Never Look Back (97 page)

Matilda looked at her list again. She would go and see Henry Slocum later, he would know how people had to go about getting government contracts, he might even know of any local businessmen putting in tenders. They’d need extra staff, and with so many men rushing off to join up, there would be vacancies
women might be able to fill. If she had to wait for James until this war was over, she might as well do something to help with it.

Matilda often regretted that she had always followed Dolores’ instructions for avoiding pregnancy. She was thirty-five now, and by the time James came back to her, maybe it would be too late to have a child. Often the girls she and Dolores helped had a baby, and each time she held one in her arms, she yearned desperately for her own. It was a feeling that never went away entirely, just as she would never be free of the pain of losing Amelia.

It was like a tidal wave that came unexpectedly. She would flounder in it, sometimes become so deeply immersed she thought she’d drown. Then it would go away again, and she’d allow herself to think it was gone for good. But it never was.

Dolores always seemed to know when it struck her. She would reach out for her hand and squeeze it, rarely saying anything. Matilda often wondered how Dolores knew these things, but then she was a truly remarkable woman in all ways.

Matilda drove herself up to Rincon Hill later to see Henry. As she left, Treacle jumped up beside her in the gig. He was growing old now, his black fur tinged with grey, and mostly he lay in the sunshine sleeping, but he loved rides in the gig as much as she did. She thought perhaps it was because he remembered their wagon, and it pleased her to think an animal could be nostalgic, just like a human.

Few things had given her as much pleasure as buying the gig. She loved the red and black wheels, the smell of the red leather upholstery, and the sense of freedom it gave her. Star, the chestnut mare, was calm and gentle, yet she liked nothing better than a good fast gallop on a clear road.

Henry’s house was an imposing one, double-fronted with pointed gables and five balustraded steps up to the front door. Matilda drove into the drive and ordered Treacle to stay with the gig, and as so often when she came here, she reflected on how odd it was that Henry, the first person to help her in San Francisco, had remained her staunch friend, while Alicia was still as distant.

Alicia seemed content at last, she had her bridge afternoons,
and her endless dinner parties, and now and again she stirred herself with some charity work. Even after Henry became a partner in London Lil’s, and Alicia benefited from the profits they made, she still couldn’t bring herself to admit to having a share in a saloon, and would never dream of inviting Matilda to one of her smart parties. Yet she did collect up parcels of clothing for Matilda’s girls, and she did persuade her snobby friends to use the Jennings Bureau when they wanted domestic help. And she didn’t mind Matilda calling on her husband.

‘It’s good to see you, Matty,’ Henry said with great warmth as the maid showed her into his study. ‘Funny that you should come by today, I was just thinking about you.’

‘Something nice I hope,’ she laughed. ‘With all the talk of war, I could do with a lift.’

‘My thoughts of you are always nice ones,’ he said gallantly, and complimented her on her pink silk dress and bonnet. ‘I don’t understand why when all my other friends are growing grey and lined, you seem to have found the secret of eternal youth,’ he said.

‘You are an old flatterer,’ she smiled. She didn’t know how old Henry was, but she guessed he must be sixty, and his once dark beard and the frill of hair around his bald head had gone snow-white in the past few years. He was very fat now, like a round barrel, but his mind was as sharp as ever. ‘But I’ll get straight to the point about why I called. I want to discuss government contracts for the war.’

He laughed, and offered her a seat. ‘Surely you aren’t thinking of moving into gun-running!’

Matilda told him what she’d been thinking about. ‘I just want to steal a march on others,’ she admitted. ‘It struck me that uniforms must be required, and foodstuffs too. I want jobs for my girls.’

Henry said he thought the uniforms would all be made in the East, and he doubted it would be practical to supply food owing to the vast distance. ‘But I’ll keep my nose to the ground, and there will be vacancies with so many men enlisting,’ he said, then went on to ask about James.

One of the most comforting things about her friendship with Henry was that he truly cared about her happiness. In their early years as partners he had introduced her to many men he hoped
would be prospective husbands. He had given that up once he saw James was the man she wanted, and perhaps because of his own loveless marriage, he sincerely hoped that one day they’d find permanent happiness together.

Matilda told him about James’s letter and confided his dilemma at being forced to fight against his own people.

‘There will be many in his position, I fear,’ Henry said with a sigh. ‘I come from the South too, remember, my loyalties are divided as well.’

‘Surely you don’t approve of slavery, Henry?’ she said in horror.

He shrugged. ‘I was brought up to it, Matty. Our slaves were treated well, I had a black mammy, played with slave children. It isn’t all like
Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
you know, Harriet Beecher Stowe has a great deal to answer for in painting such a slanted picture. I wonder what will happen to the slaves when they are all set free – few have any experience of anything but growing cotton.’

‘People can learn other trades,’ Matilda said indignantly.

‘But you are forgetting how many there are of them.’ Henry shrugged. ‘If they all rush to the cities, who will feed them, and give them somewhere to live? Many will die of cold if they go up North, white men will be fearful that they will become cheap labour. I can see so many problems ahead. Lincoln himself doesn’t have the answers.’

‘So will you be involved in gun-running to the South?’ Matilda sniped.

‘No, I won’t,’ he said quietly. ‘Not to North or South. I’ll sit on the fence and watch the two sides fight it out. Later, when it is over, I guess I’ll be one of those who tries to put the country back together again.’

Matilda felt a little chastened, his voice was one of reason. ‘I’m sorry, Henry, I don’t know why I’m getting so worked up, it’s not my fight either.’

‘It doesn’t have to be,’ he said, leaning forward and putting one hand on her arm. ‘There will be enough hot-heads without us joining them. I heard today that my three nephews have rushed to enlist down in Georgia. They will be in my prayers, along with James, and Peter too if he joins. Meanwhile people like you and me, Matty, have to keep the wheels turning here.’
After leaving Henry’s house, Matilda went straight down to Folsom Street, taking a box of clothes Alicia had given her.

As she walked in through the front door she heard Dolores raging in the kitchen.

‘I don’t care if your breasts are sore,’ she shouted. ‘That babby needs milk or he will die. Stop whining, girl, and go and get him.’

Over the years, many girls had come to them pregnant, and their babies were born in the house. It was always very difficult to find such girls jobs, usually they ended up answering advertisements from widowed farmers out in the territories. Yet many of these arranged marriages had worked well, as for most of the girls a home and a husband was all they wanted.

But Matilda had known from the first time she met Polly, the girl Dolores was shouting at, that she was trouble, She could see it in her calculating blue eyes and, her insolent stance, and hear it in her whining voice. Yet she couldn’t turn her away.

Fern had found her late one night crouched down in a doorway, heavily pregnant. She was just fourteen, and she’d turned to prostitution when she’d been thrown out of her job as kitchen maid because her mistress found she was pregnant. She had been living on the streets since March, she was filthy, lousy, half starved, and Dolores believed she had the pox. Her belly was huge, her legs and arms like sticks, and her eyes sunken into her head. Dolores had to cut off her hair because it was too matted to get at the lice. She looked worse than any of the children in Five Points.

Matilda walked into the kitchen to find Polly slouched in a chair. Dolores was standing over her, so angry that the veins in her forehead were all popping out.

Polly’s baby had been born eight days ago. Dolores delivered him and even gave up her own bed so the new mother could have peace and quiet for the laying in. Polly called him Abraham, after the President, and one of the other girls, laughing, said it was a good name, as he was as long, thin and ugly as Lincoln. He was around six pounds at birth, but he looked sickly, and clearly this was why Dolores was so angry now.

Matilda had hoped that she was wrong about Polly, but unfortunately she’d turned out to be far worse than any other girl they’d ever had under their roof. She resented being asked to do
anything, she insulted all the Negro girls, and kept boasting that back home in Indiana her father owned the biggest farm for 300 miles. She stole hair ribbons and other of the girls’ little treasures, and wouldn’t accept any of the rules of the house. Dolores said she slipped out one night and came home later with two dollars, which she must have got from a man.

She didn’t look pitiful now, three months after her arrival. Her blonde hair was growing again, she had a rosy bloom to her skin, and her limbs had filled out. In a blue print dress she looked well cared for and pretty.

‘I’ll get baby,’ Matilda said, hoping to calm everything down. She remembered her own breasts had been very sore at first, and she had heard since that most fair-skinned women reacted this way.

Abraham wasn’t crying, just lying there quietly, and she knew it was this passive silence which worried Dolores more than anything. She picked him up and found his napkin, night-gown and the bedding beneath him were sodden. Clearly he hadn’t been changed all day, even though there was a pile of clean napkins and gowns on the dresser.

Matilda took him through to the kitchen, laid him on a towel on the table, and quickly stripped him. His tiny bottom was fiery red.

‘When did you last change him?’ she asked Polly.

‘Not an hour since,’ Polly said sulkily.

‘That’s a lie,’ Matilda said, trying not to get angry herself. ‘His bottom is red and sore. I don’t believe you have changed him once today. Now, this won’t do, Polly. Babies are helpless, and he’s too small yet to even cry loud enough to tell you how uncomfortable he is.’

‘Why don’t one of the niggers see to him then?’

Matilda rounded on her. ‘We don’t use that hateful word in this house,’ she said. ‘The other girls in this house are guests, just like you, they are not here to look after you, or your baby. And if you can’t show some respect for me, Miss Dolores and the other girls, then you’ll be off to the poor-house.’

Dolores was rolling her eyes. Her expression said, ‘Let her go there now. I’ve had enough of her.’

Matilda put some ointment on the baby’s bottom, making Polly stand up so she could see how it was done, and then put
a clean napkin and gown on him. ‘Now you’ll feed him,’ she said, handing him over.

‘I can’t, it hurts,’ she insisted.

‘There’s a great deal that hurts about motherhood,’ Matilda said crisply. ‘Now, sit down and feed him, stop thinking about yourself.’

As Polly unbuttoned her dress, Matilda could see her nipples were a bit sore, but not so bad she couldn’t manage five minutes on each breast. She informed Polly of this, and went back into the front room to change the linen on the crib. As she bent down to pick something off the floor, she saw Polly had thrown bloody pads under the bed, and the chamber-pot was almost full.

Such slutty ways infuriated her, but she decided to wait until the baby was fed before saying anything, and returned to the kitchen. She noted that Polly barely looked at her baby as she fed him, her eyes were staring off into the distance, cold and indifferent.

Dolores made them all some tea, and after the baby was fed, Matilda took him and explained to Polly she must wash and dry her nipples, then put some ointment on each of them after each feed. ‘Now go into your room, collect up those pads and the chamber-pot and deal with them,’ she said. ‘Fatal diseases are spread by filth. I won’t have it in this house.’

‘But she’s the maid, ain’t she?’ Polly pointed to Dolores. ‘She does all that.’

Matilda’s temper flared up. ‘Miss Dolores is the housekeeper here. She may have emptied your pot and cleaned away other things when you were too weak to do it yourself, but you are quite capable of looking after yourself now. So do it!’

Polly reluctantly did as she was told. Matilda cuddled the baby till he’d gone back to sleep and then went and tucked him into the crib. As she came back into the kitchen, Polly was slouched down in the chair again and clearly had every intention of staying there.

The success of this house depended on all the girls pulling their weight. Matilda certainly didn’t expect Polly to scrub floors so soon after having a baby, but she was perfectly capable of doing a little mending or peeling potatoes for supper.

‘This won’t do, Polly,’ Matilda said, as Dolores busied herself with some washing up in the scullery. ‘You were in a bad way
when Fern brought you here, if she hadn’t, you might have died out there on the streets. So tell me why you seem to be going out of your way to be difficult with everyone,’

It was unfortunate that the other five girls in the house all chose that moment to arrive home from a walk. Hearing her voice they halted in the hall, not knowing quite what to do.

‘’Cos you all thinks you are better than me,’ Polly retorted, pale blue eyes as cold as ice. ‘Look at you fer a start, all done up in silk. What do you know about having a baby all on your own, or having no money? I’ve heard all about you on the streets, a heart like a stone they say, and you makes money out of girls like me.’

Matilda knew the last part of the charge against her was a rumour put about by brothel owners to deter girls going to her. She didn’t care about that. But the first part really riled her.