by Carol Jones
‘Good. Harder to track us.’
‘Where are we going?’ she asked, realising the answer as soon as she spoke, for his ta’am rested on the ground nearby, the two large baskets attached to their carrying pole. Second Brother had devoted an entire day to scouring the local thickets for a stout pole that would last the distance, however long that might prove to be. However far the pole might need to travel. The baskets contained half his body weight in provisions, all carefully assembled for the journey to New Gold Mountain. A new life was packed in readiness for his departure.
Two pairs of blue cotton trousers and two blue tunics. One padded jacket and trousers, for protection in the unknown winters that lay ahead. Woven hemp sandals. A cotton quilt lined with wadded silk, new-made by their mother and bestowed with a grudging hou wahn. A straw sleeping mat rolled up and tucked inside the quilt. A wooden block for a pillow. Rice bowls, chopsticks, spoons, cups and a wok. A well-thumbed phrase book of the foreigners’ mysterious language, wrapped in gummed silk to keep it dry. And a paltry few slivers of silver for trade.
‘Here, put this on,’ he said, handing her a bamboo hat that was sitting atop one of the baskets. ‘Tonight we will do a better job of disguising you.’
Before she could ask him what he meant, he had hoisted up pole and baskets, twisting his body until the weight settled comfortably between his shoulders.
‘Hurry, we must leave now.’
‘When will we be back?’
He looked into her eyes then, and the hard planes of his face softened almost imperceptibly.
‘You will never be back, Little Cat.’
17
Robetown, South Australia, 1856
By the time they reached Noorla’s doorstep, water was streaming down their faces in rivulets, their skirts hung wet and cumbersome upon their bodies and even Alice’s pantalets clung to her legs beneath her skirt. Although James remained limp in Thomas’s arms, the bullocky appeared to notice neither his weight nor the rain. His shirtsleeves were plastered to his forearms so that she could see the lean strength beneath.
‘Thank you, I can take him now.’
He opened his mouth, perhaps about to offer to carry James upstairs, but Violet’s eyes pleaded with him to desist. ‘I am stronger than I look.’
He nodded in silent understanding. ‘Let me know how the boy gets on,’ he said, depositing him gently in her arms. Then tipping his dripping cabbage-tree hat in farewell, he turned back to town once more. As Alice opened the door for her to carry James inside she watched him stride away. She hoped it would not be the last time she saw him.
But the boy was heavier than she had anticipated, and the stairs proved an additional hurdle. By the time she reached the door to his room, her arms were quaking with the effort and she was breathing hard. She lowered him to the bed, where he lay pale and unmoving, so unlike the jack-in-the-box boy she had come to know. While Alice drew back the bedcovers, she removed his short jacket and trousers, then struggled to thrust his flaccid limbs into his nightshirt. Throughout this procedure he did not stir. He may as well have been a corpse.
‘Is James going to be all right?’ asked Alice, when they finally had him snug beneath the covers.
‘He will be putting beetles down your back again in no time.’
‘Shall I go and tell Mama?’
‘Of course. As soon as you have changed out of your wet clothes. But, Alice, your mama may be angry if she discovers we let James visit with Mr Thomas. We wouldn’t want that, would we?’
‘No, we wouldn’t,’ Alice agreed with a frown, perhaps remembering the kerfuffle over their last adventure, when her mother took to her bed with a headache for two days when she could not find them for an hour or two. ‘But it was you who wished to visit with Mr Thomas.’
‘I believe it was James who wanted Mr Thomas to show him how to train a dog.’ For a moment the girl looked as if she might debate the matter but Violet added, ‘Your brother needs us now.’
Alice gazed down at her little brother, lying prone in his bed. Perhaps in that moment, she remembered that despite being annoying, he was her only sibling and her mother was unlikely to produce more.
‘When you’re better, I’ll play at bullockies with you in the garden,’ she promised her silent brother. ‘You can be the bullock driver and Miss Hartley and I will be the bullocks.’ Bending towards him, she stretched out her hand as if to brush a lock of sticky hair from his forehead. But Violet intercepted her by enfolding that hand in her own.
‘Best not get too close. Your mama won’t want both her children ill with the grippe. And James will need your prayers.’ She forced a smile. Clearly the boy was very sick. She suspected that he would need more than prayers in the coming days.
She hoped the doctor would not be too far from home.
*
Mrs Wallace sat by her son’s bedside, bathing his forehead in cool water. James’s illness seemed to have jolted her from her usual, jittery state and roused her into action. With her hair pulled back in a tight bun beneath a plain white bonnet, and a long apron tied about her waist, for the first time Violet caught a glimpse of the plucky squatter’s wife she must once have been. Her fear was written in the grooves upon her forehead and the wild look in her eyes, but did not show in her steady hands and calm demeanour. She had already applied a medicinal plaster to his chest and dosed him with poppy syrup.
From her place by the open window, Violet looked out over the track from town, hoping to catch sight of Dr Penny upon his chestnut horse. Mrs Wallace had sent Billy to fetch him as soon as she laid eyes upon her son. From that moment, she had hardly spared a word for Violet, other than to issue instructions. She uttered no rebuke or lecture when told that the children had been caught in the rain while playing at quoits. She did not question why the governess had failed to notice earlier that her charge was ill. Violet’s story was met with nothing more reproachful than a hard stare. A reckoning was yet to come.
The weather had set in for the afternoon so that sea and sky merged in a dull grey, the lake’s surface rippled in the watery light, while the land was hazed in a curtain of steady rain. The world had turned to water. But through the rain, she spied the tiny figure of a man upon a horse, plodding along the track between ocean and lake. She watched him draw closer, gradually discerning the bulky shape of panniers and a small valise strapped to the saddle behind the rider. Even from this distance she knew the outline of the town’s small, sturdy doctor.
‘He is coming!’ With her words, a breath of wind ruffled the lace curtains, as if the room itself breathed a sigh of relief.
But any relief was short-lived. An interminable hour later, the doctor was once more packing his equipment into his valise as James lay listless upon his bed. Apart from an occasional bout of coughing, the boy had barely stirred, even when the doctor bled him.
‘Perhaps it is only a severe cold,’ Mrs Wallace suggested, her eyes fixed to her son’s pale face, ‘and he will be himself again in a day or two.’ Violet would have admired her optimism if she believed it, but there was a hopeless note to the woman’s voice. She was, after all, a woman who had buried two babes.
‘We can only hope, dear lady,’ said Dr Penny. ‘But the boy’s condition is worrisome. We should know more tomorrow when the symptoms resolve themselves further. At this point it could be any of a number of maladies. Until then, we must keep a close eye on him. I can ask Mrs Ling to help you nurse him.’
Mrs Ling was well-regarded as a home nurse in the district and to Violet’s way of thinking, probably a good deal more experienced in the management of umpteen maladies than the boy’s mama.
‘Thank you, doctor, but Miss Hartley and I will manage, ’ said Mrs Wallace and Violet suppressed a sigh.
Dr Penny returned his leeches to their small pewter case, saying, ‘I’ve given him a little calomel and bled him to remove any bad humours. The fever is tolerable but try to keep him cool. It’s his throat that concerns me most. A poultice of grated
carrot and turnip may help. You can have your cook make one up.’
With each new bout of coughing, Violet expected James to wake, demanding a cup of ginger beer in his wheedling, boyish manner. But throughout the doctor’s examination he remained too lethargic to open his eyes, as if they were gummed down by the weight of his illness.
The doctor finished packing his valise and stood, a smile too tenuous to inspire confidence flashing briefly through his beard. ‘I’ll return in the morning to see how he’s getting on then,’ he said, patting the mother’s shoulder.
When Violet returned from seeing the good doctor upon his way, Alice was sitting on the landing outside her brother’s room, workbasket at her side, plying knitting needles.
‘I’m knitting James a scarf. Do you think he will like it, Miss Hartley?’
‘I’m sure he will love it.’
‘I’m trying very hard not to drop my stitches. I haven’t got very far but already there is a mistake… see?’ She held up the piece to show Violet a ragged hole at the bottom of the knitting.
‘Would you like me to unravel and fix it?’ The poor girl had got her stitches into such disarray that the only way to repair it was to begin again.
‘Yes, please,’ said Alice, handing her the needles.
Violet inspected the floor for signs of dust before taking a seat next to Alice. She slipped the needles from their woollen loops and began carefully unravelling the uneven stitches as Alice looked on. When she reached the bottom of the hole she inserted a needle once more.
‘Will you rewind the wool for me, please, Alice? If we work together, we shall have the job done before you know it.’
‘Is James going to die?’
‘Whatever gave you such an idea?’
‘He looks very sick.’
‘It is probably just a bad case of the grippe and he will be up and about in a day or two, annoying you once more. James cannot die,’ Violet promised. ‘Your mama will not allow it.’
*
It was a long night, sitting turnabout at James’s bedside with his mama, listening to his cough turn to a bark that racked his robust, little boy’s chest. By dawn, when Violet struggled from sleep to relieve her employer once more, the lad’s neck had swollen to bull-like proportions so that his head did not look to belong any more to his body. Mrs Wallace went to her bed, eliciting a promise from Violet that she would wake her if anything changed.
Overnight the boy’s lips had also developed a dry flaky appearance, as if he had been too long in the sun, and his breathing grew even more laboured. Violet thought to spoon a few drops of ginger beer into his mouth – the boy had such a sweet tooth – but the liquid caught in his throat, dribbling forth from the corner of his mouth in a bubble of beery saliva. For a moment, in the dim lamplight, she could have sworn she saw a froth of crimson fleck his lips and she imagined that James was coughing up what remained of his lungs. His painful bark took her back to that low-ceilinged cottage where the curtains were always drawn against the sunlight, and the birdsong was drowned by the sound of her mother’s cough. There had been no money for a nurse and her father was still at sea, but a twelve-year-old learns quickly. A twelve-year-old grows up in no time, when circumstances demand.
She wiped the saliva from the boy’s mouth, feeling a tug at her heart. She had promised Alice that her brother would recover, but she saw that she may have misspoken. Were his lungs even now turning to mush? Was his throat choking him of air? Squeezing the life from him? He coughed again and an invisible hand clutched her throat too. She realised that it was more than fear of rebuke that she felt. More than fear for Miss Violet Hartley’s welfare. She was afraid that they might lose that wilful little boy.
When the doctor arrived soon after breakfast she had never been more relieved. Surely they could rely upon his qualifications. The man had doctored sailors and soldiers and been in the Maori War. Surely he had seen illness in its myriad variations and would know what to do about a small boy who could barely catch a breath. She woke Mrs Wallace, who did not wait to dress but rushed to her son’s bedside in nightgown and wrapper. Together they watched the doctor probe and prod the boy, waiting in silence for his pronouncement.
‘The boy has developed a malignant throat,’ he said, and Violet could tell by his tone that this news was not good. ‘Come, take a look.’ He beckoned for Mrs Wallace to approach the bed and Violet peered over her shoulder. Holding James’s mouth open with a steel instrument, he gestured for them to look inside.
‘You can see that a membrane has developed around the child’s tonsils, restricting his breathing.’
Wrapped around James’s tonsils was a thick, grey mass, growing like a fungus in the back of his throat. Violet put a hand to her neck, suddenly conscious of a desire to swallow.
‘There are surgeons who advocate the removal of the membrane but in my opinion, and in the opinion of several medical men I respect, this will only lead to pain and bleeding in the patient. I do not recommend it.’ He paused, to allow time for his words to be taken in. ‘I will make up a mixture of cayenne and vinegar, which seems to have some efficacy in these cases.’
‘But he will recover, won’t he, doctor?’
‘Ah, dear lady… I believe that his recovery will depend upon his constitution… and the will of our Lord.’
‘M-my James is a strong boy. He has never suffered more than a cold. He loves nothing more than to be… to be… outdoors,’ Mrs Wallace stammered, on the verge of tears.
‘Well, that is certainly a good sign. Most adults and many children do recover from a putrid throat. But, Mrs Wallace…’
‘Yes?’
‘You may want to send word to your husband.’
Violet rushed to her employer’s side for the woman looked likely to swoon. But Mrs Wallace brushed her aside, saying, ‘You may leave now, Miss Hartley. You have done enough for one day.’
The shadow of death loomed in the boy’s brightly coloured room and Violet wasn’t sorry be elsewhere. She felt sad and anxious for James, she did. She wished with all her heart that he might be saved. But when that familiar voice of guilt nagged to be heard, she blocked her ears to it. Guilt was a futile emotion and she had resolved to be done with it years ago. It had not brought her mother back, no matter how loud and long she blamed herself for not being clever enough, or good enough to save her.
If Dr Penny could not cure James of illness, Violet’s guilt stood no chance.
18
Pearl River Delta, China, 1856
The ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach hadn’t abated by the time Young Wu reached the entrance to his father’s compound. The doors were flung open against the walls, concealing the peeling remains of last spring’s Door Gods and the snarling dragon doorknockers. Yet the sign declaring to all that they were entering the presence of Recommended Man Wu remained visible. He paused at the entrance, wondering why the house had been left so unguarded. Only the high doorsill barred his way, a barrier to any uninvited ghosts, a wall to keep the family’s luck inside, but not much use in keeping out human intruders.
No one had noticed his arrival. Their old gatekeeper was probably out and about upon some errand. His mother was likely in the kitchen preparing the evening meal with Little Sweetie, a distant Wu cousin whom his father had purchased as bondmaid in a favour to her impoverished parents. His younger sister would be returning from the silk filature, or off gallivanting with a friend, since he wasn’t there to supervise. And if his father weren’t down at the clan hall with his cronies, solving the problems of the Empire, he would be safely ensconced in his study.
He stepped over the sill, passed by the gatekeeper’s room to his left and entered the front courtyard. It was that hour between day and night where the shadows crept towards evening, yet the courtyard was still hazed in a dusky light. A cold breeze had sprung up from nowhere, rustling the paper lanterns and cooling the lingering sweat from his long walk. It circled around him, playing with his hair and raising chic
ken skin on his arms. And in the quiet of the empty courtyard he heard it keening through the empty rooms of his father’s house. His bare scalp tightened in the cold and he shivered with the coming of night.
Now that he was home, the terrible feeling that had followed him all the way from the ferry did not fade. If anything it grew worse, as if his stomach gnawed upon itself, one moment empty, the other full to bursting. He had not felt like this since the day Bully Yee pushed him to the ground and made him eat dirt. The day that his father denounced him as a weak and worthless son, unfit to be named Wu. On that day, it had been Ah Yong who saved him by clapping him on the back and telling him it had been a good fight. That it did not matter if Bully Yee won or their fathers punished them. They had put up a good fight and that was all that mattered.
Not to Big Wu.
But all that had been long ago. He was a man now and he must swallow his fears, listen to his instinct and if necessary, brave his father’s wrath.
His cloth shoes whispered upon the flagstones as he strode across the courtyard and stepped into the main hall where the sacred lamp flickered upon the altar. From here he could see through to the second courtyard where not a soul stirred. There was only the wind, moaning even louder now as a fresh gust blew through the main hall and extinguished the sacred lamp. He did not stop to think about this lamp that burned day and night, the light of the Tao that was never allowed to die. He followed the sound of the wind across the void to his father’s study where the moaning was loudest. Even the closed door could not muffle the sound. It rose in a high-pitched wail before fading to a prolonged sigh. A brief respite then the wailing began again.
If the wind’s voice sounded like a woman, Young Wu did not acknowledge it. For if he did, it would suggest a lack of trust in the father to whom he owed his existence. He dared not imagine a girl crying or broken in his father’s study, a girl whom he had abandoned. He did not want to expose what lay behind that door for then he would have to act upon it. Yet he must.