The Dreaming

by Barbara Wood

  He took her hand and squeezed it. "I'll be back to check on you."

  Three days later, typhoid fever was being reported from everywhere within a radius of eighty miles from Cameron Town. No one knew what had brought it.

  Panic swept through the Western District. No family went untouched by the disease. At Monivae, nearly the entire servant staff succumbed, and it was left to the mistress of the house and her two daughters to nurse them. At Glenhope, Maude Reed burned with fever while John Reed protected himself with large quantities of whiskey. At Strathfield, candles were lit and the Ormsbys knelt in the family chapel, saying the rosary around the clock. At Kilmarnock, Colin MacGregor locked the doors, closed all the windows, and turned away visitors, believing, as most people did, that typhoid was carried on the air.

  When Dr. Ramsey and Doc Fuller were unable to answer frantic summonses, people turned to Joanna Drury. "She cured my children of a summer fever," Winifred Cameron said to her friends. "And look what she did for Christina MacGregor's morning sickness," Louisa Hamilton said, adding silently: Maybe I could have been relieved of these swollen ankles if I hadn't listened to Pauline.

  They went to Merinda to seek Joanna's advice, and using her mother's diary as a guide, she instructed them to keep the patients' fevers down by constant sponging with cold, wet sheets; to administer plenty of fluids and only liquid food; to watch the abdomen for rigid distention; and to boil all water and milk before drinking it. The wind, she reassured them, did not bring typhoid, and fresh air in the sickroom would be beneficial.

  Dr. Ramsey's buggy was a constant sight on the country lanes. He went where he was summoned, diagnosed typhoid, administered digitalis injections to those with failing hearts, left nursing instructions with those who were still well, and departed feeling helpless and impotent. In the face of such a disease, he saw that a medical man was no more effective than an ordinary person. For all the boiled water and gentle nursing care, the epidemic was spreading. Doubts began to settle into his mind.

  When he arrived at Merinda, nine days after Christmas, he found Joanna in the bunkhouse, supervising the nursing of ten very ill men.

  David paused in the doorway to watch her. As Joanna gently propped a man up to give him something to drink, Ramsey thought that even though she looked tired and worn, her hair escaping its bun and her dress covered in a sackcloth apron, she was still beautiful. "Larry!" she called, when the patient began to toss in delirium. "Please help me with Johnno."

  A moment later, when the sick station hand was quiet again, Joanna looked up and smiled at Ramsey.

  "Hello, David," she said, coming up to him and sweeping a strand of hair from her face. "How are you?"

  "I'm fine, Joanna. And you? How is Adam?"

  "He's fine, thank God."

  "Joanna," he said. "I need to talk to you."

  "Very well. I have to check on the water situation in the cookhouse. Will you walk with me?"

  "I'm not sure we're doing the right thing, Joanna," Ramsey said as they crossed the sunbaked yard. "The way we are nursing the patients now, they have the fever for three weeks or more. This brings them to such a debilitated state that even when the typhoid has passed, they are so weak that pneumonia sets in. And then they surely die. Unless, of course, they don't die of peritonitis first because of a perforated intestinal ulcer. It is the duration of the disease, Joanna, that kills people, not the typhoid itself. If only we could rid the body of it more quickly, if only we could cure typhoid almost as quickly as it strikes."

  "I know of no such cure, David."

  "I have been working on one, Joanna," he said. "I read recently that medical men in Europe are experimenting with a new treatment for typhoid—disinfecting the intestinal tract with frequent doses of iodine and carbolic acid."

  "But those are poisons."

  "Only if given in too-large doses. Frequent purgings will clean the typhoid microorganism out of the bowel, and the patient will recover. It makes sense, doesn't it?"

  "Have these medical men had much success with this treatment?"

  He frowned. "It's still highly experimental. There have been some successes, but there have also been deaths."

  "David, I think I prefer to take care of patients according to my mother's experience. Nursing and constant vigilance."

  But David was thinking of Edward Jenner, the developer of the smallpox vaccine, and Théophile Laënnec, who had invented the stethoscope, and Rudolf Virchow, the first man to demonstrate that disease came from microscopic cells—all men who had contributed to medicine. David Ramsey wanted desperately to join their ranks.

  The epidemic worsened. The one priest and three ministers in the district found themselves busy with burials and grieving relatives, but the churches were strangely empty and silent. Isolation, everyone had been told, was their salvation.

  But even those in self-imposed prisons, such as the Ormsbys at Strathfield and the MacGregors of Kilmarnock, were not safe from the disease. Closing windows and shutting doors did not keep out the dreaded typhoid. It lurked in the water they drank, in the food they ate, and they had no way of knowing that something so tiny as to be invisible could deal such a deadly blow. Dr. Ramsey tried to warn people about microorganisms, but how could anyone be afraid of something they could not see?

  When Christina MacGregor complained of headaches and a sore throat, Colin rode into Cameron Town and wakened David Ramsey out of a stolen hour of sleep.

  "Keep her fever down with constant sponging," Ramsey said, after examining her. "Give her as many fluids as she can tolerate. And it is too hot and close in this room. Open the windows, let fresh air in. If she worsens and I am unavailable, Joanna Drury at Merinda knows what to do."

  Christina was in her eighth month of pregnancy. "What about the baby, doctor?" MacGregor said.

  But Ramsey could not predict.

  Hugh and Frank continued to ride over the countryside. They helped farmers bury wives and children; they brought isolated shepherds who had fallen ill back to Merinda's makeshift hospital. Joanna watched over the constant spongings, the feedings, the changing of the eucalyptus pallets. She passed among the beds, measuring temperatures with the thermometer David Ramsey had given her, taking care to disinfect it with alcohol between patients. The fevers climbed steadily; the pulse rates slowed; the rose spots appeared on swollen abdomens; men tossed and turned, burning in delirium.

  And the epidemic continued to spread.

  Ezekiel stood as silent and still as the eucalyptus trees around him, watching Sarah perform her daily ritual down at the river. Since the day sickness had come to Merinda, the girl had come every morning to the billabong, to sing over objects she brought from the house: a comb, a handkerchief, a Bible. These were possessions, the old man knew, of the people Sarah lived with, and she was using them in her magic to protect the three white people from the illness. Ezekiel watched her every day; and every day his bewilderment grew. The girl was a contradiction: She spoke whitefella language and wore whitefella clothes, but she practiced blackfella magic.

  And he wondered: Why would a girl whose ancestors had been taken away from her, whose tribe had been scattered, and whose songlines had been defiled want to protect the people who had done those things?

  Sarah sat back when her song was done, and pushed her long hair away from her face. She stared at the homestead through the trees, looking at the bunkhouse, where sheets soaked in disinfectant hung over the doorway and windows. She believed that a terrible poison was at work there, a poison that needed to be fought with more than disinfectants, with magic as well. And yet she was afraid that her own magic was not strong enough. She needed help.

  I'll go to the mission, she thought. I'll talk to Old Deereeree and ask her to teach me a song powerful enough to fight the poison-song on Joanna.

  Sarah suddenly stiffened. The old man was back, watching her; she could sense him behind her. It was four weeks since she had stood up to him in this very place; Sarah had been troubled by the
incident ever since. She had been raised to respect elders, to address them as "Old Mother" and "Old Father," and to defer to their wisdom, their judgments. But Ezekiel didn't understand about Joanna. Sarah wanted to give the elder the respect he deserved, but he made her angry.

  "You break the taboo, Old Father," she said now, without turning around. "You watch women's ritual. You walk on woman's Dreaming Site."

  "I break no taboo," he said, coming through the trees. There was anger in his voice; he wasn't used to being stood up to by young females. In the old days—

  Sarah rose and faced him. "This is woman's Dreaming," she said. "The Kangaroo Ancestress spoke to Joanna here."

  A look of doubt flickered in his eyes. Then he said, "She brought sickness to Merinda."

  "No, Old Father. Blackfella magic brought sickness here. She has a poison-song on her."

  He stared at Sarah, and she read the conflicting emotions on his face. She said, "Joanna is a song-woman."

  "But she is whitefella!"

  "But she is a song-woman all the same."

  Ezekiel looked away, his keen eyes peering at the woods around him from under heavy brows. He consulted the air and the sky, and his own wisdom, and finally he shook his head, and said, "I don't understand. I think the Dreaming may be coming to an end."

  "No, Old Father," Sarah said gently. "The Dreaming will always be here. Joanna has powers. But she has blackfella poison-song on her, too."

  "Do you see this poison-song?" he asked.

  Sarah had to shake her head. "No, she told me. A poison-song on her mother, on her grandmother."

  "She says." He shook his head again. Finally he said, "We wait and see." And he turned and walked away.

  When Joanna came out of the cabin, she paused and looked past the yard, over the blistering plains. She had not seen Hugh for days, she couldn't sleep; she had nightmares of people falling ill, of Hugh ill and alone, far from any house. She thought of him making his way to one of the many shepherd's huts that dotted the landscape, and lying there, burning in delirium and pain.

  She knew he rode to Lismore every day. "Pauline has organized the women," he told Joanna. "They're donating sheets and bedding, collecting eggs, boiling water and putting it into bottles. The men pick up supplies at Lismore and take them to the outlying farms."

  She looked for him now, then she went across the yard to check with her "nurses." Fevers were still climbing, and pulses continued to slow down. One man was recovering, and two others were past the stage of delirium. For those, Joanna would be vigilant against pneumonia. The bunkhouse was thick with the smell of disease and disinfectant, the day was hot; flies settled everywhere. The eucalyptus pallets became soiled very quickly and had to be changed constantly. At times Joanna felt like giving up. She was reminded of the final days of Lady Emily's life, when she lay weak and dying, and Joanna had nursed her. Those same feelings of frustration and hopelessness, of despair and anger, threatened to overwhelm her.

  She went to look in on Bill Lovell. It had been three weeks since the night of Christmas Eve, and according to Dr. Ramsey, and to her mother's diary, the disease should have run its course, and Bill should be better. But when Joanna came around the curtain that screened him off from the others, she received a shock.

  "Matthew," she said quietly to the stableboy, who was washing down the floor with quicklime. "Go at once and find Dr. Ramsey. Hurry. Tell him to come immediately."

  She returned to Bill's bedside. She could see from the pulsing of his closed lids that his eyes were moving rapidly. His face was ashen.

  Joanna picked up her mother's diary, and it fell open to pages she knew by heart. But she read it again, as she might a Bible, finding solace in the familiar words, and seeing in them also an exact chronicle of her own current experience: "We are in the third week of the epidemic," Lady Emily had written. "Jaswaran is tireless in his care of our patients. Major Caldwell died during the night. Petronius is with his widow now. I fear that this dreaded typhoid might be with us always. I worry for little Joanna's sake. Am I doing the right thing by keeping her here with me? Would she be better off if I sent her away?"

  Joanna closed her eyes and thought of Adam, who seemed so frail when she tucked him into bed every night; and also of Sarah, who, although strong, might not possess a natural resistance to white man's diseases. Every night Joanna prayed for guidance, as she asked herself the same questions that Lady Emily had asked. And when Joanna opened her eyes and continued to read the diary, she read the same conclusion she herself had come to: "But where would I send Joanna, who would take care of her as well as I can?"

  Joanna closed the book and held it between her hands. She felt suddenly close to her mother, as if Lady Emily were there in person, guiding Joanna. And then she recalled Sarah's words: "The diary is your mother's songline."

  David Ramsey walked in then, his red-gold hair plastered to his head with sweat, his jaw showing a growth of beard. It took only a brief examination of Bill Lovell for him to say, "I'm sorry, Joanna. It's peritonitis."

  "What can we do for him?"

  David wanted to shout that, if only he had had to courage to try the experimental cure, Bill might have been saved. "There is nothing anyone can do for him," he said in a weary voice. "Keep him half-sitting, give him nothing by mouth except for a few tiny sips of water. The end will come soon."

  "Will you stay for a while, David?" she asked.

  He saw the sorrow in her eyes, and he wanted to take her into his arms; he wanted to ride out of the Western District with her, and take them both far away from all this disease and death and hopelessness. "I'm sorry," he said. "There are others who need me."

  "Yes, of course."

  She found Matthew behind the shearing shed crying, because he had overheard the conversation. "See if you can find Hugh," she said gently, laying a hand on his shoulder. "He should be with Bill now."

  Hugh rode into the yard a short while later, looking exhausted and beaten. His gray eyes had taken on a hunted look from what they had seen. He had found entire families down with the typhoid, mothers and fathers and children, lying on mattresses, eaten with fever, dehydrated, delirious, with no one to take care of them or bury them. In one case he had found a ten-year-old boy—himself hot with fever and thirst—trying to sponge fevered faces.

  Whenever Hugh returned from riding around the district, he was always fearful of what he might find—Joanna down with the typhoid, or Adam. He wanted to stay with them, protect them. But he was needed elsewhere, and what, after all, could he do if he stayed? At times he was nearly paralyzed with feelings of rage and helplessness, and with memories of himself as a fifteen-year-old boy burying a father under the only tree for miles around. There had been no minister, no mourners, no coffin even, just the old blue blanket that the elder Westbrook had slept in for many a star-washed night.

  He hurried into the bunkhouse and went behind the curtain where his old friend lay. Joanna stood up. "Did Matthew tell you—?"

  "Yes," he said, sitting down and looking at Bill. Hugh saw the pall of death that had settled over those sunbaked features. "Hello, Bill," he said.

  Unfocused eyes gazed back at him. "G'day, Hugh," he said. "Have we reached Coorain yet?"

  "Almost there, Bill."

  "Good," he said. "My droving days are done, Hugh. I want to settle down. Maybe have a small run, a few sheep ..."

  He rambled for a while about the past, speaking of men long dead and outback towns long since deserted. Toward midnight, his focus sharpened and he spoke in a nearly normal voice. "Keep writing those ballads, Hugh," he said. "Don't let Australians forget what they once were."

  He died during the night. Hugh said, "He was like a father to me," and Joanna comforted him as he cried.

  Pauline removed the thermometer from beneath Elsie's arm and read it. It was not one of the new thermometers, such as the one Dr. Ramsey used, but one of the old kind, that measured the body temperature in the armpit, and took twenty minutes to register
. But it was accurate nonetheless, and Pauline saw, on this stifling January day, that her maid's temperature had gone up another degree.

  Drawing a towel out of a bucket filled with cold water, Pauline wrung it out and sponged Elsie's face.

  "Miss Downs," the young woman whispered. "You shouldn't be doing this."

  "You've taken care of me," Pauline said gently. "Now I shall take care of you."

  "How is my Tom?" Elsie asked, referring to the young man whom she loved and for which Pauline had once envied her maid. Tom had died the day before.

  "He's fine," Pauline said.

  "Why doesn't he come to see me?"

  "He's helping Mr. Downs take supplies around the district. Just lie quietly, Elsie. Everything is going to be all right."

  Pauline put the towel back into the bucket and drew out another one. She wrung it out and pressed it along Elsie's feverish shoulders. She stared at the girl's death-haunted face and thought: How quickly and easily life is taken from us. She was struck again by the frightening unpredictability of fate, and it made her think of Miss Flora McMichaels, who had not asked to be widowed before she was even wed, thirty years ago.

  Leaving Elsie in the care of another maid, she went back out to the lawn where the women were making up hampers of food, and sorting and folding sheets to be delivered to afflicted families.

  "Where is Winifred?" she said, looking around.

  Louisa put a hand to her lower back and grimaced. She was five months pregnant. "She went home. Little Timmy has fallen ill."

  Pauline looked over the operation on the lawn. Each day, there were fewer and fewer of them to do the work. Everyone was either sick, or nursing loved ones. She thought of Hugh; she wondered where he was, if he was still well. She felt her nerves growing tight, the very blood in her veins seemed to race with tension. Elsie's Tom, only twenty-six years old and as healthy as the horses he took care of, dead in ten days.