Band of Gold Page 7

  Mundawuy clasped Kitty’s outstretched hands. ‘Good to see you, too, eh?’

  ‘It was nice of you to bring Leena and the children down, Mundawuy,’ Kitty said.

  ‘Maybe, eh? But safer, too.’ He hoicked up a gob of phlegm and fired it irately at the ground. ‘Bloody police troopers and their bloody pet blackfellah trackers.’

  Kitty nodded, aware of how unsafe it was for an Aborigine to travel alone, especially a woman. ‘Will you be staying?’

  Mundawuy shook his head. ‘Got things to do. Gotta go back in a couple of days.’ He looked past Kitty, his face lighting up as Gideon approached.

  Mundawuy thrust out his hand. ‘G’day, black man!’

  Gideon, grinning from ear to ear, shook it energetically. ‘Good evening, friend Mundawuy.’

  It was a ritual they’d shared since they had first met years ago, when Gideon had gone to the aid of some of Mundawuy’s people in Sydney.

  Rian appeared, full of bonhomie, followed by Pierre, who urged the travellers to come and sit by the fire and allow him to feed them.

  As the last morsels of extremely tasty stew were being mopped up with thick slices of fresh bread, Rian asked Mundawuy if he’d seen any of the New South Wales goldfields.

  Mundawuy nodded and said through a mouthful of bread, ‘Been out to Hargraves and Ophir. And Turon.’

  ‘Did you try your hand?’

  Mundawuy swallowed and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Yeah, had a go, but us blackfellahs not popular on the goldfields, eh?’

  Rian grunted.

  ‘What about you? You rich yet?’ Mundawuy asked.

  ‘Not quite,’ Rian said, ‘but the claim’s showing promising signs. We’re down forty feet now, to the basalt, but we’ve to get through the main drift next, and it’s absolutely saturated with water. Christ knows how deep that’ll go before we get down to the lead.’

  ‘You got it all slabbed up and rendered? Don’t want a cave-in, eh?’

  Rian nodded, his aching back and shoulders testimony to the number of eucalypt slabs they had cut and carted to the claim, then laboriously lowered and secured into place.

  ‘No, we certainly do not,’ Kitty said. She quickly changed the subject. ‘Leena,’ she asked, ‘how are you at baking bread?’

  Rian, Mundawuy, Patrick and the rest of the crew sat in the Eureka Hotel. At half past twelve in the morning liquor had been crossing the bar for quite some time, and no one was sober.

  The Eureka Hotel, on the Melbourne Road between Bakery Hill and the Eureka diggings, was hard to miss. James Bentley, the publican, was an ex-convict who had made money and, it was rumoured, influential friends in Melbourne, and had arrived in Ballarat with what many saw as a somewhat suspicious friendship with the police magistrate and chairman of the licensing bench, John d’Ewes. But, as Patrick pointed out, no one cared about any of that on the nights when he chose not to close his hotel’s doors until one in the morning.

  The hotel itself was two storeys of weatherboard with a shingle roof and costly sash windows, a fancy lamppost outside the front door, a detached dining room, a livery stable and horseyards, and a canvas-covered bowling alley, the whole precinct covering half an acre. Nearby were stores, auction rooms and professional offices. The hotel was always well patronised. Sly-grogging was prohibited on the diggings, although in fact it was rife, but it was better to be fleeced in a hotel than to continually pay the fines demanded by corrupt police, even when you were innocent—and even when it was common knowledge that those in their cups at the Eureka Hotel were frequently robbed, set upon and thrown into the street by Bentley’s henchmen. And this in spite, or perhaps because, of the fact that the goldfields police and the commissioner’s troops also drank there. The Eureka might have had a fancy lamp lighting its entrance, but to many on the diggings it was known as the ‘slaughterhouse’.

  ‘I’ll be buying the next round,’ Mick said with the magnanimity of the pissed, even though he didn’t have a penny to his name.

  Rian opened his purse and peered into it, noting that there was very little left inside. He was fast running out of money, and if they didn’t strike gold soon the whole endeavour could end in embarrassing failure and they would all be forced to return to Melbourne, penniless.

  ‘One more round, lads, then that’s it, I’m afraid.’

  The last round was duly purchased and imbibed and, just as Rian was returning his empty glass to the table, there came a rattling at the front door, now locked.

  No one took any notice. The rattling became more frenzied and eventually a front window shattered and a slurred voice shouted, ‘Can ye no’ let us in? We’re wantin’ a drink!’

  From the vantage point of Rian and the crew, little could be seen of what happened next, but it seemed that Bentley, surrounded by his bullies and accompanied by his wife, crossed the room to the broken window and began to quarrel with someone outside. Insults were traded and threats made, and suddenly a hand gripping some sort of weapon emerged from the crowd, and struck out at a figure just visible beyond the glass.

  Rian decided it was time to leave and they slipped out through a side door. For some minutes they walked through the darkness, skirting around the hotel’s stable, doing their best to avoid a pungent stream of steaming horse piss, then headed down the hill towards the Flat.

  Rian said, ‘Perhaps we should have lent a hand. Poor buggers.’

  ‘No, we should not,’ Hawk countered. ‘It is not our business. We cannot help every lame duck we come across.’

  Rian tsk-tsked. ‘You’re a hard man sometimes, Hawk.’

  ‘No harder than you. But I perhaps have a little more common sense.’

  ‘I think you’ll find you’re the only one favouring that particular point of view.’

  ‘I think you will find I am not.’

  Behind them, Mick expressed his opinion of their drunken bickering by letting out an enormous, rumbling belch.

  Late the following afternoon, Patrick told Rian that the man who’d been set upon the night before—a digger called James Scobie—had died. He’d been kicked mercilessly and suffered a fatal head wound. His inquest had just been held, and James Bentley had sworn that he’d been retired upstairs at the time that Scobie had been attacked.

  ‘The jury found there wasn’t enough evidence against Bentley. It’s a rum business, so it is, Rian,’ Patrick said, packing fresh tobacco into his pipe. ‘A bloody rum business.’

  After much haggling over the price, the deed to the bakery had finally been transferred to Flora and the astronomical £50 fee for the shopkeeper’s licence paid. Until then Kitty and Pierre had been busy planning what they would sell, having decided to operate as a bakery only, not a bakehouse. Kitty favoured plain loaves and buns, because they were the only things she thought she could bake successfully, but Pierre had other ideas.

  ‘Non, chérie, we will make this the best boulangerie this town has ever seen, n’est-ce pas? We can’t be doing with just the breads and the buns! The other bakeries, they do the breads and the buns, but we will make the money. We will sell the baguettes and pains de seigle and brioches.’ His eyes lit up with enthusiasm. ‘Oui! And the macarons and perhaps even the petits choux!’

  Kitty hadn’t eaten brioche in ages. ‘You hardly ever cook anything like that for us. Except for baguettes.’

  Pierre waved his hands theatrically. ‘To waste on sailors? Pfftt! Who would?’

  Kitty was doubtful. ‘You don’t think, well, you don’t think petits choux and what-have-you might be a little exotic for prospectors? Mightn’t they just prefer plain bread?’

  ‘Oui, but they can get plain bread up the street. At Kitty Farrell’s Fine Foods, they can buy something special, a treat for the midday meal. A reward for the hard work. And what about all the wives, hein? And the swells from the town and the greedy officers from the Camp?’

  Pierre had a point there, and Kitty knew it. There were several bakeries on the Flat and in the town itself, but no
ne of them sold anything particularly fancy. And she knew Pierre was an excellent bread and pastry chef. ‘Well, all right, on one condition. Actually, two. The first is that we make croissants instead of petits choux, providing we can find a source of butter that isn’t too outrageously expensive. And eggs. I think finding a source of cream for the petits choux might be more trouble than it’s worth. And the second is that we call the business Pierre’s Bayou Bakery. You’ll be doing most of the cooking, remember.’

  Pierre’s swarthy face went pink with pleasure. ‘It be baking, not cooking. Mais oui, I like that.’

  Then came the day for them to inspect the vacated shop, a wooden building wedged between the Ballarat Times office and a drapery. Towards the rear wall sat an enormous bread oven made of solid brick, its dome peaking several feet below the ceiling, in which an opening had been formed for the chimney. Shelves for ingredients lined both side walls, several wide work tables stood before the oven, and a counter and bread racks bisected the shop, leaving an area at the front for customers. The floorboards throughout were unvarnished, and the store window bore the painted legend: Golden Bakery.

  ‘We’ll have to change that,’ Kitty remarked.

  The shop, unsurprisingly, smelled strongly of bread and yeast, and needed a good clean as smoke stains had accumulated on the walls and ceiling around the oven. Leena lifted the hatch in the counter and they moved through to the business end of the shop.

  Standing before the oven, Kitty admitted sheepishly, ‘I don’t actually know how one of these works, Pierre. Aunt Sarah had a very small one in our house at Paihia, but I have to confess I never used it.’

  Pierre flapped a hand dismissively. ‘It is easy. The fire, he goes inside the oven, oui? Then, when the oven is white hot, we rake the fire out and wait until the oven cools a little bit. Then in go the doughs!’

  Kitty eyed the oven’s wooden door. ‘Won’t the door catch fire?’

  ‘Non, we leave her open until the fire comes out, then we douse her in water.’

  Kitty nodded.

  ‘The hard part is getting up at the fart of the sparrow to prepare the breads and the pastries. Before, even. And we will be needing two of us—she is not a one-person job. Of course, I will have to be one of those persons, as I am the only one with the special recipes. And I will be having to prepare the breakfasts for the others, remember.’

  Kitty felt vaguely guilty that Pierre would have so much extra work, but he’d insisted he didn’t mind. Anything, he had admitted confidentially to Kitty, to avoid going down the shaft: he had a morbid fear of being underground.

  ‘I do not mind rising early,’ Leena offered.

  ‘No, Leena.’ Kitty was adamant. ‘You have the children to tend to. I’ll do it. You can come in later.’

  Leena had already arranged for a local Aboriginal woman—a pleasant, pipe-smoking grandmother named Binda—to mind the children two or three days a week. And when Binda wasn’t available, Amber had volunteered to look after Will and Molly, or to take Leena’s place at the bakery.

  Leena thought for a moment. ‘I will come to the bakery and take the morning meals back to the crew, then I will start work.’

  Kitty beamed. ‘Yes, that will work beautifully, won’t it, Pierre?’

  He nodded, pleased. He hadn’t wanted to leave his precious breads to finish rising on their own, and if Leena was in charge of ferrying the breakfasts, he would be free to get on with his pastries. Because, as everyone surely knew, making pastry properly was a complex process that could only be achieved successfully at the hands of an accomplished fabricant de pâtisserie. Which, of course, he was.

  On the morning that Pierre’s Bayou Bakery opened, no one came into the shop. Eight o’clock came and went, and nine o’clock, then Pierre lost his temper.

  ‘Why are they not coming to buy the beautiful breads, hein? Mon Dieu, what a crowd of Philistines!’

  Kitty was also feeling increasingly uneasy: you would think that hungry prospectors would be falling over themselves to buy good, quality baked goods. ‘Perhaps we should have advertised? Should I have gone next door to the Ballarat Times?’

  ‘The Ballarat Times, to hell with it,’ Pierre said huffily. ‘If they cannot appreciate my magnificent baking, then what is the likelihood they will have the brains enough to read?’

  ‘We could put a sign outside,’ Leena suggested.

  Pierre stopped stamping his foot, and eyed her speculatively. ‘Non, not a sign—we will put the fabricant de pâtisserie outside!’ he declared triumphantly.

  Grabbing a basket, he carefully arranged a selection of his pastries, two baguettes and two pains de seigle in it, and strode out onto the verandah. Kitty and Leena followed him to the doorway, wondering what he was about to do.

  What he did was march up and down the street outside the shop, bellowing about the excellent quality of his goods and accosting everyone he encountered, almost forcing them to sample his baking. At first people gave him a wide berth—and who could blame them, presented with an angry little Cajun with a King Charles goatee and gold teeth—then a few stopped and tentatively sampled his offerings, then a few more, and, finally, they began to come into the bakery.

  By the time Rian wandered in at eleven o’clock, the shop was crowded. Eating four macarons in quick succession, he looked around and remarked to Kitty, ‘You’re very busy. You must be pleased.’

  She was more than pleased—she was ecstatic. Not to mention relieved.

  A week after that, the shop was busy from the minute the door opened until it closed at two in the afternoon, leaving Pierre, Kitty and Leena exhausted, tomato-faced and sweaty from the heat of the huge oven. The work, however, didn’t end then. There was the oven to be cleaned out, the tables and the cooking utensils to be washed, and the bread dough prepared for the next day and left to sit, covered with damp muslin, to rise for tomorrow’s baking. They had added meat pasties and savoury pies to their menu, and these were also proving very popular, but the fillings had to be partially prepared the day before to save time the following morning.

  By the time Kitty returned to Lilac Cottage in the afternoon, she could do little more than collapse on Amber’s daybed and contemplate her aching back and red hands, raw from washing so many bowls and pots. Pierre had assured her repeatedly that it would get easier once they got into a regular routine, but Kitty wondered. The only day they didn’t open was Sunday, when everyone on the diggings observed a day of rest. Or, more likely, a day of drinking, sport or playing cards.

  They were, however, making plenty of money, even after the extremely costly ingredients for the baking had been purchased twice a week. Some customers paid with cash, and some bartered, but many offered gold which had to be measured out on the set of brass scales kept under the shop counter.

  Binda was turning out to be an excellent nanny for Will and Molly, who had taken to her immediately, which left Leena free to work in the shop whenever she chose. And when she didn’t, Amber was always more than happy to step in behind the counter, greeting each customer with a smile and a surprisingly professional line of patter about how delicious Pierre’s pastries were. She was friendly to the wives and children who came in, and could charm even the roughest, hairiest, most pungent-smelling prospector into walking away with a hatful or a handful of treats.

  One man in particular took a fancy to her, a miner named Mr Searle. He was a cheerful-looking fellow of around forty, Kitty guessed, with receding, nondescript hair and a ready smile. Every day he came in and purchased the same thing—a baguette and a macaron—and, leaning on the counter, spent so long talking to Amber about the wife and three daughters he’d left behind in Cornwall where he’d been a tin miner that Kitty had to remind her to serve the other customers. But she looked so sweet in her white apron with her thick, shining hair pulled back beneath a ruffled white cap, and it wasn’t often that anyone left Pierre’s Bayou Bakery in a worse mood than when they had come in.

  One day, though, Lily Pearce
swept into the shop and Amber immediately walked away from the counter and stood sulkily near the oven.

  Kitty, rolling out dough, asked, ‘What are you doing there, sweetheart? You should be at the counter.’

  ‘Not while she’s in here,’ Amber answered tersely, her arms crossed over her chest.

  Kitty followed the direction of Amber’s gaze, and her heart sank.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Farrell!’ Lily called, the note of cheer in her voice flagrantly insincere. She pushed her way to the front of the queue. ‘Working your fingers to the bone, I see!’

  She was wearing another of her flamboyant gowns, her hair done up in a twist from which tumbled the usual cascade of ringlets.

  Oh God, Kitty thought, irrationally irritated. Why does she have to go about looking like a parakeet? Surely even a madam can dress discreetly? Look at Flora.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Pearce,’ she said curtly, wiping her hands on a cloth.

  Pierre, chopping vegetables for the next day’s pasties, eyed Lily Pearce impassively, then split a fresh onion with devastating force.

  ‘I would like some of those little things,’ Lily said, pointing. ‘What are they called?’

  ‘Brioche.’ Kitty wondered why the wretched woman hadn’t addressed Leena, who was standing directly behind the counter.

  ‘Brioche? That’s a French word, isn’t it? How cosmopolitan of you. I’ll take half a dozen, thank you.’ Then Lily suddenly looked at Leena, as though noticing her for the first time. ‘Oh,’ she said loudly. ‘Oh dear.’

  Kitty closed her eyes, waiting for whatever unpleasantry was sure to come.