The Pearl Sister (The Seven Sisters Book 4), page 39
‘You are not sick, Mother?’
‘No. It seems God gave me the constitution of an ox, but I wish to keep it that way.’
‘You will come back?’
‘Of course – the freezing Scottish winter will provide the spur.’ Kitty shivered at the thought. ‘I will sail back to Adelaide before Christmas and celebrate the festive season at Alicia Hall. I hope you can join me and we can pay a visit to the opal mine and the vineyard to make sure the mice aren’t playing while the cat’s away.’
The Cat’s away . . .
‘Even though I understand you wish to take a break, I’m very concerned I don’t have the wherewithal to run the business alone.’
‘And I am perfectly sure you do. When your father left, I had no choice but to plunge in head first. I was completely alone with no one to ask for advice, except dear Mr Donovan, who will be there for you too. He knows everything there is to know, although he will reach his sixtieth birthday this year and I am aware he eventually wishes to retire. He already has someone in mind to take over from him – a bright young Japanese man who can speak fluent English. With the number of Japanese we employ, he will be able to communicate with our crews better and will be an enormous asset.’ Kitty rose from the table. ‘Right, let’s get to work, shall we?’
* * *
Over the next month, even though Charlie lay in bed every night promising himself that tomorrow he’d tell his mother the reason why Cat had left and that he was going in search of her, the business be damned, he never managed to utter a word. He knew his mother had spent the past seventeen years of her life running herself ragged to grow his inheritance, and all she wanted now was to take a well-earned break. How could he deny her that?
His admiration of her grew apace as he noted her voice of authority and the way she handled her staff and any problems with the lightest of touches. He also saw how the worry lines on her face had smoothed and how relaxed she seemed compared to the past.
How could he walk out on her after all she had done for him? Yet how could he not go and search for Cat and bring her back? Torn between loyalty for the two women he loved, Charlie felt often that his head and heart might explode. On Sundays – his one day off if there wasn’t a lugger coming in – he drove to Riddell Beach and swam hard to calm his tortured mind. He floated there, the waves lapping in his ears, trying to find the peace and resolution he needed. It didn’t come, and as the day approached when his mother would leave for Europe, his panic increased. He wondered if he should simply plunge his head under the waves for good to find blissful release.
Besides everything else, he didn’t feel he was cut out for the job. He had none of his mother’s air of natural authority, or the ease with which she talked to the other pearling masters at their regular dinners. Being half the age of most of them, Charlie knew they were almost certainly laughing at him behind his back and probably already planning their bids as they watched him and the company fail. His only other thought was to sell the company to one of the local pearling masters, but he knew that his mother would see it as a betrayal of his father and grandfather. The Mercer Pearling Company was one of the oldest in town, run by a family member since it began.
In short, Charlie had never been as miserable, desolate and lonely in his life.
Kitty had invited Elise round for Sunday lunch on a couple of occasions. There was no doubt that she was an efficient secretary and possibly more capable than he, as she covered up his mistakes where she could. Bright, witty and pretty, it was obvious his mother thought Elise the perfect future wife. There were constant mutterings about marriage and an heir to the empire.
‘You’d better snap her up before someone else does. Women like her don’t come along often in this town,’ she had said pointedly.
But there is already an heir out there, growing by the day in its mother’s stomach. God only knew how she was surviving . . .
‘Wait for me, Cat,’ he’d whisper to her Ancestors. ‘I will find you . . .’
* * *
‘So, this is goodbye, at least for now.’ Kitty smiled at her son as they stood in the luxurious suite aboard the ship that would take her down to Fremantle and then on the long voyage across the seas to her homeland.
Charlie thought how carefree she looked today – almost like a young girl, her eyes full of excitement.
‘I will do my best not to let you down.’
‘I know you will.’ Kitty reached out her hand to touch her son’s face. ‘Take care of yourself, darling boy.’
‘I will.’
The ship’s bell rang out to tell all those not travelling to disembark.
‘Write to me, won’t you? Let me know how you’re getting on?’ Kitty asked him.
‘Of course. Safe travels, Mother.’ Charlie gave her a last hug before leaving the suite to make his way down the gangplank. He waved until the ship was just a speck on the ocean. Then he took the little train back down the pier, where Fred was waiting in the car to return him home.
That evening, Charlie dined alone. The silence in the house was eerie and after he’d finished eating, he went to see Camira in the kitchen. In the past month, with Kitty in residence, it had been hard to pin her down alone, but she couldn’t avoid him now.
‘Dinna okay, Mister Charlie?’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Have you heard from her?’
‘No.’
‘She has not contacted you at all? Please, I beg you, tell me the truth.’
‘Mister Charlie, you nottum understand. Out there’ – Camira waved her arm around vaguely – ‘no paper and stamp.’
‘Maybe others have seen her? I know how the Bush telegraph works and messages are delivered by word of mouth.’
‘No, I hear-a nothin’, honest, Mister Charlie.’
‘I am amazed you are not beside yourself with worry.’
‘Yessum, I worry, but I think she okay. I feel her, and Ancestors look after her.’
‘Has she gone to live with your people, you think?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Will she be coming back?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Christ!’ Charlie had the urge to shake her. ‘Do you not see that I am going mad with worry?’
‘Yessum, I see-a grey hair on you this morning.’
‘If she doesn’t come back in the next few weeks, I will go and find her myself.’ Charlie paced the kitchen.
‘She nottum want be found.’ Camira continued calmly with the washing-up.
‘We both know why she left, so at least it is my responsibility to try, whether she wishes it or not. After all, she is carrying my—’
Charlie restrained himself, knowing the actual words must remain unspoken between them. Yet again, he found himself close to tears.
‘Mister Charlie, you good man, I know you lovem my daughter. And she love you. She think what she do is for best. She wanta you have happy life. Too difficult for you with her. Accept things you cannot change.’
‘I cannot, Camira, I cannot.’ Charlie sank down into a chair, put his arms on the table and rested his head upon them. To his shame, he began to sob again. ‘I can’t live without her, I simply can’t.’
‘Mister Charlie.’ Camira left the washing-up, dried her hands and came to put her arms around his heaving shoulders. ‘I see-a you two for many year. I thinkum maybe it disappear, but it not.’
‘Exactly, so I can’t just give up on her, Camira, leave her out there . . . you know what can happen to half-caste children if the mother is unwed . . . I could at least have offered her some protection! And I tried, but she refused.’ He took the amber ring out of his pocket and brandished it at her. ‘My son or daughter may end up in one of those dreadful orphanages and while I have breath inside me I cannot sit here and do nothing!’ He threw the ring onto the table, where it rolled and then came to rest in front of Camira.
‘I understand,’ she said. There was silence in the room as she thought. ‘Mister Charlie, I makem you deal. If I nottum hear from her in next few weeks, I go walkabout an’ find her.’
‘And I will come with you.’
‘No. You whitefella, you nottum survive out there. You big bossman here. Your mother, she trust you. You nottum let her down. She work hard to make big business to give you. Here, keepum this.’
She picked up the ring and held it out to him, but he pushed her hand away.
‘No, you take it. Find her, and bring her back, then I will put it on her finger. Until then, I can’t bear to look at it.’
Camira tucked the ring into her apron. ‘Okay, we makem deal? You work hard now at office for Missus Kitty and I go-a find my daughter if she not come home soon. Too many people in this family gettum lost. Sleep now, Mister Charlie, or more grey hairs comin’.’
* * *
Left with no choice, Charlie did his best to adhere to Camira’s advice. With the assurance that she would go to find Cat when the time was right, for the next four months he threw himself into the business as his mother would have wanted him to. Ledgers, legal papers and the endless arrival of luggers into dock at least took Cat from his mind. The business – like all in Broome – was struggling. Their vast stockpiles of shell had plummeted in price, as Europe and America were demanding cheaper materials. Charlie looked carefully into the business of the cultured pearl farms run by Mr Mikimoto. With real pearls becoming a scarce commodity in Broome due to excessive trawling off the coast, he could see that the cultured pearls were good replicas – and, in fact, far more suited to jewellery, as each was of a more standard size and therefore could easily be strung into a necklace or bracelet. Despite his mother’s disparaging comments, Mikimoto thought cultured pearls were the future, and so did the great continent of America, which was buying his product by the sackload.
Charlie was also impressed that pearl farming did not put human lives at risk in the way diving did, and was moved to invite one of Mikimoto’s managers over to show him how it could be done in Broome. He knew too that, after the initial set-up costs, the profits would rise. It would ultimately destroy the industry that had made the town so prosperous, but just as in nature, everything had its season and Charlie felt instinctively that Broome was moving into a dark autumn.
‘Everyone has to pay the piper,’ he muttered as he donned his master pearler’s pith helmet, straightened his gold braid and left to find Fred waiting in the car for him outside.
At least, he thought as the car drove off, he was taking his own first step into the future, however controversial.
* * *
Charlie was fast asleep when he heard a sudden keening sound fill the still air around him. He sat upright, pulling himself into consciousness.
The noise continued – a terrible high wailing, reminiscent of a sound he’d heard before. Still drowsy, he forced his mind to comprehend it . . .
‘No . . . no . . . !’
He sprang from his bed, bolted out of the room and ran through the house, following the sound through the kitchen and out of the back door.
He found Camira kneeling on the ground, kneading the red dust with her fingertips. She was babbling words he could not understand, but did not need to, because he knew already.
She looked up at him, her eyes full of undisguised agony.
‘Mister Charlie, she is gone! I leavem it too late. I leavem it too late!’
* * *
A pall of misery hung over the house as its two occupants grieved day and night. They hardly spoke, the bond that had once tied them now disintegrating into bitterness, anger and guilt. Charlie spent as little time at home as possible, sequestering himself in the office just as his mother had done after his father had left them. He now understood why – a broken heart ravaged and destroyed the soul, especially when it had guilt attached to it.
Elise, his secretary, seemed to sense that something was amiss, and despite himself, with her sunny smile and her calming presence, Charlie found her to be a light in the dark sea of gloom. At the same time, he resented her naivety, her privilege, and the very fact that she was alive, when Alkina – and their child – was not.
What tortured him most was the fact he would never know how she died, perhaps out there alone in agony, giving birth to their baby.
At twenty-one years old, and one of the richest men in Australia, Charlie Mercer could have been taken for double his age.
The Never Never
Near Alice Springs
June 1929
26
The night was still, the only sound the cry of a distant dingo. The bright white stars and the moon in the cloudless sky above him were his only light source as the horse sauntered over the rocky desert terrain, navigating the low shrubs and bushes which grew close to the ground to protect themselves from the frequent sandstorms. The drover’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light and could pick out the shadows of the rugged earth around him and the dark blue veins in the cliffs. The night air carried the cool, fragrant scents of the earth recovering from the heat of the day, and the air was thick with the sounds of skittering animals and buzzing insects.
He tethered his horse to a rocky outcrop sticking up from the earth like a red stalagmite. He’d been hoping to make it to the Alice by nightfall, but there’d been a skirmish between the local Aboriginal tribe and the drovers earlier, so he’d bided his time until it was over. Pulling off one of his camel-skin water bottles, he took a bowl from his saddlebag, filled it and put it on the ground for the exhausted mare to drink from. Swigging back the last remains of the grog from his flask and rooting in the bag for what was left of his tucker, he lay out the rough blanket and sat down to eat. He’d be in Alice Springs by sunset tomorrow. After restocking his supplies, he’d go east and work the cattle until December. And after that . . .
He sighed. What was the point in planning a future that didn’t exist? Even though he did his best to live from day to day, his mind still insisted he look towards something. In reality, it was a void of his own making.
The drover settled down to sleep, hearing the hiss of a snake nearby and throwing a rock to scare it away. Even by his standards he was filthy; he could smell his own acrid sweat. The usual waterholes he normally used had been empty, the season unusually dry even for the Never Never.
He thought of her, as he did every night, then closed his eyes on the moon to sleep.
He was awoken by a strange shrieking from some distance away. After years in the Outback, he knew it was human, not animal. He struggled to place the familiar sound, then realised it was a baby’s cry. Another soul born into this rotten world, he thought before he closed his eyes and slept again.
He was up at dawn, eager to reach the Alice by nightfall, take a room in town and have his first decent wash since he’d left Darwin. Mounting his mare, he set off and saw the camel train on the skyline. Lit by the rising sun behind it, it appeared almost biblical. He caught them up in under an hour, where they had stopped to rest and eat. He knew one of the Afghan cameleers, who slapped him on the back and offered him a seat on his carpet and a plate of flatbreads. He ignored the mould on one corner and chewed the bread hungrily. Out of all the human life he encountered on his usual route through the Never Never, it was the cameleers he most enjoyed spending time with. The secret pioneers of the Outback, the cameleers were the unsung heroes, taking much-needed supplies across the red plains to the cattle stations sprinkled sparingly across the interior. Often they were educated men, speaking good English, but as he drank their water thirstily, he heard how their trade was in danger from the new railway line that would soon open between Port Augusta and Alice Springs. The plan was to continue it as far north as Darwin.
‘We are some of the last left. All the others have gone back home across the sea,’ said Moustafa listlessly.
‘I’m sure there will still be a place for you, Moustafa. The train line cannot reach the outlying villages.’
‘No, but the motor car can.’
The drover was just bidding them farewell when the strange shriek he’d heard last night started up again, coming from a basket tied to one side of a camel.
‘Is that a baby?’ he asked.
‘Yes. It was brought into the world five days ago. The mother died last night. We buried her well and good so the dingos wouldn’t get her,’ Moustafa added.
‘A black baby?’
‘From the colour of the skin, a half-caste, or maybe a quadroon. The girl hitched a ride with us two weeks ago. She said she was heading for the Hermannsburg mission,’ Moustafa recounted. ‘The others did not want to take her given her condition, but she was desperate, and I said yes. Now we have a motherless babe screaming day and night for its milk with none to give. Maybe it will die before we reach the Alice. It was small to begin with.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘If you wish.’
Moustafa stood up and led him over towards the screeching. He unhooked the basket and handed it to his friend.
Inside, all the drover could see were moving folds of material. Setting the basket onto the ground, he knelt next to it and removed the muslin cloths that covered the baby. The smell of faeces and urine hit him as he uncovered the rest of the tiny, skinny body, with its layer of smooth, butterscotch skin.
The baby kicked and squalled, its tiny fists punching the air fiercely. Even though he’d seen many things in his time in the Outback, this half-starved motherless child produced an emotion inside him he had not experienced for many years. He felt the sting of a tear in his eye. Wrapping the sheets of muslin around the baby so he did not touch its excretions for fear of disease, he lifted it out of the basket. As he did so, he heard something drop back inside.
