Ellis Island (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Shelia had told me her employer lived in an “apartment block,” but I had never seen a building like it before. There was a carpet on the pavement outside, and an awning to protect residents from the rain. There were two magnolia trees standing sentry, and the black door to the building itself was inlaid with brass filigree flowers. As I stepped onto the carpet, a man came out of the building. He was dressed like an army general in a long, dark red coat, with shiny brass buttons and a peaked cap. He walked smartly toward me—evidently too polite to run—and headed me off at the door.

“Around the side,” he said. He had a Cork accent.

“I’m Ellie,” I said. “I’ve come to—”

“Around the side,” he repeated firmly, nodding to his left, “and down the first set of steps. That’s the servants’ entrance—
go!
”

I was blushing with shame and walked as fast as I could in the direction he had pointed. The building seemed never ending, and when I reached the next street along I looked back and was relieved to see the uniformed man was still standing there, watching after me. He waved a gloved hand at me, to turn the corner. I was halfway down the next street before I found some steps leading to a basement. They were treacherously steep and at the bottom of them was a small courtyard, as swept and clean as if it were an inside room. I knocked on the large heavy door and heard an unmistakable voice from inside call out: “It’s her, at last, it’s surely Ellie!”

“Hurry, hurry,” I said in my head, my hands wanting to paw at the wood as I realized how anxious I was to see a friendly face from home. I barely recognized Sheila when she opened the door. The curly red hair had been replaced with a short, straight bob and she was thinner, and flat-chested.

“I thought you’d never get here, I’ve been up and down waiting for you all day—I had Grumpy Flannery at the door warned to look out for you!”

We embraced and kissed and I clutched at her as we entered the building. “Oh, I’ve so much to tell you.” I squeezed her arm with excitement. “I don’t know where to start, I’ve had such adventures—”

But she cut me off, saying, “There’ll be time enough to talk later, Ellie—we’d better get you upstairs, or there’ll be no job for either of us.” She started almost running down a corridor that was so long I could not see the end of it. We were in the basement of the huge building. The walls were striped with thick pipes and painted a dark red, and there were narrow alleys running off at either side, each one exactly the same as the next—it was as if we were lost in the bloody bowels of some vast animal. All the time Sheila was talking, “Mrs. Flannery, she’s the boss and a tyrant, she has us all killed-out. She’s married to Grumpy—only we don’t call him that to his face, we call him Mr. Flannery—or His Lordship, if we’re feeling cheeky. Precious, she’s the scullery maid. She’s a colored, but she’s nice. She’s in love with David, he works in maintenance, and nobody knows about them because . . .” I could barely keep up with the speed of her feet or her words, as she grabbed my hand and hurried me alongside her.

Suddenly, she stopped outside what looked like a cage. She pulled back some black crisscross bars revealing a tiny box of a room, then indicated for me to get in. I felt a little frightened, but I couldn’t object. I stepped inside and she followed, then closed over the bars. I was petrified, but looked at my friend’s face and she smiled at me as if nothing was untoward. There was a black metal panel on the wall with buttons, which Sheila pressed. After a few seconds the cage began to move upward. My stomach lurched with shock, and I thought I was going to be sick.

“Twelfth floor,” Sheila said, looking up at a strip of numbers that were lighting up as we rose. “Here we are!” And we juddered to a halt. She pulled back the cage doors and we came out on another corridor, except that this one was full of daylight. There was a glass wall directly in front of us, behind which was a busy kitchen, like something you would find in a big, grand house. On the far side of the kitchen were large windows, through which I could see only sky. My legs gave way slightly as I realized how high up we must be. “This is the service area—kitchens, laundry—our bedrooms are down the hall.” Sheila dragged the “a” out slightly in “ha-all.” “Though I spend most of my time upstairs, in the apartment.”

I stared at her.

She laughed. “Isobel lives on the next floor up, we live down here—it’s kinda confusing. I’ll show you around later—you hungry?”
Kinda . . .
Sheila looked and sounded so different now, it was making me a little nervous. I followed her into the kitchen. “Ellie, this is Mrs. Flannery.” Sheila’s voice suddenly lost its American twang, as she introduced a woman who was about the same age and build as my beloved Maidy, but with a face as pink and fierce as a cross sow. She was standing at a long wooden table, as big as our whole kitchen at home maybe, her wide hands kneading a lump of bread the size of a small child. She wiped her hands on her apron and stood back from the table to look me up and down, as if appraising cattle. I bobbed slightly on one knee, afraid to look her in the eye in case it be construed as cheek, and mumbled, “Pleased to meet you, Ma’am.”

“Don’t genuflect, child, I am
not
the Blessed Virgin.” The accent was pure Cork—like the husband’s. “And don’t call me Ma’am—I’m not the Queen of England, either.”

The girl washing dishes behind her giggled and, without turning, Mrs. Flannery swiftly slapped the back of her knees with the damp towel. The girl stopped laughing, but turned and smiled at me. The whites of her eyes and her teeth shone like pearls against her glossy, coal-black skin. Small wonder they called her Precious.

“Are you hungry?” Mrs. Flannery was asking.

“A little, but . . .”

“Sit down there and I’ll give you something. Precious, bring me some bread and cheese—quickly, child! Sheila, where in God’s good name have you been all day? That one upstairs has been in and out, driving me half-demented all day. Oh, never mind, here . . .” A lump of yellow, crumbling cheese appeared in front of me on a large plate, alongside the softest, whitest bread, the like of which I had never before tasted in my life. I ate the food greedily, drinking at the glass of milk that had been put down beside it, and the very second I was finished Mrs. Flannery prodded me in the back and said to Sheila, “Right—get the new girl settled and get back to work.”

As Sheila marched out of the kitchen with me behind her, the old woman called after her, “And no sitting idle around like a lady. Remember who you are!”

“That aul bitch should have no authority over me anyhow.” Sheila was flushed with annoyance. “I’m Isobel’s personal maid and answer to her directly. I don’t do the dirty jobs—only minding my lady’s pretty things and dressing her hair for parties. This is our room, Ellie . . .”

We had entered a small windowless room with a low ceiling and a single bed. It was smaller than the ship’s cabin I had traveled in to get here. There was a line of coat hooks on the wall, hung with Sheila’s clothes, and a small dressing table to one side, the top of it strewn with makeup, baubles and perfume bottles. Suddenly I felt tired and sat down on the bed. Sheila read my expression as disappointment. “I know it’s small, and Mrs. Flannery said I should put Precious out of her room, but I didn’t want her sleeping in the kitchen, and—”

“No, no,” I said, horrified. “I’m just tired after the journey.”

“We can sleep top-to-toe, it’ll be fun.”

“It’s perfect,” I said. I could not quite believe where I was. The cage, Sheila’s strange hair—it all felt unreal, like a dream. The paper on the wall beside me was peeling and a troupe of faded ballerinas danced along. The last in the row had her arm torn off at the elbow, but she smiled on regardless. For a moment I closed my eyes and wondered, if I imagined hard enough, that I might be returned home.

When I opened my eyes again, Sheila was beaming at me and holding both my hands in hers. “I am
so
happy you’re here, Ellie. You are going to
love
New York.”

Sheila left me alone in the room, while she ran back to work. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes. When I woke it was dark and my dress was stuck to me with the heat. I regretted not having undressed before I settled. The room was airless and its blackness bore down on me. I felt sick with the realization of where I was. A heavy, immovable dread sat like a rock in the bottom of my stomach. Every inch of me craved home, craved John. I had been stupid to come, heartless to leave him behind. What was I doing here?

The electric light flashed on. “Up! Get up, Ellie, quick!” Sheila threw some clothes at me. “It’s your uniform, it’s an old one of mine, but it should fit. Isobel wants to meet you now, so we’d better hurry.”

Yawning, I dragged on the uniform, a black dress shockingly short—it barely reached my calves. Sheila jerked my hair back from my face into a tight knot at the nape of my neck and placed a white cap over it, then unfolded a starched apron and pulled it over my head. “There,” she said, turning me toward the mirror of the small dressing table. “You look like a proper servant.” She took a small packet out of her apron pocket and handed me a flat silver-wrapped stick, which I at first assumed was a cigarette. “Here, have some gum—it’ll freshen you up.”

I peeled back the silver paper and, as I put the stick into my mouth, the taste of mint exploded, flooding my mouth with water. In summer, John used to scythe back the mint outside our front door and fill the house with its clean, powerful scent.

“And don’t swallow it, it’s not candy!”

We came out of the bedroom and walked past the kitchen, which was dark and empty of life, aside from a small lamp. Its windows glowed a faint yellow from the lights outside. It was obviously the middle of the night. With everyone in bed, it seemed odd that Sheila was taking me to meet the mistress at this time, but she was so anxious, and taken up with us getting where we were going as quickly as possible, that I didn’t challenge her.

I followed her through a door and up a dimly lit flight of stairs. At the top of them was a wide door leading to another, long corridor. It occurred to me that this was how I had imagined the rabbits lived—constantly running along long tunnels, leading this way and that. Sheila fled ahead of me along the corridor. It seemed as if we ran for miles, past two or three doors until finally she stopped outside one of them.

“Are you ready?” she said. I had seen and heard so much on my journey that I thought I was ready for anything. But it was Sheila who seemed hesitant now, saying, “I hope she likes you, Ellie—I’m sure she will.” I was about to ask why she was worried, when she said, “Oh God!” and spat her gum into her hand, then held out her palm for me.

“Oh—I’ve swallowed it!” I said.

“I told you not to!”

“What’ll happen to me?”

She clapped her hand up to her mouth, as if too shocked to say.

“Sheila?” Suddenly, I was a little frightened.

Then she winked at me and laughed. “Nothing, stupid.” I walloped her, and the two of us giggled as if we were outside the Mother Superior’s office waiting for a telling-off. “Come on,” she said, taking my hand. “Let’s get this over and done with.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

The room beyond the door was vast, as big as a church. The very walls shimmered and seemed lined in gold. Across the room, facing us, was a long black cabinet, glossy as if it was wet and marbled with veins the color of flesh. Above it, a mirror reached up toward a ceiling that was twice the height of any of the others I had seen in this building; its beveled edges glittered with a thousand prisms, catching light from the dazzling crystal chandelier at the room’s center. Against another wall stood a four-poster bed. The sides of it were hung with yard upon yard of pink silk, and the headboard was made of what seemed to be mother-of-pearl. At the center of the bed reclined a slim woman with short blond hair and delicate features. She was lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows as she smoked a cigarette. An ornate black robe was barely draped over her naked shoulders. She was surely not yet thirty years old. She waved the cigarette lavishly in our direction—“Sheila, my darling! And this must be the new maid!”—then dropped it onto the silk coverlet.

Sheila ran across the room and rescued it, placing it carefully into an ashtray on the bedside table. She straightened up a bottle next to it and the mistress said, in a nasty tone, without turning her head, “I had a little nightcap, Sheila, as you can see.” Then she looked at me and gave me a wobbly smile. Her eyes were dead and sleepy, her voice mossy and uncertain. “How do you like our little home, erm . . . ?”

“It’s Eileen, Ma’am.”

She threw her head back and laughed, for no reason I could fathom, then fell sideways across the bed and rolled toward the ashtray, where she fumbled around for her smoldering cigarette before eventually knocking it, and the ashtray, to the floor. I thought perhaps she was stone mad, until Sheila picked up the drink bottle and waved it at me to indicate it was empty. I felt a little stupid then. I had never seen a proper lady drunk before. In truth, I had never thought such a thing could happen.

“Come on, Isobel,” Sheila said soothingly as her mistress’s head lolled to one side, near unconscious. “Let’s heave that skinny, drunken ass of yours into bed.” She pulled back the silky covers and reached under the pillow for a nightgown. “These are kept in the dressing room, I’ll show you in a minute, Ellie, but I always hide a spare one under the pillow when the master’s away, so we can get her undressed quicker when she gets like this. Get the gown off . . .” Sheila was running around the room emptying ashtrays and gathering up bottles. She seemed to know where to look, and conjured up three from various hiding places. “Come on, Ellie—for God’s sake, get her undressed and into bed!”

I undid the lady’s belt and peeled the black robe down her arms, exposing the flesh. My hands were shaking with nerves. Supposing this rich, unstable creature woke up and caught me undressing her? Her skin was so white and translucent that her veins and bones were almost visible. I balked at her nakedness—her hip bones stuck out like spoons under the skin, a glossy triangle of shockingly lustrous hair between them. Her breasts were strapped to her chest with a wide bandage. Panic and revulsion pounded in my chest. This was not what I had imagined my job would be. I wanted to go home.

“Don’t forget to unstrap her . . .” Sheila said firmly.

Almost weeping with a mixture of fear and embarrassment, I found the edge of the bandage tucked beneath her armpit and carefully eased it out. Sitting her up and supporting her back with one hand, I unfurled the gauzy strip with the other until I had released the two tiny breasts, the nipples tightening as they hit the cold air.

Sheila, having finished gathering up rubbish, came and helped me put the nightgown on, then between us we lifted Mrs. Adams into the bed, tucking the covers around her. I picked up the black robe and draped it across a purple velvet chair next to the bed. It was intricately embroidered with peony roses—the most beautiful item of clothing I had ever seen.

“Better hang that in the dressing room,” said Sheila, “so Isobel can pretend she didn’t pass out again.”

The following day I woke with a start. Sheila was gone from the bed, although her side was still warm. Again, I was immediately aware of the strangeness of where I was and the enormity of the mistake I had made in coming here. John’s letter had arrived yesterday while I was asleep, and Sheila had finally produced it from her apron after we had got her employer safely to bed.

Now, I found pen and paper in my bag and wrote:

I stopped and looked over what I had written, but as I was about to continue, Sheila ran into the room, so I quickly screwed the paper up and threw it under the bed.

“Ellie! Why aren’t you dressed? We’re going to be fitted with new uniforms!” She was beside herself with the adventure of it. “Mademoiselle Dupont
herself
will be measuring us up! And Isobel will oversee the fitting!” she squealed.

We were under orders to wait in Isobel’s dressing room—a vast anteroom off her bedchamber, furnished with a delicate gold-framed chaise longue and walls lined with rails and racks of clothes, stacks of shoes and hat boxes—more than I had ever imagined might be in the biggest shop in Dublin. I was terrified by the idea of meeting the drunken woman I had stripped the night before. At the same time, my eyes strained to accommodate the bright colors and the glittering textures. There were fuchsia-pinks and hot oranges brighter and more beautiful than any sunset; peacock-blue marabou features puffing out from the cuffs of an evening coat; a long collar stiffened with thousands of tiny pearls; a faceless head sitting on a clear glass table, wearing a fringed skullcap encrusted with diamonds and sequins. As our mistress and the dressmaker came into the room, the cap’s beaded fringe shivered, sending shards of white light ricocheting across the room. As Isobel approached me, I felt myself flush with embarrassment at the memory of seeing her naked body the night before; I was mortified by having touched her breasts.

She smiled broadly, put both her hands out to take mine. “Ellie, I am so pleased to meet you at last. Sheila has spoken of you so often.” Her lips were an unnatural shade of red, a dark maroon that made her skin appear even paler than it was. She smelt of lilac—the scent of June, the month before I left home—and her skin was cool and dry like my mother’s. Sheila was watching me nervously. She had forgotten to tell me how to act. I lowered my eyes and bobbed a curtsy. I felt ashamed of my instinctive servitude, but Isobel laughed, a light babble of charm, and behind her Sheila beamed like a proud parent. “I want my girls to look as pretty as pictures,” Isobel said to the dour-looking woman behind her. “Fashion and comfort must be our top priorities!” The dressmaker lowered her eyes, well used to being bossed about by rich ladies; but as soon as Isobel left the room, her demeanor changed. She was clearly unimpressed by her commission of fitting out servants. She made us strip to our undergarments, then poked at us with her bony fingers and squeezed the tape measure around our sweating limbs, grunting instructions and prodding us this way and that. I felt she was not as French as her name suggested.

The very next day our new uniforms were delivered, on hangers, to the front door. They were very comfortable and extremely pretty—in a light, blue-and-white striped cotton with drop waists, large sailor collars and sleeves to the elbow. Isobel called us up to her dressing room to model them for her. She was sitting on the edge of her bed in the black robe; she told us she had designed our uniforms herself and feigned hilarious disappointment when Sheila told her that Mrs. Flannery had refused to be fitted for one. “Has Sheila told you, that ghastly old woman is a spy for my husband?” she said to me. She held my eye. I smiled nervously. Dramatically, she poked a fresh cigarette into an ornate ivory holder and indicated for Sheila to run over and light it for her. “She thinks I’m joking, Sheila.”

“It’s true,” Sheila said to me. “Mr. Adams appointed Mrs. Flannery himself.”

“To keep her eye on me and make sure I don’t have an affair—isn’t that right, Sheila? Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous?” She laughed, and Sheila laughed too.

I stood there dumbfounded, unsure where to put myself. I had never been in a situation like this before, but while Sheila’s behavior seemed inappropriate to me, maybe this was how things were done in America?

“Oh, look—we’ve embarrassed the new girl,” Isobel said. “Sheila, take Eileen around the place and show her the ropes before we shock her anymore.” And she waved us away.

Later that afternoon, when Sheila was preparing her bath, Isobel called me into her drawing room. She was wearing a baby-pink satin robe that fell into a glossy puddle on the floor behind her chair; her hair was freshly ironed and, as she beckoned me over to the window, her nails shimmered like pearls. “I hope I didn’t upset you earlier with all that silly talk,” she said. “Here—I wanted to welcome you with a little gift.” Across her lap lay the black, embroidered robe she had been wearing on the first night. She handed it to me. “I saw you looking at it earlier, and I thought you might like it.”

“Oh no, Ma’am, I couldn’t . . .”

“Call me Isobel,” she said, and her smile seemed genuine and kind. “And take it, for goodness sake.”

I took it from her. The smell of warm lilac wafted up from the heavy, velvety package. It was the softest, most beautiful thing I had ever held. I curtsied for the second time. “Thank you . . . Isobel.” It was uncomfortable for me, using the name of this generous but strange woman.

“It’s nothing—you deserve it . . .” As I was leaving the room, I heard her add, almost under her breath, “. . . after all you’ve been through.” I realized that Sheila must have told her some ridiculous tale in order to secure my position, and guessed it was probably best not to ask.

My first week of employment passed in a whirlwind of instructions and lessons. As the parlor maid, it was my official job to fetch and carry for Isobel and her many guests, but in reality my duties spread into a good deal of cleaning and even some cooking as well. Everyone in the Adams household worked hard; our day started at seven and rarely ended before eleven at night—even later, if Isobel came home late from a party and wanted a snack or a nightcap in the middle of the night.

The ten-room apartment ran on a skeleton staff, because it was not the main family residence. That was in Boston. Yet Isobel preferred the Manhattan apartment, and so her Boston mansion with its twenty staff went largely unoccupied, and we had to accommodate her lavish, demanding lifestyle with just a maintenance staff of four.

Mr. Adams, a rich industrialist, was rarely in residence.

“That man’s as close to a saint as you’ll find,” Mrs. Flannery said, when I asked about Isobel’s husband as we were preparing the supper one evening. “Made his money in steel. A decent, hardworking and respectable man, from good English stock. A gentleman, a true gentleman.” She had worked for James Adams and his first wife in Boston, but her employer had asked her to move to New York four years ago, to manage his recently acquired apartment. He had also arranged for Mr. Flannery to become chief doorman for the brand-new building, and had given the couple their own apartment on 64th Street, just a short walk away. Living off site was the ultimate accolade for a servant, and the Flannerys’ independent lifestyle compensated them somewhat for the upheaval in this, the latter stage of their lives. However, at the time of her relocation, Mrs. Flannery had been unaware that her boss had fallen in love with the flighty New York socialite Isobel Fisk and was intending to make her his second wife. When Mrs. Flannery mentioned Isobel, she raised her eyes to heaven and shook her head to indicate her deep, unspoken disapproval.