The Night They Stormed Eureka (8 page)

‘Makes them think they’re eating as well as Her Majesty herself,’ said Mr Puddleham. He held his spoon delicately, as though his hands would be happier with a knife and fork. He ate in small bites too, hardly opening his mouth to put in pieces of potato cake.

‘An’ so they are too,’ said Mrs Puddleham stoutly. ‘An’ as the week goes by we just add more spuds and onions and more flour and herbs to the pot.’ She glanced over at the sacks of potatoes, the bags of flour and the big tin of treacle, sitting in a bucket of water to keep off the ants, as though to check no one had stolen them while her back was turned.

She glanced back at Sam. ‘That potato cake good, lovey?’

‘The best,’ said Sam.

Mrs Puddleham looked pleased. ‘Well, you just help me move the stew pot back from the fire a bit. That’s it, thank you, lovey. It don’t need so much cookin’ now. Just to sit and think a bit, quiet like, and let the flavours mingle. You go off and have a wash and anything else you needs to do. No need to do any more stirrin’ now till we puts it back on the fire.’

It’s weird being in a place where food is as valuable as gold, thought Sam as she trudged down to the creek. And it looked like Mrs Puddleham’s ‘secrets’
were
worth even more than the gold hidden in the dirt around them. Sam grinned, imagining this morning’s coins and pinches of gold dust in their bag down in the big woman’s stocking. Secrets, she thought as she splashed the cold water onto her face. If the Professor’s right then the diggings are full of secrets.

How many of the men who had sat at the fire that morning had secrets they were running from? A convict past, or a wife they wanted to leave behind? Surely some were like the Puddlehams, who’d come here to follow a dream, not just to leave their past behind.

She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair to try to comb it. Did the Puddlehams have more secrets she didn’t know about? The Professor had said that Mr Puddleham was only pretending that he’d been a butler. And who was Lucy? If she was the baby behind Mrs Puddleham’s disgrace, what had happened to her? Something bad, so bad she’d run away, like Sam?

No, thought Sam. Mrs Puddleham’s secrets were nice ones. They had to be. How a light crumbly mix would make a perfect pudding, and how long boiling was the best way to give anything more flavour (''cause wood is free,’ said Mrs Puddleham, ‘even if it’s a weary business to search for it').

Sam dried her face on her sleeve. There was something else she had to see to, something embarrassing. But she couldn’t put off much longer.

She arrived back at the camp just as Mrs Puddleham gave a long hard stir to the stew pot that held the mutton. It burped back at her, one giant lazy bubble, then went back to its slow day-long simmer. The other pots were simmering slowly too, each with only one side nudged into the fire, the puddings in their cloths only just moving in the water.

‘Um,’ said Sam.

Mrs Puddleham beamed at her. ‘Yes, lovey?’

Sam gestured at the chamber pot lurking in the tent’s lean-to. ‘What do I do with that?’ she whispered.

Mrs Puddleham grinned. ‘Just pour it down there,’ she jerked her head towards a mound of dirt above the gully. ‘That claim ain’t been dug for I don’t know how long. Right handy to put the rubbish down, ain’t it, Mr Puddleham?’

‘Indeed,’ said Mr Puddleham. He dipped a rag into the pudding water, then held the hot cloth briefly against his face. Sam stared as he took the cloth off and began to scrape off his whiskers with what looked like a long knife. No soap or shaving cream or razor, she thought, or even a mirror.

She hoped he didn’t cut his throat.

‘Mr Puddleham shaves twice a week, regular,’ said Mrs Puddleham proudly. ‘Neatest man on the diggin’s, he is. And a bit of mutton fat on his hair every morning to keep it shiny. Now you see to the potty, deary. Then I’ve got a surprise for you.’

Surprise? thought Sam, trudging over to the abandoned mine. You’d have to be desperate for gold, she thought as she poured the contents of the pot into its depths, to start digging there any time soon.

She rinsed the chamber pot in the creek — polluting it, she thought, but she wasn’t going to have the pot stinking out the lean-to. The water was probably polluted already. And she’d washed in it … She decided only to drink boiled water if she could.

Mrs Puddleham was undoing her apron as she got back, while Mr Puddleham wiped his newly shaved face on a bit of sacking.

‘There,’ said the big woman. ‘Now you keep a watch on them pots, Mr P, and make sure no one dips his paws into them, and stir the stew proper …’

‘Yes, Mrs Puddleham,’ said her husband, as gravely as if she’d asked him to guard the queen’s jewels.

‘We’ll be back in time for you to get more wood. But me and Sam has got more important things to see to.’

Mr Puddleham cast a sharp look at Sam, then a softer one at his wife. He nodded.

‘What?’ asked Sam.

Mrs Puddleham reached into the tent for her bonnet. ‘We got to get you some boots. Ain’t no child of mine going around in wet feet. Enough to give you your death of cold, wet feet is.’

Sam glanced down at her sneakers. They’d been worn already, and when she’d fetched another bucket of water for the stew her toes had poked right through. ‘Thanks,’ she said quietly.

Mrs Puddleham beamed again. ‘Nothing’s too good for you, lovey,’ she said. ‘Ain’t that right, Mr P?’

But Mr Puddleham was stirring the pot, and didn’t respond.

The road looked even busier in daylight. Bullocks heaved wagons through the dust. Horses panted in front of carts, or walked slow and dusty under their riders. There were people everywhere: men in rags; men in suits; old men crouched over walking sticks; and young men pushing barrows.

But although the road was crowded, there were few people among the tents. Sam supposed most of the men were down their mines.

Here and there a woman tended a fire or wiped a small child’s nose, but there were no young girls her age. Each woman nodded to Mrs Puddleham as they passed, some calling out ‘good day'. The men touched their hats or caps to her as well. Most of them wore pale thick trousers with wide sashes for belts, and red shirts that had faded to pink. Sam found herself grinning.

‘What’s the joke?’ demanded Mrs Puddleham.

‘Oh, nothing.’ How could Sam explain that a landscape full of dirty, bearded men in pink shirts was funny? ‘Why are so many men all hunched over?’ she whispered, as yet another bent man lurched by.

‘Miner’s back, lovey.’ There was nothing but sympathy in Mrs Puddleham’s tone. ‘After a few years o’ lugging dirt down in them mines they can’t never straighten up.’

Sam thought of the Professor’s words the night before. No, this wasn’t an easy world. But it was fascinating. She stared around again.

The land was flatter than she’d thought last night, shorn of most of its trees and bushes till a thin line of blue began again in the distance, where mountains seemed to float on the horizon.

The tents and mounds of dirt grew even closer together as they walked. The Puddlehams’ camp must be on the very edge of the diggings, Sam realised. For here at last were the real diggings — earth torn and shattered, a city of tents and bark humpies, dark mouths of mines with strange sails flapping above them.

Yet even within the chaos there was order: tracks straight as a road between the tents; and streets like this one, wide enough for two carts to pass each other, the grass worn down to hard dirt. Flocks of white cockatoos, fed on the bits of grain in the horse and bullock droppings, rose screaming into the air as a coach approached.

It’s like a movie of the olden days, thought Sam, as she stepped around a pile of bullock droppings still steaming in the mud of the roadway.

‘Mrs Pud—I mean, Ma?’

‘Yes, lovey?’

‘What do those sail things do?’ She pointed at one draped over a man’s legs as he sat before his tent, sewing a rip in the material.

‘Ah, them. The air’s bad in them mines, lovey, so the sails push fresh air down into ‘em. Otherwise the coves down there turn blue and choke.’

Sam tried not to imagine death in the darkness under the ground … No wonder the men take such care of their sails, she thought.

They stood aside to let the coach pass. Hopeful men clung to its top and sides, and now there were young women too, wearing bright bonnets and peering from the coach windows. One of the girls glanced down at Sam and grinned, waving a hand in a lace glove.

‘New chums,’ said Mrs Puddleham tolerantly. ‘Ah, well. Let’s hope they make enough to buy a plate of stew, even if they don’t find any nuggets.’ She nudged Sam sharply, as Sam automatically started to wave back to the girl in the coach. ‘Don’t take any notice o’ they, lovey. Hussies. Only one reason why any girl’d come to the diggin’s dressed like that. No better than they should be.’

‘Oh,’ said Sam slowly, as the coach vanished over the rise ahead. Would men in these days think any girl alone here was a ‘hussy'?

There were more bark huts among the tents now. A structure like a carport was hung with a dead sheep. Flies crowded around the customers as a butcher in a leather apron dark with blood hacked off hunks of meat from the dangling carcass.

Mrs Puddleham looked down her nose, though it was a stubby one, not made for looking down. ‘Look at that. Ten times the price we pay at the farm,
and
it’s fly-blown into the bargain. Not that anyone can see maggots in a stew,’ she added. ‘Not among the spuds. But it ain’t wholesome.’

‘No.’ Sam shuddered. No fridges here, she thought. No fly screens or even proper windows.

The tiny hut next to the butcher’s was more substantial than any she’d seen so far, made of neatly trimmed logs of wood and looking a bit like a child’s cubby. A man sat, almost filling the little doorway, below a sign that said ‘The Lemonade Man'. He was in his forties, with dark hair neatly parted in the middle and a moustache that turned up at the ends. He wore a suit like Mr Puddleham’s, with a dusty round hat. He raised it politely to Mrs Puddleham.
‘Guten Morgen, Frau
Puddleham. You care for lemonade perhaps?’

‘Not this morning,’ began Mrs Puddleham, then stopped. ‘Well why not? It’s a treat like. You’d like a nice mug of lemonade, wouldn’t you, lovey?’

Sam nodded, thinking of the dirty creek. At least a bottle of lemonade would be clean. But instead of the soft drink she expected, the man reached behind him and drew out a jug like the Professor’s and two tin mugs, which he filled with a flourish right up to the brim. The lemonade man stood and bowed to them, clicking his heels together, then handed them each a mug.

Sam sipped cautiously. It wasn’t lemonade. It wasn’t even lemon cordial. But there was a faint bitter taste of lemon, and the drink was sweet and curiously good.

Mrs Puddleham sipped slowly too, obviously making the treat last. She wiped her lips as she drained the last drop. ‘Ah, that was good.’ She reached into the small cloth bag that hung from her waist, and drew out a coin. The lemonade man coughed politely. ‘It is a penny each,
Frau
Puddleham.’

‘Not a halfpenny?’ Mrs Puddleham looked innocent. ‘Oh, my mistake.’

The man smiled. ‘For so beautiful a
Frau
on such an afternoon, it is a halfpenny. This is your son?’

‘Our Sam, just up from Melbourne.’

‘A good-looking boy. He looks just like you.’

Mrs Puddleham beamed. ‘Don’t he just? A good day to you.’

‘And to you,
Frau
Puddleham.’

Sam waited till they were out of earshot. ‘Is he German?’ Oops, she thought, Germany doesn’t exist yet, does it? It’s still just lots of states. But Mrs Puddleham didn’t notice her mistake. ‘Some foreign place. Half the diggers don’t speak the Queen’s English right. Gotta long name that sounds like a sneeze. Folks just calls him the lemonade man.’

The road was lined with huts now. A milking goat
baaed
at them from the end of a short line, while its kid nosed about for weeds. A kookaburra tethered by one leg to a post gazed at the world that had once been his. A woman in a battered man’s hat pushed a thing like a broom with a plug on the end into a wooden tub. A long line of wet trousers stretched above her. She waved to Mrs Puddleham.

‘Mrs Hopgood,’ said Mrs Puddleham, waving back. ‘Her laundry’s a nice earner. But clean trousers can’t compare to my stew.’

The road had been rising so slightly Sam had hardly realised it. Now they had reached the top of small hill.

Sam gazed down over the crest, and gasped.

Mrs Puddleham grinned. ‘Takes yer breath away, don’t it? Thems the gravel pits. More gold’s been taken out of there than ye’d find in the crown jewels.’

Sam nodded, still stunned. She had thought the diggings behind them were crowded. But this …

Once there had been a river here. Now the water was divided into hundreds of channels bubbling brown and filthy into tiny pools, each guarded by a ragged team of miners.

Men huddled over barrels, buckets, tin dishes or what she recognised as cradles, scooping, lifting, shovelling up the gravel, sifting, swirling, examining. All around the pools was a city, but like no city she had ever imagined: a vast warren of tents so close they almost touched each other. Each square metre of land was grabbed and held for tent space, a fire or for the dream of gold.

Gold. Its shadow cast a light as bright as the sun on the diggings.

It was too much to take in: thin men crawling across the broken earth, hungry from a hundred miles of marching, from lugging swags and shouldering shovels; the mud, stinking of sewage and sweat; the flies, not bush flies but flat black ones from well-fed maggots that bred among the filth, so thick they formed a shimmering haze over thewhole scene; and the noise — the shouts and shovelling, and the wail of a baby above it all.

Flies crawled into her eyes and up her nostrils; the stench was almost thick enough to float on. But over the whole place lay a feeling of excitement too, as though the breeze itself whispered the word, ‘Gold … gold … gold …’

‘Noisy, ain’t it?’ Mrs Puddleham tugged Sam’s hand and they began to walk again. ‘You could cut that smell with a knife. We’re better off down in the gully, ain’t we, well away from it all. Let the customers come to us, I says. Come on. The shop is thisaways.’