uniforms and appearance.
Eva had successfully managed to take her uniform in; however, the gauzy white apron and cap were still too big, bordering on ridiculous. It was a fine line between hiring girls who would not excite notice among the guests and making sure that they matched Mrs Ronald’s inner vision of the overall chic of the establishment. So Eva was assigned the less desirable lower floors, in the hopes that she would grow another few inches over the summer.
After inspecting the girls’ hair and nails, Mrs Ronald briefed them as to which guests were checking in and which were checking out that day, along with any special preferences.
These included the actress who required black velvet curtains hung in her suite so that she could sleep during the day and whose room must only be serviced at night, when she was on stage at the Ziegfeld Follies a block away. And the movie producer who had a horror of anything which had been used by other people; his bed, mattress and bedclothes had to be replaced, new each time he came and the sheets were to be washed separately from those of the other guests, a duty which he only trusted Mrs Ronald to perform (but which she regularly passed off to one of the other girls).
Then there were the more common requests: extra ice buckets, satin sheets, special requests for certain types of flowers – hothouse roses and gardenias were the most popular. Some guests requested that there be no paintings or artwork in their rooms while others couldn’t bear certain colours and had them banished from sight. Imported foods were provided at vast expense – chocolates from Paris, fresh pineapples from Mexico, black tea from India, and thick, long Cuban cigars. Extra pianos were delivered almost daily, as were exotic pets, new automobiles and hunting guns; and police guarded vans carrying jewellery, which was stored in the vaulted Hotel safe.
Dance floors were installed so that stage stars could practise their routines, furniture removed, massage tables and exercise equipment set up. One week the entire Grand Ballroom was turned into a championship boxing ring when Jack Dempsey was fighting Jack Sharkey at the Yankee Stadium.
Guests frequently brought their own staff as well. Extra valets and ladies’ maids hovered on the edges of the lobby, unsure of their place outside the dominion of their homeland. Not quite guests and yet not quite servants when their employers departed for the day, they were often both suspicious of and intoxicated by their new-found freedom.
The city itself had a dangerous effect on their normally restrained personalities. More than once they lost not only their heads, but their positions as well.
There was the valet who was found to be posing as his employer, the Prince of Wales, who ran up enormous gambling debts in Harlem before being discovered in flagrante with a black prostitute in his master’s bed. And the lady’s maid who had never tasted alcohol before and yielded to temptation, only to wake up somewhere near the waterfront next to an Italian dock worker who politely informed her, in broken English, that they were married and he would like to claim his conjugal rights.
Eva was assigned to learn her duties from Rita Crane, an older woman of indeterminate age and one of the world’s most unsuccessful secret drinkers. Rita kept a flask in the depths of her laundry cart, an old rubbing alcohol bottle filled with gin in her locker and a vial of morphine in her handbag that her doctor prescribed for her ever deteriorating nerves. Every morning she showed up, hands shaking, arms covered in bruises. Eva wondered if she’d been beaten with a stick but of course, couldn’t ask.
Rita had probably once been a beauty. But too much drinking, too many ex-husbands, and a fondness for good old-fashioned English cuisine had left her quite round; her bust large like the prow of a ship tapering to two hefty legs, ribboned with varicose veins. Her features were lost in the soft folds of her white skin, and her eyes had a curious downward slant which made them seem automatically sad. Her lips were so thin as to be nothing more than an idea for a mouth. Rita moved as if resentful of gravity; as though the whole idea of a physical body caused her untold inconvenience. On the whole she was like a creature raised underwater, without the benefit of light for which eyes were optional and a spine a positive luxury.
There was a violence to Rita’s scrubbing; a furious zeal to her bed making and a positive rage to her dusting which left Eva in no doubt that she was not only capable of murder but most likely experienced in it as well. Her last husband had died eleven years ago. Now she was married to her job. She hated and resented it, uttering a constant stream of profanities under her breath, the way a nun recites a rosary. Yet she was fiercely committed to performing each task to her own exacting standards. Over the years Rita had tailored her expectations of life and others accordingly – anticipating the worst at every turn and managing to find the damp, dark potential in any cloudless sky.
For an entire two weeks, Rita supervised every move Eva made; correcting her toilet-bowl cleaning technique, insisting that she sweep each carpet in perfectly straight vertical lines and then again horizontally, chastising her for the lack of artistry with which she arranged the linen hand towels, all the while attacking her youth, personal appearance and general foreignness as she felt appropriate.
Eva soon learned that when Rita was drunk she was much easier to handle. In fact, in the canteen after her shift she could be almost funny.
Back in Lille, Eva had a grandfather who was a drinker. When her grandmother needed him to be sober for an important event, she always treated him to his own personal supply of chocolates. ‘The sugar calms him,’ she used to say.
Eva couldn’t afford chocolates but she began to make Rita cups of very sugary tea throughout the day. Rita in turn grumbled and complained but drank them just the same. While it didn’t make her pleasant, at least it kept her from being downright vicious.
By the time Eva ended her training period, she had mastered all the arts of domestic service, including the proper display of hand towels.
Rita had gained seven pounds.
Soon Eva adapted to the regular rhythm of Hotel life. In the evenings the girls laundered and ironed their clothes, mended and gossiped. There was a radio in the pantry of the lower kitchen that the staff crowded round, listening to the Silvertown Cord Orchestra or the comedy antics of Amos ’n’ Andy. Drinking was out of the question; Mrs Ronald was very strict about that. And the only dancing they did was with each other. A tall, lanky black girl named Wallace was the recognized Charleston expert and willing to teach anyone for the price of a Coca-Cola, even though chances to use their new-found skills were next to nil. On Saturday evenings, they went to confession at St Boniface. On Sunday mornings, early, they went to Mass.
There were occasional treats – matinée performances tucked into the balcony at the Strand theatre, followed by a sandwich at the Riker’s Drug Store counter. Sometimes, they went to stare at the lights of Times Square, waiting to see the crowds leaving the theatres and discuss what the fashionable women were wearing.
Other times, they strolled across Central Park to Fifth Avenue, walking down past the grand department stores but never daring to go inside. There were places in the East End, small shops run by immigrants where fabric could be purchased, shoes traded, coats and jewellery pawned.
Sis took Eva to the public library and showed her how to get a card. Every week, Eva read her way through the works of Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, Henry James and Elizabeth Gaskell. She dreamed of heroines from modest backgrounds attracting unprecedented attentions, soaring tales of love across social divides and sudden unexpected reversals of fortunes. In these pages, anything was possible, even for a girl like her.
‘The trouble with you is, you’re a romantic,’ Sis pronounced one Sunday afternoon, as they all sat knitting
