Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘You come now,’ Dolores said in her most commanding voice. ‘There ain’t no sense in you sittin’ up here moping, and the girls all want to see you. Fern, she’s been practising the letters you taught her over and over, I’s mighty sick of hearing that slate squeaking when she cleans it.’

  Matilda had to agree. Dolores was right, she would only mope if she stayed here.

  The house in Folsom Street was cosy, if not elegant. As all the furniture had been donated, it ranged from a roughly hewn bench seat, which filled an unwary hand with splinters, to a once grand mahogany table, with much of its varnish worn away, and a shabby, overstuffed couch. Dolores had the front room as her bedroom, and that was as bare as a monk’s cell – an iron bed, a wash-stand and little else. At the back was a large kitchen and living-room, kept warm by a cook stove. A scullery beyond housed a boiler to heat up water for bathing and washing, and when the fire under this was lit too, the heat was enough to roast a pig.

  There were two bedrooms apiece on the two upper floors, but the girls slept four in a room, two in a bed, on the lower floor. The beds themselves ranged from a simple wooden one strung with rope, to a fancy brass one with real springs, and two old iron ones. But donations of rag rugs, biblical pictures and many brightly coloured quilts gave the rooms a cheerful, snug character.

  When Dolores and Matilda arrived at the house, the girls were all in the kitchen. Mai Ling and Suzy, the two Chinese, were sitting on a bench playing cat’s cradle with a bit of string, Maria and Angelina, the Mexicans, were huddled by the stove, and the three Negro girls, Bessie, Ruth, and Dora, were seated at the table while Fern imparted her knowledge of letters to them.

  At the older women’s arrival, Bessie rushed to greet them and Fern’s face broke into the widest of smiles, but the others only nodded to acknowledge their presence. Matilda had found this coolness one of the most difficult things to get used to, for she’d always been used to exuberant children, who flung their arms around her in greeting. But Dolores, a mine of information on almost any subject, assured her that she’d won their trust because they didn’t hide themselves, and besides, they were always asking when she was coming again.

  ‘One of you’s can make some tea for Miz Jennings,’ Dolores said. ‘I reckon it’s Ruth’s turn, and Dora, you show Miz Jennings the cookies we made.’

  Matilda found it hard to believe that these girls were the same cowed, sad little creatures she’d found in those terrible cells in the brothel. They had all gained weight, Bessie and Dora were even growing fat. Mai Ling, Suzy, Angelina and Maria’s black hair had begun to shine again, and their skin had a golden glow. Ruth, the third black girl, was the only one who still gave Matilda real cause for concern, for even though she’d gained weight, her dark eyes still had a haunted look, and she cringed each time someone made a sudden movement near her.

  They all wore similar striped calico dresses, some pink, some blue, for the owner of one of the dry goods stores in Market Street had given them two bolts of cloth. Matilda had got the dresses made up by two seamstresses. When Matilda took them out in a little crocodile to have a walk, they could easily pass for girls from a private school, and though some of the neighbours had initially been hostile to having such girls living in the same street as them, now they never excited anything more than a curious glance.

  Matilda spoke to each of the girls in turn, Mai Ling and Suzy smiled shyly, but their lack of English prevented them from saying much more than yes or no. Maria and Angelina were learning fast, and they both thanked her for the hair ribbons she’d left for them on her last visit. But Bessie, Dora and Fern had a great deal to say, about the cookies they’d baked, about Fern’s letters, and the sewing-machine, for Fern had seen one working when she was back home in Philadelphia, and she’d described to them what it did.

  ‘Well, we must get it working now,’ Matilda said. ‘I’ve never used one but I’m sure if we all put our heads together, we can make it sew. Where is it, Dolores?’

  ‘In my room, ma’am,’ Dolores replied.

  All the girls trooped behind her as Matilda went to look, and when she gasped in surprise because she recognized it as the latest model, Fern clapped her hands in excitement. Opening the little drawer in the stand, she found an instruction book with diagrams as to how to thread it, and realized Dolores hadn’t known it had to have two lots of cotton thread, one above and one beneath.

  Within minutes she had it threaded and Dolores brought her an oddment of cotton to try sewing on. Following the instructions, Matilda clamped the little foot down on the material and began turning the handle. As a clear row of neat stitches came out the other end, Dolores proclaimed it was a miracle.

  One by one, they all had a try, and as Matilda looked at all the enthralled faces around her, she suddenly saw that the real miracle of this machine wasn’t just that it would save time sewing by hand, but that it had brought them all together with a common interest, as nothing else previously had.

  Later on, while the girls were still taking turns on the machine, Matilda sat down to talk to Dolores. ‘We could use that machine to make money for this house,’ she said excitedly. ‘We could start out by making simple things like aprons, but we could progress in time to dresses and shirts, couldn’t we?’

  Dolores, who was a very able needlewoman already, grinned broadly. ‘We sure could, ma’am, I reckon we could make a heap of money that way. Specially flannel shirts for workin’ men. They ain’t too fussy about the fit, as long as they is strong. It will teach the girls sommat useful too.’

  By March Matilda was seriously worried about the viability of the Jennings Employment Bureau. Many girls had come to the small office she rented in Montgomery Street, following her advertisements in the Alta Chronicle, but few prospective employers came forward, and when she couldn’t find work for the girls immediately, they soon lost interest and disappeared. But she refused to give up, and each morning she trekked round the city calling on all businesses and wealthy households personally, haranguing the owners at least to hear her out before dismissing her out of hand. She pointed out that although they could have dozens of applicants for a position by just hanging a notice on their doors, it was time-consuming for them to have to interview girls, take up references and dredge through hopelessly unsuitable candidates. For just a small fee, she would find exactly the right kind of girl for them, check her references and make sure she knew exactly what was required of her. She promised that if the girl proved unsatisfactory after a month’s trial, she would find a replacement free of charge.

  Slowly the tide began to turn during late spring as the financial crisis began to abate. First she got a contract to supply a dozen girls to a new candy-making business, a bakery wanted two more staff, a whole spate of people contacted her wanting maids and kitchen hands, and there were half a dozen vacancies in a fish-canning factory.

  It was hard work. Most of the girls who came to her were illiterate, they might be bright and willing, but often they were dirty, hungry and with only the ragged clothes they stood up in. Matilda lost count of how many she ordered down to the bath-house or for whom she had to find a respectable dress and pair of boots before she could even think of sending them to work. She often sent such girls to stay at Folsom Street for a couple of days before they took up positions as maids, so Dolores could drill them on the sort of tasks that would be expected of them.

  Yet gradually it began to work, girls were being placed in decent employment, and as word got around the city that she could be relied on, so more positions were offered. But one of the most heartening things to come out of it was support from some of the more benevolent ladies in San Francisco’s society. They sent parcels of clothing, unwanted lengths of calico and flannel, and in a few cases offers of accommodation for homeless girls.

  Meanwhile, back in Folsom Street, several new girls had come to the house seeking refuge, and Dolores took them in, nursed them back to health, and got them to help with the shirt-making. This had prov
ed to be a real source of income. Dolores cut the patterns and the cloth, the girls willingly took turns at the machine, others sewed on buttons, made buttonholes and pressed the finished articles, and a men’s clothing store in Market Street bought them as fast as they could make them.

  At the end of each long day Matilda was so exhausted that she fell asleep instantly. She still insisted on having supper with Sidney and Peter each evening so they maintained their links as a family, but the meal was often brought ready-made at the bakehouse as she had little time to cook herself. She knew the bureau was running at a loss, but it was only a small one, and she could afford it. The house in Folsom Street was just keeping its head above water with the funds from the city council, donations and the shirt-making business. Tired as she often was, however bleak it sometimes seemed with James and Tabitha so far away, she had never felt more fulfilled. Sidney was running London Lil’s every bit as well as she had, he was growing in confidence each day, helped by what she saw as the start of a love affair with Mary, and Peter was happy too, both at school and at home.

  If the number of girls she could help seemed very small in comparison to the huge numbers finding their way daily into the sewers of the ‘Barbary Coast’, at least she felt she was doing something. She remembered how she had once told Giles her ambition was purely to think she made a difference in some people’s lives, and she was achieving that. She intended to do a great deal more before she was finished.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  1861

  Sidney came bounding into the parlour one May morning waving a letter and grinning broadly. ‘It’s from the Captain,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’ll make some sense of what’s going on.’

  Just under a month ago, on 12 April, General Beauregard had ordered his rebels from the South to open fire on the Union troops at Fort Sumpter in Charleston harbour. The only casualty was a Confederate horse, but even so war had been declared between the North and the South, and no one could talk of anything else.

  Matilda opened the letter quickly, but once she’d seen James was still writing from Fort Leavenworth where he’d been based for the last five years, she looked up at Sidney. ‘He’s still in Kansas,’ she said.

  The troubles between anti-slavery Free Soilers from New England and pro-slave Southerners from just across the border in Missouri had finally escalated into a war in May of 1856. A mob of pro-slavers sacked the Free Soil town of Lawrence in Kansas territory, blew up the Free State Hotel, burned the Governor’s house, and tossed the presses of the local newspaper into the river. John Brown, a fiery Abolitionist, retaliated by rushing into Pottawatomie Creek, a pro-slavery settlement, where he slaughtered five men in cold blood. Brown was hanged, but by the end of the year over 200 people had been killed in what had come to be known as ‘Bleeding Kansas’.

  Sidney looked disappointed. ‘I thought the Captain would be in the thick of it,’ he said.

  Matilda half smiled at Sidney’s naiveté. He took little interest in politics, only the more sensational news attracted his attention.

  ‘The trouble in Kansas is what started all this,’ she said. ‘And it’s still a hotbed of guerrilla warfare. I had hoped Mr Lincoln could cool things down once he became President last year, but now eleven Southern states have seceded because they can’t agree on the slavery issue, and have formed the Confederacy, I suppose all-out war is the only option.’

  Sidney looked baffled. ‘Maybe the Captain’s letter will explain it so I can understand,’ he said. Both he and Peter idolized James, and they soundly believed his views were more accurate than those they read in the newspapers. ‘I guess I’d better leave you to read it.’

  Matilda smiled, knowing he really wanted her to read it now and tell her its contents. She would tell him later, for over the past few years he’d become her closest friend and there were no secrets between them. Her little street urchin had grown into a fine man and she was very proud of him. A sparkling sense of humour, kind heart and lack of conceit were the things most people liked him for, but he was nobody’s fool. He ran London Lil’s efficiently, he was tough enough to deal with the most difficult customers, and his early life had made him so wily he was always one step ahead of most people.

  He was twenty-six now. His distinctive red hair and beard, along with added weight and muscle, had earned him the nickname of Big Red, but marrying Mary Callaghan two years ago had given him an extra dimension of calm and stability. Matilda had been overjoyed at their union, for Mary’s harsh earlier life, and the years she and Sidney had spent working together made them ideal partners. They delighted in their own little home a few blocks away, and were now eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child.

  ‘I’ll come down and tell you all his news in a while,’ Matilda said. ‘What’s Peter doing this morning?’

  ‘Still champing at the bit to enlist,’ Sidney said with a wide grin. ‘But I gave him a clout earlier, and said he was to clean out the cellar and not be such a fool.’

  Matilda frowned. Peter had lost none of his enthusiasm for being a soldier, and he had been eagerly waiting to hear if he had been accepted at West Point. But the moment he’d heard about the war, he suddenly didn’t care about being an officer, he just wanted to go off and fight immediately.

  Peter had always had a special place in Matilda’s heart, but since Cissie died he had become even dearer to her. While Sidney had always felt like a younger brother, she thought of Peter as her son. She often felt that she had transferred all the love she felt for Amelia, Cissie and Susanna to him on their deaths; caring for him and watching him grow from boy to man had fulfilled a deep need in her. He had such a sunny disposition, all the warmth and fire Cissie had, but was so bright and quick. He was her clown when she needed cheering, her companion and helpmate. Since his schooling had ended last fall when he became eighteen, he had filled in the time waiting to hear from West Point by working for her. He did the book-keeping, painted the whole outside of London Lil’s, and ran messages for her in connection with her girls.

  Apart from her reluctance for him to leave her, and the terrible fear he could be killed, Matilda hated the idea of him enlisting. She had done her best to bring him up as a gentleman, and the thought of him mixing with hard-drinking, uncouth desperadoes made her feel quite ill.

  Sidney had no such desire to enlist. He wasn’t patriotic, he said his only allegiance was to those he loved, and he saw no sense in fighting for something he didn’t understand. He doted on Peter too, and he was every bit as anxious as Matilda to prevent him leaving home.

  ‘I guess we can’t chain him up to stop him going,’ Sidney said, his brow furrowed with a deep frown. ‘I’ll do my best to talk him out of it.’

  ‘Maybe James has said something about Peter in this letter,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t mind him going quite so much if he could join his regiment.’

  ‘I’ll leave you to read it then,’ Sidney replied. ‘Meanwhile I’ll keep him working in the cellar.’

  Once Sidney had gone, Matilda settled down to read the letter.

  Nothing had worked out as they had planned. After their brief holiday in Santa Cruz, James returned to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, and on his first leave went home to Virginia and asked Evelyn for a divorce, but she refused point-blank. She didn’t care that they had a marriage in name only, that there would never be children, or even that he said he was in love with another woman. All she cared about was that no scandal should touch her.

  James told her that she must consider herself deserted in that case, because he was never coming back to her, and this was something he’d stuck to. He would have resigned his commission there and then too, but the situation in Kansas was volatile, and the innocent settlers so desperately in need of protection, he felt he must hang on until it was resolved.

  In the last five years, and despite the 2,000 miles between them, they had managed to spend some time together. Matilda had travelled to Denver to meet him three times. Last year she’d gone all the way t
o Ohio to see Tabitha when she started at Clevedon Medical College and met up with James there too. In all this time they had clung to the belief it would only be a few months before James could break free from the army and come to her, but once the news of the war reached Matilda, she knew he would never resign during a crisis.

  My darling,’ she read. ‘I write this letter with a heavy heart, knowing that in all probability, by the time you receive it, we will be at war. Over the years I have sent so many letters apologizing for letting you down, but in this one I cannot even offer words of hope for our shared future, because things look so terribly grave.

  I haven’t even got the conviction that this is a war which has to be fought, for the forces bringing it about are as muddled as my own feelings. If it were simply a matter of the morality of slavery then I would be glad to gallop in rattling my sabre, for you know my long-held views on that. But in fact it is merely a clash of an elite minority.

  Most Northern people are not wealthy or politically powerful, neither do they care enough about slavery to go to war over it. Likewise in the South most whites are poor farmers and not decision-makers. The Northern elites want economic expansion, free land, free labour, a free market, a high protective tariff for manufacturers and a Bank of the United States. The Southern elites oppose all that, they see Lincoln and the Republicans stopping their pleasant and prosperous way of life.

  My feelings are torn in both directions. I am after all a Virginian, and even if I deplore some of the traditions, these are my people I am being asked to wage war against. Maybe if I could believe I was to fight on the side of right, I could put aside personal loyalties. But I know all too well that slavery isn’t the real issue and even if the war does finally set them all free, the problems won’t be over, for there is enormous prejudice against the black man, and there are very few who believe he should have the same rights as white men.