Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [61]
Beth had left him feeling a great deal more hopeful, not just because they planned to meet again in a few days, but because he’d made some suggestions as to how she and Sam could get on their feet.
‘Look, Sam,’ Beth said in a firm tone. ‘Why don’t you get a barman’s job on the Bowery? There’s plenty of work going there.’
His eyes opened wide in alarm. ‘I couldn’t work in one of those rough houses.’
‘Almost all the bars in New York are a bit rough,’ she said patiently. She hadn’t been in any herself but Jack had told her this. ‘You need experience before anyone will give you work in a top hotel or private members’ club. And I’ve got a plan. If you were working as a barman, I could come in and play my fiddle there.’
Sam looked at her in horror. ‘On the Bowery! With all those—’
‘Yes, rough men.’ Beth cut him short. ‘I couldn’t do it without someone to look out for me, but I know those men will really like my playing. Besides, some of the men who drink down there own saloons uptown. We’d get ourselves noticed. Not many saloon owners could have a handsome gent like you behind their bar with a sister who gets everyone’s toes tapping. We’d be a real money-spinner for them.’
These were words right out of Jack’s mouth. But she wasn’t going to tell Sam that because she knew he’d dismiss the idea out of hand.
‘You’d really want to play in one of those dives?’ Sam said incredulously.
‘Why not? It’s as good a training ground as anywhere, better than a snooty place where some clever devil would notice if I hit a wrong note,’ she said defiantly. ‘You know I’ve been to almost all the respectable hotels to ask if they need a pianist. They take one look at me and show me the door without even inviting me to show what I can do. I’ve been to shops, restaurants, oyster bars and no one will even give me a job washing dishes. Besides, I’d rather play the fiddle. If I got a name for myself on the Bowery it might change everything.’
‘They’ll think you’re a whore down there,’ Sam said disapprovingly. ‘I couldn’t watch over you if I was behind the bar.’
‘It would be enough that men knew you were my brother,’ she insisted, for this was what Jack believed. He also said he’d be around, and all his chums too. ‘I’ll be fine — a man would find it hard to do anything improper to me while I’m playing a fiddle.’
Sam said nothing, but she sensed he was weakening, if only because he thought her fiddle-playing might enhance his own image.
‘Let’s give it a try,’ she wheedled. ‘I was told Heaney’s is one of the best bars, and they need a barman. What have we got to lose? We do one night, see how it goes, and if you hate it, we don’t go back.’
Jack had said that Sam would be a magnet for all the dancing girls in that area and he thought he’d soon come round once he was the centre of attention. Beth wasn’t too happy about girls like that going after her brother, but then she’d be around to watch over him too.
‘All right,’ he said sourly. ‘But it will be your fault if something terrible happens.’
‘What could be more terrible than to be starving and homeless?’ she said sharply. ‘And that’s what we’ll be once our money runs out.’
At eight o’clock the following night, for all her brave talk, Beth was terrified.
∗
She and Sam had gone into Heaney’s at midday and asked Pat ‘Scarface’ Heaney, the owner, for work. He was a short but extremely muscular man in his forties, and what little hair he had left was ginger. He wore a bright green waistcoat which, though startling, didn’t detract from the formidable razor scar running from his right eye right down to his chin. Jack had told Beth that he received this in his youth when incarcerated in the Tombs, the huge prison built to solve the problems of Five Points, where Heaney