The Old Balmain House

by Graham Wilson

  *

  It was February when we moved in. We collected the keys from the agent’s office and drove to the front door.

  A balmy summer’s day wafted fragrant scent from the ancient knurled frangipani tree in the front yard. A decrepit picket fence stood barely holding back an escaping front garden. It sprawled over the path we followed to the front door. We walked under a rusty tin roofed verandah with weathered floorboards. On the door a tarnished old iron door knocker sat above a small metal plaque, aged and corroded, faintly inscribed ‘Casa Ardwyn’.

  The key turned; we were inside. It really was ours. The house exuded shabby charm. Many people had lived here and most felt good. But sad memories intruded as well. What had it seen in 130 years of history?

  Gradually we unpacked and brought order to our house.

  The back garden was overgrown with straggly shrubs below a massive gum tree, it’s trunk a metre across. It must have lived here along with the aborigines before the First Fleet came. Other big trees competed for space in a crowded canopy. A previous owner built a deck extending under the trees, giving filtered summer sun on balmy days. We sat out there for half an hour, soaking it in, while our resident magpies and kookaburra gave melodic voice.

  Our daughter had the front bedroom across the passage from us. Our two boys had the attic in the roof cavity above our head. We each busied ourselves with organising our parts.

  “Mum and Dad, look what I have found.” The voice drifted across the passage. Our daughter, Tara, aged eight, came into our room carrying a thing in her hand.

  “What is it?” we both asked together.

  She shrugged and said, “Looks like an old bottle,” handing over her discovery. A small, blue-green glass bottle, covered with fine silver lace filigree, and a silver screw top, colour tarnished dark with age, perhaps a perfume bottle of another time.

  “Show us where you found it,” I asked.

  She led us into her room to where an old ornate fireplace was. “I was looking up in here and put my hand in,” she said, pointing to the fireplace, “and I felt this thing” she said indicating to the bottle. “I wonder if I should put it back?”

  However curiosity had the better of me. It was as if this bottle had called out to be discovered, this first find in our new house.

  I took the bottle from my daughter’s hand. Despite being cold glass it felt warm to touch. I rolled it in my fingers to examine it, such delicate silver lacework, tarnished with age, a patina of time toned to a soft lustre. The glass was the colour of a milky summer tropical sea, as seen at the edge of the shoreline where the colours of trees, sea and sky flow through each other; somewhere between opaque and translucent, a mixing of blues and greens.

  I opened it, curiosity piqued. It appeared empty but I saw a faint residue, remains of 100 years past. I put it to my nose. The faintest perfume rose to meet me; apples, cinnamon and gum leaves, blended with summer breeze and frangipani. Unbidden, thoughts of other times and places flowed through my mind, as if hundreds of souls had brushed past with the gentlest touch. I must have been smiling because Tara and Marie both asked why.

  So I passed on the bottle. Each described special scents and memories it evoked in them, different but similar. I felt a desire to know more.

  I found a torch to light the cavity. Tara squeezed her head into the small gap where the fireplace finished and the chimney started. “There’s something else in here” she said.

  She pulled out an oval silver frame holding a faded sepia photo of a small girl, age similar to herself. Written on the back in neat but faded writing was “Sophie, 1900-1908”.

  It and the perfume bottle had been resting on a half brick ledge, about an inch wide, above the fire place at the start of the chimney. It seemed that here they stayed, waiting, while a century passed, for another little girl to come. Then they called to her to be discovered.

  Tara looked at the photo. “She looks nice; I wonder what happened?”

  Marie said, “I think she must have lived here and died when she was about as old as you. Perhaps she got sick and her Mummy and Daddy left her perfume bottle and photo here to remember her by.”

  Tara looked dubious for a moment then her face brightened.

  “I think you’re right. She wanted me to find these because she was like me. She wanted me to find them to remember her.”

  I took the photo from Tara and looked more closely at this small girl who had summoned my daughter in her own way. A girl in a white lace dress; “First Communion dress”, my Catholic wife, Marie, said.

  Framed by dark hair I searched this child’s face. Gazing at those eyes from over 100 years ago, it felt like she was staring back at me, staring right into my soul, linking to my mind: child eyes with a touch of mischief; but yet so serious and so knowing; a soul born wise.

  I sensed a tenuous thread reaching out, coming to me and my daughter, a gossamer touch from beyond the grave. It was a transfer across space and time, an eerie and almost familiar connection. Goosebumps rose on my arms and I shivered.

  I wondered who she was and what was her story? I felt drawn to find something out about her, the girl child in the photo frame.