Never Look Back (69 page)

It certainly wasn’t a desire for gold which prompted this hazardous trip by sea. Zandra had enough money to see out her days in luxury, but her curiosity and her adventuring spirit made her want to discover if there was any truth in the rumour, and if so, to be an observer of the madness which would surely follow.

Zandra arrived in San Francisco in June, to find the tiny port almost deserted. She heard that on 12 May, just a month earlier,
Sam Brannan, a Mormon Elder and editor of the
California Star,
after returning from Sacramento to investigate the rumours, had marched down Montgomery Street waving a whiskey bottle full of gold dust and announced the American river was full of gold. Almost every able-bodied man had taken off to get some for themselves.

Zandra found herself unexpectedly marooned in the dreary little town. Ships sailed in every day, bringing in more and more gold-hungry men, but they couldn’t sail away again, for their crews deserted to find riches too.

After the sophisticated life she was used to, she viewed the cluster of primitive adobe dwellings which made up the town with utter horror. But as she couldn’t leave, experience told her to make the best of it, and she bought a piece of land and erected a tent as temporary accommodation. Dolores, who had shared so much with her in the past, accepted it, if not with pleasure, with resignation. With persistence, bribery and endless cajoling, Zandra managed to get herself a shingle and timber place built. It was two storeys, consisting of a spacious and by anyone’s standards in the town luxurious apartment above for herself, and beneath it two stores which she intended to offer for rent.

By the fall, when the rain came and men began returning from the mountains, their pockets full of gold, entrepreneurs began arriving in their thousands. Gambling halls cropped up like mushrooms around the plaza, canvas-walled saloons and restaurants were put up in the blinking of an eye. Zandra was offered three times the amount she had expected for her two stores. She looked at her apartment with new eyes and decided to come out of retirement and back into the parlour house business.

Zandra’s parlour was very busy the evening after she’d received Matilda’s letter. The candles in the chandelier cast a subdued but twinkling light over the room, the pianist played everything from spirited polkas to gentle Mozart, and her twelve girls, in gaily coloured satin gowns with carefully coiffured hair, mingled with her gentlemen.

As always, she greeted the men personally at the door, took their hats and then got one of her girls to bring them drinks. She refused entry to anyone who wasn’t smartly dressed, or the
worse for drink. Guns and knives were confiscated and kept in her locked drawer until the owners left.

Zandra’s role was to make sure no man was ignored by her girls, and that strangers in town were introduced to regulars. While her doorman discreetly watched out for potential troublemakers, Dolores escorted gentlemen to the three boudoirs at the back of the house, and it was into her hands that the money was slipped. Later Dolores would go back to the room to change the bed linen.

Although Zandra was unable to provide the French champagne and the superb suppers she’d offered back in New Orleans, or even facilities for gentlemen wishing to stay all night with the girl they’d chosen, she had kept her high standards of hygiene, and cared for her girls. She insisted they bathed each day, she introduced them to the European-style wax pessaries which prevented pregnancy, and kept them vigilant for any symptom of disease. They were well fed and paid, receiving half the sum paid for their personal services.

Most madams here and in other towns provided fancy dresses and lingerie but then charged exorbitant prices for them, keeping their girls constantly in debt to them. They turned a blind eye to rough stuff from the gentlemen, kept the girls virtually prisoners, some even encouraged the use of opiates to make them more docile. But Zandra only charged the real cost of the clothes, any man treating a girl badly was thrown out and never allowed in again, and she gave her girls freedom. For she had learned long ago that by treating them well, their happiness was reflected in their work.

But tonight Zandra’s heart wasn’t in it. Her knees were throbbing, the smoke from the men’s cigars were making her eyes sting, and she felt drained of all energy.

‘I’m too old for this now,’ she thought as she watched Maria smiling seductively up at the man she was dancing with. ‘I think it’s almost time to retire for good.’

‘That’s yer lot, ma’am,’ MacPherson called out to Matilda during the afternoon of 6 September. ‘All the orders completed ready to go down to Portland tomorrow.’

She was up in the office above the wood sheds sorting out old customer orders of John’s. MacPherson’s voice carried through
the open window, and she rushed down the narrow ladder to see for herself.

MacPherson was lounging against one pile of timber, as always chewing tobacco. Sidney was standing on another pile, fastening a rope around it.

Few things had ever looked so beautiful to her as those neat stacks, each with the owner’s name chalked on it, stretching from one side of the yard to the other. She didn’t need to ask if Sidney had checked it all, not one cracked plank got past his sharp eyes, and he wouldn’t have allowed MacPherson to call her unless he was satisfied.

‘Well done, Mr MacPherson,’ she said. ‘You’ve done a grand job. I just hope there aren’t any problems getting it down to the ship and loaded.’

‘There won’t be, ma’am,’ he said. ‘And we’ve got a few days to spare anyway. I just hopes you gets your money the other end. From what I’ve heard there’s a lot of rogues down there.’

Matilda suppressed a smile. The men down in San Francisco would be pussycats next to MacPherson. After half the orders were completed he’d started getting above himself, she’d come in early one morning to find him loading another man’s cart with some of their timber, clearly intending to pocket the cash. When she ordered him to unload it, he swore at her and claimed it was his timber, as he’d felled it. She pointed out that all timber once it had been brought into the yard was Mrs Duncan’s property, and if he didn’t obey her she would call the sheriff. He backed down then, but she suspected he’d previously pocketed money for other loads she didn’t know about.

He had argued about everything in the past week, claimed he was left with nothing after paying his men, that she was the hardest woman he’d ever met, and that Sidney was a jumped-up little snot. But none of that mattered now the job was done.

‘Can I have me bonus now?’ he asked. ‘I got some things I got to see to.’

‘Certainly not,’ she said, guessing he was intending to be on the boat leaving for San Francisco tonight. ‘The deal was you get the bonus once it’s on the ship.’

He scowled at her, spat noisily on the ground and walked away.

‘It’s all ready for shipping,’ Matilda said gleefully as she came into the cabin at dusk with Sidney. Cissie was bathing Amelia and Susanna in the washing tub, Tabitha was laying the table for supper, and Peter playing with Treacle on the floor. ‘And to celebrate we’ve all got presents.’

‘It’s all done!’ Cissie exclaimed, scooping Amelia out of the tub and wrapping her in a towel. ‘Already!’

‘We have to thank the nasty MacPherson for that,’ Matilda laughed, and put some brown paper packages on Tabitha’s bed. ‘Now, who wants to have their present first?’

‘Where did you get money for presents?’ Cissie asked suspiciously.

‘I did have some left from the sale of my wagon,’ Matilda said, a little hurt by her friend’s tone. Just lately Cissie had begun to act as if she was her servant, and she didn’t like it. ‘I haven’t stooped to selling any of
your
timber, if that’s what you think.’

Cissie didn’t apologize, but then she rarely did, any more than she gave Matilda much credit for sorting out her husband’s affairs.

Matilda had brought little rag dolls for Susanna and Amelia. Peter had a lead soldier and Tabitha a book on medicine. Sidney had already opened his present of a new woollen shirt on the way home.

‘Come on then, open yours,’ Matilda urged Cissie, taking Amelia from her arms. ‘And make any more nasty remarks and I’ll take it back.’

‘I haven’t had a present since I first met John,’ Cissie said, suddenly looking tearful. ‘He brought me some red woolly gloves.’

As she opened the parcel she gasped with pleasure. It was an emerald-green wool dress, with tiny pearl buttons down the bodice.

She held it up to herself and her eyes welled over. ‘Oh Matty, it’s beautiful and my favourite colour. Where did you get it?’

‘I had it made for you,’ Matilda replied, ‘at a dressmaker’s in town. I took the measurements of your Sunday dress to her. So you’d better try it on and see if it fits.’

‘What’s in those parcels then?’ Cissie asked, looking down at the two lying on the bed.

‘The small one is Amelia’s birthday present. I’m not going to
tell you what it is, you’ll have to wait till the day after tomorrow. The other one is the dress I was going to marry Giles in. I got it altered. I thought I’d need something a bit more fashionable to wear in case I run into Alicia Slocum again.’

‘Let’s try them together,’ Cissie said.

The children laughed and clapped as they tried on their dresses. Cissie’s was a little loose as she was still much thinner than she once was, but she looked lovely in it. Matilda’s blue wedding dress had been altered to give it a lower neckline and an elegant bustle and it now fitted her to perfection, accentuating her small waist.

‘Don’t we look a pair of grand ladies!’ Cissie said, mincing around the cabin with one hand on her hip. ‘If I’d had this back in my days in New York I’d have been able to work in a parlour house at least.’

Matilda put a finger to her lips to remind her the children were listening. Tabitha rarely missed anything and was likely to ask her what she meant.

It struck Matilda last thing that night before she fell asleep that it was the first reference to her past that Cissie had made since she arrived here in Oregon eleven months ago. Was it just the dress, or had Cissie been thinking about it a great deal?

In San Francisco, a month later in early October, Matilda stood on the waterfront watching the cart carrying the last of the timber trundle away. Her reticule fastened firmly to her wrist was stuffed with banker’s drafts and although it was raining heavily, she was glowing with pleasure.

She could have sold four times as much. As each stack was lowered on to the lighters which carried it to the waterfront, men had come up to her again and again to ask if she had any timber to spare. But the owner of each of the loads had been far too eager for that, they’d all been waiting to meet the ship, and they paid her and carted the timber away speedily. After all the trials and hard work of the past weeks she was almost disappointed she wasn’t left with just one load to auction off. She knew with utter certainty she would have got a great deal more money for it that way.

It was a heady feeling to have succeeded in a man’s world, to see admiration on the faces of men who a few months earlier
had seemed almost scornful of her ability to deliver. They would all give her new orders, most certainly of three or four times the size, but it wouldn’t be her filling them – Cissie had made it plain before she left that she wanted to sell the mill.

On the long voyage down here Matilda had churned the question as to why Cissie wanted to get shot of it over and over in her mind. At first it had seemed that she wanted to cut free from painful memories of John, but now Matilda wasn’t so sure.

It seemed more likely, after weighing up the way Cissie had shown no real appreciation for her efforts, and the way she often treated her like a poor relation, that maybe she didn’t want Matilda running the sawmill because she felt she would be relegated to a role of housekeeper.

On their last evening together Cissie had suddenly announced that she wanted to sell the cabin and the land, to move into the town and open up a small shop. Matilda hadn’t liked to point out that a shop owner needed to be able to read and write well, nor had she liked to ask if Cissie was trying to tell her to find a home of her own.

But she wasn’t going to ponder on Cissie any more for now. It was nearly five in the evening, so she was going straight to Zandra’s parlour to see her and find out if she had managed to arrange a room for her.

As she made her way to Kearny Street she could hardly believe the amount of new buildings since she was last here. Several hotels, which looked like the real thing, more saloons, shops, restaurants and houses had jumped up on all available lots like mushrooms. But the rain made the street like a quagmire and she had to pick up her skirts and do what everyone else was doing, hop from one strategically placed crate, box or plank to another.

Dolores the maid opened the door to her and ushered her through the main room to Zandra’s sitting-room, telling her as she went that her mistress’s legs were in a bad way.

Matilda was very curious about the maid. She was a very plain woman, with a severe expression, but from the affectionate manner in which Zandra had mentioned her several times in the letter which came just before Matilda left Oregon, it was clear she was more than just a maid to her. That was just another thing Matilda would like to find out about.

‘My dear, how lovely to see you again,’ Zandra said, and struggled to get up from her chair. ‘I can’t tell you how good it was to hear you were coming. I’ve already heard from one of my sources that your customers were all lined up as the ship came in. You must be so pleased to see the last of timber for a while.’

Her sitting-room was unexpectedly beautiful, very small but decorated in cream and blue, with dainty furniture which looked French. There were many books and small pictures but it wasn’t cluttered with ornaments as was the fashion. Matilda felt by looking at it she was seeing another side of this interesting old woman, at heart very feminine and cultured.

When Zandra grimaced with pain Matilda nudged her back into her chair. ‘It’s good to see you again too, but not to see you poorly. What’s wrong with your legs, can I get you anything for them?’