Fortune is a Woman (8 page)

A third son, Josh, was born, but this time Martha did not regain her health and vitality so quickly. She was weak and tired, and Josh was raised on the best Ostermilk money could buy rather than at his mother's breast. Everyone said he was the most beautiful baby in the world, and plump, brown-eyed, twelve-year-old Annie doted on him. It was she who gave him his bottles, changed his nappies, and washed and ironed his little dresses and bonnets. It was she who pushed his pram down the street, stopping to let the neighbors admire his blond, gray-eyed beauty. And it was she who shopped and cooked and kept the house clean, because Martha no longer was able to do so.

Annie would often pop next door to talk with Mrs. Morris about babies, because Sally Morris had a son just a few weeks older than Josh. They would place the two infants side by side in front of the fire on the clean rag rug made by Mrs. Morris from their old clothes and blankets, watching them crawl around together. "Just look at little Sammy," Mrs. Morris would say, beaming admiringly at her sturdy, dark-haired boy. "Why, he just dotes on Josh." Then she laughed. "Listen to me talk," she exclaimed, "like you're his mother, Annie, not his sister."

Three months later, when Martha Aysgarth faded from life, Annie became "mother" to her whole family. Her father told her she was finished with school for good and she would take her mother's place. "Your mam taught you well enough," he said gruffly, "and I'll not have any other woman coming into my house and telling me what to do."

Mrs. Morris felt sorry for Annie, having so much responsibility and still only a child. She often minded Josh while Annie struggled to keep up with the housework and the washing, the marketing and cooking and baking, because Frank Aysgarth expected it all to be just the same as it was when his wife was alive. And Frank became more silent and taciturn; he never ever embraced his children or showed them any affection, but he never took a strap to them either.

The years moved slowly by with scarcely time for Annie to take a breath, let alone think of herself. Josh and Sammy Morris were such close friends now, they practically lived in each other's pockets. They started Back Road Council School on the same day and moved slowly upward through the classes together, and they were constantly in mischief and constantly in and out of each other's houses, cadging a slice of fresh-baked bread slathered with delicious beef drippings from Annie, and sitting on the steps watching the world go by on Montgomery Street while they ate it. They stole burning-hot jam tarts from the wire tray where Mrs. Morris had left them to cool, or a hunk of feather-light Yorkshire pudding, fresh from the roasting tin. And they were always together for Annie's huge, tasty Sunday dinners of roast pork with crackling and roast potatoes, crisp and golden on the outside and soft as pillows on the inside, and her hot treacle pudding with creamy custard that was enough to melt the coldest heart. She was the best cook on Montgomery Street bar none, though Frank Aysgarth grumbled about her all the time.

"Treats her just the way he did his wife—like a slave," Sammy's mother said with a disparaging sniff. She didn't like Frank and he didn't like her; she thought he was a selfish old tyrant and he thought she was a lazy slattern who kept a rough-and-ready house and was too often at the Red Lion drinking port and lemon and keeping her husband poor, when she should have been home looking after her bairns.

"Frank Aysgarth's alius been a man's man," her husband commented. "He's got no time for women."

"Aye, not even his own daughter," she retorted bitterly. She'd heard him often enough through the adjoining wall, berating the poor girl, and God knows Annie did her best. She was always working. She would be outside first thing in the morning, scrubbing the front steps, rubbing on the bright yellow scouring stone and rinsing down the flagstones with buckets of water so that when Frank stepped out his front door it was as clean outside under his good leather boots as it was inside. She blacked the cast-iron range until it shone and you could fairly see your own face in the fireback. There was always something appetizing in the oven when the boys came home from school at dinnertime, and when she sent them back again in the afternoon, they were clean and with full bellies. Annie's wash would be strung across the street and blowing in the wind before anyone else had even got started, and at six o'clock every evening when Frank Aysgarth came home the table was set with a clean, starched white cloth with his dinner ready and steaming on the plate. As soon as he sat down Annie would take a jug and hurry to the Red Lion on the corner and fetch him a foaming pint of best Yorkshire bitter and then she'd sit quietly in the corner while he ate silently.

When he was finished, Frank would walk from the table without so much as a "thank-you" and sit himself down in the big burgundy plush armchair in front of the fire. He would pick up his copy of the
Yorkshire Evening Post
she'd bought for him and say, "Where's our lads, then?"

"Out," she'd reply, briskly clearing the table, "playing in't street." Or if it was raining, "Next door with t'other little lads."

And then she'd go quietly to the scullery and wash the dishes before calling the boys in and getting them ready for bed.

"Bloody hard labor, that's what Annie Aysgarth's doing," Mrs. Morris grumbled to her husband.
"And
she's only sixteen. She's a better mother to those lads than anybody on this street—and a better wife to her father too."

"In all ways except one," her husband replied darkly, sucking on his pipe and filling the poorly furnished room with sickly-sweet tobacco fumes.

Mrs. Morris glared at him, indicating the listening boys. "Little pitchers have big ears," she reminded him sharply. "But still, if you ask me she's nothing but a slave for the man. He'd have to pay two servants ten pounds a month to do what she does—and then he'd not get it done as well!"

Annie knew her father was a hard taskmaster, but she put up with it because she had never known anything else, and because she loved her brothers. It was true, as Bertie and Ted grew up they grew away from her, becoming like their father, shutting her out from their masculine lives and expecting their dinners on the plate as soon as they walked in the door, their Friday night bathwater hot and ready in the tub that was kept under the wooden slab in the scullery, and their shirts perfectly starched and neatly ironed with all the buttons sewed on for Sunday church. But young Josh was like her own son.

CHAPTER 6

1895

For her mother's funeral Francie wore an expensive new black silk dress with a white lace collar purchased from the smart Paris House store on Market Street. She had new black boots made of the finest kid leather, a black velvet cape lined with ermine and her long blond hair was brushed to shining perfection and tucked into a black silk bonnet. She rode with her father and her brother Harry in a black satin-lined carriage behind six black-plumed horses at the head of a procession of sixty carriages of mourners and civic dignitaries, and she stood pale and trembling by the graveside as Dolores's coffin was lowered into it.

Her little brother, Harry, in black velvet knickerbockers and jacket, his cap held respectfully to his chest, sobbed loudly, and her father, handsome and sartorially correct in striped trousers and black jacket, dabbed at his eyes with an immaculate white linen handkerchief. But Francie never shed a tear. She stared straight in front of her, gritting her teeth together and willing herself not to scream. She wanted to cry out how unfair it was that her mother should die, that she was so young, so beautiful, so sweet and gentle and so kind-hearted. She wanted to tell the three hundred mourners who had also been guests at Dolores's wedding that she loved her mother, that she missed her dreadfully, and that she would just die, too, without her. But she knew they would not have understood, so she just locked the emotions deep inside her, refusing to let a single tear drip down her cheek onto her new black silk dress.

It was a raw January day and a cold mist lingered around the gravestones. Moisture dripped from the naked trees, turning the grass into a sea of brown mud. The elaborate floral tributes bound with purple ribbons, and piled around the open grave, looked garish in the gray light. The largest was from Dolores's family. They had sent their respects but claimed the journey was too far from Jalisco and were sorry they could not be present. They sent their condolences to Harmon and a magnificent four-foot wreath of scarlet roses.

As soon as the last prayer was said over the grave the mourners hurriedly sought the warmth of their waiting carriages. The two gravediggers leaned on their shovels like gray ghosts in the mist, stamping their feet to get the blood moving, coughing harshly as they prepared to fill in the earth, and Francie turned away quickly, unable to bear any more.

Back at the house she sat alone on a spindly, gilt loveseat in the mirrored ballroom watching the guests devour the lavish buffet. The women smiled and chatted in low tones about a dance that was being held next week, about who had been invited and what they would wear. The men clustered together in groups, drinks in hand, talking business. And her brother, Harry, stood quietly at his father's side as the guests filed past to shake his hand and offer their condolences.

"How odd that girl is," she heard the women murmuring to each other, "just sitting there alone when she should be at her father's side like the brother—only four years old and he knows how to behave like a little man... and she never shed a tear at the graveside either.... Why doesn't the child show some grief for her mother? It's not normal.... Harmon had better keep an eye on her, I'd say she might be troublesome...."

Francie's cheeks burned scarlet and she stared hard at the blue swirls on the rug covering the polished parquet floor, praying she wouldn't cry. What did any of them know about her mother? Oh, they had probably smiled and chatted with her when they were guests in her house, and they had sent gifts of flowers and fruit when it was first known she was ill. But none of them had ever come to see her and she'd bet they didn't even know she had been away at the ranch this past year. Her heart clenched tight as a fist with grief. She wanted to shout at them that they didn't even care about her mother, that they wouldn't even miss her, that no one loved her the way she did....

She caught her father's eye across the room and he gestured angrily for her to come and stand beside him. Sliding reluctantly from the velvet seat she threaded her way through the crowd to where he was standing.

"Why weren't you here?" he demanded, keeping his voice low, but she heard his fiery tone and shrank back from him. "People are talking," he muttered. "Stand next to your brother and remember your manners."

Standing stiff as a ramrod next to Harry, Francie thought the day would never end. The long line of guests filed past and she remembered to curtsy and speak when she was spoken to. She was aware of the women's eyes as they watched her father. "A fine figure of a man," she heard them whisper speculatively, thinking of their unmarried daughters and the Harrison millions. Then at last the nursemaid came to fetch Harry for his tea and she was reprieved.

She was back in her old room and somehow it looked dingier and more unwelcoming than ever. The white paint had chipped from the iron bedstead and the narrow straw-filled mattress was lumpy. The flimsy flowered curtains failed to stop the chill coming off the icy barred window-panes, and though the house had the very best steam heating, somehow by the time it reached the servants' rooms it was diluted to a mere whisper of warmth. She huddled on the narrow bed, shivering and clutching a blanket around her as the tears finally flowed freely. She cried for her lost mother, and she cried for Princess, who had been banished to the stables, and she cried for her own loneliness, until she finally fell asleep exhausted, still wearing her smart black silk mourning dress and her soft little kid boots.

***

The day after the funeral Harmon telegraphed his final bid on a steam yacht he was negotiating to purchase in London. His offer was accepted and the following week he and his son traveled to New York in his sumptuous private railcar on the Southern Pacific Line, of which he was also a director. From there they sailed on the French steamship, the S.S.
Aquitaine
for Cherbourg, and from there by rail to Deauville, where he was to take delivery of his new yacht. They planned to be away for several months, so dust sheets were thrown over the furniture at the mansion, just as though no member of the family were still in residence. The only person who shared Francie's quarters was a German governess who had been hired to instruct her in deportment and some book-learning.

Francie's heart sank when she saw her. Fräulein Hassler was a strong-willed middle-aged spinster with coarse gray hair parted down the middle, then braided and curled into snails over her ears. She was tall and shapeless, her skin was sallow and her expression stern. She had large, protruding yellow teeth and she wore small steel-rimmed glasses that reflected the light, so Francie could not see her eyes.

But the fräulein knew a rich household when she saw one and she knew how to take command of a situation.

"I am not a servant, Herr Harrison," she had told him firmly at the interview.
"Natürlich
I do not expect to be on the same floor with the family, but my rooms should be on the third floor
front."

"Natürlich,"
Harmon agreed, glad to unload the problem of his daughter. So the fräulein had a large bedroom and sitting room of her own on the third floor front with a schoolroom down the hall, and Francie still had her cold little room at the back. And she ate her meals alone at the scrubbed pine kitchen table, while the fräulein had hers sent up on a tray to her room.

The first morning Fräulein Hassler sent a maid to fetch Francie on the dot of eight o'clock.

"You will report to me every day at this time," she told her, looking her up and down critically.