Yellow Pearl Read online

  Yellow Pearl

  Eighteen Short Stories from the

  Stringybark Australian History Short Story Awards

  Editor’s Choice Edition

  Edited by

  David Vernon

  Published by Stringybark Publishing

  PO Box 464, Hall, ACT 2618, Australia

  http://www.stringybarkstories.net

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright: This revised collection, David Vernon, 2018

  Copyright: Individual stories, the authors, various.

  These are works of fiction and unless otherwise made clear, those mentioned in these stories are fictional characters and do not relate to anyone living or dead.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Contents

  Introduction — David Vernon

  The Golden Age of Motoring — Tony Duggan

  No Time for Tears — James Kent

  A Secretary’s Lot — Kerry Lown Whalen

  Doug — Peter Donaldson

  Restoration — Chris Curtis

  Sally Peak, Tasmania, 1823 — Graeme Scott

  A Star is Born — Eloise Ford

  One Woman’s War Effort — Mona Finley

  The Colour of Innocence — Lecinda Stringer

  Dung Ly — Karen Lethlean

  Mosquito Coils and Holidays — Grahame Maclean

  Yellow Pearl — Sophie Constable

  A Sensible Girl — Rowena Holloway

  The Lake People — Frances Warren

  Done Right — Donna Fieldhouse

  Tin Barn — Peter Court

  The Clearing in the Forest — Linda Carter

  Water or Speed — Karen Lethlean

  About the Editor

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  — David Vernon

  Raise the term ‘history’ in a conversation in any group and half the participants will glaze over and talk about something else. Why? Is it because they think that history is a collection of dates or stories about musty, dusty kings? Perhaps. Or perhaps they have never come across an anthology like this one — full of good writing and intriguing plots. Knowing that a story is true or based on truth always adds a little more spice to a tale than a straight fiction piece can ever engender.

  Within this collection you will meet real ghosts from our past, and I suspect, even a few fictional ones. Some of these stories are written directly from experience while others transport us back to periods from which there are no contemporary survivors and thus some fictional liberties are taken — but no matter what the nature of the historical story, they have all been chosen because of their literary and historical merit. Each story makes our history come alive.

  Knowing our past is essential to understanding our present and preparing for the future.

  This is the third Editor’s Choice collection of short stories from the Stringybark Short Story Awards. It consists of some of my favourite short stories submitted to the Stringybark Australian History Short Story Award. Its companion volume is Marngrook and other award-winning stories from the Australian History Short Story Award, which was published in late 2011. Once you have finished this little book, please visit www.stringybarkstories.net and see what other tempting literary offerings we have awaiting you.

  David Vernon

  Editor

  “Stringybark”

  June 2012

  The Golden Age of Motoring

  — Tony Duggan

  A large crowd had stopped to stare. Alerted to the event by the astonishing noise that had preceded it, some of them had now even removed their headwear, as if to let their incredulous thoughts expand even further. The silken top hats of the wealthy were raised in slight jealousy; the shabby cloth caps of the workers in head-scratching amusement. Children, too, gawped from behind adult legs whilst their mothers, sheltered from the scorching Australian summer sun behind lace-edged parasols and floor-length dresses, glanced at each other with raised eyebrows.

  Most of these people had never seen a motor car.

  As this one was only the third to arrive in the State it was hardly surprising. But what was a surprise however, to those who lined the wide, dusty Adelaide street as if a royal parade were in motion, was the breathtaking speed at which the vehicle was approaching. Whispers amongst the crowd said that it must be moving at twenty miles per hour, at the very least. The men who knew more: the mechanics, the ex-railwaymen, the factory owners, confirmed to those surrounding them that on an open highway it would no doubt be capable of twice that, of perhaps forty or more.

  And then there were gasps, as the brand new 1904-model Tarrant saloon drew nearer. Its fully enclosed, shining black body was a symphony of motion and modernity; its polished chrome hubcaps reflected its open-mouthed audience. The local horses, unused to this rude, mechanical interruption, shook their heads in fear and jerked their carriages accordingly. Their coachmen were angered, but at this speed it was difficult for them to discern who exactly was even inside the devilish, motorised contraption, leaving them to shake their fists in a kind of generalised annoyance at the metal blur as it thundered past them and headed off into the glare of the noon sunshine. As the sweet smell of wisteria from the nearby church gardens was replaced by the acrid stench of exhaust fumes, the crowd finally began to disperse, talking animatedly as they did so about what they had just witnessed. Their disparity was annulled by it; their astonishment unanimous.

  Inside the car, bouncing up and down slightly on its highly-sprung, red leather back seat was twelve-year-old Cordelia Roberts. Alongside Cordelia was her mother Iris, a doyenne of the local leisured classes and wife of the Honourable Hugh Flinton Roberts, the wool exporter. Now on their way back to their newly-built mansion in the northern part of the town’s fringes, they were laden with a morning’s haul from the finest department stores that this locale had to offer. Both wore the season’s most fashionable hats of maroon felt, which were tied on tightly over their also-matching sleek bobs and secured with hefty ribbons, lest the constant vibrations threw them off and out the windows.

  The only other occupant, and the person responsible for the skilful operating of this newest mode of transport, was Angus McGee, their ageing chauffeur. The Tarrant suited him; the exaggerated curves of his handlebar moustache echoed the elegant curves of the enormous front wheel arches. McGee wore a peaked cap and a black coat with silver buttons: the unofficial uniform of the so-called ‘motorist’. Although, with his contemporaries within a hundred square miles yet to amount to double figures, it could not be said that a common dress code had yet been firmly established. McGee piloted the vehicle with determination and aplomb, as well as all the technical mastery that its basic functions would allow. But with the car’s engineering being more suited to the smooth avenues of New York or Paris he was obliged to concentrate hard as he steered around the deep holes in this much newer road’s pitted surface. As he left the town centre’s boundaries behind, McGee squeezed the rubber bulb of the horn twice in succession, its loud, strangled bleating noise causing a flock of alarmed white cockatoos to take flight into the cloudless blue sky.

  As the squawking birds scattered above, Cordelia spoke, her small voice struggling against the noise of the engine.

  “Mother … ”

  “Yes, my dear?” winced a distracted Iris.

 
; “Mother, did you see how surprised those people looked back there? I hope we didn’t frighten them. I wouldn’t like that at all!”

  Iris relaxed and smiled. Her daughter, despite her relative youth, was a perceptive and thoughtful child. She stroked Cordelia’s velvet-clad arm reassuringly, thinking how twelve was in some ways perhaps the perfect age for a girl to be, for it was an age when the wondrous imagination of childhood became wedded to the more grown-up skills of judgement and social observation.

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine, my dear. It’s just that, well, the motor car is such a new thing around here, isn’t it? And people take a while to get used to new things sometimes.”

  Cordelia nodded, lost in thought for a moment as McGee sounded the horn yet again at a stray pig.

  “Mother,” she continued, her curiosity now stirred, “what was the new thing when you were my age?”

  Iris smiled again. She told her daughter that it had been the railways. Cordelia was amazed, thinking that the railways had simply always been there.

  “And Mother …”

  “Yes, Cordelia?”

  “Mother,” continued the young girl, missing out an entire generation to make the charmingly random connections that twelve-year-olds do, “what was new when Great Grandmother Elizabeth was my age?”

  “Well …” answered Iris, amused by the repeating nature of the enquiry, “I suppose that the newest thing then, my dear, was this town and this country itself. There were no motor cars here then, or railways, or anything much at all. Your great grandmother came over here from England on a very old ship. A ship with sails, that is. Don’t you remember her telling you about it?”

  The car rattled over a particularly large hole. McGee raised his hand as a request for forgiveness as his passengers protectively held on to their precious parcels and hats. The jolt caused Cordelia to remember her great grandmother: a happy, frail old lady with long, silver-grey hair who had passed away only a year earlier.

  “Hmm … yes, I think so, Mother. But why did she come on a ship with sails? How silly of her! That must have been awfully slow. Why did she not come on an ocean liner?”

  Iris could not help laughing out loud.

  “My dear child, ocean liners did not exist back then. And yes, it was slow; it took her almost three months to get here.”

  “Three months! Gosh, mother. She must have been impatient to call her family back home when she arrived, don’t you think?”

  Iris smiled once more at her daughter’s endearing naivety as Cordelia waved at a staring, excited group of grubby farm labourers. They waved back at her as they laughed and pushed each other and shook their heads.

  “She couldn’t telephone anyone, Cordelia; telephones didn’t exist. Your great grandmother wrote lots of long letters to her family instead.”

  Cordelia, finally grasping some idea of a life before motor cars, telephones, and even railways was silent for a while, mulling over the consequences.

  “But, Mother, that must have been difficult, mustn’t it? She must have been very lonely.” she finally said, a look of slight sadness on her face. But it was a melancholia that did not last long, for the stiff breeze from her partly opened window blew the feelings of gloom away almost as quickly as they had appeared. “Things are much easier and better now, aren’t they, Mother?”

  A woman usually too busy for reminiscences, Iris found herself also deep in thought for a few moments, wondering about her grandmother Elizabeth too; about how she must have indeed felt as she pitched up in a harsh and desolate country with nothing but hopes and dreams. Meanwhile, Cordelia, her childlike imagination now gone wild, was wondering what might happen in the future; what things might be new for her own daughters and granddaughters to come. The two of them slid into an easy silence

  Up front, Duncan McGee’s mind was far from easy. He had overheard the conversation behind him, but was in two minds about whether ‘things’ were actually better at all. He had spent the majority of his long life thus far as a coachman. As such, he already missed the gentle, pleasant interaction with his passengers; the soft clicking of hooves. These days, each time he looked into the startled faces of pedestrians upon barging them unceremoniously out of the way, he was struck by the same uncanny feeling: the feeling that soon, everything would change. The town’s bars were already full of former Cobb & Co. coachmen like him, spending their last few shillings on Coopers and Porters, ales as cloudy as their own hopeless futures. This was what the railways had done. And now he was worried that this car would be joined by scores more until the horses with their buggies and sulkies had all gone too; each and every town reduced to a choking mass of filthy petroleum haze. Quiet conversation as one strolled the streets would become literally impossible; civility itself sacrificed to modernity and brutality.

  On top of this, the noise of so-called progress even followed him indoors at the end of each long working day. The telephone was the supposed miracle about which little Cordelia had seemed so matter-of-fact. But Duncan disliked the things intensely. His wife having insisted upon having one, he now found its constant jangling an interruption to his life rather than a worthwhile addition to it. As a man who enjoyed his peace and quiet he liked to speak to people when he wanted to rather than when they decided that it was the right moment. And although he would not admit it, for he did not wish to be seen as a sentimental old fool, he also secretly missed the handwritten letter: the descriptive, almost poetic dispatches, written in their spidery, faltering way, that his family back in Scotland had dutifully sent to him each month. Since the introduction of the telegraph, his family seemed to prefer a few terse words in a telegram rather than the chatty expositions of old. The cold efficiency of technology had taken over.

  Duncan McGee, of course, kept all of these sad thoughts to himself. Yet he could not help but sigh heavily as his beeping horn sent yet another unsuspecting ambler running for safety. Via his mirror, Duncan watched regretfully as the old man covered both ears with his calloused palms and squinted with unbelieving eyes until he saw the old man grow smaller and smaller in the mirror, eventually watching him disappear from view in a cloud of fine reddish-brown dust.

  Tony Duggan is an Englishman living in Adelaide. Since being brought back to Australia from London as a holiday souvenir by his Australian wife Megan five years ago, Tony has become fascinated by the historical connections between their two countries. He has recently completed a novel set in both 1860s England and contemporary Melbourne, which tells the story of two women: one an early free settler and the other her distant relation.

  No Time for Tears

  — James Kent

  She knelt by the new graves, head bowed, shoulders hunched. Her hands were clenched, but her cheeks were dry — there were no tears. On a blanket nearby a child slept.

  Her family was slipping away from her. Two dying of the typhoid that swept the Riverland but she hadn’t known of their passing. They died and were buried while she lay fevered by the same dreadful disease. Her recovery brought with it the anguish of knowing that she hadn’t been with her babies when they needed her most. Then two-year-old Margaret, named after her mother, became ill.

  Then there was a doctor in the district, a dour man. He came reluctantly and stayed only minutes. “Diphtheria,” he announced, “you can smell it … Paint her throat, with kerosene,” he instructed as he hurried from the cottage, as if he feared for his own health. Two days later the girl was dead.

  Three tiny crosses left behind on the lonely Riverland hillside within reach of the river’s foulness. And now another river and two more graves — those of her first born and her husband, Tom.

  They were almost finished with the river when it claimed them. The raging wall of water caught the boy and the man midstream. A tumult of dirty water and debris swept them from sight and the boy’s final abrupt cry would stay with her forever.

  A party of troopers hunting after a bushranger came to her aid, locating the bodies of her loved ones and help
ing her to bury them. They rode on then, anxious to hunt down their elusive quarry.

  She watched them ride away, nursing her daughter close. Rosa, all she had left now, the four-year-old girl with big brown wondering eyes and perpetual smile and laughter that was like music.

  She looked at the sleeping child, saddened. The laughter was all that the child had, she had never spoken — she appeared unable to speak. Perhaps Rosa, too, was not meant to remain in this world, she thought bitterly, and stared at the silent, almost mocking graves. Dear God, what have I done to deserve this hell?

  She camped on the riverbank, keeping the fire burning through the night, knowing that she wouldn’t sleep. She sat by it, cradling the sleeping child in her lap.

  What could she do now? Return to the Riverland? She had no family and neither had Tom. No matter what decision she made she knew that the future would be one of adversity for a woman alone with a mute child; worse for the child, for people in their ignorance feared and mocked her.

  The whistling startled her.

  It was a tuneless sound from the riverbank. Human, she decided fearfully, cradling the child closer.

  “Ma’am, don’t be alarmed —” the quiet reassuring voice reached her, followed by a horse and rider merging out of the night. “Name’s Ryan, Michael Ryan, though most folks call me Mick.” He dismounted and led the horse into the firelight. “Know of your loss, lass,” he said gently, tethering the horse to the wagon. “I’m sorry.” He appeared lost for words.

  He was a young man, tall though slightly stooped. His features were hard to discern in the shadows cast by the fire but there was a faint familiarity about him that eased her fears. Perhaps it was the distant lilt of Irish in his voice from an ancestry shared.