The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [55]
“Just look at those children,” Sofia would marvel, “a bunch of ragamuffins and my granddaughter one of the worst.” She would laugh as she said it but Missie knew it hurt.
There was one thing Missie hadn’t told Sofia about her job at O’Hara’s. The customers were a rough and ready lot, big, brawny Irishmen like O’Hara himself, though occasionally a “foreign-speaking” immigrant wandered in by mistake. Mostly O’Hara kept them in line with a mixture of Irish blarney and the threat of his fists. They were all right when they were sober but with a few whiskeys inside them, they became different men: men with one thing on their mind.
The saloon had some female customers, a few poor women burdened with too many children whose husbands beat them and who had taken to drink to escape, and then there were the whores. Missie tried not to notice as transactions were made over the stained tables, the man handling the woman like a piece of meat before he made his purchase; and she tried not to count the brief minutes before the fellow swaggered back from the alley, often still buttoning his pants. But toward the end of the evening their drunken glances were often directed at her.
The first time it happened she just froze. She stared down at the huge hand gripping her small breast like a vise. Its black-rimmed nails cut into her flesh, but she was too shocked even to feel the pain. Then she screamed. O’Hara came running, his shillelagh swinging as he hurled curses at the drunken workman.
“You filthy bastard,” he roared, with a quick crack to the side of the man’s thick skull. “Get your wanderin’ hands off her … she’s a respectable girl—and young enough to be your own daughter. If that’s what you want you’ll be off and find it elsewhere.” Purple with anger, he hauled the surprised man across the room, blood spattering from his cracked head. “Take that!” he bellowed, planting a kick that sent the man hurtling through the swing doors onto the sidewalk. “A boot in the arse is all you’re good for. And as for you,” he said, turning to Missie, “I’ll not be turning this place into a church social. Business is business, and if you can’t handle the men by yourself, you’re out.”
Missie didn’t tell Sofia what had happened, but the old woman knew something was wrong. That night as she massaged Missie’s swollen ankles tenderly and rubbed glycerine into her raw, red hands, she said, “I cannot allow this to go on. You must leave the saloon.”
Missie threw her arms around her desperately. “Please let us sell the jewels,” she begged, “like we did in Constantinople. Surely we are safe now?”
Sofia shrugged and replied, as she always did, “These are not just ordinary jewels, they are heirlooms. Such grandeur is identifiable. They are as good as worthless.”
“Then what about the money in Switzerland? We could go to a lawyer, we could have him send a letter with proof of your identity. I can’t bear it, Sofia; you should be living like the princess you are instead of worse than the poorest Russian peasant.”
Sofia went to a drawer and took out a newspaper clipping dated two weeks previously. “I didn’t show you this before,” she said, “because I didn’t want to worry you.”
Missie read the brief report. It talked of the atrocities being perpetrated in Russia, of the murder of the tsar and his family and the arrests and incarceration in gulags of innocent people. It said that the secret police were still searching for the Ivanoffs; that to the revolutionary regime they epitomized all that was wrong and decadent about “old Russia,” that the Cheka still believed the two grandchildren had escaped with the Dowager Princess Sofia. Reliable reports from inside Russia stated that the secret police had scoured Europe for them and that the search had now spread to America. It said that if they were found, the fate of these young children was certain to be like that of the imperial family: brutal murder.
Missie finished her milk in silence. What Sofia had said was true, and there was no escape. A future