‘But you didn’t pick any of them?’ said Sam slowly.
‘How could I? Not after I’d knowed Mr Puddleham.’ A smile lit Mrs Puddleham’s face. ‘Ain’t he the bee’s knees now? Them soft white hands, and that posh way he has ofspeaking. And anyhow, those other coves would have drunk everything I earned. They only wanted one thing, deary.’
‘You mean —’
‘Me cooking, and the money it could bring in. An’ I was right not to go with them, neither. ‘Cause after five years Mr Puddleham met a cove what had gone back to England who knew another cove who’d been on the ship with me … an’ the long and short of it is Mr Puddleham found out what ‘ad ‘appened to me. He used his savings to buy a passage out here and then he found me.’
Mrs Puddleham smiled up into the gum leaves, remembering. ‘There I was adding lemon peel to the rock cakes — don’t do the stint on lemon in a rock cake, lovey, nor the currants neither, for all they’re sixpence an ounce — and there was a knock at the back door. It was Mr P, large as life and skinny as tuppence, his hat in his hand. “Why, Miss Green,” he said (that were my name back then), “you’ve grown as plump an’ beautiful as one of your plum puddings".’ The smile grew. ‘Likes something to hold onto, does Mr Puddleham. An’ we wuz married.’
‘Oh,’ said Sam. She began to cut the potatoes again.
It was almost a love story, she thought. The hero left the palace and sailed across the world to the girl he loved. But it was hard to think of stiff little Mr Puddleham as a hero, and as for Mrs Puddleham …
The big woman smiled at her. And suddenly she was a heroine, one who had borne even more than Sam, happy and excited about making her fortune and getting her hotel with velvet chairs.
‘Mr P and I worked for the old bast—old toe rag for six months, too. Then when gold were discovered I said, “Mr Puddleham, this is our chance. We needs a place that is worthy of you, Mr Puddleham, a place where you can wear a top hat an’ bow to lots of toffy customers.” So we set off to the diggings, up Bathurst way first, then down here. And I wuz right, ‘cause we’re making our fortunes. It’s money in the bank all the way. An’ now we have you.’
She looked over at Sam anxiously. ‘You don’t mind, do you, deary?’
‘Mind what?’ Sam’s head was full of Mrs Puddleham’s story. How could she have been through so much, and still be able to be so happy?
‘Me bein’ a convict an’ all. That was why I didn’t tell you. You speak so lovely. Just like a lady. I thought, she won’t want an old lag fer ‘er ma.’
Sam felt her eyes prickle. ‘I … I think you’d make the most wonderful mother in the world.’
‘Really?’ Mrs Puddleham looked so happy Sam felt her heart would break.
‘I think we was meant to find you,’ said Mrs Puddleham muzzily. ‘Or you to find us.’ She pulled Sam to her in a clumsy hug.
But what about Lucy? Sam was enveloped in the scent of old clothes and bad teeth. Mrs Puddleham can’t think that I’m her long-lost daughter, she thought suddenly. Things like that don’t happen. I’m far too old, for a start. And she knows my name isn’t Lucy.
The hug felt good though. Even the pong meant she was safely in the past. Mrs Quant said the past was smelly …
Mrs Puddleham released her reluctantly. ‘Well, this ain’t gettin’ the stew cooked.’ She stood up. ‘We’ll have fifty starvin’ miners down on us if we don’t look sharp, and us with nothin’ but half-cooked stew to put in their bellies. Speakin’ o’ bellies, you don’t want nothin’ more in yours? Stew won’t be ready till sundown but I’ll whip up a potato cake for you and me and Mr Puddleham, soon as he gets back again. Ain’t nothing like a nice potato cake with a bit o’ sugar.’
Sam shook her head. ‘I’m okay — I mean I’m not hungry yet.’ She peered into the pot. It still smelled of dead sheep and raw onion. ‘Why does the stew take so long to cook?’
Mrs Puddleham beamed at her as though she’d asked for the secret of the universe. ‘Ah, that’s a good question. Long an’ slow cooking, that’s the secret of a good stew, so’s the fat can soak into the spuds and make gravy. But first of all you got to put every bit of the sheep into the pot except its baa. Just like this, see?’ Mrs Puddleham scooped the last hunks of sheep into the pot. ‘Liver, lights, brains — make sure you adds the chunks of fat along its belly too. The innards give it flavour. You see these?’
Sam nodded as Mrs Puddleham’s plump fingers held up the bunch of scented leaves she’d brought back from the farm. ‘They’s ‘erbs, they is. Winter savoury. ‘Erbs gives stew more taste, like it’s got more meat than it really ‘as. The more flavour in that there pot, the more spuds and flour you can add. Flour and spuds is cheaper’n meat. Butthere’s another secret too.’ Mrs Puddleham bent closer to her.
‘You browns the flour first in the dripping,’ she whispered. ‘I did that this mornin’ and got it safe in the pot afore anyone was up and saw me. Don’t do to give away yer secrets. You stir that flour about till it’s the colour o’ brown boots. Makes the flour taste just like meat, an’ thickens it all something wonderful too. You see how dark it looks already, afore the meat is even cooked? You puts enough browned flour in your stew an’ no cove will notice he ain’t got a plate full o’ meat an’ potatoes. Now you remember that.’
‘I will,’ promised Sam.
Mrs Puddleham smiled happily as she tipped in more water. ‘I knows you will. Secrets like that are the best thing a ma can give her daughter, I reckon. You know how to keep a man’s belly happy and the rest of him’ll be happy too. Ain’t that right, Mr P?’
Sam jumped as Mr Puddleham bowed behind her. He still wore his coat and hat and dignity, even with his arms full of dead branches. ‘Completely, Mrs Puddleham.’
‘Now you sit there, lovey, and give it all a good stir.’ Mrs Puddleham handed Sam a giant wooden spoon, flat at the base. ‘Make sure you stirs it proper, too. Can’t never get the Professor to do that. Make sure that spoon scrapes all the bits up from the bottom afore they scorches. Think you can do that?’
Sam nodded. Mrs Puddleham beamed. ‘O’ course you can. You’ll be worth your weight in nuggets to us. Won’t she, Mr P?’
Sam sat by the pot on the side away from the smoke, and stirred. It was surprisingly hard work, digging the spoon deep into the stew. But it was interesting too, watching the way the stuff in the big pot changed. The lumps of meat turned into shreds and the globs of fat mixed with the flour and potatoes, and the smoke from the fire mingled with the steam from the simmering gravy. Sam could imagine how a smell like that would wriggle its way down a mineshaft to a hungry digger, convincing him he could spare threepence for a plateful of Mrs Puddleham’s magic.
By the time the sun was midday-high Sam was nibbling a hot potato cake, browned in an old black frying pan.
The second pot was full of water bubbling around half a dozen big cloth-wrapped puddings. Sam had thought that the puddings would go soggy, boiling in just a bit of cloth, but Mrs Puddleham said they wouldn’t.
Some lumps of fat were boiling with water in another pot to make what Mrs Puddleham called ‘dripping', melted fat that could be used instead of butter. There was no way to keep meat fresh for more than a couple of days on the goldfields except by salting it. ‘And salt,’ said Mrs Puddleham, ‘is almost as valuable as gold. You just got to be careful,’ she added, scraping up the last of her potato cake with her spoon, ‘not to give anyone too much meat in the first few days. Just a bit o’ bone for everyone and a ladle of gravy.’ She grinned. ‘Won’t none of them notice there’s less meat towards the end o’ the week. That’s the secret o’ a good stew.’
‘Makes them think they’re eating as well as Her Majesty herself,’ said Mr Puddleham. He held his spoon delicately, as though his hands would be happier with a knife and fork. He ate in small bites too, hardly opening his mouth to put in pieces of potato cake.
‘An’ so they are too,’ said Mrs Puddleham stoutly. ‘An’ as the week goes by we j
ust add more spuds and onions and more flour and herbs to the pot.’ She glanced over at the sacks of potatoes, the bags of flour and the big tin of treacle, sitting in a bucket of water to keep off the ants, as though to check no one had stolen them while her back was turned.
She glanced back at Sam. ‘That potato cake good, lovey?’
‘The best,’ said Sam.
Mrs Puddleham looked pleased. ‘Well, you just help me move the stew pot back from the fire a bit. That’s it, thank you, lovey. It don’t need so much cookin’ now. Just to sit and think a bit, quiet like, and let the flavours mingle. You go off and have a wash and anything else you needs to do. No need to do any more stirrin’ now till we puts it back on the fire.’
It’s weird being in a place where food is as valuable as gold, thought Sam as she trudged down to the creek. And it looked like Mrs Puddleham’s ‘secrets’ were worth even more than the gold hidden in the dirt around them. Sam grinned, imagining this morning’s coins and pinches of gold dust in their bag down in the big woman’s stocking. Secrets, she thought as she splashed the cold water onto her face. If the Professor’s right then the diggings are full of secrets.
How many of the men who had sat at the fire that morning had secrets they were running from? A convict past, or a wife they wanted to leave behind? Surely some were like the Puddlehams, who’d come here to follow a dream, not just to leave their past behind.
She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair to try to comb it. Did the Puddlehams have more secrets she didn’t know about? The Professor had said that Mr Puddleham was only pretending that he’d been a butler. And who was Lucy? If she was the baby behind Mrs Puddleham’s disgrace, what had happened to her? Something bad, so bad she’d run away, like Sam?
No, thought Sam. Mrs Puddleham’s secrets were nice ones. They had to be. How a light crumbly mix would make a perfect pudding, and how long boiling was the best way to give anything more flavour (''cause wood is free,’ said Mrs Puddleham, ‘even if it’s a weary business to search for it').
Sam dried her face on her sleeve. There was something else she had to see to, something embarrassing. But she couldn’t put off much longer.
She arrived back at the camp just as Mrs Puddleham gave a long hard stir to the stew pot that held the mutton. It burped back at her, one giant lazy bubble, then went back to its slow day-long simmer. The other pots were simmering slowly too, each with only one side nudged into the fire, the puddings in their cloths only just moving in the water.
‘Um,’ said Sam.
Mrs Puddleham beamed at her. ‘Yes, lovey?’
Sam gestured at the chamber pot lurking in the tent’s lean-to. ‘What do I do with that?’ she whispered.
Mrs Puddleham grinned. ‘Just pour it down there,’ she jerked her head towards a mound of dirt above the gully. ‘That claim ain’t been dug for I don’t know how long. Right handy to put the rubbish down, ain’t it, Mr Puddleham?’
‘Indeed,’ said Mr Puddleham. He dipped a rag into the pudding water, then held the hot cloth briefly against his face. Sam stared as he took the cloth off and began to scrape off his whiskers with what looked like a long knife. No soap or shaving cream or razor, she thought, or even a mirror.
She hoped he didn’t cut his throat.
‘Mr Puddleham shaves twice a week, regular,’ said Mrs Puddleham proudly. ‘Neatest man on the diggin’s, he is. And a bit of mutton fat on his hair every morning to keep it shiny. Now you see to the potty, deary. Then I’ve got a surprise for you.’
Surprise? thought Sam, trudging over to the abandoned mine. You’d have to be desperate for gold, she thought as she poured the contents of the pot into its depths, to start digging there any time soon.
She rinsed the chamber pot in the creek — polluting it, she thought, but she wasn’t going to have the pot stinking out the lean-to. The water was probably polluted already. And she’d washed in it … She decided only to drink boiled water if she could.
Mrs Puddleham was undoing her apron as she got back, while Mr Puddleham wiped his newly shaved face on a bit of sacking.
‘There,’ said the big woman. ‘Now you keep a watch on them pots, Mr P, and make sure no one dips his paws into them, and stir the stew proper …’
‘Yes, Mrs Puddleham,’ said her husband, as gravely as if she’d asked him to guard the queen’s jewels.
‘We’ll be back in time for you to get more wood. But me and Sam has got more important things to see to.’
Mr Puddleham cast a sharp look at Sam, then a softer one at his wife. He nodded.
‘What?’ asked Sam.
Mrs Puddleham reached into the tent for her bonnet. ‘We got to get you some boots. Ain’t no child of mine going around in wet feet. Enough to give you your death of cold, wet feet is.’
Sam glanced down at her sneakers. They’d been worn already, and when she’d fetched another bucket of water for the stew her toes had poked right through. ‘Thanks,’ she said quietly.
Mrs Puddleham beamed again. ‘Nothing’s too good for you, lovey,’ she said. ‘Ain’t that right, Mr P?’
But Mr Puddleham was stirring the pot, and didn’t respond.
Chapter 10
The road looked even busier in daylight. Bullocks heaved wagons through the dust. Horses panted in front of carts, or walked slow and dusty under their riders. There were people everywhere: men in rags; men in suits; old men crouched over walking sticks; and young men pushing barrows.
But although the road was crowded, there were few people among the tents. Sam supposed most of the men were down their mines.
Here and there a woman tended a fire or wiped a small child’s nose, but there were no young girls her age. Each woman nodded to Mrs Puddleham as they passed, some calling out ‘good day'. The men touched their hats or caps to her as well. Most of them wore pale thick trousers with wide sashes for belts, and red shirts that had faded to pink. Sam found herself grinning.
‘What’s the joke?’ demanded Mrs Puddleham.
‘Oh, nothing.’ How could Sam explain that a landscape full of dirty, bearded men in pink shirts was funny? ‘Why are so many men all hunched over?’ she whispered, as yet another bent man lurched by.
‘Miner’s back, lovey.’ There was nothing but sympathy in Mrs Puddleham’s tone. ‘After a few years o’ lugging dirt down in them mines they can’t never straighten up.’
Sam thought of the Professor’s words the night before. No, this wasn’t an easy world. But it was fascinating. She stared around again.
The land was flatter than she’d thought last night, shorn of most of its trees and bushes till a thin line of blue began again in the distance, where mountains seemed to float on the horizon.
The tents and mounds of dirt grew even closer together as they walked. The Puddlehams’ camp must be on the very edge of the diggings, Sam realised. For here at last were the real diggings — earth torn and shattered, a city of tents and bark humpies, dark mouths of mines with strange sails flapping above them.
Yet even within the chaos there was order: tracks straight as a road between the tents; and streets like this one, wide enough for two carts to pass each other, the grass worn down to hard dirt. Flocks of white cockatoos, fed on the bits of grain in the horse and bullock droppings, rose screaming into the air as a coach approached.
It’s like a movie of the olden days, thought Sam, as she stepped around a pile of bullock droppings still steaming in the mud of the roadway.
‘Mrs Pud—I mean, Ma?’
‘Yes, lovey?’
‘What do those sail things do?’ She pointed at one draped over a man’s legs as he sat before his tent, sewing a rip in the material.
‘Ah, them. The air’s bad in them mines, lovey, so the sails push fresh air down into ‘em. Otherwise the coves down there turn blue and choke.’
Sam tried not to imagine death in the darkness under the ground … No wonder the men take such care of their sails, she thought.
They stood aside to let the
coach pass. Hopeful men clung to its top and sides, and now there were young women too, wearing bright bonnets and peering from the coach windows. One of the girls glanced down at Sam and grinned, waving a hand in a lace glove.
‘New chums,’ said Mrs Puddleham tolerantly. ‘Ah, well. Let’s hope they make enough to buy a plate of stew, even if they don’t find any nuggets.’ She nudged Sam sharply, as Sam automatically started to wave back to the girl in the coach. ‘Don’t take any notice o’ they, lovey. Hussies. Only one reason why any girl’d come to the diggin’s dressed like that. No better than they should be.’
‘Oh,’ said Sam slowly, as the coach vanished over the rise ahead. Would men in these days think any girl alone here was a ‘hussy'?
There were more bark huts among the tents now. A structure like a carport was hung with a dead sheep. Flies crowded around the customers as a butcher in a leather apron dark with blood hacked off hunks of meat from the dangling carcass.
Mrs Puddleham looked down her nose, though it was a stubby one, not made for looking down. ‘Look at that. Ten times the price we pay at the farm, and it’s fly-blown into the bargain. Not that anyone can see maggots in a stew,’ she added. ‘Not among the spuds. But it ain’t wholesome.’
‘No.’ Sam shuddered. No fridges here, she thought. No fly screens or even proper windows.
The tiny hut next to the butcher’s was more substantial than any she’d seen so far, made of neatly trimmed logs of wood and looking a bit like a child’s cubby. A man sat, almost filling the little doorway, below a sign that said ‘The Lemonade Man'. He was in his forties, with dark hair neatly parted in the middle and a moustache that turned up at the ends. He wore a suit like Mr Puddleham’s, with a dusty round hat. He raised it politely to Mrs Puddleham. ‘Guten Morgen, Frau Puddleham. You care for lemonade perhaps?’
The Night They Stormed Eureka Page 6
