14
Kitty stirred as Andrew kissed her on the forehead.
‘I’m off down to the quay,’ he said. ‘A lugger is due in the next hour or so, and I want to look at the haul and make sure that none of those damned Koepangers have any pearls hidden about their sly and devious persons. Rest well today, won’t you, my dear?’
‘I will.’ Kitty looked at her husband, dressed as always in his smart pearling master’s uniform: a gleaming white suit with a mandarin collar and mother-of-pearl buttons, topped with a white pith helmet. She knew that when he returned home for lunch, the suit would inevitably be covered in red dust and he would have to change before he went out again. Here in Broome it was constantly laundry day, but rather than having to sweat over pots of hot water herself, the suits were folded up by her maid and sent off to Singapore to be laundered when the bi-weekly steamer next returned.
It was only one of the many eccentricities in Broome that she had quickly been forced to accept now that she was no longer a minister’s daughter, but the wife of a wealthy pearling master.
She had boarded the coastal steamer Paroo in Fremantle with Andrew soon after their marriage and after some rough days at sea, the shoreline had finally emerged in the distance. Kitty had seen a flat, yellow beach and a collection of tin-roofed houses tightly packed together. The ship had moored at a jetty almost a mile long, the dark brown water lapping up its wooden supports. Dense mangrove forest hugged the shore, behind which was a row of corrugated-iron sheds. The infamous pearling luggers sat forefront in the bay, their masts clustered together against the broad, bright blue sky.
Having left the ship, she and Andrew had been driven by pony and trap through the tiny enclave of the town and Kitty had been less than encouraged. With the arrival of the steamships and luggers came a raucous influx of people filling the bars and hotels along Dampier Terrace – the town’s main street – with piano music, rough voices and cigar smoke. Kitty had been reminded of the Wild West of America that she had read about. It was as hot as she could possibly imagine, and the smell of unwashed bodies permeated the humid, windless air.
The tin-roofed bungalow, which her father-in-law had built without any thought other than providing a temporary roof over his and Edith’s heads while he established his pearling business, had been less than enticing. Andrew had promised to provide Kitty with a more comfortable home and building works had been completed only a couple of months ago.
Seven months after her arrival, Kitty was slowly becoming accustomed to this strange, isolated town, hemmed in on one side by the sea, and the vast red desert on the other. The few houses along the dusty and often flooded Robinson Street, where the wealthy white population mostly resided, stood only a few minutes from the overcrowded shanty town. Broome had not one elegant or gracious bone in its vibrant multicultural mix, yet it was the epicentre of the world’s pearling industry. If she was driven into town by Fred, her Aboriginal groom, she would encounter a mish-mash of different races who had come off the day’s ships and were looking for ways to find entertainment. Money flowed like water here, and there were plenty of establishments that were happy to lap it up. Yamasaki and Mise stocked a selection of wonderful Japanese treasures, as well as soft silks that could be transformed into beautiful ball gowns to be flaunted by the pearling masters’ wives during the ball season.
Kitty struggled upright in bed, her back aching from the weight of her engorged belly, and only thanked the Lord that the baby would be here in less than three months. Dr Blick, whom Kitty had watched drink the whisky bottle dry when she had met him at various social engagements, had assured her of the best of care when the time came. After all, Andrew – or, at least, his father – owned the largest pearling business in Broome, with a fleet of thirty-six luggers that carried hundreds of tons of shell into harbour each year.
When she’d first arrived, the phrases that Andrew often used such as ‘luggers’, ‘lay-ups’ and ‘shell grades’ had all been foreign to her, but as he spoke of little else when they were having dinner together in the evenings, her mind had slowly assimilated the workings of the business.
The Mercer Pearling Company had endured a difficult start to the season, when a lugger and all the crew upon it had been lost to a cyclone. She had quickly learnt that out here, human life was fragile and eminently replaceable. It was a fact she was still struggling to come to terms with. The cruelty and harshness of life in Broome – especially the treatment of the local Aboriginal population – was something she knew she could never fully accept.
She had been horrified the first time she had seen a group of Aboriginal men in chains, shackled together at their necks and overseen by a guard with a rifle as they cleared debris from a house that had recently been destroyed by a cyclone. Andrew had pulled her away as she had begun to weep in horror.
‘You don’t understand the ways of Broome yet, my dear,’ Andrew had comforted her. ‘It is for their own good. In this way, they can be productive to society.’
‘In chains?’ Kitty had been shaking with latent fury. ‘Denied their freedom?’
‘It is a humane method. They can still walk a good way in them. Please, darling, calm down.’
Kitty had listened helplessly as Andrew had explained that those in charge believed that the ‘blacks’ would run back to the desert the minute they had the chance. So they chained them to each other, and attached them to a tree overnight.
‘It is cruel, Andrew. Can you not see that?’
‘At least if they work, they are given tobacco or sacks of flour to take home to their families.’
‘Yet not a living wage?’ she’d entreated him.
‘That isn’t what they need, my dear. These people would sell their own wives and children at the drop of a hat. They are like wild animals and, sadly, they have to be treated as such.’
After weeks of dispute between them on the subject, Kitty and Andrew had simply agreed to disagree. She was convinced that, with kindness and understanding and some respect for the fact that these people had been in Australia for far longer than the white settlers, some more gentle accord could surely be reached. Andrew assured her it had been tried before and had failed miserably.
Yet the knowledge that this inequality was wrong gnawed away at her conscience. She had even had to ask for special dispensation from the police constable to keep Fred on the premises at night, as he would otherwise be rounded up with the rest and herded back to a camp outside of town, away from his white ‘masters’.
That situation, plus the sickeningly regular loss of life in the overcrowded shanty town and upon the ocean, was the price every person in Broome had to pay for the far higher than average wages. And, for a scant few, there was the ultimate prize: that of finding the perfect pearl.
Naively, Kitty had presumed that every shell would contain one, but she had been wrong. The industry mainly survived on the mother-of-pearl linings. Hidden inside the ugly mottled brown shells that blended into the seabed was a lustrous material that sold by the ton around the world, to be used as decoration for combs, boxes and buttons.
Only rarely would a triumphant captain present the pearl box to the pearling master with a rattle. And inside the box – which could not be opened once the pearl had been dropped inside it, as only the pearling master himself held the key – there would be a treasure of possibly huge value. Kitty knew that Andrew dreamt every night of finding the most magnificent pearl which would make him not only rich, but famous too. A pearl that would establish him – rather than his father – as the chief pearling master of Broome. And, therefore, the world.
There had been a number of occasions when he had arrived home with a pearl the size of a large marble, his eyes shining with excitement as he had shown her the often oddly shaped jewel. Then it had been off to T. B. Ellies’ shop on Carnarvon Street to see if Andrew’s find was good. T. B. was renowned as the most skilled pearl skinner in the world.
Like diamonds, pearls had to be crafted and polished to reveal their true beauty. Kitty had been intrigued when she’d learnt that pearls were made up of thin layers, like those of an onion. T. B.’s skill lay in his ability to file away each imperfect layer without damaging the sheen on the one below it. She had watched T. B. hold a pearl to the light, as if his keen brown eyes could look through to its very core. His sensitive fingers then felt for minuscule ridges as he used his files and knives to erase them, squinting through his jeweller’s eyeglass.
‘It is merely oyster spit,’ he had said matter-of-factly as Kitty had watched him work. ‘The animal feels an irritation – a grain of sand perhaps – and builds up layers of spit around it to cushion itself. And behold, the most beautiful mineral is created. But sometimes . . .’ Here he had frowned before shaving away another sliver. ‘Sometimes the layers protect nothing but a pocket of mud.’ He’d held up the pearl for Kitty and Andrew to see, and indeed, a small spot of brown was seeping out of a hole. Andrew had barely withheld a groan as T. B. continued working. ‘A blister pearl. Shame. Will make a nice hatpin, perhaps.’ The corner of his mouth lifted into a wry smile under his moustache as he resumed his work.
Kitty privately wondered if the quiet Singalese man knew that he wielded more power than anyone in Broome. He was the dream-maker – in his unassuming wood-fronted shop, he could carefully skin fine layers of pearl to reveal a majestic life-changing jewel, or turn hope to a pile of pearl dust on his workbench.
Broome was a unique and intense micro-universe all of its own, one that encompassed every soul that lived there. And Kitty herself was now another cog in the machine, playing the role of a dutiful pearling master’s wife.
‘One day, my dear,’ Andrew had said as he held her in his arms after another disappointment in T. B.’s shop, ‘I will bring you the most magnificent pearl. And you will wear it for all to see.’
* * *
Kitty fingered the rope of small delicate pearls Andrew had chosen and had strung together for her. Apart from his obsession with finding such a special treasure, nothing was too much trouble to please her; Kitty had learnt not to voice her dreams, otherwise Andrew would go to the greatest lengths to fulfil them. He had filled the house with beautiful antique furniture bought from the boats that docked in Broome from all over Asia. She had once expressed a love of roses, and a week later, he had taken her hand and led her to the veranda to show her the rose bushes that had been planted around it before she woke.
On their wedding night, he had been gentle and courteous with her. While the act itself was something that Kitty subjugated herself to rather than actively enjoyed, it had certainly not been unbearable. Andrew had perhaps been more thrilled than she the moment she’d announced her pregnancy to him five months ago, when the child had been little more than the size of a pearl inside her. Andrew had already told her how his ‘son’ would follow in his father’s footsteps to Immanuel College in Adelaide, and then on to the university there. A week later, Kitty had taken delivery of a beautifully carved mahogany bassinet and countless toys.
‘What a dichotomy Broome is,’ she sighed as she heaved herself from the bed and reached for her silk robe. Ninety-nine per cent of the town lived in appalling conditions, yet anything the richer residents wished for could be delivered to this tiny isolated outpost in the space of a few weeks.
Kitty picked up and shook out her house slippers thoroughly, having learnt that spiders and cockroaches liked to hide in their cosy interiors. She threw them down on the floor and squeezed her swollen feet inside them. Used to being active, as her belly grew she’d refused to confine herself to the house, knowing she would go mad with boredom if she did so.
Over breakfast, she made a list of all the things she needed to buy in town. Before her pregnancy, she would always walk the ten minutes to Dampier Terrace and its array of stores, which sold everything from caviar brought in from Russia to succulent beef freshly slaughtered at the Hylands Star butchery. They ate well and plentifully, with a choice and quality far superior to what was available in Leith. Tarik, their Malay cook, had introduced her to curries, which, to her surprise, Kitty had found wonderfully tasty.
After pinning on her sun bonnet, she picked up her basket and parasol, then walked round the side of the house to the stables, where Fred lay sleeping on the straw. She clapped her hands and he was alert and upright within seconds. He smiled at her, one of his front teeth missing, which Kitty had learnt was common in Aboriginal males and had something to do with a ritual.
‘Town?’ She pointed towards it, as Fred’s grasp of English was basic at best. He spoke the language of the Yawuru tribe that was indigenous to Broome.
‘Go alonga town,’ he agreed as Kitty watched him hitch the pony to the cart, relieved that he was actually here. Fred was apt to disappear to, as he put it, ‘go walkabout, Missus Boss’. Like the missing tooth, Kitty had learnt that most Aboriginals did this, disappearing for weeks into the untamed and dangerous hinterland beyond the town. Initially she had been horrified when she had realised that Fred slept on a pallet of straw in the stables.
‘Darling, the blacks don’t want to live inside. Even if we built him a shelter, he’d sleep outside it. The moon and the stars are the roof over the Aboriginal’s head.’
Nevertheless, Kitty had felt uncomfortable about the arrangement and while their own house was being renovated, she had insisted Andrew build some basic accommodation with washing facilities, a bed and a small kitchen area which Fred could use as he chose. So far, Fred had not chosen to avail himself of the facilities. Even though she made sure his uniform was freshly laundered, she could still smell him at a few paces.
Kitty accepted Fred’s help to climb up onto the cart and sat next to him, enjoying the slight breeze on her face as the pony clopped along into town. She only wished she could speak with Fred, understand him and the ways of his people, but even though she had tried to help him improve his English, Fred remained distinctly uninterested.
Once they had reached Dampier Terrace, Kitty raised her hand and said, ‘Stop!’ Fred helped her climb down.
‘I stayum here?’
‘Yes.’ Kitty gave him a smile and walked off in the direction of the butcher’s.
Having completed her shopping for supper that night, then stopping to chat with Mrs Norman, the wife of another pearling master, she emerged into the bright sunlight. Feeling rather faint in the cloying heat, she turned up a narrow alley that offered comparative shade as she fanned herself. She was just about to walk back to the pony and cart when she heard a low keening coming from the opposite side of the alley.
Walking towards the pile of discarded rubbish, thinking that perhaps it was shrouding an injured animal, she removed a stinking crate and saw a human curled up into a ball behind it. The skin colour told her it was an Aboriginal, and the outline of the figure said it was female.
‘Hello?’
There was no response, so Kitty bent down and reached out a hand to touch the ebony skin. The human ball flinched and unravelled itself to reveal a young woman staring at her with terror in her eyes.
‘I do-a nothing wrong, missus . . .’
The girl shrank further back into the pile of stinking rubbish. As she did so, Kitty noticed the large bulge of her stomach.
‘I know. I’m not here to hurt you. Do you speak English?’
‘Yessum, missus. Speaka bit.’
‘What has happened to you? I can see that we’re in the same . . . condition.’ Kitty indicated her own bump.
‘You an’ me have baby, but best I die. Will go away. Life here no-a good for us, missus.’
With great effort, Kitty knelt down. ‘Don’t be afraid. I want to help you.’ She risked reaching out a hand again to touch the girl and this time, she didn’t flinch. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Come-a from big house. Big fella boss, he saw’ – the girl patted her stomach – ‘no home for me no more.’
‘Well now, you are to stay here. I have a pony and cart along the road. I will take you to my home to help you. Do you understand?’
‘Leavum me, missus. Me bad news.’
‘No. I am taking you to my home. I have somewhere you can stay. You are not in danger.’
‘Best I die,’ the girl repeated, as tears squeezed out of her closed eyes.
Kitty raised herself to standing, wondering what on earth she could do to persuade the girl she spoke true. She unclipped the pearl necklace that nestled at her throat, then bent down and put it into the girl’s hands, thinking that if she was a ‘bad un’’, the girl would be long gone by the time she returned, but if not . . .
‘Look after this for me while I go and get the cart. I trust you, as you must trust me.’
Kitty walked at pace to find Fred and have him move the cart to the entrance of the narrow alley. She indicated that he should climb down and follow her. To her relief, the girl was still there, sitting upright with the string of pearls clasped tightly in her hands.
‘Now then, Fred, can you help this girl into the cart?’ Kitty both spoke and mimed the words.
Fred looked at his mistress in disbelief. She watched as he eyed the girl and she eyed him back.
‘Do as I say, Fred, please!’
There then began a conversation in Yawuru, as Fred took it upon himself to grill the girl who was sitting in the rubbish and holding Missus Boss’s pearls. At times it became quite heated, but in the end Fred nodded.
‘She okay, Missus Boss.’
‘Then hurry up and help her into the cart.’
Fred tentatively reached out his hand, but the girl refused it. Slowly and proudly she staggered to her feet by herself.
‘I do-a the walkin’,’ she said as she passed Kitty, her head held high.
‘Where puttum her?’ Fred asked.
‘It’s best if she lies in the back, and we put the tarpaulin over her.’
Once Kitty had organised this arrangement, Fred helped her to climb onto the front of the cart with him.
‘Now then, take us home, Fred.’
When they arrived, Kitty fetched clean sheets for the hut that Fred never used and helped the girl – who by this time could hardly stand – onto the mattress. Fetching some witch hazel, she bathed a swelling around the girl’s eye, spotting more bruises on her cheek and her chin as she did so.
Leaving a pitcher of water beside the bed, Kitty smiled down at her.
‘Sleep now. You’re safe here,’ she enunciated.
‘No one come-a beat me?’
‘No one.’ Kitty showed her the big iron key in the lock. ‘I go out,’ she gesticulated, ‘then you lock the door. You are safe. Understand?’
‘Yessum, understand.’
‘I will bring you some soup later,’ she said as she opened the door.
‘Why-a you so kind, missus?’
‘Because you are a human being. Sleep now.’ Kitty closed the door gently behind her.
* * *
That evening, having given Camira – for that was what the girl had said her name was – some broth, Kitty had opened a good bottle of red wine to accompany Andrew’s supper. Once he had drunk two large glasses, she broached the subject of the young girl currently residing in their hut.
‘She told me she was a maid at a house on Herbert Street. When her condition became obvious, they threw her out. She was also very badly beaten.’
‘Do you know who her master is?’ asked Andrew.
‘No, she wouldn’t tell me.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ he said, taking another slug of his wine. ‘She damn well knows we could go to him and find out the real story.’
‘Andrew, I believe she is telling us the real story. No one wants a pregnant maid. The chances are, she was raped.’ Kitty said the word without a second thought. Such incidents here in Broome were commonplace, with drunken sailors hungry for ‘black velvet’, as Aboriginal women were termed.
‘You can’t know that.’
‘No, I can’t, but I can tell you that the girl told me she’d been educated at the Christian mission in Beagle Bay and she can speak relatively good English. She is certainly no whore.’
Andrew sat back in his chair and looked at her in disbelief. ‘Are we to house and feed a pregnant Aboriginal girl on our property? Good God! When we are out she could creep into the house and steal everything we own!’
‘And if she does, we have the money to replace it. Besides, I don’t believe she will. Andrew, for God’s sake, the girl is pregnant! She is expecting new life. Was I, as a Christian woman, meant to leave her there in the gutter?’
‘No, of course not, but you must understand that—’
‘I have been here now for seven months, and there is nothing about this town that I don’t understand. Please, Andrew, you must trust me. I do not believe the girl will steal from us and, if she does, I take full responsibility for it. She is almost certainly nearer to her time than I. Shall we have the death of two souls on our conscience?’
‘And I can tell you that the minute she has given birth, she’ll be on her way.’
‘Andrew, please.’ Kitty put her fingers to her brow. ‘I understand your reticence, but I also know how easy it is in a place like this to become hardened to the plight of others. Imagine if I were in her shoes . . .’
‘All right,’ he nodded eventually. ‘Your condition has made you vulnerable to seeing others less fortunate than yourself in the same position. She can stay, at least for the night,’ he added.
‘Thank you! Thank you, my darling.’ Kitty rose and went to him, placing her arms about his shoulders.
‘But don’t say I didn’t warn you. She’ll be gone tomorrow with everything she can carry,’ he said, always needing to have the last word.
* * *
The following morning, Kitty knocked on the door of the hut and found Camira pacing the room like a claustrophobic dingo.
‘Good morning, I have brought you some breakfast.’
‘You keepa me here?’ Camira pointed at the door.
‘No, I told you that the key is in the lock. You are free to leave whenever you wish.’
The girl stared at her, studying her expression.
‘I free-a go now?’
‘Yes, if you wish.’ Kitty opened the door wide and used her hand to indicate the path.
Silently, Camira walked through it. Kitty watched as she hesitated on the threshold, looking left and right, and at Fred, who was chewing tobacco as he made an attempt at grooming the pony. She stepped outside and walked tentatively across the red earth, her senses alert for sudden attack. When none came, she continued, walking towards the drive that led onto the road. Kitty left the hut and made her way back into the house.
Watching from the drawing room window, she saw Camira’s small figure recede into the distance. A sigh escaped her as she realised that Andrew had probably been right. Her baby kicked suddenly inside her, and she walked into the drawing room to sit down. The heat today was oppressive.
An hour passed but just as she was about to give up hope, she saw Camira walking towards the house, then hesitating for a second before making her way back up the drive. After waiting for another ten minutes, Kitty walked over to the hut, taking with her a glass of cool lemonade that Tarik had just made, with ice shaved from the newly delivered block.
The door to the hut was ajar, but still, she knocked on it.
Camira opened it and Kitty noticed that everything on the breakfast tray she’d taken in earlier had been eaten.
‘I brought you this. It’s full of goodness for the baby.’
‘Thank you, missus.’ Camira took the lemonade from Kitty and sipped it tentatively as if it might be poisoned. Then she drank the lot down in one. ‘No keepa me prisoner?’
‘Of course not,’ Kitty said briskly. ‘I want to help you.’
‘Why you wanta help me, missus? No whitefellas wanta.’
‘Because . . .’ Kitty searched for the simplest answer. ‘We are both the same.’ She indicated her stomach. ‘How long were you at the mission?’
‘Ten years. Teacha fella say I good student.’ A small expression of pride passed through Camira’s dark eyes. ‘I knowa German too.’
‘Do you now? My husband speaks it, but I do not.’
‘Whattum you want, missus?’
Kitty was about to say ‘nothing’, but then realised that Camira currently could not grasp the concept of kindness from a ‘whitefella’.
‘Well, for a start, if you stay here, perhaps you could teach Fred some English.’
Camira wrinkled her nose. ‘He-a smell. No wash.’
‘Maybe you can teach him to do that too.’
‘Me be-a teacha, boss?’
‘Yes. And also’ – Kitty thought on her feet – ‘I am looking for a nursemaid to help when the baby comes.’
‘I knowa ’bout babies. I takem care in mission.’
‘That’s settled then. You stay here’ – she indicated the hut – ‘and we give you food in return for help.’
Camira’s serious face studied Kitty’s. ‘No locka the door.’
‘No locka the door. Here.’ Kitty handed her the key. ‘Deal?’
Finally, a glimmer of a smile came to Camira’s face. ‘Deal.’
* * *
‘So, did your little black bolt off with everything she could steal when your back was turned?’ asked Andrew when he returned for lunch.
‘No, she went for a walk and then came back. Can you believe that she speaks some German, as well as English? And she has been brought up a Christian.’
‘I doubt it goes any further than skin-deep. So what will you do with her?’
‘She tells me she took care of the babies brought to the mission. I have suggested that in return for helping me with the new baby and teaching Fred some basic English, she can stay in the hut.’
‘But Kitty, my dear, the girl is pregnant! Chances are, it’s a white man’s child. And you know the rules on half-castes.’
‘Andrew!’ Kitty slammed her knife and fork onto her plate. ‘Camira can be no older than me! What would you have me do with her? Toss her back out into the rubbish where I found her? And as for the rules . . . they are cruel and barbaric. Tearing a mother away from her baby . . .’
‘It’s for their own protection, darling. The government are doing their best to make sure these children do not die in the gutter. They wish to round them up and teach them Christian ways.’
‘I cannot begin to imagine how I would feel if our child was physically snatched from my grasp.’ Kitty was shaking now. ‘And why, when we can at least help one of them, would we refuse to do so? It is nothing less than our Christian duty. Excuse me, I find myself . . . unwell.’ Kitty rose then walked to the bedroom and lay down, her heart pounding.
She knew all about the rules for half-caste children; had seen the henchmen of the local Protectorate doing the rounds of Broome in a cart, seeking out any baby or child whose lighter skin would give the game away immediately. Then she’d hear the sound of keening mothers as the babies and children were dumped on the cart to be taken away to a mission orphanage, where their Aboriginal heritage would be drummed out of them, and replaced by a God who apparently believed it was better to have Him than to grow up with a mother’s love.
Some minutes later, there was a knock at the door and Andrew walked in. He came to sit beside her on the bed and took her hand.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘I am a little faint, that is all. It is very close today.’
Andrew took a muslin cloth from the pile on the night-stand and dipped it in the pitcher of water. He folded it across her brow. ‘You are nearing your time too, darling. If it pleases you to help a mother in similar circumstances, then who am I to deny you? She can stay, at least until she has had the child. Then we shall . . . take a view.’
Kitty knew he meant ‘see what colour the baby is’, but this was no time to be churlish.
‘Thank you, my darling. You are so kind to me.’
‘No, you are the one who is kind. I’ve been in Broome for too long. And perhaps I have become inured to the suffering around us. It takes a fresh pair of eyes to see it anew. However, I have a position and a reputation to uphold. I – and you – cannot be seen to flout the law. Do you understand, Kitty?’
‘I do.’
‘So, when do I meet your little black?’
Kitty gritted her teeth at his words. ‘Her name is Camira. I shall have a couple of dresses made up for her. She has only the clothes she stands up in, and they are filthy.’
‘I’d burn them if I were you. God knows where they’ve been, but we shall no doubt find out soon enough anyway. If she was working as a maid, we will know her former employers. Now.’ Andrew kissed her gently on the forehead and stood up. ‘I must go into town. I have an appointment with T. B. The Edith has brought in a particularly good haul and there are a couple of pearls I want him to skin. One of them may be very special.’ Andrew’s eyes glinted with pleasure and avarice.
Do we not have enough already? Kitty thought with a sigh as Andrew left the room.
She knew the real God in this town – and his name was Money.