Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [103]
‘By day I cleaned rooms, cooked and did the laundry, but by night I sang in the saloon,’ Pearl said. ‘I was never a whore. I ain’t saying there weren’t men in my bed. But I never took no money for it.’
Beth could believe that. ‘Were you a good singer?’ she asked.
‘They said so,’ Pearl replied modestly. ‘I loved to sing right from a small child; to me it was as natural as breathing. I had to sing, it was like my spirit being allowed to fly free. But I guess you feel the same way about playing your fiddle. I was young and pretty then too, I loved the attention, to be dressed in silk and satin, to have men looking at me as if I was their love. I’d come a long way from being a barefoot and hungry slave at the mercy of the master.’
Beth guessed that the reason Pearl’s mother ran away with her daughter was probably because she wanted to protect her from that master. Although Beth hadn’t suffered the kind of hardships Pearl had experienced, she understood that need to perform. ‘I feel just like that when I’m playing,’ she agreed. ‘I know I haven’t been a slave, but you can still feel bound by your background and the way you’ve been brought up.’
‘Respectability.’ Pearl nodded sagely. ‘Well, I’ve never had that, I never will. But I get respect from my girls, and the men who come here. That’s all I need.’
She went on to tell Beth that her mother was knocked down by a carriage and crippled, and it was her belief it was no accident. Her mother never walked again and Pearl had to take care of her and the business. ‘But I stayed on there till she died ten years later. I wasn’t going to let them win,’ she said proudly. ‘Then I sold the place and came here and bought this one.’
‘Why here?’ Beth asked.
Pearl smiled. ‘A man, honey, why else would I come clear across the country?’
‘Is he Frank, the friend Theo mentioned?’
Pearl nodded. ‘He’s good to me and a real gentleman, but a gambler and a charmer like Theo. Now, you listen closely to my advice! Don’t go dreaming of happy ever after. It don’t come with men like Frank or Theo. You have the good times with him, but make sure you hold on to the money you earn and anything he gives you. Give him your body freely, but don’t give him your heart, for he’ll break it.’
Beth was just going to try to get Pearl to enlarge on that when the girls began coming down to the kitchen. The blonde with the sulky expression was Missy, the two brunettes Lucy and Anna, and the beautiful redhead was Lola. Missy, Lucy and Anna were no more than eighteen, Lola perhaps twenty-three. All of them were wearing dressing gowns and slippers, their faces pale from lack of fresh air.
Beth sensed they weren’t entirely happy at finding a strange girl in their midst and she made her excuses and went back to the basement to see if Sam and Jack were awake.
They were, but both had sore heads from the previous night’s drinking. Jack went off to the kitchen to get them coffee and give Beth a chance to speak to her brother alone.
‘I’ve kind of got over the shock of staying in a brothel,’ she said cautiously. ‘I’ve been talking to Pearl and I like her. I guess last night I panicked, but that was Theo’s fault. He should’ve warned me.’
‘I was worried about how you’d react,’ Sam admitted.
‘Pearl made me see things from a different viewpoint,’ Beth said. ‘But enough of that. Tell me what you and Jack are doing.’
‘I’m managing the Bear, a big saloon just a few streets from here,’ Sam said. ‘Jack’s learning the ropes, the bar and the cellar. But Frank Jasper, the owner, runs several gambling places and he’s training me in that. He’s great, sis, nothing like Heaney, a real Southern gentleman.’
Beth smiled. She wondered if he knew that Frank was, or had been, Pearl’s lover. Somehow she doubted it, Sam wasn’t as interested in people as she was. ‘Are the wages good?’ she asked.
‘We haven’t been here long enough to see how it will go,’ he said. ‘But he gave us both ten