A Dangerous Fortune(64)
She touched his beard. “I might have known you without all this fur round your gob.”
There was a discreet cough from behind Danny, and Maisie looked up to see an elderly man standing in the doorway looking faintly disdainful. “Apparently we have been successful,” he said.
Danny said: “Mr. Jay, may I present my sister, Miss Robinson.”
“Your servant, Miss Robinson. If I may make a suggestion … ?”
“Why not?” said Danny.
“There is a coffeehouse in Theobald’s Road, just a few steps away. You must have a lot to talk about.”
He obviously wanted them out of his office, but Danny did not seem to care what Mr. Jay wanted. Whatever else might have happened he had not learned to be deferential. “What do you say, girls? Would you like to talk here, or shall we go and drink coffee?”
“Let’s go,” Maisie said.
Mr. Jay added: “And perhaps you might come back to settle your account a little later, Mr. Robinson?”
“I won’t forget. Come on, girls.”
They left the office and went down the stairs. Maisie was bursting with questions, but controlled her curiosity with an effort while they found the coffeehouse and settled themselves at a table. At last she said: “What have you been doing for the last seven years?”
“Building railways,” he said. “It so happened that I arrived at a good time. The war between the states had just ended and the railway boom was beginning. They were so desperate for workers that they were shipping them over from Europe. Even a skinny thirteen-year-old could get a job. I worked on the first-ever steel bridge, over the Mississippi at St Louis; then I got a job building the Union Pacific Railroad in Utah. I was a ganger by the time I was nineteen—it’s young men’s work. And I joined the trade union and led a strike.”
“Why did you come back?”
“There’s been a stock market crash. The railroads have run out of money, and the banks that were financing them have gone bust. There are thousands of men, hundreds of thousands, looking for work. I decided to come home and make a new start.”
“What will you do—build railroads here?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got a new idea. You see, it’s happened to me twice, that my life has been wrecked by a financial crash. The men who own banks are the stupidest people in the world. They never learn, so they make the same mistakes again and again. And it’s the workingmen who suffer. Nobody ever helps them—nobody ever will. They have to help each other.”
April said: “People never help each other. It’s everyone for himself in this world. You’ve got to be selfish.”
April often said that, Maisie recalled, even though in practice she was a generous person and would do anything for a friend.
Danny said: “I’m going to start a kind of club for workingmen. They’ll pay sixpence a week, and if they’re thrown out of work through no fault of their own the club will pay them a pound a week while they look for a new job.”
Maisie stared at her brother in admiration. The plan was formidably ambitious—but she had thought the same when at the age of thirteen he had said There’s a ship in the harbor that’s bound for Boston on the morning tide—I’ll shin up a rope tonight and hide on deck in one of the boats. He had done what he said then and he probably would now. He said he had led a strike. He seemed to have grown into the kind of person other men would follow.
“But what about Papa and Mama?” he said. “Have you been in touch with them?”
Maisie shook her head and then, surprising herself, she began to cry. Suddenly she felt the pain of losing her family, a pain she had refused to acknowledge all these years.
Danny put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll go back up north and see if I can trace them.”
“I hope you find them,” Maisie said. “I miss them so much.” She caught the eye of April, who was staring at her in astonishment. “I’m so afraid they’ll be ashamed of me.”
“And why should they?” he said.
“I’m pregnant.”
His face reddened. “And not married?”
“No.”
“Going to get married?”
“No.”
Danny was angry. “Who is the swine?”
Maisie raised her voice. “Spare me the outraged-brother act, will you?”
“I’d like to break his neck—”
“Shut up, Danny!” Maisie said angrily. “You left me alone seven years ago and you’ve no business to come back and act as if you own me.” He looked abashed, and she went on in a quieter voice: “It doesn’t matter. He would have married me, I expect, but I didn’t want him to, so forget about him. Anyway, he’s gone to America.”
Danny calmed down. “If I wasn’t your brother I’d marry you myself. You’re pretty enough! Anyway, you can have what little money I’ve got left.”
“I don’t want it.” She was sounding ungracious, but she could not help it. “There’s no need for you to take care of me, Danny. Use your money for your workingmen’s club. I’ll look after myself. I managed when I was eleven years old, so I suppose I can now.”
3
MICKY MIRANDA AND PAPA were in a small eating house in Soho, lunching off oyster stew—the cheapest dish on the menu—and strong beer. The restaurant was a few minutes from the Cordovan Ministry in Portland Place, where Micky now sat at a writing table every morning for an hour or two, dealing with the minister’s mail. He was finished for the day and had met Papa for lunch. They sat opposite each other on hard wooden high-backed benches. There was sawdust on the floor and years of grease on the low ceiling. Micky hated eating in such places, but all the same he did it often, to save money. He ate at the Cowes Club only when Edward was paying. Besides, taking Papa to the club was a strain: Micky was constantly afraid the old man would start a fight, or pull a gun, or spit on the rug.