Free Daughter of Empire by Pamela Hicks

wear a bit of lipstick.’ With that, she pressed a pink lip salve into my sister’s hand. She held us tight. She
didn’t need to say ‘Look after Pammy’; it was axiomatic that Patricia would care for me.
    We left late that afternoon on a crowded train. Our parents had booked us passage from Ireland to the United States aboard SS
Washington,
the last ship to take children across the
Atlantic before the crossing became too dangerous. Our distant cousin David – not my favourite little boy after he had bitten me following an argument in which he claimed that I had taken
food for his dog and fed it to Lottie – and his Swiss mademoiselle were travelling with us as far as New York, and while at first we weren’t happy about this, it was Mademoiselle who
saved us when our paperwork was questioned in the west of Ireland. The officials were convinced only when they got hold of the British Consul in Dublin, who verified our identity.
    The ship was so full that some of the passengers had to sleep in the drained swimming pool. We shared a cabin with two other girls and a boy. The whole experience felt a bit unreal, but it soon
turned into a great adventure: the very fact of being on a ship; the deck tennis; ping-pong; shuffleboard and crazy golf. Not to mention all the animals below decks that I could pet and talk to.
After a week at sea, Mademoiselle woke us up at dawn so that we could go out on deck as we sailed up the Hudson river. The Statue of Liberty was much taller than I had imagined. I had only ever
seen pictures in magazines or on newsreels, so seeing it in reality was thrilling. Clearing customs, I was given my first taste of what being an ‘alien’ meant. Having been born in
Barcelona, I was made to stand in a different queue from Patricia and the rest of the English evacuees. The customs official told me – in a voice that I recognised from a hundred Hollywood
movies – that under no circumstances could I work in America.
    Cousin David and his mademoiselle left to meet their host family and an extremely well-dressed woman introduced herself as Mrs Vanderbilt’s secretary. Even my childish eyes could see how
fashionably she dressed, far better than anyone back home. She guided us into a waiting car and we were whisked towards 640 Fifth Avenue. The façade of Mrs Vanderbilt’s residence was
enormous and imposing and the inside was no less so. The hall was cavernous, all marble floors and surfaces, and the huge malachite vase that was even taller than my sister made me feel like Alice
in Wonderland. (Years later I was to see it again in the entrance hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) A small queenly form – Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt was quite unlike anyone we had met
before – came into view. She wore a long silk dress with a bandeau swathed around frizzy grey curls. ‘Ah, Patricia and Pamela, welcome to New York, my dears.’ Our hands shot out.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Vanderbilt,’ we said. ‘Oh, please,’ she said, taking our hands (but not shaking them), ‘girls, you must call me Aunt Grace.’ I wasn’t
sure I would be able to manage that – she seemed so imperious. ‘And this is my niece Anne.’ A glamorous lady in stockings, heels and lipstick stepped towards us with an
outstretched hand. ‘Anne is nearly your age, I believe, Patricia,’ Mrs Vanderbilt added. For a second our eyes rounded with surprise. The ‘girl’ could easily have passed for
thirty. Beyond Mrs Vanderbilt, at quite some distance, I could see footmen in dark red livery darting here and there. I thought: America is going to be very different.

 
     
     
     
6
     
     
     
     
    A ll through that hot summer of 1940 we were shunted between the Long Island summer houses of New York’s kind society hostesses. While we were
getting used to our new surroundings, unfamiliar American expressions and new routines, the society hostesses were apparently trying to come to terms with how badly dressed we were. Mrs