The Spoils of Sin (7 page)

Her heart grew soft and she lay back invitingly. It was unclear as to the degree of readiness in the man. There was a certain redness she thought might indicate excitement.

‘Could you…handle it?' he asked.

‘Gladly.' She worked it with gentle fingers, awash with pity and concern for the disappointment he was sure to suffer. And yet, she supposed he must occasionally handle it himself. This much he would have already essayed. ‘But I guess we need to try further than that.'

‘I guess,' he agreed shortly.

She pulled him onto her, and waited for what might happen. Contact was made, and a minimal penetration. She rocked against him, watching his face. Pain, panic, concentration accompanied the rhythm she established. ‘Yes!' he shouted after a minute or so, and she felt a stickiness.

Silence followed, until he had rolled off her with gritted teeth. ‘Painful,' he gasped.

She rubbed his shoulder and said nothing.

‘Thank you,' he managed finally. ‘Now I know.'

‘Perhaps…' She wasn't sure what she intended to say. His plight affected her much more deeply than she might have wished.

‘I can perhaps sire children,' he said, as if to himself. ‘If I can persuade anyone to be my wife.'

‘Perhaps the pain would fade, with increased use,' she managed.

He tapped her lightly on her thigh. ‘Eager for more business, are you?' he teased.

She was amazed at the pleasantry. Something, it seemed, had gone right for him. ‘The box on the shelf is for your payment,' she said, disliking herself. There was no avoiding the essential nature of their encounter and she had quickly learned to maintain a hold on it. There was little place for friendship or even a reflective aftermath.

The man was plainly rebuffed. He pulled on his clothes and found the money. ‘My name is Charlie,' he told her, with a little salute. ‘I trust you will not object to a subsequent transaction? Some good has been done here tonight, for which I thank you.'

‘I'm glad,' she said. The softening she continued to feel towards him was disconcerting. It was a topic she and Carola discussed regularly: the dangerous quicksands of affection. Liking a client was almost as uncomfortable as disliking him. Any emotion was to be avoided as far as possible. Keep it businesslike, they adjured each other at regular intervals.

Charlie left without saying anything more, and Fanny slept poorly that night.

By October it was apparent that winter was fast approaching, and with the last of that year's wagon trains arrived a month or more past, there was a gradual increase in the size of the town. The new migrants took a while to choose their future pathways – whether to set up home on their square mile out on the hillsides, or to establish a business in one of the new streets. Along with the families were always plenty of single men, alert for employment opportunities, lonely for female company and hiding the ever-present fear that they had made a serious mistake.

Fanny was never sure, afterwards, where and when she first heard the rumours of gold being found to the south. The word itself seemed to float in the air, almost from the first days of their boudoir, uttered with scepticism or downright derision. It rapidly became a metaphor for unrealistic hopes and fairytale ambitions. Precise facts were entirely absent, but somehow it became known that something was going on, more than five hundred miles away in California.

By the end of October, the rumours had become steadily more concrete. Yes, really, everyone was saying – there was gold in great quantities being found in a river somewhere not far from San Francisco. Men were leaving their work in droves, purchasing picks and buckets and mules and swarming south like ants. But others – primarily the homesteaders - still dismissed the stories as having little to do with them. They had made their choices and were prospering well enough on their government-issued acres with their healthy contented families and burgeoning apple trees. California had already been considered and rejected before ever they set out on the Trail. To overturn a decision often hard-won would feel capricious and even ill-omened.

It was halfway into November 1848 before the girls met a man who had seen it for himself.

Jim was his name. He rode a horse that almost glowed with quality. His spurs were made of silver. He was almost fifty years old and had a compelling story to tell.

‘But first, young lady, I must avail myself of your services,' he said to Carola with an impatient smile. It was a busy evening, with four men waiting round the piano under Hugo's steady gaze and one more upstairs with Fanny. Jim offered double payment if he could be given priority ahead of his rightful turn.

The other men grumbled at this and Carola gave him a look. ‘Strictly in order of arrival,' she said. ‘Any other way leads to trouble.'

‘Handsome horse you're riding,' remarked a man, clearly hoping to avert any unpleasantness. He had kept a wary eye on Hugo since stepping through the door. ‘Must have cost ye a fair few bucks.'

‘Right enough,' agreed Jim. ‘How about this, then? In exchange for a most remarkable tale I have to tell, you agree to let me go up next? You won't regret it. I don't intend to take too long, and you're sure to hear things to your advantage.' He looked round at them. ‘Single men, the lot of you. Nothing to tie you to this place, pretty though it be. I can give you good reasons to head south the moment the sun rises in the morning.'

The men glanced at each other and rubbed their freshly-shaven chins. ‘'Tis a nice horse,' said one.

‘Time enough, I reckon,' said another. A third picked out a simple tune on the keys.

‘Go on, then, and be quick about it,' said the first one, evidently speaking for them all.

Jim was true to his word and, having returned from his session with Carola, spent the next hour or two regaling his listeners with accounts of the extraordinary finds in California. So compelling were his words that Fanny and Carola found themselves also sitting in the circle, the demands of the bedroom forgotten.

‘And why, pray, be ye here and not there, then?' asked the most vociferous of the men.

‘Got out while I could. Another month or two and there'll be a mad rush and 'twill all be spoiled. Whole shiploads of Chileans were arriving when I lit out. I found my little seam, more by luck than anything, and filled my pockets unmolested. Changed it for eight hundred dollars and the horse and a few other things. Enough to see me through my days, most likely. And if it runs through my fingers, I shall go back again.' He shook his head, at some unspoken thought. ‘Greed be a terrible thing, mark you. When the word spreads, the whole world will head for California and the west will be changed forever. But, boys, if you get down there now, you'll still be ahead of the worst of it. I can help you to know what to look for.' And he drifted into details of geological science that the girls found a lot less fascinating.

Later, when they had finally all gone, Carola said, ‘This gold business – if it's true, it surely will bring some changes.'

‘Even though it's so far away? How many rich prospectors are going to find their way to Chemeketa, think you?'

‘We shall have to see,' said Carola. ‘But I fancy there might be some most favourable consequences for us all.' She nibbled her lower lip. ‘And, if it truly turns out as that Jim suggests, we might consider removing ourselves to a point closer to where the riches are.'

Fanny thought of the magnificent horse and the silver spurs and the apparent common sense shown by Jim, and wondered how many men would know when to stop if there was a chance of digging untold wealth out of the ground. ‘I should be sorry,' she murmured. ‘Sorry to leave this place. It has become home to me now.'

‘We could return with our bags full of gold.'

‘And retire to a life of idleness,' Fanny laughed.

‘Jim left twenty bucks,' said Carola. ‘You must have half of it.'

‘Why so?'

‘Just because.'

There were times when Fanny loved her friend so much it hurt.

The winter brought snow, then deep slushy mud, then more snow. At times the mud froze solid, hurting the feet of horse and man alike. Fur-lined boots became the most prized item in everyone's wardrobe, with matching hats a close second. Fanny and Carola had muffs made from fox fur, and ordered a great stack of logs to be delivered to their back yard. Hugo shivered in his kennel until he was permitted to sleep indoors when the nights were at their most bitter.

The gold rumours evolved and expanded into unarguable fact, confirmed by the President himself in the final weeks of 1848, but nobody saw another Jim with his pockets full and his clothes abnormally fine until early in January. Jim himself had moved on in search of a place to settle and live out his days. ‘He'll be wanting a wife,' said Carola. ‘And chances are, he'll very soon find one.'

After a hesitant start, over half the men in Oregon decided to take a chance and make a dash southwards to see for themselves what the reality of the matter might be. News of their progress was patchy, but before long there were fantastic reports of men who had taken home ten thousand dollars and more from a single week's light digging. Carola became restless, convinced that they were missing shining opportunities to enrich themselves. Very few of the prospectors had returned to their homesteads in Oregon, and Carola expressed an opinion that they were more likely to start new lives in the California sunshine, where they might satisfy their feverish appetites with ease. ‘There will be a dire shortage of female company,' she said.

‘I don't doubt it,' Fanny agreed. ‘But … they will be drunken and rough. Men from Chile; Mexicans and foreigners. Can we not remain here, and wait for the wealth to come to us? Surely they won't
all
stay in California?'

‘We might leave it until the springtime,' Carola conceded. ‘By then we will know more of how things stand.'

As things stood, their business was flagging badly. Mr Canelli was sending barely one man a week, and only a handful of middle-aged regulars remained.

Charlie still came to visit Fanny every Friday night, aiming to be the last of her customers, so as to stay and talk a while. Her pity for him changed to admiration over the weeks. His body was well-muscled, his face attractive in a lean kind of way. ‘And really, it would be foolish to permit such a deformity to make me bitter,' he said. ‘Even when normal, it remains insignificant compared to arms and legs. A man must work and think before he lets his passions hold sway.'

Fanny tilted her head and smiled. ‘If the world were in an ideal state, that would surely be true,' she said.

‘But it ain't. I know that. If you'd known me at sixteen you'd have never let me into your bed. I was a mad dog then, raging at the injury done to me. I had an older brother, who I swear made mock of every day of my life. He called me a freak
.'

‘Cruel,' said Fanny. ‘Did you mother not prevent him?'

‘My mother acted as if nothing was wrong. Her own guilt ate away at her sense of what was real, until she lived all her time in a dream.'

Knowing the answer already, but hoping for further details, she asked, ‘It was her doing?'

‘Who else? Not that she wielded the knife, but she had it done to me, since her parents were Israelites and it forms part of their religious practice.'

‘And your brother? He had it too?'

Charlie nodded. ‘No trouble at all. He'd get it out and show me, any chance he got. He has four children now.' His eyes went pink and he looked away.

Since first meeting Charlie, Fanny had taken closer note of the foreskins on her customers. To date, she had not encountered a single man who had suffered any mutilation by way of removal. ‘It seems to me very rare,' she said.

‘It is barbarism, pure and simple,' he said, with a growl. ‘It sickens me to think of the whole Jewish race taking a knife to their little sons.'

‘And me,' said Fanny with feeling. ‘Where was your father when it was being done? Had he no power of veto?'

‘My father was a soft man, fond of books and botanical studies. He married my mother for her black hair and lovely voice, or so he said. Her voice soon turned harsh, and she never gave him a moment's peace in his life. He would never have dared interfere in her wishes, on any topic.'

Such women too were rare, in Fanny's experience. Those she had met who managed to get their own way in the family did it mainly with subtlety and bargaining. ‘Poor man,' she said.

Charlie took her hand, which worried her and made her feel awkward. ‘You maintain your sympathy for the male of the species, then? Despite your intimate knowledge of their ways?'

She frowned. ‘They show me no malice. I have learned to satisfy their needs – which are generally very simple. I see no cause for dislike.' She closed her mind against the nagging memory of John, who had frightened her on the opening night. Every time she led a new client up the stairs she suffered a pang of apprehension that here would be one such as John had described. One who would hurt her for his own pleasure, or require something unnatural and humiliating of her. Her imagination baulked at what these might be, and she dreaded enlightenment.

‘You have a good heart, Miss Francesca,' Charlie told her. ‘I have glimpsed it in all its kindness.'

Fanny's own eyes filled at this. She thought of her sister, Charity, who was not a kind girl, but judgmental and narrow. And yet the world would deem it the reverse. Fanny was a sinner, while her sister was a respectable married woman. It was unjust, she thought, with a surge of self-pity.

Carola showed a growing anxiety concerning Charlie. ‘He is plainly a devotee,' she said. ‘Remember what we said on that subject?'

Fanny only faintly recalled the conversation. It had to do with the necessity of keeping a distance between themselves and the men. Carola quoted her Charleston aunt, who had spoken a good deal on the matter: ‘We can never make the mistake of falling in love with any of them. That is not what they require of us. There can be no question of marriage for women in this business. That remains the first and most absolute fact.'