New Gold Mountain

Inside, the surface of the dresser, a comb tangled up in fine loose hairs, a dry fine heat disintegrating the lace of the curtains. Outside, out past the fences, there’s the road that the men emptying out of the towns take. The men emptying out of the towns or coming off of ships. 

They empty out of the towns and take the road, past the fences. Sometimes they knock, they ask for water. Once a Chinese man came up, asking. Some sick chinaman. Bessie said no but Regina said yes. So they gave him a little water from the well. To slake his thirst, Regina said. With their own brothers gone Bessie keeps the gun by the door. I’ll be damned if they come home with gold, she says, them scratching at the dust and panning the slurry. If they come home with gold I’ll be damned.

The girl’s out back, singing. The light’s white, baking the linen. The girl hates the winds that come up in the winter, that come up through the pines; she’s not used to it. But it’s summer and the air’s slow and crazy; the birds walk around with their beaks open. Maybe someone else will come knocking today. If he does, the girl will answer the door, and if Bessie likes she can stand in the dark of the hall with her gun. 

Outside, the long line in the distance, the men passing. A long single file of walking Chinese swinging their plaits behind them, baskets at the ends of a pole across the shoulders. And some drays, and coaches, and the dust blowing out. Inside, Regina at the dresser, fiddling with some boning. She knows about the Chinaman already, not the one who came, another one; he hanged himself in the gully. She’s thinking about him. She’s been picking up on all the traces. She might have seen him, a small speck in that long line maybe, whenever it was that he first came.

Bessie’s footsteps in the hallway, stopping at Regina’s door. Bessie, the chinaman who hanged himself, what have you heard? 

Bad news, says Bessie, from home; the Chinese Detective said there was bad news from home. Oh, and he was perfect, preserved on account of the dry air. Stan is back, you didn’t hear him? he’s back, he’s just come in. Lucky it didn’t rain, Bessie says on her way out, or else he would have rotted up there, hanging from that old tree.

The kitchen is dark. Out the windows, past the verandah, the garden is glaring white rectangles. Stan is at the table, the girl is making tea. Thank you Susan, Stan says. Bessie smiles and says, any gold? Stan says no. He’s hard Stan is. There are some sandwiches to have with the tea, a little cold roasted meat. No – but others strike it lucky; the damn Germans, Italians, the damn Chinese mucking up the tailings. Your brothers are staying, he says, I’ve come back to run the place. We’re doing fine Bessie says. Stan laughs in the direction of the gun, in the hall. 

The heavy-headed roses bloom out of the ground. Regina and Bessie cross into the house-yard for the coach, Regina tracing the paddocks, the watery line of fences, the road. That chinaman had been in the gully, hanging there, maybe swaying. The air moving about him as the moon circled. And the dew settling on his hair, a rivulet tr­avelling his long plait once the sun came up. 

Bessie and Regina step forward into the clamour of slowing hooves: letters from mother, the Boyds; some butter. Newspapers? Any news? Regina asks, what about the chinaman who hanged himself? The lad? says the coachman, why worry about a chinaman, Miss. You shouldn’t even be thinking about a chinaman. Be a good girl then, watch, the butter’s melting.

Regina puts the letters on the table but Stan doesn’t pay any mind, chewing on the dry meat with his back teeth. The butter s­oftening. The girl is still, at the sink, her back to them. You should be taking your tea in the parlour, Bessie says, it’s not fitting out here. 

The leaves move slowly at the edges of the verandah, the boughs sink to the ground and rise on the afternoon lifts. I can’t fix it, Regina says. Give it here, says Bessie. Bessie, Stan has his eye on the Dimboola Girl. Bessie says, yes, that’s why he’s come back, he has his eye on the Dimboola girl. The plums on the branches in the orchard heavy with clusters of flies. What about the chinaman Regina, why do you keep asking? I’ve been thinking about that chinaman says Regina. All alone in that gully, all by himself. Cleaver’s Gully, says Bessie, again! can you believe it? Why, I’ll never go there. Never, Bessie says, not after he’s been there, after the second time, the second time someone’s gone and deaded themselves there. 

Another lonely thing, under the stars, with the mist coming over. Riding in the dark, letting the sheep slip by, and the dogs and horses, falling back. A reticent but violent hanging, to be sure. 

It’s a sin says Bessie. He was a Chinese, a pagan, Bess, it makes no difference. You’re a strange duck Regina, a strange duck. The letter from mother is in the kitchen, says Regina. Susan, Bessie calls out, Susan, the plums are spoiling and splitting, and there’s flies all over.

That long stinking voyage, dying and sickening, roiling through the sea. Playing cards and talking and lurching in the dark. And getting out at Robe, and walking across the dry interior, walking 40 days to a slurry of grey mud and quartz and gold. And along the way, in the hacked out forests, long logs burning at their ends, shoved into furnaces. 

The only gauges in the district says Stan. Stan has his eye on the girl; the bench lined with jars, the plums in pails repelling the water. They are barely outlined in the dark kitchen, Stan and the Dimboola girl, Stan and Susan. Thin, quiet. Bessie and Regina walking in together, Bessie stopping to look at Stan and the girl. A chinaman hanged himself in Cleaver’s gully. I heard, says Stan. Cleaver’s again, says Bessie. Cleaver’s again, says Stan, I saw that drover’s ghost in Cleaver’s once, when we were taking the sheep through. I saw him hanging there in the moonlight, cold. Cold? says Bessie. Yes, says Stan. Susan wipes her hands on her apron and turns into a shadow out into the garden.

You don’t want to be courting that Dimboola girl, says Bessie. I’ve seen her walk across the fields when the winds have come up, all sharp and fast and jaggedy. She frightens the horses.

The girl and Stan like ghosts. The light catching the edges of them in the hall, out back, by the kitchen, in the boys’ quarters. Turning away when Regina or Bessie walk past. Then one day, just before the Spring, leaving and coming back in the wagon. Susan is your sister now; she’s with child. You better let mother know, says Bessie, you’d be wanting to write.

Regina’s ankles give way in the pock holes across the paddocks. Here in the gully, in the place where he did it, there’s a delicate lonely haunting. It might have been gentle, the way the breeze weaves through the grasses, but closer, in the aftermath, there are ripples; slow and sticky. Regina’s skirts drag in the sandy dirt. At the edges, the grass moves about as if under pressure. Her locket, with her picture of Matty in it, swinging like a pendulum. All around, like a ring, it’s thick and empty, the dry grass chiming. 

Susan should be showing now, says Bessie, she should be full and round but she’s all dry and shriveled and small. She’s showing, says Regina, but when she walks past the sheds and the fences, she dis­appears; the colour of her is the same weathering grey. Maybe when the rains come, says Regina, things will better up. You watch, says Bessie, you watch what happens when the rains come, and the winds start. You watch, she’ll turn with them, and the child inside her. 

The rust creeps across the trees and rose hedges in the houseyard; the slackening clouds drop their insides. And Regina Bessie Stan and Susan move about the yard, the paddocks, the small darkening chill of the house rooms.

So it’s time, says the midwife, sitting on her verandah, looking up. Yes Mrs McCafferty, says Regina, if you don’t mind. Riding back, the moon rises with the dark. The midwife looks at Regina’s hands on the reins and says, not good, the moon brings the fluids. And not an hour later the storm comes across and the creek bursts, sluicing the road. We need to go back and wait, says the midwife, wait until the waters go back into that damn creek, and the horse’s hooves can sink deep into the mud, every step along the road to yours.

The steam rises off the horses. It’s already come, says Bessie. The dripping reins fall into Regina’s lap. The midwife says, here, give her here, holding out her arms, and the little thing passes from Bessie to the midwife. Bessie barefoot on the dust, arms by her side, looking up at Regina. She tried to kill it, Regina. 

Regina takes Bessie’s hand and Bessie takes it back. The storm came up, says Bessie. The storm came up and she went to the paddock and the white colt kicked her. The white colt kicked her. Just like that. And she had it right there; right there! She lay down in that paddock in the rain and screamed and screamed and when it came she tried to kill the little bloody thing! with its cord still inside her!

She was out closing the gates, Regina, Stan told her to go close the gates.

Bessie’s dress all soaked in blood and fluid. Where is he? says Regina. He’s taken her off, says Bessie, taken her off to the madhouse. Well, says Regina, he left the babe to die. We’ll be needing to find a wet nurse says the midwife. Yes, says Regina. She gave birth right there in the paddock in the rain, says Bessie, with Stan holding the anorak. You birthed her then Bessie. Yes, says Bessie. All by yourself. But that baby’s bound to die says Regina, I’m sorry for you Bessie. 

Stan’s shot the white colt, says Bessie. He’s in a heap in the paddock.

Regina in the halls of the midwife’s house, the doors ajar. A child at the wet nurse’s breast, and another motherless bundle, newly made, waiting turn. Outside on the dusty streets, outside the parlour windows, men are travelling past in and out of the shopfronts and public bars. And the hawkers and the door-knocking market gardeners. And Regina braves the eating-house one day, all eyes on her, pushing tiny pieces of fatty pork around a bowl with a black wooden stick. The only woman there.

You took your time coming back Regina, says Bessie, I’ve been here all alone with him. The child’s alive, says Regina, suckling like a piglet on the wet nurse, she’s a lovely little thing. Stan, Bessie calls out, Stan. Stan in the hall, leaning in the doorway. Stan, Bessie says, the little one’s alive, and suckling like a little piglet.

You’ll be wanting to get that child, Stan, you can take back the wet nurse, says Bessie, to board here. No use in that, says Stan, we will wait till the child’s weaned. 

Bessie and Regina in their nightdresses by the oily lanterns, whales’ soot streaking the walls. Did you hear that? says Bessie. Yes, says Regina, get the gun, Bess. Walking in bare feet across the dark cold paddocks, Bessie with the gun pointed down. It’s only Stan, says Regina, I can see his shape. What is he doing? says Bessie. I don’t know, let’s leave him, let’s go back inside. Bessie walking back with the gun by her side. Bessie, says Regina, I’m marrying a chinaman.

Then Bessie resting the gun butt on her foot. You can’t marry one for the one who killed himself, it’s not natural. That’s not why Bessie, mind. A chinaman, a pagan, Regina. He’s a gentleman, says Regina, with his own house, his own business; he sells things. Is that so, says Bessie. Yes, says Regina, and I will take Stan’s baby and raise her. A baby can’t be raised in a chinaman’s house, says Bessie. My babies will, says Regina. That be so, says Bessie, but that little one I birthed myself and she’s mine. 

Bessie and Regina in the flat paddocks at night; their nightdresses billowed with the thin seeping wind. The grey branches, and the black green night gathering where Stan’s shape is, bent forward and yowling in the dark. And the ground and the massing leaves bully the words out of Bessie’s throat, you’re leaving me for the celestials. Only to be swallowed by the wind and the heavy chatting grasses. And the night sounds of the paddocks, the gully, of out past the road rippling the arch of the creeping winter roses like tiny bells. And the silence of Regina crossing over, wending her way to the tall red rooms, the silks, the coloured offerings at the door, the low postered beds, and the cook laying the table with black chicken and little pots of fat.