A HAZARD OF HEARTS

by Frances Burke

  Paul shrugged. ‘Henry knew how it would be and warned me not to get involved. He has to speak against Wentworth being chosen to head the Constitutional Committee in London, but he knows he can’t win. All he can hope to do is undermine the opposition while putting our case for the kind of Upper House we want.’

  ‘We should be there to rally around him.’

  ‘No. He’s stacked the audience, as has Wentworth. It’ll end in a shouting match, that’s all. You know how easily Wentworth loses his temper.’

  Frenchy shook his bushy head and poured the wine.

  ‘Why were you warned not to get involved?’ Elly asked Paul.

  He grinned, looking every bit as piratical as his friend. ‘Some of us have to stay out of gaol to continue the work, particularly those who can make public speeches. As Frenchy said, the powder keg could go up very easily, and end in half the audience finding themselves before a magistrate in the morning.’

  ‘Are your meetings always so volatile, then?’

  ‘It depends...’ Paul broke off as a wave of laughter swept the next table, and a big man with a shock of violently red hair and nose to match, rose to stand before the chimney-piece with his mug raised. His voice went with his girth and filled the room easily.

  ‘Speech is still free to all men, and I have something to say. Ladies and gentlemen, let us drink to freedom of thought, of purpose, of action, to our day of liberation and secession. Friends, I give a toast – the new Republic of Australia.’

  Frenchy shot up, flourishing his glass, but Paul pulled him back by the tail of his elegant coat. ‘Sit down, you fool. You can’t drink to treason. This isn’t France.’

  Already there was an outcry and several men descended on the giant who had proposed the toast, forcing him to the floor and holding him while a dozen glasses and tankards were solemnly emptied over his head. Sputtering imprecations, he raised his eyes to a little bald man standing over him, swathed in a grease-spattered apron and wielding a long toasting fork.

  ‘Mr Benjamin,’ he said, ‘You know the rules of this tavern. No-one speaks against Her Majesty the Queen or the British Empire. Will you leave peaceably or be pricked and added to the other sausages in my pan?’

  Benjamin shook his wet head like a spaniel, counted the opposition, and meekly departed.

  Elly joined in the general laughter, saying, ‘Is Mr Benjamin one of your sympathisers, Paul?’

  ‘He’s a damned revolutionary, like Frenchy here, but a good fellow at heart. He just doesn’t believe we want freedom to govern ourselves without breaking away from our Mother Country.’

  Frenchy picked up the wine bottle and scrutinised the level within, saying morosely, ‘If you’re not careful you’ll find yourself with a House of Lords running the Colony to suit a handful of squatters, and Wentworth the first to grasp a ducal coronet.’

  ‘Rubbish. He only just scraped in at the last election. Next time...’

  Puzzled, Elly asked, ‘What’s wrong with an aristocracy? It’s always worked well in England, if not in your country.’

  Frenchy threw up his hands. ‘Mon Dieu – can she not see?’

  She turned to Paul, who explained, ‘Elly, there’s great social injustice in England and the oppressors have always come from the titled class, or the very rich. But now, in this new land, we have the opportunity to form a more equitable government, truly representative of all men and not merely the privileged few. We want to retain the Westminster system but adapt it, to use the brains and energy of men who would otherwise be denied their chance by virtue of their birth.’

  Drinkers at the next table had turned to listen, and one put out a hand to shake Paul’s. ‘Well-said, my friend. And it’s the man from the ranks of the working class, like Henry Parkes, who will help to mould this new Parliament of ours.’

  ‘Right. Right.’ The current of agreement swept around the room. Other conversations ceased as more people began attending to Paul.

  On his feet, flushed and eager, he continued, ‘It’s true. There are plenty of others like Parkes. We have the goodwill of men articulate enough to stand up to our Botany Bay aristocrats, those self-seeking scoundrels who would carve up the wealth of the Colony amongst themselves. Against their opposition, we’ve rid ourselves of the convicts and we now pay our workers. There’ll be no slaves in this democracy. And we’ll unlock the land so that anyone who wants to work can raise his children in plenty, without the need to send them into factories and mine pits and smelters to ruin their health. This country will raise a new breed of men and women, strong, independent and free.’ He looked down apologetically at Elly. ‘I promised you no speeches, tonight.’

  ‘Don’t apologise. It’s stirring talk. I’m making discoveries.’ Elly meant it. This place, these people, were alive, generating their own excitement in life, trying to get things done. While some of it, no doubt, was air dreaming, there was purpose behind the discussions and an intention to work on the problems they would encounter. These men were builders, not destroyers, uninterested in maintaining the status quo. Their lives were go-ahead, as she wanted hers to be.

  Frenchy gazed at Paul with admiration. ‘That is the spirit of the barricades. You have the heart of a true Frenchman, mon ami. I salute you.’ He grabbed Paul by the shoulders and kissed him soundly on both cheeks. Paul jerked back out of range, cuffing his friend lightly on the jaw. Elly had never seen him so passionately alive, so happy with himself and his company.

  ‘You should know, Frenchy. You’ve thrown a few cobbles in your time and had to run for your life.’ He turned to Elly. ‘Do you think we’re all mad?’

  ‘Yes, wonderfully, excitingly mad. You’re all so unrestricted, so unafraid to try to change the world.’

  ‘Youth and a dream, always a powerful combination. But it must be accompanied by common sense. There are older, longer heads involved, experienced fighters who will be with us on the long haul to victory.’ He raised his voice again to address the crowded room.

  ‘Victory won’t come overnight, we know, but come it will, if we have anything to say. Eh, friends?’ He flung up his arms and was answered with an approving roar. ‘Then join me in a toast to our new country, to self-government, to universal suffrage, to equality for all. To victory!’

  Elly raised her glass and joined in the shout, ‘To victory!’ and drank deeply. Her gaze locked with Paul’s as a thrill ran through her body, bringing with it an odd, tingling awareness.

  Paul stiffened, his triumphant expression vanishing, to be replaced by a look of stupefaction. For a long moment the tavern, with its noise and smoke and press of people, faded into the background and there were only the two of them, poised on the edge of some great revelation.

  Elly held her breath in the expectant silence. Then, like a thunderclap, the world rolled in again on a wave of sound and sight and smells, smashing the fragile moment. Other people surged forward to claim Paul’s attention, leaving Elly wondering whether she’d imagined it all.

  Much later, when the tavern keeper had gone around and turned down most of the lamps, while yawning ostentatiously, Elly and Paul stepped out into a cold starlit night and hailed a cab. Elly’s head reeled with words, so many words, so many ideas, so much enthusiasm. She felt drunk with it all. It seemed only natural to turn to her companion with her question.

  ‘Paul, awhile since, when you spoke of the children I heard something like pain in your voice. Do they mean so much to you?’ She waited, trusting that the intimacy they’d shared with his friends would, for once, be enough to bring down his barriers.

  His voice, when he finally answered, sounded distant, but not unfriendly. It was more like questioning, as if he needed an answer where there was none. ‘Have you stood on a hillside before dawn on a bitter morn, with the moon peering over your shoulder at a line of women on their way to the mills, with the frost biting their bare toes and their ragged backs bent into hoops, their faces shrivelled and yellow-pale like rat-gnawed cheese? Have you seen the starveling
s of seven and eight struggling along at their mothers’ sides, heading for a workday of thirteen hours, with no hope of any future beyond crippled limbs, rotted lungs, stunted minds?’

  Elly’s hands tightened on her reticule.

  He went on. ‘Do you know what it’s like to suck on a leather strap to ease the hunger ache in your belly, or strip a drunken man for his rags, leaving him in the gutter to freeze? Do you know what it’s like to see hope fade from the eyes of loved ones, knowing it might all have been avoided?’ Paul sighed and leaned back further into the shadowed interior of the cab. ‘I’m a poor companion tonight. The wine has bred melancholy. Forgive me.’

  ‘There’s no need.’ She sensed that, with the mood of the evening destroyed, he wanted their outing to end, and she remained silent until the cab drew up at the hospital gate. As he handed her up the steps to the front door she turned to him. ‘Paul, I’m so glad you asked me to meet your friends. They’re a wonderful band of people. Perhaps I may come with you again one Thursday night.’

  He smiled non-comittally, thanked her for her company, then left. Standing with her hand on the stair newel she listened to the sound of fading hoof beats and thought she had just spent the strangest, most interesting evening of her life in the company of the most enigmatic and, yes, attractive of men.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘It will be a simple amputation of the left leg above the knee, Matron, but as the child is so young, it would wise to have a woman in attendance, to give reassurance.’

  Elly glanced up from the notes in her hand and studied Doctor Houston’s increasingly worn face. He removed his spectacles, polishing them on a dirty handkerchief which he returned to the pocket of his equally filthy coat. She knew he’d been operating since early morning and probably wanted to go off duty.

  The Senior Surgeon was a kind man, Elly believed, but stubborn in his refusal to accept new ideas, of which antisepsis was one. Nor did he take kindly to suggestions from staff, however senior. Elly quailed at the thought of the imminent operation, due to be conducted without anaesthetic. A child. A little boy, already terrified, torn from his mother, suffering a gangrenous infection of the leg, and about to be subjected to the horror of the knife and bone saw.

  ‘Doctor Houston...’

  He hurriedly drew out his watch and examined its face.

  ‘My goodness, can that be the time already? I must go. I leave all in your capable hands, Matron. Good day to you.’ He raced off down the hall, coat tails flapping about his knees.

  Elly sighed and scanned her notes again. Simon Leonides, aged five. The surgeon would be Doctor Phineas Gault. Well, she could at least ensure that the theatre and instruments were scrubbed clean.

  Half an hour later she stood beside the table where a child lay strapped down, unable to as much as wriggle his one good foot. Despite the effects of a dose of laudanum, panic-stricken eyes stared up at her from a tangle of wispy brown hair, and gaslight flickered over a face as pale as skimmed milk. The boy’s breath came in uneven gasps as his thin chest pushed against the restraining leather. His infected limb had been stretched out away from his body, already looking like some alien attachment, a pulpy log of greenish-grey flesh, the toes starting to rot away. The clean instruments lay on a nearby cloth-covered tray, ready for the surgeon. But Mr Gault was late.

  Elly tried to soothe the child, stroking his head and promising him it would soon be over and he would see his mam. She wiped his sweaty face and trickled a little water onto his dry lips, her own eyes shadowed with the knowledge of what was to come, her mouth compressed with anger at the unnecessary pain and danger, and at the surgeon’s callous indifference to his patient’s mental agony while he waited and waited.

  At last the surgeon bustled in brandishing a filthy, rust-stained saw. ‘I found it at last. My favourite tool. I don’t like to operate without it by me.’

  A small man crowned with tight, dark curls, he had tiny pigeon-toed feet that carried him forward in a peculiar trotting gait. His face, set in discontented lines, had an unhealthy cheesy texture as though it rarely felt the sun. Elly concentrated on the awful saw and the small grubby hands holding it, the fingernails dark with encrusted blood.

  ‘Doctor, I have already cleaned the instruments for you.’

  ‘No, thank you, Matron. I prefer to use my own. Ah, I see the patient is ready for me. Well, let’s get down to business. I have a busy schedule this afternoon, and already I have delivered two infants and carried out a post- mortem examination of a most interesting case. The man died of syphilis as a primary cause, but he had these peculiar lesions...’ He prattled on.

  Elly had ceased to listen, her gaze fixed in horror on those dirty hands. She hastened to a nearby table, saying, ‘Doctor, here is a basin of water with chloride of lime, if you’d care to wash now.’

  ‘Wash? Whatever for? I washed this morning. I also particularly dislike the chemical odour. Throw it away, Matron.’ He stared around him. ‘Now, I see the patient is well-restrained and all is in order, so I shall not need your services after all. One of the wardsmen can take over when I’ve finished.’

  ‘Doctor Houston asked me to stay with Simon to comfort him and try to ease him over the terrible shock.’

  Gault seemed nonplussed. ‘The shock? Oh, you mean nerve pain.’ He glanced at the boy’s face for the first time. ‘He’ll probably faint when I reach the bone. But if you’re worried about his screams I can apply the gag.’

  Elly swallowed her indignation and said firmly, ‘As you know, Doctor, shock can kill, and your patient is very young. No doubt you have heard of the recent use of ether to anaesthetise patients undergoing radical surgery. I wonder whether you would care to try it in this case, since I happen to be practised in administering the drug?’

  ‘Ether? Don’t believe in it. Radical nonsense. We are meant to bear pain in this life. The Bible says so. And I must say I do not appreciate uncalled-for advice from a mere nurse.’ Gault’s face had grown pink under its cheesy surface.

  Elly disregarded the warning. ‘Doctor, it can only enhance your fine reputation to increase the number of patients who survive your surgery. The death rate noted by my father in his practice improved considerably when patients did not have to contend with severe pain and shock –’

  In what seemed like an echo from her last terrible day at The Settlement, she heard him say, ‘I have absolutely no interest in your father’s practice, nor in your advice, Matron. I now propose to proceed with the operation.’ Gault strode over to the table, ignoring the child’s whimpering as he sought reassurance from this strange man with the bad-tempered face.

  Elly moved swiftly to the other side and leaned protectively over the child. ‘For God’s sake, will you not wash your filthy hands? You’ve attended two births and handled necrotic tissue this afternoon and now you’re preparing to cut into healthy flesh. You will be passing along infection.’

  Gault’s voice trembled. ‘Get out. Get out now. I don’t want you here. I shall report your insolence to the Committee.’

  ‘Report it to the full Board, if you like. I’ll be doing battle with them anyway.’ Elly, flushed and trembling herself, placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘I won’t leave this child until you’ve finished your butchery and have gone on to the next victim.’

  In answer, Gault picked up a knife from the tray and sliced straight across the boy’s thigh, splitting skin and tissue to the bone. Elly closed her ears to the boy’s shrieks. Her hands flashed to the clamps as she moved into the familiar rhythm of surgery, praying for Gault to be swift. When he grasped the filthy saw, she swallowed the bile in her throat and tried to prepare herself. An unearthly scream was wrenched from the boy’s throat as the blade bit, dragged across bone and nerve and back again, hacking once, twice more before the severed leg dropped away. Elly glanced at the boy’s face and saw he had, indeed, fainted. She measured his pulse while Gault busily sewed away at severed blood vessels, then prepared a flap of skin to go over the
stump. The pulse beat faintly and the cloth beneath the child’s body was saturated in a crimson tide.

  ‘He has lost a great deal of blood,’ she said.

  Gault ignored her. If he prided himself on his speed, Elly thought, he had every right to. Within minutes the job was done and the surgeon stepped back, wiping the blade of his saw on his coat. The little eyes bored into hers.

  ‘The patient is now in your care, Matron.’ He moved with his peculiar gait to the door, then turned and added, ‘I shall not forget this. You will regret your words today.’

  Elly ignored him. She placed a pad saturated with a solution of chloride of lime over the wound and bound it up, then released the straps and lifted the child onto a wheeled stretcher. Under no circumstances would she allow him to be thrown into the chaos of a male ward, with only wardsmen to watch over him. Little Simon would go into the exclusive care of Nurse Pearl.

  Simon Leonides never recovered consciousness. In the early hours of the morning, while Elly and Pearl and his mother watched helplessly at his bedside, his small heart gave up the struggle.

  The following day Elly received notice to attend a special disciplinary meeting of the Board of Directors that afternoon.

  Having already attended three monthly Board Meetings, Elly now knew what to expect, although the faces around the table varied from month to month and there had never before been a full attendance of the twenty-four directors, four major-office holders, medical officers and district surgeons. The room, wreathed in smoke from expensive cigars, was crowded, with extra chairs brought in for those who could not command a seat at the table. At its head presided the Honourable Edward Deas Thomson, Colonial Secretary and intimate of the Governor himself. Beside him, his Vice-President, Captain Dumaresq, M.L.C., tapped a pencil impatiently, and next to him, the Treasurer and Secretary sat with solemn faces.