Homecoming Girls

by Val Wood

  Clara turned to her. ‘It’s good to have memories, isn’t it?’ she said quietly. ‘And when we get to San Francisco you’ll no doubt recall other events; things that you and your father shared when you were a child.’ She smiled. ‘I remember the first day I met you. You came to our house and Mama brought you to the nursery to meet us. She said, “Girls, this is your cousin, Jewel.” We were amazed because we didn’t know we had a cousin; and you were so tiny and beautiful, just like a china doll, that we immediately wanted to play with you. Oh!’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t mean a Chinese doll. I meant one of those pretty ones with porcelain faces like the kind Aunt Ruby sells.’

  Jewel gave her a little push. ‘I know what you mean, Clara,’ she said. ‘You should know by now that I don’t take offence. But when we get to America there will be others who look like me; there are a lot of Chinese in America. I won’t stand out as being so different as I do in Hull.’

  ‘But you’re only half Chinese,’ Clara said. ‘Your other half is very English. Or American.’ She laughed.

  ‘Yes,’Jewel said ruefully. ‘What a hotchpotch I am!’

  There was a sudden blast from the ship’s funnel and they both jumped. ‘Goodness!’ Clara exclaimed. ‘We can’t be going today!’

  Jewel laughed. ‘You’ve heard of blowing off steam? They’re getting ready for sailing. Oh, I can’t wait. When we wake up tomorrow morning we’ll be on our way.’

  The sea was calm until the fourth day, when a heavy groundswell thundered and rolled beneath them and the low grey sky erupted with lightning flashes, making them nauseous and headachy and keeping them to their cabin. The following morning the waves crashed and broke over the deck in white frothy spumes, the sky cleared to blue with white racing clouds, the air became fresher and they ventured on deck once again.

  The voyage gave them the chance to get to know each other better even though they had spent so much time together in the past. Clara realized that in spite of Jewel’s apparent worldliness she was quite vulnerable. Is it because she’s unsure of her background, she wondered? She has no idea who her mother was and can barely remember her father. People were attracted to her and some of the other first-class passengers, mainly gentlemen, singled her out to introduce themselves. But there were others of a more bigoted nature who pointedly ignored her.

  Jewel, on the other hand, found that Clara, away from her more forceful twin, had a hidden strength which was not apparent to everyone; she had a calm demeanour and tended to blend quietly into the background when with a group of people.

  There was one day when from across the dining saloon came a cutting derogatory whisper of ‘mongrel brew’ and silence fell like a stone. Clara put her hand on Jewel’s knee, for she felt that her cousin was about to rise from the table, and pressed down to stay her.

  ‘My soup is cold,’ Clara announced in a clear voice, and a steward came hurrying across, deflecting the confusion. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said apologetically. ‘I don’t mean to be a nuisance.’

  ‘Beg pardon, Miss Newmarch,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring another bowl.’

  The conversation at their table continued and the moment passed. ‘Some people are so unfeeling,’Jewel murmured. ‘Do they not realize that we are all what we are? What our parents made us?’

  Clara shook her head. ‘They are locked into their own small world,’ she said quietly. ‘They don’t look outside it. You should pity them, Jewel, for their ignorance.’

  But I didn’t know, she thought as they continued with their meal. I didn’t know that this is what happens. It must have happened before, but Jewel has never said. Clara instinctively felt protective of her cousin, who in spite of her beauty had been exposed to such malevolent prejudice.

  Later Jewel spoke of it. ‘It never happened when I was young, but then my parents were always there. Wilhelm was an American and therefore different and Gianna was very well travelled, so when we visited other countries in Europe we were accepted for what we were. I never thought of myself as being different from anyone else until I grew up. I was about thirteen and out shopping in Hull with Mama. I’d moved a little further down the street to look in a shop window when I heard someone refer to me as a Chink.’

  She put her small white hands to her mouth. ‘I turned to him, this boy, and asked him in a friendly manner, what do you mean?’ She gave a wry smile. ‘For I honestly didn’t know. He was with a group of other boys and although he seemed embarrassed that I had confronted him, one of the others jeered and said, your da’s a Chinaman. I said no, you’re mistaken, he was English and lived in America.’

  She swallowed. ‘Then the first one said, must have been your ma then. Maybe she was a Chinese whore.’

  ‘Boys!’ Clara said. ‘I hope you walked away from them?’

  ‘Mama came along. She’d seen I was being targeted, I think, and she sent them on their way.’ She took a breath. ‘Mama explained then how some people are very prejudiced about others who look slightly different.’ Jewel smiled. ‘And she said that also they were possibly jealous because they were so very ordinary and inadequate!’

  ‘Aunt Gianna is such a sensible person,’ Clara declared. ‘And I’m sure she’s quite right. But you won’t have those problems in America,’ she added. ‘As you said, there will be many Chinese there as well as many other cultures.’

  Jewel nodded doubtfully. ‘Perhaps,’ she murmured. ‘We’ll see. Come on. Let’s take a stroll about the deck before bedtime.’

  It was a glorious sunny morning as they steamed from the Atlantic Ocean towards New York at the mouth of the Hudson. The ship had first dropped anchor at Castle Garden Island to allow immigrants, looking for a better life in America, to disembark on to a steam tug. Clara was transfixed at the sight of the tall buildings on the New York skyline, and by late afternoon they too were disembarking on to the quay alongside the brownstone counting houses where porters loaded their trunks on to a waiting hansom sent from the Marius, where they were to stay for the next few days. The hotel was owned by Wilhelm, as was another in Philadelphia, where he was also the proprietor of a newspaper business, and one more in Dreumel’s Creek, which he still regarded as home.

  ‘Good afternoon, ladies. We’re delighted to welcome you.’ The manager of the hotel came from behind his desk to greet them when he heard Jewel give their names to the desk clerk. He gave a bow. ‘Is it Miss Dreumel?’ he asked, and when Jewel agreed that it was, he remarked that he had been a counter clerk when she had been brought to the hotel for the first time and the under manager when she came again a few years later.

  ‘I was very young the first time,’ she said, ‘so I barely remember. This is my cousin, Miss Clara Newmarch.’ She turned to Clara. ‘Clara, this is Mr Brady who oversees the hotel. My name is also Newmarch,’ she told him. ‘I am Newmarch-Dreumel, but Dreumel is quite all right.’

  When pleasantries had been exchanged, Mr Brady asked about the health of her mother. ‘Mr Dreumel was here last year during the crisis, but we haven’t seen Mrs Dreumel for a while.’

  ‘She’s very well, thank you,’ Jewel told him. ‘She asked me to send her regards to you and hopes you are keeping well. Is business picking up?’ She knew that Wilhelm had contacts in New York who constantly visited the hotel to assess how the business was run and if the visitors were well looked after.

  ‘Better than it was,’ Mr Brady said, ‘although the depression is here to stay a little longer, I fear. Many companies have gone down. But not the Marius, I’m happy to say,’ he added.

  ‘This is lovely,’ Clara exclaimed a little later, looking round the suite they were to share. There were two beds with satin coverlets and matching pillows, a plush sofa and chair and an escritoire between two windows which looked out over a small square. Two mahogany wardrobes stood against a wall with a dressing table and mirror between them. Another door led to a bathroom with a plumbed lavatory and washbasin, both of which were adorned with a lavish floral design.

  ‘The first time I came
here,’ Jewel said, ‘Aunt Gianna and I came from San Francisco and it was a long sea journey and very rough and I missed Papa very much.’ There was a catch in her voice. ‘And then . . .’ she frowned as she sought to remember, ‘Wilhelm was here to meet us, but Gianna was very sad. I think he’d brought her news about somebody. Anyway, we left and set off for Dreumel’s Creek.’ She paused and thought back. Then she smiled. ‘And we went to see the Iroquois Indians in their settlement; the men were dressed in colourful blankets and wore feathered headdresses. I was taken to play with the children whilst Wilhelm and Gianna went to some kind of ceremony. It’s strange,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘I haven’t thought of that in years; oh, I recall Horse and Dekan, they were Iroquois, but I didn’t think about why we were there, and Wilhelm and Aunt Gianna – Mama – never mentioned it again.’

  ‘What an exciting life you’ve had, Jewel,’ Clara said wistfully. ‘No wonder you wanted to come back. But I wonder if you will ever be satisfied with life in Hull after we return.’

  Jewel shook her head and answered as she had answered Thomas when he had voiced something similar. ‘I don’t know. Will I ever be the same person again after this journey? Will either of us be the same, or will we change irrevocably?’

  Clara gazed at her, her lips slightly apart. ‘I expect to be the same,’ she said softly. ‘Or do you think that something might happen to change our lives? Is that what you expect?’

  The light from outside the window was fading and there was just one lamp lit in the room, which cast a warm glow over the corner where it sat on a table. The rest of the room was in shadow. Her cousin, Clara thought, seemed pensive and inscrutable as if already she was returning to her unknown ancestry.

  ‘Jewel!’ she pressed. ‘Is that what you expect?’

  ‘I expect nothing,’ Jewel whispered in reply. ‘The journey is the reward.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  They spent three weeks in New York, exploring the wide boulevards, shopping in the modern stores of Manhattan, craning their necks to see the tops of the tall buildings, strolling in Central Park and taking a boat trip around the harbour. They took a steamer along East River to watch the construction of the Brooklyn suspension bridge which had been started four years earlier to connect Manhattan with the borough of Brooklyn and replace the steam ferry. The first tower was almost completed and their guide nodded knowledgeably and said he reckoned that it would take twice as long again to finish it.

  A subtle role change crept up between Jewel and Clara that first one and then the other became aware of but didn’t immediately acknowledge until at last it was too obvious to ignore.

  Jewel was quite used to English people taking a sideways glance on meeting her for the first time, or even whispering behind a hand about her fragile bone structure and dark eyes; but in New York attention was focused on Clara’s fair, translucent skin and fine, almost white-blonde hair.

  ‘There are so many young women like me in America,’ Jewel remarked to Clara in their room after someone in the hotel had approached to exclaim at Clara’s English rose complexion. ‘Half-breeds. Whereas here, you are the one who’ll turn heads.’

  ‘It’s so embarrassing.’ Clara flushed, unused to being the centre of attention. ‘And please don’t call yourself a half-breed. It’s not nice—’

  ‘But true,’ Jewel interrupted.

  ‘You wouldn’t say it of anyone else, Jewel,’ her cousin rebuked her. ‘You are of mixed parentage, it’s true.’ She smiled mischievously. ‘You’re an oriental pearl with shades of American gemstone and—’

  Jewel fell about laughing. ‘And Yorkshire grit! I don’t mind,’ she said soberly. ‘It’s quite reassuring not to be noticed. To be able to merge into the background with so many other cultures and races.’

  For this is what she had observed on this visit, which she hadn’t noticed when visiting as a child: that there were many skin shades and accents. Dutch she recognized from Wilhelm’s background, Irish from a maid who had worked for them, French from a governess she had once had; she saw Native American people who seemed lost in their own country, and hundreds of Chinese thronging the streets of New York.

  ‘But not so many Chinese women, have you noticed, Clara?’ she said after yet another excursion. ‘I wonder where they are,’ she mused. ‘Perhaps they stay within their homes. I’d like to go to Chinatown, just to see what it’s like.’

  Clara pursed her lips. ‘Would they mind, do you think? Or would they be offended at us looking at them in their own place?’

  They had observed Chinese cigar sellers out on the streets, peddling their wares from wooden stands where small oil lamps burned, ready to light a purchase. They had seen young Chinese men carrying billboards advertising local hotels or shopping malls, but all of these were in the main thoroughfares and not in Chinatown where the majority of the Chinese population lived.

  ‘I don’t see why they should,’Jewel replied. ‘We are tourists after all, come to another country to see how the residents live and work.’

  Clara was doubtful, but Jewel could be very persuasive and so on the following day, which would be their last before catching the railway train to Dreumel’s Creek, they set out for Chinatown.

  They had asked the young under-manager, Stanley Adams, for directions, and after a slight hesitation he brought out a map of New York and showed them the way to Mott Street, which he said was the main street of Chinatown.

  ‘You’ll be careful, miss, won’t you?’ he said. ‘And don’t take any jewellery or valuables with you.’ He glanced at their summer hats, muslin gowns and parasols. ‘Perhaps, erm, perhaps if you wore something plainer?’

  They looked at each other and Clara turned about and headed back towards the stairs. Jewel followed.

  ‘He’s just trying to scare us,’ she said irritably as they entered their door. ‘There’s no reason for us to be afraid. It’s broad daylight, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we might be entering an area where there is not much money. The Chinese we have seen look to me as if they might be very poor. We shouldn’t flaunt our possessions. It isn’t fair.’

  Jewel sighed but took off her hat and put on a plain bonnet and a shawl over her gown. Clara did the same.

  ‘And sensible shoes,’ she added. ‘Looking at the map it seems to me that it might be a long walk.’

  It was indeed a long walk from the Marius and they got lost several times traversing the grid system of Manhattan, but they realized they were approaching Mott Street as the number of Chinese people in the area increased.

  They were not prepared for the sight of dilapidated slum dwellings on either side of the narrow street, or for the fact that they themselves were objects of curiosity. Residents were crowded into doorways and windows or sat on the steps of rooming houses as they passed by, and the elusive Chinese women whom Jewel had looked for hid behind beaded curtains which swayed and rattled and reminded Jewel of something from her past but she couldn’t think what.

  Outside the general stores, which were converted from the lower floors of the tenement buildings, wooden stalls were piled high with strange-shaped vegetables. Some looked like large white carrots, some were a shiny rich purple colour, and others they thought were either thin green beans or spring onions.

  Displayed in another store window were dried mushrooms, bowls of preserved eggs, dried shrimps, packets of rice and long thin pale crisp strands which Jewel said were noodles, and bundles of wooden chopsticks tied with string. Outside the store a squat shopkeeper sat smoking a bubbling pipe which emitted a sweet and spicy tang that tickled their nostrils and made them sneeze.

  ‘Do you think it’s opium?’Jewel murmured as they waited for a rickshaw and a waggon to pass before crossing the road.

  ‘Yes,’ Clara said. ‘It is. I’ve smelled it before.’

  Jewel turned an incredulous face to her. ‘When?’ she asked.

  Clara took her by the elbow and turned her about to go back the way they had com
e. ‘I once went with Mama to visit a woman in difficulties and her grandmother was there – the woman’s grandmother, I mean – and she was smoking a pipe. It had such a strong smell it made me dizzy. Mama said it was opium and it was very common at one time to smoke it for pleasure and not only for medicinal reasons.’

  An elderly Chinese man barred their way. He gave several deep bows and asked in a sing-song, melodic voice if he could help them. ‘You want medicine?’ he asked. ‘You want potion? I take you to my store and give you anything you want for illness, for pain in your joints, ache in your limbs or trouble in your mind.’

  ‘No, no,’ they said in unison. ‘We’re visitors,’ Clara hastily explained.

  He bowed towards Jewel. ‘You are not visitor. You are seeking something.’ He shook his head. ‘You not find it here. Not in New York.’

  There came a sudden call in a language they didn’t understand. A Chinese woman was standing in the doorway of a rooming house and beckoning.

  ‘We have to go,’ Clara said, but Jewel hung back as if mesmerized.

  The man bowed again several times. ‘My daughter says I must go in. The soup is ready.’

  Jewel stood and watched him shuffling towards the house. ‘He could be my grandfather,’ she murmured.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Clara took her arm. ‘He’s quite different. His face is a different shape, more round than yours, and why would he be in New York? Wouldn’t he be in California?’

  Jewel looked back, and then she sighed and shrugged. ‘I didn’t mean he was, or even might be, my grandfather,’ she said. ‘I meant he was about the age that my grandfather would be.’

  ‘Great-grandfather, I should think,’ Clara commented. ‘He’s ancient, much older than my grandparents.’