I was asked to dance at least a dozen times, and I accepted most, encouraged by my friends. The young men, all of whom were extremely well behaved and proper, came from different walks of life. I can’t remember them all (see how popular your sister was!) but there was definitely a student from Princeton, a strapping blond baseball player, an encyclopedia salesman from New Jersey, and an Italian waiter, who works in his father’s spaghetti house. It was very noisy, with the band and the crowd, but I think his name was Luigi, and he congratulated me on my neat and dainty way of dancing, though I am sure he was being polite, because the only other time I’ve danced was way back in Normal with Bethan Carter, waltzing up and down in her yard.
I stayed late, drinking fruit juice and punch. We ate fried chicken and noodles and we girls laughed and talked about all kinds of nonsense.
This morning I woke with a headache, but it was the kind of headache that makes you smile, because you remember why you have it, and somehow it was worth it, and though I know you think that punch is a sin, it was really quite delicious, and refreshing, and it has not made me hanker after anymore, or stronger, liquor. (Please don’t worry. I know all the pitfalls, and I will be very careful.)
I was in another world at breakfast. Couldn’t stop yawning. I am sure the others must have noticed. Mr Price did not appear. When I asked Miss Flood where he was, she said she had really no idea, but that he was probably ‘lying in’ and he would have to go hungry.
I must get myself off to work.
Please don’t worry or despair, I am still the same old (young) sister you saw off on the train.
Let me know how you are, when you can.
Love and best wishes,
Beatrice
August 15, 1911
Dear Elijah,
I hope you are not working too hard. I would love you to pick up your little pile of mail and write and let me know how you are doing. I picture you all the time, stopping crowds, talking with all your heart exposed about the word of God, what it means to you, and what it means to many. I just wish I had your conviction. I sometimes feel that I have let you down, and I hope you don’t think too badly of me, or spend too long praying for my soul, because I’m sure my soul is still pretty healthy, considering.
News here from the Galilee. Mr Price has left in mysterious circumstances, and I must admit, I am more than a little worried about him, because it seems so out of character. When he didn’t appear at breakfast, four or five days ago now, nor at lunchtime, or for dinner, Miss Flood went from agitation to anger (lamb chops don’t fry themselves!). Eventually, after much knocking and calling, she took the skeleton key and let herself into Mr Price’s room. We found her later on, white-faced and shaking in the parlor, where Miss Stanley had to fetch a glass of iced tea and a water biscuit.
Apparently, the room had been stripped and all his things had gone. There wasn’t a note, but the window was open, and she assumes that he shinned down the drainpipe in the dead of night, though Miss Stanley and myself don’t believe it. Mr Price is sixty-three years old. How would he get down the drainpipe, along with his clothes, his extensive collection of toiletries and his very thick scrapbooks? Anyway, why did he have to leave like that without saying goodbye? Miss Flood assures us that he didn’t owe any money. He didn’t need to escape when there’s a perfectly good front door. It is all very puzzling.
I liked Mr Price. He seemed so easy to confide in, and he was full of stories about his past tempestuous life, and how he found salvation when he was in his darkest hour. So I wonder what has happened. I wish I knew where he was. I hate to think of him sunk once again and alone. He’s the second person to have disappeared since I got here. (By the way, all that we have left of Mr Price is a large tin of shoeshine he’d left at the bottom of the wardrobe, and half of that had gone.)
Mr Brewster left. Have I said that already? He went to stay with his brother who owns a carpentry shop. We do have a new guest. A Miss Holland, who used to be the nanny in charge of four small girls, but ran away when the father of these girls started harassing her in a most indecent manner. Why are people always running away? Thank goodness for the refuge of the Galilee. Miss Holland, after her ordeal, is still a bag of nerves. She started crying over her plate of bean stew yesterday, and I tried to make light of the situation by assuring her that the food wasn’t always quite as bad as this, and that I knew a good little store that sold the most delicious cream-cheese rolls, and I would treat her to one. Much to my chagrin, she bawled even louder, and I got a ticking-off from Miss Flood who quickly came to Miss Holland’s aid with a newly ironed handkerchief and a murky glass of water.
How is Chicago? Am I talking to myself? Is it warm? Hot? Indifferent? It is so warm here that I often feel like I’m melting. The air sits so tight it’s like walking through sheets drying on the line. Writing that made me suddenly think of Joanna. I can see her now, her arms plunged in a tubful of soapsuds, and beating out the rugs hanging on the line. I wonder how she is?
And you. How are you?
Please, please, write when you can, even if it’s to tell me you are too busy to write, and to stop asking you so many stupid questions! I just want to hear.
I miss you. I miss Papa.
Love, Beatrice
August 30, 1911
Dear Elijah,
I didn’t write for a couple of weeks, because I thought, if I don’t write to him, perhaps I’ll hear something back. But still no word.
We had the most tremendous electric thunderstorm here yesterday. It was like the sky was crashing down, and we all had to rush around trying to save the cards from melting into nothing, and we ended up huddled under the canvas awnings watching the strips of jagged light over the ocean, and when the rain came, it was so thick and straight it sounded like the boardwalk was being hit by balls of glass.
It must rain in Chicago. Tell me about it.
Your loving sister,
Beatrice
September 8, 1911
Dear Elijah,
It has been a strange, cold day. It is half past ten in the evening, and I am writing this facing the window of my room, with the drapes open, and the world below me still moving about as if it were late afternoon.
At eight o’clock this morning, a policeman appeared, with his cap under his arm, which Miss Flood took straight away to mean he was the bearer of bad news. And he was. He was here to inform us that Mr Price had been found dead under an ‘L’ pillar. He’d been badly beaten about the face. We all felt very shaken and had to sit down, even Miss Holland who had never met Mr Price went as white as a sheet and was trembling. The policeman could offer no real details of the assault. There were no witnesses. All he knew was that Mr Price had been found at four o’clock this morning by a man on his way to his shift at the fish market. Then the policeman coughed, and the noise made us jump in our seats. ‘Why do you think Mr Price was wearing female cosmetics?’ he asked. We were silent for a moment, and then Miss Flood sat a little higher in her chair. ‘Mr Price was an actor,’ she informed him, with a certain sense of dignity. ‘I believe it is customary for actors to apply a little greasepaint?’ The policeman nodded, made a note of it, but he didn’t look entirely convinced. When he had gone, we all went to our rooms. I cried for Mr Price. But I also cried for Papa, and then for myself. I just couldn’t help it.
Where are you, Elijah?
Write to me.
All my love,
Beatrice
September 12, 1911
Dear Elijah,
I have not given up on you, so please don’t think I’m going to stop all these letters, because I’m not. Who else really knows me in this world?
The weather (why do people always talk about the weather in their correspondence?) is cooler, and much more refreshing, and the sky is no longer shrouded in a hazy kind of blanket. After work, or in between shifts, I often sit with the girls (their names are Nancy, Marnie, and Celina), and we pass the time of day, watching the crowds go by with thei
r sunburned cheeks and hopeful expressions. I also like to walk along the beach, especially when the people have all but disappeared. It’s a good place to think, with the ocean often pressing at your boots, and the curve of the horizon reminding you how great the world is.
The hotel is a somber place to live right now. We were informed that Mr Price’s body had been released for interment, but that no one had come to collect it. Miss Flood offered to contact an undertaker herself, because she couldn’t bear the thought of a committed Methodist and friend being treated as a pauper. When she arrived at the mortuary, she was informed that the deceased had finally been taken away by his younger brother. Miss Flood was unhappy, and said she felt strange and perturbed because Mr Price had always told her that he was an only child. ‘He said that being an only child was what led him into the world of the theater,’ she told us. ‘That because he had no playmate, he had to read and use his imagination a little more than was good for him.’ Miss Holland talked about body snatchers, which only made things worse. The mood at supper time was black.
I had been thinking about leaving the hotel and perhaps finding a room in a (respectable) boarding house, but at the moment I think that Miss Flood and the others need all my support. My room here is light and airy, and I like looking down at the street where I can watch the people come and go. As I am writing this, a group of women are standing on the corner, looking dangerous, smoking cigarettes, holding them high, and laughing through the fine gray plumes like conspirators. I wonder what they are saying? One of them, a plump redhead, is holding her stomach as if she might break herself in half with all the carrying on.
Well, Elijah, need I say it again?
Write to me soon.
I miss you,
Love Beatrice
September 17, 1911
Dear Elijah,
Wishing you a very Happy Birthday. Please find enclosed a picture postcard of the Dreamland Dock. It is one of our most popular cards.
Love and best wishes,
Beatrice
September 25, 1911
Dear Elijah,
I met a Wesleyan preacher today. He was visiting cousins who have a balloon and trinket stall on the park. He has worked in many cities and has written books about his travels, one in particular, People Preaching, is apparently very well known. Do you know it? I asked him if he had ever visited Chicago, and he said, ‘Once or twice.’ Of course, I asked him if he’d met you, and he told me that he’d met hundreds of people, and couldn’t recall them all. Perhaps you remember him? His name is Todd Grammar, a tall man with a long pointed face and thinning brown hair. He is about fifty years old. He has a wife called Olive. It would be nice (and comforting) for me to have the connection.
Love, Beatrice
October 10, 1911
Dear Elijah,
Papa’s birthday. Did you remember it? I tried to go about the day as usual. Work, then I swam for a while at the Lido. Did I ever tell you that I’m now a strapping swimmer, attempting all sorts of hair-raising dives and twists under the water? It didn’t work. I sold postcards and thought about the birds. The gulls were crying hard, and that didn’t help. In the water, the spray from my arms became the dust in the air from the bonfire. All these strange reminders. Now I intend to go straight to bed. I will not dream. I will think about jewels sitting in velvet-lined boxes. Colored polish on fingernails. Roast-beef hash. The sweet Italian children playing hopscotch on Mulberry Street. Acrobatic dancers. But best of all, and hardest of all, I will do my best to think of nothing.
Your loving sister,
Beatrice
October 20, 1911
Dear Elijah,
I had my photograph taken today with a sweet little monkey called Pom. He was wearing a red suit, like a bellboy, and reminded me of a story Papa once told us. His fingers gripped tight around my neck, and his breath smelled of garlic and bananas.
Later on this afternoon I am going with my friend Nancy to look at a room near Ocean Avenue. It is reasonably priced, close to work, and I will still be able to visit the folks at the Galilee Hotel.
I will send you my new address, if I decide to take it. Nancy has seen it, and she says it is clean and the furniture looks almost like new.
Best wishes,
From Beatrice
Room 18
Talbot House
Western Drive
Brooklyn
New York
October 30, 1911
Dear Elijah,
Please find enclosed my new address. I left the Galilee a couple of days ago. Miss Flood was very sweet and made a plate of vanilla muffins, and then there was lots of embracing and a few blurry tears from Mrs Mitchell, who said she felt like she was losing one of her children, all over again. (Something of an exaggeration, as I hardly spent any time with her, but I went along with it, dabbed her teary eyes, and promised her I’d return very soon for a visit.)
My room is lovely, and all my own, paid for by my wages from the booth. Now that the season here has all but ended, Mr Cooper transfers his stock to his other booth, and we sell birthday and anniversary cards, correspondence paper, books and stationary, and so on.
I hope this letter finds you well. I have something of a head cold, but I have been sipping lemon, honey, and warm water, recommended to me by the lady who lives next door, who says it is probably the change in my location, and the sudden drop in temperature.
Best wishes,
Beatrice
November 4, 1911
Dear Elijah,
Gray skies and rain. I visited the Galilee this morning. There were three new people, so it all felt very different. Miss Flood was busy making a banner, emblazoned with the words God Is Good For You! They all seemed pleased to see me, though Mrs Mitchell shook my hand as if I were a stranger.
I like watching the rain. From my window, I can see other windows, and people passing between them. There is a big bay horse in the yard, wearing a black coat, and stamping at the growing pools of water.
Do you have a window?
All my good wishes to you, Elijah,
From Beatrice
John Wesley House
Pickford Square East
Chicago
Illinois
December 1, 1911
Dear Miss Lyle,
I regret to inform you that I must return all correspondence sent to Mr Elijah Lyle. Mr Lyle arrived at John Wesley House on July 20. The next evening he went out with a Mr Frank Hooper. They were last seen at the Horseshoe Tavern, behaving in a very unchristian-like manner.
We have done all we can to try and locate your brother, and to assure his safety, but we have not been able to do so.
God be with you.
Yours faithfully,
(Rev.) Bernard J. Scott Esq.
BUTTERFLY
‘THE THING IS, we don’t need you at the farm any more,’ said Ginny, awkwardly. ‘You see, we’ve agreed to take on some injured men who aren’t fit to go back to the quarry, but they can see to the pigs, muck out the stables and do all the rest of it.’
Beatrice nodded. She’d seen the men hanging around the gate. They’d looked wizened and older than their years. One of them had jaundice and a cough that rattled so hard in his chest it was like he was spitting out the bullets that hadn’t quite killed him off yet.
‘They need employment,’ said Beatrice. ‘I understand.’
‘We haven’t the money to pay you. I’m sorry. We haven’t the money to pay the men either. We’re giving them free bed and board, that’s all.’
‘I didn’t expect money,’ Beatrice told her. ‘Don’t worry about that.’
‘Who said I was worrying?’
Since Mary’s funeral, Beatrice had been walking on eggshells. She would give Ada her shopping list and while Ada collected the tins and bottles in grim silence, Beatrice would say such inane things as ‘Isn’t this sunshine lovely?’ or ‘You’re looking very well today.’ But there would be no replies to any of these, as Ad
a would bang down the box of soap powder, almost smashing a bottle of vinegar, and a jar of pink salmon paste. In church she would say good morning to all the ladies, and though they’d say ‘good morning’ back, they’d look distracted, like something was playing on their minds. At the end of the service, the Reverend Peter McNally would be gazing over her shoulder as she asked him how he was, and he would tell her he was well, all the while looking at Iris engrossed in a bag of something sticky, licking the tips of her fingers and giving him a look that was bordering on the lascivious. Iris had recently let the vicar do something that he’d only ever dreamed about. ‘It’s this war,’ she’d said, hooking up her corset. ‘It makes you look for comfort, and bugger all the consequences.’
Now it seemed that Beatrice’s longest conversations were with strangers. The lady selling cotton reels on the market, who’d talked for a good twenty minutes about her baby grandson who had yet to meet his father. ‘He’s the spitting image of my son-in-law,’ she’d said. ‘It’s a shame really, because he’s nothing much to look at.’ Then there was the man who’d sold her his last copy of Woman’s Own, who’d said his son was in hospital with a shoulder wound, and he’d never thought he’d be so grateful for a shoulder wound, but the hospital was miles away and how were they supposed to get to the other side of Manchester to take him a bag of grapes and something for his pipe now and then? On the bus home, the woman sitting next to her was crying. Beatrice offered her a handkerchief. ‘Oh, I’m not sad,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve just heard from my son for the first time in months. A tatty little postcard it was, but it was his handwriting all over the back of it, so it proves he’s still alive, and there’s me thinking that he couldn’t be.’
At home she either talked to herself or wrote letters. She wrote to Nancy, telling her about Mary. She wrote to Jonathan sounding bright and breezy, with news about the fruit she’d managed to grow in the sunny corner of the garden. ‘Small pots of very tiny strawberries, raspberries winding around precarious-looking canes, and blackcurrants – though most of those are rotten.’ For the first time in years, she wrote to her aunt in Springfield, Illinois. She told her about Jonathan, how he was fighting, how she was now living in England, and hoped her aunt and her friend Alicia Wellaby were in the best of health. The letter ran to seven pages. It didn’t fit inside the envelope, and she worried about postage. In the end, she didn’t send it; instead she used the back of the pages for shopping lists, sums and reminders.
Angel of Brooklyn Page 22
