Never Look Back Read online

  The children’s faces became a blur as the steamer picked up speed, all Matilda could make out now was Sidney’s red hair and Tabitha’s bright green bonnet. ‘I love you all,’ she whispered to herself, wiping her damp eyes. ‘Be good and keep safe till I get back.’

  It was night as the steamer approached San Francisco two weeks later. They had made excellent time as the weather had been good, but the journey had been very tedious for Matilda. She’d felt obliged to stay in her tiny cabin most of the time as she was the only female passenger on a boat stuffed to capacity with prospective gold miners. In the main they’d behaved in a disgusting fashion, more like excited little boys than grown men. When they weren’t drinking themselves stupid or playing cards, they were being sick or fighting. The crew of the boat were every bit as bad – the original crew, all but two members of it, had jumped ship the last time they called in San Francisco, in search of gold like everyone else. The Captain told Matilda in confidence he expected the new crew to do likewise, all he could hope for was that there would be old sailors who were tired of California, ready when he got there to sign on to get home. He had told Matilda in no uncertain terms that San Francisco was no place for a lady, a town of tents, brawls, whores and gamblers, where the streets were mud, the air thick with foul language, and perversion of every kind was on public display.

  Yet as they sailed into the small port Matilda was thrilled by the view. Some 300 ships lay at anchor, and behind them rose what looked like a huge, shimmering, golden amphitheatre. What she was seeing was in fact thousands of tents. They stretched from the waterfront right up on to the surrounding hills, the gold colouring from the candles and lanterns lit in each tent. As they sailed in closer, a hum above the sound of the waves and wind gradually became louder and louder until it became a ferment of music and shouting.

  She stood back in alarm as her fellow passengers, many of them drunk, fought their way on to the launch boat. The Captain took her elbow and urged her to stay aboard till the morning for her own safety. She agreed gratefully, suddenly very aware of just how vulnerable a lone woman could be.

  The noise from the town didn’t let up until almost dawn. It was far worse than anything she’d ever heard back in Finders Court for the music, laughter and rough raised voices were often peppered with gun shots too. It crossed her mind she could always sail straight back again to Oregon, but to come so far and not inspect this town thoroughly seemed so very cowardly.

  Cold, damp mist hung in the air as she was rowed to the jetty early the next morning. She clutched her cape tighter round her, and told herself that her first priority must be to find somewhere safe to stay and leave her bag. But as she moved to climb out of the boat, she found herself being hauled out bodily by a fierce-looking man in a coonskin cap and buckskins, a rifle over his shoulder, and terror gripped at her insides.

  She was surrounded by men, the like of whom she’d never seen before. Brown, red, yellow and white faces, all gawping at her, pistols and knives stuck in their belts, and the smell coming from them made her feel faint.

  ‘Don’t be afeared,’ the man in the coonskin cap said in a gruff voice. ‘They ain’t wanting to hurt you none, or rob you, they just ain’t seen a lady in a while.’

  She thanked him in a whisper and scuttled off, carpet-bag in hand, her heart thumping as loudly as the hammers she could hear ringing out all over the town.

  Picking her way through heaps of merchandise just dumped on the dirt street, and avoiding teamsters who drove their carts at full pelt regardless of the throngs of men in their path, she reached the comparative safety of an ironmongery store. Stunned by the utter mayhem all around her, she paused.

  What she could see, hear and smell was like London’s docks, New York’s markets, Independence just before the wagons rolled out of town, and perhaps Fort Laramie thrown in too. The noise and frantic pace were incredible. An auctioneer in a black frock-coat and top hat was standing on a box gabbling away so fast she couldn’t make out what he was offering. Before him a crowd of men waved fistfuls of notes. Men were rolling casks, others hauling huge wooden crates. Mules, horses, and even baskets of live chickens added their voices to the din. Every nationality she had ever heard of was here. Mexicans with droopy moustaches in sombreros, mingled with Negroes, Indians and Chinese. Slender, dusky-skinned men argued with burly white men, she saw the gold-braided uniforms of ships’ captains, the dark blue of the American army, and red flannel shirts of working men. Fleeting words of English wafted to her as she stood there, Scottish accents, Irish, Australian, but there were far more foreign languages. She had been warned that there were few women here, but she could see no more than perhaps four or five, among perhaps 600 men.

  Taking a deep breath and telling herself they were all just people, with wives and children back home, she lifted her bag again and set off in the direction she hoped was the town’s centre. The amount of quite valuable merchandise just left in the streets – a crate of cigars, a bundle of shovels, and many other such things – struck her as very odd as she walked. If this town was all the Captain had claimed it to be, why weren’t they stolen? In London or New York they would be.

  After a ten-minute walk through streets lined with wood-framed shacks covered in canvas, the ground beneath her feet a bog of rubbish and human effluent, she came to a plaza. Aside from an old adobe-built Custom House, the other buildings around the plaza were quite imposing wooden ones. As they were named the Alhambra, El Dorado, Veranda and the Bella Union, and a great many people were going into them, she assumed they were hotels, and hurried across to the Bella Union which looked the nicest.

  But as she walked through the doors, to her astonishment she found it was a gambling hall, one great long room, made even longer in appearance by mirrors on the far end, and along the sides, tables for faro, roulette and monte. It wasn’t even ten in the morning yet, but most of the tables were taken, a man played a harp sitting up on a raised platform in one corner, and the candles in the crystal chandelier were all lit.

  She stayed for a moment or two, astounded by the sight. The men playing the games wore rough work clothes, knives and guns in their belts just like down on the wharf, but there were elegant women in beautiful satin gowns dealing cards, bankers in stiff collars and frock-coats with oiled moustaches. On the floor was fine matting, there were oil paintings on the silk-covered walls, and palms in tubs too.

  She was soon to see that every building in the plaza was a gambling hall, and stopping to speak to a young lad with a friendly face, who was sweeping the steps outside the El Dorado, she heard that they were open all day and night, even on a Sunday. He told her men often played with nuggets of gold which were weighed by the banker before they began to play, but usually the gamblers left with nothing in their pockets.

  When she asked him about hotels he directed her to a nearby street which he said was lined with them. She was puzzled however when she reached it, for it seemed to be only restaurants, dingy ones at that, with grand names like the Astor House, Delmonico’s, Revere House and George Washington. The lad had been so adamant that they were hotels she assumed they must have rooms at the back, so going into the Astor House she inquired.

  ‘A dollar a night, ma’am,’ a swarthy waiter in a soiled apron replied. He jerked his thumb at a tier of narrow bunks lining the wall. ‘Ladies up the other end.’

  She found it hard to believe anyone would pay a dollar for a bed in full view of diners, but several were still occupied, the dirty blankets pulled over the sleepers’ heads.

  Out of sheer curiosity she went ‘up the other end’, but the only difference between this and the male end was that the bunks were even narrower and shorter, but a flimsy curtain had been added which could presumably be hitched across the front of the bunk.

  It wasn’t even a wooden or brick building, just canvas stretched over wooden lathes and a dirt floor. Her curiosity didn’t go so far as asking if there was a wash-room, or even a privy. She was pretty certain such refi
nements were unheard of in this town.

  As the morning wore on she became frightened that she would never find a decent place to stay. People were using anything and any place for some sort of shelter. She saw a rotten boat turned upside down and a crude hole cut for a door, several packing cases with men curled up in them like dogs in a kennel, even tepee-like tents, canvas wrapped around a few poles. As she walked further out of town, up on the hills, she saw close up the tented city which had looked so enchanting from the boat. It wasn’t pretty close-up, even though jokers had put up signs with names like ‘Happy, Pleasant and Contented Valley’, for there were rotting animal carcasses lying around, tattered shirts left drying on prickly shrubs, filthy, unshaven men sprawled around in a drunken stupor.

  Going back into the town she tried everywhere. There were so many saloons she couldn’t count them, but the only rooms they had were for ‘their girls’. She saw desperate-looking gambling shacks, an opium den, and countless brothels with frowzy-looking women in low-cut dresses urging the men in. She was shown one tiny canvas walled cubicle in one place, and such was her desperation that she was on the point of agreeing to take it, despite the filthy bare mattress, when she heard a man vomiting in the cubicle next to it. She fled from there, with the sound of the owner’s ribald laughter ringing in her ears.

  From time to time she caught glimpses of ordinary-looking ladies scurrying into stores, some smartly dressed, some in the calico dresses and sun-bonnets she’d grown so used to seeing on the wagon train. It cheered her to know there were regular folk here in this crazy town too, but their hurried, nervous manner reminded her of frightened deer and it was a further reminder that this town was not for ladies.

  Most of the women on the streets were clearly prostitutes, some flashily dressed in gaudy silk gowns and fancy bonnets, but many more as bedraggled as the whores in New York. Like the men, they appeared to come from every corner of the world.

  None of the streets were paved, there weren’t even any sidewalks. She saw people emptying slop buckets and rubbish straight out into them. A dead mule abandoned there was so rotten that even the stray dogs ignored it. The stench was overpowering, far worse than anything she’d ever encountered in either London or New York. All she could be glad of was that the weather was good – she imagined that in the rain most streets would be impassable.

  Yet for all the horror, and however despondent she was at finding nowhere to stay, there was an infectious, raw excitement in the air, very like being at a fairground. The men who were saddling up mules and horses to go on up to the mountains had a look of joyful expectancy on their faces. There was a frantically busy pace in the many small stores which sold everything from picks and shovels to camping stoves and blankets, and long queues outside the banks as men deposited gold dust, nuggets and money. She knew with absolute certainty that if she could find a bed, this town could be her own private goldmine. Several times she had stopped to ask people if they knew of anywhere to stay, and in the conversations she struck up she heard that all building materials, especially timber, were in very short supply, and prices of every single commodity were vastly inflated. To take her mind off the weight of her bag, and her aching feet, she mentally adjusted the price list John had given her, using local prices.

  Finally, in desperation, she turned to the church. It was one of the oldest buildings in town, made of adobe and painted white, with a strong Mexican influence. It didn’t matter that it was Roman Catholic, as a person who only considered God as a last resort, she didn’t care about denominations.

  Half an hour later as she left, she was more inclined to believe in God, at least for today. Not only had the priest, Father Sanchez, who had been inside, commiserated with her on her plight and prayed with her for her success in the town, but he’d given her a letter of introduction to some personal friends of his, Mr and Mrs Slocum, in Montgomery Street.

  Mr Henry Slocum was a city alderman. Father Sanchez had said he was behind the idea for filling in tide lands along the cove and constructing a new wharf. Matilda had already been up Montgomery Street once today, for it was only around thirty yards from the waterfront, and found it to be one of the older and smarter streets in the town and the centre for banking and finance. She was determined she was going to charm Mr Slocum and his wife into taking her in as a paying guest, for aside from her own personal comfort, they might very well be interested in John’s timber too.

  She straightened her bonnet outside number eight and flicked the dust from the bottom of her cape, then, taking a deep breath, she walked up the two steps and rapped on the door knocker.

  It was one of the best houses she’d seen in the town, a wooden-framed, shingled three-storey, well built and maintained with demure cream lace at the windows. A young Mexican maid answered the door.

  ‘Father Sanchez asked me to call on Mr Slocum,’ she said. She held out his note. ‘This will explain everything to him.’

  The maid’s dark eyes scanned Matilda briefly, perhaps not entirely understanding what she’d said, but in halting English she asked her to come in and indicated she was to wait in the hall.

  After the noise, dirt and confusion in the street, Slocum’s house was almost church-like in its peace and cleanliness. The floor was waxed, a marble-topped side table held a glass dome with a stuffed bird, and a collection of black framed cameos hung on the wall.

  To her left, just beyond the staircase, was the door through which the maid had entered, and from behind it she heard the murmur of a male voice. Matilda looked down at her gloves, they were light grey kid, and she regretted putting them on so early this morning for now they were stained from carrying the suitcase. But she couldn’t remove them, the man would take one look at her rough callused hands and know she wasn’t a real lady.

  The door opened and the maid came out.

  ‘Meester Slocum will see you now,’ she said, bobbing a curtsey. Matilda stifled a giggle, no one had ever curtsied to her before. Leaving her suitcase in the hall, she swept into the room and smiled brightly.

  ‘How very good of you to see me, Mr Slocum,’ she said in just the way Lily would approach Giles’s smarter parishioners. ‘I do hope you won’t consider it an imposition.’

  Mr Slocum was a small, fat man, perhaps in his thirties, the lack of hair on his head in marked contrast to his bushy black beard, and he had a slight cast in one eye. He was standing by the fireplace, but she thought he had been working at his desk under the window when the maid interrupted him as there were a great number of papers and charts lying on it.

  ‘It is always a pleasure to meet a lady in this town, there are so very few of them,’ he said with a smile. ‘Father Sanchez informs me in his note that you are a widow, Mrs Jennings, and you have come to San Francisco on business, but have been unable to find anywhere to stay. May I inquire what business are you engaged in?’

  ‘Timber,’ she said. ‘I am acting as an agent for my brother-in-law’s sawmill back in Oregon. But I’ve had a terrible time today. I tried several of the hotels to try and find a room, but I’m afraid they weren’t what they advertised. I called on Father Sanchez in utter despair.’

  He sympathized with her, asked her to sit down and take coffee with him, then went on to say his wife was visiting friends, but she’d be back soon.

  It was such a relief to sit down, and she folded her hands on her lap so he couldn’t see her stained gloves.

  ‘San Francisco is not a place for a woman alone,’ he said, looking at her intently, perhaps trying to guess how old she was. ‘I find it surprising your brother-in-law sent you.’

  ‘It was purely my idea and he took some persuading’ she said with a wide smile. ‘You see, Mr Slocum, I have been left with two children, and I am not prepared to accept charity, not even from family. Mr Duncan couldn’t leave his business at present, so it seemed to me that I should repay his kindness to me by helping him. Of course when I set out I had no idea how hard it would be to find accommodation.’

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p; ‘Are you English, Mrs Jennings?’ he asked. He had a very short neck, and when he moved his head, his body followed too in a most disconcerting manner.

  ‘Yes I am, from London,’ she said. ‘I came over in 1843, and after two years in New York as a lady’s companion I moved to Missouri where I married Mr Jennings, a widower with one small daughter. Sadly he died in December of ’47, so myself and Tabitha his daughter joined a wagon train in the spring to see my sister in Oregon. My baby was born on the journey.’

  She had changed nursemaid to lady’s companion as it sounded better, just as Cissie being her sister did too. She could see Mr Slocum was both touched and impressed, exactly as she had intended. His face softened, and as the maid came in with a tray of coffee, she knew he was thinking he should help her.

  ‘I am so sorry to hear about your husband, was he a farmer?’ he asked, once the maid had left.

  ‘No, a doctor,’ she said. ‘Tabitha wishes to follow in his footsteps too.’

  ‘It seems ambition is common in your family,’ he said, and his smile was warmer now. ‘I am an ambitious man myself and I admire that quality in others. But Mrs Jennings, San Francisco is a dangerous place now that gold has been found. We have convicts swarming over from Australia, desperate Mexicans, Chinese, all the very lowest class of person from this country and Europe, and many of them criminals. Every night someone is killed here, there is no police force, if the army was to come they’d only desert to the goldfields. I fear for your safety, my dear.’

  ‘That is very sweet of you,’ she said with a gentle smile. He was an odd-looking man, but he had a good deep voice and he was obviously a real gentleman. ‘But once I find a safe place to stay, I won’t be wandering about at night, or attracting any undue attention to myself. I would consider it a great favour if you could put me in touch with someone who would take me as a paying guest, just for as long as it takes to fill my order book and get a passage home.’