Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  here is to you my brother dear

  that’s far way and in a distant clime

  though absent from my sight

  yet presint in my mind

  So I remain your affectionate sister to death,

  Eliza Irwin

  * * *

  It was spring and the cows had been put outside after wintering in the shed. To Eliza, the milk smelled different and was richer once they started feeding on the spring grass, and the cows were less settled. That was like themselves in spring, Mother said, which meant they needed to be patient with the beasts. Since Ann Jane and Mary had gone, Mother talked to Eliza about all manner of things, and Father got her to read pieces from the papers. So the afternoon conversation over milking now included her.

  ‘I need to take John to Portstewart by the sea to visit with my sister Margaret,’ said Father. He leaned against the door of the cow byre and took off his cap. ‘I worry he’s on the decline. He seems lackadaisical in the planting of the crop. Which is not like him at all.’ Father rubbed his head.

  ‘John moans in the night,’ said Eliza, ‘missing William in his bed, as I miss my sisters.’

  ‘The coming of spring affects him,’ Mother said. ‘John’s a great one for noticing change of seasons.’

  Father came and peered into the milk bucket. ‘Rosie ain’t milking too well.’

  ‘She ain’t getting no younger, Father,’ said Mother. ‘Like ourselves.’ She patted the cow.

  ‘You wish to indulge Rosie in her old age?’ asked Father.

  ‘These creatures have their place,’ said Mother.

  ‘That pup of Eliza’s rather thinks his place is nearest the fire,’ said Father. ‘I’ve had to remind him of the precedence of the household a number of times.’

  ‘He’s just a pup, Daddy,’ said Eliza.

  ‘Which is why I remind him,’ said Father. ‘Now, Lizey, I’m wondering if you could mind the dairy, so Mother can come to Portstewart with me and John.’

  ‘Of course, Daddy.’

  ‘It is Lizey should go,’ said Mother. ‘I’ve been worried about her eyes all winter, and the sea air would do her good.’

  ‘I’d like you to come, Mother. It’s been a long time.’

  ‘My eyes is not so bad,’ said Eliza, although she longed to go to Portstewart. In fact, her eyes were most troublesome, often blurry and sore, the way they had been since the hard years.

  ‘No, Father, I won’t have Lizey here by herself. Even if Robert came back from Joseph and Eleanor’s, I can’t trust him to stay home at night. Eleanor says he’s wandering out all hours – midnight and past. She hears him when she’s nursing little William Joseph.’

  ‘They should stop him.’

  ‘Stopping Robert is beyond us all,’ said Mother. ‘He’s a grown man and a stubborn and unsettled one at that. Besides, sea air don’t quite agree with me.’

  ‘As you say,’ said Father. He put his cap on and went to attend to the ponies.

  ‘It’s your Aunt Margaret that don’t quite agree with me,’ Mother said to Eliza. ‘But don’t be saying so to your father.’

  ‘Oh Mammy, I’d love to go and I’ll help Father with John.’ Eliza felt the longing to go deep inside her.

  ‘You’ve some wildness in your nature and the sea air’s most good for that. And you should take some of the money dear William sent you, and buy yourself a shawl.’ Mother looked at Eliza lovingly. ‘We’ll write and tell William – he’ll be pleased thinking of his little sister.’

  Eliza put her milking bucket aside. ‘Could you finish my milking, Mammy? I feel that wildness in me and I can’t settle.’ She could feel her heart pounding and she needed to run.

  ‘Off you go, Lizey,’ said Mother. ‘A person’s no use anyways in that state.’

  Eliza was filled with her wildness, her desire for release from the sameness of life here. She ran into the farmyard, Hercules following her, running, jumping and barking. She ran out into the laneway with Hercules, mad with delight, and down the lane towards Tattykeel. She had the red scarf that William had wrapped the gold pieces in and she waved it to the sky as she ran. She ran so fast she was breathless. Past the Canders’ place, further and further down the hill, till she collapsed near the hedge and lay herself under it, not minding the wet of the grass, Hercules panting as he lay across her stomach. She put the scarf over her eyes, and looked at the great sky through it. She imagined the sea, looking across its waves to where William, James, Mary and Ann Jane had gone. She felt such a longing for them all, such a pain in her heart. But she was going to Portstewart; that was her voyage for now. And she would see the sea.

  ‘William, William,’ called Michael, coming back from his morning piss. ‘Oh dear God, Apollo has gone.’

  ‘Gone? Where’s he gone?’

  ‘He’s been stolen, I’d say. Someone seen him racing. That’s why they took him.’

  William was on his feet, struggling into his moleskins, cursing.

  ‘Danny Phelan said he heard something, late at night.’

  ‘He didn’t think to stick his lazy head out of his tent?’

  ‘It was dark as pitch last night.’

  ‘True. I’ll borrow a horse and go after the bastard.’

  Michael looked gloomy. ‘I thought you never should have raced him. We’ll never get him back now. There’s a hundred places on that road where they might hide him.’ Apollo occupied a place deep in Michael’s heart. It seemed as if this sudden loss piled heavily on top of those others he had suffered.

  William felt a stab of guilt, for Apollo had most probably been stolen for his racing prowess. ‘There’s places on that road that others have showed me, where them horse thieves hide out,’ he said. ‘What time did Danny Phelan hear them?’

  ‘’Bout one. He’s gone, for sure.’

  ‘I’ll go anyway, for it’d be a damn shame to lose such a fine creature. He was considerably attached to you.’ He crammed the remains of last night’s damper into his pocket and took a canteen of water. ‘There’s the old track about thirty mile down with a hut, a filthy thing, someplace just off it. Thieves hide there.’

  He said it with confidence, although he could see that Michael was convinced the horse was gone, which was most likely. But it was not in William’s nature to give up, so he borrowed a horse from a mate of Danny Phelan’s and took off down the Geelong road. The futility of the search soon became clear. There were many by-ways he searched, posting notices in store windows, but he knew Apollo had gone.

  Things changed after Apollo’s theft. It was unspoken, but Michael blamed William for Apollo’s loss. The melancholy which struck many men on the goldfield now came over Michael. He became jealous of those with bigger pickings and cursed the new chums who found the sizable nuggets and were thousands of pounds richer on their first dig.

  ‘I got nothing in life to look forward to,’ he said. ‘Me family all gone. Dig, dig, dig. All the dirt and mud of the place, the damn troopers. Then those you call your mates steal your horse.’

  ‘We don’t know who stole the horse,’ protested William.

  ‘You can’t trust anyone,’ said Michael. William, who had considerable sympathy for Michael’s loss of family, hoped Michael’s despair would pass. There were many who came from Ireland who nursed such sorrows, which at times would overwhelm them. It was most understandable to William, for he still felt the fear of those years of the famine, but he did not know what to do for Michael.

  With Michael less willing to work, William suggested to Danny Phelan that he and his mate Paddy Madden should permanently join their digging party. Danny was intelligent and steady, and Paddy was a big strong Irishman, good humoured and hard working. Each evening around the fire, William and Danny pondered deeply about the best place to sink their next shaft, and they got Michael shepherding, which was simply a matter of sitting on the claim all day and making sure others did not jump it. Claim jumping, or taking over an unworked claim, was seen as wrong and immoral if your own
claim was jumped, but it was somehow fair game if you jumped another’s claim. Shepherding barely seemed like work to William, but it was the only occupation that suited Michael’s melancholy.

  A few weeks later, they got round to digging the new claim. They went down fifty feet and saw the blue clay. They dug even more furiously.

  ‘Nuggets!’ William emerged from the shaft with a great shout. ‘We hit a jeweller’s shop! We’re made, boys.’ There was dancing and hugging at the top of the shaft and then more furious digging, before leaving the shaft well guarded and going off to celebrate with drink and oysters. Their discovery meant maybe a thousand pounds each, hundreds at least, an enormous sum and the cause of much speculation and planning, as well as drinking, singing and dancing. William thought he would search around for a larger business so he could continue to dig, but have his money increasing elsewhere. And, of course, he would be sending money back to Ireland, as Danny and Paddy would too.

  Michael scoffed at William’s plans. Michael was rich and should have been happy with his fortune, but he took more and more to drink.

  ‘’Tis the curse of the Irish,’ he explained to William.

  ‘I think we should buy another horse,’ said William.

  ‘I think not meself.’

  Their golden companionability seemed to have gone, replaced by a grimness when Michael was sober, and a baiting, mocking tone when he was not. He nursed his sorrows and his anger along something fine, William thought bitterly. Previously, they’d kept a tidy tent, indeed had often been ribbed for their swept floor and neat tins of flour and sugar, the fine table and comfortable bush-made chairs. To encourage their mockers, William would, on a Sunday, tie a twist of fabric round his head like a woman’s scarf, and sweep ostentatiously around the tent, while Michael called from inside in a high woman’s voice, ‘We got scone for you laddies. Scone and tea. Observe temperance on the Sabbath,’ an invitation which gave them a sort of fame and created considerable mirth, although it sat not quite easy with the sober observance of the Sabbath they both knew from Ireland.

  One Sunday, when William attempted the game, Michael became bitter.

  ‘You’re becoming a sour man to live with,’ said William. ‘I find it hard to take.’

  ‘We’re not a married couple,’ said Michael. ‘I can leave when I like.’

  ‘Or maybe when I like,’ said William. ‘The pleasure of your company is considerable less than it used to be.’ And he held the tent flap open with a low bow.

  ‘You’re nothing but a damn heathen,’ said Michael. ‘Me mam, she told me never trust a Protestant.’ He walked out of the tent, taking nothing but a small flask of whisky.

  William thought ever after that perhaps he should have tried to stop him, instead of nursing his own anger. His anger needed little further nursing when he noticed a nugget he had picked up from the mud and placed on the sugar tin the previous night had gone. He and Michael would have shared the nugget as they did their chance finds, and it wasn’t Michael’s to take. He called across to Danny Phelan.

  ‘Do you know where Michael’s gone?’

  ‘I imagine from the temper of him, he’s gone down to Mrs Bird’s for a draught of something. Come on, we’ll look for him.’

  On their way they met Paddy Madden coming up the road.

  ‘I saw Michael coming out of Mrs Bird’s,’ said Paddy. ‘He was set on looking at a horse of McGowan’s even though I told him it weren’t proper broken, which is why McGowan was wanting to rid himself of the creature.’

  The three of them set off towards McGowan’s place in Lydiard Street. They walked past the government camp, where there were troopers lounging after their Sunday lunch.

  ‘Provisioned very handsomely at our expense,’ said Danny, ‘from our fines and licences.’

  ‘Look, there’s Michael,’ said William. ‘That’s him, on the horse.’ Even from a distance it was clear Michael couldn’t control the horse. Worse, he was probably drunk, and the troopers were bored. William watched anxiously.

  ‘He’s pulling it too hard,’ said Paddy. ‘I told him it was wild.’ Michael was riding towards them, the horse prancing and fighting. Always on the lookout for a spot of digger baiting, the troopers came up to the fence to watch him.

  ‘Hey, digger, that’s near furious riding. Not allowed! Not on Sunday!’ one yelled at Michael.

  Michael yelled an oath back and spurred the horse on. Two of the troopers mounted their horses and rode after him, waiting for him to come back up the street. When they saw him coming, they turned to chase him, and McGowan’s horse bolted.

  ‘Leave him,’ yelled Paddy.

  ‘Furious riding not allowed, furious riding offence,’ yelled a policeman from the camp.

  Michael’s horse suddenly reared. He was thrown, landing in the dirt, and the back of his skull smashed on a rock. A pool of blood spilled out from his cracked skull and the body was still with death. And it seemed to William that the street was suddenly silent, strangely so, and maybe, he thought later, it went dark for a moment, and he remembered he cried out, as if it was his own head smashed. And he saw the troopers riding slowly like cowards back into the camp, as if nothing had happened. He ran to Michael and saw the death in Michael’s face, the surprise in Michael’s clear blue eyes, open wide.

  William stood, shouting in impotent fury at the troopers and at McGowan, who was trying to catch the creature. Paddy Madden was abusing the troopers, and Danny Phelan stood and watched William Irwin, the most equable and easy of men, and a true friend, shake his fist in rage then drop to his knees, sobbing bitterly into his shirt.

  Danny said what he could in the face of this sudden and severe grief. Paddy sent for the undertaker, and Danny and William followed the body there.

  William asked the undertaker to arrange for a most dignified funeral the next day. He paid with gold dust. ‘Two black horses, with plumes,’ he said. ‘And a fine coffin.’ For he remembered Michael telling him of his mother being buried in a common grave, not even a priest to say prayers. William stood silently and looked at the broken body of Michael for a long time. They had been friends, almost like brothers, and he felt as if part of himself had been wrenched away.

  ‘Come on,’ said Danny eventually. ‘We need to see the priest.’

  ‘You’re his friend?’ Father Downing asked William. William nodded and the priest asked Danny to go and look for his servant, who might make them tea. Father Downing, like many Catholics on the field, was an Irishman.

  ‘It’s a hard thing to lose a friend,’ Father Downing said to William when they were alone. And William spoke to him of Michael’s trials, the terrible loss of his family in the famine years. He told him at length, for he had a sense that it needed to be told, for the memory of his friend. He told Father Downing about the loss of Apollo. He said how he wished he’d stopped Michael leaving the tent, his anger at himself, over which he shed tears, and he dwelt with some bitterness on the callous behaviour of the troopers. Father Downing listened, not as if it was a duty, but as if the story was important.

  ‘He and I were friends since we came to the colony,’ said William. ‘Him having no family at all, and mine all back in Ireland. It was no small matter.’

  It surprised William that the father would give so much time to a Protestant. He told William that friendship was always an imperfect thing between men, but God would forgive him any wrongdoing in the friendship and he himself would pray for Michael’s soul.

  ‘All life ends in death,’ he said, ‘which is a hard lesson, but we have the consolation of our religion.’

  ‘So do you think,’ William asked, ‘that it would be right for me to come to the funeral, not being a Roman Catholic?’

  ‘I’d have no objection meself,’ said Father Downing. ‘And I imagine that the good Lord Himself would have no great objection to a Protestant either.’

  ‘We’ll give him a fine wake tonight,’ said Danny, when William returned, but when they sent up to the undertaker
for the body, he’d shut the shop and could not be found. So there was no body for the wake. They did without, which was not as it should have been. William wanted to get drunk, but found he couldn’t drink enough to drown his sorrows in the Irish way. He stayed sober and listened to the fiddle and the songs, watching the others around the campfire farewell his friend.

  He felt he was changed forever. He could not say in quite what way, except in the sense of seeing how a man, who was full of life, could pass from life so fast. Life was precious, so full of so much, but so quick and easily gone. And it was all the more sad, Michael having been the last of his family, that he had none but William, his one true friend, to truly mourn him. And whatever the religionists might say about eternity, it did not seem that eternal life might ever be a substitute for this life.

  CHAPTER 5

  It was a cold night and the great Southern Cross blazed in the sky. Fires burned bright, dotted over the field, and there was the sound of voices, talking, laughing and singing.

  The old hands on the goldfields cursed their life because it was too cold, too wet, too dangerous, unprofitable, full of thieves and cheats. They loved it because it was free, it was wild, it had luck and good fortune, it was civilised with a fine observance of the Sabbath and the diggers had a kind regard for their fellow man. The two views prevailed simultaneously, considerable weight given to both sides by alcohol and strong debate, and by what a man might have dug out of the earth that day and what he put in his belly at the end of it.

  It was now six months since Michael’s death, and William and Danny Phelan were in a party of eight men in a shaft on the Eureka lead. They had had many disagreements about how deep they should go, what direction they should take and whether and how much they should accommodate a nearby party, and what form that accommodation should take.

  This day, all that had been forgotten. Their party had hit another jeweller’s shop, not nearly as rich as the first, and there were more partners to share it round, but they all had a fine satisfaction in the decisions they had enforced and were prepared to forget each other’s mistakes. The whole party had gone in a spirit of high celebration to John Alloo’s Chinese eating house and had brought back grog to enjoy round Danny’s fire.