Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris & Mrs. Harris Goes to New York

by Paul Gallico

  ‘Eight, sir.’

  ‘Sir! That’s a good beginning. Where did you learn that?’

  ‘Auntie Ada taught me.’

  ‘So you can learn? That’s good. Are you glad Mrs Harris brought you away from London?’

  With his large eyes bent upon Mrs Schreiber little Henry breathed a heartfelt sigh and replied, ‘Not arf.’

  ‘Would you like to live in America?’

  Little Henry had the right answer here too. ‘Cor,’ he said, ‘ ’oo wouldn’t?’

  ‘Do you think you could learn to play baseball?’

  Apparently little Henry had been experimenting in Washington. ‘Ho,’ he scoffed, ‘anybody who can play cricket can ’it a baseball. I knocked one for six - only you call it a ’ome run ’ere.’

  ‘Say,’ said Mr Schreiber, now genuinely interested, ‘that’s good. Maybe we can make a ball player out of him.’

  It had taken slightly longer, but there was that wonderful pronoun ‘we’ again. Mr Schreiber had become a member of the firm. He said to the boy, ‘What about your father? I guess you’re pretty anxious to find him, eh?’

  To this little Henry did not reply, but stood there silently regarding Mr Schreiber out of eyes that only shortly before then had reflected little else than misery and unhappiness. Since he had never known a real father he could not genuinely form a concept of what one would be like, except that if it was anything like Mr Gusset he would rather not. Still, everybody was making such a fuss and trying so hard to find this parent that he felt he had best not be impolite on the subject, so instead of answering the question he said finally, ‘You’re OK, guv’ner, I like you.’

  Mr Schreiber’s round face flushed with pleasure and he patted the boy on the shoulder. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to see what we can do. In the meantime you can stay here with Mrs Harris and Mrs Butterfield.’ He turned to Mrs Harris, ‘Just how far have you got locating the boy’s father?’

  Mrs Harris told him how, foolishly, Mr Brown of Kenosha, Wisconsin, had been the only egg in her basket, and now that it had been broken she was at a loss as to how to continue. She showed him her official letter from the Air Force demanding to know which George Brown she referred to of the 453 who at one time or another had been in the Service, and asking to know his birthplace, birthday, serial number, date of enlistment, date of discharge, places of service abroad, at home, etc.

  Mr Schreiber looked at the formidable document and scoffed, ‘Huh, those guys couldn’t find anyone if he was right under their noses. Just you leave it to me. I got a real organisation. We got distribution branches in every big city in the U.S.A. If we can’t turn him up for you, nobody can. What did you say his name was? And have you got any other dope on him - where he was stationed, maybe, or how old he was at the time of his marriage, or any other thing that would help us?’

  Mrs Harris shamefacedly had to admit that she could offer no more than that his name was George Brown, he had been an American airman stationed at an American air base in England sometime in 1951, and that he had married a waitress by the name of Pansy Cott, who had borne him little Henry, refused to accompany him to America, was divorced by Mr Brown, had remarried and vanished. As she revealed the paucity of these details, Mrs Harris became even more aware and further ashamed of the manner in which she had let her enthusiasm carry her away and handled the affair. ‘Lumme,’ she said, ‘I’ve played the fool, ’aven’t I? Wicked, that’s what I’ve been. If I was you I’d send us all packing and ’ave done with it.’

  Mrs Schreiber protested, ‘I think what you’ve done is absolutely wonderful, Mrs Harris. Don’t, you think so, Joel? Nobody else could have.’

  Mr Schreiber made a small movement of his head and shoulders which indicated a doubtful but not antagonistic ‘Well,’ and then said, ‘Sure ain’t much to go on is there? But if anyone can find this feller, our organisation can.’ To little Henry he said, ‘OK, sonny. Tomorrow is Sunday. We’ll get a baseball bat, ball, and glove and go in Central Park and see if you can hit a home run off me. I used to be a pretty good pitcher when I was a kid.’

  IT was shortly before one of Mrs Schreiber’s social-business dinners that Kentucky Claiborne definitely set the cap on to the loathing that Mrs Harris had come to entertain for him and made it an undying and implacable affair.

  He had arrived, as usual, unkempt and unwashed in his blue jeans, cowboy boots, and too-fragrant leather jacket, but this time he had turned up an hour before the scheduled time, and for two reasons: one was that he liked to tank up early before the drinks were slowed down to being passed one at a time, and the other was that he wished to tune up his guitar at the Schreiber piano, for Mr Schreiber was entertaining some important distributors and heads of television networks and had persuaded Kentucky to sing after supper.

  Kentucky was a ‘Bourbon and Branch’ man, and very little of the latter. After four tumblersful of ‘Old Grand-pappy’ that were more than half neat, he tuned up his instrument, twanging a half a dozen chords, and launched into a ballad of love and death among the feudin’ Hatfields and McCoys. Halfway through he looked up to find himself being stared at by a small boy with a slightly too-large head and large, interested and intelligent eyes.

  Kentucky paused in the midst of the blow-down of a whole passel of Hatfields at the hands of McCoys and their rifles and said, ‘Beat it, bub.’

  Little Henry, surprised rather than hurt, said, ‘What for? Why can’t I stay ’ere and listen?’

  ‘Because I said beat it, bub, that’s why.’ And then, as his ear suddenly reminded him of something, said, ‘Say, ain’t that Limey talk? Are you a Limey?’

  Little Henry knew well enough what a Limey was, and was proud of it. He looked Kentucky Claiborne in the eye and said, ‘You’re bloody well right I am - and what’s it to you?’

  ‘What’s it to me?’ said Kentucky Claiborne with what little Henry should have recognised as a dangerous amiability. ‘Why, it’s just that if there’s anything I hate worse than nigger talk, it’s Limey talk. And if there’s anything I hate more than niggers, it’s Limeys. I told you to beat it, bub,’ and he thereupon leaned over and slapped little Henry on the side of the head hard, sending him spinning. Almost by reflex little Henry released his old-time Gusset wail, and instinctively, to drown out the sound, Kentucky launched into the next stanza in which avenging Hatfields now slaughtered McCoys.

  And in the pantry where Mrs Harris was helping to lay out canapés, the little char could hardly believe her ears, and for a moment she thought that she was back in her own flat at number five Willis Gardens, Battersea, listening to the wireless and having tea with Mrs Butterfield, for penetrating to her ears had been the caterwauling of Kentucky Claiborne, then a thump and the sound of a blow, the wailing of a hurt child, followed by music up forte crescendo. Then she realised where she actually was, and what must have happened, though she could not believe it, and went charging out of the pantry and into the music room to find a weeping Henry with one side of his face scarlet from the blow, and a laughing Kentucky Claiborne twanging his guitar.

  He stopped when he saw Mrs Harris and said, ‘Ah tol’ the little bastard to beat it, but he’s got wax in his ears, so Ah had to clout him one. Git him out of here - Ah’m practisin’.’

  ‘Bloody everything!’ raged Mrs Harris. And then picturesquely added thereto, ‘You filthy brute to strike an ’armless child. You touch ’im again and I’ll scratch yer eyes out.’

  Kentucky smiled his quiet, dangerous smile, and took hold of his instrument by the neck with both hands. ‘Goddam,’ he said, ‘if this house just ain’t filled with Limeys. Ah just tol’ this kid if there’s anything Ah hates worse’n a nigger it’s a Limey. Git outta here before I bust this geetar over yoh’ haid.’

  Mrs Harris was no coward, but neither was she a fool. In her varied life in London she had come up against plenty of drunks, ruffians, and bad actors, and knew a dangerous man when she saw one. Therefore, she used her common sense, collect
ed little Henry to her and went out.

  Once in the safety of the servants’ quarters she soothed him, bathed his face in cold water, and said, ‘There, there, dearie, never you mind that brute. Ada ’Arris never forgets. It may take a week, it may take a month, it may take a year - but we’ll pay ’im orf for that. ’Ittin’ a defenceless child for being English!’

  Had Mrs Harris kept a ledger on her vendettas it would have been noted that there were none that had not been liquidated long before the time she had allotted. Kentucky Claiborne had got himself into her black book, for, in Mrs Harris’s opinion, the crime was unpardonable, and he was going to pay for it - somehow, sometime. His goose was as good as cooked.

  UP to this time, due to business in hand, worry over little Henry and the Marquis, and the exigencies of her duties, namely to help Mrs Schreiber put her house in order and get it running properly, Mrs Harris’s vista of New York after those two breathtaking approaches was limited to the broad valley of Park Avenue with its towering apartment houses on either side and the endless twoway stream of traffic obeying the stop and go of the red and green lights day and night. That, with the shops a block east on Lexington Avenue, and one trip to Radio City Music Hall with Mrs Butterfield, had been the extent of her contact with Manhattan.

  Because she was busy and preoccupied, and everything was so changed and different from what she had been accustomed to, she had not yet had time to be overwhelmed by it. But now all this was to be altered. It was the George Browns who were to introduce Mrs Harris to that incredible Babylon and Metropolis known as Greater New York.

  It came about through the fact that there was now an interim period of comparative peace, with little Henry integrated into the servants’ quarters of the penthouse while the far-flung network of the branch offices of North American delved into the past of the George Browns of their community in an effort to locate the missing father.

  Although he slept in the room with Mrs Harris and took his meals with her and Mrs Butterfield, little Henry was actually a good deal more at large in the Schreibers’ apartment. He was allowed to browse in the library, and began to read omnivorously. Mrs Schreiber every so often would take him shopping with her or to an afternoon movie, while it became an invariable Sunday morning ritual that he and Mr Schreiber would repair to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park with ball, bat, and glove, where little Henry, who had an eye like an eagle and a superb sense of timing, would lash sucker pitches to all corners of the lot for Mr Schreiber to chase. This was excellent for Mr Schreiber’s health, and very good for his disposition as well. Afterwards they might feed the monkeys in the Zoo or roam through the Rambles, or engage a rowboat on the lake and paddle about. Man and boy quickly formed an engaging friendship.

  Thus relieved of most of the actual care of the boy, and with more time on her hands since she acted now more in an advisory capacity to the staff she had helped Mrs Schreiber carefully to select, Mrs Harris came to the sudden realisation that she was no longer pulling her weight in the search for the father of little Henry.

  It was all very well for Mr Schreiber to say that if the man could be found his organisation would do the job, but after all the main reason for coming to America was to conduct this search herself, a search she had once somewhat pridefully stated she would bring to a successful conclusion.

  She remembered the massive conviction she had felt that if only she could get to America she would solve little Henry’s problems. Well, here she was in America, living off the fat of the land, and slacking while somebody else looked to the job that she herself had been so confident of doing. The least she could do was to investigate the Browns of New York.

  ‘Go to work, Ada ’Arris,’ she said to herself, and thereafter on her afternoons and evenings off, and in every moment of her spare time she initiated a systematic run-through of the Geo. and G. Browns listed in the telephone directories of Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond.

  Although she might have done so and saved herself a lot of time and energy, Mrs Harris refused to descend to anything so crude as ringing up the scattered Browns on the telephone and asking them if they had ever served in the U.S. Air Force in Great Britain and married a waitress by the name of Pansy Cott. Instead, she paid them personal visits, sometimes managing to check off two and three in a day.

  Familiar with the London tubes, the New York subway systems held no terrors for her, but the buses were something else again, and used to London civility, she soon found herself embroiled with one of the occupational neurotics at the helm of one of the north-bound monsters who, trying to make change, operate his money-gobbling gadget, open and close doors, shout out street numbers, and guide his vehicle through the tightly-packed lanes of Yellow Cabs, limousines, and two-toned cars, bawled at her to get to the rear of the bus or get the hell off, he didn’t care which.

  ‘Is that ’ow it is?’ Mrs Harris snapped at him. ‘You know what would happen to you if you spoke to me like that in London? You’d find yerself on your bum sitting in the middle of the King’s Road, that’s what you would.’

  The bus driver heard a not unfamiliar accent and turned around to look at Mrs Harris. ‘Listen, lady,’ he said, ‘I been over there with the Seebees. All them guys over there gotta do is drive the bus.’

  Injustice worked upon people of her own kind always touched Mrs Harris’s sympathy. She patted the driver on the shoulder and said, ‘Lor’ love yer, it ain’t no way to speak to a lydy, but it ain’t human either for you to be doing all that - I’d blow up meself if I had to. We wouldn’t stand for that in London either - trying to make a bloomin’ machine out of a human being.’

  The driver stopped his bus, turned around and regarded Mrs Harris with amazement. ‘Say,’ he said, ‘you really think that? I’m sorry I spoke out of turn, but sometimes I just gotta blow my top. Come along, I’ll see that you get a seat.’ He left the wheel, quite oblivious to the fact that he was tying up traffic for twenty blocks behind him, took Mrs Harris by the hand, edged her through the crowded bus and said, ‘OK one of you mugs, get up and give this little lady a seat. She’s from London. Whaddayou want her to do - get a lousy impression of New York?’

  There were three volunteers. Mrs Harris sat down and made herself comfortable. ‘Thanks, ducks,’ she grinned as the driver said, ‘OK Ma?’ and went forward to his wheel again. He felt warm inside, like a Boy Scout who had done his good deed for the day. This feeling lasted all of ten blocks.

  In a short time Mrs Harris both saw and learned more about New York and New Yorkers and the environs of its five boroughs than most New Yorkers who had spent a lifetime in that city.

  There was a George Brown who lived near Fort George in Upper Manhattan not far from the Hudson, and for the first time Mrs Harris came upon the magnificent view of that stately river, with the sheer walls of the Jersey Palisades rising opposite, and through another who dwelt near Spuyten Duyvel she learned something of this astonishing, meandering creek which joined the Hudson and East Rivers and actually and physically made an island of Manhattan.

  A visit to another Brown at the exactly opposite end of Manhattan, Bowling Green, introduced her to the Battery, that incredible plaza overwhelmed by the skyscrapers of the financial district, at the end of which the two mighty arms of water - East and North Rivers as the Hudson is there called - merged into the expanse of the Upper Bay with such sea-going traffic of ocean liners, freighters, tugs, ferry boats, yachts, and whatnot afloat as Mrs Harris could not have imagined occupied one body of water. Not even through Limehouse Reach and the Wapping Docks back home was water traffic so thick.

  For the first time in her life Mrs Harris felt dwarfed and overpowered. London was a great, grey, sprawling city, larger even than this one, but it did not make one feel so small, so insignificant, and so lost. One could get one’s head up, somehow. Far up in the sky, so high that only an aeroplane could look down upon them, the matchless skyscrapers, each with a flag or a plume of steam or smoke at its peak, filled t
he eye and the mind to the point of utter bewilderment. What kind of a world was this? Who were these people who had reared these towers? Through the canyons rushed and rumbled the traffic of heavy drays, trucks, and gigantic double lorries with trailers, taxicabs beeped their horns, policemen’s whistles shrilled, the shipping moaned and hooted - and, in the midst of this stood little Ada Harris of Battersea, alone, not quite undaunted.

  In the district surrounding 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, known as Harlem, all the Browns were chocolate coloured, but nonetheless sympathetic to Mrs Harris’s quest. Several of them had been to England with the Army or Air Force and welcomed Mrs Harris as a reminder of a time and place when all men were considered equal under Nazi bombs, and colour was no bar to bravery. One of them, out of sheer nostalgia, insisted upon her having a pink gin with him. None of them had married Pansy Cott.

  Via several George Browns who lived in the Brighton district Mrs Harris became acquainted with the eastern boundary of the United States, or rather, at that point, New York - the shore with its long, curving, green combers rolling in to crash upon the beaches of that vast and raucous amusement park - Coney Island.

  There the Brown she was tailing that day turned out to be a barker at a girlie sideshow. A tall fellow in a loud silk shirt and straw boater, with piercing eyes that held one transfixed, he stood on a platform outside a booth on which there were rather repulsive oleos of ladies with very little clothing on, and shouted down a précis of the attractions within to the passing throngs.

  Mrs Harris’s heart sank at the thought that such a one might be the father of little Henry. Yet in the vulgarity of the amusement park she felt not wholly out of place, for with the cries of the barkers, the snapping of rifles in the shooting gallery, the rushing roar of the thrill rides, and the tinny cacophony of the carousel music it reminded her of Battersea Festival Gardens, or any British funfair, doubled.

  Between spiels George Brown, barker, listened to her story with attention and evident sympathy, for when she had finished he said, ‘It ain’t me, but I’d like to find the bastard and punch him one on the nose. If you ask me, he married the girl and took a powder. I know a lot of guys like that.’