Too Much Too Soon Read online

  Doris and Matilda’s father, a successful San Francisco attorney, had left each daughter fifty thousand dollars. Ten thousand pounds! In those years between the wars it was a fortune. Langley’s touchstone of a true gentleman was one who stood aloof from commerce, and now he cultivated his ignorance of financial matters. The eight-room flat in Kensington, the staff of three, the fine old port, the occasional trips to the continent, tunneled deep into their capital. That, however, was the concern of Lloyd’s Bank. Langley was a happy man. Then, on September 2, 1939, the day after Hitler’s troops invaded Poland, Doris died giving birth to their third daughter. Langley, in his grief, made the grand gesture, enlisting in His Majesty’s Navy. Honora and Crystal were evacuated with the Edinthorpe boarders to a crenellated Victorian country house near Exeter, and the Head Mistress, a kindly, bewhiskered spinster, ensconced Joscelyn with her decrepit nanny in the school’s wartime quarters. Honora passed her free time cuddling the wailing, colicky baby in her thin arms.

  Langley spent the duration at the British naval installation in Reykjavik. After the war, in 1947, the last block of Doris’s stocks had to be sold. The wind of impending poverty chilled Langley more than had the Icelandic blizzards. In rapid succession he lost three positions.

  In extremis, Langley composed that hortatory letter to his unknown brother-in-law.

  Gideon Talbott’s terse reply sent him on a three-day bender. Bad enough that the family’s bread and butter would be dependent on his kowtowing to this common, common American swine, but what made Langley thirst for the bottle was the suggestion that Honora, his heart’s child, Honora with her Sylvander blood, should become a menial wageslave.

  * * *

  The Monday after the condolence call to the Talbott house, Honora rose before six, scurrying in her dressing gown to the big trash barrels at the bottom of the steps, rummaging for the previous day’s Chronicle. At the kitchen table, she ran a pencil down the Help Wanted column, her dark eyes bleak as she checked two advertisements. She then bent to light the broiler, jumping back from the bursting blue flame. Today’s breakfast was toast and drippings. This week, all meals would be variations on the bread theme—mayonnaise or margarine sandwiches for lunch, suppers of fried bread with ketchup, or eggybread, which was called French toast in America.

  Just like during the war, Crystal or Joscelyn would remark, and Langley would beg with whimsical testiness, What about a nice bit of chicken tomorrow, Honora?

  There would be no chicken. Less than a dollar in change was in the bottom of the jam jar that served as her bank. No replenishment would be dropped in until Friday—Talbott’s employees were paid every other Friday afternoon. Langley had had a little left from the money he’d borrowed for their passage, but yesterday, ashamed of his binge and desperate to make it up to his girls, he had topped off the warm, heavenly wad of their day at the zoo by spending his last two crumpled dollar bills to take them to an exotic Basque restaurant where they had crowded together with other people at a long table to laugh over a vast eight-course supper.

  At exactly seven thirty Langley and Joscelyn left the flat. Honora dressed slowly and carefully. Crystal primped at the bathroom mirror.

  Crystal was enrolled at City College. Unlike her older and younger sisters, she had no interest in academics but being ineligible for a green work card until her eighteenth birthday she spent her time at this free, two-year campus, routinely cutting class to join her new friends at the big corner booth of the Treat Shop. Usually some adoring-eyed boy treated her to a sundae, a long glass dish with three plump scoops melting richly under their burden of hot fudge and real whipped cream, such a delight after that whale-fat ersatz they were still using in England. When a youth dredged up the courage to ask her for a date, she did not accept until ascertaining he owned a car and had a friend for Honora.

  As the sisters emerged onto Lombard Street, they could see no farther than the corner: from the Bay foghorns lowed like primitive, mating creatures.

  Honora wore a sweater that nearly matched her new russet hat—for job interviews she never wore her shabby old coat. Shivering, she held her arms close to her body. “If only we’d learned typing and shorthand at Edinthorpe,” she sighed.

  “As if you could be a secretary!” An awareness of class barriers had been inoculated into the Sylvander girls from birth on, and each in her own way was an innocently artless snob. “The very least you can take is Debutante Dresses at I. Magnin’s, or a receptionist at a good law firm. Was there anything like that in the paper?”

  “A two-line advert for saleslady at Shreve’s. It’s a silver shop on Post Street.”

  “I know the place and it’s perfect for you,” Crystal said enthusiastically. Shreve’s had the same prestige as Gump’s. “Any other possibilities?”

  They were on their way to the cable car and had reached Washington Square; Honora looked up at the misty, ornate spires atop the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. “Stroud’s,” she said.

  “Stroud’s?” Crystal asked. “Is that a firm or a shop?”

  “It’s, uhh, a cafe.”

  “A hostess? If you want my opinion don’t even bother. It’s not good enough.”

  “They need a waitress.” Honora’s face was crimson.

  “A waitress!” Crystal cried.

  “We don’t have a dollar between us until Friday.”

  “Honora, you mustn’t take everything to heart so,” Crystal said, her voice sympathetic. “We’ve eaten bread before.”

  “The hole in Joscelyn’s shoe wore through and this morning I had to put in cardboard. She has that toothache on and off. There’ll never be enough for a dentist unless I find work.” Honora was speaking doggedly, as if justifying a major crime. “Our stockings are going; American men don’t wear shirts with detachable collars like Daddy’s—oh, you know we can’t keep on in this hand-to-mouth way.”

  “Suppose somebody sees you?”

  “We don’t know anybody here,” Honora said, immediately thinking of Curt Ivory.

  “But a waitress?”

  “Crystal, you know how many places I’ve tried.”

  “Poor thing,” Crystal said, reaching for her sister’s cold, slim hand.

  “I must find a job.” Honora’s soft voice was hollow with despair. “If I have to take that one, will you promise never to tell Daddy?”

  “Of course I wouldn’t tell him. It’d kill him. But don’t you see? We must really get to work on Uncle Gideon.”

  “Not a ghost of a chance—”

  “There it is!”

  A crowded cable car was clanging toward them.

  “Crystal, we can’t afford—”

  “Stop worrying. Don’t I always swizz the conductor? Come on! Hurry!”

  The sisters ran, jumping onto the ledge, clinging to an outside post. Crystal’s bus pass for school didn’t cover the cable car, and the small, wizened conductor bemusedly watched the extraordinarily lovely little English blonde search through her bag, growing more charmingly agitated as she discovered her change purse was missing. “Okay, okay. Put this ride down to international goodwill,” he said with a cheerful wink.

  Honora hopped off at Union Square.

  It was ten, and freshly painted shop doors were being unlocked for waiting little clusters of well-dressed matrons. Reaching Shreve’s, Honora closed her eyes as if praying before she went inside.

  When she emerged three minutes later, her luminous skin was drained of its glow.

  She stood shivering on the corner for two full minutes, then turned, trotting toward the financial district.

  Stroud’s turned out to be across the street from the gray granite, pillared Pacific Coast Stock Exchange. Not waiting to catch her breath, Honora darted inside.

  A colored Tiffany-glass screen partially hid long rows of tray-sized, linen-draped tables where a few businessmen smoked over coffee cups. Behind the brass cash register sat a waitress. Her starched Dutch cap perched atop her too-vivid red upsweep, her tight, bl
ue-checked uniform exposed the rounds of big, bra-bound breasts whose heavily scented cleavage disappeared into the V-neck.

  Honora inquired politely, “Miss, can you please tell me where I inquire about the advertisement—the one in yesterday’s Chronicle?”

  The waitress looked up from the leather menu folder into which she was clipping a mimeographed sheet of Daily Specials. Her small greenish eyes were alert yet noncommittal. “That’s quite an accent,” she said.

  “I’m from England.” Honora attempted a smile. “Is the manager in?”

  “Al’s the owner. Right now he’s over to the bakery, hassling about the bill. Ever wait table?”

  “At Edinthorpe.”

  “That’s a new one on me. Is it here in Frisco?”

  “London,” Honora asserted, then couldn’t brazen out the half lie. “Actually, it’s a school, miss.”

  “The name’s Vi Knodler,” the waitress said, suddenly cold.

  “I’m Honora Sylvander, Miss Knodler. Could you tell me what will be required?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then the position’s been filled?” Honora asked.

  “You kids! You’re all alike no matter where you come from. The minute you’re up against it, you figure you’ll condescend to wait tables. Well, let me tell you, slinging hash ain’t no breeze, no breeze at all.”

  Vi’s outburst was Honora’s first indication that, having thrown herself into the sea of “common” occupations, she might not be able to swim.

  “I appreciate that, Miss Knodler,” she said, then added, “I’ll try very hard.”

  “It takes a darn sight more than trying. Stroud’s does the biggest lunch business in the financial district. And me, I make more dough than a lot of the brokers I serve. The tips, Honora, are big tips. And you know why? Because the girls who work here are tops. Take me, I’m smiling at ’em as soon as they sit down, I take orders and when the plates come out of the kitchen, I rush them to the table, hot. I never let a coffee cup stay half empty. I treat ’em all like they was President Truman. I remember names, I remember them good. Nothing makes ’em drop a real tip like hearing, ‘Hello Mr. Jerkface, how are you today, Mr. Jerkface.’ The shift starts at six and there’s a breakfast rush before the Exchange opens. Lunch is a regular zoo. You gotta be fast and good around here.”

  “I’m positive I could learn.” Close to weeping, Honora clipped her words.

  “Stroud’s ain’t a school.” Vi leaned back in her stool, surveying Honora. “Listen, I gotta get these specials stuck in the menus,” she said in a kindlier tone. “I like listening to that cute accent of yours, so why not keep me company? Have some java on the house.”

  At this about-face kindness, Honora felt tears well in her eyes. “No thank you . . . most kind.”

  She ran around the stained-glass screen and onto Pine Street.

  The job of waitress at Stroud’s that until a few minutes ago had seemed the ultimate plunge had become shining, desirable, a holy grail of which she was unworthy.

  She walked blindly away from the Stock Exchange. The fog had lifted, and she wished it would return, pea-soup thick. Her strongest desire at the moment was invisibility in which to regain some small semblance of equilibrium. Without realizing it, she was heading toward the Ferry Building with its square clock tower —a copy of the Giralda in Seville, Langley had told them. He had also told them that this neighborhood, the Embarcadero, was “much too rough for my girls.” Honora wasn’t thinking of his warning.

  A short, slight man in a black sweater with a wool cap pulled down over his ears lurched out of a beer joint. Swaying on his feet, he grinned at her. “Hiya, babe. Swell hat you’re wearing . . . always was my favorite color, red.”

  Is this the next step? Is there any other choice? She stared at him.

  Taking this as encouragement, he reached for her arm. He smelled of stale sweat and beer, and had a wart above his lip. Quite literally she was paralyzed.

  “Come in and have yourself a drink, babe.”

  His fingers on her upper arm moved, nuzzling like small, nursing rodents against the sides of her breast. The touch was somehow far more intimate than the groping caresses of the boys she went out with. “Let’s you and me get acquainted, huhh?”

  She stared at him in horrified disgust, not seeing a wiry, tipsy little merchant seaman but a photograph printed on thin wartime paper that one of the older girls had shown around when she was ten. It showed a naked man with a monstrous, engorged penis standing over a terrified woman.

  Jerking from the loose grasp, she ran all the way back to Stroud’s.

  Vi was propping menu folders on the tables. “Hey, what’s chasing you?” she asked.

  Honora panted, “Miss Knodler—”

  “Vi.”

  “Vi, listen—I simply must find work. At least give me a try. They don’t have to pay unless I’m worth paying. Whatever’s decided, I promise I won’t argue.”

  “Well, I’ll say this for you British, you don’t give up easy. That’s why there’ll always be an England, ehh?” Vi’s small eyes were twinkling. “As a matter of fact it’s luck you’re back. Carrie, she’s the girl who’s quitting, just called in sick. Tell that to Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”

  “You mean you’ll let me have the job?”

  “For the rest of today. A tryout.”

  “I can’t tell you how . . . grateful I am . . .”

  “No violins necessary. There’s a uniform that oughta fit hanging in the helps’ john.”

  “John? Who is John?”

  Vi laughed. “First thing you gotta do, kid, is learn the English language.”

  The blue-checked uniform was permeated with a mixture of cheap rose perfume and acid sweat. Honora’s flesh rose in goosebumps. She reminded herself of the little merchant seaman and pulled it over her head. The waist was enormous on her. After she cinched it in with the beruffled rayon apron she surveyed herself in the wavy mirror. The bustline was darted, and though her small, round breasts did not fill out the fabric, the seaming accentuated her nipples. The short skirt barely covered the top of her stockings. She turned away quickly.

  Scotch-taped onto the restroom door was a diagram of the cafe with the tables numbered and divided into five stations.

  Vi came in. “Like I figured, it’s a darn good fit.”

  “But not quite long enough.”

  Vi grinned. “Exactly what the customers like.”

  Stroud’s clientele was made up almost exclusively of men in dark business suits who, had they met Honora in other circumstances, would have been politely, jovially condescending—in other words, they would have treated her like a lady. In her cologne doused uniform, however, she was exposed to another masculine side.

  Her first two parties were seated at the same time. The benign, heavily accented grandfather type, while inquiring how the lamb stew was today, patted her exposed thigh, his little finger stroking the bared flesh around her garter snap. She edged away as far as the narrow space between the tables permitted. A tactical mistake. Turning to light his cigar, he mumbled his order. Timidly she asked him to repeat. He glared at her. “Zee zalat vit oil ‘n’ vinegar, the zpenzer zteak pink, and no peaz, iz dat clear enough, Limey? You unnerztand dat?”

  She clipped her orders to the revolving wheel but forgot the lingo used by the help to call them out. The other waitresses rushing from the service area were balancing incredible numbers of plates on their arms, using napkins below the hot foods, but when Honora attempted to carry more than two starters the salad would slide or the clam chowder slop over to scald her forearm.

  By twenty to twelve every table was filled and the waiting crowd spilled around the Tiffany-glass screen. In the uproar Honora often missed her signal and one of the waitresses would rush past telling her that her order was getting cold.

  She felt like a poor, stupid donkey in a stable of racehorses.

  Finally, after what seemed a decade, it was three o’clock. After her last tabl
e had paid she stood in the service corridor raising her thick, damp black hair from the wet nape of her neck.

  “Some snap job, ehh?” Vi chuckled as she served two wedges of French apple pie, generously dousing them with whipped cream. “Come on, get a load off.” At the corner table, she began wolfing down her pie.

  “Vi, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the help,” Honora said. Vi had taken over two tables of her station and had refilled all the coffee cups.

  “Forget it. How much did you take in?”

  “Tips? I don’t know.”

  “What’s wrong with finding out?”

  Honora fished the jingling change from the pocket below her apron and began stacking the coins.

  Before she could finish, Vi said, “Ten forty.”

  “So much?”

  “Quick-eye, Vi, they call me. Not bad, not bad at all considering you weren’t here all day. The big brown eyes and fancy talk must do it, kid.” Vi smiled. “Tomorrow won’t be as rough.”

  “Mr. Stroud won’t be keeping me.” She glanced toward the cash register, which was manned by the overweight ex-GI who was the owner. His thick black brows had drawn together as he corrected most of Honora’s checks. The currency was not yet familiar and with the customers yelling at her on all sides she forgot even simple addition.

  “Who says? Al told me he’s giving you another day’s trial.”

  Honora leaned back in the chair, too weary to hide her flood of shamed relief.

  Vi chuckled, “Kid, it’s as plain as the nose on your face that this job ain’t for you. You’re class, pure class. But what the hell, it’s a good living. Now go ahead and dig into the pie.”

  * * *

  “It’s with a firm in the financial district,” Honora replied, her cheeks hot, when Langley queried about her new job. They were eating roast chicken and the first asparagus of the season, a celebratory dinner for which she had counted out small change from her tips. “Near the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange.”