“Damn and blast it, Jo, it’s that bloody Higgins again!”
“Now, dear, do try to contain yourself. The man’s only doing his job—!”
“Job my—!”
The Humber stopped with a perfect screech. The light in the middle of Brunswick Street waved even more madly, and I fended myself off the dash. My lifelong friend Lilian is a superlative medical practitioner, beloved the length and breadth of Brisbane, but no one could slight her with the description “ladylike”.
“So, Constable, what is it this time?” I pictured the kindest of suppressed additions as, you prognathous ape. “Speeding at ten miles an hour? Eleven miles an hour, down your benighted Queen Street at one o’clock in the morning?”
“Doctor Cooper—keep telling you—due care and attention—” It was too dark to distinguish features beyond our headlamps, but Higgins’ sixteen-stone silhouette was all too familiar, as were his wheezing gasps.
“Ahhh!” A Lilian-snort easily expanded to, You blighted official imbecile! “Do the words prolonged labour, breech birth, haemorrhage, utmost urgency, mean anything to you?”
“Madam, your vehicle clocked…block between Albert…Edward Street, twelve miles an hour…!”
“Sssst!” Encapsulating, Then lobby to change the laws! Waive them for medical vehicles! You bloated babbling blockhead, give me a chance to save some lives! But when Lilian begins hissing through her teeth it is more than time to intervene.
“Lilian, Lilian, dear. You know the constable has no power to change the law. Are we not, ah, flogging the messenger somewhat—?”
“Sstt!!”
“Now, Lilian, please. Constable Higgins, this is an emergency. Have your station mail the speeding summons care of Auckland House, corner of George and Mary Streets. And are you not somewhat off your beat?”
“Biked two miles—catch up—”
“Ssssttttt!”
“How very zealous. We will be in correspondence with your superiors. And now, we really must go. Lilian?”
The car backfired, as it does at the most inopportune moments. The constable’s shadow vanished, but shreds of, “Doctor, complaint, law-breaking,” vanished under Lilian’s explosion as we roared round the corner toward New Farm Park.
“Flog the messenger be damned, Jo, this ape victimises doctors every bloody week! They’re all nitpickers but he’s the absolute bloody limit. I swear, next time I will run right over the obese officious—Scythian!—and leave his body in the street!”
“Yes, dear, but really, he may wear blue, but he doesn’t tattoo it on himself. Nor does he eat raw meat; and he’s not foreign, like Scythians when they served as police in Athens. Wasn’t that the house number? 28 Moreton Street?”
Once more the brakes precipitated me into the dash. The engine spluttered into quiet. Closing the car door softly, if with extreme effort, Lilian snatched her medical bag and shot a glance to the gesticulating silhouette across the street, growling, “God grant there’s still something I can manage here.”
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Luckily, or perhaps one should say, thankfully, we were in time for the patient, which preserved Lilian’s temper along with the girl’s life. The prompt arrival of the summons induced another eruption—“Three pounds three and sixpence! That’s a week’s ordinary wages! Hell and damnation, if I see him again I will run over him!”
Some tricky operations at the Lady Lamington Hospital fortunately assuaged my friend’s wrath, and only routine alarums and excursions intervened before a sudden night-call to Mount Mee. The two hour train-trip to Caboolture preceded seventeen miles on horseback, then a critical operation on a Northern Coast farmer’s wife, an event Lilian summarised at breakfast on her return.
“So the husband had to do the anaesthetic yet again, Jo, good thing those cow cockies are used to deliveries, even if it’s only calves—God blast and damn!”
“Lilian! Mind the marmalade, oh, not the Truth again? What is it now?”
“The Truth?” Down went the newspaper with a toast-snapping slam. “It’s the bloody Parliamentarians! They’re going to victimise all of us!”
“Another fuss about noise and petrol fumes?”
“Sttt! They’re proposing a Bill—Police Jurisdiction and Summary Offences! To ban everything from Sunday newspapers to two-up games, and just listen to this: Speeding infringements to be penalised by hefty fines! Loss of licence! And arrest without warrant! ”
“Goodness! One of those would surely be enough?”
The newspaper hurtled across the breakfast room. At the door Millie’s mob-cap flashed and vanished but Lilian was already on her feet.
“Enough? This is intolerable! Am I to go in fear and trembling that the bloody Scythian will arrest me on the street? Jo, I shall telephone David! We must do something about this!”
“Yes, dear, this is certainly draconian, I agree, and so will he, but perhaps not at breakfast, do you think—!”
But Lilian had already stormed out into the passage to seize the telephone mouthpiece. “Exchange! Get me Doctor Hardie’s residence. No, not his rooms, his residence. Yes, if you please. Now.”
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Dr Hardie and Lilian have been confederates almost ever since he came back from overseas in the early ’90s, to upset medical Brisbane with his pioneering X-ray machine. Cemented by their work in setting up the Lady Lamington, the alliance has only strengthened over their years as honorary medical officers at the Children’s Hospital. As I poured more tea and nodded Millie to pick up the battered Truth, scraps of conversation floated from the passageway.
“No, never! Yes. Must act now! Damn it, David, this will cripple everyone!” Lilian is almost as explosive with Dr Hardie as with me. “No, agreed. Some kind of united front— That set of Sunday excursionists? Well, if you think…? New president? Hmmn! Yes, a good standing, I suppose. Hmmm. If you propose him, perhaps… Me? David, really—! Oh, damn it, if you’re determined…”
The mouthpiece clattered, the telephone tinged. Lilian stalked back in, grumbling under her breath.
“David agrees we must oppose this, he wants some sort of public front. He says, the Automobile Club.” We had joined as a matter of course, when the state Club was founded, in 1905, though Lilian missed the actual meeting due to an acute appendicitis. But four years later the Club seemed practically moribund. “David says they need a new president. He wants to propose Feez.”
She raised her brows. I said, “Do you have time to finish your tea, dear? Mr Feez is eloquent in court, as we know from that battered-child case. And perhaps, for what you plan, a barrister would be a better choice than an automobile seller.”
“That’s so.” Lilian began gulping tea. “But I’ll have to waste time at the blasted meeting, and confound it, Jo!” She banged the cup down. “David means to nominate Feez, but he wants me to second it!”
“A very good idea. It’s always difficult to speak publicly, I know, but this is only to say, ‘I second’. And people do respect you, you know.”
“Hmmph!” The cup clattered down again. “Hopkins, or Bancroft or—Eleanor Bourne could do it—!”
“Doctor Hopkins can hardly propose his own successor. Doctor Bancroft is not a Club member. Nor is our dear Eleanor, even if she is now the Children’s resident physician. Now, Lilian…”
“Oh, very well, blast it.” She flicked her eyebrows at me. “I’ll do as I’m told.” The teasing glint vanished. “But I must be off. A very tricky tonsilitis at the Mater, Jo, I may be late for consulting hours. I know your Playgrounds group meets today. Will you have time to keep an eye out here?”
“Of course, my dear. Telephone if you seem likely to miss altogether.”
“You are an angel, Jo.” She rose from her chair; paused, turned, and dropped a kiss on my brow. “I know I’m testy and impatient and swear like a trooper, and you’re always so forbearing. I really don’t deserve you, dear.”
I stood up myself and gave her a hug. “Never speak of unequal deserts,” I said, “between us.” I kissed her properly. “Now off you go, and bon chance at the Children’s Hospital.”
I did not bother to add, forget the meeting till the time comes. That ogre would vanish the instant Lilian donned her surgical mask.
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The prevalence of male persons engaged with automobiles, and the male tendency to speechify, lengthened the eventual meeting predictably. Luckily it was at the dear old School of Arts, whose wide verandah and plenitude of fans mostly dispelled the October heat. I had made the heat reason to coax Lilian into a silk organdie evening-waist, whose ivory shade flattered her auburn hair, while the delicate fabric and fuller sleeves softened her somewhat angular figure. Reaching up to adjust the large bow that replaced her usual tie, I could not help patting her cheek and murmuring, “You really look very well, my dear.”
The now looming ordeal ensured she arrived tight-lipped and pallid, but I managed to deflect all but a couple of well-meaning queries on whether she still had headaches from the dog-cart accident—fractured skull or not, it had been almost ten years! Nor, now the male doctors have finally acknowledged Lilian as a respected practitioner, did the usual number of foolish persons offer such remarks as, “Woman driver, y’know, t’isn’t natural.” And, “Ought to leave medicine to the men, haw, haw, haw,” or, even worse, “By Jove, Miss Cooper, all you really need’s a wedding ring.” To which Lilian, goaded, had once retorted, “I could wear it on my big toe!”
These perils eluded, we went to ground halfway up the crowded hall. Avoiding such anodynes as, “You will only have to stand up for five seconds,” I kept my mind on ensuring neither of us fell asleep before the actual appointments began.
Dr Hardie, his thick blond moustache abristle, had likewise spied out our seats in one sweeping glance, then confined his attention to the crescent of worthies on the hall platform. The then-president, Dr Hopkins, took the chair. Various persons orated about the dangers of the imminent Bill, of giving automobile or motor-cycle dealers office in the club, and the state of roads, signage, petrol and tyre costs. However, I had only extricated four moths from my hair before the real business commenced.
Since the lesser offices were apportioned first, it seemed another aeon before Dr Hopkins reached, “And, gentlemen, the nominations for President?” Over the general buzz Dr Hardie fairly trumpeted, “Mr Arthur Feez!” Beside me Lilian rose to her feet, just escaping unseemly haste, to follow up with a crisp, “Seconded!”
She sat down on an expulsion of breath only I could have heard. I patted her hand, which, as I had expected, was trembling. She in turn patted me convulsively. The gentlemen turned the matter over for a few minutes. Then, amid general applause, Mr Feez was voted in.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
The rest of the meeting passed on plans to rent rooms for the secretary, Mr Moloney, and measures, some actually practical and politically tactful, to contest the Bill. When we finally reached open air Lilian undid her high collar and drew a long, audible breath.
“Thank God that’s over!” She did mutter, since we were still in the crowd. “David can take it from here. Come, Jo, I’ve another full card at the Lamington tomorrow morning. I only hope the Peril starts.”
Lilian has a foible to buy yellow cars, and it is a foible of Brisbane persons to christen each the Yellow Peril. Discovering which, Lilian’s somewhat uproarious sense of humour led her to dub our vehicle the Peril, though only in the best of moods. To my mind its chief peril is the damage repeated crank-turning can do to my or Lilian’s skirts, when we are not at home, with liberty to call on Harry the gardener’s strong back.
That night unfortunately proved no exception. After five tries Lilian began kicking the front tyre and using “bloody” every second word. More fortunately, her sixth attempt pre-empted my own second trial. I advanced the throttle a little, shut the spark and adjusted the choke as Lilian clambered hastily in. Slamming the door, she pushed in the clutch and panted, more than somewhat maliciously, “Now I really would like to run that fat pachyderm down. Just pray, Jo, that we don’t encounter the Scythian!”
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
Plans to resist the Bill had culminated in a request for Mr Moloney to write strong if politely worded letters to all State Parliamentarians who might support us: this took less time than one would have liked. Dr Hardie kept us up-to-date. Lilian was in too much demand for more than occasional fulmination on a dire future. That is, until the Woolloongabba emergency.
We had just sat down to a somewhat belated Saturday luncheon, and were planning the afternoon excursion, with another basket of toys for the wards at the Children’s Hospital, one of Lilian’s favourite charities; then the telephone rang.
Lilian sighed and rose. I set the dish-cover over her roast lamb and potatoes. The conversation was exceptionally brief. An instant later Lilian’s head shot round the door.
“Jo, can you fetch the car? Get Harry to crank for you. Annie Davis just pulled the copper over on herself.”
“Oh, Lilian! Of course!”
I seized my emergency hat from the hall and scurried for the back door. “Mrs Tanner, can Harry please crank the car at once? A bad burn in Woolloongabba.” Lilian had delivered twelve-year-old Annie, seen her through diarrhoea and diphtheria, and Mrs Davis had been an early patient at our first rooms in Russell Street. Mrs Tanner shouted and Harry raced from his own lunch.
Another miracle, the Peril started at second crank. I shoved in the clutch, found the elusive reverse gear, and had us round at the George Street gate as Lilian, bag in hand, came racing down the steps.
“Jo, you love!” The bag landed in the tonneau and I just cleared the driver’s side before Lilian landed too. With a roar the wheels flung gravel as Lilian swept us round for the Victoria Bridge.
“I keep telling these women, don’t let your children in the laundry! And especially while the copper’s alight! Ahh!”
With a ferocious swerve we skirted a slow wagon and whipped into the Queen Street turn. Dust and a pair of cyclists scattered. Lilian jammed her hat down like a jockey and put the car at the Victoria Bridge, I held on and begged divine Providence to keep us clear of police. I knew God himself could not make Lilian slow down on a call like this.
As we feared, the full copper-load had been on the boil when Annie, trying to help her mother by fishing a sheet up with the copper stick to test its progress, had overset the lot. Though an oversize borrowed apron intercepted the main splash, her half-bare legs had not escaped.
I had anticipated more than the usual burn horrors, especially with a child we knew and cared for. We entered to very little noise beyond the usual babble of distraught family. But when Lilian shook her head at Mrs Davis and said in her usual brusque manner, “Miss Bedford will help me, please take the others out in the back yard,” I did wish fervently that we employed an assistant nurse.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
“Oh, Doctor Lilian, it hurts—!”
“We’ll fix that, Annie. Let me take a look.”
Small for her age like so many ’Gabba children, Annie was a mere huddle of wet garments on the big patchwork quilt. As I squeezed past to the tiny window and drew back immaculately frilled white curtains, Lilian already had her bag open, scissors in hand. “Don’t worry about your mother’s apron. She’ll get another one.”
And as always, her voice had changed. However often I hear it, the way she addresses children always astonishes, sometimes moves me to tears. No longer brusque or impersonal, though as always steadfastly confident; rather as if she and the child were equals, confederates in a medical magic that no adversary can defeat.
Four quick snips parted the big sacking apron’s strings. As I reached her side she handed off the scissors without looking and began, with deceptive speed yet amazing delicacy, to free the apron itself.
I took the wet cloth one-handed. She reclaimed the scissors. Annie moaned and turned her head sharply so my pulse leapt at the first dreaded signs of pain biting through the shock. Lilian murmured, “Not long now, Annie,” and I held my breath in earnest as the scissors, lightly wielded as a scalpel on flesh, cut away Annie’s over-washed, over-skimpy gingham dress.
Annie whimpered as air reached her skin. Lilian murmured, “Miss Bedford and I saw you born, Annie. We know how you look.” The cotton bloomers parted. Lilian muttered, “Jo,” and I dropped the apron and went round the bed so I might hold the girl still.
With that same deceptive speed and lightness Lilian drew away both garments at once.
Scarlet skin glared up at us, but there were no huge bursting blisters, no seared-through, seeping flesh. Annie squirmed and moaned, but she did not writhe, let alone scream aloud.
For one instant I saw Lilian actually taken aback. Then she breathed, “Well, well.” And with that surgeon’s speed, settled her next step.
“Jo, get the Vasoline. Annie, just a couple more minutes now. I shall cover this for you.” The scissors went down and Lilian’s own hand flew into the bag for the big bundle of gauze and lint.
With the same speed she smeared Vasoline thick on three big gauze sheets, gathered the first, and with a, “Here we come, Annie,” lowered it, feather-light and swift, over the girl’s stomach and waist. A second followed over the lower abdomen and upper thighs, the third over the legs. Light swathes of bandage followed atop; at last, with equal speed and care, we lifted Annie off the ruined clothes and wrapped her round.
“Now, Miss Davis,” the familiar little formality elicited a sketchy smile, “I shall give you a ‘potion’, as I used to. Presently, you’ll feel much better; then, I shall want you to go to sleep. Can you do that?”
Annie’s eyes were round, though not, I imagine, much more so than mine. She nodded gravely. Lightly, tenderly, Lilian brushed back the girl’s disheveled hair. “All over, pet.” In one hand she scooped up her medical bag, in the other, the ruined garments. “We’ll ask your mother for a water-glass.”
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“Quite astonishing, Mrs Davis—yes, Aileen, then, I did remember!” Lilian’s composure was still some way from her usual medical face. “Severe inflammation, especially on the body, but very much better than I feared. I’ve applied Vasoline, with very light dressings. She should be kept quiet. Is there a truckle bed you could fit beside the crib?” She meant, back in the main bedroom. “Here’s a light dose of laudanum: a teaspoon in a glass of water now, then as necessary during the afternoon and evening. I’ll call tomorrow, for a dressing change.”
There she paused, with a somewhat puzzled frown. “Aileen, when it happened. Exactly what did you do?”
Mrs Davis’s broad, sun-weathered face screwed up in alarm. “Why, why, Doctor, was there wrong… Could I have—what should I have done?”
“No, no, not wrong! But I was prepared for a great deal more damage— So tell me, please. Between when it happened and when we arrived: what did you do?”
“Why, I run down the street to the pub to beg a moment of their telephone, I hated to leave her but I knew we must fetch you soon as we could. I left her with Mary and Beth, Mary’s only nine but steady as can be, I knew they’d not let her—damage herself.”
“Then what did they do?”
“Why—why—so far as I can tell, nothing! Only, when I come back, they’d been dousing her with the cold water bucket; she was dripping all over, and Mary says to me, ‘It hurt her so much and we couldn’t find the salad oil so we took the buckets and poured water on her, Mama, and see, it’s better, shall we not go on?’”
She stared at Lilian, anxious, half-bewildered. “So when I had her inside, and—and the pain getting worse, Mary says, ‘Let’s do more water, Beth,’ and I let them, having nothing better, till, till we heard the car. Oh, Doctor, did I do wrong?”
“No!” Lilian exclaimed. “No, not wrong! What you did was right—righter than I can explain.” A faraway look filled her face. “But, Aileen, if you ever meet another such accident, don’t wait. Use the bucket instantly.”
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
“Do you think, Lilian, we could waive the fee?”
“Of course, Jo. Mrs Davis is prouder than Lucifer, but I’ll say there was so little to do, it would be a token at best.”
“And we will bring some replacement clothes, too.”
“Mmm. Certainly.” But Lilian had grown increasingly vague. As the little picket gate clicked behind us she muttered, “That girl, that Mary. I believe, I do believe, she’s made a medical break-through. I swear, Jo, she may be an accidental genius!”
“Genius, Lilian?”
“Genius, Jo. No blisters, no skin loss, not a quarter of the usual pain! Cold water! Maybe running cold water, perhaps first thing, on a burn. We must experiment, Jo. This could prove an entire new treatment. I may have to write a paper, drat it. But if it works more than once, other people must know—oh, blast and damn!”
We had reached the car, parked somewhat crookedly in the dusty street beside the neighbour’s picket fence. Now, around its back, appeared a familiar blue-clad, notebook-wielding shape.
Lilian’s face went from medical euphoria to a thunderous frown. “Yes, Constable?” Scythian could have whistled out on the ice. Higgins actually drew himself up.
“A complaint, Doctor. There was cyclists on Queen Street when you come round that corner. Driving without due care and attention. You nearly skittled ’em both.” As Lilian’s eye flashed and I guessed her teeth had clenched, Higgins raised his voice.
“And you was clocked over Victoria Bridge doing sixteen miles an hour, Doctor! Twice the speed limit! On a Saturday arvo—afternoon—with pedestrians and horsecabs from here to kingdom come! You coulda killed someone!”
“Sssss!” But before I could speak Lilian had stamped round the bonnet and almost up against Higgins’ heaving chest. “Do you have children, Constable?”
“What’s that gotta do with—”
“Everything! Do you have children or not?”
It came in such a tone I dared not intervene. Higgins himself very nearly recoiled. Then produced a reluctant grunt.
“Girls?”
“Orright, I got kids, girl and two boys! What’s that got to do with…”
“How old’s the girl?”
“Look, Doctor—”
“Humour me, Constable.” A less humorous tone I could not imagine. “How old is she?”
Higgins shuffled feet and pencil and would clearly have loved to exceed his position and return as good as he was getting. At last he growled, “Eight this year.”
Lilian’s back stiffened with a snap and she pointed furiously over the tumbledown picket fence, past faded zinnia flowers to the recalcitrantly dusty, out-at-elbows little Woolloongabba house.
“In there’s a twelve-year old girl, Constable, who just pulled a copperful of boiling water on herself! Have your children ever been burned?” Higgins actually took a step back. “Have you seen what it’s like?”
Higgins’ face spoke for itself. Lilian’s voice suddenly went soft and she almost whispered, “How long would you want your daughter to suffer before a doctor arrived?”
Higgins did hold his tongue, but his neck reddened, up and out to the tips of his ears. I too wanted to cry, Oh, a foul blow, Lilian! But I still dared not speak.
Higgins had no such recourse. He fell back on officialdom, his only possible riposte.
“Doctor,” through definitely gritted teeth. But his glare added, Wait for the new law. Just wait! “I am an officer of the police. It’s not my place—or my duty! —to decide, decide medical matters. My duty is to enforce the law—including speed limits!”
“Ssssstt!”
Lilian whirled about and almost flew to reach the crank. Higgins was so close to the bonnet she might well have assaulted his knees had I not gestured frantically at him and mouthed, “Post the summons!” He gave me a stare as vicious as the one he had aimed at Lilian, but he moved.
When we had chugged at a decorous eight miles an hour back between the scalloped girders of the Victoria Bridge, I said, “My dear, you know, he was doing his duty. But you made an enemy of that man.”
Lilian actually slammed a fist on the door top. “Damn it, Jo, the moron hinders and cumbers and thwarts my duty—my sacred Hippocratic duty! every time I turn around! I am sworn to salve injury and alleviate pain! How can I leave patients to suffer because I must creep at eight miles an hour for his piddling bloody traffic regulations?”
“Yes, dear. And it is infuriating—more than infuriating! But will it help your patients, to have a personal vendetta with Higgins, if that Bill goes through?”
“Damn the bloody Bill!” We wheeled summarily into George Street. By the greatest good fortune the way was for once clear. “And damn Higgins too!”
I did not reply, Yes, dear. Lilian turned short for our driveway; but as the car came to a stop, she shut off the engine, leant on the steering wheel, and sighed.
“You were right, Jo, as always. It was a low blow. But he vexes me beyond all bearing. Why doesn’t the fool government make laws that let us both do as we’ve sworn?” She bit her lip and swung open the car door. “Only one thing for it, Jo. We must enlist more Parliamentarians. That bloody Bill must. Not. Pass.”
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That night she cornered Dr Hardie in the theatre interval, during one of our rare uninterrupted treats. By the look of his protests before they parted, I gathered that “enlist more partisans” was easier said than done.
Already concerned, after that day’s contretemps I came near dreading the thought of the Bill’s passage, imagining Lilian torn between the compulsion to reach her patients and dread of the inevitable speeding excess. And how if the law of instant arrest was passed, and Higgins caught up with her after another incident like the Woolloongabba clash?
However pointlessly, I came near badgering Dr Hardie too. Then by pure chance, I collected an enthusiastic helper in the cause.
We had met Mrs Longman during my five-year term as secretary of the Pioneer Club. A brisk, humourful woman who came to Queensland in 1904, she was a force in the attainment of state women’s suffrage in ’05, though we had met seldom since. Still, when her short-clipped head popped up beside me at the Creche and Playground Association meeting, I recognised the perky grin instantly.
“Josephine!”
“Irene! How charming to meet again!”
“Indeed, indeed! Albert and I are down from Toowoomba for the entire day. Shall we have tea after this?”
An early afternoon meeting left comfortable time to visit the Shingle Inn in Edward Street. Over their excellent scones we caught up on the four year hiatus, and soon I found myself pouring out the story of the Speed War: Higgins’ bloodhound propensities, Lilian’s devotion to her patients, my own fears. “Imagine, Irene, what life will be like for Lilian if this wretched Bill comes in!”
“And for you, Josephine.” She gave me one of her warmly sympathetic glances and patted my glove beside the Inn’s solid but shining sugar bowl. “And for all the women and children who depend upon your doctor. Lilian is right, the Bill must not pass.”
“But the Automobile Club cannot seem to find supporters.”
“Tut, tut! Then we need other lobbyists, Josephine.”
“Lilian’s patients, do you mean? There are certainly plenty, but—so many of them are not important people…”
“But over half of them,” Irene pointed out, calmly, but with a twinkle, “have just acquired the vote.”
“Oh! Oh, Irene, of course!”
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With suffrage won, Lilian and I had dropped out of electoral campaigning circles. Irene had not. Inside a week she had set her forces in motion through almost all Brisbane electorates; a good number of women responded, and many pledged to urge their husbands to join as well. “We have the perfect lever,” Irene told me cheerfully. “What patient or parent that Lilian’s helped will want to lose her? How many others will understand, when shown the consequences of the Bill for themselves?”
The Doctor’s Protection League, as Irene wickedly termed it, was under way early in November, undeterred by a season of particularly fierce storms. In mid-November, Irene and I again took tea at the Shingle Inn. Though Irene’s neat head looked as perky as ever, I felt a qualm at the disparate expression on her face.
“Try the rock cakes this time, Josephine, they really don’t live up to their name.”
“Thank you, Irene, I will. How is dear Albert?”
“Busy as always, the clever man.” She returned the menu to the arriving waitress. “Very willing to address his legislative member over that wretched Bill, as you might expect.”
“So kind of him.” I concentrated on straightening the place mat. “And how is the whole campaign, Irene?”
Irene made an all-too-graphic face. Not for the first time, I wished I felt as free to curse as Lilian.
“There is support, Josephine, I assure you. Unfortunately, the motor-car has such a poor overall reputation, that,” she sighed and pushed her folded fan into her bag, “that even Lilian’s reputation has not—yet—managed to turn the scales.”
She glanced back up at me and assumed cheerfulness. “We will keep working, Josephine, I do assure you. It’s not finished yet!”
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By the end of November, even Irene’s assurance could not ease my rising qualms. As Lilian and I drove home from attending a bad fall at a building site in Windsor, I reflected wretchedly on that morning’s gloat in the Truth: however eager, even impassioned, our supporters, the Parliamentary majority remained, by a narrow margin, in favour of the Bill.
It was a torrid afternoon, the air heavy, the whey-and-charcoal clouds already milky with oncoming storm. Glancing up and back as we turned onto Lutwyche Road, Lilian remarked, “I hope we get through consulting hours before it breaks.”
I could not help adding, “I hope no one founders horses, getting home,” and she gave me a warm smile.
“One thing to be said for the new motor-cabs, Jo.”
Lilian had been delighted by the reception of my paper at the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, but preaching to the converted does not always bring wider change. She also knew the plight of cab-horses over-driven or under-watered distressed me almost more than any other abuse.
I produced a matching smile. Lilian transferred her attention back to the road ahead, and stiffened with a jerk.
“And here’s a very bad case.”
The traffic that far up Lutwyche Road is lightest between two and three o’clock, with few delivery carts or vans or workers’ bicycles, only the occasional omnibus and horse or motor-cab, and rarer private cars. But from the haze of dust and fumes and glittering metal a rider was racing at near full gallop on a lathered horse.
I caught a glimpse as they flew by: a grey horse blackened with sweat and white with foam, a spatter of red from over-used spurs, some kind of bag or pack over a blue workman’s shirt, hat pulled down to hide all but a flying moustache. The horse swerved past an approaching wagonette and Lilian exclaimed, “The damn fool!” I could not help crying, “That poor beast!”
“I’d go back, but…” Lilian touched my elbow lightly before she turned her attention to the road. I knew the “but”: I already have people ahead, waiting for evening surgery, also expecting my help.
“No.” I understand. I tried to divert my attention. “Do you imagine, an urgent telegram? A crisis at the Post Office? Some kind of telegraph break-down? That satchel—was it mail?”
“A good question, Jo. And a good thing they don’t apply speed limits to horses, or Higgins would be hot on his tracks—Good God! There he is!”
“Higgins! Surely not—good heavens! But what has happened to him?”
Lilian slapped on the brakes to cut behind yet another omnibus and whipping the car through a convenient gap pulled across and up behind the furious figure at the gutter edge.
Higgins was as black with sweat and dust as the unfortunate horse, and crimson enough to herald a coronary. His bicycle was crumpled at his feet; he was alternately kicking its frame out of shape and waving furiously at oncoming motor traffic, which, unable to distinguish his uniform and unnerved by his behaviour, kept swerving wildly out around him in the street.
“Constable, what’s wrong?”
Lilian can make herself heard on a building site. Higgins whirled about and noticed us for the first time.
He went purple as an egg-plant fruit: rage, embarrassment, chagrin, fury churned visibly over his features. I called out before he could either expire or burst.
“Is it the man on the grey horse?”
“The—the—”
He strangled a fresh gout of profanity. “Madam—police business—” He almost choked. Another motor-cab escaped his clutches and he kicked the fallen bicycle a car length down the street. “Ah, ah, DAMN!”
Lilian suddenly pulled the handbrake on. “Jo,” she said crisply, “can you get in the tonneau? And keep safe?”
I understood almost as she spoke. “Of course, my dear.” Flinging my own door open, I scrambled round among the surgical impedimenta in the tonneau, even as Lilian leant out and shouted, “Constable Higgins! Over here!”
Higgins glared. Lilian used her operating theatre voice. “Get in my car. The horse went straight on up Lutwyche Road.”
Higgins’ jaw dropped. Then the eyes sparked blue in his scarlet face and he charged for my open door.
Lilian put the car in gear, revved hard, and before Higgins landed had catapulted us into the street.
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Clinging for dear life to the tonneau side I had a mad urge to declaim dear Mr Paterson’s “Lay of the Motor-Car”: We’re away! And the wind whistles shrewd/ In our whiskers and teeth! For the wind was certainly whistling in Higgins’ whiskers and he was clinging to the dashboard harder than I.
Lilian whipped round another slow wagonette. Higgins came as near as a grown man can to a squeak and I suddenly understood he had never driven with her at speed, maybe never driven at speed in a motor-car at all.
Lilian hit an open furlong and put her foot down. The speedometer crept round past twenty, reached for twenty-five. Higgins made a noise that might have been, “Oh, Gawd,” and I shouted into the gale, “What did he do? The man on the horse?”
Higgins spluttered. I expected another cry of “Police business!” Instead he straightened half an inch and bawled, “The ba—the mongrel shot through with the whole Lennons’ payroll!”
“Oh, damn!”
Higgins boggled. I knew Lilian and I were both remembering scores of cooks, maids, charwomen and washerwomen we had tended. People whose loss of a week’s pay from the big hotel would mean not merely vexation but privation for them and their families. I yelled, “How did he get out here?”
Lilian threw the car down a gear behind another omnibus, revved up, swirled round the bus and cut across the bows of an approaching wagon. Higgins gurgled and seized the distraction.
“Bailed up the bank-van right at the door—arp!” Lilian had ducked round a pair of cyclists so close I saw the whites of their eyes. “Got clear up Queen Street, dodged the blokes at Brunswick corner—I was at the General, the station called—oof!” We flew across an intersection just ahead of a smartly trotting dog-cart. “Ahh…” With a wheeze Higgins regained his breath. “I cut him at the hospital crossing. Horse was lathered, reckoned to hang on him till the horse dropped—then I done the bloody bike!”
“And not a cab would stop.” I could not help feeling sympathy. No wonder he had kicked the offending bicycle down the street!
“Nobody else out here, if I coulda kept him in sight—!”
“We’ll get him back.” Lilian said it the way she told patients’ panicking relatives that their loved ones were “as bad as they could be, but I’ll get them through.” Higgins’ shoulders shifted. Then he actually turned his head to give her one wind-teary, astonished, almost, I thought, wondering glance.
Lilian did not notice. Her eyes were slitted at the road, where ahead of us an empty space ended in another clutch of cyclists. And beyond them, the silhouette of a racing horse.
“There he is!” Higgins slammed the dashboard. “By Gawd, Doctor, you get me up with him and we’ll run that beast into the ground!”
“Oh, Lilian.” The protest was torn out of me. I could not bear the thought of the innocent, helpless horse destroyed, and by those on the side of the law.
“Can’t run it down, Constable.” Lillian accelerated across another intersection. The speedometer hit thirty and two astonished butcher-boys fell off their cart-poles. “Jo wouldn’t like it. But…”
The speedometer dropped back to twenty-five. Lilian remarked into the almost conversation-level lull, “This car’s supposed to be quiet as a ghost. ”
“Huh?” was Higgins’ contribution. But I had seen a goat-cart emerge from what must be a back-lane some quarter-mile ahead. Still well in front of the now labouring, barely trotting horse.
“Oh!” I cried thankfully. “Oh, Lilian, yes!”
“Hang on, all.”
Again it was the surgeon’s voice. The intervening traffic, another fruiterer’s cart, sailed under Higgins’ elbow. The road opened, two hundred yards perhaps to the horse, another hundred to the lane.
Lilian floored the accelerator. The car surged forward with a high version of its usual muffled roar. House-fronts whipped past, the horse’s quarters suddenly loomed in the windscreen and Lilian whisked the car right up beside it and hit the brakes.
The Humber screeched its loudest and best. The man shouted, the horse tried to hurl itself sideways and blundered head-first into the alley mouth. Lilian stood on the brakes again and leant on the steering wheel so the car propped short and then shot round into the noisome alley, just as the horse stumbled over a deep rut and went down, flinging its rider out ahead.
Lilian braked us dead and rapped, “Constable?”
Your man, your business. Higgins had not needed the invitation. He was already wrenching at the door. The handle gave, he tumbled out and charged, with the weight and velocity of an angry elephant, and a veritable gorilla’s roar.
Law-maker and breaker hit the alley-dirt amid a mighty dust cloud. Lilian said in satisfaction, “There you are, Jo,” switched off, and got out.
I was out as fast and making for the horse. Lilian delayed only to seize the spare rope we keep under the seats, before she swept down on Higgins and his prey.
Higgins had already made his own arrangements, I found, when I had time to spare from capturing the horse’s reins and soothing it to its feet. Lilian had the rope ready, but Higgins had dislodged the haversack with a knee in the middle of the prone captive’s back, produced a pair of handcuffs from somewhere, and got one round a flailing wrist. Lilian was just in time to rope the other close enough for the second cuff.
Wheezing, puffing, uniform black with dust and sweat, lurid face powdered with dust like a floured oven-roast, Higgins rose to his feet, replaced the pinning knee with a foot, and in a pose like a triumphant big-game hunter, began declaiming, “I arrest you in the name of the King for armed robbery, illegal discharge of fire-arms, wilful attempt to injure police-officers, and…and…”
There he had to stop and wheeze. The prone captive was too winded to protest, but Lilian’s lips suddenly twitched.
“And riding without due care and attention, Constable?”
Higgins’ head whipped round. They stared for what seemed a full minute. Then, to my utter disbelief, Higgins’ dust-caked countenance split in a slow, magnificent grin.
“Orright, doc.” He made a dab at his temple, whence his hat had long since fled. “We’ll call it quits, hey? That was, um—quite a chase. But I’ve—we’ve got him. And the money. Ain’t even ruined the horse.” His chest seemed to swell. “With a single-handed arrest. I reckon, you’ll do me a bitta good over this.” The grin subsided into sober promise. “And I reckon, I’m gonna do a bitta good for you.”
Lilian’s amusement had also vanished. After a moment she began to coil up the rope. Then, as soberly as Higgins had spoken, she said, “Yes, Constable. Whatever you chance to do, we’ll call it quits.”
A moment later shouts, police whistles and the reverberations of another over-heated car motor began to ricochet down the alleyway. Lillian stepped back, Higgins resumed his big-game hunter’s pose, and we led the hobbling horse clear as the rest of the police arrived.
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Precisely what Higgins did and how he did it we have never been privileged to learn. What we do know is that shortly after the briefly notorious “Lennons’ Payroll Robbery” arrest, he was promoted to Sergeant. We hear, via the newspapers, that as finances become available the Police Commissioner plans to expand police car numbers from two to something nearer a fleet.
Better still, Mr Feez and other reputable sources inform us that the Police Commissioner has withdrawn support for the Police Jurisdiction and Summary Offences Bill. It may never come before Parliament, and if it does, it will not pass.
The best rumour of all is talk that the city speed limit will at last be raised. Soon, Lilian may be able to drive with perfect legality at sixteen miles an hour!
“Due Care and Attention” by Sylvia Kelso