Another Throw of The Dice

by Mary Clare Morganti

  Jim’s father had jumped ship and worked in the steel foundries of the mid-west but he died young and Jim said he had missed the sea and his native Norway. His mother was still living in Chicago and having grown up there was content with the inland sea. Jim had trained as a teacher and had taught at a high school until the urge to travel had become irresistible. He had travelled in Europe and Scandinavia and met his relatives but had returned home mainly because he worried about his mother on her own in the big city. His only brother lived in Canada. When his mother remarried a year or two later he decided to travel again, but this time to stay in one place for at least a year and absorb some of the local colour.

  He and Polly had met on their first training exercise where he was impressed by her open-mindedness. When he told her later what had attracted him she said simply that it was because she was a greenhorn. When she had made the pancakes Polly took a shower. She didn’t bother to lock the door because she thought Jim would be home any minute. When she thought she heard the door opened, she called out to him but there was no answer. Perhaps he hadn’t heard over the cascading water. Her ablutions finished she wrapped her lavalava around her and stepped into the corridor between the bathroom and the kitchen and called,

  ‘Hi honey - where’ve you been?’

  To her surprise there was no one there. Had she been “hearing things”, as her mother used to say?

  She woke from a pleasant doze when she clearly heard the front door being opened and knew it must be Jim but she had no idea of the time. She called in a muffled voice,

  ‘Hi honey, I made us some pancakes - they’re under a cloth on the bench.’

  He went straight to the kitchen and then appeared at the bedroom door with a tea towel in his hand.

  ‘Nice try Poll,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ She jumped off the bed and rushed into the kitchen. Even the plate was gone. With her mouth open she looked at Jim speechlessly and he said,

  ‘What’s going on?’ He put his arm around her and she swung away from him and told him what she had heard while she was in the shower.

  ‘I noticed the door wasn’t locked.’

  Polly said it hadn’t occurred to her because she had been expecting him home at any time.

  ‘Look hun, most breakins are opportunistic and it’s vital to take precautions like locking doors.’ Polly frowned at what might have happened and then she snapped,

  ‘Where were you anyway?’ as if he could take some of the responsibility. He understood her reaction so he responded mildly,

  ‘I called to see Min - I heard she had been sick. I thought you might call in there on your way home anyway so I walked for a change.’

  ‘How come you didn’t see me when I walked past her place?’

  ‘It must have been when I went to that small shop to get her some ginger ale.’

  Polly was still glowering and thinking how wrong everything had gone, when she had been so elated. Then she remembered what Jim had just said.

  ‘Is Min sick?’

  ‘Yeah - she’s had some stomach upset. I met Dinah outside the library and she said she’d been to see her.’

  Polly sat down heavily and stared in front of her. All had been sweet - and now she felt as flat as one of the pancakes which they wouldn’t see again. Jim tried to cheer her up but he was secretly disturbed at the thought that Polly herself could have been hurt. The intruder must have been attracted by the whiff of warm dough and could have ventured further when he heard the shower. Jim didn’t want to think about that so he suggested that they go out for a meal and put the afternoon’s events behind them. It was a salutary lesson for them both.

  Chapter 25

  Soon after she had spoken to Dinah on her new telephone Min had begun to feel faint and nauseous. She fell asleep fully clothed and woke up some time later with stomach cramps and a fever. She struggled out to the kitchen to boil some water and crawled back to bed in a state of panic. Being ill in an unfamiliar environment was not something she had considered so her distress was heightened. She dozed fitfully and had another weird dream which came from a totally unvisited sphere of her unconscious.

  She found herself outside an old building surrounded by tall trees which created a frightening darkness so she couldn’t find an entrance for shelter. A woman with long hair and wielding a broom made of grass stalks lashed together, beckoned to her from a long narrow window. She introduced herself as Candida Albicans dispenser of herbal remedies, who had been banished from her home city for preparing potions. She asked Min if she needed help because she could see that she was unhappy. She said ‘I have the power’.

  Min woke doubled over with pain. The vision had been so vivid that she began to speak to the woman and found herself groaning piteously. The significance of the name escaped her in her misery. She gathered her scant forces and tried to crawl to the bathroom to disgorge the contents of her stomach. Her mind was totally overwhelmed by physical impulses to the point of disorientation and she lay on the concrete floor in a state between the semi-conscious and unconscious. In a flash of lucidity she remembered the water she had drunk earlier and tried in a befuddled way to identify her illness. The word “chrystostum” went round and round in her head like a malevolent mantra each time the nausea struck. Finally she managed to find her way back to her bed where she fell asleep again.

  It was still dark when she came to, feeling weak and vulnerable and she began to cry. Her head was aching so she took some sips of the boiled water feeling too weak to look for medication. She thought of the times in her childhood when she was poorly and her mother had looked after her protectively. She heard herself whine, ‘Mum - oh please Mum.’

  Her feverishness caused her to leave the bed and lie on the concrete floor to cool her overheated core. Sleep came and went until she began to shiver and as she climbed back on to the bed she noticed a lightening outside and a distant rooster crowing. The cramps returned followed by another painful journey to the bathroom where she stayed, feeling too weak to move. When day came, how long would it be before her absence was noticed? Would it be like last time when she failed to appear?

  Muddled thoughts of dying as a result of misguided independence and memories of past events in her life when she resented interference, knitted themselves into a haze of self-pity. She could remember those times as a child when she had fantasies about dying, leaving a grieving and guilt-laden family who had never tried to understand her. Now it was different and she had no desire to cause distress by her self-inflicted isolation.

  Eventually she dragged herself to the bed again and slept soundly until she heard a voice calling her name at the front door. She called back and the voice moved to outside the bedroom area where the Principal’s assistant, Leone asked if she was sick.

  ‘Yes,’ she said feebly. ‘I’ll try and get up to open the door.’

  ‘No. Stay there. I need to call a doctor. Do you know a doctor here?’ Min replied that she didn’t and Leone told her she would find one.

  ‘I go now but someone will come today.’ And Min heard her swish through the long grass like an angel of mercy. She wanted to express her relief and gratitude but she knew that Leone would never know how much her visit had meant. She had been rescued from despair and abandonment and the dark night was over.

  It felt like late afternoon when another voice called from the front door so Min called back to say that she was coming. When she unlocked the door she fainted and was only dimly aware of being helped back to bed by someone speaking to her quietly and persuasively. A thermometer was thrust into her mouth and the doctor rummaged in her bag to find her stethoscope.

  The familiar ministrations so unexpectedly offered made Min cry again - this time with relief - and it was a while before she could answer any questions. In the meantime the young woman sat on the bed and held her hand.

  ‘You’ve taken on a tough assignment all on your own,’ she said. ‘Can you take a warm bath?’

  When Min shook her head s
he handed her a wad of tissues and smiled sympathetically.

  ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t got hot water.’ Min sniffed a few times and blew her nose.

  ‘To be honest I’ve got used to cold showers and don’t miss it.’ Her voice sounded nasal and disembodied.

  Enquiries about the food and drink Min had consumed in the twenty-four hours before taking ill provoked a provisional diagnosis.

  ‘Cryptospiridion - that water you drank when you got home all thirsty - is probably the culprit because you have no immunity to the creepy- crawlies coming through your tap.’

  The doctor stood up and went to her car to get some sterilised water. On her way through the kitchen she found a tumbler and poured some of the water into it. She handed it to Min and said,

  ‘Electrolytes - to replace lost minerals. I see you have a telephone. Is there anyone you can call?’

  Min nodded. ‘I’d only just had that telephone connected before I became ill.’

  She went on to describe the rush home in the heat and how she had to deal with her student and the two telephone men all at once.

  After the doctor left having instructed her to visit her surgery in a few days’ time, Min lay back on the pillows, took a very long breath and gave thanks for her deliverance. She was working up the energy to call Dinah when she fell into a truly deep sleep.

  Chapter 26

  It was quite late when Min woke from a restorative sleep but she wanted to talk to Dinah and tap into her practical cheer. Robert answered the phone and expressed relief that she was in the loop, as he put it. Dinah’s shriek could be heard in the background and she took the handset from Robert to tell Min that she should be celebrating. Her pleasure was such that Min was reluctant to tell her that she had celebrated by getting very sick but Dinah said that she sounded subdued. Her voice dropped several tones when Min explained and she offered to come to see her there and then.

  ‘It’s so great to be able to call you Dinah old thing and the doctor was keen for me to be in touch with someone.’

  ‘Who was the doctor?’

  ‘God - I don’t even know - but she was very understanding. She had some special water in her car and even suggested that I have a warm bath!’

  ‘I’m coming right now to get you and Robert will run one for you.’

  Min remonstrated, ‘It’s too late and I’m not quite up to it yet - but I wondered if you could come tomorrow. I won’t make it to class but at least I can ring the college. Great friends and a telephone - what more can a girl want?’

  When Dinah came the next day in her flexible lunch hour she brought two drinking coconuts and some papaya which Min craved, as she said. When she heard that Robert was keen for her to come and have that warm bath she was quite touched and decided that she’d accept the offer.

  The two women chatted about their trip to the Big Island and Dinah said it was a sort of bonding experience. They laughed about those “team- building” exercises contrived by employers to cement bonds among their workers.

  ‘The great thing that happened was the unplanned stranding and how we all dealt with it.’

  ‘With none of that nasty trans-Tasman rivalry either,’ Min looked coy.

  ‘It’s interesting to note the difference between Aussies and Kiwis which I hadn’t thought about before I came here. Perhaps you and Robert are not typical but you strike me as more serious than us Aussies - but then Lucky is pretty serious - except for his name.’

  Min was tempted to explain to Dinah how it had come about but instead she said simply,

  ‘A lucky man from a lucky country. I can’t help wondering if both terms are ironic.’

  Dinah speculated on his background and told Min that Melburnians were quite different from Queenslanders on the whole.

  ‘It’s not till we’re up against you kiwis that we truly stick together.’

  She said that she and Robert thought that Min and Lucky might make a go of it and Min blushed. She didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You’re both what I’d call pointy heads and I feel that I have to measure up when I’m around you. Perhaps it’s all that cold weather - you’re curled up with a book while I’m out in the sun plucking all that low- hanging fruit!’ Dinah brayed at the thought which had just occurred to her.

  ‘So what are your plans post-Arcadia?’

  Dinah shrugged. ‘I don’t look that far ahead. I keep telling Robert to just enjoy the present because he’s inclined to want to plan ahead. Anyway what are yours?’

  ‘I’ll see out my contract and by then I might have changed so much that

  I won’t know where I belong.’

  ‘Y’know - I sometimes long for a wander in one of those overstocked shopping malls full of people idly picking up gadgets and clothes and putting them down in a sort of trance. I know that’s pathetic.’

  ‘Ditto - I’m also nostalgic for a rousing concert with a full orchestra and my walkman is a poor substitute for the atmosphere of the live thing - not that I’m a regular concert-goer - and the funny thing is it’s the discordant sawing and tooting before the conductor appears which sticks in my mind.’

  Dinah mimed stroking a violin as she stood up. ‘Must away to my pressing duties. I’ll call after work to take you chez nous for that bath and a bite to eat. What do you feel like?’

  Min said she still craved fruit and some nice cold water.

  ‘Boiled with no ice ma’am as you wish.’

  Just as Dinah was leaving, the small truck from the post office drew up outside and through the louvres they saw ‘Mr Telephono’ on his own, getting out. Dinah rolled her eyes as they heard the knock and she went to answer the door. She introduced herself and explained why she was there.

  ‘I’ve brought the new number for the telephone,’ he said.

  ‘Would you like to come in?’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear of the sickness - no, you can pass on the number on this paper.’

  Dinah thanked Mr Telephono warmly and said how good it was that Min could call her friends.

  The gentleman smiled and turned with a wave of his hand. As he climbed into the cab of the truck he called,

  ‘I hope she is better soon.’

  Dinah read out the number to Min and wondered what would have happened if she had not been there.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Min firmly. ‘You are far too suspicious. If I lose my faith in people I’ll be a prisoner of my own nature.’

  ‘You’re probably right, but a certain amount of awareness is essential to survival - especially on your own. Anyway get your toilet things and I’ll be back in a couple of hours to whisk you away.’

  Min pondered on Dinah’s attitude but came to the conclusion that she would have to deal with people according to her own instincts and to tell the truth, she was sorry not to have seen Mr Telephono to thank him. She would call and see him in the next week or so.

  Chapter 27

  Lucky had had some frustrating times in the past few weeks with the hospital generator and in particular the effect its intermittence had on the sterilisation process. Naturally that affected the number of operations being performed but he thanked the cosmic forces that the doctors and patients were stoical and accepting of such shortcomings.

  Fortunately the technician who had flown in to do the repairs, had been able to cobble together a temporary solution until he could get necessary replacements. Lucky thought how much more pressure he would have been under as an administrator back home and he hoped that he could take a leaf out of the local staff’s book. Of course, their Job-like patience arose from a tradition of being poor relations when it came to technology. The hospital was the medical centre for everything from red eye to kidney failure. Private doctors served the better-off locals and the expatriate community. When Lucky had first seen the hospital from the outside he had been impressed, but the inside was a different matter. There were machines for procedures such as ECGs and Xrays and when they broke down they often stayed idle for weeks until an expe
rt and spare parts were available. That was his role - to see that machines were well maintained and kept ticking over. When he had first arrived he was dismayed to see relatively sophisticated machines from an uncoordinated group of donor nations lying idle for lack of technicians. The medical staff was made up of overseas doctors and overseas-trained local ones who had returned home with a sense of dedication to their country. There was a dearth of technical support because, Lucky suspected that was not an area which the locals sought as a profession. Electronic expertise was a cinderella in the medical sphere, he had come to realise.

  Along with the afore-mentioned tolerance he required the wisdom of Solomon, the foresight of an oracle and the negotiating skills of a diplomat. In this lay his personal salvation he felt sure. His mind was fully occupied to the point where his anxiety about what was happening back home took a back seat. He knew that any day he might have to fly to Australia however, but this possibility was becoming less and less real in his daily duties.

  He was reading a lot too now that distractions were fewer and he had plunged into the concerns of an English community in the early nineteenth century. He was struck by the kinship between that world and this small Pacific nation. Change, like an invading army was massing in the wings and a way of life centuries old, was already hearing the beat of drums. When Lucky thought about such things he hoped that society would be strong enough to accept change gradually and not be seduced by the blandishments of multi-nationals whose only deity was the dollar. Their outriders in the form of Coco Cola had appeared a long time ago but a strong visionary leadership able to sustain social coherence, while welcoming genuine benefits on offer, was the way of salvation. Evangelical Christianity portrayed in George Eliot’s novel Adam Bede, had culminated in these islands in the establishment of that particular brand of Christianity, thanks to the proselytising zeal of the London Missionary Society. The teachings of the missionaries were successfully blended into the chiefly structure so that a twin authority was formed and made physically manifest in the huge churches towering over every village throughout the country. Lucky was not hopeful that religion itself would form a bulwark against materialistic excess but rather hope lay in the integrity of the culture with a very long tradition.