Others on the wharf huddled under an awning, but William could not bear to lose sight of the steamer which he could see in the distance. He felt a great agitation inside himself, a great longing and a great fear that somehow Robert might not be on the steamer. The agitation was so great he felt he could not govern it, for it was not until that moment that he understood how completely he had left one life and embarked on another. Now, the two lives were about to join again. He did not know exactly what this might mean, except that it meant a great deal indeed, and was a thing of great weight and intensity within him.
It had been a long business to persuade Father to send Robert, for it seemed as if Father could not let go of Robert, unsatisfactory though Robert was. It seemed as if Father had wanted Robert to change before he let him go, but the less willing he was to release him, the less amenable Robert was to change. So the thing had stalled for a considerable time.
The rain slicing down stung William’s face, but he was fixed on the waves and the boat, his heart pounding, wanting so much to see Robert. Images came into his head of when he had embraced Robert the last time, Lizey’s brave smile, his mother’s face, the slow trot of the old dog Diana, the bog with its quick flowing stream, Ann Jane’s thick plait, all piling on top of each other. As soon as he could make out figures on the deck of the steamer, he began to wave, frantically, great arcs in the air, which he knew to be foolish, but could not stop, until he saw a return wave, and imagined he saw Robert, tall and dark on the foredeck. And as the steamer came into view, he saw indeed it was Robert, and he yelled out his name, hoarse and loud, and thought he heard the return shout of ‘William!’
And then, as the steamer came alongside, he felt tears on his cheeks, so that he could barely see, except for Robert’s great smile, and his tall self, with the dark shock of hair, and the plaited willow trunk, the same as the one he himself had brought from Knockaleery, flung onto the wharf. There was the clatter of Robert’s boots down the gangplank, and their arms around each other, him squeezing the life out of his big dark brother, who somehow still smelled of Ireland, both with tears and laughter, unable to speak, so great was the excitement of it all.
And he remembered that day, which had been back in 1857, through all the time after, when Robert gave him grief, and was so different from what he had expected. ‘Now be thankful’ were the words that always came into his head thinking of it, maybe a line of an old hymn, most forgotten, but containing that sense of thankfulness, of gratitude, that connection with his life on the other side of the world, which was now with him.
* * *
April 9, 1861
My dear William, Mrs Irwin and child,
I let you know of the deplorable harvest we have had and the state of the country, with all crops destroyed by incessant rains, snow and frost and the most part out in stooks, and indeed some yet to be shorn. God look to the poor of this country, for every thing as regards provisions will be at an enormous price if they can be got at all – no food for man or beast, it is most lamentable. We are all in our usual health, thank God – only that your dear Mother is not improving in her health. As for the rest of us, we have no reason to complain.
We have now got into our new house which is very comfortable, and we have plenty of room. There is only the parlour and kitchen on the ground floor and two large rooms upstairs, so that we are snugly situated now, but not without trouble and expences which you know well cannot be done otherwise.
I am sorry to inform you that, that part of your letter wishing sister Eliza to go to you, has prayed on your dear Mothers mind since; and she desires me say, how could you expect that she would part with Eliza? Oh! not until she is laid in Kildress, but still she is aware that you meant kindly towards bringing her there, but which must be deferred to some other time, for at present we could not lose her.
You can let us Know when you write again what loss Robert sustained by his place taking fire for he did not mention in his last letter.
I have now given you all the news. We receive your newspapers regular, and we would be always happy to have a letter from you with them every month if you could find it convenient. Your dear Mother always looks for a letter from her William. She and your brothers and sisters, nephews and cousins all join with me in our kindest love to you, Mrs Irwin and son.
Expecting to hear from you soon again and I Remain
My Dear Children
Your Loving Father
Joseph Irwin
* * *
Eliza’s eyesight was well recovered from the years when she was young. Her eyes no longer got red and sore. Father said it might have been the time of the famine, when she was growing, that they went wrong, and now, with more food, they had come right. It was true that the fields in the distance often looked much softer than they were, and the church at Kildress always took her by surprise when she came up to it. Close by, it looked like a church, but across the fields it looked like a giant with a pointed hat. But she could see well up close, and since Father’s sight was poorer due to his age, she read the letters to him from William and the others, in the parlour of their new house. The parlour had two armchairs, a new table and a dresser which had a mirror.
The mirror was a great delight to Eliza, since they had never had such a thing, so while she knew her family’s faces intimately, it was a surprise to her to look at her own, and see her blue eyes and her black hair and how the curls fell round her face, and how her face was quite long, but pleasing, and how her teeth were even, not like Eleanor’s or young James’s, who seemed to have teeth too numerous for his mouth, so they grew a little crossed in the front, although he was a lively and beautiful child.
There were things that showed in the mirror that she had not been aware of. On account of being the youngest of the family for so long, she had always felt young, but the mirror showed her the face of a woman, not a girl, which at first felt most strange to her. It surprised her that she looked somewhat like Mother.
It amused her too, to find her various faces in the mirror. She could pull happy and sad faces, and also angry and wrathful ones, or make herself stupid-looking. Sometimes she practised these faces when she was alone in front of the mirror, and then pulled them with young James, Robert’s son, who had come to live with them when his mother had died. While James fitted into the house like he had always been part of it, it was she whom he was closest to, on account of her having nursed his mother when she was dying.
She reckoned up her age to be twenty-five or twenty-six, so brother William would be almost thirty years of age now, although she always thought of him as the young man he was when he left. He must be different now, but she couldn’t quite imagine how, for she thought he would be much grander than men in Ireland who kept hotels, leastways round Cookstown. Maybe he would be like a man in Belfast or Dublin, although she had never seen such a person, for she had never been to those cities.
The new house was a lot of work, but it was a pleasure to her, being more comfortable and better fitted than the old one. As she swept and cleaned and helped Mother to rest herself comfortably by the fire, she imagined William coming home. She imagined herself explaining the fineries of the new house to him: the fireplace with the shelves along the sides, the new pots they had, and the lace at the window which she had stitched. All of these things his money had bought for them.
She wouldn’t tell him how it had changed between her and Mother and Father, for he would be able to see that. She was almost mistress of the house now, with Mother not being well, although Mother still directed her in the particulars of things. And even though she wasn’t married, James was like a child of her own. It was she who had insisted they take him in when Jane died, and since then she oversaw him washing himself clean, saying his prayers and going off to school. He helped Father considerably, which he was able to do, now being seven years old.
Robert had gone to William by the time James came to live with them. There had been no other place for James to go except to
the poor house, and Mother and Father knew that was not right. They had never accepted Jane, but they took to James, who was a lovely child, with gentle manners and grace about him.
She and he were great friends for, despite his mother’s antipathy to her, she had persisted until Jane was forced to yield to her friendship. Jane’s death had affected her and she thought much of religion at the time and derived much solace from it. She could not see how people could live without religion, for the world was full of misfortune, and a person had to find the strength to go through it all.
Eliza read newspapers from her sisters in America, and from William in Ballarat. The Ballarat Star gave the names of shareholders in the companies, and reported the difficulties with the Chinese population, who were said to be immoral on account of being heathens. She read stories of children lost and men dying in the mines, fierce election contests, a water supply for the town and grand botanical gardens being planned, nuggets worth thousands of pounds, and a railway coming. Fire seemed most prevalent, for she had seen in the paper how William’s hotel had burned down in the middle of 1861. He had been burned on his leg, but a benefit with singers and bands had raised 100 pounds for him. She read he had insured his hotel for 500 pounds, when it was worth much more than that. Five hundred pounds seemed a great deal of money to Eliza, and she could not imagine a hotel could cost more. William had written and told them that Robert’s little pub, outside of Ballarat at a place called Italian Gully, had also burned down, but they knew little of it, since Robert was never mentioned in the Ballarat Star and almost never wrote.
William had asked often for Eliza to come, even after Robert had gone to him. She had read William’s latest letter in an even voice to Father, although trembling inside. A couple of days later, Father came to the milking shed. Eliza milked on her own now, Mother not being well enough.
‘Your mam needs you, Lizey. I know you wish to go to William, but it isn’t possible.’ He leaned against the sacks of corn they were about to send off to market. ‘It’s a great shame for you, but you’re much wanted here.’ He smiled at her. ‘I am glad for myself. I like to have you with us.’ He put his cap on and went away.
After she finished milking, Eliza called to Hercules and ran down the laneway. She could feel herself much agitated, and she thought of how much she wanted to go, and how little account was taken of her wanting, even though she knew things must be as they were. She fought to keep the tears back, telling herself it was her dear parents who needed her so much. It was coming on to dusk, and that time of day further stirred her – not light, not dark, just the long half-light of early summer. Her longing for William and Ballarat swirled around inside her, and she could feel the tears in her eyes. When she looked at the sky, it sparkled because of her tears and she thought of the lights in the theatre in Ballarat. She could see William in his fine clothes, his Bridget in silk, and the dancing girls, so she followed their steps there in the laneway and sang to the music, all the while trying to choke back those same tears that made her vision of it all sparkle so. She wished to lose herself in her imaginings, and in dancing those few steps. It felt very close, mixed in with her grief.
‘Aye, Miss Eliza, yer dancin’ in the lane. I never saw no-one dance so beautiful in the Tattykeel Lane.’ Sam McGowan came around the corner and caught her at it, so she felt shamed and stupid.
‘There’s no need to mock a woman for dancing in the lane,’ she called back at him. ‘I have an entirely good reason for it, and for anything I might say to meself as well. Which in any case, is a private matter.’ But she heard him laugh as he ran off, and she felt mortified and confined. The parish of Kildress was a fine place, but it bound her too tightly. Once Sam McGowan was out of sight, she sat herself under the hedgerow with Hercules. He licked her hand sympathetically; she let her tears flow, and cried the grief out into her kerchief.
That night, helping Mother swallow the bitter tonic the doctor had given her, and getting her warm, she felt the same mortification and confinement. She asked God to forgive her, for it was her own mother who needed her.
‘It’s natural you feel so,’ Eleanor had told her when Eliza had spoken of her disappointment. ‘We see so many go. William’s most generous, but he can afford to be, for he lives that fine life in a distant place. But some of us are made to be left behind.’
Eliza said nothing, but she thought of it much, for it was deep in her. Later, she confided her hopes to Hercules that she was not made so, that one day she might go, not just to Portstewart, but across to Liverpool, and then on a boat across the sea to the great south land. She did not want to be left behind.
William thought it felt grand, having a picnic by Lake Wendouree, which had been made from Yuille’s swamp. It still had rather too many reeds, but the shores were a pretty place for a picnic after Christmas. There was him and Bridget and their baby, William Joseph, Robert, his wife, Birdie, and baby, Mary Jane, their cousin John Geddes from Ireland, recently arrived from Knockaleery, and Joe Brown, who was the brother of James Brown, whom he had come to the colony with – all Irish, which made for a particular conviviality.
Robert and Birdie and their baby were living with William and Bridget, since the pub that William had bought for Robert out at Italian Gully had been damaged by fire. ‘As pubs are wont to do,’ William had remarked wryly, since the Star had burned to the ground six months ago, a misfortune made worse by the fact that McCrae had left the partnership, so he was on his own entirely. And he had underinsured the building by a large amount.
Gold had continued to nurture the city of Ballarat. From a sea of canvas and dirt it was emerging as a splendid city, built with the prodigious energy of the ordinary men who had dug the gold. Despite the loss of his hotel, William still felt his place was in the city. He continued to believe fervently and passionately in gold, which had become so much part of him, for it required intelligence as well as luck, and provided more than occasional profit.
Since Eureka, mining had changed. Although small parties still worked the field, generally men of capital banded together in partnerships or in companies to invest in shafts of three hundred feet depth or more. There was much buying and selling of shares, an activity in which William was much involved.
Managers and miners were now employed to work the mines. Water had to be pumped out, rock blasted, and the gutters of gold, when found, twisted and turned unpredictably in a way to raise tempers. Laws had been changed to encompass this new way of working and the Mining Court was full of disputes. There were many lawyers’ offices along Lydiard Street, and the endless work of litigation made the lawyers richer than any investor or miner. As well as following the alluvial leads, quartz was being crushed, so there was the constant hiss and banging of the stampers. So while Ballarat itself gained the graciousness of a town, the land itself was dug and cleared, the old heaps worked over again and again, the very hills pounded down in search of the precious metal.
Many men had come to hate that life, but William never had, maybe because he’d been lucky. Some thought him unlucky because of the terrible fire which had burned the Star. But William refused to be sentimental about the Star and old Main Street. Now the money was moving and, if he could manage it, he wanted to move with it, up to the west side of town. The question was how to find the money, and it was to this his mind turned frequently, for he had a wife and babe now.
But he thought nothing of those cares as he watched his family and friends enjoying the picnic. Bridget sat on the blanket on the grass, smiling down at the baby, who kicked his legs and gurgled at her.
‘What a lovely boy you are, little Willy. What a lovely boy!’ she said and pulled up the child’s dress and blew on his stomach, so he laughed. She leaned over and picked up Robert’s baby, Mary Jane, and laid her down beside little William. ‘Look at them,’ she said to Robert’s Birdie. ‘What a pair of babes we got from these hulking men of ours.’ William caught her eye and she smiled up at him. ‘Who ever thought you’d give me a son a
s fine as this?’
‘This one frets something awful,’ said Birdie, fanning the flies away from the baby. ‘I swear I was walking her all last night, with her tooth breaking through . . . Oh these flies, they drive me to distraction.’
‘The smoke from Billy’s fire will drive the flies off,’ said Bridget. ‘Oh, how Billy likes this. He feels free out in the open air, like he was just a young digger still courting me. Those were fine days, weren’t they, Billy?’
‘They was the most frustrating days of my entire life,’ said William, poking at his fire, ‘on account of you giving me so little encouragement. I thought I’d never get spliced.’ But he was smiling, thinking her very pretty. Birdie was pretty enough, but his Bridget had style to her, with her pale blue cotton frock with its little lace collar and her straw bonnet. Poor Birdie always looked as if she was needing a little attention one way or the other.
William handed a mutton chop out of the fire to Robert. ‘Here, brother, put that on your bread,’ which Robert did, eating it like he was starving. William remembered how Robert had always been the most hungry at home in Knockaleery. Since he’d come to Ballarat, where food was plentiful, he’d eaten with the same appetite, with the result that he was now a big man, not just in height but in girth too, although still very handsome, his hair still dark, his face intense.
Robert seemed altogether unworried by the loss of his hotel and not in a hurry to repair it, whereas William was very concerned with re-establishing his own livelihood. Trade in Main Street was down from the digging days, but after the fire he’d immediately taken over managing the John O’Groats Hotel, another Main Street hotel, so that he and Bridget had not only a place to live, but money coming in. He wanted to rebuild his fortune, but often he woke in the night worrying how in the world he would do it.
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