Eva exhaled for what felt like the first time in hours.
The weight that had been pressing into the centre of her chest all morning was finally beginning to ease. She folded her uniform on top of the small parcel of her belongings and waited with her back pressed against the wall.
The only thing she’d had all morning was coffee, black and strong. Her uncle ate at work and now that her aunt had gone, there was no reason, in his mind, to keep food in the apartment or, in fact, an apartment at all. Her stomach knotted and growled.
She didn’t want to share a room with a stranger. She wasn’t even certain she wanted a job as a chambermaid. But what she wanted didn’t matter.
Eva pressed her eyes together.
There had been 778 tiles on the floor of Mrs Ronald’s office. 426 grey and 352 white. If you multiplied them together you got 149,952. If you subtracted 352 from 426 you ended up with 74 and if you added 4 plus 2 plus 6 you got 12 and if you added 3 plus 5 plus 2 you got 10 and if you divided 12 into 778 …
‘Already asleep on the job, eh?
She flicked her eyes open to see a blonde-haired girl standing in front of her, also a maid, only her uniform fitted. Hand on her hip, the girl had somehow contrived to position her cap at a fetching angle, just between two of the blonde kiss curls that adorned her wide forehead. There was a neatness and a compactness about her; a sureness in the swagger of her movements.
‘I’m Sis, short for Cecily.’ She thrust a hand out and pumped Eva’s palm hard. ‘I’m from Virginia, in case you hadn’t noticed. Looks like we’ll be sharing together. I knew my luck couldn’t hold out for ever. Had the room all to myself for nearly a week. Anyway,’ she sighed. ‘I guess I’m meant to show you around. Follow me.’
She led Eva down the long hallway and up a back staircase. When they got to the first floor she stopped. ‘Ever been in the front lobby?’
Eva shook her head, too nervous to speak. Already she was in awe of Sis; of her Southern drawl and her easy, careless attitude. She was afraid to speak in case Sis didn’t like her accent. It had happened to her in the house in Brooklyn, where the Scottish cook insisted on referring to her as ‘the Foreigner’ even though their employers spoke German and her own Glaswegian accent was only barely comprehensible.
‘Ever even seen it?’ Sis asked.
Again, Eva shook her head.
‘Figures. You have the look of someone who’s spent her entire life going round to the back service entrance. Come on.’ Sis pushed through the door at the top, and they peered out into the West Lobby.
By Hotel standards it was modest, intimate. But if it wasn’t the largest or grandest Hotel lobby in New York, it certainly was one of the most glamorous.
The marble floors shone beneath the oriental carpets, banks of settees were piled with velvet and silk pillows, and the bevelled mirrors which lined the walls reflected the beautiful profiles of the off-duty chorus girls parading through on their way to the bar.
Carefully chosen for the perfection of their figures, they were all the same height, with long shapely legs. Their laughter was punctuated by the clicking of their high-heeled shoes and the swishing of their daringly short skirts. A piano was playing and someone was singing.
A bellhop wove through the pockets of guests with a silver salver. ‘Madame Arpeggio,’ he called loudly. ‘Madame Arpeggio.’ The air smelled of brass polish, cigar smoke, and the lush, overripe sweetness of fresh-cut tiger lilies.
Eva watched as a small, round woman dressed entirely in black, her head crowned with a velvet turban fastened with a large ruby brooch, entered with a pair of enormous shaggy grey Irish wolfhounds. Their black leather collars were studded with pearls.
Instantly one of the doormen brought them water in china bowls, which they lapped loudly, creating puddles on the marble floor, while their mistress paused to light a cigarette and check her messages at reception.
‘Who’s that?’ Eva was so fascinated, she forgot about her resolution not to speak.
‘No one really.’ Sis sniffed. ‘Some filthy Prussian countess. Never bathes and doesn’t take those dogs out nearly as much as she ought to. Her room smells like a zoo. They’ve already changed the carpet once.’
The girls watched as she turned, and proceeded at a regal pace towards the elevator.
‘Thing is,’ Sis confided, ‘all the important people here look ordinary and the really fancy ones are usually broke or on the make. I’ll tell you, you’re in an upside-down world now,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Takes a while, but you’ll get used to it.’
Eva shared a room with Sis in the attic eaves of the building; it had a basin in one corner, a shallow closet and two narrow single beds. The window looked into the light well of the tall building opposite and the alleyway below. There was no view of the sky.
Not that it mattered. Both girls were up at six and eating in the lower kitchen, which also served as a staff canteen, by six-thirty. Then they stood in line waiting for Mrs Ronald to inspect their 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