Once upon a time, James had been convinced that his brother’s return to Sydney would be worth every fatted calf in the colony. All too often he had felt lost without John out the front, leading the way. John liked to solve things, and over the years James had grown accustomed to letting his brother step into the breach. John clearly preferred it that way and James was sufficiently at ease or perhaps lacking the confidence to make it otherwise. Recently, however, James had become less sure. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was that was unsettling him about John until a few weeks before Christmas when his brother arrived for his weekly visit.
No sooner had John sat down than he began to tell James—in some detail—about a dinner the gentlemen from the Bathurst region had held in his honour. John had not quite finished repeating the content of the various speeches made to welcome the new Superintendent of Schools when he suddenly launched into a robust interrogation about the foolish enterprise James had recently embarked upon—and with a girl from that station. Kinchela had been waiting for it, indeed he was surprised John had not asked earlier. After all, John had been coming to the gaol for over two months now. As his younger brother fumbled about for an explanation, John crossed his arms across his chest and looked at him with a sour expression. ‘The thing is,’ John interrupted, ‘I have been attracting a good deal of admiration among the right sort of colonists recently and was finally being asked to wield some influence, only now . . .’, he trailed off before shrugging his shoulders in irritation. There were several minutes of awkward silence and then John demanded that James explain what he had ever seen in a convict’s daughter worth ruining the family’s fame and fortune.
That had made James smart. The two men had had their differences—particularly after the last of the Adelaide overland expeditions—but even though there had been a cooling off between them, he never thought his brother would so deftly sink the boot in. His comments brought James up straight. He hadn’t given the matter of family reputation much thought. Nor had he considered certain financial concerns relating to his mother’s pension and the fact that their brother-in-law, Thomas Gore, was on the brink of insolvency since his warehouse business had been hit by the slump. James began to feel sick, particularly when he remembered his recent conversation with Mary Ann. It was suddenly blatantly clear that his older brother would never approve of such a match, and if he pursued the matter further he would end up like the other men who married beneath themselves in the colony. Never invited anywhere because, well, no one would share a table with such a woman. Just as bad was the fact that James might have brought down the entire family. Kinchela swallowed. He had only been thinking of himself, John reprimanded him curtly, and not very well either.
The entire conversation was utterly unpleasant and that particular meeting finished with John departing in righteous indignation as James slouched sullenly in his chair. But even as James digested the gravity of his actions, he could not avoid the fact that his brother had recently acquired a spirit of rather brash high-mindedness. Nor had John mentioned the £4000 he had borrowed from their brother-in-law, which played no small part in bringing down their sister Mary and her husband Thomas. What with these deflections and denials and John’s mocking of his ‘bit of native skirt’, James was beginning to wonder if he had placed too much faith in his brother. Perhaps the great John Kinchela was not the salvation he had hoped for, James mused as he returned to his cell.
Still, old habits die hard, and James deeply admired his brother, which was just as well for that was entirely how John expected it, particularly when, after several weeks of absence, the doctor’s eldest son suddenly appeared one afternoon just a day before Christmas, his arms laden with jolly treats from their mother’s larder, as well as other exciting news. ‘There’s been a crew of South Sea Islanders docked in the quay for less than a week,’ John began after the two brothers had settled down to a feast of their mother’s scotch eggs. James detected excitement in his brother’s voice and discerned that John must have decided to push past their recent difference. ‘Their schooner has just come in from the Sandwich Islands,’ John began, ‘via New Zealand, and since it arrived there have been all sorts of rumours as well as strange activities around the docks.’ James looked at his brother expectantly.
‘Well that was until yesterday,’ John went on, clearly enjoying keeping his younger brother in suspense, ‘when The Herald and then The Maitland Mercury both confirmed it.’ He produced the daily newspaper from his satchel and pointed to a column, which bore a slim bold title—in capital letters. John only gave his brother a moment to glance at it before he snatched it back and began to read the column out loud, skipping over the boring details and rushing on to the key facts.
‘We this day copy the details of one of the most extraordinary discoveries of almost any age or time,’ John started, ‘a discovery that eclipses all the fabled legends of Cortess and Pisarro.’ Kinchela listened, leaning forward with his hands on his chin as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. ‘It outstrips the wildest vision that lured a Drake or a Raleigh on an El Dorado hunt.’ John drew in his breath and looked at his brother, raising his eyebrows before he continued to read in a slow and steady tone: ‘Gold, glittering, glorious gold,’ he said, looking up to gauge his brother’s surprise. ‘Gold has been discovered in amazing quantities and utmost purity . . . in California.’ ‘Gold,’ Kinchela whistled and rocked back on his chair, trying to make sense of what he had just heard. John chuckled a little and then began to furnish him with other tidbits and conjectures he had heard for Sydney was fairly buzzing with ‘the dazzling discovery’, he declared.
For John, however, the excitement of the whole thing was that he had been the first to share it with his brother. Once he had relished that moment he hastened to share his opinion of the entire matter. The doctor’s son had more than a few suspicions about the so-called ‘yellow fever’. ‘This sort of madness can afflict a country in all sorts of ways,’ he cautioned, ‘let alone what it might do to our colony. Labour for a start,’ he hastened to explain. ‘What would happen if all the bounty boys hightail it to California when we need them watching our stock and tanning hides? The papers are saying other things, too,’ John followed, pointing to the section where it warned of neglected harvests as well as the ‘utter absence of law and order’ that had already consumed the fort town of Sacramento. ‘The whole thing will turn everything upside down and inside out if we don’t keep an eye out,’ he nodded shrewdly to his brother. ‘Put an end to industry and sobriety as well as good morals,’ he finished, closing the paper and handing it to his brother as if the matter was now settled for both of them. But James was not so sure. It would be tempting for anyone who didn’t like where they were to just get up and go, and he wondered if there was still any gold left, given how long it took the papers to get to Sydney.
But John would not be distracted. He had even better news, he said, producing two tin cups from his bag into which he poured sweet, syrupy madeira. It was the first drop of alcohol Kinchela had smelt since his incarceration at Parramatta. Thanks to John’s strenuous petitioning, as well as a recent conversation ‘directly with the governor’, John announced, handing one tin cup to his brother, FitzRoy had decided to exercise the mercy of his personal prerogative. James looked at him uncertainly. He would not have to serve the entire nine months of his sentence, his elder brother declared with satisfaction. He was going to be released early. Kinchela jumped from his seat and clapped his brother on the back with such exuberance that John bade him stop so they could both raise a toast to the governor’s good health.
John had come good after all, Kinchela thought, ashamed of his recent grumblings and thrilled to think that freedom was now only a few weeks away. From now on he would work hard to keep on a good footing with John and not let things go astray again. James raised his tin cup and grinned as the two men tapped them together and both took a generous swig. ‘On the first day of the new year,’ John declared with obvious p
leasure as he filled their cups again, ‘James Butler Kinchela shall be reunited with his cane and his snuffbox and free once more to walk upon the world.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
In the Soup
No one was quite sure why the wily old auctioneer was coming to lunch, particularly just a day or two after Christmas, but Martin Gill seemed to be making quite a thing of it. He wanted William and Mary Ann looking their best and Margaret to make the excellent turtle soup to which Alexander Moore was so partial. Their father had certainly been acting in a peculiar manner over the past few weeks, the two eldest children concurred. Brooding one moment, disappearing from the business unexpectedly the next and returning much later and often in an even greater state of agitation.
Margaret was watching all this but minding herself just the same. Her father’s caution had put her on her front foot. She had a feeling that he might be right, but she was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. Martin was her husband. For right or wrong, she had made a sacred vow. He could be difficult at times, no doubt about it, but she was still certain—well, most of the time she was—that her husband had their best interests at heart. Margaret wanted to do the right thing by him. Their lives were bound tight to one another and with four young children as well as William and Mary Ann there was no other sensible path forward but the one they took together as husband and wife.
She had seen other women, her own sort, who had married just weeks after arriving in the colony but had, within a few years, set off on their own. Some had needed to salvage what remained of their lives after their husbands had given them a thrashing that had taken them too close to the end of themselves. Other women had just pushed off when they got tired of the sight or smell of the man they had hooked up with. Still others had run because that was what they had always done. None of those women had prospered, Margaret knew, for she sometimes recognised a familiar face down at the market. Mostly, these sort of women were forced to live among the broken people of the streets and some were hardly what you would call female anymore. Sydney was a mean town for a single woman, and worse still for a deserted wife and mother. She would have to make do and the best way to do that was to be her husband’s helpmate.
Margaret determined that they would get to fixing whatever was going on, together. Only, try as she might, Margaret could not find the entry point into her husband’s secret. He was closed to her in a way that was not only perplexing but also, as the days went by, increasingly infuriating. Had she not carried twelve of his children and raised six of them to good standing thus far? Had she not also brought good sense to his various enterprises and taught him certain tricks that had made their confectionery business the finest in town? Had she not also drawn upon her father’s modest earnings to pay her husband’s bail when he had lost his mind out at the Homebush racecourse? All this time she had stood by him and accepted his rule, even after he’d made some particularly foolish decisions. Margaret was on edge with the way her husband was keeping to himself and now she had to serve that soup at her own table to that shuffling ox of a man. And then it occurred to her—Mary Ann. Her husband was going to try to get rid of their problems by fixing their daughter up with some monied old gull. It was one thing for parents to choose their children’s match—that was right and proper as far as she was concerned—but to sell their own daughter to a man like that—just to save your hide? With no word of it to his own wife. It was too much.
On Sunday old Moore called at the hotel for his long-awaited luncheon with the Gill family, looking scrubbed and washed and quite chuffed as he made his way upstairs to the family dining room. He was surprised to receive quite a cool reception from his friend’s wife. He had met Mrs Gill on several occasions and considered her a modest, well-conducted matron equipped with obvious talents in the kitchen. But now Margaret was barely cordial.
William, who had no idea as to why his mother was behaving in such a manner, felt the need to extend greater interest to their guest than he may have otherwise. Mary Ann felt the matter even more acutely than William. Looking quite fetching in her new red dress, she made a particular effort with her father’s guest. She asked considered questions about his work and smiled attentively as Alexander Moore pontificated about the various trades he had worked in and what he thought of the colony’s future fortunes. Seeing that this was pleasing her father, Mary Ann showered Moore with her attention and yet the more she basked in her father’s appreciation, the more she roused her mother’s ire.
But Moore was oblivious to these subterranean currents and clearly felt encouraged by the young woman’s interest. ‘Everyone is talking about gold these days,’ he opined rubbing his hands together when the splendid soup finally arrived. ‘Quite a few of the old hands have already slipped away to San Francisco, desperate to try their chances in the west,’ he continued, nodding knowingly at Gill. The auctioneer was aware of the terms upon which Gill had come to the colony and assumed his host must know some of the men concerned. Margaret sniffed and looked away. The children recognised this as an expression of utmost disgust. But still, Mary Ann and William bore on, encouraged by their father and keen to hear more of California. So Moore continued, entertaining his hosts with stories about the Chinese, who were said to be flooding into San Francisco and how small children had been picking up giant nuggets that they had found right in front of their feet.
Mary Ann wished to know if their guest knew anyone who had gone to the goldfields in search of such a fortune? But Moore was not of that persuasion. He had heard of people ‘going mad’, he cautioned the young creature, ‘from silver and diamond mines and the like’. There was no doubt that gold would be even worse, he warned, ‘particularly as the crops are drying up here. Fool’s dust,’ he said, wagging his spoon at the girl before wiping a lick of Margaret’s soup from his chin. ‘The best money,’ he said, noisily spooning more of the green creamy liquid into his uneven mouth, ‘is the money you make with your own wits, the money you can feel in your pocket. Isn’t that right, Mr Gill?’ he finished, looking up at the family patriarch, who shifted uncomfortably under his wife’s glare.
She would not have her daughter married to that pelican, Margaret told her husband that night when the pair were finally alone in their bedroom. She rarely spoke directly like that to her husband, but this time, he had gone too far, she said. She was expecting a fight and was ready for one. But instead Gill said nothing. He simply looked at his wife, or rather, sort of through her, then raised his eyebrows and whistled something sharp through his teeth before pushing off to sleep in one of the empty guestrooms.
Martin Gill had also reached the end of his tether. He was just about done with trying to repair every disastrous situation his foolish family got themselves into. If every time he put something forward he was second-guessed, or even worse, undermined by his wife in front of his children and his guest, then he would be done with it all. He had never expected Margaret to show him up like that, particularly not in front of a guest. Some men would thrash their wives for such disrespect. She had already shown him, in more ways than she realised, that she would not back him when it came to the girl. As if that was his fault, too, he grimaced, curling into one of the hotel beds and thinking how pleasant it was to get away from her infernal breathing. She was onto him, too, he reckoned, and knew the business well enough to see when something was not right.
But Gill hadn’t given up yet. He was still looking about, patching bits and pieces together, working out how they would get the hotel back into the swing of things again. He had approached a private shipping agent and got him to set up his offices in the dining room, so now there was a steady stream of hopefuls coming in to book their passage to California. Hundreds of colonists now had an eye for the goldfields, Gill knew, and he was going to make a profit from them. These days the streets were full of news from California. From what he had heard from one old sea dog who hung around the shipping agent in his hotel, there was plenty of land for the taking. All a fellow needed was a f
ew nuggets and he could buy himself a big slab of land with a river on it, like you wouldn’t get in these parts anymore. But Martin Gill had heard other things too—about whores spreading disease through the streets, wild floods that destroyed everything in their wake and fires that had seen the whole tinderbox of a town go up in blazes not once or twice, but almost every couple of weeks. Still, there was real money to be had in California, and it wouldn’t be there for long. Gold, Gill thought, drifting off to sleep in the splendid isolation of his new bed. If only some of that gold dust, even a few flakes, would float his way now.
On a crisp morning on the first day of 1849, the air was full of magpie warble as James Butler Kinchela stepped through the front gate of Parramatta Gaol and into the waiting world. He was dressed in the fine winter suit he had been wearing when he attended the trial, although it now hung loose about him thanks to months of prison slops. He had hardly adjusted to the bright morning light when he noticed Somerville’s coach sitting squat and familiar on the dusty track, right in front of him. The old driver was up in the top seat, swatting flies with his crop and looking as portly as ever. Kinchela greeted him with such genuine heartiness that the old man could not stop nodding with the awkward pleasure of it. ‘Come now, sir,’ Somerville eventually insisted, ‘or we’ll never get you to the Adelphi.’ And with that, Prisoner 486 opened the door of the carriage and hauled himself into the familiar cabin where he began to reacquaint himself with his snuffbox.
A few hours later he was comfortably ensconced in his old room at the Adelphi, looking out the window and getting a feeling for the mood in the town. Kinchela was keen for a bit of life. He had missed a drink, there was no doubt about it, but he also saw the sense in keeping a bit of a lid on it for a while. He knew that John was up in the Orange district and that this would allow him a few days before he had to head out to his mother’s in Liverpool, where John resided when he was in town. Before then, however, Kinchela would have a few days to ease himself back into the world and see what was what.
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