Part 24 (1/2)
”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 s.h.i.+vering 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.”