Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  ‘Do you think that all this loyalty might give this new governor some sympathy with the common people?’ William asked Humffray. Humffray was doubtful, but it seemed to William that there was something grand in such demonstrations that cheered the heart and made them all feel a common purpose.

  ‘Did you read about Governor Hotham?’ asked Danny Phelan one evening in the bar. ‘He got such a crowd of well-wishers in Geelong and so many cheers and no groans, that he declared that all power comes from the people. He said it was so.’

  ‘Maybe nobody never said a kind word to him before, them being so strict in the Navy, and he being a naval man, that the kind words of the Victorian people have quite turned his head,’ said William. ‘Or maybe someone in the government sees sense for the first time.’ William poured a measure of whisky for Danny. ‘Maybe they see that the interest of this colony lies in the common man, not in the squatters and their sheep.’

  ‘Mind you, if Governor Hotham didn’t mean it, it’s a dangerous thing to be saying to us diggers, isn’t it?’ said Danny.

  ‘We may get fussy about him sticking to it,’ said William. ‘He might well expand on his thoughts when he arrives here.’

  ‘I think we should invite him into this pub,’ said one wit, ‘and have it out with him. Here, we’re common men, in a pub of the first order, in a town that’s something splendid . . .’

  ‘Unless you happen to step down a shaft on a dark night . . .’

  ‘Or try and drink the water . . .’

  ‘Or walk along this street after the rain . . .’

  ‘Or try and get the police to catch a criminal . . .’

  ‘Or find a policeman who ain’t a criminal hisself . . .’

  ‘Or one who isn’t drunk.’

  And so it went on, with more whisky, more cognac, more beer, much smoking of pipes and fine cigars, and some loud and raucous singing, until the bar closed for the night.

  William went upstairs to the parlour where the more educated and better informed men gathered to talk of the situation on the field. There was John Humffray, the Scot Thomas Kennedy, a Baptist preacher with four children and fire in his belly, and Peter Lalor, an educated Irishman whose brother had been one of the revolutionary Young Irelanders in 1848. Peter Lalor was a tall, good-looking man, often quiet, but with firm ideas on liberty. These were men with rather cooler heads than those downstairs. They were also hopeful and doubtful at the same time that Hotham might change the ways things were done and give more consideration to the needs of the common man.

  John Humffray stayed after the rest left, and had another cognac and talked to William about the Great Charter in England, which had been presented to parliament with millions of signatures in the hope of getting peaceful and democratic reform.

  ‘It failed there,’ Humffray said, ‘but the ideas are powerful, and they will triumph, maybe in this colony.’

  ‘It would be a great thing,’ said William. He had read the Chartist ideas, which offered a road to peaceful reform.

  After Humffray left, William checked with Martin, the night-watchman he had to employ due to the laxity of the police in stopping robberies and catching criminals.

  ‘And how’s Charity tonight?’ he asked, petting the bulldog.

  ‘That dog, Billy,’ said Martin, ‘is no watchdog. In the way of her name, she’s too softly inclined towards the criminal classes.’

  ‘It’s a fine name,’ said William. ‘I bought the litter and gave one I named “Hope” to Danny out on the shaft, for they’re in need of hope there. We have “Charity” here to guard us and Bridget has “Faith” to stick to her side. I won’t be changing the name.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of changing the name,’ said Martin. ‘I was thinking of changing the dog.’

  After that, William spoke to McCrae, who had had arguments with Cook that day and needed some smoothing over himself. Then he sat in the parlour kissing Bridget and wishing she’d relent and share his bed, because it felt as if it would make it somewhat easier to get up at five and rouse Cook to get the breakfasts going, then rouse the guests and have the horses ready for the coach at half past six. Although, in truth, if he had Bridget in his bed, he might never get up at all.

  One Saturday evening, the new governor and his lady arrived at Ballarat and toured the field, Lady Hotham being assisted over muddy spots with the laying of planks and at one stage carried by the digger Big Larry, a burly Irishman. The governor was cheered by great crowds of diggers, but he did not repeat himself as to power coming from the people, although he did say the people of Ballarat were a fine and law-abiding lot.

  ‘What he did not say,’ William said at the bar that night, ‘was that the police of Ballarat are not a fine and law-abiding lot. Whether he did not say so because he did not know what rapscallions they are, or whether he did not wish to hurt feelings at the government camp, I know not.’

  ‘I think the Bendigo diggers did better than us,’ said Danny Phelan. ‘They gave him a petition protesting the licence fee.’

  ‘The Bendigo diggers are a most democratical lot,’ said a young digger. ‘There’ll be trouble at that field yet.’

  ‘We don’t have liberty on any field,’ William said. ‘And what order we have is from our own efforts, despite what the troopers and the police do to undermine us by taking bribes and acting so oppressive.’ And he found it exactly so the next time he was out on the field to have a look down the shaft, which was still not paying, and needed some thinking about. William had thought he should come down to help make decisions and give encouragement, given that the weather was still bitter.

  When he got to the shaft, all the party were gathered at the top. The troopers had ridden by an hour ago and arrested Danny for not having his licence.

  ‘He told them it was in his other shirt, but they chained him,’ said Paddy Madden.

  ‘The trooper wore poncy white gloves, like Danny was filth,’ said another.

  ‘I got the licence from his hut,’ Paddy explained. ‘They wouldn’t look, they wouldn’t listen, the bastards.

  ‘I’ll get him bailed out,’ said William. ‘And I’ll send my stable boy down to help you with pumping. But it’s no use going up to the camp till this afternoon. They’ve taken to marching the poor fellows around half the day while they round up anyone they can find. It’s a disgrace, but we can’t do nothing but pay the fine and get Danny back.’

  He spent half the day organising the shaft and then arguing with a policeman, trying to bail Danny out. The policeman’s breath smelled of grog, and William had to contain his anger.

  ‘They’re bastards,’ said Danny, when William bailed him out. ‘I heard them saying Governor Hotham put out the order for twice-weekly digger hunts. It didn’t take him long to lose his democratical sentiments.’

  William was still in a fury when he went back to the hotel, but his mood improved when he found Bridget putting the bar in order. Tentatively, he told her that he’d like to see her in a new dress for the ball they were going to in a fortnight, and he’d like to pay for it.

  ‘Make the dress . . . well, just so . . . buy what you like but . . .’

  ‘You don’t want me stepping out with you in a costume that looks like a whore’s dress and you’re afraid that’s what I’d order. As if the money might go to my head and deprive me of my natural dignity. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it, Billy Irwin?’

  That had been along the lines of what he was thinking, although not as harshly put. He imagined her looking like a fine lady and was afraid it would somehow go wrong.

  ‘Don’t stint yourself,’ he said, ‘that’s all I meant, Bridget.’ And he wished he was not always at such a disadvantage with her. The disadvantage came from his love, which in itself, seemed like something she might be glad to have, although she never let him know.

  Bridget knew exactly what she wanted, and it seemed to her that she had wanted it from when she was a small girl in Ireland. Her granny, who’d been a servant a
t the landlord’s house, had told her of the fine things the gentry wore and the money they spent on them, and the little extras they had, like lace garters for their stockings. The women of the big house had fussed about their dresses and looked at the fabrics, choosing trims and ribbons with great care. Her granny had explained how the dress itself was a beautiful thing, and even more beautiful when it was put on, so the girl was both modest and comely.

  In Mrs Whatley’s shop there were black silks, coloured silks and patterned ones, and Bridget examined them all very carefully. They were expensive, but she didn’t let that trouble her. There were moire antiques that she liked, striped wincies, French twills and paisley shawls, like the one Billy had already bought her. She liked it that he knew what suited her and what looked right on a woman.

  ‘I’d like the cream silk with the pale pink flower and the green stripe,’ said Bridget. She felt another fabric up against her cheek. ‘And the underskirt in this.’ It felt cool and soft, and she could imagine herself slipping into it. She began to look through the ribbons. She remembered Granny talking about ribbons, and how they were wasted up at the big house, sometimes only worn a few times till the young ladies discarded them, while the labourers in the fields went hungry for want of a small coin.

  She turned her attention to the velvet, stroking it as she might a cat, the sense of her dear granny in her head. She knew if she kept thinking these thoughts, she might even get a tear in her eye. There were lots of Irish on the diggings that were sentimental about their native land, but apart from missing her dear granny, Bridget thought Ireland wet and cold and miserable, and however people might long for the green of it, she did not. Her father had been a storekeeper there, and a very poor store it was. But now her father waxed lyrical about old Ireland. He always believed the past was a golden time, but in truth, he had been miserable always. Her mother had become miserable out of a sort of sullen duty to him, and her sister was often miserable too. Bridget did not want that for herself.

  When she was first in the colony, a young American captured her fancy, and he told her that one of the founding laws in America was the right to be happy. She found it a most curious idea. She had often suffered a sort of discontent by her own happiness not being quite enough. Sitting by the fire, kissing with Billy, she felt happy, but then she thought it couldn’t last, or more or less of it would spoil it, or he’d be like all men, who took their wives for granted. She couldn’t quite settle with him in case it took her down a path of unhappiness.

  The cream flowered silk pleased her, looking very fine in her imagination, with a sweet underskirt and a thin green velvet ribbon and a panel of dull green satin down the front, to show her shape. As Mrs Whatley measured her, she gave Bridget the latest gossip. It was about the hotelier Bentley, who owned the Eureka Hotel on Bakery Hill, killing one of his customers, knocking a poor Scot called Scobie on the head with a shovel. Bridget felt a terrible sadness pass over her. Not that she knew poor Scobie, but what manner of a world was it where a man would hit his customer with a shovel and kill him stone dead? It seemed that the bright promise of the American law of happiness could not hold in such a world.

  William thought Scobie’s death a shocking thing; the man had been hit from behind, and it seemed clear that Bentley, the hotel owner, was the culprit. Bentley was a rough man, a Vandemonian, an ex-convict, who was close in his dealings to the government camp, so much so that it was believed that his Eureka Hotel was jointly owned with the magistrate D’Ewes. It was a despised place, for Bentley plied his customers with drink and then evicted them blind drunk, and, it was suspected, often robbed them in the process. And because he was close with the government camp, it was open all hours to all comers, and was a place of fierce ill-repute, not least because many of the troopers and the police drank there.

  ‘D’Ewes was the magistrate for the coroner’s inquest into the death,’ William explained to Bridget as they opened the bar the next day. ‘It can’t be proper for him to have jurisdiction over such a thing when he has an interest in it. Even those on the jury says the thing was snuffed. D’Ewes discharged Bentley, no stain on his character, even though the other commissioner disagreed. They said it was justified manslaughter.’

  ‘It’s a serious wrong to dispose of a man’s life so lightly,’ said Bridget. ‘Murder’s a terrible crime, the worst. They owe it to the poor man and his family to do him justice.’

  ‘There’s a meeting to be held about the murder. I’m going and John Humffray says he’s going too. This thing cannot stand. It must be challenged by decent men.’

  ‘Mr Irwin, Mr Irwin,’ called the cook’s girl, shrilling from the kitchen. ‘Cook’s having one of her moods again, and I cannot kill a fowl on my own. I never killed a fowl in me life, and I tried turnin’ his head, like Cook says, but it won’t work, Mr Irwin.’

  ‘Mr Irwin, Mr Irwin,’ Bridget said, imitating the girl. ‘You’d never think a woman might sound so unpleasant. Go on, Billy, knock her on the head with a shovel. I’d swear on the Bible that’s justified manslaughter.’

  The meeting about Scobie’s murder was on a searing hot day with a powerful northerly wind blowing up the dust and papers, scattering refuse so the smell and the heat felt choking. The meeting was held at the spot of Scobie’s death, near the Eureka Hotel. By the time William got there, there was a great mass of diggers, the biggest crowd William had ever seen – later said to be ten thousand or more. The police were present, lounging against the hotel wall as if to show their disdain for the diggers.

  The size of the crowd made it hard to follow what was happening. The Scot Thomas Kennedy spoke with great feeling of the injustice done to his countryman Scobie, but much of his speech was blown away by the fierce wind. A resolution was passed that the diggers were not satisfied with the way the death had been investigated. A committee was voted in to find a way of prosecuting Bentley, for it was clear the man should be tried, given that what had already happened was a farce in the extreme.

  The temper of the crowd grew stronger with each speech.

  ‘The government camp is a place where justice is bought and sold,’ said Humffray, but a small dust storm interrupted him, so the meeting divided up. There was heated discussion at various places in the crowd and resolutions were sent up to the platform.

  ‘What about the disgraceful treatment of our priest?’ asked an Irishman. ‘An insult to our religion!’ A cheer went up.

  ‘What happened with your priest?’ William asked Danny Phelan.

  ‘They arrested his servant for not having a licence,’ said Danny, ‘but he was never a digger. When that wouldn’t stick, they charged him with assault, but it was them assaulted him, which is obvious to any thinking person, for the poor servant is a cripple, quite unable to assault anyone, although I say he would have been in his rights to do so.’

  The Germans’ band tried to play, but the wind swept away their oom pah pah so it sounded like a whine. The only glue, it seemed, was the rising anger of the crowd.

  ‘It’s costing us, missing a day’s work for this,’ Danny Phelan proclaimed. ‘And when did diggers ever get redress? There’s no justice for the likes of us.’ He was cheered. Drink being sold by sly groggers added to the passions of the crowd.

  ‘More police coming!’ someone called out. ‘Look!’

  ‘Where’s Bentley? Where’s Bentley?’ chanted the section of the crowd nearest the hotel.

  ‘Show yerself, yer mongrel,’ someone called, and the crowd began to groan fiercely, which was the habit of English crowds.

  ‘There goes Bentley,’ someone yelled. ‘On a bloody police horse.’

  ‘The coward.’

  ‘He’s riding up to the camp.’

  One digger who was a little under the weather struck the hotel with his fist, and shouted, ‘I say this hotel belongs to the diggers!’ This cry spread through the crowd and some lads threw stones and broke the hotel lamp and windows.

  There were as many diggers restraining tho
se bent on destruction as there were destroyers, who were now ripping planks off the side of the hotel. William hated this. The violence put the diggers in a bad light, depriving them of the moral force Humffray advocated so strongly. He saw troopers arrive and thought they might quiet the crowd, but they lined up beside the building, imperious and aloof. Gold Commissioner Rede arrived and ordered the soldiers about, but to little effect.

  Rede stood on a window sill of the hotel and began to address the crowd. He spoke irritably and any vestige of authority he possessed was destroyed by someone throwing rubbish at him.

  ‘Look at him, in his gold braid. A real Napoleon he is,’ said one of the Italians.

  Suddenly a great cheer went up from the crowd and William saw a tongue of flame lick along the bowling alley next to the hotel. The bowling alley was made of canvas, and with the wind it conflagrated splendidly, so fire quickly engulfed the hotel. The troopers rode off, as if the business had nothing to do with them. There was much shouting and cheering around the burning building. William did not like the violent turn the meeting had taken and he left as he did not wish to be part of it.

  As he walked back to the Star, a fierce storm broke, the hot wind turning to icy cold rain and then hail. He ran, soaking wet, as Main Street turned to mud. When he arrived the bar was filling with men from the meeting.

  ‘Being a hotel owner myself,’ William said aside to Bridget, who was working the bar, ‘I find it hard to rejoice in crowds taking the law into their own hands and burning a man’s hotel.’

  ‘Although,’ said Bridget, smiling at the digger she was serving, ‘if there are hotels to be burned, my choice would be Bentley’s, rather than this one.’