Thomas Keneally - A River Town

“You’ll come with me,” said Tim. And to the nun, “Thank you, I have water on my cart.”

On the second day of terrible heat, Dr. Erson and the sanitation officer visited the plague camp and declared everyone well, and clothing clear of infestation. That evening a huge cleansing wind came from the south, gusting up thunderheads with it. The sky cracked and people covered their mirrors with a cloth lest the lightning have a surface to admire itself by. Men were already going around collecting for the burned-out farms of Nulla Creek. The Argus would say that six thousand pigs had been consumed, twelve thousand cattle and as many as a thousand horses. By some startling mercy—no human fatalities.

Tim could have been one if he’d taken an unlucky posture in falling to the earth. The lunatic children could have been if they’d stepped into the air in the way Lucy looked as though she might throughout the enterprise.

On a cleansed and overcast morning, Kitty and Mamie and the other Burrawong passengers were loaded on a drogher with Burrawong’ s cargo and made a slow, long passage up the Macleay. People who saw them coming ran up and down Smith and Belgrave Streets announcing it. Those who needed to meet the drogher came up to Central wharf with a strange reluctance. His foot in a sock, and supporting himself on a blackthorn, so that louts outside the Commercial called, “Dot and carry one!” Tim took Annie down there to see the drogher berth. Others watched it from their windows and under their eaves, and then pretended they weren’t much interested. But of course, you needed to be interested. Even in him an unreasonable voice asked was this slow, blunt vessel the plague’s fatal bark?

In both the papers this morning, a letter had appeared from Captain Reid:

The Captain of Burrawong would like to advise the clientele of the North Coast Steamship Navigation Company that following the fumigation of the ship in Darling Harbour, and its arrival at the New Entrance of the Macleay, the vessel was thoroughly searched for rats, living or dead. The limber boards, sparketting and all lumber corners were removed, and dead rats to the number of thirty-five were collected and disposed of. None of these showed any signs of being infested with the plague.

“Following the disposal of the rats, and in expectation of continued passenger custom from the inhabitants of the Macleay Valley, the crew undertook a further thorough disinfecting of the ship. Disinfectant was spread throughout the ceiling, the forepeak and the lazarette of the vessel. Such procedures will be continued regularly throughout the present epidemic. I can assure passengers that every care will be taken. The ship will be fumigated with charcoal and sulphur prior to every departure from Sydney…

The captain’s letter however was followed by another from someone who signed himself Sanitas , some old cow-cocky from downriver, complaining that there’d been “various improprieties” in the handling of the Burrawong during her time in quarantine at the New Entrance. The droghers which were designated to bring cargo and passengers to Kempsey were permitted to lie beside Burrawong at night, and there existed the possibility of rats infected by the plague passing aboard the droghers and thence to settlements along the river. The sanitation officer, said Sanitas , had to prevent droghers from lying beside Burrawong at night. “The capacity of the flea to travel is nothing short of prodigious…”

So the scholarly farmer continued, pealing his verbal klaxon on the Macleay. No wonder people looked warily as the drogher, laden with provisions and passengers, now neared the wharf.

Telling Annie to be careful, Tim stumbled with her down the embankment towards the river bank itself and, dear God, there was Bandy.

“Mr. Shea,” said Bandy, formally bowing, as if again they had become strangers.

“Well then, Bandy.”

“Mr. Shea,” said Bandy. “I thought the women might need help with their baggage.”

They were bound together in Constable Hanney’s accusations now, so Tim bowed and said, “Very thoughtful of you, Bandy.”

Not a dramatic landing for Mamie the emigrant, not from a drogher. At this tide, the gangplank slanted up to the wharf from the hard-laden deck. Mamie and Kitty waving from the deck, and Joe O’Neill smiling wanly too, banjo-less, a little behind them. Still tormented, poor scoundrel, by Mamie. Kitty plumply pointing towards him, tapping her upper leg. Asking what’s wrong with his?

Tim making soothing motions with his free hand.

At last, after the commercial travellers had hustled back and forth on the narrow gangplank, landing their bags of samples, the sisters struggled up to the wharf. Not even gallant Bandy could get aboard to help the sisters up such a busy plank. Kitty helped ashore by Mr. Joe O’Neill, who then boarded again and came ashore with his and Mamie’s bags. He was strong enough in his desire to carry them all the way to West.

“No fuss, I had a fall, I’ll tell you,” said Tim as Kitty embraced him. Annie hid her face from Mamie and clung to Kitty’s skirts. “I suppose you’d like presents?” said Kitty, grinning down. The girl would grow up taller than her mother. You could see it already in her four-and-a-half-year-old frame.

“I know you have presents, mama.”

“I do. I have lovely things. They are for nice girls who say hello to their Aunt Mamie.”

So all the greetings were made. “Say hello to Mr. O’Neill who comes from near where Mama and Aunt Mamie come in Cork.”

What did Annie think Cork was? The other side of the moon.

Joe had come ashore with Mamie’s sea trunk, and Bandy made certain he went aboard to get Kitty’s. As if to keep the honours even. Tim said, “Didn’t bother hitching up the old feller. I’ll get Naylor’s cab to bring your sea chest down to the residence.”

“Not at all,” said Kitty. “Mr. Habash would do it for us, wouldn’t you?”

At this announcement by his wife, Tim felt rising within him a persisting reluctance at being espoused by Habash. Better that honest Joe O’Neill labour down Smith Street with both on his back.

“No, Mr. Habash has work to do,” said Tim. “I will go and hitch up Pee Dee. It’s no trouble.”

“Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense,” said Kitty. And knowing who was in charge, O’Neill and Bandy were already setting off up the embankment with one of the sea chests. Up there, unnoticed before by Tim, stood Bandy’s green wagon.

“How can you make deliveries with that ankle?” asked Kitty.

“It’s difficult just now.”

“Well, Joe’ll make them for you while he’s waiting for his relatives to turn up.”

Having arranged the muscle power of the men, Kitty took Annie by the hand and mounted the ramp to Smith Street.

Smith Street, where Mamie walked past the banks, the creamery, the Good Templars’ Hall with the demeanour of a native. Typical of Red Kenna’s children, she took things as they presented. This was, he was sure yet again, a gift.

He did not mar the homecoming, the stories of the voyage, the time in Sydney, the quarantine, by telling Kitty about Johnny’s adventure, though Johnny came home from day school looking wary and frightened, suspecting that the tale had been told. He was by now bandage-less, and his hair was growing back, so there was nothing to alert the new arrivals.

Ellen Burke had made another good stew, and its pungency came in from the cookhouse and filled the residence like a solid caress. Bandy had been invited to dinner, and Joe O’Neill was ecstatic to be staying under a roof with Mamie. More or less under a roof anyhow. There was no bed for him in the house but he would spread some blankets outside by the shed. If he had any of the Irishman’s normal advanced dread of serpents, he was willing to forget it for Mamie’s sake. Big red-bellied blacksnakes had once or twice been found on the verandah, yet were timid unless trodden on. Nonetheless, made a big dent in a fellow’s composure. Joey would fight them for Mamie.