The Night They Stormed Eureka

by Jackie French

  ‘Meeting at the gravel pits tomorrow,’ announced one of the men, eyeing the gravy-laden plate Mr Puddleham handed him.

  Mrs Puddleham put her hands on her hips, scattering drops of gravy from her ladle. ‘An’ what sort o’ meeting would that be?’

  ‘A meeting of anyone who wants justice, missus.’ This second man spoke with his mouth full, a chunk of pudding in his hand to wipe up the last of the stew. ‘A meeting to elect councillors to represent all diggers, and take our message down to Melbourne.’ The miner met her gaze. ‘Or mebbe more. Mebbe it’s time we stood together, back to back, like in America or back in Ireland, an’ fought off the oppressor.’ He pronounced it O-pressy-or. ‘America’s free of England now. We can be free too!’

  ‘Aye, an’ get killed for it,’ muttered someone in the shadows.

  ‘Words is all very well.’ Mrs Puddleham struck the cauldron with her ladle. ‘But ye’ll get no more stew from my pot, Rummy Hawkins, till you stop talking politics.’

  ‘A man’s got a right to his own views!’

  ‘An’ a woman’s got a right to say who eats her cooking. Ain’t that the case, Mr Puddleham?’

  Mr Puddleham said nothing. He began to collect the empty plates without looking at his wife.

  Rummy Hawkins slammed the tin plate down on theground. ‘Take yer stew then, and be dammed to ye!’ He stomped off into the night.

  There was silence around the campfire.

  ‘I see he finished his stew first.’ It was the Professor’s voice. Sam hadn’t seen him slip through the darkness to the cook tent. Men laughed, a little nervously. They began to spoon up their food again.

  Except for one. He looked down at his plate, still half full of stew, then stood and handed it politely back to Mrs Puddleham. He was a big man, young, with muddy hair. Mrs Puddleham stared at it, bewildered. ‘What’s this, Mr Lalor?’

  Lalor, thought Sam. Mrs Quant had taught them about Peter Lalor. He’d been one of the leaders at the stockade. He’d lost an arm in the battle …

  She stared at the big square hand that held out the plate. Was it that one? Impossible, that he should just be standing there. Impossible, that she should know what would happen to him, while he was unaware.

  ‘Your stew, madam. Good as it is, I prefer the taste of freedom.’ He looked around. ‘And I hope every man here will join us at the meeting.’

  ‘Now you see here —’ began Mrs Puddleham.

  Mr Puddleham put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’ll be there,’ he said quietly to Lalor.

  His wife looked bewildered. ‘But —’

  Mr Puddleham shook his head, his bearing as erect as if he were serving tea to the queen. ‘I will not be manhandled by dastards with neither manners nor breeding. I will nottolerate a state of affairs where men like that have power over us all. I am doing this for you, Mrs Puddleham. I am doing it for me, and for Lucy. I am doing it for all who have suffered under the tyranny of those who rule us. I said, Mrs Puddleham, that I’ll be there.’

  He bowed to her, then followed Peter Lalor into the darkness.

  Sam and Mrs Puddleham washed the plates down at the creek after the last digger had left. A slushie candle — a wick flickering in a jar of mutton fat — gave just enough light to see.

  ‘He’ll be back soon,’ said Sam.

  Mrs Puddleham said nothing. She hadn’t spoken since her husband strode off into the night.

  ‘He won’t have gone far,’ Sam added, hoping it was true. He couldn’t go far, surely? she thought. Not in the dark without a torch.

  Mrs Puddleham shrugged, her shoulders a mass of blackness against the starlit sky. ‘For a drink, mebbe, to one o’ the grog shops. He won’t take much. Not a drinker, Mr Puddleham.’ Even now her voice was filled with pride when she spoke of her husband.

  ‘Mrs Puddleham, who is Lucy?

  Mrs Puddleham began to dry the plates on the hessian sack that served as both tea towel and apron.

  ‘Please. She’s your daughter, isn’t she?’

  A nod in the darkness, more heard than seen.

  ‘You … you don’t really think I’m her, do you?’

  Mrs Puddleham stared at her, her eyes so wide Sam could see their whites. ‘O’ course not. You could never be our Lucy.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘Lucy’s dead.’

  They sat by the fire, a pile of coals glowing like the stars above them, just bigger, closer, brighter. Comforting, thought Sam, with the darkness all around.

  ‘It were on the ship,’ said Mrs Puddleham at last. Sam had made her a cup of the precious tea kept in a wooden box and doled out to favourite customers at sixpence a mug. ‘I were so afraid she’d come while I was in Newgate. They takes your baby there, puts ‘em in the workhouse. Babies don’t last long in the workhouse.

  ‘I weren’t having that. I’d keep my legs crossed, I told meself. I’d wait till I were on the ship. They lets you keep your baby if it comes on the ship. An’ I did. We was two days out from Plymouth when the pains came …

  ‘It weren’t easy. The ship diving and rising, so bad you had to hold onto your bunk or you’d fall off. But the other women — there were some good ‘uns there. Black Janey, she ripped up her petticoats to tie me to me bunk. And Annie Three Tooth had been a midwife. Don’t know how long it lasted. The ship went up and down an’ I kept screaming.

  ‘And there she was. My Lucy. Dark hair just like her Pa’s. No light down in the hold, except sometimes when they left the trapdoor ajar to let in air. Musta been open then ‘cause I could see her eyes too. Blue as the sea, though her Pa’s and mine are green …

  ‘We’d talked, me and Mr Puddleham, about what we’d do if we ever had a family. Mr Puddleham’s ma was a Lucy, so we said we’ll call a daughter after her.’ Her voice trailed off into the darkness.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Sam softly.

  ‘It were all all right for so long. I gave milk like I were a Jersey cow. Fed another baby an’ all, Silver Molly’s, that were. Used my underskirts to make cloths for her.

  ‘But one o’ the sailors brought a fever aboard at the Cape. Them sailors made free of us women, o’ course. So we got the fever too. More’n half of us died. So bad for a time they didn’t even open the hatchway, just left us with the bodies next to us. You’d look at the girl next to you, her face all eaten by the rats, an’ all you could do was hope she’d been dead afore they started to bite.

  ‘I got the fever too. But not Lucy. I shivered and burned but I kept her next to me, so she could feed. When they put buckets o’ water down Silver Molly’d save some for both of us, so we could wash our babies’ cloths.

  ‘An’ finally the fever burned out, like it had killed all it could and just gave up. They let us onto the deck, first time in more’n a month. The sea light so bright it hurt your eyes. Made Lucy cry, it were so bright. But I could see her then. First time I saw her in the light. So beautiful. And she couldsee the sky and me. She saw her ma, she saw the light, the sea, the blue sky. I’ll always be thankful she saw that.

  ‘She were dead the next morning. Don’t know why. Maybe I rolled on her in the night. That’s what killed the babies sometimes, bein’ rolled on. I’ve asked meself again and again if I could o’ done that. I’ll never know, you see, never know what it were that killed her.’

  ‘Cot death,’ whispered Sam. ‘Babies sometimes just die.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that? But not my baby. Not when I held her so careful …

  ‘Then when Mr Puddleham came to that kitchen in Parramatta. First he hugged me tight and then he says, “Where is the baby?” ‘Cause he’d heard, you see, that I was in the family way. An’ I had to tell him. Had to stand there by the fireplace turning the boss’s mutton on the spit and tell him how his baby died, how it were all my fault, how I couldn’t even keep our girl alive.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault! Not in a place like that!’

  ‘Course it were my fault! That’s what a ma is for, ain’t it? To keep her
child safe.’ Mrs Puddleham’s face was fierce with grief in the starlight. ‘An’ I’ll keep you safe. I failed with my Lucy. But you’re going ter have all that I can give you. Everything a daughter needs you’ll have from me.’

  ‘Mrs … I mean, Ma …’

  Sam put her arms around the heaving shoulders, held the big woman while she sobbed.

  ‘That’s why Mr Puddleham is joining with the other men, the miners. He won’t blame me, you see. He blames the queen, the soldiers, blames the magistrates …’

  ‘He’s right,’ said Sam softly. ‘It was them that killed Lucy. Not you.’

  Mrs Puddleham wiped her eyes roughly with the hessian sack, then blew her nose on it. ‘But what good will it do if Mr Puddleham gets killed too? Cause we can’t fight people like that, deary. Not us. All we can do is make our way an’ try an’ find some safety. Why, Mr P can even vote if he wants to when we gets our hotel. Think of him, marching down to the Town Hall to vote with all the nobs, and you and me in our best, watching him. You’ll be in pink silk, deary, and me in black satin maybe, an’ a footman from the hotel in case we sees something pretty in the shops that you might like …’

  Sam let her talk. Mrs Puddleham was right, she thought. This rebellion would bring nothing but death and heartbreak. But who would believe her if she tried to tell them?

  Finally the flow of words stopped. The big woman laid her head on Sam’s shoulder. Mr Puddleham found them sitting like that in the moonlight by the dying embers of the fire.

  He looked down at them, his face impassive, then trod down the gully towards them. Mrs Puddleham gave a start, and looked up.

  ‘Mr Puddleham,’ she began.

  The little man shook his head. He lifted his wife’s hand and kissed it. She started to cry.

  Mr Puddleham put his arm around her shoulders. He looked at Sam, then nodded. ‘Thank you for being with her,’ he said softly.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Sam awkwardly. ‘I mean, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘A child matters more than anything in the world,’ said Mr Puddleham precisely. ‘If you can be that for my wife …’ he hesitated, looking at the crumple of Mrs Puddleham’s face. ‘I thank you,’ he said again, then led his crying wife into the tent.

  Chapter 15

  Sam hauled the pile of branches over to the woodheap and tried to get her breath back. She’d been on the diggings for a week now, and had lost track of how many armfuls of wood she’d hauled to the camp. She and Mr Puddleham had to walk kilometres each day just to find enough to keep the pots simmering.

  The days had passed in a series of meals; the morning dampers, the lunchtime pancakes, the evening plates of stew, the wild ducks Mrs Puddleham had roasted one night for a miner who’d struck it lucky and wanted to treat all his friends. He’d even paid for apple dumplings for all the cook-shop regulars, with apples at sixpence each too, brought up from Melbourne. Mrs Puddleham had made custard from eggs and goat’s milk and precious sugar, and a special damper flavoured with cold tea and currants.

  Sometimes it felt like she had always been here, chopping potatoes and learning how to mix dripping into flour to make dumplings. At other times the wind would whip past without stirring a leaf, and the cold shiver wouldcome over her again, and she’d be afraid to blink in case this new world whirled away.

  She looked up from the woodheap as a yell floated down into the gully.

  ‘Roll up! Roll up! Roll up at the gravel pits!’

  Another meeting, she thought. There’d been meetings every day this week. Mr Puddleham must have known about this one, as he’d vanished after breakfast.

  Sam would have liked to see what happened at a ‘roll up', but Mrs Puddleham refused to even speak about them. And Sam was all too aware that one of these ‘roll ups’ — in a week, or a month or even a year — would lead to the violence of the stockade. Yes, it was wiser to stay away.

  A drum banged in the distance. Thin breathy-sounding fifes piped above the drumbeat, and the hollow banging of sticks against pots or billies underscored it all.

  Mrs Puddleham frowned, and glanced up at Sam. She was ‘turning the cuffs’ on one of Mr Puddleham’s shirts — taking them apart, turning them over and sewing them back on so the frayed bit no longer showed. Behind them the pots slowly glopped above the coals, and the flies buzzed hopefully in the steam.

  ‘That wood weren’t too heavy for you, lovey?’ Mrs Puddleham seemed to be deliberately ignoring the clamour.

  Sam smiled at the enormous woman — it was impossible not to smile when her ‘Ma’ looked at her like that, with such care and concern — and shook her head. ‘Just had to go a long way to find it.’

  ‘Well, you sit down and have a rest then. I made you a meat pudding, special.’ She gestured with her needle and thread. ‘It’s between them two plates over there.’

  Sam picked up the plates and sat next to her. The pudding was the size and shape of a tennis ball, shiny and doughy on the outside, and a bit like a cake inside, dappled with shreds of meat and some sort of green vegetable. She’d never eaten anything like it before, but it was as good as everything Mrs Puddleham made (except the grilled kidneys). She looked up to see the cook watching her take each mouthful. The big woman smiled.

  ‘You wait till we gets our hotel. We’ll have baron o’ beef Mondays, roast turkey Tuesdays, saddle of mutton Wednesdays with eglantine sauce. Made from rosehips, it is, all stewed till they’re soft and with the seeds sieved out. Her Majesty loved her eglantine sauce with mutton. Most of the men will be after a cut off the joint. But I’ve been thinking we should do teas too, just like Her Majesty had. Can put that on the bill o’ fare: Teas as Served to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.’

  ‘What did Queen Victoria like for afternoon tea?

  Mrs Puddleham beamed. ‘My brown betty, that’s what she liked. Good plain cake made with cold tea instead o’ buttermilk, and lots o’ sultanas. An’ teacakes — you should have seen the tray go up with my teacakes. Each slice were browned on both sides, and dripping butter. And thin bread and butter and sponge cake, light as a pile o’ feathers, with cream and strawberry jam, and Indian tea, not China, though o’ course the footmen made ‘er teafresh, not us down in the kitchen. Fruitcake every day, she had to have that, and ginger cake most days, an’ specialities too. Oh, it were fun making them specialities. One of them monsewers was ‘sposed to make ‘em but he couldn’t do ‘em good as me. Madeleines and jam drops and petty fours and curd cake and lemon tarts and orange cakes and little caramels … Melbourne won’t know what’s hit it when they sees my specialities.’

  Sam hesitated. Would Mrs Puddleham mind her making suggestions? ‘I was thinking too. Maybe we could pay for someone to bring us a cartload of wood every week. I don’t mind getting wood,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s fun hunting under the trees. And I know buying wood would be expensive. But it’d mean I’d be free to help you cook, and Mr Puddleham could serve full-time. We’d make money faster.’

  And get down to Melbourne before anyone thinks about building a stockade too, she thought.

  Mrs Puddleham beamed even wider, as though Sam had given her the biggest nugget on the goldfields. ‘Why, you’ve got a good head on you, lovey. That’s a right good idea. I’ll put it to Mr Puddleham when he gets back.’ Her face clouded. She looked down at her sewing again. ‘All this going to meetings. Mr Puddleham just don’t know how the world works, that’s his trouble.’ Mrs Puddleham tried to keep her voice calm as she squinted at her needle.

  ‘But he lived at the palace —’ began Sam.

  ‘That’s the root of it all,’ said Mrs Puddleham glumly. ‘His dad were a footman, see. So that’s all Mr Puddlehamknows — nice, safe, big houses, all the cold meat you can eat an’ bread an’ jam too, any time o’ the day or night, an’ blankets on the beds. Always a set order to do things, an’ if it’s done wrong there’s someone up above you to make it done right.

  ‘But the world don’t work like that. He don’t know what it’s like to
have chains on yer wrists an’ ankles, an’ rats nibblin’ at yer ears, and anyone who wants to can stick his hand up yer skirts —’ Mrs Puddleham brushed a tear away impatiently. ‘Well, I don’t want him to know, neither. An’ I want better for you too!’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Sam hesitantly, ‘Mr Puddleham wants the same as you — to make things better. But for everyone.’

  Mrs Puddleham snorted. ‘They ain’t got the hope of a snowball in a baker’s oven. Manhood suffrage they call it. Manhood stupidity if you ask me.’

  Sam was silent as she finished her pudding. How could she tell Mrs Puddleham that everyone, even women, would get the vote one day, though she couldn’t remember quite when and how?

  ‘There’s going to be trouble,’ said Mrs Puddleham, biting through her thread.

  Sam nodded.

  Chapter 16

  Mr Puddleham said nothing about the meeting when he returned as the shadows lengthened, just quietly added wood to the fire and topped up the stew with water.

  Mrs Puddleham was silent too. She was darning socks now, using a rock to fill the toe to stretch out the sock so she could fill the hole with threads woven in and out — it was almost magic, thought Sam, the way she could make the sock look like there’d never been a hole there at all.

  ‘Need more supplies tomorrow,’ Mrs Puddleham said at last. ‘Sam can stay and watch the pots and serve the stew while you and me goes to the farm.’

  ‘What if the bushranger catches you again?’ demanded Sam.

  Mrs Puddleham tried a smile. ‘We’ll listen careful for hoofbeats this time,’ she promised.

  ‘But what if there’s one who isn’t riding a horse?’ Sam shook her head. ‘It’s crazy carrying all that money. Why not send a note to the farm and ask Mr Higgins and George to bring the meat and potatoes to us instead? Then they can put the money safe in the bank too. I bet one ofthe diggers would take a note to the farm in exchange for a night’s stew,’ she added.