Chapter Nine

Two days later, Hare picked up a copy of the Guardian on his way to the cabinet shop when he heard the hawker shout, “Read about the hero of south Boston! Get it here, first in a series!”

The boy stared at O’Hare and, when he tried to pay him, grinned. “Complimentary copy to you, sor!”

O’Hare arrived at the cabinet shop to find Ron with the Guardian spread out on the main workbench, already reading.

He looked up. “You’re famous, son. But who’s this reporter—D. R. Sinclair?”

“Is that what she put?” O’Hare hurried to look at the sheet over which Ron had been poring. Clever girl.

“She?” Ron gave him a doubtful look. “A female reporter wrote this?”

“Yes.” O’Hare swept the article, placed prominently on the front page. “In-depth series,” he read and then the actual title of the article, “A Hungry Heart.” Ah—so that was the direction she’d taken.

Ron pushed the lamp closer. “Here, read.”

“But we’ve a load of work on.”

“Nothing that can’t wait.”

O’Hare pored over the article, soon becoming lost in the tale D. R. Sinclair had written—that of a disadvantaged young boy, just one among many, hungry for far more than food to fill his belly, ravenous for justice, fairness, and an equal chance in life.

The fight O’Hare leads, she wrote at the end, is a fight for survival. And what won’t a hungry child do, to survive?

He stood stunned for a full minute, when he finished, before he said, “Is this supposed to be about me?”

“It certainly is. He—or, so you say, she—has reached right out and snared her readers’ hearts. No one, lad, will ever look at you the same. Nor will they look at a hungry Irish child the same, I dare say.” Ron squeezed Hare’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

“Better to be proud of her. I’m amazed Winton printed this.” O’Hare tapped the paper with his finger. “It flies in the face of the hard line he usually takes.”

“He’s probably afraid to cross Miss D. R. Sinclair. Supposed to be a series, right? What’s to stop her taking the next story to the Herald?”

“But newspapers don’t print this kind of thing.”

“They do now, lad. They do now.”

****

“We sold out of papers by eleven a.m. and had to run a second edition,” Montgomery Winton said in satisfaction. “It’s even selling on the south side—especially on the south side.”

His son Jeremy made a face and glared at Dorothea, who stood in Winton’s office, her hands folded. “D. R. Sinclair. Were you ashamed to use your name and admit you’re a woman?”

“Far from it. Reporters often use their initials. Besides, that is my name.”

“It implies you’re male.”

“I don’t think so. Most reporters in this city are male, so people may assume it. I’m not responsible for their assumptions.”

“And,” Jeremy continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “it’s bad writing. This article is slanted. You’ve made a hero of an ignorant Irish troublemaker.”

Dorothea’s cheeks flushed with outrage. Before she could speak, Montgomery Winton did. “You’re wrong, Jeremy. It’s bloody brilliant writing. It’s a color piece, not straight reporting. Besides,” he admitted comfortably, “everything in the Guardian is slightly slanted. We have our own viewpoint.”

“It isn’t just that. She’s glorified a man who’s been arrested—how many times?”

As coolly as she could manage, Dorothea said, “I mean to take up his career campaigning for Irish rights in a future article. And begging your pardon, Mr. Winton”—she fixed Jeremy with a fierce stare—“you are not in a position to judge whether what I’ve written about O’Hare is true. You weren’t there for the interview. I was.”

“How many stories do you plan?” Winton the elder asked her.

“At least three.”

“Make it six. We’ll run one a week to keep interest up, just like the old fiction serials.”

“It is fiction, most of it,” Jeremy scoffed. “ ‘A Hungry Heart.’ Even the title’s sympathetic.”

“She’s pulled at her readers’ heartstrings, and there’s nothing wrong with that so long as those are attached to their purse strings. I’m in this business to make money—and outsell my competitors. I’ll take any damned tone I have to, to accomplish that.”

When Jeremy said nothing, Winton fixed Dorothea with a stare. “Curiosity about your identity is already high. We’ve had several inquiries from the Courier and the Herald, fishing for information. No one knows you’re a woman. Let’s keep it that way for now.”

“All right,” Dorothea agreed slowly.

“But I want your promise you won’t take the balance of this series to one of my competitors.”

“I have no intention of doing so, sir, so long as I’m treated fairly here.”

Jeremy sneered. “I suppose that means you want more money.”

“No, but I would like leave to act as a reporter—the job for which I was hired—and not as a servant, on an ongoing basis. I’d like leave to develop further stories along this same view.”

“You have more ideas? Like this?” Winton jumped on it.

“Plenty. I think the people of Boston need to know about their city and the individuals who live in it.”

“Hmm. And you’re sure O’Hare will grant you the rest of the interviews you’ve promised? He won’t defect and run to one of the other papers?”

“He’s given me his word, sir.”

“Oh, and the word of an ignorant bog jumper is golden, is that it?”

Dorothea turned her eyes on Jeremy. “He’s a skilled and articulate man. You must be mistaking lack of higher schooling with ignorance. All too plainly, the former does not prohibit the latter.”

Jeremy leaned toward her across his father’s desk. “Careful you don’t get too big for your knickers. And careful, little girl, you don’t fall for this hero you’ve created.”

****

Curiously, few outside the newspaper office seemed to connect Dorothea with her byline. Even when she reached the rooming house, where they knew she worked for the Guardian, none of the girls tumbled to the fact that she might have written the article that had taken the city by storm.

Eight women lived beneath Mrs. Bennett’s roof, all single and all employed in varying capacities. Most struggled to make ends meet; Dorothea’s job at the Guardian paid her better than most. Two of the others worked in a laundry, one for a fishmonger, one as tea girl in a law office.

Mrs. Bennett had very strict rules about curfews and male callers. A girl who didn’t reach home by nine o’clock would be locked out, and no excuses. Male callers weren’t welcome under any circumstances.

“There’ll be none of that here,” she’d told Dorothea firmly when she first arrived. “I run a respectable house.”

She ran a miserly house, Dorothea thought now as she returned from work just in time for supper. The house reeked of onions, and she wasn’t surprised to see Mrs. Bennett’s usual fare—a tureen of onion soup and two small loaves of bread that afforded her boarders one slice each, if they were quick enough.

She slid into her seat without hesitation. It had been a long, strange day that left her perished.

She interrupted a conversation already in progress as the bowls got filled and the bread passed.

“I’ve seen him, you know. During that demonstration last fall on the waterfront—the one where the fight broke out and so many workers got arrested. So many Irish.” The speaker, Betsy, worked for the fishmonger. Like Dorothea, she must have come straight from her job; a faint pong of day-old fish came off her, competing rather nauseatingly with the smell of onions. She rolled her eyes, and her long face twisted into an expression of ecstasy. “He’s ever so handsome.”

“But he’s Irish.” This speaker, Margaret, glanced at Mrs. Bennett for approval. Mrs. Bennett would sooner starve than accept an Irish boarder.

“So? Some of those Irish blokes are ever so well set up and handsome.”

“But dumb as stumps,” contributed another girl. “Funny, the article didn’t make him sound dumb.”

Dorothea bit her lip and scooped a spoonful of unappetizing soup.

“He’s battling for what he believes in,” said another girl dreamily, “Irish or not.”

“And,” said Deborah, from the law office, “is it fair for a man to do the same work as another and get paid less?”

“But the Irish are thick on the ground. Most of them don’t keep a job long anyway—they’re drunk half the time. Why pay to keep ’em when you can just hire another one?”

“Still, if they have children to feed…”

“They wouldn’t have so many children if they weren’t all Catholics. I mean, its barely decent.”

“And they treat their women badly—even if they are good-looking.”

“Dorothea?” Someone finally focused on her. “You work at the Guardian, don’t you? Do you know anything about the man who wrote the article?”

Did they not wonder why the journalist in question had the same last name as she did? And they called O’Hare thick! To be fair, though, she’d forgotten most of their last names; no doubt they’d forgotten hers as well.

Before she could answer, Deborah asked, “Did O’Hare come to the office for his interview? Did you see him? Bring him tea?”

“No.”

“I heard the interview was conducted at a secret location so no one from the Herald or the Courier could horn in.”

“I just wondered if he’s as handsome as Betsy says.”

Yes, Dorothea thought. Oh, yes.

At that moment they all heard a knock at the house door. Mrs. Bennett hurried off and came back with a folded slip of paper which she immediately thrust in Dorothea’s direction.

“For you.”

Dorothea unfolded the paper while heat mounted in her face. On it was drawn a picture of a tea cup, complete with steam, and the words, Tomorrow at four. Go around back. in a bold, black hand she recognized.

She looked up to find everyone in the room staring at her and tucked the paper into her bosom. She’d begun a collection.

“That,” Mrs. Bennett said, “had better not be from a man.”