The Ivory Rose

by Belinda Murrell

  Jemma cuddled the kitten closer to her face, brushing his soft, milk-scented fur with her chin.

  ‘I choose this one,’ decided Jemma, smiling at Maggie. ‘Thanks so much.’

  Maggie checked his fat, round belly. ‘He’s a boy.’

  ‘What are you going to call him, Jemma?’ demanded Sammy, bouncing up and down with excitement. ‘How about Blackie, or Sir Galahad or Sooty, like the cat in the Enid Blyton book we read …’

  Jemma looked down at the kitten in her arms. He yawned, stretching his mouth wide to show his tiny, sharp needle teeth and pink tongue. He half-opened one eye again.

  ‘Merlin,’ Jemma decided. ‘I’m going to call him Merlin.’

  ‘A perfect name,’ agreed Maggie, stroking Shadow.

  ‘Are you going to come back and look after me, Jemma, so Mama can finish her exhibition?’ begged Sammy. ‘Please?’

  ‘I’d like to, Sammy – if it’s all right with Mum and Dad, and Maggie too.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Sammy punched the air, and danced around delightedly. ‘You can finish reading me The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and we can play with Georgie.’

  Jemma started, nearly dropping the kitten. She placed Merlin down safely in the box next to his mother.

  ‘Georgie?’ asked Jemma, her heart in her mouth.

  Sammy pointed across the room, her cheeks dimpling and her eyes sparkling.

  ‘Georgie’s my new doll,’ Sammy announced. ‘Well, she’s really old, but we found her in that little space I was hiding in the day you fell down the stairs.’

  Jemma glanced to the corner of the room where Sammy’s soft toys were piled high on the cane rocking chair. There in the centre, in pride of place, was Georgiana’s china doll. Her brown ringlets were tangled and snarled. Her crimson velvet dress was faded and torn, and her rosy, painted face had a noticeable chip on the nose, but it was definitely the same doll.

  Jemma stood up, walked to the rocker and picked it up.

  ‘She’s beautiful, Sammy. But why did you call her Georgie?’

  Sammy shrugged and turned back to the kittens, who wriggled and mewled and were far more interesting than the old doll.

  ‘She just looked like a Georgie,’ decided Sammy. ‘And I used to have an imaginary friend called Georgie, so it seemed like a good name.’

  ‘It is indeed a beautiful name, Sammy. I think her proper name is Georgiana Rose.’

  Maggie frowned, pushing her fringe out of her eyes with her clay-stained fingers.

  ‘We discovered something a little odd with the doll,’ confided Maggie. ‘I don’t really understand it. Look inside her handbag, Jemma.’

  Jemma noticed that the china doll was wearing a small velvet bag on a shoulder strap that matched the faded crimson of its dress. Jemma lifted the flap and realised there was a folded paper parcel inside. She wondered what it could be.

  The paper was yellowed, with words inscribed on the outside in faded, elegant handwriting:

  Jemma Morgan, Breillat Street, Annandale

  With trembling fingers, Jemma unfolded the package. A gold chain fell out, with a delicate ivory rose pendant.

  Rosethorne

  October 25, 1977

  Dear Jemma,

  I hope this note finds you. I can hardly believe it could possibly reach you, but it is worth a try. We were all so terrified when you completely disappered that night. One moment you were there, unconscious on the floor, and the next you were gone, like sorcery. Agnes had hysterics. Ned was distraught, but I remembered back to the first day I saw you, when you just appeared from nowhere, right next to the carriage.

  Doctor Anderson set the constables searching for you all over Sydney, but I told him I thought you had found your way home to your parents. We all missed you terribly. Even now, as an old, old woman, I think of you often and wonder.

  I just wanted to write and say thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for saving me so long ago and giving me the opportunity to live a full and joyous life, blessed with love. I hope you made it safely back to your own time. I wish you too the gift of a full and joyous life, also blessed with true love.

  Yours sincerely, your long ago friend,

  Georgiana Rose Thornton O'Farrell

  ‘What a beautiful pendant,’ cooed Maggie. ‘But what a peculiar note. I suppose the pendant is meant for you, but how could it be when the note seems to have been written twenty years before you were born?’

  Jemma slipped the gold chain around her neck and fastened it. Unlike the one she had worn for so long, the chain wasn’t snapped. She pressed the cool, cream ivory with her fingertips.

  ‘You didn’t hide the note there, did you, Jemma?’ asked Sammy, tickling a kitten on the tummy.

  ‘No. But I had some special friends who lived here long ago. They meant a lot to me and taught me many things.’

  Jemma paused, lifting up the china doll and stroking her chestnut curls. Sammy put down the kitten she had been holding and gazed at Jemma.

  ‘They taught me about fun and hard work, and friendship, but most of all they encouraged me to make the most of my opportunities.’ Jemma smiled. ‘They taught me to stand up for what I believe in, and they taught me about love.’

  Maggie smiled at Jemma and stroked a clay-smeared finger down her cheek. ‘Very special friends.’

  Jemma nodded, her throat thick. She grasped her ivory rose in her fingertips.

  ‘I’ll never see them again, but I’ll never, ever forget them.’

  The Witches’ Houses of Johnston Street, Annandale, were a row of eight Victorian–Gothic houses built by John Young during the 1880s. They include the Abbey, Oybin, Rozelle (now demolished), Greba, Hockingdon, Highroyd, Kenilworth and Claremont (now demolished). Rosethorne is a fictional house based on Highroyd and Hockingdon.

  During the 1890s, one of the deepest depressions ever gripped Australia. During this time, many of the large blocks in Annandale were subdivided and the suburb became predominantly working-class.

  During the 1890s, eighty per cent of Sydney’s population was working-class.

  Most children finished school aged twelve, but some left as young as eight and went to work.

  Many children worked sixty hours per week for two or three pennies per hour (about two cents). This was approximately half the wage that women received and about one-quarter the wage of a working-class man.

  Workers lived in small, cramped housing. During the 1890s there was a housing shortage, which pushed up rents and resulted in overcrowding.

  Twenty per cent of babies died and twenty-five per cent of children died by the age of five, with up to one in three children dying in some poor suburbs. Killer diseases included whooping cough, tuberculosis, typhoid and dyptheria.

  The average life expectancy of men was fifty-two and for women fifty-six.

  Sir Henry Parkes was Premier of NSW from 1872 to 1892 and is often called the Father of Federation. He died at Kenilworth in Annandale in April 1896.

  Baby farming was a common practice during the nineteenth century, where women would take in many illegitimate and poor babies for a fee – either a larger one-off fee or an ongoing weekly payment. The babies were frequently underfed and neglected, and many died. The infants were often drugged with laudanum to keep them quiet or fed watered-down milk laced with lime. Babies often died a slow, agonising death from malnutrition or fluid on the brain. In January 1894, a baby farmer called Frances Knorr was hanged for strangling babies in her care and burying them in the garden beds.

  The 1890s was the first time since colonisation that the majority of the population was Australian born.

  The late nineteenth century was a period of immense change in Australian society with the push for Federation, the lobbying for workers’ rights and the women’s suffrage movement. The suffragettes argued for equal justice, property rights, employment opportunities and voting rights.

  In 1893, New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote, followed by South Australi
a in 1894 and the whole of Australia in 1902. Australian Aborigines however did not receive full voting rights in every state until 1965.

  Arsenic is a colourless, crystalline, soluble poison that was a common product in Victorian homes. It was used as a rat poison, to clean silk dresses and even as a cosmetic. Arsenic was mixed with vinegar and chalk and applied to whiten the skin and prevent wrinkles. Arsenic was also taken in a tablet form as a beauty product, as it gave Victorian ladies a fashionable pallor. Arsenic poisoning was often misdiagnosed as a gastrointestinal illness.

  Arsenic was also nicknamed ‘Inheritance Powder’ because it was used so frequently to poison people and was difficult to detect.

  Laudanum, or tincture of opium, was an extremely popular drug taken during Victorian times and was highly addictive as it was cheap, readily available and taken for a broad range of maladies, including headaches, sleeplessness, period pain and diahorrea. An overdose of two or three teaspoons could kill someone. Laudanum users were sometimes called opium eaters, and many famous Victorian poets, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, were laudanum users.

  Harriet Rutherford suffered from Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome. This is a psychological condition where carers of young children, usually women, gain sympathy and attention by inflicting false illnesses on their young charges, frequently causing death.

  Ghosts have always fascinated me, so I have been longing to write a tale of ghosts, murder, mystery and a haunted mansion. Ten years ago my husband, Rob, and I bought a hundred-year-old cottage in Manly, the oldest house in the street. When we moved in, the house was full of mysterious creaks and groans, and doors that would bang shut by themselves. My children – who were six, four and two – announced that there was a ghost living in their bedroom. I thought they were imagining things, until a mysterious note appeared on their bookshelf one day …

  For many years my sister, Kate Forsyth, and her family lived in Annandale – just a couple of streets back from the Gothic Witches’ Houses, one of which was reputed to be haunted. Every time I would visit her I would pass these amazing houses and wonder about their history. Once, Kate was visiting the Abbey, which was home to a huge family of cats. Kate was given a little black kitten, which she called Shadow. Now an old, old cat, her Shadow served as the inspiration for the Shadow in this book. Thanks, Kate, for many cups of tea, hours of listening and discussing, and lending me piles of books!

  My name goes on the front of these books as the author, but I couldn’t write them without a huge amount of help from so very many people. This is my chance to say thanks!

  To Rob, as always. To my gorgeous friends who help me with everything from minding my children, to baking cakes for book launches, to walking with me on the beach, to making me laugh and getting excited about my books – especially Kyles.

  A big thanks to my team of meticulous proofreaders – Emily, Alice, Grace and Hannah. And for my agent, Pippa Masson, and everyone at Random House: Zoe Walton, Brandon VanOver and the sales and marketing team – thanks for your inspiration, enthusiasm, support and dedication. A huge hurray for Nanette Backhouse, the brilliantly talented designer of the cover of The Ivory Rose, as well as The Ruby Talisman and The Locket of Dreams. I love these covers.

  Finally, for all the teachers, librarians, booksellers, children and parents who have bought my books, read them, loved them, shared them and let me know – thank you!

  At about the age of eight, Belinda Murrell began writing stirring tales of adventure, mystery and magic in hand-illustrated exercise books. As an adult, she combined two of her great loves – writing and travelling the world – and worked as a travel journalist, technical writer and public relations consultant. Now, inspired by her own three children, Belinda is a bestselling, internationally published children’s author currently writing her eleventh book. Her previous titles include four picture books, her fantasy adventure series, The Sun Sword Trilogy, and her three time-slip adventures, The Locket of Dreams, The Ruby Talisman and The Ivory Rose, a Gothic ghost mystery set in nineteenth-century Sydney.

  Belinda’s family is celebrating the 140th anniversary of the first Australian children’s book, A Mother’s Offering to Her Children, written by Belinda’s great-great-great-great grandmother, Charlotte Waring. Writing runs in the family with both Belinda’s brother, Nick Humphrey, and sister, Kate Forsyth, being published authors.

  Belinda lives in Manly in a gorgeous old house overlooking the sea with her husband, Rob, her three beautiful children and her dog, Asha.

  Find out more about Belinda at her website:

  www.belindamurrell.com.au

  THE LOCKET OF DREAMS

  When Sophie falls asleep wearing a locket that belonged to her grandmother’s great-grandmother, she magically travels back to 1858 to learn the truth about the mysterious Charlotte Mackenzie.

  Charlotte and her sister, Nell, live a wonderful life on a misty Scottish island. Then disaster strikes and it seems the girls will lose everything they love. Why were the sisters sent to live with strangers? Did their uncle steal their inheritance? And what happened to the priceless sapphire – the Star of Serendib?

  Sophie shares in the girls’ adventures as they outwit greedy relatives, escape murderous bushrangers, and fight storm and fire. But how will her travels in time affect Sophie’s own life?

  THE RUBY TALISMAN

  When Tilly’s aunt tells her of their ancestress who survived the French Revolution, she shows Tilly a priceless heirloom. Tilly falls asleep wearing the ruby talisman, wishing she could escape to a more adventurous life …

  In 1789, Amelie-Mathilde is staying at the opulent palace of Versailles. Her guardians want her to marry the horrible old Chevalier to revive their fortunes. Amelie-Mathilde falls asleep holding her own ruby talisman, wishing someone would come to her rescue …

  Tilly wakes up beside Amelie-Mathilde. The timing couldn’t be worse. The Bastille has fallen and starving peasants are rioting across the country. The palace is in chaos.

  Tilly knows that Amelie and her cousin Henri must escape from France if they are to survive the Revolution ahead. But with mutinous villagers, vengeful servants and threats at every turn, there seems nowhere to run. Will they ever reach England and safety?

  OUT NOW!

  THE QUEST FOR THE SUN GEM

  BOOK ONE IN THE SUN SWORD TRILOGY

  After their village is attacked, a young brother and sister set off on a dangerous quest to save their captured family and friends – and free their land from the Sedah invaders. Where are Ethan and Lily’s parents being held? And where have the Sun Sword and its magical gems been hidden?

  Joined by their friend Saxon and the determined Princess Roana, Ethan and Lily must solve puzzles and riddles, escape legendary sea monsters and outwit bandits along the way. But the greatest threat to the children is the sinister Sedah tracker, Sniffer, who is close on their trail …

  Can the four friends find the sun gem – before the Sedah can find them?

  www.randomhouse.com.au