Chapter 21
“I’ve seen her. I met Nelly,” gasped Elanora colliding with Sallyanne on the veranda.
“You did? Where is she?”
“She’s in the room near Miss Barton’s office. I heard her coughing. She looks really sick and she told me to tell you all not to get sent away. You need to run.”
Sallyanne smoothed the apron on her dress and scanned the playground.
“Where are you all being sent?” Elanora asked.
“Let’s not stand around here. We’ve got to do the washing today so we’ll have plenty of time to talk safely and you can tell me all about Nelly, the poor thing.” She led Elanora to an area behind the dormitory where a huge copper bowl balanced over a fire. The fire had been lit before breakfast and was slowly working up a heat. Sallyanne checked the temperature and the fire before setting off to collect dirty clothes. They were in and out of rooms and between groups of girls so they didn’t get a chance to resume their conversation until they were back at the copper. Sallyanne thrashed the fire to subdue its flames before sorting the clothes.
“Tell me about Nelly,” Sallyanne said.
“Like I said, she was really sick and she must have had some injuries because she wouldn’t let me touch her arm. She said Miss Barton wasn’t helping her get better, she was waiting for her to die, and that you all had to run instead of getting sent away. What did she mean? Where do you get sent? What is this place?”
“We are all either orphans or children from poor families who gave us up to the Institution,” she began. “They sent us here to start a new life and do our bit for the Empire. They told us it would be better.” She tossed a pile of garments into the water with soap flakes that she chipped off a block. Boiling water splashed onto her wrists but she didn’t flinch.
“So you left everything behind? How awful.”
Sallyanne grimaced and stirred the pot with a sturdy wooden paddle. “Some of the girls were taken straight off the dock by families waiting for them. I’ve never heard a word of what happened to them. The rest of us came here by train and then by foot. It was a really long trip.”
Elanora wondered if in this era the train stopped at Carford. If that was the last station the trip by car was forty minutes so that meant it was a very decent walk indeed.
“So now we stay here learning how to be good domestic servants until we can be sent out to work on farms or in the towns or wherever we are needed.”
“So you were sent out here to be slaves.”
Sallyanne levered a steaming garment from the pot and Elanora was reminded of ladling a sloppy rice noodle from a giant wok. “We may leave our placement when we are twenty-one if we marry or find other employment.”
“Sure sounds like child slavery to me. That’s so wrong.”
“Oh, Elanora, you do talk strangely. I wouldn’t say we were slaves. It’s better than what we would have been forced to do back in London,” she stared into the water watching dresses cavort like the spirits of those she had lost. “There we would’ve ended up thieves or worse. They took us off the streets and gave us food and somewhere safe to sleep. I’m really thankful for that, because I saw the kind of life I would have led if I stayed. Everyone had to steal and hide and do all manner of evil. Also, if we hadn’t ended up there none of us would have had a chance to go to school. Thanks to them most of the girls can read a little now. We were supposed to keep up our lessons out here but that all stopped once we got off the ship. All we do now is clean and sew and cook, not that there’s ever much to cook. I suppose they don’t think we’ll need an education to be domestic help.”
“It still doesn’t sound like much to look forward to,” said Elanora. Sallyanne smiled sadly into the copper.
Doing the washing was an exhausting and dangerous task. Made harder by the welts on Elanora’s hands that burned like fire from the steam and hot clothes. As both were unavoidable, she spent the day biting her cheek to keep from crying. It also made it hard to keep chatting, as there was so much levering of clothes, pounding, scrubbing and rinsing.
“So why do you think Nelly was sent back?” Elanora asked.
“I don’t know. Miss Barton says that we must never come back. Anyone who gets sent back is ‘a shame to England and worth less than the dirt on our feet when we were scraped off the streets,’” she said in her best Barton impersonation. “One girl came back just when we arrived and Miss Barton caned her terribly then made her stay in the playground with a placard around her neck. She left her there for three days then she just disappeared.”
“What had she done?”
“Brought shame to the Institution and the Empire. Apparently she stole something from her master. But, you know?” she paused from sorting to look up at Elanora, “Sometimes people don’t always tell things the way they really happened.”
“That’s true. So we’ve really got to help Nelly, haven’t we?” Elanora said firmly.
“Yes,” Sallyanne agreed as the bell clanged for supper.