by Kim Kelly
About Black Diamonds
It is 1914 and Lithgow is booming. Daniel is a young German–Australian, a coalminer and a socialist; Francine is the bourgeois, Irish–Catholic, too-good-for-this-place daughter of one of the mine’s owners. When their paths collide, they fall in love despite themselves – raising eyebrows all around town.
But before the signatures on their marriage certificate are dry, war erupts, confronting them with a new and much more terrifying obstacle. Against his principles but driven by a sense of solidarity, Daniel enlists; Francine, horrified, has no choice but to support him.
As they hurtle towards a daunting world of war, separation and grief, they learn things about themselves and one another that they would never have expected in more certain times – about heroism, sacrifice, the thin line between courage and stupidity, and, most of all, about the magical power of love.
Told with freshness, verve and humour, Black Diamonds is a celebration of two people determined to be together, whatever life throws at them.
Contents
Cover
About Black Diamonds
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Author’s Note
About Kim Kelly
Also by Kim Kelly
Copyright page
For my darlingest
[Australian history] does not read like history, but like the most
beautiful lies … but they are all true, they all happened.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897
Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra
Gay your life must be.
Marion Sinclair, 1934
Australian sons let us rejoice
For we are young and free.
‘Advance Australia Fair’, 1879
Don’t go to Hell in order to give piratical,
plutocratic parasites a bigger slice of Heaven.
Direct Action, Sydney, 1915
ONE
MAY–JULY 1914
FRANCINE
The first part of him I see is his hobnail boots, soot-black and massive, a few feet from my nose. I’m crouching, about to pick up the apples that have fallen through the bottom of the string bag, and there they are among the rolling red bobbles, and then his hands reach down, and then there’s his face, black as his boots, black crescents on his fingers. I look away quickly, over my shoulder; not sure if I’m embarrassed about the apples, the man, the grime, or myself for being here in this place.
There are others, grey streaks of charcoal heading home from the mines after the shift, I presume. I don’t know any of them, and have no reason to. They are just parts of the machine that digs the coal from the earth and keeps us in apples — and the rest. One of them glances at me, a flash of blue-white question, but keeps going, talking to the one he’s walking with.
I can’t ignore the one in front of me any longer. He’s holding out the apples he’s gathered for me, three in each huge hand. I don’t know where he’s going to put them; the bag is no good. So I look at him, finally. My cheeks are scalding already and then he smiles, teeth startling out of the black, and his eyes are green, glinting amber. Oh dear.
There’s nothing else for it: I grab up the rest of the apples from the ground, four of them, and put them in my lap, scrunch two handfuls of skirt to hold them there. He’s on his haunches, staring at me. Then he lets the apples fall, slowly, not touching my skirt; they roll in and bump against the others, and for the smallest of moments I watch them. And he’s still looking at me.
He’s going to ask me if I’m all right, I can feel it coming, but I don’t give him the chance. I stand up and fairly fly away across the street to the trap, skirt still hitched up over my dun-dusty black-stockinged knees as I drive off and I don’t care. I didn’t even thank him. There’s no real reason why I should have acknowledged him at all, but by the time I reach the house, I feel more scalded than ever.
‘You took your time,’ Polly says from the kitchen when I get in. She’s the housekeeper, and always rude. That’s the way things are here. She’s unaware that she’s a servant, it seems; unlike our old housie, Hanna — for Mrs Hanrahan — whom I’d always thought to be about as animate as congealing porridge, but now, belatedly, appreciate for that very virtue. In any case, I suppose I have taken my time. Polly wanted the apples two hours ago, for a pie, and I said I’d go, just for something to do, but I went to the post office first — I’m waiting for a copy of Native Flora and Fauna of New South Wales I’ve ordered from Sydney; still not in — and then I took the trap a little way out of town to watch the sunset. At least, not the sun setting, but the way it hits the mountain foothills as it begins to sink: the rocks sticking out of the scrub look like fire trapped in glass, and the scrappy gums almost look graceful, the white patches on their peeling trunks like streams of pearl shell. There’s so little else of colour here, except the sky that screams so blue into the valley it hurts sometimes; it’s autumn now, but what’ll it be like when summer comes? Anyway, I got my tiny glimpse of beauty before I had to turn around and face the town again, with its belching smokestacks like fat cigars, and its hills bald around the edges from all the poison; I only just made it back to the grocers before they closed.
No point in telling any of that to Polly as I tip the apples from my skirt onto her kitchen bench.
‘No time to make a pie now,’ she says. ‘I’ll poach them with brandy instead. It’ll have to do. My pastry’s gone to waste, mind.’
Tisk, tisk, tisk. Wouldn’t matter what I said, she’d heave her great bosom in weary contempt. She came with the house; we’re just pesky interlopers to her, my father and I. No doubt she thinks me a brazen little thing, too, wandering about on my own. I have no interest in her opinion; if she thinks I think I’m too good for this place, if she thinks I don’t belong here, then she’d be right.
Polly sighs as she inspects the fruit: ‘These are bruised.’ But I barely hear her. I’m still thinking about that incident with the miner. Or not thinking of him exactly, but me, and why my face is still burning. It’s not like me, not like me at all, to blush and flutter like this. I tell Polly I’m not feeling well and I can sense her eyes rolling as she washes the apples, and I’m glad she never seems to look at me. She says, ‘There’s dust on them too,’ with disgust, but I’ve already left her. I see a faint black smudge on my skirt as I climb the stairs to my room; something else for her to be disgusted with.
Upstairs is some kind of refuge, but there’s nothing mine about this room. It’s just a place where my things are now, since we lost the house in Sydney, almost a month ago, though I’m sure few here in Lithgow know that, apart from my father’s partner in the mine, Mr Drummond, who organised this new place for us. I don’t pretend to know how the world of business works, but if you read the newspapers it appears that Sydney is one big betting ring of booms and busts; everyone’s a gambler and a skiter for it. My father especially. He even tried to convince me that we were moving over the mountains because the mine needed his full attention for a time. Why, then, were we taking every stick of our furniture with us? I didn’t bother asking. I might be somewhat ignorant, but I’m not stupid; and I don’t need to rub it in for him. He’s busted. Why else would he have sold our home, my beautiful rambling sandstone home, the only home I’ve ever known, on the water at Rose Bay?
He’d say I shouldn’t crinkle my lovely brow with any such thoughts, but there’s not much frowning involved in putting two and two together: he’s hung on against some kind of ruin only because of this mine, which is doing very well, he’s boasted. But I have t
o presume he’s had to sell off just about everything else to square up his debts, and now here we are, with all our eggs in a coal basket, or whatever you call those little rail trucks that carry the stuff all about. I don’t think Father knows anything much of mines or making anything apart from money — he’s an investor, someone who puts up the finance for ventures, then takes his portion of the profits. Mr Drummond is the one who actually runs the mine and has for as long as I can remember, so there’s no reason for Father to have come here, except that property is cheaper by far, and since the town is growing such apace there’s no real shame in being here. Father still gets to strut and tootle around in his motor car and proclaim that Lithgow is the next best thing. The Birmingham of Australia! And it is, I suppose, judging from its growling pits and furnaces, factories and mills, turning out everything from iron and copper to chimney pots and tweed, rifles and bricks. And mountains of coal, of course. The whole town is black with it — truly. A grey film lies on every surface.
As much as I loathe this town, at least we’re here together, Father and I. He’s always good company, when he’s about; he’s quick to cheer me, mimics Polly’s heaving and sighing to perfection, and pours forth his rich raw baritone against clumpy piano when he’s had too much drink after dinner, which is most evenings now: ‘There once was a boy from Dublin who …’ he begins and makes up a different song every time, sometimes fabulously vulgar, depending on consumption. He’s a marvellous disgrace, and bleary or not his eyes sparkle when he looks at me. He is an Irishman, a drunk and a devoted punter, the full cliché, who came here, he tells me often enough, as a boy on a freighter from Dublin, and skipped off in Sydney town to make his fortune. What he never talks about is how he made that fortune; I suspect that’s probably too vulgar for my ears. And it doesn’t really matter in this country where wealth in itself buys respectability; if gossip is to be believed, then there are plenty here who are coarser than my father, and they are not all Irishmen — or the progeny of felons, as the English like to call us all.
There’s another thing we never talk about and that’s the future. There’s been no mention of beaus or belles or, God forbid, marriage — for him or me. I turned eighteen on Sunday, and Father said to me after dinner, as he does: ‘Lord, no, you can’t be more than twelve, my girl,’ slid his present of a silver filigreed pen across the table and then changed the subject. I do, however, fancy I understand the reason for this. My mother died suddenly in 1901, of influenza, when I was nearly five; three days after Queen Victoria, and I remember thinking all the black armbands were for us. Father still gets tears in his eyes when he speaks of her, his Josie, or when he sings ‘My Little Blue-Eyed Nell’, and sometimes I know when he is thinking of her; he has a look that pulls at my heart. But my mother is little more to me than a photograph of a pretty woman, the smell of hyacinths and the memory of a soft hand on my plump little cheek; before a lady called Miss Una came to take me up the hill to school, before the tram came and I learned to take myself. I know that’s somehow much more a part of why I feel so strange this evening; how could I ever leave Father? But it’s ridiculous to imagine I would stay with him forever in this hole in the ground just because I can’t bear that heartbroken look of his. It’s even more ridiculous to imagine that my present confusion has in any way been provoked by the filthy, nameless miner I stumbled upon in the middle of the road. The problem is, I can’t imagine … anything.
My days were clear in Sydney, calm and contained as the harbour I looked out across every day. I had my garden that tumbled down to the sea, and my painting — watercolours, of animals mostly — to keep me busy. While Father was out, I’d ramble about, catch the tram into town to lose some hours at the David Jones emporium, or go riding out to South Head, or walk the foreshore near home, most often alone, sometimes accosted for a chat about nothing by Sister Terrence from the convent taking her constitutional. I’ve never really had any friends to speak of; never made a connection with any of the girls at Our Lady, not a lasting one anyway. I’d sometimes go on picnics and attend parties with the local crowd, naturally, but really I’ve always preferred my own company, and Father’s, or that of a decent, fat novel. Or the water, swimming alone at sunset at the edge of my garden in my little sea pool … But now I don’t even have a garden, just gums towering over a yard of spindly grass in the back and a small spread of mangy flowerbeds and moth-eaten hedge in the front of the most hideous dark-brick monstrosity that was ever built: it looks like a two-storey temperance hall whose grounds have been attended by a wayward member. And as for painting, I’ve had to resort to ordering Native Flora and Fauna of New South Wales for the colour plates as inspiration, since there’s little else but ugliness outside my windows here. For the first time ever I am, I think, lonely. That’s what’s wrong with me, of course; I’m simply burning with resentment and have no one to tell it to.
I’ll talk to Father again tonight about the yard; there must be someone in this town who can help me make a garden. Then, in the morning, I’ll go to that early Wednesday Mass and talk to Father Hurley about seeing if there’s some way I can make myself busy. He seems a pleasant, approachable sort of a man. Perhaps I can teach at the school. Is there even a school? There must be. Regardless, I need to spend less time in contemplation of things I can’t change … and adapt. I’ve never done a day’s work in my life, but perhaps a job is the thing — everyone else here seems to have one. It’s a workers’ town.
The sun has well and truly vanished now, and from the window I can only just make out the lines of cottages dog-tailing beyond Main Street, away from the town, or peppering up the hill towards this house, fuzzy splotches of light here and there. And then my stomach lurches: that miner’s eyes loom out at me from the darkness. He lives out there somewhere; what does he see now? His town. Perhaps he is remembering a strange, rude girl. Why I should care I have no idea, but somehow I do.
I hear the engine of the Austin putter up the drive, the creak and bang of the front door; Father is home. Thank God.
DANIEL
I’ve hardly slept. Keep waking up, then waiting for the wake-up whistle, then dozing again. I can hear Mum by the stove, checking our clothes, turning them over. She’s washed them all, even though it’s only Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday by now. She has to go to Bathurst in the morning and she’s not sure when she’ll be back; Miriam’s expecting another baby and Mum’s going to help with the others. Mim’s got six already, and getting dippier with each one, is my sister, averaging a kid a year … fascinating. She’s so quiet, Mum, I can barely hear her. She’s quiet anyway, in everything she does. Wish my own quietness would shut up.
Stop telling me I don’t want to go to work tomorrow, today, again. I keep seeing pit top in my mind, and I just don’t want to go in. Everyone flows round me and down, and no one says a thing, not even the ponies. I’ve not choked, and I’m not worried; I’m just invisible. And I walk away, float away, back into the light.
Anyone’d think I’ve got a mental problem if they could hear what my mind’s like when I’m like this. Yes, I’m so bloody different, aren’t I. Remind myself now that I do actually have to go to work tomorrow. And go to bloody sleep.
Can’t.
Any more than I can help being … a bit separate. Why? I don’t know: it’s obvious one second and nothing the next. It’d be easy to say it’s because I’m German, except I’m not. Just Australian, but not quite. Can you know that sort of thing? I know Dad would disown me if ever I was caught singing God Save The King, but he is German, except he’s not. And he’d laugh himself stupid if ever he caught me with a Bible. No fear there. Though having an Almighty to jabber to in the middle of the night might’ve been handy at the minute. Can’t just make one up for yourself, can you. Not when you’re a red flagger from nowhere with no idea. No one’d ever rag us for a lack of religion, though, or lack of loyalty … no one’d ever rag Dad, for anything. Except me, within reason.
He’s a legend is Dad: isn’t everyone?
More than obvious with him, though, I suppose. According to legend, he came off the boat in 1882, said he wanted the gold mines, but with his bad English and heavy accent and bad timing they told him to go off to Kembla — lots of coal there. He turned up, got a job first day spragging and shovelling shit, and worked out pretty fast that all the gold was black at Kembla. He went to the face quickly and he was champion, one time taking three ton a day for seventeen days straight on his own, including Sundays, unbeatable effort, and not just because you’d get arrested for working Sundays now. He took my eldest brother in with him when he turned thirteen, and in his first week there my brother, he was Daniel too, got his face blown off from left shot and he died where he fell. No one said a word either way, but the firer moved on quietly. Wasn’t his fault, apparently; he was working like he had a bee up his arse to keep everyone going. I know there’s more to it than that, of course, and half of it is no doubt bullshit, but Dad’s not likely to fill me in: he doesn’t talk about the past beyond 1894. Ever. And I wouldn’t dare ask Mum about it. Jesus.
Can’t fail to know that that was the year I was born, a few weeks after the first Daniel copped it, and that eight years later, after Kembla blew out, killing nearly a hundred, my father moved us on too. Here, to Lithgow, since there was an amalgamation of the mines and a stronger labour movement to match it. Joke. A union of capitalists talks louder than a miners’ federation, does it? Pull the other one. The other mines here are mostly all tied up together with local iron, steel and copper, or swapping grades with Sydney and Newcastle, and the owners are all mates, with government mates, setting prices and gipping the workers; but pretty much all we do is feed the railways with clean black bituminous coal and aren’t amalgamated or associated with anything much other than steady government contracts, and we get gipped just the same.
Things are just as good or bad, wherever you are, but in all this time no one’s been blown up here, not at Wattle Dell at least. Dad doesn’t say anything about it, but he’s more responsible than anyone else for how few serious accidents we’ve had. He’s been there since just after it opened, and he’s been doing the bastard fixing ever since: blowing and stabilising the worst spots, as necessary, or as others won’t touch them; and it’s him others go to on questions of stability, more than manager or deputy. We’ve also got compulsory safety lamps because of Dad; another chapter in the legend: four years ago he raised half the money passing round the hat and then went and had a quiet word with the boss, Drummond; no one seems to know what was said, but it was obviously very effective. I asked him about it once and he only said: ‘Some things are no one else’s business. ‘End of story. Typical. But if Dad catches you with your lamp open in-pit, he’ll give you a mouthful.
