Dreamland

by Nancy Bilyeau

  Dreamland

  Nancy Bilyeau

  © Nancy Bilyeau 2020

  Nancy Bilyeau has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2020 by Endeavour Quill

  Endeavour Quill is an imprint of Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  The phantom city vanished an hour after midnight.

  The one million lights of Dreamland darkened as they always did, with a clang as loud as a cannon shot, followed by a long, wheezing gush. The rides, the attractions, the sideshows, the restaurants, the dance hall, the entire fifteen-acre fairground stretching from the Canals of Venice to Lilliput – all of it had been shut down for the night. Once they’d thrown the switch on the light panels, it didn’t take long for the heat created by the electric bulbs to dissipate, replaced by the cool, salt-flavored ocean breeze. But the smell of the fairground hung on. Nothing could drive away the scent of stale popcorn, roasted peanuts, taffy and cotton candy, fried crab, boiled corn and beer, mingling with the odor of greasy machinery and rank human sweat. That was the fragrance of Coney Island, and no one ever forgot it.

  The customers trudged home, and the exhausted park workers stumbled to the narrow beds in their apartment houses in Brooklyn. It was dark and still on the fairgrounds. This was the time when the night policeman made his rounds. The beach was on his left and Dreamland on his right; the seagulls, his only companions, hopped in the sand.

  But then, in the moonlight, past the bathing pavilions, he saw the two human figures halfway down the beach, walking slowly toward the water’s edge. It was a silhouette of a man, his arm around the waist of a woman wearing a long, dark dress that, in the moonlight, stood out against the white sand. The policeman smiled to himself as the couple sank into the sand. Hadn’t he courted his wife the same way? That was twenty years ago, and he still looked forward to coming home, taking off his uniform, and sliding into bed next to her as she slept, the springs creaking as he kissed her soft shoulder.

  The policeman kept walking, headed toward Luna Park, where Shoot-the-Chutes and Helter Skelter were rendered motionless until morning. He didn’t hear the woman in the sand: a sharp, startled cry. A few minutes later, there was a different noise; a splash in the water.

  No one saw the man walk up the beach and onto the promenade, alone.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I’ve heard it over and over, my entire life, and it goes about like this: “You’ve never had a job, Peggy, so you wouldn’t understand.” Now while it may be true that I can’t fully comprehend the details of a person’s circumstances – though I think I sympathize more than I’m given credit for – it simply isn’t true that I’ve never held a job. I have. When I was twenty years old, I went to work every day at Moonrise Bookstore, a cramped two-floor shop on East Thirty-Ninth Street, and I was happy. It didn’t last, of course.

  My job as assistant clerk at Moonrise Bookstore came to an end after five months. It was not because of any dissatisfaction on my part. I didn’t want to leave, and my employer didn’t want me to go. Yet the job ended just the same. We were both helpless before, as they say, larger forces.

  My last day, 22 June, 1911, passed uneventfully up to four o’clock of this particular afternoon. I worked away at my assigned place: half of a table in the corner of the balcony, going over the orders and the inventory and the publisher catalogs. The main floor was for the customers, as well as the novelists, poets, artists, editors and illustrators who made their way to the shop. Moonrise Bookstore might have been a complete secret to the overwhelming number of people who lived in New York City, but it was a beacon for the select few set afire by new and contrary ideas, many of them bohemian. Of course I longed to be on the main floor, but Mrs. Hamilton-Starke, quite sensibly, kept me upstairs – unless there was a gap among the staff and there was no choice but to make use of me. Which is what happened at four o’clock.

  “Peggy, could you handle the front?” called out Sylvie, the assistant most trusted by Mrs. Hamilton-Starke, and the one who ran things when the owner left early for the Friday afternoon train up the Hudson.

  It seems unbelievable now, but to descend those narrow stairs and take my place on the main floor of Moonrise Bookstore was as thrilling for me as a sashay across the stage would be for a newly-cast Ziegfeld showgirl. Each click of my heel on those steps sent my heart racing, though it was excitement laced with a bit of dread. I simply wasn’t much good at practical tasks. My only formal education had been three years at the Jacobi School, where I dove deep into the rich, lovely, hypnotic world of books and plays – Ibsen, Hardy, Turgenev, Wilde, Tolstoy – but I never learned how to take money or a bank draft from someone’s hand, calculate change, wrap a parcel, address a mailing. This is largely why I was confined to the balcony.

  There weren’t many customers, thank God. The bright warmth of early summer had turned people too sluggardly for reading, perhaps. One stern-faced matron of jutting bosom thumped down a pile of books she wished to purchase and have mailed to her townhouse. I struggled in particular with Henry James’ The Golden Bowl – the sort of book my mother would display but never, ever read. I looked down at that deep turquoise leather cover with gold letters, enclosing a thick tome, as if it were my enemy. But before her skeptical eyes, it was competently paid for, wrapped, and readied. I was mastering the tasks.

  The minute the matron had sailed away, Sylvie materialized before me at the counter. She looked quite altered. What always impressed me most about Sylvie was her neat composure; she didn’t rattle. What impressed me second-most was her kindness. When I stumbled before her on my first morning at the bookshop, sleepless with nerves, I wore a long dress interlaced with ribbons – oh, how I shudder to think of it – and slung over it my mink furs. She didn’t smirk, or, from what I could tell, share a laugh with others later. In no time, I was dressing like her, in simple buttoned blouses and slim skirts stretching to three inches above the floor, and I even tried to wear my hair as she did, parted and plaited neatly on either side of the head, which was not easy given my own thick, long hair that I didn’t have enough nerve to cut.

  But this afternoon, Sylvie’s eyes were wide, and her cheeks were tinged the palest pink. “G.T. Samuels is here, with his editor from Scribner’s,” she said. My face must have drawn a blank; the name was only vaguely familiar. “You must know about Samuels, Peggy. He’s English, and he wrote a novel about – about
physical love.” At that last phrase, Sylvie’s voice dropped to a whisper, she who lived in Greenwich Village on MacDougal Street with another unmarried woman and entertained male callers her parents never met. “He’s caused a scandal.”

  Editor and author wished to discuss the plans for Samuels’ two readings next week at the shop, Sylvie explained in a rushed whisper, and I was to take notes in Mrs. Hamilton-Starke’s office while the other assistant, Melanie, covered the store.

  Consumed with curiosity, I followed her to the office. The door hung open. A funnel of white smoke emanated from within, announcing their male presence.

  “This is Peggy, our new girl,” announced Sylvie, guiding me through the door. She didn’t introduce the men to me; I didn’t warrant it.

  Two sets of eyes traveled up, since I stood a full head taller than Sylvie.

  One man bolted to his feet, clutching a pipe. He was somewhere between thirty and forty, wearing a pinstriped suit, with a wispy mustache and a shiny forehead. He was patently the Scribner’s editor, and he proceeded to make noises about how the recruits to the calling of literature get younger every year.

  I barely noticed him, for my attention was on the other man, who had not gotten to his feet – an unpardonable social sin in New York, and I would have thought in England, too. He looked to be in his late twenties and was the last person I’d expect to author a novel about anything as strenuous as physical love.

  I found the male writers and artists who showed up at the bookshop of interest: Perpetually disheveled and preoccupied, they were mysterious creatures compared to the tediously obvious young men of my circle. But G.T. Samuels was in a class by himself. He slumped in a chair; coarse red hair sprouted from his scalp, and he’d started a beard that didn’t manage to cover his pointed chin. Most striking were his pallor and blue eyes. I’d never in my life set foot in a Catholic church, but he struck me as a delicate priest, someone who rarely stepped off hallowed ground.

  G.T. Samuels didn’t say a word to me but nodded in my direction, very slowly, as if that alone were a gesture requiring tremendous effort.

  Although I was required to take notes, I’d walked in empty-handed, so Sylvie hunted around the cluttered office for paper and pencil, as the Scribner’s editor carried on with chatter.

  “What is your family name – Peggy what?” he asked, smiling in encouragement.

  I swallowed and said, “Batternberg.”

  “Ah! Well.” With a little laugh, he puffed at his pipe and then said, “It must be quite trying for you, to have people continually ask you if you’re related to the richest man in America and to have to explain otherwise.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Very trying.”

  Sylvie thrust paper and pencil at me, her eyes widening, but she didn’t say anything, and in a moment, all mention of my name was forgotten, and I was writing as fast as possible to record the conversation verbatim. What a losing battle. My handwriting was built for beauty, not speed. The Scribner’s editor blathered on about the importance of G.T. Samuels to the world of letters; Sylvie kept trying to return him to the practicalities of the shop. Their words came and went as I valiantly scribbled a captured phrase here and there. I could feel the perspiration gathering at my hairline in the small, smoky room.

  The conversation paused; my panicked grip on the pencil loosened. I glanced at the person sitting closest to me, G.T. Samuels, who’d been silent throughout their outlining of plans for his readings.

  Samuels wasn’t listening to his editor drone on; he was looking at me. He gazed at my face and then down at the chaotic scrawls racing across the paper, and a tiny smile tightened the corner of his lips. His light blue eyes, which had seemed blank, almost glassy, to me before, bore an entirely new expression. Amusement.

  I looked away, quickly. As my fingers tightened on the pencil again, preparing to resume, a rich warmth crept up through me. I could feel it reaching my face, and, helpless to prevent it, reddening my cheeks.

  The discussion about the upcoming readings stalled after another minute. Scribner’s, as I’d come to call him in my brain, declared it the perfect moment for a drink. Sylvie objected, but laughingly, and the next thing I knew the editor was jabbing a finger at the cabinet behind me.

  “I’m positive Mrs. Hamilton-Starke wouldn’t mind,” he declared with the ferocity of someone who really had to have that drink, and he flung open the cabinet doors.

  Inside was a jumble of liquor bottles, some recently obtained and some dusty, with torn labels. I was positive that Mrs. Hamilton-Starke would mind our exposing her clutter of booze.

  “This is bleak,” Sylvie murmured. “I see vermouth, bourbon, maybe some gin.”

  “If you have gin and vermouth, you have a martini,” I said. “I see a cocktail mixer. But you need ice.”

  “I can fetch the ice,” Sylvie said. “But who could possibly bartend?”

  Without thinking, I said, “Well, I can make a martini.”

  It was as if a giraffe announced it could fly. They wanted to see this feat. However, this meant Sylvie slipping out in search of ice, and I was left alone with the two men. I prayed they would talk to each other, that I wouldn’t be expected to entertain them with the sparkle of my conversation, but God was in the mood to toy with my mortal self that afternoon, for Scribner’s next question was, “Miss Batternberg, you’re a bright young creature at the most progressive bookstore in New York City – tell us, what is your favorite book of the year?”

  I froze. I hadn’t read G.T. Samuels’ new novel, so even though the polite response would be to cite his, I couldn’t risk being asked a second question on what I liked best about it, when absolutely all I knew was that it included “physical love.” My mind went blank as I desperately searched for some other book to mention.

  I produced a long, clumsy stammering that it was impossible, with so much talent pouring into the store, to single out one writer.

  Scribner’s nodded, barely listening. I couldn’t look at G.T. Samuels, certain of disappointment.

  Where was Sylvie? Her quest for ice seemed to be taking an endless amount of time, though probably less than five minutes transpired. I blurted, “I saw an exhibition of paintings last month I quite liked. At the Alfred Stieglitz Gallery.”

  Scribner’s brightened and said, “Ah, yes. Stieglitz is certainly making a name for himself on Fifty-Seventh Street.”

  For the first time, G.T. Samuels spoke. In his rolling British accent, he said, “Was there a particular painting that interested you?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, “it was a new work of a man standing on a busy street in New York.”

  Of course, when I described it like that, the painting sounded ordinary. But in Manhattan, the serious deep-pocketed collectors were only interested in dead artists. I heard the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was nearly fired for purchasing the work of a living painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Even for those who were enlightened enough to admire the Post-Impressionists, it was the portraits, country scenes in Europe, and still-life paintings that ruled. To support the work of someone trying to capture a moment on the streets of New York, it was heresy. Yet for me, that was the only painting that seemed truly alive.

  G.T. Samuels pressed it, asking me, “How did you feel when you looked at a painting like that?”

  “I suppose,” I said, clutching my hands behind my back, “I felt glad to see someone breaking rules.”

  He nodded, anything but bored now. An infusion of strength had appeared in him, and just what he might do with that strength made my pulse quicken.

  Sylvie returned with the ice, closing the door firmly behind her, and I focused on my task, measuring the gin and vermouth, straining the mix. It was a pity we had no orange peels or other bitters, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Scribner’s was the first to try a drink, no surprise there, and declared it “magnificent.” The next person to be presented with a drink was G.T. Samuels, looking less and less like a wan priest with
every second that ticked by as he sipped his martini, his eyes fixed on me.

  I heard a stir outside the office in the main part of the bookstore, which at first I paid little attention to, since Moonrise could be a noisy place. It wasn’t until the door swung open and two men stepped inside that I realized what was happening – and that it was happening quite particularly to me.

  David Batternberg, my uncle, draped in a long black coat, vest, and trousers, all stitched on Savile Row, set off with a silk burgundy ascot, a bowler hat perched on his graying black hair, inflicted such an imposing presence on the little room that the Scribner’s editor stumbled back two steps, spilling his martini on Mrs. Hamilton-Starke’s second-rate carpet.

  “What are you doing here?” I cried, in equal parts confusion and humiliation.

  My uncle didn’t turn to face me. Without addressing anyone, he said, “My name is David Batternberg, and it’s time for my niece to be leaving.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

  Sylvie glanced at me, cleared her throat and said, “You are welcome here at Moonrise Bookstore, Mr. Batternberg. But it isn’t the close of the business day.”

  “It isn’t?” he retorted, eying the bottles of liquor assembled on Mrs. Hamilton-Starke’s desk. He tilted his head in the direction of the second man, bearded and dressed in black too, who then stepped forward, to take his place next to my uncle.

  “This is Dr. Mackenzie,” said Uncle David. As if on cue, the doctor wordlessly transferred from one hand to another a bulging black bag with a wooden handle. We were left to imagine the potions, syringes and bandages crammed inside.

  “What the devil?” whispered Scribner’s, glancing at me with new interest.

  G.T. Samuels asked, “Are we bearing witness to a kidnapping, then?”

  “Yes, you are,” I said, my voice shrill. “And I do protest.”

  My father’s favorite brother snorted. I felt his hand clamp my arm, and in an amazingly brief passage of time, I was borne out of Mrs. Hamilton-Starke’s office, through the store and out the door leading to East Thirty-Ninth Street. I hadn’t been able to catch one last glimpse of G.T. Samuels, of Scribner’s, or even of Sylvie. Were they shocked, or merely bemused? One thing was clear: They didn’t follow.