Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  It was late afternoon when he got back to the hotel. No-one rushed to tell him the news and, feeling out of sorts, he went into his office and ran through the accounts and spoke to Cook about some details in the dining room. That evening, he went in to dinner with the children. He said grace, but his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘We have another brother, Daddy,’ said Lizzie. ‘We’ll be able to see him tomorrow or the next day.’

  ‘Ah, that’s a fine thing, Lizzie,’ he said, but felt strangely empty.

  ‘Wattie’s in the rowing team, Dad,’ said Herbert. ‘They had the trials on the lake and he was chosen.’

  ‘Now that’s a fine thing,’ said William. ‘A fine thing indeed.’

  ‘Henary Black is under the table, Daddy,’ said Robert. ‘Mother doesn’t like him in.’

  ‘I think we may allow Henary a little indulgence tonight,’ said William. ‘And he might himself celebrate the new baby with our dinner scraps.’ The children giggled and Henary Black laid himself gratefully on William’s feet.

  It was three days later when he saw Julia and the baby. He liked it that she looked so happy and well, and he could see her devotion to the child. But when he went to pick it up from its cradle, she stopped him.

  ‘No, don’t pick him up; he’s resting.’

  He was about to say that the child had a considerable amount of his life left in which to rest, but he saw the distressed and possessive look she gave him and he contented himself with peering into the cradle, where the little red-faced thing was wrapped and swaddled and covered over rather more than he thought such a tiny creature might require. And despite its need to rest, it opened its eyes and fixed a look upon him. It looked not like one of his own babes; instead, it had a remarkable look of its mother, and he felt the cool distance of its stare.

  ‘He’s a fine boy of yours,’ he said.

  ‘He’s a very strong child,’ she said proudly.

  ‘I was wondering about calling him Hamilton Brown,’ he said. ‘After Richard Hamilton and Joe Brown, who brought us together.’

  ‘I’m still thinking about the name,’ she said.

  And a few days later, she told him that although Hamilton Brown was a good name, she was looking for something a little more refined, and she had decided to call the child Harold. He nodded at this, and then, as if she thought she had not paid enough attention to his wishes, she went on.

  ‘I know you are much attached to your Irish ancestry,’ she said. ‘So I thought we would give him the second name Beresford.’

  He looked at her blankly.

  ‘That is the name of the Irish Earl of Tyrone,’ she said.

  ‘My Irish ancestry has very few earls in it,’ he said.

  ‘But it has the connection to Tyrone,’ she said, ‘the County Tyrone.’

  That night, closing up the bar with Danny, he told him the story of how his new son had come to be named after an Irish earl. Danny poured a whisky and proposed a toast to wet the baby’s head, and although he did not say anything, he and William exchanged a glance which showed they agreed on the strangeness of giving the son of a Ballarat publican the name of an Irish aristocrat.

  CHAPTER 18

  ‘You have completely missed this part behind the bath,’ said Julia.

  ‘Ma’am, it’s not possible to reach it, or nearly so, and no-one can ever see it unless they stretches their neck,’ said the little maid. She was a small girl, with a look that seemed to carry a touch of insolence. For a maid, especially one just twelve, she had a gaze that was too direct, and she was inclined to answer back.

  ‘The bathrooms need to be cleaned, not just look clean,’ said Julia. ‘I have said that to you before.’

  ‘What is the use in cleaning places that just gets dirty and needs more cleaning and there’s never a person will know or not?’

  Julia thought this insolent in the extreme. ‘That is not a question for you to ask. Whether someone knows or not is not the point. I want it clean. I instruct you to clean it, and you will clean it.’ Julia handed the rag to the maid and walked out of the bathroom.

  ‘Oh Lord Jesus, help me. Of all the stupid things . . .’ The maid had thought Julia was out of earshot. Julia, however, had heard the girl. She walked back into the bathroom. She had been tolerant of this girl but now she could allow it no more.

  ‘I will not have some dirty little Irish girl question my instructions.’ Her voice was loud and angry. ‘And I will not have the Lord’s name taken in vain. I’ve had quite enough of your sly Irish ways, and you can finish at the end of the day. I won’t have your insolence here.’

  ‘But, Ma’am, I’m sorry, I’m cleaning it now, I need the work . . .’

  ‘At the end of the day! You will finish!’

  William, mending a broken window sash in the next room, heard the encounter. The little maid, just a child really, was Paddy Madden’s granddaughter. Paddy had asked him to take her, on account of her daddy being dead, and she being the oldest of six fatherless children. When William had told Julia, he had sensed her disapproval.

  ‘Such girls are impossible to train.’

  ‘She may take a little time,’ he had answered, ‘but she’s young and will most likely come good.’

  Since then, he had heard nothing but complaints from Julia about the girl. Everything about her seemed to irritate his wife, and he had thought her harsh with the child, who came from a poor home and had very little education. But now he felt his Irishness come up against Julia’s Englishness, and something in him rebelled at it. He tolerated her regulation of his family life, which made it rather more formal than he would have liked. He tolerated the indulgences and affectations she pushed upon his youngest son. He tolerated her bossing of poor Danny Phelan, although he saved Danny from the worst of it. He understood that it was not in her nature to be anything but formal with his tradesmen, where he himself was naturally inclined to be somewhat friendly. But to abuse the girl for being Irish went too far. And to dismiss the girl, when he had employed her as a favour to an old friend, he would not tolerate.

  He caught Julia in her sitting room before lunch, and found himself agitated. ‘You cannot dismiss the maid,’ he said tersely. ‘I forbid it.’

  ‘I am afraid I have dismissed her,’ she said icily. ‘I only ever took her on as a trial, and she turned out exactly as I anticipated.’

  ‘If you speak to her in that manner, you can expect no success at all.’

  ‘What manner?’

  ‘I heard you in the bathroom this morning.’

  ‘She did not clean properly. I told her the same last week.’

  ‘You called her a dirty Irish girl.’

  ‘Which is exactly what she is!’

  ‘I will not have anyone spoken to in that manner. Not in my hotel, which is also my home. I know it is what many think, but I will not have it said. I believe that girl will learn if she is treated with kindness. She comes from a most ignorant home, that is true. It’s a fine thing to give money to the asylum or arrange a fête for the hospital, and there are many in this town who congratulate themselves on such acts of charity. But it is true charity to take in a child and teach her and persist with her, so she may work anywhere and make a wage. And it is easy enough to do, for I have had many Irish work in my hotel, and they are fine hard workers, if not quite perfect in their manners to start with.’

  William walked out of his wife’s sitting room, still very much heated. And he went down to the Exchange, still very much heated. This did not improve his mood, for the Star of the East seemed to be getting richer by the day, and he had sold out too early by just a few months.

  He walked down to Main Street to order some more wood, although he could have easily sent the yard boy down. But he felt the need for his old haunts, and perhaps the greater Irishness of Main Street, for his argument with Julia made him feel how far he had come from the Irish of his beginnings. In Main Street he felt comfortable with the familiarity of the place, but he realised he had long
ago left it behind and, like so many of the Protestant Irish, had risen above it. While he did not wish it otherwise, it struck him that Paddy Madden’s granddaughter was still Irish, but no-one would think his Lizzie Irish. For Paddy’s girl had all the hallmarks of the Irish. She talked of ‘Lord Jaysus’, whereas his Lizzie said ‘Jesus’. She was poorly dressed, whereas his Lizzie was always fresh as spring. The maid’s convent education had lasted till she was ten or eleven if she was lucky, whereas his Lizzie had gone to school till she was fourteen and now read all sorts of books and wrote with a fine hand. Paddy’s girl talked of her ‘mam’, whereas Lizzie called her stepmother ‘Mum’ or ‘Mother’.

  He thought that he himself probably sounded less Irish than Paddy Madden or even Danny Phelan. And he was not enclosed in a world that was protectively and exclusively Irish. He felt a comfortable familiarity with the Irish world in Ballarat, a great affection for it, and a respect for the men he knew in it, but when he thought of it, he realised he had moved beyond it. Although that was what he wished and had strived for, he still felt the loss. His world, while materially more comfortable, was not as settled or as embracing or as familiar. There was more jostling for position, more striving, although there was considerable companionship and co-operation within all that.

  He had moved beyond his beginnings in this city, sometimes knowingly, sometimes involuntarily. Two years ago, in 1884, the thirtieth anniversary of Eureka had been celebrated, but in a way that was less than it should have been. The most strong debate was about where the Stockade of 1854 had actually been situated, which felt a lesser thing. It seemed this had masked an embarrassment at the raw sentiments and the strong ideals that had been voiced back in 1854, and a lack of understanding of the passion and determination of the diggers back then. He felt the thing had not been properly remembered, nor the dead honoured for what they had sacrificed. Many of those dead had been Irishmen and others who had been known to him.

  That night in the bedroom, Julia brushed her hair in silence, still upset about the matter of the maid. She brushed carefully, a hundred strokes on each side. William did not wish to disturb her, but he wished to broach the subject of the maid and make things right between them. In the end it was she who spoke first.

  ‘I have engaged the little maid to stay on,’ she said, as she put the brush down and coiled her hair into her night cap. ‘And I shall endeavour to train her with a firm kindness. Perhaps it is simply that I am unfamiliar with the Irish.’ She pulled back the covers of the bed, and slipped in.

  ‘You are not unfamiliar with me.’ He said it as a joke, but she did not take it as such.

  ‘That is true,’ she said. ‘But I was unfamiliar with how poorly educated that girl is, in all the ways of the world, and perhaps I was a little harsh towards her.’

  He slipped into bed next to her, but he noted, even in bed, they were both laid out straight, not curled round one another. ‘You were indeed. A little too harsh.’ He thought it strange that they had this conversation, lying flat, both staring at the ceiling, but he knew from experience this was the way it had to be done.

  ‘You were somewhat harsh towards me,’ she said, and he looked at her and thought her eyes were moist. But he could not take her in his arms, he could not comfort her, he could not joke about it. He knew her well enough to know that none of those things would help.

  ‘I was indeed,’ he said. ‘And I am very sorry for it. For you run the housekeeping of the hotel so well, and you are an excellent mother. You are the best wife an Irishman like myself could have. I am sorry to have expressed myself so forcibly.’

  ‘I come from humble beginnings myself,’ she said stiffly, ‘and while I think I was more amenable than that child is, I was always helped by kindness.’

  ‘That’s a fine thing to remember,’ he said. ‘And it is true of myself also.’

  He saw her face was more composed. He snuffed his candle and she snuffed hers. Only then could he put his arms around her and hold her.

  The phaeton William had ordered for Julia had finally arrived, but it seemed that whenever she wished to use it, he had borrowed it, or the boy was not there to harness the horse, or the yard boy could not drive her. It was a very handsome vehicle, and she teased William about his borrowing her phaeton, but in truth, she found it less trouble to send a boy out to fetch a cab from the station or from Sturt Street.

  Two weeks before Christmas, she had her chance to ride in it, for William wanted a picnic in the gardens. Willy was still in Melbourne, and while the other children could walk to the lake and catch the steamer across, Julia wished to ride in the phaeton with the hamper and her husband. She thought Harold, who was only four years old, too young to walk such a distance. However, William had examined the legs of his youngest son and declared them ‘capital’ and had him walk to the lake with his brothers and Lizzie. They often had small conflicts like this over Harold, for William thought he was too much cosseted, and Julia thought of him as her precious only child.

  Julia and William took the phaeton with the food hamper and the cricket bat, and various balls, and met the children at the lake, where they lined up to catch the paddle steamer Queen, which was one of the biggest steamers on the lake, and which could be ridden for threepence. It was an idyllic day, with fishermen out in force, people in rowing boats, and a few on large yachts, which were owned by the very richest men in Ballarat. Years before, the lake had been a place to get away from the crowds. Now it was crowded with sweet-sellers, fruit-sellers and lemonade-sellers, picnickers, rowers, sailors and pleasure seekers.

  They found a spot in the garden where there was shade and soft green lawn. They drank ginger beer, and ate sandwiches made with chicken, which were a great delicacy. The noise of a Sunday school picnic brass band drifted across to them from somewhere on the shores of the lake.

  ‘Brother Robert and myself used to bring our families here and have picnics in the early days,’ he told Julia. ‘All the babes were packed into the cart, and then we’d have a fire in the open air. But you give us a touch more elegance than we had in those rough days.’ She smiled, for she liked to think she had improved his life.

  ‘Dad, I’ll take Wattie and Herbert and Bob to the park to play some cricket,’ said John. He was a slight boy, often ill, but he was devoted to the sport and had his brothers playing well.

  ‘Can I go?’ said Harold.

  ‘You’re far too little,’ said Bob dismissively.

  ‘I’ll bowl you a few when we come back,’ said John, and the four ran off.

  ‘Statues,’ said Lizzie to Harold, who was disappointed at his brothers deserting him. ‘We’ll play statues.’

  Lizzie, at eighteen, was devoted to her youngest brother. She carried him everywhere, did his hair, bathed him, dressed him, read to him, talked to him. He in turn was devoted to her.

  The game of ‘statues’ revolved around the twelve classical Italian marble statues that had been donated to the city by Thomas Stoddart two years earlier in 1884, setting off a mania for marble statues in the city. Stoddart’s twelve statues stood in the botanical gardens. William thought they were a very fine gift, very classical and artistic, as everyone agreed, but he could not shake the feeling that white marble belonged more properly in one of those long-dead civilisations of the ancient world. He would not have admitted to such a thought, but he was pleased to see Lizzie and Harold racing to each of the statues, treating them as playthings.

  ‘Mercury,’ called Lizzie, ‘first one to Mercury.’ She let Harold beat her, and then called, ‘Flora! First to Flora.’ As she ran, her hair came loose, and she scooped the child up and swung him round so he squealed with delight. To William it seemed the perfect way to spend a Sunday, an idyllic moment, with himself and Julia sitting on the rug, the sounds of the band, the laughter of children, the wide blue sky, the soft lawn and the great avenue of trees arching over them. He lay back on the picnic rug and looked up at the sky through the green leaves. Julia sat beside him, dignified in
her print dress, but relaxed and pleased with the world, as she watched Harold and Lizzie running round the flower beds, to and from the statues.

  ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ It was Robert, white-faced, running as fast as he could towards them, cricket bat in hand, his face fearful as he stopped in front of them. William was on his feet, sensing the urgency of whatever the boy wanted to say. ‘Johnny fell down; he’s quite still. He just fell down. There’s a doctor looking at him. Come, Dad, you have to come.’

  Johnny died just weeks after he had fallen in the park. He had known. ‘Dad, I know I will die. I have felt it for a long time.’ Then he added, pathetically, for although he knew it, he had no wish to die, ‘I thought I should live longer, till I was thirty or thereabouts.’ Johnny had always been strong in his religion, and now he prayed in hope he would be spared, although he knew he would not. From the moment he fell that day of the picnic, he did not rise again. He lay like a ghost and then died. The doctor said it was dropsy, brought on by a weak heart.

  Willy had come home. It was meant to be for Christmas, but it was to see his dying brother, although he did not know it as he came in through the back yard of the hotel whistling, first tussling with Henary Black, then greeting Danny Phelan. He was so noisy and so full of life that it broke William’s heart to tell him that his dear brother was dying. And gradually it became clear that Willy too – tall, handsome, funny Willy – was very sick indeed. At first he denied it, and they thought it was only a bad cold. Then it seemed to be bronchitis. But after Johnny died, he began to cough. He coughed all night and the doctor was called again, and diagnosed consumption. He said it was much advanced. He prescribed rest and tonics and said Ballarat had the best climate for such a thing. But it seemed to William that, as soon as Johnny was gone, Willy began coughing his lungs up, in red streaks and globs, until it seemed there could be no more left. But still he coughed.