Never Look Back (110 page)

Matilda guessed what Mary was thinking now. Sidney had managed to sail through the war without harm, even his infected foot had occurred through a simple accident, not from an injury by a weapon. Was it really possible that a boy who had survived such a terrible childhood and grown to be one of the most popular characters of San Francisco could be snatched from her now, in his prime, just for going back to where he was born?

When Sebastian and Tabitha came in together, both with drawn faces, Matilda feared the worst.

‘He’s pulling through,’ Sebastian said, but though that was meant to cheer them, Matilda saw a defeated look in his blue eyes. ‘I can’t say right now that he will make a full recovery, the
beating he took was a very brutal one. But he’s strong and healthy, so I’m hopeful.’

Mary gave a little hiccuping sob, and Tabitha enfolded her in her arms to comfort her.

Matilda could say nothing. She could see that head wound in her mind’s eye. Sebastian may have managed to get out all the splintered bone, and keep out any infection until it healed, but what she’d seen protruding was brain. Like Sebastian and Tabitha, she wanted to believe in miracles, but was something as delicate as a brain able to heal itself?

Why hadn’t she stopped the boys going there? Wasn’t it just because she was as curious as them? She would have to pay dearly for that curiosity if Sidney didn’t recover, for she knew it would be on her conscience for ever.

Chapter Twenty-eight

New York 1900

As the clock on the mantelpiece struck seven, Tabitha put down her book on her lap and sighed deeply.

It was dark and very cold outside, and still Matty hadn’t come home. ‘It’s too bad of you worrying me like this,’ she said aloud.

She smiled faintly at her own words, for irritating as Matty’s behaviour had been lately, she saw the humour in their now reversed roles. Tabitha had become the mother figure, Matty the child.

For so many years Matilda had seemed so very much older than herself, an adult when she was a child, a mature woman while she was still a girl. But in fact there was only fourteen years between them, nothing once you were sixty yourself, with three grown-up children and five grandchildren.

Tabitha stood up and studied herself in the over-mantel mirror. She looked like a grandmother too, her once dark hair was snow-white, and she was plump, with a double chin and wrinkles. In many ways she liked the way she looked now, for while patients viewed a young female doctor with suspicion, they felt they could trust someone of her age, gender didn’t really enter into it.

She smiled at herself, imagining how amused Sebastian would have been at such a statement. It was the year he was sixty, eleven years ago, that they sold the brownstone they bought when they married, and moved into this elegant, spacious apartment overlooking Central Park. He had found the stairs in the house difficult, but he would never admit that was the reason they moved. He told everyone it was because he wanted to live somewhere with a view.

Two years ago he had passed away in the armchair looking at the view of the park. She had been sitting right here by the fire,
and thought he was asleep, it was only when she got up to pull the drapes that she found he had died.

She missed him so much, his gentle ways, beautiful deep voice, his common sense and his diplomacy. In twenty-five years of marriage they’d hardly had a cross word – heated arguments sometimes, but they were always just a difference of opinion, medical matters, politics or religion, nothing personal.

Yet she wasn’t lonely, for their children all lived quite close by. Giles, now twenty-six, had gone into the Everett family business started by his grandfather, and had married a society girl, Lucy Harkness, who despite being five years older than Giles, and considered a little ‘fast’, surprised everyone by quickly producing twin boys, then a little girl the year after, and becoming a superb mother.

Twenty-four-year-old Alfred was training to be a doctor, and hoped to be a surgeon. He was as committed to medicine as both Sebastian and herself, but he favoured his grandfather, Giles Milson, with the same doleful dark eyes, dark curly hair and strong social conscience.

Lily, their only daughter, was twenty-two, and very like Grandmother Everett. She had met John Dearing, the heir of a prominent banker, at a ball when she was only seventeen. Within a year they were married, within three they had two sons, and their life was a constant social whirl.

A ring on the front-door bell made Tabitha start, and she ran out into the hall to find Alice the maid had reached the front door before her, and there stood Matilda in her fur coat and hat.

‘Oh, Matty! Where have you been? I’ve been so worried about you,’ Tabitha said, rushing up to her and touching Matilda’s cheeks. ‘You’re frozen! Now, come right in by the fire and I’ll pour you a brandy.’

‘I’m fine, really I am,’ Matilda insisted. ‘Don’t fuss.’

Tabitha took Matilda’s arm and led her into the drawing-room. She took her coat and hat and nudged her into the armchair closest to the fire, then knelt down in front of her to unbutton her boots. ‘These are damp,’ she said, looking up at the older woman reproachfully. ‘And there’s salt stains on them. Have you been down by the docks again?’

‘Yes. I had a trip around the bay in a tug,’ Matilda said airily.

Tabitha made no comment. Try as she might to keep Matilda
away from the docks, because she considered it dangerous, the older Matilda got, the more obsessed she seemed to be with that area.

She rubbed Matilda’s feet with her hands, then slipped out to the bedroom to get her slippers. She brought them back, warmed them by the fire for a minute or two, then put them on her feet. It was only after she’d put a warm shawl around her shoulders and given her a brandy that she spoke again.

‘It won’t do, Matty,’ she said firmly. ‘I can’t have you wandering around the city all the time. You could be attacked by someone, you could fall and hurt yourself, and it worries me because I don’t know where you are.’

‘I can still look after myself, I haven’t gone crazy yet,’ Matilda said, looking up at Tabitha with hurt-filled eyes. ‘I like to talk to people. You know I can’t stand your grand friends for very long.’

Tabitha wasn’t the least hurt by that remark, she had heard Matty say such things almost all her life. The older she got, the more she sought out the company of ordinary people. She liked nothing better than a chat with Alice, or Jackson the coachman.

‘Maybe you should have stayed in San Francisco,’ Tabitha said, perching on the arm of the chair. ‘You had so many people there that you liked.’

‘It wasn’t the same after Sidney died,’ Matilda said, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I was glad when Mary married again, but she didn’t need me sticking around reminding her of the past. Dolores and Henry Slocum had gone too. Besides, Peter and Lisette came here, and Mary’s children are all off in different places.’

Tabitha and Sebastian’s worst fears about Sidney’s recovering from that beating were realized. It left him brain-damaged. He recovered enough to walk, talk, feed and dress himself, even his red hair grew back over the scar, but he was just like a big, amiable six-year-old.

Once Matilda and Mary knew how it was going to be, Matilda had the apartment above London Lil’s extended further, so there was more room for all of them, and took Sidney home. He could still lift beer barrels, sweep the floor and do simple jobs, but there was no question of him running the saloon any more, or being a real husband and father. Mostly he sat out out on the
veranda and stared at the view of the bay. Matilda hired a permanent manager, and she and Mary looked after the children together.

Sidney died fifteen years ago when he was fifty, his five children were then ranging between sixteen and twenty-four, and Mary still a very attractive woman of forty-seven. The man she married a year later had been her lover for almost ten years, but the only person who had known that was Matilda, and it was only a short while ago that Mary had told Tabitha herself.

Ten years ago, when Matilda was sixty-four, she finally sold London Lil’s. Since the miraculous cable car was run up California Street Hill, right past her place, land up there had suddenly become the most sought after in the entire city. Millionaires began to build mansions, and it soon became known to everyone as Nob Hill. To Peter and Tabitha it seemed very ironic that London Lil’s, which had supported so many people, and been such a major part of Matty’s life and character, should finally make her a millionairess when it was torn down.

But once it was gone, with all its memories, there seemed to be little to keep Matilda in San Francisco. She stayed for a while, set up trust funds to enable her working girls’ hostel and the two houses in Folsom Street to keep running, and when Peter came to New York, she decided that was where she belonged too.

Tabitha knew that Matilda had always blamed herself for Sidney’s brain damage, though she never said as much. She had loved and protected Mary and her children, and nursed Sidney right to the end. It was another, rather sweet irony that the shooting, rather than causing outrage, had finally brought her not only acceptance in San Francisco’s society, but the admiration she so richly deserved. In her own time she had become a legend of the Old West, and where once people whispered salacious stories about her, now they loudly proclaimed her courage, good deeds, her sparkling personality and her beauty.

Tabitha smiled fondly at Matilda and wiped her eyes dry Old as she was, she had retained the essence of her youthful beauty. Her blue eyes were still lovely, she still had her teeth, and her smile as warm as it had been when she was a girl. ‘Now, you old fraud,’ she said. ‘I know the real reason you came here, and it wasn’t because you had no friends left there. It was because
you were too vain to let anyone in that town see you grow old!’

Matilda smiled. She knew there was some truth in that. ‘I should have gone back to England,’ she said. ‘I think I will go too,’

Tabitha shook her head, her eyes smiling. ‘You don’t really want to go back, you belong here, where you are wanted and needed. Now, I guess Alice has the supper ready. I’ll tell her we’ll have it in front of the fire tonight. Then you can have a nice hot bath and I’ll read you some
David Copperfield
in bed.’

‘It’s funny how we get used to things,’ Matilda said thoughtfully. ‘Like turning on a tap and getting hot water, then pulling out a plug and seeing it run away. Back in Primrose Hill I had to lug so many buckets of water up the stairs for your bath. I thought it would always be that way. I was looking at the Brooklyn Bridge today and I had a job to remember what the river looked like before it was built. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to clean the oil lamps, and to go to a privy outside.’

‘I don’t think I want to remember that sort of thing.’ Tabitha laughed. ‘Every time I switch on the electric light here in this apartment I think it’s a miracle. I’m not a bit nostalgic for the old days.’

‘I am, but I suppose that’s because I’m getting so old. Sebastian always said folk revert to children again once they are past seventy.’

‘You’ll never be really old.’ Tabitha patted her cheek affectionately. ‘Now, I’m going to see about the supper.’

Tabitha had her ears pricked as she heard the bath water running away later. Matilda loved baths, she would wallow in one for hours. She still liked beautiful clothes too, and dainty underwear, try as she might, Tabitha could never get her to wear a woollen vest, or a flannel petticoat. Matilda loved the feel of silk, and as much lace and embroidery as possible.

Tabitha didn’t hear the bathroom door open, but she knew when it had by the waft of expensive French perfume, and again she smiled. Perfume was another of Matty’s luxuries, she put it on even to go to bed. She would give her half an hour to brush her hair, and rub cream into her hands, then she’d go in to her and read.

Sadly Matilda’s eyesight was fading fast, she could no longer
see to read, and this was one of the reasons why Tabitha worried about her ordering the carriage and going wandering around by the docks. Jackson always insisted he never let her out of his sight, but Tabitha knew he was lying. Matilda charmed him, just as she had been doing with people all her life.

She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. There was hardly a day in her life that Tabitha didn’t thank God for Matilda. Thanks to her she’d escaped an orphanage, become a doctor, encouraged Sebastian enough for him to ask her to marry him, reared three children and had over twenty-five years of loving and being loved.

Marriage had been the best part of her life, she loved her children and her home, yet Sebastian had given her the freedom to have a career of her own too. She’d got her wealthy women clients with their female problems, but she’d also had the satisfaction of becoming respected in her own right as a good doctor, regardless of the fact that she was a woman. Since Peter had come to New York, the pair of them had made many inroads into improving the health of the immigrants in New York. While he had raised money for free clinics, she had manned them and persuaded others to join her.

Tabitha and Sebastian had expected that Peter would turn his back on the poor after what happened to Sidney, and few would have blamed him. But it had the reverse effect, making him care still more. As the years had gone by, his was the voice of thunder which roared among the wealthy socialites, and made them open their eyes to the true evils of poverty. He campaigned for better housing, hospitals, schools, holidays in the country for slum children. He made the rich open their wallets and gave them a conscience, so they volunteered to help, yet he did it with such charm and grace that he retained their friendship.

There was still a great deal more to do, but Tabitha knew her son Alfred would join them in the fight before long, for he had heard Matilda’s tales since he was a little boy and she was his idol. Tabitha often thought the boys’ names should have been switched around. Alfred was so like her father, while Giles was like Sebastian. Lily was just like the flower, tall, elegant and poised. Perhaps time would tell if she had inherited the gentle qualities of her grandmother along with the name.