The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  Did they throw the errant sinner on the street with all her goods and chattels?

  Not that it mattered. Lucy wasn’t in Manhattan for romantic entanglements.

  “That won’t be a problem,” said Lucy coolly, wishing she had spectacles of her own. It was difficult, at twenty-six, to look suitably forbidding, especially when one had been blessed—or cursed—with long, curling lashes that gave a false promise of pleasures to come. “I don’t expect to have any gentlemen callers.”

  “I wouldn’t be quite so sure about that, my dear.” Matron’s eyes, an unexpected cornflower blue, crinkled slightly at the corners. Before Lucy could relax, Matron asked, with a studied casualness that fooled neither of them, “What brings you to the city?”

  “I have a job at Cromwell, Polk and Moore,” said Lucy quickly. Surely, Matron couldn’t find fault with that. It even had the benefit of being true. “The law offices.”

  “Yes, I have heard of them.” Lucy did her best not to squirm beneath Matron’s level gaze. “But wouldn’t you be served better by lodgings farther downtown? There’s the Townsend or the Gladstone . . .”

  “It would be so tedious to live too near where you work, don’t you think?” said Lucy glibly. “And, besides, it’s not really so far. It’s just a quick ride on the Third Avenue El. And the air is fresher up here near the park.”

  Lucy sniffed enthusiastically, getting a noseful of cleaning fluid and someone’s stockings left out to dry.

  Matron looked long at Lucy, but what she saw there must have convinced her, because she said, in her brisk way, “You will find all the rules posted in the lobby. Gentlemen guests are welcome in the back parlor on the third floor between the hours of four and six Wednesday through Saturday. The front door is locked at midnight and will remain locked until six the following morning. Baths are taken by rota—”

  The list went on and on, in Matron’s calm voice. Hot baths allotted at the rate of one every other day, no more than ten minutes apiece; towels and sheets to be laundered on alternate Mondays . . .

  Was breathing rationed, too? No more than ten exhalations per tenant per minute, except on Easter Sunday and Christmas, when they might have extra for a treat?

  Lucy began to wonder just what she was letting herself in for. In the July sunshine, the attic room was stifling. She could feel the sweat trickling beneath the collar of her suit jacket; her blouse clung damply to her back. The only window was high and small, nailed shut. Through a film of decades of coal smoke, the sunshine swam dimly, painting the walls of the room with dingy shadows.

  She found herself seized with a longing for her room in Brooklyn, with the bookcases her father had built for her with his own hands and the mural on the wall that her mother had painted when she was quite small, a mural of spreading trees and wandering lanes, of castle towers peeping just over the horizon, and, in the middle of it all, a knight on a rearing horse raising his sword high above his head, a dragon cringing at his feet.

  Right now, Lucy rather knew how that dragon felt, cornered, frantic.

  “Well?” said Matron, and Lucy fought the urge to tell her thank you very much, but this wasn’t what she wanted at all, and flee down the back stairs, her smart heels click-clacking on the worn treads.

  But this was what she wanted, she reminded herself, through a haze of heat and confusion. When she had heard that the old Pratt mansion had been turned into a women’s boardinghouse, with rooms to let, it seemed nothing short of heaven-sent.

  Even if the temperature in the room was more reminiscent of the other place.

  That was, after all, where her German grandmother believed she was headed. Lipstick, paugh! Just one little slip . . . no corset . . . skirts up past the ankles . . . And that typing course—what did she need with more school? The bakery had been good enough for her father; it should have been good enough for Lucy, too. It was that mother of hers, putting ideas in her head, making her think she was more than she was.

  Mother . . . Lucy felt an ache in her chest, beneath the place where her corset wasn’t. They hadn’t been particularly close, but her mother’s death the previous summer had left her reeling, for more reasons than one.

  Lucy gathered herself together, drawing herself up to her full height. “It’s exactly what I wanted,” she lied. “How much is it?”

  “It’s eight dollars a week,” said Matron, and Lucy had to pinch herself to hide her surprise. Eight dollars for a cubby in an attic? She had known prices were higher in Manhattan than Brooklyn, but she’d had no idea how much. “Will that be acceptable, Miss . . .”

  “Young,” said Lucy briskly.

  It was Jungmann, really, but a German name was hardly an asset, not now, with so many still mourning their dead. She wasn’t lying; she was merely Anglicizing.

  Lucy had left her German name behind in Brooklyn with her grandmother’s disapproval, with sauerkraut and sausages and the squish of dough between her fingers. An entire life, gone with a twist of the tongue.

  But what of it? If her grandmother was to be believed, she had no more right to Jungmann than to Young.

  Lucy raised her head high. “It’s Young. Lucy Young. And yes, it is acceptable.”

  “In that case, Miss Young”—Matron held out a hand—“welcome to Stornaway House.”

  “Stornaway House?” Lucy couldn’t quite hide her quick look of surprise. “I thought this house belonged to the Pratt family.”

  She had done her research, thumbing through back issues of the World, the Sun, and the Herald, in which the Pratts were frequently featured, richly garbed, attending the opera, departing for Newport, returning from Newport, playing tennis, creating scandal. Even the house itself had been notorious, a nasty squabble between Mr. Pratt and his architect that dragged through the papers, and led, it seemed, to the suicide of the architect.

  A house born in blood, one paper had dramatically termed the house on East Sixty-ninth Street, and so it would seem, given all that had happened after.

  Lucy had snuck out from her work in the stenographic pool at Sterling Bates, squinting at old papers in the library, putting the pieces together.

  All except the one piece she needed.

  “It used to belong to the Pratts,” said Matron placidly, closing and locking the door of the room behind her with one of the many keys she wore at her waist. She ushered Lucy to the back stair. “The house was bought by Mr. Stornaway five years ago, and dedicated for use as a home for respectable women.”

  Was it Lucy’s imagination, or was there just a hint of emphasis on those last words?

  Lucy held carefully to the banister as she picked her way down the steep, narrow stairs. Aside from the matter of her birth, she was as respectable as they came. She had no beaux; the boys back home found her too hoity-toity.

  If by hoity-toity they meant that she wanted something other than to bear their children, to live from payday to payday, to pretend she didn’t smell the beer on their breath or know what went on in the pool hall down the street, well, then, yes, she was hoity-toity. And she wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

  “Fortunately for me,” she said. “When may I move in?”

  “The room is available for immediate occupancy.” Matron led Lucy out of the servants’ stair on the fifth floor, to the grand circular stair that spiraled through the main floors.

  Lucy could feel her lungs expanding here, in the quiet of marble and polish, with the sun casting multicolored flecks of light through the stained glass dome high above. Off the staircase hall, heavy oaken doors led to grand bedrooms, bedrooms with high ceilings and long, sashed windows, nothing like the little cubby upstairs for which she was to have the privilege of handing over more than half her weekly pay packet.

  But it was done. She was in. Where she slept was immaterial. What mattered was that she was here.

  A little voice in the back of her head whisper
ed that this was folly, that there was nothing she could hope to learn here, but Lucy silenced it. She had come too far down this particular path to turn back now. Her belongings, such as they were, were contained in an ancient carpetbag and a cardboard box in her friend Sylvia’s apartment. She had given up her job of four years at Sterling Bates and the prospect of advancement for a junior position at Cromwell, Polk and Moore.

  Cromwell, Polk and Moore, among other, larger accounts, handled the affairs of the Pratt family.

  They liked to keep the family in the family, did the Pratts. The junior partner in charge of the Pratt estate was the stepson of the notorious Prunella Pratt—the last remaining member of the once-thriving Pratt family.

  The last remaining acknowledged member.

  “My parlor is down that hall,” said Matron, and Lucy nodded obediently, turning her head in the indicated direction.

  And stopped.

  There was a terra-cotta bas-relief set into the wall. Against a stylized background, a dragon cowered at the feet of a knight on a plunging charger.

  Not just any knight. Her knight.

  Her dragon.

  “Excuse me,” Lucy said, and had to clear her throat to get the words out. “But what is that on the wall?”

  “Oh, that?” Matron looked at the mural incuriously, and Lucy wondered how she hadn’t realized that the temperature in the hallway had dropped at least thirty degrees, the world frozen around them. “I believe it is Saint George. The Pratts appear to have been rather fond of him. He appears in various forms throughout the building.”

  Lucy made a noncommittal reply.

  She remembered, very long ago, her father praising her mother’s painting. Her father had always praised her mother, her elegance, her grace, her cleverness, perpetually in awe that she had chosen him, married him.

  To say that her mother had tolerated his praise was too harsh, too unkind. It was more that she deflected it, gently and kindly.

  It was the day her mother had finished the mural in Lucy’s room. Lucy’s father had been loud in his admiration, but Lucy’s mother had only shaken her head, raising her hands as if to ward off further plaudits.

  I am no artist, she had said ruefully. I can only copy. Mine is a very secondhand sort of talent. Not like—

  She had stopped, abruptly, like a clock with a broken spring.

  Lucy’s father had swung Lucy up in his arms and swept her away to make bun men from bits of dough, and the conversation had been forgotten.

  Until now.

  “Miss Young?” Matron was regarding her with concern.

  “I can bring my things tonight,” Lucy said brusquely. “I get off work at five, although sometimes they need me later. Will that be acceptable?”

  “Just let me get you your key,” said Matron, and Lucy followed her down the winding marble stairs, past a long drawing room with an elaborate, gilded ceiling, and dark paneled walls that seemed cool even in the heat of the summer day.

  In the middle of the day, all the tenants were at work. The stairwell was still and quiet; the woodwork smelled of beeswax and lemon oil. If Lucy closed her eyes, she could imagine that the house was as it had been twenty-eight years ago.

  When her mother had been here.

  “I will need a deposit,” said Matron matter-of-factly, and Lucy dug quickly in her purse.

  “How much?” she asked, hoping it wouldn’t be more than she had.

  “Two weeks’ rent is standard,” said Matron, and Lucy counted out the crumpled bills, grateful that she was frugal about lunches and dinners and streetcar rides.

  The front hall, once so grand, was marred by the addition of hastily constructed cubbies on one side, each marked with the name of a resident. On the other was a curious sort of concierge booth.

  Lifting the hinged counter, Matron ducked behind it. Unlocking a tin cash box, she put Lucy’s hard-earned money inside.

  “Room 603,” said Matron, and made a note on a piece of paper. “Miss Lucy Young.” Reaching beneath the desk, she drew out a key, frowning through her spectacles at the little tag attached to one end. “Your key, Miss Young.”

  They key was a modern thing, the metal shiny with newness.

  “Thank you,” said Lucy, and took it, feeling as though she had just crossed a mountain range and arrived on the other side, only to find that the campfire was dying low and there were wolves in wait just beyond the wagon train.

  Wolves? Or dragons?

  Deep in her heart, Lucy had half hoped she was wrong, that, once here, she would find that the house was just a house and nothing to do with her.

  Had her mother danced in the great drawing room on the second floor? Had she dined in state beneath the dark beams in the formal dining room? Lucy didn’t know. All she knew was that, somehow, her past lay in this house, with the mural of a knight on the wall.

  With the man whose name her mother had uttered with her dying breath.

  Harry.

  Four

  JUNE 1944

  Kate

  A golden thread of sunlight wound its way through the side of a blackout shade, cutting a line of light across the attic room and into my eyes. It must have been what had awakened me, or perhaps it was the knowledge that I wasn’t alone.

  I uncurled myself from the threadbare chaise longue and its faded chintz pattern. It had probably once been a very fine chair, much used and loved, but now it was worn past its usefulness. A spring had found its way through the bottom cushion, and one of the arms hung on by mere threads. I was careful not to put undue stress—or cause myself bodily injury—as I eased myself from where I’d spent most of the previous night.

  Captain Ravenel had slept deeply, mostly due to the morphine I’d administered. The previous night I’d had to reopen his wound to clean it thoroughly, and thought the bliss of unconsciousness would be a relief to us both. The leg was badly damaged, the wound worse for having been sutured before all the bone and bullet fragments could be removed, the infection worse because of the delayed use of penicillin. I had doubts I could save the leg, but I kept them to myself. I continued to see his eyes as he’d begged me to save his leg, and I couldn’t allow myself to think of failure.

  I looked at my watch pinned to my blouse, realizing it was time for another dose of morphine. Nurse Hathaway, a girl just past twenty who was too young to have formed any traditional opinions about the way things should be and didn’t seem to mind taking orders from a female doctor, had brought several syrettes of the pain medication the previous evening, sparing me yet another dash up and down the stairs.

  When I stopped by the side of Captain Ravenel’s bed and checked his chart, I realized that the nurse had been in while I’d been sleeping, had already administered the medication, and had placed a tray filled with a stack of gauze, cotton balls, and disinfectant on the bedside table. I grinned to myself, too thankful to try to figure out her motive.

  The patient remained asleep as I slid down his bedclothes to expose his wounded leg so I could examine it, allowing a view of his body, barely covered by a hospital gown. I’d seen up close nearly naked young men thousands of times since I’d arrived at Stornaway Hospital, but this was the first time I’d felt a tinge of self-consciousness. He moaned something unintelligible and I paused, studying his features. He was almost too beautiful to be a man, but the broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms and torso assured me that he was definitely male.

  My mind had always been focused on my goal of becoming a doctor, and I’d never allowed myself to be perceived as one of those silly girls swooning over a fine male form like my best friend Margie Beckwith had done since we were twelve and probably would continue to do until she finally found a husband. Her task had been made all the more difficult by war and the exodus of most of the eligible young men from the city, not to mention her job as a librarian at the New York Public Library, which ke
pt her surrounded by old records and other females in the same predicament.

  I stared at his face, at the beautiful straight nose and olive skin, at his strong chin and dark brows, and wished he’d open his eyes so I could see them again. I quickly looked away, ashamed at how my purpose had been taken captive by the sight of an attractive male. My wavering brought back the unexpected memory of my mother and me standing wordlessly in front of this building, staring up at the windows of this very room.

  I had spent a lifetime trying to understand my mother, to comprehend how she seemed to pine for something just out of her reach. I knew she’d loved my father and me, yet there had always been a barrier between us, a wall that sealed off half of her heart from us, as if she were holding it in reserve. I knew from an early age that I never wanted to be that way. And when I’d decided I wanted to be a doctor, I threw my entire heart into it. The difference between my mother and me, I’d decided, was that I didn’t believe in half measures.

  I studied again the beautiful man in front of me, reminding myself of all that I’d accomplished and sacrificed, and all that I could still do as a female doctor, and a familiar calm settled on me. I would do my job, and do it well, and work even harder not to derail my focus.

  I took his vitals and, being satisfied with the results, I picked up his chart again from the table at the foot of his bed to make notations. Despite my frantic and constant reading of the chart during the night in an attempt to guide his treatment, I hadn’t noticed his full name or where he was from. My eyes drifted to the top of the form where I’d read earlier that he was a captain and that his last name was Ravenel—a name that sounded oddly familiar. My gaze slid to the space on the form for a first name. Cooper. And he was from Charleston, South Carolina.

  He hadn’t said enough the previous night for me to determine whether he had a Southern accent, but in my newly awakened imagination, I thought that he would and that his dropped consonants and slurred vowels would sound wonderful emerging from those lips.