The Girl In the Painting

by Téa Cooper

‘Oh, me little darlin’, there’s no need to cry. Let’s get this dray down to the docks and I’ll take you home.’

  He reached over and grasped her cold hand in his, turned it over. Angry red swollen blisters peppered her skin. His words dried in his throat. By all that was holy something wasn’t right, and he’d be finding out what it was.

  It took an age to get the bullock dray down to the yards. He threw a handful of coins at one of the urchins to keep an eye out, and with Elizabeth’s hand tucked firmly in his, marched her back down the street to Camerons’.

  Poor little mite didn’t say a word, although he could feel her hand shaking. He brought his fist up to the door and hammered, hard.

  ‘I have to use the back door. We don’t use the front anymore.’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t use the front? I’ve never heard such nonsense.’ He hammered his fist against the peeling paint.

  The door flew open. ‘Michael, come in, come in,’ said Mrs Cameron. ‘Look at you, you poor thing, like a drowned rat. Come upstairs, we’ll get the fire going and warm you up.’

  The woman was all of a fluster and she’d not taken a blind bit of notice of Elizabeth.

  ‘Go and put the kettle on, child. Michael’ll be wanting a cup of tea, or something stronger perhaps?’

  She took his arm and brought him into the front room, which was as damp and miserable as the bottom of a mineshaft.

  ‘I’ll not be staying long. I’ve a mind to take Elizabeth and buy her some new clothes. That coat she’s wearing won’t hardly do up and half her arms are hanging out. Did you not get the last money I sent?’ That had to be the answer. He’d left the last run to Jing’s uncle; maybe he hadn’t delivered it. But that was a load of bollocks, he’d trust the Li brothers with his life, had trusted them with Da’s.

  ‘It’s not as easy as it once was. We’ve had to cut back a bit and then when Bill lost his lighter … well, I’ve had to start a little business of my own to make ends meet.’

  ‘His boat?’

  ‘Costs in Sydney are rising every day.’

  Ah! So that was the way of it. He turned to the door as Elizabeth brought in the tea. She’d pulled a greying smock over her dress and had a moth-eaten mob cap clamped over her curls. She looked like a kitchen drudge. ‘Dressing up for the occasion, are you, darlin’?’

  Elizabeth flushed to the roots of her lank hair, making him realise how wan she looked—dark circles under her eyes he hadn’t noticed, and her hands still shaking, those poor red hands. ‘Put the tray down and come over here, darlin’.’

  He sucked in a deep breath and pulled her to him, wrapping his arm around her waist. She leant against him like a bedraggled puppy.

  ‘Think you better tell me what’s going on, Mrs Cameron. I don’t like what I’m seeing.’

  ‘Going on? What are you suggesting?’

  ‘House is as cold as charity. Elizabeth looks as though she hasn’t seen a decent feed in weeks. Tells me she hasn’t been to school.’ The anger rose in him. He leant forward and looked the woman straight in the face. ‘That’s not the arrangement. What about her hands?’ He picked one up. It lay red and swollen in his palm.

  ‘I told you. Been having trouble making ends meet. Elizabeth must do her share. She’s one of the family.’

  All he wanted to do was scoop Elizabeth up, wrap her in his greatcoat and spirit her away, but how could he? Out on the dray, doing the Bathurst run six days out of seven. No place for her to stay. The warehouse only half repaired; his bedroll, when he’d time to use it, thrown down out the back wherever there was space. Eating out of Li’s kitchen or whatever he could grab on the road.

  He dropped his head into his hands. ‘Tell me what the problem is.’

  ‘I told you. Bill’s lost his boat. Owed some money, had to sell it off. It’ll pass, just a bad patch. I’m making ends meet, Elizabeth’s helping me. We’ve got a ladies’ laundry business.’ Her cheeks flushed. ‘Not something I like to discuss with a man.’

  And then he understood Elizabeth’s hands. ‘You’re going to discuss it, and you’re going to discuss it now. How much do you need?’

  ‘Michael, Michael.’ Elizabeth tugged at his sleeve. ‘Can I come with you to Hill End, see Mam and Da.’

  Holy Mary! He was the worst kind of lily-livered fool. An irritated huff sprang from his mouth.

  ‘I won’t be no trouble.’

  ‘No, love. We’ll sort this out. You need to go to school. We’ll get you some new clothes tomorrow, and some warm boots and gloves.’ He had to get her out of the room, had to sort this out. She couldn’t come to Hill End with him, not yet. He wasn’t ready. He still needed time. More repairs to the warehouse, find another full-time dray driver, buy the cottage on Tambaroora Road he’d got his eye on, and make a home just like he promised. ‘Go and play with Lizzie now while I sort it all out with Mrs Cameron. I’ll be back tomorrow and I’ll take you out.’

  ‘Off you go, Elizabeth. You heard what Michael said.’

  With a look that as good as ripped his heart out, she pattered to the door and slipped like a wraith into the dark corridor.

  Once the door was closed he stood up, back to the empty fireplace. ‘How much do you need? How much a month? I want her fed proper, clean clothes, no more laundry work, school every day.’

  Whatever had happened to the woman who’d sworn she’d love Elizabeth like the daughter she’d never had?

  Nine

  Maitland Town, 1913

  Elizabeth prised her lids open and surveyed the room.

  What was she doing in bed? She’d no memory of taking a nap, she never took a nap; come to that, she had no memory of entering her bedroom. She threw back the covers … Nor of taking off her skirt and blouse. Good heavens! She was dressed in only her chemise.

  She pushed back against pillows, tugged the sheet higher and ran her tongue around her mouth; she might as well have swallowed a mouthful of cotton wool.

  Jane sat beside her, stubby fingers plucking at the bedspread and her gaze fixed on some point beyond the window, more than likely contemplating some obscure calculation. The girl had no imagination, only a prodigious memory for anything to do with facts and figures.

  It wasn’t until Elizabeth cleared her throat that Jane returned from whatever void she’d been inhabiting. ‘You’re awake.’

  ‘I’m parched.’

  ‘You’ve been sleeping with your mouth open.’

  No sense of decorum. ‘May I have some tea?’ The tray sat in its usual place under the window, the ray of afternoon light turning the porcelain cups translucent.

  Jane wiped her hand across her face and struggled to her feet, looking too tired to ask any of her interminable questions. Elizabeth didn’t mind them, but they were—had always been—incessant. The girl had such a thirst for knowledge and an insatiable interest in the most obscure facts.

  It didn’t, however, extend to the niceties of pouring tea. Jane slopped the tea into the cup, her hand shaking. As the fragrant jasmine scent released, it brought back the memory of her first taste, the first time she’d drunk the brew, her face puckering at the strange flavour. She’d been so nervous, standing wringing her hands and hiding her shabby boots under her skirt, praying the fascinating boy with the pigtail wouldn’t think her a fool.

  Such a long time ago. She liked to think, even after all the time that had passed, they might one day meet again. A foolish thought; he’d be long gone, back to his family in China.

  The steam billowed onto her fingers.

  ‘It’s hot. Don’t spill it.’ Jane peered into her face as though examining a specimen under glass. ‘Are you better?’

  Her well-meaning attempt to emulate the patronising tone reserved for invalids fell short of the mark. Something must have happened to upset her if she was attempting to cultivate bedside manners.

  Elizabeth brought the cup to her lips, sipped, and let out a long satisfying sigh. How had she become a cantankerous middle-aged woman who took pleas
ure in drinking jasmine tea in bed in the afternoon?

  ‘I’ll be up in a moment. The Benevolent Society ladies will be here before long and I haven’t completed the final entries in the ledger.’

  A most unusual flush blossomed on Jane’s cheeks, making her appear as guilty as a chorister caught with his hand in the donation plate. ‘I sent them away.’

  ‘Whatever did you do that for? The afternoon’s been planned for weeks. They needed to know the state of their accounts before the committee meeting.’

  ‘After your turn I thought it would be better.’ Jane resumed her bedspread picking, her bitten fingernails compulsively tracing the patterns in the satin. She must remind Bessie to find some bitter aloes, that would keep Jane’s fingers out of her mouth.

  The steam from the tea played against her nostrils as she sipped. Her turn. She wriggled her toes under the sheets, gave her shoulders a tentative shrug. Everything felt normal. ‘There’s nothing the matter with me. What time is it?’

  Jane glanced at the carriage clock on the mantle. ‘Six fifty-two.’

  Nitpicking. What was wrong with an approximation? Beyond the window the light had faded to a pearly grey, streaked with lilac. ‘It’s about time we had supper. I’ll see you in the dining room.’

  ‘Lucy’s bringing you something on a tray.’

  ‘Stop mollycoddling me. What’s all this about?’

  ‘You don’t remember, do you?’

  Far too astute. Always had been, despite her dishevelled appearance and bitten fingernails. ‘Of course I do.’

  Did she? Elizabeth forced her mind to rerun the day. Breakfast. Kedgeree. She could hardly forget that. Her favourite. She’d spent some time reading the Maitland Mercury, completed the word puzzle, attended to some correspondence and then delivered the ledgers to Mrs Witherspoon.

  ‘We walked to the technical college. You remember that, don’t you?’

  Of course, of course. ‘The woman had trouble understanding the ledgers. You explained.’

  ‘Yes. That’s right!’ The beginning of a smile tilted the corner of Jane’s lips. ‘Then what happened?’

  Matters became a little blurry. The more Elizabeth tried to force herself into the black void, the faster her heart pounded and the angrier she became. Perspiration beaded her upper lip and the ghastly sense of vertigo threatened. Her heart tripped. ‘We walked home.’

  ‘What about the exhibition?’

  With a will of their own, her hands came up and she ducked her head, the ringing in her ears growing steadily louder, making her teeth chatter.

  Birds. Hundreds of them, wheeling and diving in a vast black cloud over her head, their dark feathered wings closer and closer, beating against her cheeks, an overwhelming darkness, thick, inky black.

  ‘Aunt Elizabeth?’ Jane placed the teacup on the bedside table and dabbed at the spilt tea with a towel.

  ‘I remember the birds.’ She forced her hands down into her lap. The nauseating stench of guano, the terrifying swooping wings. Avian eyes, dark and shiny, watching and waiting. A torrent of confusion flickered behind her eyelids like one of those newfangled moving pictures, buffeting her as though at the mercy of a tide of confusion.

  ‘Ah!’ A wealth of knowledge seemed contained in Jane’s single syllable. ‘I deduced it might have been the birds. I did wonder about the diprotodon but rejected that conclusion.’

  Elizabeth slammed the door on her bewildering emotions. Such weakness was not to be tolerated. ‘It’s a foolish phobia.’ The illogical and totally irrational fear she had—ornithophobia Michael liked to call it, though it wasn’t a word she’d ever found in any dictionary or medical treatise. Not that the word mattered, it was a horror she’d never managed to overcome.

  The large glass cases crowding the musty space had made the air close around her. She remembered grasping the tight collar of her blouse and the perspiration trickling into her eyes, making them sting. ‘I shouldn’t have gone into the exhibition hall. I thought perhaps since they were specimens, dead, inside display cases, I would manage.’ Now everything made sense. The birds had caused her dilemma.

  ‘What happened after that?’

  This cross-examination was beyond tedious. As tedious as her crippling fear. Nothing she wished to put on display. ‘We walked home. I should like to get up now. Please leave.’

  ‘Aunt Elizabeth.’ Jane leant towards her and she reared back against the pillows. For a moment, she feared she might touch her. The last thing she wanted was for the girl to feel her damp, goose-flecked skin. ‘It would be far better if we talked about this. We must try and ascertain the cause. Mr Freud is greatly in favour of dialogue—’

  ‘Modernistic claptrap. Leave now.’

  ‘I was only trying to help.’ Jane rammed her hands into the pockets of her skirt. ‘Shall I contact Michael?’

  Right at this very moment it would be comforting to know he was in the house, not swanning around playing politics. ‘You most certainly will not. He has matters to attend to in Sydney.’

  The door clattered closed and only her well-honed sense of control prevented her from hurling her treasured teacup against the wall.

  Ten

  Sydney, 1868

  ‘Hurry up, child.’ Mrs Cameron’s voice drifted down the stairs to the laundry.

  Elizabeth heaved a sigh, pegged the last of the washing onto the line and threw the basket into the corner. As much as she loved being back at school, it meant she spent almost all the rest of her time down in the dungeons, dangling over the row of steaming coppers.

  ‘We have a visitor.’

  A visitor! Michael! It could only be Michael. She unwrapped the pinny, threw it on the floor and galloped up the stairs.

  And there he was. Just as he’d promised in his last letter.

  His big strong arms lifted her off the ground and he spun her around and around until Elizabeth thought her head would burst.

  ‘Stop! Stop!’

  The world slowed and she leant back against his arms, staring into his face. So many lonely days since she’d waved goodbye. She planted a great big kiss on his cheek and slithered to the ground.

  ‘Let me look at you, me darlin’.’

  How she wished she wasn’t wearing her old dress. She didn’t want to have to explain to Michael that she simply wouldn’t stop growing and none of her clothes lasted more than six months. She pushed her hands into the pocket of her pinafore.

  ‘Oh, you’re a sight for sore eyes, and haven’t you grown?’

  ‘I am fifty-four inches tall, at least I was last week when Mrs Browne measured us all.’ Elizabeth straightened her shoulders and tried to stand still. ‘That’s four feet and six inches. I am tall for an eleven-year-old, though I’m a little more—three months and twenty-three days more. It’s a Leap Year.’

  ‘By the sound of it you’ve been studying your lessons.’

  ‘Oh yes I have. Mrs Browne says I am the best arithmetic girl she’s ever had. I am special because usually girl’s brains don’t develop like boys so they find calculations difficult.’

  ‘This Mrs Browne told you this nonsense, did she?’

  ‘It’s not nonsense, it’s scientific fact.’

  ‘You’ll be explaining this scientific fact once we get back from the picnic.’

  ‘Picnic? What picnic?’

  ‘A picnic with a prince.’

  ‘A prince, a real live prince?’ Or had he brought her another book of fairy stories?

  ‘None other, all the way from England. Prince Alfred.’

  ‘You’ll not be taking her to Clontarf. There’ll be hundreds there.’ Mrs Cameron, the killjoy, glared at them both. Of course she’d try and stop Michael, she banned anything remotely out of the ordinary. Elizabeth slipped her hand into Michael’s big paw and gazed up at him, trying to make her eyes plead.

  ‘She’ll be fine with me, and I’ve got a basket downstairs with lemonade and strawberries and …’

  ‘You spoil that child.’


  ‘How can he? He hasn’t seen me for one thousand lonely days.’

  ‘For goodness sake, Elizabeth, how you exaggerate. You sound like one of the princesses in your story books.’

  ‘If you’re going to call me a princess I must dress as one. I can’t meet a prince in rags.’ She tried for a curtsey, which brought a huge bellow of laughter from Michael. ‘What do I call him? Prince Alfred? Your Royal Highness? Is he a royal highness?’

  Mrs Cameron let out a loud huff and folded her arms across her fat bosom. ‘He’s Queen Victoria’s son and you won’t get within spitting distance of him. I can promise you that, and you’ll need tickets. Heard tell they cost a pound each.’

  Michael patted his top pocket. ‘Ten shillings for ladies.’

  He’d got the tickets, got it all organised. Oh, how she’d missed Michael. A girl couldn’t want for a better brother.

  ‘Waste of money, if you ask me.’

  With Mrs Killjoy Cameron’s words ringing in her ears, Elizabeth raced upstairs. It was perfect. The sun shone down from a crystal-clear sky and she was going on a picnic to meet a prince! She hadn’t a moment to waste.

  She stripped off her patched pinafore and struggled into her Sunday best. If she closed her eyes tightly she could pretend it was white and she had a crown of flowers for her hair. But as Mrs Cameron kept telling her, poor Irish couldn’t pick and choose, they had to make do.

  The beastly buttons were impossible so she squashed her straw hat onto her head and traipsed downstairs. She was going to have to ask someone to do her up.

  She edged around the door where Michael was deep in conversation with Mr Cameron, the two of them standing like ruffled roosters, hands on hips and faces red. It was always that way. Either something she’d done or something about money.

  Elizabeth slipped out the back into the scullery. ‘Molly, can you help me?’

  ‘What would you like me to do for you, my pet?’ She threw the next load of clothes into the copper.

  ‘Can you button me up, please? I’m going to meet a prince and I need to wear my Sunday best.’

  ‘You and your stories. Turn around.’