Never Look Back (15 page)

Matilda might have found the voyage as exciting as Tabitha if she hadn’t been forced to spend so many hours cloistered in the state-room with her mistress, holding bowls as she retched, sponging her down and cleaning up after her. Her sympathy was stretched to breaking-point because she felt the woman was doing nothing to help herself and indeed wallowing in self-pity. At times the only way she could stop herself from saying what she thought was out of gratitude that she shared a cabin with Tabitha and wasn’t down with the steerage passengers.

She had been appalled to find that these passengers were all crowded into a section of the ship which couldn’t even be honoured with the title of ‘cabin’. It was in fact just a dark, dank hold, roughly furnished with narrow wooden bunks, men, women and children all in together regardless of the fact that they were three or four separate families. With scarcely any ventilation, one meal a day – a pot of foul-smelling, greasy stew –
and only being allowed up on deck at certain times of the day, it wasn’t surprising they were all very sick.

Matilda didn’t think she could ever forget the horror she had encountered when she went in there with Giles when one of the women, fearing for her child’s life, had asked for a priest. The stench hit her first, worse than anything she’d ever encountered in Finders Court, and she’d had to cover her mouth and nose to prevent herself gagging. In the dim light of one lantern she saw the floor was awash with vomit and excrement. Hollow eyes turned to her, the passengers being unable to lift their heads from their saturated straw mattresses, and their pitiful groaning was heart-rending.

She had taken the two-year-old boy out of there, washed him, and tried to get him to drink some boiled water. But her tender care didn’t help. He died a couple of hours later, and his parents were too weak even to climb up on to the deck to attend their little son’s hasty funeral.

Matilda suspected that, but for Giles’s timely intervention, there could have been more deaths. The following day he insisted that the Captain got everyone out of the hold on to the deck, and had the crew remove the foul mattresses and scrub the area out with vinegar.

Yet the Captain refused to give the passengers better food – the only concession he made was to allow them up on deck for longer periods than before. Thankfully the weather turned calmer, and there were no more deaths.

But Matilda didn’t think she could ever forget that little boy she’d nursed, or how callous Lily had been about his death. She had berated her husband and Matilda for exposing themselves to infection, and in fact said that if Tabitha became sick she would hold them responsible.

Thankfully the trials of the voyage were ended, and with land ahead Matilda was prepared to try to forget such things. ‘Tabitha wants to know where our house is,’ she said.

‘I don’t know myself exactly,’ Giles said, smiling down at his daughter as he held his wife. ‘But come up here beside us and I’ll tell you what landmarks I do know.’

Tabitha climbed up on a coil of rope beside him.

‘See that church?’ he said, pointing to a tall steeple towering above all the other buildings on the sky-line. ‘That must be
Trinity Church because I was told it’s a navigational aid to sailors. That’s the church we’re going to. So I expect our house will be somewhere near.’

‘Its very near the wharves,’ Lily said in a quavery voice.

Matilda had to look away so her mistress wouldn’t see her smile. She thought Lily was an expert in pessimism.

‘Well, of course it is,’ Giles replied in a cheerful tone. ‘The church dates back to 1698, at that time it would have been the heart of the settlement here. It’s because New York is such a safe harbour that the city has prospered and grown so large.’

‘Well, I hope we don’t have to put up with drunken sailors and all that kind of unpleasantness,’ Lily said with a pout. ‘As a young girl in Bristol, I used to find it quite frightening and I’m sure Tabitha will too.’

‘I will not, Mama,’ Tabitha piped up. ‘I like sailors.’

‘Do you know who is coming to meet us?’ Lily asked her husband as they walked down the gangplank on to the quay.

Matilda’s head was swivelling this way and that, bombarded by sights, sounds and smells that were so very reminiscent of the Port of London, and indeed Bristol. Yet it was so hot that everything seemed magnified and very bewildering.

The smell of fish was overpowering, the wheels of carts, cabs and carriages rattled across the cobbles like rumbling thunder, and the men loading and unloading ships seemed to be shouting at the top of their voices. The ships’ bowsprits reached half-way across the street, sails left to dry flapped in the breeze, and the quayside was littered with everything from bales of cotton to baskets of live hens and even pigs.

‘Reverend Kirkbright did say he might not be able to come personally. But he assured me in his letter that we would be met and taken to our accommodation,’ Giles replied, shading his eyes from the sun as he looked around. ‘I dare say they’ll pick us out at any minute. So we must stay right here so they can identify us.’

Five or ten minutes passed, long enough for one of the crew to bring out their trunk and other luggage and put it down beside them. Lily sat down on the trunk and opened her parasol, urging Tabitha to come under the shade too.

Matilda was growing nervous, not because she felt threatened
in any way, but because she could see by Lily’s face that she was working herself up into a paddy. A young couple had rushed up to the Smethwicks the moment they came off the ship. They were already leaving in a carriage, their luggage strapped on the back. To her right one of the steerage families were being warmly welcomed by a crowd of friends or relatives, on her left the mother of the little boy who had died was sobbing in the arms of a much younger man, and Matilda guessed that this was the brother who had urged her and her husband to come here. The Milsons had disembarked quite some time before either of these families. There were dozens of people just hanging around, but mostly they were working men in rough clothes, or women in shawls and caps, hardly the kind of people who would be sent from a church.

‘Isn’t there someone you could ask?’ Lily said, covering her nose with a lace handkerchief and looking as if she might just pass out at any minute. Yet the moment Giles made to move away, she called him back. ‘No, you can’t leave us, it isn’t safe.’

Matilda guessed she was further intimidated by a group of negroes sitting on the back of a handcart smoking pipes. She doubted her mistress had ever seen a black man before. She hadn’t seen many herself, but Giles had told her a great deal about slavery in the Southern states during the voyage, and explained that while the Northern states had freed theirs some years earlier, little had been done to help them find employment in rural areas and they tended to flock into the big cities looking for work.

They waited and waited in the hot sun. A drunk lurched up to them and appeared to be asking them for money, but as he spoke a foreign language he could merely have been passing the time of day. A man rolling a barrel came dangerously close to running Matilda down with it, and a rough-looking character in a derby hat, chewing something brown and disgusting-looking which he spat noisily on to the ground, approached Giles and offered him accommodation nearby. They heard at least a dozen different languages spoken, and saw two men roll out of a public house wrestling like prize fighters.

Giles kept pacing up and down, glancing at his watch and at his wife’s tense expression, and although from time to time he
reassured her that someone would arrive any minute, it was quite clear he had no idea what to do for the best.

At last, some hour after they’d left the ship, a man drove up in a trap.

‘Reverend and Mrs Milson?’ he asked, reining in the horse.

Giles assured him they were and the ruddy-faced man with a bulbous nose jumped down and introduced himself as Mr MacGready. He made no apology for arriving so late, but said that they’d been expected several days earlier. He went on to say he was to take them directly to their house on State Street, and Reverend Kirkbright would call on them as soon as he was able.

He was a bumptious little man with a Scots accent and he made no effort to welcome them, just helped Lily up into the trap, bundled Tabitha in after her and left Matilda to climb up unassisted.

‘Take the other end of the trunk,’ he ordered Giles curtly and together they hauled it up on to the back.

Sitting in the back with Lily and Tabitha, Matilda couldn’t hear what passed between Giles and MacGready as they drove out of the docks. Yet she could see her master’s face in profile and it seemed to her that he wasn’t pleased at what he was being told.

Their destination turned out to be quite near to the wharf, but as the roads were congested with carts, gigs and cabs, it took over half an hour to reach it, and at every jolt, every strident cry from street traders, or the sight of yet another seedy looking public house, Lily let out a disapproving sniff.

Matilda personally thought it all looked fascinating. It had a great deal in common with the part of London she’d grown up in, in as much as there were thousands of people milling around, noise and the strong odours of horse droppings, drains and rotting rubbish. Yet the vast majority of the people here were well dressed, the shops were invitingly well stocked, and it had a bold, brash quality which appealed to her. Rickety wooden houses and warehouses stood alongside much grander buildings, and a glance into little lanes off the main street showed many very elegant houses. She felt she could be happy here, it was exciting, colourful, and the working men didn’t look as subservient as they did at home. She hoped that meant there
wasn’t such a big division between classes and that it really was a place of great opportunity for everyone.

‘Is this to be our house?’ Lily asked as MacGready pulled up the horse outside a narrow clapboard house in dire need of a coat of paint and its shutters mended. It was tucked in on the end of a row of fine-looking five-storey houses which were very similar to Georgian ones at home. They had imposing steps up to their front doors, and newly painted railings. Their house looked like a poor relation.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ MacGready said as he jumped down. ‘It’s all quality folk live here, so you’ll be fine.’

That remark sounded very like sarcasm to Matilda and she wondered if the man was always so rude to strangers. She was soon to find MacGready had no social graces or sensitivity. He hauled the trunk in through the front door which led directly into a gloomy parlour, and left it there in the middle of the floor. ‘There’s wood, and coal for the stove in a shed in the yard,’ he said curtly. ‘The oil for the lamps is there too. They’ve left a few groceries on the table. You’re lucky there’s a water pump out in the yard, only put in a few months since. But I’ll be getting on my way now if you don’t mind.’

‘Where is the housekeeper?’ Lily asked, her voice trembling.

MacGready glanced at Matilda holding Tabitha in her arms. ‘Ain’t one servant enough for you?’

He was gone, slamming the door behind him before any of them could say anything in reply.

Lily slumped down on to a couch in shock. Her husband looked stunned. Only Tabitha seemed unconcerned, but then she was almost asleep in Matilda’s arms.

‘It reminds me of houses in the country back home,’ Matilda said, determined to avert her mistress from any further bouts of crying. ‘Once I’ve given it a bit of polishing and unpacked everything it will be real cosy. Won’t it, sir?’

Giles looked a bit startled to be addressed. He was clearly deep in his own thoughts, perhaps smarting at the lack of welcome.

‘Yes, of course it will, Matty,’ he replied. ‘Now, shall we look around, dear?’ he said to his wife.

When she didn’t reply or even move from the couch, Matilda put Tabitha next to her. ‘I’ll go with Sir,’ she said. ‘You stay here and get your breath back.’

Their tour of the house was brief and silent. It consisted of a large kitchen behind the parlour and a tiny scullery beyond that. The shady yard had a brick path down to the privy. By a narrow staircase tucked behind a door in the kitchen they reached the two main bedrooms, then up a further flight of stairs were two more smaller attic ones.

It was clean, the furniture plain and functional, but the beds weren’t made up and there was a musty smell as if it hadn’t been lived in for some months. Had Matilda ever been offered such a house for her family she would have been overjoyed at her good fortune, but she couldn’t see the Milsons appreciating its simple charms when they were used to so much larger and grander accommodation.

‘It’s smaller than I expected,’ Giles reported back to his wife as they came back downstairs. ‘But it’s quite adequate for our needs.’

Matilda looked sharply at her master. He had made no comment about anything as they looked around, his remark seemed quite calm and resigned, yet she had a feeling he was angry.

Giles was in fact seething. He was a humble man by nature, he didn’t believe his family’s status or his calling should give him preferential treatment. But back home a new parson, particularly with a wife and small child, would be greeted warmly, refreshments offered and their new home sparkling a welcome. MacGready, who appeared from the little he’d said to be nothing more than a church caretaker, had been insufferably rude, implying that Milson’s new role would not be as parson, but some kind of lowly assistant to the Reverend Darius Kirkbright. If it wasn’t for being afraid to leave Lily and his child, he would be straight off now to see the man and give him a piece of his mind.

But Lily seemed to be almost in a trance. Aside from the hand stroking her child’s hair as she slept with her head on her mother’s lap, she was motionless and mute, her eyes full of fear.

Giles had no idea how to deal with her, and that made him feel even more wretched because he’d insisted on coming to America despite all her protests. Was he a brute who thought only of his own desires? Or was she at fault in not supporting him? Back home he’d been so sure of himself, believed he had
been called here by a higher power. Now he was not so certain of that, maybe it was sheer vanity to think he was so important.