Affection (8 page)

‘The future of the colony and its railway lines isn’t my responsibility. I’m not a politician, I’m a doctor. We all have to work within the law and twenty-one days’ quarantine has to be endured. I’m sure you can get the hearing rescheduled.’

‘Rescheduled!’ Dawson suddenly banged his hand on the table and the glowing end of his cigar rolled across the surface throwing sparks and leaving a trail of ash. It was such a violent punctuation that even Humphry stopped eating and stared at the politician.

‘Don’t you understand? The Tories won’t let it be rescheduled. This is what they want, for me to miss this hearing. That’s what I fear this is all about. This is some blasted conspiracy, isn’t it? Isn’t it? I’m beginning to think it must be.’

Turner said, quietly, ‘I assure you it’s not. It’s the law. There’s nothing I can do. Do you expect me to break the law?’

‘The law! It all smells like one of Foxton’s plots to me. I know their tricks. The law!’ Dawson stood, pushing his chair back. ‘You agree this is no place to hold people in quarantine and you say the steward is no longer sick and not a danger and yet you insist we stay. This is more than just incompetence.’

Turner stood and assured him it was in fact a very serious matter and it was being handled in the correct
way, but Dawson turned and stormed out of the office.

‘Perhaps,’ said Routh, looking sad beneath his watery eyes and walrus moustache, ‘you’d better leave.’

We could hear Dawson outside telling the mob that they’d be here for another week. There was a general hubbub about this and I could hear a woman crying. Someone yelled that the doctors then should stay as well and this was greeted with applause.

Routh looked out the door and said, ‘I’m not sure I can guarantee your safety. Maybe you’d better stay here after all, until they quieten down.’

‘They may try to blockade the office,’ said Humphry, ‘if they get it into their heads. I think we should go now before Dawson puts it to a vote.’

Turner agreed. He gave me the jar and took my bag up with his and we moved out on to the verandah. We were greeted with booing.

Humphry cleared his throat and looked as if he might be about to address the crowd, but it was Turner who grabbed his arm and said, ‘Don’t,’ and pulled him down the steps. Two men stood in front of us with their arms folded and seemed determined not to budge. I looked back over my shoulder to see Dawson chomping his damaged cigar on the verandah. He smiled tightly and the circle closed around us. Humphry and I both took a step back and I looked over the heads of the crowd. I couldn’t see Turner, but I saw the captain.

‘Mr Thompson?’ I said. The crowd cheered. He pushed forward to the front of the crush, looking worried.

‘Let us through,’ I said.

‘It’s nothing I can help with.’

‘But you’ll be held responsible.’

‘Where’s Turner?’ said Humphry. ‘If we come to any harm there’ll be hell to pay.’ A few people laughed.

‘All three of us are employed by the Government,’ Humphry continued. ‘Does that make this treason, I wonder?’

Thompson turned and said, ‘Let them through,’ but it appeared he’d lost control over the crowd. He looked up angrily to Dawson, who shrugged. Turner was suddenly pushed into my side. He said quietly to me, ‘Where’s that jar?’

‘Here.’ I had the cloth bundle in both hands.

‘Why don’t you hold it up in front of you so everyone can get a good look at it.’

I managed to unwrap the jar as the jostling continued. And that was how we made our way through the crowd.

Humphry shouted, ‘We have to get this shit back for scientific examination. Get out of the way.’

Humphry was in front and Turner behind. Someone yelped as Humphry stood on his foot, but those closest could see the jar’s contents.

‘Plague or typhoid, Dr Row? What do you think is in this jar? I hope to God we don’t spill any,’ and we kept moving forward.

A few people insisted on jostling us with their shoulders and so I took the added precaution of unscrewing the jar’s lid. Humphry needed to say no more after that.

The crowd thinned out behind us, but a hard core of men continued to shadow us through the grounds.

Captain Thompson strode after them and said, ‘Gentlemen, please. Let them go.’

We went Indian file and I still held the jar up like a talisman.

‘Could you put the lid on that blasted thing now? I’m going to be sick,’ said Humphry.

Some men had got ahead of us along the track and may have had it in their minds to somehow stop us when we got to the wharf. We finally got to the bank above the beach and I saw the
Teal
still belching smoke, rubbing against the stricken wharf.

Humphry and Turner went down the embankment in an undignified rush and I followed. My heel hit some soft dirt and skidded from under me, and I landed on my backside. Mercifully, the lid was secure and I kept a grip on the jar.

A hand reached down towards me.

‘You right there, Dr Row?’ Gard was standing over me.

‘Yes, yes.’ As I sat there, half a dozen men surrounded me.

Gard took my elbow and pulled me to my feet and walked me through the group of passengers. There seemed to be no logic in what they were doing, which made it even more disturbing.

Gard whispered, ‘Could you take a letter to my wife?’

‘Your wife?’ Men pressed around and eyed me hungrily. I felt a rising panic.

‘Yes. Just give her this.’

I felt an envelope thrust into a pocket. Humphry had been well ahead of me and was coming back now that he saw I was surrounded.

‘Is there a problem, Dr Row?’ Humphry yelled.

‘Why don’t you send a telegram,’ I told Gard. Telegrams were free. They just had to be sent ashore with the mail.

‘This is personal. A letter from a husband to a wife. You understand?’

‘Dr Row?’ shouted Humphry, marching towards us. Did he really have a pistol in his hand?

‘Where do I find her?’ I said to Gard.

‘I dunno.’

‘What?’

‘I helped you. You help me. You’ll find her.’

I heard Humphry up ahead bellow, ‘Excuse me,’ and Gard stepped back and his place was taken by a grinning man with a big white beard and bad teeth. I felt a hand grab me and I tried to knock it away, but then they all stood back and I was suddenly with Humphry, stumbling over the uneven planks of the pier.

Behind me the mob watched. Perhaps they thought they’d achieved some sort of victory in our flight. There was some scoffing, public-bar laughter.

Humphry’s pistol had vanished.

Turner was already at the
Teal
and the crew was casting off. It bucked as I stepped aboard, and I stumbled on to my knees like a drunk, raising a few more distant laughs. The jar rolled from my hands but didn’t break. I managed to pick it up.

‘All right, Row?’

I stood and it was hard going but I managed to construct a smile.

Just as we pulled into the passage the wind caught my hat and I lunged instinctively to pluck it back. The jar fell to the deck and shattered. I gave a little skip backwards and looked dismally from my shoes to Turner.

‘No matter,’ he said, and he might have considered rescuing the damned mess as it streamed towards the stern, but for a quick-thinking crew member who threw a bucket of water at it. And another.

I turned to the receding jetty and saw my boater ride a foaming crest before it flipped over and vanished.

Dead rats in the east, Dead rats in the west, As if they were tigers, Indeed are the people afraid.

Shih Tao-Nan

THE WIND WAS BREAKING
the tips off the waves and throwing them into the air. A wad of foam slapped me in the face and I peeled away a damp butterfly.

I stared at it for a while, wondering where it had come from, and then noticed another flopping on the deck, and another. One flashed past as we raced into the wind and I saw that the bay was full of them.

Thousands of butterflies were being swept by the wind that was now hitting us hard from the east, as the launch corkscrewed through the bay.

The butterfly stuck to the palm of my hand was lampblack splashed with Reckitt’s Blue.

‘
Danaus hamatus
,’ said Turner. ‘A Blue Tiger.’

He gently teased its front legs and it climbed on to his finger, raising its wings in the air to dry.

‘Was that fear in the right proportion?’ I was still shaken.

‘That was just a good old-fashioned riot, Row. Born of fear, but orchestrated for political effect. All show and strictly for Mr Dawson’s benefit.’

‘I’m sorry about the faeces,’ I said.

‘We have the serum. That may tell us something.’

A gust knocked the butterfly sideways on Turner’s finger and it steadied itself.

‘What are they doing all the way out here?’

‘Migrating. Must say I’ve never seen anything like this before.’ Turner looked around the bay. ‘The tigers must have come from over there.’ He pointed into the wind to a thin strip of navy blue land that kept disappearing behind waves.

‘Cape Cleveland,’ I said. This appeared to be a mass suicide.

Turner stared out to the sometimes visible cape. I watched his face in profile, his extraordinarily high brow, the spray on his beard. When the violent rocking of the boat let him, he used a finger from his free hand to wipe his glasses.

‘You haven’t told me much about your Maria. Is she better for her move north?’

Somehow I was surprised always when he remembered her name. ‘Yes.’

He waited for me to elaborate, and then said, ‘Your boy?’

‘Allan.’

‘He’s…?’

‘Eight.’

‘How is he?’

‘Runs around like a savage.’

‘And two girls if I remember. Well?’

I nodded.

Turner took his glasses off and wiped a sleeve over his eyes. ‘And you?’

I spread my arms. See for yourself. It wasn’t much of an answer. What was I supposed to say?

Turner held his hand up. The butterfly faced the wind and spread its wings, and a sudden gust blew it backwards over the deck and into the sea.

The deck was now littered with small flapping blue and black bodies. Turner bent down, stumbled as a wave slapped the hull, then picked up another, although this one appeared to be dead already.

‘I’ve seen this species in Brisbane.’ He turned it over in his hand. ‘Never a riot like this, though.’

‘Seems to be a day for riots,’ I said. The boat lurched again and threw us both into the railing, and I grabbed Turner’s jacket so he wouldn’t spill overboard.

‘Thank you, Row.’ We sat on the wet bench.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘we can’t have plague patients making this journey. We need to find a site on the mainland for an isolation hospital.’

‘That means new buildings, though.’

‘Tents should be adequate. If there’s an outbreak, it won’t be permanent. Finding the right site will be the thing.’

I had to stand again and find the horizon. The motion was making me queasy.

‘The wind is actually helping them make their trip,’ Turner was saying, picking up another live butterfly and holding it high. ‘They use it. The strongest survive. The survivors breed.’

‘The others are food for fish,’ I said.

‘Well. No effort is really in vain then.’ His butterfly was snatched away.

‘Do you really believe that?’

‘What I mean is, nothing is wasted in nature.’

‘Didn’t seem to be any good reason for losing my hat.’

‘Maybe someone who has a greater need for your hat will find it.’

‘I don’t have another.’ I looked out to sea. ‘I suppose this isn’t the weather for hats.’

‘Perhaps Mr Darwin’s theories apply to hats as well. Survival of the best fit.’

Turner fetched his medical bag from beneath the bench and produced a jar similar to the one that had contained Storm’s stool. He opened it and put a few wet butterflies inside.

‘For a closer look later,’ he said.

It felt as though we were moving fast, but the land was getting no closer. Turner pointed to the long stretch of coast, a small headland rising north of the city.

‘What’s that area?’

‘Cape Pallarenda,’ I said.

‘That’s where these butterflies will end up. We should pop out and investigate.’

Absolutely not. ‘No one lives there. It’s sand. And behind it is swamp.’

‘Splendid,’ said Turner. ‘We must ride out there. Do you have a buggy?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps we could borrow one. What about Dr Humphry’s?’

Humphry, at the wheelhouse, must have heard his name. He turned around.

‘Can we borrow your buggy?’ shouted Turner against the wind.

Humphry raised his flask.

Splendid.

The waves became sharper and less predictable, and we didn’t speak again until we pulled into the harbour.

Humphry had commandeered a shed at the wharves for fumigation. We had to traipse into it, remove our clothes and wash while Humphry burned sulphur. Each item was to be fumigated in turn and anything that couldn’t be fumigated had to be burned. It was a miserable exercise and we emerged smelling like rotten eggs.

When I was putting on my jacket I felt the envelope. I took it out, remembering the circle of hostile faces, wondering what the message might be. I turned it over.
It was sealed and on it was written ‘Mrs Walter Gard’ in the careful hand of the barely literate. There was no address.

It was another burden I didn’t really want. I put it back in my pocket.

Humphry dropped Turner and me back at the Town Hall and drove off through the afternoon shoppers in Flinders-street.

I had the beginnings of a toothache. It had come and gone for weeks and I knew I should get it seen to, but a toothache was something to be put off until the pain overwhelmed the terror of getting it pulled. Anyway, a good dentist was one with experience and the best were in Brisbane, not in the colony’s back blocks.

For the moment I simply wanted to go to my office, close the door and put my head on my desk for a few minutes. Turner, though, had his serum to study.

I found myself in his room, where someone had delivered a remarkable amount of luggage. A number of trunks were in the middle of the floor. In our absence, someone had returned or replaced his missing table, a hard swivel chair and had hung a picture of The Royal Couple on the wall.

‘These days,’ said Turner, patting one of his steamer trunks, ‘you never know where your luggage will end up.’

Peking? Bombay? Cape Town? I stood over them and noticed labels for Liverpool, Sydney, Brisbane.

Disappointing.

Turner took off his coat and put it on a hook behind the door.

‘My laboratory equipment is in there,’ he said, and asked if there were any more tables to be had so he could spread it out. ‘But not as wide as that one. Longer if possible.’

I said I’d see what I could find and went off to raid the storeroom. I found three smaller office tables, so I collared a junior clerk and we brought them up the stairs, each delivery finding Turner surrounded by more cloth-wrapped and boxed instruments.

He wanted the tables placed along the wall so they formed one long workbench.

I took out my watch. It was four in the afternoon.

Turner began unwrapping his treasures and placing them on the tables. Glass beakers, a tripod, a lamp, three more kerosene lamps. Bottles of spirits. I looked at the labels.

‘You didn’t have to bring all of this.’ I picked up a bottle of ether.

‘I thought it best to bring everything I needed.’

‘You can get almost anything you need up here. Anything I can’t find in Townsville will almost certainly be in Charters Towers.’

He opened a large square box of polished wood held shut by clips and two leather straps for good measure. Precious scalpels gleamed in red velvet.

There were several autoclaves, the most modern design of two-piece pressure sterilisers in their steel
cylinders. There was a box of surgical gloves and masks and an ether mask. Another wooden box contained slide trays.

The room now smelled exotically of steamer hold and machine oil, brass polish, dust and ether.

From one solid box Turner produced a brass microscope. This new sort was rare. I hadn’t seen its type before.

‘I’ve been afraid travelling with this would loosen the lenses.’ He placed it carefully on a table and looked through the eyepiece, satisfied.

‘Hasn’t happened yet.’

Inside one box was a paper bag. He offered it. I opened the twisted top. Inside was a bright mass of boiled lollies. I prised an aniseed humbug from the conglomerate and he chose a butter ball and popped it in his mouth. We sucked noisily.

‘What about that one?’

One trunk remained unopened.

‘That one can wait,’ he said, pushing it against a wall.

The other empty trunks were dispatched to the storeroom as Turner set about arranging his exquisite microscope.

I leaned close to read the label.
Bausch and Lomb Optical Company
.

‘German,’ I said.

‘American. The lenses aren’t as good as the Germans, but it’s easier to use. Three nose pieces and a double mirror.’

He sloshed alcohol from a bottle on to a cloth and wiped the desk tops, and he handed me a cloth and we did the same with his equipment, piece by piece. He lit a kerosene lamp and positioned his microscope in front of it. He fetched the glass slides and held one up. It had tiny handwriting along the bottom and I couldn’t make it out.

‘Take a look at this, Row, and tell me what you see.’

He placed the slide on the round stage and adjusted the screw at the top of the limb and, when he was ready, stood back and let me look. I made a slight adjustment. There were some fuzzy grey objects that were cells, but the objects I was looking for would be much smaller.

I stood back and rubbed my eye and put it to the eyepiece again.

‘Can you see?’

‘I think so.’

‘What do you see?’

‘Some oval cells.’

‘Bacteria.’

‘They look like safety pins.’

‘
Pasteurella pestis
. Dead of course, but in good enough shape to use for identification.’

I kept looking. This was plague? Turner said, ‘Remember the face of your enemy.’

And here, I realised, looking into this other world, was the power of a machine to reveal the powerhouse of nature. I could see the enemy and I could imagine some other machine with which I could reach out and
squash it. A shiver ran down my spine. Science would conquer all sickness one day. It was surely just a matter of time before the causes of all diseases could be put on to a glass slide and annihilated one by one. A world free of illness and suffering. It seemed possible.

‘Now, we go hunting,’ said Turner.

He took the cloth from his leather bag and withdrew the bloody syringe. He then found two clean slides and prepared them with a drop of fluid smeared on the glass plate.

He put it under the microscope and began his hunt.

There were some muffled sounds of traffic, voices down the hallway, the tick of a clock. The room was hot, but I no longer felt drowsy. Turner pulled away from the eyepiece occasionally to blink and pull faces, but otherwise his only movement was a delicate touch of the screw.

After an interminable time he sighed and said, ‘You look.’

He let me sit on his chair and I rubbed my eye and put it to the lens. What I saw was soup. There were a few intact cells, but the rest were like beans and carrots floating in a grey liquid. I adjusted the screw and found it difficult to focus on anything that I could readily identify.

‘It’s pus,’ I said.

‘Apart from a few blood cells, yes.’

‘Did you see any bacteria?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Shame.’ I pulled my eye away.

‘Good news for Mr Storm.’

‘I mean it’s a shame we have no proof.’

‘Yes, I know what you meant. But we have pus from a bubo, we have Humphry’s diagnosis and your observations of the sick steward, we have a steward aboard a steamer that visited an infected port, we have an epidemic of plague in Queensland.’ He looked at me. ‘What do you think?’

‘He had plague.’

‘In this case we must assume the disease is close, and if it’s not here yet it soon will be.’

We washed our hands in alcohol and then with soap and water from one of Turner’s metal bowls. We sat and he shared his lollies.

‘What should we do now?’ I said.

The council building had emptied. Turner’s lamp now provided more light than the window. A lolly clattered against his teeth.

‘Wash and pray.’

Maria had reminded me that back in Moreton Bay the frangipani tree would be losing its leaves.

Here in Townsville the frangipani at the front verandah still had its flowers, although they’d been dropping
plop plop
through the night. The cannas growing in the old bath buried in the front yard were a bright showy red. Seasons here lost their logic.

The wind had also dropped and the heat had crept back during the night. The air was thick and warm as I sat alone in the kitchen.

I worked a thumbnail into the surface of the table, a rough piece made from local pine, scoured by carbolic acid and still smelling of onions. Our furniture hadn’t caught up with us. It was still at Dunwich.

This, though, was a solid house with wide verandahs and a garden of dripping tropical shrubs. It sat above the town, catching a breeze and rubbing shoulders with other grand homes.

It had a view of the harbour. A wealthy trader could enjoy the sight of his ship returning from the South Sea Islands under white sails with a black cargo.