A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies (28 page)

“Number Four, in spite of the odds and all her practice, hasn’t got a chance,” said Charlotte politely.

“I tend to agree, but the outcome depends on what she’s after.”

Again the whistle, and this time no one bothered to hold anything back; you had to worry for the eardrums of the babies. Number One went down early and punched at the floor and started crying. Numbers Two and Four gave it all they had, but Two took a stumble and plopped down backward on its behind and just sat there, giving up, with a sad and baffled look. Number Four was looking the best, but then, within reach of the cushion, she suddenly turned around and ran back to the other end. All she wanted to do was run, and who needed to be bothered with baubles? Her parents looked heartbroken.

Four was clearly superior but Three was the winner, to wild cheering. Three flung itself on its loot with a shriek of pleasure that overrode every other sound. But it was drowned out by the louder crying of losers One and Two, who were picked up and carried to their cushions by parents. Number Four just kept on running back and forth, and every time someone tried to grab her, she slipped away like an oiled little pig.

Charlotte thought, I wonder if that baby’s related to me.

Then she said to her husband—in his ear; he’d leaned down to her even closer—“Number Three, boy or girl, is going to grow up to be in business,” and he said, “Your father’s name is Cyrus John Kemple and your mother’s name is Helen, originally Helen Roland-son. They are sitting at the small square table nearest the fire, eating their supper.”

The judge called out, “Now the two-year-olds. Bring out the two-year-olds!”

Like a day at the horse races. New sets of playthings were being arranged on the cushions: this time everything looked like something that could be chewed. The one-year-olds were whisked up in their mothers’ arms, and they were all itching to get back into those lanes, and wiggled and howled. What made Charlotte pick up her foot and stomp it down hard on the toes of her husband, she didn’t know; but it certainly, to her, felt good.

He gritted his teeth. He showed no expression when she said, stonily, “That’s not fair, Hays. You spied on my life? You spied on my life and didn’t tell me?”

“But Charlotte, I just now did.”

“Before!”

“But I didn’t know anything, before. I’ve only just succeeded in tracking things down today.”

“Tracking
me
.”

“Only to find you. When I learned of your parents, I’d thought you’d go to them.”

“I don’t
know
them.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You
should
be.”

“If I had known you were sending them money all these years, I would have added to it, Charlotte.”

“You know about that, too?”

“The shoe shop,” he said. She wanted to stamp on his other foot. But she didn’t.

A new set of racers was being brought out. A whole new level of noise. The two-year-olds, it seemed, promised activities in the lanes which the babies couldn’t even dream of. Charlotte didn’t look at the lanes. She looked at the square little table near the fire.

The man and woman at the table were seated sideways to her. She didn’t doubt her husband’s word, but even if she wanted to—was he certain, was he truly certain and, if so, how?—it wouldn’t have done her any good to ask. Hays was leaving. She saw the back of the sleigh driver’s coat, going through the door. She did not go after him or call to him.

The man and the woman were placidly finishing their meal. The woman wiped her mouth with the hem of her apron. The man had a half slice of bread in his hand. He broke off the crust and ate it and offered the soft inner part to the woman, who smiled at him and shook her head no, and he popped it into his mouth. They sat there like two people alone on an island—a silent one, where nothing was moving, where nothing was happening at all.

What if they never got the money she’d been sending all these years? What if the shoe-shop man stole it? Or his daughter who was married to the woodsman, the tree cutter?

Charlotte reached into her purse, hoping she still had some coins. She did, but she didn’t bother to count them: one of the boys who’d passed her and Dickie before, with a sled, was just now walking by, his fist in the air, apparently going after another boy.

Charlotte took hold of the raised fist. Dirty face. Brownish teeth, the two top ones chipped. Runny nose. She showed him the money.

His eyes grew wide instantly. “If you do exactly what I tell you, I’ll give you these.”

Solemn nod. Anything. “Did you see that man who went out the door a moment ago, a stranger?”

“Rich fellow, in a poor fellow’s getup?”

“The very one. He asked me to do a secret errand for him, but I find myself too shy.”

“I’ll do it, miss.”

Charlotte discreetly pointed out the table near the fire. “Do you know the names of that man and woman?”

“Kemple.”

“Those are the ones. Tell them a gentleman wants to know if everything’s all right with what arrives once a year in the mail to their old address. If so, he apologizes for being late this year, but it will come.”

He was off in a flash. He was crafty; he didn’t want his friends to know he was up to something. He sidled about this way and that, and when he got to the table, he made it look as if his shoe had come untied and he had stopped to tie the laces.

She couldn’t make out their expressions as the boy spoke to them. They were crafty, too.

They had to be about sixty. They looked much, much older. The man was orange-gray in his beard; his head was nearly fully bald, except for a fringe of orange-gray around the back of his head, ear to ear, like pictures of the friar in the Robin Hood stories she’d read at Miss Georgeson’s. Not the Sheriff of Nottingham, which was how she used to picture him.

The boy returned to Charlotte with his hand out. He made it seem he’d accidentally bumped her, or he was trying to pick her pocket. He said rapidly, out of one side of his mouth, “They get it just fine, thank you very much, does the gentleman want to have a word with them and I don’t have to go give the answer if it’s no.”

“It’s no,” said Charlotte. The coins had barely reached his palm before he dashed away, as if he feared she’d try to take them back.

The man and the woman did not appear nervous or bothered by the intrusion, but that might have been their desire to maintain their privacy in the company of all their neighbors. They looked around and seemed perfectly willing to cope with whatever came their way. Placidly. Like they were past all feeling. Like that was the way they wanted it.

Charlotte thought she detected, though, a bit of relief in both of them when no one appeared to bother them further.

The man’s face was thin, pale, almost gaunt—not sickly, just haggard. Not a mean face. Sad. He said something to the woman and she nodded, and he got up and went over to the lanes and tapped a man on the shoulder. Hand in his pocket. Hand out of his pocket. He was placing a bet on a two-year-old.

The woman was white-haired, with patches of gray. A sad face. Not the face of a complainer, or of someone who’s all fisted up inside with bitterness. Charlotte realized that she must have expected bitterness, sourness, signs of a nasty disposition. The woman’s face was deeply wrinkled, deeply worn. It was ruddier than the man’s, as if she was outdoors more than he was. A plump chin. A small nose, small eyes. What did they do with the money, besides betting on babies? Was it enough?

Never a word. That was her own fault; she had no one else to blame. It was money sent to an address, not to people, not specifically. The clothes on their backs would have been bought with it. They weren’t badly dressed: nice, decent clothes, Sears-like. Nothing frayed, nothing visibly falling apart.

The first time a note, just that once, to Mr. and Mrs. Kemple. No mention of herself. No connection. “A man from your part of the Valley who knows of your old distresses has come into an inheritance and wishes to remember the people of his own home by offering you some steady small assistance.”

She’d imagined herself to be Uncle Owen, the
late
Uncle Owen, that Falstaff. Uncle Owen was always sending money to people. The reason she knew this was because not long after she married Hays, he asked her if she wanted him to make a contribution to her old school, or to her orphanage, or to both, and she’d said that just the school would be fine; and he’d paid for a new cooking stove for the cafeteria, and funded the tuitions for two new girls, straight through, anonymously, which must have made Miss Georgeson (in private) swoon.

She hadn’t said anything to Hays about Owen. Or about missing the funeral. Well, if she’d stayed in her sickroom like everyone wanted her to, she would have missed it anyway.

She made a note to herself to remember to mention it at their meeting. It might be a good opening.

“I’m sad about Uncle Owen, Hays.”

“So am I, Charlotte.”

“I liked him.”

“So did I, though I’d never said so before.”

Something they had in common. Hays always said it was the best way to start a meeting. It would be better than just sitting down across from him and coming right out with something too blatant or too strong, like, “I asked Uncle Chessy to hire a detective to find out who that woman is, you’ll know who I mean, the one you were trying to kiss in public but I interrupted it and your hat fell off.” Or, “I suppose you want to divorce me, even though Heaths don’t divorce.”

The man Hays said was her father had placed his bet. He went back to the table, to the woman Hays said was her mother.

Pandemonium at the lanes. A desperado-type two-year-old had got loose, and came up with the idea that the lane dividers needed to be knocked over. Down went a couple of wood blocks, down went some planks. A gang of older children—four-year-olds, five—who must have been disgruntled at being too big to race themselves, rushed in to help out. Anarchy!

A long blast of the judge’s whistle to settle things down. Should the bad-behavior two-year-old be disqualified? Arguments back and forth. Lanes reset. The child was allowed to stay in.

Whistle to start the race. As if on cue, like they’d planned this, runners Six and Seven immediately reached over their divider and starting swinging at each other’s heads. Number Eight must have witnessed one-legged races at some fair or schoolyard: it bent up its left leg, took hold of its foot, and started hopping, and would not be dissuaded from this task, which it performed very well, until stumbling halfway to the cushion.

The winner was Number Five, by default. Five had a head of golden curly hair that poured down its back and obscured the top of its number. It was a chubby, extremely round child, waddling happily down its lane like a fatted goose, and when it got to its finish line, it lifted an edge of the cushion and crawled under it, head first, as if it meant to stay there forever, with its fat pink legs poking out.

The race was a disappointment. There was a wave of deflation all through the building, and a sense that people were saying, All right, now there’s nothing to do but drink, so let’s do it.

But people who’d put money on the fat child to win must have made out very well. Probably it was only its parents. Charlotte thought, I bet the man Hays said was my father didn’t bet on Five. I bet he went for the hopper.

The entertainment was over. There was no change in the man and woman at the table by the fire. Did they sense they were being watched? They were probably satisfied that their anonymous man was not present. They wouldn’t have been looking for a woman.

Charlotte couldn’t tell if their eyes met hers—across the wide expanse of the room, through all those people—or if she were simply a stranger in their midst, who happened to be standing at a spot they happened to gaze at. “There’s a lady stranger over by the back wall,” they might have thought. Maybe they’d mention it to each other later: “Did you see the well-dressed copper-haired lady stranger by the back wall?”

Or maybe they wouldn’t say copper, they’d say orange. Or they’d say orange-reddish. Maybe they’d say “attractive.” Or, “smart-looking.” Or, “healthy-looking.”

Or they’d just talk about the message from the boy: “He wanted to know if it was all right, he’d come checking, and what do you think of that?”

“Charlotte!” Here was Dickie, red-faced, breathless, as happy as the one-year-olds when they’d burst out down the lanes from their starting line. “Charlotte, I’ve just chased a man nearly a mile and I believe he had a knife.”

“What happened to him?”

“It was dark. He headed for the woods and got away.”

“We’re going to the train now,” said Charlotte.

“But I want to see the races. I bet they’re racing chickens. There’s a town near the mountains where they’re breeding chicks for it, special feed.”

“You missed the races.”

“Then I want to have an ale. The local coppers are buying. And I want to find your parents, say hello.”

She took hold of his arm. “They’re not here. I’ve looked everywhere. You were given incorrect information.”

“Let’s go find their house.”

“That’s not what I want to do. You have to follow me, Dickie, because Harry said so, and it’s your job. We’re going back to Boston. We’re going
now
.”

E
unice fussed, fidgeted, spilled water from the washing bowl, dropped coal on the floor. How could anyone sleep through two days and nights and come out of it fully alive, functional-like, without permanent damage to the brain?

Charlotte reassured her. “I already had a brain disease, and it’s unlikely I’ll have another. May I have a tray, with whatever meal’s correct for whatever time of day it is?”

It was just about lunchtime and it had snowed again, not as bad as before, but heavier, wetter: the kind of snow, Eunice said, that came down like overcooked oatmeal, and made you want to cry. Outside, it was not a pretty day.

“What’s the matter, Eunice?”

“I was so terrible worried for you.”

“I’m fine. Hungry, but fine.”

“Do you want a bath?”

“I want to eat.”

She was back on the second floor, but in a different room, larger than the last one. A handsome, black-and-red Chinese rug. Shutters on the window, painted a dark shade of blue. White walls, bare, with markings in the places where pictures had very recently been removed. Charlotte thought of Miss Singleton.

“Did the Navy take away Miss Singleton, Eunice?”

“They did, already, yesterday.”

“Did people go and sit in her house with her?”

“Heaps, it was lovely. All the maids and I stopped over at Bowdoin Square.”

“Poor Miss Singleton. I wonder what will happen to her rooms.”

“They’re to be re-split up into regular ones.”

“You’re so nervous, Eunice. Was it from looking at someone dead?”

“The dead don’t bother me, as it’s the living I’d be all worked up by.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Then please may I have a tray?”

No, she couldn’t have one, apologies. There wasn’t a new cook yet and Georgina was over her head. She was saying the most dreadful things about Mrs. Petty for abandoning her. Georgina had canceled meals in rooms. She closed the public tearoom, and she was keeping it that way until the new cook came in—a man, a Frenchman, coming over by boat, and it would take him ages and ages. Georgina was a little bit on strike.

“Can you get me a sandwich from somewhere? Or some biscuits? Or an entire loaf of bread, which believe me, I could eat?”

No meals in rooms. If you crossed the rule you were crossing a strike line. But the tearoom was only closed to the outside public. Charlotte could go down there and have anything she wanted, as long as it was cold meat sandwiches, the only thing on the menu, for now.

Poor Eunice was in a bad way. She couldn’t hide it. It couldn’t be just the snow, and it wasn’t Miss Singleton, and it couldn’t be just a question of having hovered near Charlotte, on and off, all those hours, not knowing if she should be roused, and being alarmed the whole time that parts of Charlotte’s mind were disappearing forever in some abyss, some quicksand-like hole of sleep. And it couldn’t be just problems of the kitchen.

Charlotte sat up and pushed back the covers. She’d slept in her underskirt, nothing else. The little maid stood by anxiously, chewing on her bottom lip.

“Don’t tell me,” said Charlotte, “that anyone expects me to put on that hideous dress.” It was laid out waiting for her on the little chair by the window.

It was actually a suit. The long, dull-gray wool skirt was more than abundant in its material: it was the type of sweeping multifold thing often worn by her sisters-in-law, which the Irish maids called a broom skirt. When you walked down a sidewalk, no matter how high the heels of your shoes, you swept up everything in your path—litter, dirt, dust, mud, slush, all sorts of disagreeable, indescribable things—and the wool would make everything cling, and you’d come home like something nasty, which the most low-standard cat in the world would refuse to drag in. The blouse was even worse: shiny glossed satin, dark green, like wet, soggy grass, with beige and gold diamond-shaped patterns in vertical rows, tiny white buttons—far too many of them—and a collar so high it would not only cover her neck but could cover her up to her eyes. And beige lace around the cuffs. The jacket was hanging on the back of the door, a gray wool lump, brand new like the rest of the outfit, but as shapeless as a box that someone’s been kicking around.

“I think it’s perfect, missus. The doctor sent it over, from one of her nurses who was sent out to buy it special for you.”

“The doctor,” said Charlotte, “wants me to look like I’m wearing something people drape furniture with, in spring cleaning. Did she send over anything for underneath?”

She did. On the bureau were heavy stockings, a white underskirt, drawers without ruffles, a white flannel under-vest that was simply pulled over the head, without buttons, and a corset cover, also flannel, that could be worn as a second, shorter underskirt. No corset.

“I’ll be warm, at least. Is my aunt here?”

“At the hospital. There was a fire yesterday morning by the docks, a bad one. We don’t expect to be seeing her anytime soon.”

“Where are my clothes?”

“Being cleaned. It’s a fine, grand suit. Cost a fortune.”

“Then you’re the one to have it,” said Charlotte. “I’m sure it will fit, but if it doesn’t, I’m sure you’ll think of a way to alter it.”

“Oh, missus, I couldn’t. I never could. The doctor’ll have my head off.”

“It’s a gift,” said Charlotte.

“Oh, missus.”

“If you don’t accept it as a gift, I’ll tell my aunt you stole it from me, which will put you in all sorts of trouble. But you can’t have it till you get me my own clothes.”

“I can do that. I’ll just pop down now for them, oh, thank you, missus!” And Eunice covered her face with her hands and burst into tears, and Charlotte thought, There’s certainly been a lot of crying in these rooms. Maybe Harry should start collecting tears in buckets, for the next time the plumbing freezes up.

She went over to the little maid, took her by the shoulders, and made her sit down, sobbing and shaking, on the bed, and so what if Harry had a rule about maids not sitting on things in a guest’s room. Charlotte sat down beside her.

A knocking. It came so close in the wake of Eunice’s breakdown, you had to wonder if whoever it was had been listening in the hall, with an ear pressed up to the door. It wasn’t bolted. The knocker didn’t wait to be invited inside.

“Good morning, Charlotte,” said Arthur. “I’m back.”

He looked freshly bathed, freshly trimmed, freshly dressed. Quiet clothes, no green jacket. A brown tweed suit, brown vest, somber necktie. He looked at her. Everything about him said, “Ask the maid to leave us alone and then let me come over and kiss you.”

She looked away first. There was no chance of getting in a word. Eunice had peeked through her fingers and, seeing who it was, turned and flung herself across the bed, sobbing so hard, the bed shook.

“Those look like convulsions,” said Arthur.

“Arthur, for the moment, please, go away.”

“You should let me look after her. I’m almost a doctor.”

“No, you’re a student,” said Charlotte.

“Like Hamlet,” he said. His smile was a little too weak, a little too forced. There was a look on his face that made Charlotte feel suddenly heavy, as if she’d been standing outside all morning in the mush of the snow. He’s as nervous as Eunice, she thought. And as worried.

A voice outside the door. “Everything all right in there, Mrs. Heath?”

The man was a genie. He was just like a genie. “Thank you, Moaxley, it is, as Mr. Pym’s just now leaving.”

“I’m right out here,” came Moaxley’s voice.

“Yes, I can hear you. Do you think you could arrange for a favor to be done for me?”

“Tell me what it is and you’ll have it.”

“I want my clothes. I’m told they’re being cleaned. Eunice has found herself too under the weather to get them for me. It would be lovely if I could get dressed.”

“Just give me five minutes.”

Arthur had backed toward the door, holding that strange little smile. He was giving her the chance to change her mind. She tried to smile in return, but her face felt too heavy.

“He’s gone, Eunice. Now sit up and dry your eyes. And tell me quickly what’s the matter, because, if I don’t have a meal very soon, I’ll be unhappier than you are now. And you can’t lie here all day blathering.”

The little maid did as she was told, wiping her eyes with the inside hem of her apron. She calmed down enough to speak. “You’ve been so very kind to me, missus, and I don’t deserve it.”

And a new burst of tears, more sobbing. Somewhere between hiding her face in her apron and looking up at the ceiling as if she wished it would fall on top of her, Eunice uttered the words “Mr. Pym” with such a strangled-sounding sob, Charlotte went cold inside, as if she were back on that long walk with Dickie.

And then a deep breath, and a shudder, and it came out. Eunice’s voice was flat now. She was miserable. “It’s the letter I didn’t post, Mrs. Heath.”

“The letter to Brookline, do you mean?”

“The one.”

“You gave it to someone else to send?”

“No, missus. I kept it in my pocket and I’ve got it here right now.”

It was true. She fumbled for it, drew it out, handed it to Charlotte. Chester Heath in Brookline. Unopened. Worn-looking, crinkled. Eunice said, “I don’t expect you’ll forgive me. I don’t deserve it. But I just couldn’t keep silent about it, no more. It’s still postable but I’d expect you’d send it yourself this time, not trusting me.”

The letter in Charlotte’s hand felt as heavy as a brick. She couldn’t think what to do with it, and as she’d already started a pattern of tossing letters into a Beechmont fire, she went over to the coals and dropped it in, and didn’t watch it flare and burn. No help on the way from Uncle Chessy! No Pinkerton’s!

“I want to know why you did this,” said Charlotte.

“It was Mr. Pym. He sent me a message not to when I’d come up and you gave it to me.”

“But he was with me. He never left the room.”

“He didn’t have to.”

“But he didn’t say anything. I would’ve heard him. I would’ve remembered.”

“He didn’t have to speak. He could send a message, with his looks, of what he wanted me to do, secret-like.”

Charlotte sighed, a long, heavy sigh. She lifted the outfit from Aunt Lily off the chair and thought, for a second, she’d throw it at poor Eunice; but then she placed it gently on the bed beside her and went and sat on the chair. “You can still have the dress, Eunice, and don’t tell me you don’t deserve it, because I hate it, I really hate it, when maids talk like that.”

Sniffing, more sobs. Charlotte said, “Tell me about Mr. Pym.”

“I can’t.”

“Are you Catholic, Eunice?”

“I am.”

“Then pretend I’m a priest and this is confession time.”

That seemed to help. The little maid nodded her head and patted herself on her chest, as if trying to slow down her heartbeat. “It’s all like he told you,” she said, “with the things that happened in the past. Except he reversed it, like.”

“You know what he told me?”

“Oh, yes.”

“He lied to me?”

“Not exactly, not for most of it, unless you count it a lie that he was the one it all happened to.”

“And who,” said Charlotte slowly, “would be the actual one?”

“It would be me, missus.”

You think you’re ready for anything. You think you can make yourself sturdy for the bearing-up of information someone’s giving you, which you don’t want to hear. Funny that the coating of lacquer she’d imagined all over herself with her husband, out in the Valley, had worked, more or less, as a fairly decent shield. There was no such thing now. Charlotte felt small and raw and exposed, and it wasn’t just because she was only wearing one piece of lightweight underwear.

What was it Aunt Lily had said, when she was making a threat about dragging Charlotte to the wards with her, and letting her see what it was like in the hospital? You would feel that your soul itself had been raked.

“Please don’t have me lose my position,” said Eunice, in a tiny voice. “Please don’t speak to Mr. Alcorn about having me got rid of.”

“I’ll do no such thing.”

Had five minutes gone by? Moaxley was back. He didn’t knock, but made sounds of clearing his throat, like he was trying not to cough. Charlotte opened the door a crack. She wanted to wrap herself in a blanket but all the blankets were on the bed, under Eunice.

“I hope you’ll accept apologies for your own clothes being too wet to put on,” said Moaxley in the hall, carefully not looking in. “But one of the ladies is a traveler for a company what makes clothes. She was willing to be parted with one of the samples.”

Through the door crack came Moaxley’s arm, passing her a new dress. “Thank you very much, Moaxley.”

“Hoping it’s your size.”

“It’ll do just fine.”

She expected it to be even more appalling than the one from her aunt. But it wasn’t half bad. It would fit her loosely, but it wasn’t overly big. The sleeves were ugly, and even worse, the dress was red—a solid, deep, maroon red, like dark wine. She’d sworn to herself the last time she was pregnant that she’d never wear any shade of red at all. How could anyone want to wear red who’d been through what she’d been through? Maybe it was mentally abnormal of her to automatically associate red clothes with blood, but men who’d been in wars probably felt the same way.