A Collar of Jewels Read online

  A Collar of Jewels

  Pamela Pope

  © Pamela Pope, 1994

  Pamela Pope has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1995 by Arrow Books.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  For Alan, Whose help, support and encouragement make all the difference

  ‘Therefore pride is their collar of jewels and violence the robe that wraps them round.’

  Psalms LXIII. 6 (NEB)

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Part One - Max

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Part Two - Oliver

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Part Three - William

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  It was half an hour since Ellie Berman had watched her husband leave the disembarkation shed, his long green coat flapping about his legs as he went out into the drizzling rain. She’d heard the warm ring of his voice as he shared a last joke with friends they had made on the seven-day journey across the Atlantic to Southampton on the steamship US MSS New York, and then he’d been lost from view among the seething mass of passengers and port officials.

  ‘I have to go to the immigration office,’ Max had told her. ‘There’s a few formalities to get through before they’ll let us stay.’

  She looked up at the iron girders criss-crossing the roof, from which hung notices about baggage clearance and signs pointing to the London-Waterloo train. It had all been so exciting when they’d first docked, but now she was too edgy to take an interest in these new sights and sounds. Half an hour without Max was too much, and she was worried that something had gone wrong with his papers.

  She paced up and down with the baby pressed against her shoulder, willing her husband to reappear. Her face was pale and she was holding William too tight, so that he gave little unhappy cries of protest. Surely it wasn’t Max’s Jewish identity that was proving difficult? She’d not heard of any problems in Britain. Or what if someone had telegraphed ahead to say that Max Berman was a troublemaker, and shouldn’t be allowed into the country? It was not true, of course, but after all that had happened over the past months anything was possible. Questions tumbled through her mind.

  Porters with trolleys were transporting luggage to the London train and the crowd had begun to thin out.

  ‘I hope your husband won’t be too long,’ said the woman from Boston who had been so good helping Ellie with the baby. ‘We’re due to leave in fifteen minutes, I understand.’

  ‘I didn’t expect him to be gone so long,’ Ellie admitted.

  ‘Would you like my husband to ask the porter to be taking your luggage?’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Faber, but I’d rather wait for Max.’

  ‘Well, don’t leave it too late, my dear.’

  In ten more minutes Max still hadn’t returned. When the last people had left, Ellie was alone in the vast hall where now every sound echoed. Panels on runners were being wheeled into place to form a wall along the open side of the building, shutting her in, and the noise of the iron wheels screeched through her head.

  A porter came up to her. ‘Are you going to London? If you want this lot shifting, ma’am, you ain’t got much time.’

  ‘Yes, we’re going to London,’ said Ellie. ‘But I don’t know where my husband is.’ Her voice trembled but she kept her head up and tried to look confident.

  ‘Reckon he’s deserted you,’ the man laughed. She’d heard about the English sense of humour. ‘Can’t hold up the train, ducks. There’s the mail to be got in on time.’

  She was getting desperate. ‘Please can you see if he’s still at the immigration office?’ she begged.

  ‘I’ll send a boy, ma’am.’ The man’s hand was cupped to receive a gratuity.

  ‘I’ve no money on me. My husband has it.’

  The wretched creature’s manner changed. ‘Afraid it’ll take a while to find someone who ain’t busy.’

  So this was England! Ellie had been full of joy a short time ago as the steamship edged towards the quay in Southampton’s Empress Dock on that September morning of 1894. It had felt wonderful to arrive in this new land, even in such dismal weather. She’d painted rosy pictures of England in her mind which had refused to be dampened by her first glimpse of the drizzle-shrouded shore, but now her joy turned sour as she shivered in the draught.

  A forbidden picture came into her mind of what she had sacrificed in order to marry Max, and her eyes blurred. In his anger, her father had declared there was no longer a place for her in the family if she married a penniless Jew; she had made her choice and hadn’t regretted it for a single instant. Whenever she looked at Max’s handsome Jewish profile her heart gave a jerk. She loved him with a passion which sometimes frightened her, and as long as they were together nothing could dim her happiness. Such high hopes she had for their future in this new land … He was strong and ambitious, afraid of nothing, and they were so fortunate to be putting the troubled times behind them.

  William, who was four months old, began to cry in earnest now, beads of moisture settling on his forehead as he grew hot with anger at having to wait for nourishment. Ellie found his milk bottle and sat on the portmanteau to feed him from it.

  There was plenty of activity on the quay still. Dockers shouted and joked in raucous voices, their accent strange to her American ears. The rain was heavier now. Through the murky greyness she saw a ship edging away from its berth further up the dock, the tide taking it so that the bows swung gently to point down Southampton Water towards the Solent and the open sea. Ellie’s heart was beating unevenly, and just briefly she wondered if they ought to have stayed on the other side of the Atlantic.

  Another fifteen minutes passed and she was becoming frantic. She couldn’t leave the luggage to go and look for Max and everyone seemed too busy to help her. Finally the same porter returned.

  ‘Ain’t no one in the immigration office, lady,’ he said. He looked at her with more compassion, seeing how young and ill-equipped she was to be left in this predicament. ‘Do you want me to get a cab for you?’

  ‘No. I can’t go anywhere until my husband gets back.’

  ‘Scarpered, has he? Perhaps it’s a copper you need.’

  The slang was like another language to her. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Police,’ the man said.

  ‘Oh, no.’ Beads of perspiration gathered round her neck and made her thick dark hair damp. William had never felt so heavy. ‘There must be some simple explanation. He’ll be here any minute, I know he will.’

  ‘Well, if he ain’t here sharpish give us a shout and someone’ll come and lend you a hand,’ the man said, with bluff kindness. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Berman. Max Berman,’ Ellie told him. ‘He’s very tall and dark and he’s wearing a green overcoat that comes down to his ankles.’

  He touched his cap respectfully. ‘Don’t you worry, ma’am. I’ll ask around.’

  When he had gone she sat down again on the portmanteau in the middle of the empty hall. Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling and her legs felt too weak to hold her. Eve
ry sound was amplified as the rain began to beat on the roof and she hadn’t felt so frightened since the start of the trouble in Chicago.

  ‘Oh William, where is your papa?’ she cried to the baby who now closed his eyes contentedly, untroubled by this fearful turn of events.

  Presently she heard someone running and jumped to her feet with a great surge of relief. Max would be desperate at having left her for so long and she started out to meet him. But the man who appeared through the curtain of rain was not Max. It was once again the porter, and she could tell by his expression that something was terribly wrong.

  ‘What is it? Where is he?’ She could hardly get the words out for the lump in her throat.

  Rain was dripping from the man’s hair into his eyes and when he shook his head it splashed her. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, love.’ He took her arm and led her to the window, pointing at the sister ship to the New York which she had recently seen leaving its berth. It was now well underway. ‘A man by the name of Berman boarded the Paris at the last minute. Very tall, he was, and wearing a green coat like you said. Reckon he’s on his way back to America on it.’

  ‘Max? On his way back to America!’ Her eyes were so wide she felt a cold wind rush into them. ‘I don’t believe you. He wouldn’t leave me here.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, ma’am. He had a return ticket to the States in his pocket.’

  ‘But what am I to do? I’ve no money — nothing.’

  Ellie swayed, and held William in a vice-like grip. If the iron girders above her head had fallen in on her she couldn’t have felt more devastated. She didn’t know which was greater, the terrible discovery that she had been deserted, or the paralysing fear as to what she should do next.

  Part One

  Max

  One

  As usual it had been a wonderful vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. Every summer the Harveys spent several weeks at their New England seaside house on the island, away from the smoke of Chicago, passing the time idyllically, swimming, fishing, or just walking across the top of the high cliffs. This year they were leaving a little earlier.

  ‘Just because Drew’s having a fight with Papa,’ complained Ellie. ‘It isn’t fair. I don’t want to go home yet.’

  ‘Your father is very worried about him,’ said Mama, supervising while servants Prudence and Maisie packed the trunks. ‘Drew has to be stopped from throwing away his education.’

  ‘He only wants to earn a living.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to earn a living — well, not on the footplate of an engine, anyway! Your father already has a place for him on the Board. Drew has brains and he’ll be even more successful than Frederick in time, provided he gives his mind to it.’

  Ellie was prepared to argue all day for her favourite brother. ‘He’s always wanted to be an engineer, you know he has.’

  ‘All boys want to be engineers,’ scoffed Mama, ‘but they usually grow out of it before they’re sixteen. Drew is now twenty-one and mature enough to know that driving a train is no occupation for the son of the President of the Union Atlantic Railroad.’ She snatched a silk shawl from the tray about to be deposited in the trunk before the lid was closed. ‘Not that, Maisie. I shall want it on the boat.’

  Ellie knew it would be no use pleading with her father. Conrad Harvey had been in one of his darkest moods ever since the telephone call from Drew saying that he had taken a job as a fireman for the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company.

  ‘The fool’s taken leave of his senses,’ Papa had stormed. ‘What the hell does he think he’s doing?’ And the next day he had commanded Mama to arrange the packing, curtly informing Lionel, Jefferson and Ellie that they were returning home.

  Elena Harvey was fifteen, that summer of 1890. Going home meant growing up. Away from the freedom of Martha’s Vineyard she was obliged to walk instead of run, to dress with decorum in gowns which emphasised the new fullness of her figure, and to speak graciously like Mama. No more romping with her brothers. No more wearing bloomers or climbing trees. Next summer she would be leaving to spend nearly two years at a finishing school in France, and it felt as if the vacation was over forever.

  Early that morning they crossed the channel at the southwest tip of Cape Cod where strong tides rocking the boat were too much for Mama’s delicate stomach. On the mainland, at Woods Hole, they boarded the train for New York. Papa was to travel on to Chicago with the boys, but Mama had insisted that her planned visit to their oldest son Frederick must still go ahead, as his wife had recently given birth to a second child.

  ‘Elena and I will continue the journey in a Pullman car after you leave the train at Boston,’ she said.

  Conrad Harvey had his own private railcar for travelling, made in the workshops of his friend George Pullman, the man whose first sleeping car had been used to carry the body of Abraham Lincoln and the mourners from Chicago to Springfield in 1865. The Harvey car was the ultimate in luxury for the President of the United Atlantic; it was equipped with the finest upholstery, carpets and carved wood, as well as the Pintch system of gas-lighting with ornate glass shades, and there was ample room to move about inside it. In the course of business, Conrad Harvey arranged for railroads to carry his private car upwards of a hundred days a year.

  This day was 19 August 1890, and the express train was making good time. Ellie hated having to sit still for so long. She amused herself by drawing caricatures of the family — a talent which made everyone laugh but sometimes caused ruffled feelings since she was able to pick out faults as well as redeeming features. She sketched Papa with his newspaper, a frown on his high forehead indicating his disapproval of any reading matter other than the Chicago Tribune. His lips were disguised by a large moustache, and his thick hair, the colour of a hazelnut, showed no sign of receding. He was a tall, proud, handsome man, and Ellie loved him dearly. Her four brothers declared him to be a martinet, but as the youngest of his children and the only girl she could usually get her own way.

  Mama was doing her embroidery, a simple design chosen for the journey which could be worked without wearing the spectacles that vanity kept her from using. She was beautiful. Ellie took pleasure in watching her, admiring the set of her narrow shoulders and the tilt of her head which revealed the slenderness of her neck. Elegance flowed from her long, posed fingers, the index and third fingers usually raised higher than the second, the smallest one extended outwards. In every drawing Ellie did of her mother the hands were a feature, sometimes mockingly so, though the young artist didn’t intend it. Mama’s hair was as dark as midnight and the colour of her eyes had been likened to rich chocolate. Although the eldest of her five children was already twenty-five and had now made her a grandmother twice over, her figure was still youthful and she chose clothes to grace it with the expertise of one used to spending a great deal of money. Dear Mama … so beautiful, yet so cool. Sometimes Ellie yearned for some gesture of affection, but those were reserved for Sibylla Harvey’s sons.

  Lionel was studying. He thumbed self-importantly through a textbook, making notes on a pad under the heading Financial Advantages of Providing Good Working Conditions for the Unskilled. Lionel was eighteen and made in his father’s mould, the same as Frederick. When he went back to University in the fall he would be boringly conversant with Euclid, and as ignorant as ever of life’s lighter pleasures. Ellie’s pencil deftly caught his studious attitude, magnifying the lower lip which protruded further the more he concentrated.

  Jefferson, who was only a year older than herself, was easy to draw. He smiled readily with an appealing lopsidedness which made women want to mother him, and his brown hair always flicked forward in spite of Mama’s attempts to control it with pomade. For Jeff, this journey was a series of new delights and he rarely left the window. When he exclaimed at seeing a herd of buffalo, Ellie quickly looked out, but the train had entered a tunnel and she saw only a reflection of herself.

  She was becoming so like Mama it wa
s embarrassing.

  ‘Why, child, you’re going to outshine your mother, I do declare,’ had been the latest comment. At this Mama hadn’t looked too happy.

  Ellie moved her head to try to see her profile, her eye muscles aching as she tried to observe her straight little nose, curved brows, neat chin and full, sensual lips. Yes, she resembled her mother quite strikingly, though her eyes were of a different colour. George Pullman, her godfather, had once described them in a rare poetic moment as being ‘like violet petals’. She hurriedly included an exaggerated sketch of herself in the Harvey family group, then linked them all within the outline of their mansion home in Prairie Avenue, Chicago. Only Drew was missing.

  ‘Papa, may Lionel take me to the dining car?’ Ellie was too restless to sit a moment longer.

  ‘A meal will be served here presently,’ Papa said. ‘Can’t you wait?’

  ‘I could, but it would be so grown-up just to be escorted by Lionel. Good for my education. You will take me, won’t you, Lionel?’

  He closed his book. ‘If Father agrees.’

  Papa deliberated, then consented. ‘Elena will be your responsibility, Lionel. See that she behaves like a dignified adult. I want no word of complaint to reach my ears.’ He touched his youngest son’s shoulder. ‘Do you wish to accompany them, Jefferson?’

  ‘Aw, no,’ said Jeff. ‘Why go to the mountain when the mountain will come to Mohammed?’

  Mama made Ellie stand still while she smoothed the crumpled skirt of her travelling gown. ‘It’s time you learnt more decorum, Elena. Be a credit to Lionel now he’s so kindly agreed to chaperone you.’

  ‘Oh I will, Mama.’

  Flushed with success, Ellie followed her brother through the elastic diaphragm which firmly joined the vestibule cars together with spiral springs. The rocking almost unbalanced her, but she planted her feet firmly and passed along the next Pullman car without mishap, aware that admiring glances followed her. In the dining car the pair were shown to a table covered with snowy white linen and set with silver cutlery, and were offered a choice of menu which included elk, beefsteak, grouse or antelope.