The Denniston Rose

by Jenny Pattrick

Opposite the fire is a table and beside the table are some wooden boxes with things in them. She looks to see if any have food in them.

  ‘For goodness sake go outside and play if you can’t be quiet!’ says her mother. She and the man who is supposed to be her father are lying close together, very still. Rose watches them for a while. When her mother is holding on to a man like that she usually doesn’t hear. Still watching them, she tiptoes to her mother’s coat and slides her hand into the pocket. The purse is there! Without taking her eyes off her mother she snaps open the lock and feels for a threepence. The cold round feel in her hand is very good.

  Now she puts on the canvas cape and ties the string around her neck, but not very well because the sides of the cape get in the way. Then she can’t do up her boots because every time she bends down the canvas reaches the floor and the boots are inside under the cape.

  ‘For pity’s sake! Crash crash!’ says her mother, without looking, ‘What’s the matter now?’

  ‘I can’t do up my boots,’ says Rose.

  ‘Take your cape off and do up the boots first, ninny,’ says her mother.

  Rose sighs and starts all over again.

  Outside, she can’t see very far. Everything is grey as if she were still under her blanket. The lumpy things they walked past in the night are rocks, not animals. The houses must be there somewhere but the mist is too thick. The mist smells of coal. She runs at one of the rocks and says boo to it in a loud voice, beating at it hard with a stick and laughing at it. In her other hand the threepence is held so tightly it hurts. She jumps along the path like a rabbit but her cape bounces up and down and scratches her neck. Now she can see the long row of huts but doesn’t want to go near there today. She walks past a long building and hears snoring. Lots of loud snoring like a pen of pigs. She snores too, then runs away along the path, past other sleeping huts, looking for one that is awake.

  Hanrattys

  THE HANRATTYS HAD been at Denniston three years when Rose and her mother arrived. Totty Hanratty was out in the lean-to, red in the face from trying to get a good heat under the kerosene tins for her boarders’ hot water. Just when she thought the coal was catching nicely, a rogue wind would drive rain in around the corner and the yellow-red glow would spit and fade.

  Totty straightened to ease her back for a moment and saw what she thought was one of the stray dogs from the Camp coming up out of the mist in search of breakfast. Another heartbeat and she’d have let fly with a lump of coal. You didn’t expect, then, to see a child; there was only her Michael and three or four older ones working round the mines.

  But a child it was: over her head a square of wet tarp that fanned out right down to her boots. A rough hole had been cut for her face, and quick blue eyes examined the dismal sight of Dickson Street in the rain. An astonishing sight. The child trotted through the mud as if she owned the place.

  Forgetting fire and boarders, Totty Hanratty goes to the fence for a better look. The triangular bundle, about four years old at a guess, zigzags down the lane, looking in windows, until Totty calls her over. The child makes a beeline for her, displaying a smile so sunny it surely must cover something darker on a morning like this. She holds out her hand; a threepenny piece lies on a bloody, muddy palm.

  ‘Can I buy some bread here?’ she asks, smiling still.

  ‘Come in quick!’ says Totty, frowning to see the caked blood. She holds open the gate and the little one trots in, trusting as a puppy. ‘Give me a moment with this fire, then we’ll see what we can find.’ The child stands under the lean-to, close to the fire which after all has got itself going, as soon as no one was watching, wouldn’t you know it.

  ‘The Company Store is the place you want,’ says Totty, busy with the shovel and glad to talk to anyone. ‘Down by the Bins. But it won’t be open yet, sweetheart. If you’re hungry you can have a bite with my Michael.’

  ‘Mother and Father will want some too.’

  ‘And who are they?’ asks Totty, dying to know.

  The child frowns and looks at the fire for a bit. ‘They’re still asleep.’

  ‘Down at the Camp are they?’

  The child looks at Mrs Hanratty in a conversational kind of way, like an adult. ‘I don’t know the names here yet. Mother and I only came in the night.’

  Totty smiles, thinking the child has got her times wrong. No one could have arrived last night. Yet it’s strange she hasn’t heard. Another child, after all.

  ‘Well, then, so your father has been here for a bit, has he?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ says the child doubtfully. Then the smile comes out again as she remembers something. ‘He’s called Mr James of County Cork.’ The name is pronounced with pride.

  Totty Hanratty breathes in sharply and can think of nothing to say. She flips two cloths from the nail on the wall, wraps them around the wire handles of a pair of steaming tins, lifts them down, heaves two fresh ones onto the grate in their place, careful not to slop water on the coals.

  ‘Well, come in anyway,’ she says finally, but her face is less welcoming.

  The weight of the tins wrenches her arms down, drives her boots deeper as she crosses the yard to the back door. The child follows, the hem of her stiff little cape dipping into the mud with each bobbing step.

  Totty’s stern look melts when she sees the child lay her threepence carefully on the doorstep where she can see it, and unlace her boots one by one. Michael can’t anywhere near do that. The hand is clearly giving pain but the child shakes her head, proud of her skill, when offered help.

  In the wash-house Totty cleans the wound, sponging gently with some of her warm water. The thought of this little girl wandering unknown on the Hill is almost more than the mind can take in.

  ‘That’s a nasty gash. Does it hurt?’

  ‘No.’ Though the smile is stiffer now.

  ‘How did it happen?’ Totty suspects Jimmy Cork.

  ‘There was something sharp in the — the thing we came up on. It was too dark to see.’ The child winces, but smiles again as soon as she is able, as if to reassure the adult. A strange child. There is something too self-contained, almost manipulative about her. Totty shakes her head to chase off these impressions. I am being silly, she thinks. It’s the idea of Jimmy Cork.

  In the kitchen, Michael, warm and golden as a fresh scone, is amusing himself banging porridge spoons, like any proper four-year-old. At the sight of the girl in the doorway his mouth drops open. Then he’s off his chair and on the floor in front of her, laughing and pointing. It’s the first time Michael has seen anyone his own size. The child’s face is equally amazed. She reaches out her good hand; offers the threepence. Michael accepts.

  Totty wants to keep her.

  TOTTY Hanratty, six months pregnant, married only two, had been the second woman to arrive on the Hill. Mrs C. Rasmussen, of course, was the first. When Rose arrived, neither woman had left the bleak plateau in three years.

  She was a McGuire, Totty was; a McGuire from Westport. Her father, Mr Rufus McGuire, owned the General Store on Palmerston Street and had shares in the Royal Mail Service to Reefton. He was also a good friend of Mr Bickerton Fisher, who was expected to represent Buller District in Parliament after the next election. Oh yes, McGuires were respected in Westport society; Mrs McGuire saw to that.

  Rufus McGuire, red-headed as his name suggested, passed the hair colour along with a wilful disposition down to his elder daughter, Dorothy. Everything about this fiery daughter broke her mother’s heart. She was a natural beauty, clever and accomplished, sang like a bird, recited long poems to make a grown man cry, was tall but not a bean-pole, slim enough not to need corsets, and sunny natured. The red hair — aggressive bristles in the father’s case — on Totty’s head curled softly around her ears and escaped in shining tendrils from the clasp at the nape of her neck. In short, Dorothy McGuire had all the attributes to make an excellent match, yet spent all her days ensuring she would make a bad one. Totty ran on the beach with young people o
f any station or no station. She walked out of the house without a chaperone and attended Entertainments with rowdy lads and lasses. She argued with business partners of her father’s, and scorned afternoon-tea parties with her mother’s friends. Totty loved the bush, would climb hills and stony riverbeds like a man. Worst of all, she spent too much time with Tom Hanratty, a rough carpenter’s son and a Catholic.

  Totty McGuire paid her first visit to Denniston in daylight, not a cloud in the sky. March 10th 1879 it was — three years before Rose arrived — and about three hundred others were with her. It was not often the mayor announced a public holiday. And who could resist when the Company laid on a free train to take anyone with a fancy for adventure to the opening of the Denniston Incline, the Eighth Wonder of the Engineering World, to be followed by a dance with entertainment down at Waimang?

  ‘You’ll ride with us, in the official party, Dorothy,’ says Mrs McGuire. ‘There is a closed carriage reserved.’ Her words are abrupt but the eyes plead.

  Totty mutters some excuse and runs down the line to the open wagons with plank seats for the working classes. Tom Hanratty’s mates laugh and wink to see his fancy girl’s lace petticoats flying, showing pretty buttoned boots and a fair bit of ankle too, but Tom leans down proudly and pulls her up as if she were any decent working-class woman. Totty smiles and bobs to Tom’s family, sitting in the open wagon behind, and earns a nod, sour as lemon, from Mrs Hanratty.

  ‘You’d best ride up with your family, Miss McGuire.’ Her words are square and nasal, causing heads to turn three wagons away. ‘That dress won’t survive the journey out here in the open.’

  Mrs Hanratty is dressed head to toe in sensible black against the soot and coal dust, as are all the other women in sight. A worn grey blanket stretches across her broad knees and over the skinny legs of the four youngest Hanrattys. Even ten-year-old Meg wears a black kerchief over her curls. Totty stands out like a whore in a nunnery.

  She sighs. ‘I can’t please anyone today.’ But Tom’s warm arm, steadying her as they chuff and rattle up the coast, tells her different.

  At Waimangaroa Junction the train stops to take on more picnickers. Tom stands up and waves both arms. ‘Hey, Jacko, it’s a holiday, man! Join the picnic!’

  Jacko, perched on the roof struts of a skeleton cottage, banging nails in the morning sun, hears nothing but waves his hammer and grins.

  ‘It’s his own house he’s building,’ shouts Tom into Totty’s ear. ‘I could do the same for us if I work for the Company.’ She smiles and nods, though the certainty of family opposition hangs heavy as engine smoke above them both.

  The train whoops and turns inland towards the gorge. Ahead, bush-clad foothills rise sharply to the plateau. People shout and point up to the distant gash of the Incline, the Powerhouse chimney rising above it like a preacher’s finger invoking the wrath of the Lord. Then the awesome view slides out of sight behind dripping ferny cliffs as the train creaks its way around the tight curves of the gorge. They pass the bridge across to the Wellington Mine and see the first workings for the Koranui Incline. They say there’s wonderful coal up at the Koranui, but getting it down is even more of a problem than from the Rochefort Plateau, where they’re headed today. No sign of work today, though, on either Wellington or Koranui. The opening of the Incline is an event not to be missed, and even the dour English miners are in holiday mood.

  Totty is entranced. On a shining day like this, anything is possible. She turns to Tom, her smile warm as sunlight.

  ‘Hold still. You’ve got a smut.’ She licks one delicate forefinger and touches the flake of soot on his clean white collar. Attracted to the spit, it comes away with hardly a trace. Totty squashes it like a bed-bug between forefinger and thumb.

  Tom laughs at the trick and tries to return the compliment. His solid carpenter’s finger approaches a smut on her muslin, but the soft thing collapses and the skirt is smudged. He groans and dabs with his handkerchief. Three more dark shadows appear. Tom looks down at his clumsy hands.

  ‘Ah, Totty, what have I done? Your dress …’ His face is desperate.

  Mrs Hanratty, tight-lipped, hands forward her own shawl but Totty declines the dark cover. She will not succumb to propriety, not today. Standing in the rocking wagon, so everyone can see, she raises her hands to her hair, drags them slowly over her face, her shoulders, down over the neatly corseted bosom and waist, all the way down to the frilled hem. In the wake of her hands black flowers bloom over flesh, over lace, over sprigged yellow muslin. Every eye, even Tom’s, is scandalised.

  Totty, now spotted like a blackcurrant pudding, sits. She and Tom ride, straight-backed and silent, up the gorge. Other picnickers exclaim over the size and grandeur of the trees, the sparkle on the river below, the coal seam clearly visible in the wall of the gorge (but how could you ever reach it?). Totty blinks, pretending the sun is in her eyes. But when two fat pigeons burst out of the bush, close enough to touch and iridescent as opals, Tom glances sideways in the general stir and winks stoutly at his wilful girl. Totty’s giggle is half sob, but the day — and a dynasty — is rescued.

  It turns out that the bottom half of the Incline is not yet functioning. Mr Dickson, Company manager, resplendent in top hat, explains to the milling picnickers that he cannot guarantee the safety of the ladies until the lower brake-drum has been inspected. But if the gentlemen would offer a hand to the ladies, they might all make their way safely up over the railway sleepers, up the steep slope of the Incline, to Middle Brake, where brand-new wagons, untouched by coal dust, are ready to haul them up the second, steeper section of the Incline.

  Several women and a few men, quoting varicose veins, hearts, delicate shoes or dispositions, decide to picnic at the railhead. Conn’s Creek is, after all, very pretty; much more suitable than the high plateau. Mrs Hanratty is one of these. She spreads her rug and sits with other women, dark and formal in the sun, like heavy boulders guarding against the exuberance of the bush.

  Others, including Mrs McGuire, feel their duty is to be at their husbands’ sides during the opening ceremony. They struggle up over stones and sleepers, but finally quail at the sight of the wagons rising vertically into the sky and out of sight. Middle Brake has a splendid view, anyway; the men and the young ones can manage the ceremony quite well on their own.

  But the sight of Totty sends Mrs McGuire into a tightly controlled fit of hysteria.

  ‘Your dress, your dress, Dorothy! How can you ever make your recitation now? Elizabeth will have to do it.’

  ‘Mother, it is a coal mine after all …’

  ‘And Mrs Leake spending such care on the stitching. Oh, Totty, how can you be so careless?’

  ‘It will wash out, Mother.’

  ‘What will they think? Mr McGuire’s daughter … You will have to stay down here with me; you have missed your chance of fame. Oh, what a madam! Mr McGuire! Oh, Lord, where has Elizabeth got to, and she’s wearing her blue, not at all the right thing. Mr McGuire!’

  ‘He can’t hear you, Mother.’

  ‘Well, run and fetch him, this is a crisis, with the programme announced in the paper, and your name in it. Mr McGuire!’

  THAT is why Miss Elizabeth McGuire, not her older sister Dorothy as reported, rather nervously recited Prophetic Lines From Locksleigh Hall:

  For I dipped into the future

  Far as human eye could see

  Saw the Vision of the world

  And all the wonders that would be …

  as Miss Mary Dickson, daughter of the Company manager, drove the silver-plated spike (two misses and one strike, according to Con the Brake, who counted everything) commemorating the opening of the Denniston Incline. And why Totty was free to walk hand in hand with Tom, away from the Brake Head and the ceremony, away over the humming plateau, a good mile away, to a mossy hollow where they sat and then lay together in the sun, and where, because they were headstrong and in love, and of a mind to make their own future, Totty conceived Michael. On that day Tot
ty developed a taste for a landscape as wilful and contrary as herself, and bred the flavour into her son’s bones.

  AT the Brake Head Mr Dickson, Company manager, has stayed back for a word with mine manager, Mr Denniston. The rest of the official party has plunged off the edge, teeth clamped to hold in place rocketing stomachs and hearts, until Con the Brake slows them just in time to arrange laughing, hearty faces for the women at Middle Brake, who have laid out bacon and egg pie and corned beef sandwiches and are now busy holding back the children until the men arrive.

  Up top, Mr Dickson’s wink at two late-comers, wandering back over the plateau, gives way to a frown when he recognises Totty McGuire, whose dress now has a new set of stains.

  ‘It’s not the thing, young Tom. Mr McGuire’s daughter.’

  Tom looks back stoutly but it’s Totty who answers. ‘Tom wants a job, Mr Dickson. You must need carpenters up here.’

  ‘You’re right, we do.’

  ‘We could build accommodations up here. And our own. Maybe a boarding house if you’d help us. And we could run it.’

  Mr Denniston, mine manager, a progressive man and well liked by the men, speaks up.

  ‘We could do with some solid accommodation, sir. Tents are no comfort to a man in winter up here. Boarding houses, now,’ he laughed and gave Tom a cuff, ‘we may not be quite as fancy as that yet.’

  Mr Dickson frowns. ‘Don’t be too sure, Robert. Coal up here is as good as any I’ve seen in the world. And I know my coal.’ He looks out over barren rocks and scrub, but what he sees are the bags of coal, stacked high and waiting for transport, an underground city of roads and crossroads driven through hard coal, an army of miners and miles of rails. He sees money pouring in and an easing of the heavy debt his Company owes. Mr Dickson is an optimist on this fine day. ‘I’ll wager you a pound to a penny,’ he says, ‘that we’ll have boarding houses, shops, streets — schools even, within the year. Two at most,’ he adds, because he is also a mean man who hates to lose a bet.