The Halifax Connection

by Marie Jakober

  “He died, couple of years back. Drowned in a flood.”

  “Oh. I’m very sorry.”

  “Yeah, so am I. Was the saddest day of my life. You’re English, right? That’s what Sanders says. She calls you that little English snippet.”

  It sounded funny, second-hand. Sylvie giggled. “She’s a bleeding ninny, that one. But yes, I’m English, from Lancashire. I were in the cotton mills, before.”

  “Was it awful? We’ve got a bunch of mills in Lowell, across the border in Massachusetts. A lot of the neighbour girls went to work there. Some seemed to like it well enough. They’d made a bit of money, they said, and now they could get married with something of their own. Some couldn’t stand it and said they’d rather starve. A few got real sick. I’d’ve gone myself, I expect, but I couldn’t leave the boys.”

  “It were pretty bad,” Sylvie said. “The noise were enough to kill you all by itself. The cotton fluff gets into your lungs and rots them. People died from it. And they got hurt from the machinery too, sometimes killed. We didn’t get paid much, either—not the women, anyway. I guess it’s better in the States.”

  “Better, maybe,” Aggie said. “But nothing what it should be. Nobody treats working people fair.”

  It was late and they were tired. They snuggled into their beds, but they went on whispering for another ten or fifteen minutes, easily, comfortably, as if they had known each other for years. Then, quite suddenly, after a small break in their talk, Sylvie heard a quiet snore coming from the other bed.

  She pulled her blankets up snug and nestled closer to MacKay for warmth … and thought of Erryn, instantly, fiercely—the warmth of him wrapped against her, the scent of him, the glorious animal aliveness that she could never stop looking at, never stop wanting to stroke. It was like a flash of fire, remembering, but on its heels came the other memories, the search boats and the icy river, the thin body lying drunk with fever, carried down the pier to a waiting hack that turned and vanished in the rain.

  Please God, let him live, that’s all I ask. Nothing else, not to touch him ever again, or to have him for my friend, nothing, just his life, please, please, please, just his life …

  November came down hard along the coast in the fall of ’63. Grey winds howled in from the sea, rattling windows and spinning dirt from the unpaved streets into bent human faces. Grey sheets of rain turned the same streets to mud, and hammered all night on the roofs, until every room in the Den felt as damp and icy as a cave. There was more work to do than ever, for everything seemed to get dirtier, and nothing ever seemed to get dry.

  But once every week there was an afternoon or an evening at Madame Louise’s fine old house on South Park Road. It was warm there, with a big fire in the hearth, and always, when she came to read, Madame’s housemaid would bring them a steaming pitcher of hot chocolate and a plate of tiny, delicious sandwiches. Sylvie never missed a visit, even when the weather turned cold and she had to walk ankle deep through snow.

  It was a fortnight or so after their return from the West when Madame brought up the subject of Erryn Shaw. It was not a conversation Sylvie was expecting, for Madame knew little of what had happened on the Saguenay. She had been sound asleep in her berth when Sylvie finally left Erryn’s side and slipped back to the ladies’ cabin. After the ladies were wakened and dressed, the mate came to tell them there had been an incident on board the previous night and one of the passengers had been injured. He would be taken off immediately upon docking, the mate said, but all the passengers must remain in their cabins until the police could be summoned. They would undoubtedly want to question the gentlemen and the passengers in steerage. There would, of course, be no need to disturb the ladies. He apologized for the delay, assured them there was no cause whatever for concern, bowed politely, and left.

  Sylvie did whatever Madame asked of her through the morning, and otherwise sat exhausted and numb, barely hearing the whispers and rumours spreading through the cabin. She had no doubt the police would send for her, or maybe even question her here, in front of everyone. Either way, Madame would know. And then anything might follow: judgments and accusations, complaints to Miss Susan, perhaps dismissal …

  But it proved to be as the mate said: no one disturbed the ladies. Perhaps the officers were grateful to her. She had, after all, saved a passenger’s life, a blessing in itself, and one that would spare the Richelieu Steamship Company a good deal of trouble. Or perhaps this was simply how things were done in the world of ladies. Perhaps a lady’s personal servant was judged respectable in a way that factory hands and chambermaids were not, and therefore given the benefit of the doubt. A mere indiscretion, surely; we’ll say no more about it.

  And so she was caught off guard when, two weeks after their return to Halifax, Madame brought up the matter of Erryn Shaw. It was a melancholy November afternoon. The entire coastline was draped in fog, and every landmark had vanished from the streets, even the Citadel. On Madame’s mantel, beside a statue of the Virgin Mary, a candle burned day and night, an offering for all who were at sea. It was on a day like this, thirty-seven years before, that her husband and his shipmates had gone down off Sable Island.

  Madame spoke without even looking up from the piano. She would do that sometimes, come at you from your blind side, like a guilty conscience. “I wonder about that young man from the steamer. Mr. Shaw. It was dreadful what happened to him. Do you suppose he’s all right?”

  Sylvie held her voice carefully even. “I hope so.”

  “Yes.” Madame paused to rub the back of her hand, slowly, the way she did when it hurt a lot or when she was troubled by something. “You knew him before, lass, didn’t you?”

  “Before?” Sylvie whispered.

  “Before we boarded the Saguenay. Oh, don’t be silly now and deny it. I may be losing my eyesight, but there’s nothing wrong with my wits. It was plain you fancied him—you scarcely looked at anything else all evening. And I will grant you, he was a charming man. But you’re a sensible lass, Sylvie Bowen, not the sort to turn all starry-eyed over a total stranger simply because he said a few clever things at table and played a fine flute. Not the sort to be brooding as you are, so much that my sister-in-law has asked me what happened on the journey, that you came back so troubled. Did you think no one noticed?”

  Sylvie said nothing and Madame went on. “You are concerned about Mr. Shaw, I think, and although you are a kind lass, as well as sensible, I think you are more concerned than kindness can account for. So I have no choice: I must conclude that you knew the young man already.”

  Madame did not frame it as a question and yet Sylvie knew she was expected to answer. She had no idea what to say. There was scarcely anything a mistress hated worse from a servant than a lie, even when the question asked was none of her flaming business. But if Sylvie told the truth, would it mean no more visits, no more borrowed books? Would yet another small sliver of hope in her life be snatched away?

  She had never known Madame to be cruel. Fussy on occasion, silly about the small things only rich people could afford to be silly about, but never cruel, not in all the six weeks they had spent together. That had to count for something.

  “Yes,” Sylvie said. “I knew him a little. We met one day while you were in church. He were a stranger in the city, just like me. He came and spoke to me. He were always kind and polite. I saw no harm in it.”

  “We never do,” Madame said. “Never, until it’s much too late.”

  “No harm came of it, Madame.”

  “You grew fond of him, lass, and there was harm enough. You’re troubled now, and your mind is not always on your duties.”

  “I’m sorry, Madame.”

  “Easy, lass. I am not judging you for it. But you must understand—surely you understand, my dear?—that you cannot allow yourself any … hopes … in regards to a man like Mr. Shaw?”

  “I don’t have any hopes, Madame.”

  “Well, that’s good, then, if it’s true.” The old woman’s fingers
tinkered with the keys, searched, slid softly into a melody. “It’s safer to sail full rigged into a hurricane, Sylvie Bowen, than to love a man who is not of your station.”

  “Yes, Madame.” Sylvie wondered how much the woman’s words were rooted in her own experience. She dared not ask, of course, and Madame would never say.

  But as for coming to the big house on South Park to read, and borrowing Madame’s books, her fears proved unfounded. Madame invited her to come again as usual. Then, three days later, a small story appeared in the Acadian Recorder: HALIFAX MAN ATTACKED ON STEAMER. It was a brief account, probably copied from a Montreal paper, but it had the one piece of information she longed for: Mr. Shaw is in hospital in Quebec, and is said to be recovering from his injuries.

  He had made it. She quietly tucked the knowledge away and savoured it against the gathering winter. He was alive, and would be well again, and that was hope enough.

  Barrington was a respectable street, much favoured by those who wished to remain close to the shipping and business heart of the city and yet keep their distance from both the waterfront and the despised upper streets around the Citadel. The owners of the Den took full advantage of this fact, maintaining the boarding house as a clean, well-ordered, and reputable residence. Liquor could be ordered at meals and in the sitting room, but those who drank were expected to behave with the dignity of guests in a private home. If they did not, they were asked to leave, something the Danners could do without hesitation, as twenty others were always waiting to get in.

  Some boarders were transients, coming and going so quickly that Sylvie barely learned their names. Others had been there for months or even years. Most were ordinary people with good jobs, the sort who could afford the place but were not rich: tradesmen, clerks, a chemist from Mott’s Drug Store, a teacher from the National School. Sometimes, if a ship came in when the good hotels were full, they might get anyone—blockade-runner captains, high-ranking officials from England or the United States, European aristocrats travelling for pleasure. And of course, among both the regulars and the transients alike, there were always American Southerners.

  Sylvie did not have much contact with them, but Aggie Breault did. As housemaid, Aggie served the boarders’ table and tended the sitting room where they spent most of their free time. Few of the Southerners had work, and all of them seemed to find the Nova Scotia weather abominably cold. Among them were two married couples, the Warners, who were very young, and the Mattisons, who had a fifteen-year-old daughter.

  “The men go out drinking or plotting or whatever,” Aggie told her. “The women just sit. Half of me feels so sorry for them I could cry, and half of me wants to take them and knock their heads together.”

  The two servants were down in the ice house, a cellar-like room below the basement level where perishable foods were kept on great blocks of ice. Every Saturday it was their job to clean it. The food was carefully moved onto shelves; the old ice was taken away; the floor and the drainage pipes were scrubbed spotless. It was a chilly, bitterly unpleasant task, but now it had a side Sylvie treasured: she and Aggie could talk together freely. And talk they did.

  “They just sit,” Aggie said again. “Even young Miss Marianne. When I was her age, the only way you could have kept me in a chair for a whole afternoon would’ve been to tie me there. They keep asking for more coal and more hot tea. It’s all I can do sometimes not to tell them, for God’s sake, go do something. Anything. Go outside and walk. Buy a pair of skates. Take up charity. Just get out of those damn chairs—you’ll feel better.”

  “Is it because they’re strangers here, do you think?”

  “Oh, partly. They don’t like Halifax. I overheard them once talking about what a dirty place it was, dirty and common, you had to scratch to find two decent houses in a city block, and there was no society to speak of—”

  “Where on earth are they from, then?”

  “Charleston, the one who was complaining.”

  “Where is that?”

  “South Carolina. Deep South. Lots of money, lots of slaves. I’ve never been there, but I know some folks who have. They say it’s got places as fancy as anything in New York. I suppose their ladies would look down their noses at most anything. But that ain’t all of it. I think they …” Aggie paused in her scrubbing and looked up. “One of them asked me right out once, where were our Negroes? She’d heard there were lots of Negroes here, why on earth was a white woman cleaning out a grate?”

  “Good thing she can’t see us down here. She’d faint dead away.”

  Aggie laughed. “I think they spend all their time in that room because they’re ladies, that’s what I think. Because Halifax is grubby and it’s cold outside, sure, but mostly because they’re ladies. Because a lady is supposed to be idle. I mean, all rich folks like it easy, but having it easy ain’t the same as doing nothing. Doing nothing … to tell you the truth, Sylvie, I think doing nothing day after day would be miserable hard.”

  “Well,” Sylvie said, “I guess it depends how much nothing you mean by nothing. Those women can read all the books they want. They can learn about the whole world if they fancy it. They can play music. They can do a whole lot of things I’d like to do.”

  “And then what? What do you do with a mess of learning if there’s nowhere they’ll let you use it? A Yankee lady can educate herself and work at most anything. Some will call her names for it, and a lot of men won’t touch her with a big long pole, but if she’s willing to put up with the nonsense, she can do it. A Southern lady can’t, less’n she moves north.”

  Sylvie shook her head. She had always known that rich and powerful people built walls and fences around each other, the same as they built them around the poor—thousands of musts and can’ts and dare nots. What she had never understood was why rich people put up with it. With so many resources at hand—schooling and money and knowledge of the world—why didn’t more of them just say bugger it and walk away? The powerless had to do as they were told or starve. Surely the powerful could simply walk away. I don’t want to live like this, and you can’t make me.

  Or did it get into your blood, being up there at the top? Making the rules, even if those rules bound you as well, because of how it felt inside to make them? Maybe it changed you so you couldn’t walk away; you couldn’t ask yourself, What am I doing this for? You were doing it to be you.

  Was that how it worked? she wondered. Was that how it came to a war in the States? Because owning a slave was more than just owning some property, however valuable; it was being a certain kind of person?

  “Maybe you’re right, Aggie,” she said, “but I’d still get myself something to read.”

  “A body can’t read all day long.”

  “I could give it a good try.”

  “Well, you’re bookish. That’s what Sanders says, anyway. Me, I like to be up and doing. You about done with that pipe?”

  “Yes.” Slowly, Sylvie got to her feet. She was cold all through, and thoroughly grateful that, when they finished here, they would get to have some hot tea in a hot kitchen.

  “Aggie, when you said the men go out to plot, what did you mean?”

  “The men? Oh, those men. They’re Confederate agents, most of them.”

  “You means spies?”

  “And everything else. Weapons buyers, couriers, people to preach the Rebel gospel and raise money for the cause. Snoops to keep track of who comes and who goes, and to tell their masters what everybody thinks. Out-and-out plotters too, trying to make trouble between the States and England. They’ve all got their noses into something.”

  “I thought a lot of them were refugees.”

  “That isn’t going to stop them from plotting.”

  “I suppose you don’t like them much,” Sylvie ventured, a bit uncertainly. “You being from the North, I mean.”

  “I can’t think of one blamed reason why I should,” Aggie replied. “Can you?”

  “No. Nary a one.”

  Aggie grin
ned, a big, warm grin, as comradely as a hug. “Well then, Sylvie Bowen, except for being bookish, I think you and I have a great deal in common.”

  So the last of autumn passed, and winter came in with gales and fog and finally snow. On the twelfth of December, Madame Louise had her fifty-fifth birthday, and the Danners invited her to dinner.

  One might have thought it was a fairly ordinary thing, having an aging relative over to dinner. But no; for three days running the Den was turned all but upside down. In the Danners’ personal quarters, all the furniture was moved and all the carpets were cleaned. Every painting on the walls was taken down and the heavy frames were carefully dusted. Every square inch of mahogany and oak was waxed until it shone; every ornament and piece of bric-a-brac was cleaned and polished—and there were, Aggie said, at least two million of them. The best china, already spotless, was taken out and washed again.

  God knew Madame was a fine lady and wanted things done right, but this was topping it like royalty. Besides, the poor dear thing could hardly see. This was for the other guests, Sylvie decided, for the Orton and Scott kinfolk; perhaps even for Jack Danner’s brother, William.

  It was William who had moved the family up; this Sylvie had learned from servant gossip when she first arrived. The eldest son of a small merchant, Will Danner made money and powerful friends as a lawyer. He turned his earnings into a fortune through lucky investments, and won the hand of a Halifax beauty named Mary Scott—the daughter of shipping magnate David Scott; the sister of Louise Mallette; and the first cousin of yet another prominent lawyer and pillar of society, James Orton.

  It was for them, all this fuss, but even for them it seemed too much. Polishing silver without a mark on it? Washing immaculate china?

  “What are we doing this for?” she whispered at one point to Aggie Breault. “They don’t even need china. The place is so clean they could eat off the furniture.”

  “You haven’t had much to do with high folk, have you?”

  “Nothing at all,” she said, and then thought of Erryn. Well, maybe a little.