No, Hannah thought. That body was Mr Vandergeld. He’d died trying to protect his chest of gold. And now the chest has rotted in the water and another storm has brought the gold and the man to shore.
‘I saw a grave,’ she said. ‘A new one.’
‘Even slavers deserve a grave,’ said Jamie. ‘We buried him properly, then Ma came down to help collect the coins.’
Mrs Zebediah sat suddenly on the wet sand, as if her legs had turned to marshmallow. ‘It’s been a morning and a half,’ she said wonderingly. ‘And we haven’t even had breakfast. I was going to make pancakes, then I heard Jamie yelling. Thought he’d been bitten by a snake. I dashed out so fast I nearly got heart failure, but he was grinning. He yelled out, “I found the pirate’s treasure and hid it at the beach. And found the pirate too!”’
‘We wrapped him in a blanket and Mum said a prayer. Don’t suppose we’ll ever know what his name was,’ said Jamie.
‘No,’ said Hannah. She pushed away any other word she might have said. Because surely it was better that Jamie and Mrs Zebediah thought the slaver’s gold had appeared to help the people who had been enslaved, rather than wondering if there was someone else who should have it, especially as there was no way of finding out who Mr Vandergeld had been.
Mrs Zebediah took Hannah’s hand, her smile once again breaking through tears. ‘Jamie will be safe now. You too. And every Islander they force from Port Harris will have a chance now there’ll be some money to take with them.’
Hannah picked up one of the coins. It was strangely thick, and heavier than any coin she had ever held. Nor did it have a picture of Queen Victoria on it.
‘This isn’t an Australian coin,’ she said. ‘It’s very old, I think. You can’t just take these to a bank, or spend them.’
‘I know that, Hannah love,’ said Mrs Zebediah. ‘But I’ve got a cousin up in Brisbane. He didn’t want to know me when things were bad, but I reckon he’ll see different now. He had a share in a gold mine up north — a tuppeny-ha’penny job that didn’t even keep his family in bread and dripping. But he knows where gold can be sold, and how to melt it down. Reckon we’ll do that with these, a bit at a time.’
‘You’ll move to Brisbane?’ Hannah asked.
‘No. This is my home. And I’m not fool enough to tell anyone else how many of these coins we have, or where I keep them, even my cousin. Especially him maybe. But a woman can visit Brisbane now and then without folks talking, and my cousin can keep a quarter of what he gets for them.’
‘And it’ll be easier without a dark-skinned son around. Friends will start visiting you again,’ said Jamie. But there was no bitterness in his voice.
He has a future to dream of now, thought Hannah. The past can float away, like driftwood. Would he forget her, too?
‘Well, maybe I won’t want them as friends, now I’ve known what real friends are like. But we’ll see.’ Mrs Zebediah smiled at him, a smile of infinite love and hope — and infinite loss too, Hannah thought. Because Jamie wouldn’t be with her every day, as he had been all his life. Mrs Zebediah wouldn’t see her son for years. Who would she cook fish pie for now, or fish stew with coconut? She had already lost so much and now even more would be ripped away.
It would be hard for Mrs Zebediah; as bitter as it had been for the woman who had left her merchildren to the sea. But Hannah could dimly see that the hope of a fulfilled life for Jamie would ease even the loss of his warmth in her life. And Jamie could write to his mother, as the merchildren could not. Mrs Zebediah could even read his letters now. She would know that her son was happy. Jamie was the kind of person who would find joy, no matter how hard he had to hunt for it, and his mother knew it. Her confidence in a good life for her son seemed to glow around her.
‘I’m perishing for a cup of tea.’ She clapped Hannah’s hands. ‘Come on, both of you. I’ll put the kettle on. You said it’s Sydney you’re going to, Hannah love? My word!’ She made Sydney sound as if it were a world away. And in a way, it was.
Hannah nodded. ‘But . . . but Papa won’t be with us. He’s going to another school in a big town called Ringworth.’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Zebediah, ‘I had a feeling your ma and pa weren’t happy.’ She added awkwardly, ‘Seeing as how we’ve all this money now, if your ma would like a hand — there’s plenty for all of us, I reckon.’
Hannah felt tears on her cheeks, or maybe it was salt spray. ‘Mama has a lot of money, I think. Enough for all we need.’
‘Well, the offer’s there,’ said Mrs Zebediah. ‘People have to help their friends.’
As Mama was trying to help them, Hannah realised, with the job down south for Jamie. The job wasn’t to keep her and Jamie apart; it was to keep him safe. Probably Mama planned to send money orders to Mrs Zebediah, too, which Mama would think Mrs Zebediah might need when she no longer had Jamie to work with her. Hannah would have to find a way to explain that the Zebediahs didn’t need money without giving away the secret of the gold.
‘I’m going to get those pancakes on,’ said Mrs Zebediah. ‘Before we drop from hunger. And I’ll make them with last night’s cream instead of milk today. I reckon I’ve separated my last bucket of cream.’ She smiled. ‘I might even buy my butter now.’
‘It won’t be as good as yours,’ said Hannah. She gazed around at the beach, and back at Mrs Zebediah and Jamie. ‘Nothing will ever be as good as this, no matter where I go or how long I live.’
‘Never say never, young lady. Never is a long, long time.’ Mrs Zebediah pressed another kiss to Hannah’s cheek. ‘I’m going to miss you, darling girl. But you and your Ma will be happy in Sydney. I know it here.’ She touched her heart. ‘Come on, the both of you. Breakfast! I reckon the water’s gone down far enough to use the track again.’ She lifted the smaller of the two sacks and began to lug it up the sand towards the path up to the farm.
But Jamie didn’t follow her. Hannah stared at him as the wet sand hugged her boots. ‘What are you going to do, now you’ll have money?’
‘Travel,’ he said.
‘Where will you go?’
He grinned. ‘To everywhere I’ve seen in books. To see the Taj Mahal maybe, or the Statue of Liberty or the British Museum. To find somewhere I can walk into a tearoom or a bookshop and they won’t call the police. Mum was right: you and your ma have shown me there’s life outside Port Harris. I won’t be trapped by men like Mr Harris now.’ He gazed at her, his words slowing. ‘Hannah . . .’
He’s going to ask if I’ll go with him, Hannah thought. But I can’t. Not even if Mama would let me go. Jamie’s old enough to make choices like this, but I’m not. Nor would most of the world accept us travelling together, even if I was older.
I can’t bear to leave you, she thought. But I must.
She met his eyes, and realised that he, too, understood.
‘One day,’ he said softly, ‘I’ll find a place where a girl like you and a boy like me can be together.’
‘Do you think there is a place like that?’ asked Hannah.
‘I’ll keep travelling till I discover one.’
She met his eyes. ‘If you can’t find it, then we’ll have to make a place. Together!’ She added, ‘I wrote you a poem. A poem to say goodbye.’ Loneliness shivered through her. Because this was goodbye. ‘One day’ was still a long way away. But if Mrs Zebediah could face life without Jamie for however many years were needed, then she could too. Maybe pain was the price you had to pay for love.
She watched as he read it.
This is the tree where we’ve unfurled
Friendship’s flag across the world.
Been together, dreamed together,
Friendship made its own new weather,
We’ve seen the world afresh together.
Where friends are, is home, forever.
He looked up at her and grinned. ‘You’re getting better.’
‘Do you like it?’
‘Yes. They’re good words. I’ll keep them always.’
‘Will you write to me?’
‘Of course. Will you send me your poems?’
‘Always.’
They looked at each other for long seconds, saying nothing. One day they would say more. One day the world would be different. Even Port Harris would change. But this was now. A girl and a boy could not outface the world. Not yet.
The wind tossed foam at them. The white-topped waves spat. The water crashed upon the sand like the hooves of wild horses, then crept back. At last Hannah said: ‘I’d better not stay for pancakes. I left a note, but Mama will be worried . . . I’ll just say goodbye to your mum.’
Papa might come looking for her if she was away too long. Mr Murphy might follow him and see the coins before they could be hidden safely. Scandal could still destroy Jamie and his mother, and Papa too. There’d only be safety when they’d all left here, Jamie too, and Mrs Zebediah was alone. If only ‘one day’ wasn’t so far away. But she had to leave him. If she didn’t leave there would be no joyous meeting to dream of till it came.
‘Mum won’t let you go without something to eat, even if it’s just one of her pies to eat as you walk.’
She was glad to change the subject to something down-to-earth. ‘A fish pie, with some ginger in it?’
Jamie nodded.
It would probably be a long time before she would eat Mrs Zebediah’s cooking again, Mrs Zebediah’s last gift of love. It would be hard to eat it, knowing when it was gone there’d be no more.
She gazed around the beach where so much had begun, and now so much was ending. She should feel desolate. Her family had been shredded. Every home she’d known was gone. Even the comfort of Mrs Zebediah’s kitchen was lost to her now. But somehow she didn’t feel alone, or hopeless. One day she would be a poet. She knew what was important now. All she needed were the words. One day she would make fish pie with Mrs Zebediah again. One day a white girl and a dark boy could hold hands and no one would yell, or even notice. And her words would help make that happen.
She held her hand out. Jamie took it. Those big dark hands and pale palms. ‘Travel well,’ she said. ‘Keep safe.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll be going to all the places we talked about together. And one day . . .’
One day, she thought, we will say all we can’t say now. One day, when you have sailed beyond the sunset, and come home.
‘Friends forever?’ she asked.
Because friendship was as much a home as any house, and so was love. And when you had a friend, a true friend, it didn’t matter if you didn’t meet for years. The love would still be there.
‘Always,’ he agreed.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is very loosely based on the lives of my two grandmothers and my great-grandmother. I spent my first three years in the care of Great-Grandma, and owe her and both Grandma and ‘Jannie’ far more than I ever realised during their lives. Even though they all lived in Sydney, and my parents moved to Brisbane, these women loved and cherished me and taught me the most important things they knew: from how to see the sunlight on the grass to how to catch and clean a fish; from cleaning the silverware to fighting racism. The phrase ‘spotlessly clean’ was Jannie’s. She had no higher praise for a fellow committee member’s home, except perhaps to compare an Australian poet to Scotland’s Robbie Burns. Jannie sent me every book shortlisted by the early Children’s Book Council of Australia and anti-racism magazines, as well as the works of Oodgeroo of the Noonuccal and Judith Wright and other Australian poets, making me perhaps one of the first generation of writers to be reared mostly on Australian literature.
All the incidents in this book happened, though not necessarily in the times or places I have put them, from the shipwreck and meeting Mrs Zebediah to my great-grandfather’s teaching career. After working in two small schools with increasing bitterness he was finally given the private-school post he felt he deserved, but I don’t know where or when. Though he moved to Sydney to be near his children on his retirement, he still lived apart from my great-grandmother. In those days divorce was a scandal, and they kept up the pretence that the separation had been ‘for the children’s education’.
My great-grandfather was a canny investor and left an inheritance for all his descendants at his death, though my mother, as the trustee, disposed of her childrens’ before we were old enough to inherit. He also wrote a book on the etiquette of letter-writing, with templates of correct letters, but I have been unable to find a copy of it. I only know his life from the stories of his wife and daughter. They told me little about him, and I may well be doing a good and dedicated man an injustice.
The most incredible event in this book — the gold coins found on a beach after a storm — really happened too. Until relatively recently the value of most of the world’s coins was in the metal they were made from. A gold coin was worth roughly the amount of gold it contained; a copper coin was worth its weight in copper. This was rarely exact, but it did mean that if you had gold coins from another country they would still retain most of their value if they were melted down or even exchanged at a bank — though questions would have been asked if there were a lot of them. Mr Vandergeld was presumably taking illegally gained coins — possibly the treasure from a ship heading to Batavia that had been sunk a hundred years or so earlier, or from a French ship captured in the Napoleonic Wars, or even pirates’ treasure (which may be mostly legendary but did sometimes exist) — to a foreign port, where fewer questions would be asked about how he came to have them.
Ever since Grandma told me the story of the gold coins among the other storm debris on the beaches, I have looked for the gleam of gold after every rain-lashed night.
I was too young to vote in the 1967 referendum that finally let Indigenous Australians be counted in the census of their own land, but on that day, and in the decade that followed, Australia really did say ‘we can be better’. Grandma and Jannie had to wait and battle most of their lives to see it. I hope I will see Australia say it again in my lifetime. I suspect, from meeting and hearing so many young people, that I will. Thank you for all that you will do, even if I never live to see it.
WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE
The law that allowed women to vote in Federal elections was passed in early 1902. It was a contentious issue — but not as important back then to the new politicians as keeping out those whose skin was not white and background not European.
TONSILLITIS
The diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of tonsillitis in this book are from 1901 and of historical interest only. If you want to know about tonsillitis, ask a doctor.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
On 17 December 1901, the governor-general of Australia signed the Act ‘to Provide for the Regulation, Restriction and Prohibition of the Introduction of Labourers from the Pacific Islands and For Other Purposes’. Most of the Pacific Islanders in Australia were to be deported from the end of 1906. To avoid being deported, people had to prove that they were not Islanders.
The only Islanders allowed to stay in Australia were those who arrived before 1 September 1879, worked on ships’ crews or received an exemption. Only very few did gain a legal exemption, despite a strong and long campaign by the Islanders themselves asking to remain. But many stayed, evading the law, as Jamie in this book would do. Australia was their home then, and is home to their descendants today.
The new law didn’t destroy the sugar industry, as men like Mr Harris in this book claimed and feared. It wasn’t as easy to make the vast fortunes he and men like him had enjoyed, but more immigrants, especially families from Italy, began to work on the sugar cane plantations, and the industry continued to thrive and change.
Nor do we have freedom from racial discrimination even today, despite the Whitlam government introducing anti-discrimination laws in the early 1970s; the Mabo decision that meant that land that had a continuous connection to its Indigenous people could be retained by them; Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s official apology to the ‘Stolen Generations’; the handi
ng back of some of the confiscated wages of Indigenous workers; the gradual recognition that there was no one ‘Aboriginal Australia’ but many nations, complex and socially advanced; and much more — and yet, still, not nearly enough.
But every time you feel despondent about the world, read some history and see how much people can change — and will still change — the world for good.
Titles by Jackie French
Australian Historical
Somewhere Around the Corner • Dancing with Ben Hall
Daughter of the Regiment • Soldier on the Hill • Valley of Gold
Tom Appleby, Convict Boy • A Rose for the Anzac Boys
The Night They Stormed Eureka • Nanberry: Black Brother White
Pennies for Hitler • Pirate Boy of Sydney Town
General Historical
Hitler’s Daughter • Lady Dance • How the Finnegans Saved the Ship
The White Ship • They Came on Viking Ships • Macbeth and Son
Pharaoh • Oracle • Goodbye, Mr Hitler • Just a Girl
Fiction
Rain Stones • Walking the Boundaries • The Secret Beach
Summerland • A Wombat Named Bosco • Beyond the Boundaries
The Warrior: The Story of a Wombat • The Book of Unicorns
Tajore Arkle • Missing You, Love Sara • Dark Wind Blowing
Ride the Wild Wind: The Golden Pony and Other Stories
Refuge • The Book of Horses and Unicorns
Non-Fiction
A Year in the Valley • How the Aliens from Alpha Centauri
Invaded My Maths Class and Turned Me into a Writer
How to Guzzle Your Garden • The Book of Challenges
The Fascinating History of Your Lunch • To the Moon and Back
The Schoolmaster's Daughter Page 25