Amongst the Dead by Robert Gott Page A

began to hum ‘In the Mood’. Brian is an excellent dancer, and he moved easily and fluidly to the syncopation he was hearing in his head. We began apart, both gyrating independently, and then came together in a graceful and energetic rendition of the dance. I threw Brian over my hip and between my legs, and we span and twirled and stomped — and didn’t believe Fred and Ginger could have done better under the circumstances. When we’d finished we were suddenly aware that work on the wharf had stopped, and men were staring at us, some with hammers poised in mid-air. If this had been a movie they would have applauded; we were rewarded instead with a few disbelieving sniggers, and the workers returned to their labours.
    We were both breathing heavily; I, for one, had underestimated how much energy the jitterbug required.
    ‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s good, but it’s only a few minutes. I’m sure they’re expecting a bit more.’
    ‘Maybe we could teach them a few of the steps.’
    ‘They’ve got leprosy, Brian. If they start throwing each other around, bits will fall off.’
    The teacher in Brian, always lurking just beneath the surface, couldn’t resist correcting my apparently poor understanding of the condition.
    ‘All right. All right. I was only joking, Brian. For heaven’s sake.’
    ‘I’m glad you can see the funny side of leprosy, Will, because frankly it doesn’t strike me as one of nature’s wittiest diseases.’
    ‘Well, I guess we all have our favourites. Now if I could just drag you down from your pulpit for a moment, do you have any ideas of a non-earnest variety for our programme?’
    Brian sighed with familiar, exaggerated resignation and said, ‘I thought I might recite “The Geebung Polo Club” — I know it off by heart — and maybe “Bellbirds”, and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.’
    I wasn’t sure how the lepers would react to Brian’s English curriculum, but I had to acknowledge that recitation was the go. My only difficulty was in deciding which speeches from which plays would be best calculated to make a leper forget his hideous condition for a few, precious minutes. Something from Cymbeline perhaps, and definitely a piece from Titus Andronicus , my performance of which had been thwarted a few months earlier by events beyond my control. In one of those flashes of inspiration that come whenever my attention is focussed on Shakespeare, I decided that I would sing a couple of the songs from Twelfth Night . I’d have to forgo the lute, of course, and do it unaccompanied, but I thought that the ostentatious plucking of a stringed instrument with healthy fingers might anyway be seen as rubbing their noses in it rather.
    The boat, which was little more than a canoe, arrived, and in a few minutes we stepped ashore on Channel Island. It was a desolate place — almost without trees of any kind, as if the landscape itself had contracted leprosy. We were met by a nurse in a uniform that had once been white, but which had been poorly dyed a khaki colour. (She told us later that the white uniforms stood out dangerously in the shadows of slit trenches.) There were people moving about near a group of buildings which I supposed constituted the lazaret.
    Sister Lucille greeted us effusively, and led us to a small, barren courtyard where the beginnings of an audience had started to assemble. They chatted amongst themselves, and the evidence of the awful infection that afflicted them was immediately apparent in the faces of only one or two of them. There were Europeans, Malays, Chinese, and Aboriginal people amongst the small crowd, and they sat together in the democratic intimacy of the ostracised and the diseased.
    Sister Lucille found a gramophone and set it up in the dirt at our feet. Thus far, neither Brian nor I had said a word to any member of the audience, despite their sitting or standing in close proximity to us, and I assiduously avoided catching anyone’s eye. A