by Carol Jones
‘The man suffers dysentery.’
She gave him a quizzical look in return. ‘I think I can handle it. Robetown was nothing if not an education into men’s bodily functions,’ she said with a light laugh.
‘As you will. But Violet…’
‘Yes?’
‘Take care. I wouldn’t want you to fall ill too.’
‘Oh, I am as tough as… new boots,’ she said. ‘Embroidered blue silk damask with pearl buttons.’
She slid her arm though his, as if they set forth upon a walk through Hyde Park, strolling by the Serpentine, with its mild-mannered ducks and toy boats, rather than the dusty banks of this parched creek, where pink and grey parrots erupted screeching from trees and deadly snakes sunned themselves upon granite boulders. But she noticed none of this. She felt his nearness like a flutter in her belly and when his arm brushed against hers, her breath quickened.
‘I’m glad I did not wear my Sunday best,’ she said, trying to still her thoughts.
‘Not the most practical for tending a man with dysentery.’
‘You might have had to strip me down to my petticoats.’
‘Violet, I’m sorry. I should never have compromised you… I…’
He closed his eyes against whatever he was thinking. When he opened them again, he drew her closer with a soft groan, so that their thighs touched and she felt the haze of lazy afternoon heat welling up inside her.
‘I can’t…’
Whatever he was going to say, he was interrupted by the voice of the girl calling out to him. ‘Mr Thomas! Mr Thomas! Fever more bad. More blood.’
He pulled away, leaving her bereft. ‘Duty calls.’
Ah yes, duty. An anathema to any sensible woman.
‘Are you coming?’ he asked, a nod of his head indicating the bullock dray settled beneath the shade of a spreading red gum.
Hesitating for the space of a single breath, she followed.
*
The smell of shit was overpowering. Poor Ah Hong’s buttocks were slippery with it, and his forehead was slick with the sweat of his fever as he groaned and thrashed about in a delirium. Strong Arm tried her best to keep him clean and trickle as much water down his throat as possible but she wasn’t practised in tending to the sick and felt inadequate to the task. There was no denying her squeamishness when it came to wiping the sick man’s arse and the vomit from his chin. She knew that his sickness might be contagious and feared coming down with it. Not just for fear of illness, but also for fear that the entire camp would discover her secret.
To add to her anxiety, the Hartley woman had reappeared in the camp and was even now heading towards the dray with Thomas, a determined spring in her step. She had linked her arm through his as if to claim him, causing Strong Arm to blink in surprise. She had never imagined that a woman might pursue a man so openly. In her world, a woman must wait upon the decision of others when it came to marriage. The foreign woman behaved more like a man than a woman in her desires, yet she usually adorned herself as gaudily as any pampered warlord’s concubine.
‘How is he?’ asked Thomas, appearing beside the bullock dray, the Hartley woman clinging to his arm. Since spending many days in his company, listening to his conversations with Big Nose, Strong Arm’s understanding of the foreigner’s tongue was growing daily.
‘Ah Hong not good. He have blood.’ She pointed to the faeces-stained rag. She may not have much medical knowledge but she knew blood in the faeces was a bad sign. The headman had a store of herbal remedies, from which she had made up a potion of dried anemone root to clear the damp heat from his organs, but the medicine was yet to have any effect. In the meantime, all she could do was keep the patient clean, try to replenish his fluids, and bathe his limbs to keep him as cool as possible. Her arms were tired and sore from carrying water, for not only did she have to tend her patient, she was washing her hands continually.
‘Miss Hartley has offered to help you.’
She heard the woman’s name and the word for ‘help’ and stared blankly. Perhaps she had misunderstood. Hartley doused herself daily with perfumed water. She did not deal in shit.
‘Me,’ said Hartley, tapping her own chest, ‘help you.’ She gestured rudely to Strong Arm with a pointing finger.
‘Not need help,’ Strong Arm said with a shake of her head. Hartley did not like her, of this fact she was sure. Sometimes she caught the woman staring at her as if she were an insect to be crushed beneath her shoe, although she did not know why. On a mere whim Hartley might denounce her to the entire company at any moment. When she discovered the woman was to stay in the house on the hill her spirits had lightened. And the past few days without her constant presence had been a relief for both her and Big Nose.
But that relief was clearly at an end. Thomas lifted both his shoulders in the gesture she had learned to read, like the saying ‘the grass above the wall bends in whatever direction the wind blows’. Hartley was the wind and neither she nor Thomas could do much about where she would blow next. With her pale hair and milky skin, she might look as weak as any lotus-footed, indoor girl, but Hartley followed no law but her own. All Strong Arm could do was hope she blew herself out before she caused too much damage.
37
The light had gone out of Ah Hong’s eyes hours before but he continued breathing, wandering in an opium-infused dream for his pain. Violet did not know where the poor man found the strength to keep going. In the four days since she had begun nursing him, he had lost so much weight that his flesh seemed to be melting from his bones and his face was little more than a skin-shrouded skull. He was too lethargic to eat, so the girl boiled up a watery rice porridge that they dripped into his mouth from a spoon. Soon enough, he could not swallow even that. His skin took on a yellow colour, and when he stopped passing water altogether they both knew that there was little more they could do. For four days she mopped his brow and wiped the filth from his body. Sometimes the smell was so bad that she used the last precious drops of her cologne to keep from vomiting. And after all that, he was going to die. She took it as a personal affront.
For the fifth time that day she was washing soiled linen in a bucket far from the creek bank. Perhaps Ah Hong’s illness had been caused by a miasma in the air or some tainted food, but Violet didn’t wish to risk making the rest of their party sick by poisoning the creek with Ah Hong’s bloody faeces so she busied herself hauling buckets of water with which to wash.
‘You make a good nurse.’ She heard Lewis’s rich baritone behind her and turned to find him considering her perplexedly, as if this fact had taken him by surprise. What did he think she had been doing in Robetown all those months? Writing the men’s letters home to China?
‘Is that so strange?’ she asked, looking down at her filthy apron.
‘Oh, I don’t doubt your compassion, Miss Hartley, but this,’ he indicated the soiled rags in the bucket, ‘is beyond the call of duty for any lady.’
‘I thought I was Violet.’
‘And how is our invalid?’ he asked, ignoring her comment.
‘It will not be long, I think.’
And so it wasn’t. By the time the sun rose the next day, the poor man gave up his struggle while the rest of his countrymen were filling their bellies with their morning rice. Big Nose and Thomas dug a shallow grave on a rise overlooking the creek, for they needed to get him into the ground quickly in the heat. His tent mates bundled him into several layers of clothing and carried him up the hill upon a bier made of branches, the rest of the party following. Each of the mourners had tied a scrap of white cloth about their hat. Violet stood to one side watching as they set fire to a pile of thin white paper printed with their strange writing, and set out bowls of food and flickering candles beneath a sheltering tree. The girl, Strong Arm, bowed her head and did not try to hide the tears that streaked her face. Violet watched as Lewis put aside his shovel to exchange several words with her. She watched as he placed a comforting hand upon the girl’s shoulder and whi
spered in her ear, their heads so close together that they might have been lovers.
*
They struck camp the following morning. Violet arrived from the homestead with her baggage to find Lewis yoking up the bullock team, Strong Arm working at his side. The bullock’s yokes suffered so much wear and tear that Lewis had to replace them regularly, carving them from a log of stringybark. The yokes and chains had been laid out in a line the previous evening ready for departure and Lewis was calling each pair of bullocks forward to prepare them for the journey ahead.
‘Come on in there, Bruiser. Come on, Taffy,’ he coaxed the first pair forward with running patter. ‘Easy there, Sailor… In you go, Dusty.’
As Lewis called each pair in with his deep, soothing voice, Strong Arm helped lay the yoke across their necks, before he fastened the bullock’s bow beneath their throats and bolted it to the yoke, the two humans working together as seamlessly as the bullocks.
Once upon a time, on the other side of the world, Violet had little contact with animals, other than her employer’s peevish lapdog, but after a month of travel through the Australian bush, she had become so intimate with the bullocks that they were on first name terms. Bruiser and Taffy were the responsible leaders who could be depended upon to follow Lewis’s commands without too much grumbling. Clipper and Smoky, on the other hand, were the two ‘polers’ yoked closest to the dray. Older and heavier, they were strong enough to slow the load if it looked like running amok downhill. Sailor and Dusty were the temperamental, younger bullocks yoked in the middle of the team. These two would go for you, given half a chance, and Violet kept them at a polite distance.
‘Good day, Lewis. Lovely day for a walk.’
He appeared to take her literally, turning his gaze briefly to the skies and saying, ‘Looks like rain to me. You might want to wear a macintosh.’
Determined not to lose her smile at his less than enthusiastic greeting, she offered, ‘May I be of assistance with the animals?’
‘Oh, I think we have matters in hand here,’ he answered.
38
Creswick, Victoria, 1857
All loans must be repaid in good faith.
Countrymen must be helped and protected.
Waterholes and creeks must be treated with care.
Camps must be kept clean.
Conveniences must be screened and maintained.
Claims may not be left unattended for more than one day.
Do not attract the attention of the Europeans.
Therefore:
Do not go without trousers.
Do not go bareheaded or barefooted.
Do not shout or cry out in anger.
Do not point or clench fists.
Do not fight or brawl.
The headman finished explaining the rules devised by the Sam Yap kongsi and regarded the assembled miners sternly. ‘These rules are for all our benefit. The earth is blessed. The gods are generous.’
It was early and the usual cloud of opium did not yet haze the man’s eyes. He coughed twice for emphasis, as if daring them to question the wisdom of their benefactor. Strong Arm took these new rules in her stride. She was accustomed to rules. When she thought back to her life in China, she realised she had been naive to think she could ever be free of rules. She could not evade the duties and obligations expected of her even if she combed up her hair and refused to marry. A self-combed woman might escape the rules of a mother-in-law, but she would still be bound by obligations to family, ancestors and clan. Not to mention the Emperor, his prefects and magistrates. If her life had been ruled by edict and custom in the Middle Kingdom, little had changed here in this wild and uncivilised land. They were just different rules.
Once she thought that if she could fight like a man, she might have a man’s freedom. But these were the thoughts of a child. Men weren’t free. They merely followed different rules to women. They still had to bow to the wishes of parents, clan and Emperor. They still had to live their lives bound by the expectations of others. Perhaps the only way to be truly free was to be alone in the wilderness, unfettered by duty and obligation. But if she were alone, with no one to talk to, no one to care for, that would be its own kind of prison. If there had been a brief moment by the ocean’s shore when she had felt free, that feeling had quickly disappeared once she set out for the goldfields. Now the most she could hope for was the strength to do what she must.
The headman had switched to a more fatherly tone. ‘The Sam Yap kongsi loves and protects all men from the three counties. It is your duty to love and protect one another in the name of the kongsi. Ours is a noble cause and happiness will be our reward.’
The Sam Yap kongsi represented all miners from the three counties of Nam Hoi, Poon Yue and her own county of Sun Dak. It ensured that the men from these three counties looked out for one another. But it also made the rules, tallied the gold, apportioned the spoils, collected the debts and issued fines. Until she could win enough gold to repay her debts, the Sam Yap kongsi essentially owned her. Even then, it would have a lien on her soul.
‘Now, there is work to be done. May you find much gold for the benefit of China and all righteous men.’ The headman waved the assembled men from Sam Yap back to their claims down in the valley.
When they first arrived, he had assigned each working group a patch of ground on which to pitch their tent. The tents were organised in squares of forty or fifty, with a space between each tent, and wide lanes between each square. The tent villages were pitched upon the higher ground, with the mining taking place around the gullies. She and Big Nose shared their tent with six other men, the same men they had eaten and slept with aboard ship, until Thomas had taken them under his protection. They were fortunate that the others welcomed them back, and for the most part they all got along – since not getting along would be troublesome – plus an English speaker like Big Nose was always useful in dealing with the foreigners.
Once the tents were established, the headman had sorted them into pairs and pointed each pair to another patch of earth that was to be their claim. This was where they were to dig for gold. To Strong Arm, the two patches of earth, for living and digging, had appeared little different. How did the headman know beneath which patch the river of gold ran? Did he have the ear of the gods? She could only take it on faith and hope that at least a tiny tributary of that river flowed beneath the claim allotted to her and Big Nose.
As the men drifted back to their claims after the headman’s reading of the rules, she and Big Nose headed for the temple. It couldn’t hurt to make an offering to bring them luck. It seemed like an auspicious moment. The Sam Yap temple was situated in the Black Lead Chinese Camp along with the temple of the neighbouring four counties, the See Yap. Temples, restaurants, a teashop, a herbalist, a scribe and several gambling and opium dens clung to each other in the small strip of buildings that made up the Black Lead camp, not far from the centre of Creswick town. The Sam Yap temple wasn’t imposing, a small wooden structure, little more than a hut with a roof of bark shingles, and without even the tiniest sky well or courtyard. The poorest farmer in Sandy Bottom Village would be embarrassed to worship here, yet at least the builders had tried to embellish the roofline with carvings of dragons and phoenixes, and several brightly coloured banners fluttered from a flagpole outside.
Once inside, the familiar scent of incense assailed her nostrils, filling the cramped interior with smoke. She placed a simple offering of cooked rice and three cups of rice wine on the table set before the gods. Guan Di, Cai Shen and Guan Yin all looked down at her from their places upon the altar. But something in the way the trickle of light from the doorway lit their faces suggested that the deities were turning up their noses at the poor offerings placed before them. Strong Arm felt a pang of regret. Perhaps she should have sacrificed her share of breakfast too. Food was sparse and the miners made do with a little rice and whatever vegetables they could purchase from the Chinese market gardeners who had set up on the outskirts of t
he town. There was little left over for the gods.
Big Nose stepped over the wooden board that served as a doorsill and ducked inside. ‘I gave Tu Di Gong the last of our salted duck,’ he said, rubbing his stomach with regret. The shrine to Tu Di, the earth god, was situated under a straggling tree beside the temple, where the deity could watch over the diggings and protect the miners from misadventure. Mining, she had discovered soon after arriving, was a dangerous business. When it rained, the hapless miners might fall and drown in flooded shafts. When it didn’t rain, they might die suffocated by falling earth. They might wander dazed or drunk into one of the many dams or water races that had been dug to bring water to the diggings. They might wander into the path of a stray bullet. And then there was the danger of foul air if they tunnelled deep enough into the earth.
She and Big Nose lit several sticks of incense, bowing three times before placing the smoking joss sticks in the brazier. Perhaps the gods would look kindly on them, despite their poor offerings, for they would need all the luck and protection they could get if they were to make their fortunes in this crowded, noisy camp, with its confusing list of rules. Presumably the rule against fighting also included killing, which happened to be exactly what Strong Arm had in mind as she knelt on the beaten earth floor of the temple prostrating herself before Guan Di. Surely the god of war would understand her need to defend herself. Surely he would forgive her. In his mortal life he had once been a great general. As a young man he had killed a magistrate to rescue a young girl. Surely Guan Di would understand her need to protect herself from Young Wu. If she didn’t kill him, sooner or later he would kill her. This fact was as clear as the harsh and brilliant sky in this southern land.
‘Are you all right?’ Big Nose was looking at her strangely and she realised that her eyes had filled with tears. She rubbed them away with the sleeve of her tunic. ‘I am your friend. I wouldn’t share your secrets with anyone,’ he added.