The Rich Shall Inherit (47 page)

“Why,” the woman had gasped, purple-red with anger, “if my late husband, Mr. Montgomery-Clyde, had heard you speak like that to me, he would have thrown you out bodily….”

“A pity he didn’t throw
you
out bodily,” Poppy had cried, stamping her foot furiously, “maybe he would have lived longer.” And then turning on her heel she’d run for the door.

“You’ll never get a job here,” Mrs. Montgomery-Clyde had screamed after her. “Never! I’ll see to it your name is blackened around this town….”

That night Poppy had packed her bags again wearily. The elation of winning the verbal battle had drained from her and she was left alone to face the truth again. If she expected to get a job with the Mrs. Montgomery-Clydes of the world, then she must curb her tongue and submit to their petty disparagements.

On the hot, crowded train taking her to Florence she told herself she would dress more discreetly next time—and hold her tongue.

But in Florence the English Lady Anthea Glennis had not liked her accent, and the American, Mrs. Cornelia Fish, had wanted an Englishwoman, and in Rome the Contessa Milari had not liked her red hair…. “Too much temper,” she had decided after a single glance in her direction.

It seemed to Poppy that the trains grew hotter and more airless as she’d sat crunched into a corner of the cheapest hard wooden seat in a hot, stuffy carriage smelling of garlic and sweat and rotting vegetables, on her way to Monte Carlo. She wondered what it was about her that told them she was not cut out to be a
lady’s companion. She had surely tried hard enough to keep up her appearance, despite her circumstances. She had wondered if maybe she would have more luck as a lady’s maid.

She had touched her hand to her neck, feeling the solid warmth of Angel’s pearls against her throat under her high-collared blouse.
“Whore’s pearls,”
Angel had said …
worth a fortune …
But Poppy knew it was impossible for her to sell such a valuable heirloom; any jeweler would suspect at once that she had stolen them; he’d send for the police and they would trace them back to their purchaser, Felipe. And who knew what he might do then? Perhaps he would accuse her of stealing them and she would end up in jail. She knew there would be no limit to Felipe’s vengeance, not only to her but to Angel for giving them to her. If she couldn’t survive without selling the pearls, she told herself determinedly, then she was worthless.

In Menton, the Comtesse de Brillard had stared at her suspiciously, but when Poppy had spoken to her in French, she’d relented.
“Eh bien
, Mallory,” she’d said authoritatively, “you are too young, but I am desperate. You may begin at once on a week’s trial.”

For a week Poppy stumbled through a hundred different duties, washing the Comtesse’s silken undergarments and pressing her expensive taffeta and lace gowns, struggling to arrange her hair and getting her knuckles rapped for stabbing her with a hatpin. She fell asleep when she should have been awake and alert, ready to help her mistress undress when she returned in the early hours of the morning from her parties. And then one terrible day, she forgot to spit first on her burning-hot flatiron and sizzled a hole in a fragile peignoir. She was fired immediately.

With barely enough money left in her pocket to eat, Poppy meandered along the southern coast of France, begging lifts from farmers and smallholders on their way to market, seeking lodgings in the meanest quartiers of the little towns, always asking in the shops and cafes if they knew anyone who wanted a maid, a cleaner, a dishwasher … anything at all. But they just shrugged her away, glancing suspiciously at her too smart though shabby clothes. She didn’t belong in their world.

By the time she reached Monte Carlo, she looked worn and tired. Her red hair had lost its gloss, the soles of her boots had worn thin, and her once chic clothes were rumpled and shabby. The concierges at the smart hotels she approached hopefully,
frowned and showed her the door, and the smart jewelry shops and elegant clothing establishments hurriedly sent her packing.

Leaving Monte Carlo’s bright lights and glitter behind, she wended her way slowly west until finally, still jobless and down to her last five francs, she found herself in Marseilles.

Setting down her heavy valise, Poppy leaned wearily against the damp stone wall in a squalid tunnel-like street near the waterfront. At its far end through a maze of funnels and masts she caught a glimpse of the sea, silver under the gray October light, and the white flash of seagulls wheeling across a fragment of colorless sky. As the wind whipped the pins from her limp hair, sending it straggling into her eyes, Poppy knew that for her, it was the end of the road. There were no jobs, nobody who cared, there was no hope. Loneliness enveloped her like a shroud.

A snatch of raucous laughter wafted from the bar across the street and, as its bead curtain rattled in the wind, she saw the crowd of sailors inside. Fresh off the steamships that had taken them to all parts of the world, they were proceeding to get roaring drunk as quickly as possible. A burly black-haired stoker, the coal dust ingrained into his hands and face from his job tending the boilers in the hot bowels of a ship, was sitting at the bar. On the counter in front of him was a tiny ball of brilliantly colored fluff. There was yet another great burst of laughter, and Poppy peered into the bar curiously, wondering what it was that they found so amusing.

“Come on then, you little bastard, talk!” roared the stoker, slamming his fist into the zinc counter so hard that the tiny ball squawked and flapped its useless clipped wings in an attempt to fly away.

“Why, it’s a parrot!” Poppy cried in astonishment, blushing as silence fell and the drunken sailors turned to stare at her.

“That’s an
Amazon
parrot,” the stoker boasted, leering at her lecherously. “Why don’t you come inside and take a closer look? Bought him myself, I did, five hundred miles up the Amazon River straight out of the jungle and his mother’s nest … cost me a fuckin’ fortune.”

He slammed his massive fist down again, so close to the bird that Poppy felt sure he would crush it. “No,” she cried instinctively, “no, please … don’t do that. Don’t hurt him!”

“Why not?” he asked. “Three months I’ve been trying to get the little bastard to talk and he still doesn’t say a word. Useless little fucker …” Raising his hand, he sent the bird crashing to
the floor with a hefty blow. “Waste of goddamn money,” he roared as they all laughed drunkenly. “I should wring its fuckin’ neck and be done with it!”

Dropping her valise in the street, Poppy rushed inside. “Please don’t hurt him,” she cried, “he’s so little … I’m sure he’ll learn to talk soon. After all, he’s still just a baby parrot …”

Plucking the terrified bird from the floor, the stoker grasped its body in one massive fist and its tiny head in the other.
“You
wanna watch the little poor parrot die, lady?” He grinned.
“You
wanna see me do it?” His big hand crunched around the bird as Poppy screamed, hurling herself at him.

“No! No!” she cried, beating his iron fists hysterially. “Don’t do that, you
can’t
kill him! Give him to me!”

Holding the limp bundle of bright feathers aloft, he grinned down at her as the men in the bar crowded closer. “And what’ll you give me in return then, eh?” he demanded as they burst into uproarious laughter once again.

“I … I don’t have much money …” Poppy faltered, taking her purse from her pocket.

“That wasn’t what I was thinking of, lady,” he said, “but let’s see what you’ve got anyway.”

Setting the almost senseless parrot on the counter, he sent the contents of her purse clattering onto the zinc. “You’re right, there’s not much,” he said, pushing the coins around contemptuously with his grimy finger. “You’l need to offer more than that, girl. Tell you what.” He threw a hefty arm around her thin shoulders. “Why don’t you join me for a drink and we’ll talk it over?”

Poppy stared despairingly at the tiny jewel-colored heap of feathers. Suddenly the bird’s eye opened and stared back at her. There was something familiar about his look of hopelessness, and she knew that the parrot was as alone and frightened as she was. There was no way she could just condemn him to death at the hands of this merciless lout. As the stoker turned his back to call for more brandy, she darted forward, quickly scooped up the parrot, and ran for the door. The sound of raucous laughter followed her into the street and she glanced wildly around for her valise … she had left it right here, outside the door. But now it was gone!

A furious bellow came from the bar, and thrusting the little parror into the front of her jacket, Poppy fled, twisting and turning in the maze of narrow alleys near the waterfront until her
heart was pounding so fast in her tight chest, she was forced to stop. Slipping into the shadow of a dark malodorous doorway, she leaned unsteadily against the wall. Her eyes were closed and she was panting for breath. The little feathery bundle inside her jacket stirred and she put her hand gently against it, thankful that at least it was still alive. She had no idea what she would do with it, or with herself. She had just lost the last of her money and all her clothes and possessions; she had nothing left—except the whore’s pearls around her neck. But they would go to the bottom of the sea with her.

“Hey,” a female voice said angrily, “what the hell y’think you’re doing, this is
my
territory!”

Poppy’s eyes flew open and she stared at the blond girl standing opposite her, legs apart, her hands on her hips and an aggressive glare in her eyes.

“Territory?” she faltered. “I don’t understand …”

“Aw, come on,” the girl sneered, “don’t give me that! Of course you know.” She eyed Poppy up and down again thoughtfully. “Maybe you don’t, though. But then what the hell are you doing around here? Wearing that fancy suit and all …” She fingered the lapel of Poppy’s jacket admiringly. “That’s a class bit of material,” she said, “real
high
class, the sort you see in the shops in the rue de la Paix in Paris.” She stared, amazed, at Poppy’s chest as the parrot stirred under her jacket. “What the hell you got there?” she demanded, backing away nervously.

“It’s a young parrot,” Poppy explained, unbuttoning her jacket to show her. “I stole it from a sailor in a bar ….”

“Stole it, did ya?” The girl threw back her head, laughing raucously. “Well, good for you. Those cheap sailors never give anything away; they’ll always cheat a girl sooner than pay, it’s time they got a bit of their own medicine.”

“Not
really
steal,” Poppy said hastily, “he took all my money ….”

“How much?” asked the girl suspiciously.

“Five francs,” she admitted.

“Five francs?
The cheap bastard, robbing you like that. God, I hate men!”

They stared at each other curiously. Poppy had never seen anything quite like her. She was middle height with plump breasts and a round face, a short pert nose and a generous mouth. Her untidy dark blond hair fell in a tangle of curls that she’d attempted to anchor in a knot, and her cheeks and mouth were
rouged an unflattering garish red. Peering closer, Poppy could see that her eyes were lined in smudgy black and her eyelashes were stuck together in black clumps. “Are you an actress?” she asked finally.

“An actress?” the girl repeated, with a throaty laugh. “Yeah, in a way I suppose I am an ‘actress’—but not the sort you mean.”

“I just wondered,” Poppy said politely, “because of your rouge and things.”

“Yeah, it goes along with the profession, kid.” She peered closer at Poppy. “You are just a kid, too,” she said thoughtfully. “So what the hell brings a young girl like you … a foreigner too … to this quarter of Marseilles?”

“It’s a long story,” Poppy said tiredly, “I’ve just lost the last of my money and now my valise has been stolen. I have nothing, and nowhere to go … there’s just me and the parrot.” She was quite calm as she clutched the tiny frail bundle closer, thinking of the immensity of the sea that they would both have to face that night, because the poor little bird would have to die with her. Still, anything was better than leaving him to die cruelly at the hands of the drunken stoker.

Anxiety flickered in the girl’s greenish eyes. She glanced quickly up and down the empty street, but business was always slow at this time of the afternoon. “You’d better come home with me,” she said, putting her arm around Poppy, shocked by the sharp jut of her shoulder blades. “I’ll fix you a cup of coffee and you can tell me all about it.”

Poppy followed her up the grimy wooden stairs to a room on the second floor. She stared around her curiously. A sagging iron bed took up most of the space, but somehow the girl had also managed to cram in a table, a dresser, a washstand with an enormous blue-and-white-pottery washbasin and jug, and a couple of ancient chairs with horsehair stuffing peeking from large rips in the worn burgundy velvet. Every available surface was filled with a clutter of objects that dazzled Poppy’s eyes; flimsy silk scarves from cheap market stalls, bits of glittering jewelry and pots of rouge, amusement park trinkets and seaside mementos, picture postcards of fashionable music hall stars and actresses, tatty bits of fur and a molting red feather boa, a couple of battered straw hats on a lurching stand. And piles and piles of books everywhere.

“Oh, I’m ‘educated,’ you know,” the girl said, following her gaze. “I can read and write. I had my schooling, my dad saw to
that. And that’s all he did, the bastard!” Filling a battered saucepan with water, she balanced on a rickety chair, and coaxing the single gas jet, which was meant to light the room, into flame, she held the saucepan over it. She grinned at Poppy. “It’s forbidden, but we all do it. They say we’ll blow ourselves up one day, but what the hell …” She shrugged her shoulders philosophically. “A hot cup of coffee is worth it.”

Poppy’s knees threatened to give way suddenly, and with a little moan she sank into a chair.

“What is it?” the girl demanded sharply. “Not pregnant, are you? If you are, I know just the person—but it’ll cost you. That sort of thing doesn’t come cheap.”