It Was Only Ever You (17 page)

Behind him the band were silent, waiting for his lead. Patrick stood for a moment that felt like for ever, watching as Ava walked to the side of the stage, then he put his head down on his chest, raised both his hands in the air, cocked his left knee up and pointed his toes to the ground and said into the microphone, ‘One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock’ – Leo bashed the drum – ‘five, six, seven o’clock, eight o’clock rock’ – another bash – ‘nine, ten, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock rock, we’re gonna rock’ – bash – ‘around’ – bash – ‘the clock tonight...’ Then all hell broke loose in the band. The vibrancy, the urgency in Patrick’s voice set them alight. They were experienced musicians. They could feel that he had been waiting his twenty-odd years for this moment. They wanted to make the music come alive for him. And they did. Everyone rushed to the dance floor before the song took off. Every booth in the house was vacated, the bar stood empty. The dance floor was a heaving mass of bodies. Patrick sang the three songs on Gerry’s list, and when he tried to go off stage the audience stomped the floor with their feet for him to stay. He ended with a slow waltz to ‘Danny Boy’.

Ava was waiting for him backstage. She was jumping up and down with excitement.

‘You did it!’ she shouted. ‘You were brilliant.
Brilliant
!’

As she pulled him into a friendly hug, Patrick’s legs felt weak under him. Now that the whole thing was over, it was safe to be afraid. He had just entertained a crowd of almost a thousand people in one of the biggest dance halls in the world. Had that really just happened? Was that him they had been clapping for? It had all come upon him so suddenly – and now the girl that had made it happen had her arms around him.

She broke away from the hug and stood in front of him saying, ‘Oh, Patrick – I didn’t know if you could do it – but you did! You were—’

And then it happened. Patrick wrapped his two big hands around her face, pulled her over to him and kissed her, fully, on the mouth.

She gently broke away, and then laughed nervously.

‘Oh,’ she said.

He had not meant to offend her. He had just been overcome with gratitude. Realizing his mistake, he quickly drew back. He loved Rose, and perhaps would always love her, in a way. But Rose was not here. She had not written, and perhaps his friend in the golf-club kitchen had been right: her father had simply sent him to America to get rid of him. Even if that was the case, Patrick told himself, if she had wanted to get in touch with him badly enough, she would have found a way. He had fleetingly thought that perhaps Dr Hopkins had intercepted his letters, but, truthfully, Patrick couldn’t believe he would be that conniving and cruel. It was far more likely that Rose had simply met somebody else now that he was ‘out of the way’. Somebody more ‘suitable’, in accordance with her parents’ wishes. Rose had let him go as surely as her father had banished him. The thought of that had left him lonely, hurt and afraid – but now Ava had come into his life. It seemed to him that in the short time he had been here, he had lived a lifetime. He had come out here, all alone in the big wide world of New York City, and had somehow survived. Which had been, in no small part, due to the kindness of this young woman and her father.

‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to say – thank you.’

She smiled. She wasn’t offended, after all. Ava’s smile was so broad, and her eyes so bright, that Patrick felt he could see everything in the world that mattered in her face.

‘No problem,’ she said.

He leaned across again to kiss her, properly this time, on the cheek. But as his mouth was only an inch away from her skin, she boldly turned to face him and whispered, ‘It was my pleasure.’

S
HEILA
DIDN
’
T
telephone ahead. She didn’t want Samuel and Anya making a fuss.

As she put her key in the door she guiltily wondered how long it had been since she had come to visit. Maybe six months? Now she was arriving with a suitcase.

Samuel heard the key in the door and was in the hall. He silently took her case from her and carried it upstairs to her old room. When Anya came down the stairs, a look of excited elation passed between them. Their girl had come home. Hope. Even though they both knew that Sheila arriving at the door like this meant there was a problem, a failure of some sort.

Sheila followed Anya into the kitchen and picked up the blue apron that was still hanging on the back of the kitchen door, as if waiting for her. Together they prepared the potatoes, Sheila peeling and passing to Anya, who cut them into thin slices and laid them in the baking tray.

‘So – how is your life?’

‘Good,’ Sheila said.

‘You have a boyfriend? You broke up with him?’ Anya asked.

Auntie was always hungry for information and never minced her words. She was a tough old bird, but she seemed smaller, and more stooped since the last time she had been here. She could see love glittering in her aunt’s eyes and felt uncomfortable.

‘I’m thinking of leaving New York,’ she said. ‘Going to work somewhere else. I might only be staying for a few nights. Before I decide where I am going to go. What I am going to do...’

Anya’s face hardened and they prepared the rest of the meal in silence before going to sit for a while. The drawing room had hardly changed in twenty years. The wind-up gramophone had been replaced with a record player. The old tube radio, however, was still there. Sheila looked at the ancient object, then at her uncle.

I should love it here, she thought. Knowing that Anya and Samuel were living a life filled with love, and contentment and easy domesticity, made her impossibly sad. She had never thought she wanted that life and yet she felt the loss of it when she was with them.

Being back here, like this, homeless and jobless, felt like a personal failing. At the same time, Sheila knew she was strong. She kept reminding herself that this was a temporary setback. She would move to Boston, or Chicago perhaps. Once she moved on she would start again, start a new life, in a different city. She would be anonymous again. Free. In some ways, perhaps, this extended visit was a goodbye to her old life and the start of a completely new one. Who knew when she might see the old couple again.

*

After they had eaten their meal, Anya announced she was going to the bakery.

‘Cheesecake. My Sheila loves her cheesecake,’ she said, touching Sheila’s cheek. Her aunt’s hands had always felt old to Sheila, but now they seemed gnarled and ancient. She felt a moment of fear at how old her aunt and uncle were getting.

Anya gave her niece’s cheek a gentle slap. ‘Look at how thin you are! We’ll make you fat again. I promised them I would make you fat...’

She trailed off. Anya always found a way of bringing Sheila’s parents into the conversation. She knew that Sheila did not like the truth, but she also knew that they had been wrong, back then, to lie about her parents. The truth was always better than a lie, even when it was done to protect somebody. Samuel nodded across the room at her irritably, but Anya was defiant. No matter how painful it was, the truth must be faced.

‘You’re in trouble?’ Samuel asked Sheila as soon as his wife had left the house.

‘Nothing I can’t handle, but...’ She looked to see if he would question her further, but his face was impassive. She felt grateful and simply added, ‘I needed to get out of the city.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is not the city, for sure.’

She laughed. He knew how much she hated the cloying suburbia of Riverdale.

‘I came to see you too.’

‘I know that,’ he said. Although he knew no such thing. Samuel wondered, for a moment, if he should apologize for Anya, but decided against it. Samuel believed that pain was something that everyone had to deal with in their own way. Sheila had her own way. He felt sad that she did not include them in her life any more. But he also knew that as guardians, they had to let her go. They were not her parents.

‘You lost your job?’

‘I quit.’

‘You need money?’

‘I’ve got enough to last me a while.’

Samuel walked across to the sideboard and took out a hundred dollars. She shook her head, but he pressed it on her. ‘You know you can always come to me for help.’ He paused, adding, ‘You always have a home here, you know that. Stay as long as you like.’

‘I’ll pay you back,’ she said. As she kissed him, she thought how she would never be able to pay them back for all they had done for her.

Samuel closed his eyes as her lips touched his sagging cheek. Inside, he allowed his heart to call her ‘daughter’.

*

Sheila ate a large slice of cheesecake under Anya’s careful watch, smoked a cigarette with Samuel, then said, ‘I’m going to take a walk. Don’t wait up.’

There was nowhere for her to go out here, but she needed some air, and to escape from the house.

She wandered into Riverdale, with its single row of shops, a hair salon, diner, small boutique and Jewish bakery. She walked past Joyce’s Bakery, where Sheila’s birthday had been written in a book and the same cake was produced every year, a chocolate and vanilla ring sponge. Philip in the salon hair was nearly as old as Anya now. He used to set her hair into tight curls every Saturday afternoon and had trimmed and set Sheila’s unforgiving frizz straight every six weeks. Walking these streets again plunged Sheila back into her childhood. She knew that this place should make her feel comfortable, happy and secure. But every perfectly trimmed lawn, and clean, painted house in this neat cloistered neighbourhood made her feel trapped and claustrophobic. Riverdale and her aunt and uncle’s house made her feel like a child again: a victim of war. Sheila knew she was anything but a victim.

She walked faster away from Riverdale and towards Yonkers. As she reached the end of St Andrews Place she hit the corner of South Broadway. She noticed a large, square building with flashing lights out front and realized she was in the heart of Irish New York. She didn’t know this part of town. The Jews and the Irish lived side by side in adjoining suburbs but never paid each other much attention. As soon as Sheila was old enough to escape Riverdale, she had headed straight towards the bright lights and glamour of Manhattan. Other areas in the Bronx were foreign territory for her.

The sign outside the building was flashing green: the Emerald Ballroom. Sheila didn’t know much about the Irish but she knew they liked to drink. And she needed a drink.

She paid her dollar at the front door, but didn’t bother to check in her coat. She would not be long. The place was thronged. It was a standard dance venue. It could have been the Twilight Ballroom, except it was much busier. This was midweek but it was as packed as if it was Saturday night. The long banquettes at the side were flanked by two big bars. Sheila bought a packet of cigarettes from a plump tray-girl in a hokey uniform emblazoned with shamrocks and went to sit at the bar.

She looked around at the crowd. They were all Irish. She didn’t know how she could tell except that she just could. The men were bigger and broader than usual. The women were plumper and they laughed more. It felt strange sitting in a place like this as a punter. The band was absolutely dreadful. Actually, the band was fine, it was the singer who was truly atrocious. Out of tune in an almost comical way. Service at the bar was dreadful too and as Sheila tried to order herself a whiskey, some kind of a kerfuffle started up and she was unable to get anyone’s attention.

Frustrated, she lost patience and got up to leave. She congratulated herself for having left her coat on and was just about to push open the exit door when ‘Rock Around the Clock’ came on. It was still her favourite number, and she could use some cheering up. She lit a cigarette and stood, twisting on the spot, elbows by her side. The kid singing on stage was doing a good job, and he had a pretty good voice too. That being said, every damn kid in town could sing ‘Rock Around the Clock’ these days. When that final abrupt cymbal came down at the end, Sheila threw her cigarette butt on the floor, stubbed it out with her heel and pushed open the exit door.

A voice stopped her in her tracks.

The boy on stage had started singing a ballad in the deepest, sweetest baritone she had ever heard. She took her hand from the door and leaned against a pillar. Her knees felt weak. She did not notice what song he was singing, only his voice. It was such a powerful sound, it seemed to enter her body and make her tremble from the inside out. It created an emotion in her that was so powerful and so new she could not say what it was. All she knew was that she had never experienced anything like it before. It was as if somebody had torn open her skin, unzipped her so that her very soul was naked. She felt utterly exposed. And yet it was not an uncomfortable feeling, but a glorious one.

Crowds had gathered around the stage and a hush came over the place as he sang. Sheila looked around her. It was the women’s faces that struck her. They were all, without exception, gazing up at the boy on stage. He was barely through the first verse and yet each female in the room was mesmerized, seduced by the extraordinary baritone emanating from him.

And that’s all he was. A boy.

Nice-looking, dark-haired and probably Irish. Not her type, of course, but he was oozing charisma, and talent and stage-charm. She knew he was a newcomer, a nobody. It was probably try-out night, judging by the atrocity that was on before him. He was wearing a cheap jacket that didn’t fit right and was holding the microphone like a nervous amateur.

Put all that together and he almost certainly didn’t have independent management yet. He would just be a part of the resident band. In which case it would be bad form to contact him directly. He was owned by the club and, if there was one thing she knew about the Irish, it was that they were territorial.

The Irish scene was quite different to the one she had worked in. They called their ballrooms dance halls, instead of ballrooms. It was typical of them to give a hokey name to what was actually a vast empire, owned largely by one man. Iggy Morrow. Sheila had never met him, but very few people on the ballroom circuit had. He was so elusive that some people said he didn’t actually exist, but his clubs were so tightly run by a series of managers that it hardly mattered. The Emerald, she figured, was probably one of his.