Bridie's Fire (24 page)

‘Did you give Eddie my note?' asked Amaranta, her eyes still steely.

‘I couldn't find him, ma'am,' said Bridie, putting the note down on the upturned barrel that served as a bedside table. Amaranta crumpled the paper in her hand.

Bridie couldn't meet her gaze. She gathered up a handful of dirty washing and backed out of the tent. At the edge of the bush, she sat down with the pile of soiled clothing in her arms and sat staring into nothingness, puzzling over what she had witnessed. Eddie and Amaranta were the two most complicated, mystifying people she'd ever met.

In the middle of the night, Bridie woke to a strange and unfamiliar sound. She crawled out of her swag and saw Amaranta's silhouette, long and black, moving against the calico of the big tent. Her hair was loose but she was wearing a full-skirted gown. Bridie guessed it was the red and black lace one that she had repaired just the other day. As she glided back and forth, her shadow moved gracefully across the canvas. And as she danced, Amaranta sang, in a rich and honeyed voice. Bridie could imagine Eddie Bones sitting on the big bed, watching.

When Bridie turned away she saw a row of men at the edge of their camp, staring at Amaranta's shadow, mesmerised by her movements.

33

A troupe of stars

A few days later, in the early morning, Bridie returned from the bush with a supply of fresh water to find two men sitting on the long bench, poking at the embers of the fire and eating the damper that she had prepared for breakfast. One of the men was gigantic, with a thick black beard and a mane of untidy black curls, the other was bald-headed and fat, with a ruddy, clean-shaven face and blue eyes.

‘And who do you think you are to be eating our damper?' she said crossly.

The fat, bald man grinned and stood up and made a bow. ‘Alfred Wobbins, at your service, miss. Here by request, miss. To join the honourable company of thespians, miss,' he said, bowing again.

‘Mr Bones doesn't need any more men to work his claim,' said Bridie, snatching the damper back from the big bearded man at the end of the bench.

‘But, little miss,' said Alfred Wobbins, ‘we're thespians! It's all the talk of the diggings that Mr Bones is keen to gather a troupe and what a very fine idea that is. My friend and I have discovered we're not miners after all. I've been here a month and not found a bleeding thing, so it's the fine old life of the thespian that I hanker for once again.'

Bridie didn't want to admit she wasn't sure what a thespian was, other than a thief like Jacobus, as he was the only other person she'd ever met who talked about them. Nor was she keen to confess that she'd heard nothing of the forming of a ‘troupe', so she simply glared at the man, picked up a small tomahawk and set about splitting wood to make more kindling for the fire.

Eddie looked as surprised as Bridie had been when he emerged from the tent.

‘Freddy Wobbins!' he exclaimed as he stepped out into the bright morning sunshine.

‘Your lovely wife said you'd be very glad to see me. And I'm certainly glad to see you, Edward Bones!' said Wobbins. ‘Someone should take that man Hargraves and string him up for the line he's spun that brought us humble folk in search of gold! Your Amaranta tells me it's a different type of gold you'll be mining from now on.'

Eddie laughed, and ran one hand through his hair. ‘Bridie, fix our guests some tea and then run up to the butcher's and buy a pound of sausages for their breakfast. We have a morning's work of plotting and scheming ahead of us, and our companions will need sustenance!'

Word spread that the camp on the turn of the Ballarat Road was a meeting place for performers of all types. Bridie had never met anyone like the people that began to arrive. The big, black-bearded man turned out to be a bluff Scotsman called Robbie McRobbie, who was nowhere near as fierce as his appearance suggested. Most evenings he would get drunk and recite poetry in Gaelic and sometimes the poems would move him so much that tears would course down his face and drip from the end of his beard. Bridie loved the sound of his voice, the rolling warmth of his words, so close to the language she'd known as a small child.

A week later, an Italian fiddle-player called Marconi joined the camp. Marconi could also juggle knives and catch them in his teeth. He tried to persuade Bridie to be part of his knife-throwing act, but she politely declined.

One morning Eddie came into camp with a slim, curly-headed boy called Thomas Whiteley. Bridie heard his laugh before she saw him. His voice carried through the camp, a warm inviting sound that made her look up from her work as if someone had called her name.

Tom's chestnut hair fell in snarly tangles around his collar and over his eyes. He had to push a thick hank of curls away from his face to see who he was being introduced to. Freddy Wobbins was so incensed by this that he demanded Bridie's sewing scissors, set Tom down on an upturned crate, and immediately began cutting his hair. Bridie thought the stranger might be offended, but Tom smiled as if he was happy to humour them all.

Tom was nearly sixteen years old and had come to the goldfields with a gang of boys hungry for riches, but they'd had no luck panning for gold. Eddie had found him outside the post office playing a tin whistle and dancing to earn a few coins, and easily persuaded him to throw in his lot with the thespians. It didn't take long for everyone to understand why Eddie had invited him to join the troupe. He had a handsome, good-natured face, brilliant blue eyes, and he loved to laugh. Tom even laughed when Marconi threw knives into the ground around his feet as he danced, which seemed a rather dangerous form of amusement. No one could help liking him.

Bridie enjoyed the company of all the new arrivals, with one exception. One afternoon Jacobus came drifting back into camp and sat down on the long bench, making himself at home. Every day from then on he'd be there with Marmalade tucked inside his shirt, playing his concertina, showing Tom his magic tricks or chatting with one of the other men. He became a familiar part of the backcloth of her life, yet he made her uneasy. It wasn't simply that he'd stolen Sugar, nor the fact that Eddie Bones obviously disliked him. Sometimes, when Jacobus looked at her, she felt he knew exactly what she was thinking. It was as if he understood all the lies she'd ever told and every promise she'd broken.

Some nights she dreamed of Gilbert coming into camp and discovering her in this company of thieves and thespians, and she would wake in a cold sweat. And then she'd wish that she could will Brandon into her dreams instead. She knew he'd like everyone in the camp. But she could hardly make a picture of Brandon in her mind any more. It was as if her old life was slipping further and further away, as if it had all happened to someone else.

On a sweltering February afternoon, Eddie called a meeting of all the performers. They sat crammed inside the big tent on upturned crates with the canvas flapping around them as Eddie announced his plan to open a theatre.

‘Now some of you men know that I've made application to Melbourne, but the government says it won't grant us a licence as the diggings is too wild a place. There aren't enough police on the fields as it is and they think we'll be stirring up trouble. But I've seen the magistrate and he's on our side. Where there's theatre, there's civilisation, and he's keen to see the goldfields civilised. If we can get enough signatures on a petition, he'll forward it to the government and we'll have our theatre. So here's the rub, boys, I need you all to scour the fields and secure every man's mark you can. The sooner we get the licence, the sooner we'll be in business.'

The actors set out to every corner of the diggings, explaining the plan and getting signatures on the dusty sheets of paper that Eddie Bones had given each of them. Bridie and Tom trudged from one camp to the next with a pencil and the petition, asking each miner to make his mark to secure support for the theatre. Eddie took the list into every makeshift store in the canvas town and quickly gathered hundreds of signatures.

Bridie was sitting at the entrance of the big tent, darning a pair of Tom Whiteley's socks, when Eddie Bones came into camp, whistling. He had a thick envelope tucked under his arm.

He tweaked Bridie on the cheek and called out to Amaranta. ‘We've got it. We're in business, my songbird,' he said as Amaranta came out of the tent. He put his hands around her slim waist and lifted her into the air.

Amaranta laughed. ‘Ah, Eddie, I knew they wouldn't be able to resist you! You could sell fire to the Devil himself.'

Bridie watched them with bewilderment. That same morning, Amaranta had called him the greatest fool she'd ever known, and their angry words had sent Bridie scurrying from the campsite. She hated hearing them argue, but here it was, not three hours later, and they were like newlyweds again.

‘We're official squatters on the Ballarat Road,' laughed Eddie, unrolling the new licence. ‘Official! Right here, to be precise, at the heart of the goldfields, “the site is to be used as a place of amusement for a term of one year, on condition said place of amusement will only be opened three nights per week; that each night's performance will terminate at ten o'clock; and that no exhibition will be given that would tend to lower the morals and good behaviour of the inhabitants of Ballarat”.'

‘That shouldn't be difficult,' said Freddy Wobbins, slapping Eddie on the back. ‘If you consider the morals of this place, we can't make 'em much lower.'

They set to work the next day. Men appeared from nowhere, tools in hand, to help construct the new theatre. Eddie and Amaranta's tent was dismantled and moved further back on the site, along with all the other small tents that had been erected by the new thespians. Teams of men and horses towed saplings and great trees that had been felled in the nearby bush. Bridie loved the sharp, heady scent of the fresh-cut eucalypts.

Once word had spread that the theatre was to be erected and that Amaranta, the Songbird of the South, would sing in it three times a week, support came from all corners of the diggings. Storekeepers donated old lumber, pieces of sheet iron, tin and zinc, packing cases and rolls of calico and paint. Even the government officials who'd been so reluctant to begin with arrived with bags of nails. Bridie was kept busy making tea and baking damper, and cooking up big pots of stew and soup for all the workers, who would often arrive in the early evening after a full day working their claims. They laboured late into the night, under a big, bright autumn moon. It was a strange scene, the theatre coming into being by moon and star and firelight, on nights crisp with the promise of cold weather.

‘We'll call her the “Star”,' said Eddie Bones, looking up at the huge swirling mass of stars above them. ‘The brightest star in the Southern Hemisphere, that's what our theatre will be, with the most beautiful star within!'

When it was completed, the building looked more like a giant cabin than a conventional theatre. It was made of huge logs, odd pieces of cut timber and canvas. The orchestra pit was just that, a hole dug into the ground, with seats made of logs and planks. The seats for the audience were made of packing cases and boxes, and at the rear, a giant felled gum tree. In the centre of the theatre, suspended from the bark roof, was a big hoop of iron with dozens of sockets for candles. Big Bill, who'd been a blacksmith before he became a goldseeker, had made it, lured to help by Eddie Bones with the promise of a free ticket to the opening night.

‘Our own chandelier,' said Tom, laughing, as he jammed candles into the rough black holes. Bridie saved all the fat she could from her cooking and set it in pots, storing them up for when the theatre was completed and they'd use them to light the stage.

Bridie sewed the stage curtain from every scrap of fabric she could gather. Every morning after she'd finished the chores of feeding the camp, she'd sit on an upturned box in the theatre, stitching stray pieces of fabric that she'd been able to beg, borrow or steal. There were fragments of fine cloth mixed with rough hessian potato sacks. When she finished it, Tom helped her thread it onto the two young saplings that he'd whittled smooth to act as curtain rods.

For Bridie, making the scenery was the best part of the whole season of building.

Everyone in the troupe worked as a team while the other helpers finished the structural work. Robbie McRobbie rolled out the great big sheets of calico that the storekeeper had donated, and then Tom helped nail them to a frame. There were to be two scenes, one set inside a palace and the other set outside. Tom painted the two scenes on opposite sides of the screen. There seemed to be no end of things that he could turn his hand to. Bridie watched him admiringly as he painted a high balcony on one corner of the backdrop.

‘You see, when we have to change the scene, we'll simply turn it about!' said Tom. Bridie laughed. Eddie Bones had already explained the procedure but she liked the way Tom was always so keen to tell her things. Sometimes, she knew he watched her, waiting to think of something clever to say. It made her feel as though everything around her was changing, exactly like the backdrops in a play. One moment, Tom looked like any other boy on the goldfields, with his worn boots and grubby face and hands, but then she'd catch sight of him from a different angle and feel astonished. When he hooked his thumbs into the belt of his trousers, tipped his hat back and laughed, he was the handsomest man she'd ever set eyes upon.

One bright autumn morning she realised that more than anything she wanted Tom to look up from his script and stare straight at her, Bridie O'Connor. She wanted him to gaze at her alone and not stand there acting as if Amaranta was his princess and the only focus of his interest. She looked down, and seeing a bright pinprick of blood on the tip of her finger quickly put it to her lips, tasting the blood and wondering at the strength of her desires.