Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  ‘What will you do now?’ asked Joe, who could sense William’s tension, of which Robert seemed cheerfully oblivious.

  ‘I’ll be merchandising wood,’ said Robert. ‘It’s a less complicated business and I kept my horse and cart. You buy the wood and then you sell it on and you make the money that way, and have only to pay for the horse and his feed. And my old Blackie, he’s a fine healthy beast. I think the easiest way is to stick to shaft timbers and firewood, where’s there’s always a demand, and stock nothing fancy at all. There’s a fellow I know down Ballarat east, near St Alipius. He’s started in a small way and wants to expand, so we may do it together.’

  Joe chatted to Robert about where he would live, what the rent might be, where he might stable the horse, where he might keep the wood and how he would secure it from thieves, which was a question, being a policeman, on which he had definite opinions.

  ‘You need a strong lock and chain to your yard,’ Joe advised. ‘And a sharp watchdog that will bark at fire, for often the wood merchants in Melbourne sets another fellow’s yard alight, so they get the business, the disreputable ones leastways.’ On that note, Joe excused himself for the night.

  ‘Wood is a cut-throat business in Ballarat,’ said William, ‘although there’s money to be made with hard work and a sharp eye.’ He stood with his back to the fire and lit up his pipe. They had recently had an argument about the size of Robert’s debt. It had been painful for William to admit that his own brother used him more than the family back at Knockaleery ever did. Those at home were always grateful for his help, expressing a pleasing surprise at his generosity, even though they expected it. Robert, on the other hand, expected it almost as his due.

  William had talked this over with his brother Freemasons at the Yarrowee Lodge, and they espoused firmness and kindness, which sounded good in principle, but were hard in practice. However, one of the brothers had had a similar problem with a relative, and he and William had made a pact that they would not lose their tempers, which was the hardest thing he had undertaken, for Robert often provoked him. Robert took all his patience, and he wished it wasn’t so, for he loved him.

  ‘The wood business will be good,’ said Robert, ‘for I will be closer to you and Bridget, and Birdie will be closer to her family. And to St Alipius, which is the church we will attend.’

  ‘So have you become a Papist?’ William asked. His tone was clipped and angry.

  Robert reddened slightly as he looked at William. ‘I been meaning to tell you,’ he said. ‘The priest put me into the faith. I had no choice whatsoever.’

  ‘If there’s anything the Protestants teach, it is that every man, woman and child has a choice about questions of religion. It is the foundation of what we were taught back at the Kildress church. You cannot say you were put into it, against your will.’ William struggled to keep his tone even.

  ‘My wife, my children, my family, they all belong. Are you suggesting that each Sunday I might go elsewhere?’ Robert was defensive and prickly.

  ‘You might have stood up for your own religion and taken your family elsewhere.’

  ‘Except,’ said Robert hotly, ‘I did not mind, but they did. So why not make them happy? There’s all this difference between the religions, but it matters not to me. I cannot get myself caring about the question.’

  ‘If you don’t care you should say so. You could tell your own mother and father. And brother Joseph, who writes terrible things, and questions our friends that go back home. Don’t you care what they think?’ He was aware that he was shouting, and tried to rein himself in.

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Robert, ‘for I left Knockaleery far behind me, and while I hold to my mother and father, I don’t care to write, for there is too much grief. I tell you that now, so you don’t nag me to write no more. Those that get left behind, like brother Joseph, they are consumed by things that happen on this side of the world, which seems most strange, for ’tis the other side of the world entirely, and I don’t believe things stretch so far. The Protestants say each man is responsible for his own soul, so you say. So it seems to me that my religion is the business of no-one but meself.’

  ‘It is your choice entirely, brother,’ William said, but he could not shake his own belief that Robert’s choice was wrong and made from weakness. ‘I’d find it easier perhaps if you had admitted your choice and not said the priest put you into it. Even so, it is I that am left with Mother and Father. You say you hold fast, but you do nothing.’

  ‘I will do nothing,’ shouted Robert. ‘I’m done writing. I hold fast. I pray for them, but I will do nothing because nothing I ever done, back in Knockaleery or here in Ballarat, is ever of a nature to please them. And while you’ve been most good to me, I sometimes feel the same about yourself.’

  ‘It grieves me,’ said William, ‘that we should be separated by questions of religion.’ He felt very heated himself, but, trying to calm himself, he thought he sounded greasy and pious instead.

  ‘Then that is our difference,’ said Robert. ‘But I do not feel it is a matter of separation, just of difference. You might think on that. And while I’ll be going to bed soon, in one of your fine bedrooms, I do not want to use your hospitality again if you have a grudge against me, same as I do not write to those who grudge me one way or another.’ He looked at William challengingly.

  ‘We are brothers,’ said William. ‘And it seems to me I have assisted you much. We are the only ones here in this country. I feel strongly about the question of religion, but it cannot be helped. I never have and never will grudge you or your family my hospitality.’

  ‘Well said,’ said Robert. He poured himself another port from the decanter, and raised his glass. ‘Let’s drink to our religious difference.’

  ‘I think not,’ said William. ‘I mean what I said, but I’m in no frame of mind to celebrate it. I’ll go to bed too.’

  He was so agitated he could not stay.

  He longed to talk to Bridget, but she was still with Birdie, so he checked on little William Joseph and then lay on his bed. Lying there, still dressed, with only the light of the candle, he felt tense and angry still. He felt keenly Robert’s ingratitude, instances of which he could add up very easily in his head. He thought maybe he should have laid them out before Robert. It seemed Robert did not think much of his generosity, and he felt a great bitterness over that. He felt anger at Robert not writing to his parents, for he thought that while there was hurt, there was also laziness and not caring for others. So he lay there, feeling anger and contempt for his brother in every bone of his body.

  He tried to think more carefully. He was going forward in life, but Robert seemed to be forever slipping back. And apart from the question of belief, it would be difficult and uncomfortable to have a brother in town who was a Catholic, going each Sunday to St Alipius. He did not like to think that way, but it was there – amongst some of the Freemasons, at St Andrews Kirk, and with some others. He had his family, his church, his business, his lodge, his pleasures, and he felt firmly ensconced in all of them. Robert could have had the same, but it felt as if, out of a sort of stubbornness, he had chosen to go against all that.

  When Bridget came to the bedroom, William got up and undressed as she got ready for bed. He noticed that her pregnancy was very sharply defined, and she had no spare flesh on her.

  ‘You look tired,’ he said, and pulled her onto his knee.

  ‘I am tired,’ she said. ‘Bone tired. But I know you’ve been brooding here in the dark, for Robert told me of your conversation.’

  ‘I have,’ he said wearily, ‘and with no solution.’ And he outlined Robert’s transgressions and faults for her, although of course she knew of them already.

  ‘He is a Roman Catholic now,’ he concluded. ‘I cannot change Robert at all.’

  ‘We have long known he is a most stubborn man.’

  ‘He profits by my generosity. He can leave this business of his religion with me, never troubling about his mother and
father.’

  Bridget ruffled his hair a little, and kissed him. ‘Ah Billy,’ she said. ‘You are a better brother to him than he might ever be to you, and that is why you wish to change him. But there is nothing you might do about it, for he will not change. I myself find him most charming and amusing, but he is fixed fast. And he is fixed fast as your brother, for you are not a man to desert those who matter to you.’

  He held her, and stoked her hair tenderly, relieved of his anger, for he saw she was right. Robert was his brother, his beloved brother, however stubborn and irritating a man he might be. He was glad he and Bridget saw eye to eye on so much.

  ‘You look so tired,’ he said to her. ‘We’ll snuff the light, and I’ll get the maid to attend to little Willy in the morning.’

  ‘Oh Billy,’ she said, ‘I can’t wait till I have this babe. I never felt so tired and ill in all my life.’

  ‘I wish you’d let me get a nursemaid for little Willy,’ he said. ‘You look so pale.’

  ‘I don’t hold with servants bringing up our children,’ she said. ‘And it’s the money. I hate you forever worrying about what you owe Cuthbert. Once I have the child, I think I will be better. But oh Billy, I sometimes wonder how I’ll carry this child to the end, for it would break me to lose it.’

  He kept stroking her hair, kissing her, trying to think of soothing things he might say to her, but she was asleep in his arms before he had them ready. He kissed her and snuffed the candle.

  John Alfred Irwin arrived a month early in the world, with the result that he was scrawny and feeble in his movements. He arrived quietly, Bridget lying in bed, too weak to sit on the birthing stool. When he slipped out into the world, she kissed his little head, but was too exhausted to hold him. It was the middle of a bitter winter’s night and the midwife wrapped him and handed him to his father, who was in the parlour. William nursed him gently near the fire.

  ‘He may not survive the night,’ said the midwife. ‘He’s a tiny child and not breathing well.’

  ‘Your mother needs you, little one,’ William whispered to the baby. ‘She’s frightened of something, your mother is, and she needs you to pacify her. She needs you to bring her to herself again, little son.’ He looked in the face of the tiny child, and saw the same face as little Anna Jane and William Joseph. He wondered at this great miracle that his children emerged from the womb, so distinctively his own and Bridget’s. He could not bear to think of the loss of the child, and though he was tired, he knew he must stay awake, to keep the child breathing. The baby took tiny shallow breaths, sometimes faltering, and he turned it gently so it was facing down for a moment, and was gratified when it spat something. He remembered, years ago, when his own father had taken him lambing, and he had seen him up-end the lambs, only rather more vigorously.

  The midwife came out of the bedroom, and looked at him disapprovingly as he rocked the child. ‘I suppose it’ll have to be you that cares for it for tonight,’ she said, ‘but we’ll need a wet nurse, and a good one at that, for a babe as small as this. And you’ll need a maid for your wife. She’s very ill and you must get a doctor in, for I cannot tell the trouble with her. She needs nursing, for she’s terrible weak. I didn’t think she’d survive the birth. The child was lying right, and very small, but she barely had the strength for it.’ She shook her head as William looked towards the bedroom door. ‘Don’t you think of going in there. She’s almost asleep and I don’t want her woke up.’

  But as the midwife settled the baby in its cradle, he crept into the room. Bridget was awake, but only just. ‘The baby’s right for now,’ he told her. ‘He’s breathing easy. And small, but strong. You don’t need to worry about him.’

  ‘A wet nurse? She said a wet nurse.’

  ‘Just till you’re better. Till you make good.’ He could barely disguise the fear in his voice, so shocked he was at the white of her face and the black around her eyes. ‘You need to rest.’ He thought he would have to say more to convince her, but she was asleep.

  The wet nurse came and slept with William Joseph and the new baby. The maid engaged for Bridget slept with her, so William was relegated to a mattress in a cupboard next to the bedroom, where he could hear the baby wake for its feed, its cries louder and lustier as the weeks went by. He heard Bridget, always in the same soft whisper, calling for the maid to help her, to clean her, to change her nightdress. She looked more frail and gaunt each time he went in. One doctor told him the bleeding would stop and she would soon be well. But the second told him he should call for a doctor who was a female specialist to come from Melbourne. So he summoned the best of the female specialist doctors, who arrived on the train one morning, wearing a fine suit and a silk top hat and carrying a silver-topped cane. This doctor spent an hour with Bridget, while William waited outside the bedroom door.

  When he came out, the female specialist doctor was in a considerable hurry to catch the afternoon train, and wrote a complicated list of tonics, and a timetable for compresses to be applied, and bleeding to be done, which he explained in a high, strained voice to William. He would not answer William’s questions, except with ‘ums’ and ‘ahhs’ which did not interrupt his writing. William felt intimidated by this Melbourne female specialist. He was unsure what questions to ask, or whether it was right to ask questions. He felt like an Irish farm boy, unschooled and ignorant. He walked the doctor across the street to the station. The doctor tipped his silk top hat, and mumbled something about the bill.

  William got a roll of notes from his pocket and peeled off twenty pounds. Somehow, this familiar act of commerce made him more sure of himself, and quite certain that the doctor was avoiding speaking to him. But the train was building up steam, due to leave very soon. The doctor tipped his hat again and went to move into the station.

  William stood in front of him. ‘You don’t get on that train till you tell me what’s wrong with my wife. I paid you to come here. You give her a few tonics – I don’t know what – and you give me a few “maybes” and “we must hopes.” What do you mean?’

  There was the sharp sound of the whistle.

  The doctor looked at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘People don’t like to pay for bad news, and that is all I have.’ His face was grim, but William could see a kindness there now. The kindness increased his dread, but also his determination to get an answer.

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘The worst.’

  ‘What is it? What ails her?’

  ‘A growth, much advanced and fast-growing. It was lucky she delivered the child. But she will not live much longer.’

  William thought he would cry out, that his heart and spirit could not possibly take this news, that he should go mad. Tears spurted from his eyes, and he wiped them away furiously. For a moment he could not speak. He was aware of the pounding of the engine at the station, or maybe it was the pounding of his own heart. The whistle screamed again and he heard the conductor call out ‘All aboard.’

  William grabbed the doctor’s arm. ‘How long?’ His voice sounded nothing like his own. ‘How long will she live? Is there any hope?’

  ‘I think not. She has weeks. Maybe a month.’ He took William by the shoulder. ‘There is nothing can be done in such cases. I left laudanum for the pain, and the compresses may give her comfort. You must not give way. You must be strong.’

  Danny Phelan, coming to work the bar at the Provincial, saw the extraordinary sight of his employer, William Irwin, running like a madman through the line of hansom cabs outside the station. Then he saw him race across Lydiard Street, with no regard to the cart coming one way or the phaeton being driven the other. He saw him run up the gutter and past a woman with shopping, almost knocking her, and then bolt to the back of the hotel and into the stables. Danny, who had an instinct for recognising tragedy, then heard the most heart-rending cry of his life. He knew about the doctor from Melbourne and he guessed what had happened. He remembered that other day, also in Lydiard Street, when he had seen William Irwin f
ace death, the day when Michael O’Connell’s blood had stained the dust of the street. He felt the same sense of doom, of loss, even more, for Bridget Irwin was the best and loveliest of women. He went into the bar, waited five minutes, then told the gormless boy who washed the glasses that he was in charge for the next hour. He poured two large tumblers of whisky, which he carried around to the stables.

  While he knew William Irwin was not a great drinker, Danny was an Irishman, so he believed alcohol was the only possible remedy at such a time. He found William, his face against the wall, shaking with sobs. He sat him down on a bale of hay, gave him sips of whisky, and listened to the terrible news. They finished the whisky together and went and looked at William’s horse Napoleon, and discussed his limp. Then they walked across the yard, back to the hotel.

  ‘I’ll look after the bar and I’ll tell Cook to take care of your dining room,’ said Danny. ‘Go to your wife.’

  Bridget had moments of lucidity, which William came to dread, for she too had made the doctor tell her the diagnosis, and she fought it every moment, with every fibre of her being. ‘My children, Billy,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave my children.’

  She fretted about the life outside the bedroom. ‘I can hear that wet nurse,’ she said. ‘Don’t allow her to speak to my Willy like that. I won’t have him treated harshly at all. Oh, he needs his mammy.’

  She missed the children badly. ‘Bring the baby to me,’ she said. ‘Oh God! Look at him. But he’s so little. Is she paying attention to the feeding? Is she feeding him when he wants it? Oh little Johnny. I’m your mammy, darling, your mammy that you’ll never know, God help you.’ And she would dissolve into a fit of sobbing that would leave her breathless and exhausted.

  Bridget then wanted to dismiss the maid who cared for her at night.