by Kim Kane
Gert looked worried. Aunt Hen smiled at her. ‘She’ll join us later! It’s her Friends of the Spirit World meeting this evening.’
‘Oh, that will be sure to bring her down!’ Gert grinned back at Hen.
‘It’s terribly fashionable at the moment in Europe too,’ Elfriede interjected, breaking off her conversation with Bea momentarily to do so.
Elfriede was like Madeleine’s mother, thought Madeleine – quite able to listen to two things at once.
‘It’s utter tosh,’ said Mr Williamson with a succinct smile, which caused the scar near his moustache to stretch white.
‘I find it quite interesting,’ said Elfriede and smiled cheekily. ‘Anyway, how does it work here?’
‘Don’t get involved, Elfriede,’ said Mr Williamson. ‘Those ladies never stop talking, ghastly mob of church bells that they are.’
‘A medium comes to the house and tries to contact people who have passed to the other side,’ explained Aunt Hen, ignoring her brother.
‘It’s trickery and wickedness to play on the feelings of bereaved parents,’ said Mr Williamson crossly. ‘Don’t put me in a foul temper now, Hen.’
Mr Williamson’s voice was snappy but his eyes were bright with something Madeleine couldn’t quite name. He shot a look over the table towards Elfriede and Bea, who were once more locked in their own little huddle.
‘It brings Bella comfort,’ said Aunt Hen, pushing her glasses further up her nose. ‘Besides, it’s not just women; every politician seems to be doing it now, Thomas. Just look at your chum, Alfred Deakin. Perhaps I shall become a medium – it’s a jolly good way to power!’
‘Deakin always was a bit balmy on the crumpet with this sort of thing.’ Mr Williamson took a bite of toast. ‘He practises vegetarianism, too.’ He smiled fondly.
‘My mum’s a vegetarian,’ said Madeleine, and then wished she hadn’t. The sentence hovered above the table like a fart.
Mr Williamson said, ‘Well then,’ and placed a curl of butter on the side of his plate. Only Aunt Hen smiled at Madeleine; then she went back to reading the paper. Her long fingers rubbed her left eyebrow while she concentrated.
Madeleine stared at the stretches of cutlery before her. She followed Gert’s manners closely as the meal commenced, as she did at every meal, determined not to stumble this time. It was like a military procession, or even like the household itself: everything had a role, and everybody seemed to know the rules. Gert had said the adults’ evening meal was even worse – held at the big table in the dining room, with an endless number of tiny courses, and an endless line of glasses, too. You needed a manual to get through a Victorian meal.
‘So, Hen, anything in the good Argus this morning?’ Mr Williamson said after a while.
‘There is very little of interest covered in your paper, Thomas.’
‘And what would you cover?’
Madeleine watched while Mr Williamson stirred his coffee, his fingers seeming too long for the spoon.
‘When a husband dies and his wife discovers their children are to be left in the care of his sister rather than with their very own mother, I want proper analysis. When women are paid as little as one-third of the male wage, even where they may be the sole breadwinner for the family, I expect proper analysis. We women have tried to influence our men indirectly for centuries, but the laws are still unjust – and how can women not have occupied a single seat at any of your constitutional conventions?’
‘Oh, Hen,’ said Mr Williamson, ‘you could make a stuffed bird laugh. Please, it is too early to talk about politics, even for me.’ He went back to reading his own paper.
‘Well, then don’t ask, Thomas!’
‘You are a woman – and I use that term loosely – who never takes the last piece of toast but must always have the last word.’
The two siblings went back to their respective papers in a sort of good-humoured truce.
Madeleine felt the napkin on her lap slide onto the floor. Damn. The napkins were laundered soap-smooth. She bent down to collect it. Across the table, beneath the embroidered folds of cloth, Elfriede’s skirts were pressed hard against Mr Williamson’s leg. Madeleine snapped back up to the table, a noise escaping her throat before she could snatch it back. Everybody stared.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ asked Aunt Hen.
‘Yes, yes, excuse me,’ Madeleine blustered. ‘My tea went down the wrong way.’ The lie felt oily in her mouth.
Gert slipped another soldier of buttered bread to Millie, who was fattening at her feet.
Madeleine stared at Elfriede through the parallel slices of toast on the rack in front of her. Elfriede was twisted away from Mr Williamson towards Bea, with whom she was still whispering. Sometimes she laughed much too loudly, throwing her head back until Madeleine could see the white points of her teeth. Next to her, Mr Williamson’s eyes scanned lines in his newspaper, moving backwards and forwards across the print like wipers. Before them, their eggs sat whole and pearly on their plates. How could anybody guess that they were woven like a Christmas wreath under the table?
Madeleine studied the curls of orange peel suspended in the marmalade. She had always thought that as she grew up she’d come to understand more about the world, but she was coming to realise that the more she understood about life at Lyrebird Muse, the more she had to pretend not to. Life may have looked pie-perfect on the surface, but there was steak and kidney under the crust, and growing up here seemed to be about loading up your plate anyway.
Madeleine shook her head and looked over at Gert again. Gert was in turn eyeing the uneaten eggs, heaping her plate with spoonfuls of jam.
When they had finished breakfast, Nanny ushered the children outside. ‘It’s grey, but it hasn’t rained since last night, and I’d like you all to get some fresh air.’ Fresh air was one of the things people seemed very keen on in the olden days.
Someone had set up a series of white iron loops upside down in the grass on the croquet lawn. The morning was cold, and the lawn was damp with frost.
‘Croquet!’ cried Gert, picking up a square-tipped mallet. ‘Come on, Madeleine, you’ll enjoy this.’
Imo was crunching down the gravel path that formed the eastern border of the lawn. Step-hop, step-hop, step-hop – she was practising skipping, concentrating, her head on the side. Charlie, as usual, had vanished; Nanny had gone off to find her.
Madeleine picked up one of the heavy wooden mallets and hit a ball with it. As it made contact, there was a lovely deep crack.
‘Like this,’ said Gert, angling a mallet between her legs. ‘You hit it like this.’ She’d hitched her skirts up above her knees.
Madeleine adjusted her grip and hit the ball again. This time, it shot right through one of the iron arches and rolled to a stop.
‘Good show!’ called Gert. ‘That does take the egg.’
Madeleine laughed, and Imo laughed too. Her mouth gleamed filling-silver.
‘Imo,’ said Gert, ‘what’s in your mouth?’
‘Nussing,’ Imo replied, looking to the side. Her mouth was clearly full of something.
‘Imo, what’s in your mouth? Spit it out now.’ Gert went over to her sister and held out her hand, and Imo spat a coin onto it. It was Madeleine’s ten-cent piece. Madeleine dropped her mallet.
‘Where did you get this?’ demanded Gert.
‘What is it? Is it from Daddy’s collection?’
‘You got it from the nursery, didn’t you? Don’t go near our things, Imo. This isn’t yours. Now, where are the rest?’
‘Elfriede says every decent lady has secrets.’ Imo tilted her chin at Gert, but then she looked down and opened one closed fist, revealing a sticky collection of coins that she tipped into Gert’s waiting hand.
‘Miss Gertrude? What’s going on? Is Miss Imogen all right?’ Nanny had materialised on the edge of the crocket lawn, where she stood with her hands on her hips, as round as a sugar bowl.
Imo’s eyes had begun to water, and her nose quivered.
> ‘It’s nothing, Nanny,’ Gert said, pocketing the coins in her pinafore quick as lightning. ‘Imo just had something in her mouth again.’
‘Miss Imogen, come here, please. You can come inside and play with the doll’s house in the nursery.’ Nanny had on her cross face.
Imogen walked towards her, head hung, her hands holding onto her pinafore, and the two of them walked back up the stairs to the house.
‘That was too close!’ said Madeleine as soon as she and Gert were alone again.
‘Tell me about it. Thank goodness she can’t read yet – fortunately Nanny’s a lousy teacher, and Imo is showing no aptitude as a student.’
‘Here, give them to me.’ Madeleine slipped the coins down the inside of one stocking. Her heart was beating hard. She’d left the coins with her clothes from home, which she’d taken from behind the doll’s house the night of her arrival and hidden in the bottom of the cupboard in the nursery. Gert had stuffed the sparkly shoes in there as well after the midnight trip to the grotto. They had stupidly imagined these secret things would be safe there.
‘I’ll get rid of them, Gert,’ she said. ‘The coins – I’ll toss them all in the well. It’s too risky.’
Madeleine lined up a ball and hit it. It puddled off to the side, missing the iron arch.
‘You can do better than that,’ said Gert. ‘I saw you play cricket.’
Madeleine stood up straight and leant on her stick. ‘Gert,’ she said. ‘This can’t go on. I’m going to get caught out, and I’m scared.’
‘I know,’ said Gert. ‘That could have ended very badly. At least it was Imo and not Charlie who found the coins. Charlie might have blackmailed us.’
A slater wobbled across a stone beside Madeleine’s boot. Madeleine pressed the tear ducts in the corner of each eye and breathed deeply.
‘Don’t cry,’ said Gert, handing her a crumpled handkerchief. She hugged Madeleine, a soft, kind hug. ‘I have an idea.’
Gert poked the slater with her boot. It contracted in a tight ball.
‘What is it?’ Madeleine just wanted to run and hide.
‘Tonight is Mummy’s Friends of the Spirit World meeting. You heard the grown-ups talking about it at breakfast. The meetings are held at a different person’s home every month. Mummy hosts them once a year, and they’re dreadfully important to her. She’ll get to those meetings even if she’s having a spell.’
Gert bit a fingernail.
‘Spirits as in ghosts?’ Madeleine asked.
‘That’s right. It’s to do with the lost ones, I think.’
‘What do you mean the lost ones?’
‘The babies that died. Baby Robert, Baby Sebastian and Baby Reginald. Robert and Sebastian only lasted a few hours. They came after Bea. Little Reggie came after Charlie. He died when he was eleven months old, of measles – he was the baby in Hen Pen’s photo.’
‘You had three brothers and they died?’
Madeleine felt as if a little key had just been handed to her, unlocking some of Mrs Williamson’s sadness. She wished she had focused on the baby in the photo a little longer, taken more of him in.
Gert shrugged. ‘It happens,’ she said softly. ‘But Reggie was so tiny and soft and pink, and he had such chubby wrists. It’s hard to let yourself love something that small when you know it could die. Even when I was six, I knew that. You push against it so you don’t get hurt, but the hurts gets in anyway.’
Madeleine looked out into the middle distance. She could see the lake in the distance, pewter in the sunlight.
‘And your mother’s spirit group – what do they do?’ she asked.
‘A medium calls on spirits, and Mummy says she has actually held Reggie, felt his bonny weight – and she’s smelt his baby hair, too; that delicious milky smell. Even Millie had that smell, when she was a puppy.’
‘Have you been to a meeting before?’
‘No. They’re a group of just eight, mainly ladies. And I’m too young to go. Come on, let’s put these in the well.’
Madeleine trailed after Gert as she set off. ‘And your father doesn’t go? How about Aunt Hen?’
‘Daddy gets angry about it – usually much angrier than this morning. He says the meetings are hogwash, and he walks around reciting Browning’s Mr Sludge, “The Medium”.
‘Then, it’s so cruel easy! Oh, those tricks
‘That can’t be tricks, those feats by sleight of hand,
‘Clearly no common conjuror’s!—no indeed!
‘But Mummy’s fascinated by it all. She hasn’t spoken to the babies, because they couldn’t speak when they went to Heaven, but Mrs White spoke to her late husband, who told her where he’d buried the family silver, and she had the gardener dig up the spot and low and behold, it was all there – still in its blue velvet bag, under the azaleas.’
‘Why did he bury it?’ Madeleine asked, confused. Mrs White sounded like she’d married a labrador.
Gert shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. They’ve always been a bit puzzling, the Whites.’
Madeleine stopped walking to roll a lemon on the grass with her foot. Its underside was green and furry. ‘So . . . if the medium can talk to people from the past, do you think he or she can talk to people from the future, too?’
‘She. I’ve certainly never heard of a male medium! But anyway, yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been wondering. As well as, more importantly, whether she can take people from the future home.’
‘I think we need to sneak into the meeting tonight and find out, don’t you?’
Madeleine grinned and gave the lemon a good, hard kick. It shot off into the garden.
The girls walked on until they found themselves at the well with its old iron bucket. The water inside it was Wizard-of-Oz green. Madeleine took the coins from her stocking.
Gert grabbed one and held it over the water. ‘I was going to suggest cementing these to the grotto, but we can’t possibly do that now. This is perfect. It’s bottomless, and it’s never cleaned.’ She dropped it. The splash echoed about the mossy well chamber.
‘Don’t tell me it’s never cleaned,’ said Madeleine. ‘We drink from it!’ Anyway, in years to come these coins will blend in with all the tourists’ wish coins, she thought.
Madeleine flipped the rest of the coins into the water. They split the surface and sank without a trace.
‘At least my wax death mask won’t be lined up on the shelf next to Ned Kelly’s,’ said Madeleine. ‘I was worried I’d be hunted down as a witch if anybody found them.’
‘We really must secure your passage home. Will you come to Mummy’s meeting?’
Gert looked at Madeleine earnestly, and Madeleine smiled. ‘It’s worth a try. At this stage, anything is worth a try.’
A deep cough came from behind them, and girls both jumped. It was Percy, wearing a dark patched jacket, with a brown woollen sack knotted over his shoulder.
‘You need to get Madeleine home? I need to get home too. So there is something we share now, Madeleine – I grant you that.’
‘Percy!’ Madeleine smiled with relief. She’d felt so stupid after the stables. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘I’ve handed in my notice.’
‘Your notice?’ said Gert. ‘But . . . you’ve been with us for, well, forever. Does Daddy know?’
‘Yes, Miss Gertrude. Your father does know.’ Percy took off his hat and smiled. He face looked sunny and his eyes shone like polished stones.
‘Why now, Percy?’ asked Madeleine. ‘Why after all this time?’
‘Nothing’s right. I want to be with my family.’
‘I thought you were an orphan!’ Gert almost shouted.
‘I am. My Coranderrk family, Miss Gertrude. The people from where I grew up. They’ve all gone on to New South Wales, now – on to Cummeragunja. I want to be with my people. It’s time.’
‘But how will you get there? You can’t have the fare for the train.’ Gert looked worried.
‘Walk!’ Percy glanced down a
t his boots. The leather top of one had come away from the sole and his grey sock poked out.
‘Are you mad? Do you have any idea how far it is to New South Wales?’ Gert frowned.
‘Thank you, Miss Gertrude, but I do. If our Ngurungaeta, William Barak, can walk a petition to Melbourne as an elderly man, I can make it to Cummera on these legs.’
Madeleine smiled. She felt light and free. ‘Good luck!’
‘Thank you, Miss Madeleine. To you too. I told Miss Imogen goodbye earlier, but will you farewell Miss Charlotte for me?’
‘And Nanny? Shall we wish her farewell?’ Gert asked Percy cheekily.
‘No. There’s no need, Miss Gertrude, no need for that at all.’
Percy winked as he put on his hat. Then he headed off down the drive, his footsteps crunching the gravel, whistling, ‘Toow wooooo,’ as he walked.
That afternoon was as grey as the morning had been. Bored, Madeleine and Gert tiptoed into the drawing room, avoiding Nanny.
The dining room chairs had been brought in and were all facing a card table, which was covered with a cloth. Three photographs were placed upon it, each depicting a baby with hard black eyes. The first two showed Mrs Williamson nursing one baby and then another; in the third, yet another baby lay on a tiny chaise lounge, three little girls sitting behind it.
‘Is that you?’ asked Madeleine in a low voice.
‘Yes,’ said Gert weakly. ‘Bea, Charlie, me and Reggie. That was taken just after he died.’
‘He was dead in the photo? Why are his eyes open?’
‘They paint them on. It’s so we’ll always remember him.
Don’t you do that?’
‘No! We don’t take photos of dead children. I’m not even sure it’s legal. I suppose the other babies with your mum are Robert and . . .’
‘Sebastian. Yes. Memento mori, they call them.’
Anna was at the back of the room, setting out the tea service on a credenza: two silver pans of fruit cake covered with a damp cloth, a milk jug and a sugar bowl.
‘What time does it start tonight, Anna?’ asked Gert loudly, heading towards the credenza, probably intending to help herself to a piece of cake. Madeleine followed, willing to travel any distance for Cook’s cake.