Nellie's Quest

by Penny Matthews

  What about Li? He might help her. The Chinese laundryman had lost his job with the Lefroys at the same time she and Mary had lost theirs. He lived somewhere in Grenfell Street, in a boarding house with the name of a flower – a lily, was it? Li had always been kind to her, but he was a single man, and Nellie wasn’t sure it would be proper for her to stay with him.

  Then there was Susan Trott, the Lefroys’ housemaid. Nellie loved Trotty. But it was impossible for her even to think of going back to that big, forbidding house on East Terrace – not after what had happened there.

  The only other person she could think of was Edward Strout, who had been her good friend at Thompson’s Boarding House. Perhaps there might be a corner of his grocery store she could sleep in? Edward was married now, so there’d be nothing wrong in asking him for help.

  Oh, why had the Thompsons ever left Adelaide? She needed them so badly! And to think they had offered her a job, too – but in the Burra, which was miles and miles away.

  ‘Well?’ asked Mr Lang, rather impatiently.

  Nellie lifted her chin. ‘I have friends I can stay with,’ she said. And, watched by several curious faces, she picked up her bundle and walked out into the rain again.

  EDWARD Strout’s little grocery store in Rundle Street was closed, and there was a notice tacked to the door. Nellie read it slowly, sounding out the words under her breath: Cl-os-ed due to dea-th in the fam-il-y.

  Nellie was already cold, and wet, and miserable, but when she understood what the words said, she felt even colder. She hoped that Edward and his Annie were all right. Then she realised that this unexpected news changed everything. It meant that there was now just one person left she could go to: Li.

  When she reached Grenfell Street, she asked a friendly-looking woman if she knew of a boarding house with the name of a flower.

  ‘Oh, that’ll be The Golden Lotus,’ the woman replied, pointing down the street with her umbrella. ‘It’s got all sorts living in it.’ She lowered her voice. ‘There’s Orientals there, I know that for a fact. You sure that’s the place you want, dear?’

  Nellie nodded, thanked the woman, and walked on.

  The Golden Lotus was a low, rambling building with a slate roof. Over the front door was a piece of board with a strange gold flower painted on it.

  Hesitating only a moment, Nellie knocked. A few seconds later the door opened a crack, and someone peered out.

  ‘Li!’ cried Nellie. ‘Oh, thank goodness!’

  Li threw open the door, and his face broke into a huge grin. ‘Nellie kitchen maid!’ he said. ‘Come inside! So happy to see you! You take tea?’

  ‘A cup of tea would be grand. How kind you are! You always were kind to me.’

  Suddenly the events of the last two days overcame Nellie completely: Li, Mary and herself all leaving the Lefroys’ home in disgrace, Mary’s illness, the Infirmary … and now she had no job and nowhere to live. A huge dark cloud of hopelessness surrounded her, and she burst into tears.

  ‘Inside,’ urged Li, taking her bundle. He untied her bonnet strings and removed her soaking bonnet, hanging it on a hat-stand in the hallway. ‘Come.’

  The kitchen was a separate building at the back of the house. There was no stove, just an open fire with a system of hooks and pulleys over it to hold cooking pots. The comforting heat from the glowing coals enveloped Nellie like a blanket. Li gently sat her in a chair, and she took off her wet boots and stretched her chilled feet to the warmth.

  Li took a blackened kettle from a hook over the fire, filled a teapot with boiling water, and put two small cups, as thin as eggshells, on the table. The tea, when it was poured, was fragrant and tasted of herbs.

  Sniffing and hiccuping, Nellie told Li about everything that had happened on this awful day. He listened silently.

  ‘So, Nellie,’ he said, when she’d finished. ‘What you do now?’

  ‘Oh, Li, I don’t know. First of all, I need somewhere to stay. And I need a job, so I can earn enough money to help Mary, but there’s nothing to be had in all Adelaide.’

  ‘Maybe you find job some other place?’

  Nellie put down her cup. ‘I did have an offer of a job out of Adelaide. My old mistress, Mrs Thompson, asked me to work for her again. But the Thompsons are in the Burra, and that’s so far away. Anyway, I can’t leave Mary. She’s desperately ill.’

  ‘Very well, we think what to do. First, you stay here tonight. Other people here, they not disturb you. Second – how much money you have?’

  ‘Not very much. I’ve already given some of it to the doctor at the Infirmary, to buy comforts for Mary.’

  Li rubbed his nose thoughtfully. ‘You need money. No use to Mary if you stay here with no job.’

  ‘I know that. But what else can I do?’

  ‘You come to Burra with me.’

  ‘Why would you be going to the Burra?’ Nellie looked at him, astonished. ‘What about the people you do laundry for?’

  ‘I decide last night, no more laundry. Instead I help uncle in market garden at Burra. He only Chinese person there – sell vegetables to miners. Good to be with family again.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Nellie sighed. ‘The Thompsons are like family to me, too.’

  ‘Then why you not go, find Thompsons? Trip take two days, cost ten shilling.’ He laughed. ‘Easy trip for us. When my uncle come from China, he walk to Burra – take him a week.’

  Nellie was sure she had more than ten shillings in her pocket. Perhaps going to the Burra would be the right thing to do, after all. But what about Mary? She shook her head. ‘No, Li, I can’t do that. My Mary needs me.’

  ‘You explain, she understand. You need job, need money. Otherwise, you and Mary both in trouble.’

  ‘We’re already in trouble,’ said Nellie. She thought for a while. ‘Li, I must try to find a job in Adelaide. But if there’s no work for me here, then I shall go to the Burra with you.’

  NELLIE slept badly that night. She was snug and warm, curled up at the side of the kitchen fire in a quilt, but she couldn’t stop thinking. How could she earn enough money to keep herself, and to make Mary comfortable in that awful Infirmary? If she couldn’t find work in Adelaide, her only choice was to go to the Burra – but how could she leave Mary? Her thoughts went round and round.

  From time to time people came into the kitchen. Nellie lay very still in the shadows, pretending she was a bundle of rags. One young Chinese man cooked something in a pot over the fire and sat down to eat it. He was soon joined by another, and they sat and talked rapidly in their own language.

  To Nellie everything suddenly seemed unbearably strange and unfamiliar. She squeezed her eyes shut and finally, worn out, she fell asleep.

  Morning sunshine was flooding through the window when Li came into the kitchen. He held something covered with an embroidered cloth.

  ‘You awake, Nellie?’

  Nellie sat up and tried to comb out her hair with her fingers. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Good, I get food for you. First, look.’

  He pulled away the cloth, revealing a wicker birdcage. Inside the cage was a small green-and-yellow bird.

  ‘Li, how beautiful!’ Nellie cried. ‘What is it?’

  Li laughed. ‘He is – I can’t say it – budgiegar? I name him Bertie after Prince Albert, husband of your Queen Victoria. He so handsome, should live in palace.’

  Bertie danced up and down on his perch. Then he said something in a tiny, squeaky voice.

  Nellie’s eyes grew round. ‘He can talk! What did he say, Li?’

  ‘I teach him Chinese. He say nei hou – “hello”.’

  ‘Nei hou,’ Bertie repeated.

  Nellie threw aside her quilt and jumped up. ‘How clever he is! I saw a parrot once at the Killarney fair – it was red and green, and much bigger than Bertie, and it could say “Give me a penny!” And if you held out a penny he would take it in his beak and give it to the man who owned him. The man had him on a chain so he wouldn’t fly away. He only ha
d one eye, the man, that is. And then he’d sit on your shoulder, I mean the parrot, of course, and peck you on the head.’

  Li opened the door of the cage and let Bertie perch on his finger. Then, carefully, he moved the little bird onto his shoulder. ‘See? Very tame,’ he said.

  Bertie fluffed his feathers and pecked Li’s ear. ‘Hou wan,’ he squeaked.

  ‘I teach him to say “Juk nei hou wan, Nellie”, “Wishing you good luck, Nellie”,’ Li said, smiling. ‘What you think?’

  ‘I think that’s a fine idea, because I need all the luck I can get,’ said Nellie. ‘I used to think I was always lucky, but now I’m not so sure. Bessie Rudge said I’d end up on the street, and she might be right after all, the creature.’

  ‘Never,’ said Li, firmly. ‘She bad woman.’ He scooped rice from an iron pot hanging over the fire and piled it into a bowl, handing it to Nellie. ‘You use chopstick?’

  Nellie shook her head. How could anybody eat with a stick?

  ‘Like this,’ said Li, picking up a pair of chopsticks. ‘You learn.’

  At first Nellie giggled at her clumsiness, but soon she found that eating with chopsticks was easier than she’d expected. When she’d emptied her bowl, Li poured tea for both of them. Bertie was still perched on his shoulder, apparently asleep.

  ‘I shall go back to the Depot this morning,’ said Nellie. ‘Perhaps there will be a job for me. Then I shall visit Mary. Could I stay here again tonight, please?’

  ‘My home your home,’ said Li, getting up to put Bertie back in his cage. ‘But next week I go to Burra.’

  There was no job for Nellie at the Depot that day. Nor the next. Nor the next. When a position for a housemaid in Kensington came up, nine girls applied for it. Nellie, who had no reference, was turned down straightaway.

  It was time for her to make a decision.

  ‘Tell me what I should do, angel,’ she said, sitting on Mary’s bed at the Infirmary. By now Nellie was used to the smell, and the huddle of wretched-looking women and children, and Rosie’s moaning and shrieking. And she was pleased to see that there was a little colour in Mary’s cheeks. She had a clean blanket and a pillow, and bread-and-milk for breakfast instead of the usual watered-down gruel.

  Mary leaned back on her pillow, cradling her old wooden doll, Vanessa. ‘Is there really no work for you here, Nell?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing. There are more orphan girls than there are jobs for them. If I go to the Burra with Li, I shall have a job with the Thompsons. But I can’t tell you how much I’d hate to leave you, angel. And I promised you I’d stay in Adelaide. It’s a terrible thing to break a promise.’

  ‘You made that promise before we knew how bad things might be.’ Mary took Nellie’s hand. ‘If you stay here you’ll have no job, and no place to live. I think you should go to the Burra. I shall be all right. I’m feeling much better now.’

  ‘Oh, Mary, are you sure? I should never forgive myself if anything happened to you while I was away.’

  ‘Never fear, Nell. The blessed saints will look after me.’

  ‘As long as it’s them caring for you, and not that Lizzie Buckley,’ Nellie said. ‘I’d not trust that one, with her pills and potions.’

  ‘She means well, I expect.’

  ‘She means to get money from you, that’s what,’ Nellie replied. ‘Maybe you’re right, though, and it’s what I was thinking myself. If I leave Adelaide, it will be better for both of us. And there might be a job for you in the Burra, too, now that you’re almost recovered – just think of that! I could send for you, and we’d be together again.’

  Mary nodded. ‘I’ll pray for it.’

  ‘I shan’t forget you, angel. As soon as I have my old job back, I’ll be sending you money. I don’t know how to do that, but Tom Thompson will show me. And I’ll ask him to help me write letters to you.’

  ‘I’ll need somebody to read them to me, though, won’t I?’

  ‘Maybe your fine doctor would do that,’ suggested Nellie.

  ‘For a fee, I’ll be bound,’ Mary said with a little laugh.

  ‘Oh, Mary.’ Tears came into Nellie’s eyes, and angrily she blinked them away. She must not cry! ‘There’s nothing so bad that it can’t get better. You’ll soon be well again, and I’ll be back in Adelaide before you know it.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  The two girls held each other tightly, and Nellie tried to speak again, but couldn’t. As soon as she had left the ward, she wept as if her heart would break.

  THE horse-drawn coach to the Burra rattled and rumbled, occasionally lurching into a pot-hole. It had left Adelaide in the middle of the afternoon, and was now on the north-easterly road to Gawler Town.

  Nellie and Li shared a seat, Bertie in his covered cage between them. Nellie had taken out her spelling book, intending to study it during the long trip. She would hate Tom to think that she had given up trying to read and write properly.

  Five passengers were aboard, apart from Nellie and Li. A middle-aged Cornish miner, Bob Trelawney, was returning to work on the Burra’s biggest mine, the Monster Mine. Then there was Mrs Grindley, an elderly widow dressed in an enormous black silk crinoline, and Mr and Mrs Evans, a young Welsh couple, with their baby daughter, Martha.

  Nellie could see that with his round cap and his pigtail, Li stood out like a pheasant in a barnyard. Bob Trelawney and the Evanses seemed to accept that he was neither frightening nor dangerous, but Mrs Grindley, who was sitting on the seat opposite, made no attempt to hide her feelings.

  ‘How is it that a young girl like you is travelling with the Oriental?’ she asked Nellie in a loud voice.

  Nellie felt a rush of anger. ‘If it was any of your business, ma’am, I’d tell you,’ she replied. ‘But as it isn’t, I won’t.’

  The woman sat back. ‘Well, of all the impertinence!’ she exclaimed.

  There was an awkward silence, and then Li said, mildly, ‘She my sister, madam.’

  The other passengers laughed, and from then on they seemed like old friends. Bob invited everyone to share his Cornish pasty, and Mrs Evans offered baby Martha to Nellie ‘for a hold’.

  Soon Bob Trelawney brushed the crumbs from his beard, dug into his pack and brought out a small concertina. After making a few wheezing sounds he began to play a cheerful sea shanty. Nellie didn’t know what it was called, but it was familiar to her: she’d heard the sailors singing it on board the Elgin.

  While she listened, she gazed out at the country through which they were passing. In the brownish-green of the scrub she could see bursts of vivid yellow.

  ‘What might that be?’ she asked Mrs Grindley, pointing. She and Mrs Grindley had become quite friendly now, although the old woman still wanted nothing to do with Li. Nellie had discovered that she was on her way to stay with her son, who worked for the South Australian Mining Association.

  ‘It’s wattle blossom,’ Mrs Grindley told her. ‘You see it everywhere at this time of the year.’ She pursed her lips. ‘The colour is far too bright, though. I do miss the English trees and flowers. Everything about this country is so crude, isn’t it?’

  Nellie thought about that, but decided that she liked the wattle. Yellow was such a happy colour – the colour of daffodils and sunshine.

  ‘Yellow very special in China,’ Li said, ignoring Mrs Grindley’s disapproving expression. ‘Colour of Chinese emperors. Very good colour, bring good luck.’

  As darkness fell, the coach pulled up at the Old Spot, the Gawler Town hotel where they were to spend the night, and the passengers climbed down, yawning and stretching. They would continue their journey in the morning.

  For a few drowsy moments Nellie thought she was still on board the Elgin. Then she woke up a little more and remembered that she was in a hotel, sharing a bedroom with old Mrs Grindley.

  Mrs Grindley lay on her bed fully dressed apart from her crinoline underskirt, which was standing in the corner of the room like a small tent made of whalebone and rope. Listening to
her loud snoring, Nellie was reminded of the big old spotted pig her dada had once brought home from the market.

  She crawled out of bed, shivering in her thin cotton shift. Eager to see what this place was like in daylight, she dressed quickly and tiptoed from the room. Down the corridor, past the taproom, and she was outside. The sun was just up, but the air was bitterly cold. Workers at the hotel were already stirring. The smell of frying meat drifted from the kitchen.

  She walked down the dirt road a little way. How huge this country was, and how empty! The grass and scrub went on for ever and ever. The Irish countryside was never like this – there was always a cottage or two, or a farmer taking his cow to market, or a family at work in the fields. The sky was different, too. In Ireland it wasn’t so high.

  Nellie took a very deep breath, held it for a moment, and then puffed it out, making a cloud of steam in the freezing air.

  Walking back to the Old Spot, she passed a wattle tree and smelled the sweet perfume of its blossom. In the early morning sunshine the little fluffy balls of wattle were the brightest, happiest yellow. Nellie picked a sprig and tucked it into her shawl, for luck. ‘For you, too, Mary angel,’ she said aloud, wishing she could show it to her beloved friend.

  The coach left Gawler Town straight after breakfast. There were still seventy miles to go, the driver told Nellie, and the journey would take another eight hours.

  Eight hours! To Nellie it was an eternity. She couldn’t wait to see the Thompsons again.

  They changed horses at Forresters, a tiny hostelry in the middle of nowhere. Nellie soon realised that one of the new animals was lame. She could hear the driver cursing as he tried to urge it on, whipping it harder and harder. Every time she heard the lash fall she winced, as if the pain the horse must be feeling was hers too. Finally the coach came to a halt and the driver jumped down and poked his head in the window.