The Night They Stormed Eureka (7 page)

‘Happy Jack’s just simple like,’ she said a bit breathlessly between blows. ‘No harm in him.’
Thwack.
‘Comes here whenever he gets a few pence, fer food for him an’ his dog.’
Thwack.
‘Don’t think he knows how to cook fer himself.’ She stopped, panting, and picked up a bit of meat that had fallen on the ground. She wiped it on her apron and threw it with the rest into the pot.

‘Can I do something?’ asked Sam.

Mrs Puddleham beamed. ‘Didn’t I tell Mr Puddleham you’d be a help? I’ll make you the best cook in the colonies, deary, you see if I don’t. Now you just sit here where I can look at your pretty face and chop the spuds. No need to peel ‘em neither — you can’t see a bit o’ dirt in a good stew. But make sure you cut ‘em proper, thicky thin.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’

‘An’ why should you? It’s me as knows the secrets o’ good cooking. Thicky thin’s how you make a good thick stew, lovey. You cut the spuds like this — thin on one side, thick on the other. That way most melts down into the fat to make a good thick gravy, and leaves a few chunks to get yer teeth into. Understand?’

Sam nodded. Mrs Puddleham passed her a knife, then hauled the sack of potatoes out with one great heave of her arm. ‘There you are then. A nice lot o’ choppin’ in that lot.’

Sam began to chop the potatoes, throwing each handful into the pot. It was already bubbling, the water dark andfrothy with bits of meat bobbing up like wet socks in a washing machine. Sam wrinkled her nose. How could that stuff turn into the stew she’d eaten last night? Suddenly she wondered what the Professor was doing. ‘The Professor didn’t come for breakfast,’ she remarked.

Mrs Puddleham sighed as she wiped the blood from her axe onto her apron. ‘Fool of a man. If I didn’t ask him to mind me pots now an’ then he’d never eat nothin'. An’ he’s got book learnin’ and everythin'. Wonderful bit o’ learning the Professor has. All them big words.’ She winked at Sam. ‘But you speak almost as beautiful as him, deary. Makes me right proud.’

Sam chopped, while behind them Mr Puddleham washed the dishes in one of the buckets, then trudged out of the gully to look for more firewood. Sam was relieved when he left. He hadn’t spoken to her yet — or anyone, she realised, except for the polite greetings and farewells to their customers.

It was peaceful, sitting here in the sun, the warmth of the fire on her face, the clamour of the diggings faint beyond the walls of the gully. I could get used to this, she thought. Just cooking, day after day, and people happy to eat your food …

‘Thunder and bleedin’ lightning!’ swore Mrs Puddleham, as a chunk of bone flew off into the fire. She fished it out with a stick, then looked around guiltily. ‘Pardon me French, lovey. Good thing Mr P didn’t hear that, neither. He can’t abide bad language. But I got into the way of it afore he found me again. Too much bad company, that’s what itwas.’ Mrs Puddleham rinsed the charred meat in the water bucket, then threw it into the pot with the other bits.

Sam stopped cutting the potatoes and stared. ‘What do you mean, before he found you again? When did he lose you?’

Mrs Puddleham blushed, her red face turning almost purple. She heaved the axe down onto the last chunk of meat before she spoke again. ‘Didn’t want you to think badly of me, lovey. But you’ve got a right to know. Mr P’s only been out here less’n a year. But I’ve been here seven years now.’

‘You didn’t come straight from the palace?’ asked Sam slowly.

Mrs Puddleham plonked herself on one of the bits of wood next to Sam. She shook her head. ‘Worked in that kitchen for near twenty-five year, I did. But then they kicked me out.’

‘Why?’

‘Cause I were in the family way, if you knows what I means.’

‘I know,’ said Sam. Mrs Puddleham meant that she was pregnant.

‘Thought you would. Innocents don’t survive what I reckon you’ve seen, deary.’ She shook her head. ‘Can’t have goin’s-on in the palace. Goin’s-on are all right for the gentry, but not for the likes of me and Mr P.’

‘It was his baby?’

‘O’ course it were! Dunno why he chose me, ‘cause there were younger maids, and prettier than me too. But chooseme he did, and it were grand, for all we had to keep it secret. Oh, that time he kissed me in the pantry among the silver … First kiss I’d ever had. You don’t forget your first kiss, never.’ Mrs Puddleham’s red cheeks blushed even redder. ‘But they’d have thrown us both out if they’d known, an’ there ain’t no place for a married butler at the palace neither.’

Mrs Puddleham shrugged. ‘I were sacked, soon as I were showing …’

‘You mean when you looked pregnant?’

‘In the family way,’ corrected Mrs Puddleham. ‘That I was, an’ out on the street with the dustbins that very morning afore I could even tell Mr Puddleham what were happening. Just the clothes on me back — not even me wages that were owing nor a crust o’ bread nor pint o’ porter for me breakfast. But I never told ‘em who done it, so Mr Puddleham kept his job. He never knew what happened to me.’

‘You didn’t go back to tell him?’

Mrs Puddleham shook her head. ‘He’d worked that hard to get where he was. Couldn’t make him lose all that. And me manners ain’t posh like his. Ain’t no grand house back home that’d employ us as a married couple like, not for the sort of job that’d be fitting for a man like Mr Puddleham.’ Her voice held infinite pride.

‘What happened then?’

‘So there I was on the streets, with no money. They picked me up for thievery, but what else were I to do? An’ truth to tell, deary, I weren’t much good at picking pockets,not like me cooking. These fingers was made to roll pastry, not slip into coves’ jackets. Got sent to Newgate then, after the trial, the magistrate sent me here.’

What about your baby? thought Sam. It took months for convicts to sail to Australia, didn’t it? Surely the baby would have been born by then?

Was Lucy the Puddlehams’ daughter? Then where was she?

She glanced up at Mrs Puddleham. The big woman’s face was blank suddenly, as though she was back in that old world of pain. Her hands twisted together, like they were searching. No, thought Sam. Whatever had happened to Lucy she couldn’t ask Mrs Puddleham now.

‘You mean you were a convict?’ she asked instead.

‘Seven years,’ said Mrs Puddleham, coming back to the present. ‘They wasn’t bad years, all in all,’ she added, her voice suddenly more cheerful. ‘Not once I got off that boat. The colony ain’t got no one what can cook as good as me. They sent me to be cook for a magistrate. Old bastard he were too, would order the lash soon as look at you, but I had me own bed with no fleas in it, and meat five times a day if I wanted it. Had to let out me petticoats four times that first year. An’ I’ll tell you the truth, there was some as wanted to marry me too. There ain’t many women in the colony, is there? So a girl has her pick.’

‘But you didn’t pick any of them?’ said Sam slowly.

‘How could I? Not after I’d knowed Mr Puddleham.’ A smile lit Mrs Puddleham’s face. ‘Ain’t he the bee’s knees now? Them soft white hands, and that posh way he has ofspeaking. And anyhow, those other coves would have drunk everything I earned. They only wanted one thing, deary.’

‘You mean —’

‘Me cooking, and the money it could bring in. An’ I was right not to go with them, neither. ‘Cause after five years Mr Puddleham met a cove what had gone back to England who knew another cove who’d been on the ship with me … an’ the long and short of it is Mr Puddleham found out what ‘ad ‘appened to me. He used his savings to buy a passage out here and then he found me.’

Mrs Puddleham smiled up into the gum leaves, remembering. ‘There I was adding lemon peel to the rock cakes — don’t do the stint on lemon in a rock cake, lovey, nor the currants neither, for all they’re sixpence an ounce — and there was a knock at the back door. It was Mr P, large as life and skinny as tuppence, his hat in his hand. “Why, Miss Green,” he said (that were my name back then), “you’ve grown as plump an’ beautiful as one of your plum puddings".’ The smile grew. ‘Likes something to hold onto, does Mr Puddleham. An’ we wuz married.’

‘Oh,’ said Sam. She began to cut the potatoes again.

It was almost a love story, she thought. The hero left the palace and sailed across the world to the girl he loved. But it was hard to think of stiff little Mr Puddleham as a hero, and as for Mrs Puddleham …

The big woman smiled at her. And suddenly she
was
a heroine, one who had borne even more than Sam, happy and excited about making her fortune and getting her hotel with velvet chairs.

‘Mr P and I worked for the old bast—old toe rag for six months, too. Then when gold were discovered I said, “Mr Puddleham, this is our chance. We needs a place that is worthy of you, Mr Puddleham, a place where you can wear a top hat an’ bow to lots of toffy customers.” So we set off to the diggings, up Bathurst way first, then down here. And I wuz right, ‘cause we’re making our fortunes. It’s money in the bank all the way. An’ now we have you.’

She looked over at Sam anxiously. ‘You don’t mind, do you, deary?’

‘Mind what?’ Sam’s head was full of Mrs Puddleham’s story. How could she have been through so much, and still be able to be so happy?

‘Me bein’ a convict an’ all. That was why I didn’t tell you. You speak so lovely. Just like a lady. I thought, she won’t want an old lag fer ‘er ma.’

Sam felt her eyes prickle. ‘I … I think you’d make the most wonderful mother in the world.’

‘Really?’ Mrs Puddleham looked so happy Sam felt her heart would break.

‘I think we was meant to find you,’ said Mrs Puddleham muzzily. ‘Or you to find us.’ She pulled Sam to her in a clumsy hug.

But what about Lucy? Sam was enveloped in the scent of old clothes and bad teeth. Mrs Puddleham can’t think that I’m her long-lost daughter, she thought suddenly. Things like that don’t happen. I’m far too old, for a start. And she knows my name isn’t Lucy.

The hug felt good though. Even the pong meant she was safely in the past. Mrs Quant said the past was smelly …

Mrs Puddleham released her reluctantly. ‘Well, this ain’t gettin’ the stew cooked.’ She stood up. ‘We’ll have fifty starvin’ miners down on us if we don’t look sharp, and us with nothin’ but half-cooked stew to put in their bellies. Speakin’ o’ bellies, you don’t want nothin’ more in yours? Stew won’t be ready till sundown but I’ll whip up a potato cake for you and me and Mr Puddleham, soon as he gets back again. Ain’t nothing like a nice potato cake with a bit o’ sugar.’

Sam shook her head. ‘I’m okay — I mean I’m not hungry yet.’ She peered into the pot. It still smelled of dead sheep and raw onion. ‘Why does the stew take so long to cook?’

Mrs Puddleham beamed at her as though she’d asked for the secret of the universe. ‘Ah, that’s a good question. Long an’ slow cooking, that’s the secret of a good stew, so’s the fat can soak into the spuds and make gravy. But first of all you got to put every bit of the sheep into the pot except its baa. Just like this, see?’ Mrs Puddleham scooped the last hunks of sheep into the pot. ‘Liver, lights, brains — make sure you adds the chunks of fat along its belly too. The innards give it flavour. You see these?’

Sam nodded as Mrs Puddleham’s plump fingers held up the bunch of scented leaves she’d brought back from the farm. ‘They’s ‘erbs, they is. Winter savoury. ‘Erbs gives stew more taste, like it’s got more meat than it really ‘as. The more flavour in that there pot, the more spuds and flour you can add. Flour and spuds is cheaper’n meat. Butthere’s another secret too.’ Mrs Puddleham bent closer to her.

‘You browns the flour first in the dripping,’ she whispered. ‘I did that this mornin’ and got it safe in the pot afore anyone was up and saw me. Don’t do to give away yer secrets. You stir that flour about till it’s the colour o’ brown boots. Makes the flour taste just like meat, an’ thickens it all something wonderful too. You see how dark it looks already, afore the meat is even cooked? You puts enough browned flour in your stew an’ no cove will notice he ain’t got a plate full o’ meat an’ potatoes. Now you remember that.’

‘I will,’ promised Sam.

Mrs Puddleham smiled happily as she tipped in more water. ‘I knows you will. Secrets like that are the best thing a ma can give her daughter, I reckon. You know how to keep a man’s belly happy and the rest of him’ll be happy too. Ain’t that right, Mr P?’

Sam jumped as Mr Puddleham bowed behind her. He still wore his coat and hat and dignity, even with his arms full of dead branches. ‘Completely, Mrs Puddleham.’

‘Now you sit there, lovey, and give it all a good stir.’ Mrs Puddleham handed Sam a giant wooden spoon, flat at the base. ‘Make sure you stirs it proper, too. Can’t never get the Professor to do that. Make sure that spoon scrapes all the bits up from the bottom afore they scorches. Think you can do that?’

Sam nodded. Mrs Puddleham beamed. ‘O’ course you can. You’ll be worth your weight in nuggets to us. Won’t she, Mr P?’

Sam sat by the pot on the side away from the smoke, and stirred. It was surprisingly hard work, digging the spoon deep into the stew. But it was interesting too, watching the way the stuff in the big pot changed. The lumps of meat turned into shreds and the globs of fat mixed with the flour and potatoes, and the smoke from the fire mingled with the steam from the simmering gravy. Sam could imagine how a smell like that would wriggle its way down a mineshaft to a hungry digger, convincing him he could spare threepence for a plateful of Mrs Puddleham’s magic.

By the time the sun was midday-high Sam was nibbling a hot potato cake, browned in an old black frying pan.

The second pot was full of water bubbling around half a dozen big cloth-wrapped puddings. Sam had thought that the puddings would go soggy, boiling in just a bit of cloth, but Mrs Puddleham said they wouldn’t.

Some lumps of fat were boiling with water in another pot to make what Mrs Puddleham called ‘dripping', melted fat that could be used instead of butter. There was no way to keep meat fresh for more than a couple of days on the goldfields except by salting it. ‘And salt,’ said Mrs Puddleham, ‘is almost as valuable as gold. You just got to be careful,’ she added, scraping up the last of her potato cake with her spoon, ‘not to give anyone too much meat in the first few days. Just a bit o’ bone for everyone and a ladle of gravy.’ She grinned. ‘Won’t none of them notice there’s less meat towards the end o’ the week. That’s the secret o’ a good stew.’