by Judy Nunn
‘Where did you get it?’ he asked. He was worried. Had she stolen it? Was she trying to sell it to him?
Pearl rose from the table. She wanted to leave. ‘It belong to the missus.’
‘What missus?’
‘She give it to my dad. She told him she wanted you to have it.’ Pearl didn’t want to answer any questions, and she knew no more than her mother had told her. ‘You give this to Kit Galloway in two years’ time, Pearl,’ Nellie had instructed her daughter as she lay on her deathbed. She had known that, when she died, Jackie would return to the bush, but her Pearl was a good girl, she could rely on her Pearl. ‘The missus wanted Kit to have it. “When he comes of age”, that’s what the missus said to your dad,’ Nellie had told her daughter.
‘Who gave it to your dad?’ Kit asked, frustrated. ‘What missus?’ He needed answers and Pearl was backing towards the door.
‘Your mum. It belong to your mum. My dad said I gotta give it to you.’ She had to get out before he asked her why she’d kept it so long. ‘I gotta go now.’
She was out the door in a flash and Kit raced after her. ‘Pearl!’ he called. ‘Pearl!’
But Pearl was tearing down the street as fast as her legs could carry her and she wasn’t looking back. Apart from running her down and physically stopping her, there was nothing Kit could do. He went back inside to examine the locket. If there was no evidence of his mother’s ownership, he’d take it to the police and perhaps they could trace the rightful owner.
Pearl didn’t look back until she’d turned the corner and run another two full blocks. Then, panting from her exertion, she glanced behind and slowed down, thankful that he hadn’t followed. She was safe now. Not only safe from any questions about why she’d kept the locket, but safe from the warning curse of her father, which had so terrified her.
‘You steal from a dead person, Pearl,’ he’d said. Jackie had been shocked when he’d discovered her wearing the locket.
Talk about bad luck, Pearl had thought when her father fronted up to the shanty. She hadn’t seen him for a year and she never wore the locket. Not when people were around anyway. Eddie had always been on at her to sell it for grog money so she’d told him she’d lost it. He hadn’t believed her and he’d bashed her around a bit. He only ever bashed her when he was bad on the grog, and he was always sorry after. So she’d scrounged all the money she could and told him she’d sold it. He’d stopped nagging her after that. Now she only ever wore the locket when she was on her own. It was such a pretty thing and it made her feel happy.
‘No honour in what you done,’ her father had said, staring at the locket, ‘bad things gonna happen to you, Pearl.’ Then he’d looked at her and his eyes had seemed to burn into her skull. ‘Bad, bad things.’ She’d felt a shiver of terror. ‘You find Kit Galloway, and you give that to him from his mother’s grave,’ Jackie had warned her. ‘’Cos if you don’t, you dead yourself, Pearl.’
As Pearl trudged through the streets of Darwin on the long walk home she felt a vast sense of relief. She’d miss the locket, it was so pretty, but at least she was rid of the curse.
Kit sat at the table examining the locket. It was heavy for such a small piece, and valuable if the diamonds were real, which they certainly appeared to be. He turned it over, there was a personal insignia engraved on the back. He fetched the magnifying plate from his atlas. Two tiny g’s. Would the craftsman be traceable, he wondered. Perhaps not, the locket appeared very old.
He tried to open it, but the catch had seized up a little and he didn’t want to force it. He worked some oil into the clasp and hinge and, after several attempts, it opened to reveal two photographs. They were faded with age but undamaged, the locket’s perfect seal having protected them from the elements.
Kit recognised his mother in an instant. So Pearl had been right, the locket had been his mother’s. But who was the man? He presumed that the locket dated back prior to the marriage of his mother and father. The man was possibly his mother’s first love. He found the thought moving. And she looked so young, so young and so very beautiful.
The man’s face seemed familiar. In a weird way it reminded Kit a little of himself. Not the face he saw in the mirror, but the way he sometimes appeared in a photograph. Strange how photographs capture an aspect altogether different from the way one sees oneself, he thought. Who the hell could it be?
Through the magnifying plate, he looked closely at the eyes and the mouth, there was an expression there he knew. The glint of humour in the eye, the slight sardonic curve to the lip. Then he realised. It was Paul Trewinnard. He’d known Paul only as an old man, prematurely aged by his illness. But here, in the locket, the face which gazed back at him was undoubtedly that of the younger Paul Trewinnard.
Jessica Williams’ introduction to Darwin had been a violent one. She’d been warned of the monsoon season and had felt fully prepared for the onslaught but, as Cyclone Zelma had buffeted Darwin, Jessica, like most newcomers to the Territory, had been overwhelmed by the vehemence of nature’s attack.
‘Ah that was nothing,’ old cynics boasted, ‘we’ve had worse and we will again.’ ‘It was a pretty bad one,’ others assured her, ‘they’re not always like that.’ Yet others told her, in a blasé fashion, that the warnings which were regularly broadcast on radio and television meant nothing more often than not. ‘Most of the time the cyclones head out west, we cop a bit of the flak, but no real damage.’
Jessica wasn’t sure who to believe. But thanks to Cyclone Zelma, she was prepared these days. A good torch and a ready supply of candles and batteries in the event of power failure, and she tuned in regularly to the ABC’s warning broadcasts, of which there were many lately. As Christmas approached warnings abounded and Jessica was astonished that the locals took such little notice.
‘It’s always the same this time of the year,’ she was assured.
Jessica was returning to Perth for Christmas and, if the current warnings were to prove true, she hoped she’d be well clear before the next cyclone hit, she had found Zelma terrifying.
Apart from Zelma, however, Jessica had thoroughly enjoyed her time in Darwin. On a research grant from the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs, she had spent the past two months compiling data on Aboriginal art as a means of historical record. The Top End was the home of a wealth of indigenous art and the work had been stimulating. So had Darwin, where she’d stationed herself for this particular leg of her research trip.
Although she’d always made friends with ease, Jessica found the Darwinese particularly hospitable, only too ready to welcome a stranger in their midst. And she’d quickly realised that Darwin itself dictated an easygoing attitude. Was it just the lazy heat of the tropics? But then the weather was hardly lazy, it was a constant drama, certainly during the monsoon season. Perhaps it was the very drama itself, dished out by the elements on a daily basis, which bonded the Darwinese. Whatever it was, Darwin was unique. As she told her father over the telephone, there was ‘something about Darwin’.
She’d finished her assignment and was filling in the last day before her return to Perth. Reneging on the offer of a long boozy lunch—her new-found Darwin friends certainly knew how to drink and she was feeling a little seedy from the preceding night—she took herself off to the library.
Browsing was one of Jessica’s favourite pastimes, particularly browsing through the history of a place as fascinating as the Northern Territory and, two hours later, she’d lost all track of time as she found herself locked in The Rise and Fall of Darwin’s Pioneering Families. Written by a journalist, Robert Ashworth, in the 1950s, it was a riveting mixture of gossip and history. She turned a page and read, beneath the picture of an extraordinarily handsome bearded man, ‘The Sullivans, a family in turmoil’. Then a picture on the opposite page caught her eye.
She stared down at it unable to believe what she saw. It was a photograph of an antique locket, and depicted on the face of the locket was the symbol she’d seen in the Aborigi
nal paintings. There was no mistaking it.
Jessica had continued her search for the elusive symbol wherever she’d gone, showing people her photographs of the Aboriginal artwork and making endless enquiries, but she’d always come up against a dead end. She’d almost given up on her quest, and now here it was staring out at her from a book in the Darwin library. The crystal clear picture of a mountain peak and a brilliant sun. And they were engraved on an antique locket.
So her theory of the symbol being a pendant of some kind had been correct, she thought. But how had the locket come to Darwin? How had it changed hands?
Pulse racing with excitement, she read the brief history of the Sullivan family, curbing her desire to skip through to the section on the opposite page which pertained to the locket. The Sullivans had started a highly successful surveying company in Darwin’s early days. The family patriarch, Benjamin Sullivan, had been an eminent surveyor, indeed a member of Goyder’s team, and had settled in Darwin to become a prominent citizen.
The early surveyors, of course, Jessica thought. There had been a great deal of contact between the blacks and the first white surveyors. So that was how the locket had changed hands. Perhaps by force, perhaps by barter, Benjamin himself had acquired the locket from the Aborigines.
She read on. In 1939, Matthew Sullivan had sued his son and a Chinese shopkeeper over the theft of a valuable locket, professing that he himself had purchased it for his mother. But the defence had proved that Matthew’s father, Benjamin, had given the locket to his wife upon their marriage. The case had been thrown out of court and the Sullivan name made a laughing stock through Matthew’s greed and his implied perjury.
So who now had the locket, Jessica wondered. The son? What was his name, she searched the page, Thomas, that was it. No, it would surely be the property of the Chinese shopkeeper who had purchased it. Once again she searched the page. Foong Lee. She wondered if he was still alive. He’d had a shop in Chinatown before the war. She enquired at the front desk of the library.
‘There was a Mr Foong who had a shop in Chinatown in the late thirties,’ she said. ‘Would you know if it’s still here?’
The young girl had no idea, she was relatively new to Darwin, but she wanted to be helpful so she fetched old Jack from out the back. Jack was a walking history book, she said.
Jessica introduced herself and once again enquired after Mr Foong’s shop in Chinatown.
‘Heavens above no,’ Jack said, ‘Chinatown was obliterated in the bombing, all the shops went and the Government didn’t bother building them again. I think they were glad to see them gone,’ he added with a touch of disapproval.
‘Oh.’ She was about to ask after the Sullivan family when Jack continued.
‘Of course Foong Lee himself built another shop, without any Government assistance, immediately after the war. I don’t know if that’s of any help.’
‘Is he still alive?’
‘Oh yes, very much so.’
‘Were you talking about Foong Lee?’ the young girl interrupted. Jessica nodded. ‘You should have said,’ she smiled, ‘everyone knows Foong Lee. He owns the Golden Dragon in Cavenagh Street. It’s a restaurant, but no-one calls it the Golden Dragon, it’s known as Foong Lee’s. He’s very famous around Darwin.’
‘I think Miss Williams was enquiring about Mr Foong’s shop, Alice,’ Jack said, annoyed that she’d stolen his thunder.
‘Thank you, Alice, you’ve been very helpful,’ Jessica said. Poor Alice looked severely put in her place. ‘Would I find Mr Foong at the restaurant?’
‘Yes, he’s always there,’ Alice beamed. ‘It’s in Cavenagh Street, near the corner of Knuckey, you can’t miss it.’
‘Thank you so much. And thank you too, Jack.’ Jessica hurriedly departed, leaving the two of them to sort out their differences.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon and Foong Lee had just returned to the restaurant having popped out to the post office to collect his overseas newspapers. They were sent to him regularly in batches, and he was very much looking forward to settling down with a pot of heung ping and the overseas news, he always enjoyed the afternoon lull between lunch and dinner, and the papers made the prospect doubly pleasurable.
As he was about to pull the door closed behind him, he saw Kit Galloway crossing the street. He didn’t bother calling out to gain his attention, it was obvious that Kit was heading directly for the restaurant. How nice, Foong Lee thought, he was coming to visit, the papers could wait.
But Kit wasn’t coming to visit. In fact he walked right past Foong Lee without even seeing him. He was probably preoccupied by whatever assignment he’d been on, Foong Lee told himself, Kit was always very passionate about his work. But in his distraction, he’d appeared worried. Foong Lee didn’t call after him, not wishing to interfere. Perhaps when he next saw Aggie he might make some discreet enquiries, he thought as he closed the door; if anyone would know what was troubling Kit it would most certainly be Aggie.
Only seconds later, there was a tap at the door. Foong Lee hoped it was Kit. But then he saw, through the glass with the red-painted dragon on it, the form of a young woman. The restaurant hours were clearly marked on the window for all to read, but Foong Lee never put up the ‘closed’ sign. He left it to his own discretion whether or not to turn people away. If he liked the look of them, or felt in the mood, he might invite them in for heung ping, to while away an hour or so before the evening trade. Today, with the overseas newspapers before him, he decided to tell the young woman the restaurant was closed.
He opened the door. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, ‘but we’re not open until half past six.’
‘I realise that, but I wonder if I might have a quick word with you,’ she entreated. ‘You’re Mr Foong, aren’t you?’
‘Yes I am,’ Foong Lee said. What an extraordinary looking young woman, he thought. Hair the colour of copper and eyes of jade, she was not only attractive, but her origins intrigued him. She was not Irish as some might presume, she was a strange mixture. Pale-skinned admittedly, but there was a fullness to her perfectly shaped upper lip, and a curve to the nostrils of her aquiline nose. He’d seen many white blacks before, and he wondered whether perhaps she might have Aboriginal blood in her. White blacks were usually very attractive, he’d found. Like Eurasians. Nature was prone to choose the best features from both races. Most intriguing.
‘Come in, my dear, may I interest you in a cup of jasmine tea?’ There was always time to read the papers.
Jessica stepped into the restaurant where the overhead fans created a welcome breeze from the sweltering stillness of the day. ‘Thank you, Mr Foong,’ she said, ‘that would be lovely.’
She watched him as he made the tea. He was a small, neat man, rather like a penguin, she thought, and she wondered at his age. He looked no more than sixty but he had to be much older. And there was a warmth about him, an old-world courtesy.
‘My name is Jessica Williams,’ she said as he ushered her to a table by the windows. ‘I’ve been in Darwin for two months on a research trip.’
‘And what can I do for you, Miss Williams?’ he asked, sitting opposite her and pouring the tea.
‘I’ve just come from the library,’ she said. ‘And I was reading about the Sullivan family in a book called The Rise and Fall of Darwin’s Pioneering Families …’
‘Ah yes,’ Foong Lee smiled, ‘Robert Ashworth. He was rather unpopular with a number of people after that was published, particularly the Sullivans. They wanted to sue him but they couldn’t, he’d got all his facts right, you see.’ He chortled, his eyes disappearing into mirthful slits as he recalled Matthew Sullivan’s outrage. ‘However, Miss Williams, if you’re researching Darwin’s pioneers, I can suggest a number of books with a little more depth and a little less sensationalism than Mr Ashworth’s.’
‘I’m not actually an historian, Mr Foong,’ she corrected him, ‘I’m an anthropologist. I specialise in Aboriginal anthropology.’
‘Oh?
How very interesting.’ He was pleased that he’d been correct, Jessica Williams was Aboriginal, he was sure of it. Foong Lee always prided himself on his powers of observation, particularly when it came to a person’s origins. But then one saw such a mixed bag in Darwin, it became quite easy after years of practice.
‘And it’s not the Sullivans I’m interested in,’ she continued, ‘it’s the locket which the family went to court over. The locket which you yourself had purchased at the time.’
‘More and more interesting,’ Foong Lee said, plainly fascinated. ‘What part could a seventeenth-century locket play in Aboriginal anthropology?’ he asked.
‘Seventeenth-century?’ Jessica felt the familiar quickening of her pulse, could this be another step in the right direction? ‘Are you sure?’
‘Fairly sure, yes. An educated guess, mind you, I never did have it authenticated. But I’d say seventeenth-century, and the work of a Dutch master craftsman.’
‘Oh!’ Jessica beamed, she wanted to kiss him. Surely it was proof that her theory of the symbol had been correct. An artifact bearing its image had come ashore from one of the early Dutch shipwrecks. ‘Mr Foong,’ she said a little breathlessly, ‘do you still have the locket? Please. Please may I see it?’
‘Sadly, no, my dear, I’m afraid the locket is no longer in my possession.’ He knew she was about to ask him where it was, how she could find it, but he cut her off even as she mouthed the question. ‘Perhaps you could tell me a little of your interest which appears so avid.’
Jessica realised she’d been grilling him. He really was owed an explanation, he’d been so kind and patient. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m excited about getting so close to it after all this time.’
She told him about her discovery of the simple kaolin clay outlines early in her university studies, then her later discovery of the ochre paintings and the theories she’d developed over the years. He watched her as she spoke, she was so passionate.
