The Night They Stormed Eureka (6 page)

‘Aren’t the Puddlehams who they say they are?’

‘A butler to Queen Victoria? I doubt it. A butler in any great house must be an imposing man, and Mr Puddleham is scarcely imposing enough to be a merchant’s butler, much less Queen Victoria’s. But an underbutler — maybe. Quite likely even, given the man’s demeanour. And Mrs Puddleham,’ the Professor smiled across the darkness. ‘I stand corrected. She is one, perhaps, who shows her true face to the world, even when she does not intend to — though I do not doubt that she has secrets too. But I was asking about you.’

‘Why do you think there’s anything to tell?’

‘Your accent is — odd. Your choice of words.’ The Professor wrestled the cork out of his jar once more and took a thoughtful swig. ‘I’ve known children who were rash, defiant, able pickpockets at eight years of age. But I’ve never met a child like you.’

‘I’m not a child.’

The Professor smiled, showing crumbled teeth. ‘You see.’

Sam took a breath. ‘Okay then. I come from the future — about a hundred and fifty years away, I think.’ She paused. ‘You’re not going to say, “You’re lying"?’

‘"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Excuse me, my dear. What I mean to say is: not yet. What were you in this future? Princess or beggar maid?’

‘Neither.’

He took another swig. ‘A real liar would have claimed to be the princess. So what was your life like?’

‘It … it wasn’t good.’

‘In what way?’

‘It’s hard to explain.’

‘Try,’ said the Professor softly.

‘Mum … Mum used to teach at the uni. Now she’s an alcoholic. Like you,’ she added.

‘What about your father?’ The voice was gentle.

Sam shrugged. ‘I’ve never had a father. Not that Mum will tell me about.’

‘Who do you have, then?’

‘Friends, I suppose. But I can’t tell them what it’s like.’

‘Your friends wouldn’t help you?’

Sam was silent. ‘I think they would,’ she said at last. ‘That’s not why I can’t tell them.’

The Professor nodded, as though he had expected the answer. ‘You are ashamed. So you came here, like every other dreamer on the goldfields, hoping for a new reality. Will you go back if you don’t find one?’

He reached across the fire. Just a pat on her shoulder, and then his hand retreated. But somehow his presence was comforting, despite the stink of booze. The snores from the tent were a comfort too …

‘I don’t want to go back! It was so easy today! Just being someone else —’

‘Easy.’ The Professor stared up the gully to where the city of tents was just a dim glow of firelight. Drunks sang in the distance in a language she’d never heard.

‘Mrs Puddleham said you argued with a bushranger today. You think this life is easy?’

‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘It is for me.’ She rubbed her nose on her sleeve. ‘Okay. What about you?’

‘Ah,’ said the Professor. ‘You know what my great lie is?’ ‘What?’

‘I really am a professor.’

‘Really?’

‘Almost. A lecturer. Classics. Oxford. The city of dreaming spires.’

‘And then you drank?’

‘No, my dear. I drank while I taught. And then … my world turned hollow.’ He looked back at her with his red-rimmed eyes. The whites were yellow, just like Mum’s, his cheeks dark with stubble, the skin both loose and papery.

‘I married. A girl of sunbeams and laughter. And she died, without me there to hold her hand —’

‘Oh yeah?’

He smiled at the disbelief in her voice. ‘Would you prefer another story? That I sailed to the goldfields for adventure? But when I got here,’ he lifted the flask again, ‘I discovered I was a drunk. Now I am Shamus O’Blivion indeed. I do not like reality, my dear,’ he added. ‘It’s over-rated. The unexamined life is not worth living. But sometimes one’s life is not worth living if you examine it too closely, either.’

‘A boy said something like that today. He said that Socrates said it.’

The drunken gaze sharpened on the other side of the glowing coals. ‘The greatest of all philosophers. Who was this boy?’

‘The farmer’s son. George. He’d been reading a book.’

‘With a red cover?

She nodded.

‘I sold it when funds ran low. A mistake. I would like to buy it back again. I must see this boy some time.’

‘He won’t part with it. He loves it.’

‘Ah. Perhaps more than I did. So he should keep it. The love of ideas is a precious thing. More precious by far than gold, though that’s what I dig for now, not for ideas. Ideas make you look at the world, but gold can buy oblivion. Shame and oblivion, my two best friends.’ He gazed into the fire. ‘This future … which I still neither believe nor disbelieve. Is it good?’ He shook his head as though to clear it. ‘I know it is not good for you. But if good things can happen to people in bad societies, then perhaps bad things can happen to some people in good ones.’

Sam hesitated. ‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘Bits of it are good. Kids can go to school now. Most people are better off, I think, in this country anyhow.’

‘Thank you, my dear. True or not, it is good to believe. For Pilate sayeth, “What is truth?” The Bible, my dear …’

He was quite drunk now, Sam realised. The Professor lurched up, the firelight sending his shadow shuddering about the campsite. ‘And now I must leave you, oh child of the future.’

‘Professor — before you go … what do you know about the Eureka Stockade?’

‘Stockade? There is a mine they call Eureka — one of the first good seams they found at Ballarat. That’s what the word means, you know. “I found it.” The area all around it is crowded with claims now, but I wouldn’t call it a stockade. There was a hotel called Eureka too, but the miners burned it down. Goodnight, Master Puddleham.’

‘Sam,’ said Sam. But he was gone.

Sam woke to the
thunk
of Mrs Puddleham’s axe. She peeped out of the tent. Dew glistened on the branches above her, and sunrise was still a red haze on the horizon.

Mrs Puddleham stood by the hunk of tree that was her table, hacking the sheep carcass into small chunks of meat and bone. She wore an apron today, made of the same sacking as the bag that held the potatoes. Suddenly Mr Puddleham came into view, lugging a wooden bucket of water up from the creek. He still wore yesterday’s suit, his hair slicked down and neat under his hat. He nodded to Sam, neither welcome nor distaste in his face, as he tipped the water into one of the big pots and headed back down towards the creek for another.

How long had they been up for? Sam wondered, as Mrs Puddleham beamed at her. ‘Morning, lovey,’ she puffed, lowering the bloody axe. ‘Breakfast won’t be long. Nice bit o’ hot damper, with a bit o’ bacon too.’

Damper? Maybe that was what smelled so good, thought Sam. The stench of the night before was still there, but the fresh-bread scent was even stronger. Sam’s stomachrumbled. How long had it been since she’d looked forwards to what she was going to eat, instead of using food just to fill her stomach? Frozen pizzas, shoved into the freezer the rare times Mum remembered to shop for food, the cheapest ones, just cheese and sour tomato. Milk she had to sniff before she drank it, in case it had gone off, or the packets of chips Gavin brought back from the pub, and tossed to her as though she should be grateful.

‘There’s a tin o’ salt by the flour sack if you wants to clean your teeth. Doesn’t do to let your teeth rot, deary. You pays for it in the end.’ Mrs Puddleham lowered her voice. ‘Don’t forget to use the you-know-what afore you come out, too. You don’t want to lower them trousers of yours where anyone can watch.’ She began to wield her axe again.

Chamber pot, thought Sam, draping the cloth back again so no one could see in. She hoped the thwacks from the axe muffled the sound.

She’d just got started when the world exploded again. It was the same noise she’d heard last night. Sam grinned as she pulled up her jeans. The diggers must be making sure their powder hadn’t got damp overnight. At least no one would have heard any noise she made.

The shots had hardly died away and the birds stopped screeching when she heard a hopeful voice outside.

‘Any damper going, missus?’

‘When has there ever not been morning damper at my cook tent?’ demanded Mrs Puddleham. ‘Threepence a hunk, and treacle’s a penny extra — an’ if you pour on toomuch an’ it drips on the ground again it’ll be tuppence. Bacon’s threepence as usual. Now sit you down, Happy Jack, and your dog too.’

‘And you too, sir,’ said Mr Puddleham politely. ‘If you would be so kind as to sit here, sir? And you, sir, over here?’

Sam stepped out of the lean-to. A dozen miners already sat on the blocks of wood around the fire, their faces eager in the early morning light. Even as she watched, others lined up to take their places.

Old men with strange hunched backs, like the man she’d seen the day before; young men wearing bright shirts in red or pink or blue, or faded rags, beards of every shape and colour; some men tanned and some with peeling noses from too much sun; and others with a strange pallor she assumed came from working underground, each one handing his coins to Mr Puddleham.

There was something else about them all, too, she thought. A look of hope, as though today might be the day they found a nugget, and tomorrow bring all the dreams they’d ever had.

Mrs Puddleham wiped her bloody hands on her tatty apron. ‘Our son,’ she announced proudly, putting her arm around Sam’s shoulders. ‘Sam Puddleham, as has come up from Melbourne specially to help us. Now you sit down, lovey,’ she added to Sam, ‘and get a good lining in your belly afore you do anything else.’ She grabbed a stick and pushed something out of the fire.

It was about the size and shape of a cushion, and darkgrey like a rock that had been left under the flames. But when Mrs Puddleham gripped it with the edges of her sacking apron and began to break it into chunks Sam saw the inside was white and moist and steaming.

So that’s how you cook a damper, she thought. It looked okay, apart from the ashy crust. And it smelled … she sniffed.

It smelled like the best thing she’d ever eaten.

She sat down on an empty spot on a log, next to a small man with a crooked shoulder and a face stretched in what looked like a permanent smile. A yellow dog sat at his feet, its head down warily in case someone gave it a kicking.

Sam stared. It was a doormat with fleas, a long weeping sore on its side and brown eyes as big as the beads on the necklace she’d given Mum two Christmases ago. But despite its wound and fear, it looked well fed — much better fed than its master.

‘What’s its name?’ The dog looked a bit like the one Liz and Nick used to have. Bitsa, Liz had called her, because she was bitsa this and bitsa that. But Bitsa had been old, and a bit fat. She had mostly lived on the sofa, accepting the pats of whoever passed. Liz had cried all day when she died.

‘Name?’ The grinning man stared at her, his smile empty, as though he didn’t understand. ‘Dog,’ he said at last. He licked his fingers. The dog sat up, its fear forgotten, and barked.

The man’s crooked grin grew wider, showing worndown stumps of teeth. ‘See, he’s happy!’ He threw the doghis slice of damper. The dog caught it in its mouth, and retired behind the seats to eat it.

Mrs Puddleham sighed as she passed Sam a tin plate with a chunk of damper on it, the treacle oozing through the steam like lava from a volcano. ‘An’ I suppose you’re happy too, now your dog’s happy.’

He nodded. ‘We’s all happy here, missus. Gold to dig and damper.’ His voice as well as the words sounded strangely simple.

‘Ah, well.’ Mrs Puddleham passed him another slice of damper. ‘You take this, Happy Jack, an’ this one’s for you, not yer dog, and it’s threepence too. But the other was just a halfpenny. Special rate fer dogs. But no bacon, mind,’ she added as the dog stared at the hunk of meat grilling on a stick propped up by the fire. ‘Bacon’s too expensive fer dogs.’

The little man shoved half the damper into his mouth. ‘Happy,’ he repeated. ‘We’s all happy now.’ The dog gave a
woof
of agreement behind them.

Sam bit into the damper. It was soft and light and sweet, a cross between a cake and a hunk of bread. Even the crust wasn’t too bad. It was easy to peel the sooty bit off the rest. How could something as good as this come out of a fire? She smiled at herself, and tried to eat more slowly.

Next to her the men lingered on each crumb, as though Mrs Puddleham’s cooking was their only link with the comforts of a home, or the women they’d left behind or never known.

Mrs Puddleham forked a small brown thing onto her plate. ‘You get that into you too, deary.’

‘What is it?’

‘A nice sheep’s kidney. Mr P’s already ate the other one. You never had a grilled kidney afore?’ She smiled comfortingly at Sam. ‘Don’t you worry, lovey. You’ll have kidneys galore from now on. I’ve kept a bit o’ liver for you in the flour sack for tomorrow too.’

Sam prodded the kidney. It looked like a turd someone had shoved in the fire. She bit onto it, then fanned her mouth at its heat. It tasted like a turd too. She swallowed it as quickly as she could, then took a bite of damper to take the flavour away. No, damper was definitely better than a kidney.

Twenty dampers later the sun bounced above the horizon, large and red as an apple. The flow of men stopped as the miners headed off to their claims. The chuckles of kookaburras gave way to sounds of clanking and thudding, yells and shouts.

Happy Jack clicked his fingers. His dog sat up, barked once, then looked at Mrs Puddleham hopefully.

‘Here,’ said Mrs Puddleham resignedly. She scraped the damper crusts into a pile, and watched as the dog gulped them down. ‘Happy now?’

The grinning man bobbed his head at her. ‘We’s happy now, missus. Happy, happy, happy.’ He clicked his fingers again. The dog licked treacle from its whiskers and followed him out of the gully.

Sam licked the last of the treacle from her fingers too. ‘Is he okay? I mean … all right,’ she added, when she saw Mrs Puddleham didn’t understand the word.

Mrs Puddleham picked up the axe again, and began chopping at what looked like sheep ribs. Flies clustered over the meat now, but she didn’t seem to notice.