by Lily Hammond
The landlady poured over another piece of paper, this one newer, thinner, and Eliza knew what that one was. The landlady held it up and it fluttered for a moment like the wind on the ship where her mother had died.
‘Death certificate.’ The landlady looked at her, one thin eyebrow raised. ‘Your ma died at sea?’
Eliza nodded. Gripped the handbag tighter, not caring this time that her hand hurt.
Another sniff, then the piece of paper was replaced with the others and the landlady unfolded the bigger pages, the ones that Eliza was really interested in. She leaned forward slightly on the balls of her feet.
Mary O’Hara, proprietor of the Walker Road Boarding House since forever now, her quilted dressing gown, pale pink in colour, buttoned high over her large chest, wrinkled her nose as she read, lips pursed.
Eliza held her breath.
At last, Mary nodded and tapped a thick finger at the letter. ‘Reckon this is the one you’re interested in.’ She leaned back in her chair and laid the letter down on the table, then pulled her plate back in front of herself. She picked up the knife and fork and sliced neatly a piece of sausage.
Eliza pressed her lips together and her stomach groaned again.
Mary glanced at her, then nodded towards the papers. ‘Come and get them, then,’ she said. ‘That top one’s the one you want.’ She took another slice at the sausage, stabbeded it with the fork, dipped it laboriously into the centre of the congealed yolk, gave a grimace, then fed it into her mouth and nodded again at Eliza.
‘It’s a reference, it is, and a good one too.’
Averting her eyes from the plate full of food, Eliza darted forward and plucked up the papers, falling back towards the door again and looking at the top one. The one the landlady called a reference.
Eliza had heard her mother speak of references, but she didn’t know what they were. She hadn’t been paying attention, and she cursed herself now for not doing so. She should have – she should have paid attention, should have known that her mother wouldn’t always be around to tell her where to go, what to do. She shouldn’t have daydreamed instead of listening.
Looking up from the paper, the one with the swirly writing, Eliza gave the landlady a hopeful look. The woman shook her fork at Eliza.
‘Says you’re a good worker, a good laundress.’
Those were words Eliza knew and she nodded her head eagerly. She was a good worker. She was an excellent laundress. If only she knew where there was a laundry she could present with this piece of paper.
Perhaps her mother was watching over her, perhaps her mother could help her even from the under the green green sea where she floated with the fish, because then the landlady said exactly what Eliza needed so desperately to hear.
It came first with a sniff, then another dainty bite of food, this time a spear of potato, crusty with butter, on the fork. She held it up for a moment, before feeding it to herself and chewing thoughtfully, knowing the girl was waiting all flushed, eager and desperate to hear what she said. It gave her a comfortable feeling of power and Mary O’Hara, daughter of a small-time brewer, long dead of a pickled liver, stretched the moment out before replying.
‘The hospital laundry will be your best bet, though I wouldn’t get your hopes up, even with that piece of paper.’ She nodded towards the letter in Eliza’s hand, chewing her food like a cow with its cud. ‘They opened a new one over in Caversham just a year or two ago, I think. Make that one your first stop.’ She sniffed again and drew together her eyebrows. ‘Then there are the Chinese laundries, but I wouldn’t fancy your chances there. They give the jobs to their own, the Chinks do.’ She pressed her knife to the sausage again and heard the girl’s stomach let out a low groan. ‘Still, they’re not far from here; I suppose it would be worth a try, if I’m to get any more rent money out of you.’
She put the sausage into her mouth and smiled wide enough for Eliza to see it there, the meat pallid and grey against her pink gums and stained teeth. ‘Go down to Princes Street – that’s the main way at the bottom of the hill and hike a left. Even you won’t be able to miss the Chinese quarter. It’s right there opposite the Exchange.’
Eliza didn’t know what an Exchange was, but she knew her right and left, and bottom of the hill – that was easy enough. She wasn’t sure what Chinese was, but that didn’t matter. In amongst all that had been the magic word.
Laundry.
Chapter Nine
Eliza closed the landlady’s door behind her, leaned against it for a moment, head spinning, both from the pungent scent of sausage and eggs that made her stomach cramp in protest, and from the thought that there might be salvation after all.
She looked at the paper in her hand, blinking at the dark type, the looping scrawl of words at the top of the page, then carefully folded it back up and slipped it into her mother’s handbag – her handbag now, she guessed.
Outside, the day squeezed a breath of freshness into the steep and narrow streets. The rain had eased and now the macadam road steamed in the growing strength of the sun that looked down on her through a brief break in the clouds. Squaring her shoulders, she gave a wordless sigh, and set her sights on the footpath down the hill.
Down the hill, hike a left, you can’t miss the laundries. Opposite – what had it been? She couldn’t remember, hadn’t recognized the word. Something that had sounded important, but she didn’t know what it was.
But laundries, she knew that. Stepping out down the street, she walked around a group of children yelping and crowing in a cluster at the entrance to an alleyway, their clothes torn and grubby, their faces avid as they bent over something they passed from one to another. Eliza didn’t want to see what it was.
Everything was closed. Yesterday it had only been the café, but today all the shops were shuttered. She had passed the mean little rows of houses and reached the commercial district, but the shop windows were blank as she passed them, their awnings rolled back tight on some, all with doors firmly closed. She stopped and pressed her nose to the door of the café where she had been several times now, then twisted her head to look up at the little silver bell that tinkled every time she had pushed the door open to go in for a cup of tea. It was still and quiet on its bracket, and when Eliza tried the door, twisting the knob in her hand, it didn’t budge. Stepping back, she frowned at it. Why was it closed?
Reaching out, she rattled the handle again, tugging on it. Her stomach rumbled.
‘It’s closed, can’t you see? You stupid or something?’ a small boy jeered at her as he ran past, turning to poke his tongue out at her amidst a hoot of laughter. She dropped her hand. Her stomach groaned again, still thinking about the sausage and egg that had lain cooling on her Landlady’s plate.
Where would she eat? Forlorn, she stood on the pavement, clutching the worn leather bag her mother had carted around with her for years, and she gazed up and down the street, searching for something, anything that might be open.
There appeared to be nothing. Sidling along the footpath, Eliza bent her head to look at her feet, too cowed to look up as the buildings grew more extravagant the farther along the road she walked. When she dared look, they were all still shuttered.
Pulse racing, Eliza quickened her pace, afraid suddenly that if she didn’t hurry, the laundries would be closed too, but if she did walk quicker along the footpath, then they would by some miracle be open.
The gap in the clouds closed up, and she freed one hand from the straps of the handbag to clutch at her coat, pulling it tighter across her chest. She had lost weight, for certain; the coat, had almost been tight at one stage – before the boat trip, before she stepped foot on this faraway, upside down land. Now, it hung too loose about her, and if she slipped her hand under the buttons, she would be able to feel her ribs lying unbuffered against the thinness of her skin. She gripped the handbag again instead and kept moving.
Until she came to the intersection, four roads meeting and turning into and away from each other. She
stopped and gazed around. Across the road, there was some sort of monument, elaborate curlicues of stone guarded by small, climbing and clinging gargoyles, their grins more appealing than frightening. The buildings backed away from this remarkable edifice, and instead, gulls strutted over an open square, their grey chests puffed out as they argued with each other. She watched them, looking at the way the wind swept up behind them as if to scare them and ruffled their pristine feathers into a brief disarray. She’d never seen birds such as these before, with their red beaks, their red legs. Some of them, she noticed, standing on the path, lips parted as she stared, even had red eyes. She blinked at that and came back to herself, deciding that the world was full of a great many almost cruel beauties. Some of which included red-eyed gulls arguing over a crust of bread they had found.
Her mouth watered at the bread and she turned abruptly away, a feeling seeping through her that made her shiver hot and cold at the same time. Shame.
For a moment, she’d considered dashing across the road and wrestling the scrap of bread from the birds.
Blindly, she turned left at the great crossroads, not because she was looking, but because she wasn’t. When she shook her head, blinking back the salty sting of tears, she stopped again and looked around.
Here, the shops were painted red and gold, and instead of the normal indecipherable signs she was used to seeing on shops, there were tight swirls and lines and dashes as though someone had tried to make pictures but didn’t quite know how to go about it.
She walked slowly, unthinkingly, down the street, gazing at the symbols on the walls, on the windows, everywhere. Lifting a hand, she traced the gold splashes on the cold glass and shook her head over them. What were they? Was this what the Landlady had called the Chinese? These strange, graceful markings?
Leaning close to the glass, Eliza cupped her hands around her face, the handbag falling to her elbow, and peered through the glass.
It was dim inside and she gasped as her eyes adjusted. Inside, there was a room, dim but sumptuous, shiny black paint and red walls, with strange lanterns hanging from the ceilings, tasselled and gilded, made perhaps of paper, she thought, looking at the golden strokes of a paintbrush on the sides.
Leaning back, she looked around. What was this marvel of a place? It smelled different down this street too, and she lifted her face, sniffing the air. Her stomach rumbled as she caught the scent of what was unmistakably food, although none of the likes she’d ever encountered before. Her mouth flooded with saliva. She leaned towards the window again, licking her lips.
There was the shadow of movement inside the building, and then a door flung open onto the pavement, sending her spilling back in surprise.
A man launched himself onto the footpath, and opened his mouth, letting loose a river of sounds Eliza did not understand. She stared at him, mouth open in shock, taking in his size – he was the same height as herself, but his face was different than any she’d seen – round, smooth, the eyes exotic and dark. He was wonderful, she thought, recovering herself, but she couldn’t understand anything he said.
Perhaps that was the Chinese too, she decided, and shook her head at him, dodging his waving hand to unsnap the handbag and dig into it for the sheaf of papers, for the letter. The Reference.
She thrust it at him, and he stopped his yelling to look at her in surprise. She nodded encouragingly and put on a smile. A real one, because suddenly, in amongst all the fatigue and terror, she was happy – here was a person as strange as she, who clearly didn’t belong here, just like she did not. Perhaps, she thought, she was Chinese too. Her stomach grumbled again, and she pressed a hand to it for silence, and nodded towards the paper in his hand.
He squinted his narrow eyes at her as though he did not trust her, but then smoothed out the fold of paper and frowned over the words on it.
A moment later he shook his head, folded the letter back up and held it out to her.
‘No work,’ he said, and she started in surprise at the sounds she could understand. ‘No work,’ he repeated, shaking his head and jabbing the letter in the air at her. ‘No laundry work.’
Her heart fell. She felt it, a sensation in her chest, something solid sliding down inside her to sit upon her empty stomach. She reached for the piece of paper with shaking fingers and took it back into her possession.
‘You go away now,’ the little man said with another shake of his black hair. ‘No work for you.’
And then he was gone, back inside the dim, beautiful room, back in with the food that smelled so different, so good, and the door was closed again while Eliza stood outside on the dirty footpath, head spinning, letter pincered between thumb and fingers like it had said bad things instead of good.
Eliza turned away from the dark windows with their fine views and the door that was shut so soundly in her face, and instead retraced her steps, haltingly, her legs heavy, wooden, back towards where the gulls were still squawking. The piece of bread was long gone, now. They argued over something new. There was always something new, Eliza thought in dejection. Always.
Eliza walked past them, the paper still in her hand, the handbag dangling from her other wrist. A gust of wind swam over the road and whistled up under her coat and she shuddered at the smell it brought with it, fishy, sticky with salt and deep green water that swallowed whatever was thrown overboard beneath the waves.
It rained. By the time Eliza got to the bottom of the street where the boarding house with her mean little attic room was, the clouds had let loose and rain fell in great silver sheets, turning the city as dark as dusk. She shivered and tucked the paper away in the handbag, finally. It was splotched with two great raindrops, and the ink fuzzed and ran underneath them. Eliza shoved it blindly into the bag.
She should have bought more food the day before, she thought to herself all the way up the hill to the house, holding her coat collar up over her neck to keep the wind out, the rain at bay. She should have bought enough for today. She was hungrier than she could ever remember being. The sky bore down on her, and the buildings seemed to loom over her on either side of the road. Eliza quivered under her clothes, wondering why life had to be so hard, and how she could have ended up so alone.
The boarding house was deserted when Eliza let herself in, all the doors resolutely closed. She glanced at the door to the Landlady’s rooms, wondering if she should knock on them, beg for a scrap of sausage, an egg, a piece of toast. She saw the lady eating again, the sausage inside her mouth and turned away, starting up the stairs. She knew the Landlady would only laugh at her or take the little red purse from her hand again, big fingers scooping out the precious silver and copper coins, keeping too many for herself.
Eliza closed the door to her room behind her, then twisted around and lifted the latch, locking herself in. Throwing the handbag down on the bed, she sighed and tugged her coat from her shoulders, hanging up the wet wool on the wobbly hanger in the corner before picking up the threadbare towel and using it to pat her hair dry. The hat had protected most of it from the rain, but it was long, and she’d done it in a plait which hung over her shoulder and down almost to her waist now in a cold, wet rope. Her fingers fumbled with the tattered ribbon that bound it.
Yesterday, she remembered, someone had complimented her on her hair. A sad smile curved her lips as she stood in the tiny room looking out over the rooftops of the city. In the near distance, the harbour sat brooding in the rain, the colour of steel and gravel. The quardle oodle bird was silent.
They had called her hair beautiful. She drew it out of the plait and smoothed it dry, picking up her hairbrush and drawing it gently through the length of it, soothing herself with the familiar movements.
It had been a woman, who had called her hair beautiful. She’d been plucked up off the streets by a woman, and the memory of a wide mouth, of golden skin, of startling eyes the colour of the ocean swam inside her head while the rain thundered down on the roof over her.
Eliza put down the hairbrush an
d went over to the bed, kneeling awkwardly upon it, favouring the knee that hadn’t been grazed in yesterday’s accident. She groped her good hand along the shelf above the bed, catching her bottom lip in her teeth as she concentrated.
She had put it on the shelf. She remembered doing so. She was sure of it.
Her fingertips touched the edge of something small, flat, rectangular, and she drew it gently towards herself, plucked it up and twisted around to sit on the bed, her hair drying in a wide red halo around her shoulders.
The card was blank on one side and she stared at the pristine whiteness of it. Like summer clouds, she thought, and turned it over.
Lines of black print marched in unruly columns across the other side, and Eliza sighed.
Chapter Ten
‘Here! I’ll get the door!’
Clemency turned around on the stoop and smiled in relief.
‘Good timing,’ she said and looked her assistant up and down, mouth pursing. ‘He’s done it, hasn’t he?’
Helen slid her key into the door and pushed it open onto the dim hallway that led straight up the stairs to Clemency’s studio. ‘Done what?’ she said, widening her eyes in innocence.
Clemency wasn’t fooled, and the sashay up the stairs, the extra wiggle in her assistant’s pert bottom told her everything she needed to know but date and time.
At the top of the stairs, Helen turned and grinned back down, knowing there was no hiding the news.
‘Oh alright,’ she said. ‘He got the promotion – and I know it’s going to mean a bother for you, having to find someone new to help you here, but for us, it’s the best news ever.’
Clemency pushed past her and put her bag down outside the door to the studio, before fishing around in the pocket of her jacket for the key.
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘And such an adventure – moving all the way up to Auckland.’