Nellie let the music wash over her. Pictures of her family flooded her mind: her dada planting potatoes; her little sisters squealing with laughter as they rode bareback on patient old Clancy; Mama nursing baby Patrick while she cooked soda bread on a griddle over the kitchen fire. The images danced in her head, so fresh and real that she could almost smell the peat smoke. She listened until tears ran down her cheeks, and her heart was full to bursting with homesickness.
A woman dressed in black stopped a few steps away from her and dropped some pennies in the musician’s hat. He nodded his thanks, and then began to play another melody, this time a lively jig. The woman smiled at him and walked away.
Nellie wiped away her tears and stared at the ground.
There, where the woman had been, was a gold sovereign.
Nellie looked around. Nobody else had noticed it. Her heart beating very fast, she moved forward, picked up the coin, and put it in her pocket.
Even sharing it with Peg and Sarah, a sovereign would keep her for a week. Surely in a week she could find some sort of work! Perhaps she could afford to buy herself a pair of new boots! In the time it took for the man to raise his tin whistle to his lips, the blessed saints had sent her another miracle.
The woman had stopped outside a tailor’s shop, and Nellie watched as she walked inside. Moments later she was outside again. She was holding her open purse in one hand and searching through it with the other. Closing it again, she turned and walked back towards the musician, her face set in deep lines of worry.
Nellie’s heart sank. She needs the money, she thought. Maybe it’s all she has in the world, and she’s lost without it. Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, tell me what to do!
Of course there was only one thing she could do.
Taking the coin from her pocket, Nellie ran up to the woman.
‘Excuse me, ma’am, I think you dropped this,’ she said.
‘IT is mine,’ the woman said, taking the sovereign from Nellie’s hand. ‘I expect I dropped it when I went to give this poor man some money.’ She looked at Nellie, starting at her bonnet and ending at her boots. ‘I must give you something by way of a reward,’ she said, searching through her purse again. ‘Oh dear – all I have are coppers, and that won’t do. You deserve more than that.’
‘There’s no need to reward me, ma’am,’ Nellie said. ‘I’m happy to have returned the money to its rightful owner.’
‘An Irish girl,’ said the woman, half to herself. ‘Are you an orphan? Forgive me – I know that many Irish girls in this country are orphans, but perhaps you are not. What is your name?’
Nellie stood as straight and tall as she could. ‘I am indeed an orphan, ma’am, and my name is Nellie O’Neill,’ she said.
‘And where may I find you, Nellie? I should like very much to do something for you.’
‘I have no home at present, ma’am,’ Nellie replied. ‘To tell the truth, I’m after finding a place to live, and some work.’
‘Indeed. What sort of work can you do, if I may ask?’
‘Why, I can do anything around a house. I’ve been a kitchen maid and a housemaid. I can cook, too. I used to work in a boarding house just a little way down the street. It burnt down a good while ago, and that’s really why I haven’t got a job now – but it’s a long story, ma’am, and I expect you won’t want to hear it.’
The musician raised his tin whistle to his lips and started to play a sea shanty. The notes bubbled and twirled.
‘What you say is very … interesting,’ the woman said, as if she was thinking hard. ‘And something tells me, Nellie O’Neill, that we may be able to help each other rather well. As it happens, I’m in need of a new housemaid. Could you come to my home a little later today?’ She took out a small notebook and tore a page from it. ‘I’ll write down my address for you.’ Then she looked up. ‘Can you read, Nellie?’
‘Not very well, ma’am. That’s something else I want – to be able to read properly, I mean. People say it’s easy, and it isn’t, not really. I’m trying to teach myself, but it takes me so long, and then sometimes I forget what I’ve learned.’
The woman looked at Nellie even harder. She has the sort of eyes that would pierce straight through you, Nellie thought. Eyes like Bessie Rudge, except that Bessie had such a cold, unpleasant way of staring.
‘Then you’ve come to just the right person,’ the woman said at last, ‘because I am a teacher at the Pulteney Street school. Go to my home at number twenty-one Angas Street. Can you remember that?’
Nellie nodded, speechless, as the teacher lifted her gloved hand briefly in farewell and walked away.
Only then did Nellie realise, with a shock, who the woman must be. She remembered Tom Thompson speaking of her; and his little brother Will had rudely said she was a witch.
‘Why, it’s Mrs Adams,’ she said aloud to nobody. ‘It’s Mrs Adams, and she knows my Tom. She was Tom’s schoolteacher!’
Before Nellie did anything else, she went to see Mr Lang at the Depot and told him that she’d found a job.
‘I shall be housemaid to Mrs Adams in Angas Street,’ she said. ‘I’m most grateful to you, sir, but I hope you’ll never have to see me again.’
Then she went to Thompson’s Boarding House, hugged Peggy and Sarah goodbye, picked up all her things, and walked out of the ruined boarding house forever.
Half an hour later she had found 21 Angas Street, a plain-looking brick cottage with a shingled roof and a picket fence. The gate was partly open, as if the house was ready to welcome her.
Nellie walked down the short front path and couldn’t resist peeping through an uncurtained window. Inside she saw armchairs, a round table, and something that made her heart lift with excitement: a tall, glass-fronted bookcase filled with books.
‘One day, Nellie O’Neill,’ she told herself, ‘you’ll be reading those books – every last one of them.’
She put down her bundles, sat on the front doorstep, and waited for her new mistress to come home.
NELLIE loved the sound her slate pencil made on the slate. Squeak, squeak, it went, as she guided it carefully over the lines she’d ruled. Writing was so much easier on a slate, and she didn’t get inky fingers, either.
It was late afternoon, and she was sitting in the front room with Mrs Adams. Nellie knew this room very well, for she had to clean it every day. The cottage was so close to the street that the dust stirred up by carriages and horses, and the occasional stray goat or pig or cow, crept through every chink. But now Nellie’s chores were all done, and it was time for her daily lesson. Mrs Adams taught her for an hour when she returned from school. The lessons were part of Nellie’s wages, but to her they were priceless.
Nellie was wearing a new dress. That was another thing about her job that made her happy. Mrs Adams’s husband had died soon after they’d arrived in Adelaide, and now she wore nothing but black. ‘I won’t ever marry again, so I’ve chosen to stay in mourning,’ she’d told Nellie. ‘I’ve a trunk full of clothes I’ll never wear again, and you may have any that would suit. We can remake them to fit you.’
As a result, Nellie already had two new cotton print dresses, plainly made but very pretty. One was pale green with a satin stripe, and the other was patterned with tiny blue flowers. She also had a violet silk for Sunday best and a brightly coloured paisley shawl. Best of all, Mrs Adams had bought her a new pair of boots from the bootmaker on Leigh Street. Nellie was paying for them at threepence a week from her wages.
This afternoon, while Mrs Adams worked at altering yet another dress for her, Nellie was practising her writing. Light strokes up, heavy strokes down, all the letters slanted to the right as if they were walking into a strong wind. Such beautiful loops she was making. Swirly top loops like feathers, long bottom loops like pump handles, and round fat little letters in between. It was a long time since she’d confessed to Tom that she couldn’t write her Ns the right way round.
‘Good work, Nellie,’ Mrs Adams said, standing up
to look over her pupil’s shoulder. ‘You are developing a lovely neat hand. It’s a pleasure to teach you.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’ Nellie hesitated. Was it time to mention the Thompsons? Was she ready to start her search again? She decided that she was. ‘Although I did have a good teacher before you. He was the son of my first mistress, Mrs Thompson. He went to your school, so you might remember him.’
‘Do you mean Tom Thompson?’
Nellie’s skin prickled. ‘Yes, ma’am. I lost touch with the Thompsons when they moved to the Burra. It was a great sorrow to me, for they were like my own family. Do you know where they might be now?’
‘They are back in Adelaide, it seems.’ Mrs Adams sat down and returned to her stitching. ‘I’ve heard that Tom is now attending Saint Peter’s School.’
‘Oh?’ Nellie tried to look as if she didn’t care. She went on with her writing, but suddenly her letters seemed to go all crooked and crabbed, and Mrs Adams stopped being quite so pleased with her.
When her lesson was over, Nellie’s eyes fell on a small framed picture hanging on the wall. It was a heart shape outlined in flowers and surrounded by lace. She’d dusted it many times, always wondering what it was.
‘What might that be, ma’am?’ she asked, pointing.
‘Please do not point, Nellie: it’s most impolite.’ Mrs Adams frowned, but then her face softened. ‘It’s a valentine,’ she said. ‘It was given to me by my husband, long before we were married. He made it himself.’ She stood up, took it down from the wall, and showed it to Nellie. ‘The paper looks just like lace, doesn’t it? The little painted flowers are pansies. In the language of flowers, pansies mean thoughts, so they are saying, “I think of you.” My husband was quite a romantic. Inside the card he wrote me a very lovely message.’
‘Is it a letter, so?’
‘Not exactly,’ Mrs Adams said, laughing. ‘It’s a way a man can tell a woman, secretly, that he likes her. Or indeed a woman can tell a man that she likes him. Usually the cards are anonymous, so the giver can express affection quite freely.’
‘A-nonymous?’ asked Nellie, puzzled. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means the giver of the card doesn’t reveal his or her name. The person receiving the card must try to guess who their mysterious admirer might be. Valentines are very popular with my pupils. They have great fun making them and giving them to their friends.’
Nellie looked carefully at the framed card, and a new part of her plan began to form in her head. ‘And would they be difficult to make, these valentines, ma’am?’
‘Oh, they don’t have to be as fancy as this one. They can be nothing more than a painting or a drawing, with a short message.’
‘I see, ma’am,’ Nellie said. ‘And would anyone at all be able to make and send a valentine, would you say?’
‘Anyone who wanted to,’ replied Mrs Adams. ‘Why do you ask, Nellie? Have you a recipient in mind? I believe you may be quite the dark horse.’
‘Oh no,’ Nellie said hastily. ‘If you’ll pardon me saying so, ma’am, that’s a very strange thing to say. I’m not like a horse at all, really I’m not.’
But Bessie Rudge did once say I was a pig, she added, to herself. A pig in a dress, that’s what she called me. An Irish pig. It surprised Nellie how much that still hurt.
While she was frying sausages for the evening meal, Nellie thought about her plan. Would it be improper of her to send Tom a valentine? Surely not – Mrs Adams had said that her students sent each other such things, and something you did at school couldn’t be improper, could it? Mrs Adams herself was a very proper person.
Quickly Nellie pulled the heavy iron frying pan off the stove as smoke started to rise from the sausages. Her mind raced on. What would Tom think of her? Would he be shocked? Perhaps she should just go to his new school, as if by accident, and hope to see him there. At first Nellie really liked that idea, but then her courage faltered. It was so long since she’d seen Tom. Would he still want to be her friend? What if, after all, he thought of her only as a servant girl who’d once worked for his mother?
No, the valentine was the best plan. It was her only chance of finding the Thompsons. Once he’d read her message, Tom could decide if he wanted to see her again, and then … But how would he know the valentine was from her? And how would she ever find the Thompsons if he didn’t want to see her? How difficult it all was!
If her plan failed – well, at least she’d tried.
Sitting in her small lean-to bedroom that night, Nellie set to work by candlelight. She folded a piece of paper into a card shape, and snipped out a lacy edge on three sides, using Mrs Adams’s sewing scissors. At the top of the card, in capital letters, she wrote A VALENTINE. In the middle she drew a bunch of pansies. Over the pansies she drew a little striped bee. The bee looked better than the flowers, so she drew another one.
She opened the card, and sat thinking for a very long time. She thought of the letter she’d once written to Tom with the help of Trotty and Li – the letter he had never received. She remembered every word of it. Then she wrote:
Dear Tom
I hope this finds you well. It is a long time since I have seen you. I would like to see the family again. The pansies mean I think of you. I hope we can meet. I am writing this all by myself.
A Friend
Underneath that, she put her address: 21 Angas Street.
She wrapped the finished card in another piece of paper, sealed it with flour paste, and addressed it to Tom Thompson, St Peter’s School, North Terrace, Adelaide.
She’d take it to the post office tomorrow.
THE next day Nellie decided not to take her card to the post office after all. Why should she wait another moment? She raced through her chores, and then she put on her violet silk dress and her new boots and walked all the way to North Terrace.
The front yard of St Peter’s School was deserted, but from one of the buildings came a low rumbling buzz of sing-song voices. A teacher in a black mortarboard cap and a flowing black gown glanced curiously at Nellie as he walked across the yard.
Nellie looked around for somebody who might help her, and soon noticed a small boy with dirty knees sitting alone under a tree.
‘Hello!’ she called. She waved to attract his attention, and he stood up and walked over to her, dragging his feet.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Billy Macintosh.’
‘Well, Billy,’ Nellie said, ‘I’m after a student here called Tom Thompson. Might you know him? And if you do, would you do me the kindness of giving him this letter?’
‘I know him,’ replied Billy. He gave Nellie a calculating look. ‘What’ll you pay me?’
Nellie rummaged in her pocket and brought out a peppermint humbug. ‘How about this?’
Billy shook his head. ‘It’s got fluff on it.’
‘Oh … How about a penny, so?’
‘Tuppence.’
Nellie sighed, but handed over the card and two pennies. ‘Mind you give it straight to Tom, now. I’ll know if you don’t do it, because … well, I’ll just know.’
‘Don’t you worry, Biddy, I’ll do it.’ He grinned at her. ‘Don’t get your feathers up!’
‘Ah, but you’re a bad spalpeen!’ Nellie said. She aimed a cuff at his head, but he dodged and trotted off, whistling.
When Nellie was almost halfway home, she stopped. She could hardly have said why: perhaps it was hearing the name Biddy again. It reminded her of her dear Mary. When Mary was nursery maid for the Lefroy family in East Terrace, she had so often been called ‘Biddy’ by Louisa and Charlotte, the spoilt little girls she cared for. The insult had hurt her, but she had suffered it patiently, believing that as a servant she deserved no better.
‘You did deserve better, angel,’ Nellie said aloud. ‘We both did.’ And, suddenly determined, she turned her steps towards East Terrace.
To Nellie’s relief it wasn’t Bessie Rudge who opened the back door to her, but Trotty the
housemaid. Nellie was so happy to see her good friend again that she smiled until her cheeks ached.
‘You’re looking well, chick,’ Trotty said, standing back and looking at her. ‘And that’s a real pretty gown. It’s good to see you all dressed up.’ She winked. ‘You bold thing, you’ve been seeing your admirer, haven’t you? Tom – that was his name, wasn’t it?’
Nellie nodded. ‘That is indeed his name, Trotty, but I haven’t seen him for a long time. A very great deal has happened since I left this house.’ And when the two of them were seated at the kitchen table she told Trotty about Li’s kindness to her, and the trip to the Burra, and her efforts to find the Thompsons, and how she had walked almost all the way back to Adelaide. Finally, her voice breaking, she told her about Mary’s illness and death.
Trotty listened with her head cocked to one side and her eyes bright with interest. When she heard about Mary, she took Nellie’s hand and squeezed it hard. ‘I shan’t forget Mary Connell,’ she said. ‘She was a proper saint, that child, and the mistress giving her the sack was unforgiveable, in my opinion.’
‘Unforgiveable? What rubbish!’ said Bessie Rudge. She had come into the kitchen unnoticed while Nellie and Trotty were talking. ‘The girl was useless at her job, and lucky to keep it as long as she did.’ She stared at Nellie. ‘Well, look what the cat dragged in.’
Nellie stood up, annoyed to find that she was trembling. The sight of the ill-tempered cook was still enough to give her the skitters. She took a deep breath. ‘How are you keeping, ma’am?’ she asked.
‘All the better for not having any bog Irish skivvies in my kitchen, thank you for asking,’ said Bessie. ‘And I needn’t enquire about you, for I can see you’ve been on the streets.’ She curled her lip. ‘You’d only get a dress like that by thieving, that’s very clear.’
Nellie stopped trembling. Burning anger flowed through her, all the way to the tips of her fingers. ‘Well now, ma’am,’ she said, ‘you might remember that a while ago you told me you could put a pig in a silk dress, and it would still be a pig. An Irish pig, that’s what you said, and I’ve never forgotten it. So you’ll be glad to know that I have a grand job, and I can read and write, and I’ve found good friends who’ve helped me more than I deserve.’ She held her head high. ‘Sure, I’m wearing a silk dress, as you’ve observed, ma’am. And it wasn’t got by thieving, as you’d like to think, but was the gift of a kind mistress. So I couldn’t be prouder to be an Irish pig, and I’ll thank you to remember it.’
Nellie's Greatest Wish Page 4