City Of Promise Part 24

"I can attest to your being very good at that, Rosie. You always were. I rather doubt the Good Lord has made a bosom too big for you to keep it from spilling out."

Rosie smiled. "That's true, Eileen. I daresay He has not. But in the case of Mrs. Wildwood as she calls herself-"

"And what do you call her? Is she not Mrs. Wildwood?"

"Who can say? When they make themselves out to be a widow, well, it's anyone's guess, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is."

"Francie Wildwood." Rosie spoke the name, then paused to see if there was a reaction. There was not. "Your nephew-in-law has never mentioned her, I take it?"

"He has not."

"I see. Well, according to Mrs. Wildwood, Mr. Turner is specially nice to her. Much nicer than he need be simply because he's her employer."

"And she," Eileen said quietly, "is nice to him in return?"

The other woman nodded and reached for the teapot, taking on the role of hostess though, in the usual manner of these outings, it would be Eileen who called for the check and paid the bill.

Later, sitting and thinking about the information which she knew was probably true, Eileen decided to do nothing about it. It would not, she decided, make Mollie any more inclined to mend things with her husband. Far from it. As for Josh, Eileen thought it quite good of him to choose such a relatively discreet liaison.

17.

MOLLIE HAD SURVIVED playing hostess at a second Thanksgiving dinner, thankful that this year as last, she was not required to make Christmas at 1060. It would, she thought, have been more than she could bear. Josh did have two large fir trees delivered; one for the drawing room and one for the help's enjoyment downstairs in the kitchen precincts. Mollie left the decorating of both to Tess, and avoided looking at either lest the shades that lived in her heart materialize with their nonexistent toys and ghostly joy and torment her further.

She had become adept at turning her mind from that which she did not wish to see. Not just the longing she could never entirely suppress, the reality as well. The occasional whiff of perfume from her husband's clothing, for example. Or the blue box marked Tiffany that was once delivered to the door-she left it on the table in the foyer and it was gone next morning. An error, Joshua said in pa.s.sing. He would deal with it. Perhaps he did so on one of the many evenings when he did not arrive home until well after midnight.

Mollie asked no questions. Why bother? She knew the answers, and she did not pretend she could expect it to be otherwise.

The new year brought bitter cold but no snow. It had been a not-quite white Christmas, with only the remains of a couple of early December dustings. In January Mollie walked around the bare and brown garden finding it hard to imagine that anything would be green again.

The Gardeners' Chronicle had taught her that most plants could winter over successfully no matter how extreme the weather, if they were insulated from rapid changes in temperature. Contrary to intuition, snow is therefore the gardener's friend. Their first winter at 1060 there had been snow from December right through to the middle of April; this winter of 1874, the garden's second, there was only brown earth. Mollie imagined she could see the bare branches of her trees and shrubs and vines shivering in the icy wind, and the cut-back plants in her perennial border shaking with cold.

"Perhaps hay," she said staring out the window of the breakfast room in mid-January.

Breakfast was the single meal they regularly took together, and while Josh might comment on something he read in the paper, it was rare for Mollie to initiate a conversation. The sound of her voice caused him to look up from The Times. "What about hay?"

"Can you spare any from the stable?"

"I suppose so. And there's more to be had in the town if necessary. What do you want it for?"

"Tucking in my garden," Mollie said.

Josh shook his head. "I do not understand what-"

"Plants need insulation from the cold," she began. "It's the thawing and freezing at the roots that causes-"

He had given up trying to muster any enthusiasm for the details of horticulture. The results were quite pretty, but the minutiae failed to interest him. "That fellow Edison," he said, returning to the paper. "Says here he's close to inventing a single wire that can carry four messages." Mollie looked blank. "It will revolutionize communication," he added. His wife went back to spooning up her soft-cooked egg. Josh suppressed a sigh. "Take as much hay from the stable as you like."

"Thank you. I shall tell Ollie."

He turned the page of The Times and found an announcement, prominently displayed and impossible to miss. The Bethlehem Iron Works in Pittsburgh wished to inform its many customers and the general public that it was now Bethlehem Steel.

Josh read the words a second time. No mistake. And next to that notice, an article saying the name change made perfect sense since these days steel accounted for the company's major output. Mostly for the railroads according to the reporter, but it was thought likely that once the slump ended-and business cycles inevitably end-there might be call for steel to be used in ". . . constructing newer and taller buildings than are currently common in our city."

Mollie had finished eating. She stood up to go.

"Listen to this," Josh said. She paused and turned to him, but her expression lacked any genuine interest. "Never mind," he said. "Go see to your hay."

In the face of the terrible economy that followed the financial panic of September, the kinds of men for whom the Carolina had been designed were fortunate if they were still working. They were not inclined to take on new burdens of heavy debt. Joshua had seen that coming. He was prepared to wait out the slump in terms of new tenants, but not to cope with ma.s.s defaults on the leases already in place. "I cannot," he told Zac, "survive empty flats and buildings allowed to go to ruin."

"What do you propose to do?"

"A few things," Josh said.

He'd begun by sending a notice to the residents of every flat. Henceforth they would be able to pay their rent monthly, even weekly if that made budgeting any easier. "I'm dealing with men who live on their salaries. In hard times it's got to be difficult for them to come up with a large quarterly payment." Additionally, he announced he was taking two dollars off the monthly rent of each flat for the next year. The twenty-four dollars of additional debt would be added to the final payment. A loan of sorts, and interest-free.

Inevitably, word of the new arrangements got around. "How come," Ebenezer Tickle demanded, "I didn't get one of them letters you sent?"

Josh didn't mention the fact that Ebenezer could not read. "Why should you have, Mr. Tickle? According to our arrangement you pay no rent for another three and a half years."

"Me and Mrs. Tickle won't be able to stay here," the dwarf said glumly, "if all the other tenants pack up and go back to boarding. Who's going to run the elevator and clean the halls and the lobby and such? Word is, you're going to cut back on the building staff."

"I shall have to do so, Mr. Tickle. But the point of the letter was to prevent a ma.s.s exodus from the building. I believe it will be successful and the flats will remain occupied."

"Even so," Tickle said, "seems to me you won't be doing any more building for a time."

They were conducting this conversation in the foundry, where not a single furnace was operating and the repaired Kelly converter hadn't been used since well before the holidays. "That may be so, Mr. Tickle."

"They tell me n.o.body's hiring down at Novelty. Not over at Globe neither. Nothing doing at any of the ironworks."

"There are few businesses in the city hiring these days," Josh said. "But that's not your worry, is it, Mr. Tickle? You are still being paid your weekly wage."

The dwarf nodded. "I am."

"Well then?"

"How long?" he asked. "I'm a married man. Got responsibilities. I need to know if you're planning to let me go."

"At the moment, no," Josh said. "I plan to keep my original crew intact as long as I can. With any luck, until things are on the uptick again. This is New York City, Mr. Tickle. There is always an uptick."

"But we won't be making steel, will we?"

"Not for the moment," Josh admitted. He had clipped the article about Bethlehem Steel from the paper. It was in his pocket as they spoke.

"Iron and steel," Tickle said, "they're all we know."

"It's a special skill, Mr. Tickle. But it's not the only thing you know. You, for instance, can run the elevator at the St. Nicholas, can you not?"

"I can. Nothing much to it. Keep the cables running smooth and the weight and counterweight in balance, and you go up and down like you mean to. No stops and starts."

"Exactly. And keeping my buildings clean and in good repair, nothing much to that either. But it has to be done."

"You're proposing we do that?" Tickle nodded to the other men, making a pretense of work by cleaning the idle equipment of the foundry. "Me and my cousins and Isaac and Washington and Sampson?"

"Yes. That's exactly what I'm proposing. You'll be the elevator men and maintenance crew for both buildings until things are better. Then we'll see."

The dwarf nodded. "Could be all right. I think the others will agree."

The streets were full of newly made beggars and tramps and half-naked children become urchins overnight. Work or bread was the cry. The response was a demand for patience, and the customary diatribes about the evils of overmuch charity. "I would think so, Mr. Tickle."

"Same pay as before?"

"That's not reasonable. Fifty-three cents an hour for running two elevators and general upkeep . . . I could hang on to the maintenance men I have for considerably less. But they were hired well after you and your crew, so . . ."

Tickle hesitated.

"I'm thinking thirty-five cents an hour, Mr. Tickle. Each man to work a twenty-hour week. What do you say?"

"For the others or for me as well?"

"You're a salary man, Mr. Tickle. Not a wage earner. Let's say twenty-five dollars a week for running the elevator at the St. Nicholas and overseeing the work of the others."

"It's a big drop in pay, Mr. Turner. And I'll be having to go back and forth 'tween the Nicholas and the Carolina at least once a day."

"It's work, Mr. Tickle. When thousands have none."

After a few moments the dwarf nodded. "I'll put it to them. See what they say."

That conversation took place on a Monday morning. By Tuesday the thirteenth of January, outside events pretty much a.s.sured Josh getting his way.

A rally had been called in Tompkins Square to show "solidarity with the suffering poor."

The goal was a labor relief bureau to be established by the city and granted a hundred-thousand-dollar fund to alleviate the misery of those who had no work. The idea had been in circulation throughout the long hard autumn and the already difficult start of winter. According to the press, creating such an ent.i.ty would be capitulating to the thriftless and improvident who were influenced by European socialism.

It was well below freezing that Tuesday morning, but the crowd wasn't daunted by the weather. Wave after wave of men and women without work arrived, bringing their hungry children, filling the park and spilling into the surrounding streets. One man foolishly unfurled the red flag of the Paris Commune. The coppers needed no further reason to weigh in, billies flailing. Chaos followed and the clubbing went on for hours as mounted police charged the crowds, and those on foot chased those fleeing their hooves. An orgy of brutality according to the organizers. The press, however, hostile to the out-of-work, mostly agreed. From the point of view of the mayor and the leaders of the business community, the best thing that could have happened. There would be no more nonsense about labor bureaus and government handouts in New York City.

Whatever he thought of the violence, Josh knew his interests to have been served, same as every other man of property in the city. Unlike most of them, however, he did not believe in rubbing the noses of his employees in their take-it-or-leave-it choices. He let Tickle come to him, and allowed the dwarf to seem to agree rather than capitulate.

"Me and the rest's in agreement," Tickle told him on Thursday. "Thirty-five cents an hour and twenty hours a week. Until things get better. Your word that you'll go back to the old contract once we're making steel again."

"You have it," Josh said, putting out his hand. "The old contract when we're again making steel."

Tickle eyed him. Rather as if he thought it had been a mite too easy. "Here or any place else," he said, nodding his head to include the old slave market turned foundry.

Josh agreed as how that was correct and they shook hands on the bargain.

Zac was once again impressed with Joshua's business ac.u.men. "So you get to hang on to your skilled crew, with considerably less outlay and temporarily doing a different job."

"Maybe not temporary," Josh said.

Zac was surprised. "You think things won't improve?"

"Nothing of the sort. Of course they'll improve. They always do. But that doesn't mean they'll be exactly as they were before."

"What then? Come, my brother the oracle. What do you think it means?"

"The answer for ninety-nine percent of things is, I've no idea. But for me . . . I doubt I'll be making any more steel."

"Why the h.e.l.l not? You've got us buying lots all over town, and you keep talking about buildings of ten, twelve, and more stories. How can you do that without steel?"

"I didn't say we wouldn't need it, just that we wouldn't make it." He pa.s.sed the notice about the steelworks in Pittsburgh across Zac's desk. "Take a look at this."

Zac read it quickly. "You're saying you'll be able to buy it cheaper than make it. You think these Bethlehem people are using the Bessemer process?"

"I'm going to go and talk to them, but yes, that's what I think. And if I'm wrong it doesn't matter. They're obviously doing something that allows them to make steel in quant.i.ty at a compet.i.tive price."

Zac nodded. "You're probably right. And if you can get it by rail from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, we can bring it up the coast on Devrey ships."

"Which reminds me," Josh said, "have you spoken with Trent Clifford lately?"

"Why in h.e.l.l would I do that after what he tried to do to you, not to mention that you think he might have been behind what happened to Mollie? Josh surely you don't think-"

"-that you're in league with Clifford? Of course I don't. I just know what a persistent b.a.s.t.a.r.d he is. I wondered if he was still trying to get you to take part in his scheme."

"I haven't spoken to him since he tried to close down your foundry. Mind you, I've no doubt, given how bad things are, that his plans are on hold along with those of everyone else."

"Hmm," Josh said.

"Mind telling me what 'hmm' means?"

"Only that my plans are not on hold. Full steam ahead. Devil take the hindmost."

Zac was quiet for a moment, then, "Sounds impressive, Josh, but you're venturing into unexplored territory. Keep in mind what the old sailing charts used to say. Unknown waters, here there be demons."

"Over there, Ollie." Mollie gestured to the Chinese wisteria she had recently planted to climb the north side of the house. It might not get quite enough sun to flower, but if it did it would be so lovely . . . Worth a try.

The boy wheeled his barrow in the direction she indicated, then deposited a quant.i.ty of hay at the foot of the wall. "You want me to put it all in this one place?"

Mollie glanced at the leafless stems of the wisteria. They were some two feet long and she had tied them to a wooden trellis when she put the vine in the ground. They were not in the least impressive at the moment, but the drawing of the pale purple blossoms hanging in graceful eddies-racemes she'd learned was the botanist's word for them-had enchanted her. "I believe the wisteria needs all you have there, Ollie. You must bring more hay for the rest." There were still a few sapling trees and young shrubs standing with their feet naked to the cold; though the crescent-shaped perennial border was covered in the thick straw blanket she and Ollie Crump had spread with pitchforks and determination.