Page 143 of The Pearl Sister
Grabbing the flask Moustafa had given him, he sprinkled the last drops of water onto the baby’s lips, but it did not respond.
‘Strewth! Don’t die on me now, baby! I’ll be done for murder,’ he entreated the tiny being. Placing the basket at the side of the bed, he paced the room, waiting for Mrs Randall to arrive. Eventually, out of frustration, and also because of the pungent smell inside the room, he ran back downstairs.
‘Nearly ready?’ he asked her.
‘I was just going to bring it up ta you,’ the woman said, placing the tray on the narrow reception desk.
He looked at its contents and realised the one thing he needed was missing. ‘You got that salt cellar for me, Mrs R?’
‘Sorry, I’ll go and get it.’ She returned with it in her sun-freckled hand. ‘It’s silver plated, got it as one of my wedding presents when I married Mr R. Make sure ya return it to me, or there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘You can count on me,’ he said, the contents of the tray wobbling as he picked it up. ‘I’ll be down later to take a wash.’
Re-entering his room, he took his shirt off, then unscrewed the silver top of the salt cellar and poured the contents into the fabric. Then he took the glass of milk and made a funnel with a page torn out of the Bible on the nightstand, and poured the milk into the empty salt cellar. Gathering up the baby, and breathing through his mouth to avoid the stink that came from it, he gently poked the tip of the salt cellar between the rosebud lips.
At first, there was no response, and his own heart beat rapidly enough for both of them. He removed the tiny silver teat, then dribbled a little milk from the holes in the top of the cellar onto his finger. Working on instinct alone, he smeared it round the baby’s lips. After an agonising few seconds, the lips moved. He then placed the tip of the salt cellar into the baby’s mouth again and sent up a prayer for the first time in seventeen years. A few seconds later, he felt a tiny exploratory tug on the makeshift bottle. There was an agonising pause and then a firmer tug as the baby began to suck.
The drover lifted his eyes to the ceiling above him. ‘Thank you.’
When the child had taken its fill, he poured water from the jug into the basin, stripped off the stinking muslin cloths and did his best to wash the encrusted muck from its body. Forming a makeshift napkin with two of his handkerchiefs, and praying there wouldn’t be another explosion, he wrapped the tiny backside as best he could. He hid the soiled muslin cloths in one of the bed sheets, and stuffed the stinking parcel into a drawer. He wrapped the other sheet around the baby, noticing the engorged stomach and emaciated legs that looked as if they belonged to a frog rather than a human being. The baby had fallen asleep, so he downed the now cold and congealing beef stew in a few gulps and washed it down with some hefty slugs of whisky. Then he left the room to feed his horse and scrub himself clean in the water barrel in the backyard.
Feeling refreshed, the drover ran back upstairs and saw the baby had not moved. Putting his ear to the tiny chest, he heard the flutter of a heartbeat and the sound of steady breathing. Climbing onto his own mattress, he remembered the tin he’d stored in his saddlebag.
The tin was encrusted in rust and red dirt as if it had long been buried. He prised it open to find a small leather box inside. Unfastening the clasp and lifting the lid, his breathing became ragged as his own heart missed a beat.
The Roseate Pearl . . . the pearl that had ended his brother’s life, yet saved his own.
‘How can it be . . . ?’ he murmured, his eyes drawn to its mesmeric beauty, as they’d been so many years before. What he could do with that cash . . . He knew its value – he had handed over the twenty thousand pounds himself.
Banished from Broome and unable to return to Kilgarra, his beloved cattle station, he travelled across the Never Never, picking up work where he found it. He kept himself to himself, trusting no one. He was a different person now, a human void with a heart that had turned to ice. And he had only himself – and perhaps the pearl – to blame. Yet, from the moment he’d seen this baby, something had thawed within him.
He snapped the box shut and placed it back in the tin before it hypnotised him again.
How was this child connected to the Roseate Pearl? Last time he had seen it, he had locked it away in Kitty’s writing desk. Camira had pleaded with him not to present it to her mistress and . . .
‘God’s oath!’
He knew now where he’d seen the baby’s eyes before. ‘Alkina . . .’
He stood up and went to study the sleeping infant once more. And for the first time in many years, acknowledged the existence of fate and destiny. He’d instinctively known that this baby with the cursed pearl secreted in its basket was connected to him.
‘Goodnight, little one. Tomorrow I will take you to Hermannsburg.’ He stroked the soft cheek, then went to lie back on his mattress. ‘And then I will journey to Broome to find out who you are to me.’
* * *
Pastor Albrecht looked up from his Bible at the sound of hooves clopping into the mission. Through the window, he watched the man draw to a halt, then climb off his horse and look around him, uncertain of where to go. Pastor Albrecht stood up and walked towards the door and out into the glaring sun.
‘Guten tag,or should I say good morning?’
‘I speak both languages,’ the man answered. Around the courtyard, a number of the pastor’s flock, clad in white, paused to look at the handsome man. Any stranger who came here was a welcome sight.
‘Back to your business,’ he directed them, and they returned to their work.
‘Is there somewhere we might talk, Pastor?’
‘Come in to my study.’ The pastor indicated the room behind him, as he heard a mewling cry emanate from the sling around the man’s chest. ‘Please, sit down,’ he said, closing the door behind him, then snapping the shutters closed against prying eyes.
‘I will, once I have given you this.’
