by Lily Hammond
If Eliza could find the woman, she’d help her. She knew her way around this strange city. She lived here.
But the woman had melted away into thin air. Eliza hadn’t seen her again. Nor did she have a way to ask for her. She stepped closer to the window and leaned her hot forehead against the glass, the purse held limply in one hand. All she had was a name, and how many women were there in this city named Mrs. Greene? She was mute in the face of this question, her tongue dry against the top of her mouth, her throat slack around the vocal cords.
Turning away from the gulls with their ink-tipped wings and bright tomato-red beaks, Eliza closed her eyes for a moment, then picked up both her suitcase and her mother’s from the foot of the bed and placed them on top of the blanket.
She opened hers. There was her winter coat, the wool coarse and fusty under her fingers. She’d worn it on the boat, and it was stiff, crusted with salt spray. She’d worn it every day on her walks on the third-class deck until one day she didn’t have to anymore; it was too warm, and she’d unbuttoned it, astonished at the shimmering heat that seemed to have risen overnight above the endless expanse of water.
She folded the coat back up and placed it on the bed. There was another skirt and blouse in the case, and her underwear. Glancing down at the floor, she took in the crumpled fabric of her pile of clothes, and bent to pick them up, folding them into the case, taking out the others and setting them aside to put on as soon as she was done.
The strap on her mother’s suitcase was thick, difficult to undo. Eliza struggled with it, won, lifted the lid. Her own suitcase was made of thick board but her mother’s was stiff leather, rubbed colourless about the corners. The lining inside was striped blue and white and she touched a fingertip to it, enjoying its homely simplicity. They’d had a milk jug striped like this on the table in the morning for their cups of tea. Blue and white striped. It hadn’t matched anything else, but they’d always had it, and she always put it on the table in the morning when she got up to make tea. She missed it and wondered what had happened to it.
Her mother had died during the journey. Eliza didn’t know the date, or how long they’d been on the ship. It had been after the morning she’d had to take her coat off during her early morning walk, when the waves had been just as endless as the day before, but the warm air a revelation that had unfolded gradually over the days to a sudden, full glory. It had been after the weather had seemed to cool again, and the waves had grown, throwing themselves frantically at the boat day after day as though they were drowning and only sweeping up to lie on the great deck could save them.
The clothes smelled like her mother. She picked up one of the dresses and held it to her face, breathing in. Tears prickled painfully at her eyes, making them grow wet with a sticky, silent grief; she laid the dress on the bed, smoothed the worn fabric under her hand, then swallowed and turned to continue, the tears tracking down her pale cheeks.
Her mother’s coat. Like her own, it was threadbare in one or two places, but still serviceable, still with plenty of wear left. Her mother’s gloves were too small for Eliza’s hands, but even though she knew that, she tried to stretch them on over her knuckles. The gloves had wrapped around her mother’s hands, but they would not do the same for hers. She put them in the pile.
There wasn’t much. A few worn clothes. The case itself was the most valuable thing. Taking out her mother’s handbag, which contained their papers, her own birth certificate and her mother’s, copies of which her mother had dug from a dusty drawer for the trip, and between which Eliza couldn’t differentiate, she tucked it under her pillow for safe keeping. Then turned back to the pile of clothes.
Both coats went into the leather suitcase. Her mother’s gloves. Her own were too frayed to be worth even a look. She pressed the rest of her mother’s clothes on the top, pressed a hand over them, then closed the lid, tackled the stiff buckle again, and set the case on the floor by the door, ready. She stood and looked at it there for a long moment, her head bowed, then breathed in, swiped the tears from her cheeks and turned away.
She washed in the water from the basin, splashing it over her face and opening her mouth to catch a few drops. The water tasted different here in this part of the world. She didn’t know what it tasted of, only that it was different. It made her homesick and she pressed her lips together, patted her face dry on her nightdress before pulling that over her head and spreading it out on the bed for the sun and heat to dry it.
The sun’s light had changed from the soft blush of its rising to something stronger, more yellow, and Eliza stood for a moment with it brushing up against her white skin, feeling it almost like a touch, then shuddering, she reached for her underwear and dressed quickly, picking up her heavy winter skirt and blouse, fumbling with the buttons, finding her shoes with a sigh and pulling them on over her stockings. She would have gone without the stockings, but then the shoes would rub at her heels, and she knew she likely had a lot of walking to do that day. Perhaps the gentle hush of rising sun this morning meant that it would be kind the rest of the day too.
But already the air in her room was warming and she turned to the window, hoping for a cool breeze from the harbour to come stick its tongue into her room, swallowing the heat. One came, pushing half-heartedly in under the wooden sash, and she wiggled her fingers at it, then got back up from her knees, brushed off her skirt, opened the door to her room and slipped out, making her way downstairs to the outhouse. She’d come back for the suitcase.
Breakfast did not come with the room. Straightening her shoulders, Eliza took a deep breath and stepped out onto the pavement, turning her feet resolutely towards the same café she’d been to the day before, the suitcase banging against her calves.
She kept her chin tucked in, eyes on the footpath in front of her, breathing steadily, holding her determination like a child with their most precious toy pressed to their heart. She would be sensible, she told herself, listening to the sound of her shoes on the footpath, hearing the cawing of the gulls overhead. Whatever bird had wardled and gurgled with the dawn was silent now. The growing morning belonged to the gulls again. She kept her eyes away from their red beaks and feet and eyes.
Strong. That’s what she’d be as well, and brave and determined, and she would get done what she needed to. Luck would be on her side, she added for good measure, nodding as she walked along, the case swinging from her hand.
The café was open, and Eliza put her hand to the door before she could hesitate. Inside, she blinked in the sudden dimness and her mouth watered at the scent of bacon that swam in the air like perfume from an exotic flower.
The table by the window where she’d sat the previous day was empty, the tablecloth still yellowed, but smooth. The paper was gone. She slid into the seat and set the case carefully on the floor beside the chair legs. Only then did she let herself look around for the waitress, tucking her hands together in a tight knot on the table in front of her.
It was the same waitress. She was serving tea to a man with bony hands and a jacket shiny and thin over the elbows. He picked up the cup before she’d barely set it on the table and slurped at it in great gulps. Eliza looked away, gazed out through the window with unseeing eyes, aware of her own dry mouth, her clenched stomach.
‘You’re back.’
She wore the same shoes, with the leather cracked over the toes of the left foot, the soles worn and rounded. Eliza looked up and nodded, showing her teeth in a smile.
‘What do you want?’
Eliza blinked, looked around at the other people in the café.
‘Tea?’
She nodded.
‘A whole pot?’
Another nod. Eliza pointed at a man sitting over the other side of the window, his shirt rolled up over forearms roped thick with muscles. He was bent over a plate, head bare, concentrating on eating.
Jessie followed Eliza’s gaze. She was silent for a moment. Then: ‘You want what he’s having?’
Eliza’s no
d was vigorous. Yes.
‘Tea. Bacon and eggs. Toast.’ She said it as a statement, but Eliza nodded again anyway.
Jessie’s heavy brows beetled together. ‘It’ll be two shillings for that lot.’
The little purse was in the pocket of Eliza’s skirt where she could feel it tucked close next to her. Eliza dug for it, pulled it out and snapped it open, spilling the coins out onto the tablecloth that needed to be laundered with Reckitt’s Blue in the final rinse to make it nice and white. She poked at the coins and looked up questioningly at the waitress.
Jessie stared at her, then shifted her gaze to the scatter of coins, picked up two of them and nodded. ‘I’ll get your breakfast for you.’
Eliza puffed out a breath and relaxed on a smile of thanks. But Jessie had turned away already, walking across the room and around behind the counter. Eliza watched her until she had disappeared from view, then looked down at the coins. Using what she’d just seen, she picked out the shillings and weighed them in her palm. Two of those would get her a nice big breakfast. Her mouth watered again at the thought, but she ignored it. She’d learnt something worth knowing. She was making progress already. She was doing fine and looking down at the coins in her hand she counted seven of them.
That was three good breakfasts right there in her palm. The seven silver-coloured coins went back into the purse and she bent over the table to peruse the remaining number. The shillings were silver but she had copper ones as well. Pennies. That’s what she guessed they were, since they had almost the same back home in England. In fact, they had the same picture of the King on them. Picking one up, she smiled at it, delighted to see something so very familiar. She clasped it between her fingers. So, now she knew what the shillings were, and the pennies.
Her first day in Dunedin after being given her attic room had been spent in a daze, and she’d left the boarding to look at the streets in a stupor of incomprehension. Everything was so similar to what she was used to, and yet so very different. She’d felt as though the world had opened up under her feet and swallowed her whole, only to spit her out upside down and inside out. She’d walked only a few blocks before becoming overwhelmed and scurrying back to her room, afraid that she would lose her way, wander in this strange parallel world without knowing if she was coming or going, feeling the press of its buildings, of its hot blue sky, of the people she didn’t know staring at her as she turned and fled, head hunched down, hands shielding her face.
After that, and after several days she couldn’t even remember, when she’d stayed balled up under the covers in the bed, she’d stepped out of her room only in determination born of hunger and desperation, taking deep, careful breaths, and drawing a detailed map of the streets in her head as she walked gingerly along them, colouring them in with sausages hanging in windows, and bolts of vivid cloth behind dusty glass. She’d recognised things that were near enough to how they were at home to be able to relax a fraction.
Over it all, laid the smell of the sea, and she’d fallen in love with the sea on the boat, on its opaque depths, the brisk scent of it, the way it wet and dried her skin.
‘Your tea.’
She jumped, having been lost amid her tumble of thoughts and impressions. She looked at the waitress with startled eyes, but Jessie was already moving away. Eliza reached out and grasped her arm.
Swinging around, the waitress – Eliza wished she knew her name – stared at her, then down at the hand wrapped around her wrist. Eliza had hands that were still strong from her years at the laundry, and she let go in a cloud of guilt.
‘What do you want? The rest of your breakfast will be here as soon as it’s cooked.’ Jessie blinked her muddy eyes at her, the whites tinged with jaundice like the tablecloth.
Eliza shook her head. No. It wasn’t her breakfast she was bothered about, although her stomach was groaning at the thought of the rich meat and eggs. She groped for the suitcase on the floor beside her, pressed her palms to it, then spread her hands out in a question.
Jessie’s murky gaze took in the suitcase, then Eliza. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘You need a place to stay?’ She waved a hand at the window. ‘There’s plenty of them.’
But Eliza shook her head. She thought for a moment, then drew a breath. Turned and patted the case with both hands, then with a jerk, pushed it away, and pointed to the coins on the table. Spread a palm in the question.
Jessie’s heavy brows furrowed. The corners of her mouth tucked themselves in.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said after a weighty minute.
Eliza damped down her frustration. Took a steadying breath instead. Reconsidered. Then nodded and smiled. Picking up a coin, she thrust it into the woman’s hand. Held her own up in a wait gesture and picked up the suitcase, passed that over to the waitress, and took the coin back again in return.
She sat back, nodding.
Jessie looked down at the suitcase in her hand and Eliza willed her silently to understand.
‘You want to sell this?’
Yes! Eliza nodded, grinned. Yes.
‘I don’t need a suitcase. I’m not going anywhere. It’s a bad time to go somewhere, leave your job if you’re lucky enough to have one.’
Frustration breaking instantly over her, Eliza shook her head. Pointed to Jessie’s flat chest. Shook her head again.
Not you.
Jessie stared at her, sallow face sweating lightly. Then suddenly, she broke into a grin of her own.
‘I know!’ she said. ‘You want to know where you can sell it.’
The last was almost crowed. The man at the table with the cup of tea looked over at them, stared a moment, then bent his unshaven face back to stare at the tablecloth.
Eliza nodded, smiled, nodded. Gestured at the window.
Jessie puckered her brows in concentration. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘There’s a place up Walker Street that might take it.’ She beamed and set the case back down beside Eliza’s chair. ‘You take it there and see if you have any luck. It’s not far away.’
Jessie nodded again and turned back to the kitchen, leaving Eliza blinking after her, then turning to stare out the window. Walker street. That was good, but where was Walker Street? She had no idea.
The sun slanted in the window and draped itself over the corner of the table.
Eliza sat beside it and watched it slink along the tablecloth.
Chapter Four
Her mouth still tasted of bacon. It was glorious and Eliza pushed her tongue around her mouth, teasing out the lingering richness. Flushed with the sense of wellbeing that came from a full stomach – a great, thick piece of bacon, two eggs perfectly cooked, and a slice of crusty white toast – Eliza turned her face to the sun for the first time with the sense that everything was really going to be all right. She would find her way around this strange city that was built in a curving loop around the harbour and she would find work too. She was strong. She knew how to do some things. There would be a hospital somewhere here. She could go there and find a way to tell them she could do their laundry. It was only a small city. She would be able to find a hospital, if she walked long enough.
Meanwhile, there were other shillings still in her purse, and even if it wasn’t smart to spend them on so much food at once, she knew now that they would sustain her for a while longer. With the money she would get for her mother’s clothes and suitcase, she would be taking care of herself, sitting pretty for a good few days yet.
She had a room; she would have money for food. She could find work.
With no idea still where Walker Street was, Eliza stepped out onto the narrow footpath. The streets in this part of the city were densely packed, sardine-rows of houses marching up the hillside from the harbour. At the bottom of the street she’d peered out over from her attic room window were businesses with deep windows to squint into.
The waitress had said Walker Street was close. Well, Eliza didn’t have anything else to do today but look for it. If it was close, then she would find it.
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She might not be able to read the signs on the shops, but she had wide blue eyes under her heavy red hair and there was nothing wrong with her vision. She would examine every shop and business as she went past. It would be a simple matter to look inside, find the sort of establishment she needed.
The sun peered down at her from on high by the time Eliza stumbled up against the right shop. She was thirsty and there were great patches of dampness under her arms. The thick fabric of her blouse rubbed uncomfortably against her skin and she shrugged against it, itchy and distressed under the wool.
A bell rattled above the door when she pressed it open and stepped through, taking a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dim, dusty view of the interior.
Definitely this was the right sort of place. The pawn shop was piled high with items of all descriptions. By the door a thick line of boots trailed off into the musty depths of the shop, their leather tongues lolling. On a shelf, knives and forks and spoons gleamed dully in the gloom. A limp fox stole stared sullenly at her from a coat stand, its eyes tired and dusty. She averted her gaze and sucked in a breath, squaring her shoulders, reminding herself again of the necessity of doing this. Consoling herself with the thought that in only a few minutes she’d have done what she came to do, and there would be more coins in her purse. More coins equalled more food, which gave her more time. She needed more time.
At the back of the shop, there was a dark, panelled wall with a glassless window in it, and behind that, a counter and a dusty, grimy office. Eliza took another deep breath and made her way towards it, the handle of the suitcase slick in her hand.