by Pamela Pope
‘Galina, take care,’ Hedda warned the year-old child when she fidgeted.
‘Galina?’ Ellie was suddenly alert. ‘This is …’
‘Our dear Katrina’s daughter. You saved her from the fire. We owe you so much, Ellie.’ Hedda’s expression was loving. ‘Galina idolises the baby. She won’t leave him for a minute and I have to put his cradle beside hers. I don’t know what she will do when you take him away.’ She touched the infant head nestling against Ellie’s breast and a lovely smile lit up her lined face. ‘I, too. Our grandson has brought us peace.’
Hedda was different now from the woman who had been so hurt on the night Max had introduced her to his gentile wife. Jacob, too, was caring and considerate. He came to the bedroom diffidently to ask after her health, and kept his eyes averted if she was not covered to the chin with shawls. They were kind people, gentle and God-fearing, and Ellie’s heart warmed to them more each day.
It was a while before she recalled the strange conversation she had heard whispered between Max and the man in the black coat. The next time her husband came to see her she asked him about it.
‘Max, will I be able to have any more children?’
It was a moment before he answered. Then: ‘You had a miscarriage,’ he said. ‘Dr Harris said you must have been about six weeks pregnant but you lost the baby when you were kicked. There can never be another.’
Ellie thought back to the evening when she had worn the blue gown and knew that was when she had conceived. She bit her lips to stop them trembling, but nothing could stem the flow of tears. Max sat on the bed and drew her into his arms, holding her while she sobbed. He stroked her hair and tried to comfort her with soothing words, but she was inconsolable. Grief for the child she had lost overwhelmed her, and the knowledge that she could never bear him another son was the bitterest blow of her life. How could other women have done this to her?
The doctor came once more and was satisfied with her progress. The pain in her body was easing, the bruises fading, and she was able to stand without help. In another week, he told her, she would be able to go downstairs.
Time had become static and she could hardly believe that it was already the beginning of August. She had been ill for four weeks, and in that time the strike had ended. The call for a general strike had failed and the boycott had gradually broken down as men sought re-employment, while the American Railway Union had lost many of its members through disillusionment. Little had been achieved. Eugene Debs had been jailed for a week for contempt, and when the Pullman Palace Car Company posted notices advertising for workers, those on strike feared for their future. Rallies were still being held to try to revive men’s spirits and their passion for the cause, but empty bellies and empty pockets had already dictated the outcome.
Max didn’t go back to the upholstery shop. He stopped paying rent for the apartment, collected the folder containing his designs, and every day he took them out to show Chicago furniture manufacturers. Every night he came home with them rejected, and his face grew longer.
*
It was raining the second time that Sibylla Harvey came to see her daughter. The carriage pulled up outside Jacob Berman’s Tailoring Emporium and Melksham helped her down, holding an umbrella over her as she crossed the sidewalk. Even on a fine day she would have disliked being in the area. In the rain it was so depressing she almost decided to postpone the visit, but Drew had been insistent that something must be done to help Ellie.
‘What a pleasure, Mrs Harvey,’ Jacob Berman said. ‘Welcome to our home.’
‘I wish to see Elena and her husband. I trust they are here.’
‘Please come through.’
The narrow passage between the shop and the house would hardly accommodate the width of her hat and leg-of-mutton sleeves. Everything was spotlessly clean, yet Sibylla lifted her purple damask skirt as if afraid it would be soiled, and she kept her bead handbag clasped against her waist. The living room behind the shop was dark and dreary, colour seeming to be non-existent except for the brightness of the red-headed child who looked like an angel asleep on Hedda Berman’s lap.
At once there was activity. The woman stood up and disturbed the child, Jacob called his son, and Ellie appeared on the stairs at the back of the room which were shrouded in shadows.
‘Mama!’ Ellie cried. She was painfully thin and wore a dress of grey checked wool poplin which sapped what colour she had left. The dowdiness of her daughter shocked Sibylla almost more than her fragility. ‘Oh Mama, this is wonderful. I’m so pleased to see you.’
‘Can I offer you some refreshment, Mrs Harvey?’ asked Hedda.
‘Thank you, no. I wish to speak to Elena and Max alone.’ Sibylla removed her gloves. A fire was burning in the grate and the humid heat made her feel quite faint. ‘Is there somewhere private?’
The bedroom was the only place. It was where she had last seen Ellie lying still and bruised, and unaware of her presence. The visit had distressed her so much she’d put off coming again. Had Conrad known anything about it she would never have been allowed to come at all.
‘Dearest Mama, if only you knew how much I’ve missed you,’ Ellie said, holding her mother’s hands as soon as they were alone. Her cheeks were damp.
‘I’ve missed you too.’ Suddenly Sibylla realised that they had hardly touched in years, and the feel of Ellie’s fingers clutching her own, unleashed emotions she had kept in check since her own unhappy girlhood. In those days she had learnt not to show her feelings for fear of being hurt. ‘Oh Ellie, I’ve been so worried about you. I can’t tell you how distraught I was at what happened to you.’
She undid the veil tied beneath her chin, removed her hat, and drew Ellie into the first embrace they had shared in a very long time.
Max appeared. He greeted his mother-in-law coolly. ‘To what do we owe this honour, Mrs Harvey? As you see, my wife is almost recovered.’
It surprised Sibylla to see that he was the master in his marriage. Ellie had always been so headstrong she had thought that anyone who married her would be left trailing in her wake, but Max was dominant. Sibylla couldn’t help but recognise the sexuality of the man. Those smouldering eyes must surely inflame every woman he looked at, and it was no wonder Ellie was still plainly besotted.
‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ she said. ‘You can’t return to Pullman and it appears you can’t get work in Chicago. What do you intend to do?’
‘I shall find work,’ said Max.
‘We’re deeper in recession than ever. There is no work. My husband won’t employ you, though I’ve asked him and so has Drew.’ Sibylla sat on the edge of a chair and waved her gloves in an effort to feel some cool air. ‘So I’ve come to offer you a solution and if you refuse I shall know you have less sense than a baboon.’
‘Mama, how rude you are,’ protested Ellie.
Surprisingly Max smiled. ‘You’re not expecting me to swing from trees, I hope?’
‘I’m expecting you to pack your things and take your wife and child to England,’ said Sibylla. She twisted the gilt catch on her handbag and opened it. ‘The money in here represents some of the dowry Elena should have had … and before you remind me that your pride forbids you to accept anything from Conrad Harvey, let me tell you that the money is mine, not his. I don’t need it — you do.’
‘But, Mama, what would we do in England?’
‘There’ll be an opportunity for you to make a new start. My father, Sir Robert Cromer, is a very rich man with a good deal of influence. I’ve written to tell him you’ll be arriving early next month and asked him to see that Max is given a good job.’ She brought an envelope out of the bag and handed it to Ellie. ‘Your grandfather’s address is in here. So are tickets and reservations on the steamship New York which will take you to Southampton. I’ve spoken on the telephone to Dr Harris and he assures me you will be fit to travel in a week’s time.’
Max took the envelope from his wife befor
e she had a chance to look inside and, as expected, he tried to give it back. ‘You cannot run my life, Mrs Harvey. We both thank you for the offer but we can’t accept it.’
‘But Max …’ Ellie cried.
‘I make the decisions,’ he said. ‘We’re not leaving Chicago.’
‘Your pride will be the ruin of you,’ sighed Sibylla. ‘No one can go through life without accepting help sometimes. How do you think Presidents are made? They need support. At the moment you need money to help you out of this intolerable situation and I’m giving it because you are family.’
‘The money is my wife’s.’
‘I want you to have it,’ Ellie put in immediately.
Sibylla felt sorry for them. Ellie was still only eighteen but by her own choice she was locked in a marriage which had brought nothing but trouble and deprivation while her contemporaries still danced the night away without a care. And Max was too unyielding and too honest to see that opportunities were there for the taking, if you wanted to succeed in this life! Where would Conrad have been without her father’s money? She would never say that Conrad had been unscrupulous, but thinking back she could see that he’d had a dual purpose in marrying her and she had always suspected that the advantages of her dowry had figured larger than love.
‘Think of your son,’ she said to Max. ‘He deserves the best, just as Elena does. What can you do without money?’
‘I can provide.’
‘With what?’ She was fast losing patience. ‘You are responsible for my daughter. I’m not saying you are totally to blame for the situation she is now in, because I know how she plagued us to give our consent, but I’m saying that you ought to allow for the fact that she was not born into poverty and cannot be expected to exist in it permanently when there is an alternative.’
‘I’d love to go and see Grandfather Cromer,’ said Ellie. ‘And I want to see England.’
Max was too tall for the low-ceilinged room and he had been standing with his neck bent. He rubbed it vigorously while he deliberated. Sibylla was afraid Ellie’s enthusiasm might jeopardise her chance and reverse the faint sign of weakening, but surely Max was no fool. He would know that by refusing he would be destined to remain at the bottom of the pile while others who had not been blacklisted took the work he sought.
‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘For Ellie’s sake I will accept, but it will be a loan. One day I shall repay it.’
‘I never want to hear of it again,’ said Sibylla. She gave the envelope to Ellie and handed a package to Max containing more banknotes than he had ever seen. ‘Open a bank account and when you get to England you can transfer it. There will be enough money to last until my father settles you in business.’
She embraced Ellie again before leaving and was surprised at how emotional she felt. Briefly she regretted the action she had just taken because it meant she would not be seeing her daughter again for a very long time, but at least she had the satisfaction of knowing she had rescued her from degradation.
It had stopped raining when she left the tailor’s shop.
‘Drive home, please,’ she instructed Melksham. ‘Thank goodness we won’t have to come here again.’
*
Ellie and Max talked about their changed circumstances well into the night. The money and the steamship tickets had been put into Jacob’s safe, but the letter with Sir Robert Cromer’s address had become creased with scrutiny.
‘Why go to England?’ Max asked. ‘The money would set me up in business here. I could make furniture from my designs.’
‘And who would buy it? You’ve already been round all the manufacturers, and if they don’t like your ideas no one else will. That would be throwing the money away.’
‘We could go to New York.’
‘No.’ Ellie’s return to health was marked by a spirited revival of obstinacy. ‘We have the tickets to England — why waste them?’
‘The money’s yours,’ he said with bad grace, after she had discarded several more suggestions. ‘It seems I must go where my wife wishes.’
‘It’s our money, Max, and we’re going to do wonderful things with it.’
She was cross with him. He was showing no gratitude for her mother’s generosity, yet they were living in his parents’ house for nothing, relying on them for food and a roof over their heads when the Bermans could ill afford it. He was behaving stupidly and it was time he learnt to be a little more flexible.
‘We’ll be together, that’s what matters most,’ she said later, curling up against him in the lumpy double bed. She longed for him to kiss her like a lover, but he refrained from any overture which might signal the start of a renewed physical relationship. Until now she hadn’t wanted it, but since the excitement of her mother’s visit she felt revitalised and the first quiver of desire disturbed her body.
‘Go to sleep,’ Max answered. ‘Tomorrow we’ll go over things again.’
‘And I shall still insist we go to England.’
*
Two weeks later, Max and Ellie Berman with their son William occupied a stateroom aboard the USMSS New York when it sailed to Southampton, England, and they were treated according to the importance of their hundred-dollar tickets. They had deckchairs hired in advance, ate at the Captain’s table, and were obliged to change into full evening dress for dinner. A portmanteau labelled ‘Hold’ and containing new clothes had been delivered the day before they left, along with a small one with items for William, and there was a selection of small flat boxes marked ‘Wanted’ which could be stowed away for use in the cabin. Sibylla never did things by halves and she had ensured they would want for nothing, either on the voyage or in their new life. Max had agreed to use the suits and shirts carefully chosen for himself, but nothing would stop him wearing the long green coat his father had made for him.
The ship cut through the choppy Atlantic water causing a swell which spread out like a white lace fan beyond her stern. In the moonlight Max could trace it back almost to the horizon and his eyes focused on the most distant waves, wishing he could ride them back to New York City.
Leaning on the deck-rails, he compared this voyage with the one he had made from Russia with his parents. Then there had been disease and overcrowding, yet everyone had been united in the belief that America was the land of plenty where they would no longer be refugees. They’d been right to hope for good things. He loved America and had no wish to leave it. What hope was there of happiness on an island where every road must lead to the sea? He was used to vast open spaces.
The night air was chilly and he huddled deeper into his coat. It wasn’t that he objected to the preferential treatment. It was just that he had done nothing to earn it except marry a wealthy man’s daughter. It would have been enough for some men, but Max wanted to be accepted on his own merit.
Ellie, of course, was quite at home amongst the upper class who professed friendship because they dined at the Captain’s table. She was at ease with them, in her element holding long conversations on subjects about which he knew nothing, and he could see how she blossomed in her own environment. The effects of her illness had disappeared. Ellie ought never to have been plucked from her rich background where she was so comfortable and contented. And Max was growing more and more uncomfortable in the presence of these people with whom he had nothing in common. He didn’t fit in. He never would.
He pondered over the letter Sibylla had written about her father. Sir Robert Cromer was a self-made man, a contractor. He’d built elegant railroad stations in two British cities, laid countless miles of track to link almost every town in the country, and he had been knighted for his work. He employed agents, sub-agents, navvies in their thousands, lawyers, advisers and secretaries. His headquarters was his home in London, a grand mansion on the scale of Prairie Avenue property but without the surrounding gardens. Land in London was at a premium. He also had a country house and more money than he knew how to use. Max thought of him with grud
ging admiration, but with no wish to be beholden to him.
On the sixth day of the voyage, when eyes were trained westward in the hope of catching a first glimpse of the Irish coastline, Ellie began unfolding her plans for the future.
‘One of the first things we must do is enrol William for a public school,’ she said. ‘I’m told Eton is the best. Mrs Faber’s son went there.’
‘William is only four months old,’ Max protested. ‘It’ll be time to talk about school in another five years.’
‘Oh no. We’re already late. Apparently we should have enrolled him when he was born.’
‘I will not have my son brought up to be soft.’
‘He must be educated like a gentleman,’ she insisted. ‘He is the great-grandson of Sir Robert Cromer, a peer of the realm.’
‘And the grandson of Jacob Berman, an honest Jew.’
‘Are you saying my grandfather didn’t come by his money honestly?’
‘I’m saying that William is just an ordinary child and all I want is for him to be wise enough to make a living and strong enough to defend himself.’
‘You’re impossible, Max. You don’t appreciate anything.’
Angry words flew between them and both were determined not to back down. It was one of many rows that developed in the confined cabin space and Max frequently left abruptly, walking round the deck to cool off.
Ellie’s ideas were becoming more fanciful by the hour, partly because Mrs Faber had lent her a magazine featuring London’s social life which advised on where it was fashionable to be seen and with whom, and what to wear on each occasion.
‘We shall have to go dancing, Max,’ she said. ‘I love dancing, don’t you?’
‘I’ve never danced in my life. When would I have learnt?’
‘Well, I shall teach you. I’m sure Grandfather will have a ballroom in his house. We’ll be invited to all the important functions, and I must be presented to the Prince of Wales. Mrs Faber says the Queen just never goes out, but perhaps we’ll be able to go to Windsor Castle, or wherever it is she lives.’