Kitty (26 page)

She felt his eyes on her the whole way.

When she told Haunui and Wai about the wheelbarrow they laughed their heads off, Haunui guffawing so loudly that Bodie hid under the sofa.

She also mentioned, very casually, that Enya Mason was Rian’s sister.

‘Did you know that?’ she asked Haunui.

He shook his head. ‘But what is it to me?’

Wai gave her a knowing look.

This morning they were going out. Kitty had a day off, Haunui didn’t feel like lumping cargo around the wharves, and the weather was crisp and clear. There was also a hanging at the jail, which Wai and Haunui had professed they wanted to watch. Kitty found the idea of taking part in such a spectacle slightly repugnant—her mother had always maintained that well-bred people did not indulge in such pastimes, which also included public floggings. But she decided to go anyway, as, apparently, had many of The Rocks folk; when they arrived at the ridge above the jail they had to jostle their way through the large crowd already there.

Below them on George Street, quite close but within the thick walls of the squat, solid prison, stood the gallows.

A woman next to Kitty eating oysters from a jar with her fingers said cheerfully, ‘Should be bringing him out soon. Won’t be long now.’

‘What was the crime?’ Kitty asked, curious in spite of herself.

‘Done a murder,’ the woman said, wiping oyster juice off her chin. ‘Bashed his poor missus to death.’ She lowered her voice conspiratorially.
‘They say her brains was everywhere, even on t’walls!’

Kitty moved away slightly.

The murmur of the crowd rose to an expectant hum as a column of soldiers marched out from the prison and took up their places. The hum erupted into jeers as a manacled figure was escorted out and led up onto the gallows platform. Clutching Haunui’s sleeve for balance, Kitty almost lost her footing as the spectators on the ridge surged forward.

The hangman—surely Sydney’s most despised inhabitant—stepped up to the condemned man and tied a blindfold over his eyes, then without ceremony placed the noose around his neck. A soldier—an officer, judging by the gleam of his epaulettes—read out both the condemned man’s crime and his prescribed punishment, and a priest of some sort said a short, inaudible prayer.

The drumming ceased.

Then, before Kitty even had time to avert her eyes, the trapdoor in the platform dropped open and the man fell through. But something was obviously wrong because instead of swinging gently as Kitty had imagined a man hanged to death would do, he began to thrash wildly about, legs flailing and his body twisting and jerking with an appalling, desperate energy.

The crowd let out a collective ‘Aaaah!’ of horrified fascination.

Wai and Haunui looked on impassively but Kitty suddenly felt sick.

Oysters finished now, the woman next to Kitty said with the authority of someone who had clearly witnessed a number of hangings, ‘Neck’s not broke. Could take a while.’

It did; after what no doubt felt like an eternity to the poor devil, the man’s body finally hung limp and still, his swollen tongue protruding, purpling already, and a dark stain seeping down the legs of his trousers.

Kitty turned away. ‘Can we go?’

Haunui nodded and they elbowed their way through the crowd, dispersing now that the entertainment appeared to be over.

Walking back along George Street, Kitty said, ‘That was the most revolting thing I’ve ever seen.’

Haunui grunted, although Kitty knew he must have seen acts of considerably greater savagery and barbarity in his time.

She was about to say something else but he was no longer listening.

‘What is it?’ she said.

He pointed. There, sitting in the entrance to an alleyway, among piles of filth and rubbish, were several people huddled in blankets.

As they came closer, Kitty whispered, ‘Who are they?’ And then she said, ‘Oh.’

There were three of them: Maori men sitting with their backs against the sandstone wall of a building.

Haunui came to a halt and addressed them in Maori. One of the men struggled to his dirty, bare feet, revealing a glint of glass hidden beneath his blanket.

‘Good afternoon,’ he responded, also in Maori. He looked to be young, but his eyes were bloodshot, his long hair matted and his bearded face and neck etched with grime.

Haunui fired off several questions so quickly that Kitty was unable to follow what he was saying. The man said ‘Ae,’ then shook his head and shrugged hopelessly, apparently unable to meet Haunui’s eyes. His companions also rose then, and Kitty caught an eye-watering whiff of unwashed body as their blankets flapped around them.

The first man said something further, and the conversation continued back and forth for several minutes, punctuated by more sharp questions from Haunui and some revoltingly liquid sniffs as the man persistently wiped his nose on the back of his hand.

Finally, he turned to Wai and said, ‘My sister is here. I would be grateful if you would see her. She is sick but she will not speak to a medical man.’

Wai looked at Haunui, who gave a barely imperceptible nod.

‘As you wish,’ she said.

The three men shuffled off up the lane, the hems of their blankets trailing in the muck.

Walking beside Haunui, Kitty murmured, ‘Which tribe are they from?’ She didn’t recognise the patterns of the moko one of the men
wore across his cheeks and nose, and there were aspects of their dialect that weren’t familiar.

‘Not the north,’ Haunui replied, by which, Kitty knew, he meant nowhere important. ‘They have a lot of trouble,’ he added.

They emerged from the top of the alley, turned into Harrington Street and walked another ten yards before the men left the street and disappeared into a narrow alleyway between a two-storeyed building and a high wooden fence. Haunui hesitated for a second then followed, Wai and Kitty close behind.

The alley was clogged with rubbish and fetid mud, and Kitty concentrated on placing her feet only on the semi-submerged boards someone had laid down the centre of the walkway. It stank mightily and she held her rosewater-scented handkerchief over her mouth and nose. At the rear of the building there appeared to be a stable, and she realised that they were behind a hotel. One of the men turned and beckoned.

Haunui advanced warily, one arm out to indicate that the girls should stay behind him, which Kitty at least was more than happy to do; the low doorway to the stable didn’t look at all inviting and she wondered how anyone managed to get horses through it.

But as she neared she saw that the door opened into a room separate from the stables—a tack room, perhaps. She followed Haunui in, blinking in the dim light and wrinkling her nose at the fug and stink of dirty people.

There were about a dozen of them, including the three men who had brought them here. They appeared to be living in the room, as there was a small hearth of stones in one corner, mouldering hay and blankets piled on the ground, and cups and several dirty pots strewn about. There was also a bucket overflowing with human waste and, not far from it, a crate on top of which sat an assortment of food—cooked meat, bread and a lump of cheese almost as mouldy as the hay. Over the stink of all this wafted the sharp brown smell of rum.

Haunui hissed and shook his head, and Kitty had no need to ask what he was thinking because it was written all over his scowling face. She glanced at Wai and saw the same thing: they were both shocked and
repelled by the disgusting conditions in which these people were living. And, Kitty suspected, ashamed for them.

The first man—whose name, Kitty had gathered, was Tu—indicated a blanketed shape on the ground in a corner. Wai approached, looked down for a moment and then squatted, one hand supporting her belly. After a moment she beckoned to Kitty.

‘She is very sick,’ she said.

Kitty bent down for a closer look. The girl—and she was only a girl, perhaps not even as old as Wai—lay on her side, her eyes closed and her filthy hair stuck to her head and neck with sweat. The corners of her mouth were caked with some sort of crust and her nose leaked a stream of thin snot. A strange, sour odour rose off her.

‘Is it measles?’ Kitty asked.

Wai shrugged and straightened up. ‘What is wrong with her?’ she asked Tu, who was hovering behind her.

‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘She has been like this for seven days now.’

Someone in the room coughed, a thick bubbling sound, and Kitty looked nervously around for the culprit. It was an older man, perhaps in his thirties, his listless eyes glazed and his dark skin sheened with sweat. She lifted her handkerchief to her face again.

Wai stepped back. ‘We cannot do anything here,’ she said.

Kitty was struck by the indifference in her tone, and glanced at Tu to gauge his reaction. But he merely nodded despondently, as if he had already known that there was no hope for his sister.

‘We will go,’ Haunui said. He turned towards the door, then stopped. Rummaging in the pocket of his trousers he withdrew a small handful of coins and handed them to Tu.

Tu nodded, but couldn’t meet Haunui’s eyes. The coins disappeared under his blanket.

The air outside was a sweet relief.

‘What’s happened to them?’ Kitty said, feeling both sickened and shocked by what they had just seen.

Haunui stood staring at his boots for a long moment. When he looked up his expression was one of uneasy resignation. ‘Tu said to me they came
on the whale ships. They spent their pay on rum, then they got sick. Five died. Now no captain will take them back to New Zealand. It is because they cannot work and they cannot pay.’

Kitty thought quickly. ‘Would Rian take them back, do you think?’

‘Rian?’ Haunui said. ‘Why should he? It is not to do with him.’

‘Why should he? Because it would be the decent thing to do, that’s why.’

‘No,’ Wai said flatly. ‘They have shamed themselves and they have shamed their whakapapa. They would not be welcome any more if they went home. And they are diseased,’ she added as an afterthought.

‘Aren’t you even a little concerned for them?’

Wai thought for a moment. ‘No. They are not my people.’

‘They are, though,’ Kitty insisted.

‘No, they are not,’ Haunui said firmly.

Kitty said, ‘Well, we can’t just leave them!’

But Haunui and Wai did just that, walking off towards the alley that led back to Harrington Street. Kitty stared after them, then hurried to catch up, disconcertingly aware that no matter how much time she spent with Maori people, she would never completely understand the way they viewed the world.

Knowing that Kitty and Wai had shopping to do, Haunui announced that he was off to the Bird-in-Hand and that he would see them later. They parted ways and the girls headed back to George Street, in search of a particularly good butcher’s shop Mrs Doyle had recommended.

But before they found it they came across something rather intriguing: a sign above a doorway that said, ‘Fortunes Told, Futures Revealed—Mrs Peggy Turnbull, Seer and Diviner’.

Wai stopped. ‘What does that mean? What is a diviner?’

Kitty had to think how best to explain it. ‘It’s someone who can tell what happened in the past—’

‘
Everyone
can tell that.’

‘—and also what will happen in the future,’ Kitty finished.

Astounded, Wai stared at her. ‘The future? How?’

‘Well, I don’t know. Sometimes they read your palm, or look into a
crystal ball or read your tea leaves.’

‘I want to go in,’ Wai said.

‘No, Wai, they’re charlatans, most of them. It’s just a trick to get your money.’

‘I will not be tricked,’ Wai declared, and marched inside.

The room was tiny, light from a high, narrow window barely illuminating the stuffy little space, and furnished with a wooden chair, several stools and a round table draped with a fringed shawl. The walls were bare except for an insipid and rather incongruous painting of a deer standing on a mist-wreathed hill. At the table sat a very fat woman reading the
Sydney Morning Herald.

She glanced up, then folded her paper and dropped it on the floor beneath her chair. She was old, as Kitty had expected, but otherwise looked very little like any other fortune teller she’d ever seen. This woman was not wearing large hoop earrings or a colourful scarf around her head like the tinkers who passed through Dereham from time to time on their way to the Norwich markets, and neither was she swarthy, wary-looking and underfed as their women had always seemed to be. This one had neat grey hair under a white lace cap, rosy cheeks in a chubby face, bright blue eyes and almost all of her teeth.

‘Good morning, ladies,’ she said. ‘I’ve not seen you two in here before. I’m Peggy Turnbull. What can I do you for?’

Kitty didn’t think this was a very auspicious start to the proceedings but held her tongue.

Apparently oblivious to the girls’ hesitation, Mrs Turnbull went on cheerfully, ‘Are you wanting your cards read, and that’s the tarot I mean by that, or your tea leaves?’

‘What is tarot?’ Wai asked.

‘These,’ the woman said, tapping a stack of colourful cards on the table. ‘Not had a reading with them before? Then perhaps the leaves might be the better bet. That will be sixpence apiece, thank you.’

What highway robbery, Kitty thought, but too late because Wai was already handing the money over.

‘Right, just give me a moment to do me preparations,’ Mrs Turnbull
said, heaving her bulk from the chair and rustling out through a curtained doorway.

Kitty and Wai sat down on the stools and waited, but not for long as the woman was soon back with two Chinese-patterned cups on a tray. She set one each in front of the girls and gestured at them to drink the contents. ‘It makes the messages more powerful,’ she explained.

Wai took a sip and pulled a face. Kitty agreed—it tasted like rotting leaf mulch and wasn’t even particularly hot.

‘What sort of tea is it?’ she asked.

‘Special reading leaves,’ Mrs Turnbull replied, returning to her chair, which creaked alarmingly under her weight. ‘Drink up.’

When they had, she took Wai’s cup first, swirling the dregs around and around in the bottom of it for what seemed like ages. Then she tilted the cup and watched intently as the leaves settled.