Dread and Wonder Before the Dawn of Time
Foreword:
In considering Frank and Helen's possible backgrounds, I have chosen to use the story of my own great-grandparents' personal histories as a vehicle, with significant changes to their fates and a fanciful fiction to fill in the gaps of what we don't know.
However, the locations mentioned, most family members and relationships are completely real and as accurately described as I can manage. I have been creative with dates as the Frank and Helen of Narnia were probably born a little later than the characters. Of course instead of ending up in South Australia with two children, they will arrive in Narnia with none. But the great care, respect and love they had for each other as they survive and thrive in a new land and create a family in a special place will be the same. Enjoy the ride.
Key References:
· The Southams of Barunga, the family of George and Elizabeth Southam who arrived in Australia, September 1877 (Chris O'Loughlin 1998)
· Google Maps
· Wikipedia
Chapter 1: The Linen Room and The Bed Room
Summary: Nellie Peachey is caught on the horns of a dilemma as she tries to escape the abuses of her employer's son and keep her job as she pines for her dearly departed mother's company and wisdom.
Notes: My own great-grand-mother's actual employer in Stretton-on-Fosse is unknown but this scenario possibly captures some of the pain and powerlessness that she may have experienced.
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Tuesday 29 February 1876
Lansdowne House, Stretton-on-Fosse
...
Nellie Elizabeth Peachey climbed quietly up the dark back stairs, struggled with the catch, nudged the door open and edged warily into the upper linen room. Dull winter light from a small high window slanted into the cheerless space, revealing a young woman of small frame, with a broad honest face framed with dark hair pulled back in a bun. Her face was tight with anxiety and it had been so for some weeks. She dumped the heavy armload of clean bedsheets she had been struggling with on the shelf, carefully arranged them into a neat stack with shaking fingers, quietly closed the cupboard door, flung herself onto the single hard chair and began to cry. There was no-one to see her tears.
She had good reason to cry. She longed for the comfort of her mother Thirza. She would have known what to do. At least she would have had wise words to help calm her eldest daughter, so she could find her own way forward. But her mother, aged twenty-eight had died in childbirth in Ascott-under-Wychwood with her eighth child nine years ago on a day of frantic searching for a doctor who never came. She had been only twenty-eight and Nellie only ten. She had been laid to rest in a little graveyard in Churchill, her unmarked grave strewn with simple violets. But that was 13 miles away from the big Lansdowne house in Stretton-on-Fosse, where Nellie now laboured in terror; too far to consider a visit to her mother's graveside. Her work was fourteen hours a day, seven days a week.
The injustice and powerlessness she was experiencing was overwhelming and had already gone on far too long. Her nervousness was causing Nellie to drop things. She was lying anxiously awake in her narrow bed and the housekeeper had taken to scolding her for taking too long with tasks… such as her work on laundering and ironing the sheets of the master's son.
The stack of neatly folded linen she had just lugged up the stairs and put away included the very sheets that only the day before, she had been flung upon, whilst young Master Hendry Lansdowne first of all declared his love for her, then made threats followed by pushing himself painfully into her and exerting himself whilst mouthing obscenities until finally he collapsed on top of her. It was the third time in the last month and the third time she had found herself scrubbing and washing the shameful stains from the linen. It was her appointed task to see to his bedding and linen and empty his chamber pot when he was home.
The threats had held each time and she had kept quiet, but her life in the house was now a terror whenever he was home.
Her steps were dogged by Master Hendry's relentless attentions and it was only the impropriety of his entry into these servant-only spaces which was keeping him at bay. Every creak of the floorboards was setting her on edge. If the Lansdowne family had been richer and larger she might have settled for being a simple laundry maid and been paid somewhat less but at least she wouldn't have had to go upstairs unaccompanied, let alone into his bedroom.
She had tried to time her visits to his bedroom until he was down eating his horrible breakfasts of porridge, kippers, devilled kidneys and toasted bread with marmalade... And the disgusting bitter coffee that he had brewed, she had heard from the scullery maid who had once tasted the dregs. But sometimes other tasks were forced on her before she could hurry into his room to strip his bed linen twice a week and he had the habit of returning to his bedroom immediately after breakfast to retrieve some belonging or other. Yesterday he must have had made his excuses early and he had cornered her again before she could escape or hide.
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