The Spoils of Sin (21 page)

A few tears slid down Carola's face. She smiled tremulously. ‘Thank you,' she said.

‘But we cannot tell Reuben,' Fanny said, suddenly decisive. ‘My family would intervene in an instant, and we would be swept along without the chance to draw breath. They would have you married to him by Whitsun.'

‘He does not deserve such a fate. He is such a decent man, Fanny. I suspect you have no idea how good he is.'

Fanny blinked. She had never paid much attention to her brother, who had always looked out of place in Providence. On the Trail he had found his natural vocation, cutting wood for fires, tending the oxen and making himself useful in a hundred ways. Then the military had taken him for a soldier and he had fallen from a horse long before they had seen any fighting. ‘He was always somewhat slow in his wits,' she said. ‘His mother died when he was tiny, and they say that was the cause of his being different from the rest of us.'

‘He was born on the same day as I was,' said Carola, with a little wince. ‘I confess I was foolish enough to see that as a sign of some kind.'

‘Sign?'

‘Just for a day or so, I allowed myself to dream.'

‘And Reuben? Did he dream the same thing?'

‘Perhaps so.'

‘If you were to marry him, what would I do?' Fanny's heart swelled in panic.

‘It is impossible. Such as we are can never settle to something so ordinary as married life. Did we not confront that truth from the start? We are soiled, tainted, forever. No husband could forget what we had been, however much he might try.'

‘Reuben might,' said Fanny softly. ‘You might even keep it from him. My family imagine us to be running a store, remember. The truth might never reach them.'

‘Fifty miles is not so far distant for that to be possible. And did you not say that your grandmother knows what you do with your nights? Would she tolerate such a marriage, knowing what she does? And your sister, Charity might have something to say on the matter.'

Fanny considered this at some length. ‘My grandmother might see it as entirely acceptable,' was the best she could conclude.

‘She would not,' said Carola with certainty. ‘And even if she did, there are others to reckon with. She lacks the power to prevail over the whole family.'

They ate the small quantity of bread and cheese they had brought with them, throwing the crusts to Hugo, and sat a little longer watching the river slide past. Fanny made no attempt to recapture the carefree mood of recent days. There was now a problem to be solved, a fresh situation that she was almost sure would demand more of her than she could easily supply. It was as if Carola had suddenly doubled in weight, throwing everything out of balance. And yet her friend had claimed to be happy, as well as worried and even ashamed.

‘We cannot tell Reuben,' she said again, on the return home. ‘What would it profit us or him to do so?'

‘I expect you're right,' said Carola, conciliatory in the extreme. ‘Although there are many months during which we might revise the decision, according to circumstance.'

What circumstance?
Fanny wondered. What could possibly happen that would change this inescapable resolve?

The summer months brought more and more talk of the goldfields, albeit with considerably less actual precious metal to illustrate it than had been hoped. Men continued to pass through Chemeketa, the vast majority headed southwards. Many promised to return with their newfound wealth, but only a handful had done so by the end of June. Those who did often had families waiting for them, or travelling westwards overland to meet them.

‘And yet many thousands of Oregon men flooded down to California months ago now,' sighed Carola. ‘Where did they all go?'

‘San Francisco,' came the answer, many a time. Those who had made their fortunes from prospecting first dallied amongst their associates, gambling and drinking in the hills and beside the rivers, before following the general movement to the little town that was rapidly becoming a city. There were investments to be made in hotels, warehouses, shipping businesses and house building. Chemeketa was regarded as a dull backwater by comparison.

But some men found their way to the boudoir, all of them with a tale to tell. One hot evening in early July – a year after their first opening - with door and windows thrown open and Hugo panting on the balcony at the top of the steps, two men arrived. ‘This is Job, and I be Silas,' said the younger one with a grin. ‘Pleasant evening, ladies, and that's for sure.'

Job was perhaps thirty, with his hair newly shorn by the adjacent barber and a clean new neckerchief knotted loosely over a shirt half-unbuttoned. He wore Indian-style slippers on his feet. He had been in the room barely five minutes before his eye had settled on Carola's middle, and a tilt of his head betrayed his diagnosis of her condition. ‘Caught out, then, Miss?' he said, with a soft sympathy in his voice.

His companion stared blankly from face to face, failing utterly to grasp the meaning of these words.

‘Silas – this be your young lady.' He waved towards Fanny. ‘Since I have already made my selection, which seniority grants me, I think.'

Silas made no objection, but merely bowed briefly at Fanny.

‘But first perhaps a cold drink and a few words,' Job went on. ‘This place is one to savour slowly, so we can leave with our heads full of memories of our time here.'

Carola quickly fetched the drinks, and then settled herself against the man's side. Since her revelation to Fanny, she had taken a better share of the work and showed no further signs of resistance. When Fanny asked, a few weeks later, how she was managing, she said she had come to a better tolerance of it, and was quite content to continue. ‘And no need for the godforsaken sponges, either,' she added.

This had not occurred to Fanny, and she experienced a pang of resentment towards her friend. She was no closer to seeing a solution to the coming complications – and Carola showed no sign of suggesting anything that might help. She was often to be seen gently stroking her belly, which was swelling steadily, but still not obtrusive. Her habitual expression of serenity irritated Fanny, but evidently appealed to their customers, who sought Carola out as never before.

‘They don't realise it, but the sight of me makes them think of family and childhood and easy days with their mother,' she said. ‘Even if they can't see the reason, they see me as someone safe to be with. Those who recognise my condition treat me with such gentleness they sometimes lose their lustful side, and simply lie beside me and talk.'

‘But some will show contempt and disgust,' said Fanny. ‘You have gone beyond the agreement we have with our men and become something else.'

‘That is true. Some show little or no knowledge of how I found myself in this state – the idea that a man like them might be to blame is quite foreign to them.'

Fanny laughed, her own days of ignorance long forgotten.

Now Job and Silas drank their fill and regaled the girls with accounts of life in San Francisco. ‘Ships arrive almost daily, overflowing with men greedy for riches. Men from the Indies, the Malay Peninsula, Spanish America – and blacks in plenty. The true Americans are arming themselves and protecting their claims, but it is harder every week. We were engaged ourselves in a battle with a gang of Chileans, fighting over a claim that was all but spent in any case.'

‘Will the gold not last for ever, then?' asked Fanny, who had somehow expected the supply to be unlimited.

Job laughed. ‘Two months ago, my lady, it was nothing to uncover twenty ounces a day, day in and day out. But when we left, it was only the very fortunate who could find so much as ten. Thin pickings 'twill be from this point on. We saw the glory days, when history was happening right before our very eyes. I saw men many a time lighting a cigar with a twenty dollar bill. But not any more. There's a better chance of getting rich from a game of pinocle than digging in the mud, these days.'

‘And you?' Fanny boldly asked.

‘We spent three months on a good rich vein,' said Silas. ‘And we banked it, too. You are looking at two wealthy men.' He was perhaps twenty-five, thin but muscular. It was impossible to see him as a man of affluence.

‘And yet you did not stay to gain more,' wondered Carola. ‘From what we have heard, that is a rare decision.'

‘Like I said, there's trouble coming,' Job explained. ‘All the different kinds of men will never get along amongst themselves. And there's desperation that hurts a man to watch. Those who are only just reaching California now are most like to be disappointed. The best is finished. ʾTwas a nine-day wonder and no mistake.'

‘Besides,' said Silas, ‘the prices being charged are rising like crazy. Beer, bread, tools, meat – it's getting so you couldn't live unless you struck lucky. There's men who've staked everything they ever had and more on finding gold and getting rich. When it turns bad on them, they'll be ruined, without even the fare to ship back to where they came from. They'll just rot on the streets – and we have no wish to see such degradations.'

‘It sounds hellish,' said Fanny with a frown. ‘The pictures you paint are vile.'

‘There's no proper laws. No civilised behaviour.' Job shook his head. ‘We came on a lynching, the day before we left. A young black lad they said had been stealing. Never seen such a thing. It turned our stomachs, that's God's honest truth.'

Silas had gone pale and was swallowing repeatedly. ‘We weren't goin' to speak of that again,' he reproached his friend.

‘But San Francisco itself?' Carola insisted. ‘It cannot be as you say. If there are new hotels and diners and suchlike, that will create a busy city like those back east.'

‘Perhaps, in years to come, when the madness has died away. For now, it is bedlam and worse.' Job smiled. ‘And there are precious few ladies there. I calculate there's ten men or more for every female. They are not safe on the streets and that's a fact.'

‘We had a visitor, back in the winter, who was there. She was in the same line of work as we are, and she made a packet of money,' Fanny said.

‘Back at the end of last year – that was the best time of all. Nobody credited the gold stories until the President made that speech about it. Before then, it was a matter of scraping the ground in the right spot and making a fortune in a week. Your friend was lucky.'

‘She was worn out with it.'

Silas laughed, until he realised it wasn't intended as a witticism.

‘Where is she now?'

Fanny shrugged. ‘Around somewhere, I guess. We haven't seen her for a long while.'

‘Busy spending her fortune,' said Silas. ‘And the best of luck to her.'

Fanny and Silas remained upstairs for longer than normal, the warm evening making them slow and lazy. A sheen of sweat coated them both, despite the open window. Fanny permitted a second coupling, which was a great rarity, and found herself stroking the smooth skin of his back as he took his time over achieving another climax. He was young, and pent up, and who could begrudge him his pleasure? Afterwards, he gave her fifty dollars. ‘I can spare it,' he laughed. ‘And you were well worth it, Miss Francesca.'

As if conjured by the mention of her name – or at least by having herself referred to, if namelessly – Marybelle herself appeared the next day, shortly after noon.

At first, neither girl recognised her. Gaunt and bowed, she walked with short shuffling steps, a hand held hard against her belly. But her eyes were sharp and she immediately noticed Carola's shape. The warm weather made it impossible to conceal with layers and shawls as women often sought to do. A growing baby was held to be an immodest thing, even for a wife with every reason to be proud.

‘Oh, my Lord!' said the visitor.

Fanny was the first to know her. ‘Marybelle!' she cried. ‘We have been thinking of you constantly. Where—? What—?' Her questions died on her lips as she assessed Marybelle's condition. She was plainly very ill and in considerable pain.

‘Could you provide me with a little cold water? Then perhaps I can give you an account of myself.'

Settled in the softest chair with a drink and full attention, the woman slowly described the intervening months since her last visit. ‘I took a riverboat voyage into the Rockies, a little way, thinking to find myself a place to settle down and make a little garden. It gave me time to think. And the more thinking I did, the more I saw myself as scarcely free at all.'

‘But why?' Fanny demanded.

‘There are few ways out of Oregon,' was the startling reply. ‘You may take a horse and ride down to California, or maybe let yourself be taken by river some part of the way. Or go by ship along the coast. And there is little else for a woman such as I. There is a great range of mountains between here and the rest of America. We are scarcely America at all, in reality. California is not yet recognised as a state of the union, and Oregon is nowhere close to it. I have spent some time in Oregon City, and find it not to my liking. And so I returned to Chemeketa, as the place where I feel the most comfortable. The land is level, the people are tranquil, and there is everything a body needs in the way of sustenance.' She drew a ragged breath. ‘And I am well aware that there is little time left to me on this earth. If I can sit quietly in the sunshine and drink the good water, I shall be content.'

Neither girl could find a word to say. Marybelle smiled. ‘And perhaps I can provide some small assistance to you. When is the little one due?'

‘Four months away, at least,' said Carola. ‘It is big already.'

‘And will get a good deal bigger. God grant that I live to see its little face. I am soft-hearted over babies.'

‘We have been hard pressed to know how to accommodate it,' said Fanny. ‘That is, how to continue as we are, once there is a little one to manage.'