Chapter Five #2
I feel her glaring at my back as I go inside.
If she thinks this is the way to get me to do her a favour, she’s not too bright.
I’m not sure what to do about Bianca, if I’m honest. I’ve known her my whole life.
She’s a sweet girl, truly. Granny calls her a Gypsy, even though she’s Italian, not Romani.
Mind you, she’s gotten into trouble in the past for taking things, but nothing much, and haven’t we all?
When a person gets hungry enough, they’ll grab an unguarded loaf of bread.
That’s the way it goes. As long as she’s quick, she gets by. So far, she’s been fairly quick.
The apartment is cool in its concrete shell, but it’s summer, so that’s all right.
A benefit of working hard is that I sleep like a log.
I wake up hours later in the exact same position.
When I get to work, where we have a mirror, I see lines from where the pillow pressed into my face.
But I’m young. I have seen much older people live with these kinds of hours.
Kiera is not in the chambermaids’ room when I arrive, and Deirdre is subdued.
“Is Kiera not well?” I ask.
Deirdre shakes her head. “She was fired. She told Mrs. Evans something about her guest, she says. You remember when she asked us that in her office? Kiera said something, and Mrs. Evans let her go on the spot.”
“ ‘No one wants a gossip around,’ ” I quote Mrs. Evans, but I am a little shocked by the severity of the punishment. Kiera’s family needs that income.
When I think of Kiera, I’m reminded of what a talker Bianca is.
If I do get her in to see Mrs. Evans for an interview—and since Kiera is gone, I know we are one chambermaid short—she will have to obey that rule.
The trouble is that Bianca likes attention.
She likes to talk. A lot. And that is not what Mrs. Evans wants in an employee of the Dominion Hotel. I’ll have to think on it some more.
As a chambermaid, I am usually on my own, but sometimes I see other staff during my daily rounds. A week after my raise, I finish my morning rooms, then happen unexpectedly onto Mrs. Evans. You could have bowled me over with a feather when she invites me to her office for a cup of tea.
“How are you enjoying the Dominion Hotel?” she wants to know.
I can see that she’s comfortable sitting in her nice chair. I am not. I have the heebie-jeebies and am sitting stiff as a board, waiting to be fired. For what, I have no idea. I can’t even touch the tea sitting in front of me. I tell her it is a grand job, and I am grateful to have it.
“Have you met other members of the staff?”
“Not really, ma’am. There’s a lot to be done, as you know.”
She smiles. “It’s all right to be human as well as a good worker, Miss Ryan. Do you have a few minutes to spare? Come with me, and I will introduce you to some others.”
“Ma’am?”
Sure, I’m knocked sideways as she leads me toward the front lobby, a place I’ve never been before.
I freeze at the entrance, astounded by the beauty of the space.
The room feels rich and welcoming to anyone who can afford to be there.
White marble pillars stand around the room, holding up a second storey, and that has an indoor balcony, painted in…
well, I’ll say nothing more, for I’ve no words for it.
The walls are dark oak, and the area shines with polished bronze, all lit up by chandeliers so grand I couldn’t have dreamt them.
The oak-paneled ceiling might as well be the sky, it’s so high.
And under that? The thick, dark carpet sinks under my shoes, and I’m careful where I step.
Flower-and-crown emblems are woven into its fibres, like the provincial coats of arms in the ceiling panels, and I do not want to leave a mark.
Scattered among plush armchairs and tables are little trees with long, thin leaves on top.
“What are those trees?” I whisper, afraid to make a sound in this place. It feels almost sacred.
“Palm trees,” she replies, but she does not whisper. “They grow naturally in tropical climates. The hotel brought them here specifically. Come along, Miss Ryan.”
I follow her blindly, my attention on the splendour of the room.
“This is Stan Miller,” Mrs. Evans says, introducing me to a pimply-faced boy in a red-and-black uniform. He wears a little round cap on his head.
“Stan is a bellboy. Good morning, Stan. This is Miss Ryan.”
Stan Miller is only fourteen. When Mrs. Evans wanders off to solve something, I stay behind.
“You may call me Rosie,” I tell him, since there are only a few years between us. It feels quare for him to call me by my formal name. “If you don’t mind my asking, how did you get your job when you’re so young?”
He tells me that bell-boying is different, and it’s all right to be younger. Plus, his father is head of maintenance, and his mother cleans in the kitchen, so that helped as well.
“My father put some of the carpets in,” I reply proudly, recalling the way Da had so often pressed his hand against his aching back. All the work put a bit of a stoop into his posture. “But he’s not working here any longer. He was hired in Montreal for another new hotel.”
As soon as his contract ended at the Dominion, and after he celebrated my new job in a whisky-filled evening with his friends, Da was called away.
He’d seemed reluctant to leave me on my own, but I reassured him.
I was seventeen, wasn’t I, and I had a steady job.
Nothing to worry about. And what an international traveller he was, I said, encouraging him. Montreal!
“It’s nice that you get to stay by the door and see the sunshine and feel the fresh air when the door opens,” I tell Stan. “The windows don’t open upstairs, but at least I can open the curtains for light.”
“I’ll be a waiter in a year or two,” he says with confidence. “Just you wait and see.”
“I believe you,” I tell him sincerely. With both his parents working here, I don’t see why he wouldn’t.
“To be a waiter you must be very attentive.”
I can’t help thinking of Damien. He is attentive to me, but I cannot vouch for his attention to his job. Then again, he has not been fired. “I agree.”
“Even more than a chambermaid.”
“Now then. Let’s not argue whose job is what. And do you like the work, so?”
“I do, but Mr. Grayson doesn’t seem to want that.” He’s bothered. “Does Mrs. Evans take your tips, Rosie?”
I’m taken aback by the question. “No, never.”
“Hmm. Well, Mr. Grayson takes ours.” He laughs suddenly.
“One day Mrs. Evans had angry words with him. Maybe about tips, but I don’t know for sure.
He was real mad after, and I heard him say something like ‘That woman is going to ruin me.’ But I don’t imagine she has anything to do about how he runs his department.
” He shrugs it off. “Anyhow, it’s all right.
Maybe I’ll meet famous people one day when they come through here.
Well, you know. Not actually meet them, but I might see them. ”
Mrs. Evans collects me, then she introduces me to two gentlemen at the reception desk, Harold and Monty.
She tells them she wants me to get to know more about the hotel, which is a fine thing to hear.
She has taken me under her wing, and sure, it galls Deirdre and some of the others to see it, but I haven’t a problem with it.
This is my path forward. Maybe I won’t be a chambermaid forever.
Maybe I’ll learn so much they will have to promote me to something more important.
Maybe one day, I will be head chambermaid, like Mrs. Evans.
Monty wanders off through a door behind the polished wood counter, leaving Harold to tell me a little about what they do here, working with the guests.
I ask him about the newspapers I see piled in separate stacks at the end of the counter, and he says that our guests come from all over the world, and they want to read news from their homes.
I see The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Variety, The Pittsburgh Press, The Ottawa Citizen, and many more.
I’ve seen a few of these papers in the rooms I’ve cleaned, often in the trash.
I’ve been tempted to read a bit, but I’ve no time for that.
Just then, a gentleman in a black suit and tie approaches the counter and Harold is instantly at attention.
Mrs. Evans takes me out of the lobby, where I am introduced to another chambermaid.
The girl is also a brass polisher, which sounds interesting, but she must not have as many rooms as I, for I cannot imagine there being enough hours in the day to clean rooms as well as brass.
Mrs. Evans checks her watch, then I follow her into a little area with big, heavy doors.
“These are some of the guest elevators,” she tells me. “They’re like the one you ride in every day, but much fancier, of course.”
One of the doors opens, and I see a girl dressed similarly to Stan, but wearing a skirt in place of trousers.
“This is Catherine, one of our elevator girls,” Mrs. Evans says.
“Hold the button, Catherine. This is Rosie, one of our chambermaids. I’m introducing her around.
” She glances over her shoulder when we hear a woman’s raised voice in the lobby, then she turns back to us. “Excuse me, girls. Duty calls.”
Catherine has to leave almost immediately, so I say goodbye, then I wait for Mrs. Evans.
She is standing before a very tall, very slender woman with a very tall, very slender feather bouncing from her hat.
The woman is dressed from head to toe in pink, and she is tearing strips off Mrs. Evans.
Hearing her, Mr. Grayson, the bell captain and Stan’s boss, strides toward them, chest puffed out.
I don’t like his manner, but maybe that’s just because I now know that he steals the bellboys’ money.
His back is to me, so I don’t hear his voice, but I hear the woman’s screeching reply.
“I cannot understand how you could employ a woman like this. Too high and mighty by far for her station,” she rants to Mr. Grayson, sneering down her nose at Mrs. Evans. “No respect at all. I am the guest. That means I am always right, and your place is to remember that and do everything I say.”
I have no idea what this is about, but Mrs. Evans isn’t budging, nor is her calm smile.
I’ve seen her paste that on in a moment’s notice.
I don’t like hearing the lies this nasty woman is spitting, right in the middle of the lobby for all to hear.
Mrs. Evans is fierce good at her job, despite what this horrible woman is saying.
She’s the reason we chambermaids do such fine work.
Mr. Grayson listens sympathetically the whole time, and when the guest has run out of complaints, he urges her away from Mrs. Evans by offering his arm. Sure, and she can’t resist glaring back at Mrs. Evans.
“I’d better not have to see you again next time I’m here.” She whirls toward Mr. Grayson, then she loudly proclaims, “You know, people like her always get what’s coming to them in the end.”
Fair play to Mrs. Evans for holding her tongue. I’d have let fly, then I’d surely regret it.
With not a hint of emotion on her face, Mrs. Evans walks to me and leads me out a different way. She says nothing.
“I’m sorry you have to put up with that, Mrs. Evans,” I say softly, once we are alone. “You don’t deserve it at all.”
I get a secret smile from her, which I treasure. “Thank you, Miss Ryan. I expect Mrs. Winsome simply had a bit of sour milk in her breakfast. I take none of it personally.”
She’s a wonder, Mrs. Evans is.
I don’t learn the real reason until later, when Stan tells me straight.
That pink woman, Mrs. Winsome, well, now, isn’t she staying in the hotel with a man who’s not her husband at all.
Mrs. Evans caught them, and I reckon she’d have held her tongue about that, only the man cleared out without paying. Somebody had to foot the bill.