The Halifax Connection

by Marie Jakober

  He had a day, he thought, perhaps two, before all the military defences were in place and all the diplomatic manoeuvres carefully made. Then Lord Monck would make it public, and it would hit the front page of every newspaper in North America. A day, maybe two, for Carroll to make up his mind. Then Erryn Shaw would be utterly in the clear, or utterly finished as an agent. Possibly dead. Don’t get your nose chopped off, Todd.

  The sun was high before he slept.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Rainstorm

  Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me—wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.

  —Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  ALL AFTERNOON THE RAIN POURED DOWN, hammering on roofs and cobblestone streets, a cold rain laced with a bitter wind. Despite the storm, Sylvie found Erryn Shaw waiting as usual near the old sailors’ church—rather like a solitary lamppost, she thought, buffeted but erect, while everything around him was bent over and scurrying for shelter. He was drenched despite his umbrella, but he seemed happy to see her—extraordinarily happy, as though he had feared the storm might keep her away. Clearly, he did not know Madame.

  He had a table for them in the little café across the way, he said. Would she join him for tourtières, cake, tea, wine, anything at all she might fancy?

  “Oh, I’d much rather have a walk,” she said, and then laughed softly as astonishment and dismay and concern all flashed across his face, each on the heels of the other. “You’re not an easy man to surprise, Erryn Shaw, but there, I think I’ve finally done it.”

  He smiled. “Tourtières, then?”

  “Oh, yes, please.”

  The little café truly did have anything she might have fancied. The wine she refused, for Madame would know, but there were pies made with chicken and pork, and with fruits of every description. There were puddings and pieces of iced cake, and tempting, miniature creamy things she had never seen before. Erryn bought recklessly, letting her choose what she wanted and then adding more. “Here, you must have one of these, and yes, one of these too, they’re exquisite, you can take some back with you, Madame can’t possibly object, not to a pastry …”

  He did not eat much. He seemed on edge—as attentive to her as a man could be, and yet on edge.

  “Tell me,” he said, “how did we come to like each other so much, when I scarcely know anything about you, and you know even less about me? Does that make it fate, do you suppose?”

  “Do you believe in fate?”

  “I don’t know.” His hair was very wet from the rain, hanging across his forehead in long, pale strings. Beside him, more rain streamed across the window glass, shimmering each time lightning slashed across the sky. “I believe in chance, I suppose. Sometimes things just … happen. Fate seems to imply design, and I have doubts about design.”

  “So you’re not the religious sort, then?”

  He shot her a sudden, sharp glance, as though he wondered if he might have said the wrong thing. Nevertheless he answered the question freely and, she supposed, honestly.

  “Not in the usual sense, no. When I was at Eton College, reading the Greek and Roman classics, I used to think I’d have made a good pagan. I liked our old churches, the really old ones, and the old graveyards, and the dark places in the woods—places where it seemed spirits might be. I could see how a man might want to talk to spirits, or make them an offering, pour wine into the ground or something. Now …” He smiled faintly, made a small, dismissive gesture. “Now I don’t know what I think. All the answers seem too easy. Have you ever heard of Procrustes?”

  “No. What are they?”

  “He. He was a chap in one of the old stories. He had a very famous bed. It was rather on the short side, apparently, and when people came to visit him, if they were on the long side, like me, he cut their feet off to make them fit. I think a lot of ideas in the world are like Procrustes’ bed—not bad ideas in themselves, maybe, but not long enough, or wide enough, or deep enough. Reality doesn’t quite fit. But when we notice, we don’t stand back and say, ‘All right, we’ve missed something. Our philosophy, our politics, our religion, has to adapt.’ No, we go get the hatchet and start chopping at the world. Sooner or later, alas, the world invariably chops back.” He paused as she nibbled one of the creamy confections. “Is that good?”

  “It’s wonderful.”

  “Tell me about your life.”

  “What?”

  He put both elbows on the table and leaned his chin against his hands. “I have this deplorable tendency to babble. I’m sure you’ve noticed. My father used to say my mouth was like a mill wheel: once it started, you had to drain the river to make it stop. But if you talk to me, I’ll be quiet and listen. Tell me where you came from.”

  It was still day outside, but the heaviness of the storm had darkened the café. The poor light softened his bony features, made him almost handsome, what with his youth and the warmth in his eyes and her own irrepressible admiration. It was glorious to be courted. By anyone, she thought, but especially by a man with so much grace and charm, a man who could make her laugh, a man who knew the world and who could—like Madame, but infinitely more so—open doors to all its marvels. Of course, it was a courtship without a future. He was a gentleman, rich and cocky like they all were, and used to having his way. He was an actor—oh, he wasn’t really, he said, he was only a second-rate amateur; it was staging plays that he was good at, as if it made any difference; he knew how to pretend. He could talk the birds down out of the trees and into the cat’s mouth, he was so convincing. He was just acting that he liked her; it was just a game, until he got her into bed, and then he would walk away.

  And it was not his getting her into bed that mattered, or even, in the end, his walking away. It was the acting itself. It was the certainty that he was acting, that he could not possibly mean the things he said and did, even for a little while. Because no man could.

  There was the truth of it, the old truth, older than this temporary wild delight. Wickerface, wickerface, fly away home, go cut your nose off and make me a comb. God almighty, Bowen, what did the cat look like when it was over?

  Tell me where you came from …

  For a moment she considered lying, making up an entire life history: a loving family, a tragic accident … a train wreck, perhaps. Oh yes, a train wreck would serve perfectly, smash her face and kill everyone else, all except Fran, and then the two of them off to the mills because what else could a lone woman and an orphan child do?

  The idea died even as it was conceived. She was not at all sure she could carry it off, but more importantly, she knew it would serve for nothing. She did not want him to like some other lass who had never existed; she wanted him to like her, and probably he would not anyway, he could not. So no, there was no point in telling him anything but the truth.

  “We lived in a mill town. A place called Darwen. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there—”

  He shook his head no.

  “It weren’t much. Just the factories and the cottages and some fancy houses for the sods who ran the place. And a church, of course, and lots of taverns. You could get your comfort in one place or the other. Nobody cared which, as long as you didn’t bring it to work the next day.

  “My ma took her comfort from God, and my pa took his from a bottle. He drank everything they earned, and when my two brothers were nine, he put them in the mill and drank everything they earned too. He beat on her at least once a week. Some women left their men when it got bad enough, but she wouldn’t. Her husband were her cross, she said, and she must bear it.”

  Sylvie had been looking mostly at her plate as she spoke, or at her hands, or at the rain-battered window. Now she looked full at Erryn’s face, and was surprised to find neither horror nor pity, only a kind of watchful, driven intensity. He said nothing, and she went on:

  “I got to go to school for two years. Then he put me in the mill too. There weren’t any laws then about how old you
had to be; those came later. And that were the worst of it, Erryn, having to leave the school. It weren’t the mill, or even the fighting, except for the last bit. But when I couldn’t go to school anymore, then I had nothing to look forward to, ever. There were the mill and there were home, and the mill were likely to kill us, and still it were better than home.”

  “Did your father beat you, too?”

  “Sometimes. Mostly the older ones. But Ma always got between them, so she took the worst of it.”

  She stared at the window again. She had begun her tale without the least reluctance. It was old history, after all; she was past it. So why was it suddenly so hard to go on?

  “You spoke of ‘that last bit’ of fighting,” Erryn murmured, very soft. “It ended badly, didn’t it?”

  “He killed her.”

  “My God.” His hands slid quickly across the table, but she pulled hers away before they touched.

  “Please,” she whispered. “I don’t want to cry.”

  “Forgive me. I meant only … Please, go on. I’m sorry.”

  “There ain’t much more. He went crazy that night. I don’t know why, what were different, except something were. We were all screaming—Ma, me, the little ones. I went at him with the water pitcher. If I’d got his head, I might have knocked him out, but he saw me, and so I only broke it on his shoulder. He took it away so fast, like my hands were made of paper.”

  She touched her fingers to her cheek, half consciously. “He gave me this. With the pitcher. What were left on it. When I woke up, he were passed out on the floor, and Ma were dead. The neighbours got the sheriff and they took him away. He got hanged, and we got scattered around to whatever relatives would take us. My aunt Fran took me to live with her in Rochdale. It were another mill town, bigger and dirtier than Darwen. Fran were so good to me, but the mill were horrid. They paid the women so little, we couldn’t hardly get by. It took forever to save enough to get away.”

  “To America.”

  “Yes. Like Fran’s old friend, Susan. She went years before, when she were twenty or so—she and her brother. He had a bit of money from the navy. One day Fran wrote to the Bishop of Halifax, bold as brass, asking about her old family friend, thinking m’appen he’d know what’d become of her. That’s how we found out she were Susan Danner now. She’d made herself a good life, she even had her own inn—a mill girl, just like us. We lived on that for years.”

  She wished he would give her a clue to his thoughts. But he sat very quietly, leaning back in his chair, one long, thin hand wrapped around his wineglass, the other out of sight on his lap. As though he had backed off. As though he did not know what the hell to say. Dear God, the girl’s nothing but factory trash … well, he would not say it, of course not, he would not even let it show. Damn actors, anyway.

  “So,” she said. “That’s where I come from.” She made herself smile, and took another sweet from the plate. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn.” He shifted in his chair, played some more with the wineglass. He looked troubled, but even while she ran the obvious, hurtful reasons for it through her mind, she did not entirely believe them. His unease seemed born of something else, something older and altogether his own.

  He looked up and met her eyes. “Once, many years ago, a friend of mine said to me, ‘There’s a whole lot of different handbaskets a man can go to hell in.’ He said it to be kind, because he’d been through hell and he knew very well I hadn’t, no matter how sorry I felt for myself when I set my mind to it.

  “I don’t know if he was right about the handbaskets. Maybe a little bit. In any case, mine was a gilded one, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. I had anything a child could want, except companionship. I didn’t get much of that. My father was in the army, and mostly gone. My mother was a great lady, and lived the social life expected of her. She kissed me good night from time to time, and told me to be sure to say my prayers. Our tutor was a grand old cove, but he was positively ancient. Our nurse, with whom we spent most of our time, was rather like a brick fence: the protection is nice, but you can’t say much for the conversation. So I went my own way, and before anyone really noticed—even me—I’d turned myself into a considerable misfit. By the time I hit sixteen or thereabouts, my father was in complete despair. I’m sure if he’d believed in changelings, he would have thought the trolls brought me.”

  “Lord save us, why? I think a man’d be pleased to have a son like you.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you to say. But my father was of the old school. God save the king and the rest of you do as you’re told—that sort of thing. There wasn’t much we agreed on. But what finished it was my choice of career. Young men of my rank become military or naval officers. They go into politics. Or they take a sinecure, and live like parasites at the country’s expense—”

  “What’s a sinecure?”

  “A posting where you get paid for doing nothing. Or almost nothing—reading a few reports and signing a few papers, two, three times a year. I could have done that. I could have taken up the law, or maybe even taught classics at Cambridge. But running a theatre? For my life’s work? It was beyond him. It shamed him. It was like a daughter deciding to be a courtesan. Inconceivable.”

  “Didn’t he like the theatre?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he did. He liked a good roast of beef too. That didn’t mean he wanted me in a butcher shop.” He made a small, bemused gesture and leaned his elbows on the table again. “It was all very mad, Sylvie. He came up to London once, to bring me to my senses. Of course, it was much too late. We did nothing but quarrel. By the time I left England, we weren’t speaking at all. We don’t write.” He paused as though to say something more, and then did not.

  “Will you go back, do you think?”

  “Never.” He spoke without anger, without a trace of defiance, but with an absolute finality. Never.

  But, she thought, if he was of high rank, surely there would be land, property, an inheritance? Surely he would go back for that?

  “Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked.

  “An older brother, a younger sister. Both married and living frightfully proper lives.”

  Again he was silent for a time, as if he was considering whether to speak of some matter or not. This time, perhaps, he did.

  “You’ve spoken honestly, Sylvie, so I will do the same. Nearly everyone who knows me thinks I’m doing what young men of the aristocracy traditionally do: they travel abroad for a while, have a few adventures, sow a few wild oats in the colonies, and then go home and take their proper place in the social order. There’s a gentleman in Halifax who thinks the burning of the Grafton Street Theatre was the best thing that could have happened to me; now I’ll settle down and build my fortune. I don’t argue with him, but I mean to have another theatre as soon as I can manage it. That’s where my fortune is, and it’s likely to be a lean one. I get a bit of money every year from my father: even an impossible son can’t be left to starve in the wilds of America. But I don’t expect to inherit much. And I will not, under any circumstances, go back to take my proper place in the social order.

  “So …” His smile was both easy and a trifle sad. “So I am as you see me, Sylvie Bowen, nothing more … and hopefully nothing less.”

  She was left without words, unable to read the implications in his, everything from honesty and honour to a warning that if she were an adventuress she was wasting her time. She could not be glad for what he had lost; she was not sorry he was here to stay. As for his personal handbasket to hell, how gilded it must have been, to think his fortune a lean one with such fine clothes on his body, and gold rings on his hands, and money coming over from England as a matter of course. Money he was simply given. For nothing. For being somebody’s son.

  She had no wish to hurt him, or to sound like a fool, and any response she could think of promised to do the one thing or the other. She made a pretence of remembering the time.

  “Oh, heavens,” she said, “i
t’s getting dark out. Mass must be long over.”

  He pulled a watch out of his pocket and glanced at it briefly. “For some time, I fear,” he said. “Will Madame be more forgiving because of the rain, or more impatient?”

  “Madame is never impatient. Well, almost never.”

  He packed the remaining delicacies into a small box the host had given him and handed it across the table with a smile. “These might do for a bribe.”

  “She’s fasting.”

  “Oh, right. I forgot.”

  “Do you make a habit of offering people bribes?”

  “All the time.”

  “And,” she said, “I suppose you always tell the truth.”

  “Miss Bowen, though it embarrasses me to say so, I am a paragon of honesty and virtue. A veritable walking miracle. After the good Lord made me, he broke the mould.”

  “And a flaming good thing, too. I couldn’t imagine two of you in the world.”

  “Of course not. How would you choose between us?”

  “Oh,” she said, “I’d sit on a park bench, with one of you on one side and one of you on the other, and let you go on about it. Be as good as going to the theatre.”

  Amusement danced in his eyes. He reached both hands to capture hers, and this time she let him.

  “It’s nearly dark,” he murmured, “and everybody out there is running heads-down in the rain. If I were to kiss you in the street, will you promise not to batter me with a wet umbrella?”

  His hands were warm, lean like the rest of him yet surprisingly beautiful, with the perfect, balanced symmetry of a hawk’s wing. She had wanted other men in her life—quite a few of them through the years, always from a distance. She had lain sometimes in her cot and run her own hands across her body, wondering how it would feel to have this man do it, or that one, whoever had caught her attention at the time, because he was nice to her, or handsome, or new in town, or merely because he existed. Sometimes desire was like the wind or the rain, it just came.