Skylark (15 page)

S
CENE
:
The goldfields of Fox's Camp — also known as Arrowtown — 1862

Winter in the goldfields

What blinded me? Why was I so drawn to him? Bully Hayes was not a handsome man; not particularly tall; his eyes were not deep set and flashing; his voice neither rich nor well modulated. Rather, he was a coarse man, thick set, with pouting, fleshy lips. He rolled a little from side to side as he walked, like many seamen, and when roused his language was foul. But then he might lay his hand on my arm and the heat of the man would blaze through me like a wildfire. He had strangely small and delicate hands, for a man of his stocky build. When his dark eyes bored into mine I would be incapable of rational thought. His huge roaring laughter! I can hear it now, that infectious guffaw. That volcano of a man opened up new worlds which I entered, at first, gladly.

There were times when I loved him truly. His charm was wild and dangerous, attractive to women like me: women who do not fit easily into polite society. Absolutely nothing gave him fear. The confidence of that man! He would commit outrageous, foolish deeds and get away unpunished. More than once he had stolen whole ships and sailed them over the horizon, far into the Pacific Ocean. It was laughable, really. He thought he could be an entrepreneur without any understanding of business. Yet he persuaded George Buckingham that he, Bully Hayes — pirate, blackguard and sea captain — was the ideal person to manage the Buckingham Family on a tour of the goldfields!

We were all foolish, but then he had caught us — hooked and reeled us in — at a difficult and broken time. George had all
the musical talent in the world but I believe he needed a father figure, someone with assurance and style, to manage the troupe as his father had. Captain William Hayes, charming, confident, seemingly affluent (he most definitely was not, the sponger!) persuaded George and his brothers that he was that man.

Our voyage over from Australia is best forgotten. Bully Hayes assured us that the
Cincinnati
was seaworthy: an outright lie. We were daily in fear of drowning as the poor sailors manned pumps and the ship wallowed and waddled its way across the Tasman Sea. Then Dunedin was a disappointment. Shiploads of diggers arrived daily, the town buzzed with the excitement of the great finds inland, but somehow the settlers of Dunedin remained stern and disapproving of our brand of entertainment. During the last few years in Australia, we — the Buckingham Family members — had learned what pleased an audience. We could sing a great range of songs, bawdy or comic, pitiful or political. We could mount a good farce or melodrama. But nothing seemed to please the good citizens of the south. We were too coarse, too common, it seemed, for their narrow, religious ways.

‘They're too busy making money to spend some on us,' said George with a rueful shake of his head as we counted the sparse takings from yet another thin crowd.

Bully Hayes was impatient to move on. Looking back, I believe the law might have been after him. He had sailed from Sydney harbour at night in unfavourable weather. Had he yet again stolen a vessel and left in a hurry when the theft was discovered?

‘We need to be closer to the action!' he boomed, slamming his fist on the table and setting George's neat piles of coins dancing. ‘All these hopeful fools are heading for the Dunstan. Come evening, they'll have naught to do in those wild places but drink our liquor and cheer at our antics.'

He called our fine songs and plays ‘antics'. That was another blot on his character: he cared very little for the quality of our entertainment. To him our skills were simply tools for making money. I was part of the attraction, too, of course. His Rosa. His. No doubt of that. Part of what dragged that seaman inland.

[Archivist's Note: A point of verification here: the Buckinghams' star performer at the goldfields was in fact billed as Rosa, not Rosetta, which seems to substantiate Lily's claim to have been the famous singer during this period. E. de M.]

So we packed our costumes and lamps and sheets of music. Rolled up our painted backdrops. We ordered fresh hogsheads of brandy and quarter-hogsheads of ale and porter. Somehow Bully Hayes managed to pile our cart with twice the liquor we paid for.

‘A speedy exit is called for,' he said, giving me a wink, and the horse a quick slash of the whip.

From Dunedin we trailed along, following the crowds, to the Dunstan, where we performed for a month with moderate success. Then on we travelled as gold was discovered further inland. The long journey took us up to Lake Wakatip [
sic
] and across the lake by steamer. Then into the cold mountains, until we found the stinking, crowded, rowdy Fox's Camp on the Arrow River. My heart lurched at the scene. Memories of Australia and my poor dead parents haunted me. I could scarcely sing for the agony of those bleak thoughts. Maman and Papa.

In fact, the camp was very different from the Victoria goldfields. Here dark bush grew down to the river and high mountains crowded out the sun. Open river flats were few. Diggers tramped up and down the river and into the stony gullies and ravines, staking claims in the most unlikely of valleys. But the gold was there all right. Plenty of men made their fortunes on the Arrow — and lost them in our hotel.

‘They search all day for their precious gold and then we relieve them of it by night.' Bully slapped his fat thigh and roared with laughter. He thought it a fine joke, and so did we at first.

We built our hotel — if you could call it that — by the river. George named it the Provincial. It was the roughest place I ever sang in: raw planks still bleeding sap for walls, and a mixture of shingle and iron for roof. No floor, simply tramped dirt, which turned to mud each morning when the younger boys sluiced away the night's vomit and urine and spilt ale.

At the back of the bar was the open room where we performed.
No such refinement as seats or boxes. The audience stood, shoulder to shoulder, or propped drunkenly against the walls. Conrad Buckingham roused them with stirring trumpet solos, then George reduced them to homesick tears with his songs and fine, keening flute. Now and then Bully would drag out a scurrilous sea shanty. But I was the star. ‘Rosa! Rosa!' they would shout, and I would give them ‘Annie Laurie' or ‘Mountains of Morne' at the beginning of the evening, moving to something more provocative as the mood of the crowd demanded.

Oh they were a rowdy lot, those diggers! It took a mighty skill (and a strong voice) to rise above their shouts and taunts. No better training, I've often said since to my children, than to sing night after night to a crowd of drunken diggers and to reduce them to tears or laughter or both. That roil of rough humanity would join me in a chorus, their swelling sound a deep, united longing for the comforts of home and womenfolk and softer, gentler times. I would smile and blow kisses, and sing again and again.

‘Show a bit o' ankle, Rosa!' was their cry, and show I did, where's the harm? Often those men would fall asleep on the floor and we would have to roll them out the door in the morning. This was not the refinement of Mrs W.H. Foley, her high theatrical Shakespeares and the like, but we comforted many sad, lonely souls on the Arrow. On a good evening I enjoyed every mad, rollicking minute of those entertainments.

And made good money, too.

Too much money, in the opinion of Captain William Hayes. A month or two into our season my life began a downward spiral that would end in disaster. First Bully began to argue with George about his commission. The Buckinghams were making too much profit and he, Bully, who managed us, should have a greater cut. George was no fool, but not a strong man like his father. He was musician first and entrepreneur second. I don't think he ever really understood Bully. Who did? George wanted to be friends with everyone and was hurt, rather than angry, when Bully laid into him. Conrad was the one to stand up to him.

‘We are the name. The Buckingham Family is the drawcard.
We deserve the greater cut,' he said firmly.

Bully drew his brows together and turned his attentions to me. ‘What do you think, Rosa? Are your brothers treating me fair?' He twirled a coil of my hair around his finger and then fiercely squeezed my earlobe — a little trick which always aroused my desire.

‘The boys are right,' I protested stoutly, aware all the same that my eyes were flashing a different message. ‘We are the entertainers.'

He pinched again and I couldn't hold back a little gasp of pain, mixed with excitement.

Later that evening, as I waited behind the scenery for my entrance, I became aware of him standing close behind me. The alcohol on his breath was overpowering but his hands were gentle.

‘Rosa, Rosa,' he whispered, one arm circling under my breast, the other pulling me against him. ‘We are made for each other. Two bright fires ready to consume the world!'

I could feel his urgency. Oh, he knew so well how to arouse me! In that sunless and frigid valley his desire was like a blazing fire to warm my nights. It was all I could do to push him away when my cue to enter came. At the end of the evening's entertainment, he drew me into his little bedroom and, shame upon me, I went willingly, my feet skipping a little dance, my cheeks all in a flush. Only later did I see his flattery and loving talk as evil, cold-blooded manipulation. He would nuzzle my neck in the most delicious manner, sending shivers right down to my toes; would murmur sweet, silly endearments which sounded like the truth to my gullible ears; would walk arm in arm down the lane now called Buckingham, proud, he said, to be in the company of such a beauty.

‘Where else on God's good earth would I find such a lady? You will make me a fine wife, Rosa Buckingham.' And so on and so forth. He believed I had Buckingham blood. The boys were kind enough to keep the secret, or no doubt Bully would have recommended a lower cut of the profits for me.

Well, for a month I loved him fiercely. And in short order I fell pregnant, more fool me.

I thought Bully Hayes would be as dismayed as I was at this
turn of events. A lady performer will do anything in her power to stay out of the family way, but Bully's charms had turned my head and I thought nothing of what might follow our steamy nights. Bully, on the other hand, knew full well what he was about.

‘Aha!' he cried, feigning delight. ‘Well, my little sweet
songbird
, I must do the right thing and wed you.'

Which he did, and none too soon, as I was already showing. Little did I know, that wretch had a wife and daughters already. Later, when our life together turned to black disaster, he would boast of the fact: how he tricked us all — and the parson too!

What a prize idiot I was. I believe that the rough, masculine life on the goldfields crippled my natural good sense. Arrowtown, as it began to be called, was a place to undermine any person's feeling for a gentle, cultured life. Civilisation seemed a thousand miles away. As winter set in, the cold bit into your very soul. The sun would not struggle over the mountains and into our chill valley until after midday. No sooner seen than set. Five days out of seven, no sun at all. The ice in the cart ruts stayed hard as glass day after day. Then turned to clagging mud, which was worse. The fingers of those poor diggers were fiery with chilblains; no doubt their toes were worse inside their soggy boots. And yet they toiled on, panning and cradling, heads peering low to catch a glimpse of the colour. The sand of the Arrow must have been rich to keep them at it. At least we had a solid roof over our heads and a fire at night. I would not have lived in a tent during that winter of '63 for all the gold nuggets in the district. (My own two nuggets, legacy from my parents, were sewn into the lining of my favourite bodice, which never left my sight. Not one soul knew of them, which was a great blessing, considering the way events turned out.)

No sooner was I the happy, newlywed Mrs Hayes, wife of Captain Hayes, than Bully's plan was revealed. He paid a couple of desperate diggers a few pennies to erect sod walls and a canvas roof directly opposite the Buckinghams' Provincial. Directly opposite! The man had no scruples at all. This sorry excuse for a tavern he grandly called the Prince of Wales.

‘You will be the star attraction, my dear,' he said, giving me a
smacking kiss. ‘We will be the toast of the town. I will undercut the liquor prices of those greedy brothers of yours. We will make our fortune and slip away before my son is born.'

I was well and truly trapped. To do him justice — which even now I am reluctant to grant — I don't think he realised how deeply mired I was. I simply had nowhere else to go. The Buckinghams would have no use for a mother and child in their constantly travelling troupe, especially one to whom they bore no blood relationship. Jack was now happily married to the real Rosetta Buckingham, or so I thought. Mrs Hayes was the new role I was forced to play.

George was furious. ‘How could you repay us in this cowardly fashion?' he shouted. ‘We have given you top billing as if you were a true sister, have paid you as family. You are a traitor, Rosa!' The poor man was close to tears. I never saw him so broken. No one likes to be made a fool of. Bully had used him and then cast him off at the first opportunity.