Gypsy Page 15

  ‘I’ll give you one chance,’ he said. ‘Tonight at eight. If they like you, you’re on; if not, then finis. Out you go. I can’t say fairer than that. I’ll get one of the boys to hand round the hat for you, and I’ll take half of it.’

  It struck Beth that the odds were all in his favour. He wasn’t going to lose even if she played badly.

  He was an intimidating man, not just because of his scar, or the muscles that showed under his thin shirt, but through his blunt manner and the way he looked at her. There was no light in his pale brown eyes, just cold calculation. He asked why they’d come to America, and when she said both their parents had died and they wanted a new start he made no comment, not even to say he was sorry for their loss.

  Instinct told her he had no soft side, and that she and Sam would have to tread very carefully with him. Jack had recommended they tried this bar first because Heaney considered himself ‘the man’ on the Bowery: he liked to be first with anything different, and a girl fiddler was certainly that. But Jack had also warned her he had a reputation as a dangerous man to cross.

  ‘How long will you want me to play for?’ Beth asked cautiously.

  He took his eyes off Sam for a minute or two to give her another cold stare. ‘That depends on if they like you,’ he said. ‘If I wave my hands after the first three numbers, you go. If not, you play for an hour. At the end of that I’ll tell you what next. Right?’

  Beth nodded nervously.

  ‘Got something more colourful to wear than that?’ he asked sharply, looking at her brown coat with disdain. ‘They won’t like you if you look like a school marm.’

  Beth gulped. She had very few clothes and all of them were dark in colour. ‘I’ll try and find something,’ she said.

  He got to his feet and looked down at her. ‘Off you go then. Be back at eight sharp. Your brother can stay on.’

  She hesitated at the door, looking back at Sam. He was polishing a glass as Heaney spoke to him. He glanced around at her as the man walked away and made a cheerful thumbs-up sign. But she saw a flicker of anxiety in his face which she guessed was because he wouldn’t be able to escort her here tonight.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she mouthed, and gave him the thumbs-up sign back.

  That afternoon she practised her fiddle for a couple of hours and made a list of all the numbers she knew best so she wouldn’t run out of ideas that evening. She was very nervous, for there was a world of difference between playing when she chose to, and in front of a room full of strangers.

  Later she washed her hair and went through her clothes as it was drying. She guessed Heaney expected her to wear something flashy, but she had nothing like that. The brightest dress was one Mrs Langworthy had passed on to her just before they left; she’d said at the time it might be useful if Beth got invited to a party or a dance. It was slightly shiny with green and white stripes, a rather low neckline, leg-of-mutton sleeves and a small bustle. Beth had been dying to put it on as it was very pretty, although she wasn’t entirely happy about wearing it to a saloon full of men. But she thought that if she sewed a little lace across the low neckline, at least she wouldn’t show any cleavage.

  At half past seven she was ready, stays pulled in extra tight, her hair left loose on her shoulders, a couple of green ribbons in her hair and her boots polished. She hadn’t been able to button up her dress at the back, and had to go and ask the woman in the room below to do it for her. But she was pleased with the end result: she didn’t look like a loose woman, but neither did she look like a schoolmistress. The combination of nerves and excitement had given her a rosy glow, and her hair was very shiny.

  Picking up her fiddle case, she locked the room and left.

  Pat Heaney leaned back on the door that led to a room he kept for private gambling and watched the girl performing, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips.

  He hadn’t expected much. Her soft English voice, the clarity of her skin and the innocence in her eyes had all made him think she would play like one of those stiff-backed spinsters in a drawing room. How wrong he was!

  The first surprise, when she arrived bang on time, was how she looked with her hair down. A real stunner, with shiny black curls tumbling on to her shoulders, nothing like the prim look she’d had this morning with her little governess’s hat and her hair scraped up under it. He liked her dress too, a classy little number, though he’d rather rip off the lace across her chest and see what lay beneath it.

  She was so scared when she got here that he thought she’d make a run for it. And her brother didn’t help by keeping looking round at her all the time while she was waiting to go on. Was he really her brother? They weren’t alike, except for their English accents.

  But then he had announced her, and instead of faltering as he expected she almost leapt up on to the stage. She paused with that bow up in the air just long enough for every man in the place to turn and look at her. Then down it came and she was off and running, notes so sweet and fast he could hardly believe what he was hearing.

  Maybe he had heard better fiddle players, but they’d never been pretty like her. She didn’t just play with her arms and hands, but her whole body, undulating with the music, better than any of those hoochy-coochy girls he’d seen at the Burlesque.

  She was on her third number now, and she had everyone’s attention. Talking forgotten, drinks not quite getting to their open mouths, feet tapping, heads nodding, every man jack of them was in a trance.

  She almost danced as she played, bending, swaying, those hips moving in a way that was sending messages down to his cock. He liked the way she tossed her hair back from her face, the way little strands stuck to the sweat on her cheeks. It was enough to make a man want to jump up beside her and stroke it back.

  Liking something this much was something Pat wasn’t used to. Knowing he had a winning hand at poker, sitting down to a big juicy steak, the first whisky of the day — they were about the only things he could really claim to like. He couldn’t remember when he’d last listened to music, really listened; he guessed it was back when he was about her age.

  Eighteen. He’d had fire in his belly then, always wanting to prove himself, and every nerve end twitching with life. When he wasn’t fighting he was fucking; he never knew which he liked best. And there was plenty of both around Five Points.

  He could still get a woman whenever he wanted one, and he could have a fight too at any time. But he was getting too old for fighting, and the women were all whores. Yet listening to this girl made him feel juicy again, like he could take on any one of those Young Turks who strutted up and down the street. Like he could take a woman to bed and keep hard all night.

  He was going to be cock-o’-the-walk tonight. Every man in here would want to pat him on the back and buy him a drink for getting her in. They were spellbound; she’d wrapped them up like a spider binding a fly in her web. And they’d be back for more night after night.

  Pat glanced at her brother. He was quite a find too, good-looking in that fragile, English aristocrat way. He had a nice manner about him, verging on the side of snooty, but with a disarming smile, and he served drinks fast and with style. Pat knew deep down in his bones the lad was honest too, and that was rarer than a horse that didn’t shit.

  But it wouldn’t take long before someone tried to poach the pair of them away. He could see Fingers Malone up the end of the bar; his devious little mind was probably already whirling with plans to get them into his brother’s fancy place on Broadway.

  So Pat knew he would have to think of some way to keep their loyalty to him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘That much?’ Beth gasped as Heaney handed over her half of what had been put in the hat for her. It was all in nickels and dimes but it was such a large heap.

  ‘Eight dollars and forty-five cents,’ Heaney said. ‘Do you want me to change it up for you?’

  Beth nodded, too astounded to speak. She had played three hour-long sets, with a break between them.
It was nearly one in the morning now and she was exhausted.

  ‘Don’t expect to get that much every night,’ Heaney said dryly. ‘You were a novelty tonight and it’s Saturday. Come Monday it might be just nickels, but I like you, so I’ll promise you’ll never leave here without two dollars.’

  ‘You want me back on Monday?’

  ‘Yup. Monday, Friday and Saturday. Might get some other players in at the weekend too.’

  ‘How will the money be divided up then?’ Beth asked, fearing she would get a far smaller percentage.

  He gave her a calculating look, perhaps surprised she’d dared to ask. ‘You leave that to me,’ he replied. ‘But as I said, I’ll see you right. You can go now, and your brother too. I wouldn’t want a pretty little thing like you walking home alone.’

  ‘He’s a strange man,’ Sam said reflectively as they walked home arm in arm. The Bowery was still every bit as busy as it had been early in the evening; drunks wove their staggering way through the more sober on the pavements, narrowly missing the food stalls. Music and guffaws of laughter wafted out from bars, the pounding sound of dancing feet from somewhere unseen, and shouted greetings from one group of people to another across the street. The air was heavy with odours, fried onions on the hot-dog stands vying with beer, tobacco, cheap scent and sweat, along with horse droppings from the cabs. ‘He hardly spoke to me all day. I didn’t know if he was pleased with how I was shaping up or not. Then he stuck a five-dollar bill in my hand and said I was to come back on Monday. Does that mean I get the job for as long as I want it? And how much will I be paid each week?’

  ‘I think he’s slippery, so we’ll have to speak up and ask such things,’ Beth said thoughtfully. ‘I know the audience liked me, but he didn’t say anything.’

  ‘That’ll be because he wants to keep the upper hand. Of course he liked you — I watched his face when you were playing. Just hope he doesn’t have any ideas about you being his woman.’

  ‘Surely not? He’s far too old,’ Beth exclaimed.

  Sam chuckled. ‘Most of the men watching you had thoughts like that. I could see it in their faces. I can see I’ve got to watch out for my little sister.’

  ‘Who would have thought it?’ Beth said dreamily as they turned into a side street to cut down to Division Street. ‘A year ago we were frantic with worry about money, and now here we are in America.’

  ‘Still worried about money.’ Sam chuckled again. ‘And we’re working in a saloon! Papa would turn in his grave.’

  ‘I think he’d be proud that we’ve been brave,’ Beth said indignantly. ‘Besides, the saloon is just a first step. We’ll find a way to make our fortune.’

  ∗

  Fortunes, Beth found, weren’t made so easily. By October, six months after they’d arrived in New York, she was still playing three nights a week in Heaney’s and by day she worked in a second-hand clothes shop on the Bowery. In a good week she earned as much as thirty dollars, but the good weeks were rare; mostly it was only around eighteen dollars. Yet this, she had discovered, was far above what most women could hope to earn. Most single women worked as cleaners, shop assistants and waitresses, and all were badly paid and worked very long hours.

  For married women with children, there was no choice but to work at home for people who exploited their desperation to earn some money. Some did piecework for garment manufacturers, working a fourteen-hour day at least in crowded, badly lit rooms. Others made matchboxes and got everyone in the family to help. Women like this were lucky to earn a dollar a day, and most got half that.

  Beth didn’t take her second job because of the money, but because she was lonely at home all day with nothing to do. She had gone into the second-hand shop close to Heaney’s one day to see if she could find a new dress. Ira Roebling, the old Jewish woman who owned it, was very friendly and chatty, and by the time Beth left the shop, with a red satin dress in a parcel, she’d given Ira a potted version of her life story, heard some of Ira’s, and had been offered the job.

  Ira had come over from Germany back in the 1850s with her husband and his parents. They had owned a very successful pastry shop for years, but a year after both her in-laws had passed on from old age, her husband died in an influenza epidemic, and without him Irma couldn’t manage the baking of the pastries. She turned to selling second-hand clothes because she loved clothes and had many contacts prepared to sell her their old finery. With each ship bringing in new immigrants, there were always people wanting cheap clothes, and just as many who wanted to sell theirs.

  Ira was a shrewd, some said mean, old girl. She gave the very lowest price for clothes and sold them for the highest. Beth guessed her to be in her sixties, though it was hard to tell as she was slender, strong and very energetic. She always wore black, including a felt cloche hat which she never took off even when it was hot. But however eccentric she was, she was funny and quick-witted. Beth had seen her cast her black shoe-button eyes over a row of figures and add them up in a trice, and she never forgot anything, not the name of a customer, nor an item of clothing in her shop. The number of people who came in and out during the day just for a chat was testimony to the esteem in which she was held in the neighbourhood.

  Ira did most of the selling, and Beth sorted the clothes into sizes, did the odd repair and generally kept the shop in order. This was no mean feat as it was crammed from floor to ceiling with stuff. There were huge boxes of shoes, all jumbled in together, and one of the first things Beth did was tie them up in pairs and sort them by colour and size. She often tried clothes on too, something Irma actively encouraged, for as she pointed out, they couldn’t sell things unless they knew what they looked like on.

  Ira lived above her shop, and her three rooms were just as chaotic. During the summer when it was unbearably hot, Beth wondered how she didn’t pass out from lack of air, for she never opened her windows for fear of someone climbing in and robbing her. But although Ira was mean in many ways, never throwing anything out and haggling with customers over prices till the pips squeaked, she always gave Beth something to eat at midday. Sometimes it was delicious chicken soup she’d made herself, but more often it was hot salt beef sandwiches from a Jewish delicatessen along the street, and some fresh fruit. She said she didn’t think Beth ate enough and no man would want her for his wife until she’d put some meat on her bones.

  Beth had laughed at that, for she saw Jack at least twice a week, and she knew he thought she was perfect the way she was. She liked him too, his sense of humour, reliability and the way he looked after her, and she supposed that if a girl spent that much time with a boy back in England, it would be considered almost an engagement.

  But Beth was reluctant to encourage Jack beyond friendship.

  Ira thought this wise, not because she didn’t approve of Jack, in fact she liked him, but she felt Beth was too young to be serious about anyone.

  ‘There are so many hundreds of nice young men out there,’ she would say with a roguish twinkle in her eye. ‘Enjoy your youth, it doesn’t last very long.’

  But Ira wasn’t happy about Beth playing at Heaney’s. ‘He’s rotten to the core,’ she’d say emphatically. ‘You must never be alone with him, and make sure your brother never lets him do any favours for him, otherwise when he calls them in, Sam will be in deep trouble.’

  Beth was always careful to keep her distance from Heaney, for he made her flesh crawl. He looked at her as if he was mentally stripping her clothes away, and she felt his eyes on her all the time she was playing. But though she wished she could leave his bar and go to work for someone she liked and felt comfortable with, she knew he would make her regret it.

  By all accounts Pat Heaney took slights very seriously. It was rumoured that he had killed several men, and crippled many more, just for talking about him behind his back or refusing to obey his orders.

  He had no real friends, only lackeys who supported him because they were afraid to do otherwise. According to Jack, he controlled dozens of pros
titutes, taking at least half of what they earned. He owned two of the most dilapidated tenements in the Canal Street area and he charged such exorbitant rents that his tenants had to sublet again and again to be able to pay him. He had a hand in the thriving opium dens, dog-fighting and bare-knuckle fights. Even if only half the stories about his revenge attacks on people who had fallen foul of him were true, he was an exceptionally dangerous man. Beth was certain that if she left to work somewhere else in New York some ‘accident’ would befall her. He would never let her be a success anywhere but in his saloon.

  Sam thought she was allowing her imagination to get the better of her. He not only didn’t believe the man was dangerous, he felt he was Heaney’s right-hand man because he let him run the bar without interference.

  But Beth could see why this was. Despicable as Heaney was, he wasn’t a fool. He knew Sam was honest and capable, and just as big an attraction to the chorus girls from the local theatres as Beth was to the male customers. She would often peep through the door during her rest period before the last set, and there were always three or four of these girls flirting with Sam. And of course Sam loved the attention.

  But then Beth knew she was guilty too of loving the attention she got. There was no bigger thrill than to have an audience in her thrall, to know she was desired by most of the men who cheered her rapturously. It was good to put on a pretty dress, to know she could afford to buy another any time she wanted to. She was doing something most women could only dream of.

  Soon after starting at Heaney’s, she and Sam had found a room on the top floor in a tenement on Houston Street, sharing the kitchen with an Italian couple who had the other room in the apartment. To almost everyone they knew, a room for just two was luxury, and although Beth often complained because there was never any peace and quiet in the building with its five floors, each with four apartments and an average of eight to ten people in each, she thanked her lucky stars that it was only noise she had to put up with, not a room full of people.