The Rich Shall Inherit (49 page)

The streetgirls were not much older than she was, but they recognized that she was different—“You’re quality,” they said admiringly—and they adopted her with motherly pride, dropping in to see her and making a great fuss over Luchay, whom they adored. They would peer at the little bundle of gaudy feathers with eyes as bright and beady as Luchay’s own, nervously offering him a small gift of nuts or pumpkin seeds, afraid he would bite. “He brightens up the place,” they exclaimed delightedly when he fluttered his little clipped wings, displaying a flash of scarlet underfeathers. Luchay was the pet they’d never had and he was something on which to lavish their love and attention and caresses, the way they never did with men.

But when they’d gone off into the night with their bright chatter and strident laughter, and the house fell silent again, Poppy would feel the familiar dark shroud of loneliness envelop her once more. She would think despairingly of home and of Nik and Rosalia, and Greg. In her mind Greg became a hero. Greg would never have behaved as Felipe or the sailors did. Greg was a man of integrity. He’d offered her his love and like a young fool she’d turned it down, until it was too late. She’d think of Angel and the “twin” babies, but she never thought of the child she had borne as being her own, nor did she conjure up a picture of her baby’s face, wondering what she looked like. She was Angel’s
daughter and had as little to do with Poppy’s own life as if she’d never borne her.

The past faded into the harsh reality of the present and instead of worrying about herself, she worried about Netta, sashaying forth in the bitter winter streets, her tatty bit of fur slung jauntily around her neck and her thin boots letting in the rain and sleet. “Netta,” she said anxiously, “surely there’s something better for you than this.”

“Sure there is,” Netta replied with her cocky grin, “there’s a millionaire out there just waiting to sweep me off my feet.” And she dragged Poppy off to the cafe for brandy and hot soup to cheer them up and keep out the cold that penetrated their miserable unheated room. Still, there were nights when even Netta couldn’t face the street and, with poor chilled Luchay, far from his warm tropical jungle, huddled under the blanket between them, she and Poppy would cling together for warmth, whispering stories of their past lives. But they never, ever mentioned the future.

Netta had been wrong about Jeanne, the girl in the attic. She didn’t die that winter. Somehow she clung grimly to life, coughing blood discreetly and flaunting her brave smile out on the bleak streets. But by January she was too weak to climb the stairs and she lay in bed, gazing quietly upward at the patch of sky that was her only view through the small, grimy window set high in the wall, smiling her thanks as the other girls bustled in to cheer her up. They brought blankets taken from their own beds to try to keep her thin body warm, and bowls of hot soup from the cafe to try to tempt her to eat, and bottles of patent medicines, bought with money they couldn’t spare, which the pharmacist had promised would cure her; and they brought belladonna to ease her pain.

Alone in the house at night Poppy would sit by Jeanne’s bedside, reading to her from one of Netta’s pile of books, or sometimes just talking to her. Jeanne was too weak to respond in more than a whisper for fear of starting the coughing again, and with it the terrifying hemorrhage, but she’d gaze at Poppy with an expression of such sweetness and gratitude for her companionship that Poppy would be forced to turn away so she wouldn’t see the sorrow in her eyes.

Luchay pattered backward and forward on his makeshift wooden stand fashioned from an old broomhandle, cocking his head on one side and peering at them both anxiously. He was
growing bigger and stronger and when he flapped his wings fluffing out his beautiful green and scarlet feathers to keep himself warm in the icy room, Jeanne’s glittering dark eyes would sparkle with delight as well as fever. “Poppy,” Luchay would squawk hoarsely, “Poppy
cara
, Poppy
chérie
, Poppy darling …” And despite herself Jeanne would laugh, and that would set off the coughing again, and the blood.

When the cold in the room grew too much for Luchay’s tropical bones to bear, he would huddle under Poppy’s shawl, and with his tiny body close to hers, she no longer felt lonely and afraid.

The sun, shining from a hard blue sky through her high, grimy window on the first bright morning in April, was the last thing Jeanne saw before she closed her eyes and, with the tiniest of sighs, was gone.

Netta hurried around the
quartier
taking up a collection for the funeral, and a straggling line of weeping streetgirls, black shawls pulled over their heads, followed the refuse cart with Jeanne’s cheap pine coffin as it was pulled slowly through the streets to the Church of St. Mary the Virgin.

Even the church was shabby, Poppy thought despairingly as the priest intoned a brief funeral service; the brass candlesticks needed polishing and there were no flowers on the altar. “Poor Jeanne,” she remarked sadly as the coffin was lowered into the frostbitten earth, “how terrible to end like this … as nothing.”

“She’s lucky she died young and we were able to give her a decent burial,” Netta said with a flash of bitterness, “most of us will end up in paupers’ graves. And then you really
are
nothing.”

The next day another girl moved into the attic room, even younger than Jeanne, maybe sixteen or seventeen. And pretty, too, thought Poppy, or she would be if she didn’t paint her face and adopt such a brash manner. And she sighed because she knew that was the way she had to be if she was to make a living in the streets.

Netta had a special “friend,” a sea captain who traveled the southern routes and who every couple of months would roll into Marseilles, as unsteady from his long weeks on board ship as if he were already drunk. The Captain had a wife in the Channel port of Cherbourg and a girl in every other port on his route, but he had a soft spot for Netta and never forgot to bring her a present. He was big and burly and jolly with a face that was more
weather-beaten than suntanned and eyes like blue slits from constantly narrowing them into the wind.

Whenever she heard that the
S.S. Marquand
was coming into port, Netta would dress in her cheap finery and in a flurry of excitement watch the big ship slip into its dock, waiting for the Captain to swagger down the gangplank and into her arms.

Poppy wouldn’t see her after that until the
Marquand
sailed again three or four days later, when Netta would return with a satisfied gleam in her eyes and wearing a new dress or a pretty necklace or a ring. With a happy sigh, she’d say, “Men ain’t all bad, you know, Poppy. And when they’re good … ooooh, they can be so
good!”
And with a happy wink, she’d hurry off to the pawnshop to hock her latest finery, and it would be brandy for everyone in Victors cafe that evening.

This time when the
Marquand
put into port, though, it was different. Instead of disappearing for a few days as she usually did, Netta hurried back home with a gleam of excitement in her eyes. “Poppy,
guess what?”
she demanded.
“He’s asked me to marry him! Me
, the best whore on the waterfront and he wants me to be his bride!”

“But … but what about his wife?” Poppy stammered, shocked.

“Died, two months ago,” said Netta airily, “and there are no kids to tie him down. He says all he thinks about when he’s lying in his bunk out under the southern stars—is me. Netta Fosquet … soon to be Mrs. Captain Georges Noiret! Oh, Poppy,” she cried, her generous mouth splitting her face in a grin of triumph, “can you believe it?
Me, a captain’s wife? And
a respectable married woman? And he’s such a good man too,” she added softly.

She looked so happy as Poppy kissed her and congratulated her and shopped with her for a dress for the wedding that was to take place two days later, that she couldn’t bring herself to ask Netta what was to become of her and Luchay.

“You’ll keep my room, of course,” Netta told her at the riotous party in Victor’s corner cafe the night before the wedding. “Here, take this,” and she pressed some notes discreetly into Poppy’s hand. “It’s not much, but it’ll pay the rent for a few months and with your washing and cleaning, you’ll manage.” There was a glimmer of doubt in her eyes as she said it, but still Poppy smiled bravely. The noise and laughter in the cafe seemed to fade into the distance as she gazed at her one true friend. “I’m so glad for you, Netta,” she whispered. “I know you’ll be happy.”

“Mrs. Captain Noiret.” Netta sighed happily.
“I’ve beaten the game, Poppy.”

There was no man to give her away, so she walked down the aisle of St. Mary the Virgin alone, with Poppy behind her as her bridesmaid. She and the First Officer of the
Marquand
were the only witnesses, and as Poppy watched Netta in her cheap new dress of blue China silk exchanging her vows, she couldn’t help but make a bitter comparison with Angel’s lavish wedding. But Netta and her Captain didn’t seem to need soaring Bach organ cantatas and a thousand roses, and incense and candlelight to add to their happiness, and they were married just as surely as Angel and Felipe.

It wasn’t often one of their profession was lucky enough to capture a husband, and Netta’s friends were waiting outside the church to throw rice and rose petals on the beaming couple. Her laugh rang out happily as she and her Captain hurried back to the ship, which was to sail that evening for the Cape.

“I’ll be back in a couple of months,” she told Poppy, hugging her tightly. “Now don’t you go do anything foolish, you hear me?” And Poppy smiled and waved as the captain swung her into his arms and carried her up the gangplank, piped aboard by the crew.

But there were no smiles on her face that night, alone in her room. With her uncertain future to face once more, loneliness settled over her again, as dark and mysterious as the night.

Luchay pattered anxiously back and forth on his wooden perch. “Poppy,” he cackled, “Poppy
cara
, Poppy
chérie
, Poppy darling…”

“Oh, Luchay,” she exclaimed, half laughing, half crying. “Of course I’ve still got you.”

When the S.S.
Marquand
put into port three months later, Netta walked down the gangplank alone, and she was wearing black.

“He’s gone,” she told Poppy, weeping, “died four weeks ago. It was a hot night and we were in bed; there I was on top of him—doing what he liked best—and then he just sort of gasped and stared at me. And that was it—gone! He was buried at sea, just like an admiral.”

Tears rained down her face as Poppy held her hand, unsure of how to comfort her.

“I knew it was too good to be true,” wailed Netta, her pert
face blotched from weeks of crying. “Damn that bastard, why did he have to die on me. Or
under
me!” she added with a hint of her old grin. “At least he went happy. Well, that’s that,” she sighed, drying her eyes and removing her hat. “I’ll never find anybody else to marry me. I’m home again, Poppy, for good. But at least the old bastard left me his worldly goods. I don’t know exactly what it amounts to yet, but he was a traveling man, so it can’t be much.”

Dignified in black, Netta and Poppy listened as the gray-haired lawyer explained Captain Noiret’s bequest. “The Captain changed his will after his first wife died, leaving everything to you, Madame Noiret,” he told her.

“Well, get on with it,” Netta urged bluntly, “it can’t be that much that we need all this legal fuss.”

“On the contrary, madame,” he said, glaring at her. “The Captain left a considerable estate. There is a house here in Marseilles and another in Cherbourg.”

“A house in Marseilles?” gasped Netta.

“As I said,
and
the one in Cherbourg,” he went on, “plus a small sum of money in the Banque Maritime de Marseilles. It amounts to just over three thousand francs, madame.”

“Three thousand francs!”
Netta repeated slowly, her eyes widening with amazement. “Are you telling me that I have
three thousand francs—and two houses of my own?”

“Indeed I am, Madame Noiret. All you need do is sign these probate papers, right here, and the title deeds and the money will be yours. Of course, I must advise you to leave everything in the bank for safekeeping.”

“Safekeeping!” caroled Netta, leaping to her feet.
“Safekeeping?
Poppy and me are gonna throw the party of a lifetime at Victor’s cafe tonight.” Picking up her pen, she dashed her name across the documents with a flourish. “Bet y’thought I couldn’t write, huh?” she said, nudging the lawyer’s elbow, with a cheeky grin. “The party’ll be at Victor’s on the rue Lesange if you want to come,” she added, laughing as she headed out the door on her way to the Banque Maritime.

“Netta, you’ve got to be sensible about this money,” cried Poppy, hurrying by her side. “You can’t just fritter it away on parties and new clothes … it’ll be gone in a month. The Captain wanted to make sure you were taken care of. You could sell the house in Cherbourg and put the money in the bank, and if you’re careful it’ll last you the rest of your life.”

“But I’ve never been careful, Poppy,” she laughed, “and it’s too late to start now. Besides, what would I do all day?”

“Maybe you should consider starting a little business,” suggested Poppy, “something you’d enjoy.”

“Come on,” Netta grinned, “you know there’s only two things I really enjoy—a good man, and the good life. And I intend to have myself a piece of both right now.”

“I have an idea,” Poppy said thoughtfully as Netta walked from the bank later, brandishing five hundred francs in her hand. “I have an idea … I think you might like it. But you’ll need all your money.”

Netta glanced at her suspiciously. “What sort of idea?” she demanded.

Poppy explained it to her as they strolled back through the autumnal streets to the waterfront, and Netta’s eyes lit with amusement.

“God, you’re a clever one,” she marveled, “why didn’t I think of that? With your brains and my know-how, we’ll make a fortune!” She shook Poppy’s hand, laughing happily. “One last fling, though, tonight at Victor’s? In memory of the Captain? He’d have liked that.”