City of Hope (11 page)

“Well?” she said.

As soon as she spoke, my heart warmed and I was glad I had waited. She was as gruff as ever. The fight might not yet have gone out of her entirely.

“Bridie—I am so sorry to hear about Mr. Flannery.”

Such was my respect for her late husband that I realized I did not even know his Christian name. As young servants, Sheila and I had called him “Grumpy.” Mrs. Flannery had called him much, much worse.

“I only have half an hour,” she said, “so you can put that cigarette out and come upstairs for your lunch. It's only soup, but you're not starved, by the cut of you.”

I smiled, following her in the front door of the building and to a tiny room on the third floor. I was thrilled to be in familiar company, and I clung to that fact so as not to let her see how appalled I was by the conditions in which I had found her.

The room was small, with a bed at one end, a table, a chair and a makeshift stove at the other. She had to go out to the hallway to a shared toilet to get water to fill the kettle. Aside from the small size and lack of facilities, I was relieved to note that the room was spotless and that she had not lost her house-proud ways. While she was gone, I put the stove on under the pot of soup, buttered two slices from a packet loaf, and found bowls and side plates from one of only two cupboards. My stomach shrank with the meagerness of the contents. All the things they had acquired over their years together, gone. It was one thing to be young and poor, as I had been, but quite another when you were old.

“I see you've made yourself at home,” she said when she came back in with the kettle. She was pleased about the company. We sat—I on the edge of the bed, and she on the one chair against the table—and I coaxed the story out of her.

Mr. Flannery had died unexpectedly after a bout of pneumonia only three years beforehand. Shortly after that, Isobel Adams had, indeed, returned to Boston and, after thirty years of service to the family, Mrs. Flannery had been let go. There was no pension for those in service, but it was understood that—with their living expenses having been catered for over a long period of time—both she and her husband had been well paid over the years and had made ready for a comfortable retirement. After her husband passed away, Bridie had even harbored some dream of returning to her native Cork. Mr. Flannery had always managed the money side of things, but when Bridie had gone to the bank and made inquiries, she discovered that the money he had securely put aside for their pension was, in fact, in risky stock, and they had lost the lot. Even the rent on the apartment they had lived in for the past twelve years was in arrears. Too proud to approach Mr. Adams for help, Bridie had sold all their belongings to clear the rent, then secured herself a job in the local laundry.

“I'm lucky,” she said. “I could have been out on the streets, like those poor devils over in the park.”

There was no time left for my news before she had to rush back to work.

She allowed me to help her down the basement steps. It was easier coming up than going down, she said.

I could hardly bear to part with her there. I wanted to do something for her, give her some money, but I knew enough that my charity would only offend her.

“I'm meeting Sheila in the next few days,” I said brightly. “Perhaps we could come and take you for tea?”

“That wretched flibbertigibbet,” she said. “I've no desire to see that girl!”

I smiled at the memory of Sheila's cheek and old Bridie trying to keep her in her place.

“Well, perhaps I'll come again and take you out? Do you have a day off when I can call for you? Sunday perhaps?”

She did not ask where I was staying, or why I was here, just shook her head slowly, her voice hard and careful.

“I think it's best not. You've seen me now, girl, be content with that.”

I would call again, although in truth I did not want to. I had come to New York to be made content, to feel free and happy again.

My feet and bags felt heavy and I took a taxi back down to The Plaza, even though it was a short walk away, then went back up to my room and lay down on the soft, silk coverlet. I couldn't sleep and I was too afraid to cry. Paralyzed, I read my crime novel and waited for Sheila's telegram.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

Sheila arrived on a lunchtime train from Boston. She insisted I not come and meet her at Grand Central, but wait instead in the Palm Court of The Plaza.

I spent the morning getting ready, meticulously applying my makeup, and curling and recurling my hair until it was lacquered into set curls around my face. I tried on everything in my limited wardrobe, and settled on the green dress I had bought in Saks. Sheila was even more passionate about her appearance than I was, and it was she who had ignited my interest in fashion, cutting my long, dark hair into a bob when I had first arrived here, borrowing clothes from Isobel's wardrobe and dragging me off to dances and jazz clubs in feathers and froth—partners on the glorious adventure of girlish glamour and romance.

Sheila had fallen in love with and married a wealthy man, Alex Ward, a decent, kind person. The Wards were Irish and had a large company manufacturing and fitting windows in the building boom of the 1920s, and Sheila and I had worked in their typing pool for a while. Alex doted on Sheila, and while she undoubtedly loved him, I often worried that her feelings for him were rooted in him constantly indulging her whims for finery and excitement. I had wondered how long it would be after they got married before he expected her to settle. In one of her letters Sheila had hinted that she had managed to avoid getting pregnant through her own design:
“There are all kinds of ways available here, Ellie, you can't imagine, and the doctors act with complete discretion. Alex says he wants a child, but I am certain he would despise my getting fat and going through all that hardship as much as I would!”

By midday I was dressed and fidgety with excitement. I decided to go downstairs early and wait for my friend.

I checked my appearance in the mirrored panels of the elevator. My lips were plump and red, my skin white and my eyes darkened with gray kohl. I tried to admire what I saw, step into the armor of style and beauty that I had created, but I was unconvinced by my attempts. I looked like an elegant version of myself, but it was an artifice. Sheila would make it feel real. She would bring me back to who I was, who I used to be.

I gave my name to the concierge and he seated me in a quiet corner of the Palm Court. There was a small scattering of people taking tea in discreet couples, and the murmur of low conversation and tinkling china drifted across the vast ballroom. Pale light shone through the glass-domed ceiling, making the white linen tablecloths almost glow.

I had finished my book the night before and asked the waiter to bring me the newspaper. Adolf Hitler had become Führer of Germany; a prisoner had drowned trying to escape from a newly opened prison, Alcatraz; and New York's Public Works Administration was pushing forward plans to build new apartments for slum dwellers on a site in Williamsburg. A few months ago I had devoured the
Reader's Digest
through my regular subscription, entering the worlds of other people, other places—the hysterics of politics and disasters from the comfort of my small, rural life. Now I just had the dull sense that the world kept turning: men in uniforms were starting political movements; cops were chasing Bonnie and Clyde across America; somebody saw the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland; dock workers were on strike in San Francisco; yet here I sat, apart from it all—a painted, paper flower, too delicate to move, knowing that events were unfolding, but remaining utterly detached from it all.

Only one thing in the paper caught my interest—an advertisement for the film
Cleopatra
by Cecil B. de Mille, showing at the Paramount Theatre in Times Square. We could go there tonight, Sheila and me, then find the small Italian bistro we used to frequent—the one with wine bottles as candle holders and gingham tablecloths and a speakeasy out the back where the dock boys drank during Prohibition. What a plan!

“Ellie!”

I heard her shout from across the room. Sheila looked just as she had when I had left her. Slim, her short red hair smoothed into sharp points at her cheekbones, a tight houndstooth coat screaming across the room.

I stood up and we ran toward each other. Our embrace was warm and effusive, and we kissed and hugged and squealed until our voices clattering across the discreet company made everyone turn to look.

Eventually she dragged me over to the table and said, “Tell me everything.
Everything!
Why are you here? How long are you here for? I don't care—you're here and I am
beyond
thrilled. Oh, I am so, so excited to see you, Ellie. No, wait: tell me nothing yet until I light a cigarette. I want to hear
every
word. I am
enthralled
to hear your news!”

She rooted in her bag and took out a cigarette while I sig­naled a waiter for more coffee. Then she lit the cigarette with a large gold lighter, holding it expertly between her puckered red lips, narrowing her eyes as the smoke drifted across them, and put her elbows on the table, her gloved hands under her chin and said, “Now you have my fullest attention—shoot!”

I had not told her in my telegram that John was dead. I did not want to tell her now.

My oldest, closest, dearest friend—I did not want to say it out loud and spoil our reunion.

“John died.”

“Oh,” she said, and for a moment I thought I had offended her. She put the cigarette in the ashtray and reached her gloved hands across to mine. “Oh, Ellie, my dearest, dearest Ellie. Are you terribly upset?”

How could I begin to describe it? The two words as I had said them had reached down into the depths of my gut and clutched at me like claws, pinching pain out of me. I wasn't ready. Not ready to drag it all up and spread it out on the table in front of us. Not here. Not now.

“I can see you are,” she said, holding my hands tighter.

I slid them away from her grasp and reached across to her packet of cigarettes, taking one and lighting it. I dragged on it deeply, and allowed the smoke to camouflage my pain in its pretty white cloud.

“So I came over here on a holiday—to see you and to try to . . .”

“Forget?” She finished my sentence.

I couldn't confess to it, but she was right. I worked hard to hold her concerned eyes, filled as they were with kind pity. Briefly I saw us locked into my hotel room, with me weeping and screaming and letting out all the poison and the pain I had been storing up, while Sheila ministered to me with kind words and her unique brand of plucky strength.

“I . . .”

I was at a crossroads, and I knew Sheila would follow me down any path I chose to take.

“You look
wonderful
, Sheila. Really, it is so good to see you—the coat?”

Sheila closed her eyes, smiled briefly to herself and when she opened them said, “Schiaparelli, darling—it cost Alex a bloody fortune and, frankly, I think the cut rather ordinary—I am beginning to suspect the boutique I bought it from was passing shoddy clothes off to fools like me, who want to dress like a European! Boston is really so parochial. And here we both are, back in New York. Oh, Ellie—let's have some
fun
!”

That night we eschewed the film, but easily found Tullio's, the Italian restaurant we had eaten in every week while we were working in Ward Windows' office. The office building itself was gone, Sheila told me, when I suggested that we call in.

“The building business in New York collapsed—no money in windows anymore, it seems.” She hurriedly lit a cigarette in the back of the taxi. “I don't want to talk about all that end of things—I leave it to Alex. Money, money, wretched money: it's all anybody ever talks about these days. Such a bore!”

She didn't offer any more information on the subject, and I didn't ask. I quietly hoped her husband's business affairs hadn't suffered too much in recent times. Especially not while he had Sheila to look after.

We found that Tullio's was still run by the same family, and we sat at the same red banquette with the same gingham tablecloths, and it seemed to me that it was the same bottle with the same red candle dripping clumps of wax down the sides that had always been there. The fat old Italian mama in the family-run kitchen brought us out two huge plates of spaghetti and meatballs, carrying us back entirely to our past as two unmarried young women working in downtown Manhattan.

We reminisced eagerly about those days: her clever nabbing of a wealthy husband, my brief indiscretion with Charles Irvington, the shipping magnate's son. “He was
mad
about you, Ellie: remember how we met him that night in this very spot—your millionaire admirer, drinking out the back with dockers! Thank God Prohibition is over . . .” she added, pouring us both another glass from our second bottle of deep red wine, “although, I must confess drinking
was
more fun when it was illegal.”

We talked about our school days in the Jesus and Mary Convent in Mayo—one or two of the nuns had died, I told her—and then she regaled me with a much more interesting anecdote of what had become of our first employer, Isobel Adams.

“She was quite a different kettle of fish toward me when I turned up one night to a party in her house.”

“No!”
I said, disbelieving.

“Oh yes,” she said, sliding the cigarette out of her mouth with great aplomb, “you can't imagine how thrilled I was to be introduced to her formally by a mutual friend. Her face!” Sheila looked around as if afraid she would be overheard, and then whispered, “It
seems
we shared a lover.”

Her eyes narrowed as she slyly studied my face for shock. I was shocked, but not so surprised, and in any case I hid it well. We were having such a lovely time, and the wine was warming me, and I felt happy for the first time since . . . so I simply said, “I don't believe you.”