In the Wet (8 page)

I shook my head. “No. I should think it was the kindest thing that you could do.”

“It’s very unprofessional,” she muttered. “I don’t know … If he were quieter, it might conserve his strength …”

I said, “I should let him have it.”

She nodded gravely. “I think one ought to.” She hesitated, and then turned to me. “I don’t think it will kill him,” she said quietly, “but if he takes enough to put him under, I think he may die before he comes to. I want you to understand exactly the position, Mr. Hargreaves.”

“Nevertheless,” I said, “I think you ought to let him have it.” I hesitated, and then I said, “If I may, I should like to sit and talk to him a little, while he’s going off.”

Behind us, the darkness was closing down. “Of course,” she said. “I’ve never seen this stuff work, and I don’t know how long it will take. If it’s like any of the others, there’ll be a drowsy period when the pain is almost gone, before he goes to sleep. He may be able to talk sensibly for a few minutes then.”

The shadows crept out of the room behind and enveloped us; on the far side of the clearing we could see the beasts of the field, waiting. She shivered a little. “Those animals …” she said. She turned back to her patient, and then said, “For goodness sake!”

“What is it, Sister?” And then I saw what it was. The room behind us was indeed nearly in darkness, because the kerosene in the lamp had come to an end, and there was now only a small flickering blue flame above the wick. “Never mind,” I said. “There’s a candle somewhere.”

I went into the room, and called, “Liang!” He came at once from the other room, and a ray of candlelight shone from the door. He looked at the lamp with concern and went straight to it and shook it, but it was bone dry. I went to my case and opened it, and took out my torch. “I’ve got
this,” I said, and it shone a pool of yellow light upon the floor. “Have you got any more candles, Liang?”

“Little candle,” he said ruefully. “Very small.” He went back into the other room, and returned with about an inch of candle burning in a saucer.

“Is that all there is?” I asked.

He nodded.

“No more candles?”

He shook his head.

“No kerosene? Nothing more to burn for a light?”

He shook his head again.

I turned to the sister. “We’ll be in darkness before morning, I’m afraid. The candle won’t last long, and this torch is very dim.”

She laughed shortly. “It’s just one thing after another tonight, Mr. Hargreaves. It doesn’t matter much, after he’s gone to sleep. We’ll have to keep watch over him, but when he’s dropped off we’d better put the lights out, so as to have them if we need them later on. He may come to again.”

“I should think that’s the best thing to do,” I said.

She turned to Liang. “Give him a pipe now, if he wants it.”

“One pipe?” he asked.

“Give him as many as he wants, to kill the pain and send him to sleep,” she said.

He took the torch from me, and padded off into the next room. He came back presently with the long metal pipe and the spirit lamp and the brown stuff in the saucer that we had seen upon the chair beside the bed as we came in. He put them down upon the chair again, and drew the chair up to the bed.

Sister Finlay said, “Liang’s got a pipe for you, if you want it, Stevie. You can have one now.”

He did not speak, but lying on his back he made an effort
to roll over on to his right side, towards the room. He seemed to be incapable of moving the lower part of his body; Liang moved forward and with Sister Finlay helping him arranged the old man’s limbs in a comfortable and reclining position on his side. Then Liang lit the spirit stove upon the chair, and took a sort of skewer and dipped it in the brown substance, and picked up a morsel about the size of a pea, and began to toast it in the blue flame while it burned and sizzled. Then he transferred it carefully to the tiny bowl of the metal pipe, put the bowl to the flame, and drew in slowly to get the morsel glowing; he exhaled at once. Then he gave the pipe to Stevie.

The old man took it, and put it to his mouth; he inhaled deeply, held it for a few moments, and exhaled it from his nose; the smoke was acrid and unpleasant. He did this four or five times, and it appeared to give him almost instantaneous relief, because within a minute or two he was lying more relaxed, and the strained lines of pain were smoothing on his face. The pipe was apparently finished with those few inhalations, because he handed it back to Liang.

“Another?” asked the Chinaman.

The old man nodded, and Liang set about preparing another pipe. I moved forward and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Stevie,” I said. “I’m Roger Hargreaves. You know me; I’m the parson from Landsborough. Remember?”

“Too right,” he said weakly. “You got on Black Joke.”

“That’s right,” I said. “You and I are cobbers. You’re a sick man now, Stevie. You’ll go off to sleep after you’ve had these pipes, and while you’re asleep we’re going to take you into hospital for an operation. I think it’s going to be successful, and you’ll be strong and well again, but there’s a risk in every operation. I’ve got to die some time, and so
has Liang here, and Sister Finlay; we’ve all got to face it when the time comes. You’ve got to face it too, Stevie. You may die tonight. Would you like me to say a prayer or two before you go to sleep?”

“Harps and angels’ wings,” he muttered. “I don’t hold with that.”

“I know you don’t,” I said. “What creed were you baptised in to, Stevie? What church did you go to when you were a boy?”

“I never went to no church,” he said. “I was raised out on the station.”

“When you were in the army, what did you have on your identity disc?” I asked him. “C. of E., or R.C., or what?”

“Church of England,” he said sleepily. “That’s what they said I was.”

“Then you’re one of my parishioners,” I said. “Look, Stevie, I’m going to say two little prayers, and then I want you to answer one or two questions. They’re very simple. Now listen carefully.”

So I did what I had to do, and he was quite good about it, and I gave him the Absolution. Then Liang was ready with the second pipe, and he took that and smoked it, and now he was much easier, and apparently in little pain.

He handed the pipe back to Liang.

“Another?” asked the Chinaman, and Stevie nodded. I glanced at Sister Finlay; she shrugged her shoulders slightly, and then nodded.

Stevie said, “I’m dying, aren’t I?”

“I hope not,” I replied. “If you are, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m crook all right,” he muttered. “She wouldn’t let me have three pipes, ’less I was bloody crook. I ain’t afraid of dying. I’ll go carrying the Queen.”

The hallucinations were returning; no doubt that was
the opium. Perhaps the fading mind was poisoned through and through with that outlandish drug. “You’ll be all right,” I said quietly. “God is very merciful, and he won’t judge you too hard.”

“You don’t know nothing,” the old man muttered weakly. “I could tell you things. Old Liang here, he’s got the rights of it. I ain’t done so good. I know it. I’ll start lower down next time. But I’ll be right. Everyone gets another shot, however low you go, and I’ll be right.”

He seemed to be convinced about reincarnation in some form, and he was too weak for me to argue with him. I was weak myself; the hot fit had come on me again, and I was restless and sweating.

“You’ll be right,” I said. “God will look after you.”

There was a long, long pause while Liang fiddled about preparing the next pipe. “I ain’t afraid of dying,” Stevie muttered at last. “That’s nothing. Old Liang here, he knows a thing or two. It’s just going off to sleep and sliding off into the next time, into the dream. I reckon that I’d rather be there than here.”

I was too hot and fuddled with my fever to say anything to that. Liang lit the pellet in the bowl of the third pipe and gave it to Stevie; the old man inhaled deeply four or five times, and gave it back to Liang.

“Another?”

Stevie gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head, and relaxed on to the pillow. Liang gathered up the spirit lamp and the pipe and the saucer of opium, and padded off with them to the next room. I moved and sat down on the chair beside the bed. Sister Finlay bent over and held the old man’s pulse for a minute, and then stood up again.

“Going off now,” she said in a whisper.

I nodded. “I’ll sit with him for a bit.” I glanced at the
candle; it was burning very low. “You can put that candle out and save it, sister, if you like. We may need it later on. I’ve got the torch here.”

She moved to the table and blew out the candle; I switched the torch on for a moment. Stevie’s hand was lying on the sheet. I took it and held it in my own; it was rather cold. I was concerned at that, and then I thought that part of the effect, at least, lay in my own high temperature. I switched the torch off, and sat holding him by the hand. A little light filtered into the room from outside in the glade, but it was waning, and as I sat there a few raindrops fell on the iron roof again, and steadied to an even drumming.

I knew that there was something that I had intended to ask Stevie, and that I had forgotten. I sat there in the darkness holding his cold hand, fuddled and incompetent in my fever, trying to remember what it was that I had forgotten to do. The drumming of the rain upon the roof perplexed me, making it difficult to think clearly; I felt myself falling into a coma, and I had to jerk myself awake. What was it that I had to ask?

And then it came to me—it was about relatives. I had forgotten to ask if there was a wife anywhere, or any children—any relatives who should be told if the old man should die. It was quite doubtful if anyone in Landsborough knew much about him, because they were all so very much younger. Even Liang probably knew little about his relations. As for myself, I did not even know his name.

I pressed his cold hand, doubtful if I had not left it too late. “Stevie,” I said. “Stevie, can you understand me? This is Roger here—the parson. Tell me, before you go to sleep—what’s your other name, your surname? What’s your full name?”

I felt the hand that I was holding stir a little in my own,
and I forced my fuddled mind to concentrate upon what he was saying.

“Anderson,” he muttered, “David Anderson. Me cobbers call me Nigger.”

I
T was no novelty to me to come upon a man known by two names, and I can remember a feeling of relief that he was still able to talk, because it was important to find out about any dependants. The country districts of Queensland are full of men like Stevie; I know several sailors who have jumped their ships and have worked for years upon the cattle stations under false names, and one or two husbands who have escaped from intolerable marriages in some city. The police know all about these men in most cases and turn a blind eye, because white labour on the cattle stations is getting scarcer every year. Like Liang with his lettuces and poppies, they see no point in persecuting a man doing a good job unless there is some compelling reason forcing them to do so.

“David Anderson,” I said hazily. “Are you married, David?”

“Too right,” he muttered.

“Any children?”

“Two.”

In my heat and my fatigue I was immensely relieved that I had time to get this matter straightened out. “I’ll write a letter to your wife when you’re in hospital, and tell her how you’re going on,” I said. “Where does she live?”

“Letchworth,” he muttered.

“Where’s that?”

“Outside Canberra.”

“What’s the name of the house, or the road?”

“Three Ways, in the Yarrow Road.”

I was so ill and feverish that there seemed to be nothing incongruous in that to me. “I’ll write to her as soon as we get you into hospital.”

“Pommie bastard,” he mumbled, or it might have been parson. And then he said, “She come from England, too.”

“She’s English, is she? What part of England does she come from?”

“Oxford,” he told me. “Her Dad and Mum, they live at Oxford, at a place called Boars Hill. But we met at Buck House.”

Even in my fatigue, I knew that this was nonsense. There was nothing serious in this that the old man was telling me; he was not married, least of all to an English wife from Oxford, and he had no home in Canberra. These were hallucinations, fantasies from the dream world that he slid into when opium or drink had gripped him. In the disappointment of this discovery I had to force myself to concentrate again upon the problem I was trying to solve. “Try and tell me what’s real,” I said wearily.

He did not answer that, but his hand stirred in mine, and he said, “Where am I, cobber?”

“You’re in Liang Shih’s house on Dorset Downs,” I told him. “We’ve got to keep you here tonight, but we’ll get you into hospital tomorrow. There’s too much water on the track to move you tonight.”

“The Butterfly Spirit,” he muttered inconsequently, “what goes out of you, flipping about all sorts of places while you sleep. Liang tol’ me. This ain’t real.”

It was no good; he was too far gone in drugs and in disease. One cannot: argue with hallucinations, or make
sense of them. I said, “Don’t worry about it now.”

There was a silence. I glanced around me as I sat by the bed. My eyes had become accustomed to the faint light now, and I looked to see what Sister Finlay was doing. She was sitting by the table, one arm resting on it; her head had fallen forward on this arm, and she seemed to be asleep. I was glad of that, because she had had a very tiring day, and there was no sense in both of us staying awake at the same time. Better to let her rest, and save her energies till they were needed.

Liang was nowhere to be seen; probably he was in the next room. A faint odour of burning incense drifted round me as I sat there in the darkness, and I thought that he had probably lit another of his joss sticks before the Buddha. The rain still drummed upon the roof, but the clouds cannot have been very thick because to my night-accustomed eyes it was light enough to see a little way across the open clearing, looking through the open door from where I sat. The animals were still there; they had come closer, and I could see them sitting or standing on the edge of visibility. Perhaps they had come closer in the darkness so that they could still watch the house, though now the lights had been extinguished.