The Touch

by Colleen McCullough

  THOUGH JAMES Summers spoke English with a broad and vulgar (according to the People Who Mattered) Midlands accent, his French and Italian were a pleasure to hear, said his references. His father, he explained, had run an English ale house in Paris for more than the first ten years of Jim’s life; he then transferred to a similar establishment in Venice. That Alexander chose him out of the many who applied was due to the man’s curious dichotomy. His French mother had been from a good family and insisted that her son read all the French classics; then, when she died and his father married an equally cultivated Italian woman, her childless state caused her to focus all her attentions on her stepson. Yet James Summers had absolutely no scholarly leanings!

  “Why did you apply for this job?” Alexander asked.

  “It’s a way to get to New South Wales,” said Summers simply.

  “Why do you want to go there?”

  “Well, with my accent I’m not going to get a post at Eton, Harrow or Winchester, am I? My English is pure Smethwick because that’s where my dad came from.” He shrugged. “Besides, Mr. Kinross, sir, I’m not cut out for life in a classroom, and I’d never get employment in a private house teaching the daughters, now would I? Truth is, I like hard work—work with my hands, I mean. At the same time, I’d like some responsibility. And New South Wales might be the answer. I hear tell that how a man speaks doesn’t tell against him, for one thing.”

  Alexander leaned back in his chair and studied Jim Summers intently. Something in the man appealed to him strongly—a kind of natural independence mixed with a degree of humility that said he needed to rely on someone he regarded as his superior in ability and intelligence. His father, Alexander suspected, must have been a hard man, but a fair one, and just possibly that true rarity—a purveyor of liquor who didn’t indulge in it himself. So his son equated his education with the softness of women, yet yearned to be like his father. A servant who was not subservient.

  “The job is yours, Mr. Summers,” said Alexander, “though it may be that I won’t discharge you after we reach Sydney. If, that is, you find that you like working for me. Once I have mastered French and Italian, I’m going to need a Man Friday, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense.”

  The plain but attractive face lit up; Summers beamed. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Kinross, sir! Thank you!”

  THEY ARRIVED in Sydney on April 13 of 1872, which happened to be Alexander’s twenty-ninth birthday. In the end the voyage had consumed over a year because Alexander’s progress in French and Italian was slower than he had expected, and also, more importantly, because he had never seen Japan, or Alaska, or the Kamchatka Peninsula, or northwestern Canada, or the Philippines.

  In Jim Summers he had found a perfect foil for his own restless energy; the man relished everything they did, every place they went, yet was content to do whatever Mr. Kinross wanted to do. He addressed Alexander as “Mr. Kinross” and preferred that Alexander call him “Summers” than the implied ease and camaraderie of “Jim.”

  “At least,” Alexander said to Summers at the end of their first day in Sydney, “San Francisco stands on a peninsula jutting into an enormous bay, so its sewage drifts out of nose range. Whereas Sydney hugs its harbor, so its sewage stays inside a much smaller body of water. I can’t stand the stench here—it’s as bad as Bombay, Calcutta or Wampoa. And to prevent your escaping the fug by moving inland from the harbor, the fools have erected a vile sewer vent chimney at the far end of the main park! Ugh!”

  Privately Summers thought that Mr. Kinross was a mite too hard on Sydney, which he deemed very beautiful. But then, he had noticed, Mr. Kinross’s smelling apparatus was extremely keen. So sensitive was it, said Mr. Kinross one day in the Yukon, that he could sniff gold, and there was a lot of gold in the Yukon.

  “But as I’ve no wish to spend more bitter winters in cold latitudes, Summers, we’ll not stay here,” he had announced.

  LITTLE WONDER then that as soon as he had presented his letter of credit to the bank Mr. Maudling had recommended, Alexander took the train and then the coach west to Bathurst, a town literally surrounded at all points of the compass by goldfields. Despite which, Bathurst itself was not a mining community—that, in Alexander’s estimation, made Bathurst orderly, neat, benign.

  Instead of seeking accommodation at a hotel or boarding house, he rented a cottage set in several acres of land on the outskirts and installed Summers in it.

  “Find a woman to keep the place clean and do the cooking,” Alexander instructed, handing Summers a list. “Pay her a little more than the going rate and she’ll be anxious to keep the job. While I scout the goldfields I want you to shop around for the things on this list. Here’s a letter of authority that will let you draw on my bank. If you can’t keep accounts, you’re going to have to learn. Find a bookkeeper and pay him to teach you.” He swung into the American western saddle he had brought with him, his necessities in saddlebags; the nice bay mare he rode he had found locally, but there was no doubt that for long days of riding through rough country, an American western saddle was more comfortable than an English one. “I don’t know when I’ll be back, so expect me at any time.”

  And off he trotted in his skins and wide-brimmed hat.

  His week in Bathurst had been filled with activity, chiefly the seeking of information from town and shire officials, three members of the local landed gentry, shopkeepers and inhabitants of various hotel bars. The alluvial gold had mostly run out, he learned, but reef gold was being worked in Hill End and Gulgong, generating a second gold rush.

  In the early days of the first placer strikes, the New South Wales Government—and the Government in Victoria, where even bigger finds were made—had been so greedy to milk revenue from this bonanza that it had levied the astronomical sum of thirty shillings for a prospector’s license that lasted only one month. In Victoria the outrage among prospectors combined with the ruthless methods of the Government’s collecting agents had culminated in a near revolution. With the result that the license fee had been reduced to twenty shillings and lasted for a year. Still, Alexander didn’t need a license yet—why tip his hand?

  The road to Hill End, no better than a track, was thronged with traffic; huge flat-bedded drays pulled by ten to twenty bullocks; what looked for all the world like an American stagecoach with the words Cobb & Co on its side; horse-drawn wagons, carts and sulkies; men on horseback or on foot, and many women and children. The attire of the men went all the way from smart city suits and bowler hats to ragged dungarees, flannel shirts and wide-brimmed hats, whereas the women were more uniform in drab gingham or calico dresses, shady straw hats or poke-fronted bonnets, feet in men’s boots. The children were of all ages from babies through to youths and nubile girls, mostly clad in little better than scrupulously mended rags. Boys of eight and nine smoked pipes or chewed tobacco like veterans.

  This, Alexander thought, is what the roads to the fields in California must have looked like at the height of that gold rush. And how American it is! From stagecoach to wagons to the look of the people, frontier American. Yet in Sydney everyone I met was pretending to be English—not very successfully. How sad. This is just too far away to attract the non-British, so the city people have decided to cling to class-consciousness.

  THE TOWN of Hill End was like all its brethren elsewhere: gouged, rutted streets that must be a mire in wet weather, the same shanties, huts, tents. It did, however, possess an imposing red-brick church and one or two other brick buildings, including one that announced it was the ROYAL HOTEL. Chinese abounded, some clad like coolies and sporting pigtails, others in British business suits and clipped hair beneath their bowlers. Several of the boarding houses were run by Chinese, also a number of shops and restaurants.

  The air reverberated with familiar sounds: the maddening boom-boom-boom of battery stampers, the grating roar of crushers. The noise emanated from Hawkins Hill, where the reef gold lay—an ugly shambles of diggings, poppet heads, derricks and an occasional steam eng
ine. Most of the claim owners, however, used horse power. It didn’t take him long to ascertain that this was no land of bounteous water; there could be no pressure-hosing the gold out of gravel banks here, for the river, a thin and shallow stream, was the only water available for all purposes. As for the wood—as hard as iron, he was told.

  “Thankless fucken hard work. This is a fair cow of a place,” his informant summed up.

  Very depressed, Alexander eyed the Royal Hotel and decided that it was not for him. Just off Clarke Street he saw a much smaller hotel of well-applied wattle-and-daub colored a pale pink, with a corrugated iron roof, an awning covering a boardwalk outside its door, a hitching rail and a horse trough. The sign said, in bright red letters, COSTEVAN’S. This will do fine, he said to himself, hitched the mare so that it could drink, and walked through the open front door.

  At this hour most of the Hill End men were working their claims, so the cool, surprisingly elegant interior was almost deserted. A red cedar bar ran down one side wall and the big room held, besides the tables and chairs common to every saloon anywhere, a piano.

  None of the half-dozen drinkers looked up, probably because they were too inebriated to do so. A woman stood behind the bar.

  “Ahah!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “A Yank!”

  “No, a Scot,” said Alexander, staring at her.

  She was well worth staring at. A tall woman, she had a lush body nipped in at the waist by a corset, the top half of creamy breasts bursting out of the décolletage of her red silk dress, its brief sleeves slipped down to bare her magnificent shoulders. Her neck was long, her jawline remarkably clean cut, and the face above them was beautiful enough to be called stunning. Full lips, a short and straight nose, high cheekbones, a wide brow, and green eyes. He hadn’t thought that genuinely green eyes existed, but her eyes were genuinely green. The same color as a beryl or a peridot. The mass of hair that framed this ravishing face was a reddish-blonde, like pink gold.

  “A Scot,” she said, “but a Scot who’s been in California.”

  “Some years ago, yes. My name is Alexander Kinross.”

  “I’m Ruby Costevan, and this”—she swept a shapely hand about—“is my place.”

  “Do you have accommodation?”

  “A few rooms out the back for those who can afford to pay a pound a night,” she said in a deep, slightly raspy voice whose accent was English-inflected New South Wales.

  “I can afford to pay that, Mrs. Costevan.”

  “Miss Costevan, but just call me Ruby. Everyone else does unless they happen to go to church on Sundays. The Bible-bashers call me scarlet, not ruby.” She grinned, displaying even white teeth and a dimple in either cheek.

  “Are meals included in the tariff, Ruby?”

  “Brekkie and dins, but not lunch.” She turned to the array of bottles. “What do you drink? I’ve got home-brewed beer on tap as well as hard stuff—Alex, or Alexander?”

  “Alexander. Actually I’d rather have a cup of tea.”

  Her eyes widened. “Jesus! You’re not a Bible-basher, are you? You can’t be!”

  “I’m a child of the devil, but a fairly continent one. My consistent vice is a cheroot.”

  “Ditto,” said Ruby. “Matilda! Dora!” she bawled.

  When the two girls came through a door at the back of the saloon, Alexander suddenly understood one of the main functions of Costevan’s. They were young, pretty, and looked clean, but they were unmistakably whores.

  “Yeah?” asked Matilda, who was dark.

  “Take over the bar, there’s a good girl. Dora, go and ask Sam to make some afternoon tea for Mr. Kinross and me.”

  The fair one nodded and vanished, Matilda manned the bar.

  “Take the weight off your feet, Alexander,” said Ruby, arranging herself at what was probably the boss’s table, better grained and polished than the rest of the saloon furniture. She pulled a slim gold case from a pocket in the side of her skirt, opened it and offered it to Alexander. “Cheroot?”

  “Tea first, thank you. I’ve swallowed a pound of dust.”

  She lit one for herself, inhaled deeply and let the smoke trickle out through her nose. The thin, pale grey tendrils swam about her head, gave him the same kind of painful, gut-wrenching thrill he had sometimes experienced in Muslim lands when he met the kohl-rimmed eyes of some utterly alluring woman. They can smother them in all the veils they like, but there are women who can conquer any attempt at harness. Ruby is one such.

  “Did you strike it lucky in California, Alexander?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. My two partners and I found a vein of gold-bearing quartz in the Sierra foothills.”

  “Enough to be a rich man?”

  “Moderately rich.”

  “Didn’t piss it all away, eh?”

  “I am nobody’s fool,” he said softly, black eyes flashing.

  Startled, she began to say something, but at that moment the back door opened and a boy about eight years of age came out wheeling a cart on which stood a big teapot in a home-made cosy, a fine bone china tea set for two, an assortment of dainty little sandwiches and a cream sponge cake.

  Ruby’s eyes had lit up at sight of the boy, who was the most unusually beautiful child Alexander had ever seen. Exotic, slim, graceful, immensely dignified and self-possessed.

  “This is my son, Lee,” Ruby said, drawing the boy to her for a quick kiss. “Ta, my jade kitten. Say hello to Mr. Kinross.”

  “Hello, Mr. Kinross,” said Lee, smiling Ruby’s smile.

  “Now scoot. Go on, quick-smart!”

  “So you have been married,” said Alexander.

  Her pale brows lifted haughtily. “No, I have not. There’s no power on earth could make me marry anyone, Alexander Kinross—no power on earth! Put my neck under some man’s yoke? Hah! I’d sooner die!”

  The violence of her answer didn’t really surprise him; he instinctively knew the important things about Ruby already. The independence. The pride in ownership. The contempt for virtuous citizens. But the boy was a puzzle: that dark beige skin, the way his green eyes were set in their orbits, the absolute black of his straight, glossy hair.

  “Is Lee’s father Chinese?” he asked.

  “Yes. Sung Chow. But he agreed that our son should be Lee Costevan, and that he be brought up British—provided that I make him a gentleman.” She poured the tea. “Sung Chow used to be my partner in this enterprise, but after Lee was born I bought him out. Oh, he’s still in Hill End, but he owns and runs a laundry, the brewery, and several boarding houses. We’re good friends.”

  “Yet he consigned his son entirely to you?”

  “Of course. Lee’s a half-caste, so he can’t be a Chinese. Sung sent to China for a wife as soon as he had the money, so he has two Chinese sons now. His brother, Sam Wong—Sung is the surname, but Wong decided to be Sam—is my overpaid cook, being the younger of the two Sungs. One of them has to go home to China to placate the ancestors, and that’s Sam. So he only takes half his wage, I bank the rest for him—the more he takes home, the greedier the relatives will be.” She snorted with laughter. “As for Sung—the only way he’s ever going home to China is as ashes in a gorgeous dragon-wreathed jar.”

  “What do you hope for your son, then, if he’s to be reared a gentleman?” he asked, knowing the fate of bastards.

  The lustrous eyes swam with sudden tears; she blinked them away. “I have it worked out, Alexander. In two more months he won’t be with me.” The tears gathered again, were mastered again. “I won’t see him for ten years. He’s going to a very exclusive private school in England. It’s a school that specializes in foreign pupils—the sons of pashas, rajahs, sultans, all sorts of Oriental potentates who want English-educated sons. So Lee won’t stand out, except that he’s hugely clever. You see, his school friends will be potentates themselves one day, all allied to the British Crown. They’ll be able to help Lee.”

  “You’re asking a lot of a little boy, Ruby. How old is he, eight
or nine?”

  “Eight, soon nine.” She poured him a fourth cup of tea and leaned forward earnestly. “He understands his situation—the half-caste business, my society shortcomings—all of it. I’ve never concealed anything from him, but I’ve never let him become ashamed either. Lee and I face what we are with fortitude and a practical outlook. It’s going to kill me to live without him, but I will, for his sake. If I tried to send him to school in Sydney, or even in Melbourne, someone would find out. But no one will find out if he’s in a school for foreign royalty in England. Sung has a cousin, Wo Fat, who is to go with Lee as his servant and protector. They sail early in June.”

  “It will be harder for him, even if he does understand.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that? But because he understands, he will do it. For me.”

  “Think of this, Ruby. When he’s grown-up, will he thank you for taking him away from his mummy at such a tender age to throw him into the lion’s den of an English public school? Surrounded by great wealth, aware that if his fellow pupils knew his real circumstances, they’d cut him dead—oh, Ruby, it has its dark side,” said Alexander, though why he was fighting so hard for a child he’d scarcely seen, he didn’t know. Only that something in the boy’s eyes, so different from Ruby’s in their soul’s reflection, had drawn him strongly.

  “Persistent blighter, aren’t you?” She got up. “Have you a horse? If you do, there’s a stable in the backyard. Just take the beast down the lane and hand it over to Chan Hoi. Feed is expensive in Hill End, so a horse will cost you five bob extra a night. Matilda, take Mr. Kinross to the Blue Room. He deserves blue—he’s a cheerless bugger.” And off she went to the bar. “Dinner’s whenever you want it,” she said as he followed Matilda through the back door.

  The Blue Room was indeed a rather depressing blue, but it was big and comfortably appointed. He got rid of the lingering Matilda by brushing past her and going to attend to his horse; the girl clearly had hopes of largesse for services rendered.