‘Wife!’ He banged a frying pan down next to the sink.
Bridget picked it up and banged it back on the stove. ‘Don’t give me the pans before I’m ready for them.’ Her mouth was set firmly as she scrubbed.
He banged a few more frying pans. ‘We have to stick by him.’
‘We don’t have to,’ she said coolly, ‘though I dare say you will because he is your friend.’
He wanted to raise his voice and shout. It was one of the disadvantages of a hotel that he could never give any argument full rein, not to his customers, nor to Bridget, for there were always others to overhear. ‘We should believe him,’ he said.
She was contrary now. ‘We have to believe what is true, or we just believe what we want. There’s no “have to” about it at all, Billy.’
‘So you want me to desert him?’
‘You don’t have to desert him. There’s men doing dishonest things every day of the week. And you let them sit. You’re not uncomfortable with a bit of dishonesty that goes your way. I don’t hear you complaining of selling out of Golden Gate when you suspected they were finished, which they were. I don’t hear of you never doing business again with that ice merchant that gave you the Charlie Napier’s ice in the midsummer heat. I’ve known you buy spirits from dubious dealers, and have them into the bar afterward. So I don’t see you have to stop your friendship with Humffray because he’s got a human streak, which to tell you the truth makes me like him rather more than previous.’
‘Bridget, you cannot say that! This is quite different, a large matter, a public matter.’
‘I can say what I like.’ She was angry now, and she piled the steaming plates carelessly, so he had to grab them to stop the whole pile smashing to the floor.
And so it went on, even after they left the kitchen and went up to bed, a louder and more bitter argument than they had ever had, so when they went to check that little William Joseph was sleeping, they did it separately. That night they slept facing away from each other, and were extremely polite in the morning.
Bridget liked Humffray, but she thought Billy’s admiration of him was excessive. Humffray was an excellent speechifier, but sometimes, she thought, his speeches sounded a little too fine, so they captivated his own mind and good sense passed him by. Also, it seemed to her the way of the world that men would sometimes do wrong things, and if their conduct was for the most part good that was good enough.
William, however, fretted on the question of Humffray. He fretted because it seemed to him against everything Humffray had ever stood for. He fretted that so many easily labelled Humffray corrupt. He fretted because Bridget would not agree with him. He fretted because his bar trade was leaving, and along with it most of his profit. He fretted for the old days when things seemed clearer and cleaner. The question would not leave him.
The hotel was quiet in the afternoons, and little William Joseph went to sleep with his mother on his parents’ bed. He was a precocious child, much given to talking once he discovered how to do it, and Bridget often had to coax him to lie down and persuade him by stroking his forehead that he should sleep. The room was warmed by the fire in winter, with a possum-skin rug across the bed, so they were cosy. Bridget pulled the blinds down so the light was soft, but bright enough so she could read.
She had started her habit of resting in the afternoon after her first baby, Anna Jane, died. The doctor had given her a medicine to take away her thoughts, and had suggested a regular afternoon sleep. The tonic did not take away her thoughts, which were wild and ungoverned, but allowed her some relief from her tears. At times she had wished herself dead, but as time went on, she knew she wanted to live, and this seemed to her like a betrayal of her dead child, so she did not like herself much at all. Many people came to see her, thinking they could help. Some showed great kindness, while others seemed morbidly curious. Her own mother had come, with sharp words.
‘You’re grieving like a heathen, Bridget. It ain’t proper.’
Reverend Henderson came from St Andrews Kirk. He gave her the condolence that her child was in a better place. She had not believed it, nor in the mercy of God, of which he also spoke.
Billy had allowed her to be angry and wild. And he had given her the little gold locket for the baby’s hair, and he had cried with her, for he was a man who loved his child from the beginning. Her own fierce love for her firstborn had surprised her. Her parents had been unstinting in their duty, but backward in love. Her love for Anna Jane, fierce and strong from when she saw her small bloodied head emerging from herself, had been quite astounding to her.
She had not believed that love could happen again. But after her body had given a mighty push and little William Joseph had rushed himself into the world, she had been just as much in love all over again. And she remembered how Billy had come into the bedroom and kissed her, and held the child, his eyes full of tears. She loved him for it, even though she did not always show it.
Now, in the hours William Joseph slept in the afternoon, she turned her passion to the questions about life. She had lost much of her faith when Anna Jane had died, although she thought perhaps she had never really believed in the fires of hell or the joys of heaven. As she read parts of the Bible, it seemed to her that Jesus was a strange and sometimes difficult man, and perhaps He was thinking the same things she thought herself. She asked herself when the world had begun and what was beyond the skies, and how could a person live in the world that was both so cruel and so joyous. She did not know the answers to those things and she thought that Jesus did not know them either, even if He said He did.
When Billy bought books on geology and began to collect fossils, she had a bookcase and a glass case for his fossils made. And she looked at the fossils and read the books, although she did not tell Billy she was doing so. Sometimes he talked to her at length about his finds or the theories of geology, without noticing from her face that she might know as much as he did.
When he went to lectures at the Mechanics Institute on matters such as skeletons and electricity and magnetism, she liked him to tell her all about what had been said, which he liked to do for, being a publican, he enjoyed talking. And she read in the newspapers about men who made a study of such things and the ideas they had.
Currently her secret delight was a book called The Origin of Species by Mr Charles Darwin, which Billy had bought. Billy was most interested in the origin of all things, a characteristic which sometimes bored Bridget when it related to the fine details of how gaslight came about, or the water supply of Ballarat, or staging posts for the coach services. But The Origin of Species intrigued her, for it told how one thing came from another, slowly over time, and the best and the most adaptable survived and developed. It was much raged against in the columns of various newspapers and from the pulpits of the churches, and that, in itself, made her curious. It was complicated and hard to read, but she took her time.
Though Billy questioned things, it did not test his faith in God or the Bible, although he saw the teachings he had been brought up with as being the simplest interpretation of things, written long ago, although with the hand of God guiding the frail human beings as far as He was able. Bridget did not agree, although she said nothing to Billy, as it seemed to her that God could have guided them quite perfectly, had He been so inclined. Billy explained to her that the Freemasons understood things in a deeper and wider way, but he failed to explain that way, which she resented not just because she disapproved of him having secrets from her (although not of her having secrets from him) but also because she thought it was something she would like to know more of.
The more Bridget questioned things, the less she thought of what was said at church and in the Bible. She felt there was something quite different, a great mystery, a great puzzle. She loved the things Charles Darwin wrote about and the way he described things, for it made her feel she was not quite so alone. ‘How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! How short his time! And consequently how poor will his
products be compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods?’ It was how she felt in some deep part of her, and although there was a sadness in the quickness and lack of consequence in life, she felt the bravery of saying so and facing it. She felt comforted and inspired that an ordinary man could try to explain the great mystery of creation with such detail and such care as Charles Darwin did. And it made her think of the great age of the earth and how small her own time was. Sometimes, even when Billy had his arms around her, she felt a distance between them, because she could not talk to him about these things. He would not like it, she was sure.
Sometimes she would wonder and wonder about things and then she might buy Billy a new book on the stars or fossils or whatever was tugging at her mind. And she would stroke little William Joseph’s forehead until he slept, and then she would cut the pages of Billy’s new book, and read and read and read. And sometimes, when William Joseph woke in the late afternoon, she wondered why she was here in the upstairs bedroom in this hotel in Ballarat, when her mind was somewhere else altogether.
The business with Humffray continued to prey on William’s mind in a very large fashion. In the bar it was as if he could feel the weight of conversation pressing against him, like a conspiracy of his drinkers against him. And he felt bitter that Danny Phelan sided with the drinkers against Humffray, although to give Danny his due he said nothing whatever in the bar, and on one or two occasions he had said that Mr Irwin was entitled to both his opinions and any friendship he might have and it was not the place of the drinkers to insult his preferences.
But the bar had become less populated as drinkers gradually took their trade elsewhere in protest. And it bit hard, for most of the profit of a Main Street hotel was from the bar. Since the Provincial was being built, and he was paying heavy interest to Cuthbert, he found it very difficult to keep up the payments, let alone buy all the small extra things that a new hotel required.
He felt he could not wait to leave Main Street and that eastern side of town, which now felt subtly turned against him. There was something about the close clannishness of the place, and the delight with which they joined against Humffray, which made him feel he did not belong in the way he used to. He hated the feeling, for it had, till now, been his place in Ballarat. His origins were there, it was where he had been at the time of Eureka, where he had had his political education, so there was a sense of loss in it which he tried to dispel by immersing himself in every detail of his new hotel. He visited the building each day and inspected the work of the carpenters to ensure his hotel was being built as it should be, and to rein in the cost of the thing. He was not always in the best of moods when he inspected the building.
He slid the windows up and down and insisted some did not move easily enough and must be taken back to the joinery, much to the annoyance of the carpenter. When the floors were laid, he went up the next day, determined to test every one himself, even though he heard the carpenter’s mate groan when he arrived. He went to where the second parlour was to be and began jumping on the floorboards, which made the carpenter, an Irishman like himself, come very quickly, very red in the face.
‘Mr Irwin,’ he said. ‘Desist! These floors aren’t to be jumped upon.’
‘They are squeaking,’ said William, and jumped again to demonstrate the squeak.
‘Any floor so used will squeak.’
‘Any floor not properly nailed will squeak in time. And this floor will squeak! Listen!’
‘The floors aren’t to be jumped upon, I say!’
‘This building is a hotel,’ said William, suddenly very angry, all his frustrations crowding in on him. ‘And in hotels, the patrons sometimes see it as their right to jump upon the floors. Therefore, in the construction of the hotel, allowance has to be made for the jumpers, not to say the creepers who wander the corridors at night and make squeaks, and the children who will run along the hallways and up and down the stairs because they can escape their ma and pa and behave as they would not do at home. And on occasion, a drunken gentleman may lurch along floors and cause a rumble in the boards. And there are many other contingencies which occur in hotel life to cause squeaks and groans in the building.’
‘Well, Mr Irwin,’ said the carpenter, ‘I heard you was most particular, and I heard you had strange political notions . . .’
This shifty reference to Humffray enraged him. ‘I have no strange notions at all,’ shouted William. ‘I will not have my hotel squeak. Which is not a strange notion whatsoever. And I want my kitchen pantries with the shelves that I wish in them, not those you care to endow me with. And I insist on four flagpoles at the front, not the three that seem to have taken your fancy. And if you can do such things for me, without the aggravation of us every day arguing over whether people jump on hotel floors, and whether they will fail to notice there are three flags when there should be four, I shall be very grateful. And I remind you that I am paying for this hotel. And if you do not like it, I can find another carpenter very quickly, for there are many in this town, and I will not hesitate.’
He stalked off, leaving the carpenter with a look of dumb fear on his face. At first, this pleased him in a mean and petty way, but after his first wave of anger passed, he felt shame, for he thought he should not have threatened the man like that. In Ireland, he had always hated it when those higher up spoke to those lower down in such an angry manner, and in the Freemasons, the creed emphasised the kindly treatment of workers and servants. So while he was right to insist on his floors not squeaking, he resolved to do it in future without threat. He went down Lydiard Street to call on Henry Cuthbert to make a payment for his credit.
‘I would like to see Mr Cuthbert,’ he said to the clerk as he handed over the cheque. The clerk nodded, but it seemed William waited a very long time before he was ushered in to Cuthbert’s office with its leather chair and fine desk and oil paintings on the wall. He felt a stab of resentment at all this finery, which was paid for by men such as himself, but he was somewhat smoothed down by Henry Cuthbert, who talked in a way that made it seem that paying him was a privilege.
‘I am having some trouble, Mr Cuthbert,’ he said. ‘My takings from the John O’Groats are down, and if you are amenable, I would like to borrow an additional small sum for a short period.’
‘I heard of your troubles, Mr Irwin,’ said Cuthbert, and William wondered if there was anything of which Cuthbert did not hear. ‘I am willing to arrange a loan, although, of course, the interest must be two per cent higher on such extra borrowings, for they cannot be secured against your property without trouble and expense, and so, in a sense, they are unsecured.’
He said this with a smile, as if he was doing a favour. But William had investigated the thing, and was less intimidated by Cuthbert than he once had been. He still carried in him some of his annoyance from his argument with the carpenter, so he was quite willing to speak his mind. He reasoned if he could have arguments with his drinkers and his carpenter, there was no particular reason to bow down before Mr Henry Cuthbert.
‘There are men at the Corner would lend for only half a per cent more than what you are offering. And they would ask for no security whatsoever. The security you have already is considerably more than my debt. And since this is a very temporary matter, an extra one per cent would seem more than reasonable to me.’
He noted a slight shift in Cuthbert’s demeanour, as if Henry Cuthbert was reassessing him, which he did not mind, for if he went down half a per cent in Henry Cuthbert’s estimation, he was half a per cent better off in his own, on account of the interest he might save. Eventually, after some polite haggling, they compromised on one and a quarter per cent on the additional sum he was to borrow.
When he went back down into the street, he felt happy over the deal he had struck, and happy when he looked back up the street and saw his hotel coming on. And while Cuthbert held surety over everything he owned, when he went to the Exchange at the Corner, he found that one of his mines was
about to pay a dividend. That morning, he had heard of one of the better Main Street brothels closing so he walked down there and struck a bargain for a cedar sideboard and some excellent dining chairs, and then, on the way home, bought himself a paper, which he scanned for news of Humffray, standing on a street corner with Charity.
The fury and scorn of the Ballarat press had been turned on John Basson Humffray and John Cathie. Humffray was called stupid, unprincipled, a tool of the squatters, a betrayer and worse. His adherence to his principles was derided as a weakness and gullibility. His fine public speaking was dismissed as hypocrisy. The voters of east Ballarat, always passionate in their politics, demanded the resignation of their two representatives.
When he got back to the hotel, William found Robert waiting for him in the yard, and he told him the latest news about Humffray.
‘Ah brother,’ said Robert, ‘you don’t have to take it so hard.’ Robert’s little public house out at Italian Gully had been rebuilt after the fire, and he had come into town to buy supplies. He and William sat outside the stables and enjoyed a pipe together. It was a cold, clear Ballarat afternoon, and the smoke rose pleasingly. William knew that Robert could buy supplies from carters who went out to Italian Gully, but he enjoyed his day in town. William fretted because it wasn’t good business practice on Robert’s part, but after the arguments of the day he wanted to enjoy the time with his brother, their easy intimacy stretching back to their days at Knockaleery.
‘Democracy is a fine thing in principle,’ Robert said, ‘but perhaps not so fine in practice. Most I speak to are convinced your friend Humffray was corrupt.’
‘No-one who knows him believes him corrupt,’ said William hotly.
‘The thing will blow over in time,’ said Robert. ‘I’m always getting meself into bar squabbles and regretting it. A week later I can’t think what I was so hot under my collar for. Then I think to meself that all I’ve done is lose an excellent drinker, for the best drinkers is the most argumentative.’
Above the Starry Frame Page 19
