The Leaving Coat

By Margaret Mulvihill

New York, September 1895: newly-arrived emigrant Norah Doolan is searching for the wild and wayward sister, who left Ireland before her and suddenly stopped writing home. Sensible, conventional Norah is proud of her status as a fully trained and experienced nurse, but her ideas about "fallen women" are challenged as she moves from the squalid boarding house of a cynical landlady to the luxurious uptown household of Alfred Elster, a gentleman-photographer with an unmentionable disease and a philandering past. In Alfred Elster's eccentric household Norah Doolan comes to a more complicated understanding of manners and morals. Her onward quest for freedom and fulfilment takes her to a valley in Montana. There, among waifs and strays and "sporting girls", she discovers a saving truth, that to live and love in a new world you must take your chance on the virtues of strangers.

Praise from acclaimed writers Mary Morrissy and Nicci Gerrard:
"An elegantly written and convincing love story, with a rich seam of wit and wisdom, and a cast of unforgettable characters: a novel to lighten the lives of its readers."
Mary Morrissy

"The Leaving Coat is a big, bold, generous-hearted delight: a female Western, an intimate epic, a story of adventure, of loss, of self-discovery and of love."
Nicci Gerrard

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margaret Mulvihill
• Release date: Dec 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301378050

Margaret Mulvihill

Margaret Mulvihill is the author of three highly praised novels, including St Patrick's Daughter, which was serialized on BBC's Radio 4. She has also written a biography of Anglo-Irish suffragette leader Charlotte Despard and many history books and articles. Born and educated in Ireland, she currently lives in London. In 1997 she received a Writer's Award from the Arts Council of England, which is when she started thinking about the themes of her new novel, The Leaving Coat.

Book preview

The Leaving Coat

by

Margaret Mulvihill

Copyright © 2013 Margaret Mulvihill

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Prologue

In January 1882 the schoolmaster Francis Doolan was buried in the old burial ground above Kilmore strand. Twelve years later Miss Ellen Doolan, his sister, went to the same grave. That ground was full then and its far wall was surrendering to the sea, so there was a certain amount of talk when, a couple of years after Ellen Doolan’s burial, a mason came from Listowel to put a new headstone of white marble over the grave.

There was no inscription and instead of a cross there was an incision in the shape of a long-necked, scoop-billed bird: a goose of a swan or a swan of a goose. Since neither of these birds is of any liturgical consequence it was decided that one or other of them must have been of some other consequence to the Doolans. But since the dead Doolans had been blow-ins from across the Shannon, and the living Doolans had blown away to America, there was no sure way of settling the mystery.

Whichever way it went, the talk was forked. A majority of the swan faction surmised that the marble had been ordered by Francis Doolan’s eldest daughter in America, well remembered as a high-kicking girl with a fondness for all things feathered. Others recalled the sorrowful Children of Lir, who spent 300 years in the shape of swans. There had been something sorrowful about the Doolans, and whether this quality derived from an excess of drink or a want of religion was another topic. In public houses, men of the goose faction took a patriotic line. Recalling the Fenian schoolmaster Francis Doolan, they also recalled the Wild Geese of the nation’s history. In kitchens, women of both persuasions aired a general irritation with the Doolans, who, when all was said and done, had no call to be leaving any sort of mark after them.

Chapter One

Kid Gloves and Cocks’ Tails

At the whiff of a wedding or a funeral the first thing on the mind of an honest woman is not love or death, but clothes. Ellen Doolan was such a woman and soon after the Whit Dance she bought five yards of fine, speedwell-blue wool. At that dance, Jeremiah McCarthy had danced all of the first six sets with Lizzy Doolan. Then the pair of them had stepped into the dark and when they returned to the boards there was clay on their shoes and grass in her hair. When Ellen Doolan bought this material she was thinking it would be as a new bride rather than an emigrant that her favourite niece would be going away. In her opinion, and the opinion of every woman in her confidence, Jer McCarthy and Lizzy Doolan had been made for each other by God and nature. What Lizzy lacked in land, she more than made up for in looks, and what he lacked in looks, he pretty well made up for with land.

After the next dance, which followed the same course, Lizzy was measured and the material was cut according to the latest mode. The skirt was to be bell-shaped and the sleeves of the coat were to be slightly peaked at the shoulder seams, so that the final costume would resemble the tailor-made worn by Lily Langtry at the Curragh. (The pattern was cut from the newspaper in which this Curragh portrait had appeared.) At the first fitting, when the coat lacked one sleeve and the skirt was fastened with a pin, the costume was already charming. Lizzy Doolan had a great carriage and the cloth brought out the blue of her eyes. Her aunt was cutting out a lining of blue satin when she was jilted.

Strictly speaking, Lizzy Doolan was never jilted because there had been no proper match. But whatever there had been by way of an understanding between her and Jer McCarthy ended at the Finucanes’ dance, where, instead of taking to the kitchen floor with Lizzy, he stayed outside with his uncle. At Mass next morning, the banns were called for him and Miss Florence Burke. Florie Burke had snaggled teeth and a duck’s tail but she came with thirty grazing acres and the site for a two-storey. slate-roof house, so it wasn’t at all hard to see what had prevailed against God and nature.

On the following Sunday, when those banns were called again, Lizzy was sitting beside her sister Norah, who was home on leave from the hospital in Cork City where she was in training for her nurse’s charter. Although Lizzy had two inches and two years on her, Norah Doolan wore the character of the senior sister. In this she was thought to resemble her mother, who was remembered as a forbearing woman and, on that account, presumed to be in heaven. The father’s hereafter was more doubtful. Francis Doolan’s last attendance at that same church had been the Sunday when Bishop Moriarty had called God’s heaviest curse, his withering, blasting, blighting curse on all Fenian men, and promised that for their punishment eternity is not long enough, nor hell hot enough.

All eyes were on the Doolan women as they left the church. Instead of joining their aunt in the tub-trap, the sisters linked arms and set out on foot along the tar road. It was a sultry day, the kind of day lovers pray for, and since they couldn’t have diverged into the shade of the fields without coming across courting couples, they kept to the scorching road. Lizzy Doolan knew every lovers’ nest in North Kerry. She had re-visited each and every one of them with Jer McCarthy, and she didn’t think she was up to another season on the grass, but, so far as her sister could tell, she was far from desolated by the whole business.

The thing that saved Lizzy Doolan from pure misery was an even purer vanity. She was inclined to think it just as well that Jer had slighted her for a girl who was all acres and no graces, for now it was as clear as the sky above that she hadn’t been made for a life of churning and suckling and scrubbing. Ballyduff was a hen’s yard and she was a swan. There was nothing to stop her now from joining her body with her soul, which was already fluttering over America.

Nothing! said Norah, thinking of passage prices and entry dollars.

Nothing at all, said Lizzy, mentioning only then the twenty guineas given over by Jer McCarthy’s uncle as a consideration for her injured feelings. But now Norah’s feelings were injured. Cornelius McCarthy was famously tight.

Word of that will get around – they’ll say it wasn’t on account of feelings that he was parted from that kind of money. Have you no shame?

God Almighty, Norah! You should be congratulating me for getting my entry dollars from the meanest old bollocks this side of the Shannon.

Lizzy Doolan had been blooming to no particular avail since she was sixteen. Some years before this latest venture, she had been offered an apprenticeship with a corset-maker in Limerick and, a couple of years before that, there had been a vacancy for an assistant housekeeper in a guest-house in Killarney. Convinced that she was about to be picked for marriage, she had shied at these opportunities, but America was differently distant. In America a swan could spread her wings and after a stint at some fascinating, light-handed occupation, as a lady typewriter in an important office, or a saleslady in an elegant department store, she would have the pick of a huge selection of husbands.

Norah Doolan heard this hymn to America through pinched toes. Her new shoes were too small for her because she had bought them with the intention of leaving them for her sister. Lizzy had first gained notoriety as a child who wouldn’t be weaned and the purchase of unsuitable shoes was but one of the reparations that Norah made for having dislodged her from their mother’s breast. On that mortifying morning, while her sister gloried in the prospect of self-moving staircases and silk parasols, she was seized by nothing more thrilling than the prospect of buying shoes that she could be sure of wearing out herself.

On the night before Lizzy Doolan’s leaving every chair and every cup in the house was taken. Friends and neighbours pushed their way to the top of the kitchen table, where the emigrant was sitting. Some of the older people came with provisions for the voyage and when Mrs O’Connor was told that food was available on modern steamers she asked how they could be so sure. As well as a loaf of currant bread and a bag of apples, she brought a coral rosary and a pint of healthful Ballyduff water. Advice for the emigrant came from all quarters. Some of it was practical, drink nothing but tea till you’re on dry land; and some of it was outlandish, be on your guard against white slavers and Mormon heathens, but Mrs O’Connor’s parting injunction was unforgettable. From the doorway, as she pulled a black shawl back over her head, she cawed: Remember what I’m telling you now, Eliza Doolan. Soon as you’re landed, you’re to keep your legs shut, and your ears wide open!

Soon after dawn the pony was tackled and then Lizzy put on the blue costume. In the hem of its coat her aunt had stitched twelve sovereigns, so that it sat even more snugly against her neat hips than it had done before. A yellow tugboat hat with a blue ribbon and veil was fixed on top of her dark hair and as she sat into the trap she looked like a swan on a lake if you weren’t well disposed towards the McCarthys – or Miss Florence Burke – a goose in a crate if you were.

From Tralee Lizzy took the train to Cork, then a hansom to the Mercy Hospital, where Norah worked. It was through a connection of Mother Hartigan’s, the nun in charge of the lay nurses, that Norah had obtained Lizzy’s 2nd-class ticket for the Queen Maeve, the cleanest and by no means the cheapest of the transatlantic steamers that sailed from Queenstown harbour. Against the dark water, with all its lights glittering, it looked like a ghost ship. On the quayside a fiddler in a ragged frock coat was playing The Rose of Tralee. Lizzy dropped a shilling into his case and then she turned to her sister for the parting embrace. As ever, Norah underestimated the force of her nurse’s hold. Eew!, Lizzy squealed, Haven’t had a squeeze like that since I won’t say when. Will ye have a care for my hat!

With that, she picked up her grip and her travelling rug, and fairly danced up the gangplank. If Ellen Doolan had been there, she would have been pleased by the contrast between her sprightly 2nd-class niece and the lumpy 3rd-class girls in their shawls and boots. Within minutes Lizzy had disappeared from view and then Norah was washed over with a terrible sense of loss which, when her sister finally came into view again, re-fixing her hat on the top deck, was replaced by an even more terrible sense of relief.

Within six weeks there was good news. Once she was over the first few days of sea-sickness, Lizzy’s passage had been smooth, and great gas. A good many of the Maeve’s 2nd-class passengers had been young people like herself. There was dancing on deck with no shortage of partners. The on board talent included an ex-army captain who wouldn’t have been budged from a hefty Russian novel if his spectacles hadn’t been blown overboard on the second day out; an actual, freeborn American, a fancy goods dealer with a fashionable Assyrian-style beard; and a master saddler – or so he said – from Clonmel, with a suspiciously consumptive squeak to his voice.

When the Statue of Liberty came into view, a joiner from Limerick declared himself to be entirely smitten, but he was rough-handed and westward-bound, and in any case Lizzy Doolan couldn’t be considering her fellow passengers before she’d considered the teeming eligibles of America. The voyage had done wonders for the state of her own hands, so that when she landed she was more decided than ever on a light-fingered, genteel occupation. On Bleecker Street, she found lodgings with a fat little widow by the name of Mrs Cullen, whose household had been recommended by the fancy goods man.

Within another month, Lizzy Doolan was Mademoiselle Mariette, a saleslady at Madame Odette’s Salon, a way-up milliner’s on 6th Avenue. She had been taken on at seven dollars a week, even though October was a slack month for hats, on account of her way with the fascinators. Everyone knew what a good hat could do for a plain face and dull hair, but to get the full benefit off of a fascinator – an assemblage of feathers and jewels balanced on the merest cap of velvet or fur – a girl had to have rich hair, brilliant eyes and a fine profile. And so that her aunt and sister might see for themselves what she was on about, Lizzy-Mariette sent them a portrait photograph of herself in a swell fifteen-dollar confection.

A swan was gliding across the lake of the Alpine scene behind her, and with her crest of silvery ostrich plumes and pearls she was fascinating a painted bird, a canary in a birch tree with roses rambling around its trunk. The hat was borrowed, of course, as was the photographer’s silver fox boa, but the saleslady’s gown of black satin, and the dainty, patent leather boots that poked out from under it, these were Lizzy’s own.

For Easter Norah had a parcel from America. The blue costume was too small for Lizzy, and she was loathe to meddle with Ellen’s tucks and seams. Besides, in Cork the coat might pass as the latest style, but in New York shortie coats with bigger sleeves were all the rage. Norah was too tactful to tell their aunt about the return of the leaving coat, but it pleased her to feel the weight of the sovereigns in its hem. They were there, still, as an inducement to her own leaving. Since kid gloves and bananas and cocks’ tails and self-moving staircases cut no ice with Norah, Lizzy tempted her with accounts of the lady bicyclettes in Central Park. After another year at the hospital, Norah was hoping to become a district nurse, a position that came with a bicycle as well as a uniform. In New York, Lizzy told her, she would command twenty dollars a week as a private nurse in a wealthy household, and spend her Sundays in a bicyclette’s divided skirt.

Within a week of that parcel, Ellen Doolan, who had been poorly over Easter, died in her sleep. Norah telegraphed the address in 14th Street, but there was no return telegram. Then she wrote to the same address and one month later there was still no reply. Thinking that a letter had gone astray, she wrote again, and again, and then, in August, there was a reply. Inside a package containing her own unopened letters was a letter written in a childish hand.

Dear Miss Doolan,

I must beg to inform you that Miss Eliza Doolan has not lodged here since the 15th of April last. It was my understanding that she had moved uptown. I send you my condolences with regard to your recent bereavement.

Respectfully yours

Mrs Amelia Cullen

Madame Odette’s was Norah’s next thought, for there could only be one milliner’s of that name on 6th Avenue. She was thinking about how she might address a letter to Madame Odette’s, without compromising Lizzy-Mariette, when an American lady applied to the hospital for a suitable young woman to act as her elderly mother-in-law’s nurse-companion on her return voyage to America. (The two Mrs Beauchamps were presently touring the Lakes of Killarney, but the younger Mrs Beauchamp wished to spend the winter in Rome.) Old Mrs Beauchamp’s nurse-companion would have a fee of fifty dollars and a second-class cabin, with the option, if she so desired, of returning to Ireland on a same class of ticket. Knowing of Norah’s worry, Mother Hartigan, recommended her for the position.

Her crossing was turbulent. For the first four days she couldn’t even lift her head from her 2nd-class pillow and she was glad that Mrs Beauchamp’s only obvious debility was her eyesight. It was as a reader rather than a nurse that she earned her passage. The old lady was partial to romantic novels with happy endings. In them, beautiful heroines of humble birth survived the most improbable adventures only to find, in the final chapter, noble parents, true love and fabulous riches. As the steamer sailed up the Hudson, to the pier where the 1st- and 2nd-class passengers disembarked, Norah was hoping for another happy ending. With any luck, Lizzy would have received the letter she had sent to Madame Odette’s and she would be looking out for her from the pier. So that she would be readily identified, Norah was wearing the speedwell-blue costume.

Mrs Beauchamp’s son had a carriage waiting for her. As soon as the old lady was settled inside it, Norah had another look around but the waiting crowd was small enough to be taken in at a glance, and there was no familiar face. The 1st-class gangplank was being raised when Mr Beauchamp suggested that Lizzy might have gone to Ellis Island, where most of the Kaiser Wilhelm’s passengers would be disembarking. With his help, Norah rushed back on board. At the end of the top deck a steep white gangway led into the steerage.

At intervals throughout her passage she had been aware of the Kaiser Wilhelm’s lower depths as the source of sounds familiar and unfamiliar – the wails of babies and mouth organs, the drone of foreign prayers – as well as smells familiar and unfamiliar – the reek of sauerkraut, the stench of vomit and a crowded, unwashed humanity. The filthiness of the steerage passengers had been a matter of regular debate among the first class passengers. Mrs Beauchamp had inclined to the view that poor Europeans were innately unclean, but one other passenger, a young doctor from Boston, had suggested that such an idea could only be justified when the steerage passengers had room and water enough to keep themselves as decently as they might like.

The crowd was dense, impenetrable for anyone but a uniformed immigration inspector. Five of them were moving through the swarm, issuing manifest number labels to every man, woman and child. For a few minutes Norah watched the scene from the white gangway. In that position, with her suitcase, her tailor-made costume and her straw boater hat, she was as conspicuous as the Statue of Liberty. An inspector called her down. She explained her position and showed him her entry paper, which was already stamped. He told her to stay by his side and when all of the steerage passengers had been tagged, he took her suitcase and threw it into the inspectors’ cutter, which was at anchor beside the ship.

At Ellis Island a lady interpreter took her to the ticket office of the Manhattan ferry. She led Norah up the stairs and along a gallery of the great hall, so that, once again, she was above the common crowd. A sea of multi-coloured kerchiefs and black coats, it seethed within a vast space that was something like a railway station or a hospital, though larger than any hospital or railway station that Norah had ever surveyed. She bought a ticket, reclaimed her suitcase and set off for the Battery boat’s pier. It was only then that she felt the full weight of her suitcase and her business. Among the line of people waiting for the Battery boat she was the only body without welcoming kin.

All around her there were shrieks and flurries of delighted recognition. Full-bearded men embraced full-skirted women; sleek-haired girls with embroidered aprons dropped their baskets and bundles for boys with bananas and chocolates; old ladies raised their shawls around hitherto unseen grandchildren. Once she was on the barge, she fixed her eyes on the grey pinnacles of Manhattan and checked her tears. What, when all was said and done, had she to complain of? Her sister had done all this alone and with fewer dollars.

At the Battery the cobbles felt cold and hard under her soles. One of her coat buttons was hanging by a thread and her hat was askew. She stopped to remove a hat pin. Then a man called out.

Hold it right there!

He was wearing a Homburg hat but instead of a face he had a camera the size of a mission collection box. Its lens held Norah’s gaze like a human eye. She blinked, picked up her suitcase and staggered on after the crowd, hoping to be taken to the Midtown elevated train. The Homburg hat followed her. She hurried on.

Please, Miss, please may I have your name and your country of origin?

She had reached the line for tickets for the 9th Avenue Elevator to 14th Street when he stood in front of her. His eyes were brown. He removed his Homburg, and repeated the question – the same question? – in German, French and some other language.

She shook her head. I’m Delilah Hudson, lately of Timbuktu.

He laughed and replaced his hat. That’s just dandy, Miss Queenstown. He pulled a card from his pocket and slipped it into her hand. If you call at this address in a week’s time, you’ll have a photograph of yourself as you arrived in Amerikay.

Then he skipped away, back to the pier where, Norah had no doubt, there were other young women to be annoyed. The sheer nerve of him! On the voyage she had heard tell of the stratagems employed by the men who preyed on female emigrants, stories of bogus officials, phoney policemen and even priests, but a photographer, that was a new one. As his little card fluttered on to the damp cobbles, she had another twinge about her sister. Lizzy Doolan would have had him carrying her case.

Chapter Two

A Stalk in the Wind

Norah Doolan was on 14th Street, squinting at number brasses, when the lies started to come back at her. The lies she’d told: her tongue was black with them.

Mrs Beauchamp was their excuse. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, when the slushy novels were all used up, the old lady had been diverted by the Tale of Lizzy-Mariette. Lizzy-Mariette was a fussy eater and a fancy dresser. She ditched the best catch in the parish because he smelled of milk, sailed off to America, and didn’t land till she was engaged again. Her new intended was a cabinet-maker, a master cabinet-maker, and the pair of them were within sight of the Statue of Liberty when he fell to his knees and begged for her hand.

But why, the Kaiser Wilhelm ladies chimed, why did Lizzy-Mariette take the cabinet-maker before she’d had a chance to consider the teeming eligibles of America? Norah couldn’t, immediately, say, what it was about him. She was thinking of endowing the cabinet-maker with an wondrous baritone when one of the other ladies suggested that Lizzy-Mariette might have been overcome by a sudden dread of starting a new life on her own. Well, yes, Norah told them then, my sister is liable to sudden urges. That was, and wasn’t, the worst lie, but how was she to tell those first-class ladies that it was for the chance of a new rig-out, or a fellow who might pay for one, that Lizzy Doolan was such a stalk on the wind.

Mrs Amelia Cullen’s stoop was within sight when Norah herself had an urge, just a flutter of one, to keep walking, turn the next corner and start over on her own. It wasn’t the weight of her case so much as the light that halted her. The light, even in the afternoon, was so commanding. She felt showed up and the house with the veiled windows and painted-over brasses was invitingly dull. She was right by the stoop when the front door opened. A big, bull-shouldered man in the dark frock-coat of a doctor, or a clergyman, came out. For a moment he just stood there, looking down on her.

She found a voice. I beg your pardon, sir, would this be Mrs Cullen’s house? He turned to rap at the door, which had closed behind him. Then, with the merest tip of his rigid hat, he stepped down and around her. Norah straightened her own hat. The door had opened again, though only by a crack. Peering through it, she said. Mrs Cullen? She should be expecting me. I’m Norah Doolan, just come from the Battery.

A puffy hand waved her into the hall. It belonged to a stout little woman resembling no one so much as the Queen Victoria. She was wearing a long white apron, like a nurse’s apron, over an old-fashioned gown of prune-coloured silk, and for insignia she had a bunch of keys on her chest and gold spectacles on the end of her nose.

Miss Doolan, indeed, shut that door after you, she chirped, in an accent that, wherever else it had been, had started out in Dublin city , if yer boots are clean, you can leave yer case where y’are and take a seat in my parlour. There’s tea still in the minister’s pot.

After the airy splendour of the Kaiser Wilhelm’s first-class saloon this parlour was a stuffy cavern but, fluent liar that she was, Norah came out with a contrary opinion. Mrs Amelia Cullen wasn’t at all surprised to learn that her arrangements compared with the best.

Quality always shows, Miss Doolan, that’s my belief. Leave off yer hat, while I’m freshening the pot.

The parlour fire, which went halfway up the chimney, was guarded by two magisterial armchairs upholstered in nasturtium plush. Norah sat into one of them, before the occasional table that supported the tea tray as well as a battered, leather-bound Bible. It was the best room of a religious lady, but of what persuasion? The Bible said one thing, but the sideboard display – a Lourdes musical box flanked by porcelain figurines of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic – said quite another. Above the mantle, draped in black crepe, there was a clue. It was a faded daguerreotype of a bewhiskered gentleman in the uniform of a Union officer. The late Mr Cullen had a Bible-reader’s strain about his eyes.

Within minutes Mrs Cullen returned with the teapot. Help yerself to the cake that’s cut. The reverend has no earthly appetites, which is more than can be said for the canon.

Nothing had passed Norah’s lips since she’d breakfasted with Mrs Beauchamp. As she drank the Reverend McDaid’s tea and ate his buttered madeira cake, Mrs Cullen hopped around the room with surprising agility, for a woman of her years and form. She swept the Bible off the table and slapped it into the sideboard. Then, with equal speed and vigour, she whipped off the apron, folded it, and placed it on top of the Bible.

I find, Miss Doolan, that there’s nothing so congenial to a man of the cloth as a clean white apron.

In the minister’s absence, it seemed that the golden spectacles were just as redundant as the Bible, for they, too, were removed and left to nestle, like ceremonial jewels, on the folded apron. Then, having girded herself with a more serviceable apron of blue gingham, Mrs Cullen slid a pot of scrubbed potatoes out from behind the other giant chair, and sat on a footstool to peel them. With her head well down she rattled off her terms.

I take three dollars a week for a share, five for a whole room, and that includes porridge and stew every day ‘cept Sunday. The gas goes out at eleven sharp. She paused for breath and, maybe, dramatic effect. I keep an orderly household, Miss Doolan, otherwise, I shouldn’t be having ministers and the like in for tea. My door’s bolted at ten o’clock sharp, and it doesn’t open again till seven, eight on Sundays. So, if you want my advice, you’ll start saving for a watch.

I already have a watch, Mrs Cullen. I’m a chartered nurse.

She looked up from the potatoes. If that’s the case, and you have the testimonials to prove it, you won’t be stopping long, and more’s the pity, I’m sure.

Thank you, but I’m in no immediate need of a situation. I was well paid by my last employer and I have the price of a return ticket. I’m here to visit my sister, Lizzy, Miss Eliza Doolan. In fact she recommended your house...

I do recall her, Mrs Cullen thumbed her spout of a nose, though you must allow, I have a deal of girls passing through. She was a flower.

Oh yes, Norah smiled, she is.

As you are too, to be sure. Keeping well is she?

Norah smiled again.

You’ll leave your laundry bundle, but no smalls please, in the hall on Thursday mornings. Friday night is full wash night, and if you break any of my ewers you’ll have to tell me at once if you please, and pay me another fifty cents. I do insist on an orderly house, Miss Doolan!

Yes, Mrs Cullen, I already have a watch.

So you do, so you do. I only want what’s best, d’you see? Some of the girls do be complaining. They think they won’t be finding the right fellow if they’re kept in, but to my way of thinking the right fellows aren’t loitering in the streets at all hours. Not that you need to be told, of course, but if that sister of yours is sending a cab, tell her to tell the driver you’ll wait inside till he’s right by the stoop. It doesn’t do for girls to be loitering about the stoop.

As it happens, my sister’s out of town this week, and I’m not expecting to hear from her for a few days.

Is that so?

Norah held her breath, but no, Lizzy’s out-of-town business was of less interest than the heinous eyes of the last potato. Having gouged them out, Mrs Cullen jumped up. Come up with me now, Miss Doolan. You might like to rest yerself before supper.

The stair carpet ended on the second floor, which was the level of the five-dollar single rooms. The one Norah was shown into wouldn’t have worried a Cistercian. It was brutally clean. Besides the brass bedstead, there was a ladderback chair and a drunken wash-table. The grate was empty and the chamberpot was chipped, and these things were noticeable because of the light that poured in from a high, meanly curtained window.

Norah set her case down and tried not to look too upset. Whatever else it was, this penitential house was a certain station on Lizzy’s trail, and the landlady probably knew more about her current whereabouts than she was letting on. If she was cute enough to be keeping a white apron by for clergymen callers of several denominations, she was cute enough to be keeping her own counsel on the vagaries of former lodgers.

I can’t boast hot and cold, or steam heat, Miss Doolan, but for my price you won’t find a neater room in a better street.

Yes, I’m sure... Norah turned to the wall. On its far side