Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  The wind was coming up, the grey clouds over the grey sea, everything in motion, which Eliza found very stirring. She pulled her shawl around her, and tucked her arm into James’s. They had each other, and there was Father and John, and Joseph and Eleanor and young William, so it was not so bad, she told herself.

  ‘Is Grandmother in heaven?’ James asked as they picked their way down to the sand.

  ‘Yes she is,’ said Eliza. She did miss Mother terribly, but Mother not being here, but being in heaven, meant Eliza could walk on the sand with James and enjoy the open sky again, which was a great pleasure. And she thought all those prayers she had said in the dark days had been answered, for she felt her spirit rise again. For the first time since Mother died, she began to think of the future.

  She wondered if in time they would go to William. And she wondered if John could emigrate, for he could not be left with Joseph and Eleanor, for they had no patience with him. And she wondered if young James would like to go to his father, or perhaps not, for Robert never wrote and James would not speak of him.

  There was much in it so it felt a less certain thing. But for now, she told herself, she would read her Bible and live each day, like the lilies in the field.

  She stood at the edge of the sea and watched the waves crash in, and she thought of all the terrors of death, and knew her life was a good one, if very short when all of eternity had to be accounted for.

  The Fenians were also the talk of the colonies, with much said of possible Fenian plots against the colonial governments, the inadvisability of allowing more Irish Catholic immigrants, and a possible Fenian uprising by Irish Catholics already in Australia.

  ‘My brother and father have been writing to me of the Fenians, and all the troubles of Ireland,’ said William as he wiped down the bar. The last of the drinkers had left for the evening and William had come to help Danny clean up, as he did most nights, after which they shared a drink and a pipe. It helped him put off the time when he went up to his empty bed, for little William Joseph had decided he liked his own bed, so William slept alone. He liked to take in the atmosphere of the bar after closing, for it reminded him of the friendship of men drinking and enjoying themselves. Apart from the stables and his little office, it was where he felt most himself. He emptied the ashcan, and collected the beer jugs and glasses from the tables. ‘My father is not so troubled by the Fenians, but brother Joseph, he thinks all his neighbours is Fenians.’

  ‘In Tyrone?’ said Danny. ‘I’d thought it’d be all Orangemen there.’

  ‘There’s plenty of discontent amongst the Catholics there,’ said William, ‘from what I read in the newspapers my father sends. It seems a great pity that it’s come to Irishman against Irishman.’

  ‘’Tis indeed,’ said Danny, ‘for there have been great Irish Protestant patriots, Wolfe Tone and Emmet amongst them. But now, it seems harder for a Protestant to be a patriot.’ Danny had now reached a comfortable middle age, and he was less given to drinking and carousing with his fellows. As a result, apart from his work at the pub, he kept his house down in east Ballarat very trim indeed, and had a fine vegetable garden and several fruit trees in his paddock, as well as chooks and other creatures. He read a great deal, being interested in history and political matters, particularly those concerning the Irish.

  ‘Irish Protestants have a great love of their native land,’ said William. ‘I count myself amongst them, and I know many others.’

  ‘True,’ said Danny. ‘But the Fenians now claim the field for the Catholics when it comes to being a patriot. Although, to myself, they seem every which way. Those Fenians in America invading Canada, as they did last year, and choosing that part to invade where there was nobody home to fight with, was to my mind foolish, for what would the Irish do with Canada? But in Ireland, I understand them better, for the English, who run a reasonable government in their own country, and in this country, are quite undisposed to grant the same rights to the Irish, who are a good deal more intelligent than your average Englishman.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said William, for although he had many friends amongst the English, it often seemed to him that the Scots and the Irish in particular had more wit about them. He and Danny finished the cleaning and he fetched the best bottle of whisky, while Danny got the glasses and a bowl of peanuts which they liked to shell and eat while they drank.

  ‘I’ve always been a moral force man,’ said William. ‘I feel the methods of the Fenians is all wrong. And they won’t carry the Protestants with them.’

  ‘I’m not a moral force man meself,’ said Danny. ‘I’d think moral force would cut little ice with the English landlords of Ireland.’

  ‘’Tis true,’ said William. ‘The landlords there never cared much for an Irishman’s dignity, or his life even.’

  ‘But we Irish are a great lot for fighting fights we can’t ever win,’ said Danny. ‘Which, I do admit, is foolishness.’

  ‘With the Protestants, there’s the question of loyalty,’ said William. ‘I would think that if both Protestants and Catholics would concentrate on the rights of man and good government and leave the Queen out of it, there would be a common cause.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Danny, ‘but the Protestants don’t like the Catholic religion, and the Catholics, they dislike your religion. Poor old Ireland is forever divided on the question of religion.’

  ‘It’s the same here in this country,’ said William. ‘Every election, each side against the other, instead of living in harmony.’ Although, he thought to himself, he understood it a little, for he did not much like the Catholic religion in some ways.

  ‘I have enough trouble living in harmony with my own religion,’ said Danny. ‘I don’t like being told what I can and cannot do by the priest. Since the priest told me how much I should contribute to the new school, when I have no children and no prospect of children, I keep my own counsel.’

  William found his own attendance at church had become rather less regular, owing to the fact that he had been asked to pay a yearly fee for his pew, which he did not like at all. He also harboured a suspicion that Reverend Henderson had thought badly of Bridget, and he was most sensitive on any question regarding his Bridget.

  There was a knock on the door, and Danny got up to get it. ‘Ah, Mr Robert Irwin,’ he said, for he and Robert were great friends. Robert often dropped in to the pub late at night and then walked back home with Danny, for they both lived in the east part of town.

  ‘How are you, brother?’ asked William. ‘I missed you and your family at Sunday dinner. You didn’t tell us you weren’t coming.’

  ‘Birdie’s brother came from Melbourne, and we went out shooting,’ said Robert. ‘I tried to get one of his lads to run over and tell you, but he wouldn’t come.’

  William held back his disapproval as he poured Robert a whisky. The disapproval sprang from a number of sources – Robert not telling him, Robert not inviting him shooting, Robert himself shooting on the Sabbath. He did not wish to have a mean streak in regard to any man, but with Robert, it piled up, illogically but powerfully.

  ‘How’s your horse?’ he asked, as they sat down. ‘Did you give him that dose I gave you?’

  ‘The creature’s no good,’ said Robert. ‘He can’t pull at all, poor old Blackie. It’s off to the knackery for him, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Don’t send him there,’ said Danny quickly. ‘It’s a terrible way for a creature to end his life. You can leave him in my paddock. You won’t get nothing for him at the knackery. I’ll care for him.’ William often thought it was just as well Danny had never got a selection, for he was dreadfully sentimental when it came to creatures. He’d bought a pig three years ago, to fatten up for Christmas, but it was still living in luxury in Danny’s yard because he could not bear to cut its throat. He had named it Victoria and made a great fuss of the creature.

  ‘You can have the horse if you want,’ said Robert, for he had no such sentiments. He looked at William. ‘I’ve been wondering, brother,
if you had a horse that would do for my wood cart. For I’m stumped without old Blackie.’

  ‘We’ll go down to the sales on Friday,’ William said. ‘I’ve been thinking I’d like a carriage horse, so we’ll look if there’s a draught horse that might suit yourself.’

  Robert threw his arm around him and beamed at Danny. ‘He’s the best of brothers, my brother William, the very best.’

  They sat and talked a little more, shelled peanuts and spoke of the Fenians. Robert, who was little interested in politics, said he was glad to be out of Ireland, for he hated the troubles of it. ‘I like this country,’ he said. ‘I like the sunshine, even though it’s fierce cold now, and I like the freedom of it. My Birdie, she pines for old Ireland, but when her family start singing of the old country, I leave smartly, for they all get very maudlin.’

  William watched as Danny and Robert talked, and while he felt at ease with Danny, he saw that Robert was even more at ease, maybe from both having the same religion, and living in the same part of town. William excused himself, leaving Danny to lock up, and went to his office, which was tucked in behind the parlour. It was a small dark room, little more than a cupboard, but he had many quartz samples there and some of his fossils. His share certificates and other important documents were in the safe, and in a box under the desk he kept the letters from Ireland, and in another were all his cuttings and notices that he had collected at the time of Eureka.

  As he did each evening, he went through the hotel accounts and entered them into his ledger along with a mining dividend that had come that day. He put off paying one or two bills, but wrote a firm letter for an account to the coaching company that owed him for feed. He liked this part of his day, for he found the figures soothing even when they were worrying. If the hotel wasn’t making money, he knew exactly how much it was failing to make, and could look where he might trim and cut. He still had a mortgage, but now it was with the bank, which he preferred to having it with Cuthbert, to whom he always felt a personal obligation. Cuthbert still held his life insurance, knew the combination to his safe and was his executor, for he knew no-one else who could oversee his affairs. It worried him that he might die and leave his two young children.

  ‘You must marry again,’ Cuthbert had told him firmly when he renewed his life insurance policy. ‘That is the only solution, Mr Irwin.’ He’d spoken of it in the way one might talk of buying a horse, or building extra rooms.

  ‘It runs rather deep, Mr Cuthbert,’ he had replied. ‘I regard it as more than a solution to my difficulties, important though they be.’

  ‘It needs thinking of as an entirely practical matter, for the safety and security of your children and your own place in society. A bachelor is an odd creature, not quite accepted.’ William had thought this a very strange remark, for Cuthbert’s poor wife was rumoured to drink too much, and mostly kept out of sight. He had a great sympathy for Mrs Cuthbert, for he imagined Henry might have little time for the weakness of a soft woman.

  William took his lamp and made his way along the hallway to his bedroom. This was the part of the day he dreaded, for it felt lonely to be in a bed on his own. He went past Jane’s room and, as the door was open, he glanced in. Little Johnny had crept in with her, and she lay asleep with her arms around him, her hair strewn out over the pillow. He thought how much he and the boys owed her, for she was gentle and forever patient.

  CHAPTER 15

  On a cold afternoon in the winter of 1867, William Irwin and Jane Norris were married in the parlour of the Provincial Hotel by the Reverend Henderson of St Andrews Kirk. Little Johnny Irwin and his big brother, Willy, were both present at the wedding, and most pleased that Jane Norris, who had always seemed to be their mother, could now be called Mother. Willy had slight memories of another mother; of waking up under a possum-skin rug and snuggling close to warm skin that had the soft smell of lavender, but these were vague memories, and generally superseded by those of this mother, who taught him prayers and his letters, fed him his tea, and told him of his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in Ireland, and many other things besides. That smell of lavender and the curl of dark hair that had brushed his face seemed small, not meaning a great deal, except in some way, deep down, where it still felt powerfully.

  To his father, this dark hair and smell of lavender was a different life, a whole life that he had lived before he married Jane Norris, and he could in no way put it aside, except for the practical concerns of his children, and a gratitude to Jane. He worked at loving her, until he did not know the difference between love and gratitude, and wondered where he would ever be without her. She was the best of girls, which was what he told her when he asked her to marry him.

  ‘You’ve done very well,’ said Danny Phelan, shaking his hand after the ceremony in the parlour. ‘She is a fine girl, and a great attribute to you.’ Although Danny was in no way close to Jane Norris, who was rather more proper than Bridget, he saw how she had put flowers around very beautifully, and there was an excellent spread of food and drink. Even a bachelor like himself could see the children were most pleasing indeed, especially as young Willy still had that touch of wildness that Danny had liked so much in little Willy’s mother.

  ‘She is an excellent girl,’ said William. ‘Marriage is a fine thing, so I’m surprised that you’re not thinking of it for yourself.’ This was a tease, for Danny had persistently and determinedly remained a bachelor. William wondered now why he himself had had such a hard time coming to it again, although, in fact, he knew exactly why. It would not do to explore his reasons, so he reminded himself this was what Bridget had wanted, and what he had come to want.

  ‘I’d never get the habit of married life now,’ said Danny. ‘I’m accustomed to my own self entirely. I think a wife would interrupt me in my habits.’

  ‘I think so too,’ said Joe Brown, who had come to Ballarat for the celebration. ‘I think that’s what a wife is for. I’m engaged to be married myself, and already she has plans for this and that, plans that don’t entirely take myself into account. But I find myself so in love with the girl, I think married life will be most splendid.’

  ‘My Birdie’s always complaining it’s me that spoils her plans,’ said Robert, who had not brought Birdie or his three children to the wedding. ‘But then, I say, she spoils mine often enough.’

  Jane sat in earnest conversation with the Reverend Henderson, who was complimenting her on the manners of the children. She smiled and nodded at him, so he was captivated by her in a way he never had been by the first Mrs Irwin, whose behaviour on her deathbed had been something of an embarrassment to him.

  William watched Jane in conversation with Henderson. She looked very pretty, paying attention to the reverend and smoothing over any lack of ease he might feel. It seemed to William it was a talent Jane had. She was a very composed girl, an intelligent girl and a hard-working girl, but being ten years younger than he, she looked up to him, she looked to please him, and sought his approval in a way that Bridget never had.

  ‘I never thought my parlour might be so pretty for a wedding,’ William said to Reverend Henderson. ‘My dear young wife does splendidly with such things, and she’s done wonderfully with these two boys, who are now hers.’ Jane smiled at him gratefully.

  There was something calm and peaceful in this marriage which was different from what had been there with Bridget. Jane did her work with the children and the house, and he did his in the hotel, around the town and with the mining companies in which he had shares, and she allowed it was all most important, so that if he was late in coming to bed she did not complain, and if he wasn’t in for lunch when he said he would be, she did not mind. After a time, he also realised how hard it had been for her living in the hotel before the marriage – for while he did not regard her as a servant, others did, so she had made no real friends. After the marriage, all sorts of ladies called on her and invited her out, and she went to card afternoons and made calls.

  Ballarat had changed. Bri
dget had made friends at the time she was working at her father’s tea stall. She had hated the round of calls and parties, and had liked who she had liked without regard to where they might fit into Ballarat society. She had never much cared for domestic excellence, which now seemed to be something of a competition between the ladies of Ballarat. William, as he was known now, for Jane refused to call him Billy, noticed that his life was smoother because of Jane’s connections and talents. Things were more ordered, and Jane excelled in the female accomplishments. Eliza’s Bible was always next to her bed and, unlike Bridget, she read a little from it each day.

  Privately, William thought the visit of Prince Alfred, the fifth child of Queen Victoria, had induced a sort of madness in the population of Ballarat. The prince arrived in the hot December of 1867. The whole of the town, including Jane and even little Willy, were overcome with patriotic fervour. For the most part, William felt it judicious to keep his opinions on the prince and his visit to himself. Jane, even though she was pregnant with their first child, was anxious to see the prince and the parade and other festivities which had been mounted in honour of the visit. William took her to the parade and the reception for the prince. He was amazed by the crowds and decorations rather than by the prince himself, who was an unexceptional, slightly plump young man.

  ‘I’m glad I put up the red, white and blue bunting and bought those photographs of the dear prince to sell,’ he said to Danny Phelan, ‘for his visit will provide a commercial opportunity beyond our wildest dreams.’

  ‘Maybe you should change the name of your hotel to the “Prince Albert Hotel”,’ said Danny.

  ‘I was thinking I’d call it the “Fourth in Line to the Throne Hotel”,’ said William.

  The Albert Hall, straddling the east and west municipalities of Ballarat, had been built in record time to accommodate the four thousand people who desired to see the prince, for a price of course. The mayor welcomed the prince with a speech so long and rambling that the prince was yawning well before its end. Prince Albert laid the foundation stone for a new temperance hall, although William was pleased to note that the prince himself did not hold back on his drink, or subscribe to the principles of temperance.