When she thought about it, weeks afterwards, Abigail felt that surely, surely she must have believed herself dreaming for longer than she did. Why didn’t I think I’d got into some street where the television people were shooting a film or something? But she knew she hadn’t. From the first minute, as she lay dazed on the cobbles, she knew that she was real and the place was real, and so were the people in it.
The furry little girl tried to lose her, ducking up dogleg courts where the houses pressed close to the earth like lichen. They had shingled roofs covered with moss, and heaps of foul debris around their walls. Sometimes the child glanced over her shoulder as she jumped black gullies of water, or dodged urchins with hair like stiffened mop-heads. Her face was distorted with panic.
The houses were like wasps’ nests, or Tibetan houses as Abigail had seen them in films, piled on top of each other, roosting on narrow sandstone ledges, sometimes with a lighted candle stuck in half a turnip on the doorstep, as if to show the way. The dark was coming down, and in those mazy alleys it came quicker. The lamplight that streamed through broken grimy windows was sickly yellow.
The little girl darted past the tall stone cliff of a warehouse, its huge door studded with nail-heads as if against invaders. There Abigail almost caught up with her, but a beggar with a wooden stump reared up and waved his crutch at her, shouting something out of a black toothless mouth. And she saw that she had almost trampled on something she thought was a deformed child, until it leapt snarling to its master’s crooked shoulder. It was a monkey in a hussar’s uniform.
And now she had gained on the little girl, who was beginning to falter.
They had turned into what Abigail did not immediately recognise as Argyle Street, though she had walked up that street a hundred times. The enormous stone arch of The Cut, the cutting quarried through the sandstone backbone of The Rocks, was different. It was narrower, she thought, though so many shops and stalls and barrows clustered along Argyle Street it was hard to see. Where the Bradfield Highway had roared across the top of The Cut there were now two rickety wooden bridges. Stone steps ran up one side, and on the other two tottering stairways curled upon themselves, overhung with vines and dishevelled trees, and running amongst and even across the roofs of indescribable shanties like broken-down farm sheds. These dwellings were propped up with tree trunks and railway sleepers; goats grazed on their roofs; and over all was the smell of rotting seaweed, ships, wood smoke, human ordure, and horses and harness.
She wondered afterwards why people had stared at her, and realised that it was not because she looked strange – for with her long dress and shawl she was dressed much as they were – but because she was running.
Once a youth with a silly face and a fanciful soldier’s uniform, or so she thought, stood in her path, stroking his side whiskers and smirking, but she shoved past him.
Picking out the fugitive child’s figure she ran onwards, almost to the edge of The Cut, where the child dived into a doorway of a corner house or shop, with a lighted window and a smell of burnt sugar that for a moment made her hesitate, for she had smelt it before.
And while she stood there, hesitating, there was a fearful noise within – a feminine protest, the clatter of metal, and a man’s angry roar.
Out of the doorway bounded a grotesquely tall figure in a long white apron, brandishing what she thought was a rusty scimitar above his head. He was bellowing something like ‘Charge the heathen devils!’ as he rushed past her, knocking her down as he went. She hit her head hard on the edge of the doorstep.
The pain was so sharp she was quite blinded. Other people burst from the doorway, there were cries of consternation, and she was lifted to her feet. The pain seemed to move to her ankle, she could see nothing but darkness and lights gone fuzzy and dim.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I think I’m going to faint.’
When she came to herself, she kept her eyes shut, for she knew very well that she was in neither a hospital nor her own home. The air was warm and stuffy; she thought there was an open fire in the room, and it was burning coal. She knew the smell, for Grandmother had an open fireplace in her house, and burnt coal in winter. Someone was holding her hand. It was a woman’s hand, not a child’s, though the palm was as hard as a man’s. The hand was placed on her forehead for a moment, and a voice, with the accent of the little furry girl’s, said softly, ‘Aye, she’s no’ so burning. Change the bandage, Dovey, pet, and we’ll see how the dint is.’
Gentle hands touched a tender spot on her head. She managed to keep still, with her eyes shut, partly because she was filled with apprehension at what or whom she might see, and partly because she still felt confused and ill. A distant throb in her ankle grew into a savage pain.
Still she did not believe she was dreaming. She thought, ‘I’ve gone out of my mind in some way; this can’t be real, even though it is.’
A girl’s voice said, ‘’Tis clean, Granny, but I’ll put a touch of the comfrey paste on it, shall I?’
‘Do that, lass, and then you’d best see if your Uncle Samuel is himself again.’
‘He’s greeting, Beatie said, heartsick at what he did.’
‘Poor man, poor man, ’tis an evil I dunna ken the cure for.’
As with the little furry girl, Abigail at first thought these unknown women were speaking some foreign tongue. Then she realised it was an English she had never heard before. She thought, ‘Perhaps it’s Scots.’ After those first bewildered moments, she found that if she listened closely the words began to make sense. She was so desperate to find out where she was, and who these people were, that she concentrated as well as she could on all they said; and after a little, as though she had become accustomed to their speech, their words seemed to turn into understandable English.
The voices, especially that of the girl, were placid and lilting.
‘She’s a lady, Granny, no doubt.’
‘Aye.’
Abigail felt her hand lifted. Fingers ran over her palm.
‘Soft as plush, and will you see the nails? Pink and clean as the Queen’s own.’
Abigail’s astonishment at this was submerged in a sickening wave of pain from her ankle. Out of her burst a puppy-like yelp of which she was immediately ashamed. But the pain was too much and she began to sob, ‘My foot, my foot!’ She opened her eyes and gazed wildly about.
Bending over her was one of the sweetest faces she had ever seen, a young girl’s, with a soft, baby’s complexion. A horsetail of dull fair hair hung over one shoulder.
‘Poor bairnie, poor bairnie. Take a sup of Granny’s posset, ’tis so good for pain. There now, all’s well, Dovey’s here, and Granny, and we’ll no’ leave you, I promise.’
Granny’s posset tasted like parsley, with a bitter aftertaste; but although Abigail thought she would instantly be sick she was not. She drifted drowsily away, lulled by the warmth of the fire and the warm hand holding her own.
When she awakened she seemed to be alone. Her clothes had been taken off, and she was wearing a long nightdress of thick hairy material. It had a linen collar that rubbed her neck and chin. She cautiously felt this collar. It had been starched to a papery stiffness. One foot, the painful one, was raised on a pillow. The other was against something hard but comfortingly warm. She felt cautiously around it with her toes.
Then a child’s voice said, ‘’Tis a hot pig you’re poking at.’
Abigail snapped open her eyes. Natalie’s furry girl sat on a stool beside her, so close that Abigail could see the freckles on her face. Her eyes were excited.
Seeing the child so close was strange but comforting, for she knew this child belonged in her own world; she had seen her and Natalie Crown had seen her. And yet, viewed at close hand, she did not seem like an ordinary little girl at all. There was something headstrong and fierce and resolute in her face. Her little hands were marked with scars and burns.
A wave of intense fright ran over Abigail. The very hairs on her arms prickled. Her breathing became fast. Deep inside her, in her secret place, she began to repeat to herself, ‘I mustn’t lose hold. I must pretend I haven’t noticed anything … anything strange.’
Now that her head was no longer whirling, though it was still paining, she was able to collect her thoughts. She didn’t like the fact that her clothes had been taken away. She remembered all the stories at school, about girls who were drugged and taken away to South America and Uganda and Algeria to be slaves in terrible places there. Nicole Price absolutely swore on the snippet of Elvis’s silk bandanna (which was the most sacred thing in the world to her) that her own cousin had been standing in Castlereagh Street waiting for a bus in broad daylight and was never seen again.
After a while she whispered, ‘What’s a hot pig?’
‘Daftie,’ said the girl. ‘’Tis a stone bottle filled with hot water. Dunna ye ken anything?’
‘Why does my foot hurt?’ asked Abigail.
‘Why wouldn’t it? You sprained your ankle terrible bad when you fell.’
Abigail felt a feeble spark of anger. ‘I didn’t fall. Some great ox knocked me over.’ She thought for a while. ‘He didn’t really … really have a sword, did he?’
‘Aye, he did. That’s me faither. He has spells.’
Abigail thought this over but could make nothing of it. Briefly she thought that if she went to sleep again she might wake up in her own room. But the strong smell of the tallow candle that burnt on the table beside her, the crash of cartwheels and hoofs on the cobbles outside the window, the blast of a ship’s whistle from somewhere near, the anxious look of the little girl, denied this.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Beatie Bow.’
Abigail scowled. ‘Quit having me on, whoever you are. That’s the name of a kids’ game.’
‘I ken that well enough. But it’s my name. Beatrice May Bow, and I’m eleven years of age, though small for it, I know, because of the fever.’
Suddenly she gripped Abigail’s arm. ‘Dunna tell, I’m asking you. Dunna tell Granny where you come from, or I’m for it. She’ll say I’ve the Gift and I havena, and don’t want it, God knows, because I’m afeared of what it does.’
Abigail thought muzzily, ‘There’s some sense in this somewhere, and sooner or later there’ll be a clue and I’ll understand it.’ Aloud she said, ‘What is this place?’
‘It’s the best bedroom, and it’s in faither’s house, behind the confectionery shop.’
‘I mean, what country is it?’
The other girl looked flabbergasted. ‘Have ye lost your wits? It’s the colony of New South Wales.’
Abigail turned her head into the pillow, which was lumpy and smelled puzzlingly of chicken-coops, and sobbed weakly. She understood nothing except that she was hurt, and was afraid to her very toes, and wanted her mother or even her father.
Beatie said urgently, ‘Promise you won’t tell where you come from. From there. I shouldna ha’ done it; I were wicked, I know. But when I heard the bairns calling my name, my heart gave a jump like a spring lamb. But I didna mean to bring you here, I didna know it could be done, heaven’s truth.’
She was talking riddles. Abigail was frozen with terror. Was she amongst mad people? The memory of some of those terrible hag faces that had confronted her while she was running returned to her – the caved-in mouths, the skin puckered with old blue scars – of what? The fearsome beggar and his wooden leg, a thing shaped like a peg, like Long John Silver’s in Treasure Island. She gave a loud snuffle of terror.
Beatie shook her, so that her head and her ankle shot forth pangs of agony.
‘Promise me or I’ll punch ye yeller and green!’
‘Leave me alone,’ cried Abigail. ‘I don’t know where I come from, I don’t know where this place is, I can’t understand anything.’
‘You’ve lost your memory then,’ said the little girl with satisfaction. ‘Aye, that’ll do bonny.’
Abigail trembled. ‘Have I? But I remember lots of things: my name, and how old I am, and I live in George Street North, and my mother’s name is Kathy, and she’s angry with me because …’ At the thought of her mother, coming home and finding her missing, ringing the police, Dad, being frantic, she lost her head and began to scream. She saw the elder girl limp into the room. Why did she limp? And Beatie Bow looking frightened and defiant.
Then she became aware that a tall old woman stood beside her, holding her hand. She wore a long black dress and white apron, and on her head was a huge pleated white cap with streamers. Afterwards Abigail realised she looked exactly like a fairy godmother, but at the time she thought nothing. She said wonderingly, ‘Granny!’
‘She’s no’ your granny, she’s ours!’ snapped Beatie. Dovey hushed her, smiling.
The old woman put her arms round Abigail, and rocked her against a bosom corseted as hard as a board. Terrified as she was, she was at once aware of the goodness that dwelt in this old woman.
She stole a look upwards, saw the brown skin creased like old silk, a sculptured smile on the sunken mouth. It was a composed, private face, with the lines of hardship and grief written on it.
‘There, there, lassie, dinna take on so. Granny’s here’
Abigail pressed her face into the black tucked cloth, and held on tight. Something strong and calm radiated from the old woman.
Never in your whole life could you imagine her addressing snide remarks to her bonnet, or the grey silky hair that showed beneath it. She was a real grandmother.
Above her head she heard the grandmother murmur, ‘Fetch Judah, Beatie, pet. I think I heard his step. He’s that good with bairns.’
‘I want my mother,’ moaned Abigail.
‘Rest sure, my bonnie, that you’ll have your mother as soon as we know where she lives, and what you’re called.’
A tall young man entered the room. She had a glimpse of fair hair, cut strangely, a square-cut jacket of black or dark blue, with metal buttons, crumpled white trousers.
‘Faither’s in a state, fair adrift with fright and sorrow. You’d best sit with him, Dovey, till he comes out of it.’
‘I’m frightened, I’m frightened,’ Abigail whispered.
The young man sat beside her. She could not see his face because the light was in her eyes. Instead she saw a big brown hand, on the outstretched forefinger of which perched a bird as big as a thimble, its feathers a tinsel green.
‘Would you know what that is, Eliza?’
‘My name isn’t Eliza,’ whispered Abigail, ‘it’s Abigail. And that’s a humming-bird. But it isn’t alive, it’s stuffed.’
The young man stroked the tiny glittering head with one finger.
‘She came from the Orinoco. I got her for a florin from a deepwater man. Did ye ever see aught as fine?’
He turned the finger this way and that, and the little bird shone like an emerald.
‘Will you listen to the way she speaks,’ murmured the old woman to Beatie. ‘I fear your dada will be in desperate trouble if he’s injured her, for she’s a lady.’
‘I’m not a lady,’ muttered Abigail. ‘I’m just a girl. You’re a lady.’
‘Not me, child,’ said the old woman. ‘Why, we Talliskers have been fisherfolk since the Earls of Stewart.’
Abigail could make no sense of any of it. She buried her face in the chickeny pillow. Maybe when she opened her eyes again she would be in her own bed, her own bedroom. But clearly she heard the young man blowing up the fire. It was with a bellows. She knew the rhythmic wheeze, for bellows were a popular item at Magpies. There! She remembered Magpies, even where things were put; Mum’s crazy sixty-year-old cash register with all the beautiful bronze-work, the green plush tablecloth draped over the delicate rattan whatnot.
She forced her eyes open. The room was now much brighter. The firelight leapt up, reflecting pinkly on a sloping ceiling. On the table was now a tall oil lamp, and Dovey was carefully turning down the wick.
There was a marble wash-stand in the corner, with a blue flowered thick china wash-basin set into a recess. Underneath stood a tall fluted water jug, and a similarly patterned chamber-pot. The fireplace had an iron hob and on it was a jug of what Abigail thought, from the delicious smell, was hot cocoa. The jug was large and white, and in an oval of leaves was imprinted the face of a youngish man with long dark silky whiskers. She had seen him before in Magpies, too.
‘That’s Prince Albert, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, God rest him. He was taken too soon,’ replied the old woman.
Judah brought something out of his pocket and proffered it to her on the palm of his brown hand. It was a pink sugar mouse.
‘Our faither makes them. Do you fancy a nibble?’
Abigail did not even see it. She sat shakily up in bed. She saw over the mantel a picture of a middle-aged woman in black, with a small coronet over a white lace veil.
How many times had Abigail seen that sulky, solemn face – on china, miniatures, christening mugs?
‘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.