Bridie's Fire by Kirsty Murray Page B

each of the girl’s boxes sat at the end of a single bed. Bridie looked at her own narrow bunk and felt a wave of loneliness. It would be the first time in her life that she’d had a bed to herself, and she wasn’t sure she liked the idea.
    â€˜Why are those other girls still here?’ whispered Bridie to Caitlin as they knelt before their trunks, folding their cloaks away. ‘Their boat must have come weeks ago.’
    â€˜Maybe no one wants them. Maybe they’re wicked girls like Biddy Ryan.’
    Bridie felt a ripple of unease. ‘They don’t look wicked to me. They just look like ordinary girls,’ she said. ‘How can you make up your mind so quickly about whether a girl is good or bad?’
    â€˜Lucky for you, Bridie O’Connor, that I do make up my mind that quick. I knew the first time I clapped eyes on you outside the workhouse that your heart was good, and I’ve seen nothing to prove me wrong yet. And I knew the first time I saw Biddy Ryan that she was a slattern, and you know her as well as I do now and what do you think?’
    Bridie didn’t reply.
    They took the bunks nearest the door and set their trunks down at the end of the beds. Bridie noticed the name of the smallest girl in the bunkhouse, ‘Honor Gauran’, painted on her box. It looked battered compared to Bridie’s. Bridie smiled at her but she turned away. That night, all the Diadem girls whispered to each other, the rise and fall of their voices like the swelling sea.
    Bridie woke to the sound of shouting. Honor Gauran was cowering in her nightgown before the Matron.
    â€˜You filthy brute. We offer you our charity, and you show us your respect with this disgusting behaviour. No wonder your mistress sent you back.’
    Honor hung her head. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ll clean it up, ma’am,’ she said in a small voice.
    Then Bridie saw it: a big puddle on the floor beside Honor’s bed. After the Matron left, Honor turned to the other girls, her eyes brimming with tears.
    â€˜I was dreaming of the master. It was the master’s fault I come back. The mistress was out one night and I was in my little bed and the master come in and took off his trousers and climbed into my bed with me. I had to hit him to get away and then I ran into the street in my nightgown but he came out the door shouting at me and threw my box into the street. That’s how it got the lid broke. All my things strewn across the cobbles.’ She sniffed deeply and wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. ‘I knows I should have gone to the water closet last night. But I’m too scared to walk about in the dark. I feel scared all the time now.’
    Bridie and Caitlin looked at each other and felt answering stabs of alarm.
    â€˜It’s all right, Bridie,’ whispered Caitlin. ‘It won’t be like that for us.’
    Everyone grew restless, waiting for their new lives to begin. There was nothing to do in the depot, and the girls hung about idly. Biddy Ryan liked to lean over the fence of the depot and call out to passers-by until the Matron hurried out and shooed her back into the barracks.
    One day a whole family of black natives walked past the fence. Their clothes were ragged, as Bridie’s and her family’s had been when they lived in the hut on the edge of Dingle, and they had a lean and hungry look about them. Bridie had never seen such ebony skin. Their big, dark eyes and the sharp angle of their bones reminded her of the hungriest time in her life. When they looked back at her staring at them through the fence, she turned away.
    Every day, some of the girls would leave with their indenture certificates signed and their bonnets tied beneath their chins, but still Bridie waited. There were rumours that the citizens were angry at the presence of the orphan girls, that no one really wanted them and that the newspapers were describing them as ignorant and