Back of Sunset

Stephen gave in to the flies: he smote savagely at them. Then he followed Covici and Tristram up another path to Covici’s cottage. A wooden sign nailed to the door proclaimed feebly in peeling paint: Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia.

II

A man sat in the shade of the veranda. He rose as the three men came in the screen door. He was tall and slim, dressed in a bright red shirt, pale blue denim trousers stuck into the tops of fancy riding-boots, a yellow neckerchief and a Stetson with a fancy braided chin-strap; only when he took off the hat did Stephen notice that he was a full-blooded aborigine.

“This is Charlie Pinjarra, me mate,” said Tristram. “We been together now about ten years. We’re heading down to Wattle Creek when we get the word.”

“G’day, Steve.” Charlie Pinjarra had a soft musical voice, one that sounded as if it might never have been raised in anger or protest. “Jack used to tell me a lot about your father.”

Stephen took the slim firm hand offered to him. It was the first time in twenty-five years he had shaken hands with a black man; another memory came back, of a boy’s farewell to a shy aboriginal child, one whose name he couldn’t remember. He was glad now of the dust on his face: it might help disguise the surprise he felt at the fact of Tristram’s mate being a black fellow. He had never been one for the Australian tradition of mateship, although he knew it was a bond that had often taken men into trouble and sometimes even death together. He had no colour prejudice that he knew of, but he had just taken it for granted that Tristram’s mate would be a white man.

“He’s always telling us about your dad,” said Covici, and a laugh rumbled out of him. “There are still a few old-timers up here who remember him. I’ll bet he’d be pleased to know you’ve come back to have a look at the Service. We have an easy time now compared to what he had to put up with in his day.”

It was a long time since Stephen had felt his father so close: the ghost of the tall bent man moved on the dark veranda, and Stephen felt a sudden wave of mixed love and shame, as if he owed a debt that his father had never claimed.

“It wasn’t so good when you first came up here,” said Tristram. “Eighteen years. A lot has happened in that time.”

Covici laughed again, waving a deprecating hand. He led the way into the house and showed Stephen to a spare bedroom. Stephen showered in the small cubicle at the rear of the house: three frogs shared the spray of water with him. He changed into shorts and sandals, wondering if Kate Brannigan would find him more presentable, and joined the other three men in the living-room. It was a large room but Covici, with his own bulk, and what he had collected in the room, had succeeded in making it look small. It was a room cluttered with Covici’s living: books, magazines, four pairs of boots, littered the floor. A pair of buffalo horns hung on one wall; on a shelf beneath was a human skull. An aboriginal shield hung on another wall, a stack of spears, like a sheaf of wheat, piled beneath it in a corner: in this room they did not look out of place, not in the least chi-chi. A huge gramophone stood in another corner, a mound of records on the floor beside it. A library of liquor bottles shared a bookshelf with some well-thumbed books: Scotch stood beside Scott, brandy beside Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.

“I drink,” said Covici, pouring whisky into a medicine glass: a strong dose, Stephen noted, “but not to excess. This country is marked with the graves of men who drank to excess. Not that I can blame them.” He looked out the window, through the screen and the flies battling to get in, at the blazing country running away to the dancing mountains. “It’s a bastard of a country.”

“Stop laughing,” said Tristram. “Why do you stay up here if you hate it so much?”

“Because of the people,” said Covici, and took a long swallow of his whisky. “A doctor is interested in people, not the landscape. How do you think a doctor in the slums survives?” He looked at Stephen. “I worked in the slums of London for five years. Stepney in a December drizzle.” He shook his head. “That was a bastard of a country, too.”

“You’re English?” Stephen said.

“English mother, Italian father. I was intended for the Foreign Office. My father was a passionate Anglophile.” He shoved a sausage thumb in the tie that held up his shorts and pulled it away from his massive belly. “Old Etonian. My father nearly broke his naturalised stiff upper lip when I took up doctoring instead of diplomacy. My old schoolmaster still writes to me, though. He knew I was too soft in the head ever to make good as a diplomat.” He looked at his watch. “It’s nearly four o’clock, time for the afternoon schedule. Would you like to listen in, Steve?”

Stephen looked at Tristram and Charlie. “Go ahead,” said Tristram. “That’s what you’re up here for. Me and Charlie’ll look after ourselves. We’re staying to have tucker with you and the doc. They cook the best meals in the Kim-berleys here at the hospital.”

“I told you it was the best hotel in town,” Covici said, and laughed aloud: the room shook with his merriment, and the Old Etonian tie cut deep into his expanding belly. “Come on, Steve.”

Stephen rose and followed Covici. His father and mother had always called him Steve; he had begun calling himself Stephen only from the day of his graduation. He had not been able to visualise Dr. Steve McCabe, M.B.B.S., on a brass plate; patients looked for dignity, not informality. And Rona and her mother would never have thought of calling him Steve.

They crossed before the front of the hospital and went up the wooden steps to the veranda of the other cottage. A big room opened off the veranda; the door was wide open and they went straight in. Kate Brannigan looked up from a pile of telegrams as they entered.

“Just in time,” she said. “I thought you four men might have got round a bottle and forgotten all about the time.”

“Have I ever forgotten?” Covici said, and slapped a large hand against Kate’s rump. “You’d think I was a drunk, to hear you talk.”

“I have no time for drunks, you know that,” said Kate, and Stephen noticed the tinge of bitterness in her voice. “Do you drink, Dr. McCabe?”

Her bluntness surprised him. “Why, yes.” Then he looked at Covici, who gave him a warning wink, and back at her. “But not to excess. Nobody could call me a drunk.”

“You’ve just gone up in her estimation, then,” said Covici, and sat down before one of the two microphones on the table in the centre of the room. “Explain to him how all this works, Kate.”

“I thought he’d know,” Kate said. “Didn’t your father ever tell you about this?”

“It hurt my father to talk about his time up here,” Stephen said, and made no attempt to hide his rebuking of her: he couldn’t understand her hostility and he was getting tired of it. “He never got over the fact that he had to go back south because of my mother’s health.”

Kate flushed. “I–I’m sorry,” she said, and her voice was no longer calm and impersonal. “I–I have a habit of opening my trap too much.”

“It’s a habit we all have,” said Covici. “Nothing in the world opens quite so easily and readily as the human mouth. The freedom of speech isn’t quite the phrase to describe the looseness of the human tongue. I have twice been knocked cold because I opened my trap too much.”

Kate looked at the fat untidy man with gratitude and affection: a child might have looked at its father in the same way. Then she turned and walked to the wall, where two large maps were pinned. She raised her hand and for the first time Stephen saw the wedding ring on her finger.

“This map shows you our area in relation to the rest of Australia, and this one shows it in detail. This base has a radio range of 400 miles, and it is effective over a quarter of a million square miles – that’s equal to the size of France and almost as big as Texas. That’s Dr. Covici’s practice – anyone in that area can call in here on their transceivers and the doctor will go out to them. There are two of us here, another operator and myself – we go on the air six times a day, and one of us is always available in case of emergency. Each cattle and sheep station has its own transceiver, there are a few at various outposts such as the missions, and one or two prospectors and drovers have portable sets – we have seventy in all tuned in to us here, all tuned to our own wavelengths and frequencies. It’s like a radio-telephone exchange with everybody on the same party line.”

“Which means there is no privacy,” said Covici. “The base also handles all inland telegrams for the post office, so everyone knows everyone else’s business.” He picked up a telegram from the pile on the table. “Your wife threatening proceedings maintenance. That’s to the head stockman out at Spinifex Downs. I know his wife, a first-class bitch. Everyone up here will be on his side.”

“You’re not supposed to read the telegrams,” Kate said.

“When I go out to the stations, do you think the people there only talk to me about their aches and pains? I’m their father confessor, too.” He winked at Stephen. “It’s the only thing that makes the job worthwhile, the gossip and scandal.”

“It’s time to start,” said Kate, and at that moment a woman wearing a nursing sister’s veil came in the door.

“This is Matron Hudson,” Covici said. “Dr. McCabe, Grace.”

Grace Hudson was in her late thirties: her looks had managed to keep pace with her years, but only just: she had been pretty once but now she was only pleasantly attractive. A strand or two of hair peeped out from beneath the veil; Stephen couldn’t be sure whether it was blonde or grey or both. Her figure beneath the thin white uniform was good, if a little plump; Stephen had seen far worse even on novice nurses. He looked at her legs, that was where nurses went worst, but they were good, too. Then he saw Kate Brannigan looking at him and saw the hostility clearly on her face again before she turned away to the microphone in front of her.

“A young handsome doctor,” said Matron Hudson. “I thought they were only in films. The girls will be pleased.”

“What girls?” said Stephen, embarrassed.

“Pilcher and Scott, my two nurses. We’re all man-hungry up here, aren’t we, Kate?”

But Kate had switched on the transmitting set in front of her, and Stephen said, “I’m only here for three weeks.”

“I might have known it,” Grace Hudson said. “None of the eligible men ever stay long here. All we get are the fat old no-hopers.” She pressed Covici’s shoulder; she too looked at him with affection. “Why couldn’t you have been handsome, Doctor? Or even just stayed young?”

“Shut up, Matron,” said the fat old doctor, smiling at her, and waited while Kate began the radio schedule.

There were two sets of controls in front of Kate: one for transmitting and one for reception. She went about her work in a cool professional way: her voice was once more calm and impersonal.

“This is 7 KXQ, Flying Doctor Control Station Winnemincka. 7 KXQ Winnemincka. It is now four o-clock. Dr. Covici is here to take any medical calls. Over.”

A crackle of voices came into the room, and Kate shook her head. “There’s rain about somewhere. Listen to the static.”

“It’s bad up here in the Wet,” Grace Hudson said to Stephen. “It makes it difficult for Dr. Covici when he’s trying to make out symptoms through an earful of static. He’s got a miracle ear, though. I’ve heard him diagnose Hodgkins’ disease out of five minutes of crackle and whistle, and been right, too.”

“Come in, 7KV,” Kate said into her microphone, and nodded at Covici.

A woman’s voice, faint with distance, came out of the receiver. “This is 7KV, Doctor. It’s one of our blacks, he has a bad knee, Doctor. Fell off his horse yesterday. He has a temperature, just over the hundred, and the knee has begun to swell. Over.”

“That’s Kingaroy Station,” Hudson said to Stephen, and pointed to the map. “Two hundred and eighty miles from here. That’s Mrs. King. Has six kids, all of them delivered by Dr. Covici.”

Covici was saying, “Good afternoon, Mrs. King. What is the patient’s name? And his age? Over.”