Meet Nellie Read online

  Mrs Thompson’s boarders had all been at the boarding house since it opened. First there was tall, elegantly dressed Eric Carlisle, who claimed his grandfather was a duke, and who spent most of his time playing cards with other men for money. (‘Duke, my foot!’ Mrs Thompson whispered to Nellie. ‘You should hear him when he forgets to talk like a lord – he’s no more a duke than our cat.’) Then there was Arthur Dawkins, a draper’s assistant, a plump, timid fellow with hair as red as Nellie’s own.

  Nellie’s favourite of the three young men was Edward Strout, who worked in a nearby grocer’s shop and sometimes brought home a fistful of sweets to share. Edward, a large young man with a sandy beard, was on the lookout for a wife. Somewhere out there, he told Nellie, was a girl who would be ‘The One’.

  Every morning at half past seven the boarders sat at the long kitchen table with Mrs Thompson and her children to eat breakfast. After that the men left the house, and Tom, William and Hetty went to school. Nellie wished with all her heart that she could go with them.

  Nellie’s first attempt at cooking breakfast was a disaster. The porridge was watery, the mutton chops were only half cooked and the fried eggs were like shoe leather. Eric refused to eat anything, but the other young men were easier to please. Arthur drank his porridge, licking his lips afterwards, and Edward even asked for another helping of eggs. ‘They’s every bit as good as my old mum used to cook back home in Wapping,’ he said. ‘Plenty of grease, and plenty to chew on.’

  Nellie learned quickly from her mistakes, though, and she soon found that she enjoyed cooking. Or perhaps it was just that she loved eating so much. She never could get used to the idea that there was not only enough food in this country; there was often too much food. What a strange world it was, where in one country people died of starvation and in another they grew fat.

  If only she could send food to the poor children in the Killarney workhouse. She imagined putting meat and bread and potatoes in a box and sending it as a gift. She could put in some fresh butter, too, and jars of Mrs Thompson’s delicious plum jam, and rashers of bacon. How wonderful it would be!

  She told Tom about her dream. She liked talking to Tom: he had such an easy, friendly way about him.

  ‘The only thing that’d last the distance would be the jam,’ he pointed out. ‘And maybe the potatoes. The rest would all go bad, wouldn’t it?’ He gave her a teasing little push, to tell her how silly she was, and boldly Nellie pushed him back. Tom loved to be right, just like her dada, and usually he was right. But she could still have her beautiful dream, couldn’t she?

  Apart from making breakfast, Nellie had to wash the dishes, black-lead the stove, scrub the kitchen floor, sweep and dust the other rooms, and empty the slops. She also had to look after baby Albert whenever Mrs Thompson was out shopping.

  Nellie had never minded hard work, and she was grateful to have three meals a day, and a comfortable bed, and the particular joy of her own pillow. That’s another wish granted, she thought. I’m not hungry, and I’m sure I’ll never be hungry again.

  Most evenings, after supper, everyone stayed in the warm lamp-lit kitchen. Nellie tidied up and washed the dishes, Mrs Thompson sewed or nursed little Albert, and the young men lit their long-stemmed clay pipes and talked while blue tobacco fumes spiralled up to the smoke-stained ceiling. Sometimes the adults played card games with the younger children – Old Maid, or noisy rounds of Snip Snap Snorum.

  Tom sat at the other end of the table with his schoolbooks. How clever he is, Nellie thought, glancing over his shoulder. One day she too would be able to make out what those tight lines of tiny black letters were saying.

  Before long Tom usually pushed aside his books and joined in the card games, and Mrs Thompson asked Nellie to brew a big pot of tea for everyone. After that Nellie went up to her own little room and lay on her bed, listening wistfully to the sounds of laughter downstairs. Often she found Sooty curled up snugly on her pillow, and she was grateful for his silent company.

  One evening, when Nellie had finished her chores and was leaving the kitchen to go upstairs, Mrs Thompson called her back. ‘Join us in a cup of tea, pet,’ she said. ‘I don’t hold with keeping servants separate from the rest. We’ve all got our jobs to do in this new country, and in my view that makes everyone equal. I’m not ashamed to say that back home I was a servant myself. I was housekeeper for a couple of dear old ladies in Dartmouth before I married Mr Thompson.’

  Nellie looked at Mrs Thompson’s wide gap-toothed smile and kindly twinkling eyes, and decided that she hadn’t seen anybody quite so beautiful since her own dear mama had died. Surely she must be the best mistress any girl could possibly have! Nellie decided then and there that she’d happily serve Mrs Thompson for the rest of her days.

  When the cards were put away and the younger children had gone to bed, Nellie sat on the stairs and told Tom about the workhouse.

  He laughed when she told him she’d never slept on a pillow before. ‘Where did you sleep at the workhouse?’ he asked. ‘On the floor?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Nellie. ‘We had beds and straw mattresses, and a blanket each. But the smell was so bad, and the straw was full of creatures – fleas and lice, you know. There were too many people in each dormitory, and we had to share a bucket of water for washing, so for those who came last it was nothing but dirty swill. And there were sick people among the well ones. One morning I woke up to find that Maggie Dooley on the bed next to me had died in the night. She was staring at the ceiling, and I waited for her to blink, but she never did.’

  Tom looked at her, fascinated and horrified. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘They put pennies on her eyes to close them, and then they took her away. Poor Maggie, she was always good to me. When she was sure she was dying she told me I could have her shawl, which was all she owned. It’s a grand shawl, too, lovely and thick.’

  ‘I thought sailing out here was bad enough, but it was nothing like that,’ Tom said. ‘We came from Cornwall in August last year, on the Forfarshire. The Governor, Sir Henry Young, was on board too. Father said that was the reason we made such a cracking pace – the voyage only took ninety-seven days.’

  ‘And did you meet the Governor himself?’ Nellie asked.

  Tom laughed. ‘Not likely! He’s much too important. He was a cabin passenger, and we were travelling steerage. We did see him quite often on deck, though, walking around and trying to keep his top hat from blowing off. We were very crowded in steerage, and plenty of people were sick. Only one died, though.’

  ‘People died like flies in the workhouse,’ Nellie said. ‘Nobody cared.’

  ‘So I suppose you like it much better here, Nellie?’

  ‘Oh, life here is a fine thing. I haven’t seen a single poisonous snake yet, and the people are very kind.’ She sighed. ‘It would be perfect if only I knew where my friend Mary was. Mr Lang at the Depot wouldn’t tell me where she’d gone, only that it was a place called East Terrace. Do you have any idea at all where that might be?’

  ‘It’s quite close to here,’ Tom said. ‘I can show you. Do you know who your friend is working for?’

  Nellie shook her head.

  ‘It’s a long street to find one person in. You’d have to be lucky.’

  ‘Oh, I’m always lucky,’ said Nellie. ‘Just look at the luck that brought me to Adelaide, and to your lovely mama’s boarding house, and the good things that have happened to me!’

  ‘A pillow and all,’ agreed Tom, with a grin.

  ON her next Sunday afternoon off, Nellie had her first chance to find Mary. Mrs Thompson had agreed that Tom could go with her to East Terrace, and the younger children wanted to come too. (‘Only if you don’t play any tricks,’ Nellie warned them.) Tom and Nellie took turns carrying Albert. William was bowling a new hoop, and Hetty was grizzling because she wanted a try.

  They passed families out walking in their Sunday clothes, farmers in corduroy trousers and wide-brimmed hats, a clergyman dressed all in bla
ck. Gentlemen rode beautiful horses or drove past in smart carriages so fast they barely skimmed the earth.

  At the intersection of Rundle Street and Pulteney Street a small group of Aborigines sat huddled in blankets, begging for ‘baccy’ and tucker. Tom turned his face away as he walked past them, but Nellie couldn’t help looking. She’d never seen black people before. Mr O’Leary had told her that they were cannibals who ate human flesh, but Nellie was sure that couldn’t be true. They didn’t seem violent or angry, only sad. There were children with them, too: a small girl in a torn pink dress, and a naked baby. Nellie was reminded of the poor people in Ireland, begging for scraps of food just to stay alive. She’d done that herself, often, and she knew that after a while you just didn’t care what anybody thought of you.

  Perhaps the Aborigines saw the settlers in just the same way as the Irish saw their landlords. This must have been their land, once, and Nellie knew what it was like to be turned off your land.

  They walked a little way down Pulteney Street, and Tom showed Nellie the school he went to with William and Hetty. It was a small whitewashed building sitting in a bare yard. ‘I won’t be there for much longer,’ he said. ‘Next year I hope to go to St Peter’s School in North Terrace. I’ll learn Mathematics there, and Latin. One day I want to be a schoolteacher.’

  ‘School’s a waste of time,’ said William, twirling his hoop around his arm. ‘I want to be an explorer. Or a mine engineer, like Papa. I hate school. I hate Mrs Adams even more. She’s our new teacher, and she’s a witch.’

  ‘Yes, a witch,’ echoed Hetty. ‘She made Georgie Mitchell stand in the corner for doing nothing.’

  ‘It was because he was doing nothing,’ said Tom. ‘Georgie Mitchell is a fool.’

  Nellie gazed at the plain little building. She imagined herself standing in front of the class and reading aloud from a book, a dignified Mrs Adams smiling approval.

  ‘I don’t care about knowing Latin,’ she confided to Tom, ‘but I wish so much that I could read properly! There was a priest school in Ballycasheen, but my dada needed all of us to help on the farm. I had some lessons at the workhouse, but it was mostly learning the Scriptures.’

  Tom looked at her curiously. ‘How much can you read?’

  ‘Next to nothing.’ She blushed. ‘I can nearly write my name, though.’

  ‘Nearly?’

  ‘I get the ‘N’ backwards,’ said Nellie, embarrassed. ‘It twists away from me.’

  To her relief, Tom didn’t laugh at her. They continued their walk, hurrying to catch up with William and Hetty, who had raced ahead.

  East Terrace was almost out in the country. On one side of the road there was a small church, and further down Nellie saw some big houses. On the other side of the road there was just dry grassland dotted with gum trees. Suddenly Tom grabbed Nellie’s elbow and pointed, and in the distance she saw two kangaroos bounding away.

  She laughed aloud with pleasure. ‘They do bounce, so they do!’ she said.

  When they reached the first house, Nellie looked at it with misgiving.

  ‘Mary could be anywhere,’ she told Tom. ‘How shall we find her?’

  ‘We knock on doors,’ said Tom.

  So they knocked on one door after another, while William and Hetty, already bored, took Albert to look at some cows.

  ‘Is there a Mary Connell here?’ asked Tom, each time the door was opened. And each time their hopes were dashed. ‘Never heard of her,’ said one elderly woman, looking down her nose at Nellie. ‘No Irish girls in this house,’ said a pot-bellied man. ‘They’re nothing but trouble.’ Worst of all, there was the woman who said, ‘I couldn’t tell you the names of our Irish servants. I call them all Biddy.’

  ‘The creature!’ said Nellie with feeling, as she and Tom turned to leave. ‘I hope Mary isn’t working for her.’

  It was a silent group that returned to Thompson’s Boarding House.

  After supper, when Nellie was clearing away the dishes, clumsy with tiredness and disappointment, Tom gave her a book. It was a small book with a rather dirty cover. Nellie opened it with careful fingers and saw pictures and letters. She recognised some of the letters. A. B. C.

  ‘It’s a spelling book,’ said Tom. ‘And it’s yours. I’m going to teach you to read.’

  LATE on a day when Mrs Thompson was doing errands in Hindley Street, William raced into the kitchen, Hetty behind him as usual. They came up to where Nellie was cleaning cooking pots, scouring out bits of burnt food with sand.

  ‘There’s a snake in the back yard,’ said William, his eyes wide. ‘A huge one!’

  Nellie felt sweat break out over her whole body. She stopped her scouring and stared back at him. ‘Do we have to do anything? Will it not just go away?’

  ‘It won’t go. Somebody has to kill it, and that would be you. It’s your job, isn’t it?’

  Nellie shook her head vigorously. ‘It’s not part of the job the mistress told me about. I’m certain the word snake never passed her lips. I’d have remembered that, so I would.’

  ‘She must have forgotten to tell you. All our servants have done it. It’s easy – you pick up the snake by its tail and crack it like a whip. That breaks its back, and it dies in a second.’

  ‘Do it yourself, then.’

  ‘I’m not big enough. You have to be more than five feet tall to do it properly.’

  ‘Then we can wait, and I’ll ask one of the young men. Mr Strout, he’d do it, I’m sure.’

  ‘Edward isn’t here, he’s visiting his cousin. Lord Eric wouldn’t touch a snake unless we paid him. And Arthur would be too scared. You aren’t scared, are you, Nellie?’

  ‘Me? Of course not! But … well, I’ve heard that in Australia the snakes poison you if you look at them, and then you die.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ chimed in Hetty. ‘You only die if they sting you.’

  ‘Only if they bite you,’ William corrected her. ‘Bees sting, snakes bite. They have huge fangs,’ he told Nellie, ‘and they drip poison.’

  By now Nellie’s knees were trembling beneath her pinny. But she took a deep breath. ‘Be strong, Nellie O’Neill,’ she told herself. ‘It’s only a little snake!’

  ‘Show me where it is,’ she said.

  All three of them went out into the yard, and William led Nellie to an overgrown area behind the garden shed. ‘It’s in there,’ he said. ‘Half of it’s under the wheelbarrow, see?’

  In the dappled light Nellie could see a thick brownish coil. As she looked, it seemed to move. Hastily, she stood back. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ she said.

  ‘It’s quite sleepy,’ said William. ‘Prob’ly it’s eaten a lot of rats and mice. You’ll have to wake it up so you can grab its tail.’

  ‘How do I know which end its tail is, for the Lord’s sake?’

  William shrugged. ‘It’ll be the end that doesn’t try to bite you.’

  ‘Right, then.’ Nellie went into the shed and found a shovel. Her heart thudding, she crept up to where the snake was sleeping. She prodded it. There was no response. She prodded it again.

  Suddenly it moved, twitching back and forth in a frenzy.

  Nellie screamed. She whacked at the snake again and again, beside herself with fear and excitement, screaming and screaming.

  Gradually she realised that it had stopped moving. Had she killed it? She was almost too afraid to breathe. Then she saw that William had picked it up in his bare hands and was holding it out to her. Hetty was by his side again (where had she been?), and both children were in fits of laughter.

  The snake was a coil of old rope.

  Nellie could scarcely speak for anger and shame. How had she let the spalpeens trick her like that? Wasn’t she as smart as they were, or even smarter?

  ‘Sorry, Nellie,’ William said, grinning. ‘It was to pay you back for that mouse in the stew. Now we’re even.’

  ‘Wasn’t I good when I pulled on the rope and made it move?’ said Hetty. ‘Wasn’t I good, Will?’

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nbsp; Nellie smoothed down her hair and her pinny, and tried to calm herself. ‘It was a fine trick, to be sure,’ she said, ‘but if there are any more tricks from either of you, I will pay you back and you will never forget it. That’s a promise.’

  Late that night Nellie and Tom sat at the kitchen table, working through the first pages of the spelling book in the circle of lamplight. Tom made Nellie recite the ABC, pointing to all the different letters one by one, and soon she could recognise them as far as Q for Queen. Not that she believed in Queens, of course, for wasn’t it the English Queen who had allowed so many terrible things to happen to the Irish?

  When the lesson was over, Nellie poured herself a glass of water from the china pitcher on the table, offering one to Tom as well. ‘My dada wasn’t one for the strong drink,’ she said. ‘He used to say there’s nothing better for us than what the good Lord has provided.’

  Tom looked at her curiously. ‘You must miss your home and your family very much, Nellie,’ he said.

  ‘I do. But this is my home now, isn’t it? And I’ve been without my own family for more than a year.’

  ‘Tell me about them.’

  Nellie put down her glass. ‘There were six of us before the Hunger, Mama and Dada and four of us children. It was the little ones who died first. Our Patrick was so young there was nothing much he’d eat, and soon Mama had no more milk for him. Then Grace caught the fever, and Katie, and they both went quickly. I was glad, because it spared them the worst of the starvation.’

  ‘Why did you starve? Were you always poor? Was there nobody to help you?’

  ‘We weren’t always poor – Dada rented a farm, and when the potato crops were good we had so much to eat! We had a horse, too. Clancy, his name was.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘We’d ride to Ballycasheen, all of us little girls on our old grey horse in a line together with our legs hanging down. But when the crops failed again and again we couldn’t pay the landlord, and so he turned us out of the farm, and we had no other place to live. It was the same for everyone. And there was no food, with the taties all being rotten. We sold everything we owned to buy food. Dada sold Clancy for three shillings. Mama said we should have kept him for the meat, but how could we eat poor Clancy? After the money was gone we lived on what we could find, which wasn’t much. And when people are starving, the sickness gets them.’