‘It is a humane method. They can still walk a good way in them. Please, darling, calm down.’
Kitty had listened helplessly as Andrew had explained that those in charge believed that the ‘blacks’ would run back to the desert the minute they had the chance. So they chained them to each other, and attached them to a tree overnight.
‘It is cruel, Andrew. Can you not see that?’
‘At least if they work, they are given tobacco or sacks of flour to take home to their families.’
‘Yet not a living wage?’ she’d entreated him.
‘That isn’t what they need, my dear. These people would sell their own wives and children at the drop of a hat. They are like wild animals and, sadly, they have to be treated as such.’
After weeks of dispute between them on the subject, Kitty and Andrew had simply agreed to disagree. She was convinced that, with kindness and understanding and some respect for the fact that these people had been in Australia for far longer than the white settlers, some more gentle accord could surely be reached. Andrew assured her it had been tried before and had failed miserably.
Yet the knowledge that this inequality was wrong gnawed away at her conscience. She had even had to ask for special dispensation from the police constable to keep Fred on the premises at night, as he would otherwise be rounded up with the rest and herded back to a camp outside of town, away from his white ‘masters’.
That situation, plus the sickeningly regular loss of life in the overcrowded shanty town and upon the ocean, was the price every person in Broome had to pay for the far higher than average wages. And, for a scant few, there was the ultimate prize: that of finding the perfect pearl.
Naively, Kitty had presumed that every shell would contain one, but she had been wrong. The industry mainly survived on the mother-of-pearl linings. Hidden inside the ugly mottled brown shells that blended into the seabed was a lustrous material that sold by the ton around the world, to be used as decoration for combs, boxes and buttons.
Only rarely would a triumphant captain present the pearl box to the pearling master with a rattle. And inside the box – which could not be opened once the pearl had been dropped inside it, as only the pearling master himself held the key – there would be a treasure of possibly huge value. Kitty knew that Andrew dreamt every night of finding the most magnificent pearl which would make him not only rich, but famous too. A pearl that would establish him – rather than his father – as the chief pearling master of Broome. And, therefore, the world.
There had been a number of occasions when he had arrived home with a pearl the size of a large marble, his eyes shining with excitement as he had shown her the often oddly shaped jewel. Then it had been off to T. B. Ellies’ shop on Carnarvon Street to see if Andrew’s find was good. T. B. was renowned as the most skilled pearl skinner in the world.
Like diamonds, pearls had to be crafted and polished to reveal their true beauty. Kitty had been intrigued when she’d learnt that pearls were made up of thin layers, like those of an onion. T. B.’s skill lay in his ability to file away each imperfect layer without damaging the sheen on the one below it. She had watched T. B. hold a pearl to the light, as if his keen brown eyes could look through to its very core. His sensitive fingers then felt for minuscule ridges as he used his files and knives to erase them, squinting through his jeweller’s eyeglass.
‘It is merely oyster spit,’ he had said matter-of-factly as Kitty had watched him work. ‘The animal feels an irritation – a grain of sand perhaps – and builds up layers of spit around it to cushion itself. And behold, the most beautiful mineral is created. But sometimes . . .’ Here he had frowned before shaving away another sliver. ‘Sometimes the layers protect nothing but a pocket of mud.’ He’d held up the pearl for Kitty and Andrew to see, and indeed, a small spot of brown was seeping out of a hole. Andrew had barely withheld a groan as T. B. continued working. ‘A blister pearl. Shame. Will make a nice hatpin, perhaps.’ The corner of his mouth lifted into a wry smile under his moustache as he resumed his work.
Kitty privately wondered if the quiet Singalese man knew that he wielded more power than anyone in Broome. He was the dream-maker – in his unassuming wood-fronted shop, he could carefully skin fine layers of pearl to reveal a majestic life-changing jewel, or turn hope to a pile of pearl dust on his workbench.
Broome was a unique and intense micro-universe all of its own, one that encompassed every soul that lived there. And Kitty herself was now another cog in the machine, playing the role of a dutiful pearling master’s wife.
‘One day, my dear,’ Andrew had said as he held her in his arms after another disappointment in T. B.’s shop, ‘I will bring you the most magnificent pearl. And you will wear it for all to see.’
*
Kitty fingered the rope of small delicate pearls Andrew had chosen and had strung together for her. Apart from his obsession with finding such a special treasure, nothing was too much trouble to please her; Kitty had learnt not to voice her dreams, otherwise Andrew would go to the greatest lengths to fulfil them. He had filled the house with beautiful antique furniture bought from the boats that docked in Broome from all over Asia. She had once expressed a love of roses, and a week later, he had taken her hand and led her to the veranda to show her the rose bushes that had been planted around it before she woke.
On their wedding night, he had been gentle and courteous with her. While the act itself was something that Kitty subjugated herself to rather than actively enjoyed, it had certainly not been unbearable. Andrew had perhaps been more thrilled than she the moment she’d announced her pregnancy to him five months ago, when the child had been little more than the size of a pearl inside her. Andrew had already told her how his ‘son’ would follow in his father’s footsteps to Immanuel College in Adelaide, and then on to the university there. A week later, Kitty had taken delivery of a beautifully carved mahogany bassinet and countless toys.
‘What a dichotomy Broome is,’ she sighed as she heaved herself from the bed and reached for her silk robe. Ninety-nine per cent of the town lived in appalling conditions, yet anything the richer residents wished for could be delivered to this tiny isolated outpost in the space of a few weeks.