Affection (9 page)

It was the home one George Busby had built. George had lost two of his three blackbirding luggers in the cyclone in ’96. It had ruined him and he shot himself, just there, outside the kitchen window.

Burns Philp and Co. was kind enough to buy the remaining lugger, and Mrs Busby had moved to Brisbane, but rented out the house. Mr Philp himself still owned a house down the street, so we were in good company, even if that company chose to be somewhere else.

The stove spat a glowing splinter and I watched it smoke on the floor. I heard someone coming and I stooped to flick it back through the grate.

Allan was in his night clothes. There was a ritual we’d fallen into. I’d be up first and make tea. Allan would come in and we’d sit and drink our tea. It was the best time of my day.

I sat.

From the sideboard he fetched the chipped porcelain cup with horses on it.

‘You came in late. I heard you.’

‘I was working,’ I said. The milk hadn’t come yet. I watched Allan put four teaspoons of sugar into his tea.

‘Is it true,’ he said, ‘that they were going to hang you on Magnetic Island?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Dr Humphry. He had to save you from being hanged.’ He blew into his cup and sipped. ‘I’m glad you didn’t hang.’

‘Thank you, Allan.’

Humphry was a friend of Mrs Busby and it was he who had arranged for us to rent the house. It apparently gave him the right to pop around unannounced and scare the children.

‘Dr Humphry gives me bull’s-eyes,’ he said. ‘You never give me bull’s-eyes.’

‘I hate bull’s-eyes.’

‘You like liquorice, don’t you. A lot.’

I nodded.

‘I don’t mind liquorice,’ he said, conversationally. It had grown light outside.

‘The Reverend Kerr says the plague is coming to kill all the sinners in Townsville,’ said Allan.

‘Don’t worry about the plague.’

‘What’s a Levite?’

Marjorie toddled into the kitchen. I picked her up and put her on my lap. She nestled back with a thumb in her mouth and we sat there for a while, the three of us.

As I said, it was the best time of the day, but also the worst. It reminded me of what I had and what was lost.

I washed and dressed. My jacket on the peg hadn’t yet been cleaned. It still smelled of sulphur. I went through the pockets and found the envelope.

‘Damnation.’

I’d been trying to forget the humiliating retreat from West Point. And why on earth didn’t the woman’s own husband know where she was? It seemed absurd now, but I supposed I owed Gard the delivery of a letter. I’d go to the post office and ask for an address.

What did a husband say to a wife when he was in quarantine? I looked at the seal, just to make sure nothing could fall out. I gave it a shake. There was a thick wad of paper in there. I held it up to the window, but couldn’t see its outline, let alone the contents. I put it in my bag, and then found another jacket and slipped out of the house.

My office was smaller than Turner’s and the view from my window was south. If I cared to open my curtains I could look out over Flinders-lane to Ross Creek and South Townsville, and the distant hazy mountains.

Flinders-lane was lined with shacks and its main businesses, I’d been told, were run by Chinamen:
gambling, grog, and prostitution. I didn’t take much interest, although Humphry insisted on describing the more colourful details.

The Mayor’s chambers had two views and he chose neither, so perhaps I shouldn’t read too much into the aspect he had chosen for me. McCreedy always kept his drapes closed and instead had hung an immense landscape near his door. It was an English pastoral scene in a frame that was riddled with worm tracks.

On my first day he had made a point of showing it to me. It was of a field of wheat, a water mill in the background. Two noble shire horses harvesting the grain. He asked me what I thought.

‘Picturesque?’

‘Yes! A masterpiece.’

I looked for a signature and couldn’t find one. It was from Home, he said; a previous mayor had brought it out with him and given it to the council, but some fool had shoved it in the storeroom. McCreedy then ran a finger along the base of the frame and rubbed the dust with his thumb as if it were rich English loam.

Now I left my own pastoral scene hidden behind the curtains and went to my filing cabinet.

Turner had asked me to go through my records to see if any undiagnosed cases of plague might have appeared; anything suspicious worth investigating. Pernicious fevers with swellings at the neck, armpit or groin, I supposed.

Every Tuesday a list of deaths registered at each receiving hospital in Townsville and Charters Towers fell
on to my desk. It was my job to include these as part of my fortnightly report to council. If there was a spate of fatal diseases or accidents, I’d know and council could act – the essence of public health, modern medicine in practice, and my job. I’d made many recommendations and each had been duly tabled and ignored.

In most cases, northern fevers came and went mysteriously, and were out of my control anyway.

Now I pulled out the death lists for the previous six months.

I regularly swapped lists with the medical officer in Charters Towers, a man I’d never actually met, but we both had this in common: a scientific knowledge of what killed people in the North. At least, it was as close as one could get. One of the problems was that there was no consistency of diagnosis. Doctors and hospitals often had their own descriptions of diseases, and in the North medical practice hadn’t caught up with medical science.

Medicine was advancing daily in the rest of the world, but many of my colleagues weren’t aware of the discoveries or, if they were, they simply didn’t trust them. Even Pasteur’s germ theory was still widely treated with cynicism. What in the blazes would the French know? The result was that medicine in the North was mired in practices and prejudices at least a hundred years old.

And this in the age of the telegraph and the steamer. I ask you.

My finger slipped down death’s ledger, written in my own hand.
Morphine poisoning
, I read.
Gunshot wound to the chest
. Well, those at least were straightforward.

Not all causes could be properly described, even by autopsy, of course. Hospital superintendents often looked at the corpse and took a stab at it: apoplexy, debility, phthisis, born dead. The list was naturally long and sad.

Children still died in droves.

I closed my eyes and saw Lillian’s grave, and had to open them again. I forced myself back to the list.

For adults the greatest plagues, as such, were mining, industrial and firearm accidents. The Charters Towers Hospital dealt with most of the mining accidents, but some appeared in Townsville, brought to town by people suspicious of their own doctors.

Brought in dead
was common, with crush wounds, gangrene, fractured skulls.

Gunshot wound to the abdomen.

My finger slid down the pages searching for patterns.

Gunshot wound of mouth. Carbolic acid poisoning. Rat poisoning.

If there was a bright side to this, it was what was not included in the reports. In my short time, there’d been no outbreaks of smallpox or typhus. Measles and tuberculosis seemed to be a problem mainly of blacks and kanakas, and they didn’t normally appear on my list because few dead or living blacks turned up at a hospital. The gunshot rates were steady. There were no
strikes, riots or rebellions, and if Dawson remained in custody it might stay that way.

My little joke.

I made notes of patterns, of other doctors’ diagnoses, and put these in my reports.

Then I went back to the filing cabinet and took out a separate folder, a single page, a separate list, one that didn’t appear in my reports.

This was a private study, if you like.

Each month, under
Acts of God
, I’d noted possible cases.

A woman had been struck by lightning, for example. A man died from a fall down a mine shaft. I included him because I’d learned he’d been running from a snake. It didn’t necessarily qualify as an Act of God, but the circumstances warranted a closer look.

I was working on a medical definition.

I’d mentioned it to Humphry, who agreed that it might be just as important to know when God was as cross as two sticks as it was to know where pernicious fevers were burning.

The Reverend Kerr tried to find a Presbyterian definition, but the best he could come up with was Jonah, where the Lord sent a great wind to break up his ship when Jonah was fleeing to Tarshish. The Bible itself, of course, was full of them.

Maria told me not to speak of it to her again.

I was looking for the inevitable death: the fist of a God determined to kill – and man could do nothing to
avoid it. Being bitten by a snake and then falling down a mine shaft was the sort of thing.

One may have caused the other, but Death was persistent. If there’d been another factor, if the man had survived the fall and the snakebite and had been eaten by scorpions, then you’d have to say his number was up.

An Act of God.

By their nature, Acts of God might be difficult to spot. For instance, someone crushed by a Castle Hill boulder might make the list, but it would depend on the circumstances. Was the boulder pushed, or subject to human intervention of any sort? Had there been a storm?

If there was a cluster of Acts, it might be possible to do something about them, to predict them, to avoid them.

I supposed I was boiling down my definition to this: was there anything man could have done to prevent the event, or did the event in any way serve nature?

The answer needed to be emphatically ‘no’ in both cases. If God had a hand in evolution, he would show His hand occasionally in an observable, if as yet unfathomable, way.

I put the list aside.

Finally, I noted that there had been a rise in malaria cases over summer, some dengue, but nothing was worth another look and I put the files away with relief.

Turner’s office had now settled on its own pungent character, a mixture of alcohol, ether, coffee and sugar.

The door was open and I was about to knock anyway when I noticed McCreedy sitting across from Turner, his back to me, tapping the table with a forefinger. Turner sat straight and still, the light was at his back, and I couldn’t quite see the expression on his face. I stayed at the door.

‘You follow me? You can’t treat them like blackfellows.’ I gathered McCreedy was talking about West Point. ‘Now, I’m not saying to ignore the regulations, but a little mercy wouldn’t do any harm, neither to the city nor to your new position here. You said yourself that those people shouldn’t be there.’

‘I said it was the wrong place for a quarantine station under the present circumstances. But we have no choice at the moment. Are you suggesting we break the law?’

‘Even under law there can be extenuating circumstance.’

‘Not in this case.’

McCreedy tried to poke his finger through the table. ‘Some humanity. That’s all I’m asking.’

Turner held up his hands. ‘I’m agreeing with you, except on the point of law. The fact is, the passengers will be released on Tuesday and no earlier. But I take your point. I think we both agree that in future no one should be sent to West Point.’

‘That’s right.’ McCreedy sat back, happy with a concession. ‘Damned right.’

‘We need another site closer to the city. For medical services and supplies.’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t solve the current problem, does it now.’

‘There is no problem if you don’t make one.’

‘Look. This railway hearing, for instance. Can’t you make an exception of Mr Dawson? This is damned important. Damned important. To a lot of people.’

‘Sawmill owners?’

McCreedy fiddled with something in front of him and struck a match. A plume of smoke rose to the ceiling.

‘Mill owners employ many men,’ the Mayor said. ‘They support families.’

‘Why don’t you ask Mr Philp for a delay in the hearing?’

‘The last damn thing he wants. This has played well into his hands.’

‘Well, there’s nothing I can do.’

‘Right then. I suppose that’s it.’

‘Unless you have any suggestion for a site for a plague hospital.’

He tapped the ash on to the floor. ‘Is it really going to be necessary?’

‘A precaution. We need a flat piece of land, good drainage for tents, preferably sandy, good access by a single track, fresh water. Out of town. Near the sea if possible.’

‘The only place that fits that description is Three Mile Creek.’

‘Ah,’ said Turner at last, ‘there’s Dr Row. Are you familiar with Three Mile Creek?’

‘Cape Pallarenda,’ I said, ‘north,’ walking in as if I’d just arrived.

‘Good. We might pop up there, with the Mayor’s permission, and stake out a site for the plague hospital.’

McCreedy got up. ‘Blast the plague,’ he said, as he fumed past me. ‘And blast all blasted doctors.’

However wide Flinders-street might be and however modern and solid the buildings, they still couldn’t disguise the town’s precarious position. Castle Hill had ruined any attempt to impose order. Try to build a straight road and it invariably hit granite and took a kink. Build a church and it was dwarfed by the unmoveable pagan monolith towering over it.

Every day it reminded the residents, if they ever needed it, that this was a frontier teetering between civilisation and savagery. The rock was bald and unbalanced and sent the occasional boulder crashing down in the middle of the night. It defied civilisation. It was an Act of God waiting to happen.

I was on Turner’s balcony.

‘Have you ever climbed it?’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘Imagine the view.’

‘Imagine the climb.’

Below us, some shopkeepers had already opened up, or were about to, and were chatting and smoking in the street. A dray piled high with lumber was making lazy progress without the whip.

‘We’ve been invited to afternoon tea,’ I said.

I pulled out one of the invitations that had arrived on my desk the day before, the handwriting smooth and formal.