Railroad

by Graham Masterton

  There was a knock at the door, and Knickerbocker Jane said, ‘Collis? It’s six o’clock. Didn’t you say that Charles was coming around at seven?’

  ‘I just woke up,’ he called back. ‘I’ll be down in a little while.’

  ‘Do you feel better?’ she asked him. ‘You looked awful pale at lunch time.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Oh – would you like a girl for tonight? I’d appreciate knowing, then I can organise their evening.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can afford it yet, Mrs Spalding.’

  ‘Have it on the house. It’s your first night in San Francisco. And don’t call me Mrs Spalding. I’m Jane.’

  ‘Well, then, I’m much obliged, Jane.’

  He shaved in front of a small porcelain mirror by the fading light of the sun. Then he dressed in one of the white shirts that the nuns at the Hospital of the Sacred Heart had starched for him. He could still smell that peculiar odour of tropical mould on it, and for a moment he was taken back to Panama City, and Sister Agnes, and Hannah. He would have to take a walk along Montgomery Street tomorrow and take a look in at Walter West’s store. He always liked to size up the competition; and in any case, there was a certain strangeness about meeting and talking to Walter West before Hannah arrived from Panama that appealed to him.

  Since they were dining at a hotel, Collis put on his black tailcoat, his white starched vest, and his evening pants. He sat on the bed and pulled on his black patent pumps, then stood in front of the mirror again to tie up his black tie, with its pearl stickpin. He banged open his silk opera hat and put it on his head at an irreverent tilt. After all, this was San Francisco, in the exuberant West, and not Broadway on a Saturday night. He inspected himself as best he could in the mirror, and decided he looked tired, worldly-wise, and reasonably rakish.

  He went downstairs. Halfway down, he glanced into the open door of one of the rooms. He saw the corner of a large oak bed, rich patterned rugs, and a small gilt chair. He also saw a girl’s bare leg, poised on the chair like a ballet dancer’s as she adjusted her garter. It looked as if life in San Francisco was not going to be too depressing after all.

  Charles and Andrew had not arrived yet, but Knickerbocker Jane was waiting in the parlour, with French champagne in a bucket of ice, and strawberry wafers. Beside her, in a shiny cobalt-blue dress with a low, gathered bustline, was a petite Brazilian girl, with dark hair fashionably frizzed, and large, shy eyes. She wore a quite extraordinary amount of gold and diamonds – rings, necklaces, and studs – but then most of the prostitutes in San Francisco did. They had a rare and sought-after commodity in one of the world’s most profligate cities, and they charged dearly for it. There was a smell of expensive French perfume in the parlour, which Collis found unusually erotic.

  ‘This is Ursula,’ said Knickerbocker Jane, rising to her feet with a matriarchal rustle of skirts. ‘Ursula, welcome Mr Edmonds. Ursula is one of our newer acquisitions, Collis. I’m sure you’ll like her. She has a most ladylike manner.’

  The champagne was dry, and cold; and although it didn’t have quite the taste of champagne in New York, it was a welcome reminder of civilisation. Collis said to Ursula, ‘Are you happy in San Francisco, my dear? You’re looking well on it, I can say that.’

  Ursula smiled, and nodded, but said nothing. Knickerbocker Jane, sitting magnificently on her purple plush settee, put in, ‘You don’t have to bother to talk to her. She speaks hardly any English at all. A ladylike manner, you see, but no English.’

  ‘She’s charming,’ said Collis, and raised his glass to her.

  Just then, the doorbell chimed, and Collis heard the front door open, and men’s voices in the hallway. Into the parlour, smelling of whisky and full of exuberance, came Charles Tucker and Andrew Hunt, both dressed, unlike Collis, in day suits and derby hats.

  Andrew Hunt clasped Collis by the hand as if he were a lost relative and slapped his shoulder several times. Charles Tucker was hardly less effusive himself, although he effused for the most part over Knickerbocker Jane’s big soft cleavage. It was becoming clear to Collis that if Charles and Jane had never actually been lovers, commercially speaking or not, then Charles would certainly like them to be. Knickerbocker Jane poured more champagne, and everybody sat down in the best of spirits.

  ‘I don’t know whether this fellow is a hero or a nincompoop,’ remarked Andrew, reaching out and resting his hand on Collis’s shoulder. ‘When I saw him go off with that West woman, and those nuns, I thought I was never going to see him again, and that’s the truth. I thought, there goes another poor victim into the jaws of yellow jack.’

  ‘God must have been smiling,’ said Knickerbocker Jane, gently easing Charles Tucker’s hand off her knee. ‘God does that sometimes.’

  ‘Whatever it was,’ added Andrew, ‘I’m most pleased to see you survived. Did the West woman get over it, too?’

  ‘Hannah’s all right, yes,’ said Collis, a little more quietly than he’d meant to. ‘She was recuperating when I left her.’

  Andrew Hunt winked at Knickerbocker Jane. ‘If you ask me, Collis had more than your usual soft spot for the West woman. What else would make a man risk yellow jack but love?’

  ‘Love, or money,’ said Charles.

  ‘He could have both with the West woman,’ said Andrew. ‘I made a point of taking a look at her husband’s fancy-goods store on Montgomery Street when I arrived here, and by the looks of it, it’s turning out real prosperous.’

  ‘Did you find out where Maria-Mamuska went?’ Collis asked Andrew.

  ‘The half-breed girl?’ Andrew shrugged. ‘She could be anyplace at all. But San Francisco ain’t New York. You’ll run into her, by and by, if you want to. Or even if you don’t want to.’

  Charles took out his watch and peered at it. ‘We must be going soon. I’m hungry, for beginners, and we don’t want to take all night eating if we’re going to make Collis some money.’

  Knickerbocker Jane came around, her skirts gracefully held in one hand, and refreshed their champagne glasses. ‘You’ll come back later, won’t you? I’ll have a faro game going in the smoking-parlour, and we may have Natalie on the piano if Mr Tibbett doesn’t come around for her.’

  ‘Well, we must teach you to sing,’ Andrew told Collis, crossing his long spindly legs and sitting back with an expression of amusement and pleasure. ‘You said you wanted to get into South Park society, didn’t you? That would be an excellent way. Collis Edmonds, the baritone from New York. I suppose you’re a baritone?’

  ‘I can’t sing a note,’ Collis protested. ‘If I tried to pose as an entertainer, I think they’d probably kick me out of South Park as fast as one of Sara Melford’s suitors.’

  Knickerbocker Jane raised an eyebrow. ‘You know about Sara Melford?’

  ‘Andrew told me about her on the ship. Is she really that difficult to pay court to?’ asked Collis.

  ‘Oh, yes. Laurence Melford keeps his eye on her twenty-five hours a day. Not that he has to. She’s as cold as a shipload of cod. She’s very beautiful, mind you, but there isn’t a man in San Francisco who can get anywhere near her. David Broderick told me she was waiting for a prince to visit San Francisco, or at least a count, and that nothing less would do.’

  ‘David Broderick’s our junior senator,’ remarked Charles Tucker, taking out a cigar. ‘He don’t speak very fancy, but the miners and the storekeepers respect him. A good straightforward man, in his way. Laurence Melford hates him. Called him an ignorant labourer once, to his face.’

  Collis accepted a cigar from Charles, and Ursula rose from her seat and came over to clip it and light it for him. When it was burning well, she knelt down beside him and put it gently into his mouth, stroking his cheek with her long fingers. Her blue silk dress had a slippery, exciting rustle to it, and her perfume was strong and exotic. Close to, he saw that she had a dark beauty spot on her cheek, and that her eyelashes were long and painted with kohl.

  ‘This seems like the way to live,�
�� he said, feeling suddenly very pampered and content. ‘I do believe I’m almost pleased I left New York.’

  Charles stood up and straightened his vest over his round stomach. ‘In this town,’ he said, ‘you can be what you want to be, and do what you want to do. Now, I think it’s time for some comestibles, and after that, we’ll try our luck at gaming.’

  The dining-room of the International Hotel on Jackson Street was a great deal noisier and more bustling than any hotel at which Collis had dined in New York, but the food was good, and just as fancified, and at least the diners took their hats off. Collis and Andrew and Charles took a table in the corner, and a waiter with big red ears and a long white apron brought them iced water, and a bottle of red wine with enough tannin in it to clean the family silver. They drank toasts to Collis’s safe arrival, to San Francisco, and to themselves. Collis wouldn’t propose a toast to luck. He was too unsure of his luck right now.

  Charles pointed out some of San Francisco’s celebrities and millionaires. In the far corner, half hidden by a potted fern, sat a short starry-eyed man with a bristly beard and short spiky hair. He was savaging a chop as if he had caught it trespassing on his plate, and waving a fork around to punctuate whatever he was saying to a plain, round lady with feathers in her hat. ‘That’s the treasurer of the Society of California Pioneers,’ said Charles. ‘He has no sense of humour whatever, so if you meet him socially, don’t try to make him laugh. His name’s William Tecumseh Sherman.’

  While the waiter went to order their fish soup for them, Charles nudged Collis again and nodded towards a middle-aged man with a sharp-looking nose, grey hair, and a way of standing with his hands tucked up in his vest pockets, so that his elbows protruded. ‘That’s Hall McAllister, that one who looks like a turkey. He’s a big-shot attorney these days. But he made his first pile selling beans and flour to the miners.’

  ‘That’s what’s so damned galling about the pioneers,’ said Andrew, tearing a piece of soda bread from the loaf in the centre of the table and pushing it into his mouth. ‘They started off as poor and undistinguished as anybody else, and yet now you can’t breathe the same air. I don’t blame them for the way they live. I’d do the same if I was rich. But some of them ought to remember where their money came from.’

  ‘There’s a good example,’ said Charles, pointing to a fat, red-faced man with his napkin tucked in at his neck. ‘That’s Sam Shields. He made his fortune by buying up a whole stretch of barren, useless land out towards Sacramento. He dumped cheap metal spelter in the streams, and it formed flakes in the water like gold. He sold that land for a hundred times what he paid for it, and there’s a whole lot of broken-down prospectors in California that would give three months off of their life to see that man in prison.’

  Their fish arrived. It was fresh and hot, with plenty of shrimp and sole and lumps of terrapin, and a good helping of cream and sherry added. Collis suddenly realised how starved he was for good food, and he ate in silence for almost five minutes, while Charles and Andrew talked about nails and wire and the price of sago. They were merchants in the plainest sense of the word, these men: they bought goods, and sold them for a profit, and anything they couldn’t sell for a profit didn’t interest them.

  Collis looked around while he ate. The restaurant’s walls were painted shiny cream, and hung with handsome mahogany-framed mirrors, which sparkled with reflected light from dozens of small glass chandeliers. There were perplexed-looking elks’ and bears’ heads on wooden shields, and paintings of California landscapes, most of them moderately crude, and even a gaudy portrait of the President, James Buchanan. The waiters moved between the tables and the potted palms and the laughing, chewing, gesticulating diners with the detachment of busy nurses, their hair glossy with pomade and their aprons stiff with starch. Across the aisle, a carver in a tall white hat and a black tailcoat was cutting pale bloody slices of rare beef from the largest joint that Collis had ever seen: in section, it was the size of a small oak tree.

  Andrew and Charles had finished talking about raw sugar prices and how the hell was a man supposed to make a clear profit on long-grain rice, and now they turned their attention to politics. Like most of the merchant classes in San Francisco and Sacramento, they were Republicans, free-soil men, and their state of California had been declared free soil in the contentious Compromise of 1850. But even on their far Pacific shore, 2700 miles from Washington, they were roused and alarmed by the increasingly rancorous arguments on Negros’ rights, or the lack of them, and whether the new Western territories should be slave states or guaranteed free. The arguments had split friendships, and even a few marriages. Among the Chivalry of South Park, up on Rincon Hill, the politeness between Northern and Southern pioneers was distinctly cool; and Andrew was telling Charles how young Willie Gwin, the senior Senator’s son, had upset a luncheon party by declaring it was high time the South seceded and Washington was fired upon.

  Charles dropped fragments of bread into his soup and noisily spooned them up. ‘It goes from bad to worse, I’ll agree,’ he said, with drops of soup on his moustache. ‘But there won’t be war. I can’t see that there’ll be war.’

  ‘What do you think, Collis?’ asked Andrew. ‘Your father used to have plenty of politicians for friends, didn’t he?’

  Collis set down his spoon. ‘Yes, he did,’ he said. ‘But most of them were doughface Democrats, and if you want my opinion they’re the worst kind. All compromisers and givers-in. If there is a war, it’ll be their fault, even though they’re the people who least want it. People like my father, who’s always so worried about his plantation investments. People like him,’ he said, nodding towards the portait of Old Buck.

  ‘They only hang that portrait there for diners to throw their forks at,’ remarked Andrew laconically.

  Charles finished his soup. ‘They can throw forks at him, but they have to admit he’s kept us out of outright civil war. Well, he has, hasn’t he? If he can keep the South from seceding, and hold the Union together for long enough, then it’s ten to one that Congress can cobble together some sort of decent compromise on slavery before it comes to fighting.’

  He blew his nose and added, ‘I don’t believe in wars. I believe in free soil, and I believe in setting the children of existing slaves free when they come of age. But a decent compromise is always preferable to war. That’s my feeling.’

  Collis shook his head. ‘I think you’re wrong. There is no such beast as a decent compromise, and especially not on slavery. It’s like a houseowner coming to terms with a burglar, and agreeing that his guard dog will bark at the burglar, but won’t bite. I think it’s time for some biting. It’s time we had men in Washington who stood up against the South.’

  ‘I shouldn’t say that very much more loudly, Collis,’ Andrew said in a low voice. ‘You have David Terry sitting a little way in back of you, and he’s something of a Southern hothead. That’s him, eating the salad. If he hears you malign the South, he’ll shoot you as soon as look at you.’

  Charles, oblivious to this aside, cut in. ‘John Frémont tried to stand up against the South, or at least against the doughfaces, but look what happened to him. You couldn’t have found a more ardent Frémont supporter than me. No, it’s quite true. But Frémont lost, and we have to accept Buchanan for a while. The best we can do now is balance what we want against what we can reasonably expect.’

  Collis leaned back while the waiter collected his empty soup plate. ‘Frémont was inexperienced, that’s all,’ he said. ‘He frightened Wall Street, too. I know he terrified my father. But he could do better next time.’

  Charles shrugged. ‘I don’t think he’ll try again. He’s taken his defeat pretty hard, you know. He stays up in that house of his, moping, and Jessie says he’s tired of politics, and life, and everything in general. He may go back to railroads.’

  Andrew gave a sparse chuckle. ‘Railroads? If you ask me, he’d be a damn sight better off moping.’

  ‘What makes you say tha
t?’ asked Collis. ‘He was quite a famous railroad surveyor once, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Whatever you’ve heard about John Frémont’s magnificent exploits looking for a Pacific railroad route, the truth is that he didn’t actually have a very happy time of it,’ said Andrew.

  ‘I thought he found quite a feasible railroad route,’ said Collis. ‘The Buffalo Route, or something like that.’

  ‘The Buffalo Trail, so called, although I don’t suppose you’d see many buffalo using it. They’d freeze their shaggy old butts off, and I understand, as a species, they’re usually more sensible than that. No, it was back in ’48, and Frémont was put in charge of finding a route from St Louis to San Francisco. He’d been a railroad surveyor in the army, you see, and everyone thought he’d be able to locate a suitable path through the Rockies for a railroad to run, just about as easy as going for a stroll. They even used to call him the Pathfinder. That was a big joke. He got himself and his party lost up in the Sangre de Cristo mountains in a snowstorm, and ten of his men died from freezing. If it hadn’t been for a band of Ute Indians he met up with, he would have frozen there, too. Mind you, he tells the story a little different himself. You ask him when you meet him. But that was the truth of what happened.’

  ‘All the same, you don’t think he’ll have another try for the Presidency in 1860?’ asked Collis.

  ‘Not a chance,’ put in Charles. ‘He’s a nice enough fellow, but he’s a sore loser. And if you ask me, he finds it as difficult to find his way around the capital as he did finding his way through the Rockies.’

  ‘Well, that’s a pity,’ said Collis. ‘We need someone like him to stand up to men like Buchanan and Douglas, and show them up for what they are. It wouldn’t surprise me if Douglas stands next time, for the Democrats, and by God we need someone who’s got guts enough to come out and say that every compromise on slavery that men like Douglas make is just one more shackle on one more Negro’s leg.’