The Old Balmain House

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 21 - Rachel remembers

  Rachel felt old and tired. This morning, with the cold in the stone house, she had found it hard to get out of bed and her arthritis pained her. Still, after almost her allotted four score years, she still found simple pleasures in life. But today she felt troubled. It was hard to think exactly why that should be; perhaps it was just the passage of time, so much change over so many years.

  When she had first come here to this house, so very long ago, it was like a light had been turned on in her life. Seen through her six year old eyes the house had seemed huge after their small Balmain cottage. She had never been back there since, she could not say why. Even though she knew she had been happy there, that leaving closed a dark chapter of her life.

  But now she must remember. She drew her mind back to that time. An image of Sophie came floating into her mind, in her white communion dress, like in the picture her Mum had given her, when she was old and dying. Now she remembered that day. As she remembered she understood why she was troubled and what she must do. It was getting hard to remember sometimes, but today she would make herself remember. It needed to be today! If she left it until tomorrow perhaps her mind would be unable to hold it any more.

  She knew her memory was not good; sometimes she did not know where she was or what she was doing; sometimes a kindly neighbour had to help her find her way home. The doctor called it something with a funny long name that started with an O sound, Ozzimers, or something like that.

  Her one son lived far away in that City called New York. His job was something to do with money, Investment Banker; that was it. He decided, three months ago when he heard she was getting lost, that someone must stay in the house to help her. Now a lady lived with her called Maggie. She was nice, but she was a bit of a bother to always have around.

  But what did that matter, she knew what was wrong, she was old. All her friends had gone and, before long, she would join them. She was nearly ready to cross over, that’s what she thought it was like ever since her dear mother, Maria, had told her the full story. But before she did she must first tell her daughter about her mother’s, her grandmother’s and her own stories, just to keep the memory alive, in case someone ever found where Sophie had gone.

  That was what she had been trying hard to remember, keeping alive this memory for Sophie. She had woken last night knowing that she could still just hold the story in her mind to tell it. But it must be today or it may be too late.

  She made a cup of tea and a slice of buttered toast. Sitting at the old wooden kitchen table, she felt the remembrances of her earliest childhood swirl around in her mind and rise to the surface.

  The strongest was of sitting on the bed with Sophie, in their room with the pink fireplace. Perhaps she was three. Sophie must have been in her second year of school because she was beginning to read, mostly picture books with a few words on each page. But Sophie and Rachel both thought Sophie was enormously clever. Even more than the reading Rachel loved the pictures and, while she could look at the pictures by herself, Sophie’s reading brought them alive in her mind. Perhaps that was why she had loved painting herself; it had been her own effort to recreate those early pictures that had flowed through her mind. Her daughter, Sarah, shared her love of painting too. Sarah had gone on to do it much better than she, Rachel, ever could.

  Sophie’s favourite books were those about faraway lands, places with pictures of ships to take you there, travelling over vast blue seas. Lands of amazing high mountains with snow and pictures of waterfalls; and pictures of astonishing animals, the giraffes with their long necks, zebras that looked like funny painted horses, jaguars with their orange and black mottled skins that swam in the water and climbed in trees and huge brightly coloured parrots that flew overhead in the forests.

  She remembered how, sometimes, Sophie would get so interested in the stories that she would read on and on, page after page, turning too fast, before Rachel could look properly at the pictures and how she would then eventually get bored and fall off to sleep. Sometimes she just pretended to go to sleep, to get Sophie to stop reading and tuck her into bed, with a big hug and kiss, pretending to be Mummy or Daddy.

  Rachel also remembered her Gran Alison and, sort of, Grandpa Charles. But that memory was all smoky in her head, like you pushed your face up against frosted glass and tried to look through, but when all you could really see were half shadowed outlines. But she knew there was something special between Sophie and Gran; it was like they could talk to each other without looking or saying anything. And she really liked her Gran, she made you feel warm inside, like you were the most important person there was.

  Now she remembered the first time Sophie showed her that beautiful perfume bottle that her Gran had given her, covered in silver flowing waves, washing over a smoky, almost milky, turquoise sea of glass. All at once Rachel had felt so jealous. Why did Grandma give it to Sophie, not me? Now this feeling flooded back, she felt the raw anger of her child mind rise again.

  She recalled that day, long ago, when she decided to pay Sophie back for this. So, when Sophie went out with her Mum and Alexander, leaving only her Dad at home, Rachel had taken the perfume bottle and hidden it away in the back of the fireplace, high on a little ledge.

  After Sophie came back Rachel had watched her carefully. She was expecting Sophie to look for the bottle where she had left it and, when she did not find it, to ask Rachel if she knew where it was.

  Rachel had made up her mind to deny knowing where it was gone. Instead she would wait to take it out and play with it, by herself, when Sophie was not there. If Sophie caught her with it she would tell her she had found it, fallen under the rug and was minding it.

  But Sophie had not done that. Instead of asking Rachel or searching for it she stood in the middle of the room looking puzzled for a few seconds. Then she walked over to the fireplace, reached up for the bottle and took it out. Sophie did not scold Rachel, it was as if she did not think Rachel had hidden if, but it had moved there by itself. All Sophie said was. “There you are, you naughty bottle, you know you can’t hide from me.”

  Next day Sophie said to her, “The bottle wants to be shared between us, so you must also use it to hold your memories.” So, after that, they would sit together, each putting in their memories, side by side on the bed. Sophie now called it “our perfume bottle”, which really meant they both owned it.

  The last thing about Sophie that Rachel remembered clearly was the day, when her Grandma and Grandpa had died; it was a long time before other people found out about it. She and Sophie were talking about boys, or mainly Sophie was talking about Matty, in that “I love you” way she had. Rachel was saying she thought boys were silly, feeling grown up talking like that with her sister. Suddenly Grandma was with them in their house, not on the boat which had crashed. Rachel knew straightaway that Sophie felt it, and she knew her Mummy felt it too, even though Mummy was outside the room. It seemed like a hole was open that let her Grandma in with them and let them see out into another place where the broken boat was.

  That memory drifted away. Then pain rose into Rachel’s mind. It was now the day Sophie had gone away and not come back. She heard her mother asking Alexander where Sophie was. Then her Mum went down the street to look for her at the McNeil’s. While she was gone Rachel took out the perfume bottle. But it felt like horrible, like ice. It was now cold and empty, with nothing inside and it hurt her hand to hold. After that she left the bottle in the bedside locker and did not take it out again. But on the day of the big church service the bottle was gone. Rachel knew at once where her mother put it, in the chimney, but she did not want to take it out again.

  When Sophie went away Mummy and Daddy did not understand she missed Sophie just as much as they did. They thought because she was only four she would soon forget her. But she could not forget, and sometimes she felt really sad and most wanted Sophie to come back, and sometimes she felt really angry because it was mean of Sophie to go away too soon.


  She remembered wanting to talk to her Daddy, soon after Sophie went away. But it was like he could not see her, even though she could see him. So she took his hand and said his name to make him look at her. For a second he saw her then his eyes went away to somewhere inside his head and she felt so hurt because she knew he had forgotten she was there. After that she did not try to talk to him anymore.

  Later she remembered that awful time when her Daddy was away for ages and ages, and her Mum had tried so hard to be brave and worked so hard. All her bad, angry part, from before Sophie went away, was gone; the times like when she sat in the chair and cried and argued with her Dad; now Rachel understood that was about the two little babies that died. But once her Daddy went away, even though she never got cross anymore, sometimes her Mummy would get so tired and lonely. And sometimes, at night, she would cry in her sleep. Then Rachel would go in and cuddle her and they would both help each other to forget their sadness. Then, by helping her Mummy, Rachel started to feel better too.

  The final memory from that time, and a happy one, was when Mummy had decided to teach her and Alexander to sing as they all worked together. Mostly her Mum sung the verses and they sung the chorus, but sometimes they had sung all together. One day they were learning a new harmony and her Mum said, “We all have to try really hard to make this beautiful, because then Daddy will hear this in his heart, no matter how far away he is, and it will bring him back. And it had!

  Suddenly Rachel awoke from her reverie. She must have sat there remembering for over half an hour because now her tea was cold.

  She rang the bell and Maggie came, that’s what she called her, though Margaret was her proper name. “I need to go across and see Sarah. Would you ring her to make sure she is in and then take me over. You needn’t stay but perhaps you could come again to help me home after lunch.”

  As she got up to leave, suddenly those old memories from Smith Street came back again, with a clarity that almost took her breath away, all flooding into her mind together. Today was their day, they must be told.

  She shook her head to clear it then went to the dresser drawer to take out a small bunch of old photos and letters. These would help prompt her memory, so little to show for 80 years of living and all that had passed. But it was what she had and it would have to do.

  Maggie offered to drive her in the car, but no, she would prefer to walk. It gave her time to collect her thoughts and hold them all together in one place before the wind blew them away, like sheets of paper caught in a gust and scattered all over the ground. Together they made a coherent whole, but each piece of paper by itself meant so little. As she walked more and more memories of other times came flooding back.

  There, across the harbour, was Millers Point, where a windmill had once stood. Now a huge ocean liner stood in front of it and behind it rose all the skyscrapers of the city. They said that they had built one that was over thirty stories tall, imagine that.

  Out on the harbour a grand sail boat came sweeping past. That brought to mind her days of sailing with her Dad, and then with her beloved David, both long gone. How she had loved those times, wind in her face and her hair blowing out behind, ‘like a golden cloud’, her David, said. If he could only see it now, so grey and thin.

  The only pity of it was that Maria would not sail with them, she never said why, but smiled brightly when asked and said, “I leave that for others.” Perhaps it had to do with when the news came of that terrible storm and of Granny and Grandpa with their boat broken on the rocks. Rachel could just remember how a man came to the door with a telegram. Even though her Mum felt it before, then it was in writing, like being hit in the face.

  Her Mum had taken the telegram with a shaking hand and passed it to her Dad, then stood in the passage and cried. Her Dad put his arms around her Mum and said soft words. Rachel had come up to them and asked them what was the matter?

  Her Dad had pulled her in against them and said. “This is saying that Grandma and Grandpa are dead and the boat is wrecked, and we are all very sad. So now we must just hold a happy memory of them.” After she hadn’t really been sad because she knew they were somewhere good together.

  She felt flooding into her mind a picture of Gran Alison and Grandpa Charles, young and beautiful on their wedding day, perhaps it was an old photograph, but where did the colour and that red gold light in her Gran’s hair come from? She could only remember her with soft gray hair. They did not take coloured pictures at her Gran’s wedding, just funny old black and white things. But still it was a real picture, she knew it was.

  It came to her as almost an afterthought. All at once she wished Gran had outlived Sophie, they were like shared souls. If anyone knew where to look for Sophie it would have been her Gran. Oh if only she could know!

  She had arrived, she was standing at the front gate of the little cottage, still with all the beautiful roses, some were there from long before, some she had planted, and now some more that Sarah had planted.

  Her daughter was an artiste; that was how she called it. She painted beautiful pictures of the city and harbour, and of the old houses and people of Balmain. She sold them at the Balmain and Rozelle markets. That brought to mind her own pictures of the harbour bridge. The bridge was not there when she was little but she remembered them building it in the bad years of the Depression and how a man she knew from Millers Point had fallen off and died. She had watched it grow from the two ends as she walked home with her children from Nicholson St School.

  Pity Sarah had no children; she missed the sound of their little feet in a house. But then she thought, Sarah’s children would be grown up by now, but then, perhaps, they would have had some children of their own.

  Right now she must stop her thinking from rambling away and hold her thoughts together for one last time as she told her daughter the story.

  Her daughter welcomed her with a happy smile and kiss on the cheek. Rachel realised that she was a pretty one even at the other side of fifty, even though her hair was a bit too red, it must be that extra bottle colour, and her breasts were sagging. That’s what comes of not wearing a bra.

  She said “Dearest, I have come to tell you a story before it is too late.” Then she handed Sarah the letters and photos and said, “I have brought these. You must use them to help me remember, if I get muddled.”

  They sat in front of the fire, two chairs side by side, with the photos on her lap and she told it, the story that needed to be said, some from her own remembering and some as told by Maria on that last day.

  When she had finished Sarah offered her tea, but Rachel said “No, walk me home please. I am finished all I set out to do. Pray God it is enough.”

  As she walked home she felt Sophie smiling at her, saying “Thank you my little sister. Soon, together, we will see the pictures of our childhood again, but completely real this time.”

  Then her thoughts turned to this house to which she came; such wonderful thoughts; such happy thoughts. How a week after her Dad had returned they had come here and it seemed like a fairy castle.

  On the day they left the other house she had taken out the perfume bottle, from where her Mum had hidden it, one last time to say goodbye. It was warm again and she knew that Sophie was safe with Gran Alison.

  More thoughts flowed of her Dad and Mum and all five of them, children in the house, playing and singing together and sailing, then of her David and her with baby Sarah and of three year old Tom holding Sarah so proudly. It was good and it was enough.

  Two days later Maggie rang Sarah. She said Rachel had died in her sleep. She seemed to be smiling and was holding two pictures. One was of her and David on a boat, the other of a family outside a different house, which had written on the back. Sophie’s 5th birthday 1905.