Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  Matilda told her a little about that. ‘None of that matters now,’ she said gently. ‘I guess you’ve been in a kind of sleep. But you’ve woken up now, and the children are going to be so very pleased.’

  It wasn’t an instant recovery, Cissie was confused, sometimes weepy, sometimes silent, now and again talking so much Matilda wished she’d shut up. But she gradually began picking up the pieces of her life, she cuddled the children, made bread, swept the cabin, and hoed down the weeds between the rows of vegetables.

  Sometimes she wanted to talk about John all the time, at others she couldn’t bear to speak his name. She told Matilda one day that she felt she couldn’t live without him, the next she retracted that and said she had to for her children’s sake.

  The day she finally asked about the sawmill, Matilda knew she really was recovering. At last she was able to speak about the orders for San Francisco, and her belief they should try to fill as many of them as possible.

  ‘But how can we?’ Cissie said, her green eyes wide with surprise and shock.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ Matilda replied and launched into the plan she’d been working on in the last week.

  Sidney had told her that several men had made inquiries about whether the sawmill would be coming up for sale. Clearly they thought they could get it at a very low price because they knew Cissie couldn’t run it herself.

  ‘But if we can hire someone to run it for you, and get those orders filled, it will be worth so much more,’ Matilda said.

  Cissie looked doubtful. ‘Why not just sell it now? If you offered the buyer those orders they’d be bound to give me more money, and it would save us a lot of trouble.’

  ‘But John stood to make over four thousand dollars’ profit from them,’ Matilda replied. ‘That’s after deducting all the shipping costs and my commission too. I doubt if you’d even get a buyer to pay one thousand for the business, even with these orders, because they’d be scared they wouldn’t get paid for the timber.’

  ‘Well, we might not get paid either,’ Cissie said doubtfully.

  ‘Oh yes we will,’ Matilda assured her. ‘Leave that to me.’

  ‘But how am I going to pay a man to run it?’ Cissie asked. ‘I don’t know how much money John had in the bank, but it can’t be more than a couple of hundred dollars. Besides, one man couldn’t do the job alone.’

  Matilda had already thought of this. ‘We go to the bank and tell them everything, then we’ll ask to borrow the money.’

  ‘No one lends money to women,’ Cissie said despondently.

  Matilda grinned. ‘They will when they’ve heard me out!’

  Jacob Weinburg, owner of Oregon City Bank, had anticipated that Mrs Duncan would call on him before long to discuss her late husband’s business affairs. But he hadn’t expected her to come accompanied by Mrs Jennings, who not only claimed to be Duncan’s agent, but had drawn up a plan to keep the business going.

  Weinburg held the opinion that women had no place in business, but almost as soon as Mrs Jennings began speaking he had to concede that she was not only the most attractive woman he’d seen since he left Boston some years earlier, but remarkably intelligent, and very resourceful.

  ‘You say you went to San Francisco and placed all these orders yourself?’ he said, leafing through the order book she’d handed to him.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘I’ve already told you, Mr Weinburg, I was acting as an agent for Mr Duncan. I was returning with these orders when he was killed, and I believe I have a duty to him and Mrs Duncan, to see them filled, delivered, and payment collected.’

  Weinburg had been in banking all his life, just like his father before him. He was fifty-five, slightly built, with a sallow complexion and a rather prominent nose, and he knew that but for his wealth and position he might never have found a wife.

  Yet as he looked at Mrs Jennings, and remembered he’d heard she too was a widow like her friend, and had come alone with her children to Oregon, he couldn’t help but wonder why such a lovely lady hadn’t remarried. She could surely have the pick of any man in the territory. Her eyes were the clearest blue he’d ever seen, and although much of her hair was tucked beneath her bonnet, it was pure blonde and very pretty.

  He dragged his eyes away from her to look at Mrs Duncan. He’d met her on two or three occasions before, the last, sadly, at her husband’s funeral. She too was a pretty woman; and it saddened him to see how thin and gaunt she looked now. He had very much admired John Duncan, indeed he had expected the enterprising man to rise to become one of Oregon City’s leading citizens in a few years. Perhaps he shouldn’t dismiss his widow and her friend without a fair hearing.

  Matilda sensed that this ugly little banker was taken by her looks rather than by what she’d said so far, but as she now had his attention, she launched first into how she’d taken the boat to San Francisco with the sole intention of making money, and then on to her plan to fill the orders.

  ‘If Mrs Duncan can offer high enough wages, we can get the orders shipped in time,’ she said firmly. ‘All we want from you is to meet that wages bill until I return from California with the money.’

  As she expected, he brought up the possibility of people refusing to pay.

  Matilda leaned forward on his desk and looked hard at him. ‘That town is absolutely desperate for every single commodity you can think of,’ she said. ‘Timber and other building materials are at the top of the list. If the men don’t collect the timber and pay me at the wharf, I shall get it auctioned then and there.’

  She gave him a brief but vivid description of the auctions on the waterfront, and how men waited for ships to come in, ready to buy the entire cargo.

  ‘The real fortunes in that town aren’t made from mining gold,’ she said. ‘This order,’ she said, pulling out the one from Henry, ‘is from Alderman Slocum who is planning to build a new wharf. I lodged with him and his wife while I was there, and I can tell you, Mr Weinburg, men who are intent on building wharves, gambling halls and hotels are not going to pass up the chance of someone else snapping up the timber they ordered.’

  Moving on then, she told him it was their plan to hire a man, offering him eighty dollars a week on the understanding he got the timber felled, sawn and delivered to the ship by 10 September. To make sure he did this they would offer him a bonus of 300 dollars on completion. She said that whoever took up the offer would have to take on men to help and pay them from his money.

  Weinburg nodded. ‘That is an extremely good offer for anyone,’ he said. ‘But you couldn’t keep up those kinds of wages after this shipment is completed. How were you intending to manage the sawmill then?’

  ‘I haven’t decided about the future yet,’ Cissie said. Throughout all this she had remained silent, knowing Matilda could explain it far better than her. ‘We may offer it for sale, the price would depend on the size of the orders Mrs Jennings brings back with her.’

  ‘So you were intending to get more?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Of course,’ Matilda said. ‘And look around for any other business opportunity while I am there. We are both widows, Mr Weinburg, with small children dependent on us. We didn’t make that long hazardous journey here to Oregon to just hang up our sun-bonnets and grow a few vegetables.’

  Jacob Weinburg was rarely amused by his customers, but Mrs Jennings made him want not only to laugh, but applaud her. She would go far, she had too much determination to fail.

  He looked towards Cissie, addressing his remarks to her. ‘Well, Mrs Duncan, go ahead and hire your man. Your husband left a balance in his account of four hundred and twenty-three dollars, and when that is used up I will continue to let you make drawings each week until the shipment is made and the costs met. I shall need to draw up a document to this end. Perhaps you can come in again next week to sign it.’

  Cissie and Matilda looked at each other and smiled.

  ‘Thank you so much, Mr Weinburg,’ Cissie said, her face sudde
nly flushed and animated.

  ‘It was a pleasure doing business with you,’ Matilda said, reaching out to shake his hand. ‘I hope we can do more in the future.’

  Before leaving town, Matilda went into the office of the Oregon Spectator and placed an advertisement for a man experienced with timber. As they drove the cart home later, Cissie began chattering just the way she used to. ‘Wasn’t Weinburg ugly!’ she exclaimed. ‘Imagine having to share a bed with him!’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ Matilda said.

  ‘Did you notice he had hairs coming out of his ears?’ Cissie went on. ‘And his teeth were all brown – ugh.’

  ‘I kept looking at his hands, they were so white and smooth. Good job I kept my gloves on, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to shake my hand if he’d seen them.’ Matilda laughed. ‘But you must be getting better if you imagine sharing a bed with someone.’

  ‘That’s what I miss most,’ Cissie said sadly. ‘What do you miss most about Giles?’

  Matilda thought for a moment. ‘His smile,’ she said. ‘Even when I first went to work for him and Lily, I liked that most. His mouth used to kind of tremble slightly, his eyes would twinkle, then it spread right across his face. It always made me smile too.’

  ‘You don’t miss the you-know-what then?’

  Matilda giggled. ‘We only did it twice, Cissie. Can you miss something you did so little of?’

  ‘We didn’t do it so much after Susanna,’ Cissie said thoughtfully. ‘We was scared to because we didn’t want another baby before we’d got on our feet, and anyway we were always too tired. I think the last time was that Sunday when he told me about you going to San Francisco.’

  ‘I wished I’d never gone, not when Sidney met me at Portland and told me he was dead,’ Matilda said.

  ‘It would have happened even if you’d been here,’ Cissie sighed. ‘John really liked you, Matty. He said he really missed you one night and I got jealous. Wasn’t that silly, because I missed you too.’

  ‘Not really.’ Matilda reached out and took her friend’s hand to squeeze it. ‘If I’d been living with Giles and you came to live there too, I expect I’d have got fed up sometimes. I think you were really remarkable that you took me in, and cared for my children.’

  ‘I love them as if they were mine, they never annoy me. But it’s going to be hard when you have to go back to San Francisco,’ Cissie said with a sigh. ‘Still, maybe it will be good for both of us. We can’t cling together for ever, can we?’

  ‘Maybe we can’t cling, but we’ll be friends for ever,’ Matilda said, feeling a lump come up in her throat. ‘I haven’t even told you all about San Francisco yet, maybe if you decide to sell the sawmill we could all move there. After the children are in bed tonight I’ll tell you all about it.’

  The night sky was bright with stars, the warm breeze was scented with pine, and the moon hung over the huge oak tree like a lantern, lighting up the tinkling brook, when Matilda, Cissie and Sidney moved out on to the porch later that evening. From behind the cabin an owl hooted, everything was so peaceful and so very different to San Francisco, yet it was the perfect time and place for Matilda to tell them about it.

  Their eyes widened as she described the scene on the waterfront when she first arrived, they gasped about the casinos, grimaced at the canvas restaurants with bunks for a dollar a night, and the filth in the streets. But as she warmed up she found her stories about the dinner parties became very funny, and her spirited impersonation of the auctioneers, the rough drunken miners, and the prostitutes in the streets made them alternately gasp with amazement and roar with laughter.

  It all seemed so long ago now, she could hardly remember the fear she’d felt on her arrival at the port, or that humiliating embarrassment at the Slocums’ dinner parties, only the good memories were really clear. By sharing it all with her friends, hearing their laughter and seeing their shining eyes, she felt she’d given them something to think on other than John and all the shattered dreams lying around them.

  Three days later, on Friday, five men were waiting outside the mill when Matilda arrived there with Sidney in the cart, all of whom had seen the advertisement in the newspaper. Cissie had declined to come with them, she laughingly said she would only choose the most handsome one, and anyway Matilda had the business head.

  Of the five men Matilda had no real choice but to select the one she liked least, for he was the only one who had the physical strength, the real knowledge of timber, and enough greed to get the job done in time.

  Hamish MacPherson was a Scot, like John, but that was the only similarity. He was a giant of a man, at least six feet three, with forearms like tree trunks. His black hair was long and greasy, his teeth were rotten, he smelled as if he’d never taken a bath in his life, and he chewed tobacco too. Each time he opened his mouth he spat out a disgusting brown stream.

  He listened to what had to be done very carefully, stopping Matilda now and then to make a point or two clear. She thought he was a very sly man, his eyes never met hers, and she had a feeling his mind was on working out some kind of fiddle.

  ‘You’re really gonna pay me eighty dollars a week?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Of course, that’s what I promised,’ she said, taking a step back from him because his smell was making her faint. ‘But you must understand that you will have to find men to help you, and pay them yourself. And you won’t get the bonus I offered until the timber is all on the ship.’

  ‘I reckon I can get the help,’ he said, scratching under his arm pit and revealing he was lousy as well as dirty. ‘I been working on a logging camp up in Canada and most of the men I was working with have come down here, intending to go on to California for the gold. A few weeks longer won’t bother them too much, specially if I’m the boss.’

  ‘You will be their boss, but I shall be yours,’ she said crisply, giving him a stern look. ‘I was Mr Duncan’s agent and I am handling everything for his widow. I shall be here every day, and if you fall behind, our contract will be cancelled immediately.’

  ‘I ain’t a shirker,’ he said, looking a little hurt. ‘I’ll get the timber on that boat for you, come hell or high water. Got anywhere I can sleep? I ain’t got fixed up with a place yet.’

  The thought of having him sleeping at the mill was horrifying, but under the circumstances she had no choice but to offer him the shed where her wagon had once been.

  ‘Just make sure you don’t start a fire,’ she warned him. ‘Now, we’d better go through the orders so you know exactly what timber is needed.’

  Cissie looked very apprehensive when Matilda described MacPherson. Sidney went into a sulk because she said she intended to come in with him every day too.

  ‘But why?’ he asked. ‘I can see to everything. You should be here.’

  ‘I’m not going to be there to supervise you,’ she said quickly, afraid she might have hurt his feelings. ‘I’ll need you to check each order as it’s completed to make sure it’s the right thickness and length. I’m just going to be there to watch MacPherson. I know his sort, I bet he’s already thinking of selling off timber on the side. And we don’t want him finding out who any of the orders are for, or getting an inkling of how much profit we’ll be making. Or he’ll be off to California getting his own orders. You’d be no match for a blackguard like him!’

  ‘And you reckon you can deal with the man?’ Cissie said with a saucy grin. ‘If he’s as big as you’ve said, you won’t be tall enough to kick him in the balls if he plays you up.’

  ‘There’s more ways to keep a man under control than kicking him in the balls’ Matilda laughed. ‘You always seem to forget that I grew up amongst his kind. Now, are you going to be able to cope here without me?’

  ‘I reckon so,’ Cissie said, picking Amelia up off the floor and cuddling her. ‘But I think Sidney ought to build me a little pen, so I can put this one in it to play sometimes. She crawls so fast I need eyes in the back of my head and it ain’t fair to make Tabitha
and Peter stand over her all the time.’

  Sidney cheered up then, delighted to find he was really needed. ‘I’ll make something tomorrow,’ he said.

  MacPherson proved to be far more efficient than Matilda expected. When she and Sidney arrived the next morning he had three equally rough-looking men with him, one of whom was already yoking the oxen up to the cart. MacPherson said they were going out to the forest straight away to fell the timber. He said they would camp out and stay there until they’d felled all the trees necessary.

  ‘Better that way, won’t waste so much time,’ he said, spitting out a stream of tobacco and narrowly missing the hem of Matilda’s dress. ‘Once we’re nearly done I’ll come back with one load and start on the sawing, then they can bring the rest back in relays.’

  ‘How long will this be?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Two weeks maybe. Keep me money till then. Ain’t nuthin’ to spend it on out there.’

  Matilda lived in a permanent state of anxiety for the next two weeks. Although MacPherson had been advanced no money, he had the cart, the oxen and John’s felling equipment. She had no way of knowing exactly where he and his men were, so she couldn’t ride out to check how they were doing, and there was nothing to keep her at the sawmill each day.

  Suppose they hadn’t really gone out to the forest, but had gone instead in the cart to California? By the time she found out it would be too late to hire another man.

  She took out all her nervous energy back at the cabin, chopping enough wood to last right through the winter, and digging over a piece of ground which John and Cissie hadn’t yet touched, ready to plant more fruit trees. Often at night she would look at her hands and sigh. They’d looked better when she arrived back from San Francisco, a few weeks of no rough work had softened them, but now they were awful again, and she didn’t think anything would improve them.

  Seventeen days after MacPherson left, Sidney came galloping home one evening to report MacPherson and one of his men had come in that afternoon with the first load. They had unloaded it, and the other man had turned around and taken the cart back for a second load.