The Unfortunates Read online

  LAURIE GRAHAM

  The Unfortunates

  Copyright

  Fourth Estate

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  This edition published by Harper Perennial 2006

  First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate 2002

  Copyright © Laurie Graham 2002

  Laurie Graham asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  Cover illustration © Rachel Ross

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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  Source ISBN: 9780007234066

  Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007390694

  Version: 2017-03-30

  Praise

  From the reviews of The Unfortunates:

  ‘If you see people creasing up with laughter on public transport, this is probably what they’re reading’

  The Times

  ‘Fresh, funny and smart, a novel that reels from the Titanic to jazz age New York’

  Observer

  ‘Epic and very, very funny’

  Daily Mail

  ‘A wildly funny novel, which is often on the brink of being a wildly tragic one’

  Sunday Times

  ‘Set in New York, France and England, this witty book is brimming with irony while an understated sadness bubbles just under the surface. Laurie Graham’s last novel, The Future Homemakers of America, was a bestseller. With deft prose and a Nancy Mitford style, her seventh novel looks like repeating that success’

  Irish Independent

  ‘Laurie Graham is a writer with a remarkably malleable comic voice … Poppy, like Nancy Mitford’s Linda Radlet and The Bolter, is a thrill-seeker with a penchant for romance, brightly coloured clothing, elaborate cocktails and effervescent company’

  Guardian

  ‘A compelling read’

  Hello!

  ‘A fantastic, engrossing read’

  Glamour

  Dedication

  To Joan Fitzgerald

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Keep Reading

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  It was just as well I had ripped off my Ear Correcting Bandages. Had I been bound up in my usual bedtime torture-wear, I would never have heard my mother’s screams.

  The bandages were part of my preparation for the great husband hunt. I was only fifteen years old, but my mother recognized a difficult case when she saw one. She had taken up the challenge the day after my twelfth birthday and never spared herself since.

  ‘The early bird, Poppy,’ she always said, when I complained. ‘The early bird.’

  And so, assisted by my aunt, she began an all-fronts campaign to catch me a worm.

  I was forbidden candy and other waist-thickening substances. I was enrolled for classes in piano, singing and cotillion dancing, and spent an hour every day in a backboard, during which I practiced French pronunciation whilst a series of Irish maids tried to straighten my hair, or at least, defeat its natural wiriness into the kind of soft loose curls preferred by husbands.

  On alternate days my neck was painted with Gomper’s Patent Skin Whitener, to coax out of it a certain oriental tinge. The label advised using the paste no oftener than once a week. But as my mother said, what did they know? They hadn’t seen my neck.

  As to my nose, she knew the limits of home improvements. I was to go to a beauty doctor in Cincinnati, as soon as I was sixteen, and have a little cartilage shaved off.

  Meanwhile she applied herself to the correction of my protruding ears. She designed an adjustable bandeau to hold them flat against my skull while I slept and had the Irish girl make them up for me in a selection of nightwear colours.

  ‘So you can choose, you see?’ Ma explained. ‘According to your frame of mind.’

  And, gauging my frame of mind all too well, my aunt informed me that some day, when I had grown in wisdom, I would be grateful for their efforts.

  The alternative to all this was that I would be left an old maid.

  I knew what an old maid was. My cousin Addie was being one up in Duluth, Minnesota, riding around all day with her dogs and not wearing corsets. And I knew what marriage was too. My sister Honey had recently married Harry Glaser and as soon as the marrying was done she had to leave home and put up her hair. As far as I could see she wasn’t allowed to play with her dolls anymore, and she had hardly any time for cutting out pretty things for her scrapbook. She had had to go to tea parties all the time, but never appear too eager about cake, and whenever she came to call Ma would make mysterious inquiries.

  ‘Honey,’ she’d whisper, ‘how are Things? Are you still using the Lysol?’

  To avoid the fate that had befallen Honey, I decided on stealthy sabotage rather than outright rebellion. As long as things appeared to be satisfactory my mother took them to be satisfactory. Surface was her preferred level. Hidden depths were unattractive to her, therefore she behaved as though they did not exist. So, every night, I took off my ear correctors, but only after the house had fallen dark and silent.

  Then, that night
, someone came to the front door and rang the bell with great persistence. I thought it had to be a stranger. Anyone who knew us knew the hours we kept. They knew our disapproval of night life and lobster suppers and men who rolled home incapable of putting a key neatly in a keyhole.

  I heard the Irish slide back the bolt, eventually, and voices. And then, leaning up on my elbow, holding my breath so as not to miss anything, I heard my Ma scream. This signaled excitement. The late visitors were Aunt Fish and Uncle Israel Fish, come straight from the opera, still in their finery, because they had seen newsboys selling a late extra edition with reports of a tragedy at sea. ‘At sea’ was where my Pa was, sailing home from Europe.

  Aunt Fish was my mother’s sister and she always seemed as at home in our parlor as she did in her own. By the time I had pulled on my wrapper and run downstairs she had already arranged Ma on a couch and was administering sal volatile.

  ‘Are you sure he sailed, Dora?’ she kept asking, but my mother wasn’t sure of anything. ‘Maybe he didn’t sail. Maybe business kept him in London.’

  My father had been in Berlin and London, inspecting his subsidiaries.

  ‘Israel will go to the shipping offices,’ Aunt Fish said. ‘Israel, go to the shipping offices.’

  Uncle Israel was stretched out with a cigarette.

  ‘Nothing to be done at this hour,’ he said. Aunt Fish turned and looked at him.

  He left immediately. And my mother, released from the constraints of being seen by her brother-in-law dressed only in her nightgown, collapsed anew.

  ‘Poppy,’ said Aunt Fish, ‘don’t just stand there. Be a comfort to your mother.’ And so while she plagued the Irish for a facecloth soaked in vinegar, and more pillows, and a jug of hot chocolate, I stood by my mother’s side and wondered what kind of comforting to do.

  I tried stroking her arm, but this appeared to irritate her. I looked at her, with my head set at a compassionate angle, but that didn’t please her either. I was altogether relieved when Aunt Fish returned from harassing our help and resumed her post as couch-side comforter.

  I said, ‘Aunt Fish, is Pa lost at sea?’ and Ma resumed her wailing.

  ‘Poppy!’ said Aunt Fish. ‘Don’t you have even an ounce of sense? Your poor mother has received a terrible shock. If you can’t be quiet and sensible, then please return to your bed.’

  I’m sure it wasn’t me that had rung the doorbell in the middle of the night with news of shipwrecks.

  ‘And send the Irish in, to build up the fire,’ she shouted after me.

  We had stopped bothering with names for our Irish maids. They never stayed long enough to make it worth learning a new one.

  ‘And Poppy,’ my mother called weakly, from her couch, ‘don’t forget to strap down your ears.’

  I lay awake, waiting to hear Uncle Israel’s return, but eventually I must have dozed, and then it was morning. But it was not like any other morning. Our family was suddenly part of a great drama. The first edition of the Herald reported that though Pa’s ship had been in a collision, all hands were saved and she was now being towed into Halifax, Nova Scotia.

  Aunt Fish returned, having changed into a morning gown, and then Uncle Israel, with news that the White Star Line was chartering a train to take relatives up to Halifax to be reunited with their loved ones.

  I said, ‘I’ll go. Let me go.’ This provided my aunt with further reasons to despair of me.

  ‘For heaven’s sakes, child!’ she sighed, and Uncle Israel winked at me.

  ‘Out of the question, Pops,’ he said. ‘Too young, you see. But why not write a little note? I’ll see he gets it as soon he sets foot on land.’

  ‘There’s no need for you to go, Israel,’ my mother said. The morning’s brighter news had restored her appetite and she was eating a pile of toast and jam. ‘I can always send Harry, if it isn’t convenient to you.’

  ‘Of course it’s convenient,’ said Aunt Fish. ‘It’s Israel’s place to go.’

  I went to the escritoire and started composing my letter to Pa, but I was still more haunted by the idea that he might have drowned than I was uplifted by the prospect that he was safe. I had no sooner written the words ‘Please, never go away again’ than I burst into inappropriate and inconsiderate tears and was sent to my room.

  Soon after, my sister arrived with her husband. Honey came up to my room and lay on my bed beside me.

  ‘Don’t cry, Pops,’ she said. ‘Pa’s safe. And you don’t want to get swollen eyes.’

  I said, ‘Why did he have to go across an ocean, anyhow?’

  ‘Why, because that’s what men do,’ she said.

  I said, ‘Would you allow Harry?’

  ‘Allow?’ she said. ‘It isn’t my place to allow. Besides, I know everything Harry does is for the very best.’

  I had often suspected that marrying had caused a softening of Honey’s brain.

  Uncle Israel left that afternoon on the special train to Halifax. And Harry went downtown, first to his broker with instructions to buy stock in the Marconi wireless company whose wonderful shipboard radio had helped save so many lives and bring comforting news to the waiting families. Then he went to the White Star offices to inquire when the passengers might be expected back in New York.

  Honey and I were pasting scraps, just like old times, when Harry walked in, looking smaller and flatter and grayer than usual. He scratched his head.

  ‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘The Titanic has sunk, with heavy losses. A boat called the Carpathia is bringing the survivors home.’

  It was eight o’clock. Up in Massachusetts Uncle Israel’s train was stopped, directed into a siding and reversed. There had been, he was told, a change of plan.

  My cheeks were hot from the fire, but something deathly cold touched me. My mother fainted onto a couch. My sister uttered a terrible little cry. And Harry studied the pattern on the parlor rug.

  ‘Marconi stock closed up one hundred and twenty points,’ he said, to no one in particular.

  TWO

  My Grandpa Minkel and his brother Meyer arrived in Great Portage, Minnesota, in 1851 intending to set up as fur traders, but they were too late. The beaver pelt business was finished. They stayed on though and changed their plans and did well enough trading in lumber to build a fine house on top of a hill in Duluth. From Grandpa Minkel’s house you could see clear to Wisconsin. So they said.

  Meyer and his wife were never blessed with children. This was somehow due to the accidental firing of a Winchester ’73, but I was never allowed to know the details. So when Grandpa headed south, looking to buy a spread and turn farmer, he left behind one of his own boys, Jesse, as a kind of second-hand son. Gave him away near enough, though he was a grown man and might well have had plans of his own. Grandpa took his other boy, Abe, to Iowa to be a mustard farmer. And that was my Pa.

  Uncle Jesse stayed where he was put, married one of the Zukeman girls and had a number of obedient children, plus Cousin Addie, the one who refused to knuckle down to marriage. Grandpa Minkel grew so much mustard he had to buy a factory. Grandma Minkel told him he should make mustard that had a fine flavor but a short life, and she was right. Folks just had to keep coming back for more and Minkel’s Mighty Fine Mustard did so well Grandma and Grandpa had to send Pa to New York City, to invest the profits and keep his finger on the quickening pulse of finance.

  My mother’s people were Plotzes. They sold feathers and goose down, in Cedar Rapids. She married Pa in 1890 and came with him to New York soon after, in a delicate condition with my sister Honey. Ma took to her new life as if to the city born. She sent directly for her sister Zillah and fixed her up with Israel Fish, and from then on a veil fell over the Iowa period of their lives. Cedar Rapids had been a mere accident of birth, and was never discussed. As far as Ma and Aunt Fish were concerned everything from the Hudson shore to the Pacific Ocean was nothing but a social wilderness.

  Minkel’s Mighty Fine Mustard was to be found on every discerning table and the pr
ofits were invested in railroads and mining, and the consequence was Honey and I were mustard heiresses, more or less.

  Pa, though, kept his finger on more than the pulse of finance, and was often absent from his own table, indulging, as I had overheard discussed by my mother and Aunt Fish, in ‘a man’s needs’. I understood these to be cigars and blintzes, two things that were not permitted at home. For these comforts Pa went elsewhere. We lived on West 76th Street. My mother bore the impediment of this address as bravely as she could. Pa and Uncle Israel Fish assured her that before too long New York society would abandon their houses on Fifth Avenue and follow her there.

  ‘We’re setting a trend, Dora,’ Pa used to say.

  But my mother didn’t want to set trends. On the steep climb to good society, novelty was one of those hazards that could pitch us all back down where we’d started. Her plan was to keep us as unremarkable as possible. Correct and unremarkable. Let no Minkel be a protruding nail. I don’t think Pa ever appreciated what a close watch Ma kept over our reputation and standing. And no matter how much she protested, he bought that rose pink low-stoop house and encouraged the architect to add as many turrets and finials as could be accommodated.

  My aunt, who still lived safely within visiting distance of The Right People, should the call ever come, said, ‘Never fear, Dora. Marriage may be a sacred institution, but if Abe tries to drag you any further into the wilderness, you may depend on having a home with us.’

  On evenings when Pa was home, a fire was lit in the library and I was allowed to sit in there with him and look at the things on the shelves of the vitrine. He had a beaver skull, and a rock of fool’s gold, and an Ojibway Indian necklace, and a little silk cap, brought by Grandpa Minkel from Germany. There was a rubber plant, and a stuffed osprey, and books. I was allowed to take them down off the shelf and read them, as long as I sat in a good light and didn’t scowl or screw up my eyes. Careless reading can cause the setting in of ugly, permanent facial lines. For this reason my mother never risked opening a book.