Corrigan's Run

by Colin Falconer

  She experienced a sudden sense of deep foreboding. She knew that when the missus didn't come back she was going to be in big trouble.

  Chapter 3

  As Father Goode never tired of repeating, Corrigan's Trader's Post at Vancoro was an absolute disgrace to the white population on Santa Maria.

  The bungalow had been allowed to crumble into disrepair, empty whisky bottles lay strewn in the grass, and several of the wooden slats on the veranda and on the front steps were broken or missing. The store’s owner had crumbled to the ravages of the tropics in the same way.

  Patrick Corrigan should have been an exceptionally handsome man. His nose had been bent in numerous fights, but the square jaw and the row of strong, white teeth had somehow escaped unscathed despite their owner's fierce temper. He had a thick black mane of hair, and an errant comma fell over his eyes, despite his frequent attempts to push it away. It lent him a devil-may-care look that enchanted the traders' wives and the native girls alike.

  Whatever his considerable talents may once have been, he now seemed to devote all his time to concealing them. He rarely performed any useful work, spending most days gambling at Sam Doo's in Chinatown; he seldom bothered to shave or put on a clean shirt; he was almost always drunk.

  When he wanted he could be utterly charming; at other times he was as belligerent as a bear caught in a trap.

  Today was not a good day for him. He was bored, and he was tired; bored with the endless rain, tired of the tropics, and tired of his life. He had had every girl worth having on the island, and there was no man left who dared challenge him to a fight.

  In fact, there was nothing to interest him except a bottle of Gilbey's gin. And that, too, was nearly empty. There was more on the Shamrock but Sanei had refused to go out into the rain and fetch more for him, even after he threatened her with a beating. Things had come to a sad old pass when a man had to get his own drink.

  He sat in a heat-drugged stupor in the back room, savoring the last drops of the oily liquid from an enamel cup, feeling the sweat run down the back and stain his vest, which was no longer white. The raw taste of the spirit matched his mood.

  It was then he saw her coming up the road, and surprise turned slowly to fascination. He heard the cheerful ringing of the bicycle bell as she emerged from the grey sheets of monsoon rain, one hand on the handlebars, the other holding a tattered black umbrella. A native boy in a lava-lava trotted behind her, carrying a large black bag.

  She wore a long white calico dress, spattered with black mud, a voluminous straw hat and white drawers that reached to her ankles. He shook his head in wonderment.

  After a few moments he heard her banging on the front door.

  Corrigan hauled himself out of his chair and sauntered down the passageway. He opened the door. Rachel stood there, leaking rainwater onto the bare wooden boards.

  He swatted ineffectually at a mosquito feeding at his neck. ‘What the bloody hell do you want?’

  Rachel drew herself a little straighter. ‘I have come to ask your help, Mister Corrigan.’

  ‘Don't tell me. You want me to preach at Sunday school.’ He drew down the corner of his mouth and emitted a long, loud belch. Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the smell of the gin.

  ‘I need to go urgently to Marmari. One of the natives is very sick.’

  Corrigan scratched at his three-day growth of beard to signal his disinterest. ‘So?’

  ‘I would like you to take me there in your launch. I cannot possibly travel in the native canoe in this weather. On the Shamrock we could be there in a few hours.’

  ‘Now why would I want to help you?’

  ‘If not for the good of your soul, then perhaps to save the life of some poor wretch.’

  ‘What's one more black man, dead or alive?’

  ‘Perhaps I can offer you something a little more substantial then.’ From her skirt she pulled two damp one-pound notes and held them under Corrigan's nose.

  Corrigan rubbed the palm of his hand across his chin, the bristles making a rasping noise. ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘It’s all we have.’

  ‘You’d give me your life savings to save some blackbird?’

  ‘God will provide.’

  ‘Not in my experience. You're a strange lot, you Holy Romans.’

  Rachel's lips compressed in a thin, white line. ‘Will you do it then?’

  ‘It'll be a rough trip.’ Corrigan stared at her, then at the money. ‘Oh well, if that's what you want to do. Your money’s as good as the next man’s.’

  *****

  Leaning on the wheel of the launch, Corrigan peered through the cockpit. The mainland loomed ahead in the darkness, a dark shadow against the deep purple sky. He was already regretting his impulse to take this damned girl up to Marmari Point.

  He needed the money, but not this badly.

  He glanced round. Rachel sat huddled in the corner, next to the native boy, her hands thrust determinedly in her lap, the knuckles white. It had been a rough passage, but she had borne it stoically enough; he had been looking forward to seeing her vomit over the side but so far she had denied him the satisfaction.

  ‘You all right?’ he said.

  She nodded and climbed shakily to her feet, one hand gripping the rail. ‘Are we nearly there?’ In the ghostly half-light her face took on a greenish tinge.

  ‘We're in the lee of the headland now. Another quarter of an hour I reckon. You didn't sick up then?’

  ‘I felt a little unwell at times.’

  ‘Gets a bit choppy in the monsoon season.’

  ‘We must thank the Lord for a safe crossing.’

  ‘Don't see why, He didn't have bugger all to do with it. That’s why you’re giving me the two quid, and not Him.’

  ‘You are not a God-fearing man, Mister Corrigan?’

  ‘There are only two things that frighten me. A man with a gun and a woman with a Bible.’ He reached between his legs and found the bottle of Gilbey's stowed under the wheel. He unscrewed the cap and took a long swallow.

  ‘Mister Corrigan, don't you think it would be safer if you refrained from drinking alcohol while you're in charge of this vessel?’

  Corrigan belched. The sound of it echoed around the cockpit like thunder. ‘You can get stuffed.’

  ‘Thank you, Mister Corrigan,’ Rachel said mildly and she went back to her seat in the corner and prayed silently for deliverance.

  Chapter 4

  Corrigan guided the Shamrock into the bay. The gentle murmur of the diesel engines echoed around the lagoon. A full moon lent an eerie luminescence to the shadowy huts under their canopy of coconut trees. She could make out the glow of fires burning in the village and the silhouettes of the natives gathered along the shoreline.

  He threw the anchor over the side into the soft sand and jumped after it. Hitching up her skirt, Rachel prepared to follow him.

  ‘Careful. You'll break your bloody neck,’ Corrigan said. Before she could protest he had lifted her clear of the launch and deposited her in the shallows.

  ‘Mister Corrigan,’ she gasped. The strength of the man surprised her. He had lifted her effortlessly, as if she were a small child. ‘I can manage by myself.’

  ‘Suit your bloody self then,’ he said and waded away the beach.

  *****

  They walked through the silent crowd to Kumasi's hut. Kumasi's wife was waiting outside. She was perhaps thirty years younger than the old man and bare-breasted, just a patterned lava-lava around her middle. She and another woman were preparing a shroud from blue-dyed tapa cloth.

  ‘Looks like they don't hold out a lot of hope,’ Corrigan said.

  Rachel didn't answer.

  Kumasi's hut was built in the style of the Europeans. It was raised on stilts a few feet off the ground with a veranda right the way around it. There were five rooms, partitioned with walls of split bamboo, and the roof was thatched with sago palm.

  Kumasi lay groaning on a bamboo mat in the centre
of the room. He was only half-conscious and his body was shiny with his own sweat. His family and friends stood around the old man's sleeping mat, silent, wide-eyed. They parted to allow Rachel and Corrigan through. Rachel knelt down beside the old man to examine him.

  He was about sixty years old. His face was gnarled, the creases on his face ingrained with the smoky residue of years of smoldering cook fires. He had a sparse and pointed grey beard in the shape of a ‘W’. It gave him the appearance of a rangy goat.

  Outside a fowl fluttered up the steps and picked its way fussily along the veranda, leaving its droppings on the split-bamboo flooring. A gekko pursued one of its amours through a small hole in the rough-hewn rafters.

  Rachel made her diagnosis. She had watched her uncle tackle appendicitis cases at the Mission hospital and she knew the symptoms.

  She turned to Wesu. ‘Sick long time?’ she asked him.

  ‘He for sick last time sun he up. Im he for die finis?’

  ‘No,’ Rachel said though with little conviction. ‘No, im he no for die.’

  ‘Balls,’ Corrigan said, somewhere behind her.

  She searched through the battered black leather bag she had brought with her. There was ether and two scalpels, a little sulphonamide, forceps, some aspirin and a quantity of bandages and catgut for stitching wounds.

  Hardly enough to tackle an appendectomy but she would have to make do.

  She palpated Kumasi’s distended belly. It was badly swollen; the infected organ might burst at any moment, spreading its poison right through the intestinal cavity. As she ran her finger over his abdomen he gasped with pain.

  She would have to operate straight away.

  She looked at the cluster of dark faces peering anxiously over her shoulder. She felt terribly helpless and inadequate.

  One face was missing. She pushed out of the hut and marched down to the water's edge where she found Corrigan sitting on the sand, the bottle of Gilbey's gin nursed in his lap.

  ‘Mister Corrigan. I need your help again.’

  ‘What's the point? The old bastard’s had it. Happens to us all eventually. Let's go home.’

  ‘Are you going to help me or not?’

  ‘Why the hell should I?’

  ‘Because if you don't, you aren't going to get your two pounds! Now pull yourself together and come with me!’

  Rachel turned her back on him and marched back up the beach. Corrigan's jaw fell open. It had been years since a woman had spoken to him like that, and he was shocked. She was just a slip of a girl, fifteen years his junior for Christ’s sake.

  He saw no reason at all why he should help her. After all, that hadn't been part of the bargain.

  Stuff her.

  *****

  They stood side by side, staring at him. Rachel had ushered everyone outside except Corrigan and now they were all crowded in the doorway, watching. The hut was murmurous with the buzzing of flying insects.

  ‘We will have to render him unconscious.’

  ‘That's easy enough,’ Corrigan said. ‘A good wallop in the guts ought to do it.’ He laughed raucously.

  She ignored him. She had boiled her scalpels in scalding water and scrubbed her hands until the skin was red raw. A hurricane lamp had been brought from the Shamrock and she laid it gingerly on the earthen floor.

  She was ready.

  She handed Corrigan a thick pad of gauze and unscrewed the cap from a small glass bottle of ether. ‘Don't get too near the lamp. The fumes from the ether are combustible.’

  Corrigan thrust his big ham fists into his pockets. ‘You mean this is dangerous?’

  Rachel stared at him and did not blink. Corrigan grunted and looked away. He took one hand from his pocket and took the bottle from her.

  ‘Every time he stirs I want you to put a little of the ether on the gauze and put it over his mouth and nose.’

  Corrigan dabbed some of the liquid onto the pad and quickly replaced the stopper. He put the gauze over the chief’s face. After a few moments the spastic movements of the limbs subsided, and Kumasi lay still.

  ‘Don't keep it there. We don't want to suffocate him.’

  Corrigan grimaced. ‘You don't really think he's going to live through all this?’

  ‘It's in God's hands, Mister Corrigan.’

  ‘Cut his throat and put him out of his misery. The bastard's got no choice. If he doesn't die from blood loss, he'll get an infection. Look at this place.’

  ‘Life is sacred. We should do our best to preserve it.’

  ‘That's your opinion.’

  Rachel picked up one of the scalpels. It glinted yellow in the light of the lamp.

  ‘I hope you don't have a sensitive stomach.’

  ‘I'm not worried about a little bit of blood if that's what you mean.’

  Rachel knelt down beside the bamboo mat, the scalpel poised in her right hand. She took a deep breath and cut deep, a single swift slash that sliced cleanly through the skin and tissue of the abdomen. Blood welled up through the incision in a rich red mass.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ Corrigan said.

  Rachel pointed the scalpel at him. ‘You will not be sick,’ she hissed at him.

  Corrigan nodded and turned away.

  ‘Thank you, Mister Corrigan,’ Rachel said and bent to her work.

  *****

  If only my uncle was here. I'm sure he could have done a much better job.’ The heat from the body raised perspiration on her forehead in tiny white blisters. A dewdrop of sweat trickled along her nose and hung there; she wiped it impatiently away with her sleeve.

  Her long pale hands were covered in blood.

  ‘You're doing all right,’ Corrigan mumbled. Rachel straightened, flicked back an errant strand of hair with the crook of her other arm.

  She bent down over her patient once more. She held the wound open with forceps, groping for the infected organ with her free hand. The entrails made a wet sucking sound as she pushed them aside.

  ‘I'll be glad when this is over,’ Corrigan said.

  The appendix now lay exposed in the wound, a swollen and angry red. Rachel knew she would have to incise carefully but swiftly. If she burst the sac its toxic contents would pour into the abdominal cavity and Kumasi would die.

  She pulled the retractors wider to give herself a little more room, the scalpel held lightly in the fingers of her other hand.

  ‘Ah!’ A few minutes later she produced a long piece of tissue, smeared with dark congealed blood, in the manner of a magician producing a rabbit from a hat. She let it plop to the floor and began to plug the wound with cotton wool.

  ‘Looks like a used French letter,’ Corrigan said.

  Rachel felt her cheeks turn scarlet but she kept her head down so that he could not see. A small moth with feathery wings, attracted by the light from the lamp, fluttered into the wound. She carefully extracted it with the forceps.

  ‘He'll be crapping butterflies for a week,’ Corrigan said.

  A muscle in Kumasi’s arm twitched. He groaned.

  Corrigan tipped some drops of ether onto the gauze and held it over their patient’s mouth and nose.

  ‘Keep the cap on that bottle,’ Rachel said. ‘You'll blow us all up.’

  Corrigan did as he was told. ‘A lot of fuss over one blackbird.’

  ‘When you cut into a man's body like this, Mister Corrigan, you cannot fail to notice that it is blood and gristle and bone, the same as any white man. Moreover you can never cut away a man's courage, or his virtue, or his love. These are things of the spirit. It seems to me the important things in a man are those things you cannot distinguish on the outside, his character, and his soul.’

  ‘I had a dog with character once. He's dead just the same.’

  It was almost dawn when she put the final stitches in the wound. A pale yellow light crept into the hut.

  ‘He is in God's hands now,’ she whispered, cutting through the last catgut stitch with shiny steel scissors.

  Corrigan ran a hand a
cross his face. ‘I'm glad that's over,’ he murmured. ‘First time I've ever seen an operation.’

  Rachel smiled a thin, tired smile. ‘If you must know, Mister Corrigan, it's the first time I've ever performed one.’

  Chapter 5

  It was past noon when Corrigan was sufficiently recovered from the previous night's experiences to pilot the Shamrock back to Vancoro. Rachel promised the villagers that her uncle would return in about a week to check on Kumasi's progress.

  ‘You mean, put flowers on the grave,’ Corrigan chuckled.

  She now sat silently at the rear of the launch watching Corrigan's fumbled attempts to start the engine. The rains had gone, and it was a fine, blue day. Portuguese men o'war drifted past on the starboard side. Rachel could make out the bright plumage of parrots among the dull green of the shoreline.

  Finally the Shamrock's engine coughed twice, then hammered into a steady rhythm, shattering the blue silence of the lagoon. The single screw bubbled beneath the stern. Corrigan hauled up the anchor and turned the Shamrock towards the ocean.

  ‘How long will it take us to reach Vancoro?’

  Corrigan shrugged. ‘About three hours in this weather.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  *****

  Corrigan leaned over the wheel, and guided the Shamrock out to sea. Occasionally he stole a sly glance back over his shoulder. By Christ, she really wasn't a bad-looking woman. Good skin, pretty oval face. If she took her hair out of that ridiculous bun she could be a real head-turner.

  He tried to imagine what she looked like naked. He let his eyes slip to her ankles. Nice slim ankles but a bit puffy and red where the mosquitoes had fed on her. It was those pretty blue English veins.

  Pity she was such a notorious virgin.

  It wasn't that some hadn't tried. One of the pearling captains had told him that he'd been invited to the Mission for dinner with Father Goode and his niece just last year. While the priest spent the evening trying to lure the old salt back to the fold, he had taken advantage of a few moments alone with Rachel to try and lure her back to his pearling lugger.