Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘You are just their servant, not their daughter. I should be more important, if you loved me as you said you did,’ he wrote. ‘I was counting on you, everything I have done was for you. Mr Donnelly wanted a married overseer and now that you haven’t arrived it appears to him that I took the position on false pretences. My work is hard, and I need the comfort of a wife to come home to at the end of the long days.’

  She could barely bring herself to read the rest of the letter for he was revealing a side of himself she hadn’t known existed. There was no understanding that she had been compelled to stay out of love and compassion for the Milsons, or even sympathy for her mistress. He claimed that back in Ireland such events as losing a child were commonplace and put aside in a day or two, and that Mrs Milson should thank God she had enough to eat, a healthy child, and a roof over her head. When he went on to say that the slave women on the plantation had to work out in the fields with a baby slung on their back and that their children, often younger than Tabitha, had to weed and hoe fields, she knew from his tone he’d not only accepted slavery, but now condoned it. That left her feeling sickened, for she feared he had become what she’d heard the Reverend Kirkbright refer to as ‘white trash’, one of those men who felt indignant that they were unable to rise in white society, so they took out their spite on the black man.

  She could understand his disappointment that she hadn’t come. She felt for him that he had to work long hours and then go home to an empty, cold house with no comforts. But the Flynn she had fallen in love with had been a self-sufficient idealist. What had changed him enough to speak of a wife in terms of a housekeeper?

  All day she dwelt on both this letter and the previous loving, excited ones in which he’d painted such a rosy picture of the life they were going to share. The more she compared them, the angrier she became, for she suddenly realized that it was this last one, written in rage, which was the true picture of him and his work. In the others he’d just been painting seductively pretty and almost certainly false pictures for her.

  She saw too that she had allowed herself to be fooled right from the start. Why hadn’t he ever introduced her to anyone he knew? Or insisted that he met the Milsons? Wasn’t it most likely that he knew she would then get another slant to his character?

  She had believed that by holding back from love-making he was purely protecting her. But now, when she thought about the practised way he’d undressed her and fondled her, she realized he was experienced with women, and knew how to get satisfaction himself without the risk of impregnating her.

  All at once that took on sinister tones. He had fired her up, removed all doubt about him from her mind. Wasn’t it likely that he was already planning to leave, and knowing she was essential to his future plans, he’d made certain she would be willing to come to him the moment he gave the word?

  ‘He’s a confidence trickster, that’s what he is,’ she thought angrily, remembering the fine jacket with the silver buttons. ‘And he wanted to marry me to give him more plausibility.’

  She was beyond tears now. When she reached for pen and paper that night she wanted to wound him as deeply as he had her. In a rage she pointed out that she knew what he was. That she couldn’t possibly marry a man who had no sympathy for someone losing a child, or live in a cottage owned by a man who made children work in the fields. She said that if he’d written to say he had only a shack for them to live in and no money, but that he had joined one of the underground movements to help slaves escape to the North, she would have jumped on the first boat after Lily was better and worked alongside him. But the thought of him prancing about on a horse whipping Negroes to work harder made her sick to her stomach.

  She pointed out that when she married she wanted an equal partnership, not just to be there to cook meals and wash a man’s shirts. She could never marry any man who didn’t speak the truth.

  Folding the letter and sealing it helped her resolve. She wasn’t going to allow herself to read it the next day and then soften towards him.

  In the days following posting her letter, Matilda found being brave and forthright didn’t give her much comfort. New York in January was a grim place, with icy winds sweeping in from the Atlantic, leaden skies and frequent falls of snow which soon turned to black, three-foot-high walls of ice on the sidewalks. The water pump often froze up, vegetables and fruit disappeared from the shops. The plight of the poor was even more noticeable as she trudged out to buy oil for the lamps or something more appetizing than salted pork to eat and saw their children with rags tied around their bare feet, begging just for bread.

  Tabitha was five now and she had started at a small school on Broadway after Christmas. But with the child gone from the house between nine and two each day, the days seemed long, alone with just her mistress. Lily had recovered her spirits in as much that she kept herself busy all day sewing, reading and baking, but she was often very withdrawn and rarely went out of the house. Giles on the other hand was very much busier with projects in the parish that included a soup kitchen for the destitute, the opening of a public school, which involved making sure it was attended by all children from the neighbouring tenements, and the Waifs’ and Strays’ Home in New Jersey. Lily seemed to have accepted now that this was all part of his job, and there had been no further talk of forbidding him to go to places she believed were insanitary or dangerous.

  Now that Matilda had much less to do around the home, Giles often asked for her help outside it – at the soup kitchen, persuading reluctant parents to send their children to school, and passing out clothes and blankets donated by good people in the parish. There was no need to go into Five Points to find orphans any longer, word had got around among them about the refuge across the Hudson river and they found their own way to Dr Kupicha’s door. As fast as adoptive parents were found for some of the original children, their places were taken by new ones, and now the church was raising money to extend the building.

  Cissie was given the position as head nursemaid for the under-fives, a position she delighted in. She had been so very sad when Pearl was adopted by a childless couple in Boston back in November, but by Christmas she had accepted it was for the best, and even asked Miss Rowbottom to teach her to read and write so she could keep in touch with her friend’s child. Sidney had been offered a new home twice, but he’d made it quite clear he would run away if he was forced to go. As he was so useful in the home farm and a good influence on the wilder boys, the governors had said he could stay permanently.

  Yet even seeing the success of the rescue work, finding fulfilment in helping Giles in new projects, and knowing that she would have always felt a sense of guilt if she had left when Lily was ill, in all these long months Matilda’s heart still ached for Flynn. He didn’t reply to her angry letter – no apology, no plea for a second chance – and she had to accept that he was never the man she believed him to be, that in reality she’d had a lucky escape. Yet that didn’t make the pain any less.

  She saw Rosa one day as she walked through Fulton Fish-market. Her belly was swollen, her dress dirty and her hair matted and as she caught sight of Matilda she darted away. Matilda knew the girl must have expected her to turn away in scorn, but she wouldn’t have, not now. Her time with Flynn had made her so much more aware of human frailties, and but for his self-control, she too might have found herself with child. That at least was something she’d always be grateful for.

  ‘What is wrong, Matty?’ Giles asked one March morning as they set off to discover why four boys who had been attending school regularly had suddenly stopped coming. It was still so very cold that it seemed to Matilda that she’d imagined how hot New York could be in August. It was indeed a city of extremes – so much wealth, but so much poverty, so colourful and lively, yet dismal and cheerless too. Hope yet despair, sorrow yet joy. Even her own feelings for it ranged from love to loathing.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, sir,’ she said, managing to force a bright smile. ‘I’m just cold.’

/>   Giles looked sideways at her as they walked along Pearl Street. She wore a grey wool cape with a hood, a cast-off from his wife, and the dress beneath it was grey too. No doubt most people in his social circle would say she was appropriately dressed for her position, but grey didn’t suit her character. If he could choose a colour for her it would be bright blue to match her eyes. He’d let that pretty blonde hair loose from its pins, and take her to see something amusing, just to hear her laugh. It seemed months since he’d heard that sound.

  ‘I didn’t mean just today, you’ve been glum for a long while now,’ he said. ‘I thought you had a sweetheart last year. You used to come home from your afternoons off looking sparkling-eyed and happy. Now you hardly go out, and when you do, you come home looking sad. What happened to him, Matty?’

  Matilda gulped. It was too late now to tell him about Flynn, if she told him he was an overseer on a plantation he would find that even harder to stomach than hearing he worked in a saloon.

  ‘There was someone for a while, but he’s gone away,’ she said simply. ‘He didn’t turn out to be the kind of man I thought he was.’

  Giles didn’t reply for some little time, just took her arm and hurried her across the busy street. ‘Few of us ever let anyone see ourselves as we really are,’ he said at length. ‘Sometimes we hide or enhance our real character, or pretend to be someone else, and we all change as circumstances do.’

  ‘You don’t,’ she said indignantly. ‘You are the same now as when I first met you nearly three years ago.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I was naive and rather too fond of myself in those days. I believed my calling made me superior to other men. I know that isn’t so now. But other aspects of my character have changed too. I have grown hard to terrible sights. I often doubt my faith. I don’t trust the way I once did. And look at you, Matty, you aren’t the same girl we picked up in Oxford Street.’

  ‘I’m glad of that,’ she smiled. ‘She was a little rogue. Did you ever guess that I made out I was more badly hurt than I really was because I thought you might give me a shilling or two?’

  He laughed, really laughed, his dark eyes crinkling up and making him look very boyish. ‘Thank goodness I didn’t offer it, you might have shot off into the crowd and I would never have seen you again! But what I meant was that your needs were so simple then, Matty. Selling enough flowers in a day to buy food was your only goal, you didn’t look beyond that.’

  ‘You don’t when you’re hungry all the time,’ she said tartly.

  ‘Well, you aren’t hungry now, and haven’t been for a long time, so what are your goals now?’

  That question was so like the one Flynn had asked on the first day she met him at the Tontine coffee house, only he’d asked her what she wanted out of life. She thought for a moment. ‘When I get old I want to look back at my life and know it was a worthwhile one.’

  ‘Does that mean you want riches, or position, or to be a good mother to half a dozen children?’ he asked, and she sensed he found her reply amusing.

  ‘I think I’d like all of those,’ she said with a smile. ‘But most of all I want to have made a difference in some other people’s lives.’ She paused for a moment, knowing she hadn’t quite made her point. ‘Like persuading you to take Cissie and Peter to the Home, that made a difference in her life.’

  ‘It did indeed, Matty,’ he agreed. ‘If that is your goal it’s the very finest one. So keep it tightly in your head and don’t ever let it go. Let me hear you laugh again too, let that man go from your heart if he was wrong for you, and start again. Life is too hard and short to spend much of it sad.’

  She knew he was right, but she wished someone could tell her how to push the face of the man she loved out of her mind. She had a feeling that picture was going to stay there for all time.

  Fire swept through the financial area around Wall Street later on that year. Fortunately for Matilda and the Milsons it began several streets north of State Street and whipped eastwards towards the docks. But the flames eating up the last of the old Dutch commercial buildings, wooden warehouses and sailors’ lodging houses was a terrifying sight, and had the wind turned, the fire could have claimed an even bigger area. The black acrid smoke and thick grey ash filled the air for several days afterwards and struck new terror into Lily’s heart. To her it was further proof that New York was the most dangerous place on earth.

  ‘Help me to persuade my husband to go home to England,’ she begged Matilda as they battled to clean away the ash which had crept in all over the house. ‘I cannot live like this, never knowing when the next disaster will strike.’

  Matilda very much wished at that point that they could go home. A recent letter from Dolly had brought news that Lucas’s health was fading, and she knew Dolly would never alarm her with such news unless she felt his end was very near.

  ‘I’ll try,’ she said.

  Lily impulsively hugged her, her small face alight with utter faith in her powers of persuasion. ‘Oh Matty, just think how good it would be to walk in the countryside, to see apple blossom in the spring and have tea on the lawn in summer. Don’t you miss those things too?’

  It was a curious thing, but for someone who had raged about Matilda’s origins on the night when Tabitha had measles, Lily seemed now to have quite forgotten she came from the slums and had no knowledge of having ‘tea on the lawn’, or any other English middle-class traditions. Since her miscarriage she had begun to treat Matilda more like a younger sister than servant. She had made her a pretty blue-striped calico dress with pin tucks on the bodice, and sought her company more and more. On several occasions she’d even asked her to stop calling her madam and use Lily instead. Matilda felt a little uneasy about their changing relationship, but it wasn’t one-sided, she found she thought of her as a dear friend rather than her mistress. Perhaps it was because she’d discovered for herself what heartache felt like, for even if the reasons behind their melancholy were very different, their symptoms were very alike.

  ‘Yes, I miss England,’ Matilda agreed. ‘I’d give anything to see my father and Dolly again, to go up on Primrose Hill, see the Tower of London and all the other places I liked. But even if the Reverend did agree to go home, I don’t think he’d settle for being a country parson, or even take on a parish in a nice part of London. He’s too committed now with his work with the poor to give up on them.’

  ‘But why?’ Lily stamped her feet with indignation. ‘We could have such a happy life in Bath or somewhere like that.’

  Matilda smiled in fondness. At times Lily was very like a spoiled child, sunny when everything went her way, sulky when it didn’t. ‘You know he isn’t a man to turn his back on his ideals,’ she replied. ‘That is the most admirable thing about him, madam, few men are so steadfast in their beliefs.’

  Lily pouted. ‘What do you know of men?’ she said.

  ‘Not much, but enough to know that!’ Matilda said. ‘It’s my opinion that most of them are motivated by greed, lust and adventure, and their poor wives get a great deal less love and attention than you do.’

  A few days later, after her mistress had spent almost all day complaining about the shambles left by the fire, and expressing her disgust that a huge mob of rough Irishmen were already squatting on the site in makeshift shanties, Matilda resolved to talk to her master that night.

  Lily’s anxiety was understandable. Things changed at lightning speed in New York, buildings were torn down and bigger, more spectacular ones took their place instantly. Whole new blocks of houses appeared like magic, and likewise areas which had been the height of fashion just a decade earlier could turn into a slum almost overnight. Cherry Hill had once been the home of notable men like George Washington, but was now a place decent people shunned. The fire, and the subsequent rebuilding needed, would undoubtedly start a mass exodus of their more affluent neighbours to further up town. Their homes would then be rented out and before long the neighbourhood could degenerate into another
Cherry Hill. Matilda hoped that even if Giles couldn’t be persuaded to return to England, he would at least ask the Reverend Kirkbright if they could move away from here.

  She waited until Lily had gone up to bed, made Giles a cup of hot chocolate and then tackled him.

  ‘Go home to England?’ he said in some surprise. ‘That’s unthinkable, Matty. I have pledged myself to this country now, there is still so much to do here.’

  Matilda wasn’t at all surprised by that response, it was what she had expected, so she went on to explain his wife’s fears for this neighbourhood and how she hankered for green fields, gardens and sweet-smelling air.

  He nodded in understanding. ‘I feel that way myself very often. If it were possible I would try and find us somewhere more agreeable to live. But I am not a rich man, Matty, I have to live where the church places me. My wife knows that too.’

  ‘But can’t you see how hard it is for her to think she’ll be here for ever?’ Matilda pleaded with him. ‘Soon the friends she has made around here will move away, it will become noisier and dirtier week by week.’

  ‘I didn’t say I intended to stay here for ever,’ he said, arching his dark eyebrows in surprise. ‘Once I feel I have laid the foundations for a better deal for the poor, I shall move on.’

  ‘Not somewhere even grimmer?’ she exclaimed, her eyes widening with horror.

  ‘No,’ he laughed. ‘You are forgetting I am something of an adventurer, Matty America is a vast country and I’ve only seen such a tiny part of it. Right now there are people making their way right across the country to uncharted lands in the West. I’d like to see that too.’

  Matilda knew about the people going off in wagon trains to find land in Oregon, and from what she’d heard about the hardships they endured, with everything from high mountains, wide rivers to ford, and hostile Indians, she didn’t think her mistress would be overjoyed to join them. When she said this Giles laughed again.