The Boy with Blue Trousers

by Carol Jones

  ‘I think you underestimate me, Mr Thomas. I’m tougher than I look.’ She had to be, to survive. Better to be predator than prey.

  His expression softened momentarily. ‘I reckon you are at that, but you don’t know what you’re in for. Why don’t you let me put you on a steamer back to Adelaide?’

  ‘There’s nothing for me in Adelaide. Or England. You must know that.’ By now she was certain he had heard some, if not all, of Mrs Wallace’s slander. She held his eyes, daring him to deny the truth, for she had never been a woman who lowered her eyes. ‘My reputation appears to be tarnished beyond restitution.’

  He was the one to look away. ‘What if we arrive at these new diggings and you’re the only woman there?’ he said, glancing down at the beach below.

  ‘It seems to me there are women everywhere in this country.’ Except perhaps amongst the Celestials. ‘And where there are women there are children. And where there are children, there is a sore need for learning. I may start a school.’

  ‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. And if you cannot keep up… you will be left behind.’

  He spoke harshly, but Violet did not believe him for a minute. She had already decided that Lewis Thomas wasn’t a man to leave a woman to face danger alone.

  ‘Then we are agreed,’ she said, holding out her hand. After a moment he took it, enclosing her lace clad fingers in a powerful grip.

  ‘Against my better judgement.’ He pointed to the beach below. ‘There are your fellow travellers. And…’

  She followed his gaze out over the dozen blue-clad Celestials foraging upon the beach, to the ocean beyond, where a tall clipper was tacking into the bay.

  ‘… here come some more, if I’m not mistaken.’

  29

  Young Wu gazed at the distant shore, with its long white stretch of beach arcing north, and its rugged cliffs to the south, all bulwarked by a border of scrubby dunes, and wondered if he had been delivered unto Hell. The first the Yan Hendrick’s passengers knew of Robetown or Guichen Bay presented itself when the hatches were unbolted and they were ordered up the ladders with their belongings. Shading their eyes with their hands, they emerged onto a deck beaten by the harsh light of a burning sun, to find that the ship had anchored in a small bay. The sight of a half-submerged ship stranded in the middle of the bay did not inspire confidence. Nor did the token jetty and the absence of anything remotely resembling a town. Had he survived two months in the cramped space between decks, alternately vomiting and purging his bowels, to be deposited upon these barren shores? Had he endured sixty days of the old gatekeeper’s constant ear-bashing to be dumped in this backwater? Where was the bustling harbour of Port Phillip? Where was the booming town of Melbourne?

  And where… was Little Cat?

  ‘You cannot do anything right.’ He heard his father’s voice thrum in his head. ‘All you had to do was find a simple peasant girl and bring her to justice. You had an entire village of Wus at your back. Yet you could not accomplish even that. How do you think to take my place as a Wu elder?’

  But he had travelled to the edge of heaven and the corner of the sea to find her. He had put aside his feelings and yoked himself to duty. Didn’t his father realise the sacrifice he had made?

  ‘How can my po rest while the girl roams free?’

  He had a duty to his father and the Wu ancestors. He could not fail now.

  ‘I think the ship took a wrong turn, Wise Master,’ croaked a voice beside him. He looked over his shoulder to find the old man standing next to him, breathing hard, four overflowing baskets at his feet.

  ‘Don’t call me “master”. You are supposed to be my uncle, remember,’ he replied with an irritated frown. ‘And don’t sneak up on me.’

  ‘Forgive me, Ma—’

  ‘Jat. I am your nephew now.’

  ‘This rotten old man keeps forgetting. This old head isn’t what it used to be.’

  And yet the gatekeeper never forgot a face, or a fact. Indeed, he had a prodigious memory for every conversation he had ever had or overheard, and liked nothing better than to regale those around him with this knowledge.

  ‘Uncle Wu!’ shouted the burly Ah Cheng, one of the old man’s card-playing cronies. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Those snake-heart agents have landed us here to save on tax,’ the old man said with a knowing nod, although how he knew this, Young Wu could only guess. Despite his poor grasp of the barbarians’ language, ‘Uncle Wu’ managed long conversations with the crew whenever he was allowed on deck. He would have them laughing at his antics, and sharing around the fiery liquid they called ‘rum’. The headman too had turned out to be an old acquaintance from the gatekeeper’s days in Kwangchow. Uncle Wu, it seemed, knew everybody and everybody knew him.

  ‘We have to walk to the goldfields from here,’ the old man said to Ah Cheng.

  ‘How far is that?’

  ‘A few hundred li.’

  ‘Waa! So far! We borrowed from the agents for passage to Melbourne. Ballarat is only a few days’ walk from there,’ said Ah Cheng. ‘Those agents are nothing but leeches! They would suck blood from a corpse.’

  Uncle Wu made his opinion of all snake-heart agents plain with a thick gobbet of spit to the deck. ‘They probably stole the tax for themselves.’

  If the men were restless upon being told of the long walk ahead, insult was added to injury with the news that they were to pay five shillings a head of the foreigners’ money to be ferried to the jetty. Yet more debt to be loaded upon what they already owed the agents. Uncle Wu was one of the most loudly indignant, several times adding to the puddle of saliva pooling on the deck, until Young Wu elbowed him in his skinny ribs and hissed at him not to draw attention to them. If he was going to find and punish Little Cat, he did not want to attract more notice than necessary.

  He gazed shoreward to see that several longboats were setting out from the village jetty, rowed by the white ghosts, and the crew was even now preparing to throw lines down to them. One of their fellow passengers was so incensed that he refused to pay and was promptly tossed overboard, baskets and all. This discouraged any more objections, and the ferrying of the passengers was undertaken without further disruption.

  By the time the Wus finally clambered up the ladder to the jetty several hours later, their clothing was damp with salt water and their baskets weren’t much better. Most of their fellow passengers had already been landed. So once everyone was assembled at the end of the jetty, they formed a line behind the headman, hoisted their ta’am upon their shoulders, and began to walk in single file towards the shore. He and his fellow passengers had expected a short journey along a well-travelled road to the city of Ballarat. Now they must once again set out upon a long journey facing unknown hazards. What was their alternative? They had all made their choice when they departed Hong Kong for New Gold Mountain. No matter their sinking hearts and their fear of the road ahead, they had no choice but to trust the headman to make arrangements for the forthcoming trek.

  ‘Ballarat! Ballarat! Ballarat!’ someone shouted, and before long the chant was taken up by three hundred voices.

  ‘Ballarat! Ballarat! Ballarat!’

  He heard Uncle Wu’s voice add to the chorus and wondered what the old man found to be so pleased about. They had been deposited like refuse in a primitive village in the middle of nowhere. They were surrounded by men they could not trust, men who owed no allegiance to the lineage of Wu. Soon they would be at the mercy of men who were not even Han, outside barbarians who did not know the teachings of the sages, and could not be trusted to act in a righteous manner. Yet somewhere in this vast land, concealed amongst these baffling foreigners, was Little Cat. He just had to find her.

  Quickening his pace, he pulled out from the line of men. Few gave him a second glance as he jogged towards the front, his baskets bouncing at the ends of his ta’am.

  ‘What is it, Ah Sing?’ asked the headman when he trotted alongside.

  Here he was no lon
ger Young Wu, son of Big Wu, headman of the village and the Wu clan elder. He had become just another anonymous immigrant looking to secure his future with the promise of New Gold Mountain. Perhaps he wouldn’t have minded that life, living free from expectation, his only obligation to pay his debts and send money home. Except that he was bound by his vow to his father’s ghost. Bound by his duty to his family and the Wu ancestors. Bound to find and kill a girl he had known his entire life. His closest friend’s sister. A girl who moved with the speed of a spitting cat and fought with the heart of a lion. A long-limbed girl with dancing eyes and fiery temper…

  The headman was staring at him expectantly, his lips pursed with irritation.

  ‘I must find my cousin. My mother’s brother asked me to keep watch over him, for he is a reckless lad and took off on his own before his parents could stop him. But I could not buy passage on the same ship.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do about it? The boy could be anywhere.’

  Young Wu slipped a hand into the pouch he carried at his waist and withdrew a handful of cash, the copper coins clinking as he deposited them upon the headman’s palm. ‘My cousin sailed aboard the Phaeton. Perhaps you could ask the white ghosts for news of that ship.’

  The headman gazed derisively at his palm, and hawked up phlegm. Young Wu added a few more coins to the small mound.

  ‘I will ask. But I promise nothing.’

  The jetty ended next to a squat building made of pale stone, where men were busy unloading huge bales from wagons hauled by armies of giant cattle. The building fronted a narrow beach, while on the other side of the jetty he spotted a shallow cave hollowed out of the rocks. And at the foot of the jetty a deputation had gathered to meet them, one man garbed in a long black coat and narrow striped trousers standing to the fore. The man’s face sprouted thick tufts of hair fringeing his chin to his ears while leaving his cheeks bare, so that he resembled a monkey. Monkey Man approached the headman of the Yan Hendrick and nodded in a perfunctory bow. The headman bowed politely in return.

  ‘Good day to you, sir. Henry Melville, Harbourmaster and Receiver of Wrecks, at your service.’

  Young Wu did not comprehend these words but he saw that Monkey Man intended a greeting. There followed a lengthy conversation, in which the Master of the Yan Hendrick also joined, once he had been rowed ashore by his bosun. At one point another of the white ghosts was motioned forward and it became apparent that they were to follow him, for the headman shouldered his baskets once more and called for the men to do likewise. They set off along a dirt track, headed towards some scattered buildings.

  ‘Ah Sing!’ said the headman, gesturing Young Wu to his side.

  ‘You have news of the Phaeton, Senior One?’

  The headman nodded. ‘Maybe I have heard something.’

  ‘Then it has landed here in this bay?’

  ‘It is a possibility.’

  Why did the man speak in mysteries? Did he expect Young Wu to grease his palm with more cash?

  ‘Then may this humble person ask where it is now?’ he asked, bowing from the waist, but refraining from the indignity of falling to his knees. He would save that as a last resort.

  When the headman’s lips remained clamped, Young Wu thought he was going to ignore the question, despite all his grovelling. But then the man turned away from the dusty road and the troupe of monkey-faced foreigners, to stare out to sea. With no wind, the waters shone like glass beneath the clear blue sky. He pointed to the middle of the bay where the tall ship lay broken upon a reef.

  ‘There. There is the Phaeton.’

  His words ricocheted through Young Wu’s body like a sharp stone; scraping at his throat, constricting his lungs, and gouging his heart, before lodging deep in his belly. Little Cat might already be dead. The thought should bring him relief. He should be grateful that his father’s ghost would be avenged without him raising a knife. But all he felt was hurt.

  ‘And its passengers?’ he managed to ask.

  ‘You did not ask news of passengers. Only of the ship,’ the headman replied, his mouth twitching. Perhaps he disliked peering up into Young Wu’s youthful face. Perhaps the man disliked Young Wu’s swagger, for he could not help being the son of a landlord, no matter how he humbled himself. Or perhaps the headman simply wished to prolong his suffering.

  Young Wu reached into his pouch and produced several more coins.

  ‘All aboard survived,’ said the headman as the copper clinked into his hand.

  A surge of feeling swept through Young Wu’s body, leaving him weak-kneed and light-headed. Little Cat was alive.

  ‘Not for long,’ his father’s ghost reminded him.

  30

  Strong Arm was finishing the last of her rice when Big Nose reappeared at their cooking fire, a frown lining his forehead. ‘Have you seen my rice bowl? It isn’t where I left it,’ he said.

  The rice was scant enough, as much of the supply the immigrants had brought from China was lying in the flooded hold of the Phaeton. She and Big Nose had to make do with a pitiful amount, served up with whatever they had in their baskets. In this case, some pickled cabbage and a few specks of salted duck. And now his bowl had gone missing.

  ‘Did you put it down near the well when you went to draw water?’

  On this first day of their trek, they had been surprised to discover the well, a round, stone-lined shaft dug by their predecessors, not far from the shores of a wide lake. She wondered why her countrymen had bothered to dig a well so near a lake until she cupped her hands in the lapping waters and brought them to her mouth, only to spit out a mouthful of salt.

  They had stopped by the well for their midday meal after a long morning trekking down an uneven track bordered by swamp, before climbing low scrubby hills to see a plain spreading as far as the eye could see. It was the first day of their trek, but she was already tired to her bones after so many weeks at sea. Strong Arm had always prided herself on her strength and was annoyed by her body’s betrayal.

  ‘Aiya! I had not finished eating from it. I put it down for one moment only while I got my chopsticks, and when I returned, bowl and rice were both gone.’ Big Nose looked so bereft at the loss of his lunch that she had to cover her mouth with her hand to keep from laughing. ‘It’s nothing to laugh about!’ he said, rubbing his empty stomach. Like all of them, he looked skinny. And from the stories he told of his life in Kwangchow, she knew that he had made a bare living running messages for the foreign devils. He had never needed the muscles of labourer, farmer or fisherman.

  ‘I will help you find it,’ she said. ‘Perhaps someone moved it by mistake. It must be somewhere around here.’

  They searched the immediate area, hunting amongst the baskets and poles dotted about on the ground, asking the men of their group if they had seen it. When that proved unsuccessful, they widened their search to include the adjacent cooking fire, where a group of men from a fishing village plied their chopsticks industriously, eating with such gusto that their shoulders appeared to shake. As they ate, she noticed that they snuck looks at the search party.

  ‘There it is!’ said Big Nose, pointing to the brawny figure of Fat Lu, who leaned cross-legged against an overflowing basket, shovelling rice into his mouth from a colourful porcelain bowl. ‘Give me back my bowl!’

  Fat Lu barely looked up from his rice, his eyes sliding over Strong Arm’s friend as if he did not exist. ‘Did I hear a mouse squeak?’ he said.

  ‘That’s my bowl, Fat Lu. Give it back.’

  ‘This old thing? It’s a bowl like any other.’

  ‘It’s my bowl. No other has one like it. I had it from my mother.’ Indeed, where most of the men ate from coarse blue and white bowls, Fat Lu ate from a fine porcelain bowl blooming with pink peonies.

  ‘Are you saying that I stole your bowl, Big Nose?’ Fat Lu swept a conspiratorial glance around the other men from his village, who had all stopped eating and were watching the encounter with interest, although she noted that the
ir shoulders still quivered… with laughter, she suspected.

  ‘It’s the only thing I had from my mother,’ said Big Nose. ‘And now she is gone to the ancestors.’ She waited for her friend to accuse the burly fisherman of the theft, but he just stared at the bowl, his shoulders slumped.

  ‘It’s Big Nose’s bowl,’ she said. ‘I have seen him eating from it many times.’

  ‘But everyone here has seen me eating from this bowl,’ said Fat Lu, licking his lips as he invited corroboration from his friends.

  ‘This is so,’ they replied, nodding obligingly.

  ‘I would not taint my lips upon the bowl of a rotten mixed-egg like him.’

  ‘You lie!’ She felt indignation for her friend, rising like steam in a bubbling pot, threatening to blow the lid clear.

  ‘So, now you call me liar and thief!’ said Fat Lu, unfolding his ankles to stand with his chunky legs akimbo and arms crossed. Even in this wide-legged stance he stood as tall as she and twice as large in girth.

  She took a step towards him, the steam gathering force, but Big Nose held her back with an upraised hand saying, ‘Do not let him goad you. It isn’t worth it. Remember the old proverb: force tells weak from strong for a moment, but truth tells right from wrong always.’

  Fat Lu laughed. ‘Which is more precious? Your pretty bowl or your pretty friend?’ he asked, striding up to Big Nose and flicking his head with one fat finger.

  ‘So you admit you took it?’ said Strong Arm.

  ‘Maybe it’s so. Maybe it isn’t. The question is, what is he going to do about it?’ he said, dashing the bowl to the ground where it shattered upon one of the jagged white rocks strewn about the countryside.

  ‘I… I…’ Big Nose stood like an empty husk, searching for an answer to Fat Lu’s belligerence. Why didn’t he say something? Do something? She felt the bubbling anger inside swell to include her friend. Why did he let Fat Lu bully him without fighting back? Yet how can you find winning words against a bully? Strong Arm had been fending off men like Bully Yee and Fat Lu her entire life. Men like Big Wu. Men who thought their size or their importance gave them leave to take whatever they wanted. To hurt whomever they pleased.