Little Lost Girl

by Graham Wilson

  Alexander was the image of his father and, if Alison was truthful, she could not help favouring him. He had the ready smile and charm, with his dark brown hair and eyes. And he could make her laugh. He would dress in finery, like a peacock, and mock himself at the same time. Around the dinner table he would regale them with tales of exploits which would have them all doubled up in laughter.

  Yet he had softness too, particularly for Alison. He towered over her, but knew instantly when she was a bit down. Then he would rag her to make her smile. At other times he would turn up with two horses saddled and lead her out on a wild exhilarating ride over the sandy heath covered headlands, rides that left them both laughing and flushed with an untamed zest for life.

  Her Da was still himself; now grey around the temples, but with that mixture of strength and leanness of a man at the height of his powers.

  Just sometimes he would say to her. “Oh Alison, my special child; you grew up too young. You should find yourself a man. God knows, there are plenty who would burst to carry you away. But there you sit, with wide sad eyes, so like those of my first Hannah. Sometimes my heart aches to make you really smile.”

  She would go over to him and put her arms around him. “No Da, I am happy, I like being here with you, tis all I want and need.”

  Chapter 9 - 1870 – Tragedy again

  An extract of the Newcastle Chronicle of June 1870 reported:

  ‘The death of Mr Archibald Rodgers took place on Saturday evening 11th June. On 3rd of that month Mr Rodgers, while superintending the lowering of a ponderous iron cylinder in the foundry yard, the palm of his left hand was accidentally crushed between the descending cylinder and another cylinder that lay on the ground close by. Although all was done that medical skill could devise to save the limb, it was found on Wednesday morning that mortification had set in to such an extent as to necessitate the hand being amputated at the wrist. This operation was successfully performed on Thursday by Dr’s Bowker, Dagner and Hector. On the following day, symptoms of tetanus appeared, and on Saturday Mr Rodger’s medical attendant perceived a change in the worse in him and, at once, apprehended that in all probability he would not live unless a change for the better took place. On Saturday his suffering increased considerably, and articulation became painfully difficult. His consciousness was not much affected till evening when he became slightly delirious and at intervals seemed not to know those around him. He recovered consciousness about 2 hours before he expired and appeared to have recognised some of his family. A few hours prior to his death, the Rev Mr Bain read him the 34th Psalm and engaged in prayer for him. Mr Rodgers was born in the village of Barnyards, parish of Kilconquatar, Fife Shire, Scotland in the year 1814 and was slightly over 56 years of age when he died. His father was an elder in the Original Succession Presbyterian Church at Barnyards, and also superintendent of the Sabbath School in connection with the same church. He therefore had the advantage of an early religious education and ever since he was 10 years old he took delight in imparting similar instruction to the young.

  ‘On the day he was buried all the flags of shipping in Newcastle Port flew at half mast, as a mark of respect.’

  Alison stood at the graveside in Honeysuckle Cemetery and sobbed and sobbed. She felt so bereft. She had barely cried when her Mum had gone, though the pain in her heart was like a knife and, when Archie followed soon after, it had hurt double.

  But then she knew she had to be strong for her Da. Now it felt as if her whole life was ripped away. Helen hugged her, Alex and James hugged her, her sisters proffered comfort and she knew of their intended kindness, but all she could feel was the void.

  Barely a week ago her Da had joked with her, as he walked over to the yard for the day, to remove the cast from that hateful lump of iron that wounded him, mashed his hand.

  Then, the awfulness as they cut away his hand, while they fed him whisky, giving him a piece of wood to bite, to hold inside him the screams.

  That final horror as she realised it was all to no avail, and watched his body contort with the spasms, until in the end he could not breathe. She had barely left his side for three days as she tried to will him strength and, when all was of no avail, to ease his pain and give him comfort. Now there was just this mound of earth next to the river.

  Suddenly she could not bear this place. All these years she had kept the rage inside, to do what was right, to help people; her brothers, her sisters, Helen, her Dad. And it had all turned to dust. She kicked the earth; she hit the hard rock of the gravestone with her hands till they bled. Then she screamed her rage at a God. How could he give her things to love only to then rip them all away? She hated it all, and she most hated Him, for letting it happen.

  All at once she knew what she would do. She would go back, return to her beloved Balmain, where she knew Tom and Mary, now stooped with age, tended her much loved cottage, and she would not come back, not ever. She dried her eyes and walked back to the house, her face set in steel. The wake was going on in the living room but she ignored it. Instead she went to her bedroom, gathered her few most treasured possessions and a change of clothes. She wrote a short note, left it on the kitchen table and walked over to the wharf.

  A coastal shipper was taking on a load of wool for Sydney. It would leave on the outgoing tide that afternoon. She knew the captain, an old friend of her father’s and of Tom and Mary.

  “Miss Alison, I am so sorry about your Dad. Can I help you at all?”

  She gave him a brittle smile. “I want passage to Sydney. Can I travel with you, please?”

  His face burst into a broad grin. “Why of course you can, time to leave this old town is it? There’s a spare cabin forehead.”

  She pulled out her purse to pay him, but he waved it away. “No girl, I can na take your money. Tis the least I can do, to see you safe home to Tom and Mary.”

  An hour later they sailed on the outgoing tide.

  Chapter 10 - Alison comes home

  The following day the ship docked in Sydney. How Tom and Mary knew, she never understood, but there they were, waiting at the dock to meet her, looking suddenly old and frail.

  Tears pricked her eyes as she hugged them, and they held her. It felt so good to have come home. Never would she leave them again. The next day she moved back into her old house, Roisin. For lunch she sat on her front porch and breathed in the familiar fragrance of gum and garden, smiling as she admired the cascading pink and yellow roses.

  She knew Tom and Mary would love to have her stay on with them, but this was to be her new life in Balmain, now all grown up, and she had to do this on her own. Besides, not a day would go by that she did not come to see them both. They understood, the love was there, both ways, and that was all that mattered.

  In her mind she knew what she would do. Hannah was a dressmaker and had made beautiful things with her hands. She was not her mother and could not do as she did. But she could gather and sell beautiful things, crafted by others. It would make her happy to give happiness to the givers and receivers of the gifts.

  That afternoon, after she had settled in, she went and told Tom and Mary about her idea. Whether she could support herself through it they did not know, however it was not really about money and anyway James had given her one thousand pounds from her Dad’s estate at the foundry.

  Tom and Mary harnessed the sulky and together they drove around Balmain village, looking for the right place for her to set up. Just up from the new Presbyterian Church on the hill they found a small shop, with delicate square glass window frames and a vacant sign on it. Inquiries revealed that the owner had returned to London to care for her mother and had left it in the care of her mother’s old friend Mrs Mills, now grey and well over 70, but still clear of mind and speech.

  “I don’t think she’ll be wanting it again dearie, and she would be happy with a small rent as it’s empty now. In fact I could write to her. Perhaps she would sell it as I hear she is settled back in London,” Mrs Mills said, peering at Alison
with rheumy eyes.

  “What did you say your name was again?’ she said, peering even harder. Her eyes lit up with recognition. “It’s you dear child, so long since I saw you last and then just a wee girl. When first I looked at you I did not see her, different hair, and features, but then you smiled at me, just the way Hannah used to, and my heart almost stopped.

  ‘Your mother was a most precious soul, taken too soon. It’s as if you have brought her back to me. Of course you shall have the shop; it could go to no other. Mrs Maher, who owns it, bought one of your mother’s first dresses. Last time I saw her, before she left, there she was wearing it, the silk shining and the dress just as bright and perfect as the day it was made.”

  In those first crowded, lonely weeks, there were times when Alison craved solitude, even though she knew that Tom and Mary would have loved to see her. She felt as if her intense work was helping her wounded soul to heal, but still she needed time to contemplate alone and come to her own place of stillness.

  Sometimes she would go and walk through the small graveyard and sit on a small wooden bench below it, to stare out across the dappled blue water, looking far out beyond the horizon. She found comfort in thinking that her Da and Mum and her small dead brothers and sister were somewhere out there, together.

  One day, as she walked down to this place, she saw a woman, a few years older, sitting on the bench. From behind she could see tresses of long black hair flowing over this woman’s shoulders and over a beautiful green blue dress, almost the colour of the sea, with delicate silver lace and brocade. A first she felt a flash of annoyance that another had taken her private place.

  Then there came a merging in her mind between the lovely dress and her own lovely perfume bottle. It was as if the two had been made together in the same die and casting.

  She felt a warm smile wash over her as the stranger turned and smiled. Before she had time to think she found herself sitting alongside her and telling her how her dress so perfectly matched the little perfume bottle.

  With kind eyes the lady said, in a heavily accented voice, “When I am a little girl, in Manilla, my Papa, he had many beautiful things, like as with what you say. Sometime, could you show me please?”

  So Alison came again the next day, with the bottle in her pocket, and there was the lady again. She showed her and told her about her sadness and the happy memories of the bottle. The lady told her how she often came and looked out to sea in the hope of seeing her husband as he returned in his ship from across the ocean. After that they often both came and sat together in the evening stillness.

  In October Alison was working away in her shop when the small bell at the front door tinkled. In strode a man in his thirties, broad shouldered, with a wolfish smile.

  “I heard ye was back in town and yet never came to see me. That first moment I heard I got in the boat and rowed across from the yard. I walked up here as fast as I could. James cabled me to say you were in town.”

  As he spoke she realised; it was Charles Buller, James’ playmate from their childhood. Sometimes Tom had taken him sailing with James when they had lived in Balmain all those years ago. She had last seen Charles when she was nine and he was fourteen, a lifetime ago.

  Back then, she thought him incredibly grown up and handsome, in her little girl eyes. Now, no longer a little girl, she felt instantly shy and blushed.

  He laughed, “I thought you cute then; now I find you all grown up and so, so beautiful” he said, with a courtly bow. “Then a duckling, now become a swan.”

  Before she could blush again, he continued. “Actually, I come bearing an invitation. My mother is holding a dinner for friends, to celebrate Dad turning 60 tomorrow. When she heard you had returned she insisted I come straight over and invite you, to represent my Dad’s oldest and best friend, who we all miss. You will come, won’t you, it is tomorrow night.”

  So Alison found herself there, escorted on Charles arm. Sitting beside him at the table he kept her amused with anecdotes of people he knew and life in Sydney. His younger brother, Richard, mostly ran the yard, working alongside his Dad. Charles, instead, had taken a sailor’s life, wanting to see the world; trips to the Middle East, Africa, Asia, London and New York. It seemed so exotic and exciting.

  But, last time he returned to port, a few months ago, he realised that it was good to be home. The restless urge was gone and he found he wanted to be with his Mum and Dad in their older years. He also had five young nieces and nephews from his brother and sister and, each time he came back, it seemed they had grown so much. He knew he wanted to be a part of that life.

  As the night continued it was as if someone had drawn an invisible link between them, two people who had lived so much of their life alone; two souls connecting in a way neither could begin to understand. Finally it was just the two of them, talking slowly and quietly together, as the last embers of a fire spluttered in the hearth.

  Charles took her hand, “I have never talked this way to anyone before. I don’t want to stop seeing you or have you leave me, even for a night.”

  Alison took his face in her hands. “Nor me, I know your Mum has a bed made for me in the spare room, but I want you to bring me back to my house and stay with me.”

  So it was, as the first light of dawn was touching the eastern sky far out beyond the harbour; that they rowed across to her house. Holding hands, to savour the moment, they slowly climbed the hill. At the crest they stood together, arms entwined, watching, as the dawn flushed the sky with rosy light. Then she took his hand and brought him to her room. They stood next to her bed, with its quilt pale in the early light.

  Delicately he took the ribbon from her hair. As it cascaded over her shoulders she unclipped the catches from her dress, and let it slide to the floor, revealing her milky white body. Then she slid her undergarments to the floor, standing totally naked before him.

  He gazed at her, mesmerised, “So beautiful, so, so beautiful. I think I have loved you since you were a nine year old girl who gazed at me with those beautiful sad eyes”

  “Hold me”, she said, “hold me and hold me and love me and love me and never let me go or leave me. I have lost too many people. I could not bear to lose you too.”

  So he picked her up and carried her to the bed, where he laid her naked body on the quilt. He loved her with wild joy as the early morning sun rose in a pale blue sky. She cried a little when he first came inside her but she held him even tighter, wrapping herself around him until she felt him explode and pour out into her, their bodies and juices mingled.

  All morning they stayed together, bodies joining and un-joining, as waves of passion swept over them. In the late morning they slept, in total satiation, knowing what was begun was all good, and would go on and on.

  That afternoon they walked, hand in hand, to see Tom and Mary and told them about their new life together and how they would be guests of honour at their wedding as soon as it could be arranged.

  Alison knew she had conceived on that first night. By the time they were married a month later she could feel the changes, her nipples and her body softening as this tiny creature grew within her. Two weeks after the wedding, when she was totally sure, she told Charles. He said, I think I felt it too that morning, something that powerful had to create a new life.

  In June the next year a boy baby came. They called him John after her first lost brother and Charles’ father. He looked like both her mother and father, and something of both Charles and his parents, a fusion of all that was good in all of them. There was quiet completeness in Alison’s soul, replacing old with new life, potential waiting to be realised.

  A year later Alison felt her body swell again. She knew with certainty this would be a daughter, a continuation in that cycle that passed from woman to woman across generations. So it was that Heather was born. She was a dark child, with the darkness of Charles’ mother, Millicent, and of her own father, clear, strong and determined. This would be one to be reckoned with, one making her own pa
th in the world.

  Eight years passed without further children. Both Alison and Charles were content, God’s gift to them of them of love and two children was more than enough.

  Charles discovered a passion for engineering, but with engines rather than shipbuilding and ironwork. He constructed steam engines to use on farms and in factories and tinkered with many other sorts of motors, but electricity most fascinated him. Motors to drive things, using electricity, following the inventions of Edison and Bell, were his greatest passion.

  Charles also continued his sailing, first encouraging Tom to sail with him, then little John, when he could swim and hold the tiller, came with him.

  Alison flatly refused to let John go out until he could swim across the channel from the wharf to the rocks, more than 20 yards. As Charles could see the sense of this he coached his son’s swimming. By the age of four John could swim like a fish, allowing him to go out. James had also maintained his love for sailing. Now he was a successful Newcastle business man, he was often in Sydney, and would stay with Tom and Mary, and the men would all go sailing together; Tom, the old sea dog, barking the orders while the two big men ran to his directions.

  Alison’s Balmain shop had become known far and wide. People came, both by boat and carriage, to seek out her treasures. She and Charles were well off and could have easily afforded a large shop or a move to Sydney town that would bring extra custom.

  But she said. “I have this shop because I chose it, and it is in Balmain because this is where I want to be. Others can be richer and more famous, but my life is rich and I know when I have enough.”

  Then, in their tenth year of marriage, Charles finally persuaded her to go with him to New York and London while he looked at the new electric power stations and other electric machines. It was a holiday for the whole family and both children found the long steamship passage across the Pacific and then Atlantic Oceans to be strangely enjoyable.