Gypsy (36 page)

Theo was convinced that this was where all his dreams would come true. Right now he was out on the viewing platform at the end of the carriage with Jack, and she had no doubt they were once again planning their dream gambling house.

She had known that Jack and Theo had had a fight after she lost the baby, for she’d seen the bruise on Theo’s cheek. Yet whatever animosity lay behind it had vanished, for they were the best of friends now, and Jack had more than proved his worth on this trip. When it came to hard manual work, he had no equal, for he was immensely strong and capable. He covered for Theo and Sam when they lagged behind, and his tough stance deterred any would-be troublemakers from picking on them.

All three of them were more muscular and fit now, handsome too, with sunburnt faces. Even if Beth couldn’t share their boyish excitement about Vancouver, she was still very glad to be with them.

‘This will do, won’t it?’ Jack looked nervously at Beth as he led her into the rooms he’d found for them in Gas Town.

They had arrived in Vancouver in the early hours of the morning, so they’d dozed in the station waiting room till it was daylight. Jack had gone off on his own while they were eating breakfast, and returned an hour later to tell them he’d taken this place, just a couple of streets away from the station.

‘It’s fine, Jack,’ Beth replied, too tired to care what it was like. There were two rooms, stained mattresses on the beds, a chair with only three legs, a gas stove and a sink in the corner of the back room which overlooked the docks. But they had stayed in much worse places.

‘It was the best of the ones I saw,’ Jack said anxiously. ‘Maybe we’d get a better place elsewhere, but I was told Gas Town is where all the saloons and gambling dives are, and it looks like our kind of place. I bet they won’t be against pretty fiddlers here.’

Beth was touched he had thought of her and smiled wearily. ‘You did well to find it, Jack. But then you always do well, whatever you do.’

Theo and Sam came up the stairs then. Theo wrinkled his nose, and Sam gave a strained smirk. ‘Why do we always get such consistently grim rooms? You’d think once in a while we’d stumble on something decent,’ he said.

Beth felt compelled to reassure them. ‘At least it’s quite a new building. I even saw an inside lavatory and a bathroom as we came up the stairs. I can fix it up for us, we’re going to do all right here.’

‘If you’re happy then we all will be,’ Theo said, going over to the window and looking out. ‘We’ve got a good view of the ships, and if we find Gas Town isn’t to our taste, we can sail away somewhere on one of them.’

‘As long as it isn’t to the north,’ Beth said, as she opened up her valise to unpack. ‘I’ve had enough of cold and snow.’

Beth woke later to hear banjo music coming from somewhere close by. It was fast and hot, reminding her of a negro banjo player who used to play in the streets back in Philadelphia. It seemed the best of omens.

All four of them had lain down fully dressed on the bare mattresses for a nap, but that must have been hours ago for she could see by the low sun that it was early evening now.

Theo was sound asleep, curled up around her back, and she wriggled away from him, suddenly energized and wanting to turn the room into a home for them.

She had unrolled their bundle of bedding, hung her dresses up in the closet, and was just dragging the table across to the window, when Theo woke.

‘That’s a good sign,’ he said, watching her spread a checked tablecloth on it. ‘Does that mean you feel at home?’

‘I feel at home anywhere you are,’ she said teasingly. ‘But get your lazy carcase off that bed so I can make it up.’

He did as she asked but then came across the room to her and put his arms around her. ‘I’ve put you through such a lot,’ he said regretfully.

That was something of an understatement, and if she’d been in the mood for sniping at him she could have given him a long list of hurts, starting with the inevitable feast-or-famine lifestyle of a gambler. There were the unexplained absences, flirting with other women, unreliability and selfishness too. But she wasn’t in the mood for recriminations now.

‘Not all of it bad,’ she said, and wound her arms around his neck to kiss him. He responded eagerly, his tongue flickering into her mouth as he pressed himself up against her, and to her surprise she felt a real stirring of desire for him too.

Since she’d lost the baby she had stopped wanting him the way she used to. She had continued to go through the motions, pretending she did, out of kindness to him, but each time she faked rapture she felt unbearably sad and cheated, for their lovemaking had been such a big part of what was good between them.

He sat down on a chair and pulled her on to his knees so she sat astride him, then unfastened the bodice of her dress and released her breasts to caress and kiss them. It felt good, just the way it used to, and as his hand crept up under her skirt and petticoats to fondle her, she knew this time there would be no faking.

The indecency of knowing that Sam and Jack were just the other side of the door while Theo was arousing her to fever pitch with his fingers was so erotic that she climaxed even before he unbuttoned his trousers and slid into her. The banjo player out on the street seemed to be in time with them. She threw back her head, pressing her breasts into Theo’s face with abandon, loving the sensual delight of him inside her.

He came with a roar of delight, digging his fingers into her bottom. ‘That was like winning a thousand dollars on the turn of a card,’ he whispered against her shoulder. ‘I love you so much, Beth.’

It was not until after ten that the four of them went out to get something to eat. They had been forced to take cold baths, for the water only got hot when the furnace in the basement was lit. But they were all reinvigorated, and Beth felt so radiant from the lovemaking earlier that she laughed at everything the boys said.

She had put on her red satin dress, even though it was creased from being packed away in her valise for so long. ‘I’m taking my fiddle with me,’ she announced as they left their rooms. ‘I’m feeling lucky tonight.’

After a dinner of fried chicken and potatoes in a restaurant close by they walked down the main street of Gas Town.

As they understood it, Vancouver originated here. In 1867 it had been just a cluster of wooden shacks and warehouses by the wharves until John Deighton, known as Gassy Jack, arrived and opened the first saloon. The city dignitaries wanted to call the area Granville, but it had remained Gas Town to its residents.

After the sedate, quiet little towns they’d visited during the past months it was a delight to find Gas Town was buzzing with activity, noise and less pious pleasures.

People were spilling out of saloons on to the pavements with their drinks and there were stalls selling all kinds of food from baked potatoes and hot dogs to bowls of noodles. Music wafted out from a dozen different sources, and drunken sailors lurched along in groups, singing as they went.

There were touts trying to get the unwary into card games down back alleys, and whores lounging suggestively in doorways. Beggars, buskers, street entertainers and pedlars all added to the hurly-burly.

Jack stopped them at a very busy saloon on a street corner in Water Street. ‘Let’s make a nuisance of ourselves in here,’ he said with a grin. ‘There’s no music, so maybe we can persuade them they need some!’

Waiting by the door with Theo while Jack and Sam went to the bar to get drinks, Beth reflected on how the dynamics of their group had changed since they left Philadelphia. Theo had been their undisputed leader then, by force of personality and breeding and because he was the one who had the money. Sam was his right-hand man, and Jack’s role was almost that of servant.

Once in Montreal, with Theo prone to disappearing, Jack and Sam had begun to make decisions for themselves. Yet even then Theo only had to click his fingers and they fell in with his plans.

Once out of Montreal, everything changed; Theo and Sam were both too refined and citified to be in harmony with the tough, strong farmers, lumberjacks and construction men they met up with. But these men took to Jack, recognizing him as one of their own.

Suddenly it was Jack making the decisions, and he carried Sam and Theo with him. On some of the jobs they did, they wouldn’t have lasted a day without Jack helping them and covering up their inadequacies. Sam soon began to toughen up, and took a pride in learning new skills and keeping up with Jack and the other men. But Theo was like a fish out of water; he couldn’t adjust. He got by solely on his charm, and Beth often overheard men referring to him disparagingly as ‘the English gent’.

She wondered whether now they were here, in the kind of environment Theo was at home in, he’d push his way back to being group leader again.

Jack and Sam returned with the drinks and they were grinning broadly.

‘We asked the landlord if you could play,’ Sam said. ‘He said, “If you dare.“So do you dare, sis?’

Beth took her glass of rum, glanced around at the crowded bar, and knocked her drink back in one. ‘Try stopping me,’ she said with a wide smile. Theo handed her the fiddle case, and she opened it and took out the instrument.

‘How much of the money have we got to give the landlord?’ she asked.

‘He didn’t say,’ Jack said. ‘I guess he didn’t really believe there would be any. I’ll go round with the hat, we’d better offer him some of it at the end, and then maybe he’ll give you a permanent spot.’

Theo watched Beth as she slithered through the crowd to the back of the saloon, her fiddle held under one arm, the bow in her other hand. She looked like a slender flame in her red dress, and he could see by her straight back and the way she held her shoulders that she was determined to succeed tonight.

She disappeared from view and Theo felt a sudden pang of anxiety, but all at once he saw her rise up behind the burly men blocking his view, and he realized she was now standing on a table.

Tucking her fiddle under her chin, she drew the bow across the strings and was off into ‘Kitty O’Neill’.

For a few long moments there was no reaction from the drinkers; almost every one of them had their backs turned to her. Theo held his breath, but slowly men began to turn towards her, and smiles of appreciation began to creep on to their faces.

Theo saw how in tune Beth was with her audience. She smiled and tossed her hair, picking up the tempo as she got their complete attention, and once she’d got it she certainly knew how to hold it.

They were mainly stevedores and sailors, some already very drunk, but they began to tap their feet, their eyes never leaving her, and she took them to the far shores of their imagination with her music.

‘She’s better than ever,’ Jack gasped. ‘Look at her face!’

Theo could see nothing else. Not the men jigging on the spot in front of her, not the couple of whores eyeing him up from the corner, or even the glass of whisky in his hand. He’d seen that same blissful expression on Beth’s face just hours earlier when they made love. He felt he ought to feel jealous that her music meant as much, but he didn’t. He just felt bigger and more powerful than any other man in the saloon because she was his girl.

By the time she’d played for twenty minutes, people passing were elbowing their way in through the door until the saloon was packed to capacity.

‘They’ll never be able to serve them all,’ Jack said, nudging Sam. ‘We’ll get up there and see if they need a hand.’

Once again Theo saw Beth’s impeccable timing, for as the boys reached the bar and offered their services, she finished her number.

‘I’ve got to take a break now,’ she called out. ‘Get yourselves drinks and I’ll be back soon.’

That first night there was over thirty dollars in the hat, and Oris Beeking, the landlord of the Globe, was only too delighted to agree that Beth should play four nights a week. Furthermore, he took Sam and Jack on as bartenders too.

Vancouver suited them in every way. People were not as staid as they’d been everywhere else in Canada, for it was in many ways still a frontier town. It was good to be able to walk along the shore in warm sunshine, to chat to fishermen and sailors and feel they belonged here. Sam and Jack found a couple of sassy saloon girls they liked. Theo got into some poker games, and on Sunday evenings when they were all at home together, they would plan their saloon, a place with gambling, music and dancing girls.

After the uncertainty and discomfort they’d experienced on their travels, all four of them were happy to be settled again. There was no more talk of moving on, only of finding somewhere a little bigger to live.

On 16 July, Beth went to the post office to post a letter to Molly and the Langworthys. She’d been posting letters home in almost every town they’d stopped at, and she was anxious now for them to receive the address they could write back to.

Outside the post office there was a large group of men, and Beth’s first thought was that they were about to start fighting, for they were pacing up and down, shouting and waving their arms. But as she got closer she saw it wasn’t anger infecting them but excitement. Two of the men were stevedores she knew from the Globe, and she guessed that the others had just come in on a ship.

‘What’s all the excitement?’ she asked, when one of the men she knew smiled and waved at her.

‘Gold,’ he replied, his eyes glittering. ‘They’ve found gold up in Alaska. Tons of it. We’re planning to go there on the next ship.’

Beth laughed. It sounded like a tall story to her. As far as she knew, Alaska was under thick snow all year round and the only people likely to go there were fur trappers.

She posted her letter, bought some bread, meat and vegetables, then made her way home. But as she passed a news-stand, she saw the headline ‘Ton of Gold’ on the front of the newspaper and a picture of a ship berthing in San Francisco on which this ton of gold was said to be.

Snatching up the paper, she read how in August of the previous year a man called George Carmack, with his two brothers-in-law, Tagish Charlie and Skookum Jim, had found gold in Rabbit Creek, one of the six tributaries of the river Klondike in the Yukon Valley. Carmack found the gold lying between flaky slabs of rock, ‘like cheese in a sandwich’.