Thomas Keneally - A River Town

Outside, beyond the gate, pulled by two draught horses and greeted by Constable Hanney, the Macleay’s white ambulance wagon turned up, putting a full stop to Tim’s attempt to make peace with Dr. Erson. Two men got down, tying white linen masks around their noses and mouths as they came towards the door, and dragging white gloves onto their hands. The world entire, it seemed now, knew that he and Primrose, Ernie and Winnie could not be safely touched. How astonishing an idea in a place like New South Wales, a modern colony, a land of promise.

Dr. Erson opened the door to the men, and they came in in official boots, ordinary men raised to authority by their masks. In their hands they carried a rolled-up stretcher. Failed farmers reduced to carrying out the mercies of the ambulance.

“Take the cat,” Dr. Erson murmured through his mask. “Wring its neck. Watch yourself. It may have plague fleas. Then the stretcher for the black woman. Wrap her up well.”

Tim shook his head. How did I manage to be here, at the end of the world, on a remote river, in a bushweek town on precisely the right morning to incur this risk?

Primrose protesting at their presence in her own language. The Gaelic of the Yarrahappini of the Macleay. One of the ambulance men wearing heavy gauntlet gloves now and lifting the cat from Winnie’s feet and gingerly holding it at most of his arm’s length.

“Poor cat, poor cat!” murmured Winnie. She stood up and made a noise of protest. Dr. Erson rushed to hold her back by the shoulders, and she begged to know, “Has the rot gone so far?”

“Kitty will follow,” called Ernie. As Winnie had predicted, he did not use the flasher Greek name Electra. “The cat will come behind.”

“Is the dumb universe spoiled too?” cried Winnie.

A fine question, Tim thought, deserving a better audience.

“No, be at ease, Mrs. Malcolm,” he cried.

One of the ambulance men, carrying a sealskin sack, proof against fleas, passed through the garden towards the wagon. Winnie thank Christ not alert enough to see that. The fellow hung the bag from a hook on the side of the wagon. Back in the house then to rejoin his mate.

As the two ruined farmers lifted the black woman from the ground, Ernie stepped forward overtaken by sudden anguish. “I have a very important meeting to attend tonight,” he told Erson.

Above the linen mask, Dr. Erson looked at him. “Ernie, this is grievous indeed. There are no meetings for us at the moment. Your associates would not thank you for coming amongst them, and will postpone the meeting anyhow on the advice of the sanitation officer.”

“And we are most endangered?” Ernie asked.

“You are most endangered, sad to say, Ernie.”

“Bloody hell then,” said Ernie, looked at Tim, and laughed.

Winnie paid more attention than he did as her un-liked servant was borne away.

The ambulance waiting, Ernie packed a bag of clothing each for himself and Winnie. From the living room he could be heard sighing as he chose items. Packing not for some brave voyage on Burrawong but for a meaner one in the white wagon.

Each item would need to be fumigated at the hospital, said Dr. Erson, so certain as to what would be done. There must have been secret meetings between the physicians and sanitation officer to plan how these affairs would be managed. From the hallway he encouraged Ernie and Winnie, who had now joined her husband in the packing. Ernie’s muttered directions and Winnie’s sudden raised voice marked the work of sorting garment from garment. In the dreary air, Tim stood by astounded and dismal.

When the Malcolms were ready and had emerged from their room, Tim moved to pick up Winnie’s bag, but the two men in masks were back. One of them offered to carry it at the rear of the promenade out of the house. As they all gathered themselves to leave, neither Winnie nor Ernie seemed to look back. Winnie won’t be returning, Tim thought. She will go back to her Melbourne.

Here now on the garden path, the procession still in good order. Erson at the head, the man who knew their chances best, and Winnie, hair unbrushed, assisted—contrary to the rules of keeping distance—by Ernie, who toted his own portmanteau.

From far up the fence, Hanney watched. Safe from exhalations or fleas or whatever it was which made up the curse. In lazy delight he waved a hand at Tim. No chance he would lose this bit of the contest. If plague were in Tim, then Hanney would consider it an utter and personal victory, a knock-out punch, a besting. Tim Shea clean bowled—Hanney!

The man not burdened with Winnie’s port swung open the back door of the ambulance, then stepped down to allow the rest of the party to mount, the doctor first. In the soft brown light of the interior, Primrose had been lain on a broad bench far forward.

Dr. Erson directed the seating. The Malcolms on a bench running down one side of the wagon—“You and Winnie should really sit apart as hard as that might be.” He pointed Tim to the bench on the other side, a position near the door.

This was the side where Primrose lay, but at a more than safe distance forward. Tim squinted up the length of the wagon to where she had been lodged on her stretcher and thought that in this umber air Primrose looked uneven in colour. Still she murmured, engaged in some horrid argument.

Erson stepped out to travel in the front with the ambulance fellows, and Tim sat last of all and the door was closed. Winnie and Ernie opposite him, lit through the canvas-covered windows. Against the rules, Ernie reached for and held Winnie’s hand at what would in normal times be thought a comic distance. Tim’s finest, imperious customers. The spacious couple who had descended the gangplank of Terara on picnic day.

The door now bolted from outside. Erson could be heard instructing Constable Hanney on returning Pee Dee and the cart to T. Shea—General Store.

“Tell the Shea woman not to be concerned,” Tim heard Erson tell Hanney. How could this constable be depended on not to twist the news in some way?

“Don’t play with the message, Hanney!” Tim called, but the warning sounded weirdly muffled in here.

“Why would I have to, Tim?” Hanney cried.

Outside. In no way a contact. Lucky bugger.

Behind the huge bungalow which was the Macleay District Hospital lay a barracks-like wooden building which had been the first hospital. People knew it as the loony house, since it was fitted out as a place to hold those lonely spirits who went mad up and down the river and needed to await shipment to the asylums of Sydney. Therefore it was set up with heavy wooden doors layered with steel, and barred windows.

Now it would be the Macleay’s quarantine.

The nurse to whom Tim had once delivered the body of Albert Rochester waited in the opened doorway of this isolation ward. Though she wore a mask, he could tell her by her forehead and eyes. At the top of the stairs, she stood aside as the ambulance men carried Primrose in. Then she addressed the rest of the party. Inside, she asked, could they kindly undress and put on gowns provided. Masks of white cotton would be found in the small dispensary and were to be worn whenever possible within ten feet of other patients. Future health depended on that. After close contacts with other patients, the masks were to be dropped in a bucket she would point out and new ones could be taken from the dispensary. In between, hands were to be strictly washed with carbolic soap. The clothing they were wearing at the moment would be fumigated—that was the best policy—and they would be supplied with clothing from their suitcases once that too had been fumigated.

She came down the stairs and took Winnie’s arm. “Is that her portmanteau?” she asked the man carrying Mrs. Malcolm’s bag. She did not wait for an answer but led Winnie up the steps. “You have a fever, dear,” she said. “Possibly just a cold.”