Meet Nellie

by Penny Matthews

  But why weren’t the children giggling? That was strange.

  ‘Come quick, please, Nellie – it’s not a joke, the house really is on fire.’

  Nellie raised her eyes, and then dropped her spelling book in fright. William’s face was blackened, his clothes were scorched. Both children were shivering.

  William gulped. ‘It’s all burning upstairs, and I can’t put it out. I tried whacking it with a blanket.’

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Buckets – get buckets!’

  Nellie grabbed all the containers she could find and started to fill them at the pump. ‘Hetty, keep filling – pass them to William, and Will, bring them to me. Quick as you can!’

  Nellie picked up two buckets, raced to the front door, opened it, yelled ‘Fire! Fire!’, and then raced upstairs. William’s bedroom was ablaze, and the flames had begun to spread to Edward Strout’s room. The timber walls burned quickly. The heat was terrible.

  ‘I’m not making any difference,’ Nellie said to herself. ‘The fire’s too strong. Should I be trying to save Mr Strout’s things? Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I don’t know what to do!’

  She threw the water on the flames, ran downstairs, shouted ‘Fire!’, picked up two more buckets, and raced upstairs again. William ran past her, carrying tins of water. The upstairs hallway was almost completely filled with thick, billowing smoke when Nellie heard a thin little cry, and her heart stopped.

  Albert.

  She had forgotten Albert.

  Nellie didn’t think twice. She tied her shawl over her head and shoulders and plunged into the flames that were snaking around the door of the room where Albert was.

  The smoke was so thick she could barely see, and it tasted terrible. Her eyes were stinging and smarting. Albert was in his cot, sobbing with terror.

  ‘I’m here, Albert! It’s all right, my angel. Don’t cry!’

  She picked him up, and he clung to her with all his tiny strength. Covering him with the shawl, she made for the door. All around it the wood was ablaze. She hesitated. She looked back at the window – no, it was too high. They’d both be killed if she jumped out. She looked back at the doorway, now a sheet of flame. Be strong, Nellie O’Neill. She took a deep breath, and ran.

  She was aware of falling. She was aware of voices. And then she remembered nothing more.

  ‘You fell down the stairs,’ said Tom.

  ‘I always was clumsy,’ said Nellie, sleepily. She felt as if she were floating. ‘How did I do that?’

  ‘You were running from the fire,’ said Mrs Thompson. ‘You were carrying Albert.’

  Nellie sat bolt upright, then lay down again quickly. She realised that there was a damp cloth on her forehead, and her head hurt. ‘Albert!’ Suddenly her mind was focused again. She was lying in the front parlour of the boarding house, on the sofa, and anxious faces were peering down at her. The rank smell of burning paint and cloth filled her nostrils. ‘Is Albert all right?’

  ‘He’s perfectly safe,’ said Mrs Thompson. ‘You saved his life, pet. But you hit your head when you fell. You should lie still.’

  ‘Is much of the house gone?’ Nellie whispered.

  ‘Part of it is saved,’ said Tom. ‘By the time I came home Edward was here. He organised a bucket line from the pump, and we put the fire out quite quickly. This downstairs bit of the house wasn’t burned, but upstairs is mostly gone.’

  ‘How …?’

  Mrs Thompson’s face was grim. ‘Will and Hetty had some fireworks left over from Guy Fawkes night.’

  ‘Oh.’ Feeling unbearably tired now, Nellie closed her eyes. Then she opened them again. ‘Is Sooty all right?’

  ‘Hetty saved him,’ said William in a subdued voice. His face was swollen with crying. ‘He scratched her real bad when she picked him up, but she didn’t let go of him.’

  ‘You were very brave, Hetty,’ Nellie told her. She swallowed. ‘Is my room …?’

  ‘Gone,’ said Tom. ‘And everything in it. I’m sorry, Nellie.’

  Nellie thought about that. So she had lost all her clothes, her brush and comb, even the Bible Mr O’Leary had given her. It was little enough, but it was all she had. Then she pushed herself up on one elbow. ‘But I still have my spelling book! Tom, I still have my spelling book!’

  NELLIE stood in the ruined hallway of Thompson’s Boarding House and looked at herself in the big mirror. She had a lump on her forehead like a purple egg, and her face was reddened where the fire had burnt it. The mirror looked no better. Its gold frame was blackened and peeling. It was only painted gold, after all.

  Gaping holes in the windows had been boarded up, and the rooms that weren’t burnt out had been made safe. The young men had left, all of them finding accommodation in hotels nearby.

  For the past three days Nellie had been sleeping with the family on borrowed bedclothes in the front parlour. It was almost like being in the workhouse again. Hetty had dared to complain just once about the hardness of the floor and the lack of pillows, but a look from her mother soon silenced her.

  Slowly the tiny cloud that had hovered around Nellie since Guy Fawkes night was growing bigger. Nellie felt it, but she willed it to go away. She wanted joy, not sorrow. In the twelve years she’d been on this Earth, she’d had enough of sorrow.

  ‘I’ve thought and thought about this, and I’ve decided what we must do,’ Mrs Thompson said, as they all sat around the kitchen table eating their supper of mutton stew. ‘The boarding house is finished – the building is past repair. I’ll sell whatever I can, and next week we’ll travel up to the Burra. We shall move in with your father, children. His cottage is very small, but we’ll manage.’

  ‘Oh, it will be grand,’ said Nellie. Living in a mining town would be such an adventure! She could see herself picking up nuggets of pure copper from the ground, buckets of them, and selling them for a fortune. (But what did you do with copper, exactly, apart from turning it into pennies and halfpennies and farthings?) ‘I can sleep in the kitchen,’ she went on. ‘I don’t even need a bed: I can curl up with Sooty. It will be fun, so it will.’

  There was silence. The look of concern on her mistress’s face sent sudden icy fear into Nellie’s very soul.

  ‘Oh, pet,’ said Mrs Thompson. ‘I wish –’

  Nellie felt the blood drain from her face. ‘You wouldn’t be leaving me behind, would you?’ she whispered.

  ‘There’s nothing I’d like better than to keep you, Nellie,’ said Mrs Thompson. ‘You’re a good little worker, and Mr Thompson and I will never forget how you saved our precious Albert. But now that the boarding house has gone, there’s no place for you. Even if we did have room, I couldn’t afford to pay you.’

  ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter,’ said Nellie eagerly. ‘I’ll work for you for nothing. I don’t care about the money. I just don’t want to leave you.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be any trouble to keep her on, would it, Mother?’ said Tom. ‘She helps you a great deal – you’ve said so.’

  ‘Of course she does, Tom, but things have changed, and there’s no turning back the clock. I’d whip Will and Hetty to within an inch of their lives if I thought it would do any good, but it won’t. They’ve learned a lesson from their carelessness, and it’s a far harsher lesson than I could ever teach them.’ She looked sternly at her two younger children, and then turned back to Nellie. ‘I wish I didn’t have to let you go, pet, but that’s the way it is.’

  There had been one way of life before the fire, and after it there would be another way of life. It was rather like the Hunger, Nellie thought: after that, everything had changed, too. And, like the Hunger, the time after the fire was a time of great loss.

  All too soon the morning came when the Thompsons were to travel north. Their few possessions were packed onto a covered horse-drawn van, and the driver and his mate checked that everything was firmly in place. Sooty yowled from a makeshift cage.

  Mrs Thompson gave Nellie a warm hug, holding her just a little longer than she ne
eded to. ‘Bless you, pet. Look after yourself.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. You won’t forget me, will you?’ Nellie looked up at her mistress, with the tiniest flicker of hope in her eyes. ‘Remember that I’d be happy to serve you still if there was any chance of it.’

  ‘I’ll remember. And I’m sure we’ll meet up again one day. Now, I’ve given you a good reference, and that should help you find another job.’ She gave Nellie a piece of neatly folded paper, and then pressed two gold sovereigns into her hand. ‘I kept this money back for you – it’s your wages. Good luck to you, Nellie dear.’

  William and Hetty hugged her too.

  ‘Sorry for teasing you, Nellie,’ said William.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Nellie. She bit her lip to stop it trembling. ‘You are a wicked pair of spalpeens, but you are good children at heart, I know that.’

  Tom didn’t hug her. ‘Keep up with your reading,’ he said. ‘And teach yourself to write, so you can write me a letter. Promise me you’ll do that.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘We’ll be in Paxton’s Square, Burra Burra.’

  ‘Paxton’s Square, Burra Burra,’ Nellie repeated, desperately holding back the sobs that threatened to overcome her. She’d have engraved those words on her heart if she could. ‘Goodbye, Tom.’

  As she watched the van creak away down Rundle Street, her tears began to fall: no amount of telling herself to be strong could stop them. But soon she lifted her chin and dried her eyes on her scorched, stained pinny. She had no time to waste on feeling sorry for herself. She would have to return to the Depot to seek another job and a bed for the night, and before she did that, she must go and see Mary. The Thompsons might have gone from her life, but Mary, she knew, would not let her down.

  ‘I can’t believe how nearly you might have been killed!’ said Mary. ‘The blessed saints were watching over you, surely.’

  ‘They must have been, for here I am,’ said Nellie. ‘Alive, thank the Lord. But now I have no job, because this morning the Thompsons left for the Burra.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘They took their lucky black cat, but they couldn’t take me.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s how it is, Nell.’

  Nellie took a deep breath as the pain in her heart threatened to engulf her again. ‘I care about the Thompsons. I thought they cared about me.’

  ‘Of course they care about you, Nell. Nobody could fail to care about you.’

  ‘Then why didn’t my mistress keep me on? I’d have done anything –’

  ‘It’s hurtful to you, I know,’ said Mary sympathetically. ‘But you have to remember that the Thompsons are not your family, and they never were. It’s yourself you have to think of. Remember our time in the workhouse? Remember how strong you were then? You’re still the same Nellie O’Neill.’

  ‘It’s like the picture that doesn’t go with the letter,’ Nellie said, half to herself. ‘The one that turns out to be not what you think it is.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re saying, at all,’ said Mary, ‘but I do know that from now on everything will be much better for you.’

  ‘How can it be better, angel? You astonish me. Everything I ever owned is gone, and my face is half burned off, and I’ve lost the only friends I have in this country, apart from you. And now I have to go back to the Depot to find another position, which could be anywhere in the whole of the country, and with a mistress from hell itself.’

  Mary pretended she hadn’t heard the forbidden word. ‘Of course you’ve been through hard times, Nell. But don’t you see, there’s a job for you right here! Isn’t Annie Higgins leaving at the end of this week to be wed to your Mr Strout? And won’t my mistress need a new kitchen maid, to replace her? And might that person not be yourself? Annie would speak up for you, I’m sure.’

  Nellie thought about the good sense of what Mary was saying, and slowly the soreness in her heart began to ease. This great house didn’t have the warmth and friendliness of Thompson’s Boarding House, but it did have something very important: it had Mary.

  In her mind she saw again that happy vision of herself and her best friend walking together in the sunlight, surrounded by fruit trees and flower gardens and clucking hens and happy children. Then she realised that Tom and Mrs Thompson and the children were there too, walking beside her. Nellie frowned at her dream, and closed her eyes to make them go away, but they wouldn’t leave. Tom smiled at her in a friendly way. Mrs Thompson held out her hand.

  Perhaps Mary was wrong. Sure, the Thompsons weren’t her family, but did that mean they couldn’t be part of her life?

  Quickly, to keep the dream from spoiling, she crossed her fingers. Then she remembered something else. In the pocket of her skirt she had something she’d never had before in all her life: solid gold. Money of her own.

  ‘Mary angel,’ she said, ‘you told me once I have a face that good luck can’t resist. And although my face might be a bit the worse for wear at this moment, I think you may be right.’

  I am descended from Irish, Scottish and English immigrants who came to this country in the mid-nineteenth century. One of them, my great-great-grandmother, was a young farm girl from Somerset, England. She arrived in South Australia in 1856, and a year later, while still only a teenager, she married a Scotsman who owned a large sheep property. He was a widower with four children. She became a mother to these four and went on to have twelve more babies of her own. My Irish great-great-grandparents, who owned the property next door, had eleven children. Even allowing for a few infant deaths, these two families between them had so many sons and daughters that they hired a teacher and built their own school!

  I grew up on a farm too, and had the happiest of Australian girlhoods.

  I was born and grew up in Italy, a beautiful country to visit, but also a difficult country to live in for new generations.

  In 2006, I packed up my suitcase and I left Italy with the man I love. We bet on Australia. I didn’t know much about Australia before coming – I was just looking for new opportunities, I guess.

  And I liked it right from the beginning! Australian people are resourceful, open-minded and always with a smile on their faces. I think all Australians keep in their blood a bit of the pioneer heritage, regardless of their own birthplace.

  Here I began a new life and now I’m doing what I always dreamed of: I illustrate stories. Here is the place where I’d like to live and to grow up my children, in a country that doesn’t fear the future.

  Between 1845 and 1850 Ireland suffered the effects of a disastrous famine, still known as ‘the Great Hunger’. The poorest Irish people lived mainly on potatoes, and in those years the all-important potato crops were ruined by a devastating disease called blight. Starving families were unable to work or pay rent on their farms, and often they were thrown out of their homes by uncaring landlords. Weakened by hunger and disease, many of them made their way to workhouses in the cities and towns. These workhouses had been set up by unions ‘for the relief of the destitute poor’ and were run by boards of Guardians.

  The workhouses were bleak, overcrowded, disease-ridden places, but for the wretched poor they were a last hope. At the height of the famine there were about 90,000 children living in Irish workhouses, most of them orphans.

  During this time the population of Ireland fell from 8 million to 5 million. At least a million people died of starvation or illnesses like typhus and cholera, and another 2 million emigrated to other countries.

  In 1848 the British government introduced the Orphan Immigration Scheme by which ‘suitable’ orphan girls were sent to Australia to work as servants. In all 4,175 Irish workhouse orphans came to Australia. Just 606 of them made their home in Adelaide.

  Over all the years of settlement, the Irish have had a huge influence on Australia’s history, society and culture. Today about one in three Australians can claim Irish descent.

  Poverty and hunger drove many thousands of people to leave Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century This illustration
shows a starving Irish family begging on the streets and, in contrast, the sort of life enjoyed by those who emigrated to countries like America and Australia.

  DID YOU KNOW THAT IN 1849 …

  The settler population of South Australia was about 38,000.

  The Californian gold rush was in full swing, with the miners later being known as ‘forty-niners’.

  An unemployed Irishman named William Hamilton tried to shoot Queen Victoria.

  Western Australia was proclaimed a British penal settlement. The first convicts arrived there in 1850.

  Eighteen-year-old Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women (1868), wrote her first novel.

  Edmund Barton, the first Prime Minister of Australia, was born.

  David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens, was published.

  Twelve years after her coronation, Queen Victoria visited Ireland for the first time.

  A cholera epidemic swept through London, killing more than 14,000 people.

  Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote The Secret Garden, was born in Manchester, England.

  EVERY careful step Nellie O’Neill took down the long gravelled carriage drive sounded impossibly loud. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. The gravel glared white in the hot sunlight, and the flowers in the neat garden beds blazed red and orange. Nellie had never felt more out of place in her life. She was painfully aware that in her shabby, smoke-stained dress she could be mistaken for a gipsy or a beggar.

  Crunch. Crunch. She tried walking on tiptoe, but it made no difference. Surely any minute now someone would emerge from the front door of that big, important house and order her to leave. No beggars allowed here! the person would say. No tinkers! No Irish! What if her new mistress, Mrs Lefroy, decided not to employ her after all?

  Nellie took a deep breath, and touched the two gold sovereigns in her pocket for luck.