by Jude Thomas
Billie winds her hair into the peaked cap. She wraps twine around the saggy britches and wriggles into a tight jacket over a flannel shirt then checks herself in the glass. She takes care to dress and behave like she believes a boy would do. Her role as a nabber will see her darting back and forth to the Princes Street corner, looking out for carriages turning into Rattray Street. A nabber’s only job is to whistle to the so-named middlemen; they must never, ever make a show of themselves. The middlemen may shout and whistle and pander to the customers, but doormen must retain dignity; signal instructions, open doors and bow without excessive words. There is a strict chain of command and protocol amongst the carriage boys of Rattray Street.
‘Sir, sir!’ the middlemen call. ‘Let me arrange assistance from your carriage!’
‘Madam,’ they implore, ‘your carriage awaits. Please allow me to assist you along!’
Tama Ellison and Joe O’Malley are the current doormen, appearing instantaneously at appropriate doorways. Their middlemen and nabbers are Harold Aitken, Tommy Jory, Archie Hamilton and Tama’s cousin Ariki. And now Bill Frost joins the brotherhood.
Bully Barnes glowers at the newcomer. And from the shadows, ready to initiate the recruit, slides Tinks Toomey.
Chapter Eighteen
It is almost a year since her initial approach to the carriage boys and Billie blows on her hands in response to the autumn chill creeping up the harbour. She has endured the standard teasing and humiliation and has learned quickly. Tinks has put Bill under the guidance of Tama, whose lounging stance belies his speed when action is required. There is a slight grumbling from the ranks until the omnipresent Bully deals a punitive reward. He does not care for this departure from tradition either, but he is beholden to Tinks.
Billie is yet not permitted to open doors and bow the customers into or out of the buildings. She must only stand behind Tama – a prestigious position, although it does not pay well. After alighting from their carriage and proceeding through the door, customers who choose to tip will have already tossed a coin to the front lad and are, in the main, unlikely to present another to a small boy tucked in behind.
Most shop proprietors are not pleased to have their frontage littered with hawkers or nuisance-makers, though some allow select carriage boys their patch. In this way there is a tacit – if grudging – agreement between merchant and boy: so long as the customers are not aggravated, the boys may continue. There are plenty of comings and goings to the shops, but the best ticket to success is ultimately the doors leading to professional chambers and offices on the upper floors. It is fortunate that there are many of these establishments in Tama’s territory and in his kindness, he sometimes slips a coin to his side-kick.
She is persistent and vigilant, while some of the lads are somewhat cocky or careless and each day she tells herself she will earn more to help at home. Three times a week she hurtles down to the precinct after school, although by this time a substantial amount of custom has faded for the day. Occasionally in class she holds her breath, becomes faint and clatters to the floor and Miss Kerr says, ‘Silence! I will not tolerate such disruptions, and if you are unwell go home, stupid child.’ This is an ideal situation for Billie, but must not be called upon too often or run the risk of Meg learning of it. Alf has discovered her extra-curricular ruse and they have a silent agreement that he shall forget to mention it to Meg.
Mondays bring forth the professional gentlemen, and some ladies, perhaps after a weekend of debating one quest or the other; Tuesdays and Wednesdays are often slow and she does not attend; Thursdays and Fridays see the majority of shoppers. Fridays also see the solicitors and their clerks scurrying back and forth, finalising their week’s instructions. Billie wishes she could work on Saturday mornings, which is also busy for merchants, but Meg definitely requires full assistance at this time. She has free rein on other days: as long as she is off to school by eight-thirty and home by six o’clock; all that she has been required to answer to Meg is that she has been helping her friends. Mother would call this a white lie, she reasons, but Meg seems pleased that Billie has made school friends. So Billie engineers her jaunts to Rattray Street on suitable days after school finishes and tallies an average of five pence for the week, mostly made up of farthings and ha’pennies.
She is promoted to share every second opportunity with Tama and starts to earn what they call a bob or two. She treasures each hard-won coin and stores it in a tobacco tin under her mattress. When it reaches the vast sum of five pounds she will present it to Mother Meg, who surely cannot then oppose such enterprise.
It all seems such a clever, well-run little earner. But Billie knows instinctively that operations which appear random seldom are.
When she has the time and inclination to do so, Billie explores the city and her guardians inherently trust her to stay safe.
She ventures far beyond Bell Hill to the north and the Exchange to the south. What a marvellous thing that the hill’s bowels have undergone massive blasting and debris – tens of thousands of tonnes of it – removed pick by pick, shovel by shovel, to make an easier transition between north and south.
She would not have been so satisfied to know that the convict labourers included a group of Maori men, sent in shackles from Pakakohe after resisting confiscation of their Taranaki land by the Queen’s men. And that more such slaves would be forced to follow and to live in the same abysmal, chained conditions in caves. Billie only knows that the thoroughfare is much easier than before, running north past the Octagon and the splendid George Street buildings and south along Princes Street and the many warehouses.
The Vauxhall Pleasure and Tea Gardens sound splendid and she boards the steamer Nugget to cross the harbour inlet. She is not out of place with couples and groups on their Sunday outings, and boards in a wave of passengers, thus saving her halfpence fare. The idea is to inspect the gardens and surprise Meg and Alf with a new attraction for them to visit on a Sunday.
Oh, what magnificence she encounters! Hot and cold salt-water baths line the jetty, one set for ladies and one for gentlemen, with elegant dressing and waiting rooms. The flower gardens and colourful borders are a sight to behold. Further ahead are strawberry gardens, and various picnic areas. An open-sided rotunda has couples dancing to an orchestra playing from the pit. The hotel has a single room: an immense chamber with a bar extending the full width, presided over by pretty ladies. Summerhouses are for hire, offering retreats for visitors seeking rest and privacy. Refreshment rooms, parlour rooms, billiard rooms, as well as archery butts and skittle alleys. And a mini zoo – cages with koala bears, kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, monkeys and a variety of birds – according to the placard, but Billie does not care for the idea of animals in cages. In wonderment she wanders until late afternoon and this time pays her halfpenny on the steamer back across the harbour. What a delightful report she shall have for her guardians!
Yet such a come-down she is in for when Meg pulls her close and says to never go there again, that the Pleasure Gardens are notorious for illicit encounters and other activities that are not nice.
Billie learns about anomalies. While clapboard flophouses and rowdy theatres, vulgar harpies and excessive behaviour are taken for granted around Maclaggan Street, the attractions of Vauxhall are a different kettle of fish.
Chapter Nineteen
September 1866
Every morning except for Sundays, Edwin Northey descends to breakfast at a mahogany table laid with fine china and silverware bearing the family insignia. Breakfast is comfortably predictable with porridge oats, local eggs and bacon, toast, Scotch marmalade and good strong tea. The day that stretches forth will also be predictable with the office, the club and home again for dinner. It will the same as for many a gentleman in England – perhaps without so many amusements as English cities.
But this isn’t his home in Yorkshire and the manor farm where he grew up. It isn’t York with its spires and factories and new brass – with its dirt and overcrowded povert
y on one hand and its inherited wealth and grandeur on the other. Nor is it Leeds with its wealthy merchants and workhouse wretches. This is Dunedin, at the nether regions of the world, full of promise but a long way from Home. It is still difficult to call this new place home – home will always be England, although his future will always be New Zealand. The place is filling up with second sons, along with working-class families prepared to slog it out in a new country and wild-eyed adventurers seeking new horizons. Plus well-heeled, educated new-brass like himself, looking for further opportunity. This colony is one mass of opportunity, that’s for certain and this is the sort of life Edwin enjoys. To picnic by the ocean, to walk about in the clear air and to attend an opera at the new Princess Theatre – all in one day – thoroughly satisfies his sensibilities.
One thing he wished to leave behind in England was the filth of the northern textile factories and their exploitation of factory workers. At first he thought of making for India, since some of his friends seemed to have an excellent life and income in Madras, albeit on the back of the cotton trade – and Edwin did have qualms about the morality of that. It was not the kind of colonialism he favoured. But the uprisings and mutinies were of main concern and the East India Company was looking like collapsing so he made up his mind to head for New Zealand to join his parents and three siblings in Dunedin. Now, after only five years, Edwin is a junior partner in his father’s law firm, where the flood of gold and investments has produced a busy practice and a good income. At twenty-seven he is doing very nicely indeed and will propose to Miss Amy Barnes in due course.
Today, like any other six days of the week, Edwin leaves home for his office. He chooses, as on most mild days, to stroll down the Rise. As he reaches lower Rattray Street a tangle of small boys laugh and boast and toss coins from their elbows. Edwin smiles at the thought of their audacious presence amongst the more well-heeled. Indeed they do no harm, and probably some good in keeping themselves from other trouble.
His work is increasingly busy. Certainly gold is not coming in as thick and fast as it was few years ago, now that the Central Otago alluvial deposits are mostly spent. But dredging is in full force, investment in infrastructure is booming, and the stock market humming, so legal transactions always keep things busy.
Too busy actually – a gentleman who works in the city should not really work so hard, he thinks wryly. He has helped his father appoint two clerks since the beginning of the year and will have to seek another if things keep up. Clerks are not hard to come by, all educated in England or Scotland, and next year the new Otago University will be opening its doors for the first time to establish itself as New Zealand’s first university.
Also, after years of non-regulation, there is a Bill before the House urging the mostly British-qualified solicitors to become certified in New Zealand’s fledgling law. Edwin has urged his father to take this inevitable step and stay ahead. With Father previously of the opinion that the colonies were established by Britain and should abide by their time-honoured qualifications, he is now conceding there is a possibility for developments to be taken into consideration. He sees that Edwin is a man of the day, a man who will become more progressive over the years – as he himself had indeed done, taking opportunities as they presented themselves.
The day passes quickly and after many solid hours of work, Edwin feels the western sun slicing through his office window. He decides that he shall, for once, leave early and make the most of the late summer with his sisters and their families up the Rise. He dons his topper, buttons his coat, checks his desk once more for its immaculate state, and jauntily descends the stairs from his first-floor chambers towards the buzz of Rattray Street. Just as he is reaching for the foyer door it is pulled back by a small boy.
‘Good afternoon, sir, please allow me.’
Edwin brushes past with a cursory nod and before he has time to raise his arm to signal a carriage, one of those tiresome but useful lads secures it for him. He tosses a farthing to the boy, who deftly catches the spinning coin and makes an obsequious bow. ‘Insolence!’ smiles Edwin to himself.
As the horse and buggy slowly moves on he glances back. The smaller door boy is now standing away from the door and is caught in full-face. And suddenly Edwin experiences the same rush of chills, the strange je ne sais quoi that came over him a year or so back. When was it? Yes, when he was waiting for passengers at Port Chalmers. That, too, was a child. But this is preposterous. He is seeing ghosts where there aren’t any.
Over the next few days and against his better judgement, Edwin casually looks for the lad again. Sometimes the bob of boys cannot be seen, just when one wants a carriage. Then out of nowhere, they swarm, making an intricate tableau of the process of embarking or disembarking the passengers. The game seems to start from the corner of Rattray and Princes Streets, where one urchin spies the inbound horse and buggy, and whistles to his chum on the next corner, and so on. On the outbound journey there is also honour amongst the motley gang and if that boy is still on the spot, he appears to have the right to perform again. It is a game, there must be wagers and there certainly is a farthing or more for the boy who makes the most compelling show of assisting.
Edwin smiles to himself again, thinking of his own strict but loving childhood, with little opportunity for laddish games, especially not with the village children whom he often envied for not having to be sent away to school. Although he was a good student, he hopes he will not have to inflict the inevitable harshness of public school life on his own future sons.
It is several weeks later, when the memory of the boy has faded, that Edwin suddenly sees him again, once more opening the door after he descends from his chambers to the street door. This time he stops and turns slowly and looks down at the lad. He has trouble controlling a sharp intake of breath. What the devil – ?!
‘Sir, do you require a carriage? Here is one now, no less!’
Edwin doesn’t really hear the piping voice; he just sees the face. The assured face and canted eyes. Edwin is shaken to the core. But no, he cannot – and he will not – contemplate it.
He raises his hand to his head and the boy twists away as if to avoid being struck. ‘I beg your pardon,’ gasps Edwin. ‘I was only – ’
But the child’s face radiates up at him with a bright, contrite grin. ‘No matter, sir. My fault!’
Edwin draws in another gasp; he again sees those amber eyes ringed with smoky grey. Like almonds toasted and salted. He sees olive skin that is at odds with the fair lashes and brows. He sees that devastating smile. ‘Here, here.’ He fumbles for change. ‘Take this, and – and – ’ He gropes for words. ‘Do be careful next time.’
Great Scot! He knows now who he has seen! Alton, his younger brother. Alton, that vainglorious young swine, too charming by far and too free with his attention to the ladies. The despair of his poor parents and after too many debts and indiscretions, sent back Home out of his father’s sight.
He climbs shakily into his conveyance and is driven away. Edwin doesn’t see anything before him on his journey other than the ghost of Alton. He is troubled, damned troubled. Damned alarmed.
He spends many weeks contemplating the situation, knowing he must not rush at it or make a pig’s ear out of what may be pure coincidence. Yet in repeatedly observing the boy, and indeed being served by him at his own door, his resolve endures. He perceives the level of command, where the young one works alongside the older in the charade: ‘Sir and madam, here is your transport just arriving. Here it is, I have called it to attend. Please allow me to assist,’ and so on. The passengers are deftly escorted onto the buggy then the boy confidently slaps the horse and tips a wink at the driver, who usually chooses to ignore it.
Today Edwin rejects the carriage offer and keeps walking, turning towards a shop window as if contemplating a purchase. He draws out his fob watch and checks the time but does not see it. He crosses the road and strolls back. He tries not to look at the young boy, but he must. Yet he must not
– this is damned irregular. It is madness! He must do something or he shall indeed go mad.
He decides to consult his most trusted friend, James Ogilvy.
Edwin meets with James at his own rooms in Moray Place. There is no need to beat about the bush with a theoretical tale. He puts his theory and concerns direct. Then he proposes two ideas: one, that he asks the boy directly about his parentage; and two, that he follows him to his home and introduces himself.
James is astounded. He cannot understand how his usually-calm friend has put himself in such a predicament. ‘These ideas are bordering on ludicrous. In any case, man, what do you hope to achieve by finding out if this is Alton’s offspring?’
‘Damnation, Oggers,’ Edwin says sharply. He and James have been friends since their passage to New Zealand on the same ship. ‘I know one should prepare for the worst so one will never be disappointed – but this is likely to be my nephew, and on the streets begging! My brother’s child! That arrogant cad, that wretched swine! And knowing his style, who knows what he’s – what he’s – ’
‘Calm yourself, Eddie, calm yourself. You are in danger of raving like a lunatic, man. At the very least you appear to be coming unhinged. I advise you strongly to treat this situation like any other: that is, with the same principles and wisdom as you would engage for a client. Detach yourself from the personal. For surely this is the best way of reaching a strategic outcome, even though we are not – at least yet – dealing with a legal situation.
‘So, man to man, let us take a simple overview. Firstly, there is plenty of riffraff running around with the motive of taking one in – just look at how those boys turn a trick, if you will, for a penny. So what’s to say you are not being set up nicely for a mischief? Secondly, just because you think this boy favours your brother’s features, the chances of him actually being your nephew would be open to interpretation. Unless you can prove it – and if so, what then? And thirdly – hear me on this – you should not be loitering around young boys for fear of – ’