Chapter Thirty
It was a long day, and when they finally closed, Colleen hurried into the kitchen to make them all a well-deserved pot of tea. She found Hattie up to her elbows in soap suds washing the dirty pots and couldn’t help but be impressed. After her fall, Jia Li had stayed downstairs for a time until she was sure that Hattie knew what she had to do, before going upstairs to rest, and since then Hattie had done a sterling job of keeping the meals supplied and the kitchen running smoothly. The large table that dominated the room was scrubbed clean and the floor had been mopped too.
‘You’ve done really well seeing as you were thrown in at the deep end, so you have,’ Colleen told her approvingly and the woman gave her a warm smile.
‘That’s sometimes the best way,’ she answered.
Flora joined them and stared round at the tidy kitchen, impressed. ‘Thank you so much for stepping in to help, Hattie,’ she told the woman. ‘But do stop for a drink now. You’ve been on your feet ever since you got here and you must be tired. I know I am.’
Hattie chuckled as she dried her hands on a towel. ‘That’s the trouble wi’ you young ’uns, you’ve got no stamina,’ she teased.
They sat together at the table and as Colleen poured out their tea she asked, ‘So, do you live around here, Hattie?’ The woman sounded very English to her.
‘Yes, not far as the crow flies.’ The woman stirred sugar into her tea and sipped at it appreciatively. ‘I came to live here forty years ago as a bride with my new husband who was a sailor and I’ve been here ever since. I brought my family up here, three strapping sons I have. Two of ’em have flown the nest and they’re scattered far and wide now. I’ve still got the youngest, my Ernie, at home with me though. My husband, Percy, died two years ago and that’s when I decided to start work again. I’ve been working in the match factory and I can tell you now this is a doddle compared to that.’
‘Well, it was our good fortune that you happened to be here just when we needed you,’ Flora told her. ‘I didn’t think anyone could make a curry like Jia Li but the customers have all said how delicious it was this evening.’
‘Oh, I can turn me hand to most things when it comes to cookin’,’ Hattie assured her. ‘My sons were like bottomless pits. I used to tease ’em an’ say they’d got hollow legs. But tell me, have I got the job or what?’
‘You most certainly have and we’ll count ourselves lucky to have you,’ Flora assured her. She went on to tell her what the hours and the wages would be. Hattie was quite happy with them and so before she left for home that evening she had agreed to return at eight o’clock the next morning.
‘I really like her,’ Colleen said when the bubbly little woman had departed. ‘And she’s certainly not afraid of hard work. I reckon we’ve dropped on our feet finding her. It was like a miracle her turning up like that.’
‘I think it was more a case of her finding us.’ Flora grinned. ‘But now I’m going to make a tray up for Jai Li and check how she is.’
She found Jia Li curled into a ball on the bed but thankfully she seemed none the worse for her tumble.
‘I so sorry,’ she said as she pulled herself up onto the pillows and accepted the tray Flora had carried up for her. ‘I be able to work properly again tomorrow.’
‘You most certainly will not.’ Flora wagged a stern finger at her. ‘You’re going to take it much easier from now on, miss! That doesn’t mean to say that you can’t come down and help out for short periods if you feel up to it, but your days of being on your feet all day are over, at least until well after the baby’s arrived. Do you hear me? As it happens, Hattie has turned out to be a little treasure so we’ll manage perfectly well.’
Jia Li sighed. She knew when she was beaten so she merely nodded in agreement.
Within two weeks Hattie had proved herself to be invaluable and all three girls had become very fond of her. She didn’t seem to find it strange that three young women were running the place and didn’t pry at all, for which they were all grateful. Hattie had taken a particular liking to Jia Li and fussed over her like a mother hen, insisting that she ate well, which neither Flora nor Colleen had been able to do.
‘You’re feeding that baby as well as yourself now,’ she would tell Jia Li as she tempted her with tasty titbits and surprisingly Jia Li did as she was told.
One evening as Flora was helping her with the washing-up, she told her about the house next door that she had bought.
‘Of course, it’s going to be a long time before it’s fit to be lived in,’ Flora confided. ‘Me and Colleen have scrubbed every inch of it from top to bottom but there are jobs that need doing that are beyond us, such as plastering and replacing the floorboards and I can’t afford to get tradesmen in just yet. I was hoping to have it ready for when Jia Li has the baby but I can’t see it happening now.’
‘Then why don’t you let me get my Ernie round to take a look at it for you?’ Hattie suggested. ‘He can turn his hand to most things and I know he’d be a lot cheaper than bringing in tradesmen. He could only work at weekends when he wasn’t busy at his regular job though.’
‘Oh, would you? That would be so helpful. I’d be grateful for any little help he can give me.’
So the following evening as they were all preparing the café for breakfast the next morning, Ernie arrived. He was in his mid-twenties and looked very much like his mother with twinkling blue eyes, dark curly hair and a jolly smile, although unlike his mother, he spoke with a broad New York accent. Both Colleen and Flora took to him immediately and they wondered why some young lady hadn’t snapped him up.
Flora fetched the key to the house next door then she, Ernie and Hattie went round there. Now that they had emptied all the rubbish out of it and given it a thorough clean it looked better already.
‘Say, this ain’t too bad at all,’ Ernie assured her as he prodded the walls. ‘I can soon patch up the walls where the plaster’s come off and replacing the floorboards shouldn’t take too much doing.’
‘Really?’ Flora gave a sigh of relief. Buying the place had taken almost every penny of the money she had managed to save and while she was still paying the rent on the café she couldn’t afford to spend a lot on it.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do,’ he said. ‘I’ll order the stuff I need to be delivered and me and the guys will come round on Saturday to make a start on it. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds wonderful,’ Flora said tentatively with a grateful smile. ‘But how much is all this going to cost?’
‘Hey, don’t worry,’ he told her airily. ‘Me an’ the guys will work for next to nothin’ so long as you feed us, and the stuff we’ll need to do it will be real cheap, I promise. I’ve a buddy in the buildin’ trade who’ll let me have whatever I need cut price.’
Flora looked perplexed. ‘But why would you do all that for us?’
He grinned. ‘Cos my mom loves workin’ with you an’ you’re good to her.’
‘Then all I can say is thank you very much indeed,’ Flora said.
Over the next few days bags of sand, cement, plaster, floorboards and everything else they might need were delivered and as promised Ernie and two of his friends – Jimmy and Sam – turned up bright and early on Saturday morning to start work. They could hear them banging and hammering through the wall of the café all day and the girls could hardly wait to see the end results. By Sunday evening, every inch of plaster throughout the house that needed replacing had been done.
‘We’ll get those floorboards done next weekend,’ Ernie told them as he tucked in to a dish of Jia Li’s curry. She was still spending a couple of hours a day in the kitchen to help Hattie out and looked much better now that she wasn’t on her feet so much, although her belly was starting to look enormous. ‘Then we’ll fix up the windows an’ doors if you get some paint. You’ll be surprised how different they’ll look when they’re done.’
‘Thank you all so much,’ Flora told him and his friends. A mere thank you s
eemed so inadequate for all they’d done but they seemed happy enough with the arrangement.
‘Ernie is such a lovely chap,’ Flora commented to Hattie when they had gone. ‘I’m shocked some young woman hasn’t snapped him up by now.’
Hattie’s face clouded. ‘As it happens he did have a young lady and they were due to be married. Childhood sweethearts, they were. She was a nanny to the child of a posh family in Manhattan. They all went on holiday to London earlier in the year so they took her with ’em, but they were aboard the Titanic on the return voyage and none of them survived. Between you an’ me, I don’t know how our Ernie got through it. He was heartbroken. He loved the bones o’ that girl, but there you are. These things happen.’
Flora’s heart started to pound and beads of sweat stood out on her forehead but she didn’t tell Hattie that she too had been aboard the ship. It was one of the things she was coming to love about Hattie, she never pried into any of their pasts and as yet none of them had confided in her.
‘All I can say is he’s been a star,’ Flora told her sincerely. ‘And we all appreciate so much what he and his friends are doing for us.’
‘To tell the truth I think he’s glad of somethin’ to keep him occupied,’ Hattie said sadly. ‘Since he lost his girl he’s never still for a minute apart from when he’s sleepin’. I think he likes to keep himself occupied so he don’t have too much time to dwell on things. But there you are. Folks deal wi’ grief in their own way, I dare say. Bless him, he might put on a brave face but I reckon there ain’t a minute goes by when he don’t still think of her.’
Flora sighed. It just went to show, almost everyone had a cross to bear.
During the next weekend, Ernie and his friends between them replaced or repaired all the floors and the weekend after one of them set to whitewashing the walls while the other two began to repair the window frames and the doors and prepare them for painting.
‘We should have it all ready for you to move into next weekend,’ Ernie told them late on Sunday night as he and his team of helpers tucked into the supper Jia Li had prepared for them. She had been the one who frequently took them trays of tea and snacks while they were working and they had a soft spot for her now, not that Jia Li noticed. Her heart still belonged to Bai and always would.
Now that she wasn’t working all the time she had finally started to venture out for a little fresh air, although she never went far. And then one afternoon her worst nightmare came true. She had taken a stroll and was making her way back to the café when she saw a face that she had prayed she would never see again. Yung Huan was sauntering along the street towards her and her heart began to thud painfully as panic gripped her. For a second she froze but then spinning about so quickly that she almost lost her balance she hurried as fast as she could back the way she had come and slipped into the first alley she came to where she flattened herself against the wall and screwed her eyes tight shut, praying that he hadn’t seen her. Her prayers went unanswered when a shadow fell across her.
‘Well, well, so we meet again.’
Her eyes blinked open and she stared up into his sneering face.
‘Why you run away?’ He reached out and twisted a strand of her thick, silky hair around his hand and she flinched away from him. It was then that his eyes fell to her belly and the sneer was replaced by a look of absolute horror. He was due to marry a girl from a very wealthy Chinese family soon and if the child Jia Li was carrying was his it could scupper everything. Admittedly he didn’t love his fiancée but Huan was bone idle and spoiled. Once the marriage had taken place he would be rich beyond his wildest dreams and never have to worry about working again. He stepped away from her as if she had the plague and stabbed a finger towards her belly. ‘I hope you not try to say that bastard had anything to do with me!’
Jia Li stared at him fearfully. ‘J-just go away.’ Her mouth was suddenly so dry that she could barely get the words out.
But Huan didn’t budge. His mind was working overtime. If she should take it into her head to speak to his mother he would be finished. She would have to be silenced. He drew himself to his full height and, grabbing her arm roughly, he began to shake her as a dog might shake a rat. He had just lifted his fist in order to punch her in the face when some men came into the alley. Jai Li turned her stricken, tear-stained face towards them and relief swept through her. It was Jimmy and Sam on their way home from work and they seemed to take in the situation at a glance.
‘So what’s goin’ on here?’ This was from Jimmy, the bigger of the two.
Huan silently cursed and stepped away from her as the two men approached.
‘Nothing at all. Me and Jia Li just talking … we old friends.’
But Jimmy wasn’t fooled. One look at Jia Li’s terrified face told a different story. She was crying softly and now it was he who looked menacing.
‘Are you now? Well, it so happens she’s our friend too so let me tell you now if I so much as see you look at her again, let alone go near her, you’ll be goin’ for an underwater fuckin’ swim in the Hudson? You got that?’
He was so close now that Huan could feel his breath on his cheek and, coward that he was, he paled as he backed away. Then he was running like the wind as Jimmy turned his attention back to Jia Li.
‘Are you all right? Did he hurt you?’ he asked gently but before she could answer Jia Li felt a warm surge between her legs and glancing down she saw that there was a puddle of water on the ground.
‘I … I think the baby coming and it too soon.’
Jimmy quickly took one arm while Sam got the other. ‘We’d best get you home,’ he told her. ‘I can turn me hands to most things but I don’t reckon I’d be any good as a midwife.’
Jia Li was too terrified to even try to reply as they carefully began to walk her home.
Chapter Thirty-One
They had almost reached the café door when the first pain struck Jia Li. It was so unexpected and sharp that it took her breath away and she doubled over.
Panicking now, Jimmy sprinted ahead. ‘Come quick,’ he gasped as he flung the café door open.
Colleen was just serving a customer and looked up in surprise.
‘It’s Jia Li,’ he told her, his face ashen. ‘I think she’s havin’ the baby.’
His words echoed through to the kitchen and seconds later, Hattie, Flora and Colleen were all racing outside. Jia Li and Sam were almost at the door by then and Hattie took control of the situation immediately.
‘Get her straight upstairs,’ she barked at Jimmy. ‘And you, Colleen – go and put some water on to boil. We’ll need lots of it and towels.’
Then her voice gentled as she helped Jia Li inside, saying, ‘Now, don’t worry, dearie, everything will be fine.’
‘Shall I run for a doctor?’ Jimmy asked, as nervous as a father-to-be.
‘Let me have a look at her and see how far on she is first,’ Hattie answered. ‘First babies usually take their time so she’ll probably be hours yet.’
All the time she was talking she was leading Jia Li amongst the tables where customers were staring curiously.
‘I’m going to close the café as soon as the last customer has gone then I’ll be up to help you,’ Flora promised. ‘Meanwhile, Colleen will make sure you have everything you need.’
Jimmy and Sam hung about in case they were needed and Sam told Colleen what had happened. ‘We found her trapped in an alley with a Chinese chap shoving her about. She seemed terrified and lord knows what he might have done to her if we hadn’t happened by. I reckon it must be the shock of that that started the baby coming.’ He was nervously puffing away on a cigarette as he spoke and Colleen’s temper flared.
‘I wouldn’t mind betting it was Huan, the chap that raped her and got her into this situation,’ she ground out as she placed a large kettle of water on the range to boil.
‘Raped her?’ Both Jimmy and Sam looked horrified.
Colleen nodded. ‘Yes, he was the son of the owner o
f the laundry where we all worked at the time. He was always harassing one or other of the girls but his mother could see no wrong in him. After he’d raped Jia Li his mother sacked her so me and Flora left too and then we all came here. It would have been useless complaining to his mother, she would never have believed he was capable of doing any wrong.’
Jimmy and Sam exchanged a sly glance. ‘Tell us where this laundry is. I reckon it’s time we had a nice little chat with this guy. He needs teaching a lesson or two,’ Sam said quietly.
‘Oh please, don’t go doing anything that will get you into trouble,’ Colleen beseeched.
Sam winked at her. ‘Don’t worry about us, just tell us where we might find him.’
Colleen reluctantly gave them directions and after a brief low-voiced exchange, the two men hurried out of the door, leaving her staring anxiously after them. But for now, she needed to concentrate on helping Jia Li.
‘How is she?’ she asked Hattie as she carried the first bowl of hot water into the bedroom.
Hattie frowned. ‘Let’s just say this baby is impatient to put in an appearance.’
‘But it’s far too early,’ Colleen fretted. ‘Should I run for the doctor?’
‘There won’t be no time for that,’ Hattie said gravely as she rolled her sleeves up and washed her hands in the water. Poor Jia Li was lying on the bed chewing on her lip in a valiant attempt to stop herself from screaming. ‘Thankfully, I’ve delivered dozens of babies in me time so hopefully all will be well.’
Colleen let out a breath of relief. She dreaded to think what would have happened if Hattie hadn’t been there.
Flora came scurrying in then having seen the last of the customers out of the café. Colleen quickly told her what had brought on the premature birth and Flora scowled. But then she and Colleen placed themselves at either side of the bed and let Jia Li cling to their hands as the contractions wracked her small frame.
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