Stars Across the Ocean

by Kimberley Freeman

  In the middle of the afternoon, they were finally done. Agnes made her way back to Gracie’s berth via newly tidied and mopped walkways. It seemed the ship was almost back to normal already. A good wash through of seawater had freshened the air, and the ’tween deck smelled better than it ever had. She held still a moment, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark, and heard singing. Beautiful singing. A woman’s voice, a sad and lilting song. Curious, Agnes made her way to Gracie’s berth.

  Jack sat there, next to Gracie’s bed, on an upturned crate.

  ‘Jack?’ Agnes said. ‘You sing?’

  ‘Aye, so here you are,’ she said, climbing to her feet.

  Agnes sank down next to Gracie, who smiled up at her weakly.

  ‘Have you been here all day?’ Agnes asked Jack.

  ‘Aye,’ Jack said. ‘I hope the lad fed you like I told him to.’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Jack’s been so kind,’ Gracie said.

  ‘She’s not too bad,’ Agnes joked. ‘Can’t keep her opinions to herself.’

  ‘Was never abandoned as a baby, though,’ Jack said.

  Gracie looked slightly horrified, and Agnes assured her they were joking. ‘Did she take good care of you, then?’ Agnes asked.

  ‘Oh yes. Though I feel very unwell. The singing helped.’

  Agnes turned to Jack. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Ah, it was no trouble. Your friend Gracie is as sweet as a sugar lump, and she’s had as bad a day as she’ll ever have, haven’t you, pet?’

  Gracie’s eyes were closed, her breath rising and falling shallowly.

  ‘Agnes,’ Jack said quietly. ‘I need to tell you something.’ She grasped Agnes’s arm and walked her out of the berth and down the corridor.

  ‘What is it?’ Agnes asked.

  ‘She’s probably going to die.’

  Agnes’s blood cooled. ‘Why would you say such a thing?’

  ‘I’ve seen how much blood she’s losing. Doctor Angel’s packed her up with cotton but she’s bled right through it, and she’s still soaking through all the linen I put beneath her.’

  ‘Jack, none of your dark nonsense. She might be fine.’

  ‘I’m going now to get Doctor Angel, but I’m telling you to prepare yourself. There’s only so much blood in a woman.’ Jack firmly patted her shoulder. ‘Sorry, Agnes. Go be with her.’

  Agnes hurried back to the berth. Gracie was still sleeping, so Agnes sat on Jack’s upturned crate and held the candle as close as she dared to Gracie’s face. Her skin was white, clammy. Was Jack right? She put the candle back, wished she had a voice like Jack’s with which to sing to her friend, and waited for Dr Angel to come.

  •

  By the second day, even Gracie knew. Dr Angel, a drunkard though he might be, was kind and careful with her, but his face and voice said everything he hadn’t said in words. For Agnes, the horror of the situation dawned on her in increments. She focused on making Gracie comfortable, and the task kept her mind from dwelling on it. But later, as Gracie slept, breathing raggedly, and Jack came back and sang, the knowledge of what was happening blossomed coldly in her body. Gracie was dying. She was here now, but soon would be nowhere. In the world, then out of it. It was too much to comprehend, so she listened to the words of Jack’s song, in the candlelit berth, as Gracie grew weaker and weaker.

  Let us go, lassie, go to the braes o’ Balquhither,

  Where the blackberries grow among the bonnie Highland heather.

  I will twine thee a bower by the clear silver fountain,

  And I’ll cover it o’er with the flowers of the mountain.

  I will range through the wilds, and the deep glens so dreary,

  And return wi’ their spoils, to your bower, oh my dearie.

  I sha’ never leave your side, though the winter breeze be swelling,

  And I sha’ lay you when you’ve died, ’neath the flowers around our dwelling.

  Her voice, pure and melodious in the quiet, creaking hull of the ship, kept Agnes from falling apart, as she held Gracie’s hand and smoothed her brow and told her God was waiting for her. Jack was still singing when Gracie drew her last breath, just before the midnight bell.

  •

  A clear, fresh day dawned, with a stiff breeze keeping away the cloying humidity. It was near to eleven when arrangements had finally been made for Gracie. Agnes had had the ghastly task of scrubbing out her cabin and bundling up all the bloody linen. It would have been a terrible task under any circumstances, but unbearable in these. She was called up on deck by the toll of the bell. It clanged over and over, every two seconds. Agnes climbed up the ladder, the metallic odour of blood clinging to her.

  They had wrapped Gracie in canvas, weighted down with lumps of coal, the canvas then stitched together. Agnes glanced at the stitching and felt indignant. It had been done so hurriedly, so carelessly. Surely Gracie deserved Agnes’s own fine hand. At one remove from herself, she could see that her fury over the poor stitching made no sense, and yet she held on to the thought as passengers and crew began to gather on the deck, heads uncovered, to pay their respects for Gracie. Some of the crew climbed up in the rigging to watch, solemn but curious. They hadn’t known Gracie, though word had got around that she was beloved of Agnes. Jack arrived, a threadbare jacket over her usual shirtsleeves, and a clean pair of trousers on. She said nothing, but came to stand next to Agnes very close, her shoulder just behind Agnes’s. Four sailors gathered around Gracie’s body and lifted her up. As they did so, she bent a little in the middle, and Agnes caught a glimpse of her shape, and then they straightened her out and she was just a lump in a sack again. Dr Angel read from the Bible and Agnes thought about Gracie’s face; about Gracie’s blind eye that wandered to the side and how much Gracie had hated it and thought it ugly. But now it was the thing Agnes missed most of all.

  Agnes’s chest began to burn.

  Dr Angel finished his reading, and the bell stopped tolling. The sailors walked to the side of the ship with their bundle and slid Gracie over the side. There was a pause, then a dull, heavy splash. With that splash, the burning in Agnes’s chest seemed to break open, like a coal fallen from a fire, and the embers spilled through her blood. She tried to breathe but couldn’t, and realised it was because she was crying. She was crying and crying, and it shook her to her foundations.

  Jack pulled her into her embrace. ‘Hush now, lassie,’ she said, as Agnes cried. ‘Jack’s got you.’

  •

  Empty sky. Empty sea. No sight of land. I’ll be crushed by how big the world is. Agnes remembered Marianna’s words, said them in her head over and over as she sat on the foredeck watching clouds gather on the horizon.

  The ship, still on course, headed for Australia.

  CHAPTER 23

  Jack was on deck with Agnes as they passed the lighthouse at Cape Otway, three weeks to the day after Gracie died. They crossed the bar, the ship pitching and yawing over the rolling sea, but then in a few hundred yards the bay was as still as a mill pond, and Agnes could see the hills and trees of Melbourne. Dozens upon dozens of ships lay at anchor, a forest of masts and rigging. Jack predicted they would have to wait overnight for the pilot to come aboard and guide them to a berth.

  ‘You may as well put those away,’ Jack said, pointing to Agnes’s trunks, which were stacked between them. ‘We’ll not be off this ship until morning.’

  Agnes was itching to be on land. Now that she had endured Gracie’s illness and death, the only happiness she could imagine was a reunion with her mother. She quieted the voice in her head that taunted her with the possibility of Genevieve not being in Melbourne either.

  ‘Perhaps I can have somebody row me over,’ Agnes said.

  ‘Row you over? Now you’re talking like a mad person. Just stay on board. In the morning, they’ll berth us right on the railway pier and in ten minutes you’ll be in Melbourne on the train.’ Jack cocked her head, considering Agnes. The last of the afternoon caught an auburn sheen in her sh
ort hair. ‘Aye, you’ll need me to take you to town.’

  ‘No, I will be right on my own.’

  ‘Where will you stay?’

  ‘I’ll find a hotel.’

  ‘There’s your first problem. Any old building of boards with a corner for a stove can call itself a hotel. They’re always full of drunks and whores.’ Jack clapped her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll come ashore with you and put you in a temperance hotel. I know one on Lonsdale Street.’

  Agnes could see that Jack’s protective instinct could not be argued with; and, it would be good to have somebody show her to a safe hotel: she’d had enough adventures with drunks and whores. ‘Be right then, Jack. But you must let me pay your fare on the train.’

  ‘Aye.’ Then in a softer voice she said, ‘Will you come back to us, Agnes?’

  ‘I don’t know what is going to happen.’ Dr Angel had all but begged her not to leave him. They would be in port for forty-eight hours and he hadn’t a hope of finding a replacement for her, unless it was another desperate liar like Agnes. She had told him what she had told Jack: she could not see her future. He should not wait for her.

  Jack turned away now, seeing that Agnes was not going to be moved. ‘Och well. If you change your mind, be sure to get back before we sail.’

  The captain came by then and confirmed what Jack had suspected: they wouldn’t berth until the morning.

  Agnes hurried along after him, reaching out to grab his sleeve with gloved fingers. ‘Captain, wait. Would it be possible for me to get to shore on a row boat?’

  He turned and looked at her with his hard, silvery eyes. ‘Agnes, I’ve never seen you so well dressed. Were you going to town? You’ll have to wait.’ Then he was striding off and Agnes returned to her trunks.

  Jack smirked. ‘I told you. You laced your corset for nothing.’ One more night, then.

  One more night between Agnes and her mother.

  •

  The Persephone was finally at the pier by ten the next morning. Jack helped Agnes off the ship with her trunks, and they negotiated their way around ropes and containers and bollards and men shouting and pulling loads, to the waiting train. A conductor helped them into the passenger car and Agnes gave him sixpence for their fares. There was a long wait on the train, which filled up rapidly with sailors and weary-faced ship passengers, as cargo was loaded behind them. Jack chatted away to Agnes, but she was warm and felt shut in. She opened a window on the train to let in sea air, the smell of fish and the cry of seagulls. Still more people crammed into the carriage. Finally, the train began to move. Off the pier, past stores and warehouses, then out into a countryside of watercolour ochres, silvery grass and pale green trees. As the train swung round, she could see the town of Melbourne in the distance, flat and spread out to a dusty horizon.

  The journey was mercifully quick, and within fifteen minutes they had pulled in at the Melbourne Terminus on Flinders Street, next to a large market building covered in advertising signs and surrounded by horses and carts. The train disgorged its passengers; Agnes and Jack were the last off. Jack took Agnes’s larger trunk, and Agnes the smaller.

  ‘This way,’ Jack said.

  They fought their way across the busy street and headed away from the river and the railway. The buildings were a mix of wood, some of which looked as though they’d been erected in a hurry, and English-style stone. There weren’t many trees and the sun seemed bright, even though it was a mild day. Agnes noticed that Jack attracted attention wherever she went. Although she dressed and walked like a man, there was no hiding the softness of her face. Some folk stared at her with hostility, some laughed, some quickly glanced away. Agnes thought about how Jack had said the best place for her was at sea. Out of society. Anything goes.

  ‘Do you mind people staring at you, Jack?’ she asked.

  ‘Aye, but I’ll only be on land for an hour. I can stand a little staring if it’s to help you avoid the worst of this town.’ She pointed ahead of them. ‘There you go. Hardwicke’s Temperance Hotel. I hear the rooms are cheap. You got your three quid from Doctor Angel, I take it?’

  ‘I … yes I did. But I have a little money saved.’ She thought about the twenty pounds left from the money Julius had given her.

  ‘Och, do you now?’ Jack teased. ‘I expect this is why you’re wearing your fancy clothes today, so everyone will know how well-to-do you are? Well, Miss Moneybags, shall I leave you and your trunk here?’ She put the trunk down at the front entrance to the hotel. It was a large stone building with two floors of arched windows, and the words APARTMENTS. COFFEE PALACE. TEMPERANCE HOTEL painted across the front awnings.

  ‘Thank you, Jack.’ She opened her arms and Jack pulled her close and hugged her hard.

  ‘I shall miss you, Agnes Resolute.’

  ‘And I you.’

  ‘Come back if your mam don’t want you.’

  Agnes didn’t reply. It was a possibility she could not for a moment entertain. She watched Jack go, and saw the many pairs of eyes following her progress. When Jack was out of sight, Agnes picked up her trunks and shouldered open the door to the hotel.

  Inside, the walls were panelled wood, trapping the dark. The windows were too grimy to let good light in, and Agnes paused for a moment allowing her eyes to adjust. An elderly, exceedingly short woman with a querulous voice greeted her from the front counter.

  ‘May I help you, madam?’

  ‘Mrs Hardwicke, I take it?’ Agnes said, removing her gloves. ‘I’d like to rent a room.’

  ‘For how many nights?’ Mrs Hardwicke replied. She must have been at least seventy. Her crepey hands shook as she turned the pages of the guest register.

  Agnes hesitated. She had a strong urge to say two, so she could be back on the Persephone in time to sail back to Colombo with Jack. But she didn’t know how long it might take to find Genevieve. Her money would run out eventually, a thought that left her stomach cold as she remembered the nights she slept in the paupers’ house in London. But she shook herself. It wouldn’t be so bad this time. She could sell her expensive dresses and even Genevieve’s jewellery if she had to, and if she needed to find work as a seamstress she at least had samples this time. ‘Two nights, for now,’ she said, as smoothly as she could. ‘Though it may be longer depending on how my business goes.’

  As Mrs Hardwicke signed her into a room and handed her keys, she explained to Agnes that there was strictly no drinking, no dancing, nor any kind of music or singing in the rooms or about the premises. The cost of her room included her meals in the dining room. Then she led Agnes, very slowly, along a corridor hung with amateur paintings, and to a room at the very end.

  ‘The bathroom is right across the hall,’ Mrs Hardwicke said. ‘Mind you don’t hog the bath. We have a full house at the moment.’

  ‘Thank you, I shan’t. Ma’am, would you be so kind as to tell me where the theatre is?’

  Mrs Hardwicke looked puzzled, her little face crinkling up. ‘Theatre? Which theatre?’

  ‘I’m … I don’t really know. But I’m looking for an actress—’

  ‘No actresses in the rooms or on the premises,’ she said.

  ‘I understand. Where might I find a theatre in town, if I promise not to bring any actresses back with me?’

  ‘You’re not an actress?’

  ‘No, ma’am. I am not.’

  ‘There are a lot of theatres. The Princess, the Queen’s, the Pavilion. There are smaller theatres and music halls too, mostly down on Bourke Street.’ The woman shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t recommend going near any of them, dear.’

  ‘Aye, thank you for your concern, ma’am. Where is Bourke Street?’

  ‘Two blocks back towards the river,’ the woman said, laying a soft hand on her arm. ‘But do be careful.’

  Agnes smiled sweetly. ‘Thank you.’

  She finally let herself into her room. It was narrow with one window that looked out onto an alleyway. She stored her trunks and went straight to the bathroom and drew a bat
h. Ignoring all warnings, she stayed in it for a long time, as six weeks at sea sloughed from her body. Then she dressed, locked her room, and went in search of her mother.

  •

  Agnes tried two of the bigger theatres first, presuming Genevieve would be a star of some kind. The young lass in the foyer of the first had never heard of any Genevieve Breckby who could also be Genevieve Valentine or even Genevieve Pepperman. At the second theatre, an older man with thickly oiled hair and a strong Irish accent told her that Pepperman operated further down on Bourke Street, and so she headed in that direction.

  Her stomach was rumbling, eager for lunch, as she made her way along Bourke Street, and past the Cobb and Co offices where stagecoaches waited across the road. The presence of playbills told her she was near a theatre, and she stopped in front of a two-storey stone building, with two elaborate lamp posts standing sentinel on either side of the vestibule. She waited for a carriage to rattle past then crossed the street to look closer at the poster: PEPPERMAN’S THEATRE ON BOURKE presents THE WINTER’S TALE by William Shakespeare. Her heart ticked hard, her eyes scanning the cast list in smaller writing below. And there it was: Genevieve La Breck as Queen Hermione. Agnes began to tremble, her eyes almost unable to focus as she scanned through the playbill for Genevieve’s stage name again. This was the only performance she was listed as taking part in, and Agnes returned her gaze to the date. Please let it be soon. Please don’t let it be in the past.

  Tonight. She would meet Genevieve tonight.

  •

  Agnes let her imagination run away. She was so close now, it didn’t matter if she toyed with incautious thoughts. In just a matter of hours, she would see Genevieve in the flesh. She wouldn’t be told that Genevieve had once again fled; so, she was free to create whichever story she liked in her head.

  She paced her room, sat down on the bed, stood again. Her appetite had abandoned her. Genevieve would welcome her. They would have dinner together after the show. They would talk about all their favourite things. There would be no need to return on the Persephone. She would tell Genevieve about Gracie, and Genevieve would give her a maternal embrace to comfort her. They would return to England together. Marianna and Genevieve would be reconciled. Julius and Genevieve would be reconciled. Genevieve would be in attendance at Agnes’s wedding. Happiness. Completeness. All of these scenarios and more played out in her mind’s eye, affecting her so viscerally that at times she shook.