The Boy with Blue Trousers

by Carol Jones

  The old man bowed his head in shame so that Young Wu saw the deep-etched creases in the back of his neck, creases earned through many decades of hard toil.

  ‘I’m sorry, nephew. You are correct. This old man talks too much.’

  Fat Lu did not bother to chase an answer to his question about their business. One foot had taken to tapping restlessly as if he could not wait to be gone from their presence and he stole a nervous sideways look at Young Wu.

  ‘Enough of this talk. What was the boy’s message?’ Young Wu folded his arms across his chest, looking down his nose at the fisherman and his uncle.

  ‘He wants to talk. He says there must be another way to conclude your business. One that is mutually satisfying.’

  ‘Hmmmph!’ scoffed Young Wu. ‘There is only one way to conclude my father’s business with the Mo boy.’ His father’s po and the ancestors would accept nothing less than a life for the life taken. ‘But perhaps I could meet with him.’

  ‘He says he’ll be waiting for you at the fork where Slaty Creek meets Creswick Creek tomorrow night at dusk. Now I must go or those greedy bastards will have eaten all the rice.’ His chins wobbled as he nodded his head to the old man. To Young Wu he offered no farewell.

  Young Wu watched him thread his way through the sparse trees lining the creek bank, as he headed back towards the township. Beside him, the old man did not lift his eyes from the ground. For all his sixty or more years, he usually vibrated with energy. He was always ready for the next task, the next challenge. He took life as an adventure. He never complained that he was tired. Now, in the space of a few moments, Young Wu saw that he had grown old. His tunic hung from his shoulders like washing from a line. And his wrists poked out from his sleeves bony and frail. Young Wu’s harsh words had stolen all his qi.

  He knew that the old man had only been trying to help. Everything he did was in an effort to help, even all his talking and gossiping. Young Wu was surprised to find himself saddened at his retainer’s shame and his own behaviour. When had he become so proud and unforgiving? How could he be a man of yee, a righteous man, if he wasn’t also a man of ren? The great sage taught that to be righteous, one must also be benevolent and loving. When had he turned into his father? It struck him then that his father was not a loving man. Was he also then unrighteous?

  But this thought was too much for him to process. It went against eighteen years of duty and respect. He turned to his uncle saying, ‘We had better get some rice into our bellies too.’

  ‘I will set a fire, Master,’ said the old man, his voice flat with acceptance. Harsh words were his lot in life, after all. When had he begun caring how he was treated? At the house of Recommended Man Wu, he had been called much worse and did not blink.

  Young Wu realised that he had become attached to the gatekeeper. He realised that if he died tomorrow, the only person who would truly mourn him was his lowly dependant, the gatekeeper Wu. His mother and sisters might mourn the loss of a first-born son and brother to carry on the family name, and keep the relatives from the door, but they would not mourn his passing. Once upon a time, his friend Ah Yong would have mourned his death, and even Little Cat might have shed a tear. Now Ah Yong hated him, and Little Cat lived in fear of him.

  The old man had become more of a father to him than Big Wu had ever been. Advising him, challenging him, sharing his hardships and helping him to achieve what he must without complaint.

  ‘I’m sorry, Uncle,’ he said, dropping to his knees. Above his head a passing wind rustled the leaves of a tree and tickled his bare scalp.

  ‘No need for that,’ said the old man, waving him to his feet with a shake of his head.

  ‘Forgive me. I’m the one who talks too much. I’m the one who speaks out of turn. A thousand pardons. I’m a worthless son and an ungrateful nephew.’ He bowed his head to the stony ground.

  ‘We are tired. We have travelled far to finish your father’s business.’

  He felt a light touch to his shoulder, and then a hand under his elbow as his uncle urged him to stand. He looked up into the old man’s face, expecting to find sorrow or resignation. Instead he found a gap-toothed smile. ‘Jat Jai.’

  Brother’s son, the old man called him.

  ‘I think we may be more than tired before this business is finished, Suk Suk.’

  41

  Violet paced the confines of the cramped room with its narrow iron cot and bare timber walls like a nervous mare, thanking providence that she was not yet reduced to sleeping in one of the tented boarding houses that had sprung up on the goldfields. In these salubrious accommodations, the boarders slept on log couches no more than a foot and a half wide, paying the outrageous sum of five shillings a week for the privilege. But if her luck did not change soon… well, she preferred not to think about that. Better to escape the room and her thoughts. Both were making her anxious. Wrapping a paisley shawl about her shoulders against the cooler autumn night, she stepped out of Mr Anthony’s boarding house into the long shadows of dusk. She would walk off her agitation before Lewis arrived. She intended to be in complete possession of her emotions when they met. Her head must rule her heart, because her treacherous heart could not be trusted.

  Up and down Albert Street candlelight flickered behind windows and the street bustled with miners heading for the legal drinking establishments of the township and the more questionable establishments of the camps. Most of them gave her a second and third look as she set off down the street towards the creek, but she ignored them. Even one man’s polite ‘good evening’ was rewarded with barely a smile. She did not have the heart to be charming this evening. Something was wrong with her. Her limbs tingled. Her skin prickled. Her body fairly twitched with impatience, no matter how sternly she told herself to remain calm. Lewis Thomas was just a bullocky with a struggling sheep farm somewhere out in the wilderness. No doubt he lived in a bark humpy like the rest of the poor dirt farmers. He should not be provoking this reaction. He had got her to the goldfields. Now she could be done with him. Thoughts of the bullocky were only distracting her from securing her future. And she did not have the luxury of walking off that precipice.

  That was what she told herself as she set off down the street, avoiding the swaying miners who had imbibed too much, too early. Avoiding the glances of women who sashayed openly about the town soliciting business.

  ‘Looking for business, love?’ one insolent woman with brassy blonde hair and rouged cheeks called as she passed by, and her colleague burst into gales of laughter. Violet crossed to the other side of the street, determined not to think about how they had come to their occupations. Their business was none of hers.

  She continued along the road, each of her senses on high alert, which was perhaps why she recognised some familiarity about one of the many Celestials hurrying past her. He looked little different to hundreds of his countrymen, with his long black queue and shaved crown, rough tunic and baggy trousers, the straw slippers slapping upon his feet, but there was some fineness about the curve of his chin, some delicacy about the ankles that begged her notice, hinting that he was in fact a she.

  Violet wasn’t surprised to see the girl hurrying down Albert Street. There were Chinese stores here as well as in the Black Lead camp. What surprised her was that Strong Arm was heading away from the town, in the opposite direction to the Black Lead, and she did not have her big-nosed friend as chaperone. The two were always together, and yet she had ventured from the camp alone.

  Picking up her pace, Violet followed.

  The girl continuied along the road for a short way, keeping her head down so that she did not have to engage with any passer-by. There was nothing casual about her walk. Her pace was brisk, her direction sure. She knew where she was going. All alone, risking discovery. Or worse. Especially after her previous close call at the river. She must have a very good reason. Leaving the last of the straggling settlement, the girl abandoned the path, taking to rough ground. What was she up to out here alone in the bur
geoning night? Violet had always suspected her of harbouring more secrets than she would admit to. She suspected that Lewis knew more of those secrets than he divulged as well. On the road they were so often together, their heads bent over some business or other. Despite their lack of a common language they seemed to understand one another. They seemed to have a common compact.

  Violet’s skin twitched in sudden realisation and she cursed herself for a fool. The bullocky was camped out along Slaty Creek, somewhere in this direction. The bullocky who, for his own mysterious reasons, had shown such care for her. Well, that mystery was now plain as day to Violet. To think that she had tried to be a friend to that duplicitous girl.

  Following fifty yards behind, she picked her way around shafts and puddles, until the girl came to a halt at the confluence of two creeks. Their waters were muddied by the army of miners who had been at work here. What had once been a picturesque meeting of two meandering creeks now resembled a battlefield, with hummocks of earth and shell holes pitting the nearby ground. Not unlike the hostilities that raged inside Violet at this very moment.

  The girl stopped to scan her surroundings. Searching for someone, someone who awaited her. The diggings were mostly deserted by this time of the day. After the hum of the town it was strangely silent, without even the usual bush night noises, for the ground had been cleared of vegetation. There was no rustling of small animals or screeching of birds. There was little tree cover either, apart from a few straggling she-oaks and an enormous grandfather red gum that would have taken ten men to chop down. Its trunk and lower branches were gnarled and burred and its roots snaked crookedly towards the polluted waters of the creek.

  But the diggings weren’t completely deserted. Someone waited for the girl beneath the red gum’s sprawling branches. The man was facing away from the town and the approaching girl, looking up to the darkening sky as if searching for something in its vastness. At first, Violet thought that the man was Lewis Thomas. But this was her fear talking. For, in fact, the man beneath the ancient tree was another Chinaman, taller than the girl and most of his countrymen, with the bearing of a soldier.

  Violet ducked behind a hummock of earth, hoping that she would not be seen in the deepening shadows. She peered out across the muddy creek to the man, who had now turned at the sound of the girl’s footsteps as she crossed the plank of wood laid over the creek. Even from this distance she could see the tension in his body as Strong Arm approached. He stiffened, pulling back his shoulders, almost imperceptibly thrusting out his chest and lifting his chin, and Violet had to stifle a giggle. The pose was subtle but she had an instinct for these matters. And the Chinaman, it seemed, wasn’t so different to any other man she knew, preening like a peacock for his hen. Whatever he intended, and whatever the girl was doing here… this John Chinaman wanted her.

  The girl stopped a few feet from the man and they exchanged words. Even if Violet had been able to understand their sing-song language, they were too far away to hear clearly. The conversation drifted to her like the murmur of distant music. After some discussion, the man turned and headed out along the banks of Slaty Creek towards Cabbage Tree Hill. The girl followed at his side, keeping him at arm’s length. Between them lay a thick blanket of subterfuge, and they both glanced about them, not wanting to be seen, searching for somewhere hidden from the view of others.

  *

  Each step pressed cold hard steel against the warm skin of her stomach. She was so conscious of the knife tucked beneath the waistband of her trousers that she felt sure Young Wu must notice her awkwardness. The cold metal was a reminder of her deceit. Yet steel might prove the only way forward. What if her twin was right and she could not beat him in a fair fight? She had bested the fishermen but they were untrained bullies. Young Wu and her brothers had practised kung fu from childhood, and he was bigger and stronger than her. She remembered the feel of his long muscular legs entwined with hers at the river, the crush of his chest against hers. The memory was ingrained upon her flesh. A woman’s flesh garbed as a man.

  Her life, and her family’s future, depended upon tonight’s outcome. She may have no choice but to resort to trickery and let the gods be her judge, for she was damned already. What difference would one more death make?

  He walked beside and slightly ahead of her, sure-footed through the scarred landscape. He did not glance back, confident that she followed, trusting that she would not attack precipitously but wait for the proper moment. He swaggered with all the arrogance of the Wus, instinctively avoiding the gaping shafts that pitted the earth. He seemed to know where he was heading, somewhere distant from the view of other diggers. To their right the ground was higher and she could see the outline of the foreigners’ tents silhouetted against the dying sun, tents cobbled together from whatever they could scrounge. The more organised had procured canvas, while others made do with sheets of bark, bits of tin and raw bullock-hides. Soon they would be far enough away to bring an end to things. For by silent agreement they both knew that a reckoning must be had. Their destinies were entwined.

  ‘There is a place nearby where we will not be seen,’ he said, indicating the way ahead with a nod.

  She followed as he turned his back on the creek and distant tents to climb a slight rise that flattened out to a narrow ridge. Here he stopped and faced her.

  ‘I did not want this to happen, Little Cat. Or should I call you Strong Arm?’ Despite the power in his body, she saw that his hands trembled.

  ‘You are very confident you will defeat me,’ she said.

  ‘I have the gods and ancestors of the Wu lineage on my side. And you are only a girl.’

  ‘Once I was a girl but I am a woman now.’ A strong and resourceful woman who had survived a treacherous journey amidst two hundred men. ‘I am not so easily defeated. You would do better to go away from here and let matters lie.’

  ‘What kind of son does not avenge his father’s death?’

  ‘Then you must accept the consequences.’

  She had already placed her feet in a fighting stance, slightly side-on to Young Wu. Now she brought her arms to the ready, bent loosely at her sides, hands open. With a brisk nod, he copied her action and so it began, their limbs following each other in a complicated dance. Their arms circled the other, extending and retreating. She let her senses feel for an opening in his defences as he sought the gap in hers. When he took the first opportunity to strike, punching straight for her, she blocked him with fingers thrust out. When she struck, he blocked her blow with his forearm. But they were merely feeling each other out, testing each other’s strength and speed for the real fight to come.

  She tried to calm her mind and let instinct take over. All those years of training with Second Brother had taught her the necessary movements but she had had little practice of late. She needed to reach deep within herself so that her body could find its centre once more. Slowing the movement of her arms, she allowed Young Wu to strike, then at the last moment turned her wrist so that his blow slid away. Taken by surprise, he adjusted his weight to control his momentum, giving her a tiny window of opportunity in which to kick out at his knee with her leg. But it did not hold him for long. Righting himself, he flew towards her, surprising her with his speed so that his punch connected with her chin before she could block it. Reeling backwards, she spun in a circle and kicked out at his chest but he ducked beneath her leg and returned her kick with a front kick to the groin.

  They had fought their way down the slope now, spinning and twisting, kicking and punching, neither able to land a blow hard enough to inflict serious damage. In skill they were evenly matched, but Strong Arm knew that her opponent’s greater strength would eventually wear her down. Her breath coming in gasps, she tried to slow the fight but Young Wu responded by speeding up his attack, sensing her fatigue.

  ‘Why did it have to be this way?’ he groaned as he panted with exertion, and in his voice she heard the rasp of pain and sorrow.

  ‘Because your father attac
ked me. Because he violated me. Because he…’ a sob caught in her throat, ‘… forced his penis inside me and took away my power.’ She could finally admit it. ‘He stole the only thing that was truly mine. How could I not kill him for that?’ How could she not bludgeon him over and over with the stone seal that bore his name, until he lay in a creeping puddle of his own blood? How could she not be glad that he was dead after he had defiled her?

  She could not stop Young Wu with her kicks but her words halted him. He stood facing her, breathing hard, an expression of disbelief upon his face.

  ‘It isn’t true! He would not do that!’

  ‘Why? Why else would I kill him? Why can’t you believe me?’

  ‘Because I asked him to arrange a match between us, because I begged him to let us marry… My father would not violate the girl I loved!’

  His words emerged as a howl and in that moment Strong Arm saw his vulnerability. He had opened himself to her attack and instinct responded. Drawing the knife from her waistband, she lunged towards him. He was her brother’s friend. He was her childhood companion. In another life, he might have been her lover. In another life, she too might have loved him.

  The realisation stole her breath away and she hesitated. At the moment her knife should have plunged between his ribs and slid into his heart, she relaxed her fingers and let the blade drop to the ground. She could not kill him, not even to save her life or repay her debt to her family.

  In that same instant when she realised that she too loved him, he must have caught the gleam of metal in her hand. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her towards him so that she felt the length of his body pressed against her. She felt the beating of his heart, hammering out his grief. Then with all the power of his anguish, he spun her out and around, releasing her when their arms were stretched to their full extent. The momentum carried her backwards, flailing for control, as she felt her feet leave the earth. Then all she knew was the sensation of falling and the hard smack of her back and head landing at the bottom of a shaft, as all breath and sense was knocked out of her.