‘I should tell Mother and Father.’
‘Your dear mother, she’s not so well. Eliza writes they’re in the downhill of life. What would your brothers in the Freemasons tell you?’
Bridget was forever trying to find out what the Freemasons did and what they thought. The idea of him having sworn secrets from her was something she struggled with mightily, and she tried to break him down whenever she could, but to no avail, because he had sworn the Masonic oath of secrecy. The Freemasons worshipped the Supreme Being, but preached tolerance, equality and brotherhood. When he had been asked to join them some years after the stockade, it had been a great honour for a man like him, a wonderful thing because it seemed like a new version of the brotherhood of the digging days, only larger and grander, taking in the spiritual realm, reaching back into ancient wisdom, and at the same time offering practical guidance and education, brother to brother. His fellow Masons were men who had a vision of the place where they lived and what they could do in their lives. His brother Robert was not like them and that frustrated him.
‘I’ll think on it,’ he said.
William woke early each day to rouse the cook and wake the passengers for the coach. This morning, there was just Joe Brown going back to Melbourne. Joe was hard to wake, still having the Irish habit of sleeping until he was woken, which caused him considerable problems as a policeman. William knocked on the door but Joe didn’t stir, so William went in and dripped cold water on him till Joe woke with a start, then burst into nervous laughter.
‘You’re lucky I didn’t pour the whole jug over you,’ William joked. ‘Cook’s got your breakfast going. You need to hurry for the coach.’ William got a pot of coffee for himself and sat in the nook between the kitchen and the dining room that he called his office. He thumbed through the accounts. He was making money out of the John O’Groats, but never quite enough to get back to where he had been. He would call Cook to account for ordering a whole sheep, a large part of which had gone to waste. He shook his head over the feed bill for the stables.
Joe came in and sat there on a high stool, jiggling his plate of bacon and eggs, toast and kidneys on his knees, chatting about this and that, and saying again what a grand girl Bridget was. William was to thank her for making him so welcome at Christmas, like one of the family, and also to mention what a fine child little William Joseph was. Joe was a different guest to John Geddes, who ate and drank liberally but never seemed grateful for the hospitality.
‘It was a fine thing to have you here,’ William said as they walked across to the stables. They were still putting the horses in harness, which gave him a moment. ‘What would you do, Joe,’ he asked, ‘if you thought a member of your family was turning Catholic?’
‘You mean Robert?’ asked Joe, who had a policeman’s eye for what was what. And when William nodded, he went on. ‘Has he joined them?’
‘He’s not joined himself, but he’s had the child baptised.’
‘Then I think you’d have to have words. Kind words, not harsh. And maybe you’d have to take some action because it’s not right.’
William paused and fiddled with the harness, then turned to Joe. ‘But what words? What action?’
CHAPTER 10
William put on his hat and whistled the bulldog Charity. The other bulldog, Faith, always stayed with Bridget, having no taste for the society of the street. Before William left, he poked his head into the bar of the John O’Groats, where Danny Phelan was preparing for the lunchtime drinkers. Danny Phelan had lost poor Hope down a shaft, a story Danny always made much of, explaining that he had lost ‘Hope’ on the diggings, which had turned him to working in the bar for William Irwin for ‘Charity’. Danny had no great ambitions, but he wasn’t on the edge of respectability like poor Paddy Madden.
‘The liquor merchant will be delivering the cognac sometime this morning,’ William said. ‘You’ll need to put it in the cellar. We have several bottles already on the shelves.’
Danny came out from behind the bar, wearing the long white apron of a barman. ‘I’ll be needing to absent meself this afternoon, for there’s the funeral of old Joe Keating that’s being held.’
‘I wish you’d told me of it yesterday,’ said William.
‘I didn’t know meself, yesterday,’ said Danny. ‘The widow only put word round this morning, so I already missed the wake, and it would put me out of sorts to miss the funeral in addition.’
‘I’ll mind the bar meself,’ said William.
‘Thanks, Billy. Much obliged.’
It felt awkward to William that Danny called him Billy, when all others working in the hotel called him Mr Irwin. He and Danny were further apart than in their days on the field. There was the matter of the different paths they had taken in life, and their different religions. In some ways he felt Danny had become more an employee than the friend he had been. He thought, however, that Danny still had the friendship uppermost in his mind. There was friendship somewhere in it, and he supposed it could not be changed.
Charity trailed behind William as he climbed the hill to the west side of town. This part of the town was properly laid out, with wide streets, and trees planted down the middle of Sturt Street. There was a post office, the hospital, the Benevolent Asylum, many banks and different churches, including the St Andrews Kirk where he and Bridget worshipped. On the western edge of the town was the lake and the botanical gardens. The buildings had a solidity that those in the east lacked, although as befitted a mining town there were still mining shafts mixed in with the places of business, one behind Bath’s Hotel and another on the opposite side. Sturt Street was far more substantial than Main Street, with its mud and floods, whores and opium dens and failing flea pits, had ever been. The foundation stones of many buildings had been laid in Masonic ceremonies, of which, on occasion, William had been proud to be a part. He felt pride in the spirit of democracy and progress, although the growth of the town had brought out the differences between men who had prospered and moved ahead and men who had not.
In the street, many people greeted the bulldog Charity, who was known as a character, mainly on account of her extreme ugliness and friendly nature.
‘Takin’ your master for a walk, Charity?’
‘Fine day for a spot of scavenging, Charity.’
William tipped his hat to Henry Cuthbert, who was his solicitor, a very learned man who had been at the High Court of Chancery in Ireland, and was therefore not one to greet a bulldog in the street. They stopped to exchange a few remarks about the Black Hill quartz mine, in which they both held shares, and which was beginning to pay some dividends.
‘Of course, we old diggers still hold out hope for a great alluvial prize,’ said William, ‘although it’s a chancy business.’
‘Indeed,’ said Cuthbert. ‘Very chancy. It still amazes me, the industry of it. I was working on two disputes and just out of fancy, I mapped how we could walk across this city at a depth of two hundred feet or more.’
‘Or swim, if the pumps weren’t working,’ replied William. ‘I was down last week, over three hundred feet deep and on the walls, if you hold a candle close, you can see the fossils of some sea creatures there. It’s something miraculous, that we never dreamed of back in old Ireland.’
‘Indeed,’ said Cuthbert, a trifle stiffly, on account of his Ireland being a superior place to the tenant farm at Knockaleery, which showed up in his speech and his learning and many other things. Henry Cuthbert was always the most polite of men, although known to be hard in business. William had great admiration for him, for as well as being a fine solicitor Cuthbert had had a part in establishing the local gas works and other enterprises which enhanced life in the town.
Cuthbert had not come to Ballarat until after the great victory of Eureka had been won, so he lacked a touch of democracy. He was a Freemason, which was how he had come to be William’s solicitor. Cuthbert had organised William’s life insurance for him, and helped draw up the deeds for a mining company William w
as a director of, so he had felt most indebted to him, although the size of Cuthbert’s bill had reduced that feeling somewhat.
He tipped his hat to Henry Cuthbert and they went their separate ways. Despite Cuthbert’s reserve and haughtiness, William liked that they were acquainted. In Ireland, he would not have been in a position to talk to a man like Cuthbert on equal terms. It was here that being a Freemason helped for, though their purpose was a spiritual and civic one, this connection resulted in considerable trust in other matters between them.
William had often wished Robert might be part of all this and share his sense of enterprise. He had dreamed of having a hotel in partnership with Robert, but Robert’s way of working was different, and his Bridget was quite clear that she and Robert’s Birdie would not happily co-exist in the same household.
‘I had enough trouble with my own sister,’ she had said. ‘And I wouldn’t want to be taking Birdie on, although if your sister Eliza comes to us, that would be another matter altogether.’
William walked to the Share Exchange which was known as ‘the Corner’, being on the corner of Sturt and Lydiard streets. The Corner was crowded with men who for the most part he knew, and many of whom had been clay-spattered diggers a few years ago. Now, they, like the town, were spruced up, opinionated as ever about their own particular brand of geology and the way gold should be extracted. They spilled out onto the footpath, gossip and rumour spreading through the crowd just like it used to spread from shaft to shaft on the field, now provoking spirited bidding for shares from the floor. The men here were hot with gold lust, hoping, hoping, hoping that a reef would be struck, or their hole would bottom to a great alluvial lead. Some were perennially gloomy, but most, like William, felt a loss of fortune here was not the permanent tragedy it might be elsewhere.
William had bought himself a seat on the Exchange, which allowed him to buy and sell on his own behalf and on behalf of others, and to launch companies in which he had an interest. Now he checked the prices for the day, and decided he should neither buy nor sell.
‘I heard the Prince of Wales mine might be paying a dividend soon,’ someone said to him. ‘Have you heard anything?’
‘I hear it’s expected,’ he said. ‘But it’s showing in the price already.’
He listened to some more talk about the Royal Saxon and the Kohinoor, and reflected that he often had better information from jawing in the bar. His broking made him money and lost him money too, with information having to be sifted from gossip and rumour, often with great difficulty. It was a different business from the hotel business, which was predictable and orderly, but he was addicted to the excitement of gold and the element of chance.
As he was leaving the Corner, he caught sight of John Basson Humffray, jotting figures in a notebook and looking most despondent.
‘I’ve made a terrible mess of things,’ Humffray said gloomily when William greeted him. ‘I’m not a man suited to it.’ He snapped his notebook shut. ‘I’ve lost more than I can afford in speculation.’
‘It’s easy enough to do, John – I’ve gained and lost meself.’
‘You seem able to recover,’ said Humffray. ‘I’ve not seen you despairing.’
William reflected that although the worry of his financial affairs often bore in on him, especially in the dark of night, Humffray was right – he was not one to be oppressed by it. The worry did not squash him down, as it did John Humffray. The goldfields, right from the start, always represented a future which would be different from the closed in, shrinking life of Knocka-leery. He knew that one could not really trust to luck, or even to hard work, but it seemed the only way to proceed in living one’s life. But he didn’t know how to explain it to Humffray.
‘I want to look at how the railway station’s coming along in Lydiard Street,’ said Humffray. ‘It seems to me that it’s not the only place for a station. My constituents in Ballarat East might appreciate a station too. Will you walk up with me?’
‘Gladly,’ said William. He thought the railway would give a great advantage to Ballarat, and he hadn’t yet looked closely at where they were building the new station.
They walked up Lydiard Street to where the station was to be. It was laid out and William could see it was to be a grand edifice. He could imagine people coming off the train, and all the goods being unloaded. This place might well become the hub of the city. He glanced across the road, and noticed there was land for sale.
‘That’s a large block across there,’ he said to Humffray.
Humffray glanced across at it. ‘Indeed it is.’
William estimated the size of the block. It had a horse grazing on it, and it stretched a way back from the road. People coming out of the station would look straight across to the land. They would see any building upon the site. He could see it in his head . . . people coming here on the railway, to this great provincial city . . . he hit upon the name.
‘What do you think of the “Provincial” as a name?’ he asked Humffray.
‘A name for what?’
‘A hotel.’
‘A hotel?’
‘Indeed. Across the road. Do you want to look at the land?’
‘That land across the street?’
‘It’s large enough, I would think.’
They walked across, and Charity made the acquaintance of the horse, while William tramped the paddock.
His vision expanded quickly, filling his mind. He’d build in timber, a long, low building to suit the site, so the first thing that would strike the eye would be ‘William Irwin’s Family and Commercial Provincial Hotel’ in a finely lettered sign running across the front of the building. He’d have flags flying above. His name was important, not just a vanity, for he was known to many on the goldfields through friendship, and through owning the Star. And he could put a board with an advertisement in the station itself, for he’d seen one like it at the Geelong station. And there would be men unloading goods who would later need a drink, and families who would need a night’s accommodation before travelling on to towns further west. Which meant that the hotel would need fine stables for coaches. He loved the stabling part of hotel work. The coming and going of coaches imposed a rhythm on the day, and he enjoyed the work of tending the horses.
William knew he must have the land.
But Humffray, although he had great appreciation of his friend’s commercial sense, could not see past a muddy paddock, or how the name of a hotel mattered, or whether it might contain ten bedrooms or thirty. So they talked further about which of Humffray’s shares might be sold without too much loss, for his financial situation was poor indeed. When Humffray left, William tramped over the land, his mind jumping everywhere, and wondering how on earth he could afford it, but also knowing he must have it. He whistled to Charity, who had found a cat to annoy, and set off home in a buoyant mood.
* * *
14th November 1861
Knockaleery
My Dear William,
Your long lost, and wrecked Letter by the Columban came to hand and we were very happy to hear of you and mistress & son being then well, thanks be to God. This leaves us all here in our usual state of health with the exception of your dear Mother, who is still in a poor state of health, and the weather being so changeable, is much against her.
There are a great many People here bound this Month for Australia. There is a Daughter of that Family of Johnsons below Joseph Baxters towards the Kildress River who some number of years ago Emigrated to Sydney and has lately returned to see her Mother and she is now going back taking her Brother Thomas with her. There are also, them Children belonging to Joseph Brown whose Passages were paid on the other side by their Sisters that have been Married to some of the Buchan’s, Henry Newberry’s Sons and a great many more.
I had to get the writing on your letter that was in the sea inked over again. You mentioned in the Columban letter that your brother Robert was to write by the same mail. If he did we never got it.
Your
dear Mother, brothers, sisters and nephews all join with me in kindest love to you Mrs Irwin and son William Joseph hoping to hear from you soon.
I Remain
My Dear William
Your Loving Father
Joseph Irwin
* * *
‘I’ll be back soon,’ Eliza called in to Mother. ‘James and me, we’re going down to the stream to pick the strawberries.’ Pretending she didn’t hear Mother’s hoarse shout of protest, she took off running with James, Hercules barking at their heels.
‘Do you have to do as Grandmother says?’ asked James. They slowed and he took her hand.
‘She is my mother and she has the right of precedence,’ said Eliza.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means she’s older, and entitled.’
‘But you could do different – not do as she says.’
‘I would not want to,’ said Eliza. ‘Well, I may want to, but we owe those that love and rear us. Especially when they are old.’
‘When you are old, who will give you precedence?’
‘If I marry, my own children may.’ She felt the disappointment as she said it. She knew by looking in the mirror she was past her youth. And there was a want of suitors, owing to so very many emigrating. All the youth were leaving for America, Australia or New Zealand. And the more that went, the more they sent back to fetch others from home, so the whole neighbourhood was unravelling.
‘I heard Uncle Joseph say you won’t marry.’
‘Oh, if I emigrate, I may.’
‘Uncle Joseph said you won’t emigrate.’
‘I may,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t leave Mother, but I may go, in time.’
‘If you don’t, who will give you precedence?’
‘My young nephew may,’ she said, ‘seeing as I’m like a mother to you.’ She smiled at him. ‘You shouldn’t ask me such questions, for they are not entirely respectful.’
Above the Starry Frame Page 17