Shortlisted
Dirt is but Matter in the Wrong Place
Louise Briggs
Her boots were pointing homeward now. Fading light was beginning to creep and curl itself around the trees and shrubs that lined her way. All the swirling dust of hot February had settled to form this cold, hard dirt track. Crisp cold was gripping the air too and she could feel it seeping up from the track into her boots, making the leather feel stiff and cold. These boots had weathered all the seasons, through thick autumn mud and thin spring dust they had kept her company, and she knew that this evening when she cleaned them as she always did, they would be difficult to pull off. She believed that if she closed her eyes right now, these trusted companions could tread the familiar way, following the ruts and bends from Barwon Paper Mill back to Chilwell.
Today had begun just like every other day, lighting the fire, making tea and pulling on her clean boots. She had wrapped herself up as well she could against the cold and begun her walk to the mill. But today had become remarkable. She knew that she would remember it for a long, long time and also, because of paper, that she would also last for a long, long time.
Today had been the 22nd day of June 1889. This morning, she had met Mr John Stanley James and this evening she was striding back home ten feet taller.
Mr Hughes, the mill manager, always made his habitual daily walk through the mill at nine o’clock. He was as regular as clockwork. She could wrap her apron tightly round her waist and settle to inspecting the finished paper and know that he was on his way. Every day he started his inspection where the young girls worked through the new deliveries of dirty rags. Then he always moved to the Cutting, Willowing and Dusting House. He checked on the rag-cutting machine and then the Boiling House. His next visit would always be to the Engine House where water from the river soaked the rags and turned them into a fine, white pulp. She could follow Mr Hughes in her mind’s eye because she had worked her way through all these different houses. He would return to the main building where the rag pulp was transformed into paper. Lastly, he would turn to the Finishing House where she now worked.
When he entered, he would always stop if he found her poised over a sheet of paper searching for blemishes and marks. Then he would greet her with a brisk “Good Morning my dear.” He called her his ‘expert’ because she never missed finding flaws and knew how to cut the finished paper into crowns and demies carefully and cleanly. She liked it when he quietly smiled at the perfection of what he had created. And it was perfect. She loved standing under the light when it streamed down through the high windows because it made the finished creamy-white paper shine sometimes buttery-yellow, sometimes tinged with purple and blue through the surface. If she then bent her head to the side, she could examine the face of the paper, following the undulating rises and falls, the tiny flecks producing a faint texture and the crisp edges. It was often so quiet she could hear the girls outside chattering and laughing as they moved the bags of rags ready for sorting. And she always heard the footsteps of Mr Hughes as he approached.
Today however, Mr Hughes had not appeared. The clock had ticked along past nine o’clock and the quiet had stayed suspended in the room as she had worked on examining and cutting. There would perhaps be a visit later in the day. But then she had heard footsteps approaching and two voices. It had not been the voice of Mr Hughes but his deputy. He had burst into the Finishing House, bringing in a swirl of cold dusty air and had loudly announced the presence of his companion, Mr John Stanley James.
Mr James had looked like he had stepped out of another world in the finest clothes of an accomplished gentleman, a world of travel to faraway lands, of books and newspapers, of richly-laden tables, of pianos and carriages and fine china. Mr Hughes usually wore thin waistcoats, and his shirts were a plain, washed-out grey, but this Mr James had had a waistcoat of deep green with the shiniest set of buttons she had ever seen. His collar and cuffs hadn’t spoken of being a mill manager or even a mill worker because she knew everything there was to know about collars, cuffs, buttons, and every possible fastening. She could tell a lot from the shirt a gentleman wore. And she knew she was expert in noticing even the smallest of details. When she had first begun work here at the mill, in the company of the other young girls sorting the rags, she had become very quick at finding buttons, clips, and fastenings. She had fancied that every rag had a history. Brown earthy dirt told of labouring in fields, soot and grime told of factories and workshops, threadbare collars and worn cuffs might mean walking the streets searching for work. After only a few weeks of sorting the rags, dear old Biddy had been quick to notice her, too. Biddy had worked at the mill ever since the gates first opened. She knew everything there was to know about how to make sure the rags were in a fit state to be turned into paper. Biddy befriended all the new girls when they began work at the mill.
She had wondered why Mr Hughes had sent his deputy this morning. And why he was in the company of a stranger. She had watched the two men survey the room, then tried to fix her eyes back on her work. She had heard them laughing about a vagabond and, as they had begun a circuit of the room, she had lifted her gaze. That was when she had seen the stranger’s boots. His fine shirt, the rich waistcoat, and the fancy buttons had been distracting, but those boots had not been much better than her own. His smile had been broad under his moustache, but it had been the sly smile of a fox.
She had told the stranger everything about working at the mill, and he had pronounced that he was going to make her famous. He had declared that people were going to read all about her and the mill in ‘The Age’ newspaper and that newspapers would last for hundreds of years. She did know that good paper could last for a very long time, so she knew that much was true. She also knew that she had started at the mill sorting filthy rags riddled with dirt and stains, but now she was able to work in the quiet, clean air of the Finishing House.
When he had finished listening to her, he had jutted out his chin, flipped open the ledger he was carrying, held it up high, and raised his shoulders and chest to meet it. As he had started to write down his thoughts with a flourish of his pencil, he had shouted, ‘Dirt is but matter in the wrong place.’
The cover of his ledger had been crafted out of deep blue cloth, but inside, she had seen the paper had been pale and thin, stretched and weak. The binding had been sewn together roughly and unevenly, and his pencil had scratched against the roughly finished surface of the paper.
Later in the day, it had been no surprise to her that he had sought out Biddy. Biddy had skin as pale and creamy as a piece of the finest paper. She was always telling us stories of how the mill began, and she had loved telling Mr James all about when the mill first opened, when the bare hills around the mill were exposed to the full sun in summer and the biting fog clung to the Barwon River in the winter. She had watched the building of Mr Miller’s house and the first married workers going home to the new cottages owned by the mill. She had remembered watching the tower at the mill grow higher and higher on the edge of the cliff down to the Barwon River. She had seen the river rise and fall. She had remembered a time when the waters rose so high that the Eucalypt trees were standing trunk-deep in muddy water. She had also told of how, only a few years later, Mr Miller and Mr Ducker had stood silently amid the blackened timbers and piles of grey ash after a fire had ripped through the mill.
Biddy had remembered the first attempts to make brown wrapping paper out of old sugar bags and the very day the first paper had been produced. That day the paper had been a triumph, and some of it had been given to the girls to make baskets for a charity bazaar. There had been less than fifty workers then, and she had known them all. She had loved talking to Mr James, especially after he had said that he was really a vagabond, and she had laughed when rumours started flying around the mill about him. Some had said he might be an inspector checking up on Mr Hughes and the working conditions at the mill. Some had wondered if he really was the vagabond he kept laughing about. They hadn’t believed he worked for a newspaper at all. Biddy would add the story of ‘The Vagabond’ to her store of memories, and no doubt it wouldn’t be long before she began reminiscing about today.
So here she was walking home on the 22nd day of June 1889. Now she knew that the importance of her work was far more than just The Vagabond’s fancy. If the good people living in Geelong in 1989, as well as 1889, might want to read about what she did here at the Paper Mill, it meant she belonged to the future. She was part of the future.
So tomorrow she would take even more care to make sure her hair was tied up securely and her white apron was clean and neat. She would stand at her table to view the finished paper and wonder even more about the messages, which would be printed on it. Tomorrow, just like today, she hoped there would be crisp, whitish sunlight streaming through the high windows all around her to light up the paper. She would carefully remove the blemished sheets so that only the finest, whitest paper went forward for cutting.
The Vagabond had come and gone, but the paper remained. The sheets would be wrapped securely, and then they would travel far and wide across the whole of Victoria, further than she might ever travel. Her paper was a silent, powerful messenger spreading news and ideas to everyone who could read. She thought of the paper used for mechanical drawings at the new Gordon Memorial Technical College opened just two years ago. She thought of letters to sweethearts, party invitations, and Free Library books. She thought of grocers’ lists, shop receipts, and Mr Brownlow’s Map Shop in Malop Street, which had books, maps, and ledgers displayed in the shop window. She thought of Birth, Marriage, and Death Certificates, of cheque books and bank notes for the London Chartered Bank in Little Malop Street. Paper was everywhere.
But most of all, she thought of the fine gentlemen in town carrying ‘The Advertiser’ and ‘The Age’ under their arms and wondered if those neatly folded pages were made of her fresh, crisp, and perfect paper. They would read about fires and floods, openings and closures, scandal and propriety. They would read about the famous and the not-so-famous, like her. They would read about what she did for them. She understood not only how to make paper, but its beauty, power, and potential. 100 years from now, her work would be remembered in ‘The Age’ because of The Vagabond. Indeed, and surely now, in word, she was part of the future.
Louise Briggs has been shortlisted for the Geelong Writers Prize for the first time. She enjoys writing fiction, along with historical fiction.
Return to the Geelong Writers Prize 2025 page
Leave a Reply