Gypsy

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘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.

  It didn’t make them feel any better to discover that dozens of other people had fallen for these tricks too. They had lost what seemed like a fortune to them, and they felt embittered that such trickery was commonplace, yet no one had warned them about it.

  There were many other unhappy incidents too, offers of work which turned out to be a hoax, accommodation they rushed to see, only to find it consisted of sharing one room with half a dozen other people. They’d been spun very believable hard luck stories and been talked into ‘Sure Thing’ gambling games which would make them rich. Mostly they were realistic about the latter, and only risked a dollar at most, but they had fallen for some of the hard luck stories, and realized after they’d parted with money that they’d been suckered.

  This hotel was the fourth they’d stayed in, each time moving to somewhere cheaper until they got to this flea-pit in Division Street. But although the room was tiny, grubby, cheerless and cold, they knew it was a palace compared with most of the accommodation on offer to immigrants with little money.

  Unless they found work soon, though, they wouldn’t be able to afford to stay even here. Sam might not know where to turn to next, but Beth did, and she knew her brother wasn’t going to like it.

  ‘We could turn to Jack,’ she said quietly, bracing herself for his anger. ‘I saw him earlier today.’

  ‘What!’ Sam exclaimed, his face darkening.

  Beth shrugged. ‘I know you don’t approve because he’s sweet on me, but he can help us. He’s already got a job, he knows people here, and with him on our side we won’t be fleeced any more.’

  ‘We don’t need help from someone like him,’ Sam said woodenly.

  ‘You’re holding out for someone from Fifth Avenue to rescue us, I suppose?’ Beth said sarcastically. ‘Or waiting for the Waldorf to send someone round to beg you to be their new barman?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he snapped. ‘You know how many jobs I’ve been after.’

  ‘Yes, but they’ve all been well out of your league,’ she retorted bluntly.

  Sam had such grand ideas that he’d gone after jobs far beyond his limited experience. He was only eighteen and he’d only ever mended shoes, kept ledgers and served drinks. But he’d got it into his head that he could leap into a top position here just because he was English.

  ‘Don’t be a snob about Jack,’ she said reprovingly. ‘He might be a bit rough and ready but he’s a good sort, and he’s sharp too. We aren’t; we get taken for suckers because we don’t know what’s what. The only way we are going to make our way in this country is by getting down there with common folk, learn the ropes and then find a way to climb them.’

  ‘We weren’t brought up to live in a slum,’ he said sullenly. ‘Surely you haven’t forgotten that place?’

  Beth hadn’t. She still shuddered at the thought of the area they’d stumbled upon by accident on their first night in the city.

  Sam had been given directions to Broadway and a reasonably priced hotel, but they must have taken a wrong turning in the dim light and ended up in the hideous slum area they now knew was the infamous Five Points, named because five streets, including Park and Worth, converged there.

  It was a thousand times worse than any slum in Liverpool, a poorly lit, veritable rabbit warren of narrow alleys lined with decaying old houses. Filthy, ragged and barefoot children huddled in doorways, bent old men were hugging open fires on waste ground, and slatternly-looking women yelled abuse as they walked by. The five-storey tenements, which loomed over the older houses like grim fortresses, appeared to house thousands, judging by the cacophony of noise coming from them.

  By then it was almost ten in the evening, the stench was like walking through an open sewer and everyone appeared to be drunk or demented
. They were approached threateningly several times, harassed for money, and savage-looking dogs snarled at them. They actually feared for their lives.

  The following day, in the temporary safety of a neat, clean hotel, they were informed that twenty years earlier, Five Points was said to be the worst slum in the whole world. Even now, in its improved state, it was the last refuge of the desperate, both the poor and criminals. As many as sixteen people could be sharing just one room, gangs of children lived rough on the streets, and hardly a night passed without someone being murdered.

  Since then they had explored New York, and while there were many other areas where immigrants lived in substandard and often hideously overcrowded tenements, the terrible sights they’d seen in Five Points were not encountered again.

  There were the mansions on Fifth Avenue, beautiful quiet squares with elegant houses, and shops crammed with goods they’d never seen before. Central Park was vast and magnificent, and there were buildings so big and grand they could only stand and stare at them. They marvelled at the elevated railtrack on which the train chugged along over their heads, and at the new, amazingly tall buildings which people called skyscrapers.

  The sheer volume of traffic — carts, cabs, carriages and omnibuses — was staggering, as was the number of restaurants, oyster bars and coffee shops. It was such an exciting, noisy, vibrant city, and the huge mixture of different nationalities, all with their own languages, customs, music and cuisines, created an alluring and mesmerizing circus of delights.

  Beth felt that if they could just get work and a decent place to live she was sure they could be very happy here.

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting we live in Five Points,’ she said indignantly, for she was growing tired of her brother seeing the worst in everything. ‘You’ve got to stop comparing everything to back home, Sam. We were really lucky that the Langworthys gave us a home after the fire. But that kind of luck is rare. I sometimes think we might have been served better back then if we’d been forced to live the way most people do; that way we’d be more worldly now. And if you hadn’t escaped out of steerage every day on the ship, you might have learned a thing or two about ordinary people.’

  He shuddered, and Beth sighed inwardly. It was only in the past few weeks that she had discovered her brother had failings, and she wasn’t sure he could overcome them.

  It wasn’t so much that he was a snob — he didn’t actually look down on people. He just believed he was due the better things of life and refused even to consider doing any kind of manual work. He was mesmerized by wealth and in the thrall of anyone who had it, and because he’d charmed himself into second class on the ship so easily, and been favoured by the wealthy customers back at the Adelphi, he couldn’t see why his charm wasn’t working here.

  But Beth could see why. New Yorkers were by and large loud and often aggressive. Sam’s appeal was his good looks, soft voice, the twinkle in his blue eyes and his very Englishness. He would do very well with just that if he were already rich and living on Fifth Avenue, but for a man looking for work he needed to project himself as strong and capable.

  Jack was working in a slaughterhouse on the East Side. He said it was the hardest work he’d ever done, a stinking, horrible job, but the pay was good and he’d made many friends there. He’d offered to get Sam in too, but Beth knew her brother would sooner die of starvation than work there.

  It had been so good to see Jack today. They had made a pact on arrival in New York that they would meet one month to the day on Castle Green, which was close to where they disembarked, at half past five.

  Beth hadn’t really expected Jack to turn up — a whole month in a new city was enough to make anyone forget hasty promises. But there he was, looking very smart in a checked jacket, well-pressed trousers and polished boots. He told her he’d managed to get off a couple of hours earlier by telling his boss a relative of his was arriving from England.

  He was honest enough to say he was living in a tenement, sharing a room with six other people, but he pointed out that he’d lived in similar places back in Liverpool. He laughingly admitted he’d got his jacket and trousers from a second-hand shop and sweet-talked a girl in a laundry to press them for him. But however awful his job sounded, it was clear he’d really thrown himself into his new life. He looked healthier and more muscular than he had on the ship, and much more confident.

  Beth had left him feeling a great deal more hopeful, not just because they planned to meet again in a few days, but because he’d made some suggestions as to how she and Sam could get on their feet.

  ‘Look, Sam,’ Beth said in a firm tone. ‘Why don’t you get a barman’s job on the Bowery? There’s plenty of work going there.’

  His eyes opened wide in alarm. ‘I couldn’t work in one of those rough houses.’

  ‘Almost all the bars in New York are a bit rough,’ she said patiently. She hadn’t been in any herself but Jack had told her this. ‘You need experience before anyone will give you work in a top hotel or private members’ club. And I’ve got a plan. If you were working as a barman, I could come in and play my fiddle there.’

  Sam looked at her in horror. ‘On the Bowery! With all those—’

  ‘Yes, rough men.’ Beth cut him short. ‘I couldn’t do it without someone to look out for me, but I know those men will really like my playing. Besides, some of the men who drink down there own saloons uptown. We’d get ourselves noticed. Not many saloon owners could have a handsome gent like you behind their bar with a sister who gets everyone’s toes tapping. We’d be a real money-spinner for them.’

  These were words right out of Jack’s mouth. But she wasn’t going to tell Sam that because she knew he’d dismiss the idea out of hand.

  ‘You’d really want to play in one of those dives?’ Sam said incredulously.

  ‘Why not? It’s as good a training ground as anywhere, better than a snooty place where some clever devil would notice if I hit a wrong note,’ she said defiantly. ‘You know I’ve been to almost all the respectable hotels to ask if they need a pianist. They take one look at me and show me the door without even inviting me to show what I can do. I’ve been to shops, restaurants, oyster bars and no one will even give me a job washing dishes. Besides, I’d rather play the fiddle. If I got a name for myself on the Bowery it might change everything.’

  ‘They’ll think you’re a whore down there,’ Sam said disapprovingly. ‘I couldn’t watch over you if I was behind the bar.’

  ‘It would be enough that men knew you were my brother,’ she insisted, for this was what Jack believed. He also said he’d be around, and all his chums too. ‘I’ll be fine — a man would find it hard to do anything improper to me while I’m playing a fiddle.’

  Sam said nothing, but she sensed he was weakening, if only because he thought her fiddle-playing might enhance his own image.

  ‘Let’s give it a try,’ she wheedled. ‘I was told Heaney’s is one of the best bars, and they need a barman. What have we got to lose? We do one night, see how it goes, and if you hate it, we don’t go back.’

  Jack had said that Sam would be a magnet for all the dancing girls in that area and he thought he’d soon come round once he was the centre of attention. Beth wasn’t too happy about girls like that going after her brother, but then she’d be around to watch over him too.

  ‘All right,’ he said sourly. ‘But it will be your fault if something terrible happens.’

  ‘What could be more terrible than to be starving and homeless?’ she said sharply. ‘And that’s what we’ll be once our money runs out.’

  At eight o’clock the following night, for all her brave talk, Beth was terrified.

  ∗

  She and Sam had gone into Heaney’s at midday and asked Pat ‘Scarface’ Heaney, the owner, for work. He was a short but extremely muscular man in his forties, and what little hair he had left was ginger. He wore a bright green waistcoat which, though startling, didn’t detract from the formidable razor scar running from his right
eye right down to his chin. Jack had told Beth that he received this in his youth when incarcerated in the Tombs, the huge prison built to solve the problems of Five Points, where Heaney had been a gang leader.

  The Bowery was a street of entertainment, lined with bars, music and dance halls, theatres, German beer halls and restaurants. At night the sidewalks were crammed with stalls, selling anything from hot dogs to fruit and candy. There were also what were called ‘museums’, though in fact they were freak shows, where for a few cents you could see the Bearded Woman, dwarfs, trained monkeys and other curiosities. Prostitutes mingled with the crowds, and inevitably there were pickpockets too. But in the main it was the playground of ordinary working folk.

  Jack had said that Heaney’s clientele was comparable to those who drank in the big, noisy, ale houses near Lime Street Station in Liverpool — cab drivers, carpenters and engineers. He’d also pointed out that Heaney’s was one of the smartest saloons on the Bowery, with its shiny mahogany bar, huge mirrors behind it and a great deal of well-polished brass and clean sawdust on the floor.

  Sam looked quite relieved when he saw it, for the men drinking at the bar were ordinary, not the bruisers or degenerates he’d expected.

  Pat Heaney clearly liked the look of Sam right off, and after only a few questions, he told him to get behind the bar and serve the customers while he talked to Beth.

  ‘I’ll be straight with you,’ Heaney said, swigging down a large tumbler of whisky and keeping one eye on Sam. ‘Girls, specially pretty ones, are trouble in a bar. But I like the idea of a girl fiddler, and you’ve got spunk coming in here and asking to play when yer just off the boat.’

  Beth lied and said she’d played publicly in Liverpool but he waved his hand in a gesture that said he didn’t care what she’d done before, he was only interested in what she could achieve in his saloon.