When Matthew Duncan, his daughter and two sons entered St Aidan’s Church, the pews were full. The tiny coffin, transferred from the Manse by Mr Martin, the undertaker, was now sitting in front of the altar beside Amy’s hawthorn branches. As they walked down the aisle, they barely looked at the congregation, only the coffin which stood like an obstacle at the end of their path.
Reverend Brownlow spoke beautiful words, yet Amy hardly heard them. The boys were behaving themselves, not because they were particularly distraught, but because they had never seen their father so quiet nor their sister so solemn and pale. Then Amy noticed the minister beckoning to her and knew it was time to sing. She hoped she could remember the words. Would she be able to finish the song without weeping? She took a deep breath and began singing ‘O Can Ye Sew Cushions?’ Only once did she falter. It was when she came to the line about ‘my wee sweet lamb’. A sob escaped before she could stop it, but clenching her hands so tightly that her nails cut into her palms, she continued for her father’s sake, and for her mother who lay in the big bedroom of the Manse and might still never leave that room alive.
After Reverend Brownlow delivered the benediction, they rose and followed the coffin out of the church. Mr Martin and another man carried the box, though it was so small Amy could have carried it herself.
The Miller family were seated in the back row of the church. Closest to the aisle, Eliza reached out and touched Amy’s arm. As she turned sideways to acknowledge Eliza’s gesture of sympathy, Amy glimpsed the girl with the dark ringlets towards the end of the pew, and next to her a flash of turquoise. Then she was outside the church.
Peggy’s grave was a small hole in the corner of the Millbrooke graveyard nearest the creek. At the sight of the pile of freshly dug red clay beside the grave, Amy cried some more. Then she saw something sunny where a marble gravestone would soon be erected – a bouquet of yellow orchids. She had seen orchids once before, in a fancy flower shop in Sydney. But where would anyone find orchids in Millbrooke?
Amy had heard the expression ‘bone-tired’. Now she knew what it meant. Every day she rose early to buy bread. Then she washed the clothes and hung them out to dry, made breakfast for her father and the boys and prepared a tray for her mother. Although Margaret Duncan still spent much of the day in bed, she was growing stronger. Even so, she carried purple shadows under her eyes as if someone had hit her, the way Charles Chen had looked following the incident with the drunkard.
After she washed the breakfast things and cleaned the house, Amy would spend an hour or two reading to her mother. Not from the Bible as her father expected, but from the popular novels of Misses Brontë and Austen that she kept hidden in her bureau. There was a particularly pompous clergyman in Pride and Prejudice, and whenever Amy read his speeches, she would adopt a Glaswegian accent which always made her mother smile.
Amy treasured those hours, knowing how close the family had come to losing the person who held everything together. The woman who balanced Matthew Duncan’s brusqueness with her tenderness.
‘Dearest Amy, I know you would rather be in Sydney,’ her mother said one morning.
‘Not at all, Mama.’
‘It’s a natural desire for a young girl to wish to live somewhere exciting. And I imagine your Aunt Molly would have made a great fuss of you.’
‘That’s true, but this is where I am meant to be. And there is no reason why Millbrooke couldn’t be exciting too.’ In asserting her wish so confidently, Amy hoped it might come true.
When the family had finished the pot of soup which was ever-present on the stove, she would make more. In the afternoon she would bring in the washing and bake biscuits or a cake. Sometimes she stewed and bottled the apples and pears that Mrs Miller sent down from Millerbrooke, usually in a sulky driven by Joseph. His visits were so frequent, Amy wondered whether he was pursuing her romantically, or if he was simply being a good friend. Even her mother, confined to the bedroom, seemed to know about Joseph. In her dealings with him, Amy was careful not to indicate anything more than friendship. She treated him as if he were her elder brother, following Eliza’s example.
Amy had postponed her classes with her friend, at least until her mother was stronger. She missed their amiable chatter in the barn. It wasn’t gossip – that was the devil’s work. They had always been careful not to malign anyone.
Whenever she had a spare moment, Amy would go to the church and practise her organ music – she had replaced her mother, who sometimes acted as organist. And occasionally she might find time to write to Aunt Molly – news about her mother, descriptions of the boys’ escapades, and stories about Eliza and her family. The only person who didn’t appear in her letters was Charles.
If only she could visit his emporium and lose herself in the aroma of the teas or the magic of the jade figurines, she might ease her sadness, at least temporarily. But the irony was that an excursion to the one place which beckoned as a source of comfort and healing would necessitate an encounter with the man she most wished to avoid.
Now
‘He snowed you, didn’t he?’ said Richard, shaking his head as he sipped his tea.
‘Kind of. It just happened before I knew it. He was saying how he loved the Manse and that it reminded him of home. And next thing I had a lodger. We’ve agreed to a trial period of four weeks.’
‘You might be glad of that, Ange.’
The waiter delivered his breakfast – corn fritters with tomato relish and sourdough toast – and Angie’s muesli with poached peaches.
‘I don’t feel comfortable about keeping all of his rent money, Richard. You must be entitled to some of it.’
‘No, it’s your windfall. Enjoy it. But you’ll have to pay the extra electricity and water charges.’
‘Of course.’
‘And you’ll have to deal with the flak of having Jack Parker in your house. It’s not something you can keep secret, particularly in a small town like this. Some people hate Songbird. They’ll say you’re consorting with the enemy.’
When he used the words ‘consorting with’, Angie wondered if he was implying ‘sleeping with’.
‘You make me sound like a Nazi collaborator.’
Richard was rubbing the stubble on his chin. ‘You might find you’ve made a pact with the devil.’
On the Thursday before the June long weekend, Angie received a phone call from Vicky.
‘I’ve come down with the flu, Angie. I’m not going to be able to make it.’
‘That’s okay, Vic. We can do it another time. Just concentrate on getting well. I bet Paul’s waiting on you hand and foot.’
There was a pause. ‘Something like that.’
‘Did I tell you that I have a prospective lodger?’
‘No. I didn’t think you were going to take in guests. Not with the house so dilapidated.’
‘He doesn’t mind.’
‘He?’
‘Yes, he’s an engineer with the mining company.’
‘I suppose he might be good company for you, Angie. After all, you’ve never been on your own before. What’s he like?’
‘Charming.’
‘Do I detect a hint of romance?’
‘Hardly. Anyway, we’re both married.’ Then Angie remembered she wasn’t married any more. Perhaps Blake was right about her being in denial. Maybe she was stuck in the past, frozen in a psychological time warp.
‘Besides, I’m too old for romance.’
‘You’re an attractive woman, Angie. One day you’ll meet someone.’
‘I’m not interested. The sexual feelings are gone.’
‘That’s what happens to menopausal women, along with the hot flushes,’ joked Vicky.
‘I’m serious, Vicky. That part of my life is over.’
The next morning Angie ran into Moira in Miller Street.
‘The town’s chock-a-block with tourists today,’ said Moira disparagingly.
‘I used to be one myself, not so long ago, Moira.’
/> ‘But not the kind who stops to use the toilets, buys a coffee and then heads on to more exciting places.’
‘No, I’m a stayer.’
They both laughed.
‘Do you want to come back to my place for a coffee?’ asked Moira.
‘Actually, I was on my way to the museum. I’ve decided to do some research into the past residents of the Manse.’
‘I haven’t been there in years. Do you want some company?’
The museum had its home in Millbrooke’s first bank, a stately building made from local sandstone. It was a funny old place with dusty display cabinets and handwritten cards.
‘You’d never see things like this in a sophisticated city museum,’ said Angie, pointing to a stuffed platypus from 1890 and a wombat with missing patches of fur, resembling a well-loved teddy bear.
‘Nor this,’ said Moira, examining the naval uniform of a captain who had served under Horatio Nelson. ‘I’m surprised some big museum hasn’t snapped it up.’
Angie followed a sign saying ‘Gold Rush Rooms’.
A showcase held a plaster of Paris landscape with a blue-painted river running through it. On either side were dozens of tiny tents bearing flags on matchstick poles. The plaster surface was dotted with square-cut holes to suggest mine shafts. Although the whole thing reminded Angie of a school project, somehow it captured the spirit of Millbrooke. A do-it-yourself kind of place, honest and unpretentious.
Then she spotted a painted canvas banner bearing the words: ‘Roll up, roll up. Rout the Chinamen.’ On the wall beside the banner was a description created decades earlier on a typewriter:
Racism on the Goldfields
In 1872 a group of European miners called a town meeting, hoping to have the Chinese removed from the Millbrooke diggings. This is the banner they carried to support their cause. Instead of being successful as they had expected, the anti-Chinese miners were out-voted two to one and the Chinese remained.
On the opposite wall hung a series of portraits, all painted in the same slightly naïve style. None of them was signed. Angie wondered if the artist might have been a talented local, or even an itinerant portraitist who had travelled from town to town offering his artistic services. What a pity he hadn’t signed his work for the benefit of posterity. The first painting was of a bearded doctor called Allen, the next a clergyman by the name of Brownlow, followed by a succession of unsmiling male faces in carved wooden frames – the graziers, businessmen and eminent citizens of Gold-Rush-era Millbrooke.
‘Not a single woman,’ said Angie. ‘It’s as if they didn’t exist.’
They were about to head towards the door when she paused to examine a glass-fronted cabinet in the corner, its shelves lined with tiny objects, none of which looked important in its own right: snuff boxes, broken pieces of china, a pair of spectacles, pieces of lace, old buttons. Almost lost among the miscellanea was a hand-painted miniature, so small it could have fitted into the palm of Angie’s hand. She put on her glasses to see the details. Inside an oval frame was a painting of a strikingly handsome Chinese man, dressed in a smart black suit and turquoise waistcoat, with a yellow orchid on his lapel.
‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ she said to Moira.
‘Yes. I bet he broke a few hearts.’
The label was typed on a piece of cardboard:
Charles Chen, circa 1870
‘I wonder whether he was a miner,’ pondered Angie.
‘I wouldn’t think so. Look at that spiffy waistcoat. Can’t imagine a prospector in one of those.’
‘Well, whatever he did, I’m glad somebody immortalised him, if only in miniature.’
Despite the museum’s fustiness, Angie preferred it to contemporary institutions with their flashy audiovisual presentations and interactive displays which seemed so removed from the past. Behind a counter in the foyer stood a white-haired volunteer whom Moira introduced as Bert, the president of the Millbrooke Historical Society.
Before Angie could explain why she was there, Bert said, ‘You’re the lady who’s renting the Manse, aren’t you? Richard told me about you. He said you might turn up, inquiring about the girl who used to live there.’
‘There are no secrets in Millbrooke,’ Moira whispered in Angie’s ear.
‘We might find something in this book,’ he said, producing a thin red-covered volume from an array on the counter: A History of the Churches of Millbrooke.
In the section about St Aidan’s Church they learned that the second minister was Reverend Matthew Duncan who held the post from 1871 until his death in 1894.
‘Perhaps Amy was his daughter,’ suggested Angie. ‘Is there some way we can find out?’
‘We could have a look in the archives room.’
He led them down a hallway to a small room, its walls lined with shelves, sagging under the weight of books and folders. A long desk held state-of-the-art computers, a large printer and other electronic gadgets that Angie couldn’t identify. For some reason she hadn’t expected to find twenty-first century technology in Millbrooke’s old-fashioned museum.
‘We’ve been digitising our collection of old photographs,’ said Bert. ‘There’s the entire series of plates belonging to Anton Weiss who ran a photography business in town in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. And we’re also transferring our microfilm copies of the Millbrooke Gazette into digital format. But we’re only volunteers, you understand, so it’s taking us some time.’
He sat at a computer and offered Angie and Moira seats on either side. Then he keyed in the name ‘Millbrooke photos 1870s’, and a series of folders appeared on the screen. He must have opened scores of pictures before they found a studio photograph with the caption: ‘New Minister of St Aidan’s Church and his Family, October, 1871.’ Right there on the screen was the Reverend Duncan with his wife and two young sons. The minister and his wife were standing straight as flagpoles, their faces unsmiling. He had sandy hair, a beard and a thick moustache, while she wore her hair in a bun, drawing attention to her large eyes and high cheekbones. The two boys were dressed in boater hats, white shirts with a bow at the neck, short jackets and trousers. Standing on either side of their parents like attending angels, each boy had angled his body towards the edge of the picture as if he were trying to run away.
But where was Amy?
‘I’m sorry,’ said Bert. ‘There doesn’t seem to be a daughter.’
Angie was disappointed until she recalled the dedication inside Sylvia’s Lovers.
‘I know the reason why Amy isn’t in the picture. She didn’t come to Millbrooke with the rest of the family. She didn’t even leave Sydney until March of 1872.’
‘How old was she? Do you know?’
‘I have a photograph of her by your Anton Weiss, probably taken during her first year in Millbrooke. She looks about seventeen or eighteen.’
‘Perhaps we can find Amy later in her life in the parish records. If she was married here, there’ll be a listing.’
From a shelf holding a row of black folders he took one with ‘St Aidan’s Parish Records 1865–1885’ written on a label glued to the spine.
‘The clergy kept very thorough registers,’ he said. ‘These are photocopies of the original pages. Now, if she was seventeen in 1872, you probably need to examine every year from 1872 until 1885 by which time she would have been close to thirty. I’ll leave you to it.’
Angie removed the relevant pages from the folder and divided them into two piles. She took one and Moira the other. Between them, they found two references to the Duncan family.
The death of a baby daughter in 1872. Cause of death: Premature birth. Failure to thrive.
A decade later there was a marriage, though not Amy’s. Robert Duncan in 1882. Was Robert one of the sons?
‘We can’t find any record of Amy,’ Angie told Bert when they had finished with the folder.
‘Perhaps she remained single,’ he said. ‘That was the case for many women in the nineteenth century. Being t
he daughter of a clergyman, she would have had a reasonable education, probably at home. So she may have become a governess or a schoolmistress. They were common professions for single women of limited means.’
Angie bought a copy of the red-covered book about Millbrooke’s churches, not so much for the text but for two particular photographs – the newly completed Manse with its lych-gate and picket fence, and St Aidan’s Church circa 1865 with a caption explaining the trustees had chosen the quiet laneway because it was well away from the public-houses of Millbrooke’s main street. Brothels too, Angie imagined, although they wouldn’t have put that in print.
As they were about to leave, Angie asked Bert: ‘What do you think of the Golden Days project?’
‘Some of my fellow historians are calling it the “Ghost Ride”. They say it will be the end of our museum. They think it’s a superficial way of presenting history. But it’s my belief that you should engage people by whatever means, and then they will want to learn more. After the tourists have had their excitement at the Songbird ride, I hope they’ll come over here to the museum to learn the real history.’
‘I agree,’ said Angie. ‘Anyway, there’s a long road between a proposal and a reality. It may not even happen.’
Back at the Manse, Angie produced the collodion portrait of Amy.
‘So this is the girl who used to sleep in your room,’ said Moira. ‘Have you seen her ghost yet?’
‘I wish I believed in ghosts, Moira. I’d really like to meet Amy.’
‘Maybe she’ll be waiting for you tonight. Sitting on the window seat,’ said Moira, giving her a wink.
But Angie was lost in the portrait. There was something in the expression of the blue eyes, hand-tinted by Anton Weiss, which reminded her of the young girl who first saw Phil Wallace in a Newtown pub back in the late seventies. In those days she was Angela Simmons, not quite eighteen and in her first year at uni. She’d never been to a pub before, but her girlfriends convinced her to go. Nobody will know you’re underage, they said. Just wear plenty of eyeliner.
Mr Chen's Emporium Page 11
