Playing Beatie Bow (7 page)

‘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.

Her real name was Dorcas Tallisker, and she limped because when they were young Judah had run over the cliff with her in a trundle-cart and her thigh-bone had been broken. Sometimes it stiffened up, and then she had to walk with a stick; but the warm New South Wales weather had made the pain lessen.

The Orkney isles are harsh country,’ she said, ‘for all there is such beauty there – the heather, and the wild birds crying, and the great craigs and the magic stones.’

‘Magic stones?’ asked Abigail.

‘Aye,’ said Dovey simply. ‘Built by dwarfies, ye ken, and even giants so they say, long before the Northmen came; for Orkney folk is half Scots and half Norwegian, so ’tis said. Ah, I would that I was there now, milking my wee cow Silky.’

Sad of face, she helped Abigail back to bed and went away with the chamber-pot covered with a cloth. Soon she was back with a little brass shovel with a few red hot coals upon it. Abigail watched with interest as Dovey put sprigs of dried lavender on the coals and waved the resultant thin blue smoke about the room.

‘There now! You’re all sweet again.’

‘Can’t I have the window open?’ asked Abigail.

Dovey was shocked. ‘But the spring air brings so many fluxes and congestions in the chest,’ she said. ‘And you’re still no’ yourself, ye ken, Abby.’

So it was spring. But how? For when she had left home it was already lowering with winter. She recalled how Beatie, in her thin dress and shawl, had shuddered with cold.

How could it be? Where had all the time gone?

But she was unable to puzzle further, because footsteps came up the stairs. Dovey, brushing Abigail’s hair, hastily pulled the sheet up to her neck, so that she would look proper, and said, ‘Tis Uncle Samuel. Try to forgive him for the harm he did you, love, for, as you’ll see, he’s a pitiful man.’

The tall man who came stooping through the little doorway was stooped and spindly himself. He was the ruin of what had probably been a handsome trooper in his blue and buff uniform and pipe-clayed gaiters. His ashy hair looked as if it had flour in it, and his bright blue eyes were spectacularly crossed.

‘’Tis the effect of the head wound,’ murmured Dovey. She said in a louder voice, ‘Come in, Uncle Samuel. Abigail is much better today.’

Mr Bow wore a long white apron. He smelt deliciously of syrup and almonds. He twisted his scarred hands in his apron and said abjectly, ‘Oh, dear Miss, there hain’t words to tell how broken up I am for doin’ yer such damage. It’s these spells, you see. I think I’m back at Balaclava and I hain’t seein’ a thing but Rooshians like bears in their big coats. And I pray from the bottom of me heart, honest to God, that I didn’t do yer too much harm.’

Abigail was much taken with Mr Bow. He looked so much like a Siamese cat. She could see Beatie’s little face scowling from under his arm.

‘It wasn’t your fault, Mr Bow. I just didn’t get out of the way quickly enough. And all I have are a sprained ankle and a bump on the head, so you’ve nothing to worry about.’

‘You’re sartin sure you forgive me?’ he asked pleadingly. ‘I hain’t been myself since my dear ’Melia died, you see, and then when Granny tells me you’re the Stranger …’

‘Hush, Dada!’ said Beatie, and the tall man, mopping his eyes, turned, muttering, ‘Ah, she was a good wife, my ’Melia, and the babby, such a fine sonsy lad – make two of Gibbie, he would.’

As he went out, Beatie dawdled in and gave Abby a sullen look.

‘Did you do well at school today, hen?’ asked Dovey.

‘Patching,’ Beatie said scornfully, ‘and how to curtsey when the Lady Visitor came. And I was sore scolded for wearing no shoes. The Lady Visitor said I might as well be a Chinaman.’

‘Indeed!’ exclaimed Dovey. Bright scarlet stained her cheeks. ‘We’ll do something about that. Orkney folk are not to be spoken to in such a way, I tell you. But I’ll not soil myself with anger at such trash. Beatie, lass, Granny wants you to read the Gospel to Abby, for she’s no memory of the Lord’s good words, either.’

From the tall narrow cupboard she took a huge book bound in half-bald green plush, its edges reinforced with well-polished brass.

‘The Sermon on the Mount would be a bonny choice,’ she said. ‘And now I’ll see to Gibbie. Granny’s been up with him half the night.’

Beatie grimaced at Abigail. ‘I’d liefer read the bloody bits, about slaughtering the enemy and blowing down walls and sticking pikes into the Canaanites.’

‘Save your breath,’ said Abigail briskly. She pulled herself up on her pillows. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘If you’re about to ask me to take you back where I got you, you can save your ain breath,’ snapped Beatie, ‘because I don’t know how to do it, and that’s the truth of it.’

The two girls glared at each other. Then Abigail laughed. The younger child was such a fierce homely creature, the eyes so bright and intelligent, the small thin hands crooked as though they would claw the eyes out of life itself.

‘You’ve got plenty of brains,’ said Abigail.

‘Aye,’ said Beatie suspiciously. ‘And what brings you to say that?’

‘Because I think you want to do other things besides learn how to feather-stitch and drop curtseys to rude rich old hags at the Ragged School.’

Beatie’s tawny eyes glittered. ‘True enough. I want to learn Greek and Latin like the boys. And geography. And algebra. And yet I’ll never. Gibbie will learn them afore me, and he’s next door to a mumblepate!’

‘But why?’ asked Abigail.

‘Why, why?’ cried Beatie. ‘Because I’m a girl, that’s why, and girls canna become scholars. Not unless their fathers are rich, and most of
their
daughters are learnt naught but how to dabble in paints, twiddle on the pianoforte, and make themselves pretty for a good match!’

Suddenly light broke upon Abigail. ‘So that’s why you wanted to know why the children were playing Beatie Bow, how they got to know about you?’

‘That’s what I asked before,’ answered Beatie resentfully, ‘an’ ye wunna tell me, damn ye!’