Little Lost Girl

by Graham Wilson

  As I raise my eyes from their faces, to the place above the fire, it is like the whole story comes alive in vivid colour. There are two paintings, one of a picnic with boats behind. In the centre are two ladies talking, as if awaiting their departure. The other painting shows the same two ladies, closer up, but with a similar background, half talking and half gazing out to sea. They look to a familiar, long remembered horizon and somehow this horizons tells of another person, little more than suggestion and shadow, but yet there is clearly a presence there that sits both outside and within their memories. I realise, unsaid, that this shadow is a long lost person, a child unknown. I am captivated by my past family.

  I do not have to ask, who are these people, the people of the picture story? They look as vibrant and alive as if I was standing there talking to them. I know, unspoken, they are Alison, grandmother, and Maria, mother of Sophie. I know it with certainty, even though I have never seen either. And somehow I also know that the partial shadow is a memory of Sophie.

  I realise, after a minute of staring, transfixed, that Sarah is talking to me. As I look back to her, there it is again, that same smile and those same eyes. Creatures of her and my flesh are alive, above her on canvass.

  So, before we talk, the unspoken bond is made; to seek and discover the truth which I will try to tell in words and she will tell in a final picture.

  Then Sarah and I talk together while Edith listens. I tell her the little I have found out, and of our new house. Sarah tells us the story she got through her Mum, most of which is written in this book.

  The final thing she says is. “One thing that has really stuck in my mind, since my Mum, Rachel, told me this story many years ago. It is what she said just after she finished telling the rest.”

  “She said, ‘I really wished that Gran Alison had lived until after Sophie had gone, because I knew, deep down inside, that she would know where Sophie went. It was like they were kindred souls, different outside but forged in the same crucible of love and fire.’

  “I don’t know how it helps, but it seemed she was saying I had to find out about my great-grandmother and that may give a missing clue. I have looked through all the things of hers that were passed down through our family but I am no wiser. Perhaps you can see something that escapes my tired old eyes.”

  I try to think too but nothing comes to me. I shake my head.

  Sarah says, “It is not a question for today, but do keep looking, still.

  Then she asks to see the perfume bottle. I give it to her and she holds it, warm in her hand, for a long, long time. Her face grows still and calm, as something flows between her and that tiny little bottle. It is like she is taken to another place, her face glowing with a strange happy light, while tears trickle slowly down her cheeks.

  She takes off the bottle top, inhales the smell, saying “Oh it brings it all back, those happy, golden days of my childhood. I am glad it has been passed along the chain to your family. Perhaps one day your daughter too will have need of this.”

  I say to her. “These are yours, you are her nearest kin.”

  She looks at me and says. “Perhaps they are mine but, if I was meant to have them, then I think Maria would have given them to me herself. I am not sure, but for now I would like you to keep them in your care.”

  We say our goodbyes knowing we must both keep looking until we find the missing piece. I have gained so much understanding but still no closure. Where did Sophie and her friend Matty go, all those many years ago?

  So I return to the Historical Association. There is a lady sitting at the table who I do not know. As I rummage, seeking inspiration, she looks up at me. So I tell her some parts of the story. When I mention an Alison who lived in Balmain long ago, she says.

  “There is something, though I am not sure if it will help you. About ten years ago, it was on New Year’s Eve, when the crowd was gathering at East Balmain; a couple set up their picnic at the edge of the rocks in the park to the east of the ferry wharf. It was somewhere about here,” she says, pointing to a map showing the end of Paul Street where the park starts.

  She continues. “They decided to go for a walk, while they were waiting for the fireworks, but they wanted to leave their valuable things somewhere safe, to save carrying them. They saw a small space in the rocks, behind where they were sitting. In the entrance of the space one of the rocks was loose, just sitting there in the start of the hole. So they pulled it out, to put their things behind it.

  Behind the rock they found a small tin box. Inside was what appeared to be a little girl’s diary. It was wrapped in oilcloth. It had the name ‘Alison’ written on it. They thought it might be important so they brought it here. From the type of paper we know it dates to around 1850. I looked at some of it and it seemed to me to be a small girl’s meanderings and dreaming, from when she was about five or six years old. It talks about a few things, like a secret cave, a small black friend Ruthie and a magic perfume bottle of memories.”

  I feel a surge of wild irrational excitement. “Could I see it please,? I say.

  She goes and finds it, then gives it to me. It is a metal box as described, dark and tarnished but solid. Inside is an object about six inches by four inches and an inch thick, wrapped in its oilcloth cover. I unwrap a book. The faded pink cover has a small girl’s hand writing. It says the name ‘Alison’.

  Almost reverentially I open the cover. I gaze at the writing, now over 160 years old, of my great grandmother’s half sister. The first page starts.

  “I am so happy. It is my birtday and I am 5. My Mummy has given me this for a preset to write in.”

  A few pictures are on the next two pages; then I turn to the next page after with a jolt.

  “Today we buried my Mummy. She died last night. I trying not to cry, but I miss her so bad.”

  To the next page, “Today I am even more unhappy. My brother Archie who is 9 has died too. He was my best friend and I miss him so much. He was very sad too when Mummy died but we tried to help each other be brave. And now he is buried next to Mummy. But the worse thing is how it is hurting Daddy, like two holes in his heart.

  Then the next entry, “My Daddy went away on the boate today. I am trying not to cry while I write, I don’t know if I will ever see him again. But he gave me a special present, a blue-green bottle, like the sea with waves on it. It was Mummies. When I open it I can smell her and I am happy, but I still want to cry. So when I was crying I put my tears in the bottle and I think it will help me be strong.”

  Then an entry with a description about what her Gran Mary had told her about the bottle. Followed by “Now I understand how I can put my happy memories in it. I will fill it up so full so when Daddy comes home I can make him happy.”

  Then a bit further on, “Daddy came home today. Hooray I am so excited, I want to dance and shout.”

  Then the next entry, “Today I met Mrs Helen, she is sad too because her hubsand died. But I made a special promise with her. We will both try not to be sad.”

  Then, “I know Mrs Helen likes Daddy and I think Daddy likes her too. That is good because Mummy is not here anymore and she would want little Hannah and Alexander to have a new mummy.”

  About half the diary was filled with her little notes and memories getting longer as the years passed, about her school friends and other people, and what she did and liked.

  Then a little black girl called Ruthie starts to appear. She describes how Ruthie and her would go exploring and ‘search the shores for tressures.’

  Then something electric, ‘Ruthie and I found a little cave. Only we know and we have both promised we will not tell anyone else about it.’

  From the description I am almost sure they are describing Ballast Point. I don’t know why I am so sure, but I know, with no doubt, this is the clue Sarah and I have been looking for.

  Perhaps it is another chance discovery like many along the path I have followed for the past many months. Perhaps Alison has reached out her hands alongside Sophie
out to bring us to this place. Yet it is so.

  Now, with total certainty, I set out on the last part of my journey.

  I search the archives for the history of Ballast Point, and discover work was done on the installation of a tank there at about the time the children disappear. I finally find a work assignment for two workers Fred Jones and Joe Wilson, who are each paid five pounds by a shipping company to level the site and prepare it for a tank and jetty to be built. A week after the work begins I find in the site’s log book the notation. “Today Mr Frederick Jones took two charges of dynamite to shift a large rock which is preventing the levelling being completed”. It is dated September 3rd, 1908.

  This is the last day the children are seen. My mind sees a picture of two little children in a cave below. I feel unutterably sad.

  I continue my research. There are now the remains of three big tanks there and they don’t sound original. There is no longer a scrubby edge to the headland, it has all been removed.

  Finally I track down documents relating to the installation of the new tanks, in 1942, from Navy Archives. I am like a dog with a bone. I can’t leave it, there must be more. Buried amongst Navy reports of the construction, is a hand written notation, ‘Works delayed for two hours today. Military Police called. Remains found under rocks removed and report lodged to police’

  Police archives defeat me. Then I think. Perhaps the remains were lodged with the coroner. I think their archives should be in a retrievable form.

  I manage to locate Glebe coroner’s records, which appear to be the most likely place of dispatch at that time. I open a heavy bound book that records the incomings and outgoings in 1942. There it is, two days after the Military Police site visit.

  ‘Remains of two children and associated goods found at Ballast Point, Balmain. Lodged with report A109201-42, stored in Bay 23, container 5.’

  Yet more investigation; this storage area no longer exists but a custody chain does. My search leads to an old warehouse in western Sydney. The accession clerk confirms the location and currency of the record.

  ‘Transferred in 1963, last review of evidence 1942.’

  I realise I am at the end of the trail. I am not sure if I want to know what this container holds. I think, What help will it bring? Who will benefit after all this time? But I need to know and Edith and Sarah deserve to know too. As the nearest living relatives to this time and place, at least they can represent those who suffered the loss and accept its closure.

  I ring them to inform them of what I have found. They say, “Go on.”

  We walk along air conditioned corridors, the attendant and I. There is a faint anaesthetic hum. We come to the marked bay and then to the marked cubicle and then to a shelf and drawer.

  It is opened and I know with total certainty this is them.

  The piles of broken bones lie mingled in death as in the final moments of life. It is the blue bird that convinces me, told from Maria, to Rachel, to Sarah, a tale of Matty’s loving gift to Sophie, the pledge of their friendship.

  An exquisite fairy wren, colours and detail perfect, carved and received with such love. I feel its soul soar and fly free with the spirits of these two children, going to a place of peace and happiness. This is the secret of the perfume bottle, that when all else passes such love remains.

  A month later we gather all the family members we can find; Rodgers, Smiths, Wilsons, Campbells, McNeils, McVeys, Bullers, Williams and Martins, and others too, including aboriginal custodians of the land one of whom is a man who is an almost direct descendant of little Ruthie, great grandchild of her cousin. Sadly Ruthie died young with no children of her own. But this man is a descendant of Jimmy and is the living custodian of the echidna totem. So he will take the precious engraved wooden bowl that has passed through hands both black and white, since its making, and return it to its true owners.

  We have approval of the Council and the other officials to place a small casket with the two children’s remains, cemented into the rock of Ballast Point, covered with a plaque bearing their names.

  Fittingly the Point is now a place for people to enjoy, fashioned into the shape of a ship, which waits, as if to carry them to another far off land.

  Sarah, body frail in the spring breeze, stands at end of the point, above the small casket and holds the small blue bird aloft to the bright blue sky.

  Her voice carries to us all, tired and thin, but resonant. “This bird is the symbol of our family having finally reached a place of understanding and peace. I ask it to fly free and bring these two dear spirits across space and time into a joyous eternity.”

  I thought then perhaps she would fling the small blue bird into the sky so it too could fly away. Instead she walks quietly to me. She stands and stares at me with those sad, but smiling, eyes which search my soul. She speaks in a soft voice that only I can hear. It may be my imaginings but it is as if small Sophie is talking to me.

  The voice says. “Please take this small blue bird and, with my perfume bottle and picture, place them in the place from whence they came, as put there by Maria. Perhaps, in some time and place beyond all our knowledge, another small person will have need of them.

  “And would you write this story as you have discovered it, to travel along with them too.”

  I know, without any words spoken, that Sarah will paint her last picture. Spaced around its frame are three remembered old Balmain houses holding their families’ stories. The space in the centre holds four much loved children; Sophie, Mathew, little Alison and a small black friend, all met again, finding treasures on sea shores; dreams carried aloft on the tiny wings of a small blue bird.

  When our ceremony is finished we take the blue bird, the perfume bottle and the small sepia photo and place them all on the ledge of the chimney in the old Balmain house.

  Now I have written it, just these words, it is complete.

  I know Sarah has painted her picture though I need not see it. My mind already holds its clear image.

  I place my words into a tightly sealed package. It rests alongside these other things, in the chimney of the house, perhaps one day to be read again, perhaps to pass into dust. I think these words are like the feathers of the brightly painted blue bird. Together they can fly free and carry our many linked souls through time and space and into eternity.

  Epilogue

  It is now six months since I have finished writing. I thought I had fully told Sophie’s story.

  But today I discover how stories have a strange ability to keep going on, passing through yet more generations and crossing into other families’ lives, other people who have also shared in the history of this house.

  I am working at my desk when I hear a knocking sound. I open the front door. Standing outside are four ladies, three in a line and one behind. I know at once, by their looks and an imperceptible kindred thing, that they are all related and connected to this house. The oldest woman is perhaps in her eighties, with the sprightly good-mannered bearing of generations past. The next lady looks in her sixties. She has the most striking and captivating face, not quite beautiful, but such presence, magnetic eyes which draw you in. The third lady, mature but still young, carries an aura of hard earned wisdom with her. Behind her is the youngest woman, I think it is her daughter. She has a waif like face, framed by spiky hair, and a twenty something body.

  I say, “Hello, How can I help you?”

  The middle lady speaks on behalf of the others, saying, “You don’t know us but we lived in this house before you, my mother and I when I was a child in the 1950s and 60s. It was also my daughter’, Catherine’s, home for a while. My mother continued to live here until she sold the house in the late 1980s. I used the front room where Sophie lived and she was my childhood friend. Sophie was my daughter’s friend too, even though we then lived on the opposite side of Australia. Later Sophie became my daughter and granddaughter Amelie’s friend when they needed help.

  “We came to the ceremony for Sophie and Matty, on th
at day at Ballast Point, but we did not want to intrude; it was a day for their own families.

  But it made us remember our time living here and how important Sophie was in our lives. For the last six months we have written our story, in which Sophie has a central role. Today we wondered if you would tell to us the rest of the story that you found out about her life.

  With that I invite them in for tea and tell them this story. In return they pass me the hand written manuscript of their story. When they depart I sit down and read it, barely leaving my seat over a day and night.

  As I finish and lay it aside I feel I have found a fitting closure to Sophie’ story, the girl in the picture with only eight years of living, but a child whose presence has passed across many generations and may yet continue.

  With my reading done I place their manuscript alongside the words I have written, to share the same journey into Sophie’s future.

  For those who want to know this other story please download and read the book ‘Child Unknown’ which is also available to read at this site.

  Appendix 1 : The Truth Behind the Imaginings

  The perfume bottle described in this book is a product of my imagination. However this story is based on truth in some places as follows:

  The arrival of my great-great grandfather in Sydney in 1841 is true, with what I know, as compiled by other relatives, as follows.

  “Archibald Alexander Rodgers was born on 4th April 1814, at Barnyards village in Scotland. He was the fifth of seven children of James Rodger and Eupan Bruce. In 1841, Archibald Rodger travelled to Sydney, with his wife Hannah and their two children James and Archibald, arriving on the “William Turner” on October 5th. Archibald Junior’s twin brother John died in the United Kingdom before they left. In Australia they had further children Alison, Hannah and Alexander. Archibald was listed on arrival as “Blacksmith, Presbyterian, aged 27, can read and write”. Hannah was listed at the same time as “Dressmaker, Presbyterian, 24 years, can read and write”