Nellie and Secret the Letter

by Penny Matthews

  Trotty grinned. ‘If you’re a pig in a dress, she’s a cow in a bonnet.’

  Nellie couldn’t help laughing at the thought of Bessie Rudge as a crumple-horned old milker. Then, as she dried her hands, she suddenly had a wonderful idea. ‘Trotty, could I ask you something? A favour?’

  ‘Ask away.’

  Nellie’s face grew hot. ‘I have this friend – a boy – not that it’s important – but I promised him one day I’d write to him, and the trouble is that I can’t – write, that is, or not properly yet …’

  ‘Of course I’ll help,’ said Trotty. ‘Oooh, a love letter, is it?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Nellie’s face grew even hotter. ‘He’s just a friend, nothing more.’

  ‘Of course he is. Don’t you worry, chick, your secret is safe with me.’

  Mary and Nellie had divided the making of the new clothes between them, so the work could be done faster. Nellie sewed neatly and quickly, but Mary’s stitching was so exquisite that Nellie marvelled at it. ‘Those little small stitches are no bigger than grains of sand!’ she exclaimed. ‘And your buttonholes are so fancy – why, it’d be an honour to be a button.’

  ‘My mama taught me to sew,’ Mary said. ‘She made all Vanessa’s clothes. I know they are old and shabby now, but they were pretty when they were new.’

  Nellie looked at Mary’s wistful face, and suddenly she had the most perfect idea: she would make Vanessa some new clothes from the scraps Arthur Dawkins had given her. Mary had seemed to be in low spirits lately, and what better way to make her happy? Already Nellie could see the doll in a dress made from the beautiful rose-covered Paris voile, and with ruffled pantalettes like those worn by Louisa and Charlotte Lefroy. It was a shame Vanessa had only one leg.

  Nellie went on stitching for a few minutes, and then remembered something that had puzzled her. ‘Mary,’ she said, ‘what did Mr Birch mean about you having an admirer?’

  Mary’s pale face turned crimson. ‘The man’s a tease, that’s all.’

  ‘So you never received a letter?’

  ‘Why would you be thinking that?’

  ‘Just wondering, angel.’

  ‘Well, stop wondering. We have better things to do, like finishing your new clothes.’

  And with that Nellie had to be satisfied.

  Next morning, wearing her new gingham dress, Nellie felt that she was neat and clean and fit for anything. She washed the kitchen floor, swept the back steps, lit the stove and put the kettle on to boil, all before the sun was fully risen.

  When Bessie Rudge came into the kitchen she gave Nellie a sour look before thrusting a smelly bucket into her hands. ‘I trust you’re not too fine these days to clean out the rubbish pail,’ she said. ‘Fancy clothes and fancy writing won’t help you there, will they? After that I need you to scrub down the pantry where mice have made a fine mess. Not to mention I have chickens to pluck, peas to shell, potatoes to peel, and a bag of flour as needs the weevils cleaned out of it. Quick smart, now!’

  ‘Sure, and I’ll do it all in a flash,’ said Nellie. Even the thought of picking weevils couldn’t change her happy mood.

  ‘You might think we Irish are no better than pigs, Mrs Bessie Rudge,’ she said in her mind, ‘but one day I’ll show you what a pig in a dress can do!’

  ‘Tell me about your Tom,’ said Trotty. She and Nellie were in the laundry, because Trotty had said it was the last place anybody would think of looking for them. Li was there too, folding bed sheets ready for ironing.

  ‘Well …’ said Nellie. ‘He’s about my age, or a bit older.’

  ‘Good looking, is he?’

  ‘I can’t quite remember him now, Trotty, and that makes me sad. I don’t think he’s so very handsome. His ears stick out a bit. He’s so clever, though! I wish I knew as much as he does. Cook says the Irish were standing behind the door when God handed out the brains, but really it’s just that so many of us never went to school.’

  ‘Cook silly woman,’ put in Li, who was listening. ‘She not see good in any person.’

  ‘Very true,’ said Trotty. ‘I’m sure Tom doesn’t think you’re lacking in brains, chick. Now, shall we get on with writing this letter?’

  ‘Yes, please!’ said Nellie. ‘It will only be very short, I promise.’ She reached into her pocket and brought out a sheet of paper, a pen, and a bottle of ink.

  ‘Right,’ said Trotty, making a space on the laundry table. ‘You always start a letter with Dear – whoever it is you’re writing to.’

  ‘And Tom is dear, indeed he is,’ said Nellie. ‘He is such a good friend to me.’

  Trotty chuckled. ‘Then we begin Dear Tom,’ she said. She dipped the pen in the ink bottle, wrote the words, and looked at Nellie.

  Nellie stared back at her. ‘What shall I say now?’ she asked.

  ‘Next say, I hope this finds you well,’ said Li. ‘Mrs Adams schoolteacher tell me.’

  ‘Mrs Adams?’ asked Nellie, surprised. ‘Would that be Mrs Adams who was Tom’s teacher at the school on Pulteney Street?’

  ‘Yes, yes, she teach there. I wash for her.’

  ‘Then you know somebody who knows Tom!’ cried Nellie. ‘Isn’t that the best luck?’

  ‘Come, Nellie,’ said Trotty. ‘You’re wasting time. D’you want to write this letter or not?’

  ‘Sorry – what an eejit I am.’ Nellie pressed her fingers to her temples and thought hard. After several moments she dictated her letter.

  Slowly and carefully, Trotty wrote:

  Dear Tom,

  I hope this finds you verry well, and the famly too. One day I hope I can visit you but the Burra is a long way off.

  ‘Ah, Burra!’ said Li. ‘I have uncle there, he run big market garden. Good business – sell vegetables to miners. Your friend a miner?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I expect he would be at school.’ Nellie craned her neck. ‘Trotty, your writing is so neat. It looks just like the writing in my spelling book.’

  ‘I always had a good hand. Wish I could say the same about my spelling. Keep going, chick.’

  I am now a kitchen maid in that big house on East Terace with my dear Mary. I am happy that we are together.

  I am making good progress with the spelling book you gave me but the ritting is not so easy. This letter is being ritten for me by Trotty, who is my friend. I have another friend too, his name is Lee. He has a pigtale. At first I thought he was a pooker, but he is from China. Mr Strowt kindly gave me the ritting paper. He is married now and he has a shop in Rundle Street.

  Mary and I have sowed new dresses for me because my old ones were destroyd by the fire. One dress has pink roses on it and the fabrick is from Parris.

  I know I shoud not say it but I wish I coud be with you all agen. I miss you verry much. But of corse my Mary is a comfort to me and I would not want to leave her.

  Remember me to Mrs Thompson and to Hetty and Will and Albert. Please rite back soon.

  Trotty finished writing the last sentence and looked up.

  ‘I can’t think what else to say to him,’ said Nellie, running her fingers through her hair. ‘Writing isn’t like talking at all, is it? I had so many things I wanted to tell Tom, and now I’ve forgotten them all.’

  ‘No need to say another word, then,’ said Trotty. ‘Just put your name at the end.’

  ‘Say, I remain your humble servant,’ said Li. ‘That is right way to end.’

  ‘I can write my own name, at least,’ said Nellie eagerly. ‘Please give me the pen.’

  And at the bottom of the page, in large letters, she wrote: NELLIE O’NEILL.

  Trotty took the letter and read it back to her. ‘Is it what you want?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a fine letter, Trotty; and I did get the Ns the right way round, didn’t I? Next time it will be all my own work.’ And so it will, she promised herself. She could see herself already, wearing her beautiful pink dress and seated at a writing desk like the one she’d seen in Mrs Lefroy’s drawing room: a proper lad
y’s writing desk …

  Trotty folded the paper, tucking in the ends neatly. ‘Where shall we send it?’

  ‘To Tom Thompson, Paxton’s Square, Burra Burra.’

  Trotty wrote the words, and blew on them to dry the ink. ‘All done. But it’s too late to post it – Mr Birch has already done the mail run for this week.’

  ‘I can send,’ said Li. ‘I have letter at home too for post office. I seal this one with wax and post at same time.’

  ‘Li,’ said Nellie, ‘you are truly a Chinese angel. And Trotty is an English one. How shall I ever thank you both?’

  ‘I wrote a letter to Tom,’ Nellie told Mary afterwards. ‘Actually Trotty wrote it for me, but it was me who said what was to go in it.’

  ‘Did you so?’ said Mary. Her voice was flat. ‘That’s good, Nell.’

  Nellie looked at her in surprise. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. You know I’ve been wanting to write to him, but I couldn’t see how to do it. Li said he’d take the letter to the post office for me.’

  Mary nodded. ‘That was kind.’

  ‘Indeed it was.’ Nellie hesitated. Something was wrong with Mary. She seemed so quiet and distant. ‘Are you quite well, angel? You’ve not been yourself these last few days.’

  ‘Indeed, I’m perfectly all right! Don’t fuss,’ Mary said, rather crossly. But a moment later she brightened. ‘Oh, Nell, we are to have such excitement here! The mistress herself told me about it. The Governor and his lady are coming to dinner next week, and Miss Charlotte and Miss Louisa are to wear their best clothes – they have matching dresses of ivory silk with lace collars. The mistress wants their hair in ringlets, too, although they hate that because it means I must put it in curling rags overnight. It makes them angry, and sometimes they pinch me, see?’ She held out her arms, which Nellie was horrified to see were covered in small red marks. ‘They will meet Sir Henry and Lady Augusta, and Miss Louisa is to play a piece on the piano for them. She is so excited, and there is nothing for it but I must listen to her play it over and over.’

  ‘You are far too kind to those bad children, Mary. They make Will and Hetty Thompson look like a pair of saints.’

  ‘It’s true, the girls don’t always respect me as they ought.’ Mary looked down at her hands. ‘And I do wish they wouldn’t call me Biddy. But I suppose I should expect no better.’

  Nellie opened her mouth to reply, and then closed it again. What could she say? She knew that in the eyes of most people, she and Mary were fortunate to have found work in such a great house as this one.

  At least the Thompsons are not like the Lefroys, Nellie thought. She smiled to herself as she imagined Tom reading her letter, and the thought carried her happily through the rest of the day. When Bessie Rudge yelled at her to hurry up with peeling the potatoes, she just murmured, ‘Yes, Cook, sorry ma’am,’ and didn’t make a face behind Bessie’s back, as she usually did.

  Perhaps Tom will write and ask if I can come back to work for them right away, she thought. Perhaps there’ll be work for Mary in the Burra too.

  Dreaming of this, she dropped a perfectly peeled potato into a saucepan of water with a triumphant splash.

  Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it’s as hot as a good turf fire in here, thought Nellie. It was turned February now, and shouldn’t it be freezing and snowing in February? It was so hard to get used to this country, where everything was upside down.

  There had been almost two weeks of heat that Mr Birch had said was ‘above the century’ – which meant, he told Nellie, that there were over a hundred degrees of heat, far more than a person should be expected to bear. Nellie remembered with longing the coolness of an Irish morning mist, and the way the dew spangled the grass, and the freezing rain that swept across the countryside in winter.

  It was early evening, and the setting sun was shining fiercely on the kitchen windows, and Nellie was melting like a tallow candle. Beneath her cap, her head was so hot it felt as if her hair was on fire. Flies were buzzing everywhere, driving her to distraction. And Bessie Rudge was in a fine old temper because tonight was the night the Governor, Sir Henry Fox Young, was dining with the Lefroys.

  Nellie dreaded Bessie’s rages, but something else was worrying her even more. Trotty couldn’t wait at the table tonight because she was ill, and there was only one person who could replace her: Nellie herself. She just knew she’d stick her thumb into the soup or drop food into the Governor’s lap. Or both.

  Mrs Lefroy had requested a special menu. There was to be mulligatawny soup, and fish in caper sauce, and cold boiled tongue with plum chutney, and roast saddle of mutton, and veal-and-ham pie, and a cherry tart. Most special of all, there was to be a chantilly basket filled with whipped strawberry cream and fresh strawberries. It had taken Bessie Rudge more than an hour to make the basket from macaroons stuck together with melted barley-sugar, and she was very proud of it. Now Bessie was seated on a kitchen stool, whipping cream. Flies circled. The heat in the kitchen was overpowering.

  ‘The mistress didn’t know what she was asking for,’ grumbled Bessie. Her face was crimson with heat and effort. ‘How can a body get cream to whip in this weather?’

  While Nellie was basting the mutton, her face ablaze in the heat from the firebox, she heard voices and laughter. The important visitors must have arrived. A little while later she heard the tinkling notes of the piano as Louisa Lefroy performed her party piece. Nellie could imagine the little girls with their glossy ringlets and fashionable silk dresses. Pretty on the outside, ugly on the inside, she thought. It was something her mama used to say.

  Soon it would be time for her to wait at the table. Nellie prayed hard to the blessed saints to help her. She tried to picture herself setting down the soup plates, thumbs and fingers nicely tucked away, not a drop of soup spilled, and herself neat and clean in her best pinny.

  But the blessed saints must suddenly have been distracted from their task, for at that moment something terrible happened. Bessie Rudge’s eyes rolled back into their sockets. And then, as Nellie watched in disbelief, Bessie fell forward into the chantilly basket, smashing it to pieces.

  Leaping up, Nellie caught the bowl of half-whipped cream, spilling some of it down her front. She eased Bessie back on to the stool and fanned her vigorously with a baking tray until she opened her eyes.

  ‘Wha -?’ said Bessie.

  ‘You fainted, ma’am. Sure, it’s the heat.’

  ‘Nonsense. Give me the bowl.’

  Nellie passed it to her, and it was then that Bessie saw the shattered basket.

  ‘You clumsy, stupid girl,’ she shouted. ‘It took me all morning to make that!’

  ‘But it wasn’t me!’ cried Nellie, aghast.

  ‘Don’t you dare argue with me, girl! The mistress will hear about this. How am I supposed to do a chantilly basket without a basket?’

  ‘It will be all right, ma’am, you’ll see,’ Nellie said. ‘We can fill separate little bowls with the cream, can’t we?’

  ‘That’ll never work,’ scoffed Bessie.

  ‘We could put strawberries on top,’ Nellie added. ‘It would still look pretty.’

  Bessie considered this. ‘Well, it’s no worse an idea than I’d expect from you,’ she said grudgingly. She wiped her sweating face on a dishcloth. ‘Lord, I’m that hot I don’t know if I’m coming or going. And this dratted cream won’t whip.’

  Nellie picked up the bowl. ‘Let me try.’

  She whipped till her arm ached and sweat trickled down her back. Slowly the cream began to thicken. Then, at Bessie’s instruction, she stirred in mashed strawberries and sugar. When Bessie wasn’t looking, Nellie dipped a finger into the mixture and licked it. Nothing she’d eaten in her whole life had ever tasted quite so delicious.

  ‘It’s done, Cook, ma’am,’ she said.

  Bessie took the bowl from her and stuck in her own plump finger. She nodded, and Nellie beamed. At last she’d done something right! Together she and Bessi
e filled small bowls with the delicious cream and piled it high with fresh strawberries. Nellie’s mouth watered. Perhaps she might be able to scrape out the bowl before she washed it-

  A bell sounded from the dining room.

  ‘They want their dinner,’ Bessie said. ‘Take off that dirty apron. You might have been born on a muck-heap, but you don’t want them in there to know that.’ She didn’t speak in her usual harsh tone, though, and Nellie thought she saw the flicker of a smile on that thin, disapproving mouth.

  When Nellie took off her pinny, she found to her dismay that the gingham dress beneath it was also badly stained with grease. What was she to do? Thinking quickly, she ran to her room, whipped off the gingham, and pulled on her beautiful dress with pink roses. She flung off her bedraggled cap and tied back her hair with a strip of the rose fabric. Then she raced out to the kitchen again.

  Picking up two plates of soup, she went into the dining room and carefully put one of them down in front of the Governor, a thin man with a large bushy beard. ‘Mulligatawny soup, your highness,’ she said. And then, to his wife, ‘And for you, my lady.’

  Mrs Lefroy grimaced. ‘You’ve set the plates down in the wrong order, Ellie,’ she said in a loud whisper. ‘It’s ladies first, always.’

  ‘Oh, I beg pardon, ma’am. D’you want me to change them around?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! Just get on with it, for pity’s sake. And don’t speak when you serve the food.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am. I’ll be more careful next time.’

  The Governor looked at her with amusement. ‘Why, you’re Irish!’ he said. ‘My mother was Irish too. Where are you from?’

  Nellie curtsied. ‘Killarney, sir.’ She flashed a worried look at Mrs Lefroy. ‘But I mustn’t be speaking to you, sir.’

  ‘Nonsense – of course you may speak. It’s a great pleasure to hear an Irish voice again.’

  ‘She’s a workhouse orphan,’ said Mr Lefroy in his cold, precise way. ‘We take on these girls out of charity, you know. Too many of them end up on the streets.’