After a week of quarantine, during which no bad news came upriver to town, Tim was beginning to feel grudging reliance on Dr. Erson’s hopeful manner. He stood by his counter and congratulated himself on every passed hour of commerce.
One afternoon, wearing a clean, starched white shirt and a neat grey coat and pants which just the same had plenty of the dust of the Macleay’s roads impacted into the weave, Bandy Habash crossed the diagonal from the Post Office to T. Shea and then actually entered the store, his thin hand held delicately high to encourage peace.
“I know what you have told me, Mr. Shea. But I happen to have some items close to your heart.”
His hand still held up, with the other he took a wadded document out of the left bottom pocket of his jacket.
“These letters have been aired,” he assured Tim and—by displaying them also in the direction of Belgrave Street—anyone unseen who happened to be a witness. Such well-modulated motions, running like silk. His voice was like silk lain over a woman’s shoulders.
“The quarantine period is only seven days in true terms. It seems the passengers are all well with that period expired. This is from Mrs. Kitty.”
“You’ve seen her?” Tim asked.
The man was everywhere, and had forestalled him again.
“I was able to trade with people from the plague camp on the South West Rocks Road.”
“I suppose you sell them all sorts of herbal rubbish.”
“I sold some jasmine and camomile tea. But not much. The people are in excellent health and not anticipating an outbreak.”
Tim took the pages from Bandy and felt the slight shock of risk which they possessed. He would not open them in front of the Punjabi. But he could envisage Red Kenna’s daughters loudly trading with Bandy at the green wagon parked on a sandy road amongst paperbarks.
Kitty: “What do you have for the awful tedium of sitting in the bush, Mr. Habash? And something for my sister please, so she can get one of the big old blokes upriver crazy for her!”
“Wait by the door there,” Tim told Bandy. He might need to send a reply to Kitty.
Tim took the letter into the storeroom to read it. Safe in the hempen sweet perfume of the sugar bags, which despite everything was a fragrance associated with riches! He sat on a bag of sago and delicately unwrapped the pages.
Dearest husband,
What a turnup, would you say. Mamie and self in the utter pink. Mamie calls it an adventure to tell the Kennas about this camping on the banks of Australian rivers! Are the little ones asking? Their mama is just delayed a little time bringing up their new Aunt. I have grown bigger in the ten days, Tim. Will you want a new woman? Ha! Dr. Erson and Sanitation Clerk met the ship and told the captain to take all maskings and facings and lumbers down so that ship could be totally searched for the dead rats. A job bigger than the pyramids say the wits. We were in meantime shipped ashore on a drogher where tents were set up and groceries provided. Some I hope to God from T. Shea—General Store, but suspect it’s the Masons again and that Good Templar crowd looking after their own, so it’s probably Bryant’s tea and damper we’re getting by on. All our luggage is with us, and if yourself were too would be happy to live on here though insects pretty thick and men bringing in brown snakes every ten minutes, the loathsome things. Johnny would scare the venom out of them I imagine.
Two days time Dr. Erson will come back to see if rats found onboard carried the plague. Mamie and self inspected clothes closely and no fleas on us.
Blessed Mother watch over you and keep you safe from smart merchants like Mrs. Malcolm. Blessed Mother keep Johnny from jumping into things.
Know you don’t like Mr. Habash. But who else to take a note? So give him fair play.
He emerged from the storeroom, half-ashamed to face Habash. His desire to see Kitty might be discernible. Bandy seemed to read him anyhow, and nodded.
“I have two fine horses. The grey you remember. My gelding as well. I do not want to make unwelcome offers, though.”
“You’re going again?”
“If you are, Mr. Shea.”
So easy to see the fellow as an ally now, and Tim barely resisted it.
“I could not go till dusk. And I would need to leave Miss Burke here with the children.”
Bandy screwed up his eyes and took thought. “It is a safe township,” he said. “They would be secure. However, yet again I do not wish to have my gestures mistaken for butting in.”
The little bugger had him on toast.
Tim said, “I could rent horses, but that would be all over town. And Pee Dee… in spite of his bloodlines… he’s not the horse for a fifty-mile round-trip.”
“That’s clear to everyone,” said Bandy.
“I will pay you for a horse.”
“Please, sir.”
“No, I’ll pay.”
“I intended to go anyhow. I have business. Packages to deliver.”
“Wait then, will you?” he asked. Politeness. He might as well try that, since the hawker seemed to flourish on hostility.
Tim went to see Ellen Burke in the kitchen at the back of the house. He weighed the hard light in her eye as she listened, frowning a little. “…and tell people I’ll deliver tomorrow afternoon.”
“But how can you after more than twenty miles there and twenty back? You’ll rest here and I’ll make deliveries.”
“No,” he said. “No. I’ll put in my normal day.”
She looked away across the room, to the wall on which molten light within the oven was reflecting. She was the sort of robust girl who very much liked to think of herself as a possible cartwoman.
“So,” she said. “Some people are allowed to travel and talk with Mr. Habash then?”
“This is a different case, miss,” Tim warned her.
“Is that what it is?” she asked. She began feeding the fire with split wood. “I’ll be very pleased if when I am married seven years, a man will do a mad ride for me just to spend an hour.”
From a seventeen-year-old, this was an astounding observation. Just the same, someone was sure to do it for Ellen, for her big bones and her ironic tongue.
“You’re not going to bring us back the plague, are you?” she asked.
“No. The seven days are more than up. There is, thank God, no plague out there.” He smiled at her. “Do you fight with my sister-in-law, Molly? I bet you fight like blazes.”
“Sometimes. We’re like sisters, you see. Putting up with my father. I’ll make you a quart of stew to take to Kitty.”
He would take some condensed milk too, in case the quarantine groceries didn’t cover that. Kitty liked condensed milk in her tea best of all. She had that in common with Lucy. She would acclaim condensed milk, breathing out through her broad lips.
Back in the store, Tim and Bandy made their arrangements for after closing. “I shall be back with both horses,” Bandy promised formally.
Johnny’s dawdling manner of returning home from school showed he fancied himself as a schoolboy and that Imelda was not a terror to him. It was to be hoped someone would be. His bandage was still in place, but it had ochre dust on it. His eyes looked clear, which was what counted. So don’t enquire into the history of his day.
Annie, sipping her own tea, watched Tim narrowly with wide brown eyes.
“Father,” she enquired, “are you going to leave us now?”