Fortune is a Woman (31 page)

"I was awakened before daybreak and with some maize-gruel and steamed bread in my belly followed the others to the caves. The foreman handed me a pick and shovel and we walked down the sloping passage deep under the earth. At the end of the cavern the men began hacking out the rock. In an hour the muscles in my shoulders were burning and my heart threatened to burst. I was covered in sweat and dirt but I dare not stop. I worked alongside the others, matching their every stroke with the pick and then shoveling away the rocks. After a few hours we stopped and they took out their small wooden rice-buckets and ate. But I had no bucket and no lunch and I wandered away so that they would not feel embarrassed and be forced to share their meager meal with me. I sank into a corner and rubbed my aching shoulders. I was exhausted and wanted to cry, but I knew I must keep up with them in order to be given a job.

"A week passed, each day following the other into the tired oblivion of night. But I was young and each morning the ache seemed a little less. And at the week's end I was given my wages. I looked at the few coins in my hand and thought this is the first time I have ever had money of my own, because I did not count the evil captain's silver dollar I had thrown into the sea. And suddenly I knew what I was going to do with it.

"That night after supper the men gathered around as they did every night and took out the cards and the mah-jongg. I took my place in the circle, sitting cross-legged on the floor, and I placed my bet along with the others. I was going to test the lessons I had learned on the ship watching the coolies gamble night after night. Within minutes I had lost all my wages.

"I tried again the following week and the next, and the next, until I learned. And then I began to win. I knew I was clever and could have won all the time but the men had been good to me and I could not take their money. So I quit gambling and saved my wages.

"When the work on the caves was finally over, I followed the other men, working with them in the fields and the orchards, until I finally made my way to San Francisco. They told me the Baptist Church held a Sunday School where they taught the heathen Celestials about their god, but they also taught them English, and so I learned. And I did whatever work I could get." He stopped and looked gravely at them. "And that is how I spent my life until now," he said finally.

"Now we know the
true
Lai Tsin," Francie said compassionately. "I only hope my courage is as great as yours."

"Have no fear, little one," he said in his light, gentle, singsong. "Your courage is even greater than mine."

The night suddenly seemed darker as Francie entered a world of pain. It attacked suddenly and she fought against it, trembling as it abated, knowing it was only lying in wait, like a wild animal, to attack again. The hours passed, and Annie bathed her head and massaged her icy feet. She stoked up the fire and wept in helpless sympathy when Francie screamed.

Dawn came and still no doctor. The day dragged into dusk and then quickly into night. Perspiration beaded her forehead as she fought the pain and Lai Tsin stood beside her and took her hand in his.

Francie looked into his face and saw his strength and felt it flowing into her. She felt a strange sense of exhilaration and suddenly she seemed to be outside her own body. Her mother was beside her, smiling at her with love in her eyes, and she called out to her. She looked down at herself lying in her mother's bed with Lai Tsin holding her hand and Annie crying, and then she saw her own child, a boy, emerging into the world. And she was filled with happiness.

Then she was lying exhausted in her bed with her son at her breast. She smiled with tired contentment. Lai Tsin's strength had saved her, she knew that. Just like it had after the earthquake when she had wanted to die. She was no longer a helpless girl—now she was a mother, she was a woman, and she was strong.

***

Annie forgot about her boardinghouse nearing completion in San Francisco. She put the past out of her mind and immersed herself in the joy of the new baby, who was named Oliver. He was so like Josh that it transported her back in time to when she was just thirteen and had looked after her own baby brother. And now she would share in raising his son.

She and Francie thought of nothing else but the baby. They marveled at his daily progress, admiring his smallest smile, his soft blond hair, and the beauty of his wide gray eyes. They bathed him, fed him, changed him, and Annie knitted endless little bonnets and jackets to keep out the winter cold. And when Christmas came they decorated a little fir tree with pine cones and scarlet ribbons and lit tiny candles. They invited Zocco and Esmerelda to drink cinnamon-flavored mulled wine and share their feast of roast goose, cooked by Annie to aromatic brown crispness outside and juicy pinkness inside. She made spiced apple dressing and rich brown gravy and a plum pudding stuffed to bursting with a dozen different fruits and nuts, soused in brandy with a lucky sixpence piece, saved from England, baked inside. And the baby gurgled happily in his crib in the cosy firelit kitchen just as though he knew it was Christmas while the pups, Duke and Duchess, gamboled at their feet.

Lai Tsin was not there and they missed him, but he said he must work hard so he could repay the five-percent interest to the Elders as soon as possible.

The New Year came and went and still Annie lingered. "I'll go soon," she kept saying, but then she told herself that Francie and the baby needed her. In February, Lai Tsin wrote that he had repaid his interest. The Elders had listened to his new proposals and granted him a new loan from the rotating credit. He was sailing the following week for Shanghai and it would be many months before they would see him again. Francie read the letter proudly, knowing how long it must have taken him to write it so beautifully and clearly in English. She picked up Oliver and dressed him warmly in his blue coat and bonnet and wrapped him in a shawl. Then she put him in the baby carriage that Lai Tsin had bought him in San Francisco and pushed him down the grassy paths where she had walked with her mother. She gazed happily at the white clouds scudding across the bright blue sky, and asked nothing more from life than to be Oliver's mother.

Annie returned to San Francisco in the spring. "I hate to leave you alone," she said as Zocco piled her baggage into the gig. "But I've put all my money into the boarding-house and I've got to make a success of it, for little Oliver's sake."

Francie waved until the gig disappeared from sight down the tree-lined drive and she turned back indoors, feeling suddenly lost. She shifted the baby to the other shoulder—he was getting heavier and she smiled, proud that he was growing into such a fine, strong boy.

She wandered around the little house, the dogs trailing at her heels, peeking into empty rooms and lingering in the warm, cheery kitchen. The pies Annie had baked before she left lay cooling on wire racks by the window, the cosy room smelled of vanilla and spices and she could almost imagine Annie was still there. Later that night she sat alone in front of the fire. The baby was asleep in his crib in her room and the dogs sprawled as usual at her feet. The house was still but for the ticking of the clock and the murmur of the fire and it was so quiet she could almost hear her heart beat. But she wasn't afraid and she wasn't lonely.

She savored the moment of perfect peace and happiness at her little ranch, just as she would for each of the next four years, when she wanted nothing else but to be who she was and what she was, Francie Harrison, mother of Oliver and friend to Annie Aysgarth and Ke Lai Tsin.

PART III:  Harry, 1911-1918

CHAPTER 23

1911

Harry Harrison walked slowly along California Street past the refurbished Fairmont Hotel, savoring the moment. He stopped and looked across the road at his rebuilt house, and it was as though he had stepped back five years in time. It looked exactly the way it had before the earthquake; the cream stone facade, the white marble steps, the Doric columns and the soaring stained-glass dome. It cost him more than twice as much as the million it had cost his grandfather, but it was worth every cent.

Of course, some things were different: the stables were now garages, there was an elaborate gilt elevator in the hall, and the staircase was onyx instead of oak. But it was the Harrison house all right. He had kept his vow and it stood once again as a monument to the family and their powers of endurance.

Lights glowed at every window and a long red carpet stretched down the front steps and across the sidewalk, lined on either side with liveried footmen awaiting the arrival of his guests. It was Harry's twentieth birthday and everybody who was anybody in San Francisco was coming. Tonight they would know that young Harry was taking over where his father had left off.

He walked across the road and up the steps into his magnificent new house. A footman sprang to open the door and the new butler, Fredricks, stood in the hall, awaiting his orders. Harry looked up at the brilliantly colored glass dome he had commissioned an artist in Venice to design incorporating portraits of the three Harrisons—his grandfather, his father, and himself—with a space where his own son's portrait would one day go. And in ornate gold lettering around the base ran the new family motto he had coined himself, with valor and strength they survive.

He smiled, pleased with himself, running his hand along the smooth black-onyx banister as he leapt two at a time up the midnight-blue carpeted stairs and along the oak-paneled upper hall to his suite of rooms. His valet had run his bath and laid out his evening clothes. A bottle of his favorite Perrier & Jouet champagne was cooling in a silver bucket and he poured himself a glass. At just twenty, he already had a taste for fine wines and gourmet food, as well as an exceptional taste in women. He smiled again as he flung off his clothes and sank into the sandalwood-scented water. He was a young man who knew exactly what he liked and exactly where he was heading. He was a millionaire and the world was his oyster and he intended to enjoy everything it had to offer.

There was just one thing that still troubled him. He had never been able to find evidence that his sister was dead. He had combed the city records a hundred times after the earthquake, but there was no mention of her name and it was assumed that she had perished in the fire along with her lover, Aysgarth, but there was still a nagging little fear at the back of his mind that one day she would reappear to blight his life and bring shame on his name again.

He frowned as he climbed from the tub and the valet handed him his towel. Tonight would be the perfect setting for the long-lost sister to stage her return. He shrugged, telling himself he was crazy, but nevertheless he sent for Fredricks and told him to put guards on every door and to admit no one without an invitation card. He reminded himself that his father would have been here tonight to see the Harrison house in all its new glory, if it were not for Francie. He remembered the vow he had made when they had brought his father home to his final resting place—that he would see his sister dead if it was the last thing he did. If she should ever return, he would keep that vow.

San Francisco's prettiest and most eligible girls had been looking forward to Harry's housewarming and birthday party for months, and they were not disappointed. The wonderful new house was the only private one left on Nob Hill and it glittered like an extravagant Christmas tree. Creamy gardenias in scarlet tubs lined the red carpet and the hall was a bower of velvety, dark crimson roses.

Crowds lined the sidewalks to watch the guests arrive and flashbulbs popped as reporters from all the San Francisco newspapers recorded Harry greeting his guests at the top of his steps for their society columns.

Francie felt oddly calm as she stared at the great house, risen like a phoenix from her father's ashes. The newspapers had been full of Harry's party and the glories of the new mansion, and though she knew she shouldn't, she had been unable to stay away. She half-expected to see her father standing at the portals greeting his guests the way he had done at the last big Harrison party—her own coming-out ball—and she breathed a sigh of relief when he was not there. Even Harmon Harrison had not been able to return from the dead; only his house could do that. And instead, there was Harry.

Harry looked the way their father must have as a young man; tall, broad-shouldered and well-built. With a sensual curve on his lips, he scanned the crowds with light-blue eyes. He looked young and handsome and arrogantly sure of himself.

Francie pulled her hat down over her eyes, pressing closer to the strip of red carpet. The next long, shiny black limousine pulled up in front of the mansion and a silver-haired woman stepped out, her diamonds glittering in the lights of the flashbulbs. It was old Mrs. Brice Leland, and beside her fluttered a young girl in a beautiful lace ball dress and a diamond tiara. Francie gasped. It might have been her five years ago.

Harry kissed their white-gloved hands, waved them grandly into the house and then went back to his post at the door to greet the next arrivals. He should have been greeting his guests inside the great hall, but he was enjoying his starring role. He liked the admiring, envious stares of the crowd and he liked the photographs. He wanted the whole of San Francisco to see him and know that the Harrisons had beaten God at His own game. The house was a temple to his father and to himself and he wanted to make sure they knew it.

A line of limousines stretched all the way down the street, waiting to drive up to the royally carpeted entrance and discharge their passengers—beautiful girls in silks and satins and their handsome young escorts in white tie and tails. It took almost an hour to greet them all and as the last car drove away Harry gave a sigh of relief. Now the party could begin.

He turned one last time to smile at the crowd,
and suddenly his eyes met Francie's.
She pulled her hat lower over her eyes and turned quickly away, but he knew it was her. For a moment he stood frozen with shock. Then he ran down the steps toward her, but she had disappeared into the crowd like a ghost.