“There goes the Koolinda,” Kate said. “I went down to Perth on her. That was when I met Les. He was over there on business. He went back to Melbourne and I followed him. We were married a month later.” She smiled, a little bitterly, a little wryly. “Impetuous, that’s me.”
“I’m glad.” Steve lay flat on his back, his eyes shut against the glare of the December sun. “Even if I am the cautious type myself.” He opened one eye, smiling at her. “If you hadn’t proposed, we’d have never got engaged.”
“I practically proposed to Les, too.” She was talking about her late husband without embarrassment. Over the past month Steve had learned all he wanted to know about Peterson: the businessman who liked drinking and gambling and parties, whose only standard was money, who had killed himself one night while driving home drunk from a stag dinner. He had seen no photo of Peterson and Kate had never been explicit in her description of him, but Steve could see him as clearly as if he had known him for years. Men like Peterson were to be found in cities all over Australia, and Steve couldn’t bring himself to condemn Peterson: they were the men of small vision lost in a world of expanding horizons, men who at war’s end had been in business in a small way and then had suddenly found themselves on the edge of an economic goldfield. Carpenters had all of a sudden found they were building contractors, salesmen had become company directors, estate agents were now a power behind the scenes of State parliaments. Men who by bitter experience had learned only how to count pennies were all at once confronted by pounds; men who had never been called upon to offer more than Yes or No were faced with decisions that were too complicated for a straightforward answer. They were the sheep in the wolves’ den of high finance, and they had been lost. Peterson had not been the first to crack, and many more would follow him while Australia continued to grow at the rate it was. But Steve had expressed no sympathy for Peterson, wanting Kate to talk the man out of her system, and now she was speaking of him without bitterness and soon would not be speaking of him at all.
Steve sat up and looked out at the small coastal steamer. It was steaming south-west, cutting across the wide mouth of the gulf; the still waters of the gulf rippled away like blue oil behind it. It had come in two days ago, the day before Christmas, and the whole town had gone down to.help unload it, wanting its Christmas presents in time for opening on Christmas morning. There had been presents from Covici for the hospital staff, for Kate and for Charlie; and there had been one for Steve, a parcel of half a dozen books. If you’re staying on, you’ll need reading matter, the accompanying note had read. I don’t know what brought about your decision to stay on, but I only know I’m glad of it. All I can say, Steve is: I envy you. I’m going back to England to visit my aged schoolmaster; he’s retired, too, and we’ll sit there and I’ll try and tell him about the Kimberleys, but I know he’ll never comprehend it. No one can who has never lived there. If some time in the future you feel a substantially built ghost hovering over you, that will be me: the spirit of envy … The books now were on the shelf in the living-room of the cottage beside the hospital, and even if he never read them, Steve would treasure them. They represented a man who, on the shortest acquaintance, had become a friend he valued.
“We’d better be getting back,” Steve said. “There’s more rain coming up.”
The Wet was with them now. It had rained all day yesterday: carols had been sung to the accompaniment of the heavy beat of rain on tin roofs. Bill Druce, taking time off from the law, had played Father Christmas at the hospital; saturated with sweat, his white beard hanging from his face like a wet dish-rag, he had handed out presents to the piccaninnies who, looking upon him as some evil spirit from the dream-time of their fathers, had gone screaming to their mothers. The rain had let up during the night, but now the clouds were banking up again.
They drove back to Winnemincka, along the track where water lay in the ruts. In another month the track would be impassable; already the roads to the inland stations were closed. The rivers were beginning to fill up; in another month they would be running bankers and then would begin slowly to spread over the countryside. The wilderness from horizon to horizon would become a yellow sea, the trees stuck fast in it like becalmed galleons. Roads and air-strips would disappear, and the radio would become the only link between the isolated outposts. The Wet would be king for the next three months.
As they came into the edge of town, down past the big boab where piccaninnies and half-caste children played in the mud, Kate said, “You will come back, won’t you?”
He looked at her, shocked. “Kate—!”
“Oh, I know! I shouldn’t have said that.” She bit her lip, looked as if she wanted to bite her tongue. “I’m sorry, darling. It’s just – well, you haven’t heard from Rona since you wrote her. You still have to see her and explain—” She allowed her tongue full rein: she was desperate for reassurance. “You don’t love her, do you?”
He took his hand from the wheel and put it on hers. He was not angry; he would only have been angry if he had doubts himself. “I’m not in love with her. I’m going to see her in Sydney because I feel I should. If she understands what I’m going to try and explain to her, I’ll be happy. If she doesn’t understand, I shan’t be unhappy. She hasn’t written, but Charles has – at least he understands, and I’m glad of that.” When he had written Goodyear telling him he was going to stay on as the Flying Doctor, he had not tried to explain whether he was doing so because he was a man of conscience or because he was a man of ideals: the question had been in his mind, remembering Goodyear’s own confession on why he had joined the committee on heart disease, but he had not wanted to put it on paper. He knew in his heart that conscience had been the primary motivating force in his decision; but now he had made the decision, conscience had disappeared and he had only a feeling of determination and anticipation. He was modestly reluctant to think in terms of idealism: he doubted if the real idealist ever did think in such terms. He was immodest enough to hope that his father, and Jack Tristram, might have been proud of him. And that Charles Goodyear, who was honest enough to recognise that he had only conscience left, might envy him. “You won’t have to worry about me, darling. I’ll spend two days in Sydney, go on to Melbourne and see the Flying Doctor Council, and I’ll be back here before you’ve even begun to miss me.”
“I miss you even now,” she said, smiling at him. “Even when you’re gone for just an hour.”
“You’re going to make a hell of a doctor’s wife,” he said, and pulled the truck up in front of the hospital.
Hudson was in the front garden. The sky was dark now, clouds coming in over the gulf; the water was silver-grey and the jetty ran out like a long black lance laid against the shield of it. The meat-works, closed down now, the meat workers gone south to wash the blood from themselves and spend their money, stood out, a galvanised-iron castle, against the coming storm. The birds were coming back in screeching swathes, small dark clouds hurrying ahead of the main storm; they came down in a clamour that drowned the first rumblings of thunder, and settled in the trees about the town. A crow came in, crying sadly at the world, and found a place among the squabbling corellas in the boab beside the hospital. Hudson looked up at the storm and shook her head as Steve and Kate came up the path.
“I must be getting old. I’m getting to hate the sound of the rain on that damned tin roof.”
“Stop laughing,” Steve said. Hudson was another who had become a friend: he would miss her, if and when she left. Pilcher had already gone, and so had Billy; but not together. Pilcher hadn’t written since she had left, but Billy had; and he hadn’t mentioned Pilcher at all. He had written only of his pleasure at being in the city at last, of what it was like to be training on the big planes, of how he was looking forward to seeing Rome, London and New York: he was still in love only with himself and the prospects of what the world offered him. Pilcher, pretty as she was, eager for love and marriage, would find a young doctor and be happy; she might occasionally think of Billy, but she was a sensible girl and in the end she might come to realise that Billy was not a man for any one girl. Hudson and Scott were still here, and they were happily resigned, if not completely happy; Hudson had her work, to which Steve now knew she was dedicated, and Scott, thankful for small mercies, would have the meat-works manager when he came back in the Dry.
“Time for the rounds?” Steve said.
“Better get it over with,” said Hudson, and arranged her veil. “Mrs. Fogarty wants to see you. I think she wants to name the new baby after you.”
“How are the others?”
“Nothing new.” The last of the typhoid patients were due for discharge next week. There had been fifteen cases in all, but fortunately no deaths. Mary Hammond had been flown to Darwin, and the crisis was now over. “Old Ben Carslake looks as if he’s getting better. He’s complaining now that he’s got Hodgkins’ disease.”
Kate went across to her cottage, to take over the evening schedule from Sid Price. Steve followed Hudson up into the hospital, went round the wards, prescribed pills for Ben Carslake, gladly gave permission for the new Fogarty baby to be named after him, and then came to Dave Keating’s bed.
“How is it, Dave?”
Keating put down the book he had been reading. “I’m itching to get outa here, Doc. I ain’t meant for hospitals. And Gawd knows what’s been happening out at Emu Downs since I come in here.”
“The feller they sent out will look after things. You’re like an old woman – too house-proud to let someone else take over from you.”
Keating grinned. “You get that way. Twenty-two years I been out there, underpaid all the time, swearing some day I’ll give up and walk out on it all. Course, I never flaming well will. I’m beginning to think I’m scared to. I’m in a rut out there and I don’t wanna get out of it.” He held up the book: Steve recognised it as a best-selling novel. “This is all about a bloke in a rut in America. Twenty thousand dollars a year, bloody near ten thousand quid, and he don’t wanna get out of it.” He grinned, showing his broken teeth. “I know just how he feels, poor bastard.”
“Your language is improving,” said Hudson, mock-primly. “You’ve at least cut out the four-letter words you used to use.”
Steve was amazed to see Keating blush. “Ah, I’m getting soft, Matron. I’ll be back to me old form when I get back to the run. You gunna fly me out there, Doc?”
“You’re not going back for another month at least,” Steve said. “We’ll see then how the strip is.”
“How’s the new pilot you got? They tell me he’s a New Australian.”
“Does that make any difference?” Steve said.
“Struth, no! We’re glad of any bastard we can get. Ain’t we, Matron?”
“Any bastard at all,” said Hudson.
They left Keating hooting with constricted merriment, trying to laugh without causing himself pain. Hudson went into her office, and Steve stepped out on to the steps of the hospital. He stood there listening: the rain had reached the houses at the far end of town: the sound of the Wet was beginning again. The gulf now was lost in the thick curtain of rain; the beach where he and Kate had lain this afternoon could have been at the other end of the world. Down there the crabs had crept back deep into the coral rocks; the gulls had gone out to sea and rode the soft swells. Beyond the town the pindan had turned grey; in the far distance the ranges had the look of sleeping elephants. Out there the wild donkeys were gathering in tight mobs, dingoes were skulking beneath bushes, the snakes and the lizards had long gone underground. On the mountain behind the town the eagles and hawks had gathered and were quiet; the budgerigars and parrakeets sat in the trees beneath the mountain, safe but miserable. The rain came up over the town, shutting out the gulf, shutting out the wilderness.
Steve pulled his shirt collar up round his neck and ran, head down, through the rain across the garden and up the steps to his own cottage. Charlie, smiling broadly, held the screen door open for him. Charlie some day would go back to the tribe; but not yet. He had lost a mate and found another: he would remain here in Winnemincka, making himself useful about the hospital, as long as Steve remained. And when the Dry came again he would ride out into the wilderness to visit a grave on a hill, a hill from which the view was good, from which you could look out across the illimitable distances to the shimmering horizon and beyond, to back of sunset.
“Kate coming for supper?” Charlie said.
“Of course,” said Steve, and closed the door against the rain, the door on which the newly-painted wooden sign was nailed: Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia.