by Tom Murphy
“That she did, child, much as she’d like the world to forget it today. But—as you guessed—she is not unkind.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Lily as they came down the stairs to the kitchen once again.
The Wallingford kitchen, for all its great size and gleaming equipment, had the look and sound of a gigantic battlefield just before the attack. Louise Dulac rose imperial and brave among a sea of pots, a forest of vegetables, a decimated zoo of fowl and fish and veal and Lily knew not what else. The tall Frenchwoman shouted her commands to cowering helpers, darted here and there waving an immense wooden spoon like a sorcerer’s wand, pointing, stirring, patting, pushing, ordering fires to be stoked here, banked there, wanting more ice, less dawdling, clear the marble to roll the pastry, is the silver freshly shined, have we claret enough for thirty, and which of four champagnes will be good enough for so impromptu a gathering here on a hot June night in New York, alors!
Mrs. Groome took all this in with a glance and motioned Lily aside. “This,” she said, “is not the moment for you to begin learning the ways of the kitchen, Lily. Why don’t you go up and unpack your things, and Susie will find you soon enough, when she gets back from wherever she’s got to. Can you find your way, girl?”
“I think so.”
Lily wasn’t at all sure this was true. She had the impression you could get lost in this huge stone palace for weeks and months and no one would know where to find you. Resolutely she turned from the clamor of the kitchen and began climbing the hundreds of stairs to the garret.
It was dark and much more quiet on the stairs. There was no sign of the fat Mr. Groome, and for this Lily thanked the Lord. There was no sign of the malevolent Tess, either, and Lily was glad enough for that. It must be late in the afternoon, but there was no way for Lily to know the precise time. Usually a church bell tolled the hour, but there would be new bells to learn now, and new people to know, new rules and new standards.
Lily’s head swam with new impressions, images of richness and confusion, of kindness and unexpected cruelty from Tess, of the exotic Louise and her strange, magical empire by the stoves, of Pat the stableboy with his dark good looks and mocking smile and irreverent commentary on the Wallingford ménage. And the mistress with her jewels, just years away from a clerk’s job in a store! There was the wonder of this land! There was Fergy’s Young America, and in spades. And fat Mr. Groome, what harm might he have done her, had Mrs. Groome not come upon them so quick and knowing?
She thought of the calm and strictly organized world of St. Patrick’s, where everyone knew their place, from God in heaven right on down, where rules were rules and the penalties severe, and the road to hell was lined with girls who failed to take heed.
Lily wondered what Fran would make of all this, wondered if she herself would last the day.
Finally, after a climb that seemed like miles, she reached the garret level, recognized the hallway, found her door. The room was just as she’d left it. For some reason this surprised Lily. She remembered Dreadful Dolan all too well, and how Dolan had thrown her doll out the window that first day, and half-expected Tess Reilley to do the same, or something like it. But there was no Tess, no sound at all in the deeply shadowed room. Lily walked to the round window and looked out. Far below, much farther than her view from the orphanage window, lay the back courtyard, with its carriage house and stables, and beyond the stables the big formal garden laid out in designs such as Lily had never seen before except in carpets, great scrolls of hedge bordered with bright flowers, huge copper beech trees in double rows, not full grown yet but threatening to meet when they were, an immense letter W in living roses edged with incredibly precise rows of shorter, bright white flowers. It was dazzling, and for a moment Lily simply stood there taking it all in, her new world, the geography of her future. As she stood, Pat led a fine tall bay horse out of the stables and stood in the sunshine brushing the already gleaming animal to a luster that made her think of satin. Pat had taken his shirt off in the heat, and Lily thought, watching him work, that he was very like the horse itself, with the same offhand grace in his movements, the same lean and rippling muscles, the great dark half-sleepy, half-amused eyes. It occurred to her that she had never seen a grown boy with his shirt off before.
Lily couldn’t have said how long she stayed in the window watching Pat curry the horse. A delivery van came rattling through the big gates, and case after case of wine was unloaded at the kitchen door. Pat kept on with his bay horse, oblivious. Even from this distance Lily could see that the boy had a rapport with the horse. The horse nuzzled Pat when it got the chance, and Pat would affectionately stroke the animal behind the ears from time to time. They both looked happy, and Lily was glad, in the confusion of her arrival in this strange and bewildering household, to see any sign of happiness. So she stood there watching, dreaming.
The voice, when it came, was startling. “Oh, he’s a fine bit of a lad, is our Pat, have no doubt of that, my girl! Likes ’em young, and likes ’em often, does Pat, and any time you’re feeling randy, he’ll be happy to oblige, day or night, as he has for others.” This announcement was delivered in a lighthearted manner, punctuated by ripples of laughter, in a tone that matched the merry face it came from.
Lily turned, gasping from surprise.
There at her elbow stood a taller girl, round in face and round in body, but nothing of fat on her, with dark blond hair and sparkling blue eyes and cheeks as pink as a sunset and a smile that lit up the room.
“I’m Susie, and you must be the new girl.”
“Lily Malone is my name.”
Susie put out her hand and Lily shook it.
“Welcome to our humble home. It’s a madhouse, of course, but they’re not all bad, not the master nor the mistress nor old lady Groome. You could have done worse, Lily.”
Susie plopped herself down on her bed and regarded the newcomer. “Skinny little thing, you be. Too skinny for Pat. Now there’s a boy-o who likes a bit of meat on his crumpets. How old are you, Lily-child?”
“Fifteen.”
“Well, don’t let it worry you. One thing’s for sure in this rotten world, and that’s that we’re all getting older by the minute, isn’t it the truth, though?”
“Sure, and it is.”
“Orphan, be you? Alone in the world?”
“I am that.”
“Ahh.”
Susie sighed a sigh of regret and understanding. Lily had never met anyone like this bubbling, joking, mocking girl, but there was something about Susie that attracted her. Lily felt at once that Susie would never do anything unkind, and that she could be trusted.
“I haven’t unpacked yet.”
“Let me help you, then, Lily. The work is lighter, says old lady Groome, and right she is, when the hands are many.”
They bent to the wicker trunk and soon Lily’s small store of worldly possessions was neatly folded into the drawers of the pine chest or hung from the brass hooks.
Through the unpacking, Susie chattered away, carefree and mischievous, describing the ways of the Wallingfords, which seemed to be diverse and eccentric.
“Miss Marianne’s the one, now, the very belle of New York is that one, and the young men’s carriages lining up around the block on at-home afternoons, and Miss M. herself playing fast and loose with all of ’em because…her heart is set on another.”
“No!” The ghost of Sister Claudia was never far from Lily’s consciousness.
“Indeed. I have it from the young lady’s own lips. In darkest confidence, you may well imagine.”
“Of course. Who is he?”
“Her parents would die dead on the spot if they knew.”
“He’s a pirate? A foreigner? A Jew?”
“Worse even than that.” Susie paused for a long pregnant moment and rolled her eyes toward heaven.
“What, then? Do tell me.”
“He is…an E-p-i-s-c-o-p-a-l-i-a-n!” Susie spelled it out as though there might be young ch
ildren about whose ears should not be sullied by the dread Protestant sect’s name.
“No!”
“Upon my honor. She’d be turned out into the street for it, her parents being nothing if not holy.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Her heart is breaking by the hour.”
“What’s he like?”
“Handsome and rich, naturally. I’ve never seen him. They meet in secret.”
“I wonder if…”
Lily never finished what she had started to say. Susie raised a finger to her lips and pointed dramatically to the door. As if on cue, someone knocked.
“Come in.”
The door opened to reveal Tess, sullen and angry, hands on hips, glowering like all the thunderstorms of summer.
“And what might ye two good-for-nothing sluts be gibbering about while your betters are workin’ their fingers to the bone? Come on with ye, now. Mrs. Groome needs help, and fast.”
Neither girl spoke, but they both stood up at once and followed the upstairs maid.
10
Lily woke in the night shivering, and thought at first she must have fever. But then she realized that the little garret bedroom was truly cold. Well, sure and it’s cold, goose, for isn’t it October already, going on to four months you’ve been here, and the days going by so fast, and so much happening, and so much to learn a body can hardly tell day from night, let alone the seasons!
Lily had come into the Wallingford mansion expecting to learn a new way of life. What she learned was survival. At the first, it was no more than a question of getting through the long days without breaking something, or incurring the terrible wrath of Louise or Mrs. Groome, and avoiding Tess if that were possible. Every morning Lily felt as though she was off to the wars, doing fresh battle with the turbulent currents of physical and emotional activity that flowed and churned through the great limestone palace of old John Wallingford.
The family’s plans varied from season to season and often from hour to hour. There were great comings and goings, visits to be paid and received, extra guests without warning, and unexplained absences, crises of needlework like the time Lily was dragged out of her narrow bed to slice the beautiful Miss Marianne Wallingford out of a ballgown she had been sewn into eight hours before, the better to set off her well-known wasp waistline. Lily felt a small twinge of pity for the haughty girl, for she could hardly breathe in all her finery.
There were two great balls, and when they happened all the maids were summoned to wait upon the grand ladies in Mrs. W.’s suite, to be ready with the sewing kit for small repairs, with cologne and smelling salts at hand, and sympathy, not to mention tea and cakes and lemonade and Madeira.
Each day had its own surprises, its own challenges, and its own traps. There was the ever-fascinating question of whether Mr. Groome would show up drunk or sober, and what to do in either case, for Groome sober was altogether different from Groome drunk, and only Mrs. Groome could handle him in either case. There was Pat, the stable charmer, lothario of the hayloft, who represented to Lily a nameless dark temptation, for his smile spoke of secret pleasures and his arrogant eyes were an invitation to bottomless pits of sin. Into those pits, Lily soon learned, her roommate Susie had cheerfully tumbled, and continued to tumble with neither fear nor regret. But Susie was seventeen and a woman of vast experience in many things besides sex, or so it seemed to Lily’s very sheltered eyes and ears.
Susie took a certain glee in trying to shock Lily, and her descriptions of how she and Patrick spent their stolen hours in the haylofts indeed made Lily’s ears tingle and her soul quiver for fear of Susie’s sure damnation. Yet it was a friendly teasing, and Susie was nothing if not generous and warm-hearted and a good companion for Lily’s first hard weeks in the house. Still, the stables and Pat himself became infused with a sense of mystery and seduction, a place and a boy to be avoided if possible. For while Lily knew perfectly well how grown-up men and women disported themselves for pleasure, the pleasure they got eluded her, and the sure damnation loomed dark and terrifying, and why Susie took such vast risks for so trifling an amusement was a thing that Lily could simply not understand, however sleek Pat’s body might be, however charming his smiles.
Lily and her new friend were exhausted, more often than not, after a working day that might last sixteen hours, up before dawn and working, working, working until after the last silver tray from the Wallingfords’ supper had been cleaned and polished and put away in its specially built green-felt-lined rack.
The busier they were, the easier it was to avoid Tess Reilley.
Tess, Lily soon discovered, was a far worse case than poor old Dreadful Dolan at St. Paddy’s. Tess seemed to hate everyone and everything with a deep, bitter, burning hatred. She kowtowed to Mrs. Groome, and for all her nastiness Tess was a hard worker, firmly entrenched in the backstairs hierarchy. But never a cheerful word came from her lips, nor a smile. And it seemed that the more Susie and Lily avoided her, the worse she got. They endured Tess in silence, for that seemed to be the only way.
In the confusion, disorder, and wonderment of her first months on the job, Lily found that Susie shone out like a sunbeam.
Shallow she might be, and easily seduced by the likes of Patrick, but Lily found that Susie’s good qualities outweighed the bad. Susie was fun, bouncy, an incurable optimist for whom tomorrow was always going to be another day, no matter how badly today might have gone. Susie could make Lily smile ten minutes after Tess Reilley had her on the brink of tears. When Lily was in one of her fits of self-doubt and depression, when she was lost in sad thoughts of Fergy, Susie could bring her out of it, laughing, quick as that.
Susie McGlynn was good fun and good medicine for Lily, and Lily swore that she would not be Susie’s judge insofar as her romance with Pat was concerned.
After six weeks’ trial, Mrs. Groome took Lily aside and told her she could have Thursday afternoons and evenings off. All week long Lily looked forward to the great day with a heady mixture of anticipation and dread. She had never, since entering St. Paddy’s, been out on her own before.
On went her best dress, the one she and Fran had made from sprigged gingham. Lily regarded herself in the little mirror, frowned, put on the little cap. Fran would be proud of me! Then she remembered that in all this time she hadn’t written to Fran, much less visited St. Paddy’s. Well, sure and she would. Someday soon. But not just yet, not today. Today was too special. Today must be kept all by itself, like the flowers Miss Marianne was always pressing into books. Down the back stairs she went, and out the kitchen door, across the big courtyard, casting a sidelong glance at the stables, which looked empty, and out the big wrought-iron gates. And nobody stopped her!
Lily turned left at the gates and walked down Sixteenth Street to the corner of Fifth Avenue, and there she stood in the clear light of the bright autumn afternoon feeling for all the world like an escaped prisoner, hardly able to understand her good luck. The broad avenue stretched uptown and downtown into infinity, beckoning. Smart carriages came clip-clopping past, bearing cargoes of elegant humanity on glamorous secret errands. Lily felt the autumn sun pressing on her back like a warm, friendly hand. I can walk up that street to the ends of the earth, she thought, and no one can stop me, nor make me come back, ever, if I don’t want to. The possibilities were dazzling, and so were the perils.
Lily stood there transfixed, a thin, indecisive statue of a girl rooted to the pavement by the enormity of this realization. Tess Reilley will never scold me again, and I’ll never have to carry the damned chamber pots down four flights of dark stairs again, or hear Louise screaming again. Emboldened, Lily crossed the avenue. Then she turned and looked back at the Wallingford mansion, as if to say goodbye forever.
The huge white pile stood uncaring in the hot light of noon, this great cold white palace guarding its riches and its secrets, kindnesses and cruelties. If I died right now the house wouldn’t care, nor anyone in it. But even as the gloomy thought crossed her mind,
Lily knew it was false, for surely Susie would care, for all her butterfly’s attention span. Even Mrs. Groome might care, a little. Pat in his wickedness was at least friendly: he’d care a bit. Well, then maybe I won’t run away just now. I’ll save my money and run away with Fran. Or even with Susie.
Mrs. Groome was their unofficial banker, and she held Lily’s small wages in her old blue tin box, safely locked. Lily had asked for twenty-five cents for her holiday, but she knew she’d never come close to spending it. Still it was a luxuriance of money, vast wealth, and all hers, earned by her own sweat hers to save or squander: thrilling! She felt the burning power of it as though the coin had been heated to glowing. It radiated power and temptation right through the thin cotton twill of her reticule.
The first money in all the world that she’d earned by herself, and a free afternoon in New York to spend it in!
The bazaars of all Araby could be no more tempting.
Lily looked left again, and again to the right, and couldn’t make up her mind. For a moment she wished for Susie, or Fran, or even Father Gregory. But this was her special time, and to savor it alone would make it more special still.
She might even go to the Wallingford Emporium! Down on Broadway it was, five stories tall and a whole block long and filled with more things than even Susie’s vivid imagination could readily accommodate. Real Persian shawls embroidered with gold, and costing thousands! And cheap things too, bright ribbons and little fans, some things that cost no more than a penny, and it must be true, for didn’t Susie have such ribbons, such fans?
Still Lily stood on the corner, and now her indecision began to weigh on her like some guilty secret. She had never tasted ice cream: she could visit Taylor & Thompson’s, the finest ice-cream palace, imagine it, where the tables were white marble and there were palms and an orchestra and gilded chairs. She could do any of these things, Lily knew, and no one would dare stop her. If only she weren’t so afraid.
Maybe next time Susie would come. Or she’d get Pat to drive her back to St. Paddy’s—was Pat allowed to do such favors for the help?—and she could see Fran again, and Sister Cathleen. If they’d want to see her. Lily was still on the corner, drowning in indecision, when Tess Reilley came scurrying around the corner and turned down Fifth Avenue toward Fifteenth Street.
