by Carol Jones
Lewis sprang to her side, catching her before she could collapse to the ground. ‘Violet! What have I done?’
‘You have shot me,’ she croaked, staring in shock at the blood already staining the sleeve of her jacket. ‘I’m bleeding.’ She had had her jacket copied from the latest Paris fashion plate, and now it was ruined.
‘Let me look.’ Gently, he undid the buttons and slid the jacket from her shoulders. She winced as he pulled the sleeves down over her arms. Then he unfastened the bodice of her dress, loosening it enough to bare her upper arm. Taking a neat handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed at the blood seeping from the wound. ‘I believe it’s merely a flesh wound.’
‘You would not say that if it were your flesh.’
‘There doesn’t appear to be any bullet lodged here, Violet.’
She heard the relief in his voice and was placated. A little. So… he did care. No doubt, he could be encouraged to care a deal more with the right incentives. And without that girl around.
‘I think you’ll live. But we need to get the wound cleaned up properly.’ He was staring at her with a puzzled frown. ‘I could have lost you.’
‘But you haven’t.’
He could have lost her. That meant that he wanted her. That he needed her. She felt a swell of happiness at his words and allowed herself to swoon towards him, but just as she was about to surrender to his arms, she remembered.
‘Strong Arm.’
That troublesome girl was getting in her way yet again.
*
One minute she was lost in a heady sweep of sensation and the next the air shattered into a million pieces of sound, the noise reverberating along the gully before escaping into the night. At the same time she was knocked to the ground by the weight of Young Wu’s falling body. Bone and flesh were buffeted by the impact. And for the second time that night her head hit the ground with a thud.
After the first shock passed, she lay quietly beneath him, trying to shake her thoughts into some semblance of order. What had happened, and was it likely to happen again? She listened to the night for clues, hearing nothing other than the rustle of small things, the murmur of the creek and a shuffle of sound from the far bank. Above her she saw nothing but stars. Perhaps they had been caught by a random shot from a drunken digger. That had happened before on the diggings, where so many of the foreign devils carried guns. Some nights the air was peppered with the sound of gunfire.
When nothing further occurred, she decided that they were safe for the moment. If they weren’t, she could do little about it, stranded as she was beneath the body of Young Wu.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, unwrapping her arms from around his waist to touch his face, which lay against her chest. ‘Wu. Speak to me.’
He was heavy, unmoving, and silent; the weight of his inert body crushing her injured ribs.
‘Wake up.’ She shook his shoulders, expecting him to protest. He could not be dead. The gods could not be so unkind. He was simply resting after the shock of whatever had happened. In a moment he would raise his head from her chest with his usual disdainful expression, invoke Second Brother’s name, and tell her not to behave like a child.
She counted to ten and shook him again. ‘Wu. Wake up. You have to wake up.’ When he didn’t answer she waited another ten breaths before trying a different tack. ‘You’re too heavy. You’re hurting me.’
If his head hadn’t been pressed against her chest she might have missed the faint moan that hummed through the fabric of her tunic and into her heart. He lived.
‘I need to move.’ She could not help him while she lay trapped, but his qi seemed so fragile that she feared any violent movement might stifle it altogether. She began counting another ten breaths to give her time to think, but soon realised that the faint sounds issuing from the far bank had resolved into footsteps, the heavy-footed gait of a European man and another lighter tread. Perhaps it would be safest to play dead. Wu wasn’t going anywhere. She closed her eyes.
‘Strong Arm!’ She recognised the voice immediately but that recognition did not allay her fears. Someone had shot at them. And here was Thomas. Had it been him? How could she trust these enigmatic foreigners whose ways were so different from her own. Who seemed to owe allegiance to neither clan nor kongsi.
‘They’re not moving.’ She recognised this voice too, although the fear she detected in it was unexpected.
A moment later, she sensed that Thomas and Hartley were standing above her. She caught the whiff of gunpowder and knew that one of them had fired the gun that shot her beloved. Then she felt a disturbance in the air as Thomas knelt beside her to place his hand upon Young Wu’s back.
‘He’s still breathing,’ he said.
‘Perhaps there’s time. If we can get him to a doctor,’ said the Hartley woman.
‘He had his hands around her throat, Violet. I thought he was going to kill her. I thought I wouldn’t have time to stop him.’
She couldn’t understand the bullock man’s words but she heard the anguish in his voice.
‘He wasn’t killing her. He was embracing her. Don’t you know the difference?’
By contrast, the Hartley woman’s voice was sharp with anger. Was she angry with Thomas or with Strong Arm and Young Wu? And which of the two foreigners had shot him? Strong Arm could not be certain.
She felt a knee nudge her as Thomas lifted Wu’s body from her chest and she breathed more easily. The scent of perfume and a rustle of silk told her that Hartley now knelt at her side. She probed Strong Arm’s body with gentle hands from shoulder to waist.
‘I don’t think she has been hit.’
Then Strong Arm had the strangest sensation of a soft cheek pressed against hers, and words whispered in her ear. ‘Open your eyes. We need your help.’
Help. She understood this word. But could she believe it? One of them had shot Wu. One of them had wanted him dead or wounded. Why would they now help him?
Yet what choice did she have?
‘Help Wu.’ The words emerged from her throat thin and parched. She opened her eyes to find Hartley’s face hovering like a ghost in front of her eyes, large and pale in the silvery light. ‘Help Wu,’ she repeated.
‘We’ll try,’ said Hartley, grasping her by the shoulders.
With her help, Strong Arm sat up, trying not to wince with the pain. Beside her, Wu rested in the bullock man’s arms. Thomas sat with his legs stretched apart, Wu leaning against him. A dark flower of blood seeped through her beloved’s tunic over his heart. It appeared to grow as she watched.
‘Wuuuu…’ His name was a wail of loss.
‘He lives…’ said Thomas. She knew these words. Yet she heard other missing words in the silence that followed them. He lived… but for how long?
She went to him on her hands and knees, leaning as close as possible, to await the brush of air against her cheek which would confirm that he lived. His breath was fast, as if he had been running. And beneath his tan his face was pale, his skin clammy. Sitting back on her heels, she took one of his hands in both hers. His beautiful hand was so cold, his qi sluggish.
‘Don’t leave me, Wu.’
They had only just found each other. He could not leave her. Not yet.
He parted his lips and she held her breath, waiting for him to speak, waiting for him to tell her that he would live. There was a strangled gurgling in his throat as he searched for the strength.
‘Yuen fen…’ The words were barely audible.
‘Wu…’ She squeezed his hands, before lowering her lips to his. She would force the life back into him. She would win the battle that waged between them, if it killed her. For if they could not be together in this life, then at least she would know that somewhere in the world Wu Hoi Sing lived. Somewhere in the world he might think of her, that troublesome girl from Sandy Bottom Village, and he would say her name. One day when he was father to eight children, grandfather to many more, he would remember her and he would smile.
She didn’t know how long she held her lips to his, but as Hartley pulled her free the words he had whispered next to her ear reverberated into the night. Yuen fen. Now was not their time. They were separated by something greater than an ocean, greater than a river of stars, greater even than death. They were separated by fate.
‘It takes a hundred rebirths to ride in the same boat, a thousand to share the same pillow.’ So it was said. One day it would be their time. Even if it took ten thousand thousand years, one day they would find each other again.
One day they would be lovers.
But Strong Arm did not believe in fate. And she did not want to wait.
45
The girl’s howl of grief was pitiful as she clung to her lover’s inert body. Tugging gently at her quivering shoulders, Violet prised her away, to hold her tightly against her chest. She felt each shivering breath send tremors through her thin frame, as she muttered the same phrase over and over in her incomprehensible tongue.
‘Yen fen… yen fen… yen fen.’
Violet patted her on the back, not knowing what else to do. She still had not found a remedy for grief.
‘Is he gone?’ she asked Lewis, looking over the smaller girl’s shoulder. Lewis sat with his back against a hummock of earth, cradling the man in his lap as if he might wake at any moment, complaining of the stony ground.
‘Not yet, but his pulse is weak and he’s losing a great deal of blood. At this rate it won’t be long.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I didn’t want to kill him. Only stop him from killing Strong Arm.’ It was a plea for understanding as much as anything. ‘He was hunting her.’
‘I know. You were merely protecting her,’ Violet sighed. She could not give him absolution, if that was what he sought, and now was not the time for soul-searching. They had to try and stop the bleeding. Already, the man’s blood smeared Lewis’s hands and stained his clothing.
‘We need a doctor. Perhaps the sound of gunshot will bring help.’
He shook his head. ‘Every second digger shoots off his pistol at bedtime to warn thieves he is armed.’
So… if he were to be saved it was up to her and Lewis… and quickly. Even in the dim light she could see the flood of crimson soaking the man’s tunic above his heart. At least she thought it was above his heart. If it wasn’t, well… there was nothing to be done. If it had missed that organ, then there was only bone, sinew and muscle to contend with, and these might be healed with a little luck and a few prayers.
‘Can you place him on the ground and mind the girl so that I can tend his wound?’
Lewis nodded, lifting the man’s body to the ground and sliding out from beneath him to relieve Violet. But her charge was having none of it. She opened her mouth, hesitating, as if caught between a scream and a sob, then closing it again she hammered her fists against Lewis’s chest in a silent tattoo of rage and sorrow. Lewis stood motionless as a tree, accepting the barrage as his due.
‘Strong Arm. We help,’ said Violet, tugging at her arm and pointing to the injured man. ‘We help.’
She lifted her skirt to reveal a petticoat made from the finest Swiss eyelet cotton. ‘Only the best will do, I suppose,’ she said with a shrug before tearing at the fabric with her teeth and ripping a wide strip from the hem. She repeated this action until she had several yards of cloth to work with. Then kneeling in the dirt, she began unfastening the loops of the man’s tunic. The girl seemed to understand her purpose because she wriggled from Lewis’s grasp and knelt at her lover’s other side, easing the tunic up his body, until she had it bunched under his arms. Lewis joined them, manoeuvring the man’s upper body so that the two women could slide the tunic gently over his head. When his torso was bare Violet folded a length of bandage into a thick wad and applied pressure to the wound.
‘Hold this while I bandage it,’ she said, taking the girl’s hands and pressing them to the wad of cotton. With Lewis’s help she wrapped the bandage beneath his arm and across his opposite shoulder again and again before tying it at the neck. Throughout these ministrations the wounded man did not make a sound. If not for the whisper of his breath upon her cheek as she wrapped him in cotton, and the blood that continued to seep from his wound, she might have thought him dead.
‘Let’s get him to the doctor in this handcart,’ said Lewis.
‘What will you tell him?’
‘The truth. That I thought he was attacking Strong Arm and intervened.’
‘But if he should die the doctor will notify the police.’
Violet realised she must think quickly before he became set in his resolve. Men could be so selfish sometimes, especially when facing a crisis of conscience. Conscience seemed to set them on a path where other people got dragged into martyrdom along with them. What good could come of involving the police? If they could find one in this godforsaken country. Mostly the miners seemed to deal out a rough justice of their own. If the man should die, Lewis would be thrown into jail. Strong Arm would be exposed as a woman. The dead man’s family would send someone else to hunt her down. And Violet would be required to secure her future afresh. And all to pander to one man’s conscience.
‘Then her identity will surely become known. Wu’s family will hunt her down. And the poor child will never be free. Perhaps it would be better to say he caught a stray bullet.’
He considered her words for a few moments, before accepting their good sense with a nod. ‘You are a wise woman, Violet Hartley.’
She heard a rumble behind her and realised that the girl was trundling the handcart towards them, tears glistening on her cheeks in the moonlight. And that was how the newcomers found them, as they clambered up the side of the gully, surprising Strong Arm so that she halted, her eyes darting from one stranger to the other.
‘Jat Jai. Jat Jai.’
One of the newcomers fell to his knees alongside the wounded man, moaning in despair. He was just another old Chinaman with his straggling grey pigtail and weathered face, and yet he seemed vaguely familiar. Perhaps it was his one roving eye that singled him out. He was certainly familiar to Strong Arm. She seemed ready to pounce on the old man like a cornered cat, spitting a stream of words at his face. The old man backed away from the body on his knees, his hands held out before him, open-palmed. He looked from Lewis to Violet saying, ‘My nephew. What happen?’
‘It was me, Mr Wu,’ said Lewis. ‘I did it to protect Strong Arm. Your nephew attacked her once before on the journey here. She told us the story of his father’s death. He would have killed her.’
‘He not hurt girl.’
‘She killed his father. He came for vengeance.’
The old man dropped his head. ‘Young Wu not kill this girl. He love this girl.’ When he looked up, Violet saw that his face was shiny with tears.
The girl in question remained poised to attack even as she wheeled the handcart closer. ‘Need doctor,’ she said.
‘He doctor.’ The old man pointed at his companion, a man of middle years dressed in a long black robe. He approached the injured man to kneel at his shoulder. ‘Nephew say wait but Uncle worry. Bring doctor… for girl.’
The doctor was bent close over Wu’s chest, listening to his patient’s breathing as he inspected the wound. Then taking Wu’s wrist in his hand he felt for the pulse, all the while listening and watching. Meanwhile, the old man stared at his nephew’s blood-soaked body as if mesmerised. Then after the exchange of some rapid conversation, the old man indicated that they were to lift the body into the handcart.
‘We take Wu to doctor tent. He give herbs. He make plaster,’ he said. ‘He do his best.’ He shuffled forward on his knees to lift his nephew’s head and shoulders from the clump of grass where he lay. ‘Look,’ he said with a nod, his voice strangely flat.
They all turned to look where he indicated, at the ground beneath Wu’s head.
‘It must have been washed up here when the creek last flooded,’ said Lewis, staring at the clump of grass.
‘G
um,’ said Strong Arm, glaring at the ground with dislike.
‘My goodness,’ said Violet.
For peeking out between the blades of grass, glinting brightly in the starlit night, was a lump of gold the size of her fist.
46
Western District, Victoria, 1859
Some days, when the wind was up, simply hanging out laundry was a struggle. As well as the normal business of contending with heavy, dripping washing, Violet had to wrestle flapping sheets and flyaway shirts and grapple with the leaning timber props. Lewis couldn’t understand that she wasn’t built for such skirmishes. He couldn’t comprehend that she belonged in the drawing room not the laundry room. At times she suspected he was more interested in the welfare of his sheep than his wife. When her feet became blistered from wearing worn-out boots, he suggested she line them with straw. But if his sheep developed foot rot it kept him up all night.
She heard a gurgle issue from the laundry basket and could not suppress a smile, despite her ill mood. Baby Lewis delighted in the snap and pop of laundry flapping above him. He crowed with joy at the fluffy white clouds drifting overhead. He must take after his father in his sunny nature. She lifted him from the basket and kissed the top of his head before placing him on the grass at her feet. Then she unpegged a dry sheet from the line and stowed it in the basket before replacing her baby atop the mound of fresh washing. Cooing with pleasure, he plucked at the cloth with his plump little fingers. Unless it was raining, Baby Lewis always rode in the laundry basket, making the entire endeavour unnecessarily complicated, but a great deal more pleasurable for them both. Living out here on their sheep station, she had to take her pleasures where she found them. At least for the moment.
The sun was warm upon the back of her neck, as the afternoon shadows grew longer. She should take Baby Lewis inside for his nap, but it was such a lovely afternoon that she could not resist standing in the sun a while longer, dreaming of the future. With the last of the drying laundry flapping behind her, she eyed the low bluestone cottage critically. Four small rooms. Kitchen, scullery, parlour and a single bedroom. Soon they would need a nursery or she and Lewis might be sleeping in the scullery, if the signs of her body could be relied upon.