Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  William knew he was in trouble with the disease of diabetes, the ‘sugar disease’ as Danny Phelan called it. He had seen it kill Humffray and other men from the days of the rush, so he sometimes wondered whether the cause lay back then. Poor Humffray had been ill for a long time and died very poor, but his wish to be buried near the men of Eureka had been fulfilled.

  Despite the blackness that sometimes came upon him, William had no wish to die. Even if life were to inflict on him more great blows, he wanted to live. It was a stubborn and persistent feeling in him, and he was much frustrated by the lack of his former vigour. He went out to the stables and sometimes found himself asleep on a bale of hay. He would sit in his office and find himself itching badly, or not able to see the papers in front of him. He could no longer walk the distances he used to, from one end of Ballarat to the other. He spent time down at the Old Colonists Club, which he had helped to establish just a few years earlier, and would find himself dozing in one of their leather armchairs. He went to the seaside with Julia for a rest cure but, although he rested considerably, he was not cured. He felt like a clock winding down, but he was not at all reconciled to the fact, even when he was tormented by fading eyesight, pins and needles, weight loss so dramatic that his suits fell off him and a strange and irregular pounding of his heart.

  Julia now did much of what he usually did, ordering and supervising, but she did not mention it, although she sometimes gave him an unusually tender glance. He bought her tokens of his esteem, pieces of jewellery and china, but he thought he had lost his touch, for he did not feel they met with her complete approval. Likewise, there were things he would have liked to say to her, which he started to say, but which always felt less than he meant. He thought that maybe she preferred things left unsaid.

  His child Harold was similarly a puzzle to him, for he was much his mother’s child. His head was stuffed so full of knowledge and culture that William felt the child must be missing some of the pleasures of boyhood. He kept the boy well supplied with pigeons, which the child was most attentive to, and bought him a ferret, which was a great delight to Harold until it escaped, as ferrets always did. But his mother could not be stopped, for she wanted him to have every civilised accomplishment, some of which William felt were at odds with what a boy should be. Julia enrolled the child in dancing lessons, and had two silk suits made, one in gold silk, one in black, with embroidered waistcoats and little soft shirts. He choked back his words, for Julia was very sensitive on the matter of anything concerning her son. He felt the thing had gone too far, but since the escape of the ferret had been recent and he had been at a disadvantage in that matter, he kept silent.

  He was more than slightly pleased when he found the gold suit discarded in the woodshed on the afternoon of the lessons. He said nothing to Julia, but it gave him a surge of hope for the boy. He only wished he had the rough and tumble familiarity he had with his other sons. He thought that in a few years he would take the boy shooting with Henary Black, but then reflected sadly that neither himself nor Henary were likely to last the distance.

  Nevertheless, the end came unexpectedly and swiftly. He was in bed a week, ill with a cold, then very ill indeed. It was the worst time to be ill, a hot and sticky January. The heat made him long for the sight of the sky, but if the blinds were up the light hurt his eyes and the room became hot. Julia had Doctor Pinnock come every second day, which he thought a needless expense. He had words with her and Pinnock’s visits were curtailed.

  ‘But should you see Mr Morrow?’ she asked.

  ‘Hughie Morrow? Why would I see Hugh Morrow?’ he asked irritably. Hugh Morrow was his solicitor, and a close friend. Julia did not answer, but went away quietly, leaving him with the question mark of Hugh Morrow. Then it came to him. His will, of course, she meant his will, which had been made some years ago. He searched his mind but he could not remember what was in it. But he understood her question now and he summoned her hoarsely.

  ‘My dear, my dear,’ he shouted. She came in. ‘I do not want the pan at all,’ he said, seeing she had it in her hand. ‘I require Mr Morrow.’

  Hugh Morrow of Cuthbert, Wynne, Morrow and Must Solicitors was summoned and came the next day, which was again blazing hot. He brought his clerk Smith, who brought his pen, ink and paper. Hugh Morrow was an Irishman himself and had the cheerfulness of an Irishman combined with the gravitas of a solicitor. They started with a list of the assets and worked steadily. There was much writing, rewriting and crossing out by the clerk. The room grew hotter and William felt more and more ill, but he did not think it was the result of the sombre task at hand, for there was something in him that still enjoyed listing and adding things. But now he felt his heart in his chest so uncomfortably that he was flustered and found it more difficult to speak.

  ‘Will we have time?’ he asked hoarsely, and pointed to his pocket watch on his bedstand.

  ‘We have time,’ said Hugh Morrow. ‘Adequate time.’

  ‘You are used to this close timing?’ asked William.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Hugh. ‘We shall be done without any rush.’ And they both laughed, although the business was very serious. Even the clerk Smith allowed himself a chuckle.

  ‘The life insurance is to go half to dear Julia,’ William said, ‘and half to my daughter, Lizzie. For while she will most probably marry, it is a good thing for a woman to have some money of her own. And if she does not, it is all the more important.’ Then they worked on the assets that were to be divided amongst all the children. They were mainly shares, and William did not want them sold cheap. The investments had to be realised at the best price.

  Then they moved on to the hotel – the Provincial – which he had owned for thirty years. He had been a hotel keeper nearly forty years in all. It had been most of his life, this world of letting rooms, stabling horses, managing the coaches, his bar, his dining room, his kitchen. He felt it keenly, this life of his, which he could hear still around him, the cheerful murmur from the bar, the cook banging in the kitchen, the coach rolling into the heat-baked yard.

  ‘The hotel,’ he said, ‘should not be sold. For that is for my dear wife. And she will run it very well, and even if she does not wish to, someone else can do it and it will provide an income for her. For I would never wish to see her in poverty, but to maintain her place in this city.’

  Hugh Morrow dictated and the clerk scribbled. Later Julia brought in lemon barley water for William and sent the legal gentlemen to the dining room for a hot lunch while she fanned and fussed, trying to cool the sick room. After lunch, in the oven-like heat of an Australian summer afternoon, there were more details to be discussed, more scribbling to be done by Smith, and more talk between Hugh Morrow and William, mainly on Hugh’s side, since William found it hard to find his voice in the thickness of his chest. Morrow got him to sign the papers, and the will was done.

  And he thought with surprise, ‘I am dying. I am dying now,’ for he caught himself at it.

  The world seemed less clear. Julia came and kissed him, and the children, first his darling Lizzie, then his four dear boys. And Doctor Pinnock, whom he thought cost too much, was somewhere there too. And he had a feeling that a reverend gentleman came. He thought it could not be the Reverend Henderson, for he had been dead for some years, but the words that were said were Henderson’s.

  The room was getting dark, and there seemed a great many people in it, so it was hotter still. But then he could not see the people, and wondered if he was still in the room.

  A little later he found himself shivering, and then he felt quite cold. The cold seemed to come from the soft darkness around him, not quite black. He was outside now, there in the half-light with its cold, and he was climbing, climbing up a hill, carrying something on his back. He remembered, with a sense of deep familiarity, this cold of an Irish autumn twilight, the soft darkness, the rain in the wind. There was a tightness round his neck. He turned and saw the setting sun on the horizon. It was Lizey on his back, Lizey’s a
rms around his neck. She let go, dropped down, but she kept her arms round his waist, and they stood there.

  ‘Remember me,’ she said.

  ‘In this life, Lizey, in this life.’ And he was gone.

  Danny Phelan knew there would not be an Irish wake for Billy Irwin. So he was most pleased when the night before the funeral Inspector Joseph Brown, who had come to Ballarat to be a pallbearer at the funeral, slipped into the bar of the Provincial Hotel just before closing time.

  ‘I thought we might have a couple,’ said Joe. ‘Two Irishmen in memory of our dear old friend.’

  After Danny had closed the bar, they poured themselves a generous amount of Irish whisky and swapped stories about William, agreeing heartily that he was the best of men and a true friend to both of them. Joe Brown took it on himself to encourage Danny Phelan to attend the funeral, for Danny was somewhat shy of the Protestant way of death, and of Mrs Irwin also. So Joe Brown also took it on himself to get Mrs Irwin’s permission to close the bar of the hotel in order that Danny could attend the funeral.

  Danny had always thought the Requiem mass was a considerable amount of ceremony to sit through, and he had heard the Protestant ceremonies were very poor in comparison. But at Billy Irwin’s funeral there was a service at the house, then another at the Masonic Hall, and then another given by the minister next to the grave, as well as a graveside ritual performed by the Masons. There were many eminent men amongst the procession: Freemasons, Licensed Victuallers, members of the Stock Exchange and Old Colonists, and there were many more of the ordinary run of men like himself. There were a hundred or more vehicles, and many people on foot, with many more lining the road to watch the funeral procession. The flags flew at half mast in the city. It made Danny realise Billy Irwin was considerably well known and much liked, so he felt proud to have served as his bartender, and to have been his friend for almost forty years. Considering it was a Protestant funeral, Danny Phelan thought they did Billy Irwin proud.

  Two days after the funeral, Danny spoke to Mrs Irwin and told her that while he would stay in his position as long as she wished, he had it in his mind to leave and retire to his home and garden, and his animals – of which he had quite a number. And while he had the feeling that this Mrs Irwin had never really liked him, she was very kind. She asked him to stay until she found a replacement, whom he perhaps could train.

  ‘I have a nephew,’ he volunteered, ‘recently come from Ireland, where he was a barman, and working here in a position where he is not quite satisfied. But of course he is from Ireland.’

  ‘You have done an excellent job for many years, so I imagine your Irish nephew might be satisfactory,’ she said, which surprised Danny, for he had thought she did not like the Irish.

  ‘And another matter,’ she said. ‘Mr Irwin’s old dog.’ She sighed, and he thought she looked a little unsure of herself, a little fragile, and again he was surprised, for though she was a small woman, she had never before appeared in any way fragile. ‘The dog is not the easiest of creatures, having been over-indulged for many years by his master. He does not seem to like me and . . .’

  Danny felt sorry for her and pity for Henary Black, for it was clear Henary and Mrs Irwin were not compatible. As he had a great affection for Henary, he agreed to take him. And whether or not it was out of gratitude for that, or whether she had softened towards him, Mrs Irwin gave him two pounds for every year he had been at the Provincial, so they parted on the best of terms.

  Julia felt great comfort in the grandeur of the funeral of her husband, although she had only attended the service at the hotel, for widows did not attend funerals. But she’d had reports of the rest, as well as many wreaths sent to her, many condolences expressed, and over two hundred cards and letters, all of which she answered, enclosing with each a small memorial card.

  She kept very busy, for there was much to be done in the business and in attending to Harold. She liked to be busy, for it kept her emotions in check. Otherwise, she felt quite overcome at being a widow again. This, her second time, was a different matter from the first, because she was well provided for and secure, for which she was most grateful. But she was alone, and she felt this keenly.

  Julia’s grief went very deep, but she kept this private, for she thought displays of emotion were coarse and vulgar. She did not wish her feelings to be in any way public. She wanted a memorial not to her grief but to William’s qualities, so she approached the question of a monument, and what would be written on it, with great care.

  William was buried in the family plot, not far from Humffray’s grave or from that of the diggers killed at Eureka. Julia consulted with the memorial mason and had a fine granite monument erected with the names of both his wives, and the children who had died before him. She left room for her own inscription, although she felt she had many years of life left. She thought long about his inscription. Her rise up the social ladder had taught her that, as with china, restraint was appropriate. She was, however, determined to give William his due, for she had a very great regard for him.

  William Irwin

  Died January, 1893, aged 62 years

  None who knew him need be told,

  A truer heart death ne’er made cold.

  Months after William’s death, as she worked through his drawers and the boxes and papers on and around his desk, Julia came across the letters from his family. She was surprised to find so very many spanning such a long period. She did not read much, for the writing, the spelling, the grammar and the punctuation were very poor indeed, but she knew there had been a great connection over the years, and much attachment. She saw from Eliza’s entreating letters that the correspondence on William’s side had stopped after the deaths of his two eldest boys. She understood that he had been unable to write. Having recently sent out very many black-bordered letters in response to his death, she understood how he would have found it impossible to write to those in Ireland of the death of these two boys. Willy and John were simply names to them, however sympathetic their sentiments. And as time went on, it would have become harder and harder, although she saw William had sent them newspapers. Whatever had happened, she saw a letter would have to be sent informing them of William’s death.

  She wrote a letter that was sympathetic, but that in one way or another managed not to invite a reply. She enclosed the notice of his death and the report of his funeral that had been printed in the Ballarat Courier.

  There were no more letters from Knockaleery.

  FACT AND FICTION

  My starting point for this novel was my family’s collection of letters written to William in Ballarat between 1850 and 1892. Despite the physical difficulties of reading them, they were incredibly alive, full of character, descriptive of the neighbourhood in which the family lived, and with some details of their working lives. These letters, despite their somewhat formalised style, had an immediacy and intimacy that gave a powerful sense of the life of the Irwin family at Knockaleery.

  But it was not a full picture for, of course, the writers – old Joseph the father, William’s brother Joseph and his sister Eliza – were not writing for people in the twenty-first century. They did not need to explain family relationships to William; they did not have to spell out all the difficulties of the debt to McCrea, nor tell him which of the people they mentioned were cousins or neighbours or friends. They did not have to explain farming methods, or the leasehold system, or many other things.

  The three parts of the book correspond to the existing letters, in which there are gaps of several years. Since the Star Hotel had a number of fires and there were later fires at the Provincial, I suspect those missing letters were lost in these fires. The loss I most regret are the letters after Eureka. The Stockade was reported in the English papers and presumably William wrote something of it to his family. I would have loved to know the family’s reaction, but I did not attempt to surmise it.

  I have used the letters sparingly in the text, and although I have drawn upon them
for other incidents and descriptions, most events that occur in the Irish family are substantially fictional. I added some punctuation to the letters and corrected much of the spelling, although I left some mistakes to give the flavour of the original. In a couple of cases, I amalgamated letters and sometimes changed the dates.

  This fiddling, of course, would not be permissible in a work of historical scholarship. At times, with the amount of research I was doing, I felt as if I was preparing to write a history, but I always wanted to make this a narrative with more heart and soul than is available in the historical records, so it is primarily a work of the imagination. But I thought the reader might care to know the shifting boundaries between fact and what is imagined.

  Ireland is a fantastic place for research into family history, but records of births, deaths and marriages for people like the Irwins are sparse. We know old Joseph was born in 1780, because his age is given, as a matter of pride, in the letters. His wife, Ann, was born around 1790, which means that William, who was born in 1831, would have been one of the youngest of her eight children. We know Robert was two years older than William, because his birth year is given on his gravestone. James, who went to America, was presumably considerably older, as was Joseph, who was married to Eleanor.

  I have assumed Eliza was the youngest of the family, but there is no record of either her birth or her death. I have assumed her position in the family on the grounds that one of the letters to William remarks how she has grown, and the fact that she is referred to by the pet names of ‘Lizey’ and ‘Elizey’. John is often mentioned in the letters as silent, or saying nothing, and writes only once – in 1892. On these slim grounds I have created the fictional characters of Eliza and John. Having read and reread the letters many times, I felt my way into the character of Eliza and created her. It was never a forced process – she was one of those characters that writers sometimes just find in their heads without doing much of the conscious business of creation. I don’t know if she had a dog named Hercules and another later named Lysander. I came across a story of an Irish schoolmaster, himself educated in classics, who passed them on to the children in the village school. As Eliza might have said, ‘It is my own fancy, entirely.’