Read In the Wet for Free Online Page A

saw Stevie.”
    “Is there another doctor coming here, at any time?”
    “There’s nothing fixed,” she said. “I’ve got it in mind. But it’s a bit difficult, with him living out there in the bush. I don’t suppose he’d come in to see a doctor, and anyway the doctor would be gone before we could get a message to him, probably. It’s only a fancy that I got when I saw him this time. It may have been just that he had a hangover that day.”
    I kept it in my mind that I should go out to the market garden upon Dorset Downs before the wet, to visit Liang Shih and Stevie in their home. But a visit such as that came low down on my list of priorities; I could not hope to do much for them spiritually, and their house was off the beaten track and difficult for me to get to without a truck of my own. I always meant to go to them before the wet, and I never went.
    Those last few weeks were very exhausting. November is always a hot month in North Queensland, and that year itwas particularly trying. I was hurrying against time, moreover, to finish getting around my parish while travelling was still easy, and I took a good deal out of myself. I knew that when the rains set in about Christmas time I should have plenty of time for rest in my vicarage, since it would be impossible to move very far from Landsborough till March or April. I drove myself hard in those last few weeks; I’m not a young man any longer, and I must confess that I got very tired indeed.
    We got a few short rainstorms early in December and as usual these made conditions worse than ever, for they did little to relieve the heat and brought the humidity up very high. Every movement now made one sweat profusely, and once wet one’s clothes stayed wet for a long time. I got prickly heat, which is a thing I seldom suffer from, and the continuous itching made it very difficult to sleep. Everyone began to suffer from nervous irritability and bad temper, and everyone looked anxiously each day for the rains that would bring this difficult season to an end.
    The rains came at last, a few days before Christmas. For three days it rained practically without ceasing, heavily and continuously. The dusty roads gradually turned into mud wallows, and motor traffic ceased for the time being. Landsborough retired into winter quarters, so to speak. I lay on my bed for most of those three days revelling in the moderation of the heat and in the absence of sunshine, and reading the fourth volume of Winston Churchill’s war memoirs which an old friend had sent me from Godalming.
    The wet brought its own problems, of course. I had to go down to the hotel twice a day for my meals and it was still so hot that a raincoat was almost unbearable; if one walked down in a coat one got as wet from sweat as if one went without one. If the rain was light I went without a coat, because wet clothes are no great hardship in thetropics. The difficulty, of course, lay in getting any dry clothes to put on; my vicarage has no fireplace and there was now no sunshine to dry anything. Mrs. Roberts was very kind and let me dry some of my washing by her kitchen fire, but the difficulty was a real one, and I often had to wear wet clothes all day and sleep in a wet bed.
    Christmas came and went. We had a carol service in the church with
Good King Wenceslas
and
See amid the Winter Snow
, and Miss Foster had to spend some time and energy in explaining to the children what snow was, a task made more difficult by the fact that she had never seen it herself. We had a children’s party in the Shire Hall with a Christmas tree with imitation snow on it, and I dressed up as Santa Claus and gave the presents away. The aeroplane from Cloncurry brought us the cinema operator with his projector, three dramas, and
Snow White
, which none of the children had ever seen, so altogether we had quite a merry time.
    After these excitements things went rather flat in Landsborough, and the rain fell steadily. In these conditions