Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  ‘Of course,’ he said, cursing himself for his foolishness in expecting her to stay with him. ‘Give me a little time, and we’ll see what we can arrange.’

  That night William and Joe Brown sat up late in the parlour of the Provincial and drank their way through a fair portion of a bottle of an excellent Irish whisky. The whisky was Joe’s idea, for although neither he nor William was much of a drinker, he thought some things should be said and that they could probably only be said under the influence of an amount of drink. They spoke at length of Robert, and his life, and of those connections that stretched back to Knockaleery and the parish of Kildress which they shared and which made them so easy with one another. When they were well enough into the bottle and the lamp was turned low, he brought up the subject of marriage.

  ‘I can’t marry again,’ said William. ‘Bridget’s loss was hard enough, and then Jane was somehow more than twice the sorrow. And now I have six motherless children, which grieves me greatly.’

  ‘Which is a reason to marry again.’

  ‘Ah, and then I’ll have more children. And then, perhaps, I lose another wife. I cannot do it. Cannot. Will not.’

  ‘Marry someone a little older. That way, you know the woman is hale, and there will be no more children.’

  ‘Oh Joe, don’t press me. I can’t think of it, going out looking for a hale and hearty woman who will bear me no more children, but who will treat my children as her own. Jane could do such a thing with Willy and Johnny, but she was young. An older woman would find it harder to take to children not her own. I have thought of it much, but it is not an easy thing.’

  ‘But if you did find someone? Someone who you trusted? Someone who might take the thing in a way that is responsible and even?’

  ‘And where do you suggest I go shopping for women? I’ve had some men sniff around here, on behalf of their worthy sisters – widows mostly, and I do not care for it. For they are sniffing for my money, or a better life, not for six motherless children. No, I do not care for it.’

  ‘You did not care for Jane to begin with.’

  ‘I did care for Jane and she was never putting herself forward at all. She was so kind, and known to me and my family – it was a different case altogether.’

  ‘And one in which you needed some pushing, as I remember it.’

  ‘You did push, but that was not what decided me. Besides, I don’t have a young man’s fancy of falling in love again, and I can’t see it any other way at all. It is not in my nature.’

  ‘Then what of your six children?’

  ‘Well, Johnny and Willy – Willy’s grown up, nearabouts. He’s a little wild to notice a woman’s care, although he’s mostly a good boy. And Johnny – he’s past his boyhood and a steady fellow.’

  ‘And Lizzie, Walter, Herbert and Robert? Surely they need a mother?’

  ‘They do, they do, for they had the best one ever.’

  ‘Who taught them prayers, and letters and songs, and to wash and clean themselves and eat up proper, and to care for one another, and to mind their manners and to know their religion. I know your niece is a fine girl, but she’s a different religion, and children is most impressionable.’

  ‘I trust Mary Jane. There’s no popery there, except in her observance of her own religion. She sends the young ones off to Sunday school with Johnny and Willy, then she goes to St Alipius.’

  ‘She’s a very young girl, and it’s a most heavy responsibility,’ persisted Joe. ‘Besides, she won’t stay forever.’

  William put his head in his hands and groaned. ‘I don’t know what to do. The question is too much for me. I know you’re right, but there’s much keeping me back.’

  ‘I know someone,’ said Joe Brown. ‘There is a lady I know of.’

  William looked up out of his hands, all the fear of a schoolboy in his face.

  Joe laughed his high, infectious laugh. ‘’Tis only a lady. She cannot harm you.’

  ‘Here? In Ballarat?’

  ‘No, she’s in Beechworth.’

  ‘That’s a considerable journey.’

  ‘Which gives you the advantage that if it does not suit, you would never see her again.’

  ‘True. Does she have children?’

  ‘She was married and widowed. No children. A well-preserved, most refined lady.’

  ‘Well preserved? She sounds like a pickled fish.’

  ‘She knows this business. Her husband was a publican, and a great friend of Sergeant Richard Hamilton. You remember him being with me, one visit I made here?’

  ‘A fine Irishman. I have seen him several times since, when he has been here on licensing business. We have sometimes had a drink, for he’s an excellent fellow. I gave him a pup from a litter here, and the next time he came, he brought some pigeons for my boys.’

  ‘Sergeant Hamilton got to know this Henry Vivian and his wife, Julia, when he worked in Beechworth. Vivian died two years ago, and his wife ran the hotel. It was nothing like this hotel, but still was a respectable house, and she’s a most intelligent woman. She sold it recently and she is totally unencumbered.’

  ‘Oh Joe. I know it is a kindness you’re offering me. I know I need to think of my children, which is also why I must be most careful. I have no idea how these things are done. You would do the introduction? I’d feel like Daniel in the lion’s den.’

  ‘It would be nothing of the sort. She is a most charming woman. I will arrange it all.’ Joe put the cork in the whisky bottle and stood up. ‘I think this has helped us do our business.’

  William wished Joe goodnight and walked down the hotel corridor towards his bedroom. He walked past where Lizzie and Mary Jane slept, and the boys’ room, and then into his own room. He lit his lamp and searched through his bottom drawer, under his vests. There was the photo of Bridget and little William Joseph. There were photos of Jane and the children, although none of himself, for he retained his old dread of photography. His two wives still felt so much part of him, as if they were still with him. They came to mind frequently, not in a morbid way, but as part of his life. But this momentary pleasure the photographs gave him was overpowered by his sadness, and he put them back under his vests and lay back on his bed. He thought himself a man who could not live easily without a wife. His bed felt lonely, his life incomplete. He had not said so to Joe Brown or anyone else, but he needed a wife for himself, not just his dear children, although their need was great enough. He thought how lucky he had been to find Bridget, and Jane too. It seemed an easier task for a young man. Now he was nearly fifty.

  People thought he should remarry, but no-one, he was sure, thought he should marry a woman like Bridget, a woman who had her own mind, who did what she liked, and did not care too much what people thought of her. He wondered if the times were different or if he was different. He felt a great fear of being attached again, and of losing again. But just last week, he had seen his Lizzie tell a woman that she had no mother, and he had caught the tremble in Lizzie’s voice, and the pity in the woman’s glance. When he saw her going through Jane’s old sewing basket, wistfully fingering the bits of ribbon, it pulled on his heart.

  He wished his sister Eliza had been able to come from Knockaleery when Jane had died, but somewhere along the way she had changed her mind about emigration. He still sent money back, but Knockaleery was a life which was long gone now, and he had to pay attention to this life.

  He sat up and tried to shake off such thoughts. He got out the old box with the nail scissors and the file and started work on a troublesome toenail. His feet were getting old and calloused, his nails thicker and more brittle.

  He had to do something. He could not go on like this. He tore the nail off roughly and got under the covers. He would decide in the morning.

  * * *

  November 18, 1878

  Knockaleery

  My Dear Brother,

  How glad I was to recive you kind leter to which I looked for this 6 mounth past. I was neerly given up faith in you and I
woud get no more – thanks be to God we ere all well. I was most glad to hear yous and childern being well, but sorry to hear of poor Brother Robert’s death, but to hear him dying in the Lord, it cheers me up. How soon we must all follow – to be remembered no more on earth.

  I got a leter from William Joseph – a most splended one. He is so much improved in hand and can tell the detales of everything as well as you. I hope he will be the joy of your old eage and God will grant him grace to do nothing to disgrace himself or you, to find Christ early in life.

  I supose you have heard of poor times that we have in Ireland. God’s judments is on us. The land has refused to give its increase. But 12 mounth of severe weather, the sumer mounth was all rain, no crops but very bad ones. No turf cut. I do not know what the half of land holders will do, for their money is drowned in debt. The landlords is puting people out.

  Thanks be to god we ere pretty safe, but lost a considerable sum of money having lent to the neighbours. There is a grate emgrathion to Newzelan and Queensland. I wrot to you severl times to find what sort of countres they are but you have forgot. The friends is all well. John and James and B Joseph and famely ere all well and Joins in Kind love to yous all and Dear childern.

  I remain your affectionate Sister to Death, Eliza Irwin

  * * *

  It seemed a strange thing to Eliza that a woman might be lonely in the parish of Kildress, but often, she felt so. Young James, whom she had reared up, was much attached to courting a young woman, and to spending time with other young men, which was how it should be, and while he sometimes walked with her, it was more out of kindness than wanting to do so. With her brother John, she often thought they’d had all the conversations two persons might have, most of them very many times indeed. And however many times she answered his persistent questions, it was never to his satisfaction, for he asked the same ones again and again. There were others with whom she talked, but it was the same talk of weather and seasons, and it felt not quite enough. She spent considerable time with Joseph’s wife, Eleanor, but even Eleanor’s conversation tended to complaint, either about young William’s wife, or about Eleanor’s missing tooth.

  It seemed to Eliza, this afternoon, as she sat near the fire with Eleanor, drinking tea, the fire smoking but not quite warm enough for a cold winter, that she had had this conversation with Eleanor, or at least a variation of it, many times too. It was made worse by Eleanor’s refusal to put more peat on the fire, on the grounds she might have to fetch more from outside. It seemed a small thing to Eliza, which she would do herself, and had offered to do, but which Eleanor had refused.

  ‘That girl,’ said Eleanor, referring to her son’s wife, ‘is thinking of going to Belfast.’

  ‘I’d love myself to go to Belfast,’ said Eliza. ‘I been thinking I should go, now we got the railway.’

  ‘She goes when and where she likes.’

  This seemed not a bad thing to Eliza, but she said nothing.

  ‘I’m too poorly,’ Eleanor said. ‘I have the brown cowtis in my lungs and all over. I spent all my life in this one place, and now it’s too late. My Joseph, he had dreams of buying a public house, like his brothers in Victoria, but that never happened. I’ve spent my entire life on Tattykeel.’

  ‘You’ve been to Cookstown,’ said Eliza reasonably.

  ‘Not this past year.’ Eleanor turned to the fire and gathered her shawl around her, sipping on her tea, and making sucking noises through the hole where her front tooth was missing. This sucking noise annoyed Eliza, for she thought Eleanor only did it to draw attention to her missing tooth. Eliza knew missing parts often caused a person pain, although she wondered how that could be so.

  Suddenly, Eliza could not stand the misery of it. She gathered her own shawl around her, said goodbye and called out to Lysander, who was her new pup, just six months old.

  ‘Oh, you’re a pretty pup,’ she told him as they went out the gate. ‘I do like you, I do.’ And she bent down so he could lick her hand for a moment.

  She and Eleanor often irritated each other. But it was not so much Eleanor this day as herself who was at fault, for she felt her old restlessness.

  Her dream of emigration was gone. It was finished. It had been a long and painful time fading, and she knew now she would be at Knockaleery forever. She could have gone when dear Father had died, but that was just after William had married Jane, and she did not think she could live in a house that Jane Norris was the mistress of, although Jane had never appeared to bear her any ill will. It was more her own feelings that she feared – that jealousy, the comparison between herself and Jane. In William’s hotel she would have been a servant of sorts, and Jane would have been mistress of the house. At Knockaleery, it was she who was mistress of the house.

  When Jane had died, William had asked her again to come, but she did not, for James did not want to come with her, and he was then too young to care for John, and John could not care for him. Indeed, she did not know how she could ever leave John, who was silent and little trouble for herself, but was not always that way with others. And behind all that was a sense that she did not quite know William any more. He was twice widowed, father of six, and while she loved him as she always had, he would be very different from the young man who left Knockaleery aged eighteen. It had taken a long time for her to see it, but she knew now the dream was finished. She felt the loss of the dream, for she had dreamed it so long.

  It was the middle of winter, but there was no snow. She was wearing the shawl she had knitted from dyed red wool bought in Cookstown. It was bright red, not like the wool they used to dye at home with madder. The dyeing, like many things, was done less now, and she liked the new bright red. As she walked, she wound her hands into the shawl, for it was perishing cold.

  She looked across the paddock, which was grey stubble in winter, and the hedgerows, which had lost their green, and she thought how well the good Lord coloured the seasons in, giving just the right aspect and mood to each one. William wrote it was most different in the colony, for there the trees did not lose their leaves. But she liked the grey of the fields with the black branches and sticks of the hedgerows, the grey stone wall snaking up the hill, and the great grey sky with its low black cloud.

  Last week she had told John and James the story of creation from Genesis, which she knew by heart. John had asked the purpose of the seasons, for he did not like the winter. Eliza had answered as best she could, which was never good enough for John. But it brought her to the larger question of why God had created the earth at all. The Good Book gave many details but it did not say why God thought of such a thing. She supposed it was because he was bountiful, and that he produced it in his own image so it would be a very fine place. But she still wondered whether God gave thought to persons such as herself, and whether He had put her on earth for a purpose, and indeed, if she was fulfilling that purpose. She knew she was never to go forth and multiply, which might appear to be the Lord’s main purpose.

  She picked up a stick and threw it for Lysander, who raced and brought it back to her then ran in great circles, barking at her to throw it again. Was she herself created to care for creatures such as Lysander? To care for John and James, and Eleanor and brother Joseph? To mourn her brother Robert and pray for his soul? She worried about that, for she did not mourn for Robert over much on account of his neglect of James, never writing at all. She would have liked to know her purpose, so she could feel it and embrace it.

  As the wind increased, she had to struggle up the hill and she could feel snow coming in small soft flakes, stinging against her face. She felt a sort of bravery in her and began to sing her favourite hymn.

  Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,

  The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.

  When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

  Help of the helpless, o abide with me.

  ‘Something most interesting always happens in the laneway with you, Miss Eliza Irwin,’ said Sam McGowan as he caug
ht her coming round the corner starting on her second verse. ‘You is a most strange creature.’

  ‘I am God’s creature, Sam McGowan,’ she replied, but she was blushing red like her shawl. ‘And nothing will stop me singing His praises when I so feel. There’s no need for the likes of you to mock.’

  She could see him laughing to himself in his sleeve, and knew he would repeat the story of her singing. But as soon as she passed him, she started again on the second verse, and finished the entire hymn just nicely as she came into the farmyard. She went over to the byre, where she found James milking Bessy.

  ‘Oh James, it’s a grand day with snow coming and all, and I sang a hymn right across the field.’

  He smiled up at her. ‘I heard you, Aunt Eliza. You was in fine voice today indeed.’

  William judged the parlour of Mrs Julia Vivian to be the parlour of a woman whom he could not marry. That was his first impression, brought on by the surplus of objects within the room. Next to the door was a small bamboo whatnot stand, which he almost knocked over as he came in. It was covered with what William presumed to be whatnots and peculiarities, objects which he found hard to fathom. Then there was a table covered with a crochet cloth, on which there were two photographs of a man he presumed to be the deceased Mr Vivian. The same man also appeared in a framed photograph on the wall, along with some china plates. The reason for having china plates on a wall had always defeated William. There were other tables and a china cabinet, and a stand with a brass urn with a plant in it. There was a silver tea set with tea waiting to be served, although he himself longed for something stronger. There was a strange tiered plate holding different sorts of biscuits and scones. The windows had blinds and curtains and then some frilling above the curtains and some silk tassels to hold the curtains back, attached to brass knobs which were attached to the wall.

  It was all too much for him, and he felt instinctively that all this made the marriage impossible.