Letters From a Patchwork Quilt

by Clare Flynn

  When he was spent she started to laugh. ‘We needed that, didn’t we? It’s been a long time, Jack. I’ll move your things back into the other bedroom in the morning.’

  ‘No.’ His voice was laced with panic. ‘Not with the baby. Best leave things be.’

  ‘I’ve asked Sally to move in. She and the baby can sleep in here. Marian’s sleeping better now I’m dosing her. She’ll do fine.’

  ‘No. It’s not right to keep pouring medicine down her. A little thing like that. She’s too small to be dosed up every night. It’s wrong.’

  She gave him a puzzled look. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I mean Marian needs you. Just like you needed your mother. She wants you. You’re the most important thing in her world. Every baby needs its mother.’ He saw the doubt in her eyes so he added, ‘You mustn’t keep pushing her away. She loves you already. Anyone can see that. She wants to be with you.’

  Mary Ellen frowned then smiled. ‘Maybe you’re right. When Mrs Avery next door was holding her this morning she cried for ages and only stopped when I took her.’

  ‘See what I mean. You’re the only person that matters in her world. She loves you and she needs you. You’re her mother.’

  ‘She needs you too. You’re her father.’

  He turned away from her. ‘I’m not her father. You know that. Her father was a stranger who had you up against a wall.’ The words were out before he could contain them.

  She started to sob. ‘You’re her father. You’re her father, Jack. You have to be. You’re married to me so that makes you her father. I don’t know what you mean by talking about a stranger. There was never a stranger. You’re a mean nasty man, Jack.’ Her sobs turned into whining. ‘It’s not fair. Why are you always so horrid to me? I try to be a good wife but you just ignore me. Is it because I’m not clever enough? Is it because you still think about that teacher? It’s all your fault. I didn’t want to come to this horrible smoky town with all these dirty, common people. I never asked to live in a public house. I’m a lady and it’s not fair that you don’t treat me like one.’

  She lay back on the pillow beside him and stared up at the ceiling. ‘You’re just the same as Father O’Driscoll aren’t you? You think I’m a slut.’

  Jack sat up. ‘He called you a slut?’

  She started to cry again and he reached to where his trousers hung over a chair and fished a handkerchief out of the pocket and handed it to her.

  Sniffing loudly she went on. ‘Yes, he did, but it’s not true. You know it’s not true. When he said it first I didn’t know what it meant, so I asked Nellie and she told me a slut is a bad woman who gives her body away to anyone. But I didn’t, Jack. I didn’t give my body to anyone. Only to Father O’Driscoll. And since we got married, to you.’

  She told him everything. How the priest had first touched her a few years earlier when her mother was dying. He would visit the house during the day when her father was at work, to administer the sacrament to her mother. Afterwards he would come to Mary Ellen’s bedroom where he would fondle her. In all her twenty-five years no young men had ever come courting and she had been flattered and pleased that this important man was spending time with her. She had been shocked by his reaction to what he did to her – the way his breathing quickened, the way he pushed her away after he had touched her as though she were on fire and muttered prayers under his breath. It had made her feel oddly powerful to be able to bring about such a change in this aloof man, who usually barely deigned to speak to her and acted as though she were invisible.

  Jack, knowing the extent of his wife’s sexual needs, was not surprised that her finding an outlet for them might have seemed like a release, a kind of freedom. What surprised and shocked him to the core was that it was the Irish priest who had been the man who had brought about this sexual awakening.

  Bile rose in his throat and his stomach roiled. He staggered over to the chest of drawers and threw up in the china washing basin, over his shaving brush and flannel wash cloth.

  Mary Ellen sat up in the bed and stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘Are you ill, Jack? Did you eat something bad. What’s wrong?’

  The room was spinning. Indeed it felt that the earth was spinning out of control. He clutched his stomach and slumped into a chair. ‘So he was the man in the alleyway with you that night. The man who was ramming you up against the wall like a prostitute?’

  She nodded.

  He wanted to be sick again but his stomach was empty and nothing came out. ‘How long had it been going on? How often did you meet him in that alley?’

  She looked affronted. ‘Only that one time. He used to fiddle with me when Mama was sleeping, but he never put his thing inside me. He stopped coming to the house when she died except to see Papa and he ignored me. It made me sad.’

  ‘So why were you in the alley with him that night?’

  ‘One day Papa was out and Father O’Driscoll called at the house and asked me to go with him to the presbytery to collect some papers for Papa. While I was there he put his hand up there again. You know. Touched me. It always made me laugh when he did that because it tickled. I told him it was nice and asked why he didn’t come to the house and do it to me any more. He said I was bad and would go to hell for being a slut. He told me leading a priest into temptation was a mortal sin, like Eve with the serpent. Making a priest commit a sin was worse than doing your own sins or getting an ordinary person to commit a sin. I started crying because I don’t want to go to hell and he got angry and hit me round the head. I fell over and he got down on the floor on top of me and pushed his thing inside me. It hurt at first. Just to begin with. I cried but he put his hand over my mouth and told me to shut up so his housekeeper wouldn’t hear.’ She pushed her lips out into a pout.

  ‘Go on. What happened next?’

  ‘Nothing that day. He just told me to go home. He ignored me for weeks, but then later, the night you found me, I looked out of the bedroom window and saw him standing outside our house under the lamp post and I went down to meet him. We went to the church and prayed together. He told me I had to pray that God wouldn’t send me to hell for being a slut. I was scared. It was dark so he said he’d walk me home. I asked him if I would really go to hell and he said if I said a full novena of the rosary every night and said nothing to anyone then God might forgive me. He told me as I’d led a priest into temptation it was up to me to give him relief – I’d put the lust in him and had to help him get rid of it. So he did it to me again leaning against the wall. Put his thing inside me. He told me I had made him sin and so I had to atone for his sins as well as my own. What we’d done was a secret and if I ever told anyone I would burn in hell.’ She started to cry. ‘I won’t burn in hell for telling you, will I, Jack? You’re my husband – I’m supposed to tell you everything.’

  Jack held his head in his hands, scarcely able to comprehend what she was telling him.

  After a while he looked up. ‘Do you know how babies are made, Mary Ellen?’

  ‘They grow inside you when you get married.’

  ‘What we just did tonight and what you did with that priest, that’s what makes babies. That night in the alleyway you and Father O’Driscoll made a baby. That’s how Marian was conceived.’

  ‘Conceived?’ Her face was uncomprehending.

  A wave of pity for her washed over him and he patiently explained to her the basic facts of procreation.

  ‘So Marian isn’t your baby at all? Not even a little bit?’

  ‘Not even a little bit.’

  ‘But Father O’Driscoll isn’t my husband.’ Her face was creased by a frown and her eyes filled with tears.

  He reached over and took her hand. ‘Priests can’t get married. You know that, Mary Ellen. They are not supposed to do what he did to you. He is the one who is the sinner. Not you.’

  ‘But he’s a priest. Priests don’t commit sins.’

  ‘It seems they do. Well, that one did anyway. He is a disgrace to the pri
esthood and deserves to be punished.’

  ‘Are you going to tell Papa?’

  Jack looked up at her, at her startled eyes and bewildered face. There was no point. Thomas MacBride would never believe him. The two men were thick as thieves. O’Driscoll was protected by the dog collar around his neck, his ceremonial vestments and the whole weight of the church, which would never accept that a man of God was capable of performing such acts.

  He wanted to kill O’Driscoll. To tear him limb from limb. To pound that smug face into a pulp. To shame him in front of his whole parish. The man who was the father of his wife’s child. The man who had destroyed his life and condemned Eliza to a life in exile.

  Jack swore he would never enter a church again.

  23

  Journey to St Louis

  Eliza didn’t write to say she was coming. She wanted to keep the possibility of changing her mind until the last possible minute.

  She visited the shipping office one last time and left the address of Dr Feigenbaum’s brother with the clerk, who shook his head but nonetheless pinned it to the noticeboard behind his desk. She said her farewells to Mrs McCarthy and, with a tug of sadness, to Connor. The little boy ran after her when she left the tenement and pressed a handful of wilting, wild flowers into her hand. ‘I wish you weren’t going away, Miss.’

  ‘So do I, Connor.’

  ‘Why do you have to go then?’

  ‘I need to find a job.’

  ‘You’re not going to purgut’ry then?’

  She smiled and ran her hand over his tousled head. ‘No, Connor. I’m not going to purgatory. I’m going to a place called St Louis.’

  ‘What’s it like there?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose it’s like New York. Full of people.’

  ‘If it’s like New York why don’t you just stay here?’

  She struggled to answer that, then said, with a forced but false optimism, ‘There’ll be a job for me there. I haven’t been able to find one here.’

  She waved him goodbye and took the ferry across the Hudson River to Jersey City to buy a one-way ticket to St Louis.

  Jersey City was awash with hundreds of newly-arrived immigrants, who had come straight off the ships from Europe, negotiated the trials of Castle Garden and were now heading for the railroad station. Eliza looked around with a half-formed hope that she might see Jack among the hordes. Three months had elapsed since she’d arrived in New York and every day that passed made seeing him again less likely. She knew he was married to Mary Ellen and settled in Middlesbrough. She had written to her friends, the Wenlocks, and they had broken the news to her. Even though it was written down in black and white, she didn’t want to believe it and she couldn’t help praying every night for a miracle, for it all to prove a horrible mistake and for Jack to turn up one day to tell her they could at last be married.

  People pushed and shoved each other, as though this might be the last train ever to leave the city. Eliza was swept along in the crowd, tired before the journey had even begun. Children were crying and people shouting and more than once she cried out in pain as someone crashed into her shins with a piece of luggage.

  As she settled herself into the cramped and spartan railway car for the journey to Philadelphia, where she was to change trains, she wondered if she were making a terrible mistake. Dr Feigenbaum was a stranger. She was already beholden to him for the money he had lent her. St Louis was hundreds of miles away, taking her deep into the heart of the United States, away from the ocean and her route back to England and Jack. But what choice did she have? She could get no work as a teacher. Her missing teeth and malformed words ruled that out, not to mention the damage to her face that would likely be deemed to frighten the children. The only alternative had been to become a seamstress – ruled out when on her day’s trial she proved to be too slow and ham-fisted. Otherwise the options were unthinkable – scavenging the streets with the rag and bone collectors or turning to prostitution.

  The journey was almost as bad as the Atlantic crossing, redeemed only by the absence of the tossing ocean and its consequent impact on the stomachs of passengers. Instead of hammocks or straw mattresses, passengers were expected to provide their own bedding and washing kit and the only place to sleep was upright on the hard wooden benches. When the occupants of the car thinned out Eliza managed to push two benches together to form a makeshift bed. But sleeping on the hard wood planks, with the train rattling and jerking along, was impossible. The temperature was cold, as autumn was giving way to the beginnings of winter. The cold should have been lessened by the presence of a small stove in the centre of the railcar, essential for the brewing of tea and coffee by passengers but, while rendering the accommodation stuffy and smelling of smoke, it had little impact in heating the space.

  Eliza was in a car reserved for women and children. A harassed Irish mother, with five children all under the age of eight, offered to let her share their washing bowl, soap and towel, in gratitude for assisting with the unruly children. Washing her face and hands was no easy task with a towel already damp from the children and while trying to keep her balance on the outside platform of the rail car. Apart from the few words she exchanged with the Irish woman, she spent most of the journey in grateful silence, looking out of the window as they sped along. The journey was complicated by the need to de-train whenever they reached a state border, where they were expected to drag their suitcases across the state line in order to embark on another train.

  When she eventually arrived in St Louis, exhausted after three days and nights travelling, she ignored the street cars and hansoms outside the railway depot and asked for directions to the Dreschner German Brewery, making her way there on foot, stopping every now and then to change the hand carrying her carpet bag. It was about two miles from the station. She trudged along past newly built houses and churches, stopping to buy an apple when she passed a large, bustling market. She looked longingly at the baked patisserie, bread, and sweetmeats and drank in the aroma of melted sugar and the tang of cheeses, but she had only two dollars left and didn’t want to contemplate what would happen if she failed to find Dr Feigenbaum. To her consternation, the area to which she had been directed was home to a large number of breweries and it took her some time before she came upon the right one – like all the others, a big redbrick building. She walked to the front entrance and asked for Mr Feigenbaum.

  ‘He’s busy,’ was the curt response from the porter. ‘You got an appointment?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I’ve just got here on the train from New York.’ She tried to speak as distinctly as possible, conscious as always of the lisping caused by her missing teeth and grateful that the veil Mrs McCarthy had attached to her hat was covering the scars and distorted contours of her face.

  The man looked at her with curiosity. ‘Mr Feigenbaum will be finished in an hour. Wait there.’ He indicated a wooden bench, then added, more kindly, ‘He’s testing the day’s batch. Be done by five. You a relative?’

  She hesitated then decided to tell the truth. ‘To be honest, I don’t really know Mr Feigenbaum himself. I just want to ask him for the address of his brother, Dr Karl Feigenbaum, who is an acquaintance of mine. We crossed from Liverpool on the same ship.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say that right away? Dr Karl lives opposite the German church. Back the way you’ve come – about half a mile. Here you are, Miss.’ He scribbled the address and some rough directions on a scrap of paper and handed it to her, looking her up and down with interest.

  Eliza took the paper, relieved that the doctor was at least here in St Louis.

  ‘You Dr Feigenbaum’s intended then?’ the man asked, unable to restrain his curiosity.

  ‘Certainly not,’ she answered.

  ‘No offence, ma’am. I can tell you’re much younger than the doc, but you never know these days. My uncle married a girl fresh out of school. Can’t have been more than sixteen and him pushing sixty. Mind you it probably helped that he had a thousand acres of
fine cotton-growing land. He’s dead now. She sold up and scooted off to Boston and we never heard from her again.’

  Eliza stared at him, open-mouthed, in horror.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am. I wasn’t saying you’re a fortune hunter. Me and my big mouth.’

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said, frostily, ‘And thank you for the address.’

  It was an unprepossessing, square-shaped house, attached to its neighbour and with an arched, recessed porch. It was built with the red bricks that characterised most of the construction in the city. There was a small patch of overgrown grass and a large tree that must have made the rooms in the front very dark. Opposite was a church with a sign outside in German.

  Eliza took a deep breath, then walked up the short flight of steps to the door and rang the bell. A small, plump woman answered. She had very red cheeks and grey hair, in braids wound around her head. The woman said nothing, but just looked at Eliza, her head tilted to one side.

  ‘Good afternoon. I am looking for Doctor Karl Feigenbaum. My name is Eliza Hewlett.’

  Before the woman could reply, the door swung wide open and there was the doctor. Almost elbowing his housekeeper out of the way, he took the bag from Eliza’s hands and placed it behind him in the hall, leaving him free to grasp her hands in his.

  ‘Come in, come in, Miss Hewlett. I am so happy to see you. Why didn’t you telegraph to tell me you were coming? I would have come in the carriage to the station to meet you. Marta, bring tea. Miss Hewlett takes hers with milk in it. And bring some of those little kuchen you baked yesterday. Miss Hewlett, this is my housekeeper, Marta Bauer. Marta, I had the privilege of making Miss Hewlett’s acquaintance on the voyage.’

  He took Eliza by the arm and led her into the drawing room, directing her to one of the chairs in front of the fireplace. ‘Please take off your coat and hat, my dear. Come in and get warm. It has suddenly turned cold today.’