The Girls at the Kingfisher Club: A Novel

by Genevieve Valentine

  When he got down the line to Doris he grinned even wider.

  “Hello,” he said, sounding like he had just barely swallowed “again.”

  “Hiya,” she said. “Doris.”

  When they shook hello, he held her hand tightly, and she smiled so hard she wrinkled her nose.

  Lou and Jo exchanged a look.

  He met Ella with no kisses, which was refreshing, and then their father was ushering them into the dining room.

  Doris and Sam Lewisohn walked in side by side, talking quickly in low voices.

  “I’ll be damned,” said Jo.

  Lou said, “The night is young.”

  • • • • • •

  As they entered the dining room, Jo saw the long rectangular table had been laid out with their mother’s elaborate china—in places for ten.

  She didn’t dare guess what it meant. Problems would have to take their turn tonight.

  Each of the girls had a seat next to a man and away from her sisters, so there would be no way out of making charming conversation, unless you were Lou and didn’t mind putting up a wall of silence for three hours.

  Jo saw she was meant to be seated next to Sam Lewisohn, which was awfully generous on their father’s part—he was young and pleasant—until she remembered how Doris had acted at their meeting with him. Of course, then, their father would be setting Doris up with the stupidest man in the bunch and be hoping that Jo could keep Lewisohn entertained.

  (For Lewisohn to be on the ballot at all, he’d have to be a man of means; their father was no progressive, unless it would benefit his bottom line.)

  “Do sit, Doris,” she said, easing Doris down into her own chair before Doris could ask any questions. A glance around the table told Jo she’d be spending the evening with Foster.

  Ella had, of course, been seated next to Prescott. Jo wasn’t worried about that pair; Ella could handle anyone, and Prescott’s evil was bland enough.

  It worried Jo most that Lou was next to van de Maar. A drunk was one thing and a bore was another, but their father’s friend was doubtless the richest man at the table (excepting their father). If Lou lost her head, it could mean more than just their father’s social standing.

  Their father and van de Maar were business associates. Their father relied on van de Maar’s discretion, but Jo knew that a man with wounded pride was capable of anything. If things went sour, they’d really go sour.

  Be good, Jo mouthed as she took Doris’s seat next to drunk Foster.

  Lou raised an eyebrow at Jo, looked away pointedly, and held up her glass for wine. She got back a glassful of water.

  “So,” said Foster, smiling vaguely, “your father tells me you like boats.”

  “Very much,” said Jo.

  “Lovely. I’ve got two, you know, one that I keep at the cape, and then one on the Danube, for when I do business abroad.”

  “What sort of business?”

  “Oh, anything,” said Foster. “Pass the wine?”

  Across the table, van de Maar was filling Lou’s water glass. “And what is it you like?”

  Lou said, “Sovereignty.”

  After a moment (too long), van de Maar smiled. “Very clever. Have you been to England?”

  “No,” said Lou.

  “I think you’d love it. There’s so much history there. Everything about America is still so young, you know.”

  “Oh, not everything,” said Lou.

  When van de Maar frowned and looked over, she said, “I’ve been reading some geology,” and smiled blandly.

  Jo wondered about the tenth place setting through the first and second courses, eating without tasting anything, listening to Foster talk up the treasures of the Danube (mainly liquor, as it turned out, which sounded more interesting in theory than in execution).

  The empty seat pressed on her, and Foster wasn’t helping. By the time the entrées were delivered, Jo was almost willing to drag Doris out of her chair just to have a decent conversation for five minutes.

  Not that she would; Doris and Sam had forgotten there was anyone else at the table, chatting as if they were old friends rather than near-strangers at a cattle auction of a dinner party.

  Lou must have finally frozen out van de Maar, Jo noticed when she looked; he was speaking with their father as though Lou wasn’t there. (Or that was how van de Maar thought of women. Jo couldn’t tell.) And beside the pristine Prescott, poor Ella looked ready to drop.

  Jo hoped their father saw it. If nothing else stirred their father’s sympathy, seeing Ella suffer might. It hadn’t helped their mother, she thought, despairing, but even ownership, if it could be stirred up in him, would be better than—

  The doorbell rang.

  The tenth guest, Jo thought, and went cold.

  She gripped her fork and knife like it was a call to battle.

  Their father was out of his seat with only the barest excuse, striding for the door.

  “I’ll answer it,” he told Walters, who had taken a few steps out of the shadows and now hesitated.

  The butler frowned. “Sir, are you expecting—?”

  “Oh, yes, Walters,” their father said, half a smile on his face. “The gentleman has been expected all afternoon.”

  With no other sign of surprise, Walters pulled the door open, letting in a pool of night-darkness that had a stranger in it.

  The man in the doorway stepped out of the shadows quickly and had his hat in his hands before he was fully across the threshold.

  “Mr. Hamilton,” he said, out of breath, “I’m so sorry for the late hour, but I thought you’d want to hear this tonight. I’ve got some information about those dancing girls.”

  It was Tom.

  fourteen

  WHAT DO I CARE WHAT SOMEBODY SAID

  It was Tom.

  Jo didn’t even notice she had moved until Lou stood up. Then Jo realized Lou was rising to meet her, because Jo was already standing, her knife and fork still clutched in her hands.

  Doris and Ella stood up a moment later; it looked like they were all rising to greet the guest. Almost.

  “You’ve seen them?” their father was asking.

  “Yes,” said Tom.

  Jo’s fork fell to the table. (Her hands were numb.)

  At the noise, Tom looked up and saw them.

  Only his shoulders went tight—he gave no other sign of recognition, and Jo felt the numbness creep to her elbows as she saw what an actor he really was.

  (She’d never doubted that those long-ago nights when he hadn’t wanted to speak, he’d done horrible things.

  Now she wondered about the nights he’d come in smiling.)

  Her father was focused only on Tom. “When have you seen them? Do you know them?”

  “A little,” said Tom to their father. “I’ve seen them from time to time.”

  “How many of them?”

  “Must be more than ten,” Tom said, “when they’re out in their full numbers.”

  Jo heard Lou down the table, breathing in and out through her teeth.

  “What do they look like? You would be able to recognize them, I take it?” Their father sounded impatient at having to ask what he felt should be freely given.

  “A few are blond, a few are darker,” Tom said. “Two or three still have long hair. Pretty girls—mean, too, if that’s your poison.”

  Poison. The word filled Jo’s mouth; her heart was thudding against her ribs, sluggish, half speed.

  “I’m paying you for information, not raptures. Where do they go? I need to find them. As quickly as possible.”

  “Ah, I didn’t realize the time,” said Tom, all pleasant apology. His voice was shaking, just at the edges, like it did whenever he was about to give in.

  Don’t, Jo thought, don’t, don’t, how could you do what you’re doing to us? She couldn’t swallow.

  “They go anyplace that will have them, I hear—”

  “Names.”

  Jo’s heart slammed against her bones
like it could send her flying—once, twice.

  “The Kingfisher,” Tom said. “Usually.”

  There was a moment without sound, where Jo thought she might have drowned.

  (Some unconscious engine inside her thought, It’s the old place, the unsafe place, he’s given you a reprieve by saying it, you can build your story around it if you have to—as if she could be making plans, watching Tom in her father’s house, in her father’s confidence.

  “Usually,” he’d said—could they escape through one word?)

  Then Tom was saying, “They’re out dancing now. I was on my way out to see you when they were on their way in.”

  Their father frowned, just for a moment, like he was disappointed. “How many of them?”

  “I counted seven,” said Tom. He didn’t even glance at the dining room.

  Jo couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.

  The girls upstairs wouldn’t have disobeyed her. They disliked her sometimes, they saw her as a tyrant, but surely they knew when it was important to obey. They wouldn’t have gone out alone, she was sure. They wouldn’t have—he wouldn’t be—they couldn’t.

  She gripped the knife harder, her hand aching.

  “Hamilton, what’s this about?”

  The four girls jumped.

  It was van de Maar; the men had given up their conversations and gotten up as well (Foster a little more slowly than the rest), and now they were peering into the hallway at the evening’s entertainment.

  “I’m so sorry,” their father said over his shoulder. “Forgive my manners. This is a small professional curiosity. It won’t take a minute. Please, have a drink.”

  Then he beckoned to Jo. “Josephine, if you would come here a moment.”

  Without thinking, Jo obeyed, walking around the table like a woman dreaming.

  (Tom was blinking, like hearing her name had stung.)

  As she passed, Ella plucked the knife out of her hand.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” their father said when she was close enough, “I’d like to see your sisters.”

  She blanched. “Now? In their nightclothes?” She lowered her voice. “In front of strangers?”

  She didn’t look at Tom. He was a stranger now, more than any of the others, and all strangers could be equally ignored.

  “I did not offer it as a topic for discussion,” he said. “I will meet them on the second-floor landing, so our guests are not inconvenienced. But I want to see them all. Now.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Tom was watching them with the detachment of someone waiting to see who would win a tennis match.

  Too bad about the knife, Jo thought. She could have put it to good use.

  “Yes, sir,” she said finally. Her throat was dry.

  She took the stairs as calmly as possible, slowly, her legs shaking. She didn’t dare look back at the dinner table, where the low voices of the chatting men highlighted the silence of her three sisters.

  Seven girls. If they had gone, if seven of them had gone to Tom’s place because she’d told them it was safe (oh God), then one of them was still sitting upstairs—too afraid to go out, waiting for Jo to return. Rebecca? Sophie? Would it be better or worse for that one girl, having stayed?

  Rounding the second-story landing, Jo had a terrifying premonition of opening doors to empty rooms; she imagined walking right to the end of the fourth-floor hall and out the back stairs, out to the streets, never stopping.

  At the third-floor landing (dark and quiet; it could mean anything), she had to search for enough breath to walk forward and knock on Rose and Lily’s door.

  Her blood pounded in her ears so loudly she couldn’t hear if there was noise from inside. She forced herself to count to ten before she panicked—tears would muddy her powder, and she didn’t dare give her father the satisfaction, no matter what happened.

  (Her eyes were stinging. She blinked once, hard.)

  On the count of eight, Lily opened the door.

  Her hair was sleep mussed, and she frowned blearily at Jo. “What’s wrong?”

  “Is everyone here?”

  For a moment neither of them moved, breathed.

  Then Lily frowned. “Jo, I don’t—”

  “Lily.”

  Her voice was thick—Lily flinched away from it.

  “Yes, of course, you said we shouldn’t—”

  “Get them up,” Jo said. “Line up on the stairs to the second floor.”

  “Jo, what’s hap—”

  “Up,” Jo snapped, still too panicked to even be relieved. She was taking the stairs to the fourth floor, moving by rote.

  Hattie didn’t even bother to ask questions when Jo knocked; she and Mattie grabbed their robes from the foot of their beds and followed Jo.

  Lined up on the stairs in nightgowns and bare feet, they looked like a collection of orphans, and Jo walked between two columns of girls toward the first floor as if she wielded the willow switch.

  (Perhaps all of this, all these years, had only given their father what he’d always wanted from Jo—an instrument.)

  “Father,” she said at the landing, the flint in her voice surprising her. “You wanted to see them.”

  Tom was still in the foyer, looking at her with something that might have been sympathy. She didn’t bother meeting his eye. He could keep it.

  Their father seemed taken aback by the speed with which she had rounded them up. He cleared his throat and excused himself again, smiling, to the gentlemen at the dinner table.

  “Back in a moment,” he said.

  There were soft noises from the dining room as the older sisters fidgeted in their seats.

  Tom looked over at the dining room, smiled encouragingly. Probably at Lou.

  He’d better hope Ella took Lou’s knife, too, Jo thought.

  Jo couldn’t look at the girls behind her, didn’t want to look at their father, refused to look at Tom. She fixed her gaze on the front door, wishing for nothing more than a head start to reach it.

  Their father took the first few stairs, then hesitated. Jo wondered if things were going to get worse—if he could even do any worse, unless he called the men over and told them to take their pick.

  But he didn’t move for a moment, and then another, and suddenly she realized what the matter was.

  He’d never seen them all together.

  He must not have seen more than three of them at a time, ever since Ella was young. He was about to meet some of his daughters for the first time, and all at once, and if he was suspicious enough to be willing to buy information about some girls going out, then he must suspect his daughters’ hearts were set against him.

  He was a fool. He’d ordered himself into confronting eight strangers he’d fathered who lived like mice in the attic above his house. He hoped to sell them off one at a time as untouched goods who had never been so wild as to go out dancing; his only concern for them had been for their reputations, and now he was standing before them, afraid of what he had made.

  He was afraid.

  Good.

  “You’ll have to come a little higher,” Jo said, and after too long added, “sir.”

  Tom took one step closer to the bottom of the stairs. It was just enough that their father would have to excuse himself if he turned back; there was nothing for it, now, but for him to stay where he was and meet them.

  Jo met Tom’s eyes for a moment. Then she turned like a society hostess and swept her arm to the girls on the stairs.

  She opened her mouth to introduce them one by one, but her father held up a hand.

  Jo swallowed.

  He didn’t want the guests to know how many more girls there were, that there were other girls being saved for someone better.

  Jo wanted to look over at her sisters (this was horrible, even more surreal for them than for her, and though she wasn’t Ella they needed comfort from someone), but she couldn’t tear her eyes from her father’s open palm, held out like a talisman against them.
r />   He didn’t look any of them in the eye. He glanced over just long enough to count them, and then he was back down the stairs, as unflappable as ever, tugging gently on the hem of his jacket and looking at Tom.

  “Well, I appreciate the information,” he said. “And I appreciate your discretion on this matter—though, as you can see, should anyone insinuate, loose girls who go out dancing are no daughters of mine.”

  Tom’s face was inscrutable. “I can see that.”

  “Unfortunately”—and their father gestured to the table—“I’m not in a position to leave my guests waiting any longer. Come by tomorrow—I pay a fair price for good information. Of course, you can join us for dinner, if you like. My daughter Josephine is hosting”—and he indicated Jo—“and her sisters, Louise, Ella, and Doris are entertaining some associates of mine.”

  From the dining room came the sound of three people shifting in their chairs to stare at the man who had come to give them up, and a thick, tense silence before Tom nodded acknowledgment. Probably Ella’s gesture, Jo thought. Manners ran deepest in her.

  Tom looked levelly at all of them, and Jo tried not to think that his gaze was sympathetic as he looked at her sisters, and harder as he locked eyes with the men.

  (It was, though; it was like looking into a mirror, watching him look around the table and wonder what was going on.)

  Their father went on. “I had a place set out for you, just in case. You’re welcome to join.”

  Tom’s placid smile when he shook his head was only a mask over his panic and bewilderment. Their father didn’t see it, but oh, Jo could.

  “I’ll have to decline,” Tom said. “It’s getting late, and I have work to do yet.”

  Jo motioned for the girls to get back upstairs while they were safely forgotten.

  She ignored the hateful looks she got from Rebecca and the twins, the fearful ones from Sophie and Violet. They could hate her all they wanted, so long as they obeyed.

  She glanced down the stairs to make sure their father wasn’t watching; when she looked back at the staircase a few moments later, they had vanished. (They knew, by now, how to disappear.)

  “Come by as early as you like,” their father was saying to Tom. “I’ll have compensation ready.”