Wimmera Gold

by Peter Corris

  They had reached the hotel. Fanshawe's brain was humming with the beginnings of an idea. A brandy might help him firm it up. 'Yes, by all means.'

  'Might help you remember what you wanted to see me about. All well with you and Margaret and the children, I trust.'

  'Oh, yes. All healthy, thank God.'

  Puzzled, the doctor followed Fanshawe into the hotel's saloon bar and allowed the squatter to buy him a brandy and soda. They lifted their glasses, toasting nothing in particular.

  'Well, Henry.'

  'Where's he from?'

  Price tapped ash from his cigar. 'Who?'

  'This John Perry.'

  'From America originally, judging from the way he speaks. But I understand he's spent some time in England. I'd say Jem Mace has had a hand in his boxing education. The man has a straight left that's beautiful to watch.'

  Fanshawe sensed that the doctor was becoming uncomfortable under his interrogation. He forced himself to switch the conversation to his wife's health. He described her symptoms in the ignorant masculine way of husbands, that Price, a bachelor, had learned to discount. The room was filling up and most of the talk was of the fight and of money won and lost.

  'Not the obvious, I suppose?' Price asked.

  Fanshawe was straining his ears to pick up snippets of conversation. He shook his head.

  'Well, I suppose I'd better come out to see her. I've got a call to make at the Prescotts' later this week. I could drop in on my way back.'

  'I thought perhaps a tonic.'

  'We'll see. There's a new tincture of opium that some medical men arc using in cases of female lassitude. I'll take a look at Margaret and see if it's appropriate. Well, thanks for the drink, Henry. Look after yourself and I'll see you in a few days.'

  Fanshawe shook the doctor's hand. A stir went through the room as Perry, dressed in clean moleskins, highly polished boots and a black coat of a somewhat military cut, entered the room. Fanshawe inclined his head in Perry's direction and spoke urgently. 'What sort of a chap is he, Humphrey?'

  'He goes by the name of 'Black' Perry, I understand,' Price said. 'But if he weren't a mulatto, I'd say they'd most likely call him Gentleman John.'

  4

  John Perry had a bruised left shoulder where the miner had struck him and a slightly tender right foot where one of Watkins' heavy boots had come down solidly. Otherwise, he was undamaged and unwearied by the fight. He picked up his purse, paid Pratt, collected on his bets and bought a round of drinks for the half-dozen or so men who considered themselves 'the Fancy' of Wilding. He was anxious to be out of the bar-room atmosphere in which he was never comfortable. Smoking only an occasional Havana himself and a moderate drinker, apart from an occasional binge when his spirits were low, he disliked the fumes that built up where men gathered, as he thought of it, to abuse their bodies and waste their time. But there were civilities to be observed, especially if your mother's blood had given you a skin the colour of toffee.

  Perry stowed his money away in an inside pocket of his coat where it nestled close to the derringer pistol that hung in a holster under his left armpit. Wilding would not be the first town to resent the demonstrated superiority in the masculine attributes of a black man. He moved towards the door but found his passage impeded by a stout gentleman wearing good but somewhat stained and disarrayed clothes. Perry stepped sideways but the man, smelling slightly of liquor, moved to block him.

  'Excuse me, Mr Perry. My name is Henry Fanshawe. I'm a landowner in these parts. I wonder if I could interest you in a business proposition?'

  The two men left the hotel and entered Miss Millicent Darcy's Tea Rooms opposite, on the corner of Stawell and Station Streets, the latter named at the insistence of the pro-railway clique. Miss Darcy was alarmed at the thought of her bone china in the hands of a black man but his clothes were impeccable, his salute was gracious and, with one of the leading squatters in the district accompanying him, what could she do or say? She directed the girl to serve them quickly and not to be too generous with the butter and jam for the scones in the hope that their stay would be brief. She was to be disappointed. An hour later they were sitting in a window seat, heads close together, over a cold pot of tea, empty cups and plates carrying only crumbs and butter smears.

  'Let me get this straight, Mr Fanshawe,' Perry said in his soft, buzzing accent which was more musical than the usual Yankee drawl. 'You guarantee me one thousand pounds at the end of a two-year period, whether I achieve anything or not?'

  'Exactly so. We can go along to my solicitor's office and draw up a paper to that effect.'

  Perry drew a small, leather-cased watch from a pocket in his spotless, buff-coloured vest. 'Nearly six. I'd guess the office is closed for the day.'

  'Peter Brennan lives on the premises. I have put a good bit of business his way in recent times as you'll have gathered. He'll open up for me.'

  Perry sat back in his chair and looked at the squatter. Just occasionally in his experience, when the stakes were high enough, men like Fanshawe could lapse into colour blindness. It had not been so, of course, when he had sought a commission in the Union army or, later, when he had been denied a match with Lang for the middleweight championship. Still, opportunities presented and a man was wise to take them. A thousand pounds was a considerable opportunity, but Perry had learned long ago not to let others set the terms of engagement.

  'Fifteen hundred pounds,' he said, 'for an eighteen-month period. To make it longer would simply draw out the agony, and the higher the stake the greater my … enthusiasm.'

  'Done.'

  Perry held up his hand; the palm was pink and the hand itself surprisingly small and well-shaped for the kinds of things it did. 'Four hundred pounds in advance, half to be returned at the end of the period if no results have been achieved. I think you will have to see your bank manager, Mr Fanshawe, if you wish to proceed with this contract.'

  'I will do so tomorrow and, rest assured, the funds are available.'

  'I can see you are a man of substance in this district. But … '

  Fanshawe looked at the mulatto's peculiar eyes. They were dark, but with a blueish tinge. Perry's black hair was wavy rather than crinkled or frizzed and his features, though clearly negroid, were more refined than those of the lantern-jawed Scots and bulb-nosed Irishmen of his acquaintance. Perry had poured tea and eaten scones with the aplomb of a bishop. Fanshawe felt that he was close to securing the services of a man far superior to Wesley Lincoln and that this was the key to success. The terms, though, would stretch him. They were just barely acceptable and he felt uneasy about the penetration of those blue-brown eyes. The fellow has squeezed the lemon dry. What else does he require?

  'How will you explain my presence at your sheep ranch?'

  'Your presence?'

  'Of course. I'll have to talk to your servants, perhaps even the members of your family.'

  'My family?'

  Perry's large mouth curved into a smile. 'Mr Fanshawe, somehow this man Lincoln discovered your secret. How? Knowing that may be the first step to learning how to catch him. You say he's a trick rider and good with a rope. That's interesting. I know a little about those things and how men with those skills behave. But I'll need all the information I can get.'

  'I see. Perhaps I could engage you to teach my sons to ride and shoot. Their mother would be opposed but … '

  'Mrs Fanshawe has something against riding and shooting?'

  'She wants the boys to be properly educated. So do I, of course. But they will be sheep men in the end. Tell me, Mr Perry, do you speak any foreign languages?'

  Perry looked surprised. 'French, some Spanish and Italian. My German is serviceable. Why do you ask?'

  'My wife has an interest in such things. Perhaps she will look upon you with more favour if I can suggest that you will give the boys language lessons as well.'

  Perry laughed. 'I think you're pretty shrewd, Mr Fanshawe. Your problem interests me. I had planned to leave for Castlemaine
tomorrow, but I think the Mount Perfect district will hold me a little longer.'

  With the transaction almost concluded, Fanshawe became suddenly ill at ease. He didn't know whether to shake hands with Perry or simply pay the bill and leave. The mulatto settled the issue by placing a half crown on the table, picking up his hat and standing. 'If you'll write out the terms we could sign to it. An informal agreement should suffice,' he said. 'My horse is at the livery. Perhaps we could meet there at, say, eleven tomorrow, after you have been to the bank. We could ride out to your ranch, excuse me, your station, together.'

  Fanshawe, discomfited at having a coloured man pay for his tea and scones, nodded and followed Perry towards the door. His mind was in turmoil; he had great confidence in this exotic individual who, by all the precepts he had hitherto absorbed, he should despise. But everything was odd at present, nothing was as it was supposed to be and he told himself that he would have to get used to this. He lifted his hat to Miss Darcy, hovering at the back of the room. Miss Darcy smiled and told the girl to collect the cups and plates separately, and to make sure that those the black man had used were washed in very hot water.

  Perry walked with Fanshawe to where the squatter had tied his horse and raised his hand in farewell. Mercifully, the street was almost empty and Fanshawe was confident that no one he knew had seen the gesture. The shadows were lengthening as he cantered down Station Street. He had been absent a long time and Margaret would possibly be worried, although he found it difficult these days to imagine what was in his wife's mind. As he rode he thought about his bank account and the effect of withdrawing the amount Perry had requested. It would make finding the Geelong Grammar fees even more difficult, but he had a distinct feeling that he would have to oblige Margaret on this point if he was ever to experience domestic harmony again.

  John Perry strolled back towards the Commercial Hotel. He had secured a room by paying in advance and showing a receipted bill from two prestigious establishments in Melbourne and Geelong. Such precautions had become second nature to him and he no longer thought of them as demeaning. He mounted the stairs and entered his room thinking about what Fanshawe had told him. He was sure that he hadn't learned the whole story but there was sufficient to make a beginning. Although the fight had taken little out of him he was tired after a day of striving to be civil, avoiding conflict, dealing with hostility and engaging with Henry Fanshawe's unusual problem. He took off his boots and stretched out on the narrow, hard bed. From his tooled leather saddlebags he removed a vellum-bound book with lined pages. He took a pencil from his pocket, wrote the date at the top of the page and recorded the incidents of the day. Perry had kept a diary for the past ten years, though some of the volumes had been lost in his travels. Others had been posted back to his family home in Barbados where, he imagined, they lay neglected in a cupboard.

  John Perry had been born in Barbados in 1840. His father was a planter, a third-generation West Indian who had married a woman whose mother had been an African slave and whose white father was unknown. Perry was darker than his brothers and sisters and in some indefinable way had never fitted into his father's household. After a wild early youth he had decamped for the United States to wander, learning to ride, shoot and survive in rough country. As the European and African heritages remained unreconciled in his temperament, so his natural athleticism and intellectual curiosity contended uneasily. His skills with horses, firearms and his fists could have earned him a living as a circus performer or professional pugilist, but the narrowness of outlook of the carnival folk and sporting fraternity oppressed him. He read widely. With a facility for languages, he had picked up French as a boy and learned Spanish in Mexico. A Swiss gunsmith, for whom he had worked in New York City, had taught him German and Italian.

  As he wrote in a firm copperplate in the diary, Perry reflected on the series of accidents and misadventures that had put him in the way of this potentially lucrative commission. He had attained the rank of sergeant in a coloured unit of the Union army and was slightly wounded at Cold Harbor in 1864. While recuperating in a field hospital, an English surgeon advised him to advance his military career by entering the Sandhurst Military Academy. In 1867 Perry travelled to England armed with letters of introduction and recommendation from his father and several well-connected planters. The support of West Indian nabobs, however, failed to overcome the prejudice that festered in English military minds as a residue of the Indian Mutiny, and his application to the academy was rejected.

  Angry and resentful, Perry caroused in London until his funds ran out. Then he took to the roads with a band of gypsies who recognised a good horseman and 'milling cove' when they saw one. For almost two years Perry felt at home with the swarthy travelling people. He added the Romany tongue to his languages and learnt considerably more about the ways of horses and men. He trusted that his diaries from this period had survived, because he had written at length about the ways of the gypsies, the hostility they encountered and their thousands of ways of taking food and money from under the very noses of those who would deny them any right to either. He hoped one day to write a book about the Romanies in the manner of Borrow's Lavengro, which he had read and admired.

  It was during his period with the gypsies that Perry met Jem Mace, then calling himself the champion of the world, though the title was disputed, and touring rural England giving boxing exhibitions. The pugilist was having trouble attracting a paying crowd to his tent at a fair outside Nottingham until he offered five guineas to anyone who could stay on his feet with him for ten minutes. Perry, who had learned to box in America and won many scraps while in the army, evaded the old master's attack for the stated time and even managed to land a few shrewd blows. Mace, said to have gypsy ancestry himself, was impressed and paid up on the spot. He gave him some lessons gratis and tried to persuade him to join his troupe, but Perry saw too many cauliflower ears and addled brains among its members to be attracted to the fistic profession.

  But word got around about the nigger who'd stood up to Jem Mace, and every roughneck in every town and along the roads wanted to try his luck against Perry. He was besieged by offers from trainers and backers and touts who all wanted to make money for themselves from his fists. The gypsies wanted no more of him. It was not in their nature to have a well-known person in their midst. Not in their interest either; having loud-mouths hanging around the caravans drinking, eyeing the handsome young women and talking boxing interfered with fortune-telling, tinkering and horse-trading.

  Calculatingly, Perry agreed to two fights—both against local heroes of the ring, both for purses of 100 guineas. He wagered everything he had on himself and won both fights convincingly, suffering no more than a few bruises and a split lip. Within weeks, Bell's Life & Sporting Reviewer was asking the question on every sportsman's lips—where is the new Tom Molyneaux, the ebony-skinner protégé of Mace and the conqueror of Noakes and the Bristol Slasher? The question was never to be answered, for John Perry had packed his substantial stake of £400 into a money belt and taken himself off to Australia.

  A knock on the door interrupted Perry's reverie. He discovered that he had held his hand still over the page for some minutes and was suffering a cramp in the fingers. 'Come in,' he called.

  A hotel servant, a boy of about sixteen, poked his head around the door. He had a sharp, knowing, old-beyond-his-years look. 'Mr Doyle would like to know if you want to eat your dinner in the hotel?'

  The boy's eyes were darting around the room. Perry was amused. The lad was no doubt expecting to see heathen idols, spears and animal skins. 'No, I'm not hungry.' He knew what eating the meal would involve—being subject to a barrage of boxing blarney from Doyle and similar claptrap from loafers in the hotel. Perry was sick of it, sick of the business of drawing blood, travelling from one dusty town to another, employing the serious skills of shooting and riding to amuse women and children. The Fanshawe commission offered a way out and a chance to exercise his wits for a change.

 
The boy nodded and began to close the door but Perry called him back. He found a threepenny bit in his pocket and flicked it in the air. The boy's eyes followed the coin which Perry caught between his thumb and forefinger. 'What's your name, young feller?'

  'Bob. Bob Logan … sir.'

  'Tell me, Bob Logan, do you know of a Wesley Lincoln, used to work for Mr Fanshawe of Fanlock?'

  'The Yankee? Yes, he drank in the pub sometimes.'

  Perry fingered the threepence. 'And what sort of a man is he?'

  'Oh, a big one. About your size, Mr Perry, and he's a great rider, like yourself. I seen him ride his horse backwards once, real fast. Just for fun, like.'

  Perry smiled. 'Did he have any particular friend in town? A mate, as you might say?'

  This was difficult ground. It was known in Wilding that on his few visits to the town Lincoln spent the bulk of his time at an establishment in Hamilton Street run by Mrs Pauline Drewe. Bob Logan was reluctant to pass this information on. He knew what Mrs Drewe's business was but doubted that she'd welcome a visit from a nigger. Then again, Mr Perry's clothes were better than most men's in Wilding, he had a fine horse and must have won money on the fight. And, more to the point, there was the matter of the threepence. Perry observed the boy's confusion.

  'Don't say anything that'll get you into trouble. I take it Mr Lincoln had a friend but you don't want to name him?'

  A shake of the head. 'There's no him.'

  'Ah.' Perry flipped the coin again.

  'Mrs Drewe in Hamilton Street.'

  Logan caught the coin. Perry watched the door close, picked up his pencil and made an entry.

  5

  It was raining heavily when John Perry met Henry Fanshawe at Mason's Livery Stables and Grain Merchants the next day. Fanshawe had slept poorly and was pale and unwell in the morning, and it was over his wife's protests that he had driven the trap into town through the driving rain. He was a bedraggled creature in his muddied oilskins with his hat pulled down hard on his head and his breath pluming in the cold air. He had withdrawn the money and handed it, fresh notes still in their wrappers, to Perry. The dark man, by contrast, had slept well, soothed by the sound of the rain on the hotel's tin roof. He had eaten a good breakfast which he had taken early to minimise the threat of unwelcome company. His poncho was only slightly wet from the short distance he had walked and his boots were still clean.