Free Affection by Ian Townsend Page B

daguerreotype at that time it might look like this: a small grey boat appearing to go backwards through a grey sea. That illusion and the sensation of the engine made me queasy. I studied the horizon, looking beyond the activity on board, the crew tending the ropes, Humphry his flask.
    Turner was standing on the bench seat with his back to me, his head over the side and eagerly facing forward, and if he had a tail it’d be hitting me in the ear.
    He’d insisted on an early start and, in spite of Humphry, had managed to arrange things so that when I arrived at the Government wharf in the dark, the SS Teal was already belching loudly.
    ‘A telegraph to the Board of Health,’ Turner explained. ‘And one back to the port office.’
    More surprising was the appearance from the shadows of Humphry’s buggy.
    ‘Just don’t say a word to me until sun-up.’
    The dawn touched the whitecaps turning them pink, and they chased each other over the sea like galahs. The Teal rolled heavily and for the first time since I’d come north, I shivered. Behind me, Castle Hill sat on Townsville, a granite paperweight lit pink by the rising sun. Ahead was the deep blue strip of Magnetic Island.
    I’d never been there. I didn’t even feel a morbid attraction to the place. All quarantine stations were alike on their glum islands. West Point would be more desolate than most because the regulation quarters, stores and sheds were carried away or wrecked by a cyclone in ’96.
    The island heaved above the waves before us, a natural gaol where people who arrived by a ship carrying some fever or other were left for a quarantine period to sicken, recover or die.
    During the previous two weeks, Humphry had come to my office to tell me stories that I didn’t want to hear. He’d sit on the other side of my desk and say things such as ‘They’re sending a petition to the Home Secretary.’
    I’d been making a list of hygienic household practices: the importance of light, fresh air, sealing foodscraps, poisoning rats, and the like. Humphry had a knack of interrupting when I was busy.
    ‘Every one of them signed it,’ Humphry continued. He rustled a sheet of paper loudly.
    I gave up. ‘What’s that?’
    ‘The petition. Look here. They’ve spelt your name wrong.’
    I looked. Humphry held up three ink-smudged sheets of paper pinned together and jabbed a finger at it. I squinted from my side of the desk.
    ‘They sent you a copy?’
    ‘Hell no,’ he said. ‘This is the original. I promised I’d take it to the post office.’
    I put my pen in its stand and sat back.
    ‘They asked you to take a petition that demands your dismissal and just, what, pop it in the mail?’
    ‘Your dismissal too. But no, of course they didn’t ask me. It was the bloke who runs the supply lighter who begged me to post it for him, with the other mail.’
    Humphry had then just come back from giving the Cintra passengers another check-up.
    ‘Saved him the trip from the wharf,’ he said. ‘And he did give me a lift over and back, so it was the least I could do.’
    I leaned across and snatched the petition from his hands and began to read it through.
    ‘You’re breaking the law, interfering with the mail,’ I said. ‘You know that?’
    ‘Not at all. I’m still on my way to the post office.’
    ‘You’re going to post it?’
    ‘I haven’t decided. I might. Might even sign it myself.’
    I sighed. Even the Methodist ministers had signed it. I handed it back to him.
    I heard no more about it after that, but it added to my growing anxiety about the island. I was in a difficult position and Humphry wasn’t helping. He liked to poke sticks into wasps’ nests and didn’t seem to care if other people got stung.
    It was hard to avoid him. Given the nature of our jobs, Humphry the Queensland Government doctor and I the municipal one, our paths crossed when it came to the public health of Townsville, so it seemed sensible to work together.
    That’s what Humphry