There were two rows of beds in the ward—six on each side. He occupied the bed opposite mine.
He had curly grey hair and a face criss-crossed by a multitude of humorous wrinkles. He was fat and sat in bed with the soles of his feet together, his knees apart, like a blackfellow.
When dinner was served he placed the plate on the bedclothes between his knees and leant over it as if about to be sick. With elbows projecting he commenced eating with incredible rapidity, using his knife and fork indiscriminately to raise food to his mouth.
Sometimes a warning message from his heart—from which he suffered—would stay him a moment, and he would pause in his eating, open-mouthed, with half-chewed food lying visibly on his tongue, and gaze intently at the end of his bed waiting for confirmation of his fear.
When reassured, after a moment’s tense introspection, he renewed his attack.
He thrust food into his mouth without regard to the demands of taste. Whatever morsel was most conveniently placed on his plate was seized voraciously.
He did not waste time in chewing—he never used his false teeth—but swallowed with a convulsive contraction of the throat and a turkey-like thrusting forward of the head. Occasionally, as if seized by an inspiration, he turned quickly and seized his tea cup.
He drank the tea in large gulps, chewing vigorously between mouthfuls and swallowing loudly.
Friends brought him a cooked chicken which he placed in his locker. At breakfast time he took it out with intense satisfaction. He turned it in his hands looking at it from various angles as if seeking a vulnerable spot. He suddenly raised it to his mouth and tore at it like a dog. Each bone was subjected to a most concentrated attention. When tossed to one side it bore no shred of flesh, but was wet and polished with saliva.
He stopped eating as suddenly as he had started, and sat hunched forward, his parted lips shining and moist with grease, his face twisted with discomfort. He breathed heavily. He threw back the blankets and clambered laboriously from his bed, thrust his feet into heavy shoes, and plodded to the lavatory.
When he returned he sat in his bed gasping and saying ‘Christ!’
He sought opportunities to smack the behinds of the nurses. He watched them approach his bed with a still, moist smile of anticipation.
He could only reach an arm’s length each side of his bed. The area in which he could bring his lustful hand upon them was limited. He thus resorted to strategy to lure them closer. He did not lean forward to take the thermometer between his lips but backward. The nurse, brought closer to his bed, came within his reach.
He tried to make the action appear spontaneous and friendly—just play-boy stuff. It became increasingly difficult to do this. The smack became recognised for what it was and was resented accordingly.
But they learned to evade him.
When successful he laughed happily. He always included us in his laugh as if by doing so he favoured us with some share of the stimulus he gained.
He had been to the war.
‘I got a gutful of gas at that bloody war. My heart was as sound as a bell before I went there. Work! I’d work any man to a standstill. And now look at me. I’m settled.’
‘That’s a fact,’ I agreed.
‘Oh! I don’t know. I don’t know,’ he hastened to add.
On the warm days there walked down the ward a man in an old check dressing-gown. His cheeks were hollow. His eyes were bright and feverish. He was a consumptive.
He had been wealthy once but had gambled his money away backing horses.
He passed each bed on his way to the fat man. His smile had its birth and manifested itself only in the flesh of his lower face. It slid into position softly and with precision. His eyes belittled and proclaimed a knowledge of evil in you. One felt one was being labelled with unwarranted sins. He and the fat man were always putting ‘a couple of bob on a moral’.
The fat man’s heart could not stand excitement. He was not supposed to listen in to any broadcast description of a race. It upset him.
‘But this is the Melbourne Cup,’ he remonstrated. ‘’Struth! It’s the Cup!’
So they ceased arguing and said: ‘Well, if you think you can stand it . . .’
There were five of us well enough to leave our beds and walk as far as the veranda shadowing the matron’s room. The consumptive, smiling, led us forth. The fat man followed him. I staggered along on my crutches. Ahead of me walked a man who had had an hydatid cyst taken from his lung. Beside him limped a patient with a diseased leg. At each step breath hissed between his teeth. At the rear came Bloody Old Joe, who was waiting to die. (‘How are you feeling today, Joe?’ ‘My life’s only hangin’ by a t’read, doctor. Any tick o’ te clock, now. Any tick o’ te clock.’)
We passed the tank and turned on to the concrete pavement, hot beneath the sun. There was a drain in the pavement. We had to cross the drain. We were all very weak. We crossed it very carefully and slowly.
‘Are you all right?’ asked the fat man, who was ahead with the consumptive.
Yes, we were ‘all right’, though the man with the diseased leg said ‘Jesus Christ!’ very softly through his teeth and I stopped and breathed deeply.
We sat in a row along the veranda. The matron placed the wireless at her window. The fat man took a position closest to the draught-lifted curtains. The consumptive sat beside him but suddenly stood up and rested his hand against a post so that he could watch the wireless set.
‘The horses are beginning to appear on the track . . . Silver Ring is leading and walking very freely. . . .’
Blood has stopped pumping into my leg through pressure on the veranda. I eased my position.
The fat man took several deep breaths then resumed a normal breathing. He said to the consumptive: ‘That’s two bob each way Talking for me and a dollar straight out for you. That’s right, isn’t it?’
That’s right,’ said the consumptive.
The fat man was satisfied. He looked round at us benignantly. ‘No man would give nineteen thousand for a colt unless he was a good ’un.’
The man who had been operated on for hydatids had raised an arm and was moving it slowly up and down in some secret test. His eyes were unseeing, staring straight ahead.
He suddenly lowered his arm, relaxed and said: ‘No horse is worth nineteen thousand pounds.’ He turned to me and said, ‘What would you do with nineteen thousand pounds? Would you buy a horse with it? Say I gave it to you now. Would you buy a horse with it?’
The blood had flowed back into my leg. I said: ‘No. I would retire.’
He said: ‘There is a bull ant there on your trousers. Brush it off.’
I brushed it off.
The fat man’s eyes were closed. His head was thrown back, resting against the post.
‘Talking is being led on to the track. . . .’
The fat man opened his eyes and sat erect.
‘. . . bay with black points . . . a fine horse . . .when this Magpie colt is four years old he will be a credit to Australia . . . he looks eager . . .’
‘He’s a moral,’ said the consumptive, looking down at the fat man.
The fat man glanced up with a contemptuous and self-satisfied expression at this statement of obvious fact.
‘Talking, with anti-knocks on, is just walking quietly . . .’
‘Nursing him,’ said the fat man superiorly.
‘Yes,’ said I.
A nurse with a white enamel dish full of steel scalpels and tweezers stopped for a moment and, with a slightly amused expression, listened to the announcer’s voice.
‘Marla is restless,’ said the fat man, raising himself and altering his position.
‘Yes,’ said I. I had not heard of Maria. I thought: We have to cross the drain going back. I said to the man who hissed between his teeth: ‘How’s your leg standing it?’
He was white. He said: ‘Can I cock it up on your shoulder? It doesn’t hurt when it is up in the air.’
I leant forward with my elbows on my knees as if I were in a lavatory. I said: ‘Heave it up.’
He raised his leg and rested it on my shoulder.
‘Is that better?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘The horses are walking in . . . Knox is handling the colt very carefully . . .’
The man’s leg was heavy on my shoulder.
The fat man glanced round the trees in the garden as though seeking aid in some internal conflict. He began laughing and joking with the consumptive, in an artificial way. They were filled with a pleasurable excitement, yet suffered from doubts. They had moments of pregnant silences.
‘They are in line . . .’
The two men thought of their money. Silent, intense, unrecognised prayers were offered to the voice as to that of a God pronouncing judgement.
‘They’re racing.’
We all moved slightly.
‘Steady,’ said the man with his leg on my back.
The fat man stretched his body erect, lifting his chin as though to free his neck from a tight collar. The consumptive no longer smiled. He kept his set, unseeing eyes steadily on the boards of the veranda.
‘Silver Standard is the first to show out. . . Queen of Song, on the inside, is taking control from Silver Standard and Young Crusader. . . .’
Talking hasn’t shown up yet,’ said the man with his leg on my back, looking at the consumptive. The consumptive didn’t hear him.
The fat man turned his head in an unconscious survey of the veranda. His lips were slightly apart. The hand resting on his knee was clamped round a tin of tobacco.
The announcer’s voice became excited:
‘Young Crusader has cleared out and leads eight lengths from Talking. . . .’
Bloody Old Joe laughed and made sucking sounds of relish with his mouth.
‘. . . at the nine furlong post Young Crusader is going ahead and is now fifteen lengths from Talking who is closely pressed by Oro. . . .’
The man with his leg on my back thrust his head closer to me and said: ‘If we go lower down do we miss that drain going back?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It goes right down.’
He withdrew his head and looked at the wireless.
‘Young Crusader is coming back now . . .’
The consumptive lifted his head from a contemplation of the veranda boards and said: ‘He should be moving up now.’
The fat man heaved his body to a fresh position.
‘He’s all right.’ His voice was hostile.
‘Talking, on whom Knox is getting anxious, is moving strongly . . .’
The voice became loudly excited.
The man who hissed through his teeth took his leg from my back.
‘Talking turned badly. Knox has pulled the stick on Talking.
The fat man clasped his hands beneath his ribs and leaned forward. His face was contorted. The consumptive moved on his feet.
‘Talking’s weakening. . . .’
The fat man, his hands still tightly clasped upon his side, rocked a little. His eyes were closed.
‘Talking has no chance. Talking’s out. . . .’
‘Jesus!’ burst from the fat man. He fell back gasping like a stranded fish.
‘Wotan comes from nowhere,’ screamed the announcer.
The consumptive bent anxiously over the fat man. A nurse hurried out. Another switched off the wireless.
The fat man was heaving on the veranda. He made strange noises.
The nurse wrapped a cloth around a small glass phial. With both hands she held the covered phial beneath his nose. She twisted her fingers. There was a faint sound of breaking glass. The fat man took great, shuddering breaths of laden air. The nurse watched him. We watched him. The nurse’s face was expressionless. The fat man slowly relaxed.
The nurse called a wardsman. Three nurses and the wardsman lifted him in their arms. They carried him slowly towards his ward. One of his arms hung loosely down. The tin of tobacco fell from his loose fingers.
The man with hydatids, the man with the diseased leg and myself, following after, stood round the tin of tobacco. We looked questioningly at each other but none of us could bend.
‘Leave it for a nurse to pick up,’ I said.
‘Someone might shake it,’ said the man with hydatids.
‘No one will shake it,’ I said. ‘It’s nearly empty anyway.’
The nurses had crossed the drain. The fat man’s arm was swinging. His head sagged from among their arms.
We did not look at the faces of each other when we crossed the drain. We did not like to look at our naked faces. We looked at the drain, our heads bent in fear of exposing our expressions.
When we had crossed the drain we stood for a while and I said: ‘This is really funny if we could only see it . . .’
But the man with the diseased leg was busy hissing through his teeth and the man with hydatids was moving his raised arm to and fro.
When we walked into the ward the fat man was lying on his bed. He looked slowly round at us and said, weakly: ‘It’s that bloody war that done it.’