wetted a cloth. I sat back in Turner’s chair and draped its blessed coolness over my eyelids for a few moments, waiting for the pain to subside. For a while there was only throbbing and nausea. My tongue went to the place where the molar had been and there was a certain pleasure in finding the devil gone. The pain began to fade.

After a time, images appeared on the underside of my lids. I could see the familiar oval bacteria swimming in solution, like jellyfish under the wharves on Ross Creek, transparent and languid. They became faces underwater – of Mrs Gard, then Mrs Duffy, and then

darling little Lillian, all drifting on the tide, staring up not at me but past me, and there on the surface was my own face staring blankly back.

And then another face appeared suddenly beside it, a crooked face, and I started awake, choking on blood.

I spat in a kidney dish and rinsed with whisky, before stumbling back to the microscope. The ache had gone, but there was a thick leaden fog to swim through. I couldn’t get the lens to focus so I washed my face in a bowl and forced myself awake, coming back to count and sketch the bacteria from young Cockerill’s groin.

No surprises in those reflected faces staring back at me through the lens.

I scrubbed my hands and went to Turner’s desk with my sketch, finished a brief report and pushed it aside. I took another few drops of laudanum and leaned back in his chair, closing my eyes again, and this time the image I saw was Allan’s strange flat brown grub.

When I woke it was dark, cold, and my neck so painful I could hardly turn my head. The lamp had gone out. I stood and fumbled stiffly for a blanket I knew Turner kept in a cupboard. I found it in the half-light and fell back into an uncomfortable sleep.

‘Coffee?’

I opened my eyes and felt my face, pressing along the jaw line. It appeared to be intact.

I heard Turner at his laboratory and went to rise, but my neck, or the chair, creaked dangerously.

‘Coffee’s in front of you.’

I could see the steam rising in front of my face. I heard Turner rustling paper.

‘We’ll move him to the plague hospital this morning,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Tooth pulled.’

‘About time.’

‘I think the man broke my neck.’

I moved it a little and pain shot to the top of my head.

‘I told you I could have done it,’ said Turner. ‘Saved you a few shillings.’

The whisky bottle was next to the microscope and I wanted to add some to my coffee but wasn’t game to move any further. Turner hadn’t mentioned it and I watched him read the report on Cockerill junior.

‘The broken leg might have masked the initial symptoms,’ he said. ‘But broken legs in themselves don’t cause fevers. Bacot must have seen that.’

Fatigue and pain still nailed me to the chair.

‘Are you all right?’ he said.

‘Yes, yes. I wish you would stop asking,’ I snapped.

Turner continued reading the report long after he should have finished.

Without looking up he said, ‘I have spent some time questioning my actions and I have come to the conclusion that I could have done more.’

I longed for the pair of pliers that could rip a rotten splinter from my own heart.

We found a cab in the street and rattled off against the morning traffic.

Cockerill was sour when he opened the door. He looked us up and down as if we’d come to beg tobacco.

‘What did your test say?’ he said. He stared at our medical bags.

‘Plague,’ I said.

Cockerill grunted and glared at Turner.

‘This is Dr Turner,’ I told him.

The old man kept us at the door a moment and then said he supposed we’d better come in, but the boy was better anyway.

We examined the boy and I was surprised to see the sheets had been changed. The splinted leg was uncovered and raised, as I’d suggested, and the young man looked as comfortable as someone with bubonic plague could be. He was sleeping.

Turner took his temperature.

‘One hundred and one,’ he told me. ‘What was it yesterday?’

‘A hundred and four.’

‘I think we can move him.’

‘No. You’re not moving him,’ said Cockerill senior from the doorway.

I’d heard reports that in Sydney, where the plague seemed to have latched on with a particular viciousness, doctors and patients had been in fist fights. Police had used guns and batons to remove plague patients and there’d even been a riot as people queued for
vaccination. I could see from Cockerill’s stance that he might be trouble.

‘We have to take him to hospital,’ said Turner, in his quiet voice. ‘Your son has bubonic plague.’

‘All he’s got is a broken leg. I can take care of that.’

‘You told Dr Row yesterday that he had a fever.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s just about gone, isn’t it? Look, he’s better. You said so yourself. Just leave him be.’ The man rubbed his nose with a dirty clenched fist. ‘He’s not going to flamin’ hospital. That’s that.’

‘It’s the law,’ said Turner.

‘The law be buggered.’

‘We have to isolate him if he has plague. You don’t want to get it, do you?’

Cockerill senior sneered. ‘I’m not flamin’ stupid, you know. I’d have got it by now if it was, wouldn’t I? Dr Bacot saw him first anyway and didn’t say anything about plague. Why don’t you get him back here and see what he says?’

‘Nonetheless, he must go to the plague hospital,’ said Turner, his words hardening.

‘Nonetheless, over my dead body,’ said Cockerill, and he took a step forward. Turner came up to his chest.

‘Let’s discuss this in the kitchen.’

‘Nothing to discuss. He’s not going near no hospital. I already told
you
,’ and he poked a finger at me, ‘he’s staying here, and he’s gonna get better here.’

I noticed now that the tip of the finger was missing. He’d be one of those men who knew only about hard
work, believed that pain had to be endured and that brute force could solve any problem.

Turner said, ‘He needs medical attention. He’s going to get a lot worse before he gets better. He needs help.’

‘That’s what they said about his mother. And his brother. Took them off to hospital and they didn’t come back.’

I reached for Turner’s elbow, fed up with this argument, but he wanted to keep going.

‘We have to take your son to the plague hospital. You could be arrested if you prevent him from being taken away.’

Cockerill suddenly put his foot to a chair and sent it smashing against the wall. The violence of it caused his son to open his eyes and try to sit.

‘Wha…?’

I grabbed Turner and pulled him past the old man and down the hall out on to the front steps. I turned around at the top of the steps, as Cockerill emerged from the kitchen with a rifle, an old Martini, solid and tarnished, looking as light as a chicken bone in those big hands.

Turner went white and I felt a moment of vindictive pleasure that he might now realise that sometimes he went too far.

I met Cockerill’s eyes as he raised the rifle to my chest. I felt a curious calmness looking down that barrel, and it was Turner this time who was tugging for me to go. I turned stiffly and we retreated to the front gate.

Cockerill yelled after us, ‘Any flamin’ doctor comes here and tries to take my son away, I’ll shoot him.’

Our cab was still waiting at the gate, and several buggies had now stopped behind it in the middle of the road to watch the commotion. It was Turner, though, who had the last word.