Arthur Williams found me like this one day.
‘Clara? Are you ill?’ he said. ‘You look very pale.’
‘What?’ I hadn’t heard his footsteps, even on the creaky wooden boards. ‘No, I’m not ill.’ Although I suppose it was a sort of illness. For no reason I would suddenly feel overwhelmed. My mind would go blank and, without warning, my body would stop moving. The emptiness inside me expanded, growing until it consumed everything: my past, my present, my future. I found it very hard to laugh, or even smile.
‘Take a few days off, Clara,’ Mr Wisdom suggested.
‘Oh, no. I couldn’t do that,’ I told him. ‘Mrs Fagan needs me. And the Finnertys. I have already let them down.’
‘It’s all right. They understand,’ he said.
I shook my head.
March 1894
Perhaps a month had gone by since Jack died. I carried out my usual tasks, but time had lost all meaning for me. Mr Wisdom called me into his office.
‘Sit down, Clara.’ He indicated the same chair that I had sat in when Warden Finnerty told me about Jack. It was as if the clock had turned back, but not far enough. At the moment when I last sat in this chair Jack was already dead, although I didn’t know it then. If only I could make time go back further. To the dance, to Jack holding me in his arms, smiling at me and making jokes. If I could go back to that night I would never leave him. I would sleep in his tent, scare off the dingo, poison it with cyanide from the mine. Jack would never borrow that rifle. Together we would think of something else, find another way to keep everything safe. It was only when Mr Wisdom handed me his handkerchief that I noticed the tears running down my cheeks.
‘I was wondering if you would like to work in the bar,’ he said. ‘Just for a couple of hours in the afternoons, when most of the men are out working. If you could do that for me, I could get my ordering done.’ I looked blankly at him, not knowing what to say. ‘It might cheer you up a bit. You have become very quiet, Clara. You don’t smile anymore.’
I agreed to try the job in the bar and found it was good to be with people again. The shiftworkers who came in the afternoons were funny, lively, loud and full of outrageous stories. For the whole of my two hours each day my mind and my body were fully occupied. There was always someone telling a joke, or reciting a poem from the Bulletin. I was making a collection of poems from the literary section of the paper, cutting them out and pasting them into my exercise book. They were definitely not Shakespeare, but the ballads were told with such dry wit, and a rough, earthy humour that made me laugh.
I especially loved the sad poems. They spoke to the sadness in me and I felt that at least there were others in the world who understood the heaviness I carried in my heart.
The evenings were the hardest. Sometimes I caught myself hurrying through the last of my chores, thinking ‘Jack will be waiting’, or stepped out onto the verandah expecting to see him leaning against the wall. The disappointment of finding he was not there would hit me like a physical blow. I had to rush into my room, shut out the world and climb into bed.
I took to writing in my exercise book again. I mostly wrote about Jack, about our time together, sometimes laughing at his funny ways as I scribbled on the page; at other times dropping tears onto the paper, making it crinkle as the sea had once done.
I know that a part of me will always be missing. Jack took it with him and I want him to keep it, I wrote.
About Clara
Clara Saunders went on to outlive three husbands.
Arthur Williams was the first. He had been in love with Clara from the start, but knew that, after Jack’s death, he must try not to rush her. Instead he made himself indispensable, fetching things, repairing her shoes, bringing in wood for the stove.
Four months passed. Clara turned sixteen and Arthur organised a birthday party for her. Afterwards, when everyone else had gone, he proposed to her. She was shocked, but said she would think about it.
At first Clara didn’t have a lot to say to Arthur, but he talked enough for both of them. He told her about a new field opening up ninety miles to the north of Coolgardie. He had plans to start up a hotel and billiard room of his own.
Before their wedding on 4 July 1894, Arthur travelled to the city. He took with him the nugget that Paddy Hannan had given to Clara and had it made into a brooch as a wedding present. Clara wore it pinned to her wedding dress.
Just a few weeks later, Clara and Arthur moved to the Ninety Mile, which would later become Goongarrie township, and set up their first hotel there. Within a year, she and Arthur bought another hotel at Mount Morgans and moved again. They had two daughters, Lillian Mary (1896) and Violet Catherine (1898). Sadly, Arthur died of pneumonia while he was in England visiting his aged aunts who, having no children of their own, wanted him to inherit the family property.
Clara sent the girls to boarding school in Perth and stayed on to run the hotel, on her own, for seven years. After her marriage to John Joseph Lynch, Clara left the goldfields in 1910, and became a pioneer of the wheatbelt with her second husband. They had two boys, John Leopold (1909) and Edward Joseph (1910). In 1939, tragedy struck again when John Joseph Lynch died of a heart attack while working on the farm. Clara moved to Perth and lived with her sister, Susan, who had also been widowed. In 1944 Clara married John Paton.
Clara Paton (nee Saunders) was seventy-seven years old when she died, in 1956, from complications after a cataract operation. Not long before her death, Clara’s granddaughter noticed that she was often writing in an old exercise book. When she asked Clara what she was writing, her grandmother told her it was just old memories.
You can find more information on Clara and on life in the Western Australian goldfields on my website: elaineforrestal.com.au
Teaching notes are available on the Fremantle Press website: fremantlepress.com.au
Acknowledgements
We are lucky, in Western Australia, to have Cate Sutherland, Children’s Publisher at Fremantle Press, and her multi-talented team. Without them, Clara’s story would still be languishing in the archives of the J.S. Battye Library. Special thanks to Armelle Davies for guiding me through the minefield of electronic editing and to my friends and colleagues at The Literature Centre, SCBWI and the Children’s Book Council of Australia for providing support and stimulation.
I wish also to thank Jan James, sadly no longer with us, and Ambelin Kwaymullina for their advice and for directing me to comprehensive references regarding Aboriginal protocols early in the drafting of the manuscript.
On pages 185–186, I have included some lines from the bush ballad ‘At the Diggings Store’ by R.A.F., first published in the Bulletin in 1896. Although this poem was published after the events of this novel, I felt that it was important to include. It is an example of the way in which bush poets captured that particular brand of wry humour, quiet courage and mateship displayed by the men of the time, who lived in such harsh conditions on the Coolgardie goldfields where, sadly, death was a common occurrence.
First published 2020 by
FREMANTLE PRESS
Fremantle Press Inc. trading as Fremantle Press
25 Quarry Street, Fremantle WA 6160
(PO Box 158, North Fremantle WA 6159)
www.fremantlepress.com.au
Copyright © Elaine Forrestal, 2020
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Cover photographs: Figure: Magdalena Żyźniewska / Trevillion Images.
Background: State Library of Western Australia 400B/51.
Gold texture: iStock.
Cover design by Carolyn Brown, www.tendeersigh.com.au.
ISBN 9781925816495 (paperback)
ISBN 9781925816501 (ebook)
&n
bsp; Fremantle Press is supported by the State Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.
Goldfields Girl Page 14