City of Hope (20 page)

The older couple moved on after I persuaded them to put aside their pride and contact their children to tell them what had happened. “My son, he's a busy man—a solicitor—he has his own family.” Their wealthy son duly arrived in a big car and took his parents back to his house, apologetic for the trouble they had unnecessarily caused.

“Really, I don't know why they didn't contact me right away,” he said. “You'd think I was a monster!”

“Pride,” I said.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked.

He meant money, but I shook my head.

“Bring them back for a visit now and again,” I said. “We have so enjoyed having them.”

We never saw the Cohens again.

The people I helped always expressed their gratitude to me, but that was never the point. I had changed their lives, but I remained a stranger to them—and to myself.

With each goodbye I felt ever more grateful to have found a place where my life was occupied only with the business of others. A place where I never had to look forward or back, but could just keep turning on the spot where I now found myself—forever.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
ONE

The third house I had bought turned out to be no bargain after all. It was in such a bad state that it was barely worth the land it stood on.

“The back of it is completely unsound,” Matt had warned me after the sale had gone through. Three weeks later, just as I was running out the door to the bank, he came into my hallway covered in plaster dust, breathing heavily with shock after an interior wall had collapsed.

“We need to secure the back of the house with iron columns—and we'll need scaffolding. It'll cost money, and I can't tackle this on my own with the men I've got, Ellie. I'll need to get some help in.”

He suggested a man he knew, called “Chuck,” whom he had met at the Labor Exchange. He was a dockworker who had lost his job, but he knew something about engineering and metalwork. “He's well connected, too, he'll be able to get us any materials we need.” I didn't care who he was or what he did, as long as he could help Matt fix the house and stop any of the men from getting injured or killed.

“No problem,” I said with one hand on the door. The bank closed for lunch in twenty minutes and I'd have to run as it was, to catch it—but Matt was hovering.

“Is there something else, Matt?”

“Well . . .”

As Matt gathered himself for his pronouncement, my irritation must have shown.

“No, Ellie—it's not important.”

“Please,” I said, “what is it?”

“Well, it's the men.”

“What about them?”

My voice sounded harsher than I would have liked. Matt's impassive face flinched. When did I become so irritable, so unintentionally angry?

“Is there a problem?”

I had run away from one life, and had now found myself entrenched in another—equally burdened with petty problems and personalities. How had this happened?

“Not a
problem exactly
,” he said.

I took my hand off the door.

“It's just that some of the men have been saying . . .”

Gossip—I was missing the bank because of idle gossip.

“. . . that you are paying more attention to the shop these days, and not enough to the work they do.”

I didn't have time for this stupidity. I had heard that some of the men had been quarreling with their wives because they were earning more money than the men. The men worked on the houses in lieu of their rent, to make them habitable for themselves. They worked for the upkeep of their families. But men preferred to work, it seemed, to line their own pockets and pay for alcohol and cigarettes. The women liked things the way they were. They each took what they needed from the stores in the way of food and supplies, then drew a small salary each week, of which they were in full control. The men didn't like it—of course they didn't, because it meant their women were in charge. Well, that was too bad.

“What can I do, Matt?”

He looked at me blankly.

“What do you want me to do, Matt?”

Matt had never stood up to me. He had never questioned my judgment or asserted his better knowledge as a man over me. We had never fought, because there was never any question of a disagreement. Yet it sometimes angered me that he had cast me in the role of his employer to such an extent that he gave me, not just his unswerving, unthinking loyalty, but his manly spirit. He was my friend, I felt that—and at times, when I saw him looking at me in a certain way, I believed he was more than that. Then he would act like this stupid fool, and I would despair and wish that he would be more of a man and take control. I took a deep breath.

“Right. We'll have a dinner tomorrow night, for the men only. No women and children. We'll let them drink and smoke and let off steam. And your friend Chuck can come along and introduce himself to me, and to them. I'll cook. Is that agreed?”

Matt nodded, and I ran out the door to the bank.

I told Bridie I was entertaining the men exclusively the following night (she was “scandalized!”) and gave her money to keep everyone out of the house until at least nine o'clock. The women and children could have a meal in the small family diner down the road, and retire back to the Balduccis' house if they finished early, where I would have cakes, sweets and cigarettes ready for them to enjoy. I would get Jake to gather up all the children when they came in from school and deliver them down to her. She was to tell none of the women that there was any sign of discontent among their men. I did not want any of them feeling that the tenuous hold on the security of their families' lives was being threatened. This was in the manner of a “thank-you” from me alone, and their own evening out was to be presented as a sort of “treat” or party.

I was not in the mood for cooking anything fancy. As I began to prepare the food itself I realized that, in actual fact, I was not in the mood for cooking at all. I felt, if the truth be told, discontented, and yet I was not entirely sure why. As I took my largest saucepan out from the cupboard, my mind flashed over the early days of my marriage, when John was a captain in the Irish Republican Army. My duty, as his loyal wife, was to cook and care for his men, harboring them all in our small cottage as renegade fighters; cleaning their wounds; comforting them. When John came home half dead with his leg hanging off, I nursed him, then came to America to earn the money for his operation. Who was there to comfort me? In later years I fed his friends, and all but reared his farm boys. Men—for all their bravado and physical strength—could be weak and stupid creatures without a woman to care for them. It seemed to me, as I pulled the pan of water over from the sink to the stove, that I had been looking after men all my life, and here I was again, keeping the men happy. Making sure they were fed and watered, and made to feel important. Who was going to do the same for me?

I did not care to answer the question because in my heart I knew that any number of my new friends would gladly have me sit back and be cared for. The truth was, I was never the kind who liked to be looked after; not even by my husband. I was happiest when I was taking charge. I would allow Maidy to cook and care for me, but never to offer me her comfort. I was too proud to take comfort from any person, be they man, mother or friend—I kept my own counsel.

I was looking after other people because I was unable to allow anyone else to look after me, but grief has no time for such logic. I was angry: with the world, with the men, with John, but mostly with myself. Angry at my own weakness, and for the feeling that, despite all my running and my money and my management, I still barely felt in control of my own life.

I prepared a simple, hearty meal that would keep them content, but at the same time would not cause me to go to much—if any—trouble. A large hunk of bacon, warm or cold as it came, could be sliced at the table and served with hot gravy, new potatoes and a loaf of Bridie's fresh bread. I also had her send up two apple pies from the shop, which I would serve with a large pan of custard. Again, hot or cold didn't matter. I set the table for eleven: the nine men, Chuck and me.

I dressed for dinner and applied makeup. If I was to be the only woman among this gathering of men, I could at least make sure that I looked like a lady and not a maid.

My hair had grown longer, so I swept it back from my face and clipped it up in a barrette. I wore a simple black dress, for authority's sake, and applied a little rouge and lipstick. It was as much armor as I needed.

The men started to arrive just before seven. In their usual manner they took off their hats at the door and wiped their feet. They were, without exception, dressed smartly, which was not always the case, as many of them ate in their work clothes. Cazper, a Polish lad, and Johnny, his Irish sidekick, were the first to arrive. Both in their early twenties, married and with five small children between them, they were cocky, immature fellows who wound each other up. For all that, they were not bad lads, and my somewhat formal invitation had cowed their usual swagger somewhat. Mario, Anna's husband, was his usual charming self and brought a bottle of wine along with him, which he handed to me with a great sweeping gesture and an overly ebullient kiss on both cheeks. Matt was the last to arrive just after ten past, and I got the impression that his tardiness was because he had rounded them up and given them all something of a talking to beforehand, warning them not to misbehave. In all honesty, I was beginning to wonder if this evening had been such a great idea.

The food was all ready, with the huge hunk of ham and a pile of floury spuds warming in the oven. I invited Mario to help me pour everyone a glass of wine from the dozen bottles I had set aside on the sideboard.

“Bridie isn't here,” I assured him, “so we can enjoy a civilized meal!”

He laughed, but did not add a clever comment, as I had come to expect from him.

As I took a place in the center of the table, Matt stood up to give me his seat at the head—the other end being reserved for our newcomer guest.

“Chuck said he would be here just after seven,” Matt said to me, then an awkward silence fell. The room was ripe with expectation that I should say or do something, and it began to take on the atmosphere of a boardroom. I would have said, “Lads, I'll head out and let you have the place to yourselves,” but the evening had been contrived now. I had cast myself as a sort of Lady Bountiful, feeding her troops. What had I been thinking of, and what had Matt been thinking of, letting me do this? He would have been better placed suggesting that I purchase them a barrel of beer and let them get on with it.

“Food,” I said, breaking the silence, “let me get the food.”

“I'll help,” said Matt, and he followed me out saying, “I'm sorry, Ellie, it's a bit odd, with you being the only woman. Chuck is a nice chap, civilized—he'll help the atmosphere.”

A civilized metalworking docker. Was I a snob? I felt I was looking and acting like one, in any case. I didn't need another guest—this evening or any evening. I needed to clear my head and get away from all these men, all these people. What was keeping me here—in America—after all? I could go back to Ireland; the pain was gone—not that it had ever come on me with the force I believed it would. Perhaps it was time to go home, to escape all these complications, all this work. I would think about it tomorrow.

There was a heavy knock on the door.

“That'll be Chuck,” said Matt. “You get it—I'll carry in the food. It's in the oven, right?”

I nodded and straightened my dress before opening the door. One more stranger to deal with, one more night of hostessing, and taking responsibility for other people. I could return home as soon as I wanted to and carry on where I had left off. I was, after all, an expert in closing the door on one world and opening up another. If nothing else, this trip to New York had proved that.

As I opened the door a tall man in my porch was propping his bicycle against the wooden railings. He turned and took off his cap. He had a scruffy, reddish beard and blond hair that was too long for a gentleman, yet too short for a vagrant. He wore workingmen's boots, and his trousers were tightened with bicycle clips.

“Ellie?” he said, then he smiled and said it again, in a tone shot through with something peculiar. Disbelief.
“Ellie?”

I would not have recognized him, not if he had come with a gold-embossed invitation card announcing himself. But for his blue eyes and the soft, adoring way they were looking at me, I would not have known that it was my old beau, Charles Irvington.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
TWO

I got such a shock that for a moment I doubted it was really him.

“Charles? Charles Irvington?”

“I might have known—the way Matt talked about you. Ellie, this mysterious Irishwoman who picked him up off the street and gave him a new life.”

He was beaming at me with that wide, white, American smile that I had so teased him about all those years ago.

For a moment my dead heart fluttered and I was drawn back—a country girl charmed by his confidence, impressed by his erudition and good looks, seduced by the glamour and promise of his family wealth.

I shook it off. I wasn't that person anymore—and, by the look of him, neither was he.

“What happened to you?” It just came out.

He laughed, more heartily still.

“God, Ellie, you haven't changed—always the charmer.”

“No, I mean . . .”

He looked down at his trousers and raised his arms to announce the change.

“The Depression, Ellie. I couldn't be part of the system anymore, when so many people were—so many of my friends on the docks were—well . . .”