Never Love a Stranger
NEVER LOVE A STRANGER
by
HAROLD ROBBINS
TO MY WIFE
LIL
WHO SHOULD SHARE THE BILLING
Call no man foe, but never love a stranger.
Build up no plan, nor any star pursue.
Go forth with crowds; in loneliness is danger.
Thus nothing God can send,
And nothing God can do
Shall pierce your peace, my friend.
From the poem To The Unborn, by Stella Benson as published in Twenty.
BY PERMISSION OF THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
Acknowledgement
The author wishes to express his gratitude
to MR. ROBERT L. SCOTTINO,
for his kind words and considerate
encouragement during the long years it
took to write this book.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Acknowledgements
What Came Before
PART ONE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Interlude
PART TWO
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Interlude
PART THREE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Interlude
PART FOUR
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Interlude
PART FIVE
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Interlude
PART SIX
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
What Came After
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
What Came Before
MRS. COZZOLINA tasted the soup. it was rich and thick, tomatoey, and with just the right touch of garlic. She smacked her lips—it was good. With a sigh she turned back to the table where she had been stuffing ravioli with shredded chicken. It had been a long, hot June day but now it was beginning to grow damp. The sky outside had grown darker and she had had to turn on the light in the kitchen.
“These American girls,” she was thinking as her pudgy fingers lightly shaped the dough and poked bits of chicken into them, the sweat damp on her forehead and just over her lips where the slight dark shadow of a moustache was visible. “Planning babies so they don’t have to carry them in the summer! Who ever heard of such a thing? Why in the old country,” she smiled, thinking of when she was young, “they just had them. You didn’t plan children there.” She had a right to think the American girls were foolish. She was a midwife and business had been bad all summer, and she had seven children of her own to feed since her husband had died.
Somewhere in the darkness of the house the doorbell rang. She picked her head up at the sound and cocked it to one side as she tried to think who it might be. None of her customers was due until next month, and she came to the conclusion it was a pedlar. “Maria,” she shouted, her voice echoing through the dim hallways, “go and see who’s at the door.” Her voice was harsh from many years of shouting at her children and at the pedlars on the street from whom she bought most of her foodstuffs.
There was no reply. Again the doorbell rang, this time it had a harsh, strident, demanding tone. Reluctantly she wiped her hands on her apron and went through the long narrow corridor to the front door. Through the coloured panes of glass in the window she could make out a dim shape. She opened the door.
A girl was standing there, a small suit-case on the steps near her. Her face was thin and drawn, but her eyes glowed with the warm, frightened luminosity, much like an animal’s in the dark. She was obviously pregnant, and to Mrs. Cozzolina’s experienced eye was in her last month. “Are you the midwife?” The voice was soft but somehow afraid.
“Yes, madam,” said Mrs. Cozzolina. She knew a lady when she saw one. There was something about them that stood out even when they had fallen upon hard times.
“I’m sorry to bother you but I’m new in New York and I—” The girl stopped a minute as a tremor seemed to run through her body. “My time has come,” she said simply, “and I have no place to go.”
Mrs. Cozzolina was silent for a few seconds. If she took the girl in that meant Maria would have to be turned out of her room and Maria wouldn’t like that. She didn’t like to sleep with her sisters. And maybe the girl didn’t have any money; maybe she wasn’t even married. Automatically her glance went to the girl’s hand. There was a small gold ring on her finger.
“I—I have some money,” the girl ventured, reading Mrs. Cozzolina’s mind.
“But I have no room,” Mrs. Cozzolina said.
“You must have,” the girl insisted. “I haven’t time to go anywhere else. And I saw your sign, ‘Midwife’.”
Mrs. Cozzolina gave in. Maria would have to sleep with her sisters whether she liked it or not. “Come in,” she said to the girl, and took her bag.
The girl followed Mrs. Cozzolina through the dim hallway and up a flight of steps to Maria’s room. It was light there and she could look out and see a row of three-storey brownstone tenements and a boy cutting pigeons from his flock with a long pole from a near-by roof.
“Take off your jacket,” Mrs. Cozzolina said, “and become comfortable.” She helped the girl undress and lie down on the bed. “How long ago did the pains start to come?” she asked.
“About an hour ago,” the girl said. “I knew I couldn’t go any further. I had to stop.”
Mrs. Cozzolina examined her. The girl felt a little nervous. This wasn’t how she had planned to have her baby. It was supposed to be in a hospital with George somewhere near by, so
mehow always hovering in the background to reassure her that things would turn out all right; or home where you could sense the presence of people who loved you and were near you, where you could draw courage from them. This was so different. She was a little afraid.
Mrs. Cozzolina straightened up. The girl was small—she was built small; she would have a hard time. The passageway was too narrow for the baby to come down easily. Anyway, she had about six or seven hours to go; maybe she would dilate more than you could expect. That was always a wonderful thing to see; now a girl turned into a woman capable of bringing forth a child under your eyes. But this looked as if it would be difficult. Mrs. Cozzolina had a feeling about it, but nothing of what she thought showed in her face. “You have some time to wait.” She smiled at the girl. “But don’t worry, it will be all right. I know; I have seven myself.”
The girl smiled back tremulously. “Thank you, thank you very much.”
“Now you try to get some sleep,” Mrs. Cozzolina said, moving towards the door. “I’ll come up in a few hours and see how you are feeling. A little sleep before is always a good thing.” She went out and down the stairs. It wasn’t until she had almost finished cooking supper that she remembered she hadn’t asked the girl’s name. “Well,” she thought, “I’ll do it when I go back upstairs,” and turned to finish her cooking.
The girl had shut her eyes and had tried to sleep, but she wasn’t sleeping. Thoughts kept trailing through her mind slowly, like distant scenes through a train window—home and George. Those were the two important things her mind always came back to: home and George. “I wonder what they think of me now? And George, where did he go?” She was supposed to meet him that day. It was a long time ago.
It had been raining and she had left the apartment to meet him on the corner near the restaurant. The wind had been blowing and she was chilled and had waited two hours before she went home again. She had called his office in the morning and they told her he left last night at his regular time but he hadn’t come in as yet. And he disappeared. She. hadn’t heard from him since, hadn’t seen him, and she couldn’t understand it. This wasn’t like him. He wasn’t that kind of a man. Something terrible must have happened to him.
She looked out the window and wondered what time it was. It had become dark, and occasionally she heard thunder rolling in the distance and could see flashes of lightning, but it hadn’t started to rain. The air hung heavy and oppressive around her, and she could hear the clink of dishes and subdued voices coming up from the kitchen, and smell the thick, heavy odour of cooking that came in through the partly open window, for the kitchen was directly below the room she was in.
When the children began to come in for supper, Mrs. Cozzolina had shushed them, telling them to be quiet for there was someone upstairs. Maria had made a fuss over her room but by now she had subsided because her mother promised her something when this case was over. They finished eating and Mrs. Cozzolina looked up at the clock on the icebox. It was eight o’clock. She jumped to her feet. The poor thing had been lying alone upstairs for almost four hours and they hadn’t heard a cry from her. The girl had courage, Mrs. Cozzolina thought, thinking of the women whose giving birth was three quarters vocal and one quarter effort on their part.
Telling the girls to do the dishes, she went upstairs to the girl’s room. “How you feeling?” she asked the girl.
“All right,” answered the girl quietly,” I guess.”
“How often are the pains coming?” asked Mrs. Cozzolina, bending forward to examine her again.
“It seems like about every half-hour,” said the girl.
“That’s good,” said Mrs. Cozzolina as she straightened up. But it wasn’t—there was no dilation at all. She went downstairs and ordered the girls to keep hot water and clean towels ready.
It was near midnight when the storm broke loose over the city. It was near midnight that the baby started to come. The girl just lay there quietly, her mouth grimly shut, holding the towel tied around the bedpost and writhing in pain. Her face was white and her eyes were wide, black pools of fear.
It was near two o’clock in the morning when Mrs. Cozzolina sent her oldest son to get Doctor Buonaventa from the corner. And on the way back, she added, it wouldn’t hurt to stop by the parish house and get a priest.
She watched the doctor cut the girl open and take the blue, squirming child from her belly. She slapped the life into it and heard his angry protest at leaving his warm and comfortable shelter. She watched the doctor work frantically to save the girl’s life. And she knew he had lost when he motioned for the priest to take over. And as the priest stood over the girl she knelt by the side of the bed and prayed.
Because the girl was so young and so brave.
Because she had lost her own husband and knew that this girl too had lost.
The girl turned to her and smiled a little. There was a question in her eyes. Mrs. Cozzolina held the crying baby to her and put it down beside her. The girl looked down at it and rested her head against his little head and began to close her eyes.
Then Mrs. Cozzolina remembered she hadn’t asked the girl’s name. She leaned towards the girl. “Your name?” she asked, her voice filled with a fear of having the child go through life without a name.
Slowly the girl opened her eyes. She looked as if she had come back a long way. “Frances Cain,” her voice barely carried to Mrs. Cozzolina’s straining ear. She shut her eyes, and then suddenly they opened and were blank. Her jaw hung loosely towards the pillow.
Mrs. Cozzolina took the child and stood up. She watched the doctor cover the girl with the sheet. The doctor took out a slip of paper from his bag. He said in Italian: “We’ll fill out the birth certificate first, eh?”
Mrs. Cozzolina nodded. First, the living.
“What’s his name?”
“Francis Kane,” answered Mrs. Cozzolina. It was only right—a name he could always be proud of, a name he could carry. His life would be hard enough; let him have this, which was his mother’s.
PART ONE
Chapter One
ACROSS the street, high in the steeple of St. Thérèse, the bells were ringing for the eight-o’clock Mass. The kids were all lined up waiting to go to their classes and the sisters had just come into the yard. A second before, all had been confusion as we milled around, playing games, calling to one another, but now all was quiet. We formed double rows and marched into the school and up the winding staircase to our classrooms. We seated ourselves with a rustle of books from the boys’ side of the room and a rustle of starched middy blouses and skirts from the girls’ side of the room.
“We will begin our day with a prayer, children,” Sister Anne said. We folded our hands on the desk and bent our heads.
I took the opportunity to shoot a spitball at Jerry Cowan. It hit him on the back of the neck and stuck there. It looked so funny I almost began to laugh in the middle of the prayer, but I stopped myself in time. When the prayer was over Jerry looked around to see who did it but I pretended to be occupied with my books.
Sister Anne spoke to me: “Francis.”
I stood up guiltily. For a second I thought she had seen me shoot the spitball at Jerry, but no, all she wanted me to do was write the day and date on the blackboard. I went to the front of the room and taking a large piece of chalk from the box wrote in big letters on the board: “Friday, June 5th, 1925.”
I stood there and looked at the teacher. “That’s all, Francis. You may sit down,” she said. I returned to my seat.
The morning passed by lazily. The air was warm and sultry and the school would be out in a few weeks and I wasn’t interested in school anyhow. I was thirteen and big for my age, and as soon as school was over Jimmy Keough would let me run his errands and pick up his bets for him from the boogies that worked in the near-by garages—the half-dollar and quarter bets he didn’t have the time to bother with himself. And I would make a pile of dough—maybe even ten bucks a week. And I didn’t give a damn for scho
ol.
At lunch time, while the other kids ran home for lunch, I would go over to the dormitory building in the back of the school, and we orphans would eat in the dining-room there. For lunch we had a glass of milk and a sandwich and a cup cake. We probably ate better than most of the kids in the neighbourhood who went home. Then back to school we would go for the afternoon. In the afternoon I felt like going on the hook. Jeeze, it was hot! I could go swimming off the docks down at Fifty-fourth Street and the Hudson. But I remembered what had happened the last time I had gone on the hook.
I think I set the world’s record for hookey playing. I played hookey for six straight weeks in a row. And if you think that’s something, remember, I lived in the school and returned there to sleep every night. I used to swipe the letters that would be sent from the sisters to Brother Bernhard, who was in charge of our dormitory, complaining about my absence. I would forge replies to them, saying that I was sick and signing them “Bernhard”. This went on till one of the sisters came to visit me and they found out. I got in that night after a strenuous day in the movies. I saw four pictures. Brother Bernhard and Sister Anne were waiting for me in the hall.
“There he is, the rascal!” Brother Bernhard cried, “I’ll teach him, the sick he is!” He came towards me. “And what have you been doing wi’ yoursel’? Where ha’e ye been bummin’?” As he grew excited the Welsh accent in his speech, which ordinarily made it soft and beautiful, would come out until you could hardly understand a word he was saying.
“I was workin’,” I said.
“Workin’ ye were,” he said. “’Tis lyin’ ye are.” He hit me in the face. I put my hand to my cheek.
Sister Anne looked at me. “Francis, Francis, how could you do it?” she said softly, almost sorrowfully. “You know I had the most hopes of you.”
I didn’t answer her. Brother Bernhard slapped me again. “Answer the taycher.”
Angrily I faced them and the words tumbled from my mouth.
“I’m sick of it—sick of the school, sick of the orphanage. I’m nothing but a prisoner here. People in jail have as much freedom as me. And I didn’t do nothin’ to deserve it—nothin’ to be put in jail for—nothin’ to be locked away at night for. It says in the Bible the truth shall make you free. You teach to love the Lord because He has given us so much. You start my day with prayers of thanks—thanks for being born into a prison without freedom.” I was half crying. My breath came fast.