Above the Starry Frame

by Helen Townsend

  But she did not wish to take up a personal correspondence with her husband’s sister, whom she had never met, and most probably would never meet. She had not given a blank refusal to her husband, but told him that Lizzie might write, and then she returned the letter to his desk. Eventually it went into one of the boxes or drawers or books of which he had so many and which she found so frustrating in their untidiness. Where Eliza’s letters went, she did not mind, for she could not bear them at all. To her, they represented a way of living and a cast of mind to which she did not wish to be party.

  William loved the regular clatter of the train. He liked the rhythm of it, the comfort of a second-class seat and foot warmer, without the expense and pretension of a first-class seat. He liked the speed of the train and the improvements he noticed in the countryside. He liked to see the country laid out before him in this way, for it showed him the extent and progress of this great colony. He thought of the railway system as a series of seams which held the vast expanse of the country together, as well as providing a mode of transport from which he could examine its development. He liked the way conductors came and punched the tickets, and he knew many of the conductors, for many Irish worked on the railways. Since the line had extended from Ballarat to Beaufort, to Ararat, to Horsham via Stawell and other places, he had developed a great love of the railways, which was partly fuelled by the new business it opened up for him. Part of this was on a small scale – the establishment of book and fruit stalls on stations along these lines – but he was amazed at the satisfaction these small businesses gave him. They provided a steady return and a chance to visit these places and see their progress.

  The journeys also provided time to think. He sometimes puzzled over his children. Willy, who was more than twenty, was not the steadiest of young men and was taking time to settle. But he thought in the end the boy would do well, for he was energetic and easy to like. And Johnny was doing well in his studies at the School of Mines, which made him very proud indeed. Lizzie, the apple of his eye, was nearly fourteen, and there was some controversy over her future. Julia thought she should stay at home, but she wanted to work with her cousin Mary Jane in a dressmaker’s shop, so it was agreed that she could do so for a few days each week, and help in the hotel on other days. He did not wish to press Lizzie into domestic life, but he felt that the idleness of many young Ballarat girls could not be good for them. Many families almost boasted of keeping their daughters idle, as if it was a mark of refinement, but he thought it the opposite.

  As well as these small domestic thoughts, William had discovered that the clattering of the train provided a mathematical rhythm to his thoughts, so he could sit and contemplate the figures in his head, and arrive at a more satisfactory conclusion than he could in his office at the hotel, where he had many pencil stubs and scraps of paper on which to do his calculations. The rhythm of the train seemed to stimulate his old capability of adding four columns in his head, and he played with the cost of the food bills over Christmas, the cost of the children’s education, and the returns on his shares. For him, for most men of his generation, gold still represented chance and excitement, however they might pore over the figures. He was prepared to take more of a gamble in gold than in other areas of his life, for gold connected him to his early days, and to the beginnings of the city of Ballarat.

  Today he was embarking on a business, which he had done several times before, of provisioning one of the railway camps which were set up from time to time as repairs on the lines were needed. This one was a major camp on the Stawell line. There were to be a total of twenty men on the camp, and they needed tents and swags, a hut for cooking, and provisions for the length of their stay. He had much loaded on the train, and had men at the other end to take the supplies out to the camp on drays. He had a butcher in Stawell, and a wholesale grocer who would send goods from Ballarat. He loved these outdoor camps, where there was always a good proportion of Irish and therefore Irish cheerfulness. It gave him a taste of the outdoor life he had so loved as a young digger, but without its discomforts. And it took him away from the hotel, which was a most satisfactory business, but after almost thirty years, and being out of debt, without much excitement to it.

  It also took him away from home, which he did not mind entirely. Julia was an excellent woman, most intelligent and engaging. He could stop her as she was going past his office and ask her about the bill from the butcher, or he could chat to her as he passed through the kitchen, or he could talk to her about the children. These conversations were always satisfactory. But they could not get much further. He could not sit in the parlour at night with her on his knee, or sprawl round the dining room fire on a Sunday evening with all the children, as he had used to do. Henary Black, his hunting dog, had been banned from the interior of the hotel on account of his smell. There was no strong case that could be put in favour of Henary Black, but he and Henary both missed the other’s company and the relaxation that went with it.

  William found Julia to be remarkably efficient in both the management of the children and her work in the hotel. Apart from supervising all the housekeeping, she had set up a special room where sales representatives might lay out their goods for buyers to inspect. She offered a morning tea for the mid-morning coach services. She had a good eye for detail and added a graciousness to the services they offered, as well as keeping a sharp eye on Cook, and organising the laundry so the sheets were always crisp and white. In those respects he was well pleased. She had a sharp business intelligence which he had never before encountered in a woman.

  Nevertheless, they lacked a certain ease. He thought that perhaps he still found her a little foreign, in some ways not quite what he was used to. Being English, she had a certain reserve, which was always there and did not break down, even with the intimacies of marriage. It baffled him, and he thought it perhaps baffled his little son Walter, who was the oldest of Jane’s boys and now nearly twelve, for he saw sometimes the same look in Wattie’s eyes when he looked at Julia that he felt himself, although she was most thorough in her mothering of him.

  Surprisingly, Julia was now expecting a child, which gave her a steady satisfaction and pleasure. She had been very busy ordering a cradle and a perambulator, which the other children, although strictly forbidden to ride, regarded as a very fine machine. She had bought an amount of clothing he could not imagine one very small child could ever need. But she was set upon the best, and he thought it easiest to allow it. He hoped that when the baby came it should look like a child of his, as had Bridget’s babies and then Jane’s. Somehow, he did not have quite the same confidence with this child, but he hoped, for he thought that greater ease in the marriage might follow.

  The train going to Belfast lacked a certain rhythm. Indeed, it felt wild and unpredictable to Eliza, with stops and starts at towns along the way, speeding up then slowing down. The hard wooden seats rocked from side to side, adding to her fear that the thing would crash and launch her prematurely into eternity, for she had read of several train crashes in the newspaper and these had added up in her mind. She held on, both hands clasping the seat, in case the thing crashed and threw her into the air. Despite these fears, she was excited, for it felt a great thing to be going so far from Knockaleery, to an evangelical meeting, and to be going alone.

  She had gone against the wishes of her brother Joseph. Eleanor was poorly, very bad indeed, and it seemed to make Joseph afraid and angry. As they sat around the fire at Tattykeel, he had lectured Eliza on the dangers of a woman travelling on a train and to a large city by herself.

  ‘I heard Belfast is a most dangerous town now,’ he told her. ‘And furthermore, Elizey, I do like you to come and help poor Eleanor, for young William’s wife lacks some patience with her.’

  ‘I am going two nights only,’ said Eliza reasonably. ‘I have a great desire to hear the evangelist, who has come all the way here from America. And I will say prayers which may do Eleanor the same good as me being by her side. I’ve heard
the evangelist is most powerful on prayer.’

  ‘I don’t hold with evangelism,’ said Joseph, ‘except for heathens in foreign parts. The old church at Kildress is good enough for me.’

  ‘It might be if you went regular,’ said Eliza. ‘But it does not matter whether you want me to go or not. I’m going for my own salvation and to praise the Lord.’

  ‘Be it on your own head,’ said Joseph savagely.

  Which was how she came to be on the train. It rattled through the countryside and over rivers so fast that the land looked liked a different country altogether. As they came into the city, Eliza looked at all the houses, so very many of them, all pushed together. At the great station in Belfast she asked directions to her hotel, which turned out to be a great wonder to her, for she had only seen the inns in Cookstown, which were much poorer.

  In the hotel, she had a room to herself, with a bed made of iron and a soft mattress, although it took her a considerable time to get to sleep, for she worried about fire. In the letters and newspapers William had sent over the years from Ballarat, she had gleaned a considerable amount of information about hotels, and one thing she knew was that they were mightily inclined to burn down.

  The next day as she walked through the city she knew she looked rather poor, for many people had fine clothes. She bought herself a hat, which was somehow very different from what anyone might wear in the parish of Kildress. It made her feel less conspicuous, although, in truth, no-one paid attention to her.

  She noticed in places there was no bare dirt to be seen at all, with the cobbles on the road, and the sky was barely seen for the buildings crowded in together. In these narrow places, she felt glad she lived at Knockaleery, where she could see the sky and feel God’s earth, and feel herself comfortably situated between heaven and the ground. Here there were statues, and shops that were much larger and grander than in Cookstown. And she wondered what all the people did here, for they were bustling about, looking very busy, but not seeming to do anything at all.

  The mission was to be held that night in a tent in the botanical gardens. Eliza had dinner at the hotel, imagining she was at William’s Provincial, although, in truth, it was a poor meal of a sort of pie which choked in her throat. But she had an ice after it, coloured red, which felt more like something that might be served at the Provincial. Then she started out walking to the botanic gardens. It felt very different from striding across the laneway to Tattykeel or to the church at Kildress, because the street was full of other people going to the mission, and they began talking and laughing and crying out, ‘Praise the Lord,’ not worrying who might hear. Back at Knockaleery, she always had to worry about Sam McGowan.

  ‘Praise the Lord, abide with me,’ she called out and felt the wonderful friendliness of all these people: men, women and children whom she did not know, pouring down this street she did not know the name of.

  When she arrived, she saw the tent was bigger and grander than she ever imagined. There was a great crowd pressing to go in, and when they opened the flaps, people streamed inside. The organ started playing and the music flooded out, the good old hymns, as more and more pressed in. They all joined in the hymns, then the preacher stood up, a big tall American in fine clothes and with a powerful voice. He had a good deal of white hair and a noble face. He began preaching, quietly at first, and then louder and louder. It was not like the sermons of the Reverend Stewart, which could send a person to sleep and seemed a test that you would not do so.

  What this preacher said and how he said it made Eliza listen to every word. He did not speak so much about the judgment of God as about the love of Jesus, and how Jesus could be a friend to a person such as Eliza. And she started thinking of dear Mother, and dear Father. She remembered how they used to say they would all meet again above the starry frame, and the preacher said so too. She thought of her sisters in America, and brother James, who had stopped writing again, and dear William. When she looked up, the preacher had tears on his face. He was praying to the Lord, respectfully, but as if the Lord was quite well known to him. He got the whole crowd to say together, ‘Help me, Jesus, help me.’ And they all said it together, again and again.

  After it finished, there were others coming from the tent, and they walked together. And they talked about the Lord Jesus as if He was close, and she thought this was what she had missed in her religion. And when she got into her room at the hotel, she looked at her Bible and some tracts she had been given. She sat on her bed and talked for a long time to Lord Jesus. She told the Lord Jesus that while she had James and John with her in her life, she had lost a lot, and Knockaleery often seemed like a cold, hard place for all her love of it.

  She thought of dear William, and how she loved him best of all her brothers and sisters. She thought of him as the boy he had been and how they had once known each other as well as two people might, and she still felt that love for him, deep in her heart. She felt that she could tell Lord Jesus all that, and it did not have to be kept locked away, even within herself.

  She told of how she was lonely. She told of how she had missed going away, when nearly all her brothers and sisters had gone. She told how hard she found it to stick to her own life, and live it well. And she said that those who were with her in this life were sometimes irritating, and perhaps they all suffered from being left and from having lost so many. And she cried again, feeling the bitterness and sorrow of all the years of waiting and wanting. And there was relief in it, in the telling of it, and giving it up to the Lord.

  The next day, she felt much changed. On the way back, the rhythm of the train felt smoother and it seemed less likely to fall off its rails. The journey seemed slow, but because it was summer the fields were still light when she got back. As she walked across these fields where she had lived all her life, she remembered how hard they had sometimes been in giving up the fruits of the earth, but at other times they had been sweet and bountiful.

  Tattykeel was on the way, and she thought she would call in and tell them of the joys of Lord Jesus. But as she came in, Joseph stood up, large and angry.

  ‘Eleanor is dead,’ he said, as if it was Eliza herself who had caused it.

  ‘Oh dear, dear, dear.’ She went to embrace him, but he turned away.

  ‘You could have been here for my dear wife,’ he said. ‘She passed away, all alone.’

  ‘But I was in Belfast.’

  ‘I told you not to go,’ he shouted. ‘And now she is dead!’

  ‘Lord Jesus took her,’ she said defiantly. ‘I could not have saved her. It was not my place to save her.’ She thought what a good friend she had been to Eleanor, and felt angry that Joseph should shout like this.

  ‘I’m glad you can take the news so cheerful,’ he said, ‘it being my dear wife of more than thirty years that passed over. And had considerable pain to bear by herself.’

  ‘You’ve no right to speak to me that way.’ She was shaking as she went out the door and started across the farmyard.

  ‘I’m your brother,’ he shouted after her. ‘Your elder brother. And just because you gone to the mission in Belfast and bought yourself a fancy hat for vanity, it don’t make it right to neglect your own family.’

  She knew when Joseph got angry, it might take weeks or months for him to get over it. And it was sad Eleanor died alone, but there were others in that house that might have tended to her. She went on, tears running down her face, for she had loved dear Eleanor and been a good friend to her.

  She thought of when she was small and she had known Eleanor as Joseph’s new bride. Back then they all wove in together, one great family. Now, there were only those who had stayed, and more and more were going. She had stayed, and would stay. She saw she would need strength to get to the end of it, for the strength of her young life was gone. She was glad she had gone to Belfast, for she thought that might give her the strength she needed.

  When Julia Irwin gave birth, there was no maid running back and forth fetching hot water and cold compre
sses. There were no breathless reports given out on how things were progressing. Instead there was a young doctor whom William did not know, who came and administered the chloroform, so there were no moans, yells or screams. There was, instead, the calm and collected face of an ordinary day at the hotel, where things ran in the way they were supposed to run.

  Little Lizzie Irwin could not quite suppress her excitement, though she bustled about, trying to settle to polish some of the silver, or wash the china. ‘Mother said you can go out, Daddy,’ she told her father. ‘You don’t have to be here at all.’

  This directive clearly came from Julia, and William felt slightly annoyed. Childbirth was women’s business, but he had never before been made to feel that he was unwelcome in his own home. Julia had explained to him that things were different now. She must have the doctor; she must have the chloroform; it must be scientifically done. But this was his home and his place of business. All his life it seemed he had been surrounded by birth. He had not been involved in it, except for the birth of the animals, for men had no business in childbirth. But dangerous and difficult though it was, it had been part of life. He had not been sent out of the house like a child.

  Nevertheless, he went out. He was unable to persuade Lizzie to come with him, for she was not excluded in the same way, and he could see his dear Lizzie, just fourteen, hungered for this new baby and would be a most devoted sister.

  He met some fellows at the Exchange who were going to lunch and a jaw, and drank a little with them, which he usually did not do. And then he took a cab down to the feed merchant and visited the coach builder to see how the phaeton for Julia was coming along. He wandered up to the stock markets, for it was market day, and watched as the animals were being sold.