by Judy Nunn
‘No, Charles, you mustn’t.’ Anne had been aghast. ‘You mustn’t send for the police. It is Hannah they are celebrating. It is her wake, you would destroy it.’
All the more reason to send the police in. They could arrest Paddy O’Shea and his wretched layabout Irish companions. Charles recalled the grimy paws on his collar, the stench of rum in his nostrils, the humiliating sight of his top hat rolling in the dust. He would never forgive the filthy assault of Paddy O’Shea.
He realised, however, that should he send for the police, Paddy and his company of larrikins would make it widely known, possibly even to the press, that he, Charles Kendle, had sabotaged the wake of a member of his own family. He could not afford such adverse publicity.
‘Go to bed,’ he had instructed the women. ‘They must stop soon, they can’t sing all night.’
It appeared they could, he thought now, over two hours later, as he went inside to pour himself a mild Scotch and water. He returned to the balcony where he sat and watched and listened, angered, but strangely fascinated by the voices of Woolloomooloo.
It was well after five o’clock in the morning when the last of the revellers staggered home to bed, and by that time Charles Kendle had dozed off in his chair.
Paddy sat on the porch steps, drained the last drop from the whisky bottle, and reluctantly decided it was time for bed. What a night it had been. Anight to remember.
He walked inside a little unsteadily, but in relative control, all things considered. Inside, Tiny O’Rourke was sitting bolt upright on the small two-seater divan, fast asleep and snoring gently, his bulk taking up every inch of the space.
‘Tiny!’ He shook the man by the shoulders. ‘Wake up, Tiny!’
A brief snort, a shake of the head and Tiny was wide awake. ‘Where’ve they gone?’ he said looking around, wild-eyed. ‘Where’ve they gone?’
‘Home. Do you want a nightcap?’
‘Sure, and why not? Will you give us a hand? Tis a tight fit this sofa of yours.’
Paddy levered him up, the divan coming with him for part of the way. ‘We’ll go outside,’ he said, ‘it stinks like a brothel in here.’ The stench of cigarettes and spilt ale was enough to make a man gag, he thought happily. Clearly a good time had been had by all.
Charles Kendle awoke with a start. There was a spring nip in the air and, despite his warm flannel pyjamas, he was decidedly cold. How foolish of him to fall asleep in the damp night air, he could catch pneumonia that way.
The servants had extinguished the gas lamps in the garden, and the first filtered light of dawn was in the sky. Perhaps he would stay up and watch the sunrise, but he must fetch a dressing gown first.
Something attracted his attention as he turned to go. In the Botanic Gardens. A strange radiance. It was the dome of the Garden Palace. It was glowing from within. Gleaming, flickering. Second by second becoming more incandescent. Then he noticed the smoke. Thin spirals, coiling their way up into the air.
‘My God!’ he said out loud. ‘The Garden Palace is on fire!’
Paddy and Tiny, bottles of ale in hand, were weaving their way down to the bay to watch the sunrise over the water. They had arrived at the mudflats and were standing, amongst the fishing dories when Tiny, glancing to his left, suddenly said, ‘Sweet Jesus, will you look at that!’
Paddy turned a bleary eye to see the Botanic Gardens flooded with light.
‘Tis the Garden Palace!’ Tiny cried. ‘Tis the Garden Palace, Paddy, she’s on fire!’
The blaze, which had roared captive within the dome, suddenly made its escape. Sheets of flame burst through the skylight and spread greedily in every direction. North, south, east, west, the fire rippled along the roofing, heading as if by command for the corner towers.
‘Let’s go and watch!’ Paddy yelled. ‘Come on!’ He sprinted up the hill, yelling, ‘Wake up! Wake up! The Garden Palace is on fire!’
Tiny lumbered along behind, others joining him, passing him, racing on to join Paddy up ahead. In minutes, people were flocking from all directions.
From up on his balcony, Charles had a bird’s-eye view. At his side, Amy, their two children, and Anne watched, mesmerised, as the flames reached the towers. In seconds it seemed the entire building was fringed with a bright red frill of fire.
A series of angry explosions like the discharge of firearms split the air. Then an ominous roar thundered across Sydney. A drum roll heralding the final moment.
A massive flame leapt into the sky. It towered there for a moment, a giant with a life of its own, then it was clouded by dense black smoke billowing in volumes up into the morning air. There was an almighty crash, like a peal of thunder. And, finally, the great dome fell.
The current of air created by the fall wreaked havoc. As if carried by a whirlwind, red-hot galvanised iron and clouds of burning embers were hurled across the inner suburbs of Sydney, as far as Elizabeth Bay. In Macquarie Street, windowpanes were cracked by the heat, and for hours ashes fell upon Woolloomooloo and Potts Point.
Paddy and the hundreds of others who had flocked to the scene stayed to watch, despite the rain of debris. Miraculously, no-one was killed or seriously injured as they stood and gazed in awe.
For a full three hours they watched whilst the rising sun fought its way through a haze of smoke and multicoloured flames of carmine and green, yellow and blue, creating a dawn of their own. They watched along with the fire brigades which had arrived from all quarters. There were the steam fire engines, and the manual fire engines, with reels and all the equipment to hand. But they were powerless. And, along with Paddy and the citizens of Sydney, the firemen stood and watched as the noble Garden Palace was razed to the ground.
Paddy was witnessing the blaze of his mother’s funeral pyre. Hannah Kendall O’Shea had died there, he thought. Four days ago she had died in the great dome, and now on this, the very day of her funeral—to Paddy it was still the same day—the dome had become her funeral pyre. He was overwhelmed by the sight and the notion.
By nine o’clock in the morning little remained of the Garden Palace. Along with the building itself, unique objects and documents were lost—paintings, hung for the New South Wales Art Society’s annual exhibition, the colonial collection of statuary, the Linnean Society’s library, the Department of Fisheries’ collection of illustrations. And the people of Sydney lost their land occupancy records from the beginning of the colony, along with many documents of deed and title. All of which had been housed in the basement.
So passed the Garden Palace. According to Christopher Pearce of the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘leaving only a few crumbling brick piers, and heaps of black and smoking cinders, to mark the spot where stood, the day before, one of the finest and most graceful structures to be found south of the Equator’.
‘Wunderlich their name is. Ernest and Alfred, they’re brothers.’
‘Huns I take it.’
Howard Streatham tried to ignore the sneer in his cousin’s voice. ‘They were born in London, I believe. Educated in Switzerland.’ He loathed Charles’s bigotry. ‘And these men are artists, Charles,’ he emphasised, ‘not tradesmen at all. Their ceilings are works of art.’
‘I realise that. I’ve seen the Centennial Hall. Did you get a quote from them?’ he asked impatiently.
‘They need to view the showroom and make an assessment first.’
‘But surely you gave them the measurements?’
‘Yes, Charles, I gave them the measurements.’ Howard, as always, refused to be provoked by his cousin’s peevishness, ‘but as I said, they are artists and it is not as simple as you might wish it to be. There are styles and designs Mr Wunderlich needs to discuss with us, which he will do tomorrow at noon.’
Alfred Wunderlich was not a remarkable looking man. Tall, lean, clean-shaven but for a neatly cropped moustache, his hairline was receding and he wore steel-rimmed spectacles. But there was something about him. Something, Howard noticed, which appeared to impress even Charles. It was breeding
, he decided. Alfred Wunderlich was a man of refinement. Cultivated. Well bred. In fact everything that Charles himself claimed to be but wasn’t quite.
Wunderlich commented flatteringly on the impressive displays behind the huge glass window-panels of the store’s ground floor. The windows themselves, set in copper trim with cedar woodwork, had been imported at great expense, Charles boasted proudly.
When Wunderlich suggested, in his slightly clipped voice, that he would be most interested in seeing the entire store, Howard cast a wary glance at Charles and waited for the outburst. The Kendle and Streatham Emporium was four storeys high and encompassed almost an entire city block.
‘Only a glimpse at each floor,’ Wunderlich added upon noticing Howard’s apprehensive glance, ‘and of course if time is scarce, then I am happy to proceed directly to the showroom.’
‘We are completely at your disposal, Mr Wunderlich,’ Charles said expansively, ‘and I should be most proud to show you around our store.’
Howard was dumbstruck as he followed the two men up the main stairway, Wunderlich remarking upon the ornately carved wood and highly polished brass trimmings. ‘If time is scarce,’ Wunderlich had said. Time was always scarce to Charles Kendle, there were never enough hours in the day for him. If he felt someone was robbing him of even ten minutes, he flew into a rage. Alfred Wunderlich had certainly made a favourable impression.
The guided tour took an entire hour, during which they visited each department on each level of the store, including even the top floor which was devoted to workrooms. There, young women sat at endless tables, sewing beautiful imported silks, beading fine crepe de Chine and weaving ribbons and feathers into millinery works of art.
As the men entered the huge showroom, the conversation between Charles and Alfred Wunderlich had progressed to music.
‘Do you play an instrument, Mr Kendle?’ Alfred Wunderlich was an accomplished musician himself, with a fine bass voice.
‘No, no, not in any true sense, I leave that to those with a talent far greater than I possess.’
This humble reply, which somehow managed to infer he did indeed play an instrument but preferred to leave the performing to those more gifted, amused Howard. To his certain knowledge Charles’s fingers had never once strayed across a piano keyboard, his hand had never once held the bow of a violin, and his lips had at no time been introduced to the mouthpiece of a brass or wind instrument.
Howard wondered why Charles was trying so hard to impress Wunderlich. It was so uncharacteristic of him.
‘You will be interested to learn, Mr Kendle, I am sure, that …’ Alfred Wunderlich stopped abruptly, suddenly mindful of Howard’s presence. ‘Do please forgive our rudeness Mr Streatham, we have been a little distracted in our musical discussion.’
‘Not at all,’ Howard assured the man, ‘Iam no musician myself, but I frequently attend concerts and am most interested inthings musical. Please continue.’
It was true, Howard regularly accompanied his cousin Anne to orchestral concerts and operatic performances, much to Charles’s chagrin.
‘She has no-one else to accompany her, Charles,’ he would insist and, indeed, since Hannah’s death eight years ago it appeared poor widowed Anne Goodlet had not one friend in the entire world. ‘Besides,’ Howard added, ‘I find I very much enjoy our musical outings, they are most uplifting.’
Charles could do little about the situation. With his youngest child now well and truly grown to adulthood, Anne’s duties as a nanny were no longer required. But it annoyed him nonetheless. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he told Anne that it was not dignified that she, a widowed woman, should be seen gallivanting about the town with a married man.
‘I have been widowed for nearly twenty years, Charles,’ she reminded him when she had recovered from the shock of his insinuation, ‘and the married man with whom Iam supposedly “gallivanting” is my cousin.’
There was a sharpness to her tone which quite surprised Charles, unaccustomed as he was to any form of retaliation from his sister. He decided not to pursue the subject any further with her, but broached it with Howard instead. Very brusquely. ‘Doesn’t Helen take offence at your squiring Anne with such regularity?’ he asked.
Howard laughed out loud, which was unusual for him. ‘Good heavens, Charles, what are you intimating? I am fifty years old, the woman is my cousin, she is desperately lonely, and Helen is not only a trusting wife, she too feels sorry for Anne.’
Charles had dropped the subject altogether, but he couldn’t rid himself of the unreasonable resentment he felt when, over the breakfast table on a morning following one of her musical outings, Anne still glowed with the pleasure of the preceding night. It was disloyal of her, he decided. Anne owed her very existence to his generosity. If she were to glow it should be with gratitude, and in his direction.
‘You will be interested to learn,’ behind his glasses, Alfred Wunderlich’s eyes shone with excitement, ‘that the Centennial Hall, the ceiling of which you have most graciously commented upon, was never designed as a concert hall at all.’
‘Really?’ Howard was most interested to learn of such a fact. ‘But I have attended a number of recitals there and have always presumed that the hall was specifically designed to house the dimensions and the sound of the great organ.’
‘Many others have been of the same opinion, but this was never so.’
Who would care, Charles thought. He was bored now. And irritated. The three of them were standing in the middle of the vast showroom, his pride and joy, and Wunderlich, in the excitement of his own tedious conversation, had passed no flattering remark.
‘The organ was obviously an afterthought,’ Wunderlich continued. There was no stopping him now. ‘For, you see, the architects had specified a plaster ceiling. One with pendentives and console. A very elaborate affair.’
God the man was pedantic, Charles thought.
‘Yes?’ Howard was interested, but confused.
‘Well, such a plaster ceiling would have been disastrous,’ Wunderlich concluded triumphantly. ‘As soon as the organ’s sixty-four foot, lower-C pipe sounded, such a plaster ceiling would most certainly have fallen upon the audience.’
‘Good heavens above!’ Howard was as impressed as Wunderlich had intended him to be.
‘Exactly.’ Alfred Wunderlich nodded, gratified by the response. ‘My brother Ernest and I managed to induce the City Council to substitute stamped zinc for the ceiling and its decoration. A vastly superior material, not only in composition, but in acoustic value. More resonance, you see.’
‘Ah.’ Howard nodded encouragingly.
‘So,’ Wunderlich concluded, ‘now we have a Centennial Hall which is structurally sound and acoustically splendid.’
‘Why call the thing “Centennial” Hall in the first place? It wasn’t even finished until ’89.’ Charles’s interruption was abrupt, and jarringly rude. ‘Damnsilly calling it Centennial Hall; it’s the Town Hall, that’s what it is.’
‘Yes, and I’m sure it will become known as exactly that in time to come.’ Alfred Wunderlich concluded that, beneath the stylish exterior, Charles Kendle was a boor. Despite the man’s patrician face, fine carriage and imperious manner, he was a philistine. ‘Now, let us attend to a ceiling design for this impressive showroom of yours, Mr Kendle.’
Things were not going well for Paddy O’Shea. They should have been. He was a man of property. He owned a cottage in the Rocks. Furthermore, he had a fine seven-year-old son whom he’d christened Daniel after his father, and a daughter who, at fifteen, was already a beauty. He had a faithful wife who loved him and mates who would see him through thick and thin. Things should have been going well for Paddy O’Shea. But they weren’t.
He couldn’t understand how it had come to this. He couldn’t even remember how it had started, not in earnest anyway.
Paddy and Dotty O’Shea had led a life of ease following the death of Hannah. At least it certainly seemed that way to Dotty. For the f
irst time in their marriage she didn’t have to scrimp and save and fret over money.
They had decided not to live in Hannah’s cottage. It was a joint decision, they wanted to stay in the Loo. But it had been Dotty’s idea not to sell the cottage, which was much grander than their little terrace.
‘It would fetch twice the rent we pay here, Paddy,’ she told him. ‘Just think, love, we’d be landlords.’ Then she giggled self-consciously at the thought—it didn’t seem right somehow. ‘We’d pay our rent and have as much again left over.’
And there was the additional money to be made from the sale of Hannah’s furniture, very little of which would fit into the tiny Woolloomooloo terrace. Paddy kept mementos of course—Hannah’s favourite chair, an etching which she loved, a vase with a dragon embossed on the side which he remembered from childhood. And, most important of all, her journal.
In sorting through Hannah’s belongings, Paddy had stumbled upon the impressive leather diary. ‘This journal is the property of Hannah Kendall’, he read on the opening page, ‘given her by her mother, Emily, on her sixteenth birthday, the 13th of April in this year of 1831’.
It didn’t seem right that he should read it, but it was somehow fitting that his daughter should.
‘I have a precious gift for you, Kathleen,’ he said when he returned home that evening. And he presented her with the journal. ‘It’s a diary. It belonged to your grandmother.’
‘It’s beautiful, Pa.’ Kathleen stroked the cover admiringly.
‘Smell the leather,’ he said, ‘it’s very old.’ He opened the journal to the first page. ‘Do you want to add your name?’
Hannah would like that, he thought. With her love of writing, Hannah had always been most insistent upon her son acquiring literacy skills at an early age. Paddy had not inherited his mother’s devotion to the written word, but he had certainly followed her example in the schooling of his daughter.
