Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [57]
As they came in closer, the noise of barrels being rolled over the cobbles, horses’ hooves, wagon wheels, ships’ engines and human voices was tremendous, and when Beth looked away from the quayside she saw thousands of craft of every kind, from tugboats to old sailing ships, out on the river. Looking back in the direction the ship had come from, she caught sight of the Statue of Liberty, which she’d seen so often in pictures at home. But nothing had prepared her for the sheer mammoth size of it, towering over the harbour, or the emotion it awakened in her.
She remembered her teacher reciting a poem. Beth couldn’t recall if it was actually something to do with the statue, or just America in general, but the part of it which had remained in her head seemed to fit both of them: ‘Give me your tired, your poor huddled masses yearning to breathe freely. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.’
Beth didn’t see herself, Sam or anyone on this ship as ‘wretched refuse’, but she supposed the woman who wrote it had watched many thousands of people from all over Europe hobbling through the immigration halls. With their worn suitcases, drawn faces, and shabby clothes they probably did look like so much refuse, though she thought the poet could have used a kinder word.
The Brooklyn Bridge was far bigger and longer than she expected too. She couldn’t imagine how anyone could conceive of erecting something so huge over a river.
Her final thought before going back below decks to await instructions about when they would disembark was to wonder, if the port of New York held all these marvels, what more incredible sights there would be in the rest of the city.
‘It seems the first and second classes are too grand to pass through immigration,’ Sam said gloomily later as he and Beth watched gangways being lowered and the upper classes happily tripping down them, most with porters carrying their luggage. ‘We get taken on a ferry to Ellis Island to be checked out. If they don’t like the look of us we get sent back to England.’
‘They aren’t likely to send us back,’ Beth pointed out. ‘We’re strong and healthy.’
‘I wasn’t afraid we’d be sent back. It’s how long it will take to be cleared. Look how many ships there are here, all full of immigrants. It will be hard to find somewhere to stay tonight once it’s dark.’
By four in the afternoon Beth was growing very anxious as the queues to be interviewed by immigration officers didn’t appear to be moving at all. It was nearly twelve o’clock before the ferry had brought them to the island and the huge, pine-built building in which they were to be ‘processed’. She had heard from a sailor on the ferry that this building had only been opened in 1892, but it was filled with thousands of people with unwashed bodies, and what with the poor ventilation, her stomach rumbling with hunger and her legs aching with standing for so long, it felt like an ancient torture room.
So much noise too — thousands of voices all talking at once, and many of them speaking foreign languages. There was a palpable undercurrent of fear as well, which perhaps was why so many small children were crying. Word passed back down the queues that they were to be questioned along with a medical examination, and although this didn’t bother Beth or Sam, it was clear that it was creating anxiety for many.
‘Public charge’ was a phrase Beth kept hearing people use. She gathered that the officials were refusing entry to anyone they thought might become one. She saw a wizened old couple who looked barely able