In the Wet (5 page)

“Is there another doctor coming here, at any time?”

“There’s nothing fixed,” she said. “I’ve got it in mind. But it’s a bit difficult, with him living out there in the bush. I don’t suppose he’d come in to see a doctor, and anyway the doctor would be gone before we could get a message to him, probably. It’s only a fancy that I got when I saw him this time. It may have been just that he had a hangover that day.”

I kept it in my mind that I should go out to the market garden upon Dorset Downs before the wet, to visit Liang Shih and Stevie in their home. But a visit such as that came low down on my list of priorities; I could not hope to do much for them spiritually, and their house was off the beaten track and difficult for me to get to without a truck of my own. I always meant to go to them before the wet, and I never went.

Those last few weeks were very exhausting. November is always a hot month in North Queensland, and that year it
was particularly trying. I was hurrying against time, moreover, to finish getting around my parish while travelling was still easy, and I took a good deal out of myself. I knew that when the rains set in about Christmas time I should have plenty of time for rest in my vicarage, since it would be impossible to move very far from Landsborough till March or April. I drove myself hard in those last few weeks; I’m not a young man any longer, and I must confess that I got very tired indeed.

We got a few short rainstorms early in December and as usual these made conditions worse than ever, for they did little to relieve the heat and brought the humidity up very high. Every movement now made one sweat profusely, and once wet one’s clothes stayed wet for a long time. I got prickly heat, which is a thing I seldom suffer from, and the continuous itching made it very difficult to sleep. Everyone began to suffer from nervous irritability and bad temper, and everyone looked anxiously each day for the rains that would bring this difficult season to an end.

The rains came at last, a few days before Christmas. For three days it rained practically without ceasing, heavily and continuously. The dusty roads gradually turned into mud wallows, and motor traffic ceased for the time being. Landsborough retired into winter quarters, so to speak. I lay on my bed for most of those three days revelling in the moderation of the heat and in the absence of sunshine, and reading the fourth volume of Winston Churchill’s war memoirs which an old friend had sent me from Godalming.

The wet brought its own problems, of course. I had to go down to the hotel twice a day for my meals and it was still so hot that a raincoat was almost unbearable; if one walked down in a coat one got as wet from sweat as if one went without one. If the rain was light I went without a coat, because wet clothes are no great hardship in the
tropics. The difficulty, of course, lay in getting any dry clothes to put on; my vicarage has no fireplace and there was now no sunshine to dry anything. Mrs. Roberts was very kind and let me dry some of my washing by her kitchen fire, but the difficulty was a real one, and I often had to wear wet clothes all day and sleep in a wet bed.

Christmas came and went. We had a carol service in the church with
Good King Wenceslas
and
See amid the Winter Snow
, and Miss Foster had to spend some time and energy in explaining to the children what snow was, a task made more difficult by the fact that she had never seen it herself. We had a children’s party in the Shire Hall with a Christmas tree with imitation snow on it, and I dressed up as Santa Claus and gave the presents away. The aeroplane from Cloncurry brought us the cinema operator with his projector, three dramas, and
Snow White
, which none of the children had ever seen, so altogether we had quite a merry time.

After these excitements things went rather flat in Landsborough, and the rain fell steadily. In these conditions and although I had been taking my pills, I fell ill with an attack of malaria. It was nothing like so bad as the first bout that I had had in Salamaua, and I knew what to do about it now. I lay in bed sweating and a little delirious for a day, dosing myself; Mrs. Roberts was very kind and brought some things up to my vicarage and either she or Coty looked in every two hours to make me a cup of tea. On the second day Sister Finlay heard that I was ill and came to see what was the matter, and gave me a good dressing down, and wrapped me up in blankets and took me to the hospital in Art Duncan’s utility, which got bogged a hundred yards from the hospital, so that I had to get out and walk the rest of the way. Finlay and Templeton put me to bed in more comfortable surroundings than I had been in for some time, and I stayed in hospital for the next week.

The fever spent its force after the first few days, as I had known it would, and they let me get up for dinner and sit in a dressing gown to write my parish magazine, going to bed again before tea. My temperature was generally normal at that time though it rose a point or so each evening, but that was nothing to worry about. I was sitting writing in their sitting room on the afternoon of January the 8th; I remember the date particularly because it was two days after Epiphany. I had not been able to preach in church the previous day, the first Sunday after Epiphany, and so I was writing what I wanted to tell my parishioners in the magazine. January the 8th it was, and I was sitting writing in the middle of the afternoon when I heard the sound of a horse and wheels. I got up and went to the verandah, and I saw Liang Shih draw up before the hospital in the vegetable cart.

I was surprised to see him, because we had had no fresh vegetables since Christmas and we all thought that we should see no more until the rains were over and the roads improved. Sister Finlay and Templeton were lying down; I went and called them, and then went back to the verandah. It was raining a little; Liang was getting down from his two wheeled vehicle and tying the reins to the fence. He had an old Army waterproof sheet tied with a bit of string around his shoulders to serve as a cape; under that he was in his working shirt and dirty, soaked trousers; he wore a battered old felt hat upon his head to shed the rain.

I said, “Come in out of the wet, Liang. Nice to see you.”

He came on to the verandah. “Sister, she here?” he asked.

“She’s just coming,” I replied. “We didn’t expect to see you for a bit. What have you got for us?”

“I no got vegetables,” he said. “Garden all under the water. I come see Sister. Stevie, he got sick in stomach.”

“Sick in the stomach, is he?” I asked. “What sort of sickness, Liang?”

He put his hand upon his lower abdomen. “He got pain here, big pain. He been sick three days.”

“Is he very bad, Liang?”

He nodded. “Very bad now. I want Sister come see him, or perhaps he die.”

S
ISTER FINLAY came out on to the verandah behind me. I turned, and told her that Stevie was sick. She nodded briefly, and I knew that she had been expecting this. “Where is he sick, Liang?” she asked. “Show me just where the place is.”

He put his hand upon his abdomen and rubbed it over a fairly wide area. “He sick here.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “It might be almost anything.” She turned to Liang. “Has he been taking anything for it?”

Perhaps there was a tiny hesitation. “Hot cloths,” he said. “I put hot cloths on belly. Very hot water, Sister.”

“And that didn’t do any good?”

“No, Sister.”

“Why didn’t you bring him in here with you?”

Liang said, “He no understand me—him mind away. I no can lift him, put in jinker. I no know what to do, and then I think better come for help.”

She stood biting her lip for a minute. “We’ll have to get him in here, Liang,” she said. “He can’t be nursed out there.”

“He very sick,” he said. “We take stretcher and put stretcher on the cart, maybe.”

“What’s the road like?” I asked. “Did you have much difficulty getting in here, Liang?”

“Or-right,” he said. “Water near house, one mile, two mile.” He put his hand down to within nine or ten inches of the floor. “Deep like that. Then road or-right.”

A mile or more of shallow water wasn’t quite so good, but the old horse could pull the light two wheeled cart where no motor vehicle could go.

“All right, Liang,” said Sister Finlay. “I’ll come back with you. If we go at once, can we get to your place before dark?”

He nodded. “We start quick, Sister.”

I turned to him. “How long did it take you to get in here, Liang?”

“I no got watch,” he said. “I think two hours, maybe.”

It was nearly three in the afternoon, and in that overcast weather it would be dark before six. I had never been to Liang’s house but I had been told that it was ten miles out; clearly in the conditions the old horse would not go very fast. I turned to Sister Finlay. “We’d better get away as soon as we can. I’ll come with you, Sister.”

She hesitated for a moment. “You’d better stay here,” she said. “I’ll get Sergeant Donovan to come out with us. I don’t want you getting a relapse.”

“I ought to go,” I said. “If the man’s likely to die, I should be with him.”

“He won’t die before we get him back here to the hospital,” she said. “I’ll take some dopes with me. All I want is somebody to help me get him on the cart and bring him in. No, you stay here. I’ll pick up Donovan on the way out.”

It was sensible, of course; I had only been out of bed a day or two. “I tell you what I’ll do,” I said. “While you’re getting ready, I’ll go on down and warn Donovan, so that he’ll be ready to start when you come past with Liang.” There are no telephones in Landsborough.

“That’ld be a help,” she said. “I’ll be about a quarter of an hour.”

I went and slipped on a pair of trousers and a raincoat and shoes, and set off down the road to the police sergeant’s house. Mrs. Donovan came out to meet me on the verandah. “Afternoon, Mrs. Donovan,” I said. “Is Arthur in?”

“Why, Mr. Hargreaves!” she said. “I heard you’d been sick—I do hope you’re recovered. Art’s gone to Millangarra—he rode out this morning.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“He’ll have stayed for dinner,” she said. “He said he’d be back before dark. Is it anything important?”

I told her briefly what had happened. “Jim Phillips is still on leave?”

“I’m afraid he is, Mr. Hargreaves. I don’t know what to suggest, unless she took one of the black boys. Dicky might go.”

I shook my head. “I’ll go with her myself. When Arthur comes in, tell him where we’ve gone, will you? If we’re not back by ten o’clock tomorrow morning, ask him to ride out that way and have a look. I’m just a bit afraid that with all this rain the water may be rising.”

“I think it will,” she said. “Liang Shih got through all right, did he?”

“Didn’t have any difficulty,” I told her. “If you’d just tell Art when he comes in.”

I met Liang and Sister coming towards me in the cart as I walked back towards the hospital. “Donovan’s away,” I said. “He’s gone to Millangarra—I left a message.” I swung myself up into the cart. “I’ll come with you, sister.”

“I don’t like it, Mr. Hargreaves. There must be
someone
who could come.”

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “If we waste time looking for somebody you won’t get there in daylight.”

She said no more, because it would be most dangerous to go wandering about in darkness in the flooded Queensland bush; it was imperative that the journey should be finished in daylight. We stopped for a minute or two at the vicarage while I went in and picked up my little case of sacramental vessels and a small electric torch, and then we started out upon the road to Dorset Downs. It was raining steadily.

One of the characteristics of that part of North Queensland is that it is entirely featureless; it is a flat country with no hills or mountain ranges, covered in sparse forest and intersected with river beds. The view is exactly the same whichever way you look, and the sun gives little guidance in the middle of the day at that time of the year, for it is directly overhead. It is a very easy country to get bushed in; the sense of direction can be easily lost, and when that happens the only safe course is to camp till the evening when the setting sun will show the direction of the west.

That afternoon there was no sun in any case; we plodded on through the rain, the old horse sometimes trotting on hard patches but more often walking and labouring in the shafts to pull the jinker over the soft ground. In half an hour I had lost all sense of direction; we might have been going north or south, or east or west for all I knew. Liang, however, knew the way; from time to time he showed us broken trees or a side track branching off into the bush that were familiar signposts to him on the road he knew so well.

We were all of us wet through in a very short time, of course, but with the temperature still in the eighties that was no great matter; there was little risk of a chill, because there was no wind at all. We sat there in a row on the bench seat of the jinker, motionless but for the movement of our bodies as the wheels bumped and swayed over the uneven ground, not talking, depressed. The grey, monotonous scene and the
hot, steaming rain, and perhaps a sense of the futility of our mission to relieve this drink sodden old man, all these conspired to rob us of all wish to talk. For my part, although it was my duty to go to offer spiritual consolation to any man near to his death, I went with the knowledge that my offer to Stevie would almost certainly be spurned, and I could not help thinking of the cheerful, green painted hospital rooms that I had left to come upon this somewhat worthless errand.

Presently we came to pools and standing water on the road, and soon the pools were continuous and we were driving through water several inches deep, the old horse making a great splashing as he plodded on. I roused myself, and said to Liang, “Has the water risen much since you came out this morning?”

He said, “No water here this morning. Water deeper now.”

“What do you think about it? Will we be able to get to your house?”

“Or-right,” he said. “We get to house or-right.”

He kept on steadily, and though now we could seldom see the track it was clear that he never left it, for the wheels rolled beneath the water on fairly hard ground. With the approach of evening the light began to fail, or possibly it was that the clouds were getting thicker. I asked Liang, “How much further have we got to go? How long before we get there?”