Affection (25 page)

The wind had picked up. People moved about, skittish, as if a storm was approaching.

I felt the nausea return and I climbed into the ambulance, out of sight, pressing my head against the cool wood, closing my eyes. My neck was hot and stiff, my face swollen, and I wondered if my wounded mouth had become infected. The two ambulancemen suggested causes and cures.

‘Cancer.’

‘I had a tooth pulled,’ I told them, but they ignored me.

‘I saw a man had a face ulcer. Looked like that.’

‘He’ll be right.’ One of them climbed in and sat beside me. He slapped me on the shoulder and I nearly collapsed forward. ‘He’s lucky we’re here. And Bacot’s good with face boils.’

‘What’d he say?’

‘I think he said it was his tooth.’

‘Cripes that can be bad. I remember once…’

I couldn’t raise the energy to tell them both to shut up. I sat still. There was some chatter and movement, but miles away. I heard Humphry say, ‘Here.’

He put something in my mouth, and then, ‘Rinse and spit.’

The top of a bottle touched my lip and then my mouth was full of whisky. I bent gingerly over the side of the ambulance and spat.

‘Here,’ and this time it felt like a glass. ‘Drink.’

It was vile, but I swallowed it with some effort.

I felt him leave and I sat. It had grown quieter. Gradually, a great knot was loosened.

When I crept to the edge of the ambulance and swung my legs down, I found Humphry smoking with the ambulancemen.

‘Told him he’d be all right,’ said one.

‘What was it?’ I said.

‘Chlorodyne,’ said Humphry.

‘How much?’

‘A dram. Sit tight.’

My jaw still felt like a kerosene tin being beaten with a hammer, but the pain was fading fast.

‘Might make you a little drowsy,’ said Humphry.

‘Now you say.’

‘Probably shouldn’t have given it with whisky either.’

But I did feel better.

‘Was Bacot here?’ said Humphry. ‘Did I miss the fun?’

I looked about. There seemed to be people everywhere. ‘I can’t see him now.’

‘Shame.’

Women were roaming through the crowd calling men and boys home for tea. One figure amongst the faces was staring straight at me.

‘Damn.’

‘Still bad? Better not have another,’ said Humphry.

‘Dawson’s there.’

‘I know.’ Humphry was looking the other way, as if the beauty of distant hills had caught his attention.

Dawson followed McCreedy through the crowd. A boy wilted to tears as the two men strode through a game.

I felt a little unsteady, Humphry’s whisky taking effect.

The Mayor launched a thick finger as he approached.

‘What in the blazes, Row? What in the
blazes
?’

I pointed my own finger back, and then crooked it as if squeezing a trigger.

‘Cockerill has a gun,’ I said.

The eyes of the crowd had swivelled to the Mayor. I saw Bacot then behind him and realised he must have run off to fetch McCreedy.

The crowd quietened a little.

Between Dawson and McCreedy I noticed the two constables in their white helmets and canary uniforms shooing the crowd back. I felt a surging affection for them.

McCreedy was saying, ‘Why don’t you let Dr Bacot handle this? He’s the only blasted doctor here knows what he’s doing. And where the blazes is Dr Turner, anyway?’

Dawson was standing impassively in front of Humphry. The MP took a cigar from his jacket, bit the end off, and spat it at Humphry’s feet.

In front of me the Mayor was gesticulating.

In the crowd, right at the front, was a boy about Allan’s age. One of the constables was pushing the crowd back and had a baton across his chest. The crowd surged around him and he looked small and frightened.
And then he was gone. I took a step forward and the Mayor caught my coat.

‘Look,’ McCreedy was saying, and something about another screaming bloody farce.

Dawson struck a match, a wet sizzle of red phosphorus. The murmur of the crowd rose and fell, and I saw the face again. It
was
Allan, closer to the fence.

He saw me. He waved. And then before I could raise a hand to tell him to stay where he was he’d turned to the police and I knew what he was going to do next. Moylan was marching up the line behind his constables as they pushed the crowd back.

I could see Allan form the word ‘Dad’.

I looked up to the house. Cockerill was standing at the top of the steps, nervous about the sudden commotion, fidgeting with the gun.

And when I turned back, Allan had broken through the police line and was running towards me. I took a step forward, but McCreedy still had hold of me so I put my hand against his chest.

I never heard the crack of the Martini.

McCreedy opened his mouth and then his eyes went wide and he seemed to shrink away. Behind him the crowd flinched and fell to its knees as one. The constables crouched and fumbled for their pistols.

The Mayor was in the dirt in front of me, but Allan had vanished.

I passed Humphry and Dawson, who were peering like little boys around the side of the ambulance.

Allan!

There was a figure in the dust just inside the gate and I cried out. Humphry later said it was that sound that caused the crowd to finally scatter.

In a few slow dream-like strides I reached him, but it wasn’t Allan’s face staring up at me.

It was Bacot’s.

I stepped over the surgeon’s body, but I couldn’t see Allan. I asked Bacot if he’d seen the boy and he shook his head. He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

It must have been comfortable in the dust inside the gate. It was a place I used to play as a boy, that soft hollow where no grass ever grew. I would have liked to have joined him.

I looked back up to the house. The old man wasn’t there; he’d vanished behind the blue smoke that still lingered in the open doorway.

I told Bacot we should go now and he reached up to me with both arms, like a baby. I grabbed him, dragging him backwards through the dust, and then other hands took him away and slid him into the cool dark rear of the ambulance.

Lucky bastard.

And then the boy had his arms around my waist and I lost my balance, sitting down heavily in the road and sinking my face into Allan’s hair.

A man has only one lifetime, and in it he should combine as many lives as possible.

Dr A. J. Turner to the Entomological Society of Queensland, 1930

HUMPHRY WORKED THE SEQUENCE
out later: Bacot had decided to rush the gate while no one was looking. He picked the worst moment: the old man was on the top step, agitated by the Mayor’s arrival and the police decision to push the crowd back. Cockerill couldn’t have known what was going on, and still had the gun pointed loosely in that direction. He surely had no idea who it was coming up to the gate and he stood too tense, then, in a panic stumbled and the thing fired.

Bacot dropped like a bag of nails.

The recoil might have knocked the old man back into his kitchen. Whatever the reason, he didn’t appear again, probably deciding to get drunk and maybe even unaware he’d hit anyone.

The surgeon had a gaping wound where the bullet had glanced off a rib and ripped his side open. It missed vital organs and his chances of survival were good, said Humphry, because he’d be spared the greater danger of being under his own knife.

After the shooting, though still not feeling sober, I’d borrowed Humphry’s buggy and took Allan home to his mother. After what was some initial shock, Allan had become talkative and reconstructed the event as an adventure in which I’d stepped into the battlefield and rescued a man who’d been shot.

Maria came straight up to me and slapped my face so hard I staggered and nearly fell.

‘
Tu es completement debile!
’

And then she collapsed into me, weeping. Allan seemed more horrified by this than by the shooting and began crying into her skirt and we stood that way until the girls came to see what the commotion was about and joined in.

Although I was still affected by Humphry’s elixir, the blow brought back the pain. But the euphoria I felt, I believed, was genuine.

They wouldn’t let go for a long time and that, more than anything that day, disturbed me. And as the sobbing subsided another knot inside me slipped loose. Just a little.

When I went to the sink and spat some blood, it caused another scene until I explained that I’d had the tooth pulled.

In an odd way, as I sat in the kitchen with Maria preparing tea and pouring French blasphemies, I felt relieved. There was something more than grief between us.

And I would have stayed. My jaw was aching again now and I’d begun to stiffen up.

But I had to return Humphry’s buggy.

I squinted into the sun and could just make out the figures in a pall of yellow dust. The men stopped talking as I pulled up.

One of the constables, O’Donnell I think it was, was at the gate with a rifle loosely aimed at the house. Near his feet was a dark splash of mud, and a jagged wet trail led to the road. There was no sign of Cockerill.

‘Anyway, the man’s a hero,’ Humphry said, pointing at me as I jumped down. ‘What do you say?’

Dawson examined me as if I was a steer carcass. ‘I say if he hadn’t forced Cockerill into a damned corner none of this would have happened. I’ll be making my own report on this fiasco.’

‘Lin! Did you hear that?’ said Humphry. ‘Mr Dawson’s going to recommend you for a medal.’

Dawson seemed to be steaming in front of the setting sun. ‘You had something to do with this, too,’ he hissed at Humphry.

‘Just say I was right behind him, if you like. That’s Dr Humphry, with no ‘e’, by the way.’

‘All right,’ said Moylan, who still looked shaky and
was cradling his silver rifle. ‘Bacot broke the law and was fool enough to get himself shot. The Lord knows what the old man was aiming at – he couldn’t have hit his neighbour’s house if he’d been trying to. What we have to do now is avoid more bloodshed.’ By that, I assumed he meant he didn’t want to shoot Cockerill.

‘Where’s Turner now?’ I said.

‘Informing the Home Secretary,’ said Humphry. ‘Never seen him so mad.’

Most of the crowd had gone now, but some groups of men had returned, less sober. Moylan occasionally called out for Cockerill to surrender, but there was no sound from the house. The sun set, the air cooled, there was a sense that the best of the show was over.

Sergeant Moylan agonised over sending in the constables, but decided if Cockerill still had his gun they’d have to shoot him. It would soon be too dark to see and they might well shoot each other.

‘What state is Cockerill junior likely to be in?’ Moylan asked me.

I’d forgotten my patient. It was hard to say, I said, but he certainly needed medical attention as soon as possible.

‘Could he survive the night?’

If junior’s disease progressed, the pain might force the old man to seek help. He would survive the night, though.

‘We’ll wait until morning then. The old man might have run out of tobacco by then.’

Lanterns were brought from the rear of the police van. The ambulance returned. Moylan mounted a guard.

Dawson, at some stage, vanished into the night. I supposed he had other souls to torment.

Fatigue rooted me to the spot. I wondered aloud what had happened to Black Bird. Did she win?

Humphry struck a match and in the glow I saw him wince.

‘Not exactly,’ he said, lighting a cigarette and saying no more for a long time. Eventually, though, he had to tell me: Black Bird had thrown her jockey before the race, and bolted into the scrub. Humphry had got his money back, but not his horse. Dawson’s comeuppance, it seemed, would have to wait.

The windows of the Cockerill house were black holes. Humphry said he’d stick around, in case something happened.

‘An unmitigated disaster.’ McCreedy was sitting in Turner’s office. The light was second-hand, from the gas lights outside, and illuminated only the very edges of things: window, table, the Mayor’s hand in mid-air, a curl of cigarette smoke, and a silver slash of jacket. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

I think they’d been at it for some time. Seeing me and probably realising only then that the dark had crept up on him, Turner lit a lamp on his desk.

McCreedy continued to look out into the night, a bottle
on the table and a tumbler half full. A cigarette shook as he raised it to his mouth. ‘Our hospital superintendent.’

‘An unfortunate incident,’ said Turner, getting up from his chair.

‘Damned right.’

Turner opened the French door behind him and sat back down, McCreedy staring past him into the night and saying, ‘I warned you. Didn’t I damn well tell you?’

The Mayor was addressing me, I realised. He could see my reflection in the glass of the door. I didn’t answer.

Turner said, ‘The old man lost his temper and Dr Bacot wouldn’t mind his own business.’ He went over to his laboratory to light the stove.

‘It
was
Bacot’s business.’

‘As soon as Dr Row diagnosed plague, it stopped being Dr Bacot’s business.’

‘Plague be damned. Plague’s nothing.’ McCreedy flicked his hand and cigarette ash floated to the floor. ‘What’s plague? A word.
Pl-ague
.’ He blew out a thin stream of smoke. ‘Means whatever you want and nothing. Something to scare children, if you want. The Black Death? More people have died in driving accidents around here lately.’

‘The deaths are fewer only because of the measures we’ve taken.’

‘And those measures have now resulted in someone being shot. You know, perhaps we should all be quarantined against damned doctors. You follow me?’

McCreedy drained his glass and poured another. ‘You know what people fear more than death, don’t you. Eh? Being separated from their loved ones.’

Turner fiddled with a pot in his laboratory, not answering.

‘That’s right,’ the Mayor called out to him. ‘You know. I’ve told you before. Force them off to some damned concentration camp like they’re Boers and of course they’re going to stick their heels in.’

Turner made his coffee. He said, ‘Did you encourage Dr Bacot to enter the house?’

‘Cockerill was his patient,’ said McCreedy. ‘I don’t care what you say, he had every right. If he’d been let in in the first place it would have ended peacefully.’

‘He entered the yard illegally. He broke the law.’

‘No. He did not. He had the Home Secretary’s permission.’

Turner froze. ‘What did you say?’

‘Yes. I thought that might shake you up. While you were provoking a riot, Mr Dawson sent off a telegram to Brisbane on behalf of the old man. Had a reply within the hour, so if you’d let Bacot in in the first place –’

‘If he hadn’t gone in at all he wouldn’t have been shot,’ said Turner, leaving his cup to face McCreedy. ‘And why wasn’t I informed of this telegram?’

‘I believe Mr Dawson tried to tell you.’

‘I don’t believe he did.’ Turner’s voice had dropped ominously. ‘I want to speak to Mr Dawson.’

‘Well.’ McCreedy stood unsteadily. ‘Please yourself.
But enough damage has been done, I should think.’ He grabbed his bottle and left.

I wished he’d left it behind.

During that night, Humphry took matters into his own hands. He ordered the constable on watch into the house by intimidating him with the Health Act. Cockerill was asleep under the kitchen table and it was simply a matter of taking the gun and then calling for the stretcher.

Public opinion, though, was now as firmly against us as if we’d brought the plague and shot Bacot ourselves, and given the town nothing but fear and threats and incarceration.

Which, of course, was partly true.

Turner sat at his table condensing the events of the previous day into a five-line telegram and drafting his resignation.

‘Is that wise?’ I said. My tongue explored the wonder of the hole in my mouth. The pain had gone and I was left with a sense of…detachment.

‘If the Home Secretary allowed Bacot entry, then my position is untenable,’ said Turner. ‘I have no authority to implement plague regulations if they can be overruled. Anyway, I’m tired.’

The confession alarmed me. I relied on Turner to be strong. He’d been fighting battles on all fronts, but was now uncharacteristically bent at the table. He looked old. His shirt collar was open and he wore no tie.

‘I should resign, too,’ I said, but I really didn’t care one way or the other this morning. I felt light-headed from actually having had some sleep.

‘That would be unwise.’

Turner went to the Post Office and his telegraph flew down a wire to Brisbane.

‘What now?’ I said.

‘Now? We wait.’

We waited.

‘I was beginning to like the place,’ I said, back in his office. Behind Turner I could see Castle Hill, looking small under a wider, clearer sky.

A clerk came with the reply:

Mayor is mistaken in reporting I authorised him defy health authorities or use force for obtaining admission for Dr Bacot or anyone else stop Both Mayor and Dr Bacot will be held responsible for any breach of regulations stop Resignation refused stop Foxton

‘What now?’ I said.

‘I suppose, just now, we should get back to work.’

The Mayor took the Home Secretary’s telegram as a physical blow. He appeared deeply offended that Turner held so much clout; that the Home Secretary would back this small, weak-chested doctor over the Mayor of Townsville.

‘He’s not heard the last of it, you follow me?’ he told me in the corridor.

McCreedy didn’t seem to appreciate that Turner could still press charges.

I believe what happened next was the result of people mistaking the cure for the disease.

Most residents had encountered only the inconvenience of the plague: the clouds of phenyl, the stench of burning rats, news of forced evictions, quarantine flags, letters to the editor, and the sound of the ambulance in the night.

The plague itself wasn’t the ultimate issue. The desecration of Mrs Duffy’s funeral and the shooting of Dr Bacot confirmed the general perception that all those evils were the fault of the doctors.

And McCreedy, true to his word, would launch one more attack.

Humphry and I walked into Turner’s office and sat down. Turner reached over his desk and handed me a piece of paper. I read the leaflet addressed to
All Prominent Citizens
.

Humphry sniffed at my shoulder. ‘Mine must still be in the mail.’

The leaflet called for a meeting to discuss the way the health officers,
Drs Turner and Rowe
, had been administering the Health Act. It proposed forming a Vigilance Committee to protect the public.

‘They’ve spelt my name wrong again,’ I said, trying to make light of it but feeling sick to my stomach.
Vigilantes? I’d thought Routh had been exaggerating about getting a gun.

‘Why isn’t your name on here?’ I handed it to Humphry.

‘I don’t go around picking fights with people who are bigger than me. Anyway,’ he lit a cigarette, settling back, ‘I live in this town. The pair of you just blew in. You’re Southerners and you’ve been telling them how to save their own skins. The cheek.’

Turner, who was staring up at the hill: ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ve done our job within the law.’

‘But we
did
save their damned hides, didn’t we?’ I said.

Humphry flicked the paper back to Turner. ‘Dawson must be terrified,’ he said. ‘That’s what this is about.’

I had assumed that Dawson had slipped back to Charters Towers, perhaps realising that the incident could turn into a political scandal that might hurt his apparent ambition to run for the Senate the next year – perhaps realising that, like McCreedy, he’d misjudged the respect with which Turner was held in Brisbane.

‘It’s spite,’ I said. But it wasn’t spite, it was raw political instinct. Humphry was right. Turner and I had threatened the authority of his Worship the Mayor and the Honourable Member of Parliament, and we still had the power to make them look like fools.

So…this leaflet, which now lay between us on the table.

Humphry, as a ratepayer, made a point of attending the meeting and reported back the next morning.

McCreedy had chaired the meeting and Humphry said Dawson was there, prowling the fringes, the representative MP glad-handing prospective voters, no doubt.