Those words alone would have been enough. Men from the north never did think to summon the doctor without grievous cause. But when I looked at him, my Magnus, looked at him properly—the stewy damp of his florid face, the sunken chest heaving—fear wormed through me. This was more than a fever. This I had seen before.

~

In Fremantle Hospital they confirmed it was flu. Had it been the year before, during the epidemic, we would all have been quarantined, the whole household, but it turned out that none of us came down with it. Perhaps that spoke of how little time Magnus had been spending at home.

As I stood outside his room, my face a mask of gauze and cotton mittens on my hands, they told me he was malnourished and his liver wasn’t functioning as it should any more.

How much does he drink? Is he anxious? Does he sleep well at night? Headaches?

I don’t know. Aye. No. Aye.

The doctors seemed surprised that Magnus Tulloch survived at all, but gradually he got stronger, his breathing less a labour. He even put on a little weight, but it wasn’t enough, no.

Have to get out of here, Meggie, he would say when I visited.

Hush, I assured him, they’ll not be keepin’ ye longer than they need to, but it wasn’t the whole story. There was talk of sending him to a hospital for veterans, to have him assessed. I could only imagine what Magnus Tulloch would be saying to that.

But in the end, nothing came of it. He was discharged with a paper bag of bottles—aspirin for pain, bromide to make him sleep. And strict orders about what he’d to eat to build up his strength—milk and cheese, eggs and meat. I looked across at him, this man of water, so pale, so thin. Eggs—aye, we could manage that, thanks to Clementina’s chickens. Eggs and vegetables from the garden were the centre of all our meals. But as for the rest? Well. If Castlemaine didn’t take him back, there’d not be food like that on our table, but it never seemed to cross the doctors’ minds, what food cost.

Clementina and I talked about it later. She flicked her fingers at the doctors’ orders. Oatmeal, neeps an’ fish cheap from the Greeks—that’s what will stick to his bones. Just like at home. An’ don’t ye be lookin’ at me like that, Meggie Tulloch. There’s some things from home is worth rememberin’.

No alcohol was the other instruction they gave him. I caught myself feeling happy, for once, about our poverty: the poorer we were, the less Magnus could drink. And wasn’t that a thought to make me ashamed.

~