by Maureen Lee
Agatha didn’t care. She wasn’t prepared to marry just anyone to get a ring on her finger. ‘If I’m going to be an old maid, I’ll be a happy one,’ she said gaily.
She was there the night Philip Fraser called on Mollie to see how she was. Philip was the young constable who’d been present the day she’d returned from Duneathly to be met with the terrible news that Tom was dead. When she was told his name, Mollie remembered he and Tom had been good friends. This was the third time he’d called to see her. He wasn’t quite as tall as Tom, or as handsome, at least in Mollie’s eyes.
She introduced him to Agatha, whose face was red from the fire. Her brown hair was piled in an untidy heap on top of her head, and her spectacles were resting on the tip of her nose, as she looked up from the piece of scarlet material she was sewing.
Philip stayed longer than Mollie had expected. When Agatha announced it was time to go, he jumped to his feet with alacrity and asked if he could walk her as far as the tram stop. A few days later, Agatha told her that the next night they’d gone to the pictures and to a dance the night after that. In no time at all they were going steady.
Watching her friend and Tom’s friend fall more and more deeply in love was yet another reminder that the world didn’t stop turning every time a tragedy occurred. She would just have to get used to things being the way they were. Tom had gone and if she didn’t accept that fact then she had a pretty dire future ahead of her.
First though, she wanted to spend one more day with him.
Somehow, by being stubbornly insistent, she had arranged to have Christmas Day with just herself and the children in the house. From early morning, she could sense Tom’s presence in Megan and Brodie’s bedroom while they opened their presents, and beside her when she walked to Mass. She set a place for him at table at dinner-time and imagined him on the floor with his girls when they played with the doll’s house their Uncle Enoch had made. Dandelion was crouched outside the tiny front door, ready to pounce on any creature smaller than himself who might emerge. Joey sat on Mollie’s knee, chirping like a bird and waving his arms at absolutely nothing - though perhaps he, too, could see his dad and he was waving at him.
It was a quiet day, serene and uneventful. The children enjoyed themselves and Mollie said goodbye to Tom, knowing he would never be so close to her again. Soon, people would come and take the furniture, and she would have to pack away the clothes and toys ready to go to Turnpike Street. In another seven days, she would close the door on a period of her life that had been too wonderful for words. She squared her shoulders: she was quite prepared.
Anne wasn’t the only member of the cast in the wings watching Zeke’s solo with fascination and a measure of disbelief. Some of the moves looked physically impossible: the way he ran up the wall, and somersaulted backwards; the perfect cartwheels in a circle around the stage; the incredible leaps on and off the counter, which must have been almost five feet off the floor. A sign above it said ‘Reception’ - it was supposed to be the lobby of the hotel in which Roses are Red was set. Zeke played a bellboy, and wore an emerald green uniform with gold buttons and a round, pillbox hat secured under his chin by a strap. The show had been running for over three months and the hat had fallen off just twice. Zeke had covered by throwing it on to a coat hook where it stayed put.
The audience were spellbound. Anne could only see the faces of the first few rows where people were watching, open-mouthed, as Zeke leapt from the counter on to a luggage trolley and careered across the stage, stopping only inches from the orchestra pit. There was an audible gasp and the musicians held up their hands in horror - it was all part of the act. The trolley was scooted in the direction of an ornate staircase where Zeke danced to the top at an incredible speed, slid down the banister, and landed on the trolley with such force that it rolled back to Reception and he jumped back on the counter with a grace of a cat. There was a grin on his face and a glow in his eyes that showed he was having the time of his life. He finished by dancing on his hands with incredible skill, double-somersaulting to the ground, and finishing with a magnificently ostentatious bow.
The curtains closed for the end of the second act and the audience shouted for more, but they were to be disappointed: Conrad Abel, the producer, didn’t allow encores until the show was over. Zeke came off stage, his face dripping with perspiration. Anne could have sworn she could see steam rising from his body. His father, who was also his dresser, waited for him with a jug of water, which he drank without pausing for breath. He tore off his hat and undid the buttons on his tunic, then noticed Anne watching.
‘Hello, there,’ he said with a grin.
‘Hello.’ She grinned back. She really liked Zeke. Along with Herbie, the three had become the best of friends. ‘Every night you get even more fantastic. I’m not entirely convinced you’re human.’
Herbie came and pumped Zeke’s arm. ‘I go along with that, pal,’ he enthused. ‘Tonight you were truly out of this world.’
Zeke bowed and rolled his eyes. ‘Well, yo see, massa and missus, I’se a nigger, and some folks already think I ain’t really human fo’ that reason alone.’
His father dug him sharply in the ribs. ‘Don’t talk like that, boy.’
‘Sorry, Pops. Just trying to fit the stereotypical picture that white folk have of us niggers.’
‘And don’t say nigger, either,’ his father said disapprovingly. ‘You’re a black man and you should be proud of that fact.’ Zeke’s dad, Lemuel Penn, had been a sergeant in the Army and had fought in the Great War. A bullet in his hip had left him with a slight limp. In the day, he worked in a hardware store in Harlem. Zeke and his eight brothers and sisters had done well at school, and Zeke had been the first black student to attend Peggy Perlmann’s academy. Some parents had removed their children in protest, but the numbers had quickly returned to their usual level.
Despite Zeke being a phenomenal performer, Conrad Abel had taken a risk hiring an eighteen-year-old black man for such a big part in a white show, but the reviews had been good and Zeke Penn was considered a triumph. Roses are Red wasn’t in the same class as Show Boat, a landmark musical written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, but the story of two rich middle-aged people - played by Eric Carrington and Patricia Peters - and their respective children - Herbie and Anne - struggling to bring their parents together, had struck a chord with New Yorkers. Even if it hadn’t happened to them, they all knew people who’d lost everything, and it was nice to escape to the theatre for a few hours and watch the wealthy cope with their not-very-important problems in a five-star hotel. Roses are Red was fully booked for the next six months and expected to run for at least a year.
Zeke went to get changed for the third and final act, and Anne and Herbie did the same. Anne found a large box of chocolates from Dainty’s in front of her dressing-room mirror marked, ‘Happy Christmas, Anne. Love from Eric’, and a much smaller box from Patricia - she was notoriously mean. There were presents from other members of the cast, but nothing from Zeke. She’d bought him a white silk scarf with a long fringe.
There was a knock on the door and she called, ‘Come in.’ The door opened, but the person didn’t enter. She saw the tall, distinguished figure of Lemuel Penn standing outside. He bowed slightly, though there was nothing obsequious about it.
‘Zeke would like to know if you would be offended if he gave you a gift for Christmas?’ he said courteously.
Anne regarded him with astonishment. ‘Why on earth should I?’
‘Some women might.’ There was a reproachful look in his eyes, as if to say she must surely be aware of the slights and insults he, his son, and all black people were subjected to on a daily basis.
‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ she said stoutly. ‘And I’ve got something for him.’
‘Thank you, Miss Murray,’ he said, as though on Zeke’s behalf. ‘Another thing—’
She interrupted, ‘Why don’t you come in, Mr Penn?’ She cleared a chair of clothes and indicated that h
e sit.
‘I think it wiser if I stayed outside.’ He gave her the reproachful look again. ‘I am not the only person who should be careful in this sort of situation, Miss Murray. You have your reputation to consider and I would advise you never to invite a black man into your dressing room.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind, Mr Penn.’ She had heard some of the stagehands call him ‘boy’ or ‘nigger’; he pretended not to hear. ‘What was the other thing you wanted to talk to me about?’
‘Mr Blinker is having a party at his home tomorrow and all the cast have been invited. Herbie insists Zeke has been included, but I wanted to make sure.’
‘Zeke is definitely included. We’ve worked out a routine between the three of us and we’re going to put on a bit of a show.’
‘Is that so?’ He frowned, clearly annoyed. ‘Zeke didn’t mention it.’
‘We only thought about it the other day.’
‘I see.’ He made to close the door. ‘It’s time you got changed for the next act, Miss Murray. I hope you have a very enjoyable Christmas - and Herbie, too, if I don’t see him before I leave.’
‘And the same to you and your family, Mr Penn.’
Anne hadn’t seen a black person in her life until she came to America. After five years there, she still couldn’t think of a single reason why anyone should be treated differently because of the colour of his or her skin. It was surely not what the Lord Jesus himself would have wanted, for hadn’t he created people in his image, and wasn’t he a dark man himself? Lev had understood, but she’d noticed he didn’t have a single black friend. ‘It’s just not done, Anne,’ he’d remarked when she’d asked him why.
There were states in the South where black people had to sit in their own section at the back of buses, and weren’t allowed in certain restaurants and shops.
It shocked and sickened her, quite literally gave her a headache, when she thought about black people being treated with such contempt. It was just as bad that other people who’d done no harm to anyone were reduced to living in the Hoovervilles. Wasn’t God supposed to keep an eye on what was happening on earth?
Anne donated half her income to charity. She would have given more but Ollie Blinker advised her against it. ‘You need to think about the future, baby. You won’t always be a dancer and you don’t want to end up in a shack in Central Park like that family you’ve adopted, do you?’
‘Well, no,’ Anne conceded. She felt guilty that she could buy clothes whenever she liked and eat whatever she fancied, but the problem of the poor wouldn’t be solved by becoming poor herself, at least so Ollie said, and Lev agreed when she asked him.
On Christmas Day, she got up early and immediately looked out of the window where the sky was a gentle grey spotted with white puffy clouds. Central Park was covered with frost and the road glittered as if it had been sprinkled with diamonds. A few cars crawled along and a man walking his dog was the only person on foot. She was conscious of the warmth in the room coming from the iron radiator on the wall. There was a boiler downstairs that heated the entire building. A memory surfaced, of another Christmas, waking up to find toys on the floor beside the bed, and sweets and fruit stuffed in one of her grey school socks. That room, she recalled, was freezing. The memory flitted away as quickly as it had come.
She put on a thick, wool frock, boots, and a fake fur coat with a hood that made her look like a teddy bear, picked up a carrier bag full of brightly wrapped parcels, and made her way to the kitchen where Christina, still in her dressing gown, was waiting with a basket of food that smelled delicious: a mixture of turkey and plum pudding.
‘Would you like me to come with you, honey?’ she offered. ‘I can get dressed as quick as a flash if you want.’
‘I’ll be all right.’
‘Well, you make sure you are now. Fred’s downstairs with the car.’
‘Thank you Christina,’ Anne said gravely. ‘You’re very kind.’
‘You’re the kind one, honey. I doubt if there’s many people in New York this morning giving a thought to the poor folks in the Hoovervilles.’ She patted Anne’s arm. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee before you go?’
‘No, thank you. I’m going to Communion afterwards and I don’t want to break my fast.’
‘In that case, I’ll have a pot ready for when you come back.’
Fred, the Blinkers’ driver, was Christina’s husband. He’d never said anything, but Anne could always tell from the critical expression on his swarthy face that he disapproved of the residents of the makeshift shacks that littered the grass at the other end of the park. When he got out of the Duesenberg to open the door for her, his nose twitched as if there were a dreadful smell underneath it - which happened to be true.
The entire area stank of urine and other disgusting odours, not surprising considering the unsanitary living conditions. The smell was even worse in summer. There were no bathrooms and the only running water came from a tap some distance away where there was usually a very long queue.
Anne’s boots made a crunching noise on the crisp, white grass as she made her way past the makeshift huts towards the Schultzes, the family she had befriended. Their home was a patchwork of scraps of wood and metal, old sacks and tarpaper. There was a partial wooden floor, the rest being covered with a tarpaulin and pieces of carpet. The door must have come from a shop because it was half-glazed and had the words ‘Watch the Step’ painted on the outside. She had no idea how the family managed to sleep comfortably on the assortment of chairs that were the only furniture, apart from a small table.
On Christmas morning, as Anne approached, a thin spiral of smoke emerged from the pipe that poked through the metal roof. The pipe was connected to a round iron fire that burned logs and kept the shack surprisingly warm if you managed to avoid the numerous draughts.
Mr Schultz, born in Germany, now an American citizen, was married with six young children. He had worked as a messenger for a bank that had closed down, and sometimes she wondered if it was the same one where Bobby Gifford, the man she’d found on a bench in the park, had worked. Mrs Schultz was a sad little woman with a bad chest. She found it harder to stand up to the privations of her present life than did her husband and children. Mr Schultz just laughed his way through it and the children were amazingly tough. They seemed to obtain a certain amount of enjoyment from their poverty-stricken life. It was through the eldest two, Gail and Vinny, who were twelve and ten respectively, that Anne had got to know the family. It was Hallowe’en and they were selling masks for a dime each that they’d made from black cardboard, but not doing very well. Anne had bought the lot for a dollar then gone with them to the drugstore to get medicine for their mother.
‘She coughs a lot,’ Gail explained.
Since then, Anne had often visited the family with food and clothes.
A tatty scrap of lace curtain hung over the glass in the door. Anne knocked and Mr Schultz let her in. ‘Merry Christmas,’ he roared, as if he were welcoming her into his baronial castle. ‘Come in, Miss Murray, come in.’ She must have asked him a dozen times to call her Anne.
The children flung themselves at her. She gave Gail the carrier bag and asked her to distribute the presents. ‘They’ve all got labels on.’ The basket she handed to Mrs Schultz, who could never quite hide the resentment in her eyes. ‘I don’t want charity,’ they seemed to say. ‘I want our apartment in East Village back. I want my husband to have a job and my children new clothes. I don’t want to spend Christmas in this awful place with people like you bringing us food when I’d sooner buy our own.’
Today, the woman was looking ill again. ‘Thank you,’ she said in a sullen voice when she’d looked through the food: candy, a Christmas pudding, and enough turkey and vegetables to feed eight. It would only need reheating later on top of the little round fire, the fumes from which were making Anne choke. Somehow, the place managed to be warm and cold at the same time. Draughts were sweeping up her coat, yet her face felt hot. She hoped she wasn�
��t getting another headache.
‘There’s a present for you, Ma,’ Gail shouted, ‘and one for Dad.’
‘It’s just scarves and gloves,’ Anne muttered. She didn’t like being Lady Bountiful: it made her feel embarrassed. Next time she had a parcel, she’d get someone else to bring it.
‘What do you say to Miss Murray?’ Mr Schultz raised his thick black eyebrows at the children. Having opened his own present, he was winding the brown knitted scarf around his neck as if to prove how appreciative he was. Mrs Schultz was shivering badly as she opened her own gift. Anne wished she’d brought something prettier; jewellery, for instance.
‘Thank you, Miss Murray,’ the children chorused. She’d bought dolls and clockwork cars for the younger children, a set of paints for Gail, who was very artistic, and, on the advice of Herbie, a knife with lots of blades for Vinny.
‘Would you care to sit down, Miss Murray, and take a cup of tea with us?’
She sat down, but refused the tea saying she’d prefer a cup of hot water. Although she longed to leave, she courteously sat in one of the chairs and waited for the kettle to boil.
‘Where’s your coat, miss?’ Eric enquired almost half an hour later when Anne returned to the car.
‘I gave it to Mrs Schultz; she was desperately cold.’
Eric tutted. ‘Now you’re desperately cold.’ He got out the car, took a rug out of the trunk and wrapped it around her shoulders. ‘Do you still want to go to church?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I’ll stop at the apartment and ask Christina for another coat,’ Eric said. ‘Or would you sooner collect it yourself?’
‘You do it for me, please.’ If Lizzie were up, Anne would have a job getting out again. Lizzie, who never went near a church, couldn’t understand the importance of going regularly to Mass. ‘How can it possibly be a sin to miss it?’ she would argue.