‘I probably could, ma’am,’ the soldier answered politely. ‘But having it in position and having it secure and safe for passage are two different things. I get involved with putting that bridge back in place, then someone’s crossing it and it moves, they fall in, they sue the army.’
Esther could feel the fury expanding inside her, puffing her up like a bantam hen whose chicks needed protection.
‘That’s right!’ she said, quietly but with deadly emphasis. ‘Refuse to do anything because you’re afraid of some imaginary consequences. Avoid making decisions or taking actions, just in case in some far distant time they might come back to haunt you. That’s the problem with the world today—no one wants to take responsibility for their actions. Well, I’ll do something.’
She scrabbled in her pocket and pulled out a tiny mobile phone, opening it up, pressing a number and holding it to her ear.
‘Sue? It’s Esther, put me through to the boss, will you?’
A long pause, during which the onlookers, sensing more spectator sport, crowded closer.
‘Geoff? Esther. I’m on the outskirts of Jamestown, place called Robinson, which is the hot spot for dengue cases. There’s a ditch here, with a rogue crocodile in it. Yes, crocodile. Yes, a real crocodile. A very large crocodile. No, I don’t know how large, Geoff, but if it had opened its mouth as I was jumping over it, I probably would have fitted nicely inside.’
There was a pause, doubtless one of disbelief, then a rush of questions from the man at the other end.
‘The ditch has no bridge, that’s why I was jumping over it,’ Esther answered when she could. ‘And no one here is doing anything about either removing the crocodile or replacing the bridge, so can you get on to someone in authority in this city and have something done immediately? It’s that or hiring a helicopter to lift me out of this place when I’m ready to leave in a couple of hours.’
Esther snapped the phone shut and turned to the woman who’d invited them in.
‘Now, if I could use your bathroom, please,’ she said.
After that excitement, the home visits were something of an anti-climax. Esther asked her questions, noted down the answers, checked especially on who had been even mildly ill in the last month.
After all, if Harold first felt sick on the day of the cyclone—or even before it—then the mosquito or mosquitoes which were spreading the dengue weren’t, as Esther had assumed, blown here from somewhere else by the ferocity of the storm.
‘Someone’s carried it here,’ she said to Byron, finding it easier to think of him by name now he’d saved her from the jaws of a crocodile.
‘These people travel a lot,’ he said. ‘They have relatives all over the north, even in the islands up in Torres Strait.’
Torres Strait islands? Hadn’t there been some bad dengue cases evacuated from there about a year ago? But they’d been flown to Cairns, not Jamestown. She’d have to get what information she could from Cairns Base Hospital. But for now she had to ask people another question—how often they travelled, where to, and when their most recent visit had been.
‘It’s opened up a whole new can of worms,’ she said to Byron. They were at the far end of the street, having interviewed everyone down one side and preparing to come back up the other side. ‘Look, forget the water around the yards for the moment. Would you work your way back up the places we’ve already visited and ask about recent travel—say for a month before the cyclone? Take this list and just put a note in the margin beside the names.’
Byron agreed, probably pleased to get out of the messy job of crawling under houses looking for anything that might hold water. Esther would ask the people on this side of the street to check their yards themselves, maybe while she was there so she could see they were doing it.
It was getting dark by the time she was back close to the ditch. She’d been so busy she’d forgotten her angry phone call to her boss, so she was surprised to see a crane standing on the far side of the crocodile’s temporary quarters, and big arc lights being set up. Army personnel milled around and Esther was congratulating herself on getting something done when a figure loomed out of the dusk—on her side of the ditch.
‘Bill? What are you doing here? How did you get across? You didn’t jump, surely. There’s a crocodile in there.’
‘So I gather from your boss,’ he said, his voice nearly as cold as his mother’s had been the previous day. ‘And just what were you doing, leaping ditches with crocodiles in them?’
The demand was just abrupt enough to anger Esther.
‘Crocodile, singular,’ she retorted. ‘And there was no other way across. Amazing, isn’t it? These poor folk have been risking their lives and their children’s lives on a daily basis because no one in authority would do anything for them, and one phone call from a doctor has the army, and half the local council by the look of things, out here to help. It’s not right!’
‘I’m not here to argue with you over what’s right and what’s not,’ Bill growled. ‘I’ve spoken to Geoff, and he realises it’s too damn dangerous for you to be up here. He should have sent a man in the first place.’
‘You’ve spoken to Geoff?’ Disbelief pushed Esther’s voice at least an octave higher. ‘He should have sent a man? On whose say-so? Yours? Get real, Bill Jackson. There’s no way I’m accepting that kind of sexist talk from you, and I don’t believe for a moment Geoff agreed with your nonsense. As for giving up this job—forget it.’
Byron joined them at that moment.
‘Here’s the list,’ he said to Esther, handing her the papers she’d given him earlier, then leaning closer as he pointed to his notes. ‘Three families were away in the month prior to the cyclone, see where I’ve marked them, and written where they’ve been.’
Esther looked at the neat notes Byron had made and thanked him, probably more warmly than was necessary as all he’d done had been to ask a couple of simple questions. But she was aware of a growing tension in the air, and of the fact Bill had failed to greet the soldier, though earlier, at the hospital, he’d seemed to know him.
This impression of something wrong was strengthened—no, more than that, it was made abundantly clear—when Bill said, ‘I’ll take Dr Shaw back to the city, thank you, Corporal.’
Byron looked startled, as well he might with Bill’s voice as cold and emotionless as a drill sergeant’s. It was also, unmistakably, a dismissal. But the corporal, no doubt used to blunt orders, rallied.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said to Bill, then he turned to Esther. ‘And what time would you like to start tomorrow morning, ma’am?’
Esther, who had no idea what was going on with Bill but was furious with his behaviour, smiled warmly at Byron, hoping to make up for Bill’s rudeness.
‘I doubt these folk are up much earlier than nine, so if you collect me then it will give us a good day.’
‘Right, ma’am,’ Byron said, saluting her smartly. He then strode away to where the arc lights showed the bridge had been restored to its former position, though no doubt it wasn’t yet fixed into place.
Which reminded Esther…
‘How did you get across?’ she asked Bill, curious enough to forget she was angry with him.
‘Holding onto the hook of the crane.’
Esther stared at him in disbelief.
‘You swung across the ditch on that hook? Isn’t that illegal? I know people used to do it on building sites, but it was outlawed years ago because it was so dangerous. Why on earth would you do something like that? Just to get over here so you could yell at me sooner?’
‘I didn’t yell at you,’ he objected, and mentally she conceded that point. Bill never yelled. ‘But I get a garbled phone call from your boss about ditches and crocodiles—what was I supposed to do? Hang around the hospital, hoping you hadn’t been eaten?’
‘Geoff knew I hadn’t been eaten,’ Esther pointed out, though there was something very weird about this conversation. It was if the words had nothing to do with what was ac
tually going on, yet she couldn’t work out what was going on.
They were still standing in the middle of the road, just out of the range of the arc lights, so, as night closed in, their little patch seemed darker in comparison. Under the lights soldiers in fatigues worked, no doubt securing the bridge so no one could sue the army later, but in spite of the activity there, and the crowd of people on this side watching it all, she and Bill were locked into some kind of private space.
‘Why was the soldier asking questions at the houses?’ Bill asked. It wasn’t what he wanted to ask. What he wanted to ask was, What were you doing in that soldier’s arms? And why were you kissing him?
‘Are you questioning my professionalism in this matter? Are you going to spy on everything I do?’
‘I don’t need to spy when you’re splashed across the television in your soldier’s arms, kissing him on the five o’clock news.’ He knew he was growling, but he’d been so shocked by the sight of Esther in the man’s arms when he’d caught the news flash on the television in a patient’s room, and by his reaction to it, he hadn’t been able to think straight since. He’d tried to tell himself it was because she’d been in danger…
‘He is not my soldier,’ Esther was informing him in cool, lofty tones. ‘Not in that way. And you know it. You know I’ve barely met him. I was in his arms because he’d just saved my life, knocking me away from where the crocodile was and then helping me up the bank. And, yes, I did kiss him. On the cheek. Which, if you think about it, isn’t much repayment for a life.’
She turned and stormed away from him, marching into the light, her shoulders straight and head held high, though now Bill saw her properly he could see the mud stains on her shirt and jeans. And suddenly awareness of the very real danger she’d been in gripped him, liquefying his intestines with fear that he might have had to live on in a world that no longer contained Esther.
He hurried after her, aware he’d made an utter fool of himself, on so many levels, yet with no idea how to make things right between them. He’d never really had any idea of how to make things right with Esther. They were so unalike at times it was as if they were different species.
‘Esther.’ He caught up with her at the footbridge, where a group of soldiers were assuring her it was safe to cross. She turned at the sound of her name and frowned at him, as if she wasn’t sure she recognised him.
‘Esther, we need to talk.’
Desperation forced the words out of him, then he felt stupid when she smiled and said, ‘Right here and now?’
Determined not to make an even bigger fool of himself, he seized her by the elbow and steered her across the bridge, then along a stretch of road towards a huge fig tree.
‘Where’s your car?’ she asked, and he gestured to it, almost invisible in the darker shadows under the tree.
‘In mosquito central in fact,’ she said, and he mentally smacked himself on the head. It was the last place he should have parked. And once again he was filled with panic for her safety.
‘You kept putting more repellent on?’ he asked, reaching into his pocket for the spray he’d brought with him and spraying it around both of them. ‘I’ve some household insecticide in the car. I’ll spray it around once we’re shut inside. You’re right, it was a stupid place to park.’
She’d ducked away as he’d shot repellent at her, protesting that she’d been putting it on at regular intervals, but once inside the car, with it sprayed so thoroughly they were now in more danger of asphyxiation from the chemicals than from a mosquito bite, she reached out and touched his arm.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We do have to talk. But could we do it somewhere we can breathe clean air?’
The touch was positive, he decided as he started the car and drove away. They’d go down to the waterfront where the sea breeze kept mosquitoes away and the moonlight on the water might make it easier for him to sort things out with Esther.
Though how this would be achieved, he had no idea.
‘What a beautiful spot,’ she murmured when he pulled up near the breakwater that reached out into the bay.
That was encouraging.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ he said, turning so he could admire not the bay but a short, straight nose and lips that pouted slightly, though by nature not moodiness. The whole effect was enhanced by the way tendrils of dark hair inevitably escaped from her ponytail, forming a delicate frame for the delectable profile.
‘And you’ve managed to get away from the hospital. Can I assume all your patients are holding their own?’
‘It’s been a good afternoon,’ he admitted, trying not to think of how bad it had turned when he’d seen the news bulletin. ‘No one deteriorating and Mr Armstrong is actually picking up a bit. We haven’t found a miracle cure. We’re still only treating it symptomatically, but it seems to be working.’
There, that was business out of the way.
‘That’s great,’ she said, with genuine enthusiasm, smiling as she faced him, so close and kissable he leaned forward in his seat.
This wasn’t going to be so difficult after all, Bill thought. I’ll just tell her I’ve still got feelings for her, and we’ll kiss, and—
‘Especially as I’ve more news,’ she said. Not only were they different species, but right now she was on a different planet! ‘Nothing absolutely earth-shattering, but little things that all add up. Take the male-female incidence query you’ve had, and think about the smell of the repellent the army is giving out.’
She waited expectantly, while Bill struggled to switch his mind from moonlight kisses back to work.
‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Doesn’t anything strike you?’
Apart from how beautiful you are? How much I long to hold you in my arms again?
‘It’s a sickly sweet smell,’ he grumbled, knowing she’d insist on an answer. ‘Terrible!’
‘Exactly!’ she said, as triumphant as if she’d just split the atom with her thumbnail. ‘It’s sweet. Like a really, really cheap perfume. The thing about perfumes, why there are so many, is that everyone has a different idea of what’s pleasantly attractive. It turns out the repellent has the kind of scent the women out at Robinson love. They’ve been using it lavishly since it was first given out—using it as perfume, rather than repellent, but…’
She shrugged her slim shoulders before adding, ‘Whatever works!’
Bill was caught up in the conversation in spite of himself.
‘You’re saying something as simple as a sickly sweet repellent has skewed the averages?’
Esther positively glowed with delight at her discovery.
‘Exactly! So much for science, eh? We put so much faith in our statistics without realising how one little outside factor could have made the figures different.’
Now he could kiss her, Bill decided as the moonlight made her soft lips shimmer with an irresistible allure. A ‘sharing delight in her discovery’ kind of kiss. Surely that kind of kiss wouldn’t come within the ban she’d put on him yesterday.
He eased forward, then realised he’d lost his chance.
Again.
‘That’s not all,’ she was saying, the shimmering lips tantalising him as they formed her words. ‘When Geoff briefed me before I came up, he was talking as if you were assuming the mosquitoes carrying the dengue had blown in with Hugo. But Harold Jenkins disproves that, doesn’t he? The figures don’t add up. The virus incubates for eight to ten days in the mosquito, then you need a few days after being bitten for the human victim to fall ill.’
Once again Bill had to focus on work—on the content of Esther’s conversation, not the lips delivering it.
‘I was thinking about that today,’ Bill admitted. ‘Although the winds were strong for at least three days before the cyclone struck, maybe longer. We can check that with the weather bureau. With a three-to seven-day incubation period once a human has been bitten, if Harold was infected early and incubated it fast, it could still be from an infective mosqui
to blown in from somewhere else.’
He wasn’t sure why he was arguing—his point was pathetic, and Esther would know it. Was it disappointment because this wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have?
Or had his brain been seduced by his libido to the extent it was no longer functioning effectively?
‘Too many maybes,’ Esther said, confirming his opinion of the feebleness of his argument. ‘Byron was telling me these people travel a lot—visiting family in other areas, often in the islands to the north. That’s why he was asking questions for me. I’d already done that side of the street when he mentioned the travel, so I sent him back to check who’d been away recently.’
Was she trying to make him feel bad, coming up with an entirely reasonable explanation for the soldier to be actively involved but not rubbing his nose in it?
Embarrassment now joined desire squirming inside him, but he clung to the threads of the conversation he didn’t want to be having.
‘So there could be a carrier who brought it back from somewhere else? Someone who had a mild form but didn’t recognise it? Did you find a possibility?’
She shook her head, and more tendrils of dark hair escaped from the ponytail, distracting him again. He wanted to touch them, feel their softness.
‘I haven’t read through Byron’s notes, but there was no one on my side of the street who’s a possibility. I need to sit down and go through everything we’ve got so far. In fact, I should be doing it now while things are fresh in my mind. We’ve a lot more people to interview, including those in hospital who are well enough to answer questions. I also need to get on to Geoff for information on an outbreak last year—patients from one of the Torres Strait islands admitted to Cairns Hospital. I remember those cases as being something different to what we’d seen before.’
He could hear the urgency in her voice and knew she wanted to move on this. Typical Esther, caught up in the thrill of the chase.
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