Chapter Text
I can recount me childhood well, for many an impression had been made upon me from a young age.
I had a simpler early life than most, the progeny of love. Mind you, I were not a sheltered wean, for it should be said that most livin’ in those early times suffered many-a-burden thrown upon them. But, because of the way circumstances played out, I had a cherished freedom and autonomy, unlike others. I was the venturesome, rambunctious type you see, explored and did me own thing, never wantin’ to take no for an answer.
Ma were a milkmaid and forever the hard operative. She’d gone straight back to work after she had me, even when me father could have well been the only breadwinner the family needed. But she’d wanted to earn her own wages to support the family and so it was, no need for debate. That very reason gave me a lot of time to be an independent.
There were a nanny in the picture, though she weren’t salaried for it. In truth, it were just older lass who’d taken to me at the time but she’d made it her business to keep an eye about me when me parents were off and earning their keep. Her faintness kept them from e’en knowin’ of her existence in the first place, but had they, I’m sure they would’ve insisted on providing her some form o’ compensation knowing the trouble she went to, to keep me from it. I don’t remember her name though, nor particularities about her features. However, I can piece together bits of her presence, in the paddocks and such or wherever I chose to play.
Ma told me I were a mischi’vous one when I was younger. But I couldn't help it now, could I? I had desperately wanted their attention, but they were always out on me, ma and da. That and the like had been the way I’d thought back then, I’d surely pinch me own ear if it were still so nowadays.
Apart from the fact me parents were hard workers and I saw them less than others did their own, I did have companions who’d occupied a lot of that time instead. Me mates were a wee boy, blond and fair-eyed named Armin, and a lass around the same age, with locks black as coal, who went by the name Mikasa. We made our own fun, thick as thieves we were. About as troublesome as imaginable too.
There were a time at age eight that I vividly recall us three running laps around a frozen lake. The game had turned into a goad-off, seein’ who’d get closest to the centre of it. Between one another, we’d kept on at our egging and o’ course it were me who rashly loped straight across the ice, gullible and overconfident.
Then, as should have only been expected, it began to crack.
I’d been frozen in fear. Me friends were calling out to me, advisin’ caution in uneasy tones. I’d pretended I were not shakin’ and tremblin’ from it, but with every step back to them and every shattering sound of the ice splitting a little more, I were closer to shedding tears and folding in dread.
Abruptly, me next step had found me with numbing coldness up me leg, all the way to the thigh. It’d had gone straight through the thin of it, I’d realised to me horror. And yet, I made not so much as a peep, because I were being wilful about it and convinced meself I just had to make it to them.
When Mikasa stepped onto the ice in a panic though and the groaning protests of the ice worsened even more than before, I’d yelled at her to stay off it, for both our sakes. Armin managed to pull her back to him seeing that her going to me aid were worse than her not doing so. Me trembling hands eventually succeeded in pullin’ meself out of the hole while me friends were crying me name ever more fretfully. Sheer will allowed me to slide on me stomach the whole way back until I were no longer a captive to the ice.
No one ever spoke of that day, and we weren’t dumb enough to do it twice considering what could’ve been the outcome. Once I’d returned in one piece, both of them had hugged me tightly, Mikasa gave me a good wallop on the head and Armin kept babbling apologetically with tears in his eyes. He’d needed more comforting than I had in the end.
We were always such a messy lot, and our parents were never pleased to see us when we turned home right grubs, or clocked us slippin’ in when the skies were already dark. But we were safe, and I think that mattered to them more than the rest of it.
Me schooling life would be one thing best glossed over, seeing as I never learnt to read or write. I’d been a free bird in that sense. For as much as me father drilled it, that I should be in them schools taking lessons, the letters on the page or on the chalkboard never sat right. It were like they moved about and e’en with me concentrating real hard, they would wiggle and switch. I wept because of it. Received corporal punishment when I got asked to read a passage and fumbled. I’d just been making my words up by then, hoping I’d land it right. But I was always wrong and got beat upon the hands with the cane or the belt for it. Those beatings would leave me with palms that couldn’t close and scarlet welts which’d ache for days.
I don’t think I was seeing what others were seeing. But the nuns said I were simply a ‘nuisance boy’ looking for attention. That they’d just have to ‘discipline’ me until I stopped being the dunce and thinking it were funny to make my words up. And maybe they were right, maybe I was stupid, but I were never doing it for the attention, who’d want the belt? So, it bore the question; why could everyone else do it and not I?
Certainly, me father did more than grumble to me about it, that were to be expected though. He was an intellectual man, yet there I was, wholly incompetent. Must’ve missed something somewhere along the line as I never could read as he could, nor indeed like me fellow pupils. Left me feelin’ aggrieved about it ‘cause I weren’t able to live up to his expectations.
Seeing me though, and the beatings bared down upon me and all my distress at that time, me mother had simply had quite enough. She went snapping at me father that; ‘if it weren’t meant to be, it weren’t meant to be!’, and she were final about that.
So, with that, I got me freedom back. I weren’t lazy about it though; I worked and earned a few pence doing jobs around as a boy of ten, but that were also the around the time the world turned bad.
At that time, the famines struck and all of Ireland, me poor homeland, were swept along with it.
People were starved by the potato blight and the bloody Brits weren’t no help at all about it, taking all our food amidst the bedlam. That’s what had taken ma in the end, the starvation. She were always certain to provide me and da the most. I’d look at her plate and she’d have but a whisper o’ food, nothing that were enough to keep her sustained but she told me she were fine, she’d ‘eaten earlier’ or she ‘weren’t so hungry today’. I knew it were a lie e’en at that age, but I was encouraged to eat, and eat I would, ‘cause I were desperate.
Ma were just too kind for all of us, and one day, she died because of that compassion. Never with complaint though, only love in her heart for the rest of us. I still miss her, e’en now, all these years later.
Still, the famine had kept up strong long after we’d lost her. Too many years went by, so much death, all our crop taken, year after year, and the goods shipped in from the Americas weren’t doing near enough for us either.
But that’s when there were a boat that offered us a way out.
I’d begged da to join us, me lover; Mary, and me. Told him life would be far more than what it were in Ireland, what with the poverty we’d been living through. Right through me youth had been the worst of it, and we’d only just barely begun to see the other end of it. The repression weren't something to be so easily forgotten either. With all o’ it combined it’d be a long reparation for Ireland, and I saw that.
Still, da were a stubborn man, said he’d rather die than leave his homeland and I told him then it would be the last we’d see of each other. He looked to be despairing behind that gruff expression, I think, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. I knew he didn’t want me to leave him, I don’t think he could really face being alone when all were said and done.
See, Da were a doctor, but also a fostering drunkard. He’d never let himself be sloppy in his work, at least in the beginning, but when ma died, he would sometimes rock up to a house he were on call for and you could smell the fumes on him. I didn’t want to leave on bad terms, so I told him I’d write. Though it would not be by me own hand, that, as he also knew would be Mary’s.
I’d met me dear Mary and at the spry age o’ fourteen. Watched her come home down the road from the school over the hill on one glowin’ evening. I’d been out shepherding for an older man when I’d seen Mary for the first time; wearing her pristine gloves and her hairs braided in ribbons. She’d been the old man’s neighbour as I’d learnt.
She and I had held each other’s eyes as she made her way into her home with a wee smile and the gesture had made me fancy her in an instant. Made me best effort to work for Mr O’Neill just to glimpse more of her. And it were like that for a while, just ogling at one another from afar ‘cause I certainly never had the courage to strike a conversation. But one day, the self-assured thing she was approached me asking if I were parched for a drink and I, all flustered, had said ‘yes’. She’d invited me into her home and the rest were but history.
Mary were literate unlike me and I’d admired her for it but were also a tad envious. It came to her with ease, and she could always be caught with her eyes raking over the words in a book. Me mild envy dissipated over time though, because she’d eventually started reading them books aloud to me, and I liked that.
Da approved of her too, relievedly. In fact, it seemed he may have thought her too good for me, nagged at me all over again about his discontent towards my blindness to words. He’d made comparisons-a-many about her and me when she weren’t about. But he liked her, and that were good enough for me. When I’d told him I were taking that boat, though, he’d said I were completely senseless and that there were something profoundly wrong with me in the head. How would travelling across the bloody ocean do me any good?
‘To the other end o' the world? Oh, so, help me God!’ He’d cried to me in vain, ‘Yer not throwin’ yer life away like that lad. Ya won’t e’en make it there in the first place, you’ll drown at sea, fer fecks sakes!’
But I guess I were just as stubborn as him in the end. I’d married Mary before we left, a small ceremony with our families, Mikasa and Armin were there too, and then we’d left them all behind.
I tell ya now, them storms Mary and I encountered were like nothing we could’ve anticipated. That old ship groaned, its sails relentlessly pulled this way and that. I thought we’d be wrecked out in that beast of a sea, me da’s forebodin’ words made true in the end. For four months straight we were aboard that ship, counting the days off one by one. We were almost parallel with the water for some of them it and had us questioning if we’d ever greet land again, but we’d held our faith because that new land promised great things. I’d been hearing the country were fruitful, full o’ untouched treasures. I told me wife I’d become a digger and we’d be bound to live a plentiful life once I scored us a nugget or two.
So, once we’d landed on the shores, I’d immediately asked Mary to contact me da, telling her to write that I’d be providing for me family in no time, and we’d be livin’ well and he’d see all the good he were missing out on. I’d told him the stories I’d heard; men pulling nuggets from the ground the size of a fist, larger e’en!
And it were true, all o’ that, but a right confident thing I was, ‘cause then I saw the reality.
Men worked the mines like dogs, hardly ever seeing the light o’ day. I’d been occupied in Ballarat at the time, and camps were stewing with men from all walks o’ life; Chinamen, Canadians, the Welsh, the Italians, the list went on and on, and everyone one of ‘em there was working for what they hoped to be the last day they’d ever need to again.
Spent two years down those mines, I did. Inhalin’ soot and all sorts. We were sending them poor canaries down the treacherous holes.
‘O sweet singin’ birdie, say, any air down there?’
When them canaries didn’t come back, we knew not to go down. Some men still did though, the promise of gold worth more than their lives. Some worked tirelessly down them shafts, only to find nothing. It weren’t a life I were used to, that were for sure, it were dangerous. If them rickety mines collapsed, you hadn’t a chance of getting yourself back out, stuck down there ‘till you died unless you had the fortune of being crushed by the falling rocks before then.
I was down there like the rest of them, chippin’ away at the dirt, bit by bit, but eventually the government decided to get on our backs. The licence fees for prospecting became increasingly absurd and the collections a pitiless thirty-shilling’s a month. Us diggers got no vote either so there were a great hash an’ hark going on all the time about our rights.
The enforcers, the ‘Jacks’ as we called ‘em, were something to turn your nose up at with how they imposed the law. We sometimes managed to save the buggers without a paid licence from getting snagged by the police if we sung out early enough though. ‘Cause them pigs were extorting us, and they were gaoling people without the due process. So, if we could save a few, we’d do it.
But after James Scobie were killed, it all went awry. Everyone knew it’d been Bently the proprietor who did it, yet he got off scot-free, bein’ the corrupt system it was. So then, in ’54, the stockade was instigated. We built up our barracks on the 30th of November, when I was just a lad o’ninteen. We were just defending our rights, we wanted better was all.
Three days after that, chaos ensued. Government troops took us when we’d been too lightly guarded, the devils. The result were that too many of ours died, a hell of a lot more than theirs, that were for sure, and it left the sight of a brutal, bloody battlefield.
That were the moment when I’d decided I weren’t cut out for it all. Whether or not things would make a change for the better in Ballarat, I took my wife further East across Victoria, away from the shiny things that brought men misery. ‘Cause really, that’s all them minerals did, made people nasty and act like starved beasts; I’d known a man, pulled himself a piece the size of a thumbnail, so proud he was, and showed it to everybody, was to celebrate with his wife and children. That were his mistake. The next morning, fella was dead, gold pilfered. Never show nobody your finds, that were the unspoken rule.
Me wife, she were already pregnant at the time, so we’d just needed to get out, even if we’d had no real direction. We’d settled out in the bush, it were certainly rural, our stay, but it was so peaceful, and wonderful to be away from the hecticness.
Our firstborn daughter was born on the 17th of April 1855. Wee, fragile thing. Light as a feather. She were the ray of sunshine we’d needed. I were still young, freshly twenty years old and Mary nineteen. We named our little girl Elizabeth. Bess for short.
Them were the years o’ bliss alright. Me wife and I, a happy young couple, free settlers, and our sweet babe, such a merry little thing she was. Always a’giggling, laughing at things me wife and I never saw.
I found some jobs to do here and there while we were building up our home, and Mary looked after our little girl well. I’d come home to a warm meal, then we three’d bundle up together in our stiff cot, all cosy. When the early morn’ light were starting to peak through the shutters, I’d be off again.
We’d spent four years together after our first daughter hoping for another, but for all we’d tried, nothing came about. Mary were in misery thinking something were wrong with her. I’d told her she were fine, and all would come good when it needed to and we’d just need our patience. I were right.
She came to me one day smiling and radiant, told me she had not bled in some time and then we noticed her belly started growing too. She’d had the common nausea, queer appetite but all were swell as she continued to round. Proudly, we told our baby girl she’d be a big sister soon, and she were so excited when we learnt her the news. She were eager for a little sister, I think she were thinking of that babe as a doll for her to play with, but I too were swaying for another little girl. Mary said she’d hoped it a boy.
She were fine then, Mary, and then it changed.
She got sick with the flu, and it weakened her down a great deal, forced her to be bedridden for most of the earlier months. Her health made a steady decline after that. Skinny from the vomiting and skeletal by the time the bump were the size of a melon. All bone, not an ounce of fat left on her frame. She and I knew it were not going to be a safe or easy birth by the time she were in her confinement stage.
As it were, Mary’s water broke earlier than we were expecting her to be due. I called for the midwife straight away but it were already dark by the time we’d gotten back and Mary were all a’shaken. Me daughter, poor thing, in a state herself she was, having seen the blood between her mother’s legs, she’d been made fretful. Only four, but she were helping her ma like the good girl she was, grabbing a cloth and trying to keep her comfortable and reassure her. All she knew; the baby were bein’ delivered tonight.
The midwife had went straight to Mary’s side, mopping up the blood, wiping the forrid of its moisture, telling me wife to breathe. Me love, seeing me, put her arms out, begging me nearer. I’d taken her hand right away, kissed it, telling her not to worry a thing; ‘the nurse be here now, dear, she knows what she’s doin’, it’ll all come good.’ I’d said, continuing to pet and stroke her hand. Me wife nodded, but I think she knew then, as well as I did, she were not going to make it.
I’d told me daughter to kiss her mother and then leave the room for her seniors to take over, it were time for her bed anyway. She’d protested telling her ma and I that she wanted to stay up and help deliver the babe, but I were not able to let her see her ma in that declining state, I didn’t have it in me. I knew what were coming, even if I didn’t wish to believe it.
I think Bess saw something in me eye that night, the sensitive wee thing she was. I think she knew it were goodbye, too, for when she kissed her ma, and hugged her, it were longer and more tender than usual. She’d whispered something more then, I hadn’t made it out meself, but it brought a faint smile to her ma’s face and then they’d both looked at me and her ma squeezed her wee hand, whispering something back and returning a delicate kiss to Bess’ brow.
Mary had wiped the cheek that had a tear stain upon wee Bess’ face and then the dear child tucked herself into to bed, no more words said.
That were the last night I spent with my wife, for morning come, and she were with God.
James, my son, all skin and bone, but had a good, strong cry on him. He’d come into the world in the early hours of the morning, born the 2nd of October 1859 at half-past four as the midwife had taken note.
He’d already had so many features of his mammi. So, his face made me cry. It shattered me, it did, I loved him and it were not his fault, but in those five years that followed I felt a great depression side me everywhere I went.
I hated Australia, and I blamed her for taking my wife.