The Widow of Ballarat

by Darry Fraser

  There were thirteen men languishing in a Melbourne jail, awaiting trial for sedition over the event at the Eureka Stockade, as the Geelong Advertiser had called it. This was no simple ‘miner’s skirmish’. Mrs Seekamp’s editorial in the local Ballarat Times was scathing in her attack on the government—she was fighting for her husband’s release from jail, and had taken up editorship of the paper in his absence.

  At least Nell could take a walk, and she was grateful. Many others from that terrible night could not. Her usual good health had fully returned, her battered body recovering better than she had expected. And as for her mind, well, each time she caught a thought about Andrew and how worthless she’d felt while in the awful marriage, she pushed it aside. She couldn’t feel, couldn’t be worthless if she was to survive. No one on the fields would be safe, including her, if things turned bad again. She had to be strong in mind and body.

  Now, here, the very air at the camp was charged with an atmosphere she hadn’t known before. Prior to her marriage, at her father’s tents, life and business had been conducted as it always had. She’d worked as a cook and a laundrywoman for her father’s team. She’d sewn, baked, and toted her wares along the avenue for a mile each way, bringing home nuggets, or minted coin, or promissory notes in exchange. Things had dramatically changed when, soon after the death of her mother, her father had married again. It changed to far worse when he’d married her off to Andrew. Yet, as Nell looked around, many things had stayed the same.

  Rows of tents, people shouting, men bent silently over their sieves at the creek, or shovelling clods of earth out of deepening holes in the ground. Women rocking puddling cradles for gold, or cradles for babes—sometimes at the same time—or trudging from site to site with baskets and sacks laden with goods, chattering endlessly. Children scampering about, and generally into mischief—they ought to be in some sort of school, not just the Sunday School. Other men scarpered to certain tents here and there, with a gold nugget in their hand and hope in their trousers.

  Nell knew where she was going and kept her head down to watch for potholes and broken bottles. People knew her in her father’s area of the camp, but here on the other side and closer to the burgeoning township, she was almost anonymous. Here, she hoped her father might never discover her. She would be just another face in the crowded, rowdy, ramshackle tent town. And her father would have no reason to look for her; she was useless to him now and would have been discarded from his thoughts and manipulations on the day of her wedding.

  As she picked her way deeper into the camp, the rowdy din grew. Gathering her skirt, she stepped over a child’s mullock heap and steeled herself against the cacophony of noise she’d almost forgotten. Tied-up dogs barked at her. Some lunged, some crawled forward pleading for a kind hand. Always, the competition among dogs alerting their masters to trespassers was deafening along the meandering waterway where the diggers panned and sluiced their sieves. The cries of female voices reached her, the screech of a child just born, the yells of children playing. The shouts of men, some angry, some elated, some frustrated.

  Was he one of them, her bushranger? She glanced about, not sure she really wanted to see him, or even imagine she would recognise him, but sure she could feel his presence.

  How stupid. Why would he be here? Why would he risk it?

  She stopped. An uncanny quiet had descended as two pairs of police on horseback trotted by, two abreast, forcing men, women and children to leap out of their way. Fists waved behind their backs, but neither trooper nor digger risked a confrontation. Not now.

  It was said that Peter Lalor had lost an arm to the surgeons and was somewhere still in hiding in Ballarat. Another whisper was that he had been spirited away to Geelong, or beyond, to garner more support. In truth, no one knew where he was, and tensions still ran to fever pitch. Would he martial another uprising, or had he died and his death been kept secret? No death certificates had been issued for the miners who’d lost their lives, or the women who’d died; no pardons nor amnesty had been given for the so-called insurgents. There were no answers yet for what had happened, and the mood in Ballarat was edgy.

  Now that the troopers had passed by, there was noise again, blustery and tense. People spilled from the raucous so-called lemonade tent, and staggered off to their patch of dirt, the day’s gold dust or nuggets gone to buy a few pannikins of illicit grog.

  Nell moved quickly. In the near distance, she could see Flora’s laundry fires and the washing tubs. It hadn’t been easy escaping the ever-watchful eye of her sister-in-law, but without Lewis by her side, Enid had no leverage to keep her indoors. It was a mystery to Nell. Surely Enid wanted her gone as soon as possible. Perhaps she was worried Nell might steal something. Ah. That was most likely it. A laugh escaped her. The last thing she wanted was to touch anything that belonged to that family.

  She stepped her way along the edges of sandy holes and heaps, careful to avoid turning an ankle on the debris of the camp, the discarded bully beef tins, the pans, rusty cups and pots. Scorched canvas still lay on the dirt in some areas or hooked on lone shrubs. Others had been raked and haphazardly piled in a heap, making way for new tents. Compensation had been denied to many of the diggers, and yet more than one man sat by his new tent gazing into its empty space, a new pan and sieve and pick by his side.

  The hoots and whistles of men, some squatting over their pans, or their mines, became loud in her ears. Startled out of her thoughts, she looked up and was greeted with a leery grin, a mouth devoid of teeth.

  ‘Young miss, a man could use those pretty hands.’

  About to assail him with the only useful thing she’d learned from her father—a mouthful of his irreverent vocabulary—she was stopped in her tracks. Something swished by her and cracked the man on the head. A small rock.

  He dropped, disappearing down his shallow hole with a yowl. Yelps of laughter and hoots and whistles followed, and two of the man’s nearest neighbours trotted over to peer down at him.

  Nell spun around, unsteady on her feet, the ground uneven.

  Flora Doyle stood with one hand on a hip, and a crude slingshot wrapped around the other. Her hair, a usually wild black mass with chestnut streaks weaving through, was held back in a laundress’s cap. A long apron covered wide, man-like trousers tied at the ankle. ‘Good day, Miss Nell. It pays to watch where you’re goin’, and not to daydream over these diggin’s.’

  Laughter at the man down the hole drifted away. He yelled obscenities at his detractors.

  ‘Good day, Flora.’ Nell dusted down her skirts, and tapped one booted foot on the other to remove excess dirt. ‘You’re so right. I was distracted by such noble sights.’ She lifted her chin at the miners still tossing gibes at their colleague. Chuckling, they left him to his own devices.

  The young woman cast a look about her. ‘Fools.’

  Nell was staring at Flora’s trousers. ‘Are they what the newspapers have called “bloomers”?’

  ‘They are at that, though I’ve fashioned them a little more to suit myself. I’ve sewn them so they’re not quite so wide.’ Flora smacked a hand against her leg, and a small cloud of dust arose. ‘Means I can bend over those damnable tubs and not be at the mercy of useless fashion, or gibes from those eejits.’ She lifted her head towards the still chortling miners. When she looked back, she stood up straight. ‘You’re a long way from home.’

  ‘Not so far,’ Nell said with a wry smile. ‘I’m more at home here than in the town. My own father is still in this mess of a place, though I’m not in any hurry to find him.’

  ‘In that case, why are you here, Miss Nell?’

  ‘I heard you might not be visiting us again, so I thought I’d visit you.’ She dropped the smile. ‘And stop calling me Miss.’

  Flora wiped her forehead with an arm dusted white. Washing soda or some such thing, Nell thought. How she remembered those days. But, unlike Flora, she had not earned a living from it. Didn’t even earn her keep, according to her father.
<
br />   ‘You’re a lady, now and all.’ Flora’s soft Irish lilt was tinged with a smile. She turned and headed for the washing tubs.

  Nell fell into step with her. ‘Hardly. I’m just a plain widow, like a lot of others.’

  ‘I heard that about you. I should be sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Nell said. ‘You of all people know how I came to be his wife. And what being his wife was like.’

  ‘I couldn’a stood it.’ Her stare was fierce before she dropped her gaze. ‘I’d’a killed a man like that,’ she said, low and hoarse.

  Nell dropped her voice to match. ‘I wonder why I did not. He is not missed. No dying under the flag for him, Flora.’

  A voice called from within the tent behind. ‘Ah, that flag, daughter. ’Twas beautifully stitched afore God, it were, and now torn down and gone only He knows where.’

  Flora raised her brows in Nell’s direction. Moving past the tubs containing dark water and grey foam at the edges, she flipped back the canvas door of her main tent. ‘Ma, we have a visitor.’

  A plump woman seated on a timber stump, sewing on her lap, looked up. ‘That’s better, Flo. More light and a breeze. Whoo, it’s so hot, I must have been off with the faeries for a bit.’ She squinted at the needle in her veiny hand, then at Nell. ‘A visitor, is it? Oh, ’sake’s, I think I’ve lost me thread, Flo.’

  Her hair, the same wave as Flora’s, had faded in colour to a soft brown, streaked with grey. Clearly brushed, it had been pulled neatly into a ribbon at the back of her neck. She looked serene and happy.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Doyle.’ Nell looked into a blank upturned face.

  Flora took the needle from her mother’s hand and checked the thread. ‘It’s Nellie Thomas. You remember Mr Alfred Thomas? His daughter.’

  ‘I remember a young girl by the name of Nellie, but not you. But that’s what’s wrong with me, isn’t it?’ she asked her daughter. ‘I don’t remember yest’dy. I do remember a bastard by the name of Alfred Thomas, though.’ She took back the needle Flora held out for her. ‘Bastard, he were.’

  Nell didn’t hide her smile. ‘He still is that, Mrs Doyle.’ Her father had thrown punches at his wife and daughter. Had drunk most of his earnings and had threatened time and again to abandon them to the streets. Nell’s mother, Cecilia, had died of consumption before she could be turned out.

  Flora raised her brows at Nell’s words. ‘That’s the Nell I remember.’

  Mrs Doyle nodded. ‘Seen him t’other day. Right gormless, he are.’

  Nell glanced at Flora, who shrugged. Mrs Doyle took to her sewing again, still nodding. Startled, Nell stepped forward to help the older woman. Flora touched her on her arm, spoke softly. ‘Leave it be. Ma’s doing a wonderful job.’

  Nell was shaken. Flora well knew that her mother held only a rag in her hands. Mrs Doyle was sewing the same thing over and over, the stitches neat and even but doing nothing. ‘Flora. I didn’t know,’ she whispered.

  Flora patted her mother’s arm. ‘Ma, I got the billy boiling for tea. All right?’

  Mrs Doyle held up the rag, turned it, settled it back on her knee and continued. ‘I’ll be out as soon as I’ve finished the lad’s shirt here.’

  Flora beckoned Nell to follow her out. She secured the canvas flap open, dropping a stick into its grommet and shoving it into the ground.

  ‘Flora,’ Nell said, concern creasing her brow.

  Lifting her shoulders, Flora looked to the sky. ‘I’m all she’s got. Apart from the “lad’s shirt”. I’ll be looking out for her till the day she dies. No mistake.’

  ‘Of course you will, no mistake,’ Nell agreed softly. ‘At least you still have her to look out for.’ Her throat tightened.

  Nell thought of her own mother. Not a frail-minded woman, but a woman lost in this man’s world, all the same. Now long departed, and gone too early, Nell keenly missed her. Right now, it came with an overwhelming thud. The sun beat down on her, the noise of the neighbouring miners and their tin pots, pans, sieves and shouts, crowded her ears, and she groped for a place to sit. Another sawn-off tree stump suited perfectly. Once her bottom hit the seat, she calmed herself.

  ‘You’ve gone a pale shade of white,’ Flora remarked.

  ‘I miss my own mam.’ Nell patted her face clean of tears, wiped her hands on her dress. ‘Or maybe it’s the heat.’

  Flora eyed her. ‘Have yer gone soft, after all?’

  ‘I worry about that sometimes, these days, after … whether my brains were mashed by the punches.’ Nell looked around. ‘How do you manage with all this and your ma, too?’

  Bending over the fire pit, Flora dipped a tin cup into the billy and handed Nell some tea. ‘I just do. Before dawn, past dusk. Even Sundays when all these slabs are on a day’s rest.’ Her Gaelic scorn and her language were still strong, it seemed. The word sounded like ‘slobs’.

  ‘But your mother?’

  ‘Oh, she seems happy enough. I need to take her to the latrine, but apart from that, she sleeps all night, wakes and works on her shirt all day. I give her other small sewing jobs. She would’ve helped sew the flag if they’d let her, she bein’ Catholic and all. She loves her seams, her stitches.’ Flora lifted a shoulder. ‘She drinks tea, eats, talks to me. It’s all right. She’s company, and she’s not always off with the faeries. Sometimes she’s as sharp as a tack.’ She blinked back bright tears in her dark eyes.

  Distracted by a sturdy man dragging a small cart, Nell held her tongue. The man pulled up in front of the washing tubs. ‘A job fer yer, Flo.’

  ‘Just land it on the mat there, Tillo.’ Flora pointed to an empty mat next to her tent. ‘Come back tomorrow before evening.’

  The man was stout and puffy cheeked. His dirty, grease-stained hat was missing bits, his shirt nearly clean and badly crinkled. He upended the cart’s contents onto the mat. ‘I got a bit of gold dust this morning. Can’t get the assayer till day after.’

  Flora looked at the pile of rough shirts, trousers and underwear. ‘Your boys woulda paid you up front for me to do that.’ She pointed. ‘It’ll be a pound.’

  He grunted. ‘Big heart, Flo.’

  ‘But not big pockets. One pound before you go for the grog.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ Tillo turned the cart and trudged off.

  ‘Not taking payment in gold, Flora?’ Nell asked.

  ‘Sometimes, when I know they’re honest.’ She turned her head at the retreating Tillo. ‘He’s only honest when it suits him. So, I trust a pound coin in my hand, mint issue.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he go to some other laundry, one of the teams that Mrs Pardeker runs, perhaps?’

  ‘There’s lots she won’t have, and lots who can’t afford her. This here is a good business, and while it lasts I’m going to work hard on it, and be hard in it.’ Flora sat across from the fire pit. ‘Feeling better now?’

  ‘I am, and I’ll be better still, as soon as Andrew’s blasted will is read.’

  ‘Surely it should have been on the day of the funeral?’

  Nell shook her head. ‘Had to be put off after the stockade. But soon, and then I will be free of this family.’

  Flora’s gaze darted to Nell’s waistline. ‘So, you’re not—?’

  ‘I’m not.’ She took a sip of tea and lifted the cup in salute. ‘Oh, how I’ve missed tea like this. The insipid stuff I get in the house makes me think Enid has used the tea leaves more than once by the time it gets to my cup.’

  Flora snorted. ‘That’s how they have a lot of money.’ She swiped a hand over her eyes, as if she had dust in them. ‘Will they do the right thing by you, then? That family can’t be as bad as—’

  ‘I don’t want anything to do with them if I can help it. And that brings me to my visit.’ She looked up as Flora frowned. ‘No, no. I’m not asking for money. I need money, yes, but I’m looking for work.’ Nell toed the dirt at her feet. The hidden gold was not hers to use, and no one else knew of it. It would stay hidden until she decided how to deal with it. ‘When I
tell them there’s no child coming and they put me past, for surely they will, I will have to work to keep myself. I might leave the fields, perhaps even leave the area, if I earn enough.’ She smiled uneasily. ‘Out loud, that sounds like a sweet story.’

  Flora’s frown deepened. ‘That family won’t support you even now? Even as you’ve—thankfully—been made a widow?’

  Nell swallowed down a rise in her throat. ‘No child,’ she said and patted her belly. ‘No support.’

  Flora stared. ‘How can that be right?’

  ‘It’s in Andrew’s will. His wishes.’

  ‘That can’t be a legal thing. You’re his widow.’

  Nell shrugged. ‘What do I know of the law? A father can sell his daughter, a man can put his wife by.’

  Flora scowled. ‘No. They can’t. It’s against the law.’

  ‘The law,’ Nell scorned. ‘It might well be true but it’s not my experience. My husband and my father must have come to some sort of arrangement because if I hadn’t agreed to marry Andrew, it was the streets for me. That much my father did tell me.’ Nell shifted on the stump. ‘And fighting Andrew’s will. How? By complaining to a magistrate? Ha! I’ve heard of women who stood before a magistrate to get an order to stop the beatings, but it only made it worse. A letter to the governor instead, perhaps,’ she said, a twist on her mouth. Looking off to the distance, she said, ‘So I must work. You do, and I used to. It’s not that bad. Better than being with Enid.’

  Flora shook dust from her bloomers. ‘Nellie, it’s hard work, laundry work. Have you forgotten? Scrubbing all day, lifting heavy tubs, lugging water. Over fires in this accursed heat.’

  ‘I can’t forget that. That’s how Andrew found me, remember?’

  ‘That’s another me mam would call a bastard.’