by Lena Dowling
Tompkins eyed the dog.
‘Shush now, Jammy,’ she said, praying to God he wouldn’t make another noise. Tompkins ran the cockfighting. As far as she knew he’d never run dogs, but she wouldn’t put anything past him.
‘And what makes you think you’ll even get a licence?’ Tompkins said, after he’d taken another swig of rum.
‘Rowley thinks I have a good chance.’
‘Somerset! I should have guessed. The Governor won’t so much as fart without checking with Rowley which way the wind’s blowing first. Turning yourself into his molly-dolly. That was slick. But then you always were the smart one. No wonder you ended up with the place.’
‘It’s just how things worked out.’
She had ended up with the guesthouse, but now she was having to make a deal with Satan just to hold onto it. It wasn’t the first time she’d been between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Only then the Devil was Danny and the deep blue sea was saying goodbye to William forever. As it turned out, she probably should have plunged into the drink, but that wasn’t her way. She’d never been one to take the quick and easy path if it meant she ended up in the wrong place.
‘You can have your rum so long as you’re willing to pay.’
‘I’ll pay.’
‘See that you do. If I have to cover you, we’ll have to consider how you might best make good on your debts.’
Nellie turned and left before Tompkins could change his mind, winding her way between the tools and barrels, back out into the courtyard, stopping only for the few seconds it took for the sentry to let her out, then ran well down the street, until she’d put a good distance between her and the garrison.
Outside, she was glad of the cape and Jammy’s warm little body against hers.
Because even with the warm October sun at her back, she had gone icy cold.
Chapter 11
By the time Nellie got back from visiting Tompkins and Rowley and getting the other errands done, the sun was a ball of crimson, sinking in the sky. At the back gate to the Tullamore, Jammy barked. Once the latch had been on the outside for the customers’ convenience and to keep the girls in, but one of the first things Pikelet had done after Danny had died was to take it off and put it on the other side.
Voices were coming from inside. Jammy barked again, the happy ruff-ruff sound she made whenever Pikelet was around.
Nellie bent down and scratched around in the dust for a pebble to save her knuckles this time, and rapped on the gate.
It wasn’t Pikelet who pulled back the tall gate, but Harry who welcomed her inside.
Harry pointed to a huge pile of rubbish. ‘We’ve been working.’
Down to his shirtsleeves, his laces open at the throat; his brow was beaded with sweat. Harry lifted his shirt to mop his brow. The unexpected view of his muscles took Nellie by surprise.
As he lowered his shirt, Nellie looked away, pretending to find something very interesting to look at in the makings of the bonfire that had been stacked up in the centre of the yard. A broken bedframe, a pile of pieces of broken pallet, and a wagon wheel missing half its spokes sat on top of a bunch of dry weeds and twigs from her garden for the tinder.
‘Where’s the mattress?’ she said, looking around.
‘It’s in there—we cut it into sections to stop it smothering the fire,’ Harry said.
‘You don’t object, I hope?’ Pikelet called from where he’d been laying planks down on stumps, making up what looked like seating around the fire. ‘I hope I’ve done right.’
‘No, no. A bonfire, it’s a fine idea.’
Jammy jumped up on to Harry’s leg, whimpering excitedly.
‘Jammy, down. I’m sorry he’s messing up your clothes.’
Harry patted the dog between the ears. ‘That horse bolted a couple of hours ago. Anyway she reminds me of the h …’ He stopped. ‘She reminds me of home.’
Nellie studied Harry. For a moment it had seemed like he’d been about to say something else. She shrugged it off. She was probably reading too much into it.
Harry wandered over to the bonfire pile, pushing some wooden slats that had fallen down further to the top of the pile.
‘I’ve warned the guests on this side to keep their windows shut,’ Pikelet said as he approached with a jar in his hand. ‘Harry’s planning to dole out some of Danny’s brandy, so that’s gone down well. We’ve been waiting for you to get back to light it. ’
‘What about the dinner?’ Nellie said, fearing all the complaints she was going to get when the guests got their evening meal late.
‘It’s done. I gave those that wanted it some of the stew and Agnes got the washing in. You’ll not be wanting your sheets smoked. And I’ve put the new folks in rooms that came off today’s ship.’
‘Oh Pikelet. I’m sorry about that. I completely forgot.’
‘You had business to attend to,’ Pikelet said, glaring at Harry’s back.
It was so typical of Pikelet to be watching out for her like that.
‘I’d offer you a seat but it might be best to wait to see which way the wind blows first.’
Pikelet dipped a rag into the earthenware jar of whale oil and pushed into a bale of twigs.
He had trouble with the flint at first, but once he got it going, flames leapt upwards, claiming the entire mound. Guests started turning up then and that was when she noticed a tray with drinking vessels and bottles of brandy.
Pikelet handed out the mixture of cups, tankards and the few good glasses that had been Danny’s, with Harry following behind with the brandy.
Nellie took Pikelet’s advice, waiting a moment to watch where the smoke went, but they had organised it well, with the breeze taking the smoke away from them. She took a place beside Mrs Green, the lady who’d borrowed the sewing box that morning to darn one of her husband’s socks. Oscar Ellis, a tall, thin beanpole of a man who was surveying for the Governor and was one of their long stayers, sat down beside her. ‘This was a fine idea,’ he said.
‘Yes, it was.’
Nellie gazed into the fire claiming Danny’s mattress. She’d have burned each and every one in the place if she could have afforded it. But furniture was expensive and there was no money for replacing things that weren’t ruined or worn out.
She looked over at Harry, hunched over a tankard, relaxed, laughing at something.
But then, it was easy to laugh and joke when your whole life wasn’t hanging in the balance.
Someone handed her a tankard. It was Pike’s, his favourite. She looked over to him and raised it in his direction. In return, he nodded his permission for her to use it.
‘Will you sing something for us?’ Oscar asked.
She forced a smile. She didn’t feel like singing yet. She was too wound up from her afternoon. Seeing Tompkins always did that to her. ‘A bit later on perhaps.’
She tipped back the tankard and took a swallow of the brandy, happy with the burn to the back of the throat. It suited her mood.
She had the rum even if it was costing her an arm and a leg. Now everything rested on Rowley and whether he could convince the Governor to give her a licence.
***
After what Nellie had said about being able to sing by ear, Harry had thought Nellie would be the one to commence the singing. It was inevitable around a bonfire. He had been curious to hear her, but it was Pike who launched into song first. The man’s voice was a revelation; a smooth baritone that was unexpected, emanating from such a ravaged casing.
Nellie joined in for the chorus. Her voice melded with Pike’s well enough, but it wasn’t until she sang on her own, an old Irish folk song, that the hairs back of his neck prickled with the sensation of the sound of her voice.
Did he miss Ireland?
Nellie’s question had been preying on his mind all afternoon. Working alongside Pike reminded him of the time he spent working for Tristan’s father.
He moved in with the Mallards after he walked out of his family home. His father
had been furious but he’d left him alone, assuming it would be a passing phase while Harry licked his wounds.
But his father and the rest of the family had underestimated him. His plans had not included returning home.
But that didn’t still mean he didn’t miss Ireland every day. He had grown up knowing he would inherit from his father one day. His future as an Irishman had been as much a certainty to him as Carrauntoohil casting its long shadow and the Boyne holding water. He had never considered emigration as even a remote possibility.
He wasn’t sure, though, that his homesickness could match Nellie’s song. In it he heard a kindred spirit. The pathos she brought to the music was as primal as the fire burning in front of them.
She sat straight-backed on the plank. In the heat, she had dropped her cape. He caught his breath. She looked extraordinary, the flickering of the fire reflecting on her face, catching the golden highlights in her hair.
‘Can you sing for us, Mr Ellis?’ Mrs Green said, drawing his attention away from Nellie and back to the other side of the pyre.
‘Not at all. As much as I enjoy hearing it, I can’t produce a reliable note. But perhaps a verse, and since I’ll be following on from Miss Malone’s singing, I feel there’s only one that would be appropriate.
‘“To a Skylark”,’ Harry said, without thinking.
‘You read my mind, sir.’
Mr Ellis recited the popular verse; and as the poem drew to a close, a crash, a piece of timber falling through burned timbers, scattered the embers beneath.
Chapter 12
The next morning, having begged a ride on a sturdy milk cart travelling east of the town, Harry returned to Tristan’s house to pick up his belongings with a dreadful headache and what felt like a mouthful of sand.
It was entirely his doing. After everyone else had retired, he had sat around the embers of the bonfire with Oscar Ellis and polished off the last of O’Shane’s stash. Ellis was an interesting fellow, a surveyor sent out by the Colonial Office. He seemed a bookish sort, but once he had a few drinks under his belt, the stories of his explorations began to flow and they’d talked until the warmth left the embers and the first streaks of dawn lit the morning sky. Then he had crawled to bed, sleeping on the straw tick with nothing more than a single layer of eiderdown beneath him. In actual fact it had offered the most comfortable sleep since he arrived in the colony, making him regret not having gone to it earlier.
The mattress in his room upstairs was the cast-off from Tristan and Emily’s own room, and in his opinion it should have been cast out. But to say so would have been to criticise his friend’s hospitality when Tristan and Emily had been so generous putting him up.
Now he stood on the threshold of the Mallard dining room, massaging his temples and cursing the fact he hadn’t retired at a sensible hour. He squinted left then right into the dining room, which was flooded with morning sun.
Tristan glanced up from his breakfast. ‘It’s alright, the coast is clear. Emily isn’t lurking behind the sideboard. And in any case, I told her I heard the floorboards creak after she went to sleep, and that you were in all likelihood sleeping it off this morning. Which, by the looks of things, wasn’t too far from the truth.’
‘Doesn’t that bother you?’ It was the only thing about Tristan and his wife’s relationship that troubled Harry. Emily’s rigid attitude on certain things meant Tristan kept some things secret from her in order to keep the peace.
‘Why should it? You’re over twenty-one, you can make your own decisions.’
‘Where is she?’ Harry said, still wary. Unlike Tristan he would tell Emily the truth, but that didn’t mean he relished the idea of Emily materialising to subject him to a lecture on the evils of drink and debauchery. Although as it happened he was guilty only of the former, and the throbbing behind his eyes was surely punishment enough.
‘She is at one of her Benevolent Ladies Committee meetings. Where were you last night anyway?’
‘The Tullamore. I’ve cleaned out O’Shane’s old accommodations,’ Harry said, drawing a chair out from the table opposite from Tristan and taking a seat, and steeling himself for arguments to justify his decision. ‘It makes sense.’
‘Yes,’ Tristan said, pausing while he took up his teacup. ‘Yes it does.’
Harry looked at his friend. ‘That’s rather an about face? I seem to recall you admonishing me to keep my distance.’
Tristan took a sip from his cup then replaced it in the saucer. ‘In principle, but installing yourself as landlord would be least likely to raise talk.’
Harry chose not to bite, helping himself to a piece of toast from the silver rack in the centre of the table. ‘I won’t be there for long. I’m sure Hunter will find a new tenant soon enough. Can you pass the jam?’
‘You said you cleaned out O’Shane’s room?’ Tristan said, handing over a crystal dish. ‘I’d like to have been a fly on the wall for that exercise. What did you find?’
‘There was very little unless you’re in the market for an opium set-up, or a Bible, of all things. There was some rather decent brandy but we drank that.’
‘We?’
‘The staff and some of the guests. Very much an impromptu affair,’ he added quickly, hoping Tristan wouldn’t take it as a slight he had not been included.
But his good-natured friend remained unruffled, ‘Danny O’Shane was nothing if not complex.’
‘You knew him?’ Harry asked before biting into his toast.
‘By reputation and observation only. But that was enough to get the measure of the man.’
Harry had his own measure from dealing with the man’s effects. Why on earth Nellie had stayed, when based on both Tristan and Somerset’s observations she had other options, still troubled him. He wanted to ask, but he was in no mood for an interrogation.
Harry swallowed the last of the toast and stood up.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To pack—if I can get my things together before Emily’s ladies’ meeting finishes—you’ll be the one breaking the news of my change in domicile, and not me.’
It would do Tristan good to have to be honest about something Emily wouldn’t approve of, and the sooner he was packed, the sooner he could see about a new mattress.
‘You’ll keep, my friend. Retribution will be as sweet as it is unexpected. But before you go, I almost forgot. There’s a message from Hunter.’
‘He’s found a tenant already?’ Harry asked, surprised he didn’t feel more excited by the prospect.
‘No, actually he has a block of land to show you.’
‘In town?’
‘Parramatta, but he says it’s worth looking at. He’s sending a carriage for you the day after tomorrow, so there must be a decent commission in it for him as well.’
Chapter 13
Nellie flopped down in the chair in the corner of her bedroom, footsore and bone weary.
She had been up since dawn, changing rooms, taking in new guests, dragging sheets and towels in from the washing lines as soon as they were dry and folding them ready for the next day. All the usual things, and then everything in preparation for reopening as a tavern on top.
Once the laundry was done, she had kept Agnes on. The only staff they had, besides her and Pike, Agnes had helped her cook several batches of pies. A full stomach would keep their customers from getting too drunk too fast and hopefully stave off trouble.
She’d still had to supervise, making sure the girl wasn’t letting the pastry get too warm or stretching it too much. After that, she had served up an early dinner for those guests who wanted it in the kitchen, before she’d helped Pike break down the tables and move them all from the dining room out to one of the stalls in the stable.
Which was a blessing since she had been so busy that she’d had no time to worry about whether Rowley would come through with the licence or about Harry Chester. With the mattress burned, she had thought he would stay on wherever it was he was staying before, b
ut after the bonfire he had slept the night his room.
On goodness knows what. Perhaps that’s where he’d gone—to buy a mattress.
Nellie went to the chest of drawers and placed her hand on a small wooden box that sat on top, as one might place their hand on their heart.
It had been a present from Mr Biggs and Colleen this Christmas just past. She opened it and took out the paper she kept in it and had folded and unfolded so many times, she had had to keep it down to once a week. The paper of the will was so weak on the creases it was giving way to holes. And when it wore away, she would have nothing left of him.
Carefully she put it back and slumped into her chair. The high-backed uncomfortable chair was for draping clothes over, not meant for sinking into, but her eyelids still drooped heavier and heavier. She pulled herself upright and shook her head. If she gave into a nap, she would never get up again.
She counted to ten, slowly drawing out each number as long as she could, then grasped the sides of the chair and levered herself back onto her aching feet. Over at the washstand, she poured some water into the washbowl to dampen her face cloth then pressed the cool fabric to her forehead and scrubbed it over her face and around the back of her neck.
‘Here you are.’ Nellie jumped. Ever since Harry Chester had arrived, she had been jumpy. Especially when the voice was a man’s.
But it wasn’t Harry. It was Rowley stood in the doorway, smiling from ear to ear.
Nellie let out a squeal. ‘You’ve got it? Let me see.’ Forgetting how tired she was, she ran to Rowley, all but snatching the roll of paper he was holding and untying the ribbon around it.
The Governor of the Colony of New South Wales, under warrant of the Crown, hereby grants and extends to Eleanor Patricia Malone, otherwise known as Nellie Malone, a convict, operating under privilege of a ticket of leave the right to purchase, store, and purvey alcoholic beverages, and further to allow said beverages to be consumed on the premises known as Tullamore Guesthouse and Tavern situated on Hunter Street, Sydney, in the Colony of His Majesty, New South Wales. The said licence is to be limited to between six o’clock and ten o’clock each evening.