Fool's Gold (24 page)

*

The sun through the portholes woke the Colonel early the next morning and he groaned as he straightened up from his improvised bed of two chairs in the deck saloon. The two cabins had been allocated to Mrs Santana and the two older Chinese women.

On the other side of the small table, Chen Kai, unusually, still slept on. The previous night, Kai had taken up his bedroll to join the new hands out on the deck under the mosquito awning, but Cornish had stopped him. He needed Chen Kai to oversee the work in the village and the clearing of the river margins where the new rice fields would be set out and it was vital that his status was made clear from the start. ‘Face’ was so important.

The rancher was already up on the bridge when Mrs Santana, a buxom lady in her fifties, with liquid brown eyes and jet black hair drawn back from her face in a knot, bustled into the saloon with a coffee pot and one cup. Chen Kai looked up from clearing away and stowing the bedding and inclined his head politely. She clicked her tongue in irritation and pushed past to start laying the table.

‘Good morning, Mrs Santana,’ said the Colonel from the doorway. ‘I trust you slept well?’

Her face was wreathed in smiles as she nodded. ‘But please, you call me Angelina, huh?’

‘Angelina.’ He returned her smile. ‘Breakfast smells great.’ He cast a swift eye over the table. ‘We’ll be two to eat in here. You’ve already met my deputy, Chen Kai?’

She opened her mouth to say something scathing, then thought better of it. She took a deep breath and said: ‘Deputy, huh?’

The Colonel nodded as he took his seat and gestured to Chen Kai to do likewise.

‘Looks like one of the hands to me,’ she sniffed. ‘Still, you the boss. I’ll bring another cup.’ She turned back in the doorway and looked scathingly at Chen Kai. ‘That Chinee girl you was making cow’s eyes at last night — she slep’ on the floor of my cabin. Don’t think it right she should stay out on the deck with all them men.’

Chen Kai thanked her gravely.

‘Someone got to look after her,’ she shrugged. ‘Brute of a father, fool of a mother.’

‘Perceptive woman,’ commented Cornish drily, ‘considering they only converse in Chinese!’

When the last of the dishes had been cleared away and the door to the galley was closed, Cornish looked up to find Chen Kai regarding him with a troubled expression.

‘Corr-onel Jack … what you said to her about … being your deputy.’

‘Yes?’

‘Corr-onel … you do me too much honour,’ he declared, stumbling over his words — a rare occurrence for Chen Kai, usually so fluent of expression.

‘I see your ability and I want to harness it to Tresco. Neither Kerhouan nor I can do aught but struggle with the books, and we know nothing about rice! I want you to stay with Tresco, hitch your fortunes to ours … But there is a condition,’ he went on with a grin. ‘You call me Jack. I can’t abide to hear you mangling the language every day with this “Corr-onel” nonsense!’

Chen Kai had to chuckle at that, but the laugh soon died. ‘Corr-onel —
Jack
— I thank you …’

‘But?’

‘But my first duty must always be to Alicia and Tamsin.’

‘Then you must persuade her what folly it would be to leave Tresco!’ Cornish replied harshly.

‘One of the reasons we have never quarrelled in all the years we have travelled and worked together is that neither of us tells the other what to do. If I felt I could not stay at Tresco, Alicia would decide we had to move on. If she cannot settle, the same will happen with me.’

‘Then we will have to make sure she never feels that way,’ growled Cornish.

Later on, standing with Chen Kai by the rail, looking down at the girl settling her mother in a chair in the warm sunshine, running around after her cantankerous father, Cornish asked abruptly: ‘Would she really have gone to the brothel for his debts?’

‘She sees it as her duty. It sickens me.’

‘I’m sure Kweh would rather have had her than the money; she’d have been quite an attraction. Not my taste, though. Wonder where she picked up such good English? Old man Ho speaks very little.’

‘From Li perhaps?’ scowled Chen Kai.

Cornish’s mind had moved on. ‘Hope Kerhouan has the jetty finished,’ he said laconically. ‘Or I don’t know how we’ll ever get this load through!’

*

A few hands were still out riding the boundaries, but Pedro had left Manuel and Julia in charge of the sheep and come down to work with Lachie and young Calum and the rest of the hands’ dragging the hardwood from up in the hills to finish the strong jetty that jutted out over the Sacramento’s muddy brown waters and the tough cordwood road that meandered across the marshy river margins to connect up with the track to the ranch house.

In the hot steamy kitchen Alicia paused to brush her hair back out of her eyes. The air in the kitchen was hot and heavy, redolent of the smell of fresh bread. She longed to step outside and fill her lungs with sweet fresh air but there was no time.

Luis, fidgeting at her side, was supposed to be helping her, but he longed to be down at the river with his brother and the men.

‘All right, Luis, off you go,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Tell Kerhouan chow is almost ready.’

She looked at the heap of loaves that had taken her most of the morning to make and knew a moment’s content at her achievement, but most of them would be gone today and tomorrow it would be all to do again.

Wearily she went into the living hall and crossed to the window to look down the valley. She saw Luis — and there, trotting to keep up with him, were Josefa and Jorge! Before she could tell whether Tamsin was with them, they had vanished around the bend, towards the jetty and out of her sight. Even as she squinted into the sun, trying to catch sight of them again, she heard a piercing whistle and realised that the steamer had arrived.

She threw off her apron in agitation and hurried into the courtyard. But Tamsin was not there, nor was she in their rooms.

‘Damnation!’ she swore out loud. The last thing she wanted was for the children to get under the Colonel’s feet as soon as he arrived back. Josefa and Jorge were old enough to keep out of the way — that was all they had done all their lives! — but Tamsin …

She contemplated running down after them, but she knew she would be too late. Better to be here when he arrived and be seen to be earning her keep; better to be sure there was a good meal and plenty of cool drinks ready.

She heard the wagons rattling down the cordwood road to the jetty and the sight of the horses brought another swift frown to her eyes. Tamsin often went to the stables to give the horses apples or sugar lumps. She had no fear, even of the great plough horses or Cornish’s huge stallion. Alicia had told her time and time again not to go without her or Kai, but this time, with everybody busy elsewhere, might she have gone in alone?

She hurried out, through the kitchen garden and across the stable yard. As she entered the stables she heard a noise in the far corner and hurried towards it, her eyes straining to make out the shapes in the shadows after the dazzle of the sunlight outside.

‘Tamsin!’ she called softly. ‘Tamsin! Where are you?’

She didn’t see the man until he was right in front of her.

‘The kid ain’t here,’ he told her. ‘Saw her down at the jetty with the foreman.’

‘With Kerhouan? Then I can stop worrying!’ She laughed nervously, not so much for her unease over Tamsin, but because she had recognised the figure in the shadows as Jos Evans. He had been around the stablest good deal over the last few days, spending time hanging around the kitchen door; too much time for Alicia’s peace of mind. He had not been insolent or forward but there had been a warmth in his eyes when he looked at her that she had found infinitely more disturbing.

‘Well … better get back to the kitchen,’ she said airily. ‘They’ll be hungry when they get all those wagons back up here …’ Her voice trailed off uncertainly as she realised that he had placed himself deliberately between her and the door to the yard. Over to her left the horses went on eating, the sound of their jaws on the grass and the buzz of the insects in the shafts of dust-laden sunlight that slanted down from the overhead vents unnaturally loud as she strove to still the panic rising in her breast.

‘No need to rush,’ he reassured her with a lop-sided grin, showing teeth that were strong and white and even, not yellow and tobacco-stained like — like — She shook her head to clear it. She would not panic, she told herself. As Kai had said, she had coped before in the
cantina
. This was
not him
, this was just another lonely ranch-hand, too long away from his weekend spree, trying to make a little small talk with a rare female. ‘Always rushin’ about, ain’t you?’

‘The — the stew — on the fire,’ she muttered, forcing a smile. ‘The wagons …’

‘Plenty time till the wagons git here,’ he said deliberately. ‘I been waitin’ a long time to speak to you. Just, like, the two of us. Must get a mite lonely, just you and the kid. Thought mebbe you and me could give each other a bit o’company of an evenin’?’

She was transfixed to the spot, like a rabbit mesmerised by a stoat, desperately searching for the words, the clever, evasive words, that would get her past him and back to the sanctuary of the kitchen, but they would not come. Her heart was in her mouth, choking her, and she could only shake her head, eyes wide in fear, trying, frantically trying to beat back the scream that was welling up within her.

‘No!’

‘Now ain’t that just a mite unfriendly?’

Her brain told her to run, but her feet would not move from the spot. He was reaching out for her. Why had she thought of him as a little man? He was strong, far too strong, and now he was pinning her close and she could not free herself without a fight — and she knew she could not do it.

‘No!’ she cried.

‘Ain’t bin that long since you had a man, has it?’ he mocked, and then his face was lowering to hers and suddenly it was Evans and Fisher, blurring into one another.

‘No!’ she said with a sob in her voice. ‘Please — no!’

‘The lady said no, Evans!’ came a deep voice from the shadows and suddenly Evans was no longer there, his weight no longer pressing on her; she fell, sobbing, in the hay.

There was a snarl, some vicious swearing, and then the thud of bone on bone. She looked up in terror to see Evans measure his length on the hard floor of the stable; after a moment he rose to his feet, shaking his head, and fled.

Cornish stood a moment longer, fists clenched, his face drawn and angry. He turned back to Alicia, but she was still lying in the hay, her eyes blind.

He squatted down beside her, a puzzled frown on his face.

‘It’s all over now. He’s gone and he won’t be back. He’ll not bother you again, m’dear, I swear it!’

He’d make sure Evans didn’t bother her again, if he had to kill him first. He wished he could be as sure of himself. At the moment it was taking every ounce of self-control he possessed not to push her back down in the hay and take over where Evans had left off!

She began to gabble incoherently and he could barely make out what she was saying.

He caught her wrists and drew her up. ‘Listen to me!’ he commanded sternly. ‘Tamsin is quite safe, Evans has gone, and the dinner can go hang! Calm yourself down! Chen Kai sees you in this state, we’ll have him sticking a knife in Evans and that’ll be the end of them both.’

‘I thought it was
him
. I thought
he’d
come back again —’

‘What?’

She drew in her breath in a shuddering gasp and raised tear-drenched eyes to him. With a light hand he brushed her hair out of her eyes and stroked her cheek as if gentling a nervous colt.

‘Come on, Alicia. I’ve told you — he won’t dare trouble you again. It’s not the end of the world. Bound to happen some time, so many men who don’t see a woman from one month to the next.’

She was silent still, her face frozen, her eyes unnaturally blank.

‘You know, if you want to be safe from the likes of Evans, there’s nothing simpler, Alicia. Marry me.’

She looked down at the strong hands gripping her wrists: hands that were long and slender, a musician’s hands, she reminded herself, but hands that were rough too with the heavy manual work of the ranch.

‘No.’ He had to bend his head to hear her words. ‘No. You think I’m a good bet for Tresco, but I’m not.’ She swallowed painfully and forced herself to go on. ‘There are things about me that would … you don’t really know me at all.’

He drew her up from the hay but still held onto her wrists.

‘Then tell me!’

‘I — can’t.’

‘I know something — or someone — has frightened you very badly.’

‘It’s not just that! Oh God!’ She began to cry again, helplessly. ‘If that were all! You would turn from me in horror if you knew!’

‘Really have to be something bad!’ he said with a laugh. But then the laugh died as he remembered with painful clarity her reaction when he had spoken of prostitutes and camp followers. His mind once set on this track, other memories came crowding in; Alicia drinking whiskey in the Orleans, a casual remark she had made that she did not know the proper version of many of the songs sung at Letitia’s.