Telegram Home

by Kirsten McKenzie

Colin coughed into his sodden handkerchief, his lungs struggling with the effort, leaving him wheezing.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I’m fine. Damaged my lungs. Good thing you don’t need strong lungs to work in here. The lungs would’ve killed me if I’d joined Isaac on the gold fields. But I would have been with him when he died. Might have been better,’ Colin brooded.

  ‘Time heals all wounds, not just the physical ones,’ Neumegen preached. ‘Besides, you need your health now you have other people relying on you. You have the baby, and Mrs Lester. They both need you.’

  ‘Mrs Lester?’ Sarah said. ‘Who’s Mrs Lester?’

  ‘The lady who looks after his baby,’ Neumegen said, sipping his tea.

  Colin made a noise of agreement. He hadn’t been entirely truthful with Neumegen about his relationship with baby Sophia and Mrs Lester. Annabel had agreed it best that they pass themselves off as an extended family unit. Warden Price’s money, and Colin’s apprentice wage would cover their board at the hotel until they put aside enough for their own place. Annabel was earning her own small pittance by helping with the hotel’s laundry, again because of the Jowl’s largesse. Another reason to be in their debt.

  Sarah wanted to ask more about Mrs Lester, she desperately wanted her to be her mother, but expected disappointment. She fought with herself, until the bell above the door chimed, and Neumegen and Colin disappeared to attend the counter.

  Could this Mrs Lester be Annabel Lester, her mother? Sarah didn’t dare let herself dream.

  Raised voices outside wiped the thoughts of her mother from her mind, and Sarah moved to eavesdrop at the door.

  ‘You call yourself a jeweller? You wouldn’t know gold if it jumped up and bit you on the arse. Next you’ll be saying that these aren’t pearls. My late mother only ever wore the best quality pearls, straight from the Orient. And you can’t even offer me enough for a new pair of boots, when this here strand of pearls is worth twenty pairs of the finest boots money can buy. A thief, that’s what you are, a thief.’

  Neumegen’s voice too quiet for Annabel to hear his reply, but the customer’s cursed response was enough to turn a sailor pale, as he blustered and threatened and swore until he’d used every foul word available. And still Neumegen kept calm, never once raising his voice. It was Colin who took the mantle of bad cop to Neumegen’s good cop.

  The added insult of Colin coming to the defence of Neumegen sent the disgruntled customer into a rage, forcing Sarah to jump back as he hurled something at the glass door, shattering it into a thousand pointed icicles. Sarah retreated behind the workbench, out of harms way.

  The smashing glass brought the neighbouring shopkeepers out onto the street, and the burlier men stepped into the fray, pulling the blustering man from the tangle of Neumegen and Colin’s tiring arms. Cabinets lay smashed on the smart wooden floorboards, the light glinting off shards of glass caught in the gaps. The cabinet of pocket watches sat on a drunken angle, leaning against another whose glass now decorated an austere display of silver propelling pencils and double sovereign cases.

  Sarah watched as Colin and Neumegen dusted themselves off, Neumegen wiping blood from a split lip, and Colin coughing into a handkerchief held over his own bleeding mouth. The blustering idiot appeared to be suffering from nothing more than cuts to his fists, his face disfigured from fights in both the near and distant past. He was lead away by two men resembling henchmen from an episode of James Bond. Sarah emerged from the workroom, glass crunching underfoot like a walk through autumn leaves.

  ‘Well that escalated quickly,’ she said, before noticing the eyes of the crowd staring at her through the open door.

  Neumegen squeezed past the upturned counters to close the door. ‘It’ll give them something to talk about, but best we don’t offer more fodder for their gossip,’ he said, sliding home the lock on the latch.

  ‘He never took his necklace,’ Colin said, pointing to the strand of pearls half-concealed under a damaged cabinet.

  Sarah bent to retrieve it, the pearls light in her hands. Instinctively she rubbed them against her teeth, the graininess of genuine pearls completely missing.

  ‘They’re not real,’ Sarah said, looking back at Neumegen.

  ‘Of course not. They rarely are.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Colin asked.

  ‘That’s why she was biting them, lad. If they’re gritty, they come from the oyster. If they are smooth, then they’re manufactured by man. And a clasp made from junk metal. It may fool someone on the goldfields, desperate for a gift for a sweetheart, but in this business, you take nothing at face value. Like our lady friend here…’

  Both men stared at Sarah, shuffling under their gaze.

  ‘I don’t think she is your ordinary customer,’ Neumegen said, dabbing at his lip. ‘But we’ve time to dwell on that later. Colin, you go for the glazier, while we sort things out here. And find William Norrie, the cabinet maker on Shortland Street - he’s done work for me before and may have something suitable in stock.’

  Colin stared a moment longer at Sarah, before grabbing his hat from the hook, and slipping out the door, with Neumegen re-locking it behind him.

  ‘First, you must change,’ Neumegen said. ‘Follow me.’

  Sarah trailed behind the gaunt man, following him out through the workroom into a room filled with floor to ceiling shelves. A staircase at the back lead upstairs, but it was to the shelves that Neumegen guided her.

  Without hesitating, he selected a hatbox which may have been mauve in the sun, but in the weak lantern light, it appeared a sickly beige.

  ‘A hat,’ he said, before pulling a small leather suitcase from another shelf. ‘And in here a suitable skirt in your size. The jacket may be more problematic, unless you don’t care for fashion, and then I have ample possibilities?’

  Laden with options, he showed her upstairs to a spartan arrangement of very little furniture and evidence of quiet wealth far exceeding the value of the stock downstairs.

  ‘Please use my room to change. Your shirt… will do, but I will dispose of your trousers. Please leave them by the hearth, and your shoes. I’ll check for boots. What size should I look for?’

  Sarah muttered her size, shockingly large for a lady in the 1860s she knew, but Neumegen didn’t seem fazed, his stiff figure retreating downstairs giving her a birdseye view of the thinning crown on his head.

  She let her eyes roam over the room — everything utilitarian but of the highest quality, and not a speck of dust anywhere. Sarah wondered who did his cleaning for him. Her mother used a Croatian couple to clean their house. She’d never been able to get her bathroom as clean as Lily and Pavao had. There’d been no funds for a cleaner after her parents had disappeared. She doubted Neumegen was the type to waste money on a cleaner either, or a maid. But there was no sign of any womanly things.

  Once in Neumegen’s bedroom — a single bed with a nightstand, a straight-backed wooden chair and an ornate upright travelling trunk-cum-wardrobe, she wasted no time in slipping out of her jeans and pulling on the voluminous skirt he’d handed her. Retrieving the nugget from her jeans pocket, she turned it over in her hands. By rights this should go to Colin. Isaac had asked her to send it to his mam, Colin’s mam too, but fate had decreed otherwise. What to do with it now?

  Neumegen called out to say he’d left a jacket and boots on the chair by the fireplace for her consideration, and so Sarah shoved the nugget and letter deep into the pocket concealed in the folds of her skirt, and emerged from Neumegen’s bedroom. Neumegen had a defined sense of style and had paired her skirt with a fitted jacket in a contrasting yet complementary pattern; delicate green embroidery on the lapels the only nod to decoration. The first pair of boots she pulled on chaffed at her ankles. Nothing in the 1800s would ever be as comfortable as Converse sneakers, but she couldn’t wander the streets of Auckland wearing her All Stars. So, she tried on the second pair — a better fit but stiff and the laces cut into her fingers as s
he tied them up. As much as she hated to admit it, they’d do.

  The walls held no mirror to check her reflection, but there was probably one inside the trunk, so returning to Neumegen’s bedroom, she fiddled with the latch until the lock sprang open, and she opened up the doors. There was no way on earth, in this time or another, that she expected to see what she saw.

  The Armoury

  Sarah stepped back from the wardrobe, her hands over her mouth, eyes wide. Her own father had kept an old police-baton under the bed for ‘security’. People usually kept hockey sticks behind the door, or baseball bats in the hall cupboard, in case they ever needed to fend off a burglar. But no one stored a dozen or more rifles in their travelling trunks.

  She closed the case up and rearranged her features into something less shocked when she heard the pawnbrokers boots on the stairs. Plastering on a smile, she returned to the front room, trying to put the rifles from her mind.

  ‘Better,’ Neumegen said. ‘Your hair needs fixing, but I have no pins here, I’ll send the lad out for a packet when he returns. But before that, time to talk, yes?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you want me to say?’ Sarah said. How could she tell him who she was and where she was from? It was too fantastical for anyone to understand.

  ‘From the beginning, or how you could tell the pearls were paste, or from when the brother died. You choose.’

  She considered her options for a moment. The beginning wasn’t an option. The pearls? Well, that was an easy one. Isaac was too painful. Going from having never seen a dead body to having a man die in her arms had sent her into a deep well of depression, that he’d died because of her was almost the end of her, so the pearls it was.

  ‘My father was a jeweller,’ she said. ‘In England.’

  ‘And he has passed now?’

  ‘Not quite, but he lives in India now, so it’s virtually the same thing.’

  Neumegen laughing was not the reaction Sarah expected, but it lightened the mood, and she laughed in response.

  ‘Family doesn’t always work out the way you imagine,’ Neumegen said, his fingers straying to the pin at his neck.

  Sarah assumed the pin had some significance to the man, but let her eyes wander to the sole piece of art on the wall.

  ‘Is that from home?’ she asked.

  Neumegen followed her gaze. The picture was from his hometown — a small oil painting of a Bavarian landscape, the old church at Ramsau prominent in the centre of the image.

  ‘You recognise Ramsau?’ he asked.

  She’d had a childhood friend who’d invited her to winter with her family after Sarah’s mother’s disappearance. Her father had come too, and although the skiing was brilliant, their accommodation was lacklustre. She’d never forget the dreary countenance of Haus Michael, including the complete lack of toilet paper when they’d first arrived.

  ‘The only part of home I brought with me,’ he shared. ‘All I have left,’ he added, a faraway look in his eyes. ‘So, you are familiar with jewellery then?’ he asked, changing the subject abruptly.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You know jewellery and you have been on the goldfields so you know miners, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘That’s good?’

  ‘It is for me, and for you too, now you fit in. We must always fit in. I have spent a lifetime trying to fit in, you should do the same. If you can’t, join your father, otherwise life will be hard here, especially now,’ he said staring past Sarah towards the painting.

  Sarah cast a glance towards Neumegen’s bedroom, wondering what scared him so much that he had a personal armoury in his room.

  ‘Business is good, and I can no longer do it on my own,’ he said.

  ‘But you have Colin,’ Sarah said, eyebrows raised. This was not the development she’d expected. This man didn’t know her from Adam, and yet he was offering her a job?

  ‘He is my apprentice, for the kauri gum, not to sell trinkets to miners with nothing better to spend their money on. A girl is best for that,’ he declared.

  It wasn’t home, but it far surpassed her last experience in Auckland being held captive by the Jowl’s, forced to act as a servant and scullery maid.

  ‘Good,’ Neumegen said, despite Sarah having not uttered a single word. ‘Have you found accommodation?’

  She shook her head, her mind adrift at the sudden change in her circumstances — working as a shop assistant for this strange man. He seemed harmless enough, despite the arsenal next to his bed. She didn’t know when she’d return to the future, if she’d return. But working alongside a pawnbroker seemed the most likely route home of all the options she’d considered both now and before.

  ‘There might be room with the boy’s companion, Mrs Lester. Otherwise I shall enquiry on your behalf. Enquiries on behalf of the daughter of my cousin… Do you understand what I am saying?’

  Sarah nodded dumbly. This man had his secrets, and he recognised she had hers, and although he knew nothing about her, why would he pass her off as a member of his family? For what gain?

  ‘Good, now we have a shop to clean. The boy should be back with the glazier soon. Come.’

  They made their way down the narrow staircase, through the storeroom and into the workroom. Neumegen pointed to a dustpan and brush, while he himself took hold of a long-handled broom, and they worked in companionable silence.

  Much of the damage looked worse than it was. By the time they cleared the glass away, and set the cabinets straight, Colin had reappeared with William Norrie, the cabinetmaker, in tow. Norrie had with him a tattered notebook and a well-used measuring tape in a leather case.

  As Norrie and Neumegen discussed the damage, they decided one cabinet was beyond salvaging, and he ordered a replacement. Neumegen surprised everyone by asking Sarah her opinion on the design of the new cabinet.

  ‘I think one with curved shelves, with narrower width shelves at the top, and full width lower down, better to display smaller pieces and highlight larger pieces of silverware, if that’s something you might go for…’ she tapered off, the men all gaping at her.

  ‘Large silver pieces,’ Neumegen muttered. ‘Yes, perhaps that is an idea. Good. Can you do that then Mister Norrie?’

  The cabinetmaker dashed off a quick sketch which under his artistic hand, looked as though he’d copied it straight from an auction catalogue, so beautifully rendered were the lines, right down to his customary eight-point star he’d added to the base of the cabinet. ‘Like this?’

  ‘Exactly like that,’ Sarah said, her ideas perfectly replicated in William Norrie’s notebook. She made a mental note to research him on Google on her return, if she returned.

  They agreed a price and Norrie left the trio to their duties.

  ‘The glazier, Colin?’

  ‘He’s delayed, but will be here within the hour,’ Colin said, who kept casting sideways glances at Sarah every few seconds. ‘There is something different.’

  ‘Her case arrived,’ Neumegen said, ‘with her clothes.’

  Colin pondered Neumegen’s answer before a coughing fit took over and Neumegen manoeuvred the boy onto a high stool. A crystal carafe sat on the workbench and the jeweller poured Colin a drink, encouraging him to take small sips of the tepid water.

  ‘Can I help?’ Sarah asked, floating about in the background.

  ‘He will be fine, too much excitement. Perhaps enough today for us all,’ Neumegen pontificated. ‘When he has recovered, walk with him to his rooms, and avail yourself of the accommodation there, with Mrs Lester if she is agreeable.’

  Sarah couldn’t breathe, this was fate, it had to be. She was certain she was about to see her mother again. Her excitement dimmed as she realised she had no money to pay for food, let alone board.

  Again Neumegen surprised them both by pressing several coins into her palm. ‘This is an advance on your wages. Come tomorrow with Colin at eight o’clock. We break for lunch at midday.’

 
Colin clambered off the stool, his face a pasty white, not the colour of a healthy man, but he had on a brave face. ‘It would be my pleasure,’ he wheezed, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief.

  Sarah followed Colin out of the shop and turned to wave goodbye to the jeweller standing in the doorway. A curious look crossed his face, and he never saw the wave, he was facing the opposite direction, towards something she couldn’t see. Perhaps only Neumegen himself could see it, something from his past, or perhaps his future.

  The Worker

  Annabel Lester checked on the baby asleep in the drawer next to her, and couldn’t help chuckling at the absurdity of her position. Here she was, mothering a child who wasn’t hers, for a boy old enough to be her own son, in an inn she hadn’t paid for, doing the laundry for a dozen men she didn’t know.

  With the dry edge of her apron, she wiped the perspiration from her face. She’d give her right eye, and her left, for an industrial washing machine at this point in time. Annabel assumed the men weren’t too fussy about the cleanliness of their clothes, happy that she’d removed the mud stains and their sweaty stench. As for mending? She’d done her best, but wouldn’t win any sewing badges.

  With the washing hung on the line outside, Annabel rested for a moment. There was no point in complaining about her lot to young Colin, he was doing his best to care for her and baby Sophia. But she couldn’t help feeling cheated out of happiness. She’d been so close to a new life, until they stole Warden Price from her after the violent attack on their camp.

  To preserve the memory of Price, she wore a cotton shirt she’d found in his bag. Thicker than the ladies shirts she’d worn, and a looser fit, she revelled in its comfort. Annabel rolled up the sleeves, exposing her white arms to the bright sun. She’d left her jacket inside, there was no need for it this afternoon. The unseasonably warm day made even more pleasant without the jacket’s restrictive collar threatening to strangle her.

  Soon she’d have to help with the midday meal — steak, chops and potatoes, all washed down with ale. She ate for free, part of the deal Colin had negotiated with the proprietors. The customers paid a shilling for their meal, which included the grog. The menu never varied, but no one complained.