The Coves
Page 21
Sam clucked at the dog and it came to heel, followed him with nose down through the streets lined with sawdust and plaster and offcuts piled for the fire. Sam had visited Ai every day this past week, and she knew that he was leaving. They usually sat in the yard, their faces turned to the sunshine, although on one occasion Sam was allowed to chaperone her amid the Chinese quarter to a herbal doctor for Chen’s medicine. Ai no longer disguised herself as a boy, and Sam took the opportunity to treat her to a cordial-flavoured soda-water in a nearby saloon. The two of them seated at a table attracted attention, and they didn’t speak much; Ai so distracted by looking at the world outside the Chinese quarter, but when their eyes met, Sam liked what he saw.
Sam now entered the alley beside Chen’s tailor shop and opened the gate and helloed to the piglets that ran around and sneezed and grunted. Their mother was looted in the riot, but the drunken Southlanders hadn’t caught the piglets and they gathered around the dog that stared at Sam, who shook his head. The dog looked disappointed, but sat and waited.
The back door cracked open and Sam smiled and tilted his hat. Ai shyly repeated the gesture with an invisible hat and smiled and climbed down the steps. Sam felt sad at the thought of not seeing her again, but there was no way around it. He pressed a letter into her hand, addressed to the post office in Melbourne-town.
‘One day soon they’ll find gold in Australia, I’m sure of it. I’ll look for you there. In the meantime, there’s this.’
He took the bag of gold dust from his jacket, heavy in his hand. ‘Hide this and call upon it when needed. It’s for your family’s debt.’
Ai looked at the bag and she smiled and her eyes softened and there were tears there, even if they didn’t fall.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said.
Sam didn’t understand, and Ai put her arms around him in an embrace that just as soon was over. ‘Your friend Mr Clement came here five nights ago. He told Mr Chen what Mr Borden had told him, about Victoria. Many from Chen’s clan have now been told. Many have brothers or uncles from their clans already in Australia, and have sold everything to buy passage there. Mr Chen has sold this house too. He is tired and, I can tell, scared of this place. We are leaving on the same ship as you. Are you going to take my arm?’
Sam took Ai’s arm. He didn’t believe it until they left the alley and rounded into the street. There was Chen, supervising two men loading a cart with trunks and hessian-wrapped bolts of cloth, sheets of leather and barrels of brined beef, baskets of fruit and bags of rice. Chen saw them but turned instead to the bullock-driver and nodded.
The clipper’s brass bell rang through the port streets. The dog trotted beside them, down the hill toward the bay, its tail raised and its nose in the wind.
Author’s note
Walking the downtown San Franciscan neighbourhood today bordered by Montgomery and Stockton streets at the base of Telegraph Hill, there’s no trace of the area that was once known as Sydney Valley, or Sydney-town. Nor would you be able to tell that in 1852 it was estimated that one quarter of San Francisco’s population was Australian. Some of these Australians were honest migrants attracted to the 1849 gold rush, but many of them were what the local media dubbed ‘hard citizens’, ‘Sydney Coves’ or the pejorative ‘Sydney Ducks’: a community of criminals that operated unchecked for many years and was blamed for burning San Francisco to the ground no less than five times between 1849 and 1855 (though Sydney-town itself was never burned). The reaction, when it came, was severe. ‘Judge Lynch’ was applied by vigilante groups and many Australians were hung, exiled, or fled back to Australia where a new gold rush was taking place. San Francisco got on with the job of becoming one of the world’s great cities. While the reputation of the Australian criminals was such that any visible reference to Sydney-town’s Australian roots has disappeared, the area’s notoriety lives on in the storied reputation of the neighbourhood subsequently called The Barbary Coast, a nineteenth and twentieth century media catchword for licentiousness, depravity and criminality.
This novel is based on real events and historical figures. While I have used some real names and historical situations in the telling of this story, I have also changed dates and amalgamated characters for dramatic purposes and to better suit the truth of fiction.
Acknowledgements
I owe a deal of thanks to the helpful and knowledgeable librarians at the San Francisco Public Library’s History Centre. To say that I was greeted with courtesy and enthusiasm is an understatement. Thanks also to gun crime writer Tom Pitts, who showed me the streets and dive bars of his city—it all filtered through. I’d also like to thank the staff at the City Lights Bookstore, located in once Sydney-town, for their advice and historical acumen. Thanks too to the staff at the Chinese Historical Society of America Museum.
I’d like to acknowledge the generosity of The Coves’ first readers, who gave it the once over when it was a very rough draft—Brooke Davis, Sean Gorman, Deborah Robertson, Ian Reid and Paul Daley, along with my brother, sister and mother—Peter, Kerri and Rosemary. Thanks to historians Keir Reeves, Ben Mountford and Tim Causer for their advice and sharing. Thanks to Loretta Martella at Artsource for keeping my writing studio going—others might see a bare room but to me it’s a sanctuary. A special thanks to the team at Fremantle Press, and especially my terrific publisher and editor, Georgia Richter, for her imagining what the early draft might become, and her patience and labour that brought it there.
Finally, thanks to my wife, Bella, for everything. If I’m remotely near the straight and narrow, it’s because of you. This novel started when my eight-year-old son came to me and asked me to write a story about him. When I said that I couldn’t do that, he countered slyly with ‘Then can you write a book about a boy like me?’ This book is that, Luka Fergus, and I hope I’ve done the precious subject justice.
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First published 2018 by
FREMANTLE PRESS
25 Quarry Street, Fremantle WA 6160
(PO Box 158, North Fremantle WA 6159)
www.fremantlepress.com.au
Copyright © David Whish-Wilson, 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Cover photograph Paris Pierce / Alamy Stock Photo
The Coves
9781925591286 (epub)
Fremantle Press is supported by the State Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.
Publication of this title was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
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