Fool's Gold (23 page)

‘So that’s what the men have been doing down by the river these last few weeks.’

‘It’ll be much more convenient. Necessary too, if Lamarr decides to elbow me out of the Californian Steam Navigation wharfs. Lucky I bought the old boat when I did, or he might have denied me the entire river.’

‘You have interests in diverse quarters, Colonel.’

‘I never did believe in putting all my eggs in one basket. Never did like anyone telling me what I could or couldn’t do, either.’

The swearing of the various documents took place without a hitch in Brenchley’s new offices, not far from the Wells, Fargo freight depot in the bustling business section of the city. Young Mr Halleck of Halleck, Peachy and Billings was there, inclined to be a little more fulsome in his praise than she was prepared to admit in so recent an acquaintance; more importantly, Brenchley had managed to persuade one of the judges from the Land Commission to attend and witness the oath.

‘That should cinch it for us, having old Judge Kellett there,’ declared Brenchley as they walked down the stairs and out onto the street again. ‘Query the validity of our deposition, you question his standing as a witness.’

While he and the Colonel concluded their arrangements, Alicia slipped away to where Kai was standing with the horses.

‘Oh, whatever are you thinking of, going back to San Francisco again?’ she whispered distractedly. ‘What if …?’

He reached out a gentle hand to pat her cheek. ‘Alicia,’ he chided softly, ‘we cannot live the rest of our lives on “what if?” But I will be very careful. No unnecessary risks. Wherever possible, I will stay on the ship.’

‘But it’s foolish! Why does the Colonel need you?’

‘We shall see,’ was all the answer he would vouchsafe.

She looked at him suspiciously.

‘Yes,’ he anticipated her question. ‘I did know. But I saw no point in you worrying before you had to!’

There was no time for any more before they parted, she and Tamsin to be escorted to the Coopers, and Chen and the Colonel to drive down to the levée, where the
Tresco
, steam up,’ was waiting for them.

*

She slipped swiftly down the broad Sacramento, away from the oak-lined banks around the city until, as the sun set in a splendour of orange and gold, they reached the flatter landscape of the lower river on its approach to the delta lands that led at last into the broad expanse of San Pablo Bay.

She was a trim side-wheeler slightly under the average size. About her there was none of the fanciful trimming and gilding of the riverboats which were still the main transport for passengers between San Francisco and the Californian capital. She could carry passengers, but her main purpose was freight and she had been adapted to that end. There were two tiny cabins and in case of need the deck saloon, but that was all. Everywhere else there were cattle pens, racks and hooks for the transport of everything from livestock to carcasses, timber to grain, food or household goods.

Chen Kai nodded approvingly as Jack Cornish showed him around below decks and elaborated on his plans. So absorbed were they in their discussions that they did not realise how far down the river they had travelled until the buzz of the Delta mosquitoes, the most vicious insects on the Pacific coast, sent them scurrying below.

They made the city by the bay in the early hours, but the dock area was deserted and so they slept on. Shortly after dawn Captain Bateman knocked on the cabin doors and by the time the sun was fully up, the loading had begun.

It was hot, sweaty work, but the Colonel paid well and by noon the hold was almost full. Only the live cargo was still in pens on the wharves, and that would not be loaded until the Tresco was ready to sail.

Cornish and Bateman set off soon afterwards to dine in the city and pick up the latest news, but Chen was adamant in his refusal to join them. The less he was about in San Francisco the better.

He set a line out from the rail into the Bay, the Sundown Sea of the Californian Indians. Where the salty tide met the fresh water from the Sierras there was always abundant fishing; tom cod, rock cod, kingfish or striped bass — he wasn’t too fussy. Dozing in the hot sun, his mind drifted back to Alicia and he wondered idly how she was getting on in Sacramento.

The evening for Alicia turned out to be one of unalloyed misery from start to finish. It wasn’t that the play, was bad: Miss Hayne gave a superb performance with which the author would have been delighted, the supporting cast was excellent and the surroundings, an elegant theatre which she had never before visited, perfect. But from the moment the Lamarrs invited themselves to join Brenchley’s party in the spacious box, all of her host’s polite attentions could not make up for the uncomfortable feelings which they brought with them.

‘You naughty man,’ chided Mrs Lamarr with a pout as she took the seat nearest the front and next to Brenchley as of right. ‘You should have
told
us you were coming this evening to see the divine Miss Hayne, and then we could have made up
such
a party! And to think I nearly told my husband we could not go! How
angry
I should have been if I had decided to go to Mrs Pikeman’s
boring
soirée!’

Alicia felt quite sorry for Brenchley who was looking rather foolish, his handsome mouth fallen open as he desperately searched for something appropriate to say. He need not have worried, however, as Mrs Lamarr did not wait for an answer but rattled on regardless, in an affectedly childish voice, until the curtain rose and a party in the adjoining box, to Miss Cooper’s eternal mortification, hissed at her to ‘Cut the cackle there! We paid to listen to them, not you!’

As the lights went up in the interval, Alicia became aware of being watched. In a box opposite them sat Hester Bryant with her mother and the Crockers.

Alicia smiled, but received in return a look of positive dislike before Hester turned her shoulder pointedly on their box. She looked up to find Brenchley looking across the theatre with a look of such wretchedness on his face that her heart went out to him; she suggested that they should go and pay their respects in the interval.

It had seemed such a good idea, but she knew it for a mistake when the Lamarrs decided to join them.

The sight of Belle Lamarr hanging on Brenchley’s arm and flirting outrageously with him was not calculated to soften Hester’s heart. On closer sight, she was seen to be looking much less than her usual pretty self, for her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen; nobody believed Mrs Bryant’s talk of a slight summer cold.

Attorney Crocker was talking to young Henry Bryant, and Miss Cooper and Mrs Crocker were deep in conversation about school charity foundations when Lamarr came to Alicia’s side with a glass of chilled champagne.

How could his wife ever have preferred him to Colonel Cornish? An unprepossessing man, of no more than middle height, short-necked, with a heavily-jowled face red from drink, he looked more like an enraged bull than ever tonight. But not Beauty and the Beast, like the Leons, she thought, for Señor Leon’s face always lit up when his eyes fell on his beautiful wife, whereas Lamarr’s scowl was deepening until he looked as though he would happily have throttled Belle.

‘Deserted by your escort, my dear?’ he sneered.

‘I was just going to join Miss Cooper and Mrs Crocker,’ she replied coolly.

He pressed the glass into her hand. With reluctance she accepted it.

‘Like the play?’ he demanded abruptly.

‘Miss Hayne is an excellent actress …’

‘Prefer the other one,’ he growled. ‘The buxom wench. Don’t care for these die-away women, all airs and graces.’ He took a noisy swallow of his wine and went on in deceptively sympathetic tones: ‘So you’re working for Cornish, are you? Don’t get too enamoured of the job — or your employer,’ he leered, ‘because neither of ’em’s going to last much longer. And you can tell him I told you so.’

Before she could reply, he slid his arm around her waist and pushed his face closer to hers until she could smell the spirits on his breath. ‘Still, pretty little filly like you — you could find y’self another
housekeeping
job right easily. Might even have a place for you myself.’

The blood was drumming at her temples as panic flooded through her. She was going to scream, she knew she was, and then Miss Cooper was at her side and her voice fell welcomingly on Alicia’s ears.

‘Do come and join us, my dear Mrs Owens. Mrs Crocker is telling us of the excellent plan she has for raising funds for the new school.’ She practically dragged Alicia out of Lamarr’s grasp and over to the other side of the box.

‘Odious man!’ hissed Mrs Crocker. ‘His behaviour is a disgrace! Do steer clear of him, my dear Mrs Owens. That kind of man, when crossed, can act in a most unpleasant manner — especially when his wife is making a fool of him so blatantly.’

Alicia could barely nod, for she was still shaking with a mixture of anger and fear. Across the room, Lamarr and his wife exchanged a few angry words and then he strode abruptly out of the box.

Brenchley had managed to manoeuvre Hester into a quiet corner, but just as he began to speak, Belle Lamarr was at his elbow, laying a fragile hand on his arm.

‘I really think we should return to our box, my dear,’ she breathed softly, looking up at him through her long eyelashes. ‘Otherwise our party will be holding up the curtain.’

Hester flushed vividly, turned sharply on her heel and stormed back to her mother’s side. Belle Lamarr was really very clever, thought Alicia angrily. With just a few words, the spoilt beauty had managed to give the impression that Brenchley had got up the party specifically for her benefit.

The rest of the evening could only drag. She narrowly avoided being seated next to Lamarr at the supper which Brenchley had arranged at the Orleans — Belle Lamarr having left him no choice but to invite them too. Only Letitia’s insistence that she change seats with Alicia — ‘for I must take this opportunity to talk to Mr Lamarr about Mrs Crocker’s fund-raising’ — saved her from more of his unwelcome attentions. She wondered how Belle Lamarr could bear to see her husband behave so, but all
her
attention was focused on Augustus Brenchley!

As she collapsed gratefully into the soft feather bed at Letitia’s, she almost felt it would have been easier to risk San Francisco!

Chapter Seventeen

Chinatown was expanding rapidly, but Chen Kai-Tsu still knew his way around and led Cornish along Upper Sacramento Street to Dupont where gradually the white faces turned more golden and round eyes became almond.

The free and easy attitude to racial mixing of the early goldrush mining community had long since disappeared; now San Francisco had its clearly marked ghettoes of Chinatown and Nigger Alley.

The breeze from the ocean had driven away the heavy mists that so often shrouded the City by the Bay in summer and the warm sun had broken through to sparkle on the waters of the bay, where steamers and sailing ships jostled for wharf space alongside the hulks of vessels abandoned by their crews in the mad rush of the gold years.

They strolled down Dupont Street, past the prosperous shopfronts with their display of exotic and strange delicacies, past the herbalist’s kiosk and the fortune tellers’ booths, the tall Westerner and his companion attracting no little attention, and then cut up a side street and down a gloomy alley, for it was not among the rich that they would find what they were seeking, but in the poorer back alleys, where families found themselves on the border line of poverty because there was just one too many sons to absorb into the family business or trade, and those down on their luck had not yet started on the downward slope of despair and opium that would render them unfit for any worthwhile occupation.

Here were the brothels and the opium dens condemned but still frequented by the sanctimonious Anglos who indulged in daily tirades against the ‘yellow peril’ they had imported; here too skulked those unfortunates who had fallen foul of the law and in accordance with San Francisco’s notorious Pig-Tail Ordinance had their queues cut off an inch from the head, seeking to hide their shame in the shadows until their hair grew back again. Chen shrugged himself deeper into his American jacket and pulled his hat down over his ears.

He stopped in a doorway where a middle-aged Chinese lounged, watching the passers-by, and put a question to him in swift, fluent Cantonese. At first the man just shook his head, but the production of a handful of coins soon evinced the answers he wanted.

They ducked down another turning: here there were no houses, only shacks and lean-tos and, at the far end, shabby canvas tents.

In the first tent they came to there were three young men and an older couple. Three of them were busily making cigars in the corner of the tent, but there was not enough work for the other two. It was a common problem: the middle men were unwilling to let them have more tobacco, for as newcomers with no
tong
or association to vouch for them, they were not yet considered credit worthy.

With no ties to hold them to the City’s Chinese community and little prospect of bettering themselves, they were happy to exchange the cocoon of Chinatown for the wide open spaces of the Sacramento Valley, particularly as there would be work there for the mother.

They gave Chen Kai a number of other directions and the two men moved from shack to lean-to to tent. Mostly Chen Kai would do the talking, but from time to time Jack Cornish would put in a question. They were looking for young men, fit and strong, to start a rice plantation down by the Sacramento, where the annual floods made the land unfit for anything else, but they took none who did not speak reasonable English. Usually the brief interview ended with a slapping of hands and instructions on how to find the Tresco by sundown, but occasionally Chen Kai would murmur that he was honoured to have made their acquaintance and that he would be in touch.

‘What was wrong?’ asked Cornish in surprise outside one shack. ‘They were fit and strong; the shack looked pretty clean and good …’

‘Too good,’ stated Chen Kai drily. ‘They’re not poor — they’re trouble.
Tongs
,’ he enlightened his employer. ‘One of the nastier kinds.’

By the time the sun was dipping down towards the glassy surface of the bay, they had all the workers they needed, plus the woman to help with the laundry and the housework. They had only one more call, to two young men who worked in a bakery and cookhouse nearby and slept in the rat-infested storeroom at the back. They shook hands enthusiastically on the deal, then the older one turned hesitantly to Cornish.

‘You need house help too?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I know very good worker: do you cooking, laundry, anything you want.’

‘We only need men at the moment, Li,’ repeated Chen Kai. ‘Planting rice fields and building houses.’

‘She can work in the fields good as any man,’ pleaded Li. ‘If you can find a job for her — anything — I beg you —’

‘When you’ve settled in and the work’s underway, you can send for your woman,’ Chen Kai reassured him.

‘By then it is too late,’ shrugged Li fatalistically. ‘Mr Kweh has called in her father’s loan and I know they cannot pay it.’

‘A moment!’ commanded Chen Kai and turned away for a hurried consultation with Jack Cornish.

‘He can’t pay this debt just on the promise of future work, surely?’ objected the rancher.

‘Probably not. But Li must have some money. I guess this is the girl he wants to marry.’

‘Then why doesn’t he?’

‘Pride. While the family is still in debt, they won’t consider alliances. And perhaps the father thinks a richer husband might pay the debt for him.’

‘Let’s go see.’

Down an even gloomier and shabbier alley they went, ending up outside a lean-to made of old planking scavenged from one of the old abandoned hulks.

In answer to Li’s call an elderly man came to the front and bowed obsequiously to Cornish and Chen Kai. In answer to Chen’s brief enquiry in Cantonese, he gabbled a few excited sentences, then disappeared into the gloomy depths of the lean-to.

‘Careful, Kai,’ joked the rancher. ‘He may see you as that prosperous husband and make you an offer!’

‘He already has,’ replied Chen Kai with barely concealed disgust. ‘It seems his daught —’

His voice tailed off as Ho’s daughter appeared in the doorway.

She was exquisite: a dainty figure dressed in an elaborately embroidered gown in red and gold which showed up the soft ivory skin, only faintly tinged with colour on the high cheek-bones. Everything about her was in perfect proportion, the wide-set almond eyes, straight nose and delicate rosebud mouth; the clinging folds of her silken robe emphasised the shapeliness of her neat figure.

Chen Kai-Tsu stood a moment with his mouth open in shock, then he pulled himself together and turned angrily to Li.

‘I thought you said she was poor?’ he hissed. ‘She’s dressed like a rich man’s concubine!’

The girl, who after a first swift glance had dropped her eyes modestly to the ground, now raised her head, its elaborate crown of dark hair seeming too heavy for her slender neck.

‘It is kind of you to honour us with your opinion, esteemed sir,’ she began in a soft voice, slightly blurred with ill-suppressed tears, ‘but if Li has brought you here to change my mind, he has wasted his time and yours.’ Her English was clear and barely accented.

‘Pearl! There could be work for you — a new start, up valley, on a farm!’

Li’s voice was eager, boyish, but the girl he had addressed as Pearl just looked at him, her eyes filled with the melancholy of years.

‘Li, it doesn’t change anything. Tomorrow is Steamer Day, when all debts fall due. My honoured father cannot pay in cash, so Mr Kweh demands payment in kind. This morning he sent round this dress for me, so …’ Her voice broke.

‘But your parents —’

‘If they don’t pay, Mr Kweh will turn the
tong
on them, put them out of work, or worse. I owe it to them …’

‘You owe them
nothing
!’ protested Li vehemently. ‘After the way they treated you!’

‘It will not be so bad, Li,’ whispered the girl, struggling to hold back the tears. ‘He will wipe out the debt and he will graciously permit me to send some of … of my … earnings to my parents until my mother is well again.’ Her voice quivered piteously. ‘Since my brothers died … there’s no one but me to look after them.’

‘It’s not right!’

‘It is my duty.’

‘This Mr Kweh,’ asked Kai softly, ‘he is not Kweh of Dupont Street?’

She hid her face in her hands. ‘Yes,’ she whispered brokenly.

Chen Kai drew Li aside. ‘How can you let this happen, Li? This is the girl you were to marry?’

Li laughed mirthlessly. ‘She is the daughter of Ho. He was a prosperous farmer in our country, before the floods came, and the famine, and his two sons died. He would not have a humble cook for a son. If I had the money I would pay the debt, but I thought … if I could get a job for her …’

Chen Kai turned on the girl.

‘How much is the debt?’ he demanded abruptly.

She looked at him with wide, frightened eyes. ‘One hundred dollars,’ she moaned. ‘My father gambled with money he did not have.’

One hundred dollars. The price of a Paris hat for a rich Sacramento lady. The price of dishonour and shame for this family.

Stifling a sob, the girl turned to run back into the gloom, but Chen Kai reached out swiftly and grabbed her firmly by the wrist.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ he exclaimed. ‘You stay here!’ He repeated his command in Cantonese in case she had not understood. ‘Don’t move, do you hear?’

Her eyes widened in surprise, for she had thought him an Anglo, like his companion.

‘Corr-onel Cornish,’ whispered Chen Kai urgently, ‘at home — at Tresco — I have some fifty, sixty dollars with Alicia. I need a hundred now. Will you cover my money and lend me the balance?’

‘It’s not your debt, Chen Kai!’ protested the rancher. ‘And has it occurred to you we may have been set up?’

‘She is not lying,’ replied Kai gravely.

‘Come on, Kai, this is Li’s problem, not yours. We don’t need any more workers. And we’ll miss the tide if we delay much longer.’

‘Please help me in this,’ Kai pleaded. ‘If Alicia were here she’d beg your help too. I wish I had not become involved, but now I am, I can’t just leave her to Kweh’s mercies.’

Cornish sighed heavily. ‘You’re a fool, Chen Kai,’ he warned, pulling out his heavy leather purse. ‘Tell me, Li, her father, can he work? I won’t take on three useless mouths.’

There were barely a thousand Chinese women in the whole of California, most of them prostitutes. He’d started out to look for one decent woman, and looked like being landed with three!

‘Old Ho was very good farmer,’ Li assured him. ‘But they give all the food to Pearl this week, you understand.’

‘To plump her up for Kweh? My God!’ bit out Chen Kai. ‘Sometimes my own people disgust me!’

The girl, who had followed the conversation with a puzzled frown marring the perfection of her pale face, shrank away at this outburst of anger.

‘I’m not angry with you, child,’ he reassured her. ‘Tell me, your mother — what ails her?’

‘She has a bad cough, master,’ answered Li frankly. ‘But only since she worked in the dusty factory. All day and half the night. Trying to pay off Ho’s debt to Kweh.’

‘So long as she’s not consumptive,’ challenged the Colonel. ‘Deceive me in that and I’ll send you all back! Now go fetch Ho.’

Li disappeared into the murky interior of the lean-to and they could hear the murmur of voices within. Cornish counted out the money. ‘Hope you know what you’re about,’ he said grimly. ‘You know where you can find this Kweh?’

‘Everyone knows where Kweh lives,’ ground out Chen Kai. ‘At the Golden Dragon House — the biggest brothel in Dupont Street.’

Cornish looked at Chen Kai, his face rigid with shock.

‘Now you understand, Corr-onel?’ he asked softly.

‘Now I understand.’

*

While the family packed their miserable possessions together, Kai went to Dupont Street, along with Li and a middle man for witness, and paid Ho’s debt.

It was a long and elaborate transaction, for they had to propitiate the middle man with all necessary ritual in order to save Ho’s ‘face’. For the most part he left it to Li, partly because the superficiality of it all was distasteful to him, but more importantly because here, among the minor hierarchy of the Chinese underworld, he wished to avoid any reminders of that other westernised Chinaman whose companion had fallen foul of the Vigilantes.

They hurried down to the wharf, Li and his brother carrying Ho’s wife in a wickerwork chair. Chen Kai slung Pearl’s small bundle over his shoulder and automatically offered her his arm; he had lived so long among Anglos that he had forgotten how little physical contact there was between Chinese, even members of the same family. Pearl, dressed now in a more sober and shabby robe, smiled shyly up at him and took it.

Captain Bateman had loaded the two wagon loads of auction lots which the Colonel had bought, the cattle were all loaded in pens and the ship had steam up by the time the small party reached the quayside.

‘All cargo battened down, Colonel,’ he announced proudly. ‘The coolies are all up on deck and Mrs Santana is waiting for you below.’

‘Very well, Captain,’ declared Cornish. ‘Prepare to cast off.’