Page 16 of A Good Prospect

Chapter Seven

Ophir volunteered to take Tamasin her lunch. They had installed Tamasin in the apartment adjacent to Ophir’s, in the outbuilding that faced the valley to capture the morning sun, so it made sense anyway for him to carry the two covered dishes down the flagstones to the building they also, unfortunately, shared with Knut Frostad. Ophir set one dish on the veranda floorboards so he could rap three times at her heavy wooden door. He usually just barged on in anyway after warning her, and that’s what he did now, setting the two dishes on her small, roughly-hewn table. Numerous coarse engravings representing the Virgin Mary and many saints were suspended from the walls. They had also been hanging in Ophir’s own apartments, but he had respectfully removed them. Oddly, an empty aguardiente bottle also sat on the rough table. The one glass sitting there was probably Knut’s, in his cups having nothing better to do than annoy the poor girl.

“Tamasin?” he called lightly. He now knew she preferred to be called that, as the nuns at some school she’d attended always referred to her as Thomasina—as well as that brutish husband that everyone would prefer to forget.

There was not far for Tamasin to go in the two rooms of her apartments, and Ophir saw she’d even made up her bedding before leaving the building. He first rapped on the rickety door of the privy which was set some distance off—no one.

“Tamasin!” he bawled, more concerned now. She should not have even been out of her bed, much less leave the building! Ascención and Román had reset the broken arm, which would probably never hang straight and true as it perhaps had before, and Ascensión had tried to tell Sal and Ophir some shy and embarrassed details about how awfully the Irish girl was bleeding, but the men did not want to hear it. They hemmed and hawed, drew imaginary objects in the dirt with the toes of their boots, and basically slapped each other on the back to go shoot something, rather than listen to the story of female bleeding.

Ophir shouted toward the valley, “Tamasin!”

He had visited her several times a day. He’d played chess with her using Captain Dearborn’s chess set, and was surprised to find Tamasin was remarkably literate, so got permission to loan her some books from the Captain’s library. Most of the books were manly, but Tamasin’s favorite, the one Ophir always saw her reading, was a volume of Audubon’s Birds of America. He also saw her deeply engrossed in Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk and even Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which Ophir meant to borrow. Apparently the nuns had taught her a sense of social justice, which was probably what nuns did.

“Tamasin!”

Some knocking from above made Ophir lift his head. There on the second story veranda, Knut Frostad clung to the railing balusters, peeping through as though he were in jail. “What’s all this hubbub?” Knut croaked. He’d evidently been lying on the veranda this entire time.

Ophir called up, “I thought you went to San José to find investors for the Palomares Commercial and Mining Company.”

Struggling to his feet, Knut flung his torso over the railing with a laborious “ooph.” Wiping his face with his hand, he drawled, “I guess I’ll go tomorrow. Today does not seem like a propitious or advantageous day to start on such a journey. I shall get in touch with Robert Loblaw, a dear old friend in the finance business. Ach, that fellow can go on a bender! Are you looking for Miss Tamasin?”

“That’s why I was yelling her name,” Ophir concurred.

“Oh,” Knut said, as though genuinely surprised. “Well, go down to the river. I sent her down there to wash my laundry, jah!”

Ophir jammed his hands onto his hips. “What? Are you loco? The girl has a broken arm and is supposed to be staying in bed.”

Knut waved a dismissive hand. “She’s been getting very antsy lying around. A girl like that lives to work! She practically demanded to wash my laundry. And a gadabout such as myself must have clean clothing for a trip to San José, to look as dapper as possible.”

“You’re unbelievable, Knut!” Ophir railed. He stalked off toward the river, but it didn’t stop his grousing. “I’ve never met anyone as selfish as you! Sure, she’s antsy because she’s accustomed to working like a machine day and night. Listen, Knut, don’t forget. In San José we want you to find evidence from the Board of Land Commissioners of the year this adobe was built. And don’t forget to change the gold I gave you into currency!” He muttered to himself. “Unbelievable! He’s a fine one to talk about bending the elbow! He was supposed to be on his way to San José…Now he’ll be gone for three weeks on a bust with the boys instead of finding us investors! Not that he’ll find anyone worthwhile anyway. He’s definitely humbugging Salvador!”

He had run out of steam by the time he reached the banks of the sparkling stream. Sure enough, Tamasin squatted there on some large, round rocks. She did look much improved from the pathetic wraith they had rescued a week earlier. Doña Carmen had loaned her a Californio ensemble, and the tightness of the black silk bodice showed her bony figure to even worse advantage. Doña Carmen was attempting to fatten her up with corn tortillas—Las Oliveras boasted many acres of cornfields over a couple of nearby hillocks—but Ophir knew that Doña Carmen could ruin even something as simple as a tortilla, so he’d been sneaking Tamasin jerked beef and had asked the fellow who slaughtered beeves to dry some fatty cuts for the girl.

The bright silk sash about her waist made her resemble even more a young girl, and she had placed her stockings and slippers to one side as she worked. Her brilliant rebozo hung over a nearby sapling branch, its fringed ends fluttering in the slight breeze. She had even done up her hair in two long plaits of the brashest red, giving her the pious look of a supplicant. Altogether, Tamasin was the picture of serene contentment as she scrubbed Knut’s smallclothes with a hog’s hair brush as mockingbirds trilled and dove over the babbling water’s surface, and red and yellow grosbeaks puffed their feathers as they eyed the bright rebozo jealously.

“Tamasin!” Ophir said cheerfully.

She turned her beautiful moon face to him. There always seemed to be a smile on her face now. Her lips were plump, as though she’d pinched them to make them full and rosy, and her flawless open face had not a blemish or freckle. Her large, round eyes were the sage green of malachite pebbles, alert and surprisingly trusting for one who had been through so much pain. “Ophir,” she acknowledged happily.

“What’re you doing, washing Knut’s laundry?” He tried to act casual, but inside he was fuming. “You should be in bed.” He squatted down next to her, hands dangling between his knees.

“Oh,” she said lightly, continuing to scrub some perfectly shining undergarment. Her broken arm had been bound in a sling, and with the fingers of that hand she held down the garment while scrubbing with her good arm. “I must admit, I was getting bored lying about in bed. I’m just not accustomed to it. I have been working for my meals since I was six years old! Besides,” she added, confidentially, “I feel guilty just lounging about. In my life, it just hasn’t been done.”

“You’ve only been recuperating a week. You went through a terrible ordeal over at that camp you had.”

Shrugging, Tamasin labored to her feet, the smallclothes streaming onto the rocks at her feet. “Oh, yes, it was sorrowful of course, losing the baby. But many girls at the asylum gave birth, or lost babies without any dire consequences.”

Ophir stood too, going to the water’s edge and taking the disgusting garment from her hand. He tossed it in the water where he could poke at it with a stick to rinse it. He had actually been referring to the regrettable death of her husband. “Many girls at the asylum…? Was it an asylum for girls with child?”

“No, not necessarily, that’s just how it worked out, I suppose. It was a place for fallen women in general, women with no family like me. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a ‘fallen woman.’ I didn’t share the Magdalene Society’s image of ‘guilt and wretchedness.’ I simply took passage for The States when we had no food to eat in Ireland. So already my only skills were labor.” She tried to take the stick from Ophir, apparently not wishing to burden him with laundering. They played a little child’s game with Ophir keeping the stick away from her reach. She finally gave up, obstinately wedging her little fists on her hips. “We inmates worked eighteen hours a day in the Magdalene laundry. I’m a very good laundress!”

Ophir could see she was proud of this dubious achievement. “So the asylum took in girls who had fallen…become pregnant by strange men?”

Sticking out her luscious lower lip, Tamasin shook her head adamantly. “Most of them only became pregnant after arriving at the asylum.”

Ophir frowned. “How does that work? If it was an asylum for girls, and there were nuns…”

“The priests. They were mostly responsible. Hey, that’s plenty clean. Let me wring it and hang it on that tree.”