Ellis Island (22 page)

In the early evening there was a gentle knock on the cottage door and I opened it to find a young girl in full maid’s uniform standing in front of me. “The lady of the house sent me down to see if you needed anything, Miss,” she said, and curtsied.

I didn’t know where to look or what to say in the face of this young girl’s servitude. “No, thank you . . . er . . .”

“It’s Mary, Miss.”

“There’s nothing, thank you, Mary.”

She curtsied again and had turned to go when suddenly I called her back.

“But could you find Mr. Charles Irvington and ask him what time he is coming to collect me for the party?”

She smiled slyly, as if she knew something, and I realized it wasn’t the lady of the house who had sent her down at all.

Charles arrived bearing a bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume; it was the size of a whisky bottle, big enough to serve a whole funeral.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Maybe he was sorry, but I suspected it was not for proposing to a married woman—I suspected he was only sorry that I hadn’t gone along with him. “This is for you,” he added, handing the perfume to me; then added inelegantly, “My sister-in-law said I should bring you this. She says I’m an awful ass with women.”

I didn’t like the way he said “women”—as if I were just one of a few mistakes he had made. “Case in point,” I said, taking the bottle off him, and we both laughed.

“Do you like the cottage?” he asked.

“It’s beautiful.” I smiled at him.

“I knew you would . . .” He tried to add something else, but I put a finger to my mouth to shush him.

“You choose the music and pour us a drink,” I said, “while I go and drench myself in this stuff.”

It was the party to end all parties. Tables were laid out in banks along the wall of a ballroom that opened out onto the lawn, each groaning with food that would barely be eaten. Dozens of men in white suits wove among the crowds, their faces impervious, carrying still more trays of canapés and champagne, which the guests grabbed at without thanks as if the tray bearers were invisible. A band was set up on the lawn on an unlit podium, their black faces disappearing as the night drew in, the music eventually drowned out by the clamor and chatter; drunken clowns in shimmering dresses and expensive evening suits danced on anyway, spilling drinks as they moved and jerked, out of time, oblivious to their own inelegance. I had seen it all before and felt pleased that I was no longer the ingenue servant; I had gained enough knowledge of the way the rich lived to pass myself off as having a certain level of sophistication.

Perhaps my confidence that evening had been fueled by Charles’s declaration, but I felt as if I had nothing to prove and that I stood as high as any of the other guests. It occurred to me, briefly, that it was not my position as guest at a grand party that was strange, but my earlier position of servant, which had been an aberration of both my fine education and my middle-class upbringing. I flinched briefly at the ugliness of my own snobbery, but nonetheless kept hold of it all evening to protect me from the judgment of this lofty company.

As it turned out, Charles’s brother Edwin was a hilarious buffoon. Despite being the elder of the two and the primary heir to the shipbuilding business, he was as down to earth as Charles. His wife, Gloria, welcomed me warmly and within minutes was confiding far more than she should. When I asked, somewhat nervously, if their parents were in attendance, she laughed coarsely and said, “No way! The Irvingtons are frightful snobs—real ‘old-school.’ They wouldn’t be seen dead at a party like this. Besides they
loathe
me—if Edwin wasn’t such a whizz in the business, they’d disown him for marrying a divorcée. But then, they only have one other son, and Charlie’s a dropout, so . . . Oh my goodness, I’ve shocked you!”

I smiled and shook my head, but it didn’t make any difference—she was going to tell me anyway.

“Yes, darling, I’m divorced—from a ghastly bum I married when I was eighteen. It can be done, you know.” She dug her sharp painted fingernails into the white flesh of my upper arm. “Anything’s possible when you have this much money, honey—
anything!
”

We danced and drank until the early hours of the morning, then, as the sun was pinking the edge of the night-gray horizon, Charles walked me back to the cottage. He made me wear his jacket and carried my shoes so they wouldn’t get caught in the damp grass, and he slung one arm round my shoulders, protecting my neck from the chill.

At the porch he stopped and, knowing he couldn’t come in, turned to face me. Then he stood there, his body not a foot away from mine, not touching me, but just looking down onto my face—his eyes slowly circling my features, nose, mouth, ears, hair and eyes. I had rejected him and yet he was still here, taking my friendship in place of my love. It seemed, in that moment, that my loyalty to John was misplaced; pity and proximity made me reach my hands up to Charles’s face and pull it down toward me.

The kiss turned hard and hungry, traveling with the speed and heat of lightning down into our limbs. As our bodies moved in to lock, we pulled away from each other and stood on the quaint porch panting messily, unsure how to contain the pleading in our bodies. Charles ran his hand through his blond hair and grinned; his eyes were shining.

I said, “I think you’d better drive me back to the city.”

We drove in silence. We had shared every joke, told every tale, said everything that needed to be said. What remained unsaid scarcely even mattered now, because even though I was still running away from him, we had moved into the realm of the inevitable. The kiss had set in motion a turn of events of which we were no longer entirely in control. Love had set in and, one way or another, seemed to be telling us that it would have its way. The unfinished kiss with Charles caught at the back of my throat like a song waiting to happen.

I could not think about what might or might not happen when we arrived back at my apartment in New York. I could not think about the future, or John, or anything beyond the sun rising up behind the copper trees and the two of us alone on the road before the rest of the world came awake.

Charles parked the Rolls-Royce on the street outside and walked ahead of me up the narrow stairs to my apartment door. Once there, he put the bag down and pulled from the door a letter that had been nailed up with a pin.

“It’s a telegram,” he said, handing it to me.

It was marked urgent. I pulled the flimsy envelope apart and read:

Chapter Thirty-Eight

My father was dying and my conscience told me I had to go home, even though every other inch of me was screaming at me to stay in America and let my life unfold into the great adventure it was promising to be.

America had already given me so much: a career, friends, an elegant demeanor, a home full of beautiful things. Now my adopted country was offering me wealth and love and fulfilment—a lifetime without hardship or complaint. All I had to do was stay. I could ignore the telegram from Maidy, slice off the past, forget John, and pretend this was all there was. Pretend that the girl with the black bobbed hair and the independent life was who I really was now; pursue my burgeoning relationship with Charles; move on. My heart, which I had always been so certain of, was now confused and conflicted. There was duty, and home, and John. There was America. There was Charles. Whenever I stopped to ask myself what I wanted, I felt like a dog frantically scrabbling in the earth in search of a bone that wasn’t even there.

My conscience won. Emilie arranged for her sister to move in and pay my half of the rent for the few months I was away. She was nineteen and her parents were happy to let her live in the city as long as she was with her sister. “Plus, she’s fallen in love with a very bad man. My parents want her away from the Bronx until she gets over him. She’s too young to be dating—they know I’ll keep her safe.”

I laughed and Emilie half smiled and half frowned back. “What?” she exclaimed. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I am the sensible one in my family . . .”

“She must be pretty crazy then,” I said. I would be missing out on all this madness. All the risky romance, the intrigues, the fashions, the easy come, easy go beautiful mayhem of our life in New York would be happening without me.

“Why are you taking so much stuff with you?” Emilie asked.

I was packing the trunk—everything I owned was spread out on the floor, as I methodically folded and rolled and wrapped everything, before placing it into one of the deep drawers.

“You’ll only have to bring it all back with you again.” She picked up the embroidered tablecloth and the set of matching napkins that were lying folded on the bed. “Table linens? Why on earth are you taking these?”

I looked down at some of the other items I had already packed—a small glass vase, a china dog, a crystal sugar bowl. “They’re gifts,” I said.

Emilie shrugged and, apparently satisfied with my explanation, left the room leaving the true answer in her wake: I was packing as if I were never coming back. Even though I was unquestionably going to return, I found I could not bear to leave anything behind.

“They’re gifts for my mother and Maidy,” I said again, firmly and out loud, although there was only myself in the room. “I have a return ticket,” I continued, addressing the trunk. I could not help wonder if it was a fortuitous coincidence that I had stumbled across this cavernous case, or if this terrible turn of events was being driven by a Romany curse contained in it.

The small narrow trinket drawer at the top of the chest was stiff, and as I tugged it open I heard a faint rattle. A small, silver octagonal ball rolled across the green felt. It wobbled slightly before settling on one of its edges, inviting me to pick it up. It was a goat bell. I don’t know how I knew that. I supposed I must have seen them tied around the necks of kids on fair days back home. I rolled it across the palm of my hand, but the tinkle was gone out of it. I thought about the man in the shop with his severe, pointed features and tried to imagine him as a goatherd. Immediately, then, I remembered my father and that he was sick. I tried to imagine him dying: how he would look, gaunt and white, clutching his large wooden rosary beads like the martyrs he so admired, his last words in devotion to the Blessed Virgin. A seam of dread loosened across my chest at the thought of him—at the knowledge that, alive or dead, my own father held no more pull on me than that of duty. The call of duty was not as loud or as tuneful as the call of love, but it was nonetheless as strong. Stronger perhaps—otherwise I would have returned home to John when he had asked me. I folded my fingers into a fist around the foreign trinket. It was clearly valueless, yet I did not want to throw it away. So I put the tarnished, silent bell back where I had found it, throwing a confused jumble of my own jewelery in on top of it before hurriedly closing the drawer.

Charles had arranged my passage with a first-class ticket—return. He called round to the apartment the day before I left and handed it to me without words or explanation. It was not given as an elaborate gift; such a thing was commonplace to Charles, valueless. “We can all meet in Tullio’s and have lunch, then I and the gang can come with you down to the port and wave you off.” His voice was forced in its jollity, but his eyes were dead. He had always had the happy, confident stance of a man who didn’t stop until he got what he wanted—hoping for good things and, generally, getting them. I could not bear to look at him so sad, because of all he had come to mean to me—not just as a man, but as the embodiment of my dashed hopes and dreams.

“I’d rather go alone,” I said, “if you don’t mind.”

He shrugged. “Whatever you want, Ellie.”

I want to stay,
ran through my head, yet as it did I realized I wasn’t certain if that was true anymore. Now that I had the ticket in my hand it was as if a part of me had already left.

“I’ll be back in two months,” I said brightly—smiling.

One short year.
John’s words when I had left for Ellis Island rang back in my head.
Just one short year, Ellie.
How long had it been?

Charles and I embraced, and all the time he had his arms wrapped around me I was waiting for him to pull back and kiss me again. Fearful that another kiss would bring my propriety truly into question, but hopeful that perhaps that same propriety would be caught by the wind and sent flying across the sea, where it would be sucked into the depths of the Atlantic and leave me here, happy to live out my American dream without guilt or question. But Charles did not kiss me, nor I him.

When the door closed after him, I wrapped my arms across my stomach, leaned into them and pushed the anguish of my own selfish desires from me in a guttural sob.

The following morning I traveled to the port alone. The trunk had been collected by the shipping line the day before. It would be traveling first class, but I would not.

At the ticket office I made an almighty fuss until they agreed to cash in my first-class ticket for third-class, giving me a refund in cash. The woman behind the counter argued with me and asked if I was accompanied by a man. Clearly thinking I had lost my mind, to be both traveling with no man to protect me and trying to get myself downgraded to third class, she called out the manager. But the length of the line behind me persuaded him to concede, and he gave me my refunded dollars in cash.

It was an inauspicious end to my days in New York, but I knew I needed to return with all the money I could. I had no idea what hardship I would have to face when I got home. But I was certain of one thing—there would be hardship.