Goldfields Girl

by Elaine Forrestal

  February 1894

  In the morning I slept a little later than usual. I was in the kitchen with my tea and toast when Mr Wisdom came in.

  ‘Warden Finnerty wants to see you, Clara. He’s waiting in my office,’ Mr Wisdom said. I wondered why, but I had a mouthful of toast and couldn’t ask. Thinking that the Finnertys must need fresh towels in their room, I finished my tea, wiped my hands on my apron, and went to speak to him.

  The warden was standing in the tiny room, which had been partitioned off from the dining room. He was looking out through the narrow window, roughly cut into the wall to let in some light. He turned when he heard me come in.

  ‘Ah, Clara,’ he said, and indicated a chair that belonged in the dining room. It didn’t feel right to sit down before he did, but he insisted. I watched him pace the small room several times. He stopped and stood in front of me.

  ‘I’m so sorry to have to do this, Clara, but I need to interview you,’ he said. I waited, wondering why he was being so formal.

  ‘Were you with Jack last night?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘At the dance.’

  ‘And after the dance?’

  ‘We went for a stroll, out towards the Sandgroper.’

  He nodded. ‘Did you and Jack have an argument?’

  ‘No. Why would we?’

  ‘I believe you had a falling out … in the pub the other day.’ His eyes held mine and I felt confused. Had I done something wrong? Mr Finnerty was very precise about the law, but he had often said to me that he trusted my judgement.

  He turned his back, took a few steps towards the window, then came and sat down again. Resting his hand on my arm he said, ‘There is no easy way to tell you this, Clara. Jack was found dead this morning.’

  I stared at him. Then I smiled and shook my head.

  ‘No, that can’t be right,’ I said. ‘There’s some mistake. Jack walked home with me about midnight. He’ll be sleeping in his tent, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m afraid there is no mistake.’ The warden was looking at me with such a deep sadness in his eyes that, even as my voice denied it, I felt my body folding in on itself, slumping into the chair.

  ‘No!’ I said again. The warden waited. Suddenly I could not sit there any longer. I jumped up, knocking the chair aside. ‘Where is he? I want to see him,’ I demanded.

  ‘I’m sorry, Clara, but I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The warden hesitated. He righted my chair. Then he drew in a deep breath and said, ‘Because it would be better for you to remember him the way he was – when you last saw him.’

  I sat down heavily. This can’t be happening, I thought. Jack is alive. Of course he is. He will be having a good laugh at all of us thinking otherwise. He’s probably gone off to do some prospecting, or to visit Padraig at Tipperary.

  ‘Please, I need to see Jack,’ I said. ‘If he’s not in his camp, I can probably find him.’

  ‘We have found him,’ Warden Finnerty said. As the silence lengthened between us, a terrible certainty crept into my soul.

  ‘Why can I not see him, then?’ I said in a very small voice that did not seem to belong to me.

  ‘It will only cause you more pain,’ the warden said, pacing again.

  ‘But I have to see Jack.’ I took a step towards the door, but the warden stood blocking my way. When I tried to dodge around him he caught hold of my wrist and held it tight.

  ‘Jack was found dead on the ridge outside town,’ he said. ‘With a rifle beside him. His face has been blown off.’

  My hands flew to my own face. I heard a cry of anguish, an injured animal sound that at first I didn’t recognise, but my mouth was open, my head flung back. I tasted salt in the corner of my mouth. Hot tears were pooling there. I leapt to my feet. ‘I want to see him!’ I shouted. ‘I want to see Jack!’

  Then Mrs Fagan was there. She placed a mug of hot tea on the desk beside me. A strong smell of brandy rose up with the steam. ‘Drink this, pet,’ she said gently. I stared at the mug as if it would bite me. Then I swept it onto the floor and fled.

  February 1894

  The desert wind cut like a knife. I shouted into it defiantly. Great cries of anguish came out of my mouth, wrenched from the deepest part of my being. Ghastly sounds that flew shrieking into the vast, empty spaces of the land and died there. The shifting sands absorbed them. Rocks, flecked with fool’s gold, scattered them, and hid them amongst the bones of other dead things. ‘Jack! Jack! Wait! Don’t go without me.’

  I must have been making plans, not even knowing I did so, never really doubting that my life and Jack’s would always be linked. One minute I was angry with him for being so careless. Because it had to have been an accident. He wouldn’t leave me like that on purpose, and who could want to hurt Jack? The next minute I was furious with myself for never saying the most important things to him. The future had been swept up and thrown away, discarded in the empty shafts, the ‘white man’s holes’ of Coolgardie. What use was a king’s ransom? All the gold in the world would not buy one more moment of time for me and Jack. I turned my head to one side, then the other, looking for some way forward. Even with my eyes wide open I could not see anything but emptiness. My head began to turn more quickly, from side to side, until I was shaking it like a dog with a flea in his ear, desperately trying to dislodge the unwanted truth.

  Finally exhausted, I slumped down on the sand.

  Sometime later I became conscious of a human presence. I lifted my head. An Aboriginal woman with a baby on her hip stood looking down at me. I got slowly to my feet. She did not move, but stood regarding me steadily with her large black eyes. The naked baby stared at me with its matching black eyes.

  ‘You bin sleep long time, missus,’ the woman said at last.

  I looked up at the sun and saw that it was well past midday. The sky was bleached almost white. There was not a cloud anywhere to cast a cooling shadow on the parched land. I shook red dirt off my skirt and tugged at my apron. It was crumpled and stained with tears.

  ‘Lallie,’ the woman said. I tried to speak, but my mouth was dry and I couldn’t get my tongue to work. ‘Lallie,’ she said again, placing one hand on the bones of her chest above her bare breasts.

  I moved my tongue over cracked lips. ‘Clara,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘Come.’

  Other, more distant voices came softly at first, then more urgently, and I shifted my gaze in their direction. Three women and several children stood in a group about fifty yards away, watching us. Lallie beckoned and they slowly came closer, eyes lowered.

  ‘Come,’ Lallie urged, and started to walk. The sun blazed down. My skin felt tight, sunburnt. I looked around for any sort of landmark that would tell me where I was. In my anguish I had broken the first rule of this unforgiving land. I had not given a single thought to my surroundings, or to checking my direction. There was nothing I recognised. Without Lallie I would be hopelessly lost. I hurried after her.

  Lallie moved effortlessly over the sand while I stumbled along behind. The sun beat down on my unprotected head. My dry eyes squinted against the glare.

  Lallie stopped and pointed. At first, I could see nothing but low, sandy ridges, blown by the wind to form ripples on a blood-red sea. Lallie pointed again. Away in the distance, scoured into the plain, were two straight lines, starkly white against the red-brown country. They could only be the tracks of many wheels.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, and held out my hand to Lallie. With a slight nod of her head she hitched the baby higher on her hip and walked away. ‘Thank you,’ I called after her.

  It was mid-afternoon, but there was no-one in the kitchen when I reached the hotel. I heard voices in the dining room and hesitated in the adjoining doorway.

  ‘Clara!’ Mrs Fagan saw me first. ‘There ya are, pet! Come and have a cup of tea.’ I didn’t move, but looked at them in turn.

  ‘We were worried about you,’ Mr Wisdom said gently.
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br />   ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Arthur Williams looked at my dishevelled hair, my sunburnt face. Then he went behind the bar and lifted a bottle of brandy from the shelf.

  ‘Thank ya, Arthur.’ Mrs Fagan took the bottle from him, put her other arm around my shoulder and ushered me into the kitchen.

  Mrs Fagan poured tea into two mugs and laced them both with brandy. We sat together in silence, sipping the strong, sweet liquid. When I had drained my mug, Mrs Fagan offered me more.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said. She poured another mug of tea for herself and seemed in no hurry to go on with the work, which I was feeling guilty about. But I didn’t move. My legs felt weak and shaky. I wanted to go on sitting there, safe in the kitchen, with the familiar sounds of the hotel going about its usual business, and the solid presence of Mrs Fagan sitting opposite.

  ‘Do you know an Aboriginal woman called Lallie, Mrs Fagan?’ I asked, wanting to keep her there just a little longer.

  ‘Can’t say I do,’ Mrs Fagan replied. ‘I do think it’s a shame, what’s happenin’ to them. It’s our fault, mind. Ya can’t expect them to keep themselves healthy when camels foul their waterholes and the dams and soaks are so dry.’

  ‘I say the same thing to Jack – said the same thing.’ I looked at Mrs Fagan, who reached across the table and patted my hand. ‘Lallie showed me the way home today,’ I said.

  ‘’Twas kind of her, so it was,’ Mrs Fagan said. ‘No doubt she went out of her way.’

  ‘I had not wanted to be brought back. I had wanted to be with Jack.’ I knew I was not making any sense, but I wanted to say more, as if words would bring back some certainty to the world, if only I could produce enough of them. Mrs Fagan sat listening, nodding occasionally, until no more words came. Then she covered my hand with hers.

  ‘Come now,’ she said and stood up. She took my arm and walked with me to my room. I clung to her and she helped me into bed. My eyes were already closing when she leaned down and said softly, ‘Nothin’ will ever be the same as yer first love, pet. But ya’re here, and Jack is not. Think on it, so.’

  The next morning I woke with grit in my mouth and puffy eyes. I got up and washed my face, rinsed out my mouth, being careful not to swallow any of the water from the bowl, and dressed in clean clothes. My mind was numb, but I felt the need to be moving around, doing things, anything that kept me busy and stopped me from thinking too much. It was still early, but I went to the kitchen. The new batch of dough had risen overnight and everything was neat and in its place. I wondered how long Mrs Fagan had had to stay up working, on her own, to make it that way, and felt a rush of gratitude for her unquestioning support.

  I stirred the coals in the kitchen fire and added the last of the wood from the box next to the hearth. The box needed refilling so I carried it out to the woodheap at the back of the shed. As always, the brushwood had been sorted, cut into different lengths and neatly stacked according to size. I filled the box and carried it back to the kitchen. The sun was not yet up and the kitchen was still dim. As I stepped through the door a figure came towards me. It was Jack’s friend Bill Lockhart.

  ‘Hello, Bill,’ I said, but didn’t look at him. I knew he would speak about Jack. My feelings were still too raw, my thoughts too confused. I didn’t know what to say, so I hid my face by bending over and carefully putting the box down beside the hearth.

  ‘Terrible … what happened to Jack,’ Bill said quietly

  I straightened up slowly to face him. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I have to tell you, just so you know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That Jack’s death was an accident. A freak accident. There’s no way it could have been anything else.’

  I stared at Bill then, shocked that anyone could possibly have thought otherwise. ‘What are you saying?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing! Well, no, that’s not quite true. Warden Finnerty has to investigate any sudden or suspicious death. And you were the last person to see Jack alive.’

  The rifle, long forgotten in the corner, seemed to leap out at me. My legs buckled. Bill rushed to my side and helped me to a chair.

  ‘The last person … Is he saying …?’ I couldn’t go on. Did they think I killed Jack? Even Warden Finnerty? My head felt as if it didn’t belong to me. I laid my arms on the table and rested my head on them.

  ‘I’ll make you some tea,’ Bill said. He put more wood on the fire and moved the kettle to the middle of the hotplate. When it came to the boil, he swilled out the teapot and tipped the last of yesterday’s cold tea and spent leaves onto the straggling mint plant. Mrs Fagan was determined to grow mint in a pot, just outside the door. ‘To keep away the flies,’ she always said, but it never did.

  ‘You know that a dingo had been raiding Jack’s camp,’ Bill began, spooning fresh tea-leaves from the caddy into the pot.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, lifting my aching head. ‘But Jack had dealt with it. He had put his flour in a barrel and everything else in tins with lids.’

  ‘Them dingos don’t give up easy,’ Bill said, shaking his head slowly. ‘I heard Jack come back to his tent after the dance. There was a lot of swearing and sounds of Jack moving around. Then he went somewhere. Padraig says Jack had borrowed his rifle earlier. Said he was going to sort out the pesky bugger once and for all.’ Bill lifted his mug of tea and blew across the top of it. ‘There was a big moon that night,’ he continued. ‘But you know that.’

  Immediately my mind leapt back. I saw the feldspar glinting in the rock, and heard Jack’s voice. I saw him smiling and tried to block out a sudden image of his face damaged beyond recognition. I swallowed hard to stop the tears from escaping. ‘Some of the fellas, the ones who weren’t too drunk, they say they heard a shot, but they thought nothin’ of it. In the mornin’ though … Well, you know the rest.’

  ‘I don’t! No-one will tell me! They won’t let me see him. I need to see him, Bill.’ My voice was shaking and the tears were streaming down my face, soaking the front of my blouse. I mopped at them angrily.

  Bill stood up and came around to my side of the table. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘They’ve taken him away, Clara. Warden Finnerty had the body removed.’

  I blew my nose, and tried to compose myself. ‘Please, Bill, I need to know what happened.’

  Bill hesitated, but he understood. ‘It’s obvious that Jack was after the dingo,’ he began. ‘He was climbing up the ridge, probably to get a better look, or to take a shot. The marks are still there, where his boots slipped on the loose stones. He must have fallen and the rifle in his hand went off.’ Bill turned his face towards the door and took a deep breath. ‘In the mornin’, when I went outside to have a leak, I noticed somethin’ on the ridge. At first, I didn’t want to look, but I had to be sure.’ He tipped his mug and drained the tea from it. ‘He didn’t suffer, Clara, I’m certain of it. He might have heard the bang. That’s all.’ Bill stared into his empty mug, avoiding my eyes. ‘Padraig is blamin’ himself, for lendin’ Jack the rifle, and … Well, I should have got up when I heard him leave his tent.’

  ‘Will you take me out there, Bill?’ I said at last.

  ‘Jack’s not there,’ Bill said. ‘There’s nothin’ left.’

  ‘I know. But I want to see where Jack died,’ I pleaded. ‘You found him. You can show me the exact spot.’ I caught hold of Bill’s hand and held it tightly, as if I was drowning and he was my last hope of rescue. The first rays of the sun sent a shaft of light into the room and I looked into Bill’s eyes. There was hurt there. He shuffled his feet, obviously reluctant, perhaps as much for his own sake as mine. But I could not let go of him until he agreed to take me.

  ‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘But it’s about a mile out.’ I stared at him. ‘Sorry, I was forgettin’ you walk further than that most mornin’s.’

  ‘If I had to walk a hundred miles, I would still want to go,’ I told him.

  February 1894

  Just on s
unset, Bill came around to the back door to find me. I was ready.

  We set off towards the ridge with the last rays of the sun striking gold on the tips of the Reward Reef. The stamps at Bayley’s Mine were still smashing down on the red-brown rocks, each crushing blow sending a shudder through the earth.

  We walked silently, both engrossed in our own thoughts. Before long, a strong smell of excrement filled the air. Clouds of flies rose up. They crawled all over me, into the corners of my eyes and mouth, even down the neck of my blouse. Bill was just ahead of me. His back was covered in a moving mass of black insects. Like me, he constantly swept his hands in front of his face and looked down to avoid stepping in the worst of the mess underfoot.

  At last we reached the base of the ridge. Tents were pitched in clusters on the other side, sheltering from the full force of the wind that blew from the east. The smell here was less of excrement and more of rancid fat and cooking fires. My stomach turned over and bitter bile rose in my throat. I clamped my mouth shut. The horror of swallowing another live fly was stronger than the urge to vomit.

  Bill began to climb ahead of me. The slope was covered in loose stones. My boots slipped. I flung out my hands to save myself. The rocks tore at my fingernails and grazed my palms.

  Near the highest point, where the ridge was steepest, Bill stopped. There were dark patches where blood had soaked into the ground. Jack’s blood. The scrape marks from his boots showed where he had slipped and fallen. I dropped to my knees and picked up a stone. A thick coating of dried blood covered its surface. I held it to my cheek. It felt warm from being in the sun. I picked up two more bloodied stones and put them in the pocket of my apron.

  Bill was looking at me strangely.

  ‘This is all I have left of him,’ I said.

  In the dark days that followed, I would sometimes find myself standing still, on the verandah, or in one of the rooms. I would have a pile of sheets in my arms, or a dust cloth in my hand, not knowing whether I had just finished the cleaning, or whether I was about to begin. How long had I been standing there? A few minutes? Half an hour? I had no idea.