Meet Letty Read online

  MEET LETTY

  It’s 1841 and Letty is on the docks in England, farewelling her bossy older sister who is about to take a long sea voyage to Australia. But then there’s a mix-up, and before she knows it Letty finds herself on the ship too, travelling to New South Wales! How will Letty manage when her sister doesn’t even want her on the ship? And what will it be like on the other side of the world?

  Meet Letty and join her adventure in the first of four exciting stories about a free settler girl and her new life in a far-off land.

  Puffin Books

  To my sisters

  And my beautiful nieces –

  This generation of Australian girls

  With illustrations by Lucia Masciullo

  Puffin Books

  Contents

  1 GRAVESEND

  2 ON THE DUCHESS

  3 OUT TO SEA

  4 THE EQUATOR

  5 THE DOLDRUMS

  6 IN THE HOSPITAL

  7 SOUTHERN ATLANTIC

  8 THE LUGGAGE HOLD

  9 SYDNEY HARBOUR

  10 SYDNEY SHORE

  THE 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 t
o 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!

  ‘OH NO!’ Letty cried. ‘Help!’

  A girl of about her own age turned to Letty.

  ‘You shouldn’t look down at the sea, you know,’ said the girl. She tipped her head, and a dozen blonde ringlets bobbed up and down. The girl reminded Letty of the little birds which darted about the streets of her town, boldly snatching crumbs. ‘That’ll make you feel sicker,’ the girl advised.

  ‘No, that’s not it.’ Letty clung to the railing. ‘I’ve lost my family. I’m in the wrong place! I have to get off!’

  ‘Don’t fuss. They can’t get far.’ The girl gestured towards the other side of the ship. ‘I’ve already measured the deck. It’s just nineteen steps across, when the sailors don’t get in the way. I’m Jemima,’ said the girl, twirling one of her curls. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Letty,’ she answered. ‘My sister’s Lavinia and I have to find her straight away.’

  ‘We’ll ask the Doctor then.’ Jemima pointed to the back of the ship, where a wooden balcony rose above the deck. ‘See the bald man with the long moustache?’

  Letty saw a man with a pen and paper in his hands, next to another in a top hat.

  ‘The Doctor’s nearly as important as the Captain,’ said Jemima.

  Jemima was so confident – Letty gladly followed her up the wooden ladder.

  ‘Good afternoon, Doctor,’ Jemima said.

  The men turned around.

  The gentleman in the top hat glared at them.

  ‘Have I seen you already?’ The Doctor frowned at Letty.

  Letty shook her head.

  ‘Name?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘I’m Letty Beddows,’ she answered.

  He looked down his list. ‘Miss L. Beddows, female, unmarried emigrant,’ he read. ‘Done.’

  ‘But sir, I —’ she began.

  The Doctor waved her away with his pen. ‘Only cabin passengers are allowed on the poop.’ He turned his back.

  Letty wanted to tell him she was the wrong Miss Beddows. But he didn’t want to listen.

  Jemima stuck her tongue out at the men’s backs. ‘Poop to them too!’ she whispered to Letty.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Letty whispered back. She didn’t want to be on the poop deck if she wasn’t supposed to be there. She wanted to be off the ship completely. She had to find Lavinia before the ship left the jetty.

  ‘There she is!’ From the ladder, Letty spotted her sister coming up from the hold, looking around her.

  ‘Lavinia!’ yelled Jemima, in a voice as loud as a boy’s.

  Lavinia picked up her skirts and swept across the deck. She stood in front of Letty with her hands on her hips. ‘We looked all over the shore and the jetty for you,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I was minding your chest. You didn’t come back.’ Letty saw Jemima take a look at Lavinia and slip away. Letty guessed why – Lavinia in a temper was like an iron hot from the fire, hissing steam and not to be messed with.

  ‘Where is it now?’ demanded Lavinia.

  ‘In the hatch,’ Letty answered, with pride.

  ‘That’s just as well! But why didn’t you wait on the dock?’

  Why didn’t you come back? thought Letty. ‘I told you,’ she said in a small voice, ‘Papa said to stay with the chest.’

  ‘Oh, never mind!’ Lavinia gave Letty a short, hard hug. ‘You’ll have to get off right now and find Papa by yourself.’

  ‘But, Lavinia, the gangplank’s gone.’

  ‘No!’ Lavinia stared at her. She grabbed Letty by the wrist and called out to the Doctor.

  ‘Excuse me!’

  The Doctor looked down from the poop deck.

  ‘Help us, please,’ Lavinia said. ‘My sister shouldn’t be on board.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

  ‘My sister here,’ Lavinia said, ‘has to be let off the ship.’

  ‘Isn’t she on the passenger list?’

  ‘No, I am,’ answered Lavinia.

  The Doctor frowned again. Lavinia and Letty followed him to the ship’s front end, where he interrupted a sailor shouting orders.

  ‘First Mate, this child must disembark.’

  ‘Cable stowed then, Jones?’ First Mate roared at the freckled boy Letty had spoken to before.

  The boy was dripping with green slime and mud now. Letty thought he looked like a mermaid gone wrong. The ship was a very strange place, where she didn’t belong, and Letty desperately wanted to be away from it.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘There’s your answer,’ the Mate bellowed at the Doctor. ‘Ship’s anchors are stowed; towlines are fastened. The tide won’t stop for nobody and neither will I!’

  The Doctor turned to Lavinia.

  ‘Your sister must remain on board, Miss Beddows.’ The Doctor’s moustache twitched as he looked down his nose. ‘It’s a great nuisance.’

  A nuisance? thought Letty. Is that what she was?

  ‘Ready the mainsail!’ First Mate yelled. A dozen sailors swarmed up a crisscross net of ropes, stretching like a spider web from the big mast in the middle. The ship’s crew were undoing the knots that held the biggest sail in place. The sail began to flap like the wings of a monster seagull. The ship creaked and shuddered. It really was about to take off.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Lavinia said. They looked helplessly at the wedge of water between the ship and the jetty. Lavinia twisted her shawl between her fingers. ‘Look, Letty! It’s Papa! Wave for all you’re worth!’

  Papa was clutching his watch chain, looking very small amongst all the people on the jetty.

  ‘Papa!’ Letty screamed. Lavinia fluttered her best red handkerchief madly.

  Papa’s hand went up. He’d seen them.

  He’ll come after me in a boat, thought Letty. He must. ‘I’m here, Papa! Help me get off!’

  The Duchess eased away from the dock. The wedge of water between the girls and their father widened. The passengers cheered.

  Papa turned around and pushed into the crowd.

  ‘Papa!’ Letty called, as if it could bring them back together. She saw him talking fast to a dock worker on the jetty. He was waving his arms around, but he didn’t turn and look at her. She kept calling until she could no longer see him.

  The Duchess cruised down the river. Letty watched Jemima skip from one side of the boat to the other as Gravesend disappeared into the distance. Jemima waved at her, but Letty didn’t join in.

  A while later, they reached a wide bay. Waves rolled in from the sea beyond. The ship began to lurch, and Letty was afraid.

  ‘When will Papa catch up to us?’ she asked Lavinia.

  Lavinia flounced her skirts in annoyance. ‘What do you expect him to do, Letty? Fly? He can’t reach us, even if he hired a rowboat. A big ship can’t stop for one little girl.’

  ‘He’s not coming?’

  Lavinia shook her head.

  She was caught on the ship. Her home was gone. She had left her Papa and her step-family. The realisation hit her like a wave. Letty was too miserable to speak. How had it happened? She asked herself. She had done what she wa
s told. She was only trying to please people and be good. But somehow she had made an awful mistake. She was a nuisance, the Doctor had said. The sharp pain of being unwanted struck her. Letty felt desolate.

  The ship rolled on the rough water.

  ‘This is very uncomfortable,’ said Lavinia. ‘And you have really put my plans out. I’m going inside.’

  Letty trailed after Lavinia. ‘Inside’ was not the neat cabins below the poop deck, she found. Those were for the Captain, the Doctor and a few rich ‘cabin passengers’. Instead, the girls climbed down a ladder into the ship’s hold, where the hope chest had been stowed earlier.

  It was dark and smoky below decks. Letty began to feel sick. She and Lavinia walked past row after row of rough bunks. The bunks had only a dirty curtain for privacy. Letty could see they were filled with crying babies and grumpy mothers. The single women’s berths were at the very end, past a timber wall.

  ‘Hello, Beddows!’ Jemima’s head poked around a curtain. ‘I’m glad you’re in this mess too!’

  ‘Are you?’ said Lavinia, in a voice that meant she did not wish to discuss anything with Jemima.

  ‘It will be fun,’ said Jemima brightly. ‘Messes share the cooking and the washing and all sorts of things.’

  ‘Oh!’ Letty said. On board ship, ‘mess’ obviously meant something else.

  ‘We’re going to give dinner a miss,’ said Lavinia.

  Letty did not feel like eating either. She helped Lavinia undo her corset, then took off her own dress and climbed under the blanket with her sister. She and Lavinia had to share a bunk because Letty’s fare had not been paid. The blanket was scratchy and the straw mattress was lumpy.

  ‘Lie still, wriggle-worm,’ Lavinia grumbled. ‘Just when I thought I’d get a bed to myself …’ The girls had always shared a bed at home. Letty wished she was there now, in their bedroom above the noisy street.

  Letty felt the in-and-out of Lavinia’s breath, and the up-and-down of the sea.

  After a while, Lavinia turned over.

  ‘Do you realise, Letty, we’ve done it now?’ She put an arm over Letty and squeezed her. ‘We’re going to a new land and a new life,’ she whispered.