by Ruth Park
‘Why ever have you a picture of old Victoria on the wall?’ she asked.
‘You mustn’t speak of our gracious Queen in that way, child!’ said Granny severely.
‘But our queen is Elizabeth!’
They laughed kindly. ‘Why, good Queen Bess died hundreds of years ago, lass. You’re still wandering a little; but don’t fret: tomorrow you’ll be as good as gold.’
Abigail said nothing more. She stared at Queen Victoria in her black widow’s weeds and her jet jewellery. Once again, deep inside her, she was saying, ‘I must be calm. There’s some explanation. I mustn’t give myself away.’
Out in the darkness she could hear ships baa-ing on the harbour. ‘Is it foggy?’ she asked.
‘Aye, so maybe I won’t be leaving in the morn,’ said Judah. ‘I’m a seaman, you see, lass.’
Quite near by a bell blommed slow and stately. Abigail jumped.
‘It’s naught but St Philip’s ringing for evensong,’ said Dovey softly. ‘Ah, she’s all of a swither with the shock she got when Uncle Samuel ran into her, poor lamb.’
Abigail tried to still her quaking body. She said to the young man, ‘I want to see where I am. Would you help me to the window?’
‘Sure as your life, hen,’ replied the young fellow heartily. Abigail had expected only to lean on his arm, but he gathered her up, bedclothes and all, and took her to the window. He had the same dark-blue eyes as the old woman.
‘What are ye girning about, Beatie?’ he chided. ‘Open the shutters, lass.’
Sulkily and unwillingly, the little girl unlatched the shutters and threw them wide. Abigail looked out on a gas-lit street, fog forming ghostly rainbows about the lamps. A man pushed a barrow on which glowed a brazier. ‘Hot chestnuts, all hot, all hot!’ His shout came clearly to Abigail. Women hurried past, all with shawls, some with men’s caps pulled over their hair, others with large battered hats with tattered feathers.
But Abigail was looking for something else. She was upstairs, she knew, above the confectionery shop, and she had a wide view of smoking chimneys, hundreds, thousands of smoking chimneys, it seemed, each with a faint pink glow above it.
Mitchell should have been standing there, lit like a Christmas tree at this time of night. The city should have glittered like a galaxy of stars. The city was still there – she could see dimmish blotches of light, and vehicles that moved very slowly and bumpily.
‘The Bridge has gone, too,’ she whispered. No broad lighted deck strode across the little peninsula, no great arch with its winking ruby at the highest point – nothing. The flower-like outline of the Opera House was missing.
She turned her face against Judah’s chest and buried it so deeply that she could even hear his heart thumping steadily.
‘What is it, Abby? What ails you, child?’
For the first time she looked into his face. It was brown and ruddy, a snubbed, country kind of face.
‘What year is this?’ she whispered.
He looked dumbfounded. ‘Are you codding me?’
‘What year is it?’ she repeated.
‘Why, it’s 1873, and most gone already,’ he said.
Abigail said no more. He took her back to the bed, and Dovey gently folded the covers over her.
‘It’s true then,’ she said uneasily to the old grandmother. ‘She’s lost her memory. Dear God, what will we do, Granny? For ’twas Uncle Samuel that caused it, and in all charity we’ve the responsibility of her.’
The tall old woman murmured something. Abigail caught the word ‘stranger …’
Dovey looked dubious. ‘It’s my belief she’s an immigrant lass, sent to one of the fine houses on the High Rocks to be a parlourmaid, perhaps, for she speaks so bonny. Not like folk hereabouts at all! But where’s her traps, do you think, Granny? Stolen or lost? Just what she stood up in, and the Dear knows there was little enough of that!’
Thus they talked in low voices beside the door, while Beatie Bow crept a little closer and stared with thrilled yet terrified eyes at Abigail.
‘You!’ said Abigail in a fierce whisper. ‘You did this to me!’
‘’Tisn’t so,’ objected Beatie. ‘You chased me up alley and down gully, like a fox after a hare. It wunna my fault!’
Abigail was silent. She kept saying to herself, ‘Abigail Kirk, that’s who I am. I mustn’t forget. I might sink down and get lost in this place – this time, or whatever it is – if I don’t keep my mind on it.’
Judah and Granny had gone down the stairs. Dovey limped over and put a hand on Abigail’s forehead. ‘You’ve no fever, and the ankle will be a wee bit easier tomorrow. You stay here and talk to Abby, Beatie, seeing that you’re getting on so grand, and I’ll heat up some broth for your supper.’
Beatie stared at Abigail crossly, defiantly, and yet with anxiety.
‘It’d be no skin off your nose if you codded you’d lost your memory because of that dint on the head. I dunna want my granny to know.’
‘I want to go back to my own place,’ said Abigail in a hard voice.
‘I dunna ken where your ain place is,’ protested Beatie. ‘I didna mean to go there myself. It were the bairnies calling my name. I dunna ken how I did it, honest. I never did it afore I had the fever.’
As though to herself, in a puzzled, worried voice she said, ‘One minute I was in the lane, and the next there was a wall there, and the bairnies skittering about, and all those places like towers and castles and that… that great road that goes over the water, and strange carriages on it with never a horse amongst them, and I was afeared out of my wits, thinking the fever had turned my brain. And then I heard children calling my name, and they were playing a game we play around the streets here, except that we call it Janey Jo. But they couldna see me, because I tried to speak to one or two. Only you and that wee little one with the yellow coat.’
The child’s cocky attitude had vanished. Her face was sallow and the big hollow eyes shone. Abigail remembered that Natalie had wept because she believed that this girl had been unhappy. She had mentioned fever. Perhaps that was why Beatie’s hair had been cut so short. Abigail remembered that once it had been the custom to shave the heads of fever patients. She was about to ask about this, when Beatie said in an awed voice, ‘Is it Elfland, that place where you come from?’
‘Of course it isn’t, there isn’t any Elfland. Are you crazy?’
Beatie said in a hushed voice. ‘Green as a leek, you are. Of course there’s Elfland. Isn’t that where Granny’s great-great-granny got the Gift, the time she was lost so long?’
‘You’re crazy,’ said Abigail. ‘You’re all crazy.’
She closed her eyes. The fire crackled, the room was full of strange smells, but the smell of burnt sugar was strongest of all. A hand timidly touched hers.
‘It’s bonny.’
‘What is?’
‘That place you were. Elfland.’
Abigail opened her eyes and glared into the tawny ones. ‘I told you it wasn’t Elfland.’
‘Where is it then?’
‘Guess,’ said Abigail snappily.
Beatie Bow was silent. Abigail stared at the ceiling. Then Beatie Bow said, ‘How did those children know my name?’
‘I wouldn’t know, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you.’
She wanted to scream like a seagull. With a great effort she kept the sounds of lostness and fright down in her chest. Her head was throbbing again and her ankle felt like a bursting football.
‘If it wasna Elfland,’ said Beatie slowly and thoughtfully, ‘it was some place I dunna ken about. Yet the bairns there don’t play Janey Jo any more; they play Beatie Bow.’
Abigail didn’t answer.
Suddenly the little girl shouted, ‘I will make you tell, I will! I want to know about the castles and palaces, and the lights that went so fast, and the queer old things the bairns were playing on, and how they knew my name. I’ll punch ye yeller and green, I swear it, if ye dunna tell!’
‘Maybe
you’ve got the Gift,’ said Abigail cruelly. Beatie turned so white her freckles seemed twice as numerous. Abigail said, ‘You get me back there where I met you, or I’ll tell your granny where I come from and who brought me.’
Beatie whipped up a hard little fist as though to clout her.
‘I dunna want the Gift. I’m feared of it! I wunna have it!’
Abigail thought hazily, ‘When I get back home, or wake up, or whatever I’m going to do, I’ll be sorry I didn’t ask her what this stupid Gift is. But just now I don’t care.’
She turned away from Beatie’s anxious, angry face, and pretended to be asleep. Within a moment or two she was.
Chapter 4
Twice during the night Abigail awakened to hear a child whimpering forlornly somewhere above the ceiling.
‘That can’t be,’ she thought muzzily. Then she remembered that this was an old-fashioned house. There might be attics.
Dovey had left the lamp turned low. The round glass globe had bunches of grapes etched on it. The fire had gone out and there was a smell of cold ashes.
She heard a halting step on stairs somewhere. So there really must be yet another child, and Dovey was coming down from looking after it.
Abigail didn’t know whether she liked Dovey or not. She seemed so gentle and good, but Abigail knew from books and TV that an angelic exterior often hid an interior chock-full of black evil. Besides, she didn’t want to be comforted by Dovey at two in the morning or whatever it was; so as the girl limped into the room Abigail pretended to be asleep. Dovey wore a baggy red-flannel dressing-gown, and her hair was in a plait tied with a scrap of wool. She looked worn and sleepy.
Granny was with her in an even baggier red-flannel dressing-gown. Her hair was tucked under what Abigail imagined was a nightcap, a little baby bonnet with a frill about the face, and tapes under the chin.
‘The hideous clothes the Victorian working class wore,’ marvelled Abigail – a long way from the hailstone muslin and exquisite China silks that sometimes ended up at Magpies.
‘Did Judah get away, hen?’ asked Granny.
‘Aye. He’ll sleep on board, for the fog’s lifting and he thought the skipper’d be away with the morn’s tide. I gave Gibbie a draught and he’s asleep, but he looks poorly, Granny. Do you have a good or a bad feeling about him, poor bairn?’
Granny sighed. ‘I hae no clear feelings any more, Dovey. They’re as mixed up as folk in fog.’
‘But you’ve no doubt that this little one here is the Stranger?’
The two women spoke in whispers, but Abigail heard them, for the night was almost silent. There was no sound of traffic except a dray’s wheels rolling like distant thunder over the cobbles at the docks. She could hear the waves breaking on the rocks of Dawes Point and Walsh Bay.
‘Aye, when I first saw her I had a flash, clear as it was when I was a lass. Poor ill-favoured little yellow herring of a thing. But still,, it came to me then, she was the Stranger that would save the Gift for the family.’
Abigail was so indignant at the description of herself that she almost opened her eyes.
‘And then there was the gown, forebye. I swear, Granny, I almost fainted when I set eyes on it. The very pattern that we worked out between us!’
‘And not a needle lifted to it yet,’ said Granny. ‘Hush, Dovey, the child is stirring.’
The lamp’s reflections on the ceiling shifted, and the room was left in darkness. Abigail had the impression that Dovey came back to sleep in the other bed, but she was unable to keep awake to see.
‘I’ll bet I’ve had one of Granny’s possets in the cocoa or something. On top of everything else they’ll poison me.’
This was her last outraged thought as she sank into sleep. She was still resentful when she awoke. The trundle-bed had been slept in but was unoccupied; the house was full of unfamiliar noises, metal clinking vigorously (the fire downstairs being raked out?), the continuous puling complaint from above (the mysterious Gibbie?), someone yelling in a temper (Beatie, without a doubt), and Granny’s soft full tones, making peace amongst them all.
She struggled to a sitting position. Her head felt better, clearer. Her ankle still hurt frightfully. She peeled back the bedclothes to look at it. Hideous! Yellow and purple and swollen to twice its size. But perhaps it wasn’t as painful as yesterday.
‘Now then,’ thought Abigail, inside this new clear head, ‘something very weird has happened to me. I’m in the last century. I don’t know why, and that doesn’t matter. I’ve got to get back, before Mum goes mad with worry. Dad, too, I suppose. Now, what were those women talking about last night when they thought I was asleep?’
She concentrated. Some of the words came back.
‘I didn’t dream them. Granny said I was the Stranger, without doubt. Well, I’m a stranger all right, but what’s the Stranger? And there was that other bit about saving the Gift for the family. This creepy Gift that Beatie’s always sounding off about.
‘Then they said something about my dress, my Edwardian dress.’
She was puzzling her head over the half-remembered words when Dovey entered with a metal can full of steaming water.
She poured it in the basin on the wash-stand.
‘How do you feel this morning, Abby love?’
‘Better,’ said Abby. ‘I want to get up. I think I can hop around.’
‘We’ll ask Granny first.’ Dovey smiled. ‘Can you remember anything more clear-like today?’
Abigail was about to tell her snippily that she had never forgotten anything at all, but caution kept her silent. She said, ‘I’m Abigail Kirk, and I’m fourteen.’
‘Never!’ said Dovey, astonished. ‘I’d thought you about our Beatie’s age. Why, you’ve not filled out in the least.’
Abigail thought bitterly of the ‘little yellow herring of a thing’ but kept her thoughts to herself. She said with false wistfulness, ‘It’s a pity, but none of my fault.’
‘Perhaps you were not well fed as a babby,’ said Dovey sympathetically, briskly washing Abigail down to the waist.
‘They’ve no business sending you out to a situation, under-sized as you are. There now, put on your shift, hen, and I’ll give your legs a rub.’
‘Can’t I have my own clothes?’ asked Abigail. ‘Where’s my dress?’
Dovey looked uncomfortable. A rosebud blush crept over her china-like complexion. ‘I believe ’twas so stained with blood and dirt Granny burnt it.’
‘But it was new and I loved it,’ wailed Abigail. Just in time she clamped her mouth shut. Don’t talk. Just listen. You have to be sharper than these people, nice as they seem to be, or you’ll never get home.
‘It was my best,’ she said chokily.
‘Ne’er mind,’ Dovey said soothingly. ‘I’ve a skirt and bodice you can wear and welcome. But first we must let Granny see if you’re well enough to come downstairs.’
Granny said no. She said after a dint on the head-bone rest was necessary.
‘But I’ve nothing to do,’ complained Abigail. ‘Isn’t there anything I can read?’
Dovey and Granny exchanged pleased glances. ‘So you can read, lass? Can you figure, too?’
In her astonishment Abigail almost laughed, but she lowered her eyes and said, ‘Well enough.’
‘In our family we have considerable learning,’ said Granny with quiet pride, ‘for we had the advantage of a grand dominie back home in Orkney. But here in the colony poor Beatie and Gibbie, who’s the wean that’s still sickly from the fever that carried off his mother and her babe – they’ve naught but the Ragged School. And that’s no’ good enough for Talliskers, even though it may be so for Bows.’
‘Now, Granny,’ objected Dovey mildly. ‘Tisn’t Uncle Samuel’s fault he can sign his name only with a cross. To be sore wounded for his country’s sake is more than enough to ask of a sojer.’
But there was nothing for Abigail to read except the family Bible, and to this she shook her head.
‘
You’re never godless?’ asked Granny anxiously. After some thought Abigail understood she was asking about religion.
‘I don’t remember,’ she whispered.
‘Poor bairnie,’ said Granny. ‘Dovey, send Beatie to her when she comes from school, to speak to her of Scripture. It may bring the child’s memories back to her. Not to remember our Father in Heaven!’
At the thought of her own father, Abigail’s eyes filled with genuine tears. Oh, what was he doing? Thinking her kidnapped or murdered, comforting her mother or blaming her for letting her go home alone?
‘Be brave, lass,’ said Granny. ‘You can do no less.’
Abigail looked blurrily at the strong clear-cut features of the old woman. ‘All right for you,’ she thought; ‘you aren’t desperate like me.’
While she lay there the sounds of the nineteenth-century Rocks rose up from out of the street, horses slipping and sliding on slimy cobbles, a refrain from a concertina, market cries: ‘Tripe, all ’ot and juicy! Cloes prarps! Windsor apples! Rag ’n’ bones, bring ’em out! China pears! Lamp oil, cheapest in town!’
From somewhere near the water came the sweetly harsh summons of a bugle. ‘That’ll be the Dawes Point Battery,’ thought Abigail, marvelling. ‘Fancy – real live troops there, and muskets and drums! And all I’ve ever seen in my time are bits of old wall, and the cannons, and grass, and people sitting under the Bridge eating their lunches.’
Disagreeable things happened to her. She had to use the chamber-pot, while Dovey bustled around tossing up her pillows and pulling the coverlet straight. Of course, it had to be done. Abigail realised that the lavatory, if there was one, would be a little shed at the bottom of the yard, with a can and a wooden seat with a hole in it. But even though Dovey was matter-of-fact about it, Abigail hated it.
To keep her mind off her embarrassment she thought how much her mother would enjoy seeing Dovey. She was so like one of the Victorian china dolls that sold for huge prices at Magpies that Abigail wondered if the dolls’ faces hadn’t been modelled on those of real girls. She had a tiny chin with a dent in it, blue eyes that Abigail thought bulgy, and a little soft neck with circular wrinkles running around it.