New York

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “It might be an hour or two,” the captain told him, at six o’clock.

  Frank had already, twice, asked him what was wrong. An oil leak, he was told, the first time. Then, a problem with the cylinder. The explanations made no sense. Normally, he’d have gone down there to see for himself—he was certainly as competent as the vessel’s engineer. But he was feeling too old and depressed, so he sat quietly and nursed his brandy. Most of the other passengers had retired to their cabins. Three or four sat together, chatting in the bar. But he didn’t feel like talking, and remained alone.

  At seven o’clock, he wondered whether to give up and go home. If he’d just been waiting for Donna Clipp, he’d have done so. But there was the matter of Gabriel Love and the railroad. He still had to absent himself from town. So he tried to think only of the profit he was going to make on the Hudson Ohio Railroad, refilled his brandy glass, and stared grimly into it for another hour. At this very moment, he reminded himself, up in Boston, Cyrus MacDuff was being told about Gabriel Love’s raid on his railroad. At least, he thought, someone out there is having a worse evening than me. Very soon, he supposed, MacDuff would be trying to send him a wire. And he wouldn’t be able to find him. This damned boat was his hiding place for this adventure. He might be lonely, but he was invisible. That thought cheered him up a little.

  At eight o’clock, the captain announced that they’d be leaving soon. Frank Master took one more, foolish look down the pier, then sat at a table and demanded a meat pie and a plate of vegetables. This, at least, was brought promptly.

  At nine o’clock, the captain whispered to him that the problem was fixed, and that they just needed to test the engine. Rather rudely, Frank said, “Tell me when it’s done,” and waved him away. He heard the engine start, then stop. Just before ten, it started again. This time it did not stop. A few minutes later, the vessel nosed out into the river, and was swallowed by the great, dark downpour.

  Donna Clipp had had enough. She would have left already, if it hadn’t been for the rain. As far as she was concerned that bastard Frank Master could go to hell in a handcart. It was past ten o’clock at night.

  His note had been clear enough.

  Dear Clipper,

  There has been a change of plan. Wait for me at Henry’s Hotel in Brooklyn.

  I’ll be there as soon as I can after three o’clock. We’re going to Long Island.

  I can’t wait to see you.

  F.M.

  Typical, she thought. He can’t wait to see me, but he ain’t coming. Men were all the same—and she ought to know. She’d known a lot of men.

  Some of them had had money. The older ones anyway—not much point in being with an older man, if they hadn’t got money. The question was, would they spend it?

  And that was what she found so contemptible about most of them, really. They had plenty of money. They weren’t going to live that long. There was no way they could go through the money they already had, yet they still saved it. Habit, she supposed. Skinflints.

  Oh, they’d spend a bit. Buy you a bottle of champagne, a fur coat, maybe. Presents, to keep you happy—or so they thought. Even pay your rent, if you were lucky. But give you what you really needed? They seemed to think that if you were poor, you must be stupid.

  She’d heard of women who’d been set up for life by older men. Heard of it, but never met one. Not girls like her, anyway. And why? Because men didn’t care. They didn’t respect you. They took what they wanted, but if you asked for anything in return they called you a gold-digger, or worse.

  That was rich people for you, in Donna Clipp’s opinion. Scum, really, when you thought about it. They might look good, but underneath, they were just scum. Worse than she was.

  It was ten at night, pitch black and pouring with rain, and she was sitting in this stupid hotel on the wrong side of the Brooklyn Bridge, and not a smell of her so-called lover, the old fool.

  Donna Clipp was a nice girl. She had thick blonde hair—natural blonde, too—and blue eyes that could laugh or give you a smoldering look, just as she pleased. She’d never walked the streets. Always had respectable jobs. She’d made dresses, and she’d sold them. She had an eye for fashion. She had some talent for acting and had tried to get theatrical jobs, but they usually told her she wasn’t tall enough. Her short, rather full figure certainly hadn’t been a problem in encounters of a closer kind, and she’d been kept, more or less, by various men. When she came to New York, she found respectable lodgings in Greenwich Village. Within a month, she’d met Frank Master. But though she’d been seeing him for some time now, she hadn’t much to show for it.

  So she’d been wondering, for the last three weeks, what to do with him.

  There was one other matter that had been weighing on her mind lately. A letter she’d received a couple of weeks ago, from a friend with whom she’d shared lodgings in Philadelphia. The letter had been cautiously worded, but she’d understood very well the message it contained.

  Someone had been round asking questions about her. Her friend didn’t seem to know if it was the police, or possibly some person with a grudge. But it looked as if someone was on the trail of certain missing articles of value. The gold bracelet she was wearing, for instance.

  She might claim that it had been given her as a gift. But was it really likely that a rich man would steal his own wife’s jewelry to give to his mistress? Would a jury believe that? She didn’t think so.

  If he hadn’t brought her on a pretext into the house, and if she hadn’t seen all the lovely things his wife had, it wouldn’t have happened. She blamed him, in a way. But that wasn’t going to do her any good. If they were on to her in Philadelphia, would they find her in New York? They might. Not at once, but one day. She wasn’t sure what to do about that.

  The simplest thing would be to get rid of the offending items—you couldn’t prove anything then. But they were valuable. She really needed Frank Master to come up with something before she did that.

  So when he’d suggested the trip up the Hudson, in all the comfort of the finest steamer too, she’d thought that things might be looking up after all. She’d prepared herself carefully. And she’d been rather disappointed when his note, announcing the change of plan, had come on the very day of their departure. But the only thing to do was go along with it, and see what was on offer.

  She’d put her bags in a cab, therefore, and set off from Greenwich Village to Brooklyn.

  It was a pity that it had been raining. When the Brooklyn Bridge, with its mighty suspended span, had opened five years ago, it was counted as one of the wonders of the New World. Over a mile long, soaring a hundred and forty feet over the entrance to the East River, its two stupendous supporting towers with their pointed arches, and the great, graceful arc of its steel cables combined to evoke all the power and beauty of this new industrial, Gothic age.

  Down its center went two sets of tracks for railcars. On each side, with views up or downstream, lay roadways for horses and carriages. And over the rail tracks, for pedestrians, stretched a seemingly endless walkway, suspended in the air, in an elegant rising curve, between the firmaments of the river below and heaven above.

  If you took the outside lane in a cab, the view over the river was magnificent.

  But not today. With the rain coming relentlessly down, she could see neither the water below, nor even the tower ahead. Instead, it was as if she’d entered the rain cloud itself, humid, insistent, depressing, sealing her off from every hope.

  As the rest of the afternoon had passed, she’d assumed that Master had just been delayed. Early in the evening, she had wondered if something might have happened to him. By eight she’d concluded that the weather was so bad he’d called the whole thing off; but he might at least have sent a message to her, and a cab to take her home. She’d asked the waiter to bring her a pot of tea, and continued to wait, just in case he turned up. At nine, she’d ordered some hot soup. Now it was after ten, and she’d had enough. She didn’t care w
hat had happened to him, she was going home. She asked the hotel porter to find her a cab.

  But an hour passed, and there was no cab to be found.

  It was gone midnight before Lily de Chantal decided to turn in for bed. She’d been rehearsing for her part the next day. Not that the role was difficult, but she wanted to be sure she performed it perfectly. And truth to tell, she was savoring it as well.

  Revenge, even for someone with her kindly nature, was sweet.

  Nine in the morning would be about right, she thought. If little Miss Clipp wasn’t back from the wild goose chase she’d been sent on already, she would be by then. Catch her first thing, before she had time to collect her wits.

  “I can’t do it myself, my dear,” Hetty had said, “because if Frank ever found out, he’d hold it against me. But you could do it. A man can forgive his mistress more easily than his wife. Besides,” she’d added with a smile, “you owe me a favor, I think.”

  So the tasks had been assigned. Hetty had written the note, Mary had arranged the delivery, and now she, Lily de Chantal, was going to send the little bitch packing.

  Hetty had given her everything she needed, and Lily had rehearsed her speech precisely.

  “I am afraid, Miss Clipp, that I have proof—absolute proof—that you stole jewelry from Mrs. Linford of Philadelphia. I even have witnesses who can perfectly describe seeing you wearing the items after the theft. You will go to jail, Miss Clipp. Unless, of course, you’d like to leave New York, today—and to leave without saying a word to Mr. Master. And if you make any attempt to contact him in the future, then we shall take all this evidence to the police.”

  Donna Clipp would go fast enough after that. She’d have to.

  The neatness of the plan had been summarized by Hetty, days before.

  “I want Frank to think she’s jilted him. Failed to turn up for the ride upriver, then left before he comes back. That’ll hurt his pride, I’m afraid, but it’ll bring him back to his senses. He’ll be looking for comfort; he’ll be looking to us.”

  “Us?”

  “To you, to me, to the way things were. I think we’re too old to quibble about those details now, aren’t we?”

  “You,” said Lily de Chantal, “are a remarkable woman, and he’s lucky to have you.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” said Hetty. “I quite agree.”

  Yes, thought Lily now, she’d be glad to dispatch little Miss Clipp on her way, for both of them.

  So she was greatly astonished, twenty minutes later, when the doorman knocked upon the apartment door to ask if she wished to receive a visitor. And still more so to see behind him, soaked to the skin, the figure of Frank Master.

  At one in the morning, at Henry’s Hotel, Brooklyn, there was a battle of wills. To the great annoyance of the manager, Donna Clipp had demanded a bedroom and refused to pay for it, on the grounds that it was the hotel’s fault that they hadn’t found her a cab.

  “I could put you out of doors,” he had said.

  “Try it,” she’d replied. “You never heard me scream.”

  He did step out of doors, with a view to ejecting her, all the same. But when he got outside, he discovered something strange. The rain was turning to snow. And the temperature, so warm all week, was dropping like a stone. He was just turning to go back indoors again, when he heard a great growl and a moan from the direction of the river. And a second later, a howling gust of wind rushed down the street, slamming shutters, bending small trees, and almost rolling the manager off his feet as it smacked him with its icy blast. Holding onto the side of a doorway, he pulled himself back into the entrance and slammed the door behind him.

  “Here.” He gave her a key. “Nobody can go out in this weather.” He pointed to the stairs. “Up there. Second on the left.”

  But he didn’t offer to help the bitch with her bags.

  Looking out of her window across Central Park, while Frank sat in a hot bathtub, Lily de Chantal watched the wind whip tornadoes of snowflakes across the empty spaces. In Gramercy Park, for some time, Hetty had gazed in puzzlement at the strange telegram that had come for Frank earlier in the evening, from Boston, asking him if he was selling a railroad. But now, hearing the strange howl and whistle of the wind, she pulled back the curtains and looked out in astonishment to see a maelstrom of snow, and hoped poor Frank was safe, out on the cold waters of the Hudson, on such a terrible night.

  Where on earth, she wondered, could such a blizzard have come from?

  It had come from the west. A great snowstorm with freezing wind, carried all the way across the continent from the Pacific on an icy airstream, at six hundred miles a day. But it took two to make this storm. Up from Georgia had come a huge, moist, warm front. Near the mouth of the Delaware River, some hundred and twenty miles below New York, the two had collided.

  The temperature had fallen, pressure had plummeted, and suddenly the sea and the river had been whipped into a fury. Then, up the coast, had come a mighty blizzard. Soon after midnight, New York’s rain turned to snow, the temperature dived below freezing, and the wind began to gust at eighty miles an hour.

  It went on all night. When dawn came—or should have come—the blizzard ignored it, smothered it, blotted it out. As the hours of morning passed, the whole north-eastern seaboard and every creature on it was swallowed up in the great, white hurricane.

  There was nothing they wouldn’t do for you at the Dakota. But this went so far beyond the call of duty that Lily de Chantal was almost embarrassed. The porter’s boy didn’t mind, though; he seemed to relish the challenge, and the porter assured her: “This boy of mine could find his way to the North Pole and back, Miss de Chantal. Don’t worry about him.”

  So she gave young Skip the note, and told him to be careful.

  It was ten o’clock on Monday morning when Skip left the building. He was fourteen years old, small for his age, but wiry. He was wearing stout boots with a heavy tread, and his leggings were tied tightly with string around his ankles. He wore three sweaters and a short coat, which made it easier to move. He had a thick wool cap over his head, earmuffs, and a scarf wound round his face. Skip was happy.

  As he left the safety of the big entrance yard, he’d already decided what to do. There was no point in trying to cross the park, which was like an arctic landscape, with the blizzard blowing as hard as ever. He didn’t even try to go down beside it. Instead, he walked west half a block and turned down Ninth Avenue. A few blocks south, and he’d be able to pick up the great diagonal of Broadway.

  It wasn’t easy even to walk. The icy gusts almost blew him off his feet, the wind was so strong that the snow couldn’t settle in any normal pattern. In some places, it had driven the snow into drifts that were already above his head. In other places, where the wind had almost brushed it clean, he could see the ground.

  The avenue was almost empty. People had tried to get to work—this was New York, after all—but most had been forced to give up. The El above him was silent, its tracks so solid with ice that, even had an engine tried to set out, its wheels would not have had enough grip to move.

  After struggling down two blocks, however, Skip saw a welcome sight. A single carriage drawn by two patient horses had just turned into the avenue and was plowing its way slowly along. Skip didn’t hesitate for a moment. As the carriage passed, he nipped up beside the coachman. That individual was about to knock him off his cheeky perch and let him fall down into the roadway when a gruff voice from inside the carriage called out: “Let him be.”

  “You’re lucky,” said the driver.

  “Where’ve you come from?” asked Skip.

  “Yonkers, Westchester County,” answered the coachman.

  “That’s a long way,” said Skip.

  “Been going since six this morning. I thought the horses would’ve died, but they kept at it. Big hearts.”

  “Why not stay at home?”

  “My gentleman in there has business in the city today. Says a blizzard ain’t goin�
� to keep him from that.”

  “It ain’t keeping me from mine either,” said Skip happily. That was the spirit of New York, the boy thought. He wouldn’t care to live anywhere else.

  “No trains from Westchester?” he inquired.

  “We crossed a bridge and saw one stuck fast in the snow. I reckon they all are, most likely.”

  At Sixty-fifth Street, they picked up Broadway. When they reached the south-west corner of Central Park, the carriage started south down Eighth, and Skip jumped off. He wanted to follow the line of Broadway.

  People had been shoveling for a while already, doing their best to keep a path open along one of the sidewalks. It was more like a trench. Skip noticed that the untidy masses of telegraph lines were all frozen. Soon he came to a point where they had been brought down entirely, into a great tangle of wire and ice that went on for several blocks. At Fifty-fifth Street he slipped and fell, but he was so bundled up that he wasn’t hurt. He laughed, and looked about to see if he could find another ride. There was nothing. No cabs, no carriages, hardly anyone even trying to walk. Some of the stores and offices seemed to be open, but no one was going out or coming in. He slipped and slid another two blocks and came to a saloon. He went inside. Here, there were a few men, wrapped up like himself, standing at the bar. He unwound his scarf.

  “Drink, son?” offered the barman.

  “No money,” said Skip, though it wasn’t true.

  One of the men at the bar put a few coins down and motioned him to approach. There was a smell of whiskey and hot rum at the bar.

  “On me, boy,” said the man. “Give him a car driver’s,” he instructed the barman, who nodded. “It’s just ale and red pepper,” he told Skip. “It’s what the coachmen take. It’ll keep you warm for a bit.”

  Skip drank it slowly. He could feel the warmth in his stomach. After a while, he thanked his benefactor, and headed out into the street again, wrapping his scarf tightly round his face at the doorway. And it was as well that he did, for as soon as he stepped into Broadway, the snow whipped round his face as if it meant personally to attack him and rip his scarf away again. But steadying himself against a railing, he put his head down and staggered on.