Never Look Back (109 page)

Peter agreed it was, and told her that Tabitha had examined many immigrant women’s small children and found them to be suffering from rickets and other complaints that sprang from poor nutrition. He said Tabitha had asked them what they fed their children and they had admitted to feeding them with what they ate themselves. That, Tabitha had discovered, was often just pretzels, doughnuts, beer and coffee. These poor, ignorant women who so wanted to become true Americans, had abandoned the sort of simple, cheap wholesome food they’d eaten back in the old country, instead they had embraced what they saw as an American diet.

A pail of water thrown from an upstairs window, narrowly missing them, made them turn to see Sidney wasn’t right behind them.

Matilda sighed. Sidney was an inquisitive man, and very friendly, so she expected he’d struck up a conversation with someone. They had reached a wider lane which didn’t smell quite so bad, and as Peter’s colour was coming back, she was loath to go back again to the narrow alleyways. ‘We’d better wait for him here,’ she said wearily. She desperately wanted a cup of coffee, her stomach was rumbling from missing her breakfast, and she really didn’t think they had achieved anything by coming here, except perhaps to give Peter a guilty conscience that he had so much when others had nothing.

After a wait of five or ten minutes, and still no sight of Sidney, they reluctantly turned back the way they had come. But as they turned into a particularly fetid alley, all at once they heard the sound of fighting, men shouting and women screaming.

Matilda’s sixth sense told her Sidney was in the thick of it, and she began to run towards the noise, pushing through women
turning out of doors, all intent on seeing what was going on.

As she came into a small yard between two very old houses, she could see Sidney’s unmistakable red hair over the heads of the crowd gathered there. Frantically elbowing her way through, she got to the front and to her horror saw two men were holding on to each of Sidney’s arms, while a third was hitting him around the head and middle with what looked like a long axe handle. Blood was pouring down the side of Sidney’s head, and he didn’t appear to have any strength left to fight the men off. A small child of perhaps five or six, standing near, was wearing his grey hat.

‘Stop!’ she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘He’s done nothing to you.’

Peter ran past her, straight up to the man hitting Sidney, and tried to grab the axe handle from him.

Matilda glanced around her. From every direction more and more people were coming, filling the small yard. She knew that it would be only seconds before someone set about Peter, and perhaps her too if she didn’t do something.

She pulled out her gun from her pocket and fired a warning shot into the air.

‘I said stop it,’ she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘The next person to touch either of my sons gets the next bullet.’

There was a sudden hush, people close to her edged away, but the two men holding Sidney merely glowered at her, and continued to hold him. It was clear they’d been hitting him for some time, for his eyes were almost closed and even his legs were swaying as if he’d been partially knocked out.

Peter managed to wrest the axe handle from the third man, giving him a warning whack with it, but as he moved in to try to frighten off the two men holding Sidney, Matilda saw two more very big men with dark beards and filthy oilskin waistcoats dash forward out of the crowd to grab Peter.

‘Get the police, someone!’ she shouted. But there was no time to wait for help, one of the men had already caught hold of Peter’s coat lapel, his fist raised to strike him. Matilda aimed her gun at the man’s leg and fired again. He hopped like he had been stung, screamed out some abuse, but moved away.

‘That’s better,’ she shouted, moving closer. ‘You two holding
my son, let him go, or one of you gets it. I aimed for your friend’s leg, but I shall aim right for your heart.’

One man let go, and backed away, but Sidney suddenly sagged, and the remaining man lifted his foot to kick him in the belly.

Matilda didn’t stop to think, just fired at him without aiming. The man lurched, reeled a few feet, then fell on to the ground. Peter leaped over to Sidney who had now collapsed on the ground, but although Matilda wanted to run to him too, she didn’t dare. She had witnessed scenes very like this one in the ‘Barbary Coast.’ Fights were sport, and no one would side with or come to the aid of a stranger. They were likely just to watch and cheer while all three of them were slaughtered.

Turning to the crowd behind her, she tried to appeal to their better nature. ‘Please help us,’ she implored them.

‘Don’t look like you need much help, missis,’ a man called out. ‘Not the way you fired that gun. Whatcha come down this way for anyway?’

All at once Matilda became aware of the malevolence in the air. The houses on all sides leaned in on the yard, the flapping washing on lines above their heads shutting out much of the natural light. There were faces at every window, she even caught sight of a woman wielding a slop pail, ready to throw its contents at her if she came within range. She could feel the animosity towards her and her boys, her gun alone was what was holding them back.

Matilda slowly edged across the few yards towards the boys, keeping the gun cocked and ready in case any one rushed them, her eyes swivelling around watching for sudden movement. Just a glance at Sidney’s crumpled figure and Peter’s stricken face was enough to know he was seriously injured.

She was only a few feet from them now, but the mob was edging ominously closer too, packing in on all sides. She didn’t need to hear what their indistinct rumbling voices were saying, the hatred in their gaunt faces was enough to know they were spoiling for real action, to beat her and the boys and strip the clothes from their backs.

She walked in safety around the alleys of the Barbary Coast for people knew who she was. Here she and her boys were just well-dressed and well-fed strangers, and as such they were a target for hatred.

The man she had hit in the leg was now propped against a wall, holding his bleeding wound and still hurling abuse at her. The second man was prone on the ground. Her heart was pounding with terror, she had to hold the gun with both hands to stop herself shaking. She had never felt more helpless.

Suddenly she heard a shrill whistle. The crowd heard it too, for all heads jerked round.

‘Police!’ someone hissed, and as the sound of metal-tipped boots came running in their direction, suddenly there was pandemonium. Women shrieked and ran for doorways, men fled into alleys, others unable to get away because of the sheer numbers shrank back against the walls.

As a dozen policemen brandishing cudgels burst into the yard, Matilda stood alone in the centre, gun in hand.

‘Thank God you’ve come,’ she gasped.

Many a time in the past Matilda had complained bitterly about the police’s different treatment for rich and poor, but for once she was glad of it. She had no doubt that if she had been in rags with a smoking gun in her hand, she would have been dragged away to the cells without even having time to explain what had happened. But as it was, the police listened to her, even before checking on those that were hurt.

Their care and sympathy was all for Matilda and her boys. Sidney was hastily placed on a stretcher and she was told she was free to accompany him to the hospital. As Matilda ran along beside the men carrying the stretcher, she saw some of the police disperse to look for the other men involved, while others dealt with the two remaining injured men.

The small hospital close by was as grim as the old Marine Hospital in San Francisco, dark, dirty and crowded with desperately poor people waiting patiently for treatment. Normally Matilda’s sympathies would have been aroused by the sight of a mother holding a limp, clearly very sick child in her arms, but all she could think of right then was Sidney. She ordered the nurse in charge that her son needed immediate attention, then turned to Peter and insisted he should rush to get Sebastian and Tabitha regardless of the fact that this would mean they would have to delay their honeymoon.

It seemed like hours while she waited for them to come. On seeing how dirty the nurses were, she declined their help, and
bathed his wounds herself. His skull was broken on the right side of his head, small pieces of splintered bone embedded in the bloody mass beneath. His chest and belly were covered in weals too, and she thought his ribs were broken. He regained consciousness fleetingly, but he didn’t seem to know her.

Then suddenly Sebastian and Tabitha were there. In a trice they had Sidney whisked into a smaller private examination room, and at their insistence Peter led Matilda away out to a cab so they could go back to the hotel and tell Mary what had happened.

It was eight when they left that morning, by the time they got back to the hotel it was three in the afternoon. Both Mary and Lisette were angry rather than anxious. When they woke to find their husbands and Matilda gone, with no note of explanation, they had assumed the trio had gone out on some private business with no thought for them and the children. It was Lisette who launched into a tirade of complaint at Peter.

‘How could you leave us without any warning? You know we don’t know our way about,’ she said, dark eyes flashing with rage. ‘Mary and I had to take the children out to the park all alone, then we had such a miserable time at luncheon because the little ones played us up in the restaurant.’

‘And where’s Sidney?’ Mary snapped, her eyes flashing dangerously ‘If he’s in a saloon somewhere I’ll do for him when he gets back.’

There was nothing for it but to tell them straight out where he was and that he was badly hurt. The explanations as to why and how would have to come later.

Mary’s face lost all its high colour, anger vanishing as fear took its place. She pulled on her coat and hat and insisted they were to take her to the hospital immediately.

‘Mary, you can’t go yet,’ Matilda said, trying to restrain her, glancing round at the children who were all looking at their distraught mother in shock. Elizabeth was twelve, James eleven, and John eight, all old enough to understand, but the other two were just babies. ‘For one thing Sebastian and Tabitha are operating on him right now, for another Peter and I have to explain how it all came about before you see him.’

Nothing had ever been so difficult for Matilda to explain. In the light of what had happened to Sidney, any reasons she could
give for their actions sounded feeble and entirely foolhardy.

‘It’s all your fault,’ Mary screamed at Matilda. ‘You and your do-gooding!’

Lisette’s dark eyes swept from Mary to Matilda. As the only real outsider in the group, in as much as her whole life had been a pampered one, she had often been a little embarrassed by the nature of Matilda’s charity work and wished her husband would distance himself from it.

‘Mary, it wasn’t Matty’s idea to go,’ Peter said, kneeling down in front of her and trying to take her hands. ‘Sidney and I planned it right back in San Francisco. Don’t blame Matty, please, but for her we could all have been hurt.’

‘But she could have stopped you going,’ Mary spat at him, snatching her hands away from his. ‘Ain’t there enough slums back home without her leading you to the ones here too?’

‘She couldn’t have stopped us.’ Peter shook his head. ‘We needed to see it. We’d have gone whatever she said and she knew that, that’s why she came, hoping we’d be safer.’

‘Well, I hope you’re satisfied now,’ Mary sobbed. ‘If Sidney dies you can tell his children
you
were responsible. But then I expect we’ll end up somewhere like that ourselves without him to provide for us.’

Matilda couldn’t even bring herself to assure Mary that she’d take care of her and the five children if that happened. To voice the possibility would make it seem inevitable, and she couldn’t accept that.

‘Sidney’s not going to die. He’s a strong man,’ she said instead. ‘With Sebastian and Tabby looking after him he’ll pull through.’

Peter and Lisette took charge of the children later so that Matilda could take Mary to the hospital. She had stopped her hysterical outbursts, even saying she was sorry she’d blamed her, but a plaintive statement about how she wished they’d stayed home and never come to the wedding cut Matilda to the quick.

Sebastian was still operating on Sidney when they got to the hospital, but on his instructions they were shown to a private room to wait. While they were there a burly Irish policeman called in to tell Matilda Sidney’s assailant had died from his gunshot wound, and that in all likelihood the first man she’d shot would probably lose his leg. The policeman told her this most
cheerfully as if she’d rid the city of some of its vermin. He praised her courage, and said that no charges would be brought against her as it was a clear case of self-defence. But Matilda felt nothing, not relief she wouldn’t be charged nor even guilt that both those men might have had wives and children. All her thoughts were centred on willing Sidney to survive.

As they waited in silence, fingers linked together for mutual comfort, Matilda found herself thinking back over the twenty-odd years she’d known Mary. Maybe in the early days of London Lil’s Mary’s loyalty was out of gratitude for Matilda giving her a new start, but they had become friends later. When Cissie and the girls had died, Mary had such sympathy for her, Sidney and Peter, and later when Matilda opened up the house in Folsom Street, she was always so ready to help in any way she could.

Matilda could remember well the delight she felt when Mary and Sidney wanted to get married. The first two years of the war would have been so bleak but for her moving into the apartment with baby Elizabeth. Shared fear for their men drew them even closer; when Matilda helped deliver James, they became like mother and daughter.

She didn’t know how she would have fared without Mary in the years after the war. Her gentle, loving ways, her deep understanding of her loss, were so comforting. Then there had been the births of her other children, each one bringing happiness back to the family and pushing out the sadness.