Southern Gold

by Jude Thomas

  Chapter Fourteen

  September 1864

  Evie drops into the bed, exhausted from the long day’s work. The last of the guests had gone upstairs by ten o’clock, but she had continued on stitching in the gentle candlelight.

  She knows it is slovenly, but she is too weary to change into her nightgown, only shedding her shawl and skirt on the bedpost before crawling into bed beside her sleeping child. The bed feels like a feather cloud, even though its stuffing is only kapok. Billie murmurs in her slumbers, Evie encircles her, and knows nothing more as she falls into a long, ocean-deep sleep.

  Today had started out as any other. That is, with the exception of Billie’s breakfast egg sporting a pink face thanks to the cochineal water, and waxy crayoned purple eyes, mouth and hair. A chorus of happy birthday broke out. Then Mungo trotted in on cue with a small packet in his jaw and stood on his back legs in offering. ‘For me, Mungo? Why, thank you, my best little friend,’ and Billie tore off string and newspaper wrapping to reveal a new slate and three sticks of chalk. ‘Oh, my own slate! And now I shan’t have to share in school!’

  ‘Billie, what a thought indeed! Of course you do not need to share with your classmates – ’ Meg consulted Evie with a quick glance ‘– but surely you shall wish to share if another pupil does not have your advantage?’

  Billie had looked ashamed at her outburst, saying contritely, ‘Yes, Mother Meg and Alf, yes Mama. My mouth went quicker than my brain, and of course I shall share my slate.’

  Then it was off up the rutted road, past the proliferation of public houses and horse yards, accompanied by Mungo to the usual spot.

  The afternoon had been also like any other. Mungo had waited at his corner in a quiver of anticipation and catapulted himself forward in the usual rapturous reunion and frenzy of adoration. Then home and through the side door into the scullery for thick bread and milk before Billie’s routine afternoon chores.

  And the evening had continued in the normal fashion, commencing with a nutritious meal and suiting most to dine at this end of the day. Today’s juicy lamb shanks, mashed potatoes and spinach from the garden was followed by jam roll with a sweet, sticky sauce and custard.

  This evening’s songs were, as usual, balm to the souls of their weary guests. A family of eight had begged an extra night’s lodging before moving off over the treacherous hills to Mosgiel, two infants sleeping with their parents in one room and four others top’n’tailing in another. A family of five occupy the largest guest room, and two men crowd into in the boxroom barely made for one. Meg will share with nobody but her Alf, and that’s that. Maguires is full and quiet except for the sounds of sleep.

  Evie usually dreams of fine clothes and rich circumstances. Her recurring dream is of singing around a piano at a grand homestead before it gently transforms into a garden party where azalea petals fall all around during a wonderful sensation of floating. There are silken clouds drifting, velvet trees gently waving, and taffeta leaves fluttering.

  But this time a cloud overtakes the sun and the day is becoming ruined. It is raining, sleeting and the wind is howling. Mother pulls her inside, inside to the warm of the house where the piano is playing. But the house is different, like a cave, and everyone is screaming with no sound but with ugly mouths that gush forth rivers of virulent red. Then she is being pulled from the warmth of her mother’s arms and she is crying out. And this is when she awakes, gasping.

  It must be a bad dream. Yes, that is it. All is well and she must sleep more to be fresh for the morning.

  But the bad dream will not cease and now she is being pulled under a bridge, into a grotto, into the deepest cave. Cough, cough, she cannot breathe. Gasp, wheeze, pant. Almost choking with the lack of air. The cave’s depths are pulling her down, pulling her further under. But the more she flails in its sinister hold, the hotter she becomes – so raging hot that she is thrashing off the all the bedclothes. In the distance there is barking and shouting. The smell is getting more putrid. And she really is choking.

  Evie is wrenched from the sleep cave into her own dark room – but now with a sinister glow outlining the sparse features, making them look like devils and pikes. She is terrified. And she is coughing again. There is smoke billowing under the frail wooden door. Smoke and fire. Fire! FIRE! FIRE!

  There is now thumping and cracking and crashing. Banging, shouting and pandemonium. Evie grabs her shawl and cries, ‘Billie, Billie, wake up, wake up! We’re on fire! We’re on fire!’ She drags the sleeping form from the mattress and across the floor. ‘Quick, quick, the window!’

  The sleep-drugged child clings to her mother with such ferocity that Evie can hardly stagger. She shoves Billie towards the window. She raises her arm to smash the panes, but they explode from the searing heat. Yet it is no use, the mullions are far too small to push through, and far too strong to break. Struggling and gasping, Evie tries to wrench the sash upwards – but it has been closed all winter and will not budge.

  Loud screams and shouts bounce through the bedroom walls. The thin timber is ablaze and the smoke is thickening.

  ‘Let go, Billie! Let me be so I can open the window – let go of my arm!’ Evie shrieks as, struggling and panting and retching, she pummels and struggles at the heavy timber sash. It grinds apart and with a jerk is thrust upwards. More shards of glass fling down like daggers, and one plunges into her tilted neck. Panting, she pushes her head and shoulders through the opening, gasping in a lungful of night air. She hauls the clutching child upward and with a supreme effort, heaves her through the space. ‘Jump! Jump!’ Her voice is a croak. ‘Jump, Billie!’

  Slumped over the sill now, Evie glides in and out of her mind. Billie is out; she knows she must jump too. Over what she perceives to be a long, slow time, but is only a minute or two, she rouses her body enough to drag it over the ridge. Safety is coming soon. But it is so very hot, and she is so very tired, and why is it such a long way to tumble down and down and over and over to reach her precious child?

  Someone is pulling her back, pulling and pulling, and will not let go. Oh, but there is Mother calling her. And there is Father, and there is little William laughing. But best of all, whispering sweet things, is her beloved sister Florence with her bonnet, bidding her to follow. Now the pulling back is being released, and the drawing forward is getting stronger.

  ‘Come home, Eveline, come home to us all,’ Florence is calling, although there is no voice now, only a sweet hum. Or is it song? Is the bonnie boat coming over the waves?

  And on a chariot of gentle memories, she floats and soars. Away, and away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Billie’s eyes slowly open. Everything is dark. Darker than when she buries her face into Mungo’s soft black patches. She reaches up. Nothing is there. She rolls her body over on the hard ground and begins to crawl. One knee forward, another knee forward – but it hurts, oh, it hurts.

  Mama will be cross if I get my drawers dirty. The thought hovers over her.

  The dark is a little scary, but not as much as the hole under Mother Maguire’s dunny seat. And then she remembers she must call it a privy. Oh, how cold it is in the privy. How cold it is, how shivery.

  Her knee meets something firm. She touches, feels, and inhales the scent. And even with the reek of acrid smoke and charred wood, she knows it is her mother.

  ‘Mama, Mama,’ she whimpers. She lays her head on Eveline’s lifeless form. ‘Mama, don’t be sad now. Courage shall not forsake us. Let us have fortitude.’

  She awakens to the wan glow of dawn. She can see jagged black shapes, criss-crossed like a game of pick-up-sticks. She can see faint twirls of smoke, rising to become gathered up into the greyness that hangs over Maclaggan Street. The stench of a burnt world jags at her throat. She coughs and it feels like a wad of cotton is stuck inside her chest.

  In the distance a dog barks and a few feeble responses echo back. A little later the barks come again. Then a little closer. Mungo!

  ‘Mungo, Mungo! He
re, boy – here I am!’

  The hoarse yelps get more intense and joyous, and out of the vapour looms a small, singed object. Mungo, with his gammy eye and mangled ear, was never a beauty. But beauty is all Billie sees as she buries her head into him, then wraps her scorched, bruised body around his sturdy little frame; one that is waggling with such intensity that they are soon a tumble of licks and sharp cries.

  Until Billie starts to choke and breaks into tight sobs. Mungo’s own ecstasy reduces to a low, slow moan and they rock together until quiet comes upon them.

  He stretches out and his nose touches Evie’s cold form beside them. He licks and whimpers, and gives a brief shudder. Mungo has seen cold forms before and knows. He keeps vigil with Billie and her Mama as weak light filters through the haze.

  Four years ago, before ‘Gold!’ was on everyone’s lips, there were five hotels in Dunedin and now there are eighty-one, each prey to destruction from a rogue candle. This latest heap of rubble is the fifth such disaster in Maclaggan Street since the beginning of the year.

  A group of grimy men poke at the charcoal and ash, occasionally stooping to retrieve an item that hasn’t been roasted beyond recognition. Tankards, buckets, crockery, cauldrons lie under a heap of charred timber and corrugated iron. Silence hangs heavily over the long acre, broken by a curse, a low moan, a splintered sob, as one corpse after another is retrieved from the mangled mess. Some survivors have already been taken in by friends further up the hill, away from the stink and chaos. A lone woman claws through an area of rubble, croaking her husband’s name. Two small boys kick about in the debris, happy to have something new to explore, unaware of anything more than their own world.

  Into the uncanny silence breaks the sweet, liquid notes of a bellbird; then the fractured warble of a tui. Fruit trees planted further up the hill have grown to handsome specimens over the past few years, and terrestrial birdlife has migrated from the dense native bush to this valley. One weary forager hears the uncertain notes and turns to his fellow man with a look that says ‘out of death comes life’.

  The tui’s rise-and-fall stanza comes intermittently: pip-pop, portle. A response from deeper in the bush: wip,tek-tek-tek, teeer. Then the notes seem to meld into a shallow cry. A cry like a newborn, yet twisting into a croak. And the croaky cry becomes a thin wavering riff:

  ‘Singing cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o. Alive, alive-o, and cockles and mussels and – ’

  Intermittently it is accompanied by a reedy howl.

  ‘Ye gods, something’s bloody alive!’ As if in slow motion, exhausted men start clambering over reeking rubble towards a pile of charred beams. ‘Lord save us,’ croaks one, ‘it’s a bairn!’

  ‘Sure an’ dat’s no bairn – ’tis Alf’s child!’ shouts another. ‘Jasus Mary an’ Joseph – both her and da mutt are alive!’

  Billie raises her eyes through the dim space above her bunker to see faces, blackened and undistinguishable. But she knows the voice of Shuran O’Fee and other gruff voices seem familiar too – friends of Alf.

  Shuran’s voice becomes clearer, shouting, ‘Miss Billie, is it you, child? Is it yourself? Are ye hurt, oh are ye –?’

  ‘My leg hurts something fierce, but Mungo has been keeping it warm,’ wheezes Billie, ‘and I’ve been singing and singing to keep us happy. I like “Speed Bonnie Boat” best, but he likes “Cockles and Mussels”. Mama is so tired, and won’t wake up. She has forgotten her skirt, she just has her shawl and petticoat. Mama must be so cold and we are trying to warm her, are we not, Mungo? And I’m hungry now.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  The summer days are shortening, the hillsides are warm, and the valleys accept the longer shadows. Mist hovers low over the harbour in the early dawn as the air currents merge. Dogs bark, children laugh, and without fail night follows day.

  It is many months since the fire that decimated Maguire’s Private Hotel, and a new building is being established on the burned-out site. But the Maguires are no longer the owners. They, along with Billie, have been taken in by the kindness of neighbours further up the hill at Abbeyleix House, one of the largest public watering holes and accommodations on Maclaggan Street. They have saved nothing – even the week’s takings were consumed by the eager flames – but out of devastation there is small mercy: at least there is plenty of work available for good hotel staff.

  The Maguires do have a small sum of savings with the Bank of New Zealand, thanks to their hard work and thrift, but there it shall stay; it is not nearly enough to start rebuilding. At least, Meg reminds herself, they don’t live rough like many settlers, in a hut made of sticks with naught but a pan over a miserable outside fire for cooking.

  Meg now works in the Abbeyleix kitchen – scrubbing, scouring, chopping, beating – and they are given lodging in return, plus a small wage. She feels comforted that they have a roof over their head, and a little extra to get by on, and she keeps her mind clear of most other concerns by being constantly busy. She feels blessed to be alive each day, and not be taken away like their dear, sweet Evie.

  Not so Alf. His mind has been forever damaged by the outcome of the blaze that claimed their proud little business, but mostly by the loss of his Evie, and he cries like a baby at times. He has lost his ability to speak, and will focus on a speck of dust or a hair off Mungo, or into the distance as he sits on the hotel veranda. Shuran O’Fee comes of an evening to share a jar, and friends often drop in to play cards. While Alf doesn’t partake yet, he watches and it is good therapy.

  Alf will smile quietly at Meg as she strokes his hand, or prepares him for his bed. There are still some functions that he is able to reserve the right to accomplish, but on the whole Alf is cocooned in his own world. That is, until he sees his Billie, when he becomes a little more animated.

  Mungo forbears her tuneless renditions, and rarely lets her out of his sight while she is in and around Maclaggan Street. She is permitted to join the establishment’s guests on Friday and Saturday evenings, but never is she allowed to venture into the public bar with its rough clientele.

  Billie desperately misses her mother and still weeps after her prayers at bedtime, but seldom does she succumb to excessive sadness – and indeed it is she who keeps her weather eye on Meg and Alf. Meg is busy all day in the kitchen, and Alf is hardly any trouble unless he gets agitated. His friends still bring him the Times and the Witness and read the editorial comments and snippets of what they hope will perk him up. But it is Billie who is now reading to him the most and after school, once she’s completed her daily tasks, she comes to sit beside Alf and reads until he is weary. In the main he is stimulated by this activity, and from time to time he reacts with a clap or a nod or a smile that indicates the man within.

  Billie learns to avoid articles that provoke too much emotion, after one such reading sent him to a lather, crying ‘Fire! FIRE!’ and it took her some time to calm his distress.

  Her schoolwork is impeccable; she has a photographic memory, her mind is deep, and her intelligence sharp. But the infant mistress continues to resent the fact that she has a child who, at not even seven years of age, is ahead of the ten-year-olds and not far behind most of the twelves who will be leaving at the end of the year. Miss Kerr does not like children who don’t conform to her standards – they confuse and frighten her. In fact, she does not like children at all, but teach is what she must do.

  She refuses to acknowledge Billie other than to taunt her, sometimes with thinly concealed fury, other times with sarcasm. Whether Billie smiles, or frowns, or lowers her eyes, Miss Kerr cannot be pleased.

  A few of her classmates also sneer, mainly to curry favour with their teacher, but Billie is neither brash nor falsely modest and would-be bullies don’t find satisfaction. She remembers Mother’s words when things get difficult: ‘Be strong and of good courage: fear not nor be dismayed’ and endeavours to be these things.

  But she is not any keener on school, and finds comfort only when she walks with her friends or arrives hom
e to the Abbeyleix and curls up with Alf. She is, however, keen to better herself with income, to earn extra money to help her guardians.

  ‘God bless you, child, I would never take your money!’ says Meg when the subject is broached, which it is with increasing regularity.

  ‘Then I shall put it in the bank for later,’ says Billie. ‘I know where it is in Princes Street and I shall give it in there.’

  ‘So you say, miss,’ Meg sighs in defeat. She knows that this one should not get the upper hand, yet her tone is that of such reasonableness and persuasion that it is hard to resist this approach. ‘But you should not expect to find work outside the domestic sort and there is plenty to do here, even if I cannot give you a coin as yet. Someday, though, I shall think of a way to spare you a penny or two, if you are intent on earning.’

  ‘No, no, that is not what I mean at all! Oh, Mother Meg, I do so wish to get a great deal more, and I have seen those Rattray Street boys with many coins between them, and even playing flick with them.’

  ‘Rattray Street boys? Flick? Whatever next, indeed!’

  ‘Mother would not let me stop to talk – ’

  ‘And neither she should, God rest her soul.’

  ‘But I do want to learn to play flick when I get those coins! How grand it would be to stack a pile on my elbow with my hand curled up just so – ’ She raises an arm bent tight with an eager fist curled forward like a swan’s head. ‘And then – flick! – my hand would catch all the coins before they fall down, and if I should drop them I should snatch them up before the boys run and steal them!’