by Carol Jones
2
Most days Young Wu found reason to wander down the alley next to the Mo house. He told himself it happened to be situated along his route to the temple, or that it was the most convenient alley to reach the ferry poled by his cousin, Ferryman Wu. But the truth was that he liked to keep an eye on the Mo twins. This afternoon he was returning home from supervising the silk reelers at his clan’s silk filature. As usual, his route followed the path along the river before making a turn through the village. Sandy Bottom Village was a three-surname village of some two hundred families. Situated on a bend in the river, its alleys wound between houses, skirted around banyan trees and traversed irrigation channels. Several of these alleys led to a paved road where the lineage temples and the Wu clan hall were sited. Others came to abrupt dead ends in a ruse designed to hinder any bandit or warlord who chose the village as prey.
It had taken centuries for Wu’s ancestors to tame the river at Sandy Bottom Village. They had dug the fishponds, formed the dykes and planted the raised earth, so that from a distance the floodplain twinkled with water, and the land was lushly green with rank after rank of truncated mulberry trees, all arranged in the four-water-six land system. The entire area was criss-crossed with paths that meandered through field and village, yet Young Wu’s journey always took him past one particular house, little different to any other whitewashed, mud-brick, clay-tiled house in the district. Except for one thing, or things. The Mo twins. Mo Wing Yong or Ah Yong and his sister Mo Lin Fa, better known as Little Cat.
The many layers of his cloth-soled shoes allowed him to tread softly along the dirt alley, stopping unnoticed at the entrance to the courtyard. Sometimes the only occupants were chickens. Sometimes Grandfather Mo could be seen, squatting on a low stool mending nets or weaving a raincoat from straw. If he was early, he might catch Little Cat and her mother reeling silk thread on the veranda and then he would continue on his way. But if he happened upon the twins alone, he would enter.
‘Young Wu!’ shouted Mo Wing Yong, catching sight of him in the doorway. The Wu clan accounted for more than five hundred souls in Sandy Bottom Village, by far the most numerous and prosperous lineage. But despite their multitude, everyone knew Wu Hoi Sing as Young Wu, son of Big Wu, who was headman of the village, and the Wu clan elder.
Unfortunately, Ah Yong had momentarily taken his eyes from his sister’s hands to greet him. He watched as the girl exploited her brother’s moment of inattention by pivoting on one leg and swinging the other in a high kick to the side of his head so that he reeled back from the blow. Yet his friend didn’t seem unduly upset at the kick. He screwed up his face, before shaking his head to fling away the pain.
‘Need some help teaching her a lesson, Ah Yong?’ Young Wu laughed, folding his arms over his chest and leaning back against the wall, legs crossed at the ankles. He knew his comment was guaranteed to annoy Little Cat. Since she was so easily annoyed.
As expected, she threw him a withering glance before returning her attention to her brother. He felt a pang of something that may have been disappointment. He had expected more from her, a stinging riposte or, at the very least, an invitation to argue. The twins were his age mates and he had been keeping an eye on them for as long as he could remember. He supposed it had begun when they were ten and the twins stood up for him against Bully Yee – the biggest, meanest boy in the village – who had taken to calling him Maggot Wu. He didn’t know why the boy taunted him in this way. Perhaps because it was the lowest thing he could think to call the headman’s son. Or perhaps he really thought Young Wu was as loathsome as a maggot. In any case, he had found himself eating dirt with Bully Yee’s big foot on his neck until the Mo twins threw themselves at his attacker. Ah Yong pummelled at the bully’s back while Little Cat hung from his neck like a troublesome child.
They had all earned a beating that day, or to be precise, two beatings. One from Bully Yee, and another from their parents for fighting. Big Wu did not approve of pointless fighting, especially when his son lost. He did approve of purposeful fighting however, for bandits were a perennial problem in the region. Just last month he and the other elders had conceived a plan to build watchtowers in the village. His father believed the situation was only going to worsen, with the long-haired Taiping rebels warring with the Imperial Army, the foreigners creeping further and further up the Pearl River, and warlords taking advantage of the whole mess to grab for power.
Anyway, after the incident with Bully Yee, he had taken to trailing the Mo boy through the mulberry groves, sitting next to him in the clan hall at their lessons, or joining him under the banyan tree by the river when the monks came to teach them kung fu. He didn’t mind admitting that he admired Yong’s strength and agility. And there was something strange and exciting about the idea that his friend had shared a womb with his sister. With a girl. He couldn’t imagine sharing a womb with one of his sisters. His two elder sisters would suck all the nourishment from the space and his younger sister would drive him away with her wriggling. He often wondered if some of Yong’s maleness had rubbed off on Little Cat in the womb, for she didn’t behave like other girls he knew. But if that were true, why hadn’t some of her femaleness rubbed off on her brother? It was a mystery he was yet to solve.
Mo Wing Yong was his friend. Lin Fa, however, was generally an annoyance. Or so he complained to her brother. A loud, tall girl who popped up where she wasn’t wanted, and spoke up when she wasn’t invited. She wandered barefoot where she willed. She didn’t seem to care that her pigtails were straggly or her trousers muddy, so unlike his own sisters. Not one of them would ever kick her brother in the head.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ah Yong said now in response to his offer of help. He didn’t glance up as he answered, focusing all his attention upon his sister, resetting his position, one elbow tucked loosely to his side. The girl was a hand shorter than her brother, and her limbs lacked his muscular bulk, but Wu knew from experience that she struck with the speed of a spitting cat.
‘Why are you fighting a girl anyway? She should be wrestling laundry down at the riverbank, not fighting her betters.’ He tried again to provoke a response.
‘Tongue and teeth will fight each other sometimes,’ Ah Yong muttered absently as he blocked his sister’s next strike with a receiving hand.
‘Tongue and teeth should work together,’ Young Wu said, quite reasonably he thought. Even his Elder Sister, who was known for being bossy, would not think of upsetting family harmony like Little Cat.
‘Tongue and teeth should learn to shut up!’ she hissed, finally losing her temper.
‘Little girls should learn to mind their manners.’
‘Little boys should keep their opinions and their penises in their pants.’
Luckily, the last comment was too vulgar and disrespectful to be ignored. A curt reprimand was called for at the very least. Instead he found himself pushing off from the wall and kicking away his shoes, a tingling of anticipation twitching his arms.
‘Want to show me how?’ he offered, as he bent over to roll his trousers higher, and then coiled his queue around his neck. He knew that fighting a girl was unbecoming. He knew that she was goading him, but despite knowing these facts he felt a sense of urgency, as if he must teach her a lesson. Must subdue those long slender limbs, tangle those whirling arms, and flip her to the ground with a twisting leg. She was only a girl but he wanted to crush her. To make her—
‘Lin Fa, that is enough!’ Ah Yong shouted, capturing both his sister’s wrists and holding them so tightly that she could not wrench them from his grasp. ‘And you, Ah Sing, stop teasing my sister. She’s too stupid to know when to stop and you should know better. You’ve had plenty of practice with three sisters.’ He glanced angrily from Young Wu to his struggling twin.
‘If she doesn’t want to fight, she shouldn’t pull the tiger’s tail,’ he said with a shrug.
‘Who said I don’t want to fight?’
‘I did, little sister. You think you
could win a real fight against either of us? I’m just toying with you.’
From where he stood, Young Wu saw how she struggled to free her wrists, twisting her arms so far that she was in danger of dislocating a shoulder to escape. She narrowed her eyes, flicking venom-filled glances from one youth to the other as her brother watched impassively.
‘Let me free, Goh Go, and I’ll show him not to mess with the tiger,’ she hissed.
‘Daaih Lou was right. I should never have let you train with me in the first place. But who listens to their older brother?’ Ah Yong said, shaking his head before suddenly releasing her and stepping back. ‘It has put all the wrong ideas in your head. Girls shouldn’t fight.’
She was breathing hard. Young Wu couldn’t help noticing how her chest rose and fell beneath her tunic, how she held her spine rigid with anger, and how red marks like manacles had formed about her wrists. He wanted to hold her close until her resistance melted away. He wanted to soothe her so that she purred rather than hissed. But he spoke none of this nonsense. Men did not speak of such things, not even to their wives.
‘Your mother should have bound her feet when she could and then she would not be able to fight,’ he said instead, with a conspiratorial glance at his friend. ‘Now it is too late. She is chang gai po.’ Like a chicken she would continue fighting long after she had lost her head.
‘It’s not true that girls shouldn’t fight,’ Little Cat shouted. ‘One way or another, girls always have to fight.’
‘Huh!’
‘Teacher Fang invented the White Crane style by observing cranes. Wing Chun learned kung fu so that she could escape a bandit who would force her to marry him. Sometimes girls have no choice. Sometimes fighting is the only way to be free.’
She spat the words but the fight had gone out of her for the moment. Her arms hung loosely at her sides and her breathing slowed. She looked down at the ground rather than challenging them further. Her pigtails caressed the curve of her bowed neck like two ropes of silk. Young Wu knew he should be pleased that she ceased provoking him. This was as it should be, as the sage Confucius advised. Yet he was disappointed.
He strove to be a man of yee, a righteous man like his father, yet Little Cat brought out the brute in him. He was drawn to her and repelled at the same time. How could a man be gentle and good if a woman would not listen and obey?
‘No one is free,’ he said, pointing out the obvious. ‘We all have obligations.’
She stood so still that he felt regret form like a pebble in his gut. There was something compelling about the fizz of blood in his veins that her hostility incited. His desire to fight her warred with his desire for righteous action. He did not want to let it go.
‘Except perhaps a hermit,’ he forced himself to croak.
‘Of course a boy would say that,’ she muttered, not raising her eyes from her feet, bare and narrow with long toes that clawed into the dust of the courtyard.
‘One day you may find, little sister,’ pronounced her brother, ‘that the price of freedom is too high… even for you.’
Young Wu nodded, recognising this truth. He was the son of Big Wu. He had obligations to his father and the Wu ancestors going back fifty generations. He had to set an example. He had to relinquish vain desires.
3
Robetown, South Australia, 1856
That morning, the autumn sun had beckoned cheerfully, tempting Violet into a sprigged muslin day dress, which had cost the extortionate sum of two pounds six shillings the previous summer. Muslin may not have been the most prudent choice for a walk upon the beach, but how could she have predicted that a cold breeze would spring up from the bay, setting it to flapping, and turning all her labour with the curling iron to straw? The wind was playing havoc with her bonnet too, while twisted ropes of kelp twined about her boots and rimed the hem of her dress in salt. And all her vanity had been for naught, since the only people to see her were the children.
Perhaps an hour of arithmetic would have been advisable after all, despite the children’s hankering for adventure, for they had been plodding along the beach for a good half-hour and still the sand stretched ahead for miles. Violet didn’t fancy the walk back to town with sand whipping her face, yet neither did a climb over the dunes appeal, with the sword-like grass and prickly heath that dragged at her skirt and scratched her ankles. Not to mention all the nasty, biting things. But at least the walk would be shorter. It occurred to her that every decision in this disagreeable country became a choice between two evils.
Beside her, Alice picked her way through the seaweed, stooping every now and then to examine the chalky backbone of a cuttlefish or toss a flat stone out to sea, whilst James played chicken with the creeping waves. Violet bent to pick up one of the cuttlebones, dusting the sand from her glove with the other hand. ‘Did you know, children, that this shell is the backbone of a creature with ten arms called a cuttlefish?’
‘Mrs Smith feeds it to her parakeet,’ said Alice, snapping the cuttlebone in two. ‘It isn’t very strong for a bone.’
‘I believe its lightness helps the creature stay afloat. And the cuttlefish has the remarkable ability to change colour too.’
‘I should like to see that,’ said James, distracted from his game momentarily.
‘Have you seen one change colour, Miss Hartley?’ asked Alice.
‘No, but I have read about it in Mr Darwin’s book. My previous employers were fortunate to possess an extensive library.’ But she did not want to think about her previous employer or his walls of books. She had travelled to the ends of the earth to escape those memories. ‘Well, I think we have had enough Nature for one day,’ she announced.
‘Just a little longer,’ Alice pleaded.
‘Your nose is pink already, Alice. Your poor mama will have conniptions when she sees you.’ The girl was unlikely to risk upsetting her mother since they were all familiar with Mrs Wallace’s conniptions. Her brother, however, was made of sterner stuff and would not be dissuaded from his expedition by the threat of a ruined complexion or a tearful mama.
‘Cook has promised seed cake,’ said Violet, sidestepping the carcass of a large crab.
Food was her customary bribe with eight-year-old boys, but this morning seed cake appeared to have lost its attraction too, for James remained deaf to her pleas. Rather, he poked industriously at the dead crab with a stick of driftwood so that its insides oozed forth in yellowish slime, while Alice looked on in scientific fascination. Violet was considering resorting to sterner measures when he shouted suddenly, ‘Look, a steamer!’ abandoning the crab and pointing out to sea.
Indeed, a ship was steaming into the bay from the north, coming from the port of Adelaide, no doubt. Sailing low and dark in the water, with twin masts and a single funnel belching smoke, it seemed vaguely familiar.
‘It’s the Burra Burra,’ he declared, ‘on its way to Melbourne.’
‘The Burra Burra,’ Violet repeated with a shiver. Had it been a mere three months since she found herself ensconced below its decks with six girls bound for service in the South Australian bush, a pianoforte, numerous bolts of cloth, several crates of tea, a barrel of pitch and assorted plumbing fixtures? Already it seemed like an age since she had stepped onto the rickety jetty in Robetown, to be met by Mr Wallace. Following upon the interminable voyage from Gravesend, she had never been happier to find herself with solid earth beneath her feet.
Since the voyage from England, she had discovered a new respect for sailors, something she hadn’t appreciated when her father was alive. As a child she was more interested in his tales of strange lands and the even stranger creatures he met than the dangers of his journeying. But on her voyage out she experienced the rigours of a sailor’s life for the first time. The sun had burned so hot that it melted the pitch upon the deck. She had it from the mate that the beef had been three years in the barrel. The water was so tainted she could not drink it without a splash of vinegar and the butter had turned to a rancid oil. Perhap
s she was lucky she had been too seasick to eat anything other than stale biscuits, so hard she had to break them with a hammer. Her single consolation for these privations had been the inches she shed from her waist. To think that this had been her father’s lot for his twenty years at sea.
Violet closed her eyes on further thoughts of her father or her journey. She wasn’t one to dwell upon unhappy circumstances. Unhappiness was too debilitating for a young woman of uncertain means and indeterminate family. It was liable to show upon her face in a less than attractive manner and lend an unappealing quality to her voice, a consequence she could ill afford under present circumstances. No, she was determined to make the best of her situation, such as it was, as a poorly paid governess in this rural backwater at the veritable ends of the earth. Well, at least until she could arrange a more congenial situation, one more suited to her talents. For an inventive young woman, that should not prove too difficult.
‘If we return now we may be in time to see the Burra Burra dock,’ she said, pleased at this sudden inspiration. James considered her suggestion for a moment, but the beach still offered too many attractions to lure him away quite so easily.
‘And perhaps we might find some gull eggs in the dunes,’ she offered. Gull eggs were sure to be alluring to an energetic boy.
‘Can I take my stick?’
‘Why not.’ The dunes were riddled with the burrows of mutton-birds, but Violet was confident she could contrive not to find any of the poor innocent creatures or their eggs.
‘And if we meet some bushrangers I shall protect you,’ he said, beating at the air with his stick.
‘There are no bushrangers in South Australia,’ said Alice, who had a sharp way with facts. She had not learned to dissemble in the face of male certainty as yet, something Violet had been forced to learn at quite a young age.