When they dock in New York, Phyllis's first impression, even before disembarking, is of incredible, stifling heat. She can feel sultry air coming through the open porthole as she's gathering up the last of Cora's things, and when they finally step out onto the gangplank, they're greeted by a shimmering wall of heat that nearly bowls her over. It's hotter than the hottest summer day she has ever experienced; hot in the way she imagines that deserts and jungles are hot, with a sweltering humidity that immediately glues all her clothes to her. She envies Cora's light, sleeveless linen dress fiercely, and decides then and there to get rid of at least one layer of undergarments at the first opportunity. They're more than three thousand miles from home and no one will know, and anyway, she has heard that women in America are much looser and more liberated. Perhaps she'll go home dressed like Louise Brooks or Clara Bow, she thinks, smiling to herself at the absurdity of it even as she tries to discreetly fan some air underneath her skirt.
Mrs Levinson hasn't come to meet them off the ship in person, but has sent a car and her chauffeur instead. He's a tall, slim man with light-brown skin, pomaded hair and an easy, open smile, and after he settles Cora in the back seat and winds up the glass partition between them, he carries on a cheerful conversation with Phyllis as he navigates the long car expertly through the teeming streets around the piers. It's mostly one-sided, as she's half smothered from the heat and is a little shy around strangers at the best of times, but he doesn't seem to mind, and she finds it's pleasant sitting there with her hands folded in her lap, having landmarks pointed out to her and catching the occasional breath of breeze from the window.
After a bit the streets grow wider, cleaner and less crowded, and the buildings both more elaborate and lower to the ground; they're not really small, but they feel that way in contrast to the skyscrapers. If Molesley were the one making this trip, she thinks, he would have read up on architecture beforehand and know exactly what all the different decorative arches and cornices meant, instead of just watching them pass. Thinking about Molesley gives her a sudden deep pang of homesickness, and she turns and fixes her gaze on the plane trees rolling past outside her window, a gesture the chauffeur takes for admiration of the scenery.
"It's nicer as you go uptown, huh?" he says.
Phyllis clears her throat so her voice won't sound choked. "Uptown?"
"If you want to get around the city on your own, you got to know uptown, downtown, East Side, West Side. We came from the Lower West Side, and we're going to the Upper East. Avenues run north and south and streets run east and west."
"Oh, I see."
"Really?"
"No," Phyllis confesses, and he laughs.
"Don't worry, I'll show you on a map when we get where we're going. It's a piece of cake once you see how it works. Anyway, uptown's for the swells."
"The what?"
"You know, the rich folks." He glances back at Cora behind the glass partition, but Cora is writing something in a tiny notebook she's pulled from her handbag, and appears not to be paying attention. "They all used to live on Fifth Avenue, you know, Millionaires' Row, but a lot of them are selling their houses to developers who want to knock 'em down to build stores. Bergdorf Goodman's going up next year where Cornelius Vanderbilt's place is now. They're something to see, though, those mansions. Some folks have more money than they know what to do with."
The names mean little or nothing to Phyllis, and she finds the open talk of money rather embarrassing, but she nods, understanding the spirit of what he means, if not the content.
"Where does Mrs Levinson live?" she asks.
"Sixty-fifth and Fifth." He looks at her sidelong, sees confusion on her face, and clarifies. "Sixty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue. Real swanky, right across the way from where John Jacob Astor used to live. That's it just ahead."
Phyllis looks where he's pointing and sees an ornate stone edifice rearing up toward the blazing blue sky. "The one with the railing round the top?"
"That's the one. And here we are, safe and sound."
"Thank you, Mr—I'm so sorry, I don't think I heard your name."
"That's 'cause I never said it." The chauffeur grins. "Most people who come to see Mrs Levinson don't care as long as I drive them where they want to go. But it's Calvin. Calvin Rhodes. And you are...?"
"Phyllis Baxter."
"Well, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Phyllis Baxter." Calvin makes a smooth turn and stops the car directly opposite the house's entrance. "Here we are. Doesn't look that big from the front, but it takes up half the block. You'll see when you get inside."
The house is indeed a grand one, although Phyllis is accustomed to the soaring rooms and rich tapestries and paintings at Downton Abbey and takes it all in stride. It's a good thing she's not very attached to it, because after the first week, Cora comes storming into her room to be undressed for bed and announces that they'll be staying at the nearby Plaza Hotel for the rest of their time in New York. Phyllis says "yes, milady" and keeps taking down Cora's hair, knowing that if she keeps quiet the story will emerge on its own, and after a few minutes of seething, Cora bursts out that her mother is the most difficult woman who ever lived, and if they spend another two and a half months under one roof without a break, one of them will surely murder the other one.
"This is why I don't like to visit her on her own turf, Baxter," she adds. "I wouldn't have come this time either if I hadn't had to." This makes Phyllis wildly curious—after all, it's because of Cora that she's had to come herself—but for once her Ladyship manages to keep her own counsel, and the curiosity goes unsatisfied.
Once they've moved, Phyllis enjoys the Plaza, where she has her own room adjoining Cora's and is treated as a somewhat lower-level paying guest rather than a servant, but New York itself leaves much to be desired. She's lived in London and is used to the smell of a gargantuan city with a fetid river running through it, but New York's boiling summer heat seems to concentrate and intensify ordinary smells into an eye-watering stench. It's worst downtown, where Calvin has driven them a few times for Cora and her mother to deal with some sort of mysterious financial business, but even in the stylish neighbourhoods that the Levinsons frequent, there's a pervasive, nearly intolerable reek composed of hot tarmac, fumes from passing vehicles, horse manure and rotting rubbish bins—and, of course, sweaty people, which includes Phyllis no matter how carefully she bathes or how much dusting powder and rubbing alcohol she applies to herself. Sweat runs down her back and collects in strange places, like the crooks of her elbows and the backs of her knees, and when Molesley writes that they're having an exceptionally cold and wet summer this year, she imagines it with a longing that borders on the indecent. Mrs Levinson's maid tells her that in only a few months, the city will be snowed in and Central Park will look like the Arctic, but Phyllis fervently hopes they will have gone home by then.
After the second week, she's learnt to go out and conduct as much of her business as she can early in the day, before the heat has a chance to build up and reflect off the pavements like an oven, and then to spend the afternoon indoors, reading or sewing or writing to Molesley to tell him, yet again, that she misses him. It's the twenty-eighth of July now, and they're scheduled to leave for the Levinsons' other home in Newport, wherever that is, on the first of August, which is when Mrs Levinson says it will really get hot in the city. (Phyllis, who was in the front seat of the car when Mrs Levinson made this pronouncement from the rear, was horrified and is still wondering how much hotter it could possibly get.) She asks her Ladyship if a month in the same house with her mother won't be difficult, and Cora says she can grit her teeth and bear it for the sake of Newport's cooler climate.
"Never again, though," she says. "This is my last trip to America, Baxter. Once we're finished here, I intend to live and die in England. Will you do my hair higher up off my neck today, please? I know it's not the latest style, but I can't bear to have it sticking to me."
Phyllis complies with the request, escorts Cora down to the hotel's lobby and hands her over to Calvin, who is driving her and Mrs Levinson to a charity breakfast, and then sets off on her own, armed with a carefully written list of things she needs to buy and the map Calvin supplied her with on their first day in the city. She's discovered since then that the grid system of streets and avenues he described makes it surprisingly easy to find her way around, though she's taken a few wrong turnings. She is planning to ask Calvin if she can keep the map to show to Molesley, who enjoys that sort of thing.
As she gets farther from the park and closer to midtown, there are fewer trees lining the avenue, but still enough for her to keep to the shade for the most part. It rained overnight, which did nothing to make the weather any cooler, and the tarmac is steaming gently as the puddles evaporate into the bright hot morning air. She consults the map, turns a corner onto a new street, and sees it's mostly empty except for an old woman with a trio of tiny, fluffy dogs, a man walking in a hurry, as if late for work, and a little girl, ten years old or so, heading in the opposite direction to her on the same side of the road. The girl's feet are bare, which isn't uncommon for poor children in New York (the wealthy ones, like Master George, Miss Sybbie and Miss Marigold at home, wear boots if they're boys, or ruffled white socks and leather shoes with a T-strap if they're girls), but seems incongruous here on this shabby-genteel street. Her black hair is roughly bobbed with an uneven fringe, and her dress is both too tight and too short, as if she's grown and no one has noticed.
Phyllis's first thought is to ask if she's lost, but she seems to know where she's going—at any rate, her head is down and she's striding fast and purposefully. On the open pavement, it should be easy for her to go around Phyllis, who is already at the far right to stay underneath the trees, and that means it's a surprise when she collides full on with her instead. They're all tangled up for a moment as Phyllis stumbles, nearly goes down on one knee, and gets her balance again, and somehow in the midst of the confusion, she feels a hand tugging at her bag. Her own hand shoots out almost of its own accord and grabs hold of the dirty wrist attached to that invading appendage, and next thing she knows, she's holding the struggling girl out at arm's length, like a fisherman with a large and unexpected catch.
"Ow!" The girl squirms. "Let go. I ain't done nothing."
"Only tried to put your hand in my bag," Phyllis says. She eases her grip a little, not wanting to hurt the child, but holds her fast and pulls her to the inside of the pavement, out of the path of any foot traffic that may come along. Her heart is racing with the shock of this sudden encounter. "I know all about that trick. You bump into someone on the street and then take their purse while they're distracted, don't you?"
"Don't know what you're talking about," the girl says.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about. You didn't make a very good job of it, either. I've met people who could nick your wristwatch while they were shaking your hand."
"Oh yeah?" The girl scowls up at her. "Well, sorry I ain't a good enough thief for you, lady. I'll go right home and get to work on improving if you just let go."
Now that she's standing still, Phyllis can get a better look at the bruises on her spindly legs and the dark circles under her eyes. She's thin as a twig, but it's difficult to tell whether it's malnutrition or just the naturally skinny build of some prepubescent girls, including Phyllis herself when she was that age. Combined with the rest of her appearance, though, it seems safe to assume she hasn't eaten a good meal in a while.
"If you needed money you could have asked me for it," Phyllis says. "You didn't have to steal it."
The girl sneers. "Yeah, right. And you'd give it to me just like that."
"Try me," Phyllis says. "How much do you want?"
"I dunno. Two bits?"
"How much is that?"
"A quarter," the girl says in scathing tones, as if she can't believe what an idiot she's tried to rob.
Phyllis is still hazy on how much a quarter is actually worth, but she knows she has one to give. "All right. Do you promise not to run if I let go? I need both my hands free."
"Yeah," the girl says warily, and Phyllis turns her loose, fishes the purse out of her handbag and opens the clasp.
"Here." She presses the coin into the girl's hand, trying not to pull a face at the dirt ground into the lines of the palm. It's thick, crusted grime, the sort that accumulates over weeks rather than days, and she wonders how long it has been since this child had a bath. She smells ripe, but so does everyone and everything else in this steaming swamp of a city, so it's hard to gauge accurately.
"What's your name?" she asks.
"Like I'd tell you." The girl backs up a step or two, and Phyllis winces at the sight of those small bare feet coming down mere inches away from cigarette ends and gobs of other people's spit and droppings that probably came from the dog-walking woman's Pomeranians. "How do I know you won't get the cops after me?"
"If I wanted to do that, I'd have screamed 'thief' when I caught you trying to dip me," Phyllis points out reasonably. "You'd be in the back of a Black Maria right now. I didn't, though, so why don't you tell me your name?"
"Ruthie," the girl says. "Ruthie Kelly."