The Boy with Blue Trousers

by Carol Jones

  Throughout his illness, Violet had done her best to comfort his stricken father, serving him cup after cup of Darjeeling and reading aloud from Mr Dickens’ Hard Times. But there was little she could do to aid the distraught mother who remained inconsolable. And now Violet and Alice were trapped with her in this house of death and she could see no hope of immediate escape.

  *

  ‘Miss Hartley, may I speak with you in the drawing room?’ said Mrs Wallace, materialising at the door to the schoolroom the following morning, with her daughter disappearing into the woodwork behind her. ‘You may wait in your room,’ she added, with a stern glance for Alice, who had a haunted look.

  This did not bode well.

  Violet followed her employer downstairs to the drawing room, arranging herself in a ladder-backed chair facing away from the disquieting new family portrait Mrs Wallace had recently commissioned. The daguerreotype took pride of place on the mantel, housed in a tooled leather case, lined with red velvet and sealed behind brass-mounted glass. Upon entering the drawing room, a guest was obliged to stop and admire it, for it would not be ignored.

  Mrs Wallace had called in the artist, who arrived with all haste on the first steamer from Adelaide. Violet had watched him pose the family for the portrait. Mama and Papa sitting on a pair of dining chairs, with Alice and James seated between them. At first glance, the portrait brought a smile to the viewer’s face, to see the father with his arm about his beloved daughter’s waist, and the dear boy with his head resting gently upon his mother’s shoulder. But upon closer inspection, the viewer noticed that there was something not quite comme-il-faut about the little family. Something about the boy’s eyes was… disconcerting. Unearthly almost. Like the eyes of one of Monsieur Boucher’s delightful painted cherubs.

  For indeed, the boy’s eyes had been added after the event. Ensconced in his studio, bent over his workbench, the artist had taken a fine sable brush and painted them in. Since they would not open of themselves. Since the happy family was an illusion. Not because the family was unhappy (although that was arguable), but because one of its members was in fact… a corpse. Several times a day Violet was confronted by the unhappy portrait and reminded of this truth. Each time she entered the drawing room she experienced an overwhelming desire to pick up the tooled leather case, dash it to the floor and watch as the fragile silver image tarnished in the hostile air.

  To the boy’s mother the portrait was a way to keep her dead son alive. To Violet, the memento mori spoke only of death and sadness. And Violet had no truck with sadness. Like any illness, sadness was to be wrestled with as valiantly as a malignant throat. So although she sat facing away from the portrait, this did not prevent the uncomfortable feeling that she was being observed from beyond the grave. She could not rid herself of the sensation that those painted eyes watched and judged. Nor could she avoid noticing the scrap of hair pinned to her employer’s gaunt chest inside a gold-rimmed brooch. A brown curl sealed behind glass forever.

  ‘Alice and I have been having a chat,’ Mrs Wallace began, her hand straying to the brooch. ‘I have decided to send her home to England to complete her education. So your services at Noorla will no longer be required,’ she announced abruptly, clutching at the brooch. Violet could see the bones bouncing about beneath the skin like piano keys.

  ‘I wonder if Alice may feel lost so far from home? Particularly given… recent events,’ she suggested.

  ‘Given recent events? You mean, the death of my beloved son…’

  ‘Yes. James’s sad passing…’

  ‘… given that your neglect killed my son. That and your meddling with the Chinamen.’

  For a moment, Violet was dumbstruck. But she had been accused of worse in her time and had faced it down. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she protested. ‘I nursed poor James far into the night. I… I cooled his fever. I changed the dressing at his throat. I… I did everything I could. And Mr Wallace asked me to nurse the Chinamen.’

  ‘Oh, yes, once the damage was done you became most solicitous, particularly over my husband. And I’m sure Mr Wallace was appreciative of your attentions. As others have been in the past… no doubt,’ she said with a smile that exposed her cheeks, sunken with grief.

  Violet knew what that smile implied. She had seen it before. Right before the serpent struck.

  ‘But who or what caused the damage? That is the question,’ Mrs Wallace continued, uninterested in any response on Violet’s part.

  ‘A miasma in the air, a pollution in the water? Who can say?’ Violet scrabbled for reasons. ‘And then we were caught in the rain while playing at quoits.’ Did the woman think to blame her for an act of God? She may have been slightly remiss in not putting James to bed sooner, but she had not struck him down with the illness.

  ‘Quoits? Ah yes, Alice has told me of your excursion. She has told me how my son complained of a sore throat and yet you insisted on chasing after that Thomas fellow, that dirty, rough bullocky. You placed your appetites above the welfare of my son.’

  ‘No… Alice is mistaken. The children desired to play with Mr Thomas’s dog. And it was only after we arrived that James—’

  ‘Spare me your excuses, Miss Hartley. My daughter was not mistaken and she does not lie. Do not think I haven’t heard about your previous… adventures. But I won’t sully my son’s memory by naming them. Tales of your exploits have reached even here. We’re not so much a backwater as you think, and I am not the uncultured colonial you counted upon. I have a wide acquaintance. Even in London.’

  ‘I did not think that at all.’

  ‘If I had known what kind of woman you were earlier, I would never have engaged you. How a woman of your lax morality has the audacity to teach children is beyond me.’

  Throughout this speech, Violet watched as a drop of spittle clinging to the corner of her employer’s mouth poised to dribble down her chin, while the bony hand flexed rhythmically about the brooch. As if the woman desired to strike her.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ she said, leaning forward to hold the other woman’s gaze. ‘I have only ever exercised the utmost care for the children, and respect for you and Mr Wallace.’

  ‘Of course, you would say that. But I am not so easily fooled.’

  ‘And if you are referring to my previous employer, the earl’s daughter, she was quite unhinged by her husband’s philandering ways. It was my misfortune to find myself under her roof.’ Seduced by that husband’s smile and his promises. A house of her own. A gig to drive about the town. Yet he hadn’t a shilling to his name, she was to discover when it was too late.

  It all belonged to the earl.

  Mrs Wallace’s face remained closed to Violet’s explanation. ‘Unhinged by the treachery of a woman she had taken into her home and treated with naught but kindness, you mean.’

  ‘I didn’t think you the kind of woman who listens to malicious gossip. The kind from which an unmarried woman, such as I, cannot protect herself.’

  ‘Protect herself! It is your employer and her children who need protecting. I will not have you near my daughter any longer! And I certainly will not have you near my husband!’ Mrs Wallace was screeching now, the spittle spraying forth from her mouth. Violet knew that she would not listen to reason, would not be dissuaded. Grief had stolen her reason and someone must be made to pay.

  She gathered her dignity, saying, ‘Then I shall be gone within the week. And I would expect to receive a month’s wages in lieu of notice.’

  ‘You shall receive nothing from me. Since you have taken everything. And you will be gone by tomorrow or I shall have you thrown onto the street. But you would know all about that, wouldn’t you?’ She sprang from her chair as if she could not bear to be in Violet’s presence a moment longer, then swept from the room dragging her skirts behind her like a thunderous cloud.

  *

  Violet was staring into the empty depths of her coin purse when Alice sidled into her room, looking furtively about and twis
ting her hands in the folds of her black skirt. Her hair had escaped from its plaits and Violet saw that she had been crying.

  ‘You had better not speak with me or your mother will toss me from the house without my valise,’ she said, not unkindly, despite the fact that Alice had landed her in this quandary. The poor girl was no match for her mother.

  ‘I didn’t mean to get you into trouble. When I asked Mama if she wouldn’t like a little walk upon the beach, she began questioning me about where else we had been on our excursions. And then she asked me about that day… the day James became ill.’

  ‘I thought we had agreed on quoits,’ said Violet, with a sigh.

  ‘I could not lie to Mama. Not when she has lost so much.’

  ‘I know.’

  She still had a daughter though. And Alice still had a mother and a father. That was something to be going on with. Something Mrs Wallace might want to remember before she sent that daughter to the other side of the world where anything might happen to her.

  ‘The truth is dangerous, Alice. I told you this once before. Now it has got you sent away, and me destitute without a roof over my head.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know you are, chérie. But it cannot be helped now. We must both make the best of things.’

  Violet had been destitute before. She had been without a roof over her head before. She still had her wits. And her beauty… while it lasted. She would make the best of her situation, for what else could she do? Something would come along. But Alice was of such tender years and little experience. She was to be sent ten thousand miles alone to the other side of the world, poor child, far less prepared for misery and solitude than her governess. Perhaps Violet was the luckier of the two after all.

  ‘I don’t want to go to England. I want to stay here with you.’ Alice’s eyes pleaded with her for comfort and Violet was tempted to gather the child into her arms. But what would be the point? She needed to stand strong in the face of misfortune. She must learn to stand on her own two feet now that she was being sent away. Violet knew the folly of false comfort.

  ‘Your mama has decreed otherwise, Alice. But I shall discover where you are sent and I will write. And in the meantime, I have a gift for you.’

  She rummaged in the top drawer of the dresser, retrieving a hefty volume bound in salt-stained green cloth. It had been the last gift from her father. Placing the book in Alice’s hands she said, ‘Here is my favourite book. It has helped me through many a difficult situation. I want you to have it.’

  ‘Vanity Fair.’ Alice read the title aloud.

  ‘I’m sorry I cannot stay with you, Alice, but Mr Thackeray’s words will have to serve instead. Whenever you are feeling sad or unsure, ask yourself, “What would Becky do?” and she will guide you.’

  Clutching the book in one hand, Alice threw herself at Violet, resting her head upon her shoulder. Despite her misgivings, Violet could not help but wrap her arms about the child’s waist, stroking her back like the babe in arms that she was.

  ‘There, there… don’t cry. You will ruin my gown with your tears.’

  25

  Guichen Bay, South Australia, 1857

  That night it was Strong Arm’s turn to sleep on deck. Most of the men from Hong Kong were squeezed head-to-toe between decks, lying upon narrow wooden shelves, arranged one atop another. But the three iron-barred hatches offered little ventilation in the crowded space between decks, so the men were allotted turns sleeping in the open air. At the outset of the voyage, the headman appointed by the company that chartered the ship had organised the two hundred and sixty men into groups. Each had its designated cook and barber, and each group took turns sleeping above deck. Eating and sleeping dictated life on board. Twice a day a drum sounded, and the cooks carried platters of food from the galley down through the hatches to the between decks, struggling to fill the men’s stomachs with an unchanging diet of rice, increasingly putrid salt fish and a miserable allowance of pickled cabbage. They counted themselves lucky when the ship called into port and a few mouthfuls of fresh vegetables or pork were added to their rations.

  During the day, they were allowed on deck in groups to wash in salt water or take a little exercise, but at night they were locked below decks. For two months, Strong Arm had endured the belching, farting, snoring and groaning of two hundred and sixty men living in close quarters. She had listened to the desperate moans of the opium addicts and tried to ignore the stench of seasickness that had come to permeate the ship’s timbers. It was a far cry from the half-hearted bickering of the girls’ house in Sandy Bottom Village. But she tried not to think about the village, for she could not afford tears in front of these men. Not if she wished to keep her secret. Already the other men laughed at her self-ascribed nickname.

  Aboard ship, the only amusements were endless games of dominoes and cards, interminable bouts of gambling and the fun that could be had from laughing at one another, so she did not blame them for their teasing. In between bouts of seasickness, Big Nose had passed his time trying to teach her the foreigners’ language, which he had learned running errands as a boy in Kwangchow, while she had attempted to teach him the basics of kung fu. But the strange words came lumpish and clumsy to her tongue, and Big Nose tangled his limbs into knots.

  They had all been whittled away by the voyage. The bones of Big Nose’s face had grown so prominent that his nose now protruded like the beak of a goose, and Strong Arm’s limbs were so thin they made a lie of her nickname. Beneath the sleeves of her tunic she had lost her muscles and gained the dainty arms of an inside girl, despite her attempts to practise kung fu whenever she was allowed on deck. So as time passed she had to be even more careful to keep her body covered, making her smellier than most since she could not strip off her tunic to douse her body with buckets of cold seawater. She had to train her mind to think like a man, a youth, so that she would not let her secret slip, not even to Big Nose.

  Sometimes she thought her journey would go on forever. That she would never reach the promised bounty of New Gold Mountain, nor return to the lush green groves of her home. Her sleep was tormented by images of Big Wu with his bamboo claw, sawing, chopping and stabbing at soft flesh. Wild eyed and bloody, Big Wu’s ghost pursued her through her dreams so that she woke dry-mouthed and sweating, horrified by what she had done. She had killed a man.

  But not this night. On this night they spread their mats gratefully upon the open deck, staring up at unfamiliar stars, relieved to escape the noise and stench of so many bodies crowded together in the cavernous space beneath them. They were lucky that it was summer in this strange land where the seasons were upside-down, for in winter the journey around the bottom of the world would have set them to shivering on their rush mats with only thin cotton blankets to keep out the chill winds. As it was, the voyage from Hong Kong had been balmy, sailing across the South China Sea to the port of Singapore to take on fresh water and provisions, then through the Sunda Strait of the Spice Islands, and around the west coast of the great southern continent, before turning eastwards along its lower shores.

  Once, as they sailed the brilliant blue waters of the west coast, the captain had allowed the entire contingent above deck in relays when a whale surfaced near the ship. The giant beast had spewed spouts of water from a hole upon its head, as it cruised alongside the Phaeton for upwards of an hour. Strong Arm had never thought to witness the like, and marvelled that the gods had created such magnificence. She could only dream of what other wonders they might have in store in this new land, and hoped she would be equal to any task set before her. Her family depended upon her success.

  These southern waters heaved with the wind, making the below decks particularly foul, so she was glad to sleep above deck. Despite the rolling of the ship, she slept soundly the night through. When she awoke the following morning, she was surprised to see that the Phaeton was once more hugging the coast, where a line of dunes edged the shore and an outcrop of rocky islets broke the calm wa
ters of a wide bay. As the ship sailed level with the curve of a long white beach, she sensed a new urgency in the bustle of the crew on watch. They had put away their buckets and paintbrushes and abandoned their sailmakers’ needles. Today was not a day for the usual shipboard maintenance. Today, something new was about to happen.

  ‘Where ship now?’ she called to a crewman who was hurrying towards the mast, where several others were already scaling the rigging. The unfamiliar foreign words emerged sluggishly from her throat.

  ‘Welcome to ye new home, lad,’ said the man, pointing to a spot in the south where a rocky promontory thrust into the sea, wild surf pounding its feet. Atop the cliff, a triangular white pillar rose as if in warning. She did not understand all of the sailor’s words but she knew their intent.

  ‘Where Melbourne?’ she asked, puzzled by the lack of buildings upon the shore. They had been told that their destination was a booming city with a busy port, made wealthy by the discovery of gold. But all she could see were barren dunes, the distant promontory, the smudge of several modest buildings and what looked to be a lone jetty snaking into the bay.

  ‘Forget Melbourne, lad. This is Robetown, Guichen Bay.’

  She turned to Big Nose, a question in her eyes. Perhaps he could decipher the man’s meaning. But her friend only stared out at the deserted shore and shrugged.

  ‘How we get to diggings?’ he shouted to the sailor who by now was halfway up the mast.

  ‘Why, ye walk, m’friend,’ he called down to them. ‘Ye walk.’

  Strong Arm’s earlier cheerfulness evaporated like salt spray upon her skin. Had they come so far to be abandoned in the middle of nowhere? Or like the unsuspecting crickets the children of Sandy Bottom caught and kept in cages, had they been duped into captivity? Were they doomed to spend the rest of their lives labouring as coolies on some rich ghost-man’s land far from the Middle Kingdom, like so many others before them? If that were the case, she might never find the money to help Elder Brother and repay her family for the trouble she had brought upon them. She would never repay her debt to Second Brother, who had given up his dream to save her skin, and who even now might be eking out a living on the streets of Kwangchow.