Band of Gold (11 page)

Eventually, Rian said, ‘She lied to us.’

‘I know she did. But she shouldn’t have been able to. I should have known where she was.’

‘You thought you did. You thought she was with Bao at the Chinese camp.’

‘But if I wasn’t so busy at the bakery, I’d be spending more time with her.’

‘And if I wasn’t so busy trying to become the richest bloody man in the Southern Hemisphere,
I’d
be spending more time with her.’

Kitty shook her head slowly and blinked back tears. ‘God, Rian, she wasn’t even safe with Bao. The two of them together, and they weren’t safe.’

They gazed at each other remorsefully until Amber appeared and sat down at the table. She had scrubbed herself from head to toe, and
her hair was wrapped in a towel and piled on top of her head. Her poor lip was swollen from the slap she’d received and her face was very pale.

Rian folded his good hand over hers. ‘What happened, sweetheart? You don’t have to tell me the bits you talked to your mother about, but what happened?’

So she told them.

She and Bao had gone to the circus. She had already been once with Kitty, but she’d wanted Bao to see it, too. They’d both known, however, that they would not be permitted to go alone, especially not by Bao’s father, so they’d gone anyway. And yes, she was very sorry now that they had lied, but the circus at least had been good.

When the performance had finished just after three o’clock, Amber had seen Mr Searle at the entrance to the tent, standing with his hat in his hand. She had waved and he had approached them, saying he had a message for her from her mother.

‘I was at the bakery earlier and she’s asked me to take you to pick up some new aprons she’s ordered for the shop. Pretty ones with the name embroidered on the pockets.’

And Amber had said, ‘But she doesn’t know I’m here. She thinks I’m at the Chinese camp.’

Mr Searle had winked at her then. ‘Is that where you’re supposed to be? I thought the pair of you looked like you were up to something! I saw you after I left the bakery and followed you here, but I didn’t want to interrupt your treat. I know how children love the circus. My daughters do, anyway.’

His message had annoyed Amber—surely her mother trusted her to look after herself while she walked into town from the Chinese camp to the draper on the Main Road?

‘Which draper?’ she had asked.

‘They’re not at the draper’s. Your mother had a seamstress make them up. She lives out on Navy Jack’s. Her husband’s a digger. Not
a very lucky one, by all accounts, so she makes ends meet doing a bit of sewing.’

‘We do excellent tailoring at our camp,’ Bao had said to Amber. ‘We could have made you lovely aprons.’

And Mr Searle had given Bao a strange and not very friendly look.

Amber had wondered why Kitty couldn’t collect the aprons herself, but supposed she must be busy, and could see this afternoon’s lie unravelling if she didn’t do as she was asked, so they had gone with Mr Searle.

‘It’s a long way out,’ Amber had said.

‘We’re almost there, see?’ Mr Searle had said, finally indicating a tiny hut.

Mr Searle had knocked and called out, ‘Mrs Dunne, the young lady is here for the aprons!’ and opened the door for them.

But as soon as they were inside he had slammed the door shut. And there had been no Mrs Dunne in the hut, just a big ugly man with wild carrotty hair.

‘And the hut smelt, Pa. It smelt of
really
dirty bodies and farts. We were nearly sick,’ Amber said, screwing up her face at the recent memory.

Bao had run to the door, but Mr Searle had barred the way, grinning and giggling like the monkeys they had seen in the circus. He had pushed Bao and she had fallen down, then the big man had picked her up and dumped her in a corner, and put Amber there as well. The girls had yelled and screamed, but no one had come to help them.

Then the two men had had an argument. The big one, whom Mr Searle had called Albert, had wanted to get straight down to ‘doing the business’, but Mr Searle had wanted her and Bao to be ‘their wives’. He was sick of eating bad cooking, he’d complained, and he’d always wanted a pretty girl for a wife instead of the sour old bat he’d been saddled with in England, and what could be nicer and
more fitting than a good meal followed by the conjugal rights owed a man by his loving bride? Albert could have Bao, because he wanted Amber.

In an effort to stall for time, Amber had asked Mr Searle how his daughters would feel about their father pretending to be married to someone who wasn’t their mother.

‘And do you know what he did, Pa?’ Amber said, tears forming again and spilling down her cheeks. ‘And this is just about the worst bit. He just laughed and said there had never
been
any daughters! He said he’d made all that up so there would be something to talk about in the bakery! He took me for a fool, Pa. He
tricked
me!’

He tricked all of us, Kitty thought miserably, and wished to hell she’d paid more attention the dozens of times the bloody man had been in the shop.

So Amber and Bao had made Albert Tuttle and Josiah Searle a meal of mutton, cabbage and damper. While they waited for the mutton stew to cook—and, to their delight, it had taken over an hour and a half—they were told to clean up the shanty, which was in a filthy state. All the while, Tuttle had sat on the single chair with his back against the door, watching their every move, and Mr Searle had perched on a crate in front of the fire, smiling to himself and humming happily with anticipation.

Finally, the food was ready. Amber and Bao had been offered a share but had refused.

‘That made Mr Searle angry,’ Amber said. ‘He said it was very rude of us, and a real wife would be pleased to be invited to eat with her husband.’

‘What time was this?’ Rian asked, wondering how far away he and the search party had been at the time.

‘I don’t know, but it had gone dark.’

Amber and Bao had sat in the corner growing more and more fearful as the men consumed their meal. Then Tuttle had put aside his
plate, wiped his hands on his shirt, burped loudly and ordered Bao to stand in front of him. When she refused, he dragged her across the room to the fire and ripped open the front of her jacket, exposing her golden skin and budding breasts. She struck out at him, but he batted away her hand and tried to press his greasy lips against hers. Horrified, Amber had leapt after Bao and darted around behind Tuttle. His knees were bowed as he bent to accommodate Bao’s diminutive height and Amber delivered an almighty, well-aimed kick to his baggy crotch that sent him grimacing in silent agony to his knees, then onto his side on the floor.

Searle, appalled that his lovely evening had gone so suddenly wrong, reached for Amber, grabbed a fistful of hair and slapped her face, opening the cut on her lip. Bao, her normally serene eyes flashing with shame and fury, grasped the front of Searle’s waistcoat, launched herself upward, clamped her teeth on his nose and bit down hard. Then, amidst the groaning and outraged squealing, Amber had taken her hand and they’d run for the door.

‘And there you were, Pa,’ Amber finished. ‘I knew you’d come and find us. I knew we’d be all right.’

Rian sat at the table nursing a glass of brandy. His
sixth
glass of brandy, if truth be told. Kitty and Amber had gone to bed. Amber had not wanted to sleep out here on her own tonight, and he had offered to take the daybed. His vision was blurring slightly—whether from the brandy or fatigue he wasn’t sure—but the more he drank the more he became convinced that he knew who was behind Amber’s abduction. And poor little Bao’s, although he didn’t believe she had been the primary target—she’d just had the misfortune of being Amber’s friend. What the hell was he going to say to Wong Fu the next time they met?

No, it had been an orchestrated kidnap, and he knew who had
planned it. Who in Ballarat had it in for him—especially him—and for Kitty? And who, in particular, would know about the nasty little proclivities of a man like Josiah Searle?

Lily Pearce, without a doubt. She would have put the dirty shite up to it, he was sure. Probably even paid him to do it.

He drained his glass and poured himself another. Then stood, reached for his hat and left the cottage.

In the bedroom Kitty lay awake, both Amber and Bodie snuggled against her chest, dreading to think what he was off to do now.

‘Open the door!’ Rian shouted, banging on it again. ‘Open up!’

A pale face peered out of the window. ‘Hold your ’orses, Mister. There’s plenty for everyone!’

Inside someone was playing a piano, accompanied by laughter and muted shrieks.

‘I want to see Lily Pearce
now
!’ Rian demanded.

‘You’re a keen one, ain’t ya?’ the girl remarked, looking him up and down.

‘Just shut up and send her out.’

The girl, finally realising he was highly irate, not desperate for sex, pulled her head in and disappeared.

Waiting, Rian paced up and down the verandah.

Lily finally appeared in her underwear, a floaty peignoir of some sort draped about her shoulders. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she disdainfully. ‘What do you want?’

‘Did you send Josiah Searle after my daughter?’

Lily looked nonplussed. ‘Josiah Searle? The one who fancies young girls? No. Why would I do that?’

‘My arse, you didn’t.’

‘Good idea, though. That would have taught you a lesson, wouldn’t it?’

Rian leaned forward and breathed brandy fumes in her face. ‘He took her and her friend this afternoon and had them holed up in his filthy little shack with some half-wit called Albert Tuttle. Christ knows what they would have done if we hadn’t found them in time.’

Raising her arched eyebrows condescendingly, Lily said, ‘Still in one piece, are they?’

‘Yes, they are. Just.’

Lily made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘What age is your daughter? Thirteen? Fourteen? That’s not that tender, you know. Wouldn’t have been the end of the world. I’ve got girls that young working here.’

Rian glared at her through bleary eyes, running through a range of suitable responses he couldn’t seem to coax out of his mouth. ‘I’ll prove you were behind this if it’s the last thing I do.’

Making a show of stifling a yawn, Lily replied, ‘Well, I wasn’t, so don’t waste your time. And rest assured,
Captain
, when I take my revenge, it won’t be as simple as giving your daughter a fright. Oh no, it will be much worse than that.
Much
worse.’

‘You’re full of shit, Lily Pearce.’

‘And you’re full of booze. Go home to your precious wife,’ Lily snapped, and slammed the door in his face.

The bell over the bakery door chimed as Flora entered, her face uncharacteristically grim.

‘I heard about what happened last night,’ she said to Kitty as she set her basket on the counter. ‘Is she all right?’

Kitty nodded and inclined her head towards Amber, who was rolling out dough on the table, in a manner that suggested Flora should perhaps mind what she said.

But Flora ignored her. She lifted the hatch in the counter, stepped through and laid a gentle hand on Amber’s shoulder. ‘I can imagine
it was a terrifying experience for you, dear.’

Amber stopped rolling. ‘It
was
quite awful.’

‘Did they…harm you anywhere?’

‘No, except I got a fat lip.’

Flora shared a glance of intense relief with Kitty.

‘But they were going to,’ Amber said, who, after her talk with her mother the night before, understood what Flora meant. ‘And the big stupid one tore Bao’s jacket and looked at her bosoms.’

‘Oh, poor sweet Bao.’ The
coque
feathers on Flora’s hat fluttered as she shook her head angrily. ‘I’ll call on her and her father later this morning, make sure she’s all right. I heard you kicked Mr Tuttle in the balls, dear?’

‘Yes. It was really satisfying.’

‘
Good
girl! But you have to remember, Amber, that not all men are like that. In fact
most
aren’t. There are plenty of fine men in this world, so don’t let this put you off. Your father is one of them. So is Pierre.’

Pierre, shaping
croissants
and pretending not to listen, blushed furiously.

‘And so are all the other men who work for your father. And once you find a good one, you should keep him, because he’ll be worth holding on to.’

Kitty blinked in surprise. Given Flora’s preferences, she had assumed that Flora would have little to say in men’s favour—she certainly had no qualms about taking financial advantage of their desire for the charms of women.

Careful not to get flour on her black gown, Flora leant against the table. ‘Have you heard yet about what else has happened?’

Kitty and Pierre stared at her expectantly, not even noticing when someone came into the shop.

With far too much cheer for what she was about to impart, Flora said, ‘Josiah Searle and Albert Tuttle died in the small hours of this morning. Apparently, they burned to death in their shanty.’

And Kitty’s heart thudded wildly as she remembered the door closing so quietly after Rian had gone out last night.

Flora accepted the tiny cup of tea that Wong Fu passed to her. Bao was shaken, and feeling deeply ashamed regarding what had happened to her, but physically she was unharmed.

‘Do you think she will be all right?’ Flora asked.

‘I hope so. She takes things very much to heart. She can be very…delicate,’ Wong Fu replied. For a moment he looked extremely sad and tired. Then he sighed. ‘No, I fear she may not be. She has always been frightened of white men. To her they are too big, and too loud and foul-smelling. And for her to have one of them touch her…’

‘Yes, I can quite understand that,’ Flora agreed wholeheartedly.

Wong Fu’s face darkened and he struggled to keep the snarl out of his voice. ‘Especially such a filthy cretin as Tuttle. She cannot eat, you know. She cannot hold down food. She says she is not hungry, but I know that is not it.’ Wong Fu tapped his head. ‘I know what she is seeing. In her mind she is seeing the hands and faces of those pigs, and she knows what they—’ He stopped talking, silenced by his own anger. He forced his shoulders to relax and took a long, measured breath. ‘I beg your pardon, Mrs McRae.’