Mr Chen's Emporium

by Deborah O'Brien

  After lunch Amy and Eliza took their baths and began to dress. Amy had brought her corset. How she hated that whalebone contraption, but it produced an hourglass figure, which made her inclined to bear its attendant discomforts with stoicism. Eliza helped her to lace it up.

  Then Amy donned her muslin party dress, freshly ironed by Matilda. It had been a gift from Aunt Molly, purchased after the Duncan family’s departure for Millbrooke. In Sydney Amy had worn it to concerts and tea dances; in Millbrooke it remained hidden alongside the other forbidden possessions. Her father would have been appalled by the low neckline, immodestly revealing her collarbones, not to mention the lace trim and the floral pattern, clear signs of vanity.

  ‘You look perfect,’ pronounced Eliza.

  ‘There’s just one more thing,’ said Amy, removing a velvet band from her travelling bag. Pinned to the velvet was her grandmother’s cameo brooch. Eliza secured it around Amy’s neck.

  Then it was Eliza’s turn. Her gown was a sophisticated creation of green silk with tiers of frills at the back. For a girl who rode horses and delivered calves, she seemed quite at home in evening attire. As a finishing touch she produced a little bottle of perfume from the jumble of jars and phials on her dressing-table.

  ‘It is called attar of violets. Pat it behind your ears,’ she told Amy.

  ‘It reminds me of Aunt Molly,’ said Amy. ‘She always smells of violets.’

  ‘Then keep it,’ said Eliza, pressing the bottle into Amy’s hand. ‘I have plenty of others. My father buys them for Mother and me whenever he visits Sydney. Though mostly I forget to use them.’

  Mr and Mrs Miller had arranged for Mr Weiss, the town’s photographer, to take formal family pictures during the afternoon. He was an expert in the process of wet-plate collodions which gave remarkably detailed and lifelike results. Promptly at four o’clock he arrived with a portable dark-tent, bottles of strange-looking chemicals and various glassware, informing a perplexed Matilda that he would need copious amounts of water to rinse his plates. It was decided to take the photographs on the pillared verandah in front of the grand front door with its lunette and sidelights. Amy was to be included in the family photograph, from which only Charles was missing because he was busy at his store. After that, Mr Weiss took individual portraits, allowing his subjects to smile if they wished. How unlike the photographer who had come to Miss Howe’s and insisted on poker faces.

  By the time Mr Weiss had finished, it was getting dark. Amy could hear the band tuning its instruments in the barn.

  Eliza decided she and Amy should make a grand entrance to the dance, once the other guests had arrived. As they reached the door, an exuberant polka was underway. Eliza had barely entered the room when a young man asked her to dance. Where were their dance cards, Amy wondered, before noticing that none of the ladies seemed to have one. Following the polka, there was an old-fashioned quadrille.

  Her eyes scanned the barn for Charles. At the opposite side she caught a glimpse of a vivid turquoise waistcoat. Nearby was Daniel Miller. Just as she was wondering why Joseph was missing from the trio, he was suddenly beside her, requesting the next dance, his blond curls bobbing as he spoke. The lively music foreshadowed another polka. Joseph was soon galloping across the room with such verve Amy could barely keep up with him. At the end they were breathless and thirsty and he fetched her a glass of lemonade.

  ‘Are you enjoying your stay here at Millerbrooke House, Amy?’

  ‘I am indeed.’

  ‘And you have taught my sister to dance the waltz.’

  ‘Yes, but it is not a fact I wish to broadcast.’

  ‘So Eliza told me,’ he smiled.

  They danced a schottische and then a mazurka. Miss Howe had always said it was bad manners to allow a man to monopolise your dance program. But did it really matter here in the Millers’ barn?

  After the mazurka the band announced an interval. Joseph was still at her side when she noted Charles speaking to a young lady with shiny brown ringlets, who was wearing a diaphanous lilac gown which made Amy’s muslin party dress look childish by comparison. Suddenly it wasn’t the barn at Millerbrooke any more. It was a scene from Jane Eyre – the grand ball at Thornfield. The dark-haired girl in lilac was Blanche and the man in the waistcoat was Mr Rochester. And Amy in her floral-patterned muslin was Jane, and she was wretched. Even so, she made small talk with Joseph and Eliza and tried not to look in Charles’s direction.

  When a Viennese waltz was announced, Charles was nowhere to be seen. Eliza tugged Joseph’s hand.

  ‘Come on, Joseph, I want to show you how well I can waltz.’

  ‘A lady should never ask a gentleman to dance,’ he replied.

  ‘We are sister and brother, not lady and gentleman.’

  Joseph shrugged his shoulders amiably. ‘Will you excuse me, Amy?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she replied, taking a seat next to Mrs Miller.

  As the band started up, Amy saw a tall figure in a turquoise waistcoat crossing the room. Was the crowd parting to let him through, or was it just her imagination? It seemed to take an age for him to reach her, as if the world had suddenly slowed down. Then she heard his voice close to her asking: ‘Would you care to waltz with me, Amy?’

  ‘With pleasure, Charles,’ she whispered in reply.

  As he took her hand and led her into the centre of the floor, she thought she would swoon. The band was playing the fashionable new melody from Vienna, ‘The Blue Danube’, and all at once they were spinning around the barn in each other’s arms. If there were other dancers on the floor, Amy didn’t see them. Shyly she looked up at the brown eyes only to discover his gaze fixed upon her face. What had happened between them?

  When the music finished, he kept hold of her hand. The band struck up another barn dance, but he ushered her to the side of the room. Amy’s heart was pounding so fast inside her corset that she was tempted to place her other hand against her chest to steady it. For some moments they just stared at each other, neither speaking. Had all her daydreams come true? Did he really feel about her as she did about him? She began to speak, ‘Charles, I . . .’

  But he spoke over her, ‘Please excuse me, Miss Amy. I must take my leave. I have urgent matters to attend to. Good evening.’

  And just like Aladdin’s genie, he was gone.

  That night, as Amy lay sleepless in Eliza’s bedroom, she went over the events of the evening, but could not solve the mystery of Charles’s sudden departure. Had he been playing a game, flirting with her and then running off at the end of their waltz?

  Had she misread that speechless moment when they had looked into each other’s eyes? She had taken it to mean he didn’t want to break the magic. Yet there was a simpler explanation for his silence. What if he had nothing to say to her? Did he think of her as an inexperienced child? Was the young lady with the brown ringlets more his type? Was there any hope for Amy at all? She let out such a loud sigh she was certain it would wake Eliza. But the figure lying next to her continued to sleep, a little snore accompanying her every breath.

  Amy longed to be versed in the ways of the world, but who could teach her? Perhaps she could write to Aunt Molly for advice. Then again, if she put everything down on paper, it would seem like the silly fantasies of a lovesick girl. For now, at least, she must be satisfied with her novels as a guide to courtship and romance.

  Now

  Blake and Tim had come down from Sydney for the weekend to help paint the guest room. They had finished Angie’s bedroom as well, carefully avoiding the remnants of original wallpaper which she had marked off with a border of masking tape. The Naples yellow hue worked perfectly with her blue and white toile wing chair and the collection of Chinese porcelain, now featuring in the half-finished still-life canvases of Angie’s painting ladies.

  On Saturday night they went to the pub for Lisa’s braised lamb shanks and mash. Richard was there – his home away from home. He invited the three of them to Millerbrooke House on the S
unday, but Angie declined because they needed to finish the painting. She could have made the time, had she really wanted to, but she found Richard disconcerting, though she wasn’t sure why.

  The Manse had proven to be a much bigger project than Angie had expected. She’d done up a house before, when she and Phil were first married. Although it had been a challenging project, the difficulties were always tempered by a series of little achievements, foreshadowing the glorious home to come. She had imagined the Manse would be the same. A thorough clean, a scattering of rugs, the addition of her lovely furniture and a vase or two of fresh flowers. She’d thought she had the instant recipe to transform a rundown house into an elegant home, in the way a cooking show contestant takes a boring bolognaise sauce and adds five ingredients to make it dazzle the judges. But the house remained shabby. It was telling her to forget the instant makeover. It needed every job to be finished. Only then would it shine.

  Vicky was coming on the Queen’s Birthday weekend. Angie was excited about her visit but dreading it at the same time. No matter what Angie did with the guest room, Vicky would notice every single fault, the cracks in the plaster, the uneven floorboards, the chips in the skirting boards. She would bemoan the lack of power points and the funny old hot water heater. She would mutter about people who decided in haste and repented at leisure. Then she would question the wisdom of a widow being isolated from her family and friends at a time when they were most important. She would leave Angie feeling drained and unsettled.

  Angie often pondered her decision. But lately she was beginning to think it wasn’t as rash and stupid as everyone believed. Because Millbrooke had brought her a special gift. Not something she could hold in her hand or see in the daytime, something more elusive, yet precious all the same. For the first time since his death, Phil had returned to her in the night. She had dreamed she was in a vast room. In the centre was a man in a dressing gown, seated in a wheelchair. It was Phil, and she ran to him, saying: ‘You’re not dead, after all. You were sick, but you recovered.’ She was so happy to see him she couldn’t stop crying. His face was thin and pale, his skin looked grey, yet he was alive. Then she woke up.

  The dream had recurred several times. Sometimes he would be leaning against the doorway and she would rush over to touch him in disbelief. Every time she would experience the same burst of happiness, then the emptiness of waking.

  When she told Blake, he said, ‘It’s likely to be your subconscious mind trying to keep Dad alive.’

  ‘Well, at least I can catch a glimpse of him when I go to sleep. Isn’t that a good thing?’

  ‘Yes and no. The problem is that you’re blocking out the reality of Dad’s death. And when you deny your feelings, they’ll always find a way of resurfacing. Like a cold sore that pops up when you least expect it.’

  ‘You don’t actually mean that I’ll get cold sores, do you?’

  ‘No, it’s a metaphor, Mum. But you might be more prone to illness. Or you might do something completely out of character. Something really weird.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, you’ve already run away to a town in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘It wasn’t running away, Blake. It was readjusting.’

  Angie didn’t like it when her twenty-something son acted like a parent and treated her as a child. From now on, she would keep her dreams to herself.

  Before the boys left for Sydney, she showed them Amy’s trunk. For some reason she had hoped they would share her enthusiasm for the Manse’s former resident.

  ‘Why are you keeping that battered old thing?’ asked Tim. ‘Don’t they have council clean-ups here in Millbrooke? I’ll take it to the tip for you, if you like.’

  Ignoring his comment, Angie unwrapped her treasures from the acid-free tissue paper in which she now kept them.

  ‘I’m trying to build up a picture of Amy Duncan, the owner of the trunk.’

  ‘So when did she live here?’ asked Blake.

  ‘In the nineteenth century.’

  ‘Spooky! Next thing you’ll be seeing dead people,’ quipped Tim.

  Blake gave him a jab in the arm.

  ‘Tim didn’t put it very tactfully, Mum. But I think what he’s trying to say is that you should be looking towards the future. Not delving into the past.’

  WINTER

  ‘The crowd acclaimed Aladdin

  for his achievements and generosity of spirit

  and marvelled at how he had risen

  from humble beginnings.’

  ‘Histoire d’Aladdin, ou la lampe merveilleuse’

  Nuit CCCXXXIV [Antoine Galland c.1710]

  5

  ROLL UP, ROLL UP

  Then

  When Amy told the Reverend Duncan she wanted to go to the town meeting, he said exactly what she had expected him to say: ‘It is not a place for a wee lass and I forbid ye to attend.’

  Then she turned to her mother for support.

  ‘Heed your father, Amy. There will undoubtedly be a drunken throng and it could easily become a riot.’

  After supper Amy washed and dried the dishes. Her father was in his study, completing the weekly parish accounts, while her mother was reading stories to the boys. She fetched her purple cape and slipped out the back door. Eliza, Joseph and Daniel had tied up their horse and carriage at the end of Church Lane, and they all walked to the School of Arts together. Already a crowd had assembled on the main street. The four of them jostled their way inside and could find seats only towards the back.

  Mr Miller and Charles were seated on the stage among several other prospective speakers. Amy hadn’t visited Mr Chen’s Emporium since the dance at Millerbrooke two weeks earlier. Seeing him now made her blush and wince at the same time. Fortunately he had not spotted her.

  When the local magistrate called the meeting to order, nobody was listening. Finally he brought his gavel down heavily on the table in front of him. As someone began to play ‘God Save the Queen’ on the pianoforte, everyone stood and sang heartily. The room was so crowded that latecomers had to stand along the side walls. Eliza gave Amy a nudge.

  ‘How many ladies are present, Amy?’

  Amy began to count the bonnets. Probably less than twenty. At the back of the room a group of a dozen Chinese stood at the door. She thought they were brave to come.

  Daniel pointed to a large banner, painted in red, white and blue, held aloft by two men near the stage. It made Amy cringe. The words read: ‘Roll up, roll up. Rout the Chinamen.’ Nearby stood a line of policemen in dark serge uniforms – would the presence of the local constabulary be enough to rein in the rabble?

  The first speaker was one of the proponents of the Miners’ Protection League. As he rose from his seat, he was met with tumultuous applause.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he began. ‘And there are some ladies present too, I see.’

  Amy noted an English accent. She couldn’t pick the dialect, except that it was probably northern.

  ‘We are all familiar with the problems the Celestials bring to the goldfields. The worst of their sins is to waste water. We’ve all seen their water channels and the way they sluice and wash tailings. They do not seem to appreciate that water is precious. When the creek runs dry owing to their profligacy, we are forced to pay sixpence a bucket for something which should be free.’

  Amy heard ‘Hear, hear’ from the crowd.

  ‘Furthermore, the Celestials bring disease and pestilence wherever they go. Black canker, camp fever, swamp sickness, infantile paralysis, even French pox. When they move on, the diseases disappear. They are a threat to the prosperity of all right-thinking, God-fearing men. They smoke opium and sell it to the weaker among us, so that Westerners have also become addicted to this sorry black substance. They gamble and worship pagan idols. They work on the Sabbath. It cannot continue. They are putting the livelihoods of all white miners at risk.’

  A chant began, echoing the words on the banner, and the magistrate called the meeting to order. Several oth
er speakers followed, presenting much the same arguments.

  ‘Why doesn’t someone speak against them?’ whispered Amy to Joseph.

  ‘My father will. And Charles. Be patient.’

  ‘But I’m afraid these bigots will hold sway with their falsehoods,’ she protested.

  ‘Let them vent their bile,’ said Eliza. ‘It will not go unchallenged.’

  At that moment a scuffle broke out at the front of the room. Those who were seated stood up to gain a better look. Being so far towards the back, Amy could see nothing.

  ‘Father and Charles!’ cried Eliza. ‘Are they all right?’

  Joseph tried to push his way into the aisle, but the crowd blocked him. Then they heard police whistles, followed by the magistrate’s gavel pounding on the table.

  ‘Order, order! Resume your seats,’ he shouted. ‘Order! If there is a repeat of this behaviour, I shall have the offenders taken to the lock-up.’

  Somebody laughed.

  ‘If you find that amusing, sir, just consider a June night spent without a fire or a blanket.’

  That prospect seemed to settle the audience. Joseph craned forward to check on his father and Charles.

  ‘They are unharmed,’ he said to the girls.

  When the meeting resumed, it was Mr Miller’s turn to speak. There was polite applause from the townsfolk among the crowd.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is John Miller of Millerbrooke House. It was my father, Captain Alexander Miller, who founded this town. I have lived here most of my life, so the welfare of this colony and its people is very important to me.’

  There were cheers from around the room.

  ‘We have heard a lot of talk tonight. Idle talk and ugly words. I can see a banner at the side of the room.’ When he pointed to it, every head turned in that direction. The chant of ‘Rout the Chinamen’ began again. Mr Miller waited until it subsided. He had a sense of authority about him. Amy decided he had inherited it from his father, the heroic sea captain.