Chapter 20
“Wake up, Elanora, it’s time to get up.”
Elanora opened her eyes, uncertain of who might be shaking her shoulders this time. Elephants, bears, girls, past, present?
Sallyanne waited beside her bed with a folded stack of fabric, “Here, this is for you.” She handed her the navy and white bundle which unfolded into a shin length dress and large white overlay similar to an apron but far more substantial. There were black lace up boots, ballooning undergarments and petticoats to struggle into, which Elanora only just managed to do after surreptitious observation of the girls banked beside her. Every time she looked up, however, the girls would lower their heads and turn away, avoiding eye contact. They huddled together, whispering, staring, speculating.
Sallyanne was pulled into a huddle leaving Elanora alone, shifting self-consciously on her tightly bound feet. There were more whispers until Sallyanne called for everyone’s attention and gathered them over to her bed. Twenty pairs of eyes stared at Elanora.
“This is her. She came yesterday. Her name is Elanora Lacey and Miss Barton found us together in the laundry last night. I know some of you said you saw a girl being brought back in last night, and this is her.”
“But Olive said she ‘eard Miss Barton call ‘er Nelly,” said one of the girls and the rest nodded, clutching hands with excitement.
Sallyanne turned to Olive, “Are you sure? Could she have said Elanora do you think?”
“Well, I don’t think so,” answered Olive. “But I s’pose it were noisy in the kitchen. Maybe she said Elanora but they don’t really sound the same, do they?”
“We need to send someone in to check,” suggested Mary, at which everyone gulped.
“I wouldn’t risk it, girls,” said Sallyanne. Let’s just assume it wasn’t Nelly. After all she was sent out months ago. She’d be miles away on a sheep station right now probably. And a lot better off than all of us. Elanora is new. We need to make her welcome. She has no parents, no home. She’s one of us.”
Elanora smiled. The girls smiled back, disappointment evident on their faces.
Floorboards suddenly cracked underfoot. There was a mad scramble to reach the ends of beds as Miss Barton appeared looking more swollen than the night before. “New girl, come here,” she ordered. Elanora hurried over. Miss Barton scowled at the plait extending like a dusty dirt track down her back. “Come with me.” She swooped out of the dormitory with Elanora trailing behind.
Miss Barton led her into her office which was sparsely furnished but so clean it gleamed even in the soft light of morning. She sat at her desk squaring away the long black folds of her dress. The buttons that ran from waist to neck barely contained her and Elanora mused that all that pressure must have built up and shot out the top of her scalp as a huge, puffy explosion of hair that had to be contained in a wiry knot of pins on her head.
She took a ledger from the drawer and became absorbed in scratching down items in columns until Elanora’s feet burned from standing still. “Right. Miss Lacey,” she said at last, lifting her thick boned face. “What skills do you have, or have those colonials taught you nothing?”
“I can read and write and...do arithmetic.” Arithmetic! Brilliant!
“Well and good, but can you sew, can you clean, can you cook?”
Elanora thought of sewing machines, microwaves and washing machines. “A bit. I was brought up more with learning from books.”
“Learning from books! I’m sure. How old did you say you were?”
“Twelve, Miss Barton.” What’s one year’s difference if it buys me more sympathy? Elanora reasoned.
“You look older.” She wrote down a number in her book. “And your parents are dead? There is no one who cares about where you are?” Miss Barton bent her elbow, gripping the pen in her hand like a hunter would his spear.
Elanora twisted the hair escaping at her temples, “No. No one.”
Miss Barton dipped her pen into the ink well before scribbling some more then gulped and tilted back her full throat. “Then we shall see what becomes of you. We are a charitable institution, Lacey, but our charity does not extend to layabouts and locals. Our girls are brought to this country to help build the Empire. They are here for a better life through hard labour, not like their wayward parents. I wouldn’t normally consider taking you on board, but considering your parentage, perhaps I can make an exception. As it turns out there will be a placement available for you very soon,” she nodded in short sharp bursts to help force the clot down her throat. “Go now to Milkthwaite and learn the skills that will prepare you for useful employment.” Miss Barton lowered her head to resume writing.
“And Lacey,” she looked up with her catch wedged in her throat and a satisfied half smile, “don’t get comfortable because you won’t be here for very long.”
Elanora walked back to the empty dormitory. While the girls were about their pre-breakfast duties, she threw herself onto Sallyanne’s bed, hugging the pillow. She tried to imagine the sounds of a full class sliding back on metal chair legs, flicking pens, smacking books onto decks, the weary instructions from teachers. If only she could look out the window and see Ashden heading for the fig. Or Oscar skulking for an attack. Even that would be comforting. But there was not even a smell that reminded her of home. Under the pillow, a familiar curl of fur brushed her fingertips halting the onset of tears. She crawled her fingers further under and scooped out a golden bear, bright button eyed and smiling. She crushed it to her chest. Sallyanne’s bear was alive. How she could tell, she wasn’t certain. Maybe the Timefold had sharpened her senses. However it happened, Elanora could feel the life inside this bear and it sang into her heart a hum of love.
With eyes screwed shut, Olive rang the metal bell, sending its chunks of sound out like an invisible box on the ears. At assembly Elanora’s face was glowing when she took her place beside Sallyanne who cast her a worried glance before attending to the front. Miss Barton stood on the veranda, tight and towering, and led the girls in the singing of God Save the King. Her voice boomed over all others, sounding much like the bell.
“Now girls, before breakfast I will introduce you to the new girl who stole her way in last night but whom I have decided will join us for a short time. A very short time, until she learns some responsibility. Elanora Lacey, come here.” Elanora’s face grew hot and red under an introduction that reeked of foreboding. The joy from the souling disappeared in a flush of nerves.
“Unfortunately Miss Lacey is ungrateful for my offer and thinks she can still lounge about as she pleases.”
Oh no! I was supposed to go straight to help with the jobs this morning, she thought. The teddy had distracted her and the beast Barton had found her out already.
“I believe it’s time to cut off your ties to the past and set your eyes on the future.” She brandished a fierce set of iron scissors. Elanora flinched, her teeth chewing in the bottom corner of her lip. She gazed up at the thick blades when Miss Barton yanked up her plait and her face was forced to stare at her boots. The matron flashed the blades open and shut then hacked at the base of her neck, metal chafing through strand after strand of hair. The sound sawed up and down Elanora’s spine setting her teeth on edge. The tension on her head suddenly vanished and she stumbled over leaving her mane behind in Miss Barton’s victorious grip. She held it up like a gutted eel then threw it at Elanora where it slipped to her feet in a lifeless strip.
“Girls, you may forward to the dining hall and you, Lacey, can go in and receive your cuts. And put that thing with the rubbish.”
Elanora picked up her long plait. It lay across her hands like a burning welt. She didn’t even know where the bin was. She looked blindly from side to side, not really able to think at all. It was like holding one of her limbs. She had never known life without her long hair.
“There’s a place for rubbish behind Miss Barton’s office,” Sallyanne whispered as she passed on the way to the dining hall. “You’ll be okay,” she
smiled and was carried in by the crowd. The girls averted their eyes as they passed.
Elanora carried her plait behind the office. The bin wasn’t there so she rounded the corner, passed a closed window where finally she found a pile of rubbish. She knelt down ceremoniously to place her hair somewhere on the pile where there wasn’t too much wet filth.
“Goodbye me,” she said. As she got up she heard a racking cough from behind the window. She put her ear to the wood. There was another cough and wheeze. Footsteps were approaching so Elanora hurried past and headed inside to Miss Barton’s office.
“We have very high expectations of our girls, Miss Lacey and if I give you an instruction it will be carried out. Your hand.”
Elanora had often thought that reinstating the cane at Scrubstone would have been a great way to solve the problem of bullies like Oscar Rindman, but as she faced the first slice of pain, she couldn’t wish it on anybody. The cut not only stung but beat her bones. Six on one hand, six on the other. Miss Barton’s arm was strong and accurate. She savoured each wince on Elanora’s face and swallowed several times to drain the saliva that flooded her mouth as if she smelt the approach of a meal.
“Don’t expect breakfast. I would stand you on the stone block but I need you to learn. I need you polished and gone as soon as possible. Close the door on your way out.”
Elanora’s hands vibrated from the lashings but she managed to shut the door. The scar on her left hand from Jacub had awoken in fresh pain. She closed her eyes and sighed. She would find a way back. If she had gotten out of the Timefold she was sure she could get back in, even if there was no fig, no gateway and no Ashden.
The girls were still eating in the hall and the smell of food made her feel emptier than ever. Barton was back in there watching them like a hawk so there was time to investigate what lay on the other side of the window. Elanora figured the location of the room inside the building and approached quietly.
She turned the knob and peered through the crack. A young girl lay on a cot, her face ash grey. Elanora pushed the door and slipped inside, closing it gently behind her. The young girl saw her but the hopeful expression on her face died, “Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m Elanora. Who are you?”
She coughed and screwed her face up from the pain. “Nelly.” Her eyes were deep set and darkly shadowed.
“I heard the girls talking about you. Olive said she thought she heard you last night. Did you come back from somewhere?”
Nelly brightened at the mention of a familiar name but paled just as quickly. “I was brought ‘ere last night.”
“You’re sick, is Miss Barton helping you?”
She rolled her eyes, “She won’t ‘elp me. She’s just waitin’ for me to die.”
“What do you mean?” Elanora knelt on the floor beside the cot and went to touch her arm that rested beneath the blanket.
“Don’t!” Nelly hissed and coughed again.
“What’s happened to you?”
“Tell the girls not to get ‘emselves sent away. Tell ’em to run.”
“Nelly, you have to tell me what happened to you,” Elanora implored, as another bell clanged and footsteps jumbled along the corridor.
She looked into the girl’s faded eyes, “I have to go. But listen, I’m going to come back. You stay here, I’ll help you somehow,” Elanora promised and rushed from the room having forgotten all about the pain in her hands.