The Crimson Thread (11 page)

Angry Words
 

Bertie was hurrying home around nine in the morning. J.P. Wellington had told her to go start on the other dresses immediately. She was lost in thought when Ray stepped out of a doorway just before her building. “So?”

            “They loved it! You’re a magic man!” she said, throwing her arms around him impulsively. “You have saved me yet again. Thank you, a million times, thank you.”

            He put his hand on her back and rocked her joyfully. “I was glad to do it, princess.”

            “They want two more, but I’ll make them myself,” she said, stepping out of his embrace. “I can’t ask you to do it again.”

            “They won’t be as good,” he said.

            Bertie wanted to take offense and call him conceited, except that she knew he was right. “Your work is better than mine. It’s amazing, in fact,” she admitted. “I truly think you are a genius.”

            “I know it, though it’s always nice to hear,” he said with a grin.

            “If you wouldn’t mind helping me one more time, perhaps this time you could show me hoe you did it, so that later I could do it myself without asking you for help,” she suggested.

            “You need sleep,” he noted. “Be at the room at seven tonight and we will make two more dresses.”

            “Thank you,” she said again.

            “Don’t thank me. Remember, we are negotiating a payment.”

            “Of course,” she agreed, without giving her words much thought.

            Bertie got home and found Liam sitting in bed with Eileen, showing her the pictures in a book Maria had brought with her the night before. “Maria will be coming back at lunchtime with something called spag-haddy for us,” he told her.

            Eileen stretched her arms to Bertie for a hug. “Ria is nice,” she said, her flaxen curls bouncing around her pale face.

            The little girl puckered her lips for a kiss, and Bertie kissed her lightly. “How is my girl today?” she asked.

            “Eila loves Bridgy,” she said with a smile. Bertie took hope from these words. Maybe Eileen was finally improving. She seemed livelier than she had in weeks.

            :”Liam,” Bertie said, fishing five dollar bills from her dress pocket. “Run an errand for me, would you? See if you can find some cod and potatoes for supper. And with the money that’s left, go to the thread man and look for the red, shiny thread exactly like the kind I had. Remember the spool of it I showed you? Buy as much of it as you can afford. Tell the man you want crimson thread.”

            “Sure thing,” he agreed, clearly happy to be set free from the apartment for an outing.

            “Be back in time for the spag-haddy,” she reminded him as he flew out the door.

            Bertie played with Eileen until the child went down for her nap. Since she’d become ill, Liam had reported that she slept more than ever. This day it was a relief, since it allowed Bertie to nap beside her.

            She awoke with the noon sun blazing in her eyes and Maria shaking her shoulders. “Lunch is here, sleepyhead. I brought you something from the restaurant. Come eat and tell me everything.”

            Liam ran in with his bag of groceries for supper and poured the change onto the table. “The thread man says he’s all out of the crimson thread,” he reported.

            “Oh, no!” Bertie cried, throwing her hands up despairingly. She swiped the change into her hands. “I’ll look later and maybe find something equally nice, though I doubt I’ll find anything as beautiful.”

            With Eileen on her lap, she sat at the table with Liam and Maria and shoveled spaghetti into her mouth. “Slow down. Are you starved?” said Maria, laughing.

            “I had no supper or breakfast,” Bertie realized. “This is wonderful.”

            “I told you it was.”

            They looked at Liam and Eileen, both of whom were completely covered in tomato sauce, and laughed. “Spag-haddy is the best!” Liam announced gleefully.

            When Liam and Eileen left the table and began a game of tag around the apartment, Bertie told Maria everything that had happened. “If they like these two dresses, Mr. Wellington will hire me to work alongside James,” she concluded.

            “The boss’s son, the one you’ve been mooning about after?” Maria asked.

            Bertie nodded excitedly. “Maria, I wouldn’t be a servant in his eyes any longer. I’d be his partner, his coworker. He said he though we’d make a great team. Suddenly it might be possible for…well, you know.”

            Maria clapped her hands together delightedly and hummed “”The Wedding Match.” Then she frowned with concern. “But what about Ray?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Does he know that he’s making these dresses so you can be with the rich and handsome man of your dreams?”

            “He doesn’t, but I don’t see what difference it should make,” replied Bertie.

            “Of course it makes a difference, Bertie,” Maria insisted. “It will make a big difference to Ray. Don’t tell me you don’t see it. The man keeps helping at every turn because he’s madly in love with you.”

That night, once again, Bertie left Liam and Eileen with Maria and went out to meet Ray at the basement room. He was already at work when she climbed down the cellar stairs, this time at the spinning wheel. Beside him was a piece of the blue material that had been hacked into with a blade and was almost completely shredded.

            “I am spinning it into new material,” he explained. He was twisting the blue into the gold pieces from the packing material and even with the bits of straw. The resulting thread was a luminous blend of gold and blue. The straw produced a skein of thread that had body and an unusual nubby texture. “This will be our accent material for the new dresses. Once I weave it together into cloth on the loom, I can use it for collars, belts, cuffs, flounces. No one will ever have seen anything like it; at least not in this country.”

            “Did you learn to do this as a boy?” she asked.

            He nodded. “The cloth making is from my grandmother, yes. People said she had magic hands and that I inherited them from her. The dressmaking I learned from carious dressmakers and tailors I’ve worked for.”

            “The design of the first dress was so unique,” she said. “Did you see it somewhere?”

            He tapped his head. “I saw it in here. I imagined it on you.”

            Watching him work, she remembered Maria’s words. Was he really madly in love with her?

            Of course he was. He’d made it clear enough.

            And did she feel something for him in return?

            This was a more difficult question to answer. She felt
something
, to be sure. But what was it? It was certainly nothing that the logical part of her brain could give a name to. He was not what she would rationally desire in a man.

            “You are so kind to me,” she said, stepping closer to him, and then faltered. How could she possibly tell this man that she could never love him? That was what she needed to say, because it was the right thing to do. But he had been kind, and she didn’t want to hurt him.

            “You keep telling me you expect payment, but you don’t say what it will be,” she said, deciding on another approach. “I would feel better if I could pay you and I hope that if I get this job with Wellington Industries, I will someday be able to do so.”

            “I have money,” he replied with a note of irritation as he continued his work. “I don’t need you money. I do this for you.”

            “You know that we will only ever be friends,” she said, speaking quickly.

            He stopped spinning. “And why is that?”

            “Because I don’t love you.”

            He turned and looked at her with that direct, piercing gaze that made her feel he was seeing into the depths of her heart. “You’re wrong,” he stated.

            She shook her head. “I’m not wrong.”

            He returned to his spinning. “I can see you more clearly than you can see yourself,” he insisted.

            She sat on a crate, her head on her hands. What could she do now? She had told him honestly how she felt.

            Abruptly, he stopped working and slapped his hand on the spinning wheel. He got up and strode to her. “You know that I love you. I think of you day and night. My feelings for you are real and they are powerful. It must frighten you. It frightens me. You respond to me, too. I can see it in your face, in the way you lean toward me when I am near. You can run from it if you wish, but don’t expect me to believe there is nothing between us!”

            She stood to face him. Her mind was whirling as if he was somehow hypnotizing her into believing his words. But she couldn’t fall under his spell. “I never asked for your help!” she cried. “You helped me because you chose to, but I never asked you for anything!”

            He grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her close. “Then give me my payment now. Kiss me, and that will prove to you how much you love me.”

            She yanked away. “No! I will pay you anything else, but you can’t make me feel what I do not feel! What else shall I pay you to make things square between us? Name your price, but it will not be me!”

            He laughed bitterly, scornfully. “I don’t know. Why don’t I take your firstborn child?”

            “Ha!” she cried. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

            “What price would
you
have me name?”

            “Fine, then! My firstborn child it is. And when I have money, I will mail it to you and we will be clear of each other, all debts paid, over and done with.”

            Bertie suddenly felt that she had to get away from him. It was urgent that she not listen to another word he had to say. Overcome with emotion, she ran up the stairs into the alley.

            Tears welled in her eyes, but she put her head down and began walking briskly back toward her apartment. She’d known he was hotheaded and rude. Why had she expected anything different from him?

            Bertie had walked a block when a horse-drawn hired cab slowed down alongside her. James stretched half out the window, waving to her. “Bertie, hello there! Fancy meeting you down here!”

            With the palms of her hands, Bertie dashed the tears from her eyes and forced her lips into a smile.

            The carriage stopped and James leaped out, with his friend George Rumpole right behind. He wasn’t exactly drunk, but Bertie could see from his unsteady stance that he’d been drinking.

            Normally she didn’t approve of drunkenness. It was an addiction and scourge that caused only misery, in her opinion. She’d seen it destroy too many lives. But somehow, in James, it didn’t seem too bad. He was only out having fun, and he wasn’t exactly stumbling drunk.

            “I’d have expected you to be holed up somewhere sewing feverishly. What are you doing down here in this wretched neighborhood?” he asked.

            “I might ask the same of you,” she countered, deliberately avoiding the question.

            “We’re slumming – I believe that’s the term,” he replied with a laugh.

            “Pardon?” Bertie had never heard the word.

            “It’s when the well-to-do avail themselves of the pleasures usually reserved for the low-life denizens of this unsavory area.” He said, and she detected the alcohol slur in his voice.

            “Do you think it’s safe for you to wander about here by yourself, Bertie?” George asked solicitously. “It will soon be dark.” She sniffed the distinctive odor of beer on him, but clearly he had not drunk as much as James.

            She realized that they had assumed that she didn’t live in the area and was thankful for their mistake. Meeting them on the street like this made her see how squalid the streets must appear to them, how dangerous and dirty – which, in fact, they were.

            “Why aren’t you home working on the dresses?” James asked again.

            Desperate for something – anything! – to tell him, she recalled some of the fancy ladies she’d seen touring the streets in groups. They glanced in horror at the conditions and spoke loudly about how they would write to the mayor and demand reform. Some stood in front of saloons with signs advocating the prohibition of liquor. Others passed petitions in the street, advocating better working conditions and shorter hours for child laborers.

            “I come here as part of my charity work for the poor souls who live in this awful place,” she said.

            “We knew you looked like an angel, Bertie, but we didn’t know you actually were one!” cried George.

            “Oh, I’m no angel!” she assured him lightly.

            She turned and caught sight of Ray walking fast down the block toward her. His expression was intense, and she knew he was coming after her.

            “Can we offer you a lift somewhere?” George asked.

            In minutes Ray would be upon her. If he wanted to talk and smooth things out, she should listen to him. But that wasn’t what the fierce look on his face told her was on his mind. She certainly didn’t want to argue with him here on the street – especially not in front of James.

            “Yes, please,” she accepted, not even waiting for one of them to open the door for her but quickly climbing into the carriage.

            Ray saw her departing and began to run ton catch up. James saw it too and shot a concerned glance at Bertie before climbing into the carriage with George.

            Ray caught up as the carriage was leaving and was in time to slap his hand on the carriage window. “Bertie!” he yelled.

            “Who is that?” asked George.

            “Would you like me to get out and deal with him?” James offered eagerly.

            Bertie looked down at her hands. “He’s someone I know from…from my work here. Ignore him. He’s probably drunk.”