Gypsy (17 page)

She vowed to herself then that she would show him she could be as good as any man in taking the rough with the smooth, and she would throw herself into the big adventure wholeheartedly.

A couple of hours later, the pipe and cigarette smoke and the sheer number of hot sweaty bodies in a confined space with little fresh air coming in, made Beth head for the deck.

As she went up the stairs she realized to her consternation that she was a little tipsy because she found it hard to coordinate her movements. Just as she was about to topple backwards, she felt two hands clutch her round the waist from behind to steady her.

It was Jack.

‘Steady on, girl,’ he said. ‘If you’re sure the deck is where you want to be, I’ll come with you.’

As they finally got up to the top, the cold fresh air felt wonderful. The rain had stopped, the sky was clear and studded with stars and the sea was flecked with silver lights.

‘This is better,’ she sighed, taking deep breaths. ‘How beautiful it all looks.’

‘That it does,’ Jack agreed. ‘The sea looks like black satin, and see that moon!’

It was just a crescent, but it appeared far closer and brighter than Beth had ever noticed back in Liverpool. They found a locker to sit on and stayed there in companionable silence for some time. The band was playing along in the first-class saloon, and now that they were going up the Hudson River it was far warmer than out at sea, so much so that several other couples had come up and were standing further along the deck.

‘You’re a dark horse,’ Jack said, grinning at her. ‘You never said you could play like that. I thought when I saw your violin case you only played that screechy chamber stuff.’

‘It’s an Irish fiddle,’ Beth said with a smile. ‘I don’t think it knows anything but jigs. My mother never approved of it; she always said it was ale-house music.’

‘You’ll never be short of work playing that way,’ Jack said. ‘But where are you going tomorrow? Have you got plans?’

‘I think Sam has,’ she said. ‘What about you?’

‘I’m going to my friend’s place,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think it’s much, a kind of lodging house, but it will do until I get work.’

‘And what will that be?’

‘Anything that pays well,’ he replied. ‘I just wish I had a talent like yours. You’ll surely have people falling over themselves to hire you.’

‘Hire me?’ she exclaimed. ‘To play my fiddle?’

‘Isn’t that what you were gonna do?’ he asked, looking puzzled.

‘I thought I’d have to do domestic work or be an assistant in a shop, like back home,’ she said.

Jack snorted with laughter. ‘Well, you’d be crazy if you did when you’ve got a talent like that up your sleeve.’

‘But they won’t take a girl on, will they?’

‘That would be an even bigger attraction,’ Jack said. ‘Especially someone as pretty as you.’

‘Well, thank you, Jack,’ she said, blushing a little.

‘I’d be glad to come and listen, but I don’t suppose you’ll want to know me once you start moving in fancy circles!’

‘Of course I will,’ Beth said indignantly.

‘Nah!’ He shook his head. ‘I’m too rough for someone like you. Your friends will look at my scarred face and think I’m a wrong ’un.’

‘How did you get it?’ she asked, and reached out to touch the scar gently.

‘My pa done it. He was hitting Ma, I tried to stop him, and he picked up the knife and slashed me. That’s why I left London. Couldn’t take no more.’

‘If you got it defending your mother, there’s no reason to be ashamed of it,’ Beth said, and kissed the scar.

Suddenly his arms were round her and he was kissing her.

Beth was startled, but not unpleasantly so. Jack’s lips were soft and warm; she liked the way one of his hands was caressing her face and the tingle she felt down her spine. Without even being aware of what she was doing, she nestled into his arms and put hers around him.

As his tongue insinuated itself between her lips she thought he was taking liberties, but it felt good and she didn’t want to break away. He was breathing heavily, holding her tighter and tighter, and it was only then that she realized she ought to call a halt.

‘We should go back now,’ she said as she broke away and stood up. ‘We’ve got an early start tomorrow and so much ahead of us.’

‘I don’t ever want to let you go,’ he whispered. ‘You’re so lovely.’

Beth smiled at him and patted his face. ‘That’s sweet, but you’ll see me tomorrow.’

‘I’d do anything for you,’ he said, catching her fiercely by her shoulders. ‘Anything!’

By the time Beth got back below decks, the party had broken up. A few drunken men were still staggering around, but the women and children were all in bed. In the single women’s dormitory Maria and Bridie were waiting for Beth; it seemed someone had reported back that she had been seen with Jack.

‘Is he your sweetheart?’ Bridie whispered, her freckled face alight with eagerness.

‘No, at least I don’t think so,’ Beth said, hurriedly pulling off her dress and boots and clambering into her bed. She had no idea whether a few kisses amounted to being someone’s sweetheart. She liked Jack, but then he’d been the only man on the ship that she’d got to know. And for all she knew, she might meet someone far more suitable when they landed.

‘Did he kiss you?’ Maria whispered.

‘Yes.’

‘What was it like?’ Maria asked.

‘Nice,’ Beth whispered back. ‘But I don’t know how it compares as it was the first time.’

‘You’ve never been kissed before?’ Bridie said incredulously.

Miss Giles came in then to check everyone was in bed, so Beth was spared having to say anything more.

She pretended she’d fallen asleep before Miss Giles left, shutting the door behind her. With her eyes closed she could relive Jack’s kisses, and savour the delicious sensation all over again.

‘What’s happening now?’ Beth asked Sam. It was ten in the morning and a clear, sunny day. They had been woken at first light by the ship’s engines starting up again, and someone yelled out that it was time to disembark.

Suddenly it was utter chaos down in steerage with everyone rushing to pack up the remainder of their belongings. Even the crew shouting out that it would be several hours before they left the ship made no difference to the mass panic.

Beth was swept up in it too, and rushed up on deck to see for herself.

There was New York spread before her, looking exactly the way it had in a picture she’d seen in a magazine. She could even see the spire of Trinity Church which she knew was an aid to shipping as it was the highest building.

She was spellbound. The church spire might be the tallest building, but all the others appeared remarkably tall too. It was the sheer volume of ships that really astounded her. Countless piers jutted out into what a sailor told her was the East River. Apparently the Hudson, which they’d sailed up the previous evening, was on the other side of the island, and a ship was moored at each and every pier. Despite the early hour the quay was crowded with every kind of cart, wagon and carriage imaginable, and hundreds of men were unloading and loading cargos.

As they came in closer, the noise of barrels being rolled over the cobbles, horses’ hooves, wagon wheels, ships’ engines and human voices was tremendous, and when Beth looked away from the quayside she saw thousands of craft of every kind, from tugboats to old sailing ships, out on the river. Looking back in the direction the ship had come from, she caught sight of the Statue of Liberty, which she’d seen so often in pictures at home. But nothing had prepared her for the sheer mammoth size of it, towering over the harbour, or the emotion it awakened in her.

She remembered her teacher reciting a poem. Beth couldn’t recall if it was actually something to do with the statue, or just America in general, but the part of it which had remained in her head seemed to fit both of them: ‘Give me your tired, your poor huddled masses yearning to breathe freely. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.’

Beth didn’t see herself, Sam or anyone on this ship as ‘wretched refuse’, but she supposed the woman who wrote it had watched many thousands of people from all over Europe hobbling through the immigration halls. With their worn suitcases, drawn faces, and shabby clothes they probably did look like so much refuse, though she thought the poet could have used a kinder word.

The Brooklyn Bridge was far bigger and longer than she expected too. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could conceive of erecting something so huge over a river.

Her final thought before going back below decks to await instructions about when they would disembark was to wonder, if the port of New York held all these marvels, what more incredible sights there would be in the rest of the city.

‘It seems the first and second classes are too grand to pass through immigration,’ Sam said gloomily later as he and Beth watched gangways being lowered and the upper classes happily tripping down them, most with porters carrying their luggage. ‘We get taken on a ferry to Ellis Island to be checked out. If they don’t like the look of us we get sent back to England.’

‘They aren’t likely to send us back,’ Beth pointed out. ‘We’re strong and healthy.’

‘I wasn’t afraid we’d be sent back. It’s how long it will take to be cleared. Look how many ships there are here, all full of immigrants. It will be hard to find somewhere to stay tonight once it’s dark.’

By four in the afternoon Beth was growing very anxious as the queues to be interviewed by immigration officers didn’t appear to be moving at all. It was nearly twelve o’clock before the ferry had brought them to the island and the huge, pine-built building in which they were to be ‘processed’. She had heard from a sailor on the ferry that this building had only been opened in 1892, but it was filled with thousands of people with unwashed bodies, and what with the poor ventilation, her stomach rumbling with hunger and her legs aching with standing for so long, it felt like an ancient torture room.

So much noise too — thousands of voices all talking at once, and many of them speaking foreign languages. There was a palpable undercurrent of fear as well, which perhaps was why so many small children were crying. Word passed back down the queues that they were to be questioned along with a medical examination, and although this didn’t bother Beth or Sam, it was clear that it was creating anxiety for many.

‘Public charge’ was a phrase Beth kept hearing people use. She gathered that the officials were refusing entry to anyone they thought might become one. She saw a wizened old couple who looked barely able to stand and hoped that they could prove they had family to take care of them. There were whole families who seemed so dreadfully poor that they were bound to be treated with suspicion, and what of those who looked thin, pale and coughed a great deal? Were they harbouring tuberculosis?

By the time Beth was called forward to the doctor, she felt faint with hunger and thirst, but the doctor only looked her up and down and waved her on. The questions were simple enough: how much money she had, what sort of work she would be doing, and a few others which were obviously intended to discover if she was mentally competent.

After waiting for so long for the interview, it seemed absurdly brief, almost a disappointment. She was waved on, Sam right behind her, and suddenly they realized it was all over. They’d been accepted and they could get aboard the ferry bound for the city.

The hours on Ellis Island had been horrible, frustrating and tiring, and they had expected that once they were over that, everything would be fine. But as they walked down the gangway from the ferry on to the quay in New York, Beth was terrified.

It was now after eight in the evening, dark and cold, and it felt like being thrown headlong into a maelstrom: thousands of bewildered, luggage-laden people, and preying on them the jackals who were determined to relieve them of some of their money.

Intimidating burly men in checked suits and homburg hats elbowed their way through the crowds, offering to change their money into dollars and get them a hotel room or a bus or train ticket. There were ragged, barefooted urchins tugging at their clothes begging for money or offering to carry their bags, and a huge negress with a turban on her head urged them to come to her restaurant for something to eat. One stout man wearing a frock coat and top hat blocked their way, insisting that he could take them to a ‘swanky apartment’ for a small consideration.

Beth might have been tempted to put her trust in someone, for she was hungry and cold, wanting a cup of tea and a sit-down more than anything in the world, but Sam, carrying their luggage, swept her on, brushing aside all these pedlars and warning her to keep a tight hold on her fiddle.

‘Annabel’s father told me of a hotel to make for,’ he said. ‘We’ll just get away from here and find something to eat, then we’ll take a cab to the hotel.’

‘What about Jack?’ she asked, for she’d turned and seen him trying to catch up with them.

‘Jack can look out for himself,’ he said sharply.

Chapter Twelve

‘I never thought it would be so hard to find somewhere to live,’ Sam sighed despairingly. ‘Nor that there would be so many people out to cheat us. I really don’t know where to turn next.’

Beth was unpicking the lining of her jacket by the light of a candle to get at the last of the money they’d brought from England. As Sam spoke, she looked across to where he sat hunched by the meagre fire, a picture of misery.

They had been in New York for a whole month, but they had not bargained with being the target for quite so many crooks. It was almost as if they were wearing placards saying ‘Greenhorn’.

There was the booth down by the docks which invited immigrants to register for work. The form they had to fill in looked official; the man who advised them was smartly dressed and seemed concerned for them. The twenty-dollar fee didn’t seem that much, not if it meant they would be sent out to good, well-paid work. But after three days, when no message arrived at their hotel as he’d promised, they called back to the booth, only to find it had gone, and their twenty dollars with it.

Another time they answered an advertisement for accommodation in the newspaper. They met the landlord at the boarding house and were shown two pleasant rooms which they were told the present tenant would be vacating at the end of the week. They paid him twenty-five dollars’ advance rent and were given a key. But when they turned up, ready to move in, the key didn’t open the front door of the building, and when they managed to rouse one of the other tenants they discovered the man they’d met wasn’t the landlord at all. There were no vacant rooms there.