‘In your world.
He didn’t answer right away, but opened his mouth to speak, stopped, then gave a mirthless ‘ha’ and shook his head.
‘What?’
‘You’re going to tell me you told me so.’
‘Told you what?’
‘A bunch of people from the office are sick.’
He watched her face for her reaction. She felt an icy anticipation. ‘How sick?’
‘Two in hospital. Three more got turned away.’ She could see him struggle to dam the words in his mouth, hold them back. ‘Apparently being turned away is good, it means you’re not going to die yet. There’s no room in the hospitals for anyone who isn’t dying.’
She didn’t have any more emotion to call on. The cold dread that sat between them was not part of her and she had no words to dispel it.
‘I didn’t know whether to tell you about them. It’s been on my mind but there’s nothing I can do.’
Voices in the street. Natalie under the streetlight, facing her house. Stuart holding Ella, perched on the wall of the verandah. Ella leaning forward with her hand out, squirming in Stuart’s arms.
Hannah moved sideways, shifting the slice presented by the curtains from the street to the verandah and back.
Ella twisted around and said something to Stuart as he leant into her. Natalie blew a kiss to Ella who caught it and kissed her hand where it landed. Ella wriggled down from the wall and away from Stuart’s grasp. Natalie took a step towards her and then one back with her hands up. Ella was halfway down the steps before Stuart caught her.
Natalie wiped tears off her face. She took a chocolate bar out of her bag, gave it a kiss then put it in the mailbox. She gave a wave and walked off in the direction of the hospital. Through the window, Hannah could just hear Ella, struggling to get out of Stuart’s arms, ‘Mummy, Mummy.’
Daniel hovered in the kitchen, stiffly moving from one spot in Hannah’s way to another. He silently observed her getting breakfast ready, not quite comfortable to offer to help, not quite relaxed enough to leave her to the preparations.
‘Have a seat Daniel, breakfast will be out soon.’
‘Would I be able to ring my mum?’
Sean answered from the kitchen table. ‘Why don’t you wait until after breakfast, mate.’
Daniel glanced at Zac for support. ‘My mobile’s out of charge and I want to ring my mum.’
Sean picked up the phone, shifted it from one hand to the other. ‘I think I should... I’m going to talk to your dad first and see if she’s well enough to talk.’
‘I can talk to my dad.’
‘Just let me speak to him first. After breakfast.’
Daniel had an expression on his face that almost approached resolve.
‘Why don’t I ring him now.’ Sean took the phone into the garden, Hannah followed him out. He held the phone sideways to let the sound escape. It rang and a voice answered. ‘Hi, is that...’ Sean stamped his foot to get her attention and raised his shoulders in a question. She shrugged, she’d never actually met him. ‘...Daniel’s dad?’ An inaudible reply. ‘It’s Zac’s dad. Daniel wants to talk to his mum. I don’t know what to tell him. Is she, is she all right?’
Hannah heard the sobs on the other end of the phone and the tinny, strangled voice. ‘Susan’s alive. Oh God, she’s still alive. Last night, I didn’t think, she was so bad, I couldn’t see how she could last the night. But she’s still here.’
The kids were lined up behind the glass of the back door, watching. Sean turned his back, a shred of extra privacy. ‘What do you want me to do? I can tell him she’s okay but she can’t talk if you want.’
‘No she can, she can, she wants to. Put him on, I’ll tell him.’
‘Do you want a moment to get yourself together?’
‘We’re so, we’re so grateful you’ve got him. That’s what Susan said last night. He’s safe with you, she couldn’t have borne it if she’d put him at risk.’ The thin voice was crying again.
‘Maybe you should put her on first, give yourself a moment. You know.’
Sean forced a smile before he turned back and beckoned to Daniel. Hannah turned to see Daniel’s reaction as he took the phone. She saw the hope become confusion and concern.
Oscar came running across the yard. ‘Mum, Mum. Someone’s at the front door and Zac says we can’t open it. Zac told him to go away, but he said he wants to talk to you.’
‘I’ll go.’ Sean took Oscar’s hand.
‘No! He says he wants Mum, he has to talk to Mum.’
Hannah sighed. ‘Maybe it’s Mr Henderson. Maybe he needs groceries too. We can start a co-op.’
Oscar ran in circles around her, getting under her feet as she tried to walk. ‘I was scared he might try to break the door but Zac said the grill was made of metal and he couldn’t break that.’
Zac and Daniel formed a concerned huddle halfway down the hall. Zac pulled himself a bit taller as she pushed past. She could hear someone moving on the other side of the door.
‘Who is it?’
‘Groceries.’
Her forehead creased and her lips pursed even though he couldn’t see her. ‘Just leave them on the porch like it says on the instructions.’
‘It’s not that.’ He sounded hesitant, not dangerous. She tried to imagine what dangerous sounded like, probably nothing like her imaginings. ‘I’m trying to tell my regulars and you’ve ordered from us a few times now.’ Don’t let him be one of the end timers that she’d been reading about on the net. At least on the net she could click away from their crazy rants about Manba being a punishment for, well, pretty much anything.
‘What about?’ He said something that she couldn’t make out. ‘I can’t hear you.’ He said it again but he was speaking too fast. She turned to the boys, just in case. ‘Why don’t you go bug Daddy in the office.’
She swung the door open, stepping well back. The grill was locked and she held the keys in her hand. Its mesh was the only barrier between her and this man and his germs.
‘I’m trying to talk to all my regulars.’
She’d only ordered once and that had been delivered when they were out. He could be anyone under the paper facemask and gloves, the paper hospital gown.
‘This is my last run and I don’t think they’ll find a replacement.’
‘I guess it’s not safe. Well, thanks for all you’ve done.’ Now go away from my front door.
‘I’m driving trucks up in the Hunter for the electricity. Someone needs to deliver the coal and their food. And I don’t have to get out of the cab. So it’s safer, you know, too.’
‘Uh-huh.’ She could see someone looking out from behind a curtain across the road. Drawn by the sound of a car engine.
‘I can’t get petrol, the government’s taking it all, the petrol stations are all shut. Reserved for emergency services. Like the trucks for the coal. I had to drive halfway across Sydney to fill up this morning, from a mate who still had a bit in his tanks and once that’s gone, I’m done. I’m no use for deliveries without a truck.’
Hannah wasn’t sure what to say that would make him leave.
His paper mask hid his mouth but his grey eyes looked older than his jet black hair would suggest. There was a sad acceptance in them. ‘I haven’t been home this week, I wouldn’t do it, I wouldn’t put them at risk. Not with all the houses I go to. My wife puts the little ones on the phone every night. It breaks my heart. But if I’m working for the government, they’ll do the right thing by my family. I can look after them this way.’
‘That’s good.’ She wondered what his kids looked like, what his wife was doing right now. She hoped he didn’t pull out photos.
‘It’s not going to get better anytime soon.’ He talked like they were old friends. ‘Have you noticed? The number of dead is going up every day. Not so much around here yet. I wouldn’t be going door to door if they were. More in the north, but it’s moving. And it’ll break a hundred today, for sure. Nice kids
, your kids. Course I knew you had kids from your order.’
He had been through their groceries. It gave her a shiver, to think how much this stranger might know about them. Where they lived, her name and phone number. She felt a strong need to slam the door.
‘Your kids were very polite. I’ve had lots that aren’t, people screaming at me, and I’m bring them their food. You’d think I was robbing them.’ Hannah smiled. A small, unhappy, go away smile. ‘You’re doing the right thing by them, staying inside. But I wanted to warn my regulars. If things start getting tight, you might find someone to deliver but don’t have a grocery van pull up in front of your house, it won’t be too safe.’
‘Sure. I’ll do that.’
‘Oh, and there’s a few things missing, they’ll credit your card. No deliveries coming from interstate.’
Her stomach lurched. ‘What’s missing?’
‘They give me a list of what’s in the delivery. You’re supposed to check it off and sign to say it’s all there.’
‘Leave it with the groceries. I’m not signing.’ Her hand trembled on the grill handle. Two hours out there, she wasn’t going to get it for two hours. She tried to pull herself together, the same things would be missing in two hours. ‘Is it the rice? Did you see if there was any rice? Turn the plastic bags around, I might be able to see.’
He shrugged and spun each bag around. ‘If it’s not here, there’s nothing you can do.’
‘Ha! Rice, there, I can see it. Not the chocolate. They must have sent chocolate. What about the cold things? The milk and the fresh meat. That bag needs to be out of the sun.’
He looked at his clipboard. ‘No refrigerated delivery noted.’
The milk. The meat. ‘Are you sure? Could you check in your van? How can I be sure you haven’t left something in the van?’
‘It’s on the form. You have to sign it.’
‘I’m not opening the door.’
‘Look,’ he pressed the sheet against the grill. ‘Down the bottom, no refrigerated delivery.’ He slipped it into one of the bags.
‘Wait, wait. I didn’t read it all, bring it back.’
‘I have a full van to deliver. The form will be there when you’re ready to come out.’
She tried to see into the bags. If she could work out what was missing, she could plan. Curse Gwen and curse Daniel and curse the people who had ordered before her. Curse the two hours when she wouldn’t know for sure.
He sat in the cab, looking at his clipboard. Just a stranger who cared about people he knew only through their groceries. A man who cared about his kids.
No meat, no milk. All she had was one face of the bags, frosted images of the groceries through the plastic. She could only see one cube of coffee grounds and no chocolate. As if staring hard enough could give her x-ray vision, she pressed her face against the grill and willed herself to make sense of the diffuse shapes and colours.
The sound of the delivery van disappearing in the distance was overtaken by another car turning into the street. She hauled herself up from the cold wood floor to get a better view. The silver sedan pulled back into the spot it had left less than two days ago, in the middle of the night before last. The doors opened, lethargically. The little girl trudged to the front step and sank down onto it. She watched her parents without interest, as her father opened the boot, unpacking the boxes onto the kerb. The suitcase, the barbecue, only one cardboard box, nothing sticking out the top. The mother, passing the girl, took her hand and languidly led her to the front door.
From the kitchen, Hannah could see the boys in the office. Both doors were open and across the small lawn she could hear them serenading Sean. He had his hands over his ears, trying his best to look angry, failing to cover his laughter. Their untuned voices jumbled over each other. Daniel was trying to follow Zac’s lead, with half an eye nervously on Sean, afraid to be left out, afraid to get in trouble, a little at sea. The singing faded in and out, depending on which way they faced. For a few seconds they clicked into staccato unison and she caught ‘...just like cherry cola...’. The inappropriate things she let them learn when it didn’t matter, when they were too young to understand, and how well they remembered. If she was lucky, that was pretty much all the words they knew.
As the breeze blew the sound away, she heard a rustling from the direction of Natalie and Stuart’s garden. Through the gaps in the paling, she could just make out Stuart in a garden chair. If he wanted to talk he would have said something but to not acknowledge his presence bordered on rude.
He moved again.
‘Hi, Stuart, how’s it going?’
He stood slowly and stiffly. ‘You know, it’s going. Ella just went down for a nap.’ From his face, drained of colour, he could do with one himself.
‘Has Natalie come home yet?’
‘She won’t be back ’til this is over. It spreads like wildfire. You know most of the people who have died so far have been medical staff.’
‘I’m sure she’s careful.’
He stared into a distance that went all the way to his garage. She knew she was intruding on the only break he got from Ella all day but she thought it would seem brusque if she walked away. He was nice enough, but if Natalie hadn’t been so personable, if there hadn’t been Ella, if they weren’t neighbours, she wouldn’t have tried.
Just as she was ready to make her excuses, he broke his silence. ‘You should get rid of that cat.’
She looked around for Mr Moon but he was off somewhere. ‘I’ll try to keep him inside if he’s bothering you. But he hasn’t been sick.’
‘He doesn’t need to be. Shut him in or shut him out. I’d be happier if he wasn’t hanging around.’
She couldn’t keep the cat in, it was like storing mercury in a sieve. ‘The boys love him. I don’t think they’d understand.’
‘Tell them he ran away.’
‘Oscar’s not that easy to fool anymore and teenagers, well you know, teenagers.’ Zac had that peculiar teenage sensibility to loss, the sad sinking in of bad news, the awful new awareness of permanence, the knowledge that some things don’t get better.
‘You can’t seriously think a cat is worth the risk.’
‘What makes you think that cats spread it? Did Natalie say so? It’s bats, that’s what I read, they think it’s bats.’
He gave a condescending laugh. ‘Maybe they’re wrong about how long it lasts outside the body or how it’s transmitted but somehow it’s spreading. You can pin your hopes on it being the bats but are you sure your cat doesn’t catch them? When this is over there’s a PhD in there for someone.’
There were so many rumours on the internet, more or less outrageous or ignorant. Just contemplating all the possibilities was enough raise an anxious need for information. This was just another one—and an old one at that. They killed cats during the plague even though rats spread it. Random shots in the dark, hoping to hit an undefined target.
He made her uncomfortable. She was preparing a departing sentence in her mind, something along the lines of Well, nice to have seen you, hope Natalie comes home soon when Stuart spoke again. ‘Not everything you read online is the truth.’
‘Well, that’s no surprise.’
‘I mean the official stuff. There’s no point getting people into a panic about things they can’t change. I don’t think Natalie tells me the truth, either. I know she doesn’t tell me the truth. What could “being careful” possibly mean when you’re standing at the epicentre of the end of the world?’ Stuart leant down and picked up a coffee cup from beside his chair. ‘Back to it.’
The street was too big, the distance from the door to the car much further than it used to be. Walking across her own front yard was the strangest thing she’d done in a week. The pools of light under the telegraph poles were large and sinister, their presence made the shadows and crevices more likely to harbour harm.
She pushed the petrol cap back into place as she passed. Had they left it open last time they filled?
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The sound of the car door reverberated indiscreetly, the sound of the engine filled the street. She looked around for the twitch of curtains, or shadows at the front doors of her neighbours’ houses. The needle on the petrol gauge still hovered around a quarter of a tank. That didn’t tell her much, it had never been very reliable and she could drive for several days without it moving before it precipitously dropped below empty. She should have listened to Sean and filled up on the way back from Canberra.
On the main road, she was surprised by how many people were about. The pedestrians were sparser than usual but she didn’t think it was right that anyone at all was out. They spilled off a bus that had stopped in front of her, heads down, masks over faces, repelling each other like magnetic poles. Each one that tumbled onto the pavement stepped sharply to one side to avoid a knot of four men, leaning against a shop front. Their lack of masks shocked her and they were passing cans of beer, pulled from the carton that lay between them, from hand to gloveless hand. The pedestrians kept their eyes to the ground, avoiding them but from the safety of her car she stared and pushed down the door lock button. One looked straight at her and laughed.
For long stretches, the only signs of habitation were lights in the houses, punctuated by thin clusters of people near the sets of shops. Those areas could pass for a quiet but normal evening if the shops and cafes weren’t almost all shut. The further she got from home the more, irrationally, she felt threatened by these islands of activity. She ran the orange at a couple of intersections rather than stop. The second time, she put her foot down, stomping on her guilt.
On an unlit, deserted stretch of road, she pulled over to memorise the cross streets leading up to the one she wanted. She needn’t have bothered, the street was obvious, the biggest road, with streetlights and a row of shops running in both directions away from the main street, empty of people. The storefronts were lit, but dimly, as if the shopkeepers had left one light on only. Up on the left she could see a store that glowed more brightly. She drove along the empty kerb and pulled up in front of it.
An Ordinary Epidemic Page 14