‘It is, but it’s pay-as-you-go and the lady in the shop says I have to pay for calls coming in from abroad, so I’ve probably got about thirty seconds left on my twenty dollars.’
‘It was a good idea to bin your SIM card. I’ve had another load of calls today. Mouse said that if they’re clever, they can probably trace you through the airline record too, so—’
Star was abruptly cut off and I saw a text banner appear across the top of my phone telling me my credit had run out.
‘This is getting ridiculous,’ I groaned as I walked back down the street to the hotel. I wasn’t James Bond, or even Pussy Galore, or whatever she’d been called.
‘Hi, Miss D’Aplièse,’ the receptionist greeted me. ‘Have you decided how much longer you’ll be staying yet?’
‘No.’
‘Well, just let me know when you have.’ I noticed the receptionist studying me intensely. ‘You haven’t stayed here before, have you? Your face looks familiar.’
‘No, never,’ I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘Thanks, bye,’ I said and plodded back upstairs to my room.
The frogs were still giving their evening chorus beyond my open window. I switched on the overhead light in my room and saw the CD player sitting on the nightstand, reminding me that I should listen to some more of Kitty’s story, as I needed distraction. I lay down on the bed, loaded new batteries into the machine and stuck in the second disc. Putting on my headphones, I lay back, pressed play and closed my eyes to find out what happened to Kitty Mercer next.
Kitty
Broome, Western Australia
October 1907
14
Kitty stirred as Andrew kissed her on the forehead.
‘I’m off down to the quay,’ he said. ‘A lugger is due in the next hour or so, and I want to look at the haul and make sure that none of those damned Koepangers have any pearls hidden about their sly and devious persons. Rest well today, won’t you, my dear?’
‘I will.’ Kitty looked at her husband, dressed as always in his smart pearling master’s uniform: a gleaming white suit with a mandarin collar and mother-of-pearl buttons, topped with a white pith helmet. She knew that when he returned home for lunch, the suit would inevitably be covered in red dust and he would have to change before he went out again. Here in Broome it was constantly laundry day, but rather than having to sweat over pots of hot water herself, the suits were folded up by her maid and sent off to Singapore to be laundered when the bi-weekly steamer next returned.
It was only one of the many eccentricities in Broome that she had quickly been forced to accept now that she was no longer a minister’s daughter, but the wife of a wealthy pearling master.
She had boarded the coastal steamer Paroo in Fremantle with Andrew soon after their marriage and after some rough days at sea, the shoreline had finally emerged in the distance. Kitty had seen a flat, yellow beach and a collection of tin-roofed houses tightly packed together. The ship had moored at a jetty almost a mile long, the dark brown water lapping up its wooden supports. Dense mangrove forest hugged the shore, behind which was a row of corrugated-iron sheds. The infamous pearling luggers sat forefront in the bay, their masts clustered together against the broad, bright blue sky.
Having left the ship, she and Andrew had been driven by pony and trap through the tiny enclave of the town and Kitty had been less than encouraged. With the arrival of the steamships and luggers came a raucous influx of people filling the bars and hotels along Dampier Terrace – the town’s main street – with piano music, rough voices and cigar smoke. Kitty had been reminded of the Wild West of America that she had read about. It was as hot as she could possibly imagine, and the smell of unwashed bodies permeated the humid, windless air.
The tin-roofed bungalow, which her father-in-law had built without any thought other than providing a temporary roof over his and Edith’s heads while he established his pearling business, had been less than enticing. Andrew had promised to provide Kitty with a more comfortable home and building works had been completed only a couple of months ago.
Seven months after her arrival, Kitty was slowly becoming accustomed to this strange, isolated town, hemmed in on one side by the sea, and the vast red desert on the other. The few houses along the dusty and often flooded Robinson Street, where the wealthy white population mostly resided, stood only a few minutes from the overcrowded shanty town. Broome had not one elegant or gracious bone in its vibrant multicultural mix, yet it was the epicentre of the world’s pearling industry. If she was driven into town by Fred, her Aboriginal groom, she would encounter a mish-mash of different races who had come off the day’s ships and were looking for ways to find entertainment. Money flowed like water here, and there were plenty of establishments that were happy to lap it up. Yamasaki and Mise stocked a selection of wonderful Japanese treasures, as well as soft silks that could be transformed into beautiful ball gowns to be flaunted by the pearling masters’ wives during the ball season.
Kitty struggled upright in bed, her back aching from the weight of her engorged belly, and only thanked the Lord that the baby would be here in less than three months. Dr Blick, whom Kitty had watched drink the whisky bottle dry when she had met him at various social engagements, had assured her of the best of care when the time came. After all, Andrew – or, at least, his father – owned the largest pearling business in Broome, with a fleet of thirty-six luggers that carried hundreds of tons of shell into harbour each year.
When she’d first arrived, the phrases that Andrew often used such as ‘luggers’, ‘lay-ups’ and ‘shell grades’ had all been foreign to her, but as he spoke of little else when they were having dinner together in the evenings, her mind had slowly assimilated the workings of the business.
The Mercer Pearling Company had endured a difficult start to the season, when a lugger and all the crew upon it had been lost to a cyclone. She had quickly learnt that out here, human life was fragile and eminently replaceable. It was a fact she was still struggling to come to terms with. The cruelty and harshness of life in Broome – especially the treatment of the local Aboriginal population – was something she knew she could never fully accept.
She had been horrified the first time she had seen a group of Aboriginal men in chains, shackled together at their necks and overseen by a guard with a rifle as they cleared debris from a house that had recently been destroyed by a cyclone. Andrew had pulled her away as she had begun to weep in horror.
‘You don’t understand the ways of Broome yet, my dear,’ Andrew had comforted her. ‘It is for their own good. In this way, they can be productive to society.’
‘In chains?’ Kitty had been shaking with latent fury. ‘Denied their freedom?’