The Halifax Connection

by Marie Jakober

  She leaned against the rail, watching the bluffs along the shore grow distant and ever darker, and the last traces of the city slip away. It had been a grand adventure, her journey with Madame. She could have imagined nothing like it back in England—this landscape almost savage in its beauty; this new and fascinating freedom, limited by Madame’s plans, by Madame’s every wish, but nonetheless real, for even Madame could not command the river. Six weeks, a thousand miles, and everywhere unexpected wonders, not least of them a man who smiled at her.

  It was ending now. Not over, but ending, like the Indian summer. In three days at most they would be back in Halifax, and she would be back at the Den. She did not look forward to it. Halifax she liked well enough, for all that some found it scruffy. The sea was endlessly varied, what little she saw of it; and the fortress town had a hard, cold splendour that seemed to her the stuff of poetry. But Susan Danner’s boarding house was a wearisome and lonely place. It was better than the Lancashire mills, of course it was—no cotton fluff, no smoke, no hideous noise, no dangerous machinery. They had decent food to eat, and as much of it as they wanted. For all of this she was grateful.

  But a servant’s life was bound to her household. She had no life outside except for a few precious hours once a week—too few, so far, for Sylvie to have made friends in the city. Fran, her lifelong friend, was lost to her, and in the Den she had found none. She got on, day by day, but there was no closeness, not even the militant worker comradeship she had shared sometimes in England, which had mostly been impersonal but always intense. It did not help that she was bookish when her fellows were not; that she was new to the work, and had to be shown things, when they were already run off their feet. And then there was her scarred face, all the worse because she had to wear a stupid white bonnet with her hair tied back. Little Annie MacKay, the timid, illiterate scullery maid, who was terrified of everything from thunderstorms to mice—little MacKay would flinch sometimes when she turned and found Sylvie unexpectedly beside her. She would laugh and try to make it nothing, just startlement, but she never met Sylvie’s eyes. There was no hope of friendship there. Dinah Reeve, the housemaid, had a follower and would marry after Christmas; she was interested in absolutely nothing else. Sanders the cook was a proper flaming Baptist, the sort who frowned on every kind of pleasure and never shut up about the Lord. The only man among them, other than the master, was Harry Dobbs. He was twenty-odd and full of himself. He behaved himself under the Danners’ roof, but Sylvie never wanted to meet him on a dark road at night.

  For weeks she had simply lived from day to day. No matter how quickly she learned, it never seemed to be quickly enough. Reeve could whip a sheet around a mattress in seconds, with every corner tucked neatly out of sight. All of them could run up and down the stairs, wipe, carry, scrub, polish, or pack things up faster and more neatly than she could. Miss Susan might well have dismissed her except that it was summertime and workers were hard to find, domestic workers hardest of all. Nobody wanted to be a servant.

  When she was abruptly summoned from her scrub pail to the parlour on a quiet September afternoon, she felt sure it was the end. She was terrified, and almost relieved. Maybe there was something better, somewhere. Maybe.

  But her mistress said nothing to her. She spoke instead to the strange woman who sat in the parlour rocker, dressed entirely in black. The woman looked to be sixty or so, and she squinted as though there was something wrong with her eyes.

  “This is Bowen,” Miss Susan said. “I think she’ll suit.” She introduced the older woman as her sister-in-law, Louise Mallette.

  Louise Mallette seemed decent enough, although she asked a lot of questions. She told Sylvie not to call her M’um but Madame, and she said it differently, with the stress on the last bit, the way the French Acadians did. She knew Sylvie had been in the mills—Miss Susan must have told her—but she wanted to know what sort of work she had done there, and for how long, and why she came to America.

  “There were no more work, Madame. We had to leave or starve.”

  “We?”

  “My aunt and me, Madame.”

  “Ah, yes. Frances. My sister-in-law mentioned her. They were friends once, many years back. Your aunt died in Nassau, I understand. Because the American Rebels took your ship and left you there.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “A truly villainous business, this war. I’m told you can read, lass.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “You went to school, then?”

  “Only for two years, Madame. But my aunt were always borrowing things for us to read. And there were classes sometimes in the Mechanics Hall, in Rochdale. I went to those when I could.”

  The woman handed her a small book, the meditations of a saint with a peculiar, European-sounding name. She read aloud as she was asked, losing her nervousness almost at once in the simple pleasure of the words, stumbling over a few that were difficult, but only a few. It was religious writing, different from anything she had heard in church, or anywhere else. She wondered if it might be Papist.

  They let her read quite a long bit, and she suspected she was being tested in some way. Perhaps she was supposed to protest. Sanders would, no doubt. Sanders would drop a Papist book quicker than a hot coal, before anything inside could jump out and gobble up her soul.

  “Thank you, that will do,” Madame said at last. “You read well. Have you ever served as a lady’s maid?”

  “No, Madame.”

  “Well, you’re obviously intelligent, and my sister-in-law tells me you’re well behaved. She’s offered me your services for a journey to St. Catharines, in the West. My sight is very poor. You’ll have to attend me day and night, take care of my clothing and possessions, look after the travel arrangements, everything. And you’ll have to read to me every day; I have few other comforts. Do you suppose you can do that?”

  Could she do that? Could she eat strawberries and cream?

  “Yes, Madame.”

  “Well, that’s settled, then,” Miss Susan said. “You may return to your duties.”

  It felt like a miracle even then. St. Catharines. It was a long way off; she was not sure how far, but a long way. She would see oh so many wonders, ride on trains and riverboats, meet all manner of fascinating strangers.

  “No, you won’t,” Reeve told her scornfully when they gathered for their supper in the kitchen. “You’ll be running and fetching for the old biddy day and night. My sister was a lady’s maid for most of a year. Said it was the worst year of her life. Said she’d rather be in the scullery, at least the potatoes didn’t call her names.”

  “She’s a Papist, too,” Sanders added, “that Miss Louise. She’ll turn you if she can. Mark my words, girl, she’ll turn you from the Lord, same as she was turned by that awful man she married.”

  “What awful man?” Sylvie asked. “Who did she marry, then?”

  “Ship’s mate on some scruffy Yankee freighter,” Harry Dobbs said. “A handsome devil, apparently, but a Frenchie, and a real hellion. She went off with him one night just like a milkmaid, got herself taken into the Catholic Church, and married him before the sun come up.”

  Reeve nodded. “All he wanted was her father’s money, and when he saw he wasn’t to get any, he left. And got himself sunk. Was years until her father talked to her again. Then he up and died and left her a fortune.”

  “She’s got a nice house,” MacKay offered timidly. “On South Park Road. I saw it once, walking by. It’s all brick.”

  “Oh, Miss Louise lives fancy.” Sanders finished off a last chunk of stew and wiped her mouth. She was tall and sturdy. She would have been a handsome woman except that she always seemed to be angry about something. “She got servants of her own, too. So why’s she coming here wanting one of ours?”

  “Her maid begged not to go,” Sylvie said. “Her son’s awful sick.”

  “And did the missus say why she picked you?”

  “She said I could be easiest spared.”

/>   “Well.” Sanders looked at her and then at the others, one by one. “That’s right fair, ain’t it? Them as been here the longest and works the hardest gets to stay and work harder, and this little snippet goes traipsing all over the country.”

  It was like a punch bowl spilled on the table. Dobbs looked maliciously amused. MacKay lowered her chin almost to her chest, the way she did whenever she heard what she wished she had not.

  “No,” Sylvie said grimly. “It ain’t fair. Not much be fair that I’ve noticed. But I were nine when I started in the cotton mills, and I been working ever since. So don’t act like you got a monopoly on it, Sanders. You don’t.”

  “Watch yourself, girl. I’ll take no lip from a lady’s maid no more than I’ll take it from anyone else.”

  Sylvie said nothing further. Sanders was the cook and therefore the senior, the one in charge, the same as a foreman in a factory. The sort who could say most anything they pleased, and then nail you to a wall if you answered back.

  Why don’t you just go bugger yourself, Emma Sanders? Someday, she thought, she would really like to say it, right into the woman’s hard, self-righteous face. Only Fran had always said there was no purpose in such things. When you really needed to do it, you did not dare; and by the time you could dare, it hardly mattered anymore, it was all behind you.

  There was no more talk that night about her change in fortune, at least not in her presence. But in the days that followed, she felt more distant from her fellows than ever. She had been rewarded for being the least valuable member of the household, and they resented it. She was going to be a personal maid, one of those snotty creatures who always had the lady’s ear, who got the lady’s cast-off dresses, who never had to dirty her hands, who thought she was better than her peers.

  They did not seem to care that it came about by sheer chance. They did not seem to notice that it was temporary, that it would never happen again, that only a blind woman would have a body servant with Sylvie Bowen’s face. She had been given something wonderful and they had been passed over, and they resented it.

  How would it be now, she wondered, when she came back? She was finally healthy. She had lost the last traces of her mill-town cough and gained several pounds; she did not look like a rake handle anymore. There was colour in her cheeks and sparkle in her hair. She had thrived like a young deer on the sunshine and the restful days. Would that seem unfair too?

  The deck was almost deserted. A cold wind had come up in the northwest, and one by one the passengers drifted away. There had only been a handful. According to Madame, most who made this journey were businessmen. They travelled often; they had seen it all before. The moment they were on board, she said, they would claim their staterooms, or drop a hat or a handkerchief on a berth in the lower level, and settle down to sample the offerings of the bar.

  But even those who had come out to watch the departure, or to enjoy a smoke in the last of the evening’s light, were gone now. Sylvie remained. She loved being here, but mostly she hoped that Erryn might come to join her. He had seemed so happy yesterday, like a boy on a picnic. Maybe it was because of her. Or maybe it was only because he was going home. She wondered how she could possibly know. She wondered how a woman ever knew, with men—if there were signs you could identify and depend on, or if it was like religion: one day something changed inside you and afterwards you simply believed.

  Erryn did not come. The night turned pitch-black; the only light on the deck came through the windows of the grand saloon. It was a gorgeous place, she could see as much even from the outside. Persian carpets as fine as Miss Susan’s, and cut glass chandeliers all dazzling with lights. Men in fancy waistcoats and gold watches sitting in the stuffed chairs with their legs crossed, reading the newspapers. A handful of women, not one of them alone. Nary a sign of Erryn Shaw.

  At least he was going back to Halifax too. It would not be so dreary, being at the Den, if he were nearby, if he still remained her friend. But would he, being a gentleman’s son like he was and she a scrub maid? Sometimes she laughed at herself, bitterly, because the notion seemed so absurd. Other times … other times she would think: Maybe. Maybe he had meant the things he said. Maybe he would go on meaning them, at least for a little while.

  She would have given almost anything to talk with Fran, and yet she knew exactly what Fran would say. Fran would brush her hair from her face and tell her there was no way to know, no way to be certain of anything. Not with human passions, not with love. That was why everybody kept writing poetry about it—because no matter how much they had said already, they had not said half.

  She sighed and finally turned to go, and almost ran into him in the passageway. There was barely any light at all, and no other people, just a beanpole shadow dead in front of her and then his laughter. “Sylvie, my heart, is that you?” In the next breath his arms were around her, no one to see, the cabin wall sheltering them at one side and the great round paddle box at the other. His arms hard around her and kisses to melt her bones.

  “You’ll not believe who’s on this boat,” he said when he stopped to speak at all. “We have a travelling German pianist. We have seven members of the glee club from McGill College. We have the esteemed Erryn Shaw, flautist and stage manager extraordinaire, who has just spent the last hour arranging for the biggest, most glorious party to ever brighten the windows of Richelieu’s bedtime express. By tomorrow, Miss Sylvie Bowen, I give you my word, I shall have the formidable Madame Louise eating out of my hand!”

  He was wrong, but only by some hours. Madame was ready to eat from his hand well before midnight.

  The Richelieu Steamship Company offered very fine service on its nightly runs between Quebec and Montreal. Those who travelled first class could travel in the height of luxury; they could eat a king’s feast off burnished silver, drink the most expensive imported spirits from crystal glassware, and sleep on pressed linen in a stateroom with gilded knobs on the doors. But they could not reserve anything in advance. Thus, even the Saguenay’s most elite passengers had to stand in line on the quay, in rain or wind or burning sun, to be assured of obtaining a stateroom at all.

  The businessmen could send some lowly clerk to hold a place for them, and wealthy residents could send a servant. But strangers and tourists had no choice except to turn up early and wait like any ordinary chap.

  “It is appalling. It is absolutely uncivilized.” The speaker was a Frenchman sitting directly at Erryn’s left, at one of the long supper tables lit with candles where, just now, a profusion of edibles were being offered: beefsteak braised in champagne, roast venison, roguet canellas, braised carrots, potatoes, turnip, chicken pie. The Frenchman had introduced himself as the Baron Pierre Laurent de St. Denis, which may or may not have been the truth; barons and dukes and counts of all sorts turned up fairly often in North America, many of them more familiar with the inside of a jail than the inside of a castle. But in any case, the man was well educated. He spoke flawless English, with only a small accent, the occasional “is” sliding into “ees.” Montreal was in the French part of North America, he said; he had expected better.

  “Well,” someone offered, with an irony the Frenchman altogether missed, “the English have had their hands on it for a hundred years.”

  Across the table, Madame Louise murmured something to Sylvie, who bent her head to listen. In the candlelight, with her hair hanging loose about her face, the scars were barely noticeable. Even in good light Erryn noticed them less and less—or, more correctly, he noticed them always differently, seeing them at times with a shock of recognition and dismay, and at other times barely seeing them at all. They had never robbed her of her prettiness and grace, not even the first time. Now they were becoming simply part of her, a sad part, yes, but more and more peripheral, like a crippled finger or big feet. An imperfection. Who was he, great bony birdlike makeshift that he was, to mind an imperfection when he had so many?

  His gaze, he feared, was becoming obvious. He turned back to th
e Frenchman, who was still talking with great energy and enthusiasm to his other near companions.

  “And now this matter we read of in the papers, this … this confederation. A big editorial today in your Herald. ‘The time is now,’ it says, in letters this high.” He held up his hands a foot apart. “I do not understand it. You want to make a country here? Out of all this bush?”

  It was lovely to watch, the way every male head in reach of his voice turned and stared at him. The way Madame Louise smiled.

  “But why not, m’sieu?” she said. “What is wrong with bush?”

  “Oh, nothing, madame, nothing! It is very fine. I have hunted, I have fished, I have sailed all those Great Lakes. C’était merveilleux. But it is so empty. You are so … comment dit-on? … so scattered, yes? There is a city, and then there is nothing for a hundred miles, and then there is a town, and then there is nothing again. Your Nova Scotia is so far away you cannot even get there except by going through the United States—”

  “Well, really,” said the man at his left.

  “Oh, I understand you may take a freighter, and arrive in a month or so. Or you may take a stagecoach and arrive in a fortnight, with all your bones rearranged. That is life in the colonies. I quite understand. But how this can make a country, or why you would even want to attempt it—I confess, mes amis, it is quite beyond me.”

  Fewer than twenty of the Saguenay’s hundred and eighty passengers were women. One of them was a certain Mrs. Foster from St. John, New Brunswick, a city that had almost as many Grey Tories as Halifax. She was easily fifty, wearing impressively fine silks and a small fortune in rings.

  “You have not been paying attention to the war, then,” she said.

  “The war?” St. Denis murmured. “You mean the American war, yes?”

  “Yes. When the Yankees are all kicked out of the South, where do you think they will come looking for more territory?”

  “Or rather,” suggested another, “when they kick the Rebels out, which is far more likely, and they’re stronger than ever, with a good army at hand and nothing more for it to do, our few scattered colonies might look a little tempting. Do you not think, sir, that an established nation, however bushy it might be, would be somewhat more secure?”