Black Diamonds

 

About
Black Diamonds

It is 1914 and Lithgow is booming. Daniel is a young German–Australian, a coalminer and a socialist; Francine is the bourgeois, Irish–Catholic, too-good-for-this-place daughter of one of the mine's owners. When their paths collide, they fall in love despite themselves – raising eyebrows all around town.

But before the signatures on their marriage certificate are dry, war erupts, confronting them with a new and much more terrifying obstacle. Against his principles but driven by a sense of solidarity, Daniel enlists; Francine, horrified, has no choice but to support him.

As they hurtle towards a daunting world of war, separation and grief, they learn things about themselves and one another that they would never have expected in more certain times – about heroism, sacrifice, the thin line between courage and stupidity, and, most of all, about the magical power of love.

Told with freshness, verve and humour,
Black Diamonds
is a celebration of two people determined to be together, whatever life throws at them.

 

Contents

Cover

About
Black Diamonds

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Author's Note

About Kim Kelly

Also by Kim Kelly

Copyright page

 

 

For my darlingest

 

[Australian history] does not read like history, but like the most
beautiful lies … but they are all true, they all happened.
Mark Twain,
Following the Equator
, 1897

Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh, Kookaburra
Gay your life must be.
Marion Sinclair, 1934

Australian sons let us rejoice
For we are young and free.
‘Advance Australia Fair', 1879

Don't go to Hell in order to give piratical,
plutocratic parasites a bigger slice of Heaven.
Direct Action
, Sydney, 1915

 

 

ONE

MAY–JULY 1914

 

FRANCINE

The first part of him I see is his hobnail boots, soot-black and massive, a few feet from my nose. I'm crouching, about to pick up the apples that have fallen through the bottom of the string bag, and there they are among the rolling red bobbles, and then his hands reach down, and then there's his face, black as his boots, black crescents on his fingers. I look away quickly, over my shoulder; not sure if I'm embarrassed about the apples, the man, the grime, or myself for being here in this place.

There are others, grey streaks of charcoal heading home from the mines after the shift, I presume. I don't know any of them, and have no reason to. They are just parts of the machine that digs the coal from the earth and keeps us in apples — and the rest. One of them glances at me, a flash of blue-white question, but keeps going, talking to the one he's walking with.

I can't ignore the one in front of me any longer. He's holding out the apples he's gathered for me, three in each huge hand. I don't know where he's going to put them; the bag is no good. So I look at him, finally. My cheeks are scalding already and then he smiles, teeth startling out of the black, and his eyes are green, glinting amber. Oh dear.

There's nothing else for it: I grab up the rest of the apples from the ground, four of them, and put them in my lap, scrunch two handfuls of skirt to hold them there. He's on his haunches, staring at me. Then he lets the apples fall, slowly, not touching my skirt; they roll in and bump against the others, and for the smallest of moments I watch them. And he's still looking at me.

He's going to ask me if I'm all right, I can feel it coming, but I don't give him the chance. I stand up and fairly fly away across the street to the trap, skirt still hitched up over my dun-dusty black-stockinged knees as I drive off and I don't care. I didn't even thank him. There's no real reason why I should have acknowledged him at all, but by the time I reach the house, I feel more scalded than ever.

‘You took your time,' Polly says from the kitchen when I get in. She's the housekeeper, and always rude. That's the way things are here. She's unaware that she's a servant, it seems; unlike our old housie, Hanna — for Mrs Hanrahan — whom I'd always thought to be about as animate as congealing porridge, but now, belatedly, appreciate for that very virtue. In any case, I suppose I have taken my time. Polly wanted the apples two hours ago, for a pie, and I said I'd go, just for something to do, but I went to the post office first — I'm waiting for a copy of
Native Flora and Fauna of New South Wales
I've ordered from Sydney; still not in — and then I took the trap a little way out of town to watch the sunset. At least, not the sun setting, but the way it hits the mountain foothills as it begins to sink: the rocks sticking out of the scrub look like fire trapped in glass, and the scrappy gums almost look graceful, the white patches on their peeling trunks like streams of pearl shell. There's so little else of colour here, except the sky that screams so blue into the valley it hurts sometimes; it's autumn now, but what'll it be like when summer comes? Anyway, I got my tiny glimpse of beauty before I had to turn around and face the town again, with its belching smokestacks like fat cigars, and its hills bald around the edges from all the poison; I only just made it back to the grocers before they closed.

No point in telling any of that to Polly as I tip the apples from my skirt onto her kitchen bench.

‘No time to make a pie now,' she says. ‘I'll poach them with brandy instead. It'll have to do. My pastry's gone to waste, mind.'

Tisk, tisk, tisk. Wouldn't matter what I said, she'd heave her great bosom in weary contempt. She came with the house; we're just pesky interlopers to her, my father and I. No doubt she thinks me a brazen little thing, too, wandering about on my own. I have no interest in her opinion; if she thinks I think I'm too good for this place, if she thinks I don't belong here, then she'd be right.

Polly sighs as she inspects the fruit: ‘These are bruised.' But I barely hear her. I'm still thinking about that incident with the miner. Or not thinking of him exactly, but me, and why my face is still burning. It's not like me, not like me at all, to blush and flutter like this. I tell Polly I'm not feeling well and I can sense her eyes rolling as she washes the apples, and I'm glad she never seems to look at me. She says, ‘There's dust on them too,' with disgust, but I've already left her. I see a faint black smudge on my skirt as I climb the stairs to my room; something else for her to be disgusted with.

Upstairs is some kind of refuge, but there's nothing
mine
about this room. It's just a place where my things are now, since we lost the house in Sydney, almost a month ago, though I'm sure few here in Lithgow know that, apart from my father's partner in the mine, Mr Drummond, who organised this new
place
for us. I don't pretend to know how the world of business works, but if you read the newspapers it appears that Sydney is one big betting ring of booms and busts; everyone's a gambler and a skiter for it. My father especially. He even tried to convince
me
that we were moving over the mountains because the mine needed his full attention for a time. Why, then, were we taking every stick of our furniture with us? I didn't bother asking. I might be somewhat ignorant, but I'm not stupid; and I don't need to rub it in for him. He's busted. Why else would he have sold our home, my beautiful rambling sandstone home, the only home I've ever known, on the water at Rose Bay?

He'd say I shouldn't crinkle my lovely brow with any such thoughts, but there's not much frowning involved in putting two and two together: he's hung on against some kind of ruin only because of this mine, which is doing very well, he's boasted. But I have to presume he's had to sell off just about everything else to square up his debts, and now here we are, with all our eggs in a coal basket, or whatever you call those little rail trucks that carry the stuff all about. I don't think Father knows anything much of mines or making anything apart from money — he's an investor, someone who puts up the finance for ventures, then takes his portion of the profits. Mr Drummond is the one who actually runs the mine and has for as long as I can remember, so there's no reason for Father to have come here, except that property is cheaper by far, and since the town is growing such apace there's no real shame in being here. Father still gets to strut and tootle around in his motor car and proclaim that Lithgow is the next best thing.
The Birmingham of Australia!
And it is, I suppose, judging from its growling pits and furnaces, factories and mills, turning out everything from iron and copper to chimney pots and tweed, rifles and bricks. And mountains of coal, of course. The whole town is black with it — truly. A grey film lies on every surface.

As much as I loathe this town, at least we're here together, Father and I. He's always good company, when he's about; he's quick to cheer me, mimics Polly's heaving and sighing to perfection, and pours forth his rich raw baritone against clumpy piano when he's had too much drink after dinner, which is most evenings now: ‘There once was a boy from Dublin who …' he begins and makes up a different song every time, sometimes fabulously vulgar, depending on consumption. He's a marvellous disgrace, and bleary or not his eyes sparkle when he looks at me. He is an Irishman, a drunk and a devoted punter, the full cliché, who came here, he tells me often enough, as a boy on a freighter from Dublin, and skipped off in Sydney
town
to make his fortune. What he never talks about is how he made that fortune; I suspect that's probably too vulgar for my ears. And it doesn't really matter in this country where wealth in itself buys respectability; if gossip is to be believed, then there are plenty here who are coarser than my father, and they are not all Irishmen — or the progeny of felons, as the English like to call us all.

There's another thing we never talk about and that's the future. There's been no mention of beaus or belles or, God forbid, marriage — for him or me. I turned eighteen on Sunday, and Father said to me after dinner, as he does: ‘Lord, no, you can't be more than twelve, my girl,' slid his present of a silver filigreed pen across the table and then changed the subject. I do, however, fancy I understand the reason for this. My mother died suddenly in 1901, of influenza, when I was nearly five; three days after Queen Victoria, and I remember thinking all the black armbands were for us. Father still gets tears in his eyes when he speaks of her, his Josie, or when he sings ‘My Little Blue-Eyed Nell', and sometimes I know when he is thinking of her; he has a look that pulls at my heart. But my mother is little more to me than a photograph of a pretty woman, the smell of hyacinths and the memory of a soft hand on my plump little cheek; before a lady called Miss Una came to take me up the hill to school, before the tram came and I learned to take myself. I know that's somehow much more a part of why I feel so strange this evening; how could I ever leave Father? But it's ridiculous to imagine I would stay with him forever in this hole in the ground just because I can't bear that heartbroken look of his. It's even more ridiculous to imagine that my present confusion has in any way been provoked by the filthy, nameless miner I stumbled upon in the middle of the road. The problem is, I can't imagine … anything.

My days were clear in Sydney, calm and contained as the harbour I looked out across every day. I had my garden that tumbled down to the sea, and my painting — watercolours, of animals mostly — to keep me busy. While Father was out, I'd ramble about, catch the tram into town to lose some hours at the David Jones emporium, or go riding out to South Head, or walk the foreshore near home, most often alone, sometimes accosted for a chat about nothing by Sister Terrence from the convent taking her constitutional. I've never really had any friends to speak of; never made a connection with any of the girls at Our Lady, not a lasting one anyway. I'd sometimes go on picnics and attend parties with the local crowd, naturally, but really I've always preferred my own company, and Father's, or that of a decent, fat novel. Or the water, swimming alone at sunset at the edge of my garden in my little sea pool … But now I don't even have a garden, just gums towering over a yard of spindly grass in the back and a small spread of mangy flowerbeds and moth-eaten hedge in the front of the most hideous dark-brick monstrosity that was ever built: it looks like a two-storey temperance hall whose grounds have been attended by a wayward member. And as for painting, I've had to resort to ordering
Native Flora and Fauna of New South Wales
for the colour plates as inspiration, since there's little else but ugliness outside my windows here. For the first time ever I am, I think, lonely. That's what's wrong with me, of course; I'm simply burning with resentment and have no one to tell it to.

I'll talk to Father again tonight about the yard; there must be someone in this town who can help me make a garden. Then, in the morning, I'll go to that early Wednesday Mass and talk to Father Hurley about seeing if there's some way I can make myself busy. He seems a pleasant, approachable sort of a man. Perhaps I can teach at the school. Is there even a school? There must be. Regardless, I need to spend less time in contemplation of things I can't change … and adapt. I've never done a day's work in my life, but perhaps a job is the thing — everyone else here seems to have one. It's a
workers
' town.

The sun has well and truly vanished now, and from the window I can only just make out the lines of cottages dog-tailing beyond Main Street, away from the town, or peppering up the hill towards this house, fuzzy splotches of light here and there. And then my stomach lurches: that miner's eyes loom out at me from the darkness. He lives out there somewhere; what does he see now? His town. Perhaps he is remembering a strange, rude girl. Why I should care I have no idea, but somehow I do.

I hear the engine of the Austin putter up the drive, the creak and bang of the front door; Father is home. Thank God.