by Ruth Park
And then, all at once, there was a fearful rattle and clang from outside, and there was a burnt-brick man from a truck, depositing a ladder, some timber, bags and tins of mysterious substances and a heavy toolbox in the back driveway.
‘Morning all,’ he called. ‘Got a few things here for Scotty Cameron. Scotty’s coming along this arvo. Said to tellya. Hooray!’
All day long Callie was in a dream of anticipation. Once, when her gaze accidentally met Frances’s, she said, half-absentmindedly, ‘My Grandpa is building me a private place.’
‘Don’t you talk to me!’ flashed Frances, but Callie could see she was a little glad it had happened.
When she arrived home from school, Grandpa was already there, wearing his old overalls and his red woollen cap.
Dan and Gret buzzed around him as he moved. ‘What you wearing that funny hat for, Grandpa?’ demanded Gret.
‘To keep the sawdust out of my curls, of course,’ replied Grandpa. He nodded briefly to Callie. ‘Get into your working duds, lass. You’re going to be builder’s mate.’
‘Callie has to help Mum after school!’ interposed Dan swiftly.
‘That’s your job now, my mannie,’ said Grandpa with a lowering glance. ‘And if you do it well, Callie might ask you to tea when her castle’s all finished and spruce.’
‘I won’t come if it doesn’t suit me to,’ retorted Dan defiantly. Then he gave a long querulous wail and ran off. Grandpa paid no attention, but bawled at Gret, who was inquisitively poking at the tool chest. ‘Quit sniffing about there, you obnoxious wee ferret!’
Gret burst into delighted chuckles. No matter how cantankerous Grandpa was, she still found him amusing.
Callie immediately found that it was not easy to be Grandpa’s builder’s mate. When he needed a tool, he needed it instantly, and handed by the right end. When he removed the old racks from the cupboard, he expected Callie to stack them tidily in the hall that very minute, without being told. When the cupboard was empty, he put an electric-light globe on the end of a long extension, and went up the ladder with it.
‘What are you looking for, Grandpa?’ asked Callie.
‘A way into the cupola, daftie,’ he replied. ‘Hold that ladder steady. Do you want me to fall off on my bonnet?’
Giggling, Callie held it. Inch by inch Grandpa examined the ceiling of the cupboard. Suddenly there was a great triumphant ‘Mm—mphm!’
‘What have you found, Grandpa?’
‘A trapdoor.’
The news that, long ago, people had managed to get into the cupola brought the rest of the family to look. Callie excitedly shooed them beyond the cupboard door.
‘There’s no room in here for anyone but me, and I’m holding the ladder so that Grandpa won’t fall on his bonnet.’
The faces ranged themselves at the open cupboard door as Grandpa pushed and strained at the trapdoor.
‘There used to be a folding loft ladder. That’s how they got up here in the old days before the cupboard was built. See the clamps on the wall to hold it firm? But I’m bothered if I can get the trap open.’
‘Would it be nailed shut, Pa?’ asked Callie’s mother.
‘I don’t believe so. It’s just swollen with age.’
Grandpa put the back of his head and neck against the trapdoor and pushed, teetering perilously.
‘You’ll hurt yourself, you’ll break something, Grandpa!’ cried Callie in an agony.
‘Be blowed if I will,’ croaked Grandpa with a last shove; then, with a sound like a huge wooden yawn, scraping, squawking, the trapdoor moved upwards, bursting a hinge with a fearful yelp.
‘I never seen such a strong man!’ said Gret, awed.
A misty beam of light poured down from the cavity above and turned Grandpa’s face a faint leafy green.
‘Can you get inside?’ implored Callie, but Grandpa had already hoisted himself to the waist through the trapdoor. The rest of him followed. She could hear creakings and rich Scottish grunts.
‘I want to go too!’ cried Dan desperately.
His mother held the back of his frail stalky neck. ‘No, no, you might fall!’
Callie tore up the ladder, almost kicking it away from the wall in her haste. She dragged herself with difficulty through the oblong cavity, and stood with Grandpa in an eight-walled room, very high, with a circular peaked roof. The room was filled with dim-coloured lights and air so stuffy, so hot, that she began to cough.
‘Oh, Grandpa,’ she gasped. ‘It’s marvellous!’
Four strange oval windows studded this tiny minaret. They were of an old-fashioned thick glass, rose-red, light-green, yellow and sky-blue. Grandpa forced up the catch of the blue one, and gave the frame a whack with the flat of his hand. It ground open, letting in the blankly white daylight.
Cries of curiosity and rage came from below, as Gret and Dan fought to get up the ladder. Rolf squalled and Mrs Beck scolded. But Callie scarcely heard.
For the cupola, though its floor and corniced roof were furry with half a century of dust, still looked occupied. A narrow bench angled around four of the little walls, and on the bench lay a book. Across its open pages was a strange pen with a blue striped glass handle and a narrow rusted nib. A swivel chair with a red leather seat, hard and cracked as wood, was before the book. There was a bookshelf plumaged with dust, a rag mat with a wheel design in faded red and grey, and a small picture on the wall above it. The picture was so dirty and cobwebby that Callie couldn’t tell if it were of a white orchid or a white butterfly.
‘People have lived here before,’ said Callie to herself, for Grandpa wasn’t listening. He was rapping at the beams which supported the peaked roof and muttering things like ‘Ironbark, be dod.’ Then he knelt down and with his penknife took a silken shaving from between two floorboards, declaring, ‘Cedar, and sound as a bell. Losh!’
All the time the top of the ladder shook and vibrated, and roars came from below as the children’s mother wrestled first one and then another child off those inviting rungs.
‘Can’t we come up, Pa?’ Her plaintive cry arose. ‘We’re longing to see!’
‘That’s for Callie to say,’ called Grandpa.
Callie’s mouth opened to answer, ‘Yes, of course you can. Mind the ladder. Don’t bang your head on the cupboard ceiling.’ But before the words were out, the strangest feeling shook her. She was afraid. She was afraid that if she let them in, she’d never be able to get them out again. This place, which was now hers, would be shared, the way her bedroom was, her treasures, her everyday experiences. Her ownership and her privacy would be whisked away, not because anyone wanted to do so, but because that was the way of family life.
‘Do I have to, Grandpa?’
‘Bless me, no.’
‘Mummy wouldn’t understand. Her feelings would be hurt.’
‘Aye.’
Callie brightened. ‘I know. I’ll say she can come, but the kids can’t.’
‘In that case she wouldn’t come up by herself,’ said Grandpa. Callie knew this was true. Grandpa did not turn away and get busy with something as adults usually did when Callie couldn’t make up her mind. He said, ‘Will I tell you what I’d do, given a wee place like this that a person wouldn’t want overrun with visitors? I’d let them all see it before we fix it up, and then that’s the last time till you say so. Take it or leave it, I’d say.’
Callie bounded to the trapdoor, ‘You can all come up and have a look. But you’ll have to make it a good look, because after that it’s out of bounds until Grandpa and I have finished fixing it up.’
‘There you are,’ said her mother eagerly. ‘Callie said we can go up. Dan, will you stop pushing Gret!’
‘I want to go up first, why can’t I be first. I’m oldest after Callie!’ he squalled.
‘It’s the only time you can come up, it really is!’ cried Callie desperately. ‘Don’t you forget that!’
4
But of course the family didn’t take her seriously. In a momen
t the cupola was crammed with people, exclaiming, sneezing, discovering that the picture was of a sailing-ship and not a white orchid or a butterfly, even before Callie had a chance to find out for herself.
Rolf’s fat hand reached up and blindly pawed along the bench until he found the blue glass penholder. It was as though he knew by radar where to find breakable objects.
There was a sharp crunch and Rolf began to bawl.
‘I wanted to write with it,’ protested Callie. ‘It was so old. I’ve never seen a pen like it.’
But before she could say anything else, Dan had found the list of names.
The cupola walls were made of narrow tongue-and-groove planks, painted in peeling brown enamel, except in one place where the timber had been planed very smoothly and left bare. And here was a column of names, some printed, some written, some in ink and some in purple indelible pencil. It was headed by the words MY OWN PLACE in careful, scrolly, black-painted letters.
‘I know who they are!’ exulted Dan. ‘They’re the kids who had this cupola before we came!’
Callie was cheated and enraged. It wasn’t fair that Dan should have found the list first. Hastily her mother said, ‘Read it out to us, Callie!’
But she couldn’t make out every signature, and so Grandpa and Mum had to puzzle them out between them. This was the list:
Sam Tebbutt
Armella Tebbutt
Dolly (very wobbly, in faint red chalk)
Benjamin Strachan
Geo. Strachan
Peggy Braddie
Isie Duncan
Captain Jas. Frazer (R.N. ret.)
Heather Beck gave Callie a squeeze.
‘And now Callie can write her name, too. Under the Captain’s.’
Callie’s defensive body relaxed, and she smiled with pride and pleasure.
‘And I’ll put mine under Callie’s!’ crowed Dan.
‘No, you won’t,’ fired up Callie. ‘Don’t you dare write on my wall!’
‘I will so, when you’ve finished with the castle and it’s my turn!’
‘I’ll never be finished with it,’ cried Callie.
The alarmed feeling had returned. Grandpa had climbed down the ladder to fetch some tools, and she had not even his understanding look to encourage her. Somehow, in some unexpected adult way, the cupola would be snatched away—if not now, then next month or next year—and it would all seem reasonable and proper. And she’d have no place of her own again. She leaned out of the oval window, and had a swan’s-eye view of the harbour, the fronded blue waterways, the lofty headlands almond-green in the sun and ivy-green in the shadows. From the great bridge hooping between its brown Egyptian towers came a sweet moaning note, the voice of constant traffic. She felt very much like a princess in a turret, and cheered up a little.
Gret found a loose board and jumped up and down on it. Instantly the picture fell and its glass shattered.
‘Very naughty, Gret!’ said Mrs Beck crossly.
‘That was very likely the Captain’s ship,’ said Callie, outraged.
‘Only an old picture,’ said Dan.
‘I liked it.’ Callie glared. Her mother sent Dan down the ladder for a dustpan and brush to gather up the glass.
‘We’ll get a new glass, darling. It will be as good as new.’
‘I wanted it as it was,’ muttered Callie. She thought: ‘If only it really was a castle. If only there was a moat to keep them out!’
‘Out of the way, Callie,’ said Grandpa behind her. ‘I’ll have to take off the window, for all the timber and electrical stuff will have to come in over the roof.’
He pushed aside a couple of children and looked critically at the top of the cupola, which was peaked like a witch’s hat.
‘Could be very hot in summer, Heather. I believe I’ll insulate it. Aye, I’ll do that.’
‘We’d better leave you to it, then,’ said Mrs Beck.
Dan gave Callie a smug look. ‘I will so write my name on the wall some day.’
‘You won’t. Never!’ said Callie in a low, trembling voice.
As they went carefully down the ladder, Callie heard Dan complaining, ‘Isn’t Callie mean, isn’t she acutely mean? I only said it would be my turn after she’s finished with the cupola. Why is she so disagreeable?’
Laurens came home late as usual, wan and bleached with weariness, even his bright blond hair looking grey. He had taken on a great deal of overtime work to help pay off the house. But before tea he had a quick look at the cupola, and was enchanted.
‘It pleases me that so many people liked it before our Callie,’ he said. ‘After dinner we get out the copy of the title-deed to the house and find out who they all were.’
They discovered that the Crown land had been sold to the Reverend Thaddeus Tebbutt in 1886, and he had built the house. Sam and Armella had probably been his children.
‘Dolly, too,’ suggested Mrs Beck.
‘No, Dolly was a bear,’ said Gret firmly.
Then came the sale of the house in 1898 to the Strachan family.
‘That accounts for Benjamin and George,’ said Laurens. ‘But what about Peggy Braddie?’
No Braddies appeared on the deed, so the children decided that Peggy was a grandchild of the Strachans.
‘Poor little one, her mother died young and her father was killed in the First World War, so Granny looked after her,’ speculated Laurens.
The house was sold in 1923 to Rose Duncan and James Frazer, both of Auchterlonie, Scotland.
‘They were brother and sister,’ guessed Callie, who loved this game of imagination. ‘Rose was really a Mrs Duncan, and she was a widow. Isie was her daughter.’
‘No, she was a bear, too,’ put in Gret.
‘Isie was here until she grew up, and then she got married.’
‘She ate grubs,’ said Gret. ‘Some bears do.’
‘Make her be quiet, Mum. Isie got married, and that’s when she went away…’
‘To the Zoo,’ giggled Dan.
‘You shut up!’ shouted Callie.
Dan began to cough and then to cry. His tall white forehead turned a lavender shade. Mrs Beck said crossly, ‘Really, Callie, why do you take things so seriously!’
‘Captain Frazer must have died about 1930,’ Laurens broke in quickly, ‘because then the house was sold to the Barretts and after that to the Lightfoots, who sold it to me. Captain James must have shut the trapdoor when he left the cupola for the last time, and taken away the ladder, and perhaps built the big linen cupboard. So the Barretts and the Lightfoots never suspected you could get into the cupola.’
But it was no good, the spell was broken. Callie couldn’t bear the irritated look on her mother’s face, and she couldn’t bear to see Dan peeping provokingly between his tear-wet fingers, either.
‘Sneaky rat,’ she said scornfully. ‘You’re not really crying.’
‘For goodness’ sake, Callie!’ cried her mother. ‘Will you leave Dan alone!’
Callie barged out of the room, muttering.
‘What an acutely nasty girl,’ said Dan, wheezing.
When all the children were in bed, their mother talked to Laurens about Callie. ‘I only agreed to Pa’s plans about the cupola,’ she said sighing, ‘because he thought Callie would cheer up if she had a place of her own. And now look! She’s as jealous and possessive as a hen with one chick.’
‘She is just so excited,’ soothed Laurens. ‘Everything will settle down.’ He gave her a hug. ‘Oh, Heather, all things are so good for us now! I am so happy. Let us go down and say goodnight to the old lady.’
They went down to the sandstone grotto, and Laurens hoisted up a corner of the old car’s cover. He patted the battered black snout.
‘A thousand hours’ work on her and she’ll be as good as new.’ His wife smiled.
‘Don’t listen to her, old dear one,’ said Laurens. ‘You will yet be queen of a veteran car rally, do not fear.’
This was Laurens’s big personal ambition.
During the next few weeks Heather Beck continued to feel worried. Suppose she’d been right all along about Callie, and what was really troubling her was that she was odd girl out in the family?
‘Suppose she develops into one of those difficult teenagers!’ thought Mrs Beck, dismayed. ‘I just couldn’t cope.’
She recalled the really savage look Callie had given Dan. And yet she had always loved him so much.
‘Pa must have been wrong when he thought that all Callie needed was privacy,’ she fretted. ‘It’s something much deeper than that.’
And she took to being very loving with Callie, who was always too busy to respond, and pulled away from her mother with mutters of ‘Grandpa needs the screwdriver with the red handle’, or ‘I’m just in the middle of cleaning down the walls, Mummy!’
For this was a thrillingly busy time for Callie. Every morning Grandpa, who had a lift from a mate, arrived on the dot of seven. He said he had started work early all his life and didn’t mean to change now. And Callie, who for some years now had had to be shaken awake in the mornings, took to opening her eyes at six. With excited anticipation she would hear the currawongs shouting in their boys’ voices: ‘Daybreak! Daybreak!’ She would quietly wash and get into shorts and jumper, then climb up into the cupola to see the world awaken—the little ferries crossing the harbour and shaking the sea to glitter, the spiralling gulls, the carrot-coloured roofs of southern Sydney, wet with dew, catching fire under the rising dazzle. Sometimes she saw a ship sliding through the Heads, rising majestically as with a great breath when it met the ocean.
In the early morning the air was full of interesting smells: the cucumber smell of the moss Grandpa was scraping from the roof slates, damp possum in the camphor-laurel tree, elusive whiffs from the Neutral Bay shore—drying wharf piles, mussels and cunjevoi and upturned boats.