Gibber’s Creek Gazette, 20 May 1974
Country Party Candidate Announces his Retirement from Politics
Unsuccessful Country Party candidate for the last election, Mr Kevin Briggs, today announced that he would be retiring from politics. Mr Briggs served the voters of Gibber’s Creek from 1957 to 1972. Labor Party MP, Nicholas Brewster, who holds a lead of more than 8,000 primary votes in Saturday’s election results, wished Mr Briggs well. ‘Kevin Briggs served his country and the people of Gibber’s Creek for more than a decade. We all owe him our gratitude and best wishes for a very happy and long retirement.’
SCARLETT
Gibber’s Creek is dead, dead, dead after six pm, thought Scarlett as she peeled potatoes for Leafsong’s moussaka and gazed out the café window at the deserted town.
‘I’ve counted six cars, eight pigeons and a dog in the past hour,’ she said to Leafsong.
Leafsong grinned and shrugged. Scarlett had half expected her friend to begin speaking now that she finally had her own life. Dr McAlpine had agreed the only physical things that might cause such a sudden cessation of speech were either a cancer or something neurological, like a stroke or brain tumour. But those calamities would have shown other symptoms long before this.
Leafsong’s muteness might be psychological, or it might be by choice. Sometimes Scarlett found herself on the verge of asking Leafsong if she had chosen to be silent, and if so, why.
But some things stayed private, unless you wanted to share them, like how a girl who could not use her arms till she was in her teens had been kept clean.
‘Another car. Two more pigeons. A cat: look out, pigeons. A white ute —’ She stopped, recognising both ute and driver. The ute slowed suddenly, as if the driver had recognised Jed’s sports car. It turned and parked at the kerb outside the café.
Scarlett wheeled out to the front of the café as Mark came through the door. ‘Hi. Where were you —?’ She gazed at Mark. He was pale and blinking. Suddenly he dropped to the floor, his body shuddering, his eyes showing more white than colour.
‘Leafsong!’
She had never hated her helpless body more, stuck in her chair unable to do anything. No, she could do something . . . ‘Put a cushion under his head,’ she told Leafsong. ‘Roll him onto his side. Yes, like that. Check his breathing.’
Should she yell for Jed and Carol? Or call an ambulance? But the references she had read said an ambulance was only needed if the seizure went on for more than three minutes. This had only been five seconds . . . She glanced at her watch, just as Mark’s shaking ceased. Leafsong looked up, questioningly.
‘How is his breathing? Steady?’
Leafsong nodded.
‘Keep your hand on his shoulder so he knows there’s someone there. Mark, can you hear me?’
‘I . . .’ He blinked, turning to look up at her.
‘Don’t try to sit up yet.’
‘I’m okay . . .’ He sat, his head in his hands.
‘Tea,’ ordered Scarlett. ‘Two sugars.’ She wondered if Mark had lost control of his bladder or bowels, though there was no smell or stain, and she certainly wasn’t going to ask. Thank goodness Jed and Carol hadn’t seen the seizure, which would have humiliated him further.
‘Do you think you can get up onto the sofa?’ She could reach him there.
Mark nodded. He heaved himself up and staggered across the room. She wheeled over to him, then took his large hands in her small ones. ‘It’s okay. You weren’t out for long. Here, sip this.’ She handed him the cup Leafsong had brought over and was relieved his hands were steady, that he was able to swallow.
‘How do you feel?’
To her horror he began to cry, silent tears that became sobs. She took the cup from him quickly, then manoeuvred herself and her chair so she could put her arms around him. Leafsong vanished. Scarlett was glad. Mark would want as few people as possible seeing his embarrassment. But he needed one person, as a friend.
At last the sobs decreased. She handed him a paper napkin to blow his nose on.
‘Sorry,’ he breathed.
‘Don’t be.’ She wanted to say that she had spent most of her life in far more humiliating positions; that humiliation only bit you if you let it. But to say either would underscore what he must feel was a lack of control and overwhelming vulnerability. She settled for, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘It’s . . . it’s all gone wrong.’ Mark looked so bereft she took his hand again.
‘You mean your epilepsy? Have you been having more seizures?’ If he had, she’d drag him to see a doctor. A real doctor, not Ra Zacharia.
He shook his head, but she wondered. Sometimes people had petits mals without knowing.
‘The community is breaking up,’ whispered Mark, as if a whisper made it not quite as real. ‘Mark 38 left yesterday, and Mark 39 with him. Not to work elsewhere, but because they felt they weren’t healed.’
She tried to remember who the numbers were. ‘Is 39 the woman with the grey bun who weaves?’
‘No, that’s 41. Mark 39 worked in the kitchen. Mark 38 is his wife. She worked there too. Mark 39 had pancreatic cancer till Ra Zacharia healed him. But he’s been having pains in his back. He probably pulled a muscle, that’s all.’
And getting as thin as a rake and grey in the face, thought Scarlett, thinking of the couple she had seen on her last visit out there a fortnight earlier.
‘Mark 39 convinced him that his cancer has come back.’ Mark’s voice was still hoarse and shaken. ‘Ra Zacharia told them his pain and weakness were just the toxins leaving his body . . .’
Balderdash, thought Scarlett, but she couldn’t say that to Mark. Not now, not yet.
‘But they wouldn’t listen. And this morning 16 and 24 said they were leaving too. They just don’t understand! Ra Zacharia has explained that we may not be fully healed just now. But it’s going to be different soon.’
‘How different?’ asked Scarlett quietly. Mark seemed almost drunk, either from the after-effects of his seizure or from emotional overdose. Or was it something else, she wondered, a herbal combination Ra Zacharia may have given him to control his seizures?
If conventional anti-epileptic drugs could leave someone a little drowsy, possibly a herbal concoction meant for the same purpose might do so too, even if it couldn’t stop the seizures.
She knew more about herbal medicine than she had when she met Mark, from books she’d borrowed from the town library, and other works she’d hunted for in bibliographies and ordered through the bookshop. One fact she did know: it was illegal for any herbalist to offer to cure or to control epilepsy.
‘Ra admits that he can’t cure us all! Not forever! But we only have to wait. It’s only just over a year now.’
‘What will happen then?’ asked Scarlett gently. She felt Leafsong arrive still and intent beside her.
Mark looked at her, then glanced at Leafsong. ‘I . . . I’m not supposed to say. I shouldn’t have told you that! Ra Zacharia says he tried to tell the world about the Message,’ the capital letter was distinct in his voice, ‘but no one would listen. He can’t risk ridicule now, not when the Visitors might hear it on earth broadcasts.’
‘We won’t tell anyone,’ said Scarlett.
‘Not even Jed?’
‘Not even Jed,’ she agreed.
‘The aliens are going to land next year. We need to meet them. Pure spirits who have learned to be one with the universe. And then the aliens will cure us,’ said Mark quietly. ‘They’ll make us perfect, so we will live forever too.’