by Ann Petry
He’d try to figure this story out by pretending that he was an average reader of the Chronicle, say a bank clerk, riding to work on the Franklin Avenue trolley. Bank clerks were about the only ones who rode on trolleys. What would he make of it?
I’d read it again because I would be puzzled by it, intrigued. How did this woman who lived on Park Avenue, in New York, richest street in the world, most expensive place to live, come to be walking about on Dock Street, at midnight? Park Avenue meant wealth, penthouses, liveried servants, elegance. Dock Street at the corner of Dumble meant poverty, colored people, tenements, whether you called it Dark Town, Little Harlem, The Narrows, or The Bottom.
Perhaps she was driving through Monmouth, en route to New York, stopped to ask for directions, and this young Negro immediately attacked her. But how could he attack a woman sitting in a car, engine running, he standing on sidewalk, woman leaning out of car, window down, “Could you tell me—”
Undoubtedly the woman got out of the car. It’s a lonely street, Dock Street, at midnight. It was the kind of street you stumble into in a dream, a street that runs parallel to a river, and you’re always falling when you reach a street like that in your dreams, you know there’s a river nearby though you can neither see it nor hear it, and you keep falling, falling, falling, toward the river. The lights are so few and far between that they can’t penetrate the darkness, they only serve to make the street longer and darker than the inside of a nightmare, and there’s never any traffic, nobody walking by.
So this woman, this stranger from Park Avenue, got out of her car and asked directions of the first passer-by, who happened to be Mrs. Crunch’s unscrupulous young nephew, and he immediately attacked her.
Nonsense, he thought. Besides I’ve accepted the Park Avenue part of this story as being correct. But so would a bank clerk. He would not know that Mrs. William R. Sheffield’s name and address appeared erroneously in the story; nor would he know that Camilla Treadway Sheffield and Mrs. William R. Sheffield were the same person.
Having replaced the Chronicle on the Madam’s tray, he unplugged the percolator and busied himself making toast, squeezing oranges. He couldn’t waste any more time puzzling over this conundrum. This was one of his busiest days. They were having a tea, a high tea, in the afternoon, for three hundred young women from the plant.
It would have been understandable if the Madam had said, They’re just little working girls, anything will do, just the fact that they’re asked out here for tea is enough, no need to fuss, give them some little sandwiches and small cakes and that will do very well. But she didn’t. That first year he worked for her, she had told him that this annual tea was to be handled with as much care as though they were having the President of the United States in for tea, well, any of the presidents before Roosevelt.
Under his direction it had become more than tea, it was a kind of open house, which called for the best silver and china and the finest napkins, oak logs burning in the fireplaces, two waiters from the Monmouth Hotel to help keep the service smooth, and honest-to-goodness food: sandwiches with wonderfully flavored fillings—chicken, anchovy, cheese, lettuce, pâté; toasted muffins accompanied by slivers of Virginia ham; bitesize cakes as well as loaves of cake, candies, mints, salted nuts—all of this set out in the dining room.
At seven-thirty when Rita came into the butler’s pantry, he was rubbing up the trays that he was going to use that afternoon.
“Good morning, Mr. Powther,” she said, yawning, patting her hair, giving the small pleated apron she wore a kind of jerk, as though she’d like to take it off.
“Good morning, Rita.” She looked sleepy and so her clothing didn’t sit properly on her. The white dress was clean, unrumpled, but because she was sagging with sleep the uniform sagged too. Lately she’d been having an affair with Al of which Powther disapproved. She didn’t keep her mind on her work any more. Right now she was leaning over the sink, staring out of the long window, in hope she’d catch a glimpse of Al as he came toward the house for breakfast.
He started to say something to her about the unfortunate mixup in names in the paper, but didn’t. She was much too fond of gossip, especially if it concerned the family. She was about twenty-five pounds heavier than the Madam, and so couldn’t wear her clothes, always a source of irritation to a personal maid. As a result, she constantly disparaged the Madam. Al did the same thing but he went in for an all-inclusive largescale vulgarity, that not only included the Madam, but the house, the other servants, the garage, the cars, everything. Rita went in for a highly personal, smallscale cattiness directed exclusively at the Madam.
“She’s in her bath,” she said, turning away from the window. She opened her eyes very wide, as she always did whenever she was about to say something unkind. She had large brown eyes, and the sudden widening of them underlined, pointed up whatever she said.
“She can get in and out of a bathtub faster than anybody I’ve ever seen. I don’t think she’s clean. In one minute and out the next—”
“You’d better run along then,” he said coldly. “Or the coffee will be cold.”
She picked up the tray, and he held the door open for her. He was quite near her when she looked down at the tray, really looked at it, and he saw sullenness, resentment come into her face, changing it, as though a mask had been placed over it.
“Roses,” she said, a sneer in her voice. “White roses! I suppose she’ll be wanting them pinned on that mink coat when she leaves for the plant.”
“They should look very well on it,” he retorted, thinking, You’ll feel more spiteful than ever when you get your first look at the downstairs part of the house this afternoon. Rita was pressed into service, taking care of coats, under Mrs. Cameron’s direction, and he always judged the degree of perfection he had achieved by the quick resentment that came into Rita’s face when she looked around.
By eleven o’clock he felt that the entire downstairs had the burnished look of a house ready for a high tea. Rita would not know that a week’s work had gone into the making of the gleam and shine that included windows, the fine wood of the furniture, the floors. Rogers had sent his men over with oak logs for the fireplaces, had personally delivered daffodils and tulips from the greenhouse, and had included some of the poets’ narcissi because of their wonderful fragrance.
He had persuaded Rogers’ men to help Jenkins move a pair of sofas and ten Sheraton armchairs from the morning room upstairs down into the entrance hall, in order to increase the amount of sitting space. The east drawing room was as big a room as he’d ever seen but three hundred people could not possibly find seats in it. There was always a moment, about five o’clock, when all three hundred young women were drinking tea at one and the same time, no matter at what hour they had arrived.
After he finished arranging the flowers, he went toward the kitchen for a second cup of coffee. He would have to drink it quickly because he still had a lot of details to work out with Jenkins, but he hated to miss the midmorning coffee that the Frenchman made especially for him and for Al.
It never failed to amuse him to watch the transformation that took place in Al when Mrs. Cameron came into the kitchen. Al would be lounging in the doorway, coffee cup in hand, chauffeur’s cap on the back of his head, and at the sight of Mrs. Cameron, he snatched his cap off and stood up straight. Like any firstclass housekeeper, she could be very sharp on the subject of what she called disrespectful behavior, and could, by a skilful choice of words, make Al take on the appearance of an overgrown schoolboy being sharply reprimanded by the teacher, face red, head hung down.
He pushed open the swinging door between the butler’s pantry and the kitchen, and then stood still, shocked into stillness. He was totally unprepared for what Al was saying. It had never occurred to him when he was pretending that he was an average reader of the Chronicle that there was still another angle, another way in which people would react to that sto
ry about Link Williams.
Al was saying, “You don’t believe me, huh? Well, then, what was she doin’ on the dock in Niggertown, at three o’clock in the mornin’? Just like she was askin’ to be raped by a nigger—” He saw Powther standing half in, half out of the kitchen and he stopped talking.
Powther sipped the scalding hot coffee, wishing that it was cold so that he could drink it fast, and leave the kitchen. He tried to pretend he hadn’t heard what Al said, pretended not to see how red Al’s face was, or the way his pale blue eyes were blinking. I always forget about race, he thought. I forget that other people think about it. I didn’t think of Link Williams the way a white man would think of him. I thought of him as another man, that was all. To hear him spoken of like that hurts me.
He had never given any thought to the way the Chronicle identified Negroes. He had never reacted to it, one way or another. Now his reaction was a purely personal indignation, not even indignation, a kind of fretfulness. If they had just put Link Williams’ name in the paper without saying he was colored, he, Powther, would not be in this awkward situation, sitting across the table from the Frenchman, who would not look at him, pretending not to see that Al’s pale blue eyes were still blinking, that his big face was redder than ever, that he had pushed his cap so far back on his head that the short cropped blond hair was visible, and that the position of the cap emphasized the roundness of his skull.
Silence in the kitchen. He thought, We’re all embarrassed. The Frenchman keeps stirring his coffee, the spoon clinking against the cup, stirring it though he doesn’t put sugar or cream in it, and I keep sipping mine though it’s so hot it burns my lips. Al keeps pushing that cap farther and farther back on his head, and it will soon fall with a soft plop on this brick floor. The Skullery keeps peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink. He must have his face almost in the sink, he was holding his head so far down, revealing his embarrassment by presenting a view of the seat of his bluejeans to them.
The Frenchman said, “Watch it there, blockhead. Watch the peels. Watch the peels.”
“Yes, sir. I am, sir,” the Skullery said meekly.
Powther thought his face must now be resting on the stopper, his head was so far down in the sink, the rear of the bluejeans so far up.
“You are not. Scrape. I said, scrape. Not peel.”
The Frenchman was trying to fill the kitchen with talk again. By himself.
“Coffee’s good, Frenchie,” Al said.
Al was trying to help out, too.
Then Mrs. Cameron came in the kitchen and Al straightened up, and took his cap off, fast, as though at the unexpected approach of a five-star general.
Well, she should have been a general, Powther thought, watching her, and if she had been a man she would have been. In many ways she reminded him of Mrs. Crunch. They were both short, they had the same erect carriage, and they wore their hair in the same fashion, piled on top of their heads. Mrs. Cameron had a small neat figure, not that Mrs. Crunch’s figure wasn’t neat, but it was a little more ample than Mrs. Cameron’s, and Mrs. Cameron was pink-cheeked, whereas Mrs. Crunch’s skin was brown, skin on the face alike though in the firmness of the flesh, and the lack of wrinkles. They both had the same uncompromising manner.
She said, “Good morning. Have you seen the paper?” Brisk, don’t beat about the bush, bring a thing right out in the open, don’t whisper about it, talk about it, clear it up, straighten it out, all there in those few words.
She kept walking up and down, looking first at Al, then at the Frenchman, then at Powther. She was wearing a longsleeved gray dress, and he decided it was cotton and stiffly starched, because the skirt rustled as she walked. Her expression was so severe and her lips were compressed in such a thin tight line that if she’d had a birch rod in one hand and a book in the other, she would have looked exactly like a caricature of a schoolteacher.
“Well?” she demanded.
The Frenchman said, “Yes.”
“I thought we’d talk about it now. The four of us. And work out a point of view, so that when the others—”
The Frenchman held up his hand. “Wait,” he said. “Empty the garbage cans, blockhead.” As soon as the Skullery left the kitchen, he said, “Now—”
“What is there to discuss, or work out a point of view about, Mrs. Cameron?” Powther asked. “Obviously the Chronicle made a mistake. There’s a mixup in names. They transferred Miss Camilo’s name from some other story. It’s an easy thing to do in a newspaper office. A line of type is picked up and transferred—”
“I thought about that too, Mr. Powther. But there isn’t any story in the paper about the family, or about Miss Camilo, from which a line of type could have been transferred to this story. That theory just doesn’t fit. I wish it did,” she said.
“Then—” he faltered. It’s true. But how could it be? What would Miss Camilo be doing in The Narrows at that time of night? Much as he disliked and distrusted Link Williams, he couldn’t quite picture him attacking a woman, a stranger. Especially a woman as beautiful and as obviously aristocratic as Miss Camilo. He must have been terribly drunk.
Al said, “She’s been runnin’ with him for months. Ever since December—”
“That’s enough of that, Albert,” Mrs. Cameron said. Her cheeks were no longer pink, they were red. “There will be no loose talk about Miss Camilo in this house. If I hear of any, I shall take immediate steps to put an end to it—permanently. I will not allow any malicious gossip about her or any other member of the family.”
Powther left the kitchen first, understandable because of the tea that afternoon, and he had so many things to do, and so little time in which to do them. He saw Mrs. Cameron go through the hall shortly afterwards, skirts rustling, head up in the air, the severe expression still on her face. He went into the butler’s pantry, pushed the swinging door open about half an inch, holding it like that because he wanted to hear what Al and the Frenchman were saying. He had never listened outside a door in a household where he worked, but he had to find out what Al had been going to say when Mrs. Cameron interrupted him. Who had been Miss Camilo’s lover ever since December?
The Frenchman was talking. He was always excited, always outraged, screaming and swearing half in English, half in French, a prima donna of a cook. He didn’t sound a bit excited now. He sounded cold, matter of fact, and perfectly horrible.
The Frenchman: She’s a whore. A whore ought to work in a whorehouse.
Al: Bunny oughtta take her out in the garage and strip her down and beat her every morning.
Powther thought, Why are they saying these things? There is nothing in the newspaper to make them talk like this. Then he remembered Al, sitting behind the steering wheel of the town car, studying Dumble Street, looking down the length of Dumble Street, “It would be just about here—what’s down there—followed her—lost her right here in this street—she come up that driveway like a bat outta hell—somebody oughtta tell her, Mal—smash that crate up—if I was the Captain—she looks like an angel—”
So Al has told the Frenchman about Miss Camilo staying out late at night, staying somewhere in Monmouth, he thought. Then too they both know, just as I do, that she stays away from the Captain as much as six months at a time, and has ever since that first year they were married. Six months or a year in Paris or London or Quebec or Chicago, and the Captain always in New York. Naturally they believe that so young and beautiful a woman must long since have found a lover whom she preferred to her husband.
Al: Everybody in Monmouth’s goin’ to be askin’ what was she doin’ on the dock in Niggertown, three in the mornin’, just askin’ for that nigger to rape her.
The Frenchman: She’s a whore.
He let the door swing shut, tight shut. He supposed it would never be called attempted attack, though that was the charge. There would always be the suggestion of rape. People would say three o’clock
in the morning, when it was midnight. On the dock, when it was not the dock itself but Dock Street, corner of Dumble. It said so in the paper. But when the people in Monmouth told the story, they would always make it sound as though Miss Camilo was held down, flat on her back, on the dock, held down by a Negro, but they would say “nigger.” Miss Camilo held down by a nigger.
It made him feel sick inside. That was another thing he forgot when he read the paper, pretending he was a bank clerk trying to figure that story out. He forgot that the staff at the Hall would know instantly that Mrs. William R. Sheffield of such and such an address in New York was Camilla Treadway Sheffield. But other people wouldn’t know it. The newspaper didn’t know it either. There was no reason why they should. People in Monmouth didn’t know the Captain or Miss Camilo. They knew the Madam but not Miss Camilo. But they would. All Monmouth would know it eventually. You couldn’t keep a thing like that quiet. The story would spread slowly, slowly, just like ink on a blotter. Mrs. Sheffield is the Treadway girl. Scandal. Story enlarged upon, embroidered, even to the nighttime trips, until Miss Camilo would sound like a common streetwalker, subject to attack, one of the weak ones to be preyed upon.
There wasn’t anything that Mrs. Cameron could do to stop the progress of this scandalous story. He could tell by the way the staff avoided all mention of it at lunch in the servants’ dining room, that the whole thing had been thoroughly discussed. Al had undoubtedly told every one of them about Miss Camilo coming up the driveway like a bat outta hell, had used the word nigger as though it were his own personal invention, over and over again. Mrs. Cameron, sitting at the head of the table, looked more severe than ever, and Rita, who sat midway, had a sly kind of smile that kept coming and going about her mouth. Al talked pointedly and constantly about cars, and the weather, and how he had spent the morning tuning up the old Rolls-Royce.