Gypsy

by Lesley Pearse

  There was the moment when she said she loved him and he had stalled on saying he loved her too. Yet at the time she’d thought that was just teasing.

  She knew he had been happy out in Bonanza, but perhaps she’d been presumptuous to think he could be happier still living with her in the Outside. Now she came to think of it, he hadn’t ever talked about how he intended to make a living when they left Dawson.

  His silence on the boat trip to Dawson looked suspicious now too. She’d thought he was merely stunned by Oz giving him the money, but what if it was because he felt he was being drawn into a trap?

  That seemed laughable, but maybe to a man who liked a simple life well away from others, the prospect of living in a real house, surrounded by staid, respectable people, was a living death.

  Yet surely he knew he could voice such fears to her? So perhaps it was in the Monte Carlo that he began drawing back? When Percy Turnball spoke of her being a legend, perhaps Jack was afraid he would always be in her shadow? That he would be expected to mould himself around her playing, and never again be able to choose how he wanted to live?

  But why would he think that? She thought she’d made it plain enough that she didn’t care about anything other than him. Even playing her fiddle was secondary; she was just as happy playing for him alone and no longer craved an audience.

  Would he have gone if she’d told him she thought she was carrying his child?

  In the early evening Beth’s pride roused her from the floor.

  ‘If he’d rather be scrabbling around in the Arctic with a bunch of half-wits than going off on the boat to Vancouver with me, then that’s his funeral,’ she said to herself.

  She slung the mattress back on to the bed and threw the covers over it, washed her face in the basin and scowled at her swollen eyes.

  ‘You will not cry any more,’ she told her image in the mirror. ‘You’ll go down to the dining room, eat a good meal, then pack your things ready for tomorrow. You won’t let anyone see you care that he’s gone.’

  ‘I’d like someone to help me to the boat with my luggage, please,’ Beth asked the hotel manager as she paid the bill the following morning.

  The lobby was full of people departing for Nome, and though hardly any of them looked capable of braving an Arctic winter, they appeared to be following like sheep because so many others were leaving.

  ‘Of course, Miss Bolton,’ the manager said, smiling slimily at her. ‘Mr Child will be meeting you there?’

  ‘Yes, he will. He’s been called away on business,’ she said, smarting because the weasel had made a point of calling her Miss Bolton to show he knew she wasn’t married to Jack.

  She had packed Jack’s new clothes, for if she’d left them in the room that would make it obvious she’d been abandoned, but she thought the manager knew that already, and was relishing her distress.

  The bellboy walked behind her along Front Street with the luggage on a small handcart. The street was packed with people departing Dawson, and she guessed the boat would be grossly overcrowded as captains were like everyone else, only too happy to make a fast buck. But at least all the extra people would only be going as far as St Michael before jumping off to find some other way of reaching their destination.

  Beth kept her head up high as she walked along. She might have a broken heart, but she knew she looked good in her new costume, with her hair pinned up under her hat. Yet all the same she dreaded seeing anyone she knew, for they were bound to ask where Jack was.

  The Maybelline was a small but sturdy-looking steamer and relatively new, unlike most of the boats that had been pressed into service during the previous year. One of the crew took Beth’s luggage and showed her to her cabin which was up on the top deck. It was tiny, with only a foot of floor space next to the bunks, but as she’d seen how crowded it was down on the lower two decks, she didn’t care. Putting her luggage on the bottom bunk, she climbed on to the upper one and lay there watching the scene on the wharf through the tiny porthole.

  If she hadn’t felt so miserable, she might have laughed to see people fighting to reach the front of the queue for tickets, then trying to bribe the crew to get them aboard. She didn’t understand their desperation. Only people you loved were worth fighting for. She’d certainly have fought tooth and nail to save Sam, and turned her back on a fortune if it had meant Molly could stay alive and well back in England.

  The boat was juddering with the sound of hobnailed boots stomping across its deck. Outside her cabin she could hear a man with a booming voice complaining that his cabin was too small, and the crew member responding by telling him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t like it he could get off the boat and he’d sell his tickets to someone else for double.

  A woman’s voice piped up then, saying it was a disgrace that the boat was so overcrowded. She got a similar reply to the one given to the male complainant.

  Beth got down off the bunk when she heard the steam horn blast out to hurry the last stragglers on board. She felt she had to take one last look at the place which two years earlier she’d set off for with such excitement.

  The window was only a square foot of glass and it didn’t open, so her view was limited only to what was directly in front of it: just a group of young men with kitbags, heavy coats and shovels, still hoping they might be allowed on at the last minute. Behind them was a saloon, the fancy carved decoration on its facade suggesting the interior would be equally lavish. But it was a false image; inside it was little better than a shed, and tears welled up in Beth’s eyes for it seemed to symbolize how she’d been suckered into believing Jack was the real thing. She had believed he had no false facade, no tricks or cons. Honest Jack, a man she could depend on, who could be her friend, her love, her everything.

  She was certain now that his baby was growing inside her, for she’d felt that nausea again as soon as she smelled coffee this morning. She knew she would love the baby despite Jack’s betrayal. Perhaps in time she would even forgive him. But she also knew she would never trust another man, not for as long as she lived.

  Her view was out of focus because her eyes were swimming. She saw a man running behind the men in the queue, and although she only saw him for a brief second, she had the fleeting impression that he was tall, with dark hair. Her heart leapt involuntarily, yet she turned away from the window, irritated that she could imagine it was Jack.

  But then she heard shouting and she pricked up her ears, for the man yelling that his wife had his ticket sounded just like Jack.

  She was out through the cabin door and running down the steps to the crowded lower deck like the wind. There were passengers and luggage taking up every inch of space, but beyond them she could see the crew had already pulled in the gangplank and cast off, and on the wharf, with the boat moving slowly away from it, was Jack, red-faced and furious.

  ‘That’s my husband,’ she shouted, jumping over cases and kitbags and pushing people aside. ‘Let him on, please!’

  The crew looked round at her in surprise. Jack took a few steps back, then ran forward and leapt out to the boat.

  There was a united gasp from all the passengers on the lower deck, for the gap between boat and wharf was widening fast.

  Beth clamped her hand over her mouth, for it seemed that Jack was suspended in space and would surely land in the water. But he landed on the boat with less than an inch to spare, falling forward on to his knees.

  He was filthy and unshaven, but to Beth he looked wonderful. She ran forward, arms outstretched to hug him.

  ‘Thank God I made it,’ he panted as she ran to him. ‘You would’ve thought I’d run out on you!’

  Ten minutes later in their cabin, Jack was still breathless. ‘I had to go to see to Oz,’ he wheezed out. ‘He’d been attacked. Willy the Whistle couldn’t get him in his boat.’

  It was some little time before he got his breath back to explain fully. He was on his way back to the hotel the night he’d left her to go for a wander, when Willy
the Whistle (so named because he played a penny whistle), an old-timer who’d been panning for gold around Dawson for years before the stampede began, shouted for him to stop.

  Earlier in the evening, Willy had been in his cabin in the woods, some four or five miles from Oz’s claim, when he heard dogs barking and scraping at the door. He recognized them immediately as Flash and Silver, and knowing that they’d come for help, he followed them through the woods. About a mile away he found Oz lying in the undergrowth, badly beaten up, barely conscious and bleeding from a knife wound in his chest.

  Willy was only a small man, and though he managed to rig up a rough stretcher and, with the dogs pulling it, succeeded in getting Oz to his cabin, he knew he didn’t have the strength to get Oz down to his boat and into it. So he shoved an old towel into Oz’s wound, gave him some whisky, and leaving him with his dogs to guard him, rowed into Dawson to get help.

  Jack explained that he came back to the hotel to change into his old clothes, but as he was in such a hurry and expected to be back by morning anyway, he didn’t think to leave a note or even wake Beth.

  When he and Willy got back to the cabin it was still dark, but on examining Oz Jack felt that moving him into the boat to take him to hospital might kill him. So he patched him up as best he could, and sent Willy off again to get a doctor while he stayed there.

  ‘I told him to go and tell you where I was,’ Jack said. ‘But the idiot drank the best part of a bottle of whisky on the way, fell asleep and drifted past Dawson. I was stuck out at Willy’s cabin, with no boat to go for help, and I couldn’t leave Oz anyway. By the time Willy had woken up, nearly killed himself rowing back to Dawson against the current and got a doctor, it was late last night. The doctor came out in his own boat with another man at first light. I came back here with them. Once Oz was in the hospital, I ran round to the Fairview, but you’d already left.’

  ‘I thought you’d left me and gone to Nome,’ she blurted out. She was ashamed now that she’d doubted him, for the blood and dirt on his clothes and his exhaustion were ample evidence that he was telling her the truth.

  ‘How could you think that?’ he exclaimed, his eyes full of hurt. ‘Surely you know you are the most important thing in the world to me? I wouldn’t trade you for a ton of gold. I love you, Beth.’

  ‘But you’d taken your tool bag and the money,’ she said weakly. ‘What else was there to think?’

  ‘I took my tools in case I needed them,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t take the money. That was in the safe at the Fairview.’

  He put his hand into his shirt and pulled out the money bag. ‘I put it in the safe after I gave you the money for your dress. Word had got around about Oz giving it to me. I was afraid we’d be robbed.’

  ‘The manager didn’t tell me,’ she said.

  Jack shook his head in disbelief. ‘That arsewipe,’ he hissed. ‘Bet he hoped I wouldn’t come back and he could keep it. He looked surprised to see me. I ran like the wind from there, no time to even wash myself. And I can’t even hug you now to make up for it all, I’ll mess up your nice outfit.’

  ‘I can get water for you to wash, and I brought your clothes with me because I didn’t want everyone to find out you’d run out on me.’

  Jack smiled. ‘Run out on you! If I’d had to swim to catch up with the boat I would have.’

  Beth felt all the tension and hurt inside her fading away.

  ‘How is Oz now?’

  ‘He’ll pull through. The chest wound needed stitching, and the Mounties will be rounding up the blokes who did it. Luckily he’d left all his money in the bank here at Dawson, and he’d even put the nuggets I found in a bag and tied them to Flash’s collar.’

  ‘But why didn’t the dogs defend Oz?’ she asked.

  ‘Willy and I were mystified by that too. But Oz came round enough on the way to hospital to tell us he’d been drinking with two blokes he thought were pals, in their cabin, which was about a mile from Willy’s. He tied the dogs up outside. I guess the men thought Oz had the money on him, and greed made them set about him. But they scarpered when they didn’t find anything on him, and Oz crawled out and let the dogs loose.’

  ‘Some pals!’ she exclaimed. ‘If the dogs hadn’t been so clever he might have died out there.’

  Beth got a bucket of water for Jack to wash, and once he was clean he hugged and kissed her. ‘I’d like to show you just how much I love you,’ he said softly. ‘But after two nights without any sleep I don’t think I could prove my point.’

  Leaving him to sleep, Beth went out on the top deck to watch the river. She had been told that Yukon was the Indian name for ‘Greatest’ and she thought it was well named, for it was over 2,000 miles long, ranging from deep and narrow stretches through canyons and sharp bends, to miles wide where it slopped over flat land. The glacial water was so cold in the rapids that if a man fell in he would die from that alone, or be sucked to the bottom in minutes by its strong and deadly current.

  But it was so beautiful too, sometimes emerald green, sometimes turquoise. Caribou and moose waded in its shallows, ducks and geese idled in its more placid water, and swallows nested in its banks. Yet she had loved it in winter too, when the ice was four feet thick and she and Jack had sped along its bumpy surface on a sledge, with Flash and Silver pulling them.

  She looked around at the other passengers sitting on the decks, squashed up with their luggage, and felt sad for them that they weren’t seeing the beauty of this country, only craving the riches they could take from it.

  Coming here had been a complete education. A lifetime in England or even New York would never have tested her, pummelled or taught her as much as the two years spent here. She could live without comfort now, make a meal out of anything, knew that the human body could endure far more than anyone would suppose.

  But the greatest, most important thing of all, and she’d only realized she’d learned it today, was the knowledge of who she was and that she was capable of being independent. She had been horrified and terribly saddened by the thought that Jack had run off and left her, yet she hadn’t been frightened of the prospect of coping alone.

  Last night as she packed her bags she felt that was it, the sad end of a chapter, and there was nothing for it but to go on to a new one. She knew that when she arrived in Vancouver, she was capable of getting herself a place to live, and work. She wouldn’t have crumbled because she was alone.

  Even the prospect of bringing their child up alone hadn’t frightened her. She might have chosen to call herself Mrs for convention’s sake, but not because she was ashamed. She was a musician, and a good one, and she would always get work somewhere.

  She was of course overjoyed and relieved that Jack had turned up. But in a way she was glad she’d had this chance to discover she had grown into a strong, dignified and capable woman.

  ‘When should I tell him about the baby?’ she murmured to herself, putting her hand under her jacket on to her stomach. She was certain there was one, but perhaps it would be better to wait until a doctor had confirmed it.

  Jack didn’t wake until the daylight was fading. He opened his eyes as Beth came into the cabin and smiled.

  ‘Feeling better?’ she asked, bending over to stroke his face.

  ‘I am now I’m with you,’ he said, taking her hand in his and kissing it. ‘I got a fright thinking you were going without me. I wouldn’t have got another boat for days and I would have had no way of contacting you.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t have been meeting every boat in the hope you were on it,’ she said teasingly.

  He smiled, studying her face. ‘I would have tracked you down eventually. I’d have run round Vancouver putting up posters saying, “Missing! Fiddle-playing Gypsy Queen. Reward given for information“.’

  ‘What are we going to do when we get there?’ she asked, gently pushing him over so she could sit on the bunk with him.

  ‘Whatever you want to do,’ he replied. ‘We could get another boat down to Cali
fornia to be warm all winter. New York, Philadelphia, Constantinople, Paris or Rome, we can go anywhere we fancy. What do you want to do?’

  ‘Just to be with you,’ she said. ‘In a warm, quiet house with a proper kitchen and a bathroom. I want you at home with me every evening.’

  He looked at her quizzically. ‘No grandiose plans for another saloon? A shop, a boarding house?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘But you’ve got something up your sleeve? I can sense it!’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, lying down beside him and wrapping her arms around him. ‘But for now there’s just the two of us, scrunched up in this tiny bunk, so we should make the most of it.’

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank all those who helped me in my research into the Klondike Gold Rush.

  Malcolm Latchem was a great help with background information about violin playing and the folk music of this period. Thank you, Malcolm, you made me wish I’d persisted with learning the violin beyond ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’.

  A big thank you to Patrick Griffin of Wexus Travellers’ Club, who made all my travel arrangements for the complicated journey following in the footsteps of my heroine to Alaska and on to Dawson City in Canada. His knowledge, enthusiasm and sense of humour made it seem a much less daunting trip.

  I read every book I could get my hands on about the Gold Rush and its characters, but the two which stood out over all the others were by Pierre Berton, Canada’s leading historian. Klondike, the Last Great Gold Rush, 1868–1899, was simply marvellous. Exciting, fantastically descriptive, a book everyone should read to get the full picture of the madness of gold fever. The Klondike Quest, also by Berton, is a photographic essay of the same story. With fabulous photographs along with the narrative, you can almost feel you were there.

  Special thanks to Bombay Peggy’s, the one-time brothel I stayed at in Dawson City, which managed to re-create the decadence and naughty aspects of how it was once, with twenty-first century comfort and a warm welcome.