‘Killarney?’
‘Mary comes from the Killarney Union Workhouse in County Kerry,’ put in Mr Lang. ‘It’s a well-run place, I can assure you, and it has sent out only the cleanest and most reliable girls.’
The man frowned at Mary. ‘Are you clean and reliable?’
‘I am, sir.’
‘Well, the work requires no special skills, so I suppose I shall take you on,’ said the man. ‘I expect all the best girls have already gone.’
He spoke to Mr Lang, and signed various pieces of paper. Then, turning back to Mary, he looked at Vanessa with disgust. ‘You’ll have to leave that revolting toy behind. My wife wouldn’t allow it in the house.’
Nellie clasped her hands in grief. No! she thought. Oh, poor Mary!
But Mary’s expression didn’t change. ‘Very well, sir,’ she said. She put the doll on the floor and lifted up her bundle. ‘Good luck, dear Nell,’ she whispered to Nellie, and then she left the Depot without a single backward look.
Nellie gazed after her friend, feeling sad and happy both at once. Then she picked up Vanessa and tucked her tenderly into her own bundle of belongings.
‘Be strong, Nellie O’Neill,’ she told herself. But right at this point she was finding it very difficult to be strong. What if nobody should ever want her? What in the name of Heaven would she do then?
NELLIE felt even less strong when she realised that she had no idea where
Mary had gone. How could she manage without Mary? How could Mary survive without her?
‘Mr Lang, sir,’ she said timidly. ‘Can you tell me where Mary Connell might have gone, please? Where might I find her, if I should need to?’
Mr Lang was writing at a large desk at the end of the room. He put down his pen. ‘I can’t tell you, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘We want you orphan girls to become sensible, independent young women, and you won’t do that if you stick together like a flock of geese. You have to let go of each other’s apron strings.’
Nellie imagined a whole lot of geese dressed in pinnies, and in spite of her worries she smiled to herself.
‘I wouldn’t be sticking to Mary like a goose, sir,’ she said. ‘But she’s my best friend, and we promised faithfully we’d look after each other.’
Mr Lang’s stern expression softened a little. ‘I cannot give you her exact address, but I can tell you that she has gone to a very good home in East Terrace, a fine wealthy home. Run along, now.’
Nellie curtsied. ‘I’m obliged to you, sir.’
East Terrace! She tucked this away in her mind and sat down to wait with the other unwanted girls. Just listening to their familiar Irish voices made her feel happier. She closed her eyes and imagined herself back in Ireland, the lovely country it had been four or five years ago, before it was torn apart by starvation and sickness.
The woman who walked through the front door soon afterwards didn’t seem to be the sort of person who would be looking for a servant. She was very plainly dressed, and wore a man’s straw hat on her head. Not even a bonnet of her own, thought Nellie with surprise.
A head popped out from behind the woman, and then another. Two children, a boy aged about seven and a girl a little younger, had been hiding behind her skirts. They looked like chickens hiding beneath the wings of a mother hen. Nellie remembered running after chickens when she was small and Dada had the farm, before the English landlords turned them all out. They’d had so many fresh eggs to eat then, and sometimes even a chicken for the pot, and chicken soup …
‘Nellie O’Neill, this is your new employer,’ said Mr Lang. ‘Mrs Thompson runs a small boarding house in Rundle Street, and you will be working in her kitchen.’
Nellie looked up in alarm. She didn’t want to work in a kitchen! Immediately she saw in her mind the big, bad-smelling kitchen at Killarney. And she, Nellie, couldn’t so much as boil a potato.
She turned to Mrs Thompson. A pair of friendly eyes in a plump, red-cheeked face looked back at her.
‘Don’t worry, pet,’ said Mrs Thompson. ‘I won’t bite.’ She smiled, revealing that one of her front teeth was missing. ‘I need some extra help because Mr Thompson has gone up to the Burra to work in the copper mines. He’s left me with four children and more work than you can poke a stick at. Can you cook?’
Thinking quickly, Nellie nodded. This mightn’t be the job she wanted, but she needed it. And it wasn’t really telling a fib, was it, if she didn’t say anything?
‘I know you won’t have much idea what you’re doing, being Irish and coming from a workhouse,’ Mrs Thompson told her, ‘but I’ll train you up quick as a wink.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ said Mrs Thompson. ‘I wondered if you’d speak English. Some of them don’t. It’s a strange, thick accent you’ve got, I must say.’
Nellie swallowed. ‘It’s what I was born with, ma’am,’ she said politely.
The little boy stuck out his tongue. Nellie ignored him. The little girl made a face at her. Nellie bared her teeth, and the child giggled and vanished behind her mother’s skirt again.
Picking up her possessions, Nellie followed the Thompsons out into the sunshine. Ten minutes later she was standing outside her new home, a weatherboard building on the wide dirt road that was Rundle Street.
‘Do you have fleas, Nellie?’
‘I don’t think so, ma’am.’
‘Lice?’
Nellie scratched her head. ‘I don’t know, ma’am.’
Mrs Thompson tipped back Nellie’s bonnet and started to search carefully through her hair. Nellie stood, silent and humiliated, while the two children giggled at her from behind their hands.
‘I don’t think you have lice. But you’re not very clean, pet, are you? You need a bath before we do another thing. Will and Hetty, run away now. Nellie, come with me.’
Cold with dismay, Nellie followed her mistress down a long hallway with doors opening off it on either side. The walls were covered with flowery wallpaper, and there was a large mirror in an ornate gold frame. Surely it must be real gold! It was so beautiful that for a moment Nellie forgot about the dreaded bath. She stood still, marvelling at her own reflection. Why, she could see herself from top to toe!
‘Here, Nellie!’
In a back room was a big tin bathtub. Mrs Thompson half filled it with brownish water bucketed from a pump in the yard.
‘Put your things on that chair. Then take your clothes off, and in you get.’
‘All my clothes, ma’am?’
‘All of them.’
Nellie had never been properly naked since she was a baby, and in spite of the freezing water, she felt her face grow hot with shame. She looked at her feet and knees, but nowhere else, for that wasn’t proper. Mrs Thompson scrubbed her with a scrubbing brush until her skin tingled, and then washed her tangled red hair with some hard yellow soap.
As soon as she was dressed again in clean clothes, and her wet hair roughly combed out, Nellie was shown around the boarding house. She felt light and strange after her bath, as if she was starting her new life in a new skin.
To her relief, the kitchen wasn’t at all like the kitchen at Killarney. For a start, it was warm. There was a long table, a dresser piled with thick white china, and a huge cooking stove with red coals glowing through the grate. A big saucepan was sitting at the back of the range, and the delicious smell that came from it made Nellie almost faint with hunger. A glossy black cat came up to her and wound itself around her ankles.
‘That’s Sooty,’ Mrs Thompson told her. ‘Our Will found him in the yard one morning, and he decided to stay. He’s a good mouser.’
Nellie bent to stroke him. ‘You must be a very lucky black cat,’ she said to him, ‘and not an unlucky one, as my Mary would think. You’d give her the skitters, so you would.’
‘The front parlour and the dining room are for everyone’s use,’ Mrs Thompson went on, ‘but most times you’ll find us in the kitchen, which is more cheerful-
like. All the bedrooms apart from yours are on the first floor: you’re up in the storage area. My boarders are three very respectable young men. All Englishmen, I’m happy to say.’
They creaked up the wooden stairs together. Nellie heard muffled laughter, and turned to see William and Hetty tiptoeing close behind her. The moment she saw them, they raced away, laughing openly now. What were they up to?
A baby began to cry. ‘Oh dear, Albert’s woken,’ Mrs Thompson said. She pointed up a further, much narrower, flight of stairs. ‘Your room is on the right. You’ll find a couple of clean aprons behind the door.’
Nellie’s room was tucked up right beneath the roof. The ceiling was so low that she could barely stand upright, and the bed took up nearly all the floor space. But it was hers, hers alone! And to her delight and amazement there was a pillow on the bed. Nellie had never had such a thing, not in her entire life. Putting down her bundle, she poked the pillow gently. It was as soft as bread dough.
She sat on the bed to see what it felt like, and then quickly stood up again. She’d sat on something lumpy, but there was nothing on the white counterpane. Turning to look at the back of her skirt, she squealed with surprise. A dead mouse was pinned to her skirt by its tail.
So that was what they were up to, the spalpeens. Well, they had a lesson coming to them now, and no mistake!
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ said Nellie under her breath. It was something poor Maggie Dooley used to say when everything became too much for her. And it might have helped Maggie, but it certainly wasn’t helping Nellie.
‘If the fire in the stove goes out overnight, you’ll have to light it again in the morning,’ Mrs Thompson had told her yesterday. ‘I suppose you know how to start a fire? Your first task will be to make breakfast. It’s the same every morning: porridge, then fried chops and eggs, or bacon if we have it, and toast. My young men have hearty appetites.’
‘Why did I tell her I knew how to light a stove?’ moaned Nellie. ‘And why did I say I could cook? Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, please help me!’
The stove crouched in front of her. It seemed much bigger than it had looked yesterday. It was big, and black, and stone cold.
Nellie couldn’t read the time shown by the clock on the mantel, but she knew it was early, very early. Nobody else had stirred, and the light in the kitchen was dim and grey.
She opened the grate of the stove. It was full of ash and bits of charcoal.
A box filled with long, thin bits of wood stood near the stove. She took several pieces and stuck them on top of the cold ash. Now she had to make a fire. How did you do that? At home they’d had a turf fire, which Dada had lit using an old tinderbox. She remembered him once telling her about lucifer matches – wonderful things, he’d said they were: you could strike them against anything to produce a flame. It was like a miracle.
And now it’s a miracle I’m needing myself, Nellie thought. She peered all around the kitchen. There was no tinderbox to be seen anywhere. But what was in this metal container?
Aha! Lucifers!
Nellie chose one and scraped it cautiously on the top of the stove. Nothing happened. She scraped again, harder.
The match burst into flame with a sudden flare and a horrible smell. Nellie dropped it and stood there in terror, breathing quickly. After a few moments, she giggled at herself. It was just a little fire, for goodness’ sake!
Next time she put the flaring match to the wood in the grate. Again, nothing happened: just a few scorch marks on the wood. She tried again. And again. And again. She blew fiercely at the wood, hoping to encourage the tiny flame. Clouds of ash billowed out and covered her face and hair.
Nellie glared at the stove. ‘You black beast!’ she muttered. ‘I’ll not let you get the better of me!’
Half an hour later, with ash powdering the floor, and the stove still cold, there was just one match left. Nellie collapsed into a chair, put her head on the kitchen table, and sobbed.
‘You’re supposed to clean the grate out first,’ said a voice.
Nellie raised her head and smeared her tears away with her ash-covered hands.
A thin, brown-haired boy of about her own age was standing in front of the stove. ‘You must be the new Irish skivvy,’ he said.
‘I’m Irish indeed, but I’m no skivvy,’ said Nellie indignantly. She wasn’t sure what a skivvy was, but it didn’t sound like a good thing to be. ‘And who might you be, when you’re at home?’
‘My name’s Tom,’ said the boy. ‘And whoever you are, it looks as if you need help.’
‘Oh, I do,’ Nellie groaned. ‘This is my first morning, and I had such a fine sleep last night, with my beautiful pillow under my head, and here I am with the black beast that won’t let me light it, and there’s no tinderbox, and the mistress will be down any minute and the stove is still cold as the Lake of Doom, and –’
Tom put his hand in the grate and pulled out one of the long bits of wood. ‘This is a spill,’ he said. ‘There’s kindling out the back, and that’s what you start a fire with. The spills are for lighting the lamps.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Nellie wretchedly. ‘I didn’t know what anything was for, and I was afraid to ask because then the mistress would think I was stupid.’
‘She would’ve been right, wouldn’t she?’said Tom, but he laughed in such a good-natured way that Nellie couldn’t feel offended. He looked at the clock. ‘The kettle should be on by now. What’s your name?’
‘Nellie O’Neill. Actually it’s Ellen, but only my dada ever called me that, and only when he was in a temper, like he was the time I gave my bit of bread to a gipsy girl. I had to do it, because she was so hungry you could see all the bones of her face, but Dada said –’
‘I’ll show you how to light the stove, Nellie. First of all you have to clean out some of the ash – use the ash pan there.’
Nellie did as she was told, and then watched as Tom laid the fire with kindling and plenty of wood shavings, and set the last of the matches to it. To her great relief, it blazed away cheerfully.
By the time Mrs Thompson came into the kitchen, carrying baby Albert, the black beast was growing hot and a kettle of water was starting to come to the boil.
Mrs Thompson put Albert on the floor, where he immediately began to crawl. ‘Well done, pet,’ she said to Nellie. Then her gaze fell on the empty match tin, and she frowned. ‘Where did the matches go? Did you use them all up?’
‘Yes, ma’am. I’m very sorry, ma’am.’
Tom scooped up Albert, who was about to stick his chubby finger in a mousetrap. ‘It wasn’t her fault, Mother,’ he said. ‘She didn’t know where the kindling was.’
Nellie whipped around. ‘I didn’t know the mistress was your mama,’ she accused him. ‘I thought you were a servant, like me.’
‘I help out sometimes.’
‘And you did help me, and I thank you. But you should have told me who you were.’
Tom bowed. ‘I’m Tom Thompson. Happy to be of service, Miss O’Neill.’
The blood rushed to Nellie’s cheeks. ‘Miss O’Neill’ – how fine that sounded! Why, she’d never been called ‘Miss’ in her life! Perhaps this was the first of her wishes to come true – that she’d no longer be just an Irish orphan, but herself.
Already I like you, Tom Thompson, she said in her mind. I hope we shall be friends.
That night, Nellie sat Vanessa on the dressing table in her bedroom. ‘I haven’t forgotten our lovely Mary,’ she whispered to the doll’s faded, painted face. ‘She’s somewhere in this town and she’ll be missing the two of us. I’ll find her, I promise.’ She knelt at her bed to say her prayers, and she prayed that Mary was well and happy, and that she would have a chance to find her very, very soon.
Then she threw back the counterpane, removed a squishy rotten apple nestled just where her toes might find it, hopped into bed and fell asleep.
‘CAN you read?’ asked William. Nellie looked up from where she was on her knees, scrubbing th
e kitchen floor. The younger Thompsons were standing together, looking down at her. ‘What’s it to you?’ Nellie answered.
‘My friend Georgie Mitchell says Irish people can’t read because they’re too stupid.’
Nellie made herself speak calmly. ‘Well, that’s not the case with me, not at all,’ she said. ‘I think you’ll find I’m just as smart as you are, William Thompson, and probably a great deal smarter.’
‘I can read,’ piped up Hetty. ‘I’m learning my ABC. Do you know your ABC?’
‘Everyone knows their ABC,’ replied Nellie. ‘I can count, as well.’
‘I can count too!’ said Hetty. ‘I’m only six, but I can count to a hundred already.’
‘You’re a clever girl,’ said Nellie. ‘But are you and William so clever that you know what happened to that mousie? That dead wee mousie you pinned on me yesterday?’
Both children shook their heads.
‘What mouse?’ said William. ‘I don’t know anything about a mouse.’
‘Oh, but you do,’ said Nellie. ‘Or if you don’t, you will, and quite soon. Because that wee furry dead mousie is now in your tummy. I chopped it up and put it in the stew you had for dinner last night. Did you not wonder why I only ate the bread?’
Hetty gagged, and William turned pale.
Nellie smiled at them. ‘Soon you’ll be coughing up fur-balls, just like Sooty there.’
William clenched his fists. ‘I’ll get you for that!’ he shouted.
‘Not if I get you first,’ said Nellie. She stood up and sloshed more water on the floor, making sure she got some on William’s boots. ‘Oh, and I found the apple you left me. It was as fine an apple as I’ve ever eaten, and I thank you for your kindness. It’s not many who would be so thoughtful. Now, I’d be obliged if you’d let me get on with my work.’
She smiled now as she scrubbed. The wee mousie had been given a proper Christian burial beneath a bush in the back yard, but that was Nellie’s secret, now and for ever.
Meet Nellie Page 2