The Glass Harmonica, page 6
He whined, “Dooya, ’ave ye played me fer a cully? Ye never said she wasn’t willin’!”
Dooya pushed the man toward her bed. “Put yer needle away fer the minute,” she said. “I’ll deal with this little minx.”
The man stumbled back to the bed with his bottle, falling heavily onto it, mumbling to himself. Dooya loomed over Eilish.
“Listen to me,” she thundered. From Eilish’s room Mackie began to scream. Dooya ignored him. “I’ve given you a roof and a table these four years, Eilish Eam,” she shouted. “It’s time and past ye did a bit o’ work, and this is the work o’ this ’ouse!” She grabbed at the chair and pulled.
“I won’t!” Eilish cried. With all her strength, she shoved the chair at Dooya, striking her full in the chest.
Dooya fell backward, hitting the floor hard on her tail-bone. “Oh, me ass!” she shrieked. Mackie screamed louder, a hopeless monotone wail.
Dooya got to her feet again with difficulty, grunting, swearing. Eilish still held the chair, waving it before her, heart pounding in her ears. “Stay away from me!”
Dooya grabbed the chair in her two hands and flung it into a corner. Eilish cringed against the table. There was no place to hide. There was nowhere she could run. Dooya grabbed a handful of her hair and wrenched her toward the bed, growling, “Old enough now to do a woman’s work!” And she thrust Eilish on top of the bearded man.
He smelled, if possible, worse than Dooya. The empty bottle he let fall, so as to have both hands for Eilish. He seized her right hand and forced it over his hot and swollen phallus. She shuddered with fear and revulsion.
“There now, me darlin’,” he said in her ear. “Ye’ll be all the happier for a bit o’ fuckin’!” He fumbled at her nightdress with his other hand.
In the background Mackie howled on and on. Eilish twisted her head away from the man’s stinking beard, and in so doing she spotted the gin bottle.
It was made of heavy brown glass, and it lay on the bed within a hand’s-breadth of the man’s shoulder. Eilish grabbed the bottle with her left hand and whacked the little man a great blow across the bridge of his nose.
He yelled in pain. Blood flew everywhere, over Eilish’s hair, her shift, her hands. Free now, she scrabbled backward through the bedclothes, brandishing the bottle. “Don’t touch me!” she screamed. “Don’t ever touch me, ye bloody bastard, or I’ll bash yer roger as flat as yer ugly nose!”
Her victim cried, “Dooya! Damn ye, Dooya, this little bitch’s broke my nose!”
Dooya came flying, the still-screaming Mackie in her arms. She saw the mess of the man’s face, the bedclothes, and Eilish still with the brown bottle in her hand. “What’ve you done?” she shrieked. Holding Mackie on one hip, she backhanded Eilish with her free hand. Caught by surprise, Eilish fell backward to the floor in a jumble of blankets, Mackie wailing at the top of his voice all the while. From the flat beneath came a thunder of pounding and voices shouting for quiet. For a long moment they all stayed where they were, Eilish scrabbling at the blood on her face, trying to wipe it off on the blanket, the man moaning and pressing the sheet to his ruined nose, Dooya cursing long and fluently under her breath.
At length, with most of the blood off her face and hands, Eilish got warily to her feet. She and Dooya stared at each other, both panting, open-mouthed. “Give me the lad,” Eilish said, and Dooya, exhausted now, worn out by drink and exertion, handed him over. “Ssh, ssh, now, Mackie, me darlin’,” Eilish said, pulling his head down on her shoulder. “Ssh, now, ’tis all over.”
Dooya fetched a wet towel and began to mop up blood from her client’s broken nose, the man wincing and then groaning like a woman in childbirth. “Great ninny,” Dooya muttered. “Worsted by a slip of a girl. What a chucklehead.”
Eilish soothed Mackie into silence while Dooya repaired her visitor as best she might. When peace reigned at last, Dooya and Eilish eyed each other. Dooya was a horrific sight, mussed hair, eyes red and cheeks purple, clothes awry, and Eilish supposed she herself didn’t look much better.
“I told you,” she said truculently. “I won’t do it.”
“Aye, and I’m tellin’ you, me lass,” Dooya said sullenly, “ye’ll do it or be out on yer bum.”
The knock at their door came immediately, as if ordained. First there were two polite raps, then four impatient ones in rapid succession.
“God’s body!” Eilish swore. “ ’Tis a madhouse!” Mackie began to whimper again.
Dooya threw the door open. “What d’ye want?” she demanded, before she even saw the visitor.
Peter, Franklin’s blackamoor, stood on the narrow landing. In the darkness of the stairwell, his teeth gleamed white as he smiled and bowed. He held a modest tricorn hat in his hand, and looked past Dooya to Eilish. “Mr. Franklin bids you good morning, Miss Eam. His carriage is waiting below.”
Dooya goggled.
Eilish stepped forward, putting Mackie into Dooya’s arms. “Indeed!” she cried. “Do come in, Mr. Peter!”
The plump Negro hesitated, and then followed the disheveled Eilish over the threshold. He looked around at the chaos, the bearded man moaning on the bed with a wet towel over his face, the red-faced Dooya, a whimpering Mackie hiding his face in her shoulder. Peter took one step beyond the door and stopped, standing with his hand in the pocket of his braided waistcoat, his wide eyes showing white in his dark face.
Eilish teetered on the verge of hysteria. “Oh, I’m coming, I’m coming, to be sure, Mr. Peter,” she cried. Behind the blackamoor she saw Rose Bailey, come up from the pub to see who had arrived in the nice carriage. Eilish seized her hand to pull her into the flat.
“Rose, wait here!” She ran to her room, blanket trailing, and returned. She pressed fourpence into Rose’s hand, all the money she had in the world. “Rose, you watch Mackie tonight, all right? And tomorrow night! Make Dooya pay you after that. I’ll come back to see Mackie, and I’ll make sure.”
Rose was staring at the blackamoor in his bright scarlet wool overcoat. “But why, Eilish? Where are you going?”
“I have an expectation, I do,” Eilish declared. “I’ve a chance, and I’m meant to take it!” She retreated toward her room. “Will you, Rose? Will you watch Mackie?”
“I will if that one minds her manners,” Rose sniffed, indicating Dooya with her head.
Mackie lifted his head from Dooya’s shoulder. “Eilish? Go to play?”
His piping voice tore at Eilish’s heart.
“Aye,” Eilish answered. “I’m going to play in a different place. Rose will be here with you while yer ma’s gone, though. You know Rose, Mackie.”
“Eilish go to play?” Mackie said again.
“Aye,” she repeated. She put out her hand to his cheek, and then pulled it back. Her chest ached. She could hardly wait to be away from Dooya’s smell, Dooya’s cold flat, her empty table, her vile customers. But Mackie . . .
“Candy?” Mackie asked.
Eilish gave him a tremulous smile. “Aye. I’ll bring Mackie some candy!”
Satisfied, Mackie lay his head against his mother’s neck. Dooya picked up the chair from the corner and sat down in it, Mackie in her lap. A bubbling snore came from the bearded man, and a moment later Dooya, too, was asleep, her chin on top of Mackie’s head.
“Mr. Peter, just give me a minute,” Eilish said. She ran to her room and threw on her clothes as quickly as she could. Her few small possessions she stuffed in a sack. Moments later she was following Peter down the stairs, Rose Bailey trotting after them.
“Eilish, where ye off to? What will I be telling Dooya?”
“Never mind Dooya.” Eilish climbed into the little carriage. “I’ll be back when I can.”
Rose wrung her apron and shook her head back and forth as she watched the carriage pull away. Eilish waved at her, once, from the window. Then she turned her face forward, into her future.
• • •
THE little room at the front of the house in Craven Street was nicely appointed with printed cotton curtains over the window, a painted iron bedstead with a thick mattress and a puffy quilt, and a wide bureau with four drawers. William Franklin’s linens and ties still filled the bottom drawers, but the top two had been lined with fresh paper and left empty for Eilish. “ ’Tis little enough I have to put into these,” she said.
The maid, her arms folded, stood in the doorway. “Never mind that, miss,” she said haughtily. “The first thing for you is a bath.”
“A bath?”
“Aye. Mrs. Stevenson’s orders. Follow me, please.” Without waiting to see that she was obeyed, Bessie hurried down the stairs, her back straight, her neck stiff. Eilish paused only to put her little bit of embroidered linen, her mother’s linen, into the empty top drawer, and then hurried after her.
Four floors below, in the basement kitchen, a hip bath was being filled with steaming water. Soap, brushes, and towels were laid ready, and Mrs. Stevenson was giving instructions to the cook. She looked up when Eilish entered.
“Ah, Miss Eam,” she said. “Cook here, and Bessie, will see to you. In this house, each person bathes every week, head to toe. Your baths will be here in the kitchen.”
Bessie stood beside the tub and said, “Off with your clothes, then, miss.”
Eilish stared at her, open-mouthed. “Take—take off my clothes? All of them?”
“Of course, all of them! What did you think, you would bathe in your shift?”
Eilish was at a loss. She had never, that she could remember, been completely naked. But all of them were watching her, waiting. Slowly, unhappily, she undid the tie at the neck of her cloak, and stepped out of her battered shoes. Cook said impatiently, “Come on, now, my girl, your bath’s getting cold. In you go!”
Eilish pulled off her shapeless dress and then her even more shapeless shift. Beneath these she wore nothing, and she looked down at herself as she stepped into the hip bath. She was surprised to see that her breasts had begun to fill out, though the rest of her body was thin and flat. She shivered with cold and flushed with embarrassment all at the same time.
Bessie picked up her clothes, holding them at arm’s length, and disappeared with them. Mrs. Stevenson had already left the kitchen on some other errand, leaving only Eilish and Cook. Cook was even plumper than Bessie, with red cheeks and soft brown hair. She gave Eilish a cake of fragrant yellow soap and a brush with a long wooden handle, and then turned away to her baking.
Eilish took the soap and brush and sank slowly down into the water. She had never felt such a warm wetness, and after her first fear, the sensation was delicious. The water reached just to her chest, and her bent knees poked out above it. Little by little, she began to lather herself. When she had soaped her whole body and rinsed it, she did it again. Bessie came in with a pile of clothing and stood beside the tub. “Hair,” she said shortly.
Eilish said, “What?”
“Hair,” Bessie repeated sourly. “Wash your hair, too.”
Eilish didn’t bother arguing. She dropped her head backward into the water until it was thoroughly wet, and applied the soap to her tangle of black hair. So pleasant was this new experience that she didn’t even mind Bessie’s tone. Not until the water began to grow chilly and slightly scummy with the soap did she want to think about getting out.
When she was dried, and her hair wrapped in the towel, Bessie began to hold out items of clothing. They were obviously well-worn, but clean. There were bloomers, a scratchy wool shift, cotton stockings, and the loveliest pale blue petticoat. Over it all went a dark blue wool sack gown, much too long, but marvelously warm. Bessie took the towel and rubbed Eilish’s head briskly. It hurt, but Eilish was too proud to say so. When her hair was mostly dry, Bessie tied it in a thick horsetail in the back, and pulled a lappet cap over it, tying the cap with strings beneath Eilish’s chin. She stood back then and looked at her handiwork.
“You’ll do,” she said. “Here’s a pair of Miss Polly’s shoes. They’ll be too long, but you can stuff the toes if you need to.”
They were soft calf leather, worn and pliable. Eilish put them on with a little sigh, and Bessie sniffed. “Indeed,” she said.
Cook laid out a cup of tea and a plate with hot fresh bread on it. “Here you are, my girl,” she said gruffly, but not, Eilish thought, unkindly. “A bite to get you through the morning.”
Clean outside, warm inside, Eilish sipped the hot tea and then took a huge mouthful of bread, sweet and soft. It was so much whiter than the hinder end loaf that would be Mackie’s breakfast. At the thought, her gorge rose suddenly, and she put down the thick slice of bread. Would Mackie haunt her every day here?
She looked up and saw Cook’s inquiring glance. “Oh, it’s ever so lovely,” she said sincerely. “Thanks.” And with Cook’s eye on her, she finished the snack.
7
San Antonio, May 2018
ALARGE, red-faced woman met Erin and Mal’s plane in San Antonio. As Mal supervised a skycap in the removal of the instrument cases from the first-class cabin, the woman chatted endlessly to Erin, calling her “honey,” rattling on about the heat and the orchestra and the hotel. Erin stood nodding, trying not to look bored. They set out through the airport at last, Erin keeping an eye on the motorized cart carrying her instrument, glancing around occasionally at the renovated terminal. Phone consoles and information booths were set into the stucco walls like saints’ niches in a Spanish mission, and all the seats had curving, solid arms like church pews. Imitation moss draped every corner.
“Honey, isn’t it hot?” the red-faced woman asked. “You must be tired. We’ll just have to get you a nap. Would you like some ice cream?” Erin hadn’t caught the woman’s name, but it didn’t seem to matter, since there was never a break in the stream of words. It was a relief to reach the limo. As they drove away, Erin gazed out at Texas in springtime and tried to breathe away the hollow feeling in her solar plexus that came from missing Charlie.
The limo, a gray contemp, rolled past fields delicately tinged with green, where cattle and horses grazed. In one pasture, Australian emu paraded on long thin legs behind a tall electrified fence. Erin didn’t know what they were for, but she smiled, thinking what Charlie might have said. A few minutes later they drove past a tented enclave that sprawled over many acres, the smoke of outdoor cooking fires rising in slender streams into the still air.
In the city the central neighborhoods were styled with wooden spikes topping stone walls and glassphalt driveways cut to look like cobblestones. The maintenance workers wore loose cotton shirts and trousers and broad-brimmed sombreros. The rooms at the Riverwalk Plaza were furnished in white wicker and tiled in brick-red. When Erin went into her room, she found a large bouquet of irises and orchids sent by the Chamber Music Society, and a fruit basket waiting near the hot- and cold-server. The red-faced woman peeked into the room, nodded satisfaction, and said, “You need some lunch, Mr. Oskar?”
Mal, opening the door to the room next door, said, “Thanks, but we ate on the plane.”
“You okay, too, honey?” the woman asked Erin.
“Yes,” Erin said. “Thank you for the flowers. And the fruit.”
The woman was talking even before she finished her sentence. “You just call room service if you’re hungry. I’ll be by to pick you up for dinner. You just have a little nap, now, honey.”
A bellhop, costumed in belted leather trousers and a wide-sleeved shirt, set Erin’s suitcases on the valet rack and pressed the button to turn on the viewwindow. “Shall I unpack for you, miss?” he asked.
“No, thanks, I’ll do it.” She gave him some money, and he closed the door on his way out. Sighing, Erin kicked her shoes into a corner, took a Japanese pear from the basket, and turned to survey the room.
In the viewwindow a dancer in a flaring red dress twirled across a bougainvillea-draped patio. A man on a wrought-iron bench bent over a large guitar, his face hidden by a stiff, silver-trimmed hat. Beyond the hacienda, brown fields stretched beneath an empty blue sky. The dancer swayed and stamped, soundlessly snapping her fingers. Erin watched her for a moment before she went to the realwindows to open the latticework shutters.
The room looked directly down on the Riverwalk, where heavy tree boughs hung over smooth glassphalt paths. Between them the San Antonio River ran green and clear, its slow-moving waters microbe-clean. Erin nibbled at the pear and watched pedestrians in shorts and sleeveless shirts stroll in the sunshine. The Riverwalk was lined for miles with umbrella-shaded restaurant tables and covered kiosks. Waiters and vendors wore long dresses and bonnets, or leather pants and sombreros. It was all quite lovely and silly. How nice it would be if Charlie were here, if the two of them could go down to the Riverwalk, sit, and watch the river and the people flow by, laugh together. She could go alone, of course, but it wouldn’t be the same.
The phone console chimed and said, “You have a call, Miss Rushton. It is a Seattle number. Do you wish to take it?”
“Yes!” Erin threw herself across the bed, stretched out on her stomach facing the phone.
Charlie’s face filled the screen, and she grinned at him, waving the pear. It was the first time all day she had felt cheerful. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he answered, smiling back at her. Looking at his familiar face was like looking into a mirror, the same fine bones and slender chin and white-blond hair. Sometimes he threatened to grow a beard so people could tell them apart. “You made it, I guess.”
“Here we are,” she answered. She gestured around her at the hotel room. “Another city, another suite.”
Charlie followed her gesture. “Nice flowers. What’s that? In the viewwindow?”
She rolled a bit to the side so the camera could see it. “Flamenco dancer, I think. From 1836. The Alamo and everything. You remember from the last time, don’t you?”
“That was three years ago. Most of it was still under construction. How does the city look?”
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