Beneath the Southern Cross (30 page)

When they'd gone, Kathleen confronted her brother. ‘Why did you have to be so rude? He only came to thank us.'

‘He came because he fancies you, just like all the others.'

There was contempt in his voice and Kathleen felt angry. What right did he have to scorn her? But she tried to answer reasonably. ‘What's happened to you, Dan? We used to be good friends. Why have you changed? What have I done?'

He didn't answer but lifted his feet from the table, rose, and put on his cap and the jacket he'd draped over the chair.

‘What's wrong with you, tell me!' His sullen silence was annoying her beyond measure. ‘It's the damn push, isn't it?' she snapped
when he still refused to answer. ‘That Dockers' Gang'll be the death of you, they're turning you into a thug.'

He walked out of the kitchen. ‘I'm going to the pub to meet the lads.' His tone was surly. He wished to God that she'd stop nagging. She'd nagged him since he was eleven years old and he used to like it then, in the days when she'd been more mother than sister, as well as best friend and hero to boot. But her loyalties lay elsewhere these days, and she'd lost the right to nag.

She followed him through the front room and grabbed his arm as he opened the door. ‘Haven't any of you learned from the death of that boy?' she hissed with anger and frustration. ‘Are you all that stupid?'

‘I won't be back till late, the lads have got some plans.' He patted the pocket of his jacket meaningfully, intimating he was carrying a knife. He wasn't, but he wanted to annoy her. He hadn't liked the way Billy Kendall had looked at her, and he wondered whether she had encouraged him.

‘Don't be a fool, Dan.' She pulled at his arm as he turned to go. ‘Don't be a fool. Listen to me!'

He wrenched his arm from her grip. ‘Why?' he snarled. ‘Why should I listen to a whore!' The words were out before he could stop himself, and he regretted them immediately. ‘I'm going, Kath.' And he left, avoiding the hurt in her eyes.

As Kathleen boiled the kettle again, for hot water to wash the cups, she tried to erase the words from her mind, telling herself he hadn't meant them. But he had, she knew it. And there was anger beneath her hurt. So what if, over the years, she'd accepted the odd gift from a man, did that make her a whore? She'd never walked the streets and sold her body. She'd never slept with a man if she didn't wish to. Well, no, that wasn't quite true, but it still didn't make her a whore.

She banged the teacups into the wash bowl, chipping the side of one. And if she was a whore, as her brother said, then what did that make him? A pimp surely. Apimplived off the earnings of a whore, didn't he? Kathleen seethed with moral indignation. She worked hard, legitimately, for the money that kept them alive! By God, she thought, if Dan was here now, if he hadn't run off to the pub to escape her, she'd have a thing or two to tell him.

Kathleen O'Shea had been nineteen years old, and her young
brother Dan eleven, when their mother Dotty had died. It had been less than a year after the killing of Paddy O'Shea, but his death was not the cause, Dotty had not given up. Dotty had fought on to support her family, slaving away ina milliner's workshop, her daughter by her side. Young Dan was to stay in school, she maintained, no block boy's job for him.

It was the smallpox which claimed Dotty, as it had so many others. Just a rash on her body at first. It didn't show on her face, and Dotty kept quiet about it in case it was something infectious. She couldn't afford to be sent to the quarantine hospital and lose her pay, or worse, lose her job. It might not be there when she got better, there were too many queuing for employment.

But a week later, when the sores erupted, she could no longer hide her predicament. The doctor told her it was only a matter of days before she'd be highly infectious and her family would be at risk.

‘Do you people not know of the vaccination?' Doctor Davies said as he treated the pus-filled sores. ‘Do you not read the newspapers? Do you not see the notices? Do you not know that this can be prevented?'

Dotty nodded. ‘I've seen the notices,' she said, ‘but no-one around here gets the vaccination.'

It was a typical reaction and Hector Davies, a passionate Welshman, was exasperated. People took no note of warnings and heeded no advice. The government was greatly to blame, in Hector's opinion, physicians had been lobbying for compulsory vaccination laws since his own grandfather's time. But to no avail.

In England in the 1790s the British physician, Edward Jenner, had observed that many of the local milkmaids appeared to be immune to one of the most deadly diseases known to man. Tests proved that the milkmaids were infected with the milder virus, cowpox. Jenner's resulting vaccine, hailed as the most profound medical discovery of the century, was made instantly available, and shipments of the cowpox vaccine had arrived in Sydney as early as 1804. Doctors had been loudly vocal in promoting its use, but the government had remained unconvinced of the necessity of compulsory vaccination laws.

For nigh on ninety years the vaccine had been available, and yet still people were dying of smallpox. By the hundreds. To Hector Davies, the situation was ludicrous.

Like his grandfather before him, Hector was an agitator for medical reform, and a deeply frustrated man. But he would not give in to apathy. He would draw up yet another petition and, with the support of his fellow physicians, he would present it yet again to the government.

‘You must be transferred to the Coast Hospital for Infectious Diseases,' he said wearily, doubtful that the woman would survive.

Dotty nodded. She prayed that her job at the workshop would still be there when she got better.

‘You may go with your mother,' the doctor said. ‘Kathleen, is it not?' The girl nodded. She was a beauty, Hector thought, and educated to a degree—she had written down his instructions—but what would her fate be without a mother to guide her? ‘In several days, however, when your mother is in her most dangerous state, you will not be allowed in her company, for that is when the disease will be at its most contagious, do you understand?'

Dotty died in the hospital two weeks later, the bacteria which had infected her sores causing damage to her heart and lungs. She was buried in the Coast Cemetery and Kathleen, young Dan with her, regularly travelled by tram to visit Dotty's grave overlooking the rocky coastline of Botany Bay.

Kathleen continued to work her ten-hour shifts at Abraham's Millinery but her salary barely covered the rent and their food and clothing. Dan begged to be allowed to leave school, he could earn good money as a block boy, he insisted, or working on the newspaper delivery drays. But Kathleen refused to listen. ‘Mum and Pa wouldn't like it,' she said. ‘You'll stay at school.'

When Mr Abraham himself singled her out from the fifteen women employed in the workshop, Kathleen felt very privileged.

‘Receptionist work requires a pleasant manner and appearance above all else, my dear,' he said in his perfect, clipped voice with its trace of Polish origin. ‘You have the necessary qualifications, and I am sure you will not let me down.'

‘Yes, Mr Abraham,' she bobbed a sort of curtsy, eager to please.

Then the words which were magic to her ears. ‘Of course there will be a substantial rise in your wages befitting your new position.'

‘Thank you, Mr Abraham.'

On receipt of her first week's wages, Kathleen visited the bargain
basement of Kendle and Streatham's Emporium and bought herself two new blouses and a tailored jacket and skirt. She was riddled with guilt as she did so, but it was necessary, she told herself. She must look smart and respectable now that she was in daily contact with the buyers and with Mr Abraham's business associates.

Kathleen was aware that her rise in station met with the deepest of disapproval from Elsa Duckworth, the martinet in charge of the women who slaved away in the workshop. At the end of each day, when Elsa delivered the quota sheets to the reception desk, she looked Kathleen up and down and gave a derisive snort which openly said that Kathleen had been selected for her looks alone.

Elsa's disdain, however, only served to spur Kathleen on, and she quickly learned not only the filing system and the paperwork required, but the names and personal details of all the regular buyers. ‘Mr Saxon,' she'd say, ‘and how is your new baby?' Or, sympathetically, ‘I hope Mrs Littlemore will be better soon.'

All of which pleased Mr Abraham. Kathleen had seen little of him when she'd worked in the back room but now she saw him every day and he was always exceedingly courteous. ‘Is that a new bolero, my dear?' he'd say in a fatherly way. ‘Most attractive.' He always noticed what she was wearing, and Kathleen went to great pains to look her best. It was the least she could do, she told herself, for Mr Abraham was a man of great style. Always impeccably dressed, with a neatly trimmed goatee, Mr Abraham even held a monocle to his right eye when he was studying his paperwork. The monocle deeply impressed Kathleen.

David Abraham had indeed employed young Kathleen O'Shea because of her appearance. Under normal circumstances he would have instructed Elsa Duckworth to place an advertisement seeking someone with the proper qualifications, but he had noticed Kathleen in the back room. He had no ulterior motive beyond the pleasure of her appearance—he liked beautiful things. And if it proved that the girl could not handle the job then he could easily have her returned to the workshop.

But as the days and weeks passed, David Abraham found himself mesmerised, watching her through the glass windows of his office as she busied herself at her desk. Kathleen O'Shea was more than pleasing to look at, Kathleen O'Shea was a true beauty.

He couldn't help himself. It hadn't been hisoriginal plan at all
but, ‘Do you enjoy theatrical performances, Miss O'Shea?' he asked her one Friday night.

‘I don't know, Mr Abraham, I've never been to one.' The sapphire eyes met his with disarming honesty.

‘Mr Coles has kindly supplied me with two tickets to a performance tomorrow night and I wondered whether you might like to accompany me.'

William Coles was the proprietor of the Bohemians, a theatrical company named after the cultural movement which had recently been embraced by Sydney's artistic circles. Hiscompany performed at the circus and entertainment centre on the west side of George Street. Modelled on Buffalo Bill Cody's American venture, the performances were staged in an enormous marquee, with tiered seating around the canvas walls. Wild West shows, circuses and melodramas, including many Australian plays, were staged there, all proving immensely popular with the general public. As Abraham's Millinery supplied the headwear used in the productions—anything from Red Indian headdresses and cowboy hats, to police helmets and damsels' bonnets—David Abraham had any number of seats at his beck and call.

‘Oh yes,' overwhelmed as she was by the invitation, Kathleen didn't hesitate for a minute, ‘I'd like that very much.'

‘Shall I call for you?'

‘No, no, I'll meet you out the front.'

‘Excellent.' Probably better that way, he thought. ‘At seven o'clock, shall we say?'

‘Yes, Mr Abraham. Thank you.'

Kathleen saw
The Mystery of the Hansom Cab
that Saturday night and, as she fell in love with the world of entertainment, David Abraham fell in love with her.

One month and many outings later, including an evening at the Theatre Royal, a performance at the Tivoli, a vaudeville show and a production of
Ned Kelly
by the Bohemians, Davidsummoned up the nerve to kiss her. Outside her own front door. He'd dropped her home in a hansom cab and the driver was waiting.

He didn't know why he was nervous. He was fifty years old, he'd been married, and he'd had affairs, though not many, since the death of his wife fifteen years previously. He was not inexperienced with women. But she was so young, and so nubile, surely
she must find him unattractive. The kiss was tentative as he awaited her response.

Kathleen was a virgin, but she was accustomed to kissing. She'd kissed and fumbled before and was an expert at knowing when to stop. She was not at all offended by Mr Abraham's show of inti-macy—despite his insistence, she still had trouble calling him David. She liked him and she wanted to be nice and, besides, she owed him a lot. She returned his kiss with grateful fervour, instinctively opening her mouth to his and pressing her body against him.

For a moment David lost himself. His hand fumbled for her breast. His eyes were closed, his breathing heavy, he hadn't intended for it to happen like this but he didn't want it to stop.

Kathleen was instantly aroused; for some time now she'd been longing to know what it was like to be with a man, and she was more than ready to find out. She responded to his passion with equal intensity and, her arousal driving him mad, David grabbed at her skirts and ground his body against hers like a twenty-year old on fire. He wanted to take her up against her own porch railing, right there in the lamplit street.

Then he opened his eyes and saw the hansom cab driver. The man, from his perfect viewpoint atop the cab, was grinning. He saluted David with his whip as if to say, ‘Good on you, guv', and David broke away, mortified.

His heart was beating wildly and he felt a little dizzy. He turned his back on the cab driver and sat on the railing as he fumbled for the phial of laudanum he kept in the pocket of his vest. He hoped he wasn't going to have one of his turns, he wasn't used to this sort of excitement.

‘Are you ill?' Kathleen asked, concerned.

‘No, no, my dear,' he assured her, waving the phial under his nose, his head quickly clearing.

Moments later he made his farewell as if nothing had happened, and Kathleen thanked him for a most enjoyable evening as she always did. When he got out of the cab in Glebe Point Road, David refused to look at the driver.