Chapter Text
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
--John Donne
"So, tell me, Jack, where did you collect your coins? Amongst the ruins of Ancient Greece? Or deep in the jungles of Patagonia?"
"I inherited my collection from Uncle Ted and sold it at the age of twelve so I could buy my first bicycle."
"Now, that's an adventure!"
"It was, it was. I rode further than I'd ever ridden before: through the uncharted wilds of North Richmond - "
" - Where even Captain Flint didn't dare to tread!"
"And where the pirate girls of Collingwood ruled the waves."
When Jack is ten years old, his uncle Ted passes away. The memorial service is a long and sombre thing, and Jack tries not to squirm against the old, smooth wood of the pews, the starch in the collar of his best Sunday clothes uncomfortably sticky against his neck in the cloying summer heat of the church. In Jack's memories, which are not at all like those of the lengthy and overwrought eulogies being delivered by elderly relatives he doesn't know very well, Uncle Ted was kind, a bit distant, a sort of soft chuckle of a man. He takes that memory, the softness, and stores it away in a quiet place in his mind and tries not to doze off during the homily.
Later, after the service and the quiet gathering at the cemetery where they laid Uncle Ted to rest and the reception, during which Jack and his cousins mill around uselessly in their best clothes, not allowed to play, whilst the men stare grimly into glasses of dark spirits and women hold each other and do not cry, there is a meeting in a solicitor's office for the reading of the will. It is a trim, grey sort of place, and Jack doesn't really understand why he has to be here amongst these adults, but his father told him to come, and he is not yet in the habit of arguing with his parents. He stands rigidly, hands locked behind his back, as though ready to recite for the schoolmaster; he knows of no other stance to hold in such company.
The solicitor is a dry, spare man with a thin, reedy voice. He cannot be older than his late thirties (Jack, for reasons he has never really cared to examine, often notices these things about people), but is already balding a little, his hair combed forward and laid down with care to hide the loss. He executes the will in a droning monotone, listing numerous bequests - Uncle Ted, who read Classics at Balliol before the Boer War, was a man of slightly more than modest means - until he gets to a collection of coins, to be left to Edward Robinson's nephew, John, because all young boys should have a treasure of their own. Jack, who has not been called John by almost anyone since the Matron attending his delivery asked what should be recorded on the birth certificate, starts slightly; he had not expected to have been included in the will at all. He feels his father's hand on his shoulder and wonders if he's supposed to say thank-you, but in the moment, his throat feels oddly dry, and he ends up just nodding his head slightly.
The coin collection, such as it is, ends up being mostly odds and ends Uncle Ted found during the war, plus a few more interesting rarities collected while he still lived in England, before he retired to the Antipodes to make a life here. Jack pores over each one, learning the intricacies of stamping and milling and metals, because he feels as though he should treat a dead relative's bequest as something important, and because he remembers, in that quiet and secret place in his mind, the kindness and the softness and is grateful for it. But like most healthy boys his age, Jack's greatest passions lie elsewhere. He spends most of his time, when he is not pressed into service around the house at his parents' orders or poring over schoolwork, outdoors: swimming and making rope swings over the river with the other boys; climbing trees to pilfer apples; making the most of Melbourne's feeble flurries of snow in the winter to wage snowball fights or build armies of tiny snow soldiers. His dream, as ten becomes eleven and his limbs become long and rangy with the beginnings of adolescence, is to buy a bicycle and train for the Tour de France. As eleven becomes twelve and his mother, clucking with disapproval at how quickly growing boys wear through their clothes, lets down the hems on yet another set of trousers, Jack retrieves the box of coins from where it has lain mostly untouched for the last year. He runs his fingers over each one of the collection and thinks of Uncle Ted and his soft chuckle and his kind eyes and wonders what kind of dreams he had when he was a boy, if he ever wanted anything more than an Oxford education and a quiet retirement in the colonies.
He sells the collection to an antiques dealer - he has no idea if he gets for it what it's really worth. He keeps one coin, a favourite: a crown piece, a memento of the war and of the old Transvaal Republic. It is hard for him to imagine his Uncle Ted as a soldier fighting the Boers in that far-away, foreign place. The coin is a reminder of all of the things he never knew and all of the things he wants to know about the world some day: foreign lands, strange peoples, wild adventures.
With the rest of the proceeds of the sale, he buys for himself his very first bicycle.
Abbotsford has been Jack's world for most of his life, with the exception of visits to family in Fitzroy. He is dimly aware, in the way that schoolboys are, of a world beyond: a world described in the verses he memorises and recites for the schoolmaster, Keats and Donne and Marlowe and Shakespeare. Damned kings and doomed lovers live and die on blasted heaths and in fair Verona, but Jack still dreams of the French countryside as he rides his bicycle down the narrow streets in the twilight after chores and schoolwork are done. He is fourteen, growing into long limbs, finally filling out with lean, ropy muscle and sinew, and with each pump of the pedals his world expands.
The rougher, pitted streets and alleyways of North Richmond should perhaps hold a little more fear for a boy alone on a shiny, carefully-maintained bike. But Jack, too lost in thought, too given to the rhythm of the pedals, the sweet burn of air in straining lungs, gives it no mind until he is forced to skid to a stop one chilly August afternoon before he collides into the girl who has just run into his path. She is a grubby, wild creature in patched, hand-me-down clothes: a worn calico dress that has seen better days, ragged petticoats meant for a shorter, younger girl. Her brown-black hair is cut choppily at her shoulders. She stares at him, blue-green eyes bright with exhilaration in her dirty face. She is clutching a basket of white peaches against her chest and breathing hard, as though she has run a great distance, which makes Jack think that the peaches are probably not hers.
"Whatcha starin' at?" she demands, her accent rough. She holds her shoulders back proudly, like a duchess. Jack is reminded of an aunt he almost never sees: a schoolmistress, regal and overbearing in featherbone corsets and crinolines, except that he is sure this girl in her worn boots and scabbed elbows has surely never been near a corset in her life.
Jack blinks. "I wasn't staring," he says finally. "You ran in front of me."
"I never did," the girl retorts. Collingwood, from the accent, Jack thinks with the observational part of his brain, and not Clifton Hill, either - really Collingwood, where you don't walk home alone at night. Though maybe this girl does. She continues, "I reckon you need to look where you're going."
Despite himself, Jack replies, "I thought I needed to stop staring."
This shuts the girl up for a second, but only for a second. "You're in the wrong part of town, smart-arse," she starts hotly, but whatever she was about to say next, she is interrupted by the arrival of friends, equally ragged and very out of breath - a boy and a younger girl, doubled over and panting heavily. Their eyes widen when they see her and the girl goes to her, clutching her sleeve and tugging.
"Phryne, we have to go!" the girl - blonde, pig-tailed - begs. "I saw a constable outside Mr Archer's shop, it's only a matter of time before he sets them onto us, and you know dad's already fit to be tied about the ruckus with the gang from over at Cooper's last week and - "
The brown-haired girl rolls her eyes, but Jack sees a flash of fear cross her features. It is gone in an instant and he wonders if he imagined it. "Dad can go and jump," she says, contriving to sound careless. "He's probably drunk, Janey, he won't even know where we are."
"Phryne, please - "
"All right, all right!" The girl - Phryne - gently disentangles her sleeve from the younger girl's grip. She is still holding the basket of peaches. She turns to the boy, who has been watching all of this unfold with rapt attention, and sighs. "C'mon, Janey, Raymond," she says, "we'd better scarper before that useless constable finds us and we all have to explain ourselves to the police - or worse, Dad." She says that last like it's a particularly bitter curse, and Jack, whose father has always treated him with a sort of rough affection, wonders about the brief look of fear and feels momentarily sick.
He realises he must be staring again, because the girl Phryne looks back at him, pokes her tongue out and says rudely, "Put your eyes back into your head before you lose them." She turns to leave with her friends, turns back, and adds, "And just because we didn't give you any trouble this time doesn't mean we won't next time."
Jack, who didn't realise he'd done anything to get himself into trouble, but who also slightly resents being told where he can and can't ride his bicycle by a girl about half his size, says mildly, "Who says you could if you wanted to?"
Phryne puts down the basket of peaches and starts towards him with a snarl, eyes narrowing, but her friends pull her back, murmuring urgently at her, and she huffs and rolls her eyes again and picks the peaches up, thrusting them at the unfortunate Raymond, and they leave together. She shoots a dark glance over her shoulder at Jack as they leave and he stares blandly back at her before turning to ride home. The sky has darkened while they've had their odd confrontation, and he should be getting back for dinner. As he rides, pumping methodically at the pedals, he wonders idly about a girl who steals white peaches and carries herself like a duchess in rags and tatters, but by the time he gets home, tired and sweaty and with just enough time to wash up for dinner, he has all but forgotten about her.