Geordie watched him go, and then joined Sam and Bart in a card game around the fire. Big Sister finished the washing up, put the children to bed and began to mend shirts. Emmie Jackson, more lethargic than ever, sat beside her, making no effort to help.
Fred looked around him on his walk until he reached the section where Hyde’s saloon and gaming den was flanked by Fat Lil’s Place. He had never visited either of them, although he had heard Sam and Bart chatting about them.
He stopped there—and caught the eye of Fat Lil herself.
It was the Yankees at the diggings who had christened the Madam at The Golden Horseshoe Fat Lil, and had changed its name to Fat Lil’s Place. Not that Lil was really fat, just big all over. Junoesque, as Geordie had once described her to Bart.
‘You know who?’ Bart had said, puzzled. ‘She’s Fat Lil, isn’t she?’
Fat Lil was very much the Madam. She kept the girls in order, and the place respectable, if a whorehouse could ever be called respectable. She often stood, or sat, outside, gathering custom, magnificent in her satins, with feathers in her hair, her face as highly painted as an Old Master, Geordie said, confusing Bart all over again.
Although Lil had once been on the game herself she rarely practised it now. Occasionally, if someone took her fancy when she sat outside, she invited him into her bed. ‘Lucky for some,’ laughed the diggers, since she never asked for payment—but this happened rarely.
Fred’s restless mood had grown with every step he had taken. Lately he had found that looking at women, other than Big Sister, that was, made him feel—well—strange. He had a dim memory that doing something with women was very nice, but like many other aspects of Fred’s life, his memory of exactly what that something was, was rather patchy.
Fat Lil watched him approaching. Everything about his handsome face and his beautiful body attracted her. When he drew level she returned his innocent stare with her knowing one.
‘Hello! New chum, aren’t you?’ Then she realised that he was The Wreck, sobered off, and without all the hair. A proper Apollo, as someone had once called a handsome man she had known, long ago when she had been Thinner Lil.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Not all that new now, though.’
‘No,’ said Fat Lil, running her eyes up and down him. ‘Like a bit of fun, would you? Free, too.’
Fred was immediately attracted by the prospect of a bit of fun.
‘Yes,’ he said, adding, ‘my name’s Fred.’ He gave her his swooning smile, even more attractive now that he had lost his beard. ‘A bit of fun sounds nice.’
‘Right, then,’ she said, taking him by the hand, for he seemed a little unsure of what to do next. She led him to her own quarters which were unexpectedly comfortable and pleasant, in contrast to the stark appointments of the girls’ rooms.
Fred thoroughly enjoyed having fun with Fat Lil. Once in her bed he found, much to his surprise, that he knew exactly what to do, and that he was rather skilful at it, judging by Fat Lil’s pleased reactions.
Fat Lil was surprised as well as pleased. She thought that although it was some time since Fred had enjoyed a bit of fun—and she was right about that—he was still very considerate of his partner, both before and after the fun. She thought this was a little surprising, too. Great hulking diggers were not usually so thoughtful in her experience.
‘Nice, wasn’t it?’ said Fred dreamily, afterwards, thinking that he had been missing a lot in life by not remembering what fun was before. He sometimes wondered why he had such difficulty in recalling things. Whenever Geordie asked him questions about the past to test whether his memory was returning, his usual reply was, ‘I can’t remember, Geordie.’
Geordie, indeed, was curious to know why it was that Fred had lost some things completely, and yet remembered others quite well. It had been obvious to him for some time that sex had flown out of Fred’s universe, and he had sometimes wondered what would happen when—and if—it flew back, and why it had disappeared at all.
That first night Fat Lil was so pleased with Fred that she allowed him, nay, encouraged him, to pleasure her for longer than usual, so it was quite late when he finally trotted off to the only home he could remember. Not that Fred had much idea of time and its importance—that was something else which he had mislaid.
Big Sister was still up when Fred rolled home, a look of stunned happiness on his face. Sam and Bart had abandoned the card game and had gone to Hyde’s for a quick drink—which always seemed to turn into a slow one, Kirstie noticed sardonically.
Geordie was teaching her to play chess. He had tried to interest Fred, but Fred had said distressfully, ‘It makes my head hurt,’ when Geordie had begun to explain some of its basics to him. The chessboard lay on a mat between them, and Fred’s arrival came at a crucial point in the game.
‘Remembered you had a home to come back to, did you, Fred?’ Kirstie said sharply to him. The sharpness was partly because Geordie had her Queen pinned down again.
Her sarcasm flew over Fred’s head. He was still in such a state of delight that nothing could disturb him.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said simply. ‘I don’t forget that.’
‘As a matter of interest,’ Kirstie asked, more to delay the fatal moment when her next move—whatever it was—would result in her losing the game than real curiosity about Fred’s doings, ‘where have you been and what have you been doing?’
Fred, who had sat down in front of the chessboard, opened his mouth to tell her about his adventure with Fat Lil—and then closed it again. He was not so far gone that he did not remember that fun with women like Fat Lil was not something which you talked about to a pure and innocent young girl like Big Sister.
Not that she didn’t know about them—you couldn’t live in the diggings and be unaware of their presence, but there was a pretence that somehow young virgins never saw them and knew nothing about them and their activities.
He desperately tried to invent some explanation of where he had spent the last three hours, and began to sweat with worry that he might come out with something wrong.
‘I…’ he began, and then, water running down his face, he pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and tried to mop it up. He looked at the chessboard as though it might give him inspiration. Not that it did, but what it did do was drag a memory from the distant recesses of his mind.
‘If you’re playing with white, Big Sister,’ he said judiciously, ‘you could mate Geordie instead of him mating you, if you let him have your Queen, and then you moved your rook to the square opposite his King—seeing that his taking your Queen leaves your Bishop covering his King as well, and so his King has nowhere to go and you’ve won the game.’
There was an intense and stunned silence. Both players stared at the board. Geordie, an old chess hand who was certain that he had won the game, saw immediately that Fred had spotted a major weakness in his attack—probably because he had not been concentrating very hard against a novice.
He looked across at Fred. ‘Now, how the devil did you know that, Fred?’
Fred had spoken without thinking. He looked at the board and tried to think but nothing happened. The game of chess was once more as mysterious to him as it had been when Geordie had tried to teach him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, mopping his sweating forehead with his handkerchief again. ‘Why did I say that, Geordie? Does it mean anything?’
‘Yes,’ said Geordie, ‘It means that you were once a better player than I am, and I’m a good one. Are you sure that you can’t remember anything more?”
Kirstie, who had been watching Fred and his handkerchief closely, gave a short scornful laugh. ‘I think that Fred has remembered another game,’ she said. ‘Lend me your handkerchief, Fred, I’m hot, too.’
Fred