Never Look Back (30 page)

By the time she’d got the large bowl from the scullery, he was knocking on the door. She opened it, and to her utmost surprise Flynn was standing there, holding the block of ice in a piece of sacking in his hands.

‘Flynn!’ she gasped. Her mind switched back to her embittered thoughts earlier today. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you, what else?’ he said with a smile. ‘I won’t go away until you tell me why you didn’t meet me on Friday.’

She looked nervously back across the parlour towards the kitchen. Giles or Tabitha could come down any minute. ‘The Reverend got me to go back to Five Points with him,’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t let you know because I didn’t know where you lived.’

His smile was as wide as New York Bay. ‘That was worth me giving the ice man ten cents to bring this to your door,’ he said. ‘But just tell me, were you worried you might not see me again?’

‘Worried! I was beside myself,’ she admitted, then, realizing girls shouldn’t be so forward, she slapped her hand over her mouth.

He laughed softly. ‘Then you’ll meet me this Friday?’

‘I could meet you today,’ she said, unable to control her delight. ‘After church I’ve got the whole day off.’

His smile was even broader then. ‘I’ll wait for you along by Castle Clinton. ‘But if anything happens another time it’s the Black Bull I work at,’ he said, putting the ice into her bowl. ‘It’s not a rough dive, not compared with some up there, but if you daren’t come, give a note to an urchin and tell him I’ll give him ten cents when he delivers it.’

She could hear her master’s step on the stairs. ‘I must go,’ she said, looking round fearfully.

He caught her two arms and pulled her close to kiss her. The bowl of ice was between them, but even so the brief touch of his warm lips on hers sent her head reeling.

‘I’ll be there from twelve onwards,’ he said as he turned to go down the steps.

Matilda had to close the door hurriedly for fear of Giles seeing him. But as she walked back into the kitchen with the ice she silently apologized to God for having such little faith in His powers.

‘A penny for your thoughts,’ Giles said to Matilda when he came down the stairs early one morning in February to find her gazing out of the window at the snow-filled street.

‘I was just remembering taking Tabitha tobogganing on Primrose Hill last year,’ she said. ‘Snow was beautiful in England, wasn’t it? It’s so ugly here.’

‘Only this end of New York,’ he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and looking out with her. Despite the early hour, dozens of carts had churned up the snow and made it dirty, and though it was still like a thick white blanket on the roof-tops, from down here in the parlour Matilda couldn’t see that. ‘Further up in Harlem it will be as lovely as in England, and I expect it’s a picture out in New Jersey. I don’t doubt the children are pestering Miss Rowbottom right now to let them go out in it.’

‘When can I go to see them again?’ she asked wistfully. She had been only twice since the day they took Cissie, once more with seven new children, then at Christmas for a visit. There was no room for any more children now, but the Reverend Kirkbright was looking to find good people in Pennsylvania and
Connecticut to adopt some of them, to make room for more needy cases.

‘When the weather gets better,’ he said. ‘Sidney and Cissie ask after you every time I visit.’

‘Are they really happy?’ she asked. Giles had been out there the previous day, checking that the provisions sent had reached them. Over supper last night Giles had talked in general about all the children. But in front of Lily they couldn’t really discuss individuals, for fear of letting things slip which would alarm her.

‘Yes, they are happy,’ Giles smiled. ‘Sidney is blossoming into a fine, strong lad, and if I had to pick just one child as an example of how successful our rescue plan has been, it would be him. Miss Rowbottom tells me he’s grown three inches since he arrived and he’s put on around eighteen pounds. He’ll work until he drops alongside Job on the Home farm, and he’s an inspiration to the younger children. That lad will go far, he’s kind-hearted, canny, and good with his hands. If he doesn’t care much for book learning, that doesn’t matter.’

‘And Cissie?’ she asked.

‘She’s a very impudent girl.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘But Miss Rowbottom praises her more than she despairs. She’s an excellent mother and Pearl and Peter are flourishing. In fact all the children treat her like she’s their mother, and that leaves Miss Rowbottom free to do the tasks she’s better qualified to do, like teaching and housekeeping.’

He paused.

‘There’s a “but”, isn’t there,’ Matilda asked anxiously.

‘Yes,’ he sighed ruefully. ‘I sensed signs of rebellion yesterday, Cissie doesn’t like taking orders and I think she feels a bit cut off from life and men out there. I think when the babies get bigger and the weather improves, we might find her wanting to leave.’

‘But how would she manage with Peter?’ Matilda asked.

‘That’s the real problem,’ he sighed deeply as if he’d already spent a great deal of time thinking about it. ‘If she comes back to the city she’ll be bound to turn back to prostitution. It’s the only way she could earn enough money to keep her boy.’

Although Matilda was a little surprised by her master’s bluntness, it pleased her to find he had finally grasped the real reason why so many women turned to selling their bodies. Almost
everyone of his class believed that such women were low creatures with no morals, but then as Flynn had once pointed out, they had no comprehension of the economics of real poverty.

‘Respectable’ employment for an unskilled woman meant a sixty-hour week for often less than a dollar a day It also meant her children must be left alone, often hungry, cold and in danger. Matilda was pretty certain that even she could be tempted into prostitution, however distasteful that idea was, if it meant her children could be warmly clothed, well fed and she had enough money to call a doctor if one of them was sick, all without being away from them for too long.

‘There are farmers out in the country desperate for wives,’ she said, repeating something Flynn had told her. ‘They advertise in the newspaper all the time. Perhaps I could suggest that to Cissie?’

‘Have you been reading those and looking for someone?’ He laughed and tweaked her cheek with affection. ‘You don’t have to go to those lengths, Matty, you’d only have to flutter your eyelashes at someone here and they’d come running to be your sweetheart.’

Matilda blushed. Since she had started helping him with the orphaned children, she had gradually become Giles’s confidante. It was to her he poured out his dismay at the mainly uncaring society they lived in, with its cruelty, bigotry and snobbishness. He used her as a sounding board when planning a talk to raise money for the Home, he told her of his dreams to see decent, cheap housing built for the working classes, equal rights for women, and slavery abolished. In turn Matilda shared with him her first-hand knowledge of what it was to be poor and disadvantaged. She had opened his middle-class eyes to exactly why the slums were nurseries for criminals, and indeed why so many slum people could never be lured into churches, or their children into schools.

Yet in all this time she was still unable to tell him about Flynn. She didn’t understand why this was so. Maybe Giles wouldn’t approve that he worked in a saloon, but he kept an open mind about people until he’d met them, and she was sure his only real concern would be that Flynn was an honourable man and capable of taking care of her.

Matilda believed Flynn was, but perhaps that was because she
was overwhelmed by the depths of her feelings for him. Merely to say she loved him didn’t accurately describe how she felt. It was a passion which roared inside her, demanding more each time they met. More kisses, more touching, more time together, and sometimes that desire grew so strong that she could barely hold back. Sometimes she even blamed Lily and Giles for the way she felt, believing that if she didn’t need to hide Flynn away, it wouldn’t all feel so desperate.

‘There would be no point in me finding a sweetheart,’ she retorted. She was just about to add that whatever he was like, Lily would find some fault in him, but she stopped herself just in time. ‘I’d never have any time to spend with him,’ she said instead, then walked back into the kitchen to cook the breakfast.

Giles stood at the window for a moment or two, puzzling on the sharpness of that last remark. Was it a complaint that she had so little free time? Or something more?

He doubted that Matilda really thought herself ill used, it wasn’t in her nature, but added to other things he’d observed in the past few months, he wondered if there was someone she was keeping secret. She always looked flushed when she came in after her afternoon off, and somehow he didn’t think looking at the shops, or even meeting up with other maids for tea and gossip, would create such animation. Occasionally she came out with astute social comments about America too, that couldn’t have come just from observation or newspapers. But he had never questioned her. Giles believed she was entitled to a private life, and he expected that when she was good and ready, she’d tell him about it.

As Matilda whisked up eggs for breakfast, she was close to tears. She had been seeing Flynn for almost five months now, and though she lived for those precious few hours with him each Friday, sometimes she felt so frustrated she almost wished she’d never met him and churned up all these feelings inside her. It was too cold to go walking, and so the only place they could go was tea rooms. Yet it wasn’t enough just to talk and hold hands any longer, they were both desperate to be alone together somewhere they could kiss and hold each other.

All the talking they did just made the differences in their working lives so much more obvious, and the problems insurmountable.
Often, lying wide awake in bed, reliving Flynn’s passionate kisses, she’d imagine him being in the saloon, pouring out jugs of ale, laughing and joking with his customers. He would still be pouring drinks when she was fast asleep. Then while she was up, cleaning out the grate in the parlour, laying the table for breakfast, and washing and dressing Tabitha, he was still in bed. Even his religion was different to hers, for she knew now he was a Catholic. If he had been able to come to Trinity Church on Sunday, maybe Lily would overlook that he worked in a saloon and let him take her out on Sunday afternoons. But Flynn took his religion seriously, he was proud of being a Catholic, and although one church was the same as another to her, Flynn didn’t see it that way.

But then Flynn didn’t look at anything in the way others did. He laughed at the middle classes and said they were hypocrites. He thought the poor lacked imagination and daring, and he despised those who had inherited wealth. He took the view that he was entirely unique, a free spirit who could never be shackled to a job he hated, or even to one place.

While Matilda found this attitude to be part of his charm, it also worried her, for when she married she wanted stability and peace of mind. But Flynn would laugh at her when she ventured this opinion. He said life should be an adventure, and that she must trust in his abilities. He said that by the spring he’d have enough money saved to catch a boat to Charleston. As soon as he’d found a job, he’d send for her and they’d be married.

While Matilda was with him, she was always swept away by his belief in himself. She saw herself stepping off the boat, getting married and going to live in a pretty white wooden house, with a porch to sit out on in the evenings, a garden for her to grow fruit and vegetables, a horse for Flynn in the stable.

Yet as soon as she got home, doubts would creep in. Supposing it didn’t turn out like that? If Flynn couldn’t get the kind of job he wanted, and the riches he expected never materialized? Home might be a tumbledown shack. She might end up having a baby every year like so many other women did, and not enough money coming in to feed them. Flynn might just get so embittered that he’d turn to drinking.

If she had nothing now, then it wouldn’t seem such a gamble, but she’d grown used to a warm, comfortable house, good food
and security. She told herself daily that she couldn’t stay with the Milsons for ever, and that she wanted a life that was all her own. But what of Tabitha? It wouldn’t be easy to leave a child she loved so much, and she didn’t think Flynn had really grasped how much Giles and Lily meant to her either.

It seemed to Matilda that some of these worries could be eased by just spending more time with Flynn. She had only seen one side of him, a handsome, passionate man who made her laugh, told her stories, and charmed her so she didn’t look for faults. But alone in her room at night, she saw how little she really knew about him. His tales about his past were vague, there was no collaboration from a friend or family member. For all she knew he could have run from Ireland or England because he’d been in trouble there. If she could see him working, mixing with other people, or just be out having fun with him, then maybe her doubts would be swept away for ever. But only some sort of miracle would give her that chance.

The miracle came in April just after Easter. Matilda woke one Monday morning to find the sun shining and a definite touch of spring in the air. When she went out into the yard to the privy she noticed green buds on the honeysuckle growing over the walls, and heard birdsong rather than just the customary squawk of seagulls.

She made pancakes for breakfast, and both Giles and Lily seemed to be in an unusually happy mood, teasing Tabitha about how much she ate these days, telling her that if she continued to grow so fast they’d have no clothes to fit her. She thought they must all be affected by spring fever.

Matilda was just about to get up from the table to clear away when Giles said he and his wife had something to tell her.

‘We’re going to Boston for a holiday,’ he said. ‘We want you to look after the house for us while we’re away, and have a bit of a rest yourself.’

They were going to stay with an old lawyer friend of Giles’s from Bath, and they were both clearly very excited at the prospect of seeing a new American city and spending time with people from home.