Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [66]
Beth had laughed at that, for she saw Jack at least twice a week, and she knew he thought she was perfect the way she was. She liked him too, his sense of humour, reliability and the way he looked after her, and she supposed that if a girl spent that much time with a boy back in England, it would be considered almost an engagement.
But Beth was reluctant to encourage Jack beyond friendship.
Ira thought this wise, not because she didn’t approve of Jack, in fact she liked him, but she felt Beth was too young to be serious about anyone.
‘There are so many hundreds of nice young men out there,’ she would say with a roguish twinkle in her eye. ‘Enjoy your youth, it doesn’t last very long.’
But Ira wasn’t happy about Beth playing at Heaney’s. ‘He’s rotten to the core,’ she’d say emphatically. ‘You must never be alone with him, and make sure your brother never lets him do any favours for him, otherwise when he calls them in, Sam will be in deep trouble.’
Beth was always careful to keep her distance from Heaney, for he made her flesh crawl. He looked at her as if he was mentally stripping her clothes away, and she felt his eyes on her all the time she was playing. But though she wished she could leave his bar and go to work for someone she liked and felt comfortable with, she knew he would make her regret it.
By all accounts Pat Heaney took slights very seriously. It was rumoured that he had killed several men, and crippled many more, just for talking about him behind his back or refusing to obey his orders.
He had no real friends, only lackeys who supported him because they were afraid to do otherwise. According to Jack, he controlled dozens of prostitutes, taking at least half of what they earned. He owned two of the most dilapidated tenements in the Canal Street area and he charged such exorbitant rents that his tenants had to sublet again and again to be able to pay him. He had a hand in the thriving opium dens, dog-fighting and bare-knuckle fights. Even if only half the stories about his revenge attacks on people who had fallen foul of him were true, he was an exceptionally dangerous man. Beth was certain that if she left to work somewhere else in New York some ‘accident’ would befall her. He would never let her be a success anywhere but in his saloon.
Sam thought she was allowing her imagination to get the better of her. He not only didn’t believe the man was dangerous, he felt he was Heaney’s right-hand man because he let him run the bar without interference.
But Beth could see why this was. Despicable as Heaney was, he wasn’t a fool. He knew Sam was honest and capable, and just as big an attraction to the chorus girls from the local theatres as Beth was to the male customers. She would often peep through the door during her rest period before the last set, and there were always three or four of these girls flirting with Sam. And of course Sam loved the attention.
But then Beth knew she was guilty too of loving the attention she got. There was no bigger thrill than to have an audience in her thrall, to know she was desired by most of the men who cheered her rapturously. It was good to put on a pretty dress, to know she could afford to buy another any time she wanted to. She was doing something most women could only dream of.
Soon after starting at Heaney’s, she and Sam had found a room on the top floor in a tenement on Houston Street, sharing the kitchen with an Italian couple who had the other room in the apartment. To almost everyone they knew, a room for just two was luxury, and although Beth often complained because there was never any peace and quiet in the building with its five floors, each with four apartments and an average of eight to ten people in each, she thanked her lucky stars that it was only noise she had to put up with, not a room full of people.
The room wasn’t much,