City of Hope (9 page)

I grabbed my robe from the end of the bed and answered the door. A tall Negro man stood behind a silver-service trolley: “Breakfast, Ma'am.”

I started slightly. I had not seen a black face since leaving America almost ten years ago.

“What time is it?” I asked, as he smoothly wheeled the trolley in over the deep, salmon-pink carpet.

“Nearly eleven, Ma'am—I called earlier, but there was no reply, so I figured you were still sleeping. I brought the tray back down, and had them do it up again for you.”

Wealthy and all that I was, by Irish standards, I was not used to such sublime service.

“Thank you,” I said and wrapped the robe around me. It was plain blue cotton, not at all grand enough for my luxurious surroundings. I would have to buy another, a silk one, if I was to stay here.

He lifted the huge warming silver lid, revealing a small toast rack with the same grandeur as if it hid a suckling pig, then poured my coffee with a flamboyant flick of his pristine cuffs, bowing slightly to incur my approval as he swept his hand over the tray to indicate the cream and sugar.

I was in a different world, far from the chill of our cottage, or even the apartment, with its modest electric stove. I had nothing to attend to. All my thoughts could be occupied entirely with the rarefied decorum of a hotel breakfast and my own beauti­fication.

The waiter hesitated at the door, and I rushed apologetically to my purse and took out a dollar.

He bowed again with a “Thank you, Ma'am” and was turning to leave when I quickly asked, “What is your name?”

“Jerome,” he said, the thread of a smile playing on his long, stern face.

I reached out my hand and he shook it formally. His long, slim fingers felt cool and dry, like freshly ironed linen.

“Thank you, Jerome,” I said, and he bowed again briefly.

I was truly back in New York. Except that, this time, it was not as a lady's maid, but as a lady myself. I knew, from my years in service to the rich socialite Isobel Adams, how the politeness and gratitude of a guest were noted by those who ministered to them. I understood how things were here. I belonged, after all.

On my journey out from Ireland I had been driven by my need to escape. I knew from a new
Vanity Fair
magazine that I had been flicking through, only a few days before John's death, that the RMS
Majestic
was stopping the following day at Cobh from Southampton, on its way to New York. On my escape from John's graveside, this pointless, passing fact had pressed itself to the front of my mind and become my certain fate.

Once in Ballyhaunis, I managed to convince myself that it was a prudent, if somewhat hurried decision, and as the train carried me out of Mayo I was only aware that I was moving—away, away, through the flat fields, past the houses of people I didn't know, and nobody was looking at me, nobody knew or cared about the details of my life. It was a relief. Once in Cobh, I hurried to the ticket office, showed them my passport and previous American papers, paid for my passage and was afforded the luxury of boarding the RMS
Majestic
immediately. The ship was vast, seemingly bigger than Cobh itself, and I could comfortably hide there. I wandered around, exploring my surroundings, the shops, restaurants, hair salon and beauty parlors. As a porter carried the shabby trunk—my only piece of luggage—into my first-class cabin, a well-dressed couple passed by on the way to their quarters.

“Good evening,” the man said, tipping his homburg.

“Looks like we're neighbors,” said his wife as she held out her hand and introduced herself. “Penelope Hunt—and this is my husband, Giles.” English. I had no desire for company, but I smiled politely and did the same.

“Ellie Hogan.”

The woman opened her eyes slightly, and I saw them flick down my plain black coat. She was surprised, no doubt, at a woman traveling alone first class—and an Irish “peasant” at that. I was not in the humor for any company, let alone theirs, but I did experience strange comfort from the fact that they were strangers. They did not know about John, or that I was still wearing my funeral suit—and in their not knowing it, I felt safe, and for a moment was able to not believe it myself.

In my cabin I studied the fine wooden paneling and felt the comfort of the rich carpets, lay down on the cool sheets that smelled of starch and lavender and fell into a sleep so deep that I did not dream. The next morning as I woke the ship was pulling out of Cobh harbor. I had forgotten where I was, and instinctively felt for John in the bed next to me. The pain of remembering peeled back my feeling of peace, and altered it to panic as I heard the distant thunder of the engines and looked out of the cabin window to see the expanse of water that had already separated us from the land. It was only then that it truly hit me what I had done. I was running away. I had left Maidy, and my home, and John behind. Not John himself, but his graveside, his farm, our cottage—everything I held dear was over there, in the increasing distance, the disappearing toytown of Ireland. What had I done? The panic grew stronger and I wanted to run again. Back, back, back to Kilmoy, to settle things. Perhaps it wasn't too late? Perhaps they would commission a small boat to take me back before we moved too far from land?

I rushed out of the cabin and into the narrow corridor, but there was nobody around. Everybody was on deck—watching Ireland disappear into the distance, relishing the great adventure of this transatlantic crossing.

I stood there and willed myself to calm down. I could not get off the boat. I was here now, and I would just have to go along with it. I persuaded myself that I was doing the right thing. Maidy was strong, she would cope and, in any case, she had the support of wiser women than me. I would send her a telegram from the ship—that very day I would do it, and tell her that I would be back home to her in a couple of weeks. As for the welfare of my business, it was more than safe in Katherine's capable hands. In any case I did not want to think about it, as I felt that my distraction with work might have been the cause of John's death. John is dead, he's dead—he died of a heart attack a few days ago. How many days? A week? Four days. Three, three days ago. He was buried, in a box in the ground in Kilmoy. Yammering facts, insufferable truths—urging me to fall headlong into their swirling pit of pain, snatching at my heart with their sharp claws. I would not go under. I would step aside adeptly as they swiped at me. I wouldn't—couldn't—accept that John was dead. Not now, not yet. There had to be a way to make these terrible feelings go away. I could not endure them. I did not have the wherewithal to mourn. I was too hurt, too shocked, too angry.

So I buried John for the second time that week. I took the pain of his death and locked it in a box in my mind, and resolved not to open it again until such time as I felt able. I could put things out of my mind when I had to. I had done it before, when I came to America as a young woman. I would telegram Sheila and tell her to meet me in New York—at The Plaza. It would be wonderful to see my old friend. I would enjoy this holiday and return to Ireland soon, refreshed and strengthened by this break. Then, perhaps, I might be able to grieve for my husband. I was doing the right thing in coming away as I had. Surely I was.

Over the coming days of the journey I lost myself in the routine of first-class travel. I bought myself a bathing costume in the shop, and started the day with a swim in the vast blue indoor pool on the lower deck, then went back up to my quarters, dressed and ordered breakfast in my room. I bought myself two simple day dresses in the boutique, and a pearl barrette for my hair. I had my bob tinted and waved, and my nails painted in the beauty salon. In the afternoons I read in the smoking lounge, taking great interest in the papers, and in the evenings I retired to my cabin again, where I took my meals, listened to the radio and read from the large selection of novels in the ship's library. I lived within the walls of the ship and did not go up on deck once during the journey. The sight of the sea seemed to compound my fear, with its never-ending gray expanse of nothing, glimmering prettily at the surface of its murky, murderous depths.

Sitting on the edge of my unmade bed in The Plaza, I plopped a perfect square of white sugar into my coffee cup and smiled as the sweet, brown liquid jumped over the sides of the china cup. For the first time since leaving Kilmoy I felt—happiness was too strong a word for it—but somewhat settled.

I closed my eyes to savor the coffee and tried to imagine that my grief was being washed to one side, with the foreignness of that first sip. As the fresh, sweet, silky liquid slid down my throat, I thought how coffee was the drink of a New Yorker. John never took to it. I grabbed onto the familiarity of the bitter taste, and rolled my mind back to my heady New York past: before John's death had plunged me into terror; the days before I had lost everything; the days before I had acquired everything to lose—the days of freedom. This trip would not bring me back my youth, or make me forget all that had happened. However, it would, I decided, offer me some distraction; a shady place where I might take shelter before the sharp, searing truth of John's death burned me from the inside out.

I knew he was dead, but I still could not look. This trip would offer me something else to capture my attention. As I placed the coffee cup back down in its saucer, I gently closed the door on my pain.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

I gave my key to the concierge in the lobby of The Plaza.

“How long will you be staying with us, Ma'am?” he asked.

“Some time, I think,” I said, playing the part of the confident, wealthy, independent woman. It felt good to be somebody else. I smiled at him and, in smiling, my spirits lifted. Could running away be that simple?

It was raining as I stepped outside, to the clatter of the carriages and men selling apples alongside the gates of Central Park—the streets seemed busier, more populated than I remembered. I planned to walk, but then recalled that spring showers in New York could be ferocious, so I asked the doorman to hail me a taxi to Saks Fifth Avenue. I thought it was only just around the corner, but did not want to take a chance on my memory.

I knew, from what I had read in the papers, that New York had changed. The events of “Black Thursday,” heralding the start of the 1929 stock-market crash, had made world news, although we Irish had been so poor for so long that we hardly believed it could be as bad as it was. Men throwing themselves off high bridges, because their businesses had gone bust, was not something the average Irish person could fathom. I had cashed in my American savings in 1928, four years after my return, and finally accepted that I would probably never return. A year later I was reading about how people in New York were struggling to pay their utility bills. In the meantime, we in Ireland still had no utilities to speak of. No electricity in rural areas, and to many the telephone was still a contraption they barely believed existed. I could not dwell with any seriousness on things being “bad” in America. However bad things were, in my own mind at least, New York would still have to fall one helluva long way to be as backward as Kilmoy!

The taxi snarled along the wide avenue. New York looked more or less the same as I remembered, but it felt unfamiliar. The shine had gone off it somehow; the swagger and celebration and excitement I had been hoping for were not here. I recognized the big stores, the same ornate architecture, but Manhattan was not as I had expected it to be; there was something missing that I could not quite put my finger on. In my memories the sun bounced off the windows of the tall skyscrapers, sending out glimmering shards of light. But now the gold on the buildings did not seem to glitter, and many of the doorways were dark, as if there were people or secrets hiding behind them, waiting in the shadows. Fashionable ladies still walked up and down Fifth Avenue, but they did not make the same stylish parade I remembered from my time here in the 1920s. Instead they walked fast, their eyes fixed on the pavement ahead of them, as though there was some unnamed menace following them.

The air inside the taxi was heavy, syrupy with the stench of warm leather and sweat and bad perfume. The driver asked me where I was from, and I told him.

“Ireland?” he said. “Hope it ain't as tough over there as it is here. I got six kids,” he said, pointing to a faded photographic portrait on his dashboard. A family sitting stiffly in a studio, all dressed up like a bunch of Victorian gentry, except with wide American smiles. “Wife's brother was a photographer. Lost his job last year, driving a taxi now, like me. It's not mine, you understand—working twelve hours a day and barely covering the rental.”

As he dropped me off, I tipped him generously after his tale of woe. It irritated me to do so, but I had no desire for an angry cab driver to be calling out after me in the street. As I handed the money over, he held my fingers for a moment and said, “Well, thank you, Ma'am,” with such soft gratitude that I realized I had misjudged him and felt both guilty and pleased.

Once inside the golden doors of my favorite department store, with the bright lights glittering over an unending universe of beautiful things, I allowed myself to be transported back to the breathless wonder of my early twenties, standing in Isobel Adams' wardrobe as her new maid for the first time—the fairy tale of being in a place where the real world of work, and hunger and hardship, that I had known in Ireland became almost instantly replaced by brightly colored feathers, sparkling beads and sequins. My head had been turned by the greed for glamour, and John had never embraced this side of life as I had. To John, beauty was solely what God put before us in nature: my eyes matched in the color of spring bluebells; the dark autumn bog reflected in the color of my hair. I could see beauty in what he saw, but it never worked the other way around. John refused to appreciate my love of good design and modernity. There was a prick of prideful defiance as I realized that I was here on my own terms now, in the heartland of distraction and the foolishness of “female frivolity”—as he saw it. This was, I decided, where I belonged on this day, bathed in the beautiful golden lights of money and style. I had found my antidote, and for the next few hours gave myself over entirely to the distraction of shopping.