Angel of Brooklyn (23 page)

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘Never mind, you’re missing nothing, and neither am I. It’s where I fell from grace. Those bleary-eyed characters got to me, and they
wouldn
’t let me go. Men who’d lost their sons. Kings who were losing their lands. I played Hamlet for three whole seasons, and I’m sorry to have to tell you that I brought him home with me. Night after night, I was melancholy, and I was always asking myself questions that could never be answered. When it all became too much, I sought solace,’ he told her, pausing for a second by the large oilcloth banner. ‘And I’m sorry to say I found it in the wrong place. I hit the bottle. I was sozzled from morning till night. I began to slur my words. Those lovely long vowel sounds I’d become so famous for were sliding all over the place, and there was not a thing I could do to stop them.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Never mind sorry,’ he said, opening the door to the dining room, where it appeared the rest of the hotel sat waiting for her, ‘I was saved by the Lord. By the Methodist Mission of America, who told me to put down my bottle and start looking at the Word. Not the word of Mr Shakespeare, or those other great dramatists, whose characters I was slowly but surely murdering, but the word of the Bible, the only true piece of literature that’s been printed and bound in a book.’

‘Amen,’ said a woman on the nearest table. She was sitting straight-backed, and staring at her shiny empty plate.

‘Mrs Mitchell,’ said Elliot. ‘Mrs Mitchell is another permanent guest. Mrs Mitchell, let me introduce Miss Beatrice Lyle. You are a Miss?’ he added. You don’t look like you’re married, and I see you aren’t wearing a ring that means you are promised?’

‘No,’ said Beatrice shyly, ‘I’m not married.’

‘I was never a drinker,’ said Mrs Mitchell. ‘I’m here because I was married to one, and under the influence of it he took everything, including my three sons, who followed their father like sheep, and went to live with him in some dreadful flimsy shack of a house on Hawaii.’

‘Hawaii?’ said Beatrice. ‘My goodness.’

‘He read a book about the Sandwich Islands,’ she said, opening out her napkin. ‘Said he liked the look of the palm trees, but I know for a fact he had no real interest in those trees whatsoever.’

‘No?’

‘No. Palm trees, nothing. It was the nearly naked natives circling their hips in those little grass skirts with those fancy scented flowers tucked behind their ears he was thinking of.’

Beatrice shook her head. The other guests were politely looking away. Elliot guided her towards an empty table.

‘You can sit here with me,’ he said. ‘This table has a good view of the street, and though it might not be Broadway, or west of Chatham Square, it still has its God-given qualities. Like that tree,’ he nodded. ‘And that hazy strip of sky.’

The sky was certainly hazy, and even at this hour the heat still poured through the glass, turning the small pat of butter into a rancid yellow pool.

‘In my actor days, I used to eat out all the time,’ he said. ‘A three-course meal at midnight was nothing out of the ordinary, though it played havoc with my digestive system, and I was nursing an ulcer for years. Actors work very strange hours, they move from place to place, and they like to be sociable. Sociable didn’t suit me in the end. Sociable wore me down. I never knew when to say no. Of course,’ he added, ‘not all actors are demons. I knew some lovely actors who preferred a cup of tea and an early night, but I have to say, they were very few and far between.’

‘It sounds exciting, the world of the theatre.’

He frowned. ‘But my dear girl, have you not been listening? The theatre was my downfall. It very nearly killed me.’

‘I didn’t mean –’

‘For what we are about to receive,’ began a voice on another table, which started a wobbly chorus, ‘may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’

‘Fish,’ said Miss Flood, hovering with a tray. ‘Fish, boiled potatoes and cabbage.’

‘Most nutritious,’ said Elliot, rubbing his hands together. ‘What kind of fish is this?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Flood, ‘but it’s white.’

Elliot Price looked satisfied as he carefully sprinkled a little salt onto his three bruised potatoes.

‘Miss Lyle,’ said Miss Flood with a smile, ‘I managed to rescue your lunch.’

Her lunch had been two cheese sandwiches. The bread was hard and curled, but Beatrice thought they looked better than the fish, which appeared to be little more than a steaming pile of bones.

‘So what brings you to this place?’ Elliot asked. ‘We all have a story to tell. Apart from Mr Brewster,’ he nodded towards a man in the corner, ‘who refuses to divulge any more than his surname, and who’s to say it’s his real one?’

‘It isn’t much of a story. My brother is a preacher. My father died in tragic circumstances, and I was left alone.’

‘Really?’ he said, widening his eyes. ‘
How tragic
.’

‘There was a fire,’ she told him, picking at the bread. ‘I have no other family, at least none that I could really turn to. Afterward, I tried keeping house for a while, but it was difficult, and lonely. I closed up most of the rooms. An elderly neighbour employed me, and I ran errands and kept her company, but then she died. My brother went to Chicago, where he’s preaching and working with the Church. I wanted to get away from Illinois altogether.’

‘And you chose Brooklyn?’ he said.

‘I wanted to come to New York,’ she explained. ‘My brother arranged all the details. It was either this, or Hoboken.’

‘Hoboken,’ said Elliot, using the handle of his knife to scratch behind his ear. ‘I know that place. You made the right decision.’

‘I don’t know. Have I? It doesn’t look like the New York I was expecting.’ She glanced outside the window, where a woman in a dirty grey dress was dragging her children in a line; she had five, and at least two of them were crying.

‘But this is Brooklyn,’ he told her. ‘This is the real thing. It’s New York without all the hard glamour and the falseness. Was that what you were after? The glamour that is Broadway, Manhattan? Times Square?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Brooklyn’s a good place to start again,’ he told her. ‘Almost everyone in Brooklyn has come from someplace else.’

‘I was born here,’ snapped a voice from behind them. ‘I was born around the block, and my father too.’

‘Miss Stanley was born here,’ said Elliot. ‘A true Brooklynite. Let us not forget.’

‘Though my mother came from Poland,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Warsaw. But she soon lost her accent, and she always made sure that she looked like an American.’

‘Bravo,’ said Elliot, scooping up some cabbage. ‘There’s nothing better looking than an American.’

It was quiet in her room. She could hear nothing behind the walls, or above her, not a footstep, a cough, or a rattling. What did the others do after supper? Did they stay in their rooms? Sit chatting in the
parlour?
Did some of them have jobs? And what on earth did they all do for money?

Beatrice sat on her bed. The pillow was hard.
Property of the Galilee Hotel
was stitched into the corner. In her case there was a notebook full of plans, but they didn’t seem to belong to the New York she’d just landed in. The plans in her notebook involved Tiffany & Co., where she would work selling diamonds. She’d studied Elijah’s book of rocks and minerals. For the past three years she’d stared hard into the window of the jewellers in Normal, where Mr Boris Kosch displayed his rings on velvet cushions, gold chains hanging from little metal trees, and his wife would serve tea (Russian-style) if you were making a purchase and taking your time about it. ‘It’s all part of the service,’ she’d smile, as girls stood hunched over cases, blushing and biting their nails, their fresh-faced boys behind them worrying about the cost, because was a ring really needed after all?

But Tiffany & Co., advertised in her magazines, was the most spectacular store. They sold jewels to rich New Yorkers. Maharajas. The British aristocracy. Pencil-line drawings showed women with furs around their necks, pouting their heart-shaped lips, their hands full of bracelets, ‘
Oh, I’ll take the lot!
’ she says, one foot on the running board of her automobile. ‘
It’s hard to choose at Tiffany’s!
’

Beatrice had seen herself holding out those trays of diamond rings. She knew about carat and the different shades of rubies. She’d used cold cream on her hands, and manicured her nails, because she knew appearance was important, it was the little things that made all the difference.

She went outside. The air was cooler now. She could see Elliot Price talking to Miss Flood in the dining room, using his hands, like they were spelling out the words. Miss Stanley was sewing in the parlour, her mouth full of pins, her forehead wrinkled; pulling out the needle like it pained her.

From the top of the step she could see all the way down Renton Street. The air sat on the rooftops and shimmered. A group of boys were kicking a flat-looking ball and men strolled by in summer straw hats with fancy walking canes. It seemed the street was coming to life. She could hear trombones and the sound of the seagulls as they drifted into shore.

‘The meals stink,’ said a voice behind her. ‘Me? I go to the Jewish bakery whenever I can. At least those bagels taste of something.’

Beatrice turned. A girl around her age was standing with her arms folded. She had dark curly hair and a round plump face.

‘I’m Lydia. I’m only here until the day after tomorrow, that’s when my dear, dear papa will be coming to pick me up, and take me home to Kirksville, Missouri, where I shall certainly die from boredom within the first three weeks. Missouri stinks,’ she said. ‘All of it.’

‘What are you doing in Brooklyn?’ asked Beatrice.

‘Me? I’m on a little vacation.’

‘Really?’

‘No. Real reason? My mother ran off with a travelling salesman. Fell madly in love with a man selling buttons. Can you imagine? My father was so ashamed he almost shot himself. But he didn’t,’ she added, rolling her eyes as if he should have done it. ‘Now my mother is travelling all over America with a trunk full of buttons and bows and her eyes full of love hearts. My father said he needed time to adjust to this new situation, so he sent me away to an aunt, who wasn’t even home when I got there. She has this big fancy house near Central Park, but there was no one inside it, not even a girl washing dishes or polishing the floor. And that’s how I ended up here, and it’s a dump, if you don’t mind my saying so. Are you a Methodist?’

‘I suppose so. Are you?’

‘You have to be to get into this place. So, yes, I suppose that I must be.’

They sat by the door, Beatrice tracing her finger in the dust. ‘It isn’t at all like I thought it would be,’ she said. ‘Brooklyn, New York.’

‘You ever been to Manhattan?’

‘No.’

‘That’s where it’s all supposed to be happening, but the people over there, they’ve got bigger problems than me. They’re all too busy trying to make themselves a quick buck, or showing off their fancy clothes or admiring their reflections to look at you twice. I spent a night in Manhattan, all by myself, because I figured if my aunt ain’t home yet, then come night-time, she might be, and so I walked around a while, took in the sights, and then went back to Central Park, and there was still no answer. The windows, and believe me there were plenty of them, were black. A woman appeared from next door with a wheezy Pomeranian bitch under her arm, who looked at me like I was nothing, and couldn’t believe it was my relative she’d been living
next
door to all these years. Anyway, it turns out that my aunt is in the Hamptons for the summer, wherever that might be.’

‘Did the woman help you out?’

‘You’ve got to be kidding. The woman threatened to report me for loitering if I was still there when she got back. Her dog started snarling, and let me tell you, that fluffy little dog had teeth that looked like razors. I didn’t hang around.’

‘What did you do?’

Lydia sighed as she leaned back on her hands and looked up at the sky. ‘I walked around Manhattan for a while. I got a cup of coffee. I didn’t have the money for a room, but I’d heard that New York stays open, so I figured I’d just walk around, buy a sweet roll and a couple of coffees, and wait until morning.’

‘What happened?’

‘You want to take a walk?’ she said. ‘I talk too much. I know I talk too much and then people make their opinions, and I’m usually the bad mouthy one they try and avoid at mealtimes. Take your friend Mr Price, for example.’

‘He’s hardly my friend.’

‘Whatever. That man turns his nose up whenever he sees me, like I smell worse than a dog’s behind, just because I don’t read Shakespeare, or whoever it is he’s talking about. He thinks he’s English. Have you noticed that yet? Anyway, I know things about Mr Price he wouldn’t want nobody else to know about.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like, I’m talking too much already. What about you? I’m bad at asking questions, I’m so terrible, really I am; don’t take it personal, I usually forget.’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Is that all you can manage, “all right”? You’re creating quite a stir, you know. I saw them all looking, even Mr Brewster had a funny little twitch at the side of his mouth, and usually that man is like a stone, so you made an impression in there, believe me.’

‘I look a mess,’ Beatrice said. ‘I’ve been in these clothes since the day before yesterday.’

‘Who was looking at the clothes?’

They walked towards Prospect Park. The streets were full of people. Men sat on upturned crates playing pinochle and poker and girls jumped in and out of skipping ropes singing songs in other
languages
, their plaits bobbing high in the air like question marks. People shouted from window to window. ‘You know what the time is?’ ‘Henry Schwimmer, he don’t know nothing!’ ‘She always plays the innocent, have you seen the look on her face when she comes tiptoeing home in the dark?’

Beatrice felt dirty. A man was having his hair cut, right there in the street. Her head felt itchy, it really needed washing. Lydia looked so clean; she could almost hear her squeaking.