Homecoming Girls

by Val Wood

  ‘They’ve no money to pay,’ the woman said. ‘They can get water from the outside pump.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Clara said. She’d seen some of them putting their heads under the pump. ‘But I’ll pay.’

  The woman grudgingly gave her a large jug of lemonade and held out her hand for payment. Clara took the jug outside, to where seven or eight children were standing round the pump. ‘Have you cups?’ she asked them.

  They didn’t understand what she meant at first. But then she lifted the jug and said, ‘Lemonade!’ The youngest of the children, a boy who looked about six, cottoned on and raced back to the train, returning with two tin mugs, one for himself and one for a little girl who he said was his sister. The others then also ran back to fetch a variety of mugs and bowls. All but one, a raggedy dark-skinned child in torn trousers and dirty shirt who just stood and looked at her.

  ‘Don’t you have a cup?’ she asked, and he shook his head and turned away. ‘Wait,’ she said. Measuring out the liquid to the eager children, she saved the same amount in the jug and handed it to him. He tipped his head back and drank it straight down.

  ‘Thank you, missy,’ he said, and the grin he gave her more than compensated for the discomfort she had been made to feel by the mean-spirited woman at the station.

  Three engines arrived clanking and clattering to join the waiting carriages and everyone sent up a cheer. The extra locomotives were required to make the steep ascent over the mountains. The passengers climbed back on board and sat back in their seats for the final leg of the journey to San Francisco.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Seventeen years had passed since Jewel left San Francisco as a child and she had virtually no memory of it. She and Georgiana had travelled by clipper into New York, the easiest route at that time as there were no railroads running across the country as there were now. The only other means of travel would have been the arduous overland journey by coach or waggon and then canal boat, which Georgiana had considered too hard for a young child, though for many pioneering women and their families it was the only affordable way.

  Jewel and Clara travelled on the last stage of their journey in weary but companionable silence as they passed through scenes of awesome splendour: through dark tunnels of what seemed to be impenetrable mountains, up and over the highest inclines and into the deepest of valleys where the train ran alongside wide and sparkling creeks and wooded slopes led down to rivers and lakes where they saw beavers building dams.

  They slept in their shaking beds and rocked giddily as they stood to make pots of coffee and gazed out at the country rushing by. An hour before they were due to arrive, they brushed each other’s hair and pinned it up and changed their plain travelling gowns for something more suitable for their arrival in the city of San Francisco.

  Jewel chose a grey silk pleated bodice and jacket with a separate apron-fronted skirt and a small padded bustle, whilst Clara wore a tailored leaf-green dress with a short ruched train. They put on their neat flowered hats, and when they stepped gingerly down from the train which had been their cocoon for the past seven days it seemed as if they emerged into a cavernous cacophony of noise: shouting, swearing, roaring men, screaming children and, it appeared, women of easy virtue. Newsvendors yelled incomprehensibly, and foreign citizens of every colour and race swamped the concourse. It was as if they had entered the tower of Babel, for in their confused state they could neither hear nor understand.

  Their porter appeared by their side to collect their luggage and find them a horse cab to take them to the hotel which Wilhelm had suggested they use. It was a small establishment set in a quiet street away from the bustle of the centre of the city, and had been recommended to him by someone he knew.

  An elevator took them to the third floor. Neither spoke, for, as they discussed later, it was as if they were in a wakeful dream, and each step they took was automatic as they followed the bell boy pushing the trolley with their luggage.

  They had been given a suite of rooms with a balcony. The bell boy advised them to use the balcony in the evening only when the weather was cooler; the main room contained two large beds, a sofa, an occasional table and two easy chairs. A separate bathroom with a claw-footed bath and a washbasin, a flush lavatory and a chair holding a pile of soft towels invited them to make bathing their first undertaking.

  They tipped the boy and asked him to send up tea and cake. Clara asked him for the time, as she had quite lost track of it and couldn’t have said if it was morning or afternoon. Since the sun was hidden behind a thick grey haze, she couldn’t tell from that either.

  He grinned and told her it was four in the afternoon. ‘Afternoon tea time for English ladies, miss,’ he said. ‘And bread and butter with the crusts cut off.’

  She laughed at that and said that would do very nicely, and by the time he had left Jewel was already running a bath, unlacing her boots and rolling down her stockings.

  Clara opened a cupboard and found two dressing robes and slippers. She unpinned her hat, unbuttoned her gown and, slipping out of it, said, ‘You take your bath, Jewel. I’ll lie on the bed until the tea comes up.’

  She heard the sound of slapping water as Jewel stepped into the bath and Clara sighed as she put her head on the pillow. Half an hour later she was woken from a rocking, lurching sleep when a maid knocked on the door and brought in a tray of refreshments.

  Jewel appeared, pink and rosy, and confessed that she’d also fallen asleep, slipping down into the deep bath and being woken by a mouthful of water.

  ‘You take your bath, Clara,’ she said, ‘and I’ll pour the tea and bring you a cup. How luxurious will that be?’

  ‘Unheard of!’ Clara laughed, and happily indulged herself. She considered that after a week without a bath, they had both been in need of one. She stretched back in the water, letting her hair float about her, and thought how lucky she was to be in such surroundings in another country. She let her thoughts drift home, to her sister and her parents, and suddenly remembered that she hadn’t written from New York as had been her intention, though both she and Jewel had made copious notes whilst travelling on the train.

  ‘Jewel,’ she called. ‘Did you write home?’

  There was no answer. She’s asleep, she thought. We must do it tomorrow. There’s no real hurry. Still damp from her bath she climbed into her own bed and felt sleep steal over her. They won’t expect a letter every week.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jewel and Clara slept for four hours, then dressed and went sleepily down to supper. They spoke little and ate simply. Both felt shaky, as if they were still on the train.

  ‘Have you realized,’Jewel said, as she spooned tomato soup, ‘that it takes almost the same length of time to travel across the country, coast to coast as they say, as it does to sail from Liverpool to New York?’

  Clara nodded. She could hardly keep her eyes open. ‘I know,’ she said huskily. ‘I can’t take in the size of this country. It’s so vast compared to our own small island.’ She smiled. ‘I’m really looking forward to exploring San Francisco, though. Incredible to think it was built on gold.’

  ‘And they’re still finding it,’Jewel told her. ‘I heard two men on the train discussing gold strikes in Nevada and Utah. They left the train in Ogden, and I didn’t see them get back on again.’

  ‘So what would you like to do first?’ Clara asked her. ‘And when? Shall we find our bearings tomorrow and then—’

  Jewel heaved a breath and absent-mindedly crumbled her bread. ‘Well,’ she interrupted, ‘first, I’d like to try and find my father’s house. I have a vague picture in my head of where it was, but I don’t have an address and Mama couldn’t remember it either. I have Dolly’s and I wrote to her to say I was coming on a visit and would she tell Larkin and Jed. They were friends of my father’s when he first came to America, I think. Larkin can’t read, which is why we used to write to Dolly. She wanted to know about me when I was growing up, but our correspondence grew lax o
ver the years.’

  ‘Do you remember them?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Not really,’ she said, and then smiled. ‘I remember Dolly wearing bright clothes and big hats and sometimes she let me try the hats on, and Larkin used to swing me up in the air, but I can’t recall Jed at all.’

  ‘So tomorrow, then?’ Clara said. ‘Where will we start? At Dolly’s?’

  Jewel shook her head. ‘No. I want to try and find the house for myself. It was at the top of a hill. We’ll buy a town plan.’

  The following morning, feeling refreshed after a good night’s sleep, they ate breakfast and prepared to leave, first asking the desk clerk where they might buy a plan of the town. He directed them further along the street and then asked them where they were heading.

  ‘I can’t recall the name of the street,’ Jewel told him, ‘but I know it was at the top of a hill.’

  He looked at her in astonishment. ‘Well, ma’am, there are a great many hills in San Francisco and all pretty steep. Have you no idea where it might be?’

  She shook her head rather sheepishly. ‘The city has grown since I was last here.’

  The clerk pursed his lips and then after a moment of pondering he said, ‘I’d advise that first you take the cable car up Clay Street.’ He seemed to puff himself up, and added, ‘Wire rope railway! It’s a new invention, fitted only last year. Andrew Hallidie was the inventor – an Englishman, I believe. Pretty soon they’ll be all over the city hills; Sutter Street is next, they say, maybe Geary Street. Sure beats walking up them.’

  They thanked him and went outside. The weather was foggy and rather warm and damp, but they walked up the street in search of a news store, whilst Jewel wondered whether she should revise her plans and look for Dolly first, rather than wander aimlessly. San Francisco was so much larger than she recalled.

  The plan they purchased didn’t really help, so Clara, realizing Jewel was becoming despondent, suggested that they journey up Clay Street as the clerk had suggested, so they could find their bearings.

  San Francisco was a bustling, noisy city. No one strolled, but all seemed to have an urgent need to get to the next place in the quickest possible time. Horse buses, carriages, carts and waggons flew past them at top speed and they had to pick up their skirts and hurry across the wide roads to avoid being run over.

  They entered some of the large stores and made a few purchases, and then wandered up and down the streets and boulevards, remarking on the size of the buildings and on the different types of architecture, which appeared to be taken from every country imaginable. Some of the houses on the hills were built in the English terraced style with steep pitched roofs; some buildings were like French palaces and some had Turkish towers and minarets. Others, possibly Italian, they surmised, had overhanging eaves and balustraded balconies, reminiscent, Clara thought dreamily, of Romeo and Juliet.

  They found Clay Street quite by accident, hearing the racket of the cable car before they saw it as it rattled down the hill and deposited its passengers at the bottom. They bought tickets and took their seats in the open-sided cartlike structure; the brass bell rang, the grip man released the lever, the car jerked and up they went, both rather giggly and nervous as the underground cables pulled the car along the rails to the top of the hill.

  They hopped off and both laughed at the experience. ‘Sure beats walking,’ Clara said, mimicking the desk clerk. ‘That would be quite a pull uphill and I don’t know if I’d have had the breath for it,’ she added in her normal voice.

  Jewel gazed about her. ‘We’ll have to find it – the breath, I mean,’ she said slowly. ‘Because I don’t recognize any of this. We’ll have to go further up again.’

  They walked up the next hill, stopping occasionally to gaze in store windows or up at the houses, some of which had massive embellishments and were painted in bright colours quite at odds with their architecture. The colours were almost dazzling now that the fog had cleared and sun come out.

  They both put up their parasols. Clara had little beads of perspiration on her forehead which ran down her cheeks and off the end of her nose. Jewel on the other hand seemed to remain cool, her pale face contrasting with Clara’s pink flush.

  ‘I’ll have to stop and sit down,’ Clara said eventually. ‘I’m desperate for a cool drink. Up there.’ She pointed a little further up the hill to where there was a sign for a restaurant. ‘Let’s go in if it’s open.’

  The bell clanged as they opened the door and after being greeted by the proprietor, a short dark man with a mass of curly hair, they were shown into a cool dark room with a window overlooking the city below them and brought a jug of iced lemonade.

  ‘I won’t be able to find it,’ Jewel admitted. ‘Papa’s house. I really have no idea where it is.’

  Papa’s house. Papa’s house! The words echoed in her head. Wilhelm is my papa; or at least he has been for so many years and yet that phrase rolled off my tongue so easily, and I know who I meant. She felt a sudden rush of warmth and heard a whisper of memory in her head. Remember I will always love you, my darling. Was that her father speaking to her? Edward? Not Wilhelm, although she knew that Wilhelm loved her as his own.

  ‘Are you all right, Jewel?’ Clara asked anxiously. ‘You seem very preoccupied.’

  ‘I am preoccupied,’ she answered vaguely. ‘I was wondering how I could be so foolish as to think I could remember where the house was after all these years. There have been so many changes, so many new buildings. It is an impossible task.’

  Clara nodded and gratefully took a sip of lemonade. ‘I fear it is,’ she said.

  Jewel sat silently, and drank calmly from her glass; already she had made up her mind. Tomorrow they would take a cab and find Dolly. Dolly would tell her where her father’s house was and arrange for her to meet Larkin and Jed. She leaned forward to gaze at the panoramic view spread out before them. Then she narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Can you see the church down there?’

  Clara’s gaze swept the vista. ‘The one with a bell tower? Is it a cathedral?’

  ‘I believe it might be,’ Jewel said vaguely. ‘There’s something niggling away at me and I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘Something about the church?’

  Jewel nodded and then, turning round, she called the proprietor over to her. ‘Can you tell me the name of the church down there?’ she asked.

  ‘Si,’ he said, with a strong Spanish or Mexican accent. ‘It ees St Mary’s Cathedral. Twenty-one years old. The first cathedral of California. Built of granite, cut and brought from China, bricks brought from New England. A church for everyone; all communities, even the Chinese.’

  He spoke as if he were a guide showing them around the edifice itself. Jewel thanked him and he moved away to attend to other patrons. Then he turned back. ‘Everyone ees welcome,’ he said. ‘Two blocks north from Chinatown, near the bay on Montgomery Street.’

  ‘Thank you.’Jewel smiled. ‘We shall visit. I feel as if I know it,’ she murmured to Clara. ‘As if I’ve been. But I don’t know when!’

  ‘Then we’ll take a look,’ Clara said. ‘But could we go tomorrow, please? By the time we get back down the hill it will be too late to walk there.’

  ‘All right,’ Jewel agreed, realizing that it wasn’t the lateness of the afternoon that was troubling her cousin but the intense heat, unused as they were to such high temperatures.

  She would have liked to wander off on her own to find the church, but that of course was impossible. Wilhelm’s warning that they must only ever do things together rang in her ears. Besides, she was well aware that she would be very much at risk if she were foolish enough to venture out in the streets alone.

  They ordered lunch at the restaurant as they hadn’t eaten since breakfast and the aroma coming from the kitchen was tantalizing. They asked for a local dish that was not too spicy; the dishes that were being carried towards the other tables looked and smelled very pungent.

  A dish of what looked like pale green
cream flecked lightly with tomatoes was put in front of them, with warm flat bread shaped like little pancakes for them to dip into it; this, their host told them, was guacamole, made from avocado, chopped white onion and thinly sliced tomato and flavoured with lemon, black pepper and coriander. On a separate plate was a serving of raw fish in lime juice. They declared both delicious and were brought dishes of chicken and rice, black beans, and a plate of a delicious purple vegetable, stuffed with onions and tomatoes, which they were told was eggplant.

  To finish, a plate of fresh fruit was brought to the table – melon, mango and banana – and another jug of lemonade.

  Both were replete after the food and Clara declared she felt more rested and able to walk back down the hills. ‘Perhaps if we bear down towards the direction of the bay,’ she suggested, ‘we shall get an idea of the whereabouts of the cathedral in relation to our hotel. We can hardly miss it, after all. It’s quite a landmark.’

  Jewel agreed, but unlike Clara, who had become more energetic, she was now feeling tired and lethargic after eating and pleased to be walking down the hills and not up.

  By the time they reached the top of Clay Street, their legs were aching and both agreed that it would be nice to ride on the cable car again. They waited in line with the other passengers to board the car, and as they bought their tickets and stepped on board both felt a sense of smug satisfaction at riding a cable car and eating exotic food as if these were commonplace daily occurrences rather than adding memorable experiences to their lives.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  They were up early the next day, aiming to be out before the heat became too strong and dressing appropriately in light muslin dresses and sun bonnets. But when they emerged from the hotel after breakfast the weather was dull and foggy and much cooler.

  On stepping off the cable car the previous day they had seen the cathedral of St Mary’s in the distance and gulls wheeling in the sky where they judged the bay to be, and this was the direction in which they set off, Jewel having again determined that they should try to find their own way before contacting Dolly. It was a long walk and there were many people dashing about their business, waggons and traps clattering along the road. The two young women clung to each other’s arms in fear of being knocked over or carried along in the melee.