Never Look Back

  Brett was the next to raise his glass, and gave his mother a scathing glance. ‘To the future!’ he said.

  George and Albert at opposite ends of the table looked a little puzzled, perhaps they hadn’t fully heard everything that had been said. But they raised their glasses, and everyone else followed suit.

  Tabitha wondered how the dinner party could possibly continue harmoniously, but to her surprise Matilda turned to Anne and smiled. ‘We really should have got together earlier to sound one another out, shouldn’t we? But it’s done now, and let’s put it aside. Now, do please tell me where you got that beautiful gown made, it’s so stylish, it could have come from Paris.’

  Perhaps Anne Everett realized she had made a grave mistake in trying to humiliate Matilda, for she made no further sarcastic remarks, and surprisingly, seemed to warm to her outspoken guest. By the time the dessert was served, the matter had been put aside, for Matilda had drawn everyone out by suggesting everyone told their favourite comic story about someone they knew.

  George’s was about a good friend of his involved in landscaping Central Park who was tricked into parting with an enormous sum for trees, expecting them to be well-established ones of at least four or five feet in height. When they arrived they were seedlings, no more than three inches high. Rupert, who was in banking, told a tale about a man who posed as an English lord, got himself invited to all the society events, where he charmed everyone, and managed to swindle thousands of dollars from the bank. By the time it was discovered the man was in fact Irish, a penniless immigrant when he first arrived in New York, he had skipped off to South America.

  Brett prompted his father Albert to tell them all about the disastrous ceremonious opening of the railroad into Chicago. The dignitaries, including two Senators, were to arrive by train. A band was playing on the station, Albert and Brett waiting to receive them with a champagne reception. When the dignitaries and their train never arrived, Brett and Albert had to go out on a handcar, pumping themselves down the line to inspect, only to find that several miles out of town, some wild railroad men had decided to remove a length of the track as a prank. The train with its load of dignitaries was stranded there, not hopping mad and indignant as Brett and Albert expected, but drunk, as there had been large supplies of whiskey on board.

  It was almost midnight when the party finally broke up. Matilda was last to leave, and as Tabitha and Sebastian escorted her to the front door where her carriage was waiting, Matilda suddenly enveloped Tabitha in a tight hug.

  ‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,’ she said. ‘But I had to set the record straight.’

  ‘I’m very glad you did,’ Tabitha said, hugging her back. ‘It’s all out in the open now, and I’m so very proud of you.’

  Sebastian grinned. ‘It turned out to be the best and liveliest dinner party Mother’s ever thrown,’ he said. ‘I bet we’ll all be talking of it for months.’

  Matilda disengaged herself from Tabitha and took Sebastian’s two hands in hers, looking up at him. ‘You are a good man, Sebastian,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t imagine any man being more worthy of my precious Tabby. I really don’t mind your mother thinking I’m a common upstart, I guess I am. But I had to point out to all your family, for Giles and Lily’s sake, that Tabitha is their equal. That was the really important issue.’

  Sebastian was touched by the sincerity in her words. He could feel the roughness of her hands in his, even through her lace gloves. They said so much about her character and he hoped his mother would one day see them too, for then perhaps she’d really understand what made him love and respect this woman so much.

  ‘You are more of a real lady than all of Lady Astor’s cronies put together,’ he said. ‘Now, go on back to your hotel before you catch cold and sleep tight. Tabby and I will meet you for lunch tomorrow.’

  As Matilda’s carriage bowled away through the snow to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, she smiled to herself. All things considered, she decided, Tabitha was marrying into a good family. The men were principled and fair-minded, and Tabitha’s modern views would almost certainly bring a welcome breath of fresh air to the younger women. She thought it would be advisable, though, to keep her distance from Anne Everett. Tonight’s sharp exchanges might have been necessary to clear a few cobwebs, but she guessed that in the next few weeks before the wedding, Anne would be eagerly waiting for her to make a social blunder, and if it came she would be all too gleeful.

  Not that Matilda had any intention of getting involved with any more society folk while she was here, that was the main reason she’d opted for staying in a hotel. That way she was free to come and go as she pleased, wander around the city, and see Tabitha and Sebastian on her own.

  She was astounded at how much New York had grown and changed since she first came here as a young girl. The vast and beautiful Central Park had replaced that awful shantytown Flynn had once shown her, blocks and blocks of smart new houses on both sides of it. There was a train which ran overhead, lighting on all the streets, and many wonderful shops. So far the snow had prevented any real exploring on foot, but maybe she’d buy some stout boots if it didn’t clear soon.

  Peter and his wife Lisette, Sidney, Mary and their children would be joining her for the wedding, and after the bride and groom had gone off on their honeymoon, they were intending to make the return journey a holiday, stopping off in different towns they’d always wanted to visit.

  Sidney had three more children now, John, Cissie and Ruby. All five children had freckles and red curly hair, and Matilda adored them. Peter had married Lisette only last year after a long courtship; she had the looks and style of her French mother, and the brains of her lawyer father, Henry Pollock.

  The war and a close brush with death had changed Peter, just as it had so many of the brave young men who entered into it thinking it was the ultimate adventure. While still as outwardly jovial and devil-may-care as he’d always been, those who knew him well saw greater sensitivity, caution and ambition. He had taken Matilda’s advice and studied accountancy, and he now had a flourishing practice with dozens of extremely prosperous clients. His good education and the circles he mixed in now had given him a sophistication which Sidney lacked, yet he had retained his integrity and a social conscience. He had used the money he’d inherited from Cissie to buy a very comfortable house, but along with handling all Matilda’s financial affairs, he was her confidant, aide and supporter in all her charity work too.

  It had been Peter more than anyone who had helped her to come to terms with losing James, for he truly shared her loss. He was the one who always knew when she was thinking about him, and his little stories about James during the war gave her back the small part of the man she hadn’t seen.

  As the organ at Trinity Church began to wheeze into life and the wedding march began, Matilda turned to look at Tabitha being led up the aisle by Sidney, and tears pricked her eyelids.

  It seemed impossible that this tall, slender woman in white satin was that plump little tot she’d rescued from the path of the horse and carriage over thirty years ago. Matilda had never managed to hold any real faith in God, but today she was prepared to acknowledge that perhaps he had orchestrated that near tragedy for a purpose.

  Had she not met the Milsons, she would never have come here to America. Without her assistance Giles might never have gone into Five Points and found Sidney, or Cissie. But for Cissie she would never have set out to Oregon and met James. All their lives seemed to have been inextricably linked, and today it did seem to have been pre-ordained.

  She glanced back along her pew, putting her finger to her lips to warn the children to stay quiet. Mary looked lovely in emerald green, her red curls peeping becomingly from her bonnet. She smiled serenely as she held Ruby, the youngest, in her arms, perhaps thinking back to her own wedding. Sidney often said he felt blessed by having her and his five beautiful children; he said that being able to give his own children the love and security he’d never had as a child had wiped out any re
maining bitterness about his early life.

  She glanced over her shoulder to Peter and pretty, dark-haired Lisette in the pew behind. Lisette was tucking her arm through her husband’s and looking up at him in some surprise as his eyes were glinting with emotional tears at seeing Tabitha in all her wedding finery. Was it possible that this elegant young man in his tail-coat and striped trousers had begun his life in a filthy cellar just a couple of miles from here?

  Matilda gulped to rid herself of the lump in her throat. They were her children, even if not one of them had been born to her, bound together as brothers and sister by the hand of fate. Her father’s advice never to look back might have stood her in good stead for most of her life, but it was right to look back now, for here in the church she knew so well as a young nursemaid, she could see the sense in the long and sometimes impossibly hard road which had led her back here again.

  While she felt sadness that she’d never been a bride herself, she had been blessed in so many other areas of her life. She had known the kind of passion which most women only dream of, and love in so many different forms. She’d had adventure, good friends, excellent health, and become wealthy too. She wasn’t ashamed of anything and she had no real regrets. If she was to die tomorrow she could go happily knowing she had made a difference in other people’s lives.

  Tabitha and each of the three bridesmaids were holding posies that Matilda had made herself this morning. She’d gone down to the flower market and bought the flowers herself, far grander posies than she ever sold on the streets, with pink rosebuds, white carnations, and delicate freesia. But the old skill hadn’t left her, she’d picked the glossy leaves which enclosed the flowers from a bush in Central Park, wrapped the twine tightly around the stems and added a circle of lace and ribbon to finish them off. The scent of them brought back a whiff of England and in some odd way seemed to evoke Lily and Giles’s presence.

  There was pain inside her that James hadn’t lived to see this day. It would have been just perfect if he was by her side now, his hand in hers. But he was tucked into her heart, and if heaven was the way Giles used to describe, he was here somewhere watching, along with all those other dear ones who loved her and Tabitha.

  As Tabitha came alongside Matilda, she turned to smile. Her face was partially concealed by her veil, but her happiness shone through it. As she continued forward, Sebastian turned round at his position at the altar rail, and the look of naked love on his face was unmistakable.

  ‘Don’t you dare start crying yet!’ Mary whispered to her, above her small children’s heads. ‘You’ll start me off!’

  Brett was Sebastian’s best man, and they both cut fine figures in their tail-coats. Matilda glanced across the nave to the Everett family. They had at least ten times more people on their side, from young children right up to very old folk. Anne was dabbing at her eyes too, and she looked a picture in pink silk, the crinoline skirt so wide it filled the pew, and her bonnet trimmed with small white flowers.

  Matilda’s gown and small veiled hat were pale blue. She had abandoned her customary black just for the wedding as she didn’t think James would approve of her in mourning on such a happy occasion.

  After the minister had pronounced Tabitha and Sebastian man and wife, he mounted the pulpit for his sermon, and Matilda hoped he’d make it a brief one for the children were beginning to fidget. She had never really been bored when Giles preached, but he was the only minister she remembered, apart from the Reverend Darius Kirkbright’, who could manage to hold her interest for more than a few minutes. She closed her eyes for a second and remembered Kirkbright’s speech of farewell to the Milsons, and how the congregation had applauded. She wondered if he was still alive. He’d be at least eighty now, so she doubted it.

  The Waifs’ and Strays’ Home was still there in New Jersey, she’d taken the ferry to see it soon after she got to New York. Perhaps it was a mistake to go back, as it wasn’t as welcoming as she remembered, icy cold, the children too quiet and cowed, and she suspected they were hungry too. But then few things were the same. New York was all grown up, most of the old wooden houses she remembered gone, replaced by brick and cast iron, an elevated train service whizzing along overhead, belching out thick smoke into the tenements of the Lower East Side it passed by.

  Sebastian had told her that these tenements, most of them built just a few years earlier, were a public disgrace, designed purely to make as large a profit as possible for the landlords out of the smallest amount of space. Even if only one family occupied each tiny three-room dwelling, with only one window on the outer wall, they would be cramped and unsanitary, but the rent was too high for the poor immigrants, and they all sub-let, with sometimes as many as three or four families squeezed into one apartment. With great sadness Sebastian had pointed out that while the elegant brownstones in the blocks around Washington Square and Central Park and of course the mansions on Fifth Avenue had water piped right into their homes, the poor of the tenements still had to make do with one privy and tap between hundreds of them.

  Matilda had steeled herself against going to look at these tenements, for she knew once she’d seen them, she wouldn’t be able to contain her desire to do something to help. So instead she had made several trips to Macy’s, the fine dry goods store which had opened on Sixth Avenue, to buy lengths of cotton and flannel to take home for her girls to make up into baby clothes and dresses for themselves. She reminded herself that she was here in New York just for Tabitha, that San Francisco had enough problems for her to deal with, and she was better placed to give her help there.

  The sun was shining when they eventually emerged from the church, and as all the wedding guests waited while the photographer set up his camera to take pictures of the happy couple, Matilda was reminded of Dolores, and of her words that day she had found Matilda crying over her picture of James. It was still a mystery to both of them that a likeness of a person or an object could be transferred to a sheet of paper, just as it was equally puzzling how a message could be sent by telegraph from one side of the country to the other. But she supposed the young understood such things.

  Dolores was sixty now, but still running the home on Folsom Street with as much energy as she’d shown when they first began it, and Fern was thirty-two, and still her housekeeper at the working girls’ hostel. What wonders they both were!

  As Matilda stood in the sunshine of the old churchyard, the other wedding guests all around her, memories of Flynn flitted through her mind. They had never dared walk through here for fear of running into Giles, but almost every street surrounding the church held poignant memories of him. Most of the tea and coffee shops they’d spent so much time in were gone now, but many of the alleyways he’d kissed her in were still there. She’d walked down to Castle Green one day and looked out across the bay, remembering all the dreams they wove together there.

  She wondered what happened to him. Did he make his fortune? Or did he join the rebel army as so many Irishmen did, only to be killed too?

  ‘Why such a sad face?’ Sidney asked her, taking her by surprise.

  It seemed improbable that Sidney was thirty-eight, married with five children. His face had grown fatter and ruddy in the last few years, there was a paunch under his tail-coat, and deep lines around his eyes. Only his red hair was the same, it still shone out like a torch.

  ‘Just memories,’ and she laughed lightly. ‘Has it brought back any for you?’

  ‘Too many! I slept here in the churchyard in the summer on many a night,’ he said with a wide grin. ‘And down on Castle Green! But I shan’t be telling any of these smart people that! I had it in mind to take Mary and the children out to New Jersey before we leave and see the Home again though.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, taking hold of his arm and squeezing it. ‘It’s not how you remember it, there’s nothing good to see and it will upset the children,’

  He looked surprised, amber eyes widening. ‘Okay, I won’t do that, not if you think it might upset
them. But you won’t talk me out of taking Peter to Five Points.’

  ‘You can’t, Sidney,’ she said in horror. ‘That won’t be good for either of you.’

  Sidney’s mouth was set in a determined straight line. ‘Peter needs to see where he was born. It’s as much part of his life as the trip to Oregon, Cissie and the girls dying, or the Battle of Gettysburg. We’re both grown men now, Matty. Don’t try to stop us.’

  Matilda woke early the next morning to the sound of whispering outside her hotel room door. Recognizing the voices as belonging to Peter and Sidney, she guessed they had both crept out of their own rooms and were planning to go to the Lower East Side, now, before their wives woke.

  She was out of bed in a flash and opened her door. They were bending over to put their boots on. ‘Come in here, both of you,’ she said sternly.

  Although the previous day’s wedding ceremony had been a joyful occasion, the reception in the afternoon at the Everetts’ mansion had proved an unhappy experience for Sidney and Mary. Neither of them was accustomed to sophisticated events, and the splendour of the mansion and the elegant guests made them awkward and gauche. Perhaps their children had sensed their discomfort too, for they played them up, touching everything and climbing on furniture, which had in turn made the couple even more uneasy.

  Matilda had whisked the children away later, taking them for a carriage ride in Central Park, but on her return she was grieved to find that though removing the children to allow them to let off a little steam had calmed them down, Sidney and Mary still hadn’t been able to relax enough to enjoy themselves. She understood why. Back home in San Francisco they were well known and respected, their origins or class immaterial, but their strained faces showed that in just a few hours, the day had been spoiled for them by feelings of inferiority.

  Matilda sympathized, she could remember only too well her own dilemma at finding she was neither fish nor fowl. In truth she knew she was still in the same position, she might have learnt how to look and behave like a lady well enough to pass muster, but closer inspection always gave her origins away.