us even wonder if she’s the same one who started it all.’
‘What happens to the tea cosies?’ Chang Kyong-–sil was a practical young woman.
‘That’s the challenge. Apparently most of the first lot went to countries that drink tea, although some were distributed around the UN complex. The second “Lusala” sewed up the holes and sent them to a hill tribe in China for hats. They’ve been used to incubate eggs. And so on. My solution was to use them for the safe packing of medical supplies.’
Chang looked thoughtful. ‘And no-one thinks this is strange?’
‘Strange, yes. But comforting, somehow. It’s a bit of old-fashioned kindness in a world where kindness is not valued nearly enough.’
Two months later, Chang wrote her letter and carefully signed the name Lusala Ngilu in a fair copy of the original. As she despatched the cosies, metamorphosed now into foot warmers, she felt a quiet sense of achievement. The following year, around the time Mrs Pargetter was making scones for Moss and Finn, Ana Sejka became the next Lusala, and listened with special interest to Chang’s briefing.
‘This Mrs Pargetter is Australian,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder where Opportunity is, exactly.’
9
Opportunity and Cradletown
OPPORTUNITY WEEKES WAS BORN ON the Californian goldfields. His father, Jeremiah, was an itinerant preacher with smouldering eyes, a beard that rivalled Abraham’s and a voice that could waken the dead. His mother, formerly Miss Clementine Witherspoon, was the eighth daughter of a Kansas crop farmer whom God had previously afflicted with seven plain daughters to marry off as best he could. The charming blonde Clementine was his only hope of a prosperous old age, and Farmer Witherspoon was understandably devastated when his lovely youngest daughter ran away at the age of seventeen to marry Jeremiah.
Perhaps it was the curse the farmer sent after them, or maybe it was his daughter’s rebellious nature, but after Jeremiah’s mesmeric eyes lost their power over her, Clementine ran away again, this time to join the eclectic band of young women in Miss Kitty’s brothel. There she worked, watched and listened until she felt her education was sufficient to strike out on her own.
Before she left her husband she bore a child, whom Jeremiah insisted they name Opportunity, in gratitude to God’s gifts to all of us. Jeremiah was of a faith that believed that once a person is ‘saved’, they become worthy not only of heavenly reward but also of worldly treasures. He could not make this point strongly enough to his congregation, and they obligingly cooperated with God’s plan by contributing generously to his ministry. Jeremiah and Clementine both had a head for business.
When California became infected with news of gold in the faraway colony of Victoria, the preacher decided to take his son to a new land where the stain of his mother’s occupation would never more blight his young life. Being of a dramatic disposition, he wrote to Clementine before he left, informing her that he was removing his spotless lamb from the foul odour of his mother’s scarlet sins. There was also mention of the Whore of Babylon and the bold opinion that Jesus should never have stopped the mob from stoning the adulteress. He concluded: I remain Your Obedient Servant, Jeremiah C. Weekes. He felt a good deal better for this, and left for the colony with a light heart and a mission to convert the wicked and sustain the faithful who sought their fortune in the rich soil of the Victorian goldfields.
Young Opportunity was eleven by then, and not the appealing waif he once had been. Ungainly, his fast-growing limbs clumsy and graceless, he slouched and sulked while his father attempted to preach to men who, unlike his compatriots, could not or would not abandon themselves to the Spirit. If they came to his meetings at all, they came to stare stonily, to jeer or to laugh. Some would even pretend to feel the Spirit and stagger about gabbling in tongues, providing the small crowd with much merriment. Jeremiah hated these exhibitionists, but at least after such diversions a few people would good-–naturedly make a small offering at collection time.
However, it was not enough to support him and his boy. They spent their days working on a small claim, and the evenings passed with Jeremiah teaching an increasingly resistant Opportunity his letters and numbers.
As more families and women came and businesses were established, the canvas town reached a critical mass, and serious building began. The streets of fine shops and dwellings, the ornate town