Never Look Back (64 page)

Alicia was still in bed and Matilda thought she’d probably stayed there purposely, so she offered to make the breakfast, and as she whisked up some eggs, she told Henry she was intending to see if there was a boat to Oregon leaving today.

‘First Maria, and now you,’ he exclaimed in some alarm. ‘I do hope you aren’t leaving for the same reason.’

That remark suggested he blamed his wife for Maria’s hasty departure. There was certainly no guilt in his eyes, only a look of concern.

‘There’s no connection, I assure you,’ she said, suddenly feeling a lot easier being alone with him. ‘I’ve got all the orders I need now and I miss my children too much to stay any longer.’

‘I tend to forget you have a family,’ he said. ‘Last night I heard
there is a boat leaving at four this afternoon. If you really are set on going I’ll take you down there after breakfast and make sure you get a decent cabin.’

Matilda thanked him and they chatted quite comfortably about the children, and Oregon, while they waited for the stove to get hot. After a breakfast of scrambled eggs, ham and coffee, which they ate in the kitchen, Matilda took a tray upstairs to Alicia, and said her goodbyes. She was so relieved to be leaving that she even kissed the woman with some warmth.

‘What a lovely morning’ Henry said as they left the house a little later.

There was no mist for once, the sun rising up in a clear blue sky, and before them the bay with its many ships looked enchanting.

‘It is, isn’t it,’ Matilda agreed, smiling at him. He was wearing a silk top hat and a dark grey tail-coat, and he cut quite an imposing figure, even carrying her carpet-bag. ‘If I wasn’t so overjoyed at the prospect of seeing my children again, I could almost be sad to go.’

‘I should have said this first thing this morning’ he said a little hesitantly. ‘I was appalled Mrs Slocum allowed you to clean up the kitchen for her yesterday. I regret to say she can be rather presumptuous, and not a little disagreeable.’

‘I didn’t mind tidying the kitchen at all,’ she said, sensing that he was trying to tell her his marriage was not an entirely happy one. Wanting him to feel she sympathized with him, she put her hand on his arm. ‘Mrs Slocum and I have such different backgrounds and interests I’m afraid we were destined never to be real friends. But I was very grateful for your hospitality, and I do hope I haven’t offended either of you. I’m afraid I am a little outspoken.’

‘You did not offend me in any way,’ he said, looking sideways at her. ‘I found you to be an interesting, stimulating guest, and I very much admire your business acumen.’

‘Well thank you, sir,’ she smiled, fluttering her eyelashes just a little. ‘I would really like to start a business of my own here. I sincerely hope I could count on your advice and knowledge if and when I do.’

‘My dear Mrs Jennings,’ he said. ‘I would consider it an honour
to help in any way I can. I believe you are a very rare bird, not only beautiful, warm and amusing, but with a fine brain tucked away under that pretty hair. You could do well in this town.’

Henry said goodbye after arranging her passage home and inspecting her cabin. A short while later Matilda left the boat for one last look around the town and to buy some small presents for the children.

She had finished her shopping within an hour and was on her way back to the boat when she stopped to look in the window of a cigar store, amused by a display of stuffed racoons, each with a large cigar in its mouth. Suddenly she saw reflected in the glass a young girl passing on the other side of the narrow street. Just the way she appeared to glide, rather than walk, reminded her of Maria.

She turned abruptly. This girl was wearing a stylish bright yellow dress and a straw bonnet, but her glossy black hair and golden skin were most definitely Mexican.

Maybe if the girl hadn’t looked across at Matilda, and paused for just a second, a look of alarm on her face, Matilda would have thought she was mistaken, but with that the girl suddenly broke into a run, rushed up a flight of wooden stairs at the side of a chandlery and disappeared.

Without stopping to think, Matilda darted after her.

The steps led to a wooden veranda, which went round the back of the upper floor of the building. There were several chairs and tables, and two doors. Matilda knocked on the first one.

It was only as she waited that she questioned why she was chasing the girl. They had established no rapport in her stay at the Slocums’, and Maria was bound to see her as an enemy. Was it really any of her business why she left?

However, it wasn’t Maria who opened the door, but an old woman dressed entirely in black with a mantilla of black lace over her white hair.

‘I just saw Maria come in here,’ Matilda said. ‘Could I speak to her for a moment?’

‘What business do you have with her?’ the old lady asked. She had a tinge of a foreign accent, though Matilda couldn’t identify it, her eyes were bright blue and very sharp, and they seemed to bore right into her.

‘No real business at all,’ Matilda said. ‘I was a guest at the house where she was working and I was concerned about why she left so suddenly I have left that house now too, but when I spotted her just now I just wanted to be certain she was all right.’

‘Why would you care about a Mexican maid?’ the woman said scornfully, looking her up and down.

Matilda riled up. ‘I’d like to think I could spare a thought for anyone who had been ill treated, whatever their position or nationality,’ she snapped back.

To her utmost surprise the woman smiled. She had only two teeth left in her mouth, and smiling should have made her look older still, but instead she suddenly looked years younger.

‘You must be the English woman everyone is talking about,’ she said. She cocked her head on one side and looked quizzically at Matilda. ‘You are every bit as pretty as they said, but that green cape and bonnet doesn’t do much for you.’

The woman might be old, and her face as crumpled as an ageing apple, yet there was something very attractive about both her and her voice. Even her personal remark had a note of humour about it.

‘I didn’t wear it for any other reason than to keep warm,’ Matilda retorted. ‘Now, may I speak to Maria for a moment?’

‘Would you like to step inside?’ the old lady asked, opening the door wider to reveal a small hall decorated in dark red and gold. ‘I wouldn’t normally ask a lady like yourself in, but since you are concerned about Maria, I feel it would be better for you not to be on public display up here on my veranda.’

In a sudden flash of intuition Matilda realized that this place had to be a brothel and the woman the madam.

‘You do know what this house is?’ the woman said before she could back away. She smiled as if amused by Matilda’s shock.

The smile was a challenge to Matilda. She was too proud to admit she’d blundered up here without realizing. She was also curious.

‘Oh yes,’ she said as boldly as she could manage. It was after all the middle of the day and she couldn’t see that she could come to any harm in broad daylight. ‘But I can only stay a few minutes as I am booked on to a boat leaving soon.’

The old woman left the front door wide open and led the way through another door. Matilda followed, fully expecting squalor,
but instead she found herself in a large and very luxurious room. It was gloomy, for the light from windows overlooking the street below was muted with heavy lace curtains, stale cigar smoke mingling with the smell of fresh polish. The walls were deep gold, the many couches dark red, and a chandelier hung from the ceiling.

For a second she thought she had jumped to the wrong conclusion about the nature of the place, until she turned and saw a painting of an almost naked woman reclining on a bed, hanging over the fireplace.

A tinkling laugh from the old lady startled her. ‘My dear! Your face is a picture. I am
so
sorry, you said you knew what this house was.’

‘I did,’ Matilda said with more confidence than she felt. ‘But I have never been in a brothel before.’

‘A brothel!’ the woman exclaimed with some indignation. ‘This, my dear, is a parlour house.’

Cissie had used that term occasionally and from what Matilda remembered it meant the ‘girls’ were high-class whores, operating in a place which was something like a fancy gentlemen’s club, where the members had a few drinks, danced and ate a good supper. Cissie of course had never got anywhere near such refined surroundings, but her view was that this was the top branch of the tree.

‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t know the distinction,’ Matilda said. She was very nervous now, wondering if she ought to run for the open door. ‘Perhaps you ought to enlighten me?’

The woman showed absolutely no sign of embarrassment as she explained. It seemed it was much as Cissie had said, only the woman claimed that not all men came looking to buy the company of a girl, rather that they saw it as a congenial place to meet and make friends, to talk in comfortable surroundings. She called her girls ‘her boarders’, just as if they were merely guests, there to make the place more decorative.

It was the woman’s cultured voice and her gracious demeanour which calmed Matilda. She still felt it would be wiser to go, for if it got about in the town that she’d been in here, people might deduce she was like the girls who worked here. But she did want to talk to Maria, and she also found the old lady quite compelling.

Perhaps the old lady realized her predicament because she touched her arm very gently.

‘You are quite safe. We are closed now. There are no men on the premises, only myself and my boarders, and most of them are still sleeping. Have some tea with me, and I’ll call Maria. I have never ever entrapped a girl to work for me yet, and I certainly would not start with you.’

She picked up a small bell and rang it. A door opened at the far side of the room and a tall, thin Negress in a maid’s uniform complete with starched apron and cap came in. ‘Ah, Dolores. Will you bring a tray of tea for my guest and myself,’ she asked, ‘and tell Maria I wish to see her.’

‘Where are you from?’ Matilda asked once she had been invited to sit down. ‘You have a very interesting accent.’

‘Russia.’ The woman smiled. ‘But I was sent to England as a young girl, and I have lived in France for many years too, so I guess my accent comes from all three. I left England over fifty years ago, but the memories of it are indelible.’

Matilda guessed that made her in her late sixties. She wished she dared ask what made her open a parlour house. ‘We haven’t introduced ourselves. I’m Matilda Jennings,’ she said.

‘I’m Contessa Alexandra Petroika. I am known as “the Russian woman” by those who fear me, “the Contessa” by those who admire me, but “Miss Zandra” to my girls.’

Matilda gave a little start at this. One night at dinner Alicia had made a curiously oblique remark about ‘the Russian woman’, and Henry had quickly turned the conversation in another direction. Now she understood why.

Maria came sidling in, she looked very alarmed at seeing Matilda and moved to turn back.

‘Don’t be afraid, I haven’t come from Mrs Slocum,’ Matilda assured her, then speaking slowly and clearly, she explained. ‘I am just worried about you. I would like to know why you left your job and came here. I promise I won’t tell Mrs Slocum where you are.’

She hadn’t really studied Maria back in the house, noting a pretty face beneath her starched cap but little else. She was in reality dramatically beautiful, with golden skin, lustrous hair, and such large, expressive black eyes.

‘She bad woman,’ Maria said with a toss of her head. ‘Always slap me, work, work, work.’

Matilda sighed, she could imagine this was true. ‘And Mr Slocum?’

‘He not bad man,’ she said. ‘But I tell him geeve me five dollars each time he come to me, and he say yes Maria, but he stop geeving me money because he say he love me.’

Matilda gulped. Even taking into consideration that Maria spoke poor English, she was clearly admitting she had instigated this arrangement. The look of pique on her lovely face was chilling. Matilda looked to the Contessa, not really knowing what to ask next.

‘I think Mrs Jennings wishes to know if you are happy to work here,’ the Contessa said.

Maria’s face broke into a smile. ‘Oh yes. Good food and no hard work.’

‘Will you tell Mrs Jennings why you came here to work rather than find another job as a maid?’

Maria pulled a face. ‘I not like to clean and wash dishes. I want beeg money and pretty dress. I go now?’

The Contessa nodded and Marie left immediately without so much as a backward glance at Matilda.

The Contessa raised one eyebrow. ‘Did that satisfy you?’ she asked as she poured the tea. ‘I’m sure you must have wished to question her further, but her lack of English makes it impossible to hold a real conversation with her, or even see the real girl underneath.’

‘I saw and heard enough,’ Matilda said sadly.

The Contessa shrugged. ‘You are shocked, maybe even disappointed, to find Maria is just a mercenary little baggage. I expect you either imagined Mrs Slocum treated her as a slave, or that her husband forced his attentions on her and she was compelled to submit to keep her position, maybe both?’

‘I think Mrs Slocum was too hard on her, yet I couldn’t really believe that of her husband,’ she said.

‘I suspect the truth of the matter was that Maria took that position with the sole purpose of entrapping Henry’ the woman said with a shrug. ‘He has a cold, childless marriage, and such men are easy prey. Maria and his wife are much the same inside. Money is what they both want.’

Matilda was startled by her using the familiar term of ‘Henry’, and by her incisive view of his marriage. This woman was becoming more interesting by the moment.

She handed Matilda her tea, the dainty bone china was decorated with small green leaves, and to Matilda it was an untimely reminder of Lily. Her views of love and marriage had been so idealistic, she would have been shocked to the core to think many women didn’t share them.

‘Now Maria has come to me,’ the Contessa went on. ‘I agreed I would give her a try, but I doubt she will be here for long. I do not like that coldness in my boarders, even as beautiful as she is. But maybe she can change. She has had a very hard life.’