Our Australian Girl (9 page)

Here's a sneak peek at Meet Letty

T
HE
coachman dumped the old chest in the street. Letty's heart felt as if it was being jolted around too. The chest held all her sister's things, and so many dreams. It was going to Australia.

Letty's sister Lavinia hopped down from the coach in a swirl of skirts. She had read in the newspapers that there weren't enough young women in Australia. She often told Letty that she didn't like their small, mouldy house, where she was always tripping over little brothers and sisters. So Lavinia had made up her mind to leave, and Letty and Papa had come to Gravesend to say goodbye.

‘After today, I won't be costing you another penny,' Lavinia said. ‘I'm going where I'll be wanted. And appreciated.'

‘
I
want you,' said Letty. Letty could not imagine life without her sister. Lavinia was like a pink flower in their grey town. She took up lots of room in their family, with her wide, swishing dresses and definite opinions. She was Letty's older sister, the one who had bossed her around and brought her up in the years after their mother died. Their baby stepbrother, Charlie, and their little sisters, Fanny and Florence, were adorable, but they weren't the same.

Now Lavinia ignored her. Letty hurt inside. Lavinia meant so much to Letty, but Letty was not enough to keep her here.

Papa and the girls lifted the chest by its brass handles. They struggled in a lopsided triangle across the dock and into the Customs House.

‘That's it?' said the Customs Officer, looking in the chest.

Papa pretended not to hear. Letty knew he was still angry with Lavinia for spending all her money on what was in it.

‘Yes!' snapped Lavinia.

The chest held a few pieces of good linen, and a new outfit, bought with the emigration payment from the government. The chest wasn't exactly full, but Letty and Lavinia were very proud of it. It was a hope chest – where a girl stored things for when she would be married and have a home of her own.

‘Here's your tin, then.' The Customs man pushed a metal plate, cup and spoons towards Lavinia. ‘Here's your blanket and your pillow. And here's a bag to keep them in. Your ship's leaving with the tide.' He pointed to the forest of masts out the window.

Papa, Lavinia and Letty lumped the chest along the docks. A wooden ship loomed over the nearest jetty. Letty thought it was as long as three houses, but much, much taller. The ship's name was painted on the front in gold letters: The
Duchess
.

‘Right!' Lavinia put down her end of the chest and dusted her hands. ‘I'll be back in a few minutes.'

‘Where are you going?' Papa wanted to know.

‘Ladies' business,' said Lavinia, over her shoulder. She hurried back to shore.

Letty stood close to Papa on the wooden jetty. Families bustled past, loaded with luggage and children. Letty could hardly believe that Papa and her stepmother were letting Lavinia go by herself.

‘The tide's going to turn soon.' Papa fiddled impatiently with his watch chain. He didn't have a watch, but he liked people to think he did. ‘It's time for boarding the ship. What's keeping your sister?'

‘I don't know,' whispered Letty. She could hardly speak. The ship's shadow swallowed her words, just as it would soon swallow her sister. She might never see Lavinia again.

‘Where has she run off to now?' grumbled Papa. ‘I'll have to go and look for her. You be a good child now, Letty, and stay right by the chest.
Don't
leave it for anything.'

The water slapped the sides of the jetty. The big ship creaked. Letty sat on the hope chest. It was big and solid. She traced the brass studs on the lid with her fingers:
R.P. 1671
. It was almost two hundred years since ‘R.P.' had owned the chest. The leather covering was cracked and the brass had lost its shine. But the things inside it were new and pretty. They were precious. Letty had helped Lavinia sew the pillowcases and petticoats. Letty guarded the chest as if she were guarding Lavinia's love.

Letty's hair blew in her eyes. It was true what Lavinia said about their house, she thought. It hadn't been easy to keep the hope chest's white linen away from chimney soot and little Charlie's sticky fingers. One night, Letty had even tripped over him and burnt her hair in the lamp. Lavinia had to cut part of it off. It was so ugly.

If I were as pretty as Lavinia, Letty thought, and people noticed me the way they notice her, maybe I would be brave and leave home too. Letty tucked the short bits of hair into her bonnet and tightened the strings.

‘A-hoy there!' a boy sang out. ‘Miss!'

‘Me?' said Letty.

‘Yes, you with the blinkin' big box.'

Two sailors stood over Letty. ‘Is that to go on the
Duchess
?' the older one asked. His skin was brown as wood and weathered as the jetty boards.

Letty nodded.

‘Hop off then, and we'll take it aboard,' he said.

Letty looked up and down the jetty. Where were Papa and Lavinia? The sailors stood with their thumbs hooked into the rope that tied up their trousers.

‘Please, not yet,' she said.

‘Now or never, miss.' The younger one wasn't much more than a boy, maybe fourteen, like Letty's older brother had been when he went away to work. He had gingery hair and freckles all over his hands. His elbows poked out of holes in his shirt.

Letty didn't know what to say. She was afraid that if she stopped the chest going to Australia, Lavinia and Papa would both be angry with her. She got off the lid.

The sailors lifted the chest onto their shoulders. Letty searched the dock and the shore with her eyes. She thought she could see Lavinia's pink dress, but it was too far away.

The sailors went up the gangplank, onto the ship. What should she do? She felt as if her boots were glued to the dock.

‘Be a good child and stay right by that chest,' Papa had said. That was what she should do. Letty dashed after it. She dodged under the arm of a man with a list and scurried onto the gangplank. The plank felt as if it was disappearing under her. Letty grabbed at the rope.

‘Easy does it,' said the young sailor, gripping her arm with his freckly fingers.

‘Oh!' Letty moved away from the sailor's hand. She tried to stand with her feet neatly together, like a little lady, as Stepmama had taught them. But the ship's deck felt crooked and she buckled at the knees.

‘Where is the chest?' she asked.

The sailor pointed to the middle of the deck. ‘Goin' in the hatch.'

She saw passengers' boxes being lowered on ropes, down a square hole. ‘I have to go with it,' she told him.

‘That you cannot, miss,' he said sternly. ‘You-er not luggage. You stay put on deck.'

‘Hands to the anchor line!' someone shouted.

The ginger-haired boy disappeared.

Letty did as she was told. She sat as close to the hatch as she dared and watched the gangplank. A stream of passengers climbed on board. But none of them were Lavinia or Papa. Letty waited a long time. She began to worry that something had happened to them.

Letty decided she had to move. All the luggage had gone down the hatch. The passengers were leaning over the ship's railing, calling and waving to people on the jetty. She couldn't see past them. She pushed into the crowd along the rails. A tall woman blocked her way.

‘Excuse me. I have to find my family,' Letty said.

Letty ducked beneath the woman's elbow. Through a gap in the railing, she saw Papa standing on the jetty, by himself. Then she saw that the gangplank was being pulled in. The ship was getting ready to sail, Letty realised. And she was still on it!

Here's a sneak peek at Meet Nellie

‘P
ROMISE
we'll always stay together,' whispered Nellie. ‘Promise
faithfully
.'

She had to whisper because most of the other girls in the stuffy, tar-smelling cabin were asleep. Nellie didn't feel like sleeping. In fact, she'd never felt so wide awake in her life. She sat hunched on the narrow bunk that had been her bed for the last four months, and her best friend, Mary Connell, sat hunched on the bunk opposite. Mary's pale face, half hidden beneath a prim white nightcap, was barely visible in the darkness.

Over the creaking and shuddering of the ship Nellie could hear Sarah Ryan's muffled sobbing. Poor Sarah must be having another bad dream. The
Elgin
, which was carrying nearly 200 Irish orphans halfway around the world, had seen plenty of nightmares. None of the girls could forget the horror of the Great Hunger, the famine that had killed so many thousands back home in Ireland.

‘Of course we must stay together,' Mary whispered back. ‘You know I'd be scared to death without you.'

Nellie reached for Mary's hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. ‘There's nothing to be scared of, angel. We survived the Hunger, and we survived the workhouse. We've even nearly reached South Australia without being shipwrecked! And now we're going to work for rich people in Adelaide. No more sleeping in dormitories, no more eating corn mush!' Such beautiful pictures now formed in Nellie's head: a warm little bed of her own, and herself sitting in front of a steaming plate of stew, with a pile of fresh soda bread a mile high . . .

Mary gave a tiny sigh. ‘I wish I was like you, Nell,' she said. ‘You've always been strong.'

‘I've had to look after myself, just as you have – I'm not one bit stronger than you.'

‘Yes, you are! Nobody would ever believe you've just turned twelve. When you told the Guardians at the workhouse that you were older, it would hardly even have seemed like a fib.'

‘It wasn't
my
fib,' protested Nellie. ‘It was Father Donnelly who told the Guardians I was thirteen. He said to my dada that older girls would have the best chance of getting out of the place. He was right, too, for if the Guardians had known I was only eleven, I'd not be here with you.'

‘And thank goodness you are,' said Mary, ‘for I'd miss you so much if you weren't.'

‘And I can't think how much I'd miss you,' Nellie replied, gazing earnestly at her friend through the darkness. ‘We must always look after each other, Mary. Goodness knows what could happen to us in Australia. Superintendent O'Leary told me it's a very peculiar place. He said there are snakes that can poison you to death in a second, and animals that bounce like india-rubber balls.'

Mary shuddered. ‘I'll always be there for you, Nell, I promise.'

‘And me for you. Never forget it.'

There was a sigh, and a thump, as Peggy Duffy turned over in the bunk above Nellie's head. ‘Do hush up, you two! Think of us who's trying to sleep, now.'

‘Oh, hush yourself, Peg!' retorted Nellie. ‘We're making no noise at all, and it's you who's disturbing the peace with your moaning.'

In the morning the
Elgin
would be docking at Port Adelaide. And after that, as Nellie knew, all the girls had to find work. She'd heard that there were plenty of jobs for Irish maidservants in the colonies. Perhaps she and Mary could work together! Someone in a fine big house might need two maids just like themselves. She imagined how much fun they'd have. They might even be put to work outside, in the sunshine. Mr O'Leary had said that the weather in Adelaide could be very hot.

Thinking about Mr O'Leary made Nellie remember the Killarney Union Workhouse, which had so recently been her home. She was grateful to it because it had kept her alive when she had nothing but the rags she stood up in, but what a cold, grey, cheerless place it was! Each day was as dreary as the last, with rules that told you when to work, when to eat, when to sleep.

Nellie felt that she would always be haunted by the thin, careworn faces of the women and children there. They were the faces of people who had given up all hope.

She gave herself a little shake and made herself see happy pictures again: pictures of Mary and herself picking apples, throwing grain to hens, running through a flower-filled garden . . .

‘It will be such a grand adventure, being in South Australia,' she said. ‘Don't you think so, Mary?'

‘I'd feel much better about it if I knew that only good things would happen to us. The dear Lord only knows where we shall be in a year's time, Nell.'

‘Oh, let's make a plan!' Nellie cried. She loved making plans: they were exciting, and they gave you something to work towards. Nobody could take a good plan away from you. ‘In this country we can do things we couldn't have dreamed of back in Ireland! Let's say what we wish for, and then after a year we can see if our wishes have come true. Shall we do it?'

‘Nell, you know I hate to make plans for the future,' Mary said. ‘It's such terrible bad luck.'

‘That's pure nonsense,' said Nellie. ‘Just cross yourself and say “I know this won't happen”. That will break the bad luck, won't it? Come, say what you most wish for.'

Reluctantly, Mary crossed herself. ‘Well then . . . I know this won't ever happen, but what I want is to be a nursery maid in a great big house and look after little children. I did love the babies at the workhouse. It was cruel that they were stuck in such a place, the poor things, and most without their own mothers to look after them.' She paused, thinking. ‘Oh, and I wish that I shall never be hungry again, not ever. So what do you wish, Nell?'

‘I'm with you entirely on the bit about not being hungry. But I want so many other things as well. Most of all I want to be part of a family. I miss my own family so much.'

Mary patted her hand. ‘Don't be thinking about that now. What are your other wishes?'

Nellie sat up a little straighter. ‘Well, I don't want to be called “orphan” or “workhouse girl” ever again. I want to be only myself, Nellie O'Neill.'

‘And you
are
yourself,' laughed Mary. ‘Who else might you possibly be?'

‘You know what I mean! You know how you hate it, too, when you're treated like the filth on somebody's boot.'

‘Well, yes, but I don't let it bother me. And I'd not waste a wish on it.'

‘Maybe you should let it bother you, for it's not fair,' said Nellie with passion. ‘And I still have one more wish. Don't laugh! – I want to learn to read.'

Mary gave her a wondering look. ‘Why?'

‘You don't need to read when you're scrubbing floors or emptying slops,' said Peggy's voice from the bunk above. ‘You're a daft eejit, Nellie O'Neill. Now
go to sleep
!'

‘Maybe I don't
need
to,' Nellie said, ‘but I
want
to. My dada could read. He read the Bible to us children every night.' She thought sadly of the last time she'd seen her father, so weak from hunger and disease. ‘Be strong, Nellie,' he'd said to her. ‘Don't let the workhouse break your spirit. Remember that the O'Neills are descended from Irish kings.'

‘I know your wishes will all come true,' said Mary. ‘You have a face on you that good luck can't resist.'

‘I hope you're right, Mary angel,' said Nellie. ‘And good luck will touch you on the shoulder too, I just know it will.'

The two girls reached forward to hug each other, and then turned around to go to sleep. Soon their journey would be over, and their new lives would begin.