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higher, until it burst silently into a delicate shower of stars. For a short time, while the upward streak was still visible and the star cluster drifted slowly downward, it looked like a fragile white flower – perfectly white, clear and startling against the blackness of the void.

CHAPTER 3
    Penn Station soared above me. Although it was only midmorning, I had been drinking on the train and the building confused me. The floor was acres of concrete but embedded in it were twinkling glass bricks. Everywhere there was indestructible granite but it was baby pink in colour. There were colonnades of giant Corinthian columns but the ironwork was as frivolous as dainty lace. Why all this contrast? My eyes hurt; I felt an incipient headache. It was time for another drink.
    I went to my favourite hotel off Christopher Street and headed straight to the back bar, known for opening early. I hadn’t been here for a year, but nothing had changed. The room was closed in and gloomy and the air glowed dull red. Two prostitutes leaned against a giant papier-mâché horse, which was as tall as a man and stood on floor panels of red glass lit from beneath. I laughed. The horse reminded me of Boston’s Watch and Ward Society, trying to stamp out the warm red glow of vice wherever it was seen. I tipped my hat at the prostitutes and ordered two bourbon highballs from a pretty waitress.
    I sat in a corner and spent an hour or so reading the morning editions I had bought at the station. Great scareheads proclaimed the dramatic accident at sea: the Allan Line’s Virginian had relayed to Cape Race that the Titanic had struck an iceberg and was calling for help. The embarrassment at White Star, it was said, was equally dramatic. There were some very famous Americans on board the ship.
    My headache worsened. I had never much liked New York. If you took a deep breath in Boston you could smell the sharp, clear air of revolution, of new thinking, but all I ever smelled in New York was melodrama and money. The city’s newspapers were filled with action, indignation and thrills, but they had no nuance and no heart. I ordered another highball, rubbed my temples and read no more.
    By midday my headache began to ease and I set out downtown. The weather was growing warm. I could smell fried fish and horse manure. Wagons trundled by with potatoes, carrots and onions left over from the Monday morning markets. I drifted east along Fourth Street, past Washington Square, and for old time’s sake I took a detour to the monumental brown-brick and terracotta edifice of the ten-storey Asch Building.
    In the year or so since the fire, the upper brickwork had been scrubbed of the soot that had streaked upwards from the windows like clownish eyelashes, and the interiors had been refurbished and replaced. From where I stood I could not see them, but I knew that new young immigrant girls now worked at the sewing machines, the braiders and corders, the seamers and binders. ‘Welcome to America,’ I whispered to them. I hoped they were safe. I was not religious – I had abandoned my Catholicism as a child – but I did make the sign of the cross, and I did pause to remember.
    On Broadway I hailed a hansom, and by Canal Street the traffic had thickened. Our horse grew fractious and lively. Two young women drove by too close in a shiny automobile, veering from side to side and shouting suffragette slogans through a megaphone. The horse shied alarmingly; the women laughed, and I did too. One of them reminded me of my daughter Harriet, just turned seventeen, who romped and leapt through life with the same energy as these young drivers. The encounter made me think two things: that I must visit Harriet as soon as I returned to Boston, and that this century, whether it be wonderful or horrible, was going to belong to the women.
    We passed Wall Street. Broadway became narrow and gloomy. The great stone edifices of ten- and twenty-storey buildings blocked the light. People