LETTY AND THE STRANGER’S LACE
It’s 1841 and Letty and her sister Lavinia have arrived in Sydney town. It’s a dangerous place for two girls on their own, and luckily they find a place to stay at Mrs Chisholm’s Female Immigrants Home. When Lavinia gets a job, poor Letty is left feeling useless and alone. Then she meets Mary, a strange woman in a dark room. Letty is frightened of Mary… But Mary has a secret, and Letty soon realises that perhaps she’s not as useless as she thought.
Follow Letty on her adventure in the second of four exciting stories about a free settler girl and her new life in a far-off land.
Puffin Books
To my sisters
And my beautiful nieces –
This generation of Australian girls
With illustrations byLucia Masciullo
Puffin Books
As Letty stood on the docks in England waiting to say goodbye to her sister Lavinia all those months ago, she could never have imagined that a mix-up would bring her to Australia. But she and Lavinia have survived the ship’s journey across the world and finally arrived in Sydney. They have no home, no job and an empty hope chest, and their only friend is Abner, a young sailor with a big heart. Now night is falling, crowds are fighting, and Letty has never been so afraid …
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Melbourne • London • New York • Toronto • Dublin
New Delhi • Auckland • Johannesburg
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2011
Text copyright © Alison Lloyd, 2011
Illustrations copyright © Lucia Masciullo, 2011
The moral right of the author and the illustrator has been asserted.All rights reserved.
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders for material used in this book.
If anyone has information on relevant copyright holders, please contact us.
puffin.com.au
ouraustraliangirl.com.au
ISBN: 978-0-14-330541-5
Contents
1 SYDNEY WINTER’S NIGHT
2 THE FEMALE IMMIGRANTS HOME
3 CUMBERLAND STREET
4 THE OTHER END OF CUMBERLAND STREET
5 ON THE WHARF, SYDNEY HARBOUR
6 IN MARY’S HOUSE
7 THE DRAWING ROOM, 200 CUMBERLAND STREET
8 BACK TO FRY’S BAKERY
9 RACE DAY
10 HYDE PARK & THE DOMAIN
11 MARY’S ROΟΜ AT NIGHT
THE ground felt unsteady under Letty’s feet as they trudged up the hill. She was glad she held her sister Lavinia’s hand. The street was dark; it seemed to Letty to have a secret life, scratching and scuttling at the edges of her hearing. A dog howled.
Letty did not have much to be glad for, other than Lavinia. She was tired and starved. Her clothes were stiff with salt water and dirt. She and Lavinia had sailed all the way to Australia from England, leaving their family behind. It was their first night in this strange country. And they were homeless.
Lavinia hadn’t been happy with the immigrant tents, or the loud pubs offering rooms to stay. So they were searching for the home for girls that they’d been told about at the last hotel. They had come to an intersection and they didn’t know which way to go. Sydney had no street signs. Or if it did, there were no streetlamps to read them by.
A street ran off to their left. Not far along it, Letty could see a well-lit building. Several horses were tied up outside. A faint hum of voices and music came from inside. Letty felt drawn to the cheerful light like a moth.
In front of Letty, her sailor friend Abner stopped, bent sideways under Lavinia’s hope chest. Letty knew Abner was used to travelling, and working by starlight. But not even he could find his way around this strange city at night.
‘Better ask directions,’ Abner suggested, lowering the chest off his shoulder.
A big sign above the door told them the building was a theatre. As they came near, a bell rang and people began to spill out onto the street.
Lavinia and Letty hesitated. A group of men staggered out the theatre door, bumping into the people already there. A woman screeched, then a man was yelling, and next Letty saw him swing his fist. The woman fell to the ground. Letty shrank back into the darkness like a startled mouse.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Lavinia. She grabbed one handle of their chest.
‘Which way?’ said Abner, taking the other handle.
More scuffles broke out all over the street. Letty heard a thud as someone was thrown against the theatre wall. She wanted to run.
‘That way!’ She pointed left, down the hill. She didn’t know if it was the right way, but it was the quickest and easiest way.
Abner, Letty and Lavinia hurried down the hill, the chest swinging and banging against their shins. Another turn took them past an empty fenced square and along a main road.
‘This way’s back to the sea,’ said Abner. Letty could feel it too: a damp, salty breath of air in their faces. So they turned upwards.
The street narrowed. All three of them were breathing heavily. Abner stumbled over a step.
‘Are you all right?’ Letty asked, puffing.
‘Aye,’ he said gruffly. ‘But we’d best be asking someone whe-er to go, I think.’ Just up the hill, a house door opened, casting a circle of light on the street. Lavinia looked at it, then she gathered her skirts in her hands to climb the steps.
‘Well, here goes,’ she said.
Letty admired Lavinia so much. Her sister was not lanky and strong like Abner, but she was brave. Letty could not imagine herself knocking on a stranger’s door for help. Even an open door.
Abner put out his hand. ‘Wait now, Miss Lavinia.’
A big man was coming out of the doorway, fiddling with his belt buckle.
‘Oh!’ Lavinia turned her head away, but the man didn’t notice her. He stood with his legs apart. Letty tried not to listen to him splashing on the street. The man turned to go back in.
‘Ugh!’ Lavinia muttered. She lifted her skirts just above her ankles. ‘Excuse me!’ she called.
Letty kept close behind her.
‘Who’s keeping you, George?’ called a voice from inside. Behind the man at the door, Letty saw three or four others, lounging around a table strewn with cards.
‘A pair of lasses,’ said George, looking them up and down. He looked at Lavinia’s slim ankles particularly. Lavinia dropped her skirts to cover her feet.
‘Not your raving sister?’ said the man inside.
George frowned.
‘Mind your mouth, Archie,’ warned a third card-player.
‘Ask them in, why don’t you?’ said Archie.
Lavinia took a step back. ‘Can you tell us how far it is to Mrs Chisholm’s house for girls?’ she asked George.
The man scratched his stubbly chin with a large hand.
‘Struth. Can’t say that I can,’ he answered.
‘On Kent Street,’ Lavinia persisted. She looked past the big man to see if the others could tell her.
‘You’re no help to the ladies, George,’ the man inside said. ‘They need me.’
‘We need Mrs Chisholm’s Female Immigrants Home,’ Lavinia said firmly. Her hand squeezed Letty’s tightly.
The men all laughed. Letty wished they would stop staring and joking around, and answer the question. She felt uneasy, caught between the men in the room and the darkness of the streets. She remembered how Papa had often warned his daughters against strangers. But he was not here in Sydney to look after them.
‘Ah, now we can help you,’ said Archie. ‘T
hat’s not on Kent Street, up top of the Rocks. That’s on Bent Street.’
‘You’re on the wrong side of the Cove,’ George explained. ‘You have to go down to the stream and back up the other side.’
Oh no, thought Letty. They had to return in the direction they’d already come. She had led them the wrong way.
‘Thank you,’ said Lavinia.
‘Come back if you get lost,’ George called after them.
‘And how are we going to do that?’ Lavinia muttered, as they went back to Abner and the chest. ‘Lost is lost. Some people are so stupid!’
‘Sorry Lavinia,’ said Letty. If she hadn’t chosen the wrong way before, they wouldn’t have to go all the way back now.
‘I wasn’t talking about you,’ said Lavinia. ‘Don’t be sorry, just keep walking.’
They shared carrying the chest with Abner. Letty’s feet ached. Lavinia’s steps were dragging too. By the time they reached the intersection near the theatre again, Letty’s head felt dizzy.
‘That the-er is Bent Street, I’d say.’ Abner pointed to where the street zigzagged up.
Letty was too tired to talk. Lavinia just nodded. The three of them plodded on, around the bend.
Up ahead was a long, low wooden building. A verandah came down over the windows, like a hat over its eyes. The posts were a bit crooked, like the street.
‘Do you think that’s the home?’ Lavinia wondered aloud.
‘Not much of a building, it aren’t,’ said Abner.
‘Better than the seashore,’ said Lavinia.
Or the theatre, thought Letty. Or George’s house. She hoped so anyway. Maybe here they could get a safe bed for the night. Away from drunks and dogs and creeping shadows.
Lavinia marched up to the door and knocked.
Letty could hear laughter inside – high-pitched and happy – women’s laughter. Chinks of light escaped the curtains. Letty thought she could smell food, too. She wished she was inside. But what if it was the wrong place? Where would they go next?
Lavinia knocked again.
After a long while, a woman opened the door, a candle in her hand. She had a hard, square face and was wearing an old nightcap, as if she were going to bed.
‘Is this Mrs Chisholm’s house?’ Lavinia asked her.
‘Surely,’ said the woman. She held the candle forward and looked at the three of them. ‘You’re straight off a boat. I can tell by the smell of you.’
‘Could you take us in?’ Lavinia asked. ‘Please? We don’t have anywhere to stay.’
‘We’re fair full up,’ the woman said. ‘Near seventy souls here already.’
Tears rose up in Letty. It seemed as if the whole wide world didn’t have a place for her. But she didn’t want to give in and cry in front of a stranger. She fought the tears down.
Lavinia tossed her head and straightened her shoulders. ‘All right!’ she said to the woman in the nightcap. ‘I trust you don’t mind us camping on your doorstep. I cannot walk a step further. And neither can my sister.’
The woman laughed. ‘You can hop off your high horse, Miss,’ she said. ‘We don’t turn desperate people away. There’s always room. Even for the lad, if he’ll bunk down in the kitchen. Come in.’
WHEN Letty woke up next morning, she thought for a second that she was still on the ship. She was swaying gently in a hammock. Dust motes danced in the sunlight. Letty poked one hand out of the blanket to touch them, remembering that she was back on dry land. Oh, that’s right, she thought dreamily, Lavinia and I are safe.
People chattered around her, but Letty couldn’t see past the hammock’s edges.
‘Lavinia?’ she called out.
No answer.
Letty wiggled to the edge of the hammock. It swung wildly and tipped her onto the one below. The lower hammock was empty. Where was Lavinia? Letty hugged herself tight against the cold.
‘Morning!’ The woman who had let them in the previous night bustled across to Letty. ‘The water in the copper’s boiled. It’s time for your bath.’
The other women in the long room grumbled enviously. But Letty did not want a bath. She wanted to find Lavinia.
‘Where’s my sister?’ she asked. ‘And Abner? Please?’
‘The boy is eating us out of house and home. And your sister’s in the bath already, clothes and all.’
‘Oh! Can I have breakfast first, Mrs Chisholm?’ Letty asked. ‘Lavinia takes forever.’
‘I’m not Mrs Chisholm,’ retorted the woman. ‘Too old and ugly to be her. I’m Bridget. I keep house, and your sister won’t take forever when I’m around. Hurry up, now. You’ve both got an appointment with Mrs Chisholm herself, soon as she gets to the office.’
‘Do we?’ said Letty, surprised. She had never had ‘an appointment’ with anyone. That was the sort of thing her Papa used to do, back in England where she had left him – accidentally – so many weeks before.
‘Surely,’ said Bridget. ‘Like I said last night, Mrs Chisholm don’t turn people away. But she don’t like slackers or spongers either.’
It was wonderful to get into warm water for the first time since leaving England three months earlier. Lavinia had used so much soap that the water frothed. Letty floated and hummed. The black dirt crusting her skin dissolved. So did her fears of the night before.
Lavinia came back in a borrowed dress to brush out Letty’s hair. She had another dress for Letty to put on after the bath. It was a faded lavender colour, with nice scalloped flounces. But it was much too big.
Lavinia frowned. ‘Nobody had a spare small enough for you,’ she said. ‘If only you’d brought something else to wear.’
But Letty hadn‘t, because she wasn’t supposed to come to Australia. After Letty had saved her sister’s life on board the ship, Lavinia was glad she had come. Still, Letty wondered whether she was going to be a nuisance to her big sister. Even if neither of them meant her to be.
‘We might not do for a fashion illustration,’ said Lavinia, ‘but at least we’re gloriously clean. I am starving.’
They joined Abner in the kitchen, where he was working steadily through a mound of bread and jam.
‘Are you staying here, too?’ Letty asked him.
Abner shook his head. ‘Going back to the ship, I am. Straight away this morning. Before First Mate has a mind to skin me.’
Letty’s heart sank a little, the way a cake did as it cooled. She didn’t want Abner to go. He was her best friend, and the only person she knew in Australia except Lavinia.
‘Will you come and visit?’ she asked.
‘When I can,’ he said. He stood up and wiped his mouth with one hand. Letty hoped that First Mate would not be hard on him. She hoped he would be allowed to visit her often.
‘You-er a sight, truly,’ said Abner. He smiled broadly.
Letty looked down at the baggy dress in embarrassment.
‘Who’d guess you-er skin was white as angels, under that ship muck?’ he said.
So he wasn’t talking about the dress at all. Letty laughed. She felt his approval warm her through, even nicer than the soapy bath.
After breakfast, Bridget took them next door to Mrs Chisholm’s office. Letty did not know what to expect. She wondered what Mrs Chisholm would think of them. From the respectful way Bridget spoke, Letty thought Mrs Chisholm must be very stern.
In fact, Mrs Chisholm was much younger than Bridget, with a round face. Neat ringlets of hair fell to her shoulders. Her dress was very neat, too, of inky blue, expensive silk. Letty thought she looked calm, and certain.
Lavinia dropped a curtsey. So did Letty.
‘What’s your name, please?’ asked Mrs Chisholm.
‘Lavinia Beddows.’
‘Lavinia!’ humphed Bridget. ‘Too fancy for a servant girl.’
‘Quiet, Bridget. It’s not the name that matters, but the girl. Is the little one your sister?’
‘Yes,’ answered Lavinia. ‘This is Letty, and she stays with me.’
‘Hmm,
’ said Mrs Chisholm. ‘You know I set up this place to keep girls off the streets. You are welcome here, but not for too long – days not months. New South Wales needs young women – as wives, mothers and workers. What kind of work can you do, Miss Beddows?’
‘I did have work lined up here,’ Lavinia explained proudly, ‘but my employer let me down.’ She flicked her shawl over her shoulder as if she were whisking the thought away. ‘I can read and write, and sew very well. And also cook and clean.’
‘And you are very attractive,’ said Mrs Chisholm thoughtfully. ‘We will have to be careful where you are placed. No bachelors.’
Lavinia blushed.
Mrs Chisholm made some notes in a big ledger in front of her. Then she looked up at Letty. Letty did her best to stand still without squirming.
‘Letty is quite young,’ Mrs Chisholm said.
Letty knotted her fingers together to keep them from trembling.
‘But there’s a place for everyone on God’s earth,’ Mrs Chisholm added. ‘Next please, Bridget.’
‘So now what?’ Lavinia asked Bridget when they came out of the office.
‘Now you peel the potatoes.’
Lavinia pulled a face.
‘And you wait and see,’ continued Bridget. ‘City people come here wanting servants, and country folk come wanting wives. Mrs Chisholm does her best to see they all get what they deserve.’
Letty thought that not everyone deserved a servant or a wife like Lavinia. She hoped somebody kind and trustworthy would turn up for them both. She wasn’t sure if they would. She was not at all sure what sort of a person she, Letty, deserved.
TWO weeks later, Letty and Lavinia stood in front of a house at an address Mrs Chisholm had given them. It had taken this long to find a suitable employer who might take on Lavinia. They were there for an interview.
‘My, this is nice,’ said Lavinia appreciatively.
Letty nodded. ‘No coal smoke,’ she said. Even though it was winter, the sky was pale blue. Sydney Harbour shone in the distance.
Letty and the Stranger's Lace Page 1