by Janeen Brian
“We must try to break the fever,” said the doctor, firmly. “We must try very hard because I have seen worse cases that this, Mrs Pollock, and the child has miraculously survived.”
“O’ course, Doctor, O’ course,” she stammered. But she didn’t let go of Dorrie’s limp hand.
“Jack,” said the doctor, turning and addressing me. “You’re a good lad. Would you get me a bucket of water and some more cloths, please? As quickly as possible, eh? We have to get your sister cool. And as fast as we can.”
I didn’t draw breath. I rushed into the kitchen and gathered what cloths I could find. Then I grabbed a bucket and lit a lantern. Outside, in the soft rain, I worked the water pump as hard as I could and dashed back inside.
Mam gave me several pillowcases she’d found and I soaked those and the cloths and squeezed them out.
“Jack,” said Dr Hughes, “what if you and I help cool Dorrie? Think you can do that?”
“Yes,” I said.
Dr Hughes spoke to Da. “Mr Pollock, why don’t you take your wife into the kitchen and put the kettle on? It’s going to be a long night.”
“You’ll let us know if …”
“Of course. Have a rest for a while. I’ve got a good helper with me.”
Over the next three hours, the doctor and I, and later, Mam and Da, soaked and squeezed cloths. As one bucket emptied, I’d head outside and pump to fill another. We’d lay the cloths all over Dorrie: her forehead, neck, throat, legs and body. When they grew warm, we’d remove them and replace them with fresh cooler ones.
Each time I returned to the room, I was overwhelmed by the stench. It smelled sour. Of something dying.
I worked harder.
Sometime before dawn, the doctor felt Dorrie’s forehead and then stood back.
“Jack,” he said in a quiet voice. “Will you please fetch your parents?”
I turned to look at Dorrie.
“Now, please, Jack.”
Mam and Da hurried in. Mam kneeled by the bedside. Da stood beside Mam. I stood at the doorway, unable to breathe.
“The next half-hour is vital,” said Dr Hughes. “Crucial. The fever is at its peak. If it breaks, we have a good chance.”
He didn’t say what would happen if it didn’t.
I walked over to Dorrie’s bed and put Marianne in her arms.
Chapter 30
I didn’t notice anything except whether the cloths were cool or warm and whether the bucket needed refilling. As long as there were things to do, there was hope.
I was placing a cloth over Dorrie’s forehead when she opened her eyes. The blueness struck me. A shiver went up and down my spine. I blinked, but when I looked again, her eyes were closed, as if nothing had happened.
Had I imagined it? Was it something I’d just wanted to see?
“Doctor?”
“Yes, Jack?” He looked up from rinsing a cloth.
“Oh, nothing.” I didn’t want to look foolish.
“Jack.” It was the faintest whisper, but it was Dorrie’s voice. I stared, open-mouthed, as her eyes slowly opened.
“Dorrie,” I cried.
The breath left my chest and I clenched my hands high in the air. The feeling was like nothing I’d ever felt before. I was overjoyed to see the blue eyes and hear the voice of my pesky little sister.
“Wonderful!” said Dr Hughes. He moved swiftly to check on Dorrie, while I rushed into the kitchen. Mam sat at the table and Da was outside rocking Arthur.
“Mam, Mam. Dorrie’s awake. She’s better.” I ran outside, letting the door slam and yelled to Da to come in straightaway. “She’s better!” I added, just in case he thought the worst.
When I returned to the bedroom, Mam was hugging Dorrie and weeping. Da and I were both smiling broadly, speechless.
“Thank’ee, Doctor,” Da said at last, “from all of us.”
“Your Dorrie is a strong girl. She’ll be all right now. And that boy, Jack … He was a great help. Fetching me in the middle of the night was difficult.”
Da turned to me and held out his hand. “You did it, lad. You did it.”
As I shook my father’s hand, I felt his pride for me flow into mine. I felt tired and warm at the same time.
But I had other thoughts.
“Da,” I whispered so the doctor wouldn’t hear. “I don’t think Mam’s got any money for Dr Hughes. I’ve still got some coins from when I was working. You can have those if you want.”
“It all be sorted, lad. But thank’ee.”
After Dr Hughes had packed his bag and had a cup of tea, he suggested, with a glint in his eye, that next time I called, I might like to take the road and come in daytime. I gave a weary smile.
While Mam and Da attended to Dorrie and Arthur, I walked out with him to his carriage.
I couldn’t believe it was a new day. I drank in the smell of fresh rain and moist earth. All around, everything was waking up. Birds were calling and singing their plans for the morning, or flying off in this direction or that. A crow cawed in the far distance, but a willie wagtail, perched on our fence, drowned out the crow’s deathly cry with his bright song.
This time I was certain it was the same wagtail as I’d seen before.
I pulled up a clump of grass and was feeding it to the horse when Dr Hughes picked up both of my hands and turned them over. He peered more closely at the right one.
I was too tired to protest. But I wasn’t about to give him an explanation either.
“Do you want to tell me about those marks, Jack?” he said.
I shuffled my feet and looked down. “Not really.” Then, not wanting to seem rude, I added, “There’s really nothing to tell.”
The doctor didn’t speak for a while. It was awkward. As if he expected me to say more.
“I suppose I’d better go in now, Dr Hughes,” I said at last.
“Of course you must, you poor boy. Just remember, Jack, there’s nothing so terrible that you can’t speak of it to those who love you. Most times, it helps.” He climbed up onto his seat. “Come and visit me any time, Jack. Not only when someone’s sick. Goodbye.” He clicked the reins. “Gee up,” he said. “Gee up.”
I waved goodbye and turned to go back inside.
The doctor’s words hit me with a dull force. I was suddenly faced with something else to deal with. But my legs were buckling and my head felt like a heavy grey fog. I stumbled into my room and fell straight onto my bed.
When I awoke, I rubbed at my eyes, crusty at the lids. My clothes were covered in dust. Sweat and grime were etched in the scratches all over my arms and legs. There were drops of dried blood on my shirt and dried mud on my boots.
It took me several moments before my head cleared and I realised I was in my new room. It took another moment before I remembered what happened the previous evening.
“Dorrie!” I sprang out of bed, but it was too soon. I felt the blood drain from my face. I reeled and toppled against the bed. A few minutes later, when I was steadier, I hurried to my sister’s room.
“Dorrie?”
She was dozing because her eyelids fluttered. Then she opened her eyes and gave a faint smile. It seemed like a different room to the one I was in last night. My sister lay dressed in a fresh nightdress in a clean-smelling bed. Her hair was brushed and caught up in two bunches, one either side of her face, like Elsie’s.
“Are you better, Dorrie?”
She stared at me, swallowing first, and then said, “I can’t find Marianne.”
I gave a quick look around, saw no doll, and said, “Maybe Mam’s just taken her for a walk outside. I’ll go and see.”
But two steps out the door, I remembered something. Something about other dolls and toys. I sighed and my hands fell to my sides. Mam had once told me when Charlotte, William and Amy died of typhoid, she’d had to burn their clothes and bedclothes.
There was a smell of smoke and when I stepped outside, Da was kicking over the last of the embers at the back of the garden,
near the vegetable patch where he’d planted potatoes. So they’d done the burning.
What would Mam tell Dorrie?
The sun was directly overhead so it was midday. I couldn’t believe I’d been asleep all that time.
“Mam,” I said, “Dorrie’s awake and she’s looking for Marianne.”
Mam nodded slowly. Then she held wide her arms and hugged me long and tight. “Thank’ee, Jack. Thank’ee, me handsome.”
“That’s all right, Mam, but what are you going to say to Dorrie?”
“I don’t know yet, son, but I’ll think of something. Something so’s Dorrie don’t know the truth, just now. It be too hurtful for a little one to lose the doll she loves.”
Da walked up, wiping his forehead with a rag. “Dr Hughes told your mam and me more than you have, Jack,” he said.
I glanced at my father, anxious about his meaning.
“He said you arrived in the dark with no lantern.”
“I’m sorry, Da. I tripped and it broke. I’ll buy you a new one.”
“It’s not that, lad!” He shook his head. “It’s that you fetched the doctor at all. In the pitch dark. That be a feat in any man’s language.”
“Jack,” Mam said with a frown. “What else happened? You be such a mess.” She looked at my clothes and face and patted the bench for me to sit down.
In a tired voice I began, recounting how the lantern broke, how I’d cut my finger and finally, how I’d fallen into an old mine pit.
Mam’s face went pale. “All the time, I warn you about those pits. But how could you have seen in the dark?” She put her hand on my shoulder.
For a moment, no one said anything.
Then Da said, “But I be wanting to know something else, lad.”
I caught a glance between he and Mam and my throat tightened.
“Jack. Are you in trouble at school? Fighting or maybe something else?”
I didn’t answer. I stared blankly at Da’s boots while I tried to think of what to say.
“Only last night I had a chance to watch you work with the doctor,” he continued, “and I be noticing your hands. Look at your right hand, lad, and tell me why it looks so cut about.”
It was as if a huge wave hovered above me. If it crashed, I would be swirled about in the thrash of water, with no chance to breathe. My da wanted to know the answer to everything that I’d tried to keep secret.
Above me, the wave peaked. I didn’t want to drown. But what could I say?
In a flash came a picture of Mr Skinner and immediately, my skin stung, my shoulder burned. Then Willie Ryan’s face appeared. His jibes. His yellow teeth and cruel eyes. Lastly, came the long, dusty road to Adelaide where I’d planned my escape.
Mam had explained how sometimes you hold back the truth, so as not to hurt someone you love. Wasn’t that what I’d been doing?
In the end, it was the sound of other words that gave me courage. There’s nothing so terrible that you can’t speak of it to those who love you, Dr Hughes had said.
I took a deep breath, and before the wave broke, I began.
Dr Hughes had been right.
It was a relief to tell Mam and Da everything about school. Da’s face grew red and he banged his fist on the table. Mam’s eyes flashed and she cried, “That man should be horsewhipped. Taking everything good from learning and putting nothing but fear and pain in its place. He be nothing but a coward.”
Chapter 31
Next morning, I set off for school as usual. But I wasn’t alone. Da was with me.
“I be up early,” he told me over breakfast, “and spoke with Colin Nancarrow saying I might be late for my shift this morning. But it be easy to make up the time.”
Although it was different walking with Da, it felt good. We didn’t race each other or pull at each other’s braces, but we pointed out lizards or bugs. And I told him about the Tree and what Mrs Ellery had told me about the Aborigines of the area. I didn’t tell him about Elsie hanging upside down. But it did remind me of a question I wanted to ask her. Perhaps I already knew the answer.
Da and I went on, pointing out this bird and that, guessing the names of butterflies by the way they flew and naming the clouds.
“That one’s a teaser,” I said.
Da looked puzzled.
“It’s what Mam calls the kind of cloud that looks like it’ll bring rain but never does.”
“Ah, yes.” Da nodded and then glanced at the pile of books I was carrying.
“You be lucky you didn’t throw them away then, Jack.”
“Yeah, although there’s some extra writing in some of them.” I told him about Dorrie and what she’d been doing.
“Mmm, as long as she didn’t spoil it for you. We all know Dorrie be panting to get to school. But it weren’t all Dorrie, you know, lad.”
“What do you mean, Da?”
“I mean that some of that writing be your mam’s.”
“What! Why’d she do that?”
“She told me she was helping Dorrie. That’s when she thought you weren’t going back to school and wouldn’t need the books. But really, she was teaching herself, Jack. Your mam never had any schooling. She was a bal-maiden in Cornwall, sorting out ore in the tin mines.”
I stopped. Mam couldn’t read or write?
Pictures and thoughts drifted into my head: Mam getting me to read everything aloud; Miss Goldsworthy’s comments, notes, letters and stories she couldn’t read herself. I didn’t know why I hadn’t worked it out before. How proud she must’ve felt when she carved our initials on the pasties.
We walked on. “Maybe I could teach her, Da.”
“Maybe you could, lad. Maybe you could become a teacher.”
“No.” I jumped in before he said anything further. “I don’t want to be a teacher. But I reckon I know what I might do.”
“What’s that, lad?”
“First, I’ll stay at school. And then I’ll study to be a doctor.”
“Ah. Like Dr Hughes.”
It was great to feel that Da understood.
“So, I be getting free medical attention in my old age?” he quipped. “That sounds good!”
Laughing, we strode on, arriving at school before the bell rang. Everyone was still outside, playing. Their eyes widened when they saw I was with my da and they grew even wider when he walked into the schoolroom alone.
Henry, Samuel and Elsie hurried over.
“Was that your da?” asked Elsie.
“Yeah.”
“What’s he doing here?” Samuel’s eyes were still fixed on the doorway.
“Gone to see Mr Skinner.”
“Phew,” said Henry. “My da’s never been here. Nor my mam, come to think of it.”
“Is it about that letter, Jack?” said Elsie.
The letter! I’d forgotten about that. It was still stuck in the sheaf of papers behind the photograph in the parlour. Oh no. Mr Skinner would be thinking that was what Da had gone to speak to him about. Whereas Da had his own list of things he was going to say.
“Umm, not really.” Then I recalled what I was going to ask her. “You remember that time you came after me and we pitched stones?” I was hoping she’d catch my meaning because I hadn’t told the boys that I’d tried to run away.
“Yes.”
“How did you know? You know, that it was me and what I was going to do?”
“I was up the Tree. I love climbing it. And if you get real high, you can see for miles. I figured the rest.”
I nodded and we both grinned.
But there was still something else.
When Samuel and Henry ran off to get a drink, I went on.
“That day on the road, when you asked me if I’d told Mam and Da about Mr Skinner and what was happening …”
“What about it?”
“You were right. I should’ve told them. Only I didn’t want to hear it then. And especially not from you.”
Elsie’s eyes sparkled. She saw the funny side of my comme
nt and we were both laughing when the boys returned.
Suddenly, through the schoolroom window came the sound of loud voices. Alarmed, the four of us tiptoed closer to see if we could hear what was going on.
“Perhaps your father’s breaking Mr Skinner’s pencils,” said Elsie and we all laughed so hard, we had to rush away so we wouldn’t be caught.
While we leaned against the gate, I told my friends the reason I’d been away the day before. There was so much to tell: Dorrie being ill and my race to the doctor’s and how my parents now knew about the caning and the cord.
“That’s good,” said Elsie. “So that’s why your father’s here.”
No sooner had she spoken, than Da appeared at the door. He wore a smile of satisfaction.
“It be nice to meet you,” he said after I introduced him to my friends, “but I must be off to work. Enjoy your day, Jack. I’ll be looking forward to hearing about it later.”
“Bye, Da.” I watched him head off, wondering what today would bring. If only Da had told me what he’d said to Mr Skinner.
School began as usual. The stiff, formal greeting. The taking of our seats with stern rebukes if anyone allowed their seat to squeak, the rollcall and the announcement of the day’s class monitor.
It was Samuel.
Elsie and I exchanged glances while I tried to stop the jitters in my chest.
“Pollock,” barked the schoolmaster.
I took in a huge breath. What now?
“As of today, you may choose which hand you wish to write with.” Mr Skinner stared at a space above my head. “It is my decision to allow you to do this, of course. However, I will no longer take any responsibility for your moral character. That will be left entirely up to your parents.” His mouth looked as if he’d sucked something sour.
It took awhile before his words sank in.
“It means you don’t have to have the cord,” whispered Elsie, almost busting with excitement. “And it means he won’t cane you any more, ’cos now you can write with your left hand!”
I leaned back against the desk and stared at my hands. In my head, I thanked Da for whatever he said to Mr Skinner. I couldn’t stop smiling.
