Nellie and Secret the Letter Read online

  Contents

  1 A NEW START FOR NELLIE

  2 BESSIE RUDGE

  3 A NEW FRIEND

  4 SHOPPING

  5 A PIG IN A DRESS

  6 WRITING TO TOM

  7 THE GOVERNOR COMES TO DINNER

  8 THE CHRISTENING GOWN

  9 A WICKED ACCUSATION

  10 MARY’S SECRET

  WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE IN NELLIE’S TIME

  It’s 1849, and Nellie is starting her new life as a kitchen maid in a grand Adelaide house with her best friend, Mary. But Nellie’s desire to live out her dreams soon leads to a battle with the spiteful cook Bessie Rudge. Can Nellie keep her temper and avoid being thrown out to beg on the streets? And why is Mary acting so strangely?

  Follow Nellie on her adventure in the second of four exciting stories about an Irish girl with a big heart, in search of the freedom to be herself.

  Puffin Books

  Irish orphan Nellie O’Neill has arrived in South Australia and begun her new life as a servant. Her first job, at the Thompson family’s boarding house, was a dream come true. She felt part of a family again, and Tom Thompson, the oldest boy, became her great friend. He even started to teach her to read and write.

  But then a terrible fire at the boarding house changed everything. Now the Thompsons have moved to the copper-mining town of Burra Burra, and Nellie has been left behind to start all over again …

  Every careful step Nellie O’Neill took down the long gravelled carriage drive sounded impossibly loud. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. The gravel glared white in the hot sunlight, and the flowers in the neat garden beds blazed red and orange. Nellie had never felt more out of place in her life. She was painfully aware that in her shabby, smoke-stained dress she could be mistaken for a gipsy or a beggar.

  Crunch. Crunch. She tried walking on tiptoe, but it made no difference. Surely any minute now someone would emerge from the front door of that big, important house and order her to leave. No beggars allowed here! the person would say. No tinkers! No Irish!

  What if her new mistress, Mrs Lefroy, decided not to employ her after all?

  Nellie took a deep breath, and touched the two gold sovereigns in her pocket for luck.

  Off the noisy gravel at last, she ran down a side path and around to the back of the house, to the servants’ entrance. Timidly, she knocked.

  The door opened almost immediately. Nellie had hoped that her dear friend Mary Connell would be there to greet her, but she was unlucky. Of course, Nellie thought, Mary was the family’s nursery maid, and she must be busy with the children. Instead, the doorway was filled by the broad, white-aproned figure of Bessie Rudge, the Lefroys’ cook.

  Nellie’s heart started to beat very fast. Mary had told her many stories about Bessie Rudge and her permanently bad temper.

  ‘I’m Nellie O’Neill, if you please, ma’am,’ she said, ‘and I’m here to be the kitchen maid.’ She held out a crumpled piece of paper. ‘I have a reference from my last mistress, ma’am, to say I’m capable.’

  Bessie took the paper, holding it between two fingers. She looked Nellie up and down, and shook her head. ‘You’d better meet the mistress,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’

  Nellie wiped her sweaty hands on her skirt and followed Bessie Rudge at a respectful distance, feeling more like a beggar girl than ever. She’d never seen anything like the inside of this house. It was a bit like being in church, but without so many candles. She half expected to see Father Donnelly, the kindly priest she’d known back in Ireland.

  The walls of the front parlour were hung with paintings, and there was a piano in one corner. Everything shone with polish, even the floorboards. But it was the carpets that Nellie noticed most of all. She wished she could take off her boots and dig her toes into that lovely warm softness. It would be the most wonderful feeling, even better than walking through a peat bog. Instantly she was back in the fields outside Ballycasheen, with the sun warm on her back, and Dada lifting the turves of peat with a spade …

  ‘Her name is Ellie, madam,’ Bessie Rudge was saying. ‘She’s from one of them Irish workhouses, you know. Only a pauper girl and an orphan, but she has a reference from her previous employer, a Mrs Thompson. It was her what ran the boarding house in Rundle Street that burned down a short while back, if you remember. Our own Annie Higgins also put in a good word for the girl, in spite of her being Irish, which normally I’d not hold with. Gipsies and tinkers, the lot of them, and not to be trusted.’

  The creature! Nellie thought indignantly. But she said nothing.

  Mrs Lefroy read Mrs Thompson’s reference, raising her eyebrows once or twice, and then bent towards Nellie and sniffed. She brought a handkerchief to her nose, and moved back a step. ‘I trust the fire at the boarding house was nothing to do with you, Ellie?’

  Nellie quickly gathered her thoughts. ‘It’s Nellie, ma’am, if you please: Nellie O’Neill, although my real name’s Ellen. And no, the fire was none of my doing – it was the Thompson children playing with fireworks, although of course they aren’t bad children at all, and I know they never meant to burn down the building. But -’

  ‘That’s enough, Ellie. We are not having a social visit. I see you have some experience as a kitchen maid?’

  ‘Oh yes, ma’am. Mrs Thompson taught me to cook breakfast and all. Mr Strout, who was one of the young gentlemen at the boarding house, said my breakfasts were every bit as good as his mother’s.’

  Bessie Rudge gave a sour little snigger. ‘Perhaps the young gentleman’s mother was a shocking bad cook, madam, if you’ll pardon me.’

  Mrs Lefroy laughed. ‘You may well be right.’ She turned back to Nellie. ‘We will not expect you to do any cooking. Your job will be to keep the kitchen area scrupulously clean, and to help Cook by preparing vegetables, washing up, and so forth. You may sometimes be asked to assist with other tasks when Trotty needs a helping hand.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ What did ‘scrupulously’ mean? Nellie wondered. Was it a new kind of cleaning that she would have to learn? But she liked the sound of the name Trotty. Perhaps she and Trotty would be friends. Then (she put her hands behind her back and counted on her fingers) she would have three friends: Mary, Tom Thompson and Trotty …

  ‘And of course you will obey Cook in every particular. If you fail to give satisfaction, I shall expect her to tell me.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And do have a good wash. Soon.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am, about the smell, and all.’ Nellie felt a wave of longing for the boarding house. Life there had been pleasant, and Mrs Thompson had been as kind to her as a mother. Best of all, Tom Thompson had started to teach her to read and write. Now the Thompsons had moved far away to Burra Burra, which they called ‘the Burra’. Tom’s father worked there in a big copper mine.

  Nellie had lost her own family to the famine in Ireland – her mama and dada, and her baby brother and both her little sisters. Her greatest wish was to be part of a family again, and she’d hoped to go to the Burra, too, and to stay with the Thompsons for always. She realised now what a foolish hope that had been. ‘You’re not their family,’ Mary had told her. ‘You’re their servant.’ Nellie hadn’t wanted to believe her, but Mary had been right, after all.

  Still, Nellie had promised to send Tom a letter, and she must find a way to do it soon. If only writing wasn’t so difficult!

  When the interview was over, Mrs Lefroy asked Bessie to show Nellie to her bedroom. To her disappointment Nellie found that she wouldn’t be sleeping upstairs near Mary, but in a tiny dark room next to the kitchen. Bessie and Trotty had bigger rooms close by, down a narrow passageway.

  ‘Susan Trott is the housemaid here,�
�� Bessie Rudge told Nellie. ‘And that means she’s a sight more important than you are.’

  ‘Please, ma’am, what does Trotty do, exactly?’ Nellie asked. ‘Miss Trott, I mean.’

  ‘Of course, you wouldn’t understand about domestic staff, would you?’ Bessie said with scorn, shaking her head. ‘In a civilised English household it’s the housemaid what sweeps and dusts and polishes and makes the beds and waits at table and so forth. That’s a position of responsibility, second only to being cook. But a kitchen maid is the lowest of the low, and don’t you forget it.’

  When Bessie Rudge had gone, Nellie sat down on the hard little bed that was now hers. ‘You must make the best of things,’ she told herself firmly. ‘It’s a grand opportunity you’ve been given. And never forget, you’ll be living in the same place as Mary, and isn’t that worth putting up with Mrs Rudge?’

  But still, something told her that in this big, wealthy household, things weren’t always likely to go her way.

  ‘Fetch me the jar of dripping. Quick smart! I won’t put up with dawdling on the job.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I mean Cook. I mean Mrs Rudge.’

  It was Nellie’s first day as kitchen maid, and she was determined to show Bessie Rudge what a good worker she was. She ran to the cool safe at the back of the room and lugged out the big earthenware jar. It was heavier than she expected, and its sides were slick with grease.

  She fumbled, grabbed at it, missed. The jar slipped from her fingers and crashed onto the stone-flagged floor. It lay in fragments, the white dripping exploded all around it.

  Frozen with horror, Nellie could only stand and stare.

  Bessie Rudge’s face turned a deep red. The frill of her starched cap trembled. ‘Idiot girl!’ she shouted. ‘Heaven preserve us from the Irish fools that are sent out to this country! Clean that up now, and quickly, or you’ll feel the back of my hand!’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Rudge. I mean Cook.’

  Nellie ran to the scullery to fetch a cloth. ‘Mrs Rudge is exactly like Matron Hogget at the workhouse,’ she said to herself. ‘She has a temper like the devil, and there’s no kindness in her whatsoever. Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what have I got myself into?’

  She started to clean up the mess while Bessie Rudge, hands on hips, glared down at her. ‘When you’ve done that, there’s the dishpan to be emptied and the big frying pan to be scoured. I keep a clean kitchen. Not that you bog Irish would know anything about that, I presume.’

  Bog Irish indeed! If it weren’t for Mary, I’d run away this instant, so I would, Nellie thought as she scrubbed furiously at the stone floor.

  She heard light footsteps and looked up to see Trotty smiling down at her. A rosy-faced English girl, Trotty didn’t appear to share Bessie Rudge’s dislike of the Irish.

  ‘Keep your chin up, chick!’ she whispered. ‘Things will be better tomorrow.’ She glanced meaningfully at Mrs Rudge’s back, and rolled her eyes.

  But to Nellie’s despair the next day was just as bad as the first had been. Bessie wanted everything done ‘quick smart’, and Nellie was never quick enough or smart enough. There were pots to be cleaned, dishes to be washed, floors to be swept, tables to be scrubbed, vegetables to be peeled, all in a dizzying cycle. Of course Nellie had done all these things at Thompson’s Boarding House too, but nobody had shouted at her there, or made her feel stupid. Mrs Thompson had called her ‘pet’, Nellie remembered with a warm glow. Bessie Rudge called her ‘girl’. Or worse.

  ‘Look at that stewpan, girl!’ came Bessie’s loud voice, yet again. ‘How many times have I told you to clean the bottom. I want it so shiny I can see my face in it!’

  ‘And the bottom is the only thing that’d want to reflect your face,’ Nellie muttered to herself. Then she almost laughed out loud at the idea of Bessie admiring herself in the reflection from a copper stewing pan. Sure, nothing would make that face beautiful, she thought. It’d curdle milk.

  ‘You do still smell very strange, Nell,’ said Mary, sniffing. ‘Like ashes when they’ve gone cold, and a bit like rotten potatoes too.’

  ‘I washed myself at the back-yard pump last night,’ said Nellie. ‘But I have nothing else to wear – this is what I had on when the fire burned down the boarding house. I must get some new clothes soon.’ She leaned back and closed her eyes. ‘I’m so tired. I could go to sleep right here in this lovely room and never wake up again.’

  It was Sunday morning, and the two girls were sitting on the truckle bed where Mary slept in the nursery. The normally noisy room was quiet because the older children, Louisa and Charlotte, had gone to church with their parents, and baby Henry was asleep in his crib. Toys were strewn everywhere – china dolls, a spinning top, battledores and a shuttlecock, brightly coloured building blocks. In one corner stood a magnificent dapple-grey rocking horse with red-painted nostrils and a velvet saddle.

  ‘Poor Nell,’ said Mary. She leaned over and pulled out a bundle from beneath her bed. It was here she kept her beloved old doll, Vanessa, along with the clothes she’d been given by the Guardians at the Killarney workhouse. She kissed Vanessa on her wooden head, then put her to one side and flipped through the small pile of garments. ‘Here.’ She pushed a brown cotton dress into Nellie’s arms, and topped it with a pair of stockings and a shift. ‘Now you can smell as sweet as clover again.’

  Nellie opened her eyes. ‘I can’t take these.’

  ‘You can. It’s only a loan, till you have new things of your own. We promised to help each other, didn’t we, when we first arrived here in Adelaide?’

  Gratefully, Nellie took the clothes. ‘Mary, you truly are an angel if ever anybody was. Now I can wash my smelly dress, and then maybe Mrs Rudge won’t turn up her nose at me.’ She paused, thinking. ‘Of course it could be the case that she just doesn’t like me at all. Is that a possibility, do you think?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with you, Nell. There’s nobody in the world she has a good word for. God forgive me for saying so, but Our Lord Himself would have trouble trying to please her.’

  Nellie laughed at the thought of Jesus working in Mrs Rudge’s kitchen, scurrying about to obey orders and failing to give satisfaction. Then she scolded herself for her wicked lack of respect. ‘Oh, Mary,’ she sighed. ‘I believe my good luck is starting to run out. I hate that Mrs Rudge already, I swear I do.’

  ‘Nell, hush your mouth,’ Mary said, shocked. ‘You know Father Donnelly says we should never say the word hate. Now, you must promise me faithfully that you will do whatever Mrs Rudge asks of you, and never think of answering back. Not ever, Nell! You know what would happen to you if you should lose your job. You can’t risk that, now, can you?’

  Nellie shivered. Of course she couldn’t risk it. If she lost her job, she would very likely soon be starving and homeless. She’d heard that work was now hard to come by – already some of the Irish orphan girls had been seen begging in the streets. Back home in Ireland Nellie had been forced to beg too, and she vowed she’d never do it again.

  The nursery door opened, and Louisa and Charlotte Lefroy burst in. Nellie watched in disbelief as Louisa pulled off her pretty bonnet and stamped on it. Charlotte, giggling at her older sister, did the same thing.

  ‘Biddy, my bonnet is all broken,’ called Louisa. ‘Come and fix it for me!’

  ‘And me!’ added Charlotte. ‘Mine is broken as well.’

  ‘And hurry up, you lazy thing,’ said Louisa. She slumped down in a chair and then stared at Nellie. ‘Why is that dirty person in our room?’ she demanded in a loud voice. ‘That’s not her place: I shall tell Mama. Then you’ll be in trouble, Biddy.’

  Mary ran to pick up the spoiled bonnets. ‘Do hush, please, Miss Louisa. You’ll wake Master Henry.’

  ‘It’s time for him to wake up. It’s bad for him to sleep too long.’ Louisa went over to Henry’s cradle and roughly shook the sleeping baby. Very soon he was wide awake and bellowing, scarlet with rage. ‘You’d better calm him, Biddy. You know Mama hates to be disturbed
by his noise.’

  ‘Well!’ exclaimed Nellie, as she watched Mary trying to soothe the baby, while Louisa and Charlotte looked on with smug faces. ‘I’ve never seen such wicked spalpeens in all my life.’

  ‘You must go, Nell,’ whispered Mary, jiggling Henry on her shoulder. ‘If you don’t, they’ll tell the mistress.’

  ‘But -’

  ‘They aren’t always this naughty, really they’re not. It’s just that they’re bored after all the time they’ve had to sit still in church.’

  Nellie got up to leave, but at the doorway she turned. ‘You’ve the patience of a saint, Mary. I’d tan their hides, so I would.’

  She walked slowly down the stairs, thinking. She’d hoped that in this new country it wouldn’t matter who you were or where you came from. But the English had always treated the Irish like dirt, hadn’t they, and why should it be any different here?

  Nellie knew that back in Ireland, when the famine was at its worst, the English landlords had thrown Irish farmers off their rented land without another thought. Dada had explained to her that the English saw the poor people of Ireland as being less than human. ‘They’d value a pig more highly,’ he’d said; and Nellie remembered the bitterness in his voice. But she knew there were good English people, too – people like Mrs Thompson, who believed that nobody was better than anyone else. People like Tom. Tom never cared that she was Irish, and she never cared that he wasn’t. They were just friends.

  Nellie didn’t always say her prayers, as Father Donnelly had told her she should. But before she went to bed that night, she knelt and prayed that both she and Mary could be very, very strong.

  At dawn on Monday Nellie took her scorched, filthy clothes to the laundry building at the back of the house. With a bucket of water and a bit of soap they’d scrub up nearly as good as new.

  She wasn’t surprised to find someone already in the laundry. Of course there would be someone there, because Monday was wash day. But she was very surprised by the person she saw, and she couldn’t help a sudden ‘Oh!’