The two women were so close that Helen could have reached out and touched them had they been there in the normal sense but if she opened her eyes she would be unable to see them and no longer able to hear them. They in their turn had no awareness of their auditor sitting on the plinth of the war-memorial obelisk. She had not existed in their time. Their conversation was trivial, local gossip, trouble with a neighbour’s goat that had broken its chain, a sick child, and of interest only because it had taken place some eighty years earlier. Helen was the Helen Walters of ‘Us Girls’ which catered for the clothing needs of the over- sixties woman. It was an idea that had come to her when she had found herself in this age-group and, while still interested in clothes,.had had difficulty in finding anything really flattering. She admitted to an awkward figure. She had asked herself, “Why should this have to be?” Fashion seemed to be blind to anything but youth and stick figures and not everyone is young and lissom. And!! We live in a world with an aging population. Surely this was a growing market. It was not only the young women who wanted to look nice and that could often mean no more than wearing what was personally appropriate. Larger women had dress shops to meet their exclusive needs. Why shouldn’t older women have something similar? The ‘Us Girls’ title was based on the premise that women remain girls to the end of their life. She still thought of herself that way. She had taken over a failing dress shop which had styled itself a boutique while trying to be all things to everyone. She had practically given its stock away. Her new staff had been over-sixties. A rule that continued. They were not saleswomen and they must never be saleswomen. They needed to have good taste when it came clothes, a genuine interest in people, be absolutely honest in their advice, be someone that you would not hesitate to
ask for advice, and they must be extremely tactful. It is easy to tell a woman that she looks super in something but not so easy to convince her that a garment really does her no credit particularly when she has set her mind to it. They had to be practical psychologists. The garments stocked were carefully classic and timeless with the planned obsolescence of the latest fashions firmly rejected. Those petty tyrants with their sketch pads and mouths full of pins could take a running jump at themselves. The whole object was to have a woman walk out with something that enhanced her looks and, hopefully, would continue to do so for years to come: with maybe even with an added spring in her step. The putting of sales secondary might have seemed a sure road to disaster but it had not proved so. Few businesses can have achieved the same level of customer loyalty and repeat sales. It came to be that a woman trying on a garment in one of the changing rooms would come out and seek the appraisal not only of the staff but of other customers as well, even complete strangers. Some would pirouette with almost childish exuberance, dignity in abeyance, and strut an imaginary cat-walk. There developed a club atmosphere of women helping women and any criticism tended to be taken in good part as being meant constructively. Larger premises had soon become necessary but that was as far as Helen had been prepared to go. She had been advised strongly on a number of occasions to open branches elsewhere, make the most of her idea before someone else did, but she had asked herself, “What for?” Her own needs were more than adequately met and she had no living relative to pass the business on to. She had never married and that gave her no cause for regret but having no daughter, another Helen, did. She was the sixth in an unbroken line of eldest daughters named Helen. Tradition had been broken.
The result of her reluctance had been a rash of blatant copies with none anywhere near as successful as the original. Others had even taken Helen’s concept and franchised it but she didn’t mind. If older women benefited that was all to the good. There had never been a road into this valley and Helen, in denims and strong boots, had walked up a stream-bed through a narrow cleft to reach it. The boots were off and her socks dried beside her in a rather wan morning sun. It was a bleak place lacking soil and with crowding hills that severely limited the hours of direct sunlight. It must have been purgatory in winter. Only one thing could have persuaded people to live here. Gold! A prospector, by name of Jasper Bro, had followed traces of alluvial gold up a tributary from the main river, into the sub-tributary that passed through the cleft, to find the quartz reef from which it had eroded. He had sold his mining rights to big-money-interests overseas. Quartz mining with its necessary stamper battery and refinery requires a great deal of start-up capital and particularly so in this case. It was the lure of another new find that interested him anyway. The first problem had been access. The cleft was the only possible means of entry into this narrow valley and the stream occupied the whole bottom of the cleft. With the stamper battery and refining plant needing to be situated beside the main river some miles away, a rail link had been necessary. This had been built on trestles above the stream with parts of the rock wall having to be blasted away to allow the passage of the rather small tank locomotive and its trucks. Quite a large town had sprung up with shops and all the various other businesses, a school, boarding houses, dance halls, churches, lodges. It had even had a band rotunda for like every other town of its time it had had its own brass band. The town had been called Hambletown the reason for this being now obscure. There was now nothing left to see but this obelisk and a few
tumbled headstones in a wilderness graveyard. Souvenir hunters had long since found that there were no more pickings. Helen’s grandparents and mother had lived here. Grandparents that she had never known. Her mother’s father, who stemmed from a long line of Cornish miners, had died in that war that was to end all wars. Alone in the world, Helen’s roots had become particularly important to her. She had a photograph of Hambletown’s menfolk proud in their new uniforms parading down the main street, the local brass band in the lead, before leaving for Auckland and eventually The Front. That photograph showed a surprisingly large town. Her grandfather had been somewhere toward the rear and his actual position was uncertain but she had another photograph of him, proudly and stiffly posed, taken by the Hambletown photographer. She had seen his name at the Menin Gate among those Dominion troops whose burial place is unknown and been present in the evening when the buglers of the Ypres Fire Brigade sounded “The Last Post”. She had gone to Belgium for these very reasons. She had been both moved and exasperated.–‘Men and their bloody wars!–His name was also on this obelisk with all the others who had died from here. On learning of his death, her grandmother had sold the house to work, and room with her young daughter, Helen’s mother, in one of the boarding houses. In a few years it was to prove fortunate that she had sold the house. The reef became more difficult and costly to work and gold prices slumped. The overseas interests didn’t care about people. They closed the mine and the town’s reason for being disappeared. Houses were then worthless and there was no way that they could be shipped out even if cut into sections. There was a sudden rash of fires but only the first lucky few were able to collect. Insurance companies are far from stupid. While it was in the mining company’s interest to maintain a strong local community, freight
rates to and from the river landing had been purely nominal. The return trip had been basically a string of empties anyway. Now that service was entirely withdrawn to cut the town off from the outside world. Local businessmen banded together to buy the line and rolling stock so that what was portable in the town could be moved out. The larger live-stock, mostly draught animals, would have to wait for the driest summer months, the only time that they could be guided down the stream below trestles which was the way that they had come in but few could afford to wait that long. The mining company had again shown its colours. A price was asked that held the town to ransom but it had to be paid. It was true that the rail’s component parts had originally been brought in with great difficulty. Even separated from its motion, the remaining parts of the locomotive had been too heavy for the then available river traffic and it had been hauled for a considerable distance by bullock train. But, after nearly sixty years, it had long since paid for itself. The businessmen in their turn had shown themselves to be little better than the company charging rates that sought to more than recoup their own losses. Her grandmother and mother had moved away when the end came but her grandmother had died shortly afterward leaving her mother in the care of a family friend. Her father she knew little about and scarcely remembered. He had been put up for adoption back in the tight-lipped days. Walters was the name of his adoptive parents and Helen had been unable to discover his true parentage. He had been killed in the second-edition of the European war. She had sat in this same spot about ten years previously having just picked her way carefully up that same treacherous stream, wet to her knees as today, and with her boots and socks off as now. She had closed her eyes to enjoy a similar sun and heard the town come to life. Open her
eyes and there was nothing. Close them and there was bustle all around and the crunch of hooves and iron tires on gravel. The fussy little ore train had rattled up on non-existent trestles and the plaintive wail of its whistle had hurled itself backwards and forwards from crag to crag. It had been the same on her subsequent trips. Sometimes town’s-people stood nearby and talked as was the case now. At other times someone would share her seat on the obelisk base. Usually it was small boys who insisted on whistling which seemed to be a common practice of the time. But even when silent, she could recognize their presence and approximate age. She had been drawn here the first time by simple curiosity but she had been driven since by a compulsion that she could not explain. The way in would be taxing even for someone much younger and in recent years she had been finding it increasingly difficult. She could only be dropping into a very narrow time slot. This memorial had been erected in 1921 and the town had died just a few years later. It was unsettling to have this hindsight cum foresight that disaster was so near and be unable to tell anyone. Not even tell those who meant so much to her. They were still living here somewhere and, even if she could not help them, it was her continued hope that she would at least hear their voices sometime. She was sure that she would recognize them immediately. The two women moved off, still talking, and were almost out of earshot when a hand touched Helen’s shoulder. “Are you unwell Mrs.Trethowen?” Helen opened her eyes. It was Elsie Brommers the town’s most vindictive gossip and trouble maker. And she must be unwell: must have taken a turn of some sort. For why else would she be sitting here at the base of the memorial in this embarrassing state of dishevelment? And why of all persons did it have to be Elsie who approached her? Elsie’s show
of concern would be, as it always was, fishing! You told her nothing. And yet Helen had the feeling that there was something that she should be telling everyone. Even Elsie. BUT………WHAT?