Playing Beatie Bow (21 page)

It was a time when Abigail’s long practice at keeping her feelings to herself was useful. She was sure that neither her father nor her mother realised what was going on inside her. And all she knew herself was that the empty place inside her was so desolate that she fancied she could hear winds blowing within it, round and round, looking for some place to rest.

She took Natalie and Vincent to the playground occasionally. The children there had given up Beatie Bow as a game; they were now crazy about something else. Natalie said wistfully, ‘It’s queer, Abigail, but I never see the little furry girl any more. I wonder where she is?’

‘She’s probably at home,’ said Abigail, ‘brushing her hair and hoping it will grow long enough for her to be bridesmaid at a wedding.’

‘Who’s getting married?’

‘Her brother and her cousin.’

Natalie broke into delighted laughter. ‘Oh, you’re making up a story about her! And did her hair grow long enough?’

‘I don’t know, Natalie. I’m not really making up a story. And we have to go home, it’s getting so dark.’

‘All right,’ said the little girl docilely. ‘But if you think of some more of the story, Abigail, you’ll be sure to tell me, won’t you? Will she have a new dress for the wedding?’

‘I told you 1 don’t know,’ said Abigail, so curtly that she was ashamed of herself. For she longed to sit down somewhere with Natalie – some place Vincent would not find them, or any adult – and begin a story: ‘Once upon a time, over a hundred years ago, there was a little girl called Beatrice May Bow who had the fever. Her mother died, and her baby brother died, and they cut off all her hair, because that was what they did in those days …’

She realised now that not only did she long for Judah, but she was homesick for all the Bows. She wanted to see Dovey kneeling beside her bed, her lame leg stuck out a little askew from that abominable red-flannel dressing-gown, saying her prayers with such simple faith. She wanted to help Granny make skirl i’ the pan, which was fried onions thickened with oatmeal and browned, and rather tasty in a disgusting way; or hotch-potch which was just mutton stew; or oatmeal scones to be baked on the heated round of metal called the girdle. She hadn’t even finished telling Gibbie the story of Treasure Island. She wondered whether anyone ever would, or would he go to his grave without learning the fate of Long John and the parrot.

She had to know what had become of all those people. She had to find out before she left Australia, so that she could still think about them in Norway.

She knew she was doing a stupid thing – like biting on an aching tooth and rubbing salt into wounds, and all the dusty old sayings; but she went to the Public Library newspaper room and asked for the files of the
Sydney Morning Herald
for December 1873, and January and February of 1874. She had to fill in a form stating why she wished to see the papers, and wrote ‘Historical Project’, which, she supposed, was correct. The enormous bound files were brought and placed on the sloping reading tables. She was amazed to discover that each newspaper had ten or twelve pages of advertisements before the reader came to what she thought must be the major news pages, though there were no banner headlines.

What was she looking for? She knew Judah and Dovey would never dream of putting a notice of their wedding in the newspaper; that was for the grand people of the High Rocks. Just the same, she read down the births, deaths and marriages column. No Talliskers, no Bows.

On the cable page she saw an occasional reference to a name she knew, Mr Gladstone, the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Disraeli, the Duke of Edinburgh marrying a Russian princess. She hadn’t known there was another Duke of Edinburgh.

She looked up to see an old man across the table giving her a poisonous look and realised she was turning the stiff old pages with too much of a rustle. Cautiously she turned to the advertisements. Ah, now she was home – ironmongery departments selling girdles, kerosene lamps, cooking ranges, camp ovens; Mark Foy’s corsetry department; David Jones’s new shipment of finest velvets, ribbons, osprey and ostrich plumes, ex ship
Oriel
. She was excited, for now she felt that at least the 1870s had really existed, that high-steppers and fashionable ladies bought their hats at David Jones, and when Granny Tallisker’s corset wore out she might get a new one at Mark Foy’s. Though more likely she’d get a second-hand one from a barrow, she mused, gently turning the pages, the days, the weeks flitting past, throwing up a name here, a headline there, columns of shipping news, random paragraphs, accidental death from bolting horse in Pitt Street, ship
The Brothers
sinks with all hands.

She felt that her heart had stopped. After a little while she realised that her unseeing eyes were fixed on the old man opposite, and he was snarling even more poisonously at her. She returned her gaze to the paragraph. Heavily laden with timber,
The Brothers
had turned turtle in a gale and sunk off the coast a hundred miles north of Sydney. Some of the valuable cargo had drifted ashore and been salvaged. The date was 4 February 1874.

She did not recall walking home along the Quay. As she went into Mitchell’s lift, Justine and the two children tumbled out. Justine said cheerfully, ‘Bet you’re in a fluster, getting ready for Norway. Lucky you.’

‘Lucky me,’ said Abigail with equal cheerfulness.

It was queer how her legs walked, her arms moved, her hand turned the key in the door. It was just as if her body went on knowing what to do, though her mind was numb with shock. She pulled out the drawer of her divan, took out the crochet, and sat in the bear chair.

‘Granny,’ she said to the empty room, ‘I have to warn him; you know that.’

The crochet was more damaged than she had thought. The heat of the incinerator had made some of the old threads disintegrate. It fell into rags in her hands. She gathered up these rags, held them to her chest, and turned her thoughts with all her might to Granny, Beatie at her bench in the Ragged School – anyone at all who might hear her, help her to get back to some time before Judah embarked on
The Brothers
and drowned.

She felt the force of her love and desperation tighten her whole body.

‘Granny!’
It was a silent yell, as had been the one she had given in her peril at the top of the old warehouse.
‘Granny!’

The living-room began to waver as though it were behind a sheet of gauze that a wind gently rippled. The window that showed sea and sky and the Bridge darkened and was no longer there.

She was somewhere, neither in Mitchell nor back in The Rocks. She was suspended as though in a dream, not hearing or feeling, doing nothing but see. And what she saw was a hackney cab, a knot of white ribbons tied to its door, waiting outside the church, Holy Trinity, the Garrison Church. The lean old horse had a rosette of white on his headband, and the cabby himself had stuck a white rose in the ribbon of his hat.

Abigail gazed at this as though at a picture. She could do nothing, she could only wait. Then Beatie ran out of the church. She was in gala dress, a wreath of yellow and purple pansies on her still-short hair, a white dress with a pleated ruffle. The dress showed white stockings and elastic-sided boots.

Then came Mrs Tallisker on the arm of Mr Bow, both still in their mourning clothes, though Mrs Tallisker carried a small basket of lavender stalks.

‘Granny!
Granny!
’ shouted Abigail, silently within the silence. The old woman looked uneasily around, then her attention was drawn to the church door, where a crowd of sightseers parted, smiling and clapping.

Judah and Dovey appeared, tall Judah towering above the small lame girl. She wore a plain grey print dress, and a modest bonnet with white ribbons tied under her chin.

‘Judah! Don’t go on
The Brothers
. She will be lost. Don’t, don’t!’

But Judah was admonishing a crowd of what were probably his shipmates, skylarking and pushing each other as they came out of the church. Beatie began to throw rice, and immediately the sparrows flew down from the trees on the green and snatched the grains almost under the sightseers’ feet.

‘Get away, you blanky things!’ Abigail could see the words form themselves on the child’s lips. Granny smiled and drew the little girl close, saying a word or two to her.

‘Beatie, can’t you hear me?’ sobbed Abigail. ‘Oh, Beatie, listen to me, I only want him to live and be happy with Dovey. Don’t let him go on that ship!’

But Beatie did not hear. She danced about the bridal pair, kicked at the sparrows, half out of her head with delight.

Abigail was able to look into Judah’s face as if she were only a few inches away. She saw his clear ruddy skin, his dark blue eyes, his white teeth as he smiled down at Dovey. He looked through Abigail as though she were made of air.

Some of the bedraggled women in the crowd darted forward to touch Dovey’s wedding-ring, as though for luck. Solemnly she held out her hand to them, and Abigail saw the tiny red flash of the garnet in her betrothal ring, beside the thin glint of gold.

Then she and Judah kissed Beatie and Granny and Mr Bow, and Judah lifted Dovey into the hackney. Granny threw the lavender in after them, and stood back, smiling.

‘Granny, Granny!’ sobbed Abigail. She could see the scene losing its colour, fading like an old painting. Granny looked about searchingly for a moment, as though she had heard something as faint as the cheep of a bird, then turned away and waved her handkerchief after the cab as it slowly rattled away, a crowd of urchins following it and pelting it with old boots.

Abigail felt that her hands were full of dust. She looked down, saw them on her lap. The crochet was nothing any more but two handfuls of crumbled threads. Nothing was left, not a leaf of the grass of Parnassus, not a twist of the rope border. It fell over the bear chair like yellowed frost.

The living-room was very cold. She turned on the electric fire and crouched before it, shuddering uncontrollably.

Somewhere inside her a little thought arose: ‘He may not have shipped on
The Brothers
.’

But she did not believe it.

‘Good-bye, Judah, good-bye,’ she said.

When Abigail was almost eighteen, the Kirk family returned to Sydney. They had lived in several countries, and the girl felt an immense gap in both time and space since she had last stepped into the unit on the twentieth floor of Mitchell.

‘Quick, look out the window!’ squealed Kathy. ‘All the new buildings.’

But Abigail was gazing wistfully about her old home.

‘Peculiar,’ she said to her mother. ‘It looks both smaller and larger.’

‘And grubbier,’ Kathy grumbled, looking at the marks on the walls, the many dents and scratches that were traces of unknown tenants’ lives.

‘Well,’ said Weyland, ‘if we can’t turn it into something that feels more like home, we’ll sell it and find another place.’

‘Art deco wallpaper,’ mused Kathy, ‘fringed lampshades.’

‘Red plush toot seats?’ said her husband. ‘I’ll shoot myself.’

Abigail went into the bathroom. It was still the prettiest bathroom she had ever seen, but her face seemed to be at a different level in the vanity mirror.

‘Can I have grown,’ she wondered, ‘as well as all the other changes?’

The face that looked back was not very different from that of the fourteen-year-old who had so often looked into the glass and cursed that she would never be a beauty. But time had thinned the cheeks, taken off a sliver here and put one on there, given the narrow dark eyes long fair lashes that looked engaging against the tanned skin. Norway had lightened her hair, too. It was now a streaky sandstone colour.

‘A bit like Beatie’s,’ she thought. It was queer she could recall Beatie’s face better than she could remember her own of four years ago.

It had been a curious four years. They had made those months or weeks or minutes in that other century recede a little, like a dream. For the first year, her memories of her life with the Bow family had seemed bitterly real; she had been, torn apart with grief for Judah, a true unselfish mourning that he had not lived to be happy with Dovey, had children, grown old. It had been a long time before she made herself realise that even if he had not drowned, he would have died many years before she herself was born.

‘I might have been only a kid, but I did truly love him,’ she said, ‘and I wanted him to have his life, even though I could never share it.’

Occasionally during those first dislocated miserable months in Bergen she had comforted herself by thinking that she had dreamed the whole story, or created the fantasy because she had been so upset about her parents coming together again. But she knew that was not so.

‘And how wrong I was about Mum and Dad, too,’ she thought. ‘What a silly kid to get so harrowed. And what a sillier one not to realise that adults have as much right to happiness as the young do.’

Her mother peeped into the bathroom.

‘What are you mooning about?’

‘Just thinking about growing older, looking different,’ said Abigail with a smile.

‘You look beautiful, I know that,’ said Kathy, hugging her.

‘You, too,’ said Abigail. ‘Do you know what, Mother? I think I’ll go and see if the Crowns still live next door. Remember little Natalie, and hellish Vincent?’

As she approached the front door of the Crown unit, she almost expected to hear the fearful sounds of domestic battle coming from beyond. But all she heard was a piano. Her heart sank a little. The Crowns had moved, after all. She pressed the bell, and after a little the music ceased and the door was opened by a tall, good-looking boy of ten or eleven. Peering at him, Abigail gasped, ‘You can’t be Vincent!’

‘That’s me, all right,’ he answered pleasantly. ‘But who are you?’

‘Abigail Kirk. I used to live next door. I used to take you and Natalie to the playground, remember?’

‘Hey, Abigail!’ He grinned with genuine pleasure. ‘You went away overseas didn’t you – Holland or some place?’ He turned and called, ‘Mum, come here, you’ll never guess!’