The Dog with Seven Names Page 5

  Doc and I sat together, listening to birds squabble over places to roost. After a while I heard footsteps and smelt the man called Fred. He wheeled a bed onto the verandah. Beth was lying on it. Doc checked Beth’s leg and shone a torch into her eyes. Then he pressed the long tube around his neck onto her chest.

  ‘All good,’ he said.

  I wagged my tail.

  Matron called Doc and he went inside. Beth was alone on the verandah. I put one paw on the bottom step, then another. Soon I was next to her bed. I woofed softly.

  ‘Flynn!’ she squealed.

  I licked Beth’s hand and she told me how frightened she’d been.

  ‘But I’m doing my best to be brave,’ Beth added.

  She told me stories about her family, just like Elsie used to. At last the little girl fell asleep. I nudged her hand under the net covering her bed and stood guard, snapping at any mosquitoes that buzzed around her.

  Then I heard footsteps. It was Matron. She stared at me. I snapped another mosquito. Matron smoothed Beth’s sheets, rearranged the netting, then turned on one black shoe and strode away. I stretched out beneath Beth’s bed. When Doc came back, Beth woke and asked, ‘Where’s Flynn?’

  Doc pointed under the bed.

  ‘She’s been watching over you while you slept.’

  ‘What about Matron?’

  ‘Matron and Flynn have come to a truce.’

  ‘What’s a truce?’

  ‘It’s like soldiers in the war coming to an agreement. But with Matron and Flynn, they’re just pretending they can’t see each other.’

  Beth giggled and the jingly sound made my tail thump on the floorboards.

  ‘I can see her and hear her,’ Beth said.

  Doc laughed. ‘I can too,’ he said, stroking my ears.

  Fred reckoned Matron was stricter than the Army whose soldiers filled Port Hedland’s dusty streets. She loved rules and made sure everyone obeyed them – even Doc. I soon learnt that it was best to keep out of Matron’s way. She had a special soap called carbolic. It smelt horrible.

  Matron said that if I was going to stay then I must have regular scrubs with carbolic. After the first bath I ran to find something to roll in. Even cat pee would smell nicer than carbolic. But after I rolled in the dirt, Fred grabbed me and dragged me back to be washed again. After a while I understood that I had to put up with the soap, and also that the carbolic stopped my fleas – they must have hated the smell even more than me. I stopped wriggling when Fred scrubbed me, and soon smelt like Elsie’s princess again. A soapy kind of princess.

  Beth slept on the verandah, where white lattice blocked the moonlight but let in the sea breeze. Each night I crept up the steps to be near my little friend. Beth was tucked safely under a mosquito net, but she tossed and wriggled under the stiff sheets. As I guarded Beth, my ears twitched at the interesting new sounds.

  There was a worried feeling at the hospital, like the one at Elsie’s station before the family evacuated. Whenever she woke, Beth whispered, ‘I’m frightened, Flynn.’ Her small hand hung down from the sheets searching for my head and I made sure I was always near enough for Beth to reach me.

  Matron changed Beth’s bandages two times a day. After her evening medicine, the nurses brought Beth a warm drink and an arrowroot biscuit. Beth always gave me half her biscuit, just like Elsie used to.

  During the day aeroplanes buzzed over the town. Women, children and babies came to the hospital. They were leaving towns called Derby, Wyndham and Broome to travel to Geraldton and then on to a place called Perth.

  Every day more people came. Some spoke with strange, gruff-sounding words. Matron said they were Dutch. The Dutch people were also evacuating. They’d left a place called Java. I wished Elsie was here to show me all the places on her map.

  Doc gave the Dutch children medicine and checked their eyes, ears and chests. Matron learnt some of the gruff words and tried to make the ladies comfortable while Lee Wah made tea and sandwiches. The women stared into space as they ate. They smelt tired and frightened. After a few hours Fred took the women and their children back to the airstrip. The sound of so many aeroplanes terrified Beth, even though I stayed by her side.

  ‘Don’t fret,’ Matron said. ‘Your father will be here soon.’

  ‘What if the planes are Japanese bombers?’ Beth worried after Matron had left.

  But none of them were. Fred knew about planes. As they circled the town, he taught me which ones belonged to the air force and the army and which ones were evacuation planes. Fred explained which plane was a Swallow, a Dragon, an Electra or Lodestar.

  ‘And there are flying boats that can land on water as well as the land,’ he said.

  I watched the ocean but never saw any of them.

  Fred also knew the pilots. He waved to Jimmy Woods when he swooped the hospital in his Electra. Sometimes the pilots landed on the beach for fun. We gathered on the verandah to watch them whizz along the sand.

  Soon my ears knew which planes were arriving long before anyone saw them. When Fred saw me watching the sky, he learnt to stop what he was doing and watch with me. Then he’d call, ‘Don’t worry, everyone, that’s just Jimmy,’ or, ‘Look out, here comes Len.’

  While Beth and the other patients rested through hot afternoons, Doc let me follow him down the path to his home. I met his mate and her milky-smelling baby. The baby gurgled at me and tried to pull my ears. Other days, Fred took me for a walk past Doc’s house to cool off in the ocean.

  I’d never seen so much water. Fred laughed when I sniffed and tasted waves. They were like the salt lick for cows on Elsie’s station. Fred threw a stick into the waves and yelled, ‘Fetch.’ I shook my fur. If that ocean went all around Australia, I wasn’t going any further than my paws!

  Some days Doc and I walked onto a bridge that stretched over the water. Doc called it a jetty. It was made of wood with metal tracks along the middle. Sometimes ships were tied to its side. The ships seemed much bigger than the ones in Elsie’s schoolbooks. I remembered the radio words about War smashing a ship called Sydney and shuddered.

  An old man often sat at the far end of the jetty throwing string into the water while boys jumped back and forth across the metal tracks. One day, a boy fell into the ocean. I barked until the old man threw a tyre kind of thing from the jetty into the water. The boy grabbed it and splashed back to safety. As I leant over to watch, Doc said, ‘Don’t fall in, Flynn, or I’ll have to throw a lifebuoy to you too.’

  Each day the smell from Beth’s wound improved.

  I was under Beth’s bed when her father arrived.

  ‘Daddy,’ she cried.

  He hugged her tight then asked Doc about her leg.

  ‘It’s healing nicely,’ Doc said. ‘She won’t lose it.’

  ‘Thanks, Doc,’ he mumbled, wiping his eyes. ‘We’re in your debt.’ Beth’s father looked around and added, ‘Struth, you’re busy!’

  ‘Run off our feet,’ Doc agreed. ‘In the past two weeks, thousands of evacuees have come through Hedland from northern towns and the Dutch East Indies. We’ve had at least five thousand, but our radio man, Everett, reckons it’s closer to eight thousand. Thank goodness they don’t all need medical help. Our supplies are dangerously low.’

  Beth’s father shook his head. ‘I’ve never seen so many people!’

  ‘They don’t stay long, usually just a few hours. There’s a plane going to Geraldton later today. We don’t have child-size crutches, but if you’re able to carry Beth, I can get you onto it.’

  Geraldton! I wagged my tail. Was that where all the aeroplanes were going?

  Beth’s father lifted his daughter into his arms.

  ‘The sooner we leave the better, Doc.’

  I nuzzled Beth’s soft hands, feeling sad and happy at the same time. Sad that Beth didn’t need to clutch me any more, but happy that her leg was getting better.

  ‘I wish we had some way to repay you,’ Beth’s father said.

  Doc pointed
to me. ‘I don’t suppose you need a dog?’

  I stood still, waiting for the man’s answer. If they took me to Geraldton, Elsie might find me. But what if she’d evacuated to the place called Perth? I looked up at Doc. I loved Beth, but wasn’t unhappy at the hospital. I liked the interesting smells and Lee Wah’s treats. I liked the way Matron did the same things at the same time each day. Most of all I liked Doc. I felt safe with him. When everyone else was frightened, Doc was always calm.

  ‘The dog’s been wonderful for our girl,’ Beth’s father said, ‘and I’m grateful. But once my wife and children are safe in Perth, I’ll be signing up for the militia. Grace will have her hands full with the three kids. She couldn’t manage a dog as well.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Doc replied. ‘The patients love Flynn. She has a knack of knowing what they need. I’m just worried that we might have to evacuate suddenly.’

  I nudged Doc, trying to tell him that I could evacuate too. Doc patted my head, then took a letter from his pocket and handed it to Beth’s father. ‘Maybe you could drop this in Geraldton when you refuel. The mail is unpredictable at the moment and I’d like to be sure it arrives safely.’

  I nosed the letter in Doc’s hand, wanting to rub paw prints all over it in case Elsie saw them.

  ‘Of course,’ Beth’s father said. He put the letter in his pocket as Beth hugged me goodbye. My head was squeezed against her chest and as I listened to Beth’s heart, I tried to squash the natural dog fear of being squeezed tight.

  After Beth and the other evacuees left for the airstrip, Doc sat in the yard with a cup of tea. I crouched beside him wondering why everyone I loved kept leaving me. The only patients on the verandah now were old Jock and his friend, Bluey. They were both asleep. I lay beside Doc and rolled onto my back. If I stared at him long enough, maybe he would tickle my tummy.

  Doc missed my signal and opened his newspaper instead.

  ‘Listen to this, Flynn,’ he said. ‘Since the fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin, people are worried the same things could happen in Perth.’ Doc looked at me and added, ‘Or here in Hedland!’

  I wagged my tail. The words meant nothing to me, but I liked being included. Doc often shared his newspapers.

  ‘Listen to this, Matron,’ he’d say, but it was hard to stop Matron, so Doc read to me instead. I loved hearing him tell the news; just as I’d loved listening to Elsie tell me stories.

  As Doc flicked the pages, I tried to hear Elsie’s voice in my mind. Some days it was harder to remember …

  ‘There have been air-raid practises in Perth,’ Doc continued. ‘The newspaper says that if there’s an attack, an organised community, who know what to do, will have a better chance of surviving a bombing raid.’

  Doc took a deep breath and scratched my belly at last. ‘I suppose that’s true,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to scare old Jock and Bluey, but perhaps we should have an air-raid practice at the hospital. Goodness knows what Matron will say.’

  Matron liked the idea. She found a shiny whistle and played air-raid games until she smelt deeply content. Although Doc was the alpha, Matron was boss inside the hospital. I kept out of her way and went to visit Doc’s wife until the whistling stopped. She always had a kind word for me and sometimes she saved me porridge scrapings. It was peaceful lying under her verandah, listening to the baby gurgle and plop onto its padded bottom.

  My life in Port Hedland settled into a routine. Before dawn, I circled the yard making sure that no cats or rats had tried to sneak in. At sun-up when Lee Wah came out to water his vegetable garden, I followed him around. Then I flopped outside the kitchen while he made breakfast for the patients. Lee Wah saved me tasty scraps when he was in a good mood.

  Port Hedland was busy. Men wearing soldier clothes like Elsie’s brothers dug long ditches and marched through the dusty streets. Some of the men were kind. They called me to come over for a pat. Others threw rocks at me.

  During the day I stayed close to the hospital, unless one of the nurses, Molly or Edith, took me to play in the water at Pretty Pool. If Doc evacuated I didn’t want to be left behind. At night I roamed the streets of Hedland, sniffing buildings just in case Elsie was near. Aeroplanes never came after dark so that was the best time to search for her.

  I usually waited until after dinner, just in case there was leftover mutton. Then I trotted along the beach to check all was well at Doc’s house. Some nights when the baby cried, I crouched near the window listening to Doc’s wife hum the little one to sleep, the way Elsie used to hum to me.

  Next I wandered along the jetty, watching the moon shine in the sky and in the water at the same time. I never got tired of doing that.

  If the mosquitoes were especially annoying, or if the moon went behind a cloud, I left the beach to sniff around the shops and houses. Elsie hadn’t been in any of them.

  Port Hedland was full of curious sounds as well as smells. In the big hotel soldiers laughed and shouted, so I usually hurried past. Other dogs barked, warning me to keep away from their homes, and I did. After roaming the streets and finding no trace of Elsie, I went back to the hospital and slept. In my dreams my golden eyes saw Elsie and knew that she missed me. My instincts told me that if I walked with the ocean on one side and the morning sun on the other, then one day I would find her. Once I even set out to begin the journey, but without water I couldn’t go very far.

  One morning as I left the jetty, tiny shelled creatures flipper-scrambled across the beach, racing each other to the water. Seagulls squawked, swooping down to snap at them. I nosed one of the funny little things and licked it, wondering how it would taste. Not good. I left them to the gulls.

  When Doc wasn’t flying, he came to the hospital after breakfast to check Matron’s patients and to do what he called ‘surgery’ in a sharp-smelling room. He also went to a small-hospital to help the dark-skinned ladies whose time had come to become mothers. I followed and Doc chatted to me as he walked.

  The humans separated themselves into different hospitals. I wasn’t sure why, but it had something to do with their skin. Back on Elsie’s station, dogs of all types lived in the kennel yard. They were prized for how well they worked, not for how they looked. My mother had light-coloured fur and she was smaller than the blueys, but the Boss said she could run with the best of them. Humans were different …

  The people at the small-hospital loved me. While Doc worked inside, I sat outside with the Aunties. They patted me and admired my dingo eyes. One day a young boy sat with us. Screams came from inside the hospital and I felt the boy’s fear.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ an Aunty told him, ‘your mamma will be fine.’

  Her words didn’t soften the boy’s fear. His heartbeat was fast and his body trembled. I heard him swallow a whimper, and I licked his arm. Then I started to dance. I spun in circles on my hind legs until at last the boy laughed. The boy’s father came along and asked, ‘Who’s this special fellow?’

  ‘Doc calls him Flynn,’ the Aunties said.

  The tall man grinned and threw a stick for me. We played until at last a baby cried and the ladies all smiled.

  Flying with Doc in his plane was my favourite thing. We went to places called Warrawagine, Marble Bar, Pardoo and Roebourne. Before taking off, I nudged Doc as he checked the wings and engine. I was always impatient to be in the cool sky.

  ‘The plane’s name is John Flynn,’ Doc told me as he tapped its wheels. ‘She’s named after the Reverend, like you. And she’s a Fox Moth.’

  I wagged my tail, but didn’t think the plane looked like either a moth or a fox. And I still didn’t know what a Reverend was. Humans are strange the way they give names to things. I’d been Princess, Dog and Flynn. I snapped at a fly and wondered whether I’d have any more names before I found Elsie.

  One evening, after a day of flying, and when all Doc’s patients were settled, he sat in the yard telling me stories from his newspaper. Lee Wah brought tea for Doc as he stretched his feet and turned
the crackly pages.

  ‘Hey, Flynn, listen to this! The RAAF says that Japanese aircraft flew over Darwin, but there were no bombs dropped.’ Doc frowned. ‘I hope the enemy isn’t planning another raid on Darwin …’

  I heard a distant rumble and looked to the sky. It was the plane they called Electra. Doc watched my nose point upwards and his body stiffened. When he saw the plane, Doc relaxed and waved to the pilot. The plane dipped its wings.

  ‘More evacuees.’ Doc sighed, putting down his paper. ‘Lucky the last lot are on their way to Geraldton.’ He drank the rest of his tea and tickled my ear. ‘Your little Beth will be there now, Flynn.’

  With my Elsie, I thought, rolling onto my back as Doc hurried into the hospital.

  4

  Hendrik’s Engel

  Early March 1942

  I was chasing parrots when Everett ran across the yard from his radio hut next to the hospital.

  ‘The Japanese have attacked Broome,’ he shouted. ‘Their Zeroes strafed flying boats in Roebuck Bay and Jimmy’s flying injured women and children to Hedland. Some are badly burnt.’

  There was a moment of silence. We could have heard a flea jump. Then the humans sprang into action.

  Matron bellowed orders. ‘Molly, prepare the operating theatre.

  Edith, tell Lee Wah to boil the copper and sterilise Doc’s instruments. Fred, we’ll need to ration the water. Ask Sergeant Vince to bring all the waterbags his men can spare.’

  Molly, Edith and Fred ran to follow Matron’s instructions. I kept out of the way, sensing trouble.

  Jock and Bluey, the old-timers on the verandah, called for someone to stop and tell them what was going on.

  ‘Broome’s been bombed,’ Fred yelled. ‘The Japs attacked flying boats that were packed with Dutch evacuees. Broome hospital can’t cope so they’re flying here. Others are travelling overland on trucks.’

  Jock shook his head. ‘They’ll have trouble on the tracks around Eighty Mile Beach.’