Playing Beatie Bow

Fourteen-year-old Abigail Kirk was not always Abigail. Born Lynette, she changed her name at ten after her father, Weyland Kirk, a half-Norwegian architect, left the family for another woman. Devastated by what she experienced as a double rejection, the child punched her father on the nose and chose "Abigail" because it sounded like a witch's name. Now she lives with her mother, Kathy, in a high-rise tower called Mitchell in The Rocks, a historic harborside neighborhood in Sydney, Australia. Kathy runs a vintage shop called Magpies. Outwardly composed, Abigail conceals an inner emptiness she cannot name.

One afternoon, Abigail takes her young neighbors, Natalie and Vincent Crown, to the playground, where children play a ghost-rising game called Beatie Bow. Natalie points out a "little furry girl" who watches but never joins in: a small child of about eleven with close-cropped hair, bare feet, and old-fashioned clothes. When Abigail approaches, the girl flees. Later, at the Crowns' home, Abigail finds a yellowed crochet yoke in a ragbag and takes it home. She identifies the embroidered pattern as Grass of Parnassus, a bog plant, notices the tiny initials "A.T." in the design, and sews the crochet to a green dress she has made from an Edwardian curtain. She feels an intense, mysterious happiness wearing it.

Kathy reveals she has been secretly meeting Weyland, who wants the family to reunite and move to Norway. Abigail is outraged and refuses to go. Kathy erupts, accusing Abigail of never once having considered her mother's feelings. The accusation stings because it is true, and mother and daughter lapse into cold civility. After a tense scene at the shop, Abigail storms out and reflects guiltily that she never offered Kathy comfort after the separation.

At the playground, she spots the furry girl again and gives chase up a cobbled alley to Harrington Street. A horse-drawn cab emerges from the dusk and nearly runs her down. The girl pushes Abigail out of the way. Abigail crashes onto wet cobblestones and finds herself in a gaslit street reeking of horse manure and sewage. She is no longer in her own time. She chases the girl to a confectionery shop where Mr. Samuel Bow, a gaunt former soldier with a head wound from the Crimean War, charges out during a violent spell and knocks Abigail down. The household takes her in: Dovey (Dorcas Tallisker), the family's cousin, a gentle young woman who walks with a permanent limp; Granny (Mrs. Alice Tallisker), a composed old woman; and Judah Bow, an eighteen-year-old apprentice seaman. From a window, Abigail sees a city with no Harbour Bridge and no Opera House. Judah tells her the year is 1873.

The furry girl reveals she is Beatrice May Bow, called Beatie, with hair regrown after typhoid fever killed her mother and baby brother. She begs Abigail not to reveal where she truly comes from, fearing Granny will conclude Beatie possesses the family's supernatural power, called "the Gift." This legacy of second sight and healing originated on the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, when an ancestress was taken to "Elfland" and returned with a child carrying mystical abilities. Both men and women can transmit the Gift, but only women can possess and use it. Abigail overhears Granny and Dovey discussing her as "the Stranger," a figure foretold to preserve the Gift. They note her green dress bears a crochet pattern Granny designed but has not yet made. Dovey tells Abigail her dress was burned, seemingly destroying her link to home.

Abigail adjusts to Victorian life with difficulty. She meets Gibbie (Gilbert Samuel Bow), Mr. Bow's sickly son of nearly ten. When she discovers the shop sits near where she first arrived, she slips away to return home but is captured by thieves and locked in a warehouse attic. She silently calls out to Granny, and Judah and his shipmates, alerted by Granny's psychic effort, rescue her from the rooftop.

Granny, gravely weakened, confirms Abigail is the Stranger. Abigail pieces together the truth: The initials "A.T." stand for Alice Tallisker, Granny herself, who will one day crochet the very yoke Abigail brought from the future. The crochet, not the dress, transported her across time. A family Prophecy states that when the Gift is at risk, a Stranger arrives carrying something that belongs to the Talliskers. Its words are grim: "One to be barren and one to die" (103). The family believes Beatie will be the barren one and that either Gibbie or Dovey may die young. Dovey admits the dress was not burned but locked in her bride chest, and Granny refuses to return it until Abigail fulfills her role.

Resigned to staying, Abigail grows close to Judah, whose ship is laid up for repairs. His vitality and devotion draw her to him, and one evening she realizes she loves him. The empty place inside her fills. Beatie confronts her, revealing that Judah is betrothed to Dovey, a promise rooted in love and in guilt over having caused Dovey's limp in a childhood accident. Granny counsels Abigail that true love includes the ability to live without the beloved.

On a cockling trip to gather shellfish across the harbor, Judah and Abigail find themselves alone in a borrowed boat. He asks her not to leave. They kiss. He admits confusion about his feelings; she tells him she loves him but acknowledges Dovey's claim. They return to find that Mr. Bow, having drunk hidden rum, set the shop on fire. Dovey cries out that Gibbie is trapped in the attic. Abigail pushes Dovey to safety and goes back alone, breaks the window, and forces the terrified boy onto the lean-to roof below, saving his life. She also rescues Dovey's bride chest, containing her green dress. As the fire brigade works, Abigail watches Judah rush to Dovey and embrace her with unmistakable love. She turns away and whispers goodbye.

Granny tells Abigail she has fulfilled her purpose: She saved Dovey for Judah, giving the Gift a double chance of survival. Abigail puts on her green dress, says farewell, and walks with Beatie to Harrington Street, urging Beatie to seek an education. Beatie's figure grows transparent and vanishes. Abigail finds herself back in the twentieth century; no time has passed. She cuts her waist-length hair, hides the Victorian garments, and tells Kathy she will go to Norway.

In the following days, Abigail wanders The Rocks, finding all trace of the family erased. At the Public Library, she discovers that Judah's ship, The Brothers, sank with all hands on 4 February 1874. Desperate, she clutches the damaged crochet and calls out to Granny. A vision forms of Judah and Dovey's wedding, but Abigail's warnings go unheard. The crochet crumbles to dust, and the link to the past is severed.

Nearly four years later, Abigail returns to Sydney with her parents. She visits the Crowns. Justine, the children's mother, introduces her younger brother, Robert Bow, a twenty-year-old marine engineering student strikingly similar to Judah. Upon seeing Abigail, Robert involuntarily calls her Abby, though they have never met. Together they open the Bow family Bible. Judah died at nineteen; Dovey and her baby daughter died of smallpox. But Gibbie, the boy Abigail saved, lived to seventy and continued the Bow line. Robert descends from Gibbie. Beatie never married but became headmistress of Fort Street School, a renowned classics scholar.

Abigail realizes the Prophecy was correct, but Granny assigned it to the wrong people: "One to be barren" was Beatie, and "one to die" was Judah, not Gibbie. Her true role as the Stranger was to rescue Gibbie from the fire, ensuring the continuation of the family and the Gift. She reflects that time is not a void but a great river, always changing yet continuous. Robert asks to see her again, and the novel closes with the promise of their relationship, the Gift enduring across generations.