Rosetta by Alexandra Joel Read Free Book Online Page B

in fashionable twenty-first-century colours such as charcoal and pale grey. The streets are lined with interesting bars and restaurants and boutiques selling designer clothes, mostly black. There are wonderful food shops; some offer dozens of different kinds of olive oils that glimmer on crowded shelves, others display ribbons of freshly made pasta or tempt with fragrant, sultana-studded pastries. In cafes where a multitude of coffee blends, grinds and flavours are on offer, patrons sit and sip and smile. When not consulting their smartphones or laptops, they watch other, similar people going by.
    After this introduction to slick and thriving Carlton, arriving at Frances Villa is a shock. This was where, in December 1901, legal records show my great-grandparents and their infant daughter next took up residence.
    Presumably, Louis had determined that the house be called after their child, though the name is no longer on display. I seeonly a modest cottage, the last of a row of six in Faraday Street. All are in varying states of dilapidation, several are enveloped by graffiti and a couple look frankly uninhabitable. The house in which Rosetta lived with Louis and Frances is in better condition than the others, though still poor. The wounded roof bears red streaks of rust and the corrugated-iron awning above the veranda slopes at an alarming angle.
    Feeling awkward, I ring the doorbell and explain the reason for my interest to Leanne, a friendly blonde woman who, though anxious to leave for work, generously invites me inside. ‘These are the last unrenovated places in Carlton,’ she says. From the look of the house, the years have not been kind.
    I step inside and am instantly transported to another time, in the very place where my great-grandparents with their new baby tried to go about their lives. I see the bedroom in which Rosetta spent long, troubled nights beneath the white plaster ceiling rose, the kitchen with its modern shiny stove placed in the same arched alcove where Ivy helped her to produce cakes and puddings, bread and roasts.
    I want to believe that in those first few years at least my great-grandmother found space for Frances in her heart. So I stand before the empty hearth and picture her, sitting by the fire, her child nearby. Perhaps Rosetta invited Frances to play with the silky scraps of fabric that fell from her sewing box, or took her into the garden, pointing out bright rosellas flashing blue and green between thick clusters of scarlet gum blossom and sun-dappled leaves. It seems possible to me.
    I thank Leanne who, with a flick of her ponytail, takes off down the street. As I watch her go I feel a shiver. No doubt it is the result of the cool Melbourne breeze whipping down the side lane, but as the door slammed shut I’d felt a sort of presence. It was as if Rosetta had just slipped by, as if she too desired to see where she had been.
    JANUARY 1901
    A restless energy pervades Melbourne’s quiet tree-lined streets. Though the old Queen still sits upon the throne, her loyal subjects in even this distant dominion know it will not be for long. Change hovers in the air and, with it, the promise of transformation.
    First comes Federation: six mismatched colonies are forged into a new nation. On the first day of January, beneath a fierce sun, Australia’s inaugural Governor-General, the vainglorious Lord Hopetoun, mounts a grand dais in Sydney’s Centennial Park and reads the Proclamation of the Commonwealth.
    Louis, studying the newspaper at breakfast the next morning, turns to his wife and says, ‘I do not understand why it wasn’t done in Melbourne. Everyone knows this is the superior place. What was it that writer Richard Twopeny said about Melbourne? “The people dress better, talk better, are better.” He was right.’
    Louis puts the paper down, then pushes his toast and marmalade away in an exasperated fashion. ‘Honestly, it’s enough to make a man