Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  The city boasted illuminated decorations, a fine triumphal arch across Sturt Street measuring sixty by forty-five feet. The German community of Ballarat, paying tribute to the prince’s German heritage, serenaded him. The Chinese, with a massive Chinese dragon, added exoticism to the huge procession of Ballarat citizens who paraded past him in a variety of costumes.

  ‘The prince himself looked a little weary of it,’ remarked Danny in the bar that night, ‘the temperature being over a hundred, I would think.’

  ‘One hundred and five degrees,’ said William, who recorded the temperature and took barometer readings every day.

  ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’ proclaimed one of the drinkers. ‘A toast to our dear prince.’

  William could not complain. Glasses were downed and quickly refilled. Several more toasts were made before closing time, and a fiddler on the footpath outside played ‘God Save the Queen’ as the bar closed.

  ‘I don’t know that playing the anthem for closing time is exactly a mark of respect,’ said William.

  ‘Your little Willy got a Prince Albert medal in sugar,’ said Danny. ‘And I don’t know if that’s exactly a mark of respect either, since he’s already sucked the prince’s face off it.’

  ‘We’re doing a fine trade,’ William said, as he closed the door. ‘And if the rooms weren’t so full of families needing breakfast tomorrow, and us having to make up picnic hampers for those that follow the prince around all day, I’d toast his health too. We’ve made a pretty penny. I’ll give you a royal bonus at the end of the week, Danny. This prince is hard work and you’ve done a fine job.’

  ‘We’ve done better than Bath’s Hotel, I believe,’ said Danny, ‘where the staff, I have heard, are not subject to princely generosity. He and his retinue eat, sleep and drink there but, being fourth in line to the throne, they do not pay anyone at all.’

  When William came to bed the night after the prince had left, he found Jane looking at a photo of the prince.

  ‘I think he is very nice-looking young man,’ she said, ‘but not as distinguished as my dear husband. I wish you might get a photograph of yourself taken, that I may send it home to my family.’

  ‘I will, I will. And when our baby is born, we will have a photograph of the whole family taken for you to send home,’ he said, although he still felt his strange old dread of the camera.

  He got into bed and put his arms round Jane. ‘Being with child suits you very well,’ he said. ‘I hope the little boys are not too much for you in your condition.’

  ‘They are sweet children,’ she said. ‘Willy is not always amenable, but he is a most affectionate child. And you must hear him read, for he reads very well indeed for a child of his age. His schoolmaster is most impressed with him.’

  ‘They must have a good education. A man with a good education has a great advantage in life.’ And William rubbed her stomach to feel the kicks of the little thing in there.

  ‘And a woman too,’ she said. ‘An education for girls is most important. And in more than just the domestic arts. I would like to think the children will be better educated than you and I were back in Ireland. Our parents and teachers did their best, but I think we may do better still.’

  He kissed her. ‘I have much to be grateful for,’ he said, ‘and you above everything.’

  The following month the prince was shot at a picnic in Sydney. It was only by the greatest good luck that the bullet was stopped by the prince’s thick leather braces, so he was only slightly wounded. The assassination attempt was bad enough, setting Ballarat on fire with indignation, but the news that the prince had been shot by a Ballarat man by the name of Henry O’Farrell was cause for enormous shame. Even worse, it appeared the man was part of a Fenian plot on the prince’s life, for he had called out, ‘I am a Fenian’ after he fired the gun, or perhaps, ‘I am a bloody Fenian.’ In the past year, there had been great fear of the Fenians and their possible activities in the antipodes.

  The people of Ballarat competed fiercely to demonstrate their loyalty, so when prayers failed to be said for the recovery of the prince at the Catholic cathedral in Ballarat, although they were said at every other church, much was made of that. There was considerable speculation about where the sympathies of the Irish Catholics lay. O’Farrell was both an Irishman and a Catholic, albeit disgruntled on both counts. It was said he had shot the prince to bring attention to the plight of the Irish nation.

  Two days after the shooting, the Albert Hall was filled with five thousand men protesting the shooting, attesting to their indignation and loudly pledging loyalty to the Queen and the royal family. There was wild talk that O’Farrell should have been lynched by the mob in Sydney. The rule of law seemed forgotten. There was further talk of how the Fenians should be exposed amongst the Catholics in Ballarat, without any proof that they existed in the first place.

  William walked home from the meeting feeling somewhat dispirited. The danger of Fenians had been much discussed, which was right and proper, but it was the questioning of the loyalty of the Irish which offended him. It was always there – the implication that the Irish could not be trusted, that they were forever plotting, that they were disloyal. Yet in the vast crowds that had turned out to see the prince in Ballarat and elsewhere, there had been many Irish, both Catholic and Protestant.

  Usually when he walked home at night, William enjoyed the quiet of the city and felt a pleasure in the fineness of the buildings and the great progress of Ballarat. But this time, he thought of Knockaleery, and wished himself back there, walking by moonlight in the quiet of the countryside. He thought how settled life had been there. It had been hard, but it ran to the rhythm of the seasons, waiting each year for the earth to provide its increase. The relationships between people were defined and seemed timeless, and he felt a powerful nostalgia for his uncomplicated youth. But then he thought of the famine and fear, and deference and obedience given where it had not been earned, and many other things that he had no wish to revisit. And those very schisms he had seen this evening had their origins back in Ireland.

  And he was indeed living in one of the most wonderful cities of the empire, under a fine system of democracy, even if it wasn’t quite as high-minded as the diggers had envisaged back in the days of Eureka. Even then, he recalled, in those campfire conversations, Ireland had often been a cause of dissent, but he thought it was not the fault of those that lived there, but of those who misruled the country.

  William had met Henry O’Farrell, the man who had shot at the prince. He had had a feed business at the haymarket in Ballarat, and he had struck William as a man not at all suited to running a business, or indeed anything much at all. O’Farrell often had the smell of alcohol on his breath, and was one of those men inclined to talk passionately, regardless of whether the other party wished to listen. He had been a ranter – about the terrible ills done him by the Catholic Church, to which he belonged, and about the troubles of Ireland, which he traced back in a long and complex monologue until William had been forced to cut him rudely short. But it had been some time since he resided in Ballarat, so were he part of a Fenian plot, there was little to link the Fenians to the Irish Catholics in Ballarat.

  In the next few days William found there were many who were in favour of taking the law into their own hands, seeing Fenians everywhere amongst the Irish Catholics. This happened even in circles where he hoped there might be more light and less heat.

  ‘It’s a disgrace,’ said one of the brothers after the lodge meeting the next week, ‘that we should allow these Fenians in our midst. I know some fellows in the Volunteer Rifles would deal with the likes of them.’

  ‘It would be a good thing to know who they are, before we send the Volunteers out after them,’ said William. ‘And an even better thing if they were tried under British justice, given that’s the very thing we’re defending.’

  ‘Have you no loyalty?’ asked another brother. ‘Don’t you think we should be defending ourselves and our dear Queen?’


  ‘He didn’t say that,’ said another, who was more moderate. ‘Just that we should know who they are.’

  ‘We know who they are, all right. You have only to look to O’Farrell’s religion.’

  ‘Their priests – they stuff the Catholics’ heads full of stories of the English wickedness that never was and never would be. No prayers were said at St Patrick’s for the dear prince last Sunday.’

  ‘The priest said that was an oversight,’ said William. ‘And even if it weren’t, it doesn’t make them Fenians.’ He was aware he was speaking out against a powerful tide of opinion. But to him it seemed that Ballarat could not be responsible for one errant son and that to tar all the would-be assassin’s co-religionists and co-nationals with the same brush was a dangerous thing.

  He went on, aware he was voicing an opinion which his fellow Masons regarded as suspect. ‘We should deal with Fenians, but we should remember that most Irishmen who are Catholic are as loyal as every man here.’

  ‘Your own brother included?’ asked a man who was also a member of St Andrews Kirk, and a leader in the temperance movement. ‘Your brother who tossed his own religion for popery?’

  William had been waiting for years for someone to comment about Robert’s religion. He had often wondered how he would deal with such a comment. Even though some sly remarks had been passed, no-one had said anything to his face before this. Now he found himself possessed with a cold anger. He stood tall and looked straight to the man that said it, and answered him with force.

  ‘Yes, my own brother indeed. For why should you be questioning his loyalty? What has he ever done or said apart from changing his religion that might make a man question him? I have many friends amongst the Catholics, and I know that some don’t like the English, but I know none that are disloyal to the Queen, and none at all that are Fenians. There may be some I don’t know, but I see that as no reason to label them all.’

  ‘They have their separate schools and those nuns come out from Ireland to teach them,’ said the man.

  ‘It doesn’t make them Fenians,’ said William. He saw Henry Cuthbert looking at him coldly. Cuthbert had been on the organising committee for the prince’s visit. William looked round the faces of his Freemason brothers, who had sworn to liberty, equality and fraternity, but he saw little sympathy. He wished all good night and went home in a foul temper.

  William had stood up to east Ballarat out of loyalty to John Humffray. Now he stood up to west Ballarat on the question of Catholic loyalty. He stood up for his brother, he stood up for the Catholics in general, he stood up for nuns and priests, he stood up for a drunk who slurred his way through ‘Wearing of the Green’ one night, and he stood up for Danny Phelan.

  One day he arrived home from the Exchange to find two men waiting for him in his parlour. He knew them slightly. One, a man named McDonald, was a hard, red-headed Scot who worshipped at the kirk. William knew he belonged to the Orange Lodge and was a fervent temperance man. The other he knew was a supporter of Charles Jones, the sectarian politician who baited the Catholics and ranted nonsensically, throwing half-truths and slurs into all his speeches. They stood awkwardly, and he guessed their business would be political. He did not ask them to sit and there was no point in offering a drink, although he thought he could have done with one himself.

  ‘What can I do for you two gentlemen?’ he asked.

  ‘We have been looking into the matter of the Fenians,’ said McDonald.

  ‘And what have you found?’ William asked evenly.

  ‘We have reason to believe that your barman, Mr Daniel Phelan, is a Fenian,’ said McDonald. ‘We have a committee, collecting information in the town.’

  ‘And what information may that be?’

  ‘We have heard from some who live nearby him.’

  ‘Do you wish to know what I know of him? I can attest to his character, for he has worked for me more than ten years and I have known him since the early days of the rush.’

  ‘We have him nailed already. We would feel that a loyal man like yourself would not care to have such a man working for him.’

  ‘What exactly have you heard?’

  ‘That he is a Fenian.’ McDonald’s face was now redder than his beard and his hair, which were very red indeed, and his companion was sweating considerably.

  ‘But on what grounds do you believe him to be a Fenian?’

  ‘On remarks he made about the state of Ireland.’

  ‘What remarks?’

  ‘They are written down, in the records we keep. We can assure you he has said things that are most suspect.’

  ‘You expect me to believe you, even though I have known this man for fifteen or so years?’

  ‘There is other evidence, apart from the suspect things he has said.’ McDonald the Scot leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘There is the naming of his pig, the same name as our Queen.’ Now he rocked back on his heels and looked at William as if he had produced the most damning piece of evidence.

  William was torn between anger and laughter. He thought it better to let the anger dominate in his dealings with these gentlemen, and he thumped the parlour table so the brass urn on it jumped and shook. ‘I have run a hotel in this town for fourteen years,’ he said loudly. ‘I run a house that’s respectable and esteemed, and no committee of gentlemen is going to advise me on whom I’ll have working in my hotel, which is mine and mine alone. How my servants name their pigs, or their children, or their cats for that matter is the least of my concerns.’

  ‘He is a Fenian,’ persisted McDonald. ‘This is a serious matter.’

  William thumped the parlour table again. ‘It is a ludicrous matter, Mr McDonald, whatever Mr Phelan calls his pig and whatever his snooping neighbours call him. Mr Phelan is an Irishman and I am an Irishman, and many’s the time Mr Phelan and I have discussed the sad state of Ireland. And neither himself nor myself are in any way Fenians, or sympathisers with the Fenian cause. I bid you good day.’

  When Danny came to work that afternoon, William told him of the visit by the two Orangemen. ‘I wish you hadn’t named that pig Victoria,’ he told Danny. ‘It’s a hard case to put, that one.’

  ‘I won’t be changing the name, for I named her for the glory of this great colony we live in,’ said Danny, ‘and therefore for the glory of the Queen. It isn’t to bring the Queen down to her level at all, but to celebrate the bountiful nature of her realm.’

  William did not say so, but it was a harder case still because the pig did have a marked resemblance to the Queen, which was a very peculiar thing in an animal, but undeniable.

  ‘The thing’s getting more and more foolish,’ said William. ‘I’ll be glad when it’s over. Although we won’t be losing much custom, since they all seemed pursed-lipped temperance men.’

  The more the police looked for those that were part of the Fenian conspiracy, the less evidence there was of any conspiracy. O’Farrell, it seemed, was a drunk, prone to fantasies of his own importance. He was a man with a grudge, unhinged, who had acted on his own volition. There were Fenian sympathisers and Irish nationalists, but however the Orange Order railed, the conspiracies involving priests and nuns, secret codes and dastardly plots had no evidence to back them.

  ‘Are you not worried about the Fenians taking over this colony?’ Jane asked him late that night.

  ‘They seem to have overtaken the minds of a good many Protestants and the imaginations of a good many drinkers in my bar,’ he said as he pulled off his boots. ‘A few are even so fevered with conspiracy that they choose to drink elsewhere.’ He stroked her hair and kissed her.

  ‘Do people think you disloyal? That you stand up for the Catholics?’

  ‘They barely think at all, and they are offended when they find someone who does.’

  ‘I did not get invited to Mrs Greaves’s card party,’ she said, ‘which I found a little strange.’

  ‘It may be a shame,’ William said, ‘but it is not strange. Greaves is an Orange
Lodger and a temperance union man – in public at least, for he’s known to have a secret drop or two at home and sometimes be worse for wear in public even. Does it distress you not to be invited?’

  ‘A little,’ she said, and stroked her pregnant belly. ‘But I would not have you change opinions over a card party. And I think in time I will be able to smooth things over.’

  The business died down when O’Farrell was executed and no Fenian plot was uncovered, although the distrust between Catholics and Protestants remained strong. William found, as he had with Humffray, that though business dropped away, other business increased. And when he went to Cuthbert’s some time later for legal business, he found he was no longer attended to by Mr Henry Cuthbert himself, but by his clerk, Hugh Morrow, who was an Irishman also, but a self-made man like himself, and therefore more congenial. William took this as a sign he had fallen from Cuthbert’s favour. Cuthbert, always the most polite of men, continued to tip his hat to him in the street, but he no longer stopped and talked.

  Robert had many problems, and William often found himself called upon to help him deal with them. Robert’s misfortunes were not all of his own making, although many were. William worried that his brother always seemed to be going backwards in life, never moving forward. His family increased in size as his fortunes decreased. He seemed to be getting poorer and poorer, his children more ragged, Birdie more dowdy, the house very run down indeed.

  William called down to the woodyard one morning to find that Robert had been robbed. A load of wood had been taken in the night, and his takings for the previous day, which had been hidden under a feed bale, had also been stolen.