Ellen let the curtain fall. The Well was only a little better than the Angel and Crown but she was paid more and Mr Hermanshaw didn’t take liberties. Mrs Hermanshaw saw to that.
In truth Ellen had come up in the world. She might still be singing in a supper room, but The Well was one of the most respectable drinking houses in the city. And New York was a growing city, with wealth and opportunity. Although the cramped house she shared with Joe and his growing family was only slightly wider than number two Anthony Street, it did at least have three floors, and they would be moving north at the end of the month.
As she watched the smoke from pipes and cigars curl up through the house lights, Ellen sent up a silent prayer that it would not be too long before she could stop spending the nights in a smoky hall and stay at home with her two daughters. Josie was making good progress in school and Bobbie was growing fast. In a few months, she would be crawling around and would soon be getting under everyone’s feet.
But when Bobbie started walking she didn’t want Robert’s daughter’s first steps to be in the alleys and lanes of New York’s Bowery district. The area was becoming more crowded by the day as hundreds disembarked at the dock, full of little else but hope, to start a new life. The area around Coulter’s brewery was fast becoming as impoverished as Flower and Dean Streets in Whitechapel.
‘Ma.’ Ellen turned around to find Josie, holding Bobbie, behind her.
‘We have just been to see Hetty. She made a doll for Bobbie. Hasn’t she, Bobbie?’
Bobbie looked up at her mother and smiled. Ellen reached out and took the wriggly child who every day looked more and more like her father. She had his hair, light brown with a dash of gold, and his frown. And she had Robert’s impatient nature. But most of all - and that was what stopped Ellen’s heart on a daily basis - Robert’s dark, expressive brown eyes looked at her from her daughter’s pretty face.
Many a night since she left London Ellen had awakened, her body on fire after dreaming of those dark brown eyes; dreaming of how Robert’s eyes would grow soft when he looked at her and how they flashed with passion as he made love to her. She saw Robert’s face in her dreams and wept. Bobbie snuggled against her.
‘What shall we call your dolly?’ Ellen said. The baby blew a soft raspberry.
From where she stood in the wings of the stage, Ellen heard the opening bars of her first tune.
‘I have to go,’ she said, handing Bobbie back to Josie. ‘She shouldn’t need feeding until I’m finished. I’ll be done in half an hour or so.’
Leaving her two daughters, Ellen made her way onto the middle of the stage just as the plush dark-blue curtains were drawn back. Enthusiastic applause rose from the audience as she took centre stage.
As the majority of the audience was Irish she started, as she usually did, with a traditional Irish ballad. Looking out through the haze of cigar smoke Ellen could see that after the first chorus the audience were singing along with her. At the end of the song she looked round as she took a sweeping bow.
She launched into her second song, which again was well received. As she swayed across the stage, Ellen spotted a man in his early thirties with light-brown hair smiling broadly and tapping his foot in time to the tune. The way he lounged back with his legs extended under the table brought a vision of Robert as she had first seen him and, despite the jollity of the house, an aching sadness overwhelmed her.
She had planned to sing ‘My Old Hillside Home’ next, but with Robert’s memory like a ghost hovering over her, she doubted she could make it to the third line without tears.
She signalled to Mr Levy, the conductor of the small orchestra, that she wanted ‘Run to the Fair’. The orchestra struck up. She sang two more ballads which brought her to her last song.
What shall I sing?
Sensing her indecision, members of the audience started to shout.
‘Sing “Come and Hear the Piper”,’ a woman’s voice called from the back.
‘Sing “A Sweet Maid Went A-Walking”,’ a gruff male voice with a heavy Donegal accent shouted.
There was a hush as the audience waited for Ellen to decide.
‘Sing “The Soft, Soft Rain of Morning” for me, Ellen,’ the strong, vibrant voice of her dreams called from the back of the room. Ellen’s head spun.
It couldn’t be ...
Ellen raised her eyes to where the voice had come from. Stepping from the back of the house and into the light was Robert. He came towards her.
Ellen staggered back, clasping her chest. Her eyes ran over his tall frame which towered over those sitting around him. He was dressed with his usual understated elegance in a chocolate brown frock coat and buff trousers. With his hat in his hand, his rebellious light brown hair had its way and fell over his forehead just as she remembered. Her gaze took in the much-loved angles and planes of his handsome face and then she looked into the brown eyes. The same, yes, that had looked at her in passion and caused her bones to melt. They were now fixed on her.
It was Robert! Here! He was here.
Inside her the hurt, pain and regret were swept away. How could she have ever left him? Gazing across the smoky room at him now, she didn’t know. She only knew that he was here.
‘Robert! Robert!’ she sobbed across the heads of the crowd.
He closed the space between them in two heartbeats and leapt onto the stage. In one swift movement he had taken her in his arms. Ellen felt their strength and she pressed herself further into his embrace. She clung onto him with both arms, her hands clutching at the wool of his jacket until it scraped her knuckles.
The crowd in the Well roared its approval.
‘Ellen,’ he said simply as his lips pressed onto her hair. ‘Thank God.’
Hearing the rapid thump of Robert’s heart beneath her ear Ellen shut her eyes and savoured the feel of the man she loved and who had traversed the ocean to find her.
Tilting her head, she gazed up at Robert. Her eyes locked with his and he gave her a weary smile. ‘Sing your
last
song, Ellen. Then I am taking you home.’ He let her go and stood back against the curtain.
Wiping tears from her eyes, Ellen signalled to Mr Levy.
As Ellen sang the old Irish ballad there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The ballad itself could cause strong men to sob, but with the added drama of Ellen and Robert’s reunion to fuel them, the audience were visibly wiping their eyes after the first few chords.
Ellen sang as she always did, clear and true, but with a tremor of emotion in her voice that had been absent since she had left Robert nearly a year before.
With his ardent eyes on her, Ellen’s heart was near to bursting with joy. Robert had found her. He had found her and, judging by the look in his eyes and the firm way he had enfolded her in his arms, he would never let her go again.
She finished to rapturous applause. Robert took her hand and led her off the stage. As they ducked behind the heavy curtain his arm went out again and pulled her to him hard.
‘I’m sorr—’ Ellen began, but her words were cut short as Robert’s mouth met hers in a forceful kiss. She could feel his emotion course through him, making her light-headed with the power of it. Her knees buckled and she felt Robert tighten his grip to support her.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, releasing her lips, but proceeding to kiss her cheeks and forehead. ‘Nothing matters, now that I’ve found you.’
‘But how?’ Ellen asked, her hands on the flat of his chest and looking up at him. She couldn’t take her eyes off his face. He looked tired, but otherwise the face that had haunted her night and day for almost a year was much the same.
Robert’s here,
her mind said over and over again.
‘Doctor Munroe! Doctor Munroe,’ an excited voice behind them shouted. ‘You came. You came.’
Before she could turn around to face her daughter, Ellen was shoved aside as Josie threw herself at Robert, jumping up and down on the spot as she hugged him. ‘You came. I knew you would.’
Josie grabbed her mother’s hands. ‘I knew when Doctor Munroe got my message from Pat he would come after you.’ Josie clasped her hands together and looked heavenwards. ‘It’s just like—’
Ellen’s head was already spinning. ‘Message? Pat?’
‘Patrick Nolan. I met him on my way home on the day you had...’
Bobbie!
Josie gave her mother a quick look and caught her lower lip in her teeth. ‘I ... I wanted to bring him back but he was sailing on the evening tide and couldn’t, but I made him promise to go to Doctor Munroe and tell him where we were.’
‘You did the right thing, Josie,’ Robert told her, with his eyes fixed on Ellen’s face.
Bobbie! What would he say?
‘Could you go and tell Mr Hermanshaw I’ll be going home a little early tonight,’ she said to her daughter. ‘Er ... take your time. We’ll be in my dressing room.’
Robert stepped forward and took hold of Ellen again, catching her to him and forcing her to look up at him. ‘Lead the way,’ he said, his hand firmly around her waist.
Within a minute of dodging through the props and scenery in the wings, they reached Ellen’s dressing-room door. With one swift movement Robert pulled her into the room, encircled her in his embrace and captured her lips in a hard, demanding kiss.
All of Ellen burst into life in Robert’s arms. She kissed him back fervently, caressing his face and shoulders as if to reassure herself that he was truly here.
She tore her lips from his. ‘Robert,’ she said breathlessly. ‘There is something you—’
Her words were cut short as Robert, taking hold of her head, pressed his lips onto hers again.
There was a muffled sneeze and a small cry. Robert’s brow creased for a second, then he glanced around the room and spotted the basket on the floor with a small hand waving above its rim. He looked back at her.
‘Ellen?’
Twisting herself out of his arms, Ellen went over and picked up the still sleepy Bobbie. The baby hiccuped and sneezed again.
Ellen held her out for Robert to see. ‘This is Robina, your daughter.’
Robert’s mouth dropped and his eyes fixed on the infant Ellen held. He came over and placed his index finger in Bobbie’s small hand. He gave Ellen a stupefied look and she saw tears in his eyes.
‘I have a daughter,’ he said, his voice full of wonder. He ran his hands lightly over the soft red-gold down on her head. His head snapped up. ‘Did you know—’
‘No, no. I was halfway across the Atlantic before I realised.’ She laid her hand on his arm and gazed up at him. ‘If I had even thought I was with child, I would never have left, Robert, I swear it.’
Robert’s face remained sober for a second longer then a proud smile spread across his face and Ellen let out the breath she was holding.
‘I know, Ellen,’ he said, putting his arm around her shoulders and pulling her to him, his lips pressing onto her hair. ‘I know.’
He enfolded Ellen and Bobbie in his arms and held them to him tenderly then, carefully wrapping the shawl around Bobbie, he took hold of her and sent Ellen a heart-melting smile.
‘My love,’ he said, emotion cracking his deep voice. ‘You don’t know how I have dreamed of this moment.’ Settling his daughter in his arms he kissed her head and beamed back at Ellen. ‘Now that we have a daughter, you’ll have to marry me.’
Ellen thought her heart must surely stop at any moment as it couldn’t stand much more happiness.
She let her head fall back and she sent out a peal of joyous laughter. ‘I will marry you, whenever and wherever you say,’ she said, and Robert joined in her merriment.
There was a tap at the door and Josie peered around the door.
‘Come in, come in, Josie,’ Robert called, as he saw her. ‘Come and join the rest of your family.’
Bobbie, who had until now been quite content, stared up at the tall stranger who held her tenderly in his arms and suddenly started to fret. Ellen held out her arms for her.
‘I’ll have to feed her,’ she said, taking the child from Robert and settling down on the chair. Robert pulled up the chair and sat beside her as Josie scrabbled onto the large dressing chest and sat cross-legged. Robert watched Ellen offer their baby her breast and again she saw tears in his eyes.
‘When did you arrive, Doctor Munroe?’ Josie asked, as Bobbie suckled hungrily.
Robert took out his gold watch and glanced at it. ‘Six hours ago. The ship tied up at ten this morning,’ he said ‘I dropped my bags at Mr Tappen’s house in Rose Street just before tea.’
‘Are you staying there?’ Josie interrupted.
‘I am. Mr Tappen is in correspondence with Lord Ashley and he gave me a letter of introduction,’ Robert answered, his eyes resting briefly on Bobbie. He looked back to Josie.
‘So, after a bite to eat, I changed my clothes and set about finding you. I reached your brother’s at six where I introduced myself and asked your whereabouts.’ Robert smiled at Ellen. ‘Your brother looks like your mother, doesn’t he?’
Ellen nodded. ‘That he does.’
Robert let out a short laugh. ‘He greeted me warmly and told me he was “right pleased” to see me.’ He smiled as Bobbie was tucked onto Ellen’s other breast. ‘I can understand why now. Anyhow, after freeing myself from their hospitality, I took a brisk walk to the Well.’
‘Are we going back to London, Doctor Munroe?’ Josie asked.
‘I hadn’t planned to. I quite like the thought that we might stay here for a year or two.’
Robert stood up and went over to the young girl perched on the pine chest. Lifting her off, he stood her in front of him. ‘And you’ll have to call me something other than Doctor Munroe if I’m to be your stepfather,’ he said.
Josie jumped up and hugged him around the neck, making him stagger back as her weight lunged against him.
‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather call Pa than you, Pa,’ she said, giving him a noisy kiss on the cheek. She dashed over to her mother, hugging her in turn. ‘Can I go and tell Hetty, Ma?’