Letters From a Patchwork Quilt

by Clare Flynn

  ‘It is late’ he said. ‘I intend to stay in a boarding house tonight then take the train to St Louis tomorrow. Please allow me to accompany you there. You can take a room for tonight then seek somewhere more permanent tomorrow. Indeed I am willing to postpone my own onward journey to assist you in getting settled, my dear.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice sounded uncharacteristically harsh. ‘You’ve done enough. I’ll forward the money I owe to you in St Louis when I have it. Please give me the address.’

  He tore a page out of a small notebook and wrote down the name of the brewery where his brother worked in St Louis and handed it to her.

  ‘New York is a dangerous city and there are people everywhere who make their living by preying on new arrivals. A young woman alone is vulnerable. Please reconsider and let me help you.’

  Eliza jumped up, knocking over her chair. The other occupants of the busy restaurant stopped talking and turned to look.

  ‘I’m sorry. I must go. I have an address of a lodging house. Someone I met at Castle Garden recommended a place. Goodbye and thank you for your kindness.’

  He called after her. ‘God bless you, my dear. May you find what you are looking for. And remember, if you do not, my offer is open for ever.’

  She ran out of the restaurant into the street. It was hot, the air clammy and debilitating, despite the fact that it was now late evening. She looked about her, not knowing which way to go, fumbling in her purse for the address Clarence had given her in Castle Garden. Kingsbridge Road. There was no one around to ask, so she set off, walking blindly, hoping that before long she would find a signpost or someone to give directions. She began to regret refusing the doctor’s suggestion that she accompany him to his guest house. Conscious of the growing darkness, it was with relief that she came upon a woman, respectably dressed and with an honest countenance, holding the hand of a small child. Eliza asked if she could direct her to Kingsbridge Road.

  ‘You're going in the wrong direction. It's miles away. What you want to go there for?'

  'I was told I'd find accommodation.'

  'Come with me, darling.’ The woman had a soft Irish brogue. ‘I’ll see you right. There’s rooms to be had where I’m living. I can rent you one. What’s your name?’

  Eliza gasped in relief and wearily followed the woman, who told her she was Mrs McCarthy, as they navigated through the grid of narrow streets and alleyways. They walked briskly, the small boy, Connor, skipping along beside them. Mrs McCarthy explained she was fetching him home after yet another episode of running away.

  ‘The wee lad’s only seven, but he has it in mind to go back to Ireland. Keeps trying to head down to the port.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He was a twin and his brother passed away from the fever four years ago on the voyage out. He’s got it into his head that Fergus is back in Galway and keeps trying to go back there to find him. I’ve given up trying to get it into his thick skull that Fergus won’t ever be coming back.’ She stroked a hand affectionately over the tousled hair that covered the eponymous thick skull.

  ‘Fergus was a good child most of the time. We pray for his soul every night. I keep telling this little fellow that if he keeps on running away like this he’ll have a long time in Purgatory himself – or even worse end up in the other place. You a Catholic?’

  Eliza nodded.

  ‘Most are round here. Apart from the coloureds. Here we are then.’ She turned into a narrow alley, signalling for Eliza to follow.

  They entered a dark space, barely six feet wide between two tall buildings. Something flapped in Eliza’s face and she screamed. The woman stopped and waited for her to catch up.

  ‘Not scared of a bit of washing are you, lass? You won’t go far in Five Points without running into a washing line.’ She laughed a guttural laugh and took Eliza by the arm, pushing her towards a doorway.

  The light from an open window revealed that they had entered a small interior courtyard with tenement buildings surrounding it on all sides. As well as the dripping laundry, the space housed piles of wood, a pair of beaten-up old handcarts and what looked like an empty beer keg. Two mangy cats were fighting over what might have been a dead rat. There was a man leaning against the doorpost, smoking a clay pipe. He cuffed Connor over the head as the boy ran past him into the building, then looked Eliza up and down as though imagining her without her clothes on, but said nothing. Mrs McCarthy nodded at him but didn’t speak, and led Eliza into the hallway of the building.

  Inside it was pitch dark. Connor had disappeared into one of the rooms. There was no lighting in the hallway or on the stairs and Eliza had to fumble her way in the dark, hanging onto the bannisters and trying to keep up with Mrs McCarthy. They climbed seven flights of stairs to the top of the building and at the end of the passageway the woman unlocked a door, holding it open for a breathless Eliza to enter. Mrs McCarthy lit a candle and handed it to Eliza. The room was tiny. It couldn’t have been more than eight feet long by five feet wide. The one window gave onto a narrow air-shaft that ran between the building and its neighbour.The Irish woman sat down on the only thing that passed for furniture - a wooden tea chest. Eliza held the candle aloft and looked around her. The air-shaft was only about two feet wide and when she opened the window and tried to lean out she could see nothing of the night sky above her. She had hoped for a draught of cooling air but the heat outside was even more stifling than that inside the room, and the air-shaft, far from ventilating the place, seemed to be a source of foul air in itself.

  ‘You’ll be needing bedding? I can let you have a straw mattress and a blanket for fifty cents. You may want to take it up onto the roof. The doorway’s at the end of the landing. It’s cooler up there. That’s what most people do to get a decent night’s sleep. A bit crowded on a hot night like tonight so you may have trouble bagging a space.’ She laughed her throaty laugh again. ‘But you’ll be safe enough out there. Mostly families in this building. Decent folk all of them. Rent is four dollars and fifty cents for the month payable in advance.’

  ‘That seems a lot for one very small room.’

  The woman looked her up and down. ‘Four dollars then.’

  ‘I was told to expect to pay three dollars.’

  ‘And there’s me thinking you’d just stepped off the boat! All right. Let’s say three-fifty and it’s a deal. The water pump’s in the yard and the privy’s down there too. Best not go down there after dark on your own though.’

  ‘Mrs McCarthy?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where do you live?’ Eliza counted out the money and held it out to the woman who quickly checked the bills and stuffed them into a pocket of her apron.’

  ‘Second floor. At the front. Give me a knock if you need anything. I’ll send one of my lads up in a minute with the bedding.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  The woman nodded and left the room. When her footsteps on the stairs had receded Eliza slumped onto the tea chest and began to sob.

  16

  Attacked

  Eliza awoke after a disturbed night, tossing and turning on the straw bed, bathed in sweat, with a raging thirst but too fearful to brave the dark stairwell in search of the water pump out in the yard. Her mood was no lighter, despite the arrival of daylight. There wasn’t much of that anyway. Just a greyish gloom from the narrow air-shaft. She could see straight across it into a dwelling in the building opposite. A couple eating at a table in front of the window looked up and nodded to her.

  There was no possibility of staying here. It was imperative that she find work and alternative accommodation, even if it reduced the amount she could put aside each week to re-pay Dr Feigenbaum and save for her passage back to England.

  She made two trips up and down the seven flights of stairs, first to queue to use the privy and then, once she had borrowed a jug from Mrs McCarthy, to fetch water from the pump. Collecting the wood for the stove could wait as it was too hot to think of lighting it and she had no desire to cook anything in that place – eve
n if she’d had the implements to do so.

  Mrs McCarthy looked at her dubiously when she told her she was a teacher, but pointed her in the direction of the nearest Catholic church and told her the name of the priest. ‘If anyone can help you it’s Father Connolly.’

  When Eliza emerged into the courtyard it was in a frenzy of activity. Women were hanging newly-washed rags and sheets on the myriad washing lines that crisscrossed the space and rose in serried ranks, slung between the windows of the buildings at each level, like bunting on a ship. Children played, some of them holding their smaller siblings, little girls pretending to be mothers. All too soon they would be playing the part for real. Little boys played chase around the yard, knocking into each other and getting tangled in the washing, dodging the slaps that their harassed mothers dealt them when they were in range. The day was hot again, sultry, the sun covered by cloud and the atmosphere oppressive. There was a foul smell that pervaded the whole neighbourhood.

  Eliza turned to one of the women and asked, ‘What’s the terrible smell?’

  ‘Tanneries. They’re all around here.’

  ‘Is it always as bad as this?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’

  Eliza knew she wouldn’t, couldn’t. It was the stench of hell, indescribable, fetid, rancid, overpowering, nauseating. It caught at the back of her throat and made her gag. She put her handkerchief over her mouth and went out of the courtyard.

  The church to which Mrs McCarthy had directed her was just a couple of blocks away, but she decided to go to the port first to find out if Jack had sent a telegraph message. There was no message. She fought back the tears. He would be in touch soon. He had to be. He wouldn’t leave her here all alone like this. Would he?.

  She trudged back to Five Points and walked in the direction she thought would take her to the church. The street she was walking down was quiet. She looked around nervously. Had she taken the wrong turning? It seemed different from the area around her lodgings, where people thronged the streets, going about their business. Here it was uncannily quiet. Deserted. Buildings boarded up. No one in sight. After a few hundred yards she decided to retrace her steps. Something was wrong.

  She looked about her, trying to get her bearings. If only there was someone to ask. She was about to go back to the last busy road she had walked down and ask for directions, when she was grabbed from behind, a hand clamped over her mouth and another around her waist and she was dragged backwards.

  Her heart wanted to catapult out of her body with fright. The sky was a narrow grey strip between tall buildings. She couldn’t see her assailant but she could smell the stench of sour sweat and unwashed clothes. His hand over her mouth muffled her cries and was too tightly clamped for her teeth to gain any purchase.

  He pushed her up against a wall. Her hat fell off and her face scraped against the rough bricks. He pinioned her against the wall with his chest. He was a big man. She could feel the strength and weight of his body against her. Her heart thumped in her chest and her struggle to breathe made her dizzy. Oh sweet Jesus help me! Don’t let me die!.

  Her head was jerked back by the hair then the hand moved away from her mouth and she sucked in great gobs of air, gasping as though she had been drowning. Her arms were twisted behind her back so she cried out in pain then he slammed her face hard against the bricks. She felt bone shatter and the taste of blood filled her mouth. She struggled again to breathe. She was going to die. Alone here in a dark New York alley. She was going to die.

  The man’s body continued to pinion her in place while his free hand grasped at her skirts. She tried to struggle. To move her legs together. To squeeze them tight. Can’t breathe. Can’t move.

  Then her racing heart and the surge of fear gave her a rush of strength she didn’t know she possessed. She twisted sharply, trying to shake him off but he pressed his body hard against hers, now forcing one leg between hers. Panic gave way to anger. She’d had enough. She was damned if she’d let her life get any worse. If he was going to rape and kill her she’d die fighting. She raised her right foot up and to the side and stamped her heel down hard on his foot. He was momentarily taken off guard and as his body loosened its pressure on her, she twisted around, brought her knee up and rammed it into him between his legs as she had once seen a boy do to another in the playground with tearful consequences. Her attacker screamed in pain and bent over double. She moved to run out of the alley, but he caught her arm and pulled her back towards him, landing a punch like a hammer blow on her already broken face. Everything went black.

  She awoke in an unfamiliar room. She was lying in a proper bed, under sheets and blankets. Washing hung on lines across the ceiling all around the room. She tried to pull herself up the bed, but the room began spinning and a shaft of pain burnt through her skull.

  ‘Mam! Mam! She’s woken up.’ A small, half naked child with an unkempt mop of tangled curls was standing at the foot of the bed. The child crossed the room and leaned out of the open window where she yelled the same message.

  Mrs McCarthy materialised at the bedside a few moments later.

  ‘You were out cold, Eliza, love. Quite a walloping you got. Looked like you were lying there cold for some time before they found you. What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. How did I get here? How long have I been here?’ Her own voice sounded strange to her, muffled, distorted. She moved her tongue and tasted blood. She could feel a large gap in her lower jaw where several teeth should have been. As well as the sharp pain in her face, she felt a dull ache in her stomach on one side. The room started to spin and she closed her eyes. It was too difficult to contemplate what had happened and what state she was now in.

  Mrs McCarthy’s voice penetrated the fog. ‘You were lying unconscious in an alley leading up to Mulberry Bend.’

  She wanted to go back to sleep. To sleep and wake up to find this was all a bad dream. But she knew it wasn’t.

  ‘You don’t want to go walking down dark alleys like that on your own, Eliza. There’s men in gangs as would knife their own mothers, let alone a stranger.’

  ‘Someone gwabbed me and dwagged me off zhe stweet down dere.’ The sound of her own voice was unreal, like someone trying to speak with their mouth full.

  ‘Whas wong with me? It hurts. My teef have gone.’

  She felt the panic rising inside her as her voice distorted the words and made her sound as though she was talking with a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth. The pain in her cheek and jaw was like nothing she had ever known.

  ‘Did you get a look at him?’

  ‘Behind me mosh of zhe time. Happened so fass.’ A sharper wave of pain sliced through her face and she cried out. ‘It hurs. My face hurs.’

  ‘Here, lassie. Laudanum. It’ll dull the pain.’ The woman pushed a spoon into her mouth and Eliza swallowed the medicine and felt the pain recede almost immediately to be replaced by a delicious drowsiness that numbed her whole body and filled her with a strange sense of contentment and wellbeing. She tried to smile up at Mrs McCarthy, but sleep overcame her.

  When she woke again it was nightfall. Mrs McCarthy was moving back and forth slowly in a wooden rocking chair. The creaks were the only sound in the room. Eliza realised it must be the middle of the night.

  The woman saw her stir and moved to the head of the bed, where she took a damp cloth and mopped Eliza’s brow.

  ‘How’s the pain? Any better?’

  Eliza struggled to speak. ‘Do you have a looking gass? I wan see my face.’

  ‘There’s time enough for that later. You need to get your strength back first. There’s a pot of chicken soup warming on the stove. You haven’t eaten anything for two days.’

  ‘Please. Bwing me a miwwa.’

  The woman shrugged. ‘We don’t have a mirror in the house, dear.’ She laughed. ‘No call for it. We’ve more important things to spend our money on. My days of looking pretty are long gone.’

  ‘Ank you for taking me in.’ H
er words were slow as she struggled to form them, conscious of the slurring and he inability to form some sounds.

  ‘You’re welcome. Gives me a bit of peace so I’m not complaining.’ Again the dry sardonic laugh. ‘My old man and two of my lads are sleeping upstairs in your room. It’s like a holiday for me. My Paddy’s a devil for the sex business, if you’ll pardon my frankness. No sooner have I popped a babby out than he’s shoving another one in me. That man’s like a machine. Never stops. Wants to have his way all the time. I’m done in with it. Twelve kids I’ve carried and brought into this world and eight of them we’ve put in the ground. But he keeps on. No mercy. Men don’t know the half of it. Don’t get me wrong, Eliza, he’s a hard worker. He’s a longshoreman and he works his hide off to provide for the family. Barely touches the drink either. Just a few pints on a Saturday night. Sometimes I wish he was a bit fonder of the ale as he might pass out like half the street do after a good session and then I’d get at least one night’s peace.’ She laughed again. ‘You ever been married, Eliza?’

  ‘No. I engaged to be mawwied.’

  ‘So where’s your sweetheart?’

  ‘England. Be here as soon ash he can. I go to zhe port. He send telgwaf.’

  The woman snorted. ‘I’ve heard that one before. Sorry to shatter your dreams, but I doubt you’ll be seeing him again.’

  ‘Why say zat?’

  ‘Because he’d never have let you go if he meant to marry you.’

  Eliza felt the tears welling up. She turned away from Mrs McCarthy. As she moved her head on the pillow, a shaft of pain sliced through her face and around her skull and she screamed in agony. The woman was there in an instant, the laudanum bottle at the ready.

  ‘Take this and it will all be all right.’

  17

  Recovery

  Eliza’s hostess seemed in no rush to see her return to her own quarters. The pain in Eliza’s face gradually subsided but she didn’t know whether this was the natural healing process or the continuing effects of the laudanum. Lifting the bedcovers, she pulled up her night shift to look at the source of the pain in her belly and saw that her stomach was blackened with bruises.