Never Look Back (105 page)

‘I am so very pleased to meet you at last,’ she said, her brown eyes sweeping over Tabitha as if she liked what she saw. ‘My nephew has told me so much about you, my dear, and we’re so very happy that you are soon to become one of our family.’

Mr George MacVeeney was small and stout with a ruddy complexion and a bulbous nose. He pumped Tabitha’s hand vigorously and beamed at her as he made similar welcoming remarks.

Emily admired Tabitha’s gown, and said that red had been her favourite colour as a young woman. ‘It’s a great disappointment to me that as one gets older one can no longer wear such vivid colours.’ She looked down at her own rose-pink gown which was sprinkled with tiny seed pearls and grimaced. ‘Pink is a poor substitute for red.’

‘You look lovely,’ Tabitha said truthfully. ‘Both you and your sister are so elegant, I hope I can count on some advice from you both when choosing clothes for my trousseau. I am overwhelmed by the amount of shops here in New York, I really don’t know where to start.’

Matilda arrived on the dot of seven, simultaneously with Brett, Sebastian’s older brother, his wife Amy, Rupert, a cousin, and his wife Sophia. As Tabitha had met Brett, Rupert and their wives just the day before, she greeted them quickly and turned her entire attention on Matilda.

She was stunned by how magnificent she looked, and touched that she had clearly spent the last four days preparing for tonight to create the best possible impression. Her black velvet evening gown was trimmed with fluffy feathers around the low neck, enhancing her delicate pinky-toned skin, and a beautiful sapphire necklace and ear bobs, left to her by Zandra, matched her
eyes. As always she wore lace gloves; tonight’s ones reached to her elbows, with tiny jet buttons at the wrists. Her blonde hair had been carefully arranged up in loose curls by an artful hairdresser, and it shone like gold under the chandelier. She was forty-seven now, but her figure had remained taut and slender, and the few lines on her face had only added softness, not age.

Every man in the room turned to look at her in admiration, and Tabitha felt her heart swell with tenderness and pride, for ten years ago when James was killed, she had been fearful that Matilda would never recover her spirits or her looks. She had worn black from that day since, and in that last year of the war, Tabitha had seen her grow thinner and thinner, until she was just skin and bone. She hardly slept, did as much work as three other nurses, and so often Tabitha woke in the night to see her sitting by the window crying silently.

Yet grief-stricken as she was, when she returned to San Francisco, she put on a brave face. She opened London Lil’s again with a lavish celebration party and within weeks it was as famous and popular as it had been during the Gold Rush years, the shows she put on even more spectacular. Yet however much she might have appeared to be only interested in making her own personal fortune, those who knew her well saw that her real motivation was to use this wealth to improve the lot of the underclasses.

When she saw how many girls had fallen into prostitution during the war, she bought the empty neighbouring house in Folsom Street, in order to offer sanctuary to more of them. She opened a working girls’ boarding-house for the same reason, and expanded the Jennings Bureau to find work for the many soldiers who came back to the city with disabilities.

Tabitha was away in Ohio at that time, but Peter, who was then training as an accountant, wrote to her, often in anger because Matilda was still slighted by ‘polite society’ in the city and he claimed that the malicious rumours about her came from this quarter. One was that Matilda was supposed to be a procuress herself, that she lured fallen girls to her doors to polish them up, then sent them off to brothels in other cities. They said she had a string of lovers, and that she made huge profits from her so-called charitable works, and that much of the donations from
the public went into her pocket along with the fortune she made from London Lil’s.

As Peter did all Matilda’s book-keeping, he knew that the small profit Matilda made from the bureau and boarding-house, along with all donations, went straight to the girls it was intended for. A third of all profits from London Lil’s went to several charities, the one closest to Matilda’s heart was to aid war widows and their children.

But then a great many of these socialites who reviled her had increased their wealth by speculation and carpet-bagging during the war. Their sons had wriggled out of the draft, some of them were the unscrupulous owners of properties on the Barbary Coast and shareholders in the Union Pacific Railroad.

When they saw Matilda vigorously speaking out at rallies on behalf of the Chinese who were used in their thousands almost as slave labour on the building of the railroad, or read her impassioned articles in newspapers about the need for free medical help for the poor, for Negroes to have the same rights as white men, for the Indians to be treated with respect, and for the Barbary Coast to be policed and cleaned up, they quaked.

Yet Tabitha, Peter and Sidney had in time learned to ignore the salacious gossip about the lady they loved, just as Matilda herself did, for the work she did brought its own rewards, and she was content. For every lie spread about her there were ten people with a debt of gratitude to her who told their true stories. It became widely known that on nights she was missing from the saloon, she was either down at Folsom Street teaching girls to read and write, harassing police into raiding brothels to check on their girls’ ages, or looking out for girls who were in need of help.

Peter often said that if she had been a plain woman, with a less flamboyant nature, she might have gained sainthood by now, for the poor knew her true worth and loved her. But a woman who could laugh, dance and take a drink with customers in her saloon, who drove a smart gig and knew personally most of the shady characters in town, including the politicians, and who aroused female jealousy, was bound to be vilified. Matilda liked it that way, she didn’t want the status of saint, she identified too often with the sinners.

‘You look wonderful,’ Tabitha said, embracing Matilda, and suddenly not caring a jot if she upset a few people later tonight. ‘Let me introduce you to everyone.’

‘First let me look at you!’ Matilda said, her smile as vivid as her eyes. ‘That dress, Tabby, is inspirational!’

They both laughed, for Matilda had had it made for her by her own dressmaker back in San Francisco. While they were choosing the material, Matilda had related the tale of how Lily had worn red for passion when Giles proposed to her. She said Tabitha must keep up the family tradition.

‘You don’t think it’s just a wee bit too bold for me?’ Tabitha whispered.

Matilda shook her head. ‘It’s perfect, the colour warms your skin and empathizes with your lovely eyes.’

Perhaps it was true that love made all women beautiful, she thought. She didn’t know who had arranged Tabitha’s hair in ringlets, so that they jiggled on her bare shoulders seductively, but she deserved praise, for it set the gown off to perfection.

She wondered for just one moment what Miss Dix would have made of this dramatic change in her nurse’s appearance. She certainly wouldn’t have let Tabitha into her hospital if she knew she was capable of looking like this!

‘Now,’ she said, her eyes dancing, ‘I’m ready to be introduced, and more than ready to tell them all how much you will enhance their family’

‘You see, I was right, she’s charming everyone,’ Sebastian whispered in Tabitha’s ear a little later. Matilda was at the centre of the family group, sparkling and vivacious as she found out who everyone was, asked about their children, and told funny little anecdotes about the long and cold journey she’d shared with Tabitha from California.

As they all went into dinner, Tabitha felt more relaxed. She and Sebastian were seated next to each other at one side of the beautifully laid table, Matilda and Anne opposite them, with Albert and George at the head and foot, the other guests in between. The first course was a consommé, followed by a fish dish, and Matilda was being so very gracious, taking care to compliment Anne on the superb food, her lovely home, and also chatting to Brett, who sat on her immediate right. Tabitha had
noticed Anne kept looking at Matilda’s gloves, as if wondering why she hadn’t removed them, and she wished she had confided in Anne why she wore them.

Sebastian led most of the conversation, he spoke of the brown-stone house he had just purchased close to Central Park, and got Tabitha to describe some of the furniture they had bought the previous day. Their wedding was to be in early April at Trinity Church, followed by a reception here at the house. His three young nieces were to be bridesmaids, and Amy, his sister-in-law, spoke up to say her girls were terribly excited, and she just hoped Tabitha could get them all to agree on what colour dresses they were to wear.

‘I really don’t mind,’ Tabitha laughed. ‘What colour have they got in mind?’

Amy groaned and said one wanted red, one blue and the other pink. She’d already told the youngest one that red wasn’t a suitable colour for a wedding.

Matilda looked at Tabitha, her lips quivering with silent laughter, clearly remembering how Tabitha herself had asked if she could wear red when her father was making the plans for their wedding.

‘I agree, we have to rule out red,’ Tabitha said, giving Matilda a sly wink. ‘But as all the girls are so blonde and angelic, why don’t we settle for pink?’

Amy, who was blonde too, of German descent, beamed.

‘I believe your father was once minister at Trinity Church?’ she said. ‘That should make the day extra special for you, Tabitha.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Tabitha smiled. ‘That’s why we chose it. When Sebastian and I went there to make the arrangements, I was quite overcome by all the memories it brought back. I thought I’d forgotten everything about it. But I hadn’t. We walked round to State Street where we used to live, but the house has been pulled down now, and there’s an insurance company there instead.’

Everyone spoke of the dramatic changes in what was now just a financial district, and George MacVeeney spoke of when most of the area was gutted by the fire of 1845. He said he had owned a warehouse at that time and he lost everything.

‘It was a terrible sight,’ Matilda said, commiserating with him. ‘We were choking on the smoke in the house in State Street. Lily,
Tabby’s mother, was terrified the fire would reach it too, but fortunately for us the wind blew it towards the river,’

‘You were there then?’ Anne said in surprise, turning in her seat to look at Matilda, brown eyes like gimlets.

‘Of course,’ Matilda said. ‘I was Tabby’s nursemaid. I came to America with the Milsons.’

‘I haven’t gone back that far with my family history,’ Tabitha said, looking across the table to Anne. ‘Matty became my nursemaid back in London when I was only two. She held our family together through thick and thin. Both Mama and Papa always said they didn’t know what they’d do without her.’

Anne gave Matilda a sideways stare. ‘And you stepped into the breach and married Reverend Milson when his wife died too.’

That remark had more than a tinge of sarcasm and Tabitha heard alarm bells ringing in her head. Matilda was too honest to be an entirely successful liar, and she was already blushing.

‘I loved both Lily and Giles,’ she said, but as all other conversations around the table had stopped suddenly her voice sounded unnaturally loud. ‘I couldn’t stay and care for Tabitha alone in the house with Giles, there would have been talk. So we decided to marry.’

‘So it was a marriage of convenience?’ Anne probed.

Tabitha gulped. She knew Matilda would never agree to that, not even to smooth things over.

‘No, for love,’ she said. ‘It grew out of our shared grief. Sadly Giles was killed just a few weeks later, and because Tabby and I could no longer stay in the minister’s house in Independence, the following spring we joined a wagon train to take us to my friends in Oregon.’

Tabitha breathed a sigh of relief. She thought Matilda had handled that superbly, as she hadn’t spoken of an actual wedding, she hadn’t even told a lie.

‘We had a pretty terrible time on the way,’ Tabitha said, and giggled from nervousness. ‘Amelia, my half-sister, was born in the wagon just before we got to The Dalles.’

There was a chorus of sympathetic noises from all the women, and surprisingly from Brett too, who had seemed rather pompous and chilly when she first met him yesterday. Sophia, Cousin Rupert’s wife, a vivacious, dark-haired woman, remarked
on how hard it must have been for Matilda to make such an arduous journey at such a time, and asked whether Amelia was going to be a bridesmaid too.

‘Sadly no, Amelia died from cholera when she was six,’ Tabitha said. ‘Aunt Cissie, and her daughter Susanna too. You may have heard me speak of Peter, he was another of Cissie’s children. Matilda took him back to San Francisco, and brought him up as her own. I think of him as a brother.’

There was a moment’s embarrassed silence, broken only by Sophia apologizing profusely for being so tactless.

‘You weren’t to know,’ Matilda said, giving Sophia a gentle smile. ‘There is so much sadness in everyone’s family, but I hope with more good doctors like Sebastian and Tabby, perhaps one day a cure will be found for such terrible diseases.’

Tabitha thought Anne had run out of loaded questions, and as the main course – roast pheasant – was brought in and served, she moved back to speaking about the house Sebastian had bought, and her view that they would need to hire a housekeeper and a cook if Tabitha was
really
going to practise medicine in New York after the wedding.

‘Of course she is, Mother,’ Sebastian laughed. ‘We are intending that she should have her surgery in our house, and I shall be relying on you to send along all the women you know who have been harshly treated by male doctors.’

Anne made no reply to this, and Tabitha thought the odd expression on her future mother-in-law’s face was irritation that her son had chosen to make such an announcement in public, rather than tell her himself first in private. But to her surprise she turned to Matilda again. ‘Why don’t you call yourself Mrs Milson?’ she asked.