Kitty

by Challinor, Deborah

  They came to a halt at the mouth of another close little street named Cribb’s Lane. On the corner stood a handsome, genteel-looking tavern—St Patrick’s Inn according to the shingle above the smart, panelled double doors. The view of the harbour below was impressive. But none of the crew went in, heading two doors further down and going into another, considerably rowdier, establishment called the Bird-in-Hand.

  ‘We can’t go in there,’ Kitty said to Rian.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ he replied. ‘One of us will meet you in St Patrick’s at…’—he got out his watch—‘one o’clock. There’s a parlour there where you can wait.’

  ‘No, I mean we can’t go into a hotel.’ Kitty said. ‘It’s not, well, it’s not respectable.’

  Rian gave her a measured look, none of last night’s tenderness evident in his expression at all now, then let out a frustrated sigh. ‘You’re in Sydney now, Miss Carlisle, not embroidering altar cloths at some mission station. The rules are different here.’

  Kitty felt an unwelcome pang of regret at his formal use of her surname, and at his deliberate sarcasm. She had spurned him this morning, that was true, but she hadn’t realised he would take it quite so much to heart. But he would soon see that she could be just as aloof when it suited her.

  ‘This is The Rocks,’ Rian went on. ‘It’s a different way of life. But St Patrick’s is respectable. I know the proprietors, the Maguires. They’re decent people.’

  ‘What do you suggest we do for three hours while you’re supping away in here, then?’ Kitty asked, inclining her head towards the doorway of the Bird-in-Hand.

  ‘Go shopping,’ Rian said, withdrawing his purse from an inside pocket of his jacket. He counted out ten sovereigns and handed them to her.

  She stared at the heavy gold coins in her hand.

  At her look of incomprehension Rian said, ‘You need clothes and things, don’t you?’ He emptied the remainder of the coins from the purse and slipped them into his pocket, then gave the purse to her as well. ‘Best to keep it in this. Out of sight.’

  ‘We can’t take money from you.’

  Rian shrugged. ‘Well, it’s up to you. But you also can’t go around dressed like that for the next however many months. You look like a pair of doxies, and down-at-heel ones at that.’

  Kitty couldn’t argue with him, although she would dearly have liked to; she had never taken money from a man before in her life. Apart from her father, of course. And after last night this felt somehow…degrading. She glanced quickly at Rian to see if she could detect any hidden meaning behind his gesture, but his face was as impassive as ever.

  ‘This is a loan, then. I’ll pay it back,’ she said, although she didn’t know quite how.

  ‘Suit yourself. I suggest you go to one of the better second-hand shops in Gloucester Street for the basics, then visit Mrs Mason’s in Suffolk Lane if you want anything made. She’s a very reputable sempstress. Tell her I sent you, you should get a good price.’

  Haunui appeared, a tankard of ale in one hand and his big frame almost filling the doorway of the pub. ‘You coming in?’ he asked.

  Wai shook her head excitedly. ‘We are going shopping.’

  ‘What with?’ Haunui said, surprised.

  ‘I have advanced some funds,’ Rian said. ‘Miss Carlisle is due wages anyway.’

  And it occurred to Kitty that she possibly was, too. But surely not ten pounds, not for two weeks’ worth of little more than coiling ropes and swabbing the deck?

  Haunui glanced from Kitty to Rian, then back to Kitty, clearly aware of the frosty atmosphere between them. He handed his tankard resignedly to Rian and said to Wai, ‘I will come with you.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ Kitty said, touched by his solicitude, ‘but you don’t need to. I’m sure we’ll be fine. We won’t go far.’

  ‘I will come with you,’ Haunui repeated stubbornly.

  ‘You’re a braver man than I am,’ Rian muttered as he went up the steps to the pub.

  Haunui raised his bushy eyebrows in silent agreement.

  Their first stop was at a shop in Gloucester Street that had a sign painted across the window advertising ‘Mrs Goodwin’s Good Used Ladies’ Clothing’.

  Standing on the street, Wai giggled and said, ‘Are we good used ladies, or bad ones?’

  Inside it was cooler, and it was clear that the shop was the front room of someone’s house. A bell chimed as they entered, Haunui ducking to avoid whacking his head on the door lintel. There were various goods arrayed on a shelf behind a counter, and several tables held tidy piles of assorted articles of clothing. On the floor beneath them sat a neat row of shoes and boots, and some wooden crates containing bits and pieces.

  A middle-aged woman in spectacles, presumably Mrs Goodwin, appeared from the dimness of the room beyond the shop, drying her hands on her apron. ‘Morning, can I help you?’

  ‘Good morning,’ Kitty said. ‘My friend and I are in need of clothing.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Mrs Goodwin said. She stared pointedly at Haunui. ‘We don’t outfit men. This is a ladies’ outfitter.’

  Haunui gazed implacably back, clearly not intending to remove himself in any great hurry.

  ‘And I only take cash, not trade,’ the woman added.

  ‘We have cash,’ Kitty said. ‘We need two dresses apiece, and bonnets and shawls. Can you oblige?’

  ‘Not with the bonnets—I don’t carry them,’ Mrs Goodwin said. ‘Underthings?’

  ‘No, we will have those made. Unless you have some good petticoats?’

  Coming out from behind the counter, Mrs Goodwin extracted several petticoats from the piles on one of the tables and held them up for inspection. ‘What about these? Barely used, they are. Very nice, too.’

  They were both of quality fabric and in sound condition. Kitty nodded. ‘Dresses?’

  Mrs Goodwin indicated the other table. ‘I’ll let you go through them yourselves. There’s quite a selection.’

  There was, too. After twenty minutes of sorting through them all and hemming and hawing, during which Haunui decided he might wait outside after all and perhaps smoke the pipe Ropata had given him, they had both found two each they liked the look of.

  Mrs Goodwin led them through to the room beyond the shop, hovering in the doorway while Kitty and Wai tried them on.

  ‘Just out of the factory, are you?’ she asked conversationally, although there was some doubt in her voice.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Kitty said. ‘What factory?’

  ‘The Female Factory.’ At Kitty’s blank stare, Mrs Goodwin elaborated. ‘At Parramatta? The women’s prison?’

  ‘We are not convicts!’ Wai exclaimed.

  Mrs Goodwin ignored her, saying to Kitty, ‘It’s just that your hair’s been cropped, so I thought…’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Kitty snapped. ‘We only arrived in Sydney this morning, from—’ She stopped, feeling instinctively that it was probably prudent not to say where they were from. ‘Overseas,’ she finished lamely.

  Mrs Goodwin shrugged. ‘Sorry. It’s an easy mistake to make, you know. Most of us on The Rocks are convicts. Well, ex-convicts, at least. There’s no shame in it. That looks very nice on you.’

  The two dresses Kitty had selected—one of pretty cream and red-sprigged challis with wide, slightly old-fashioned sleeves and the other a lilac muslin with a detachable lace pelerine—fitted her well, except that they were both a little short. She wondered if they had had the same previous owner. She liked them both, especially their colours after the dreary black, brown or grey of either mourning or missionary preference. A sharp image of the people she had left behind at Paihia flashed through her mind, and she pushed it away.

  ‘They’re not quite long enough,’ she said.

  ‘Not a bad thing, though,’ Mrs Goodwin remarked, ‘with all the muck and shite about on the streets.’ She regarded Wai’s choices more critically: a startling deep purple sateen affair and a milder green and blue gingham. ‘When’s
your babby due, dear?’ she asked.

  ‘June,’ Wai said.

  ‘They won’t last the distance, then, will they? You’re better to get something with more room in the waist.’

  ‘No, I want these,’ Wai said, holding out the skirt of the purple dress and twirling around. ‘Can I have them, Kitty?’

  ‘Perhaps your man can buy you another later,’ Mrs Goodwin suggested.

  Wai stopped twirling. ‘I have no man.’

  Kitty looked at the older woman for signs of censure, but there were none.

  ‘Well, you could let them out, I suppose,’ Mrs Goodwin said doubtfully. ‘Or add a panel down the front?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Kitty said to Wai, ‘we ’ll buy you something else when we need to. Now, shawls please.’

  ‘Shawls are in the boxes under the table.’

  They chose one each, and Kitty asked, ‘How much does all this come to?’

  Mrs Goodwin retreated to her counter and added up the prices on a square of paper. ‘You’re not wanting shoes as well?’

  Kitty looked at the second-hand shoes and boots on the floor and shook her head. Her mother had impressed upon her ever since she was small that buying used clothes—outer clothing, that is, never garments that went next to the skin—was perfectly acceptable, but that wearing footwear that other people’s smelly feet had been in was only ever for the desperately impoverished. ‘Is there a shoemaker in this part of town?’

  ‘Yes, John Simpson in Essex Lane. Or there’s Nolan’s General Store in George Street down near Hospital Wharf, they do a limited range. There’s a milliner in George Street too, if you’re wanting bonnets. That’ll be three pounds, five and six.’

  Kitty handed over four of the sovereigns and watched carefully as Mrs Goodwin handed back the change from the depths of a pocket in her apron.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Mrs Goodwin nodded kindly, then hesitated for a moment. ‘Take care, the pair of you. The Rocks is a good place but it can be mean as well, especially to strangers, and Christ knows there’s enough of them about. And particularly dark strangers, if you get my gist,’ she added, nodding at Wai. ‘There’s some of her lot living here if she’s looking for the company of her own kind. Seamen, I believe they are, staying down near the wharf. They drink at the Ordinance Arms and they’ve a few of their womenfolk with them. She might be wanting them when her time comes.’

  Kitty didn’t know whether to thank the woman or berate her for her rudeness. Instead she simply nodded, and they left.

  Outside, Haunui, who had parked his large rump on a barrel and was benignly watching two groups of children throwing stones at each other from opposite sides of the street, heaved himself to his feet. ‘Finished?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘No, we’ve only just started,’ Kitty said, smiling as he struggled to keep the dismay off his face.

  Their next stop was at another second-hand shop further along Gloucester Street displaying a range of bonnets in the window. Kitty, who would have worn a chamber pot on her head if it disguised her lack of hair, chose a cream one with long ribbons and modest frills around the brim, while Wai selected one in sapphire blue. She put hers on straight away, inordinately pleased with her reflection in the shop’s mirror. Together, that was another one pound seven and six gone.

  ‘Being a lady is not very cheap, is it?’ Wai remarked as they left the shop.

  ‘No, it isn’t. Shoes next. Or would you rather have boots?’

  Wai stopped and looked down at her short but wide feet. ‘I do not want either.’

  Kitty put her hands on her hips. ‘You have to have something, Wai. You can’t go around barefoot.’

  ‘Why not? I did at Paihia.’

  ‘Yes, but the ground at Paihia wasn’t covered in that,’ Kitty said, pointing some feet away at a sludge of something that looked suspiciously like human sewage.

  ‘There was dog shit.’

  ‘Wai! Where did you learn that sort of language!’

  ‘Sharkey. He said Pierre’s fish stew made him shit through the eye of a needle.’

  Haunui started to laugh until Kitty fixed him with a stare.

  ‘Well, it’s not ladylike,’ she reprimanded.

  Wai squinted at her thoughtfully. ‘You are funny sometimes, Kitty. First you dress up in trousers and act like a man, then you say to me to be ladylike. Why do I have to be the lady? I am not a lady, I am Wai. Puhi is not the same as lady.’

  ‘You like your bonnet and your new dresses, don’t you?’ Kitty reasoned.

  ‘Ae, but they do not make me a lady,’ Wai said sadly. She patted her expanding stomach. ‘Everyone must see now that I am not.’

  ‘Oh, Wai,’ Kitty said, feeling tears pricking at the back of her eyes. ‘Of course you’re a lady. None of this is your fault.’

  ‘No one else knows that. All they see is a hapu brown girl.’

  Haunui laid a big hand on Wai’s shoulder, not laughing now.

  Kitty didn’t know what to say because she knew Wai was right. She looped her arm through her friend’s. ‘Well, let’s go and find this shoemaker, shall we? Then you can be a hapu brown girl in lovely new shoes.’

  But finding shoes for Wai wasn’t easy. John Simpson had a good range of women’s footwear, but Wai tried on and dismissed every single pair suitable for out of doors, including clogs.

  ‘They all…pinch,’ Wai complained. ‘They hurt.’

  Kitty sighed. ‘Even these?’ she suggested, holding up a pair of heavy black walking shoes with metal buckles on the front.

  ‘No, they are just ugly.’

  Haunui rolled his eyes.

  ‘I like those,’ Wai said, pointing at a delicate pair of slippers in grey silk.

  Mr Simpson, who had been patiently handing Wai pair after pair of shoes, sighed as well. ‘They won’t do,’ he said, ‘not with all the muck on the streets. They’re parlour slippers, they’ll not last you a week. What about boots? Sometimes they’ll fit better. I make them a little wider over the arch so they’re easier to get on. A nice pair of highlows, perhaps?’ He crossed the floor of his tiny shop and reached up towards several pairs of boots displayed on a high shelf. ‘Buttons or laces?’

  ‘Laces, I think,’ Kitty said.

  Wai shook her head. ‘Buttons.’

  Kitty gave her a look that in Paihia she had usually reserved for the most recalcitrant of her pupils. ‘Laces means you can tie them more loosely.’

  ‘Buttons,’ Wai said again, her jaw thrust out defiantly.

  Kitty and the shoemaker exchanged a glance. ‘Buttons, please,’ Kitty said.

  Four pairs later, Wai finally found a style she liked. She ran her fingers over the soft tan kid, caressing the row of little buttons that opened the tongue almost all the way down to the toe. She put both boots on and pranced around the shop, stamping her feet to hear the little wooden heels striking the flagstone floor.

  ‘Are you sure they’re comfortable?’ Kitty asked.

  Wai nodded vigorously. ‘They are lovely!’

  Breathing another sigh, this time one of relief, Kitty selected new boots for herself and a pair for Haunui, who complained almost as much as Wai when he put them on, and paid Mr Simpson. Now there were fewer than four pounds left, but it would be enough.

  On their way to Suffolk Lane to find Mrs Mason’s premises, they stopped at another little shop that sold, apparently, a bit of everything a woman might need. Haunui glanced apprehensively through the window at the array of toiletries and fancies and announced that he was very thirsty after all the shopping and that it was probably better if he met them at St Patrick’s at the appointed time. Kitty and Wai loaded him up with the parcels containing their new dresses and bonnets and went into the shop as he trudged off down the street.

  They bought hair clips and an ivory tooth comb each, handkerchiefs, toothbrushes and a pot of tooth powder, soap to supplement Pierre’s contribution and a bar of castile for their hair, rose water, pomade to tame Kitty’s n
ew curls, scissors, thread, lisle stockings, towelling for Kitty’s monthlies, towels and facecloths for bathing, and a dainty reticule each. Kitty considered the selection of gloves, then decided not to buy any, as most of the women she had seen in the streets hadn’t been wearing them. She also wistfully eyed a display of hair-pieces and wigs but decided against purchasing one—generous though Rian had been, the money would not run to pandering to her vanity as well as paying for the necessities. Nor did she buy anything from the range of lace fans, hand-mirrors, jewellery, silver buttons, silk flowers, beaded hair combs, porcelain vases and trinket boxes also for sale, although she would have liked to.

  They left the shop with more parcels under their arms and went in search of Mrs Mason’s premises.

  ‘My feet hurt,’ Wai said as they turned into Suffolk Lane.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Kitty said, spying a shingle announcing ‘Mrs E. Mason, Sempstress’ halfway up the lane. They must have walked straight past it this morning.

  The shop window was very discreet, draped with a white lace curtain and featuring a single example of—presumably—Mrs Mason’s work: a beautifully cut dress in peach silk, its seams almost invisible and the tucks and pleats in the sleeves and at the waist perfectly flat. The bodice was decorated with panels of intricate beading that glimmered in the light, and Kitty wondered whether the obviously talented Mrs Mason had also worked the decoration herself. She gazed covetously, then followed Wai inside.

  The elegant shop, which looked to have been purpose-built for retail, was empty. Wai rang the bell on the counter with unnecessary enthusiasm, and a moment later a woman appeared through a curtain.

  ‘Good morning,’ Kitty said. ‘We would like to speak to Mrs Mason, please.’

  The woman smiled. ‘I’m Enya Mason,’ she replied in a voice that immediately declared her Irish origins.