Affection (27 page)

He trotted the horse slowly down the main street. Crowds packed the sidewalks and the balconies, and a few people cheered, perhaps thinking we were part of the show.

‘How’s this for a send-off?’ said Humphry, who might well have planned it this way.

His little surprise.

A policeman under his tall white helmet came marching sternly across the road to us with a white-gloved hand held up, but then seemed to change his mind and waved us through. I recognised Clark. Or was it O’Donnell. I turned and saw Allan salute him, and he saluted back.

A band started up ‘Soldiers of the Queen’, and we rode through assembling armies of pipers, Druids in white beards, Masons, butchers, Oddfellows, friendly societies and Caledonians.

‘What a menagerie,’ said Humphry in feigned disgust.

‘
Je n’y crois pas!
’ said Maria.

‘Can we stop?’ said Allan from the back, but Humphry said if we did we’d never get started again and, besides, this was the best view we’d ever
have of the circus. He produced a bag of boiled lollies and handed them over his shoulder, a small compensation.

We crossed the bridge to the sound of cheering. I assumed McCreedy was taking the stage.

‘Now there’s an irony,’ said Humphry.

He had pulled the buggy up on the wharf and we were staring again at the SS
Cintra
.

The ship was dressed in bunting for the celebrations and all passengers were out on the deck trying to catch a last festive glimpse.

Humphry produced his silver flask and hit me in the chest with it. I took a sip and handed it back.

‘You keep it.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

He pushed it back. We shook hands and he just nodded, and I turned and followed my family up the gangplank before one of us embarrassed the other by saying something sentimental.

And then I was standing at the railing, watching Humphry’s figure on the wharf, watching the spot where he stood even after I could see him no more, as the ship slid away.

As if on cue, as we rounded the breakwater, the Garrison Artillery let go a twenty-one-gun salute along the banks of Ross Creek. The crowd cheered. And Allan believed it was all for us.

Out in the bay, I had a last look at Townsville with its rugged backdrop, finally in context, complete and even beautiful.

The passengers eventually drifted to the bar or their cabins and I found myself alone, still staring at the spot, now part of an endless green-grey coastline.

The wind had sprung from the north-east and blue-black thunderheads rose above the distant hills, as the
Cintra
chugged down the coast.

If
the alarm be warranted, Brisbane must be added to the three or four
pestis pestilentiae
holes of direst disease. And it then becomes our duty to Humanity to vacate the city and cleanse the corrupt centre, by making it a lake of fire and brimstone.

Point 25 of ‘Twenty-five Reasons Why The Australian Epidemic Is
Not
Plague!’ by Dr. T. P. Lucas, MRCS Eng., LSA Lond., FRSQ

IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON
when I trudged from the Highgate Hill tram stop to Turner’s house.

It was a modern suburb of a modern city. Children played in the street under spreading jacaranda trees. The place had life. I felt as if I’d stepped into the world from some other place.

Hilda answered the door and led me inside.

Turner looked up from his tray of insects. I supposed it was the strength of those spectacles that gave him the startled appearance.

‘It’s Dr Row, Dr Turner.’ His wife stood behind me.

‘I know who it is, Hilda dear. Thank you.’ Fank you.

Turner and I blinked at each other like two frogs until Hilda forced me to sit.

‘You will have coffee, Dr Row?’ she said.

‘That would be appropriate.’

Turner put a pencil down and sat back. On the table were rows of tiny moths stuck to a flat board with small silver pins.

‘I’m reclassifying some of my old collections,’ he said, sweeping a hand over the table. ‘I’d made a mess.
Epicoma
with
Axiocleta.
’

‘I can imagine.’

He scratched his beard. ‘You took the position on the Epidemic Board. Congratulations.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you. We’re closer to the girls. Found a place to rent in Toowong.’

‘Maria’s happy?’ he asked.

I said I supposed she was.

‘She’s here?’

‘She’s visiting the girls. Eileen,’ I told him, ‘is having a baby.’

‘Well, splendid. Is everything all right? Perhaps I could call.’

‘She lives out at Toowong, too.’

‘No bother,’ said Turner.

I looked at him looking at me and I nodded.

‘Everything is all right, though?’

‘Yes. This will be number four.’

‘I meant you.’

‘Dr Turner, is this a consultation?’

‘If you like.’

Hilda brought coffee and we made ourselves busy with spoons and sugar.

I held the steaming cup under my nose for some time. The room was full of slowly atomising books and insects and I felt I might sneeze.

‘Allan’s still in Britain,’ I said.

Turner nodded.

Maria and I had been visiting Allan at Oxford when war broke out, and we were stuck there. Allan enlisted. So did I.

I hadn’t realised until well on in things that Turner was stationed at a war hospital near Epsom.

‘And you were in France, too, Row?’

‘For a year. Quite long enough,’ I said. Afterwards, I told him now, I took the opportunity to study bacteriology in London. We returned. I said that Allan had stayed on to complete his medical training and was now in Edinburgh.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Turner.

‘You know?’ I put my cup down.

‘He writes.’

I was flabbergasted. ‘Does he?’

‘Don’t be so surprised. He sends me the occasional moff. For old time’s sake, I suspect, but he has quite a knowledge of lepidoptera.’

‘Dear God.’ I felt a pang of paternal jealousy. Allan had never told me he kept in touch with Turner, and I
wondered what else they discussed apart from moths. What could they have in common after all these years? Certainly not me.

‘He’s not a very good correspondent,’ said Turner.

‘Like his father.’

We finished our coffee. He stood. ‘I’ll show you your moff.’

He ushered me to a wide cabinet. Its drawers were long and thin and he pulled one out. On it were trays of moths, all small things, carefully arranged crumbs. He slid the drawer back and pulled out another.

‘Ah. There.’ He pointed a finger amongst a crowd of similar-looking insects. I bent forward and Turner handed me a magnifying glass.

Eupterote rowii
looked as light as a wafer. Its wings had tiny grey-blue veins. I couldn’t see what distinguished it from its neighbour.

‘I’m honoured,’ I said.

‘So you dashed well should be.’

I stood for a moment and admired the rest of the trays. Hilda brought more coffee and we both sat again, this time in more comfortable armchairs by the window. The hibiscus bushes trembled in an afternoon breeze.

‘And how are you, Row?’ he said.

‘You’ve already asked.’

‘You didn’t answer.’

‘I’m well enough.’ I sipped my coffee. ‘I’m happy. Maria’s happy. Is that what you want to know?’

‘No need to snap,’ he said. Putting his cup down. ‘You know that Maria thinks you may be shell-shocked.’

‘You’ve spoken to Maria?’

‘Well, don’t look so surprised. She’s concerned about you.’

‘And Allan?’

Turner nodded.

I put my cup down and stood up.

‘Row,’ he said, gently. Woe.

For God’s sake. ‘How deep does this conspiracy go?’

‘Sit down.’

‘Is that the reason for all of this? They think I’m mad.’

‘Of course not.’

I remained standing, looking down at him.

‘Well, we’re all a bit mad, I’ve always thought,’ he said. ‘It’s just a matter of degrees.’

‘And this appointment with the Epidemic Board is part of this, isn’t it? A job in town might do me some good.’

‘No, no. That’s nothing to do with it. It just so happens you are the best person for the job.’ He suddenly looked tired and old. ‘I was afraid you’d take this the wrong way.’

I sat back down again.

‘The wrong way? Talking about me behind my back?’

‘Concerned that you’ve been distant, perhaps unwell.’

We sat for a while, unwinding a little.

‘It’s not the War, you know,’ I said. ‘It’s not even Townsville, or whatever might have been different there.’

‘No.’

‘You know I don’t blame you,’ I said. ‘Or myself, any more, really. It’s that I’ve never managed to get over Lillian.’

He nodded. He looked deeply sad then. We both stared into his front yard, into the gathering dark.

‘You’re a lucky man, Row.’

‘Am I?’

‘You have three bright, healthy children. You must be proud of them. And grandchildren. That must be a wonderful thing.’

Turner had never been able to have children. He’d thrown himself into paediatrics, especially in recent years. It was with a sense of shame that I began to realise how selfish I’d become. Distant and selfish.

And I couldn’t snap out of it.

We gathered our composures, and Turner managed to say, ‘I’ve had an opportunity to contact Humphry lately.’

‘Really?’ Another stab to the heart. My own sense of guilt that I’d not written in twenty years. ‘Has he written back?’

Turner said, ‘He asked about you.’

I sipped my coffee.

‘Do you remember that grub we found in the tree ants’ nest?’ he said.

I shook my head.

‘Small round thing, size of a half penny.’

I did remember then. Allan kept one in the back yard.

Turner stood, went to the wall. He took down a framed picture and brought it over and propped it against the windowpane in front of me.

It was a moth, of course.

‘
Liphyra brassolis.
The moth butterfly,’ he said. ‘That’s what that little half penny turned into. A beautiful thing, don’t you think?’

It seemed a bit drab to me, each caramel wing a teardrop.

‘Is this another analogy?’ I said.

He glanced at me over the top of his glasses. ‘Moths are full of analogies, aren’t they. No. Not this time. Only if you want to look for one.’

I looked. The light in Turner’s study probably didn’t do it justice, but I supposed moths weren’t meant to be seen in the light.

‘Is it a moth or a butterfly?’ I said.

‘It’s a butterfly that doesn’t like the sun that much.’

It grew dark and eventually we ran out of things to say.

We finally shook hands at the door. He clasped my hand with both of his and I did the same and we stood there nodding and smiling at things said and unsaid, the usual bond between men who’d shared wars, great or small.

And I turned and walked away.

‘I could give you a lift,’ he called after me.

‘I’ll walk to the tram stop. It’s not far.’

I could hear the sound of motorcars and tram bells rising up the hill.

‘Come and see me again,’ he said. And I turned to wave, but he’d closed the door.