A Song Across the Sea (33 page)

“I’m trying to look out for you, Sheila. Can’t you see that? I took this job to get you away from the Bowery, and people like Webb. I want you to have a real future! It’s not so easy as you seem to think. In a few months you’ll graduate high school. I’ll have saved enough money by then for you to take secretarial training. If you apply yourself to it, I’m sure you’ll be able to get a decent position somewhere.”

Sheila looked at her and smiled her bored, kittenish smile. “We’ll see about that.”

•  •  •

Being a maid wasn’t so bad, once you realized that it was simply a role to play. You never spoke unless you were spoken to. Then it was, “yes, sir” or “yes, mum.”

She rarely had dealings with Mrs. Millinder. When not propelled into the role of hostess by her husband, the poor woman kept mostly to her bedroom suite. Tara thought of her as a ghost, a wraithlike, wheelchair-bound specter who haunted a few favorite rooms and left the rest of the mansion to the living.

There was more at work here than illness. Tara was sure of it. There was sadness. Tara wondered what was behind it, but she had her own problems to mull over.

Tara wanted to take her own name back again. She wanted to see her friends, and sing again onstage.

Wild schemes seized her imagination while she beat dust from the rugs each day. Plans formed and reformed themselves in the ashes she emptied from the bottom of the coal-burning cookstove. Ideas leaped, like dust motes, from the bed linens she collected for laundering.

The police could not be counted on for help. Nor could her friends. Hap, bless him, had tried, and look what happened to him. Mr. Glass and the other vaudeville managers regarded her with the same affection they would the plague.

There was one person she longed to turn to for help. Reece would know what to do. If he chose to, he could come to her rescue just as he had that day they met, when she was stealing apples just to survive. He would not be afraid of Muldoon—she was sure of it. With a sigh, she shut Reece out of her thoughts. She was on her own now. Any feeling between herself and Reece had been a childish fantasy on her part, nothing more. Reece belonged to another woman.

•  •  •

Tara ran her fingertips softly over the strings of the harp. The faint, gossamer tones that rippled through the music saloon sounded a melancholy melody. Or was it just that music—any music—reminded her of her own misplaced dreams?

She was supposed to be polishing and dusting in here, not indulging in self-pity. She climbed onto a stepladder and ran an oiled cloth lovingly over the carved woodwork inlaid with mother-of-pearl that adorned an archway. Some day, she’d live in a house like this. She would! And some day she’d be back onstage, performing again. Some day she’d be able to invoke Paddy’s memory and not be haunted by painful guilt. Some day she’d find a man she could love as much as she thought she’d loved Reece. Some day she’d have children with that man, and a home of her own.

It wasn’t an easy thing, living in this some day world. Other people were going on about their lives with vigor while she moved through hers in a self-imposed trance. Tara knew the rest of the staff thought her peculiar and standoffish, but some still tried to be friendly to her. She held herself at a polite distance, not wanting to get close to anyone. Less to lose that way.

She hummed as she worked and drifted from there into song. The mansion was nearly deserted this afternoon, except for the staff, and who cared what they thought?

I’ll stay by the window

I’ll watch the front door

Your footsteps returning are all I need hear

When the wind blows you homeward

I’ll no longer be lonely

So hurry, please hurry

For I need you near

It was a song she’d been learning for her act. That she’d never had a chance to sing it on stage triggered burning, bittersweet tears and colored her singing with extra poignancy.

It’s my voice you hear

On the winds of the desert

My thoughts that reach you

Across the cold sea

Though you roam the whole world

I’ll still be waiting

Waiting for when you return home to me

Waiting for when you return home to—

Tara shifted on the ladder and froze, her hand stopped in mid-motion.

Mrs. Millinder was in the doorway. She sat in her wheelchair, a fragile beauty in a tea-colored skirt and creamy crepe de chine blouse.

“I’m sorry, mum. Didn’t realize anyone was about.”

“What a lovely song,” Mrs. Millinder remarked. “It reminds me of someone Ah miss very much.”

Tara was at a loss. Her first impulse was to excuse herself and hurry from the room, but Mrs. Millinder’s loneliness was transparent. She seemed as if she wanted to talk. Tara yearned to reach across the social chasm that separated them and give some simple human comfort to this poor woman, but her lowly role in this mansion got in the way of her compassion.

And there was something else. She could see it more clearly now, in the muted afternoon sunlight ambling in through the salon’s leaded glass windows. Some nuance of expression in Mrs. Millinder’s face, or the green-gold cast of her eyes, or the curve of her brow, was disturbingly familiar to Tara. Why did she feel as if she’d known this woman before coming to work in her mansion?

All she really knew about Mrs. Millinder came from gossip. Whispers of past tragedies. A terrible train wreck that left her an invalid. A son who’d disappeared. In spite of all her wealth, Tara thought that Mrs. Millinder was the saddest person she’d ever met.

“I know how it feels to miss someone,” Tara said gently, climbing down from the ladder. “I lost me brother. He was only six years old.”

“Only a small boy. It’s not fair, is it?” Mrs. Millinder looked down at her hands for a moment, frowning. “But what if your brother were still alive, and…and you didn’t know how to reach him? If he were staying away because of shame? Because he thought you were disappointed in him and he couldn’t bear it? What would you do then?”

Tara was dumbfounded. How could she possibly answer this?

“It’s sad indeed,” she said carefully, “When a misunderstandin’ keeps people apart. If that’s all that was at the bottom of it, I’d move heaven and earth to get me wee brother back again.”

“Yes. Well.” Mrs. Millinder smiled ruefully and gestured toward her wheelchair. “You see Ah can hardly move myself these days, much less move heaven and earth.”

Tara cursed her own thoughtlessness. “I’m sorry, mum. I didn’t mean—”

“Ah know you didn’t. But perhaps you’d take me back to my room now. I’d like to rest before dinner.”

•  •  •

“But I don’t understand, General. I’m not a military expert. Why was I asked here?”

In the stifling, windowless conference room in Washington, D.C., General John Damon’s expression was characteristically guarded. Since meeting him four years ago at an aerial race in France, Reece had never seen the general reveal much feeling—except the passion for flying machines that both men shared.

“I fear that this country is going to make a grave error, Reece. If we do enter this war—”

“Is it likely?”

“It’s almost certain, if the fighting continues much longer. German U-boats are sinking too many neutral U.S. ships. The British merchant fleet is taking a beating, too, in addition to their naval vessels. It comes to this: Germany has the ability to bring oceangoing commerce to a halt. This country depends on trade for our very existence, Reece.”

“So it’s a matter of economics,” Reece murmured bitterly.

Damon was unperturbed. “Isn’t it always? I’m a soldier, not a politician. It’s not for me to judge whether or not we should wage war. But if we do, I want us to be prepared. That’s why I need your help. We have scarce 200 airplanes for military use right now. That’s not nearly enough.”

Reece frowned. “How many do you need for aerial reconnaissance?”

“Airplanes are going to have a far greater role than that in this war, Reece. The Europeans have already grasped that fact, but then, they’ve been at this for awhile. Did you know that some airplanes are now equipped with wireless sets, so that information can be transmitted back to the bases right away?”

Impressed, Reece shook his head.

Damon continued. “Since the success the English had with the attack on that railway station in Cologne last October, airplanes will be used more and more to bomb ground targets. The French and English are both working on airplanes that can go over 100 miles per hour, with machine guns mounted on them. The Germans can’t be far behind. Maybe they’re already ahead. In the meantime,” he concluded, his tone turning sarcastic, “the great military minds in this country are still concerning themselves with bayonets and cavalry.”

“I need someone to go to Europe and see what they’re doing in the factories. To fly with Allied squadrons and report back to me about the maneuverability and capabilities of those airplanes. To make recommendations on what we’ll need.

“It could be dangerous, Reece, but your country needs you.”

•  •  •

Reece returned to New York and began making arrangements for his trip.

Hap was surprised to learn of it. “You? Going to Europe? There’s a war going on over there, you know. It’s dangerous. Nobody’s going to care that you’re a Yank and that we’re not in it yet. When bombs fall, they don’t look to see who they’re landing on.”

Reece shrugged, only half-listening.

“When will you go?”

“Not for a month or so. It’s going to take the general some time to set everything up. Get permission to send a civilian observer in, that sort of thing. It’ll give me a chance to put my affairs in order. ‘Tie up loose ends,’ was the way Damon put it.” He smiled ruefully. “Not that there are many to tie up these days.”

“Reece, you’re not doing this because…because you can’t find Tara, are you?”

Was he? Was that the real reason he was leaving? Wearily, he conceded to himself that Hap may have hit upon a truth. Hap and Delores knew the whole story by now, and Hap told Reece that Tara had—at least at one time—shared his feelings. It was too much to hope she still felt that way, wherever she was. He had let her down. He should have broken off his engagement right away, and not carried on with the charade for so long. She would be here with him if he had acted sooner.

He sat heavily in a chair. “What’s left for me here, Hap?”

“She’ll come back some day, Reece. She just got spooked by Muldoon. She won’t stay away forever.”

“I should have been here to help her.”

“You can’t blame yourself for what Muldoon did.”

“No. I guess not.” He frowned, then sighed. “But with every day that passes, I think Tara must be making a new life for herself. What makes you think she’s waiting for me? She’s beautiful and spirited, warm and caring. Some other man will come along, if one hasn’t already. A woman like that doesn’t sit on the shelf for very long.”

Hap didn’t bother to argue with him. He knew there was truth in what Reece said. “There’s one other thing, Reece. You should try and make peace with your mother before you go. Don’t leave things the way they are.” Hap was a firm believer in relations getting along, and found the estrangement between Reece and his mother deeply disturbing.

“You mean—in case I don’t come back?”

Hap refused to answer.

It was a thought Reece returned to again and again in the days that followed. If he could just see his mother. Talk to her face to face and explain things. Even if she refused to listen, he could leave knowing that he’d tried. Getting into the mansion might pose a problem. “The servants have their orders,” she’d written. He knew that Emory would be no ally to him.

The solution presented itself several days after his talk with Hap, when Delores dropped a newspaper on the table in front of him at breakfast. “Look—here’s an item on the society page about your parents.”

“He’s my
step
father,” Reece corrected her.

“Right. Well, look at this: your mother and
step
father are having a masquerade ball next week.”

As Reece scanned the brief article, a plan quickly hatched in his mind…

•  •  •

Tara’s romance with Broadway started when she was sent to the market one day and met with someone from her not-all-that-distant past.

Roxanne, her old nemesis from the theater, was as surprised as Tara at their encounter, and just as rude as she’d always been. “My, my. What a pretty frock, Tara. I’d say you’re doing quite well for yourself. And to think we wondered what would become of you when you retired so hastily from vaudeville.”

Tara steeled herself against the insults. “It’s a maid’s uniform, as well you know. I’m not ashamed of it. At least I’ve steady, honest work.”

“What a coincidence. So have I. I’m a headliner now. But you probably don’t get to the theater much these days. So I’ll tell you: I get all the good songs now. Miss Sarah Bernhardt herself came backstage after one of my performances to compliment me.”

“I’m very happy for you,” Tara said, nearly choking on her frustration. “Sure and I always thought you were very talented. It’s only right that you get the success due you.”

She turned on her heel and walked away rapidly so Roxanne wouldn’t see her tears.

“Tara! Wait!” Roxanne hurried to catch up to her. “I’m sorry. I was just being spiteful. What happened to you—you getting fired like that. It wasn’t fair. I told Mr. Glass so, too. You could have been one of the best. Everyone said so.”