To All Appearances a Lady

by Marilyn Bowering

  A family of killer whales sported off the starboard bow, their calling muted and eerie in that muffled world. Then they disappeared, following the channel that I hesitated to risk, and I steered the failing Rose slowly westwards into the D’Arcy Island shallows.

  —

  The Rose had settled nicely at anchor in the cove I had found almost by instinct, and although the fog still filmed the landscape, I was in good spirits, my stomach lined with beef, bread, and coffee, and my hands warming round a mug of hot rum. I knew little of the island near which I sheltered other than that it had no inhabitants now but at one time had served as an isolation station for lepers. In all my time on the coast I had known no one who had set foot on it. Like most sailors I had seen enough leprosy in my travels to want to stay as far away from it as possible. There were still lepers nearby, however, on Bentinck Island, not far from where the pilots boarded inbound ships off Race Rocks. I had never passed by that desolate spot without a shudder of horror. The station was due to be closed once the last inhabitant died, and from what I had heard, that would not be much longer.

  I raised my mug in the direction of the darker air that was the shore of D’Arcy Island, and saluted its ghosts, and drank.

  —

  I have heard men say that a spirit enters a ship like a rat. It travels along the bowline, into the forecastle, and up the mast; or if there is no mast, it finds a perch on any high point. For there is not a ghost that is happy at sea: they long to return to land but have first to complete their undertakings, since it is living men who compel them by the strength of their memories. Not that I had seen any myself, but I knew men who had, and I had walked the deck of the Silverbell all one night to calm a seaman’s fears. A woman had appeared three times on deck, calling for the captain, and it was true that he and many others on board that ship did not survive the voyage, and I had had to write the sad letters home.

  I thought of the rising sun, the singing of birds, and the pale stretch of blue that made up the morning heavens, for I did not like the turn my thoughts had taken, and had learned long ago not to give free rein to them. But as I looked at the shoreline, which was only a shoreline, and raised my mug of rum to my lips, I heard a cracked voice singing, “I’ll be with you in apple blossom time,” and then a laugh.

  I turned my head slowly in the direction of the scent of joss and opium. She was seated on top of the wheelhouse wearing the heavy black cashmere shawl that I had brought back for her from one of my voyages. And she was tapping her pipe out on my teak.

  “Stop it, Fan,” I said angrily, before I had time to think. “I only just had that repaired.”

  She smiled a slow smile and took her time at her work until the pipe was clean. By then I was shaking.

  “Do not be afraid, Robert Lam,” she said. “I am your old friend.”

  “I know who you are,” I said, “but you’re not welcome here. I’ll have no stowaways aboard my boat.”

  She looked around the Rose disdainfully. “Is this your new home?” she asked.

  “You know it is. We did nothing but argue about it at the end.”

  “Then what choice do I have, Robert Lam? I made you a promise, and now I am going to keep it. I have to go where you go.”

  My cup tipped off the rail, fell to the water, and sank as I raised my hands and pressed them against my temples. I closed my eyes, but when I opened them she was still there.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  She looked at me with pity. “How is it that you remember everything except that which is important? You are a very foolish man.”

  That was it. When I looked again, she was gone. I heard the lapping of the water against the Rose’s sides, but no voices, no more of Lam Fan.

  —

  I awoke with a headache. My sleeping bag had drooped over the end of the bunk, and where it touched the floor it was soaking wet. A half inch of water sloshed from side to side as the Rose rocked at anchor. I sat up and looked out the porthole. The fog was still glued to the sky, and, if anything, had thickened since the night before. I put on my wet boots and got up to light the stove. A shimmer of fish scales, risen from the cracks in the flooring, floated on the surface of water in my flooded cabin, and as I splashed my way through to the stores, I bumped into the briefcase the lawyer had thrown on board, which I had stowed beneath my bed. I lifted it up to a shelf to dry, went up to start the bilge pump, came down and made the coffee, and reflected on the hours I would have to stay put and on Fan’s “visit” the night before and what it could have meant. If it was grief that had summoned her, it ran deeper than I knew. And it was not grief but curiosity and the sure knowledge that I was afraid that made me summon my courage, take the key that Fan had given me the night she died, and open the tin box I had carried onboard in my kit bag.

  Still, for a moment, I hesitated as I lifted the lid; for I had remembered a bad night with Fan, and the trouble that had filled my mind at her angry words.

  —

  I had been through the Depression. I had been through the war. I had learned not to probe beneath the surface. Yet, when I saw the diary and flipped open the cover to read on the flyleaf my mother’s name, “India Thackery,” I could not resist looking further. But the diary, after the first half page, proved to be disappointingly blank. I looked back at the flyleaf. On it, in the same handwriting as my mother’s name, was the date “January 1900.” I glanced at the page of writing, but it meant nothing to me.

  There were several yellowed folded papers clipped together inside the diary, and these I unfolded with care. Their edges were powdery, and in the creases the paper fibres were parting. But what was printed there was perfectly clear. My coffee cooled in my cup, my wet feet grew numb as I sat in the Rose and read:

  An Act For The Relief Of India Thackery Haack

  [Assented to first day of January 1900]

  Whereas India Thackery Haack, of the city of Victoria, in the province of British Columbia, wife of Robert Louis Haack, formerly of the said city of Victoria, mining engineer, but now residing in the city of San Francisco, in the state of California, one of the United States of America, has by her petition set forth that on the twenty-ninth day of November one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, she was lawfully married to the said Robert Louis Haack, of the said city of Victoria; that they lived together as husband and wife until November thirtieth of the year one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, when without lawful reason or excuse he deserted her, and has since continued to live apart from her, and has committed acts of adultery; and whereas she has humbly prayed that the said marriage may be dissolved and that she be authorized to marry again and that such further relief may be afforded her as is deemed meet; and whereas she has proved the said allegations of her petition, and it is expedient that the prayer thereof should be granted:

  Therefore Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:—

  1. The said marriage between the said India Thackery Haack and Robert Louis Haack, her husband, is hereby dissolved and shall be henceforth null and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever.

  2. The said India Thackery Haack may at any time hereafter marry any man whom she might lawfully marry in case the said marriage with the said Robert Louis Haack had not been solemnized.

  I sat there, with cold hands, feet, and heart, for several minutes before I could take in what the document said. Growing up as an orphan, not knowing anything of my father, but believing my mother to have been a respectable and ordinary woman, was one thing. Finding out, at this late date, that my mother had married a man who deserted her after one day of marriage, and understanding (since Fan had told me my birth date) that I had been conceived and born out of wedlock, was another. Moreover, Robert Louis Haack was not a Chinese name, nor was mining engineer a Chinese occupation on the west coast of Canada in the late 1900s. Yet I was half-Chinese, and I was named Robert Louis. If Haac
k wasn’t my father, why had India given me his name? And who was my father, and what kind of woman was my mother?

  “I wish I hadn’t asked, Fan,” I said aloud. “Maybe your way, not telling me, was better.” I resented, far more than I had ever thought possible, being a bastard.

  I poured my coffee back into the pot and put it on to heat. I opened the hatch to let in air. I bailed the remaining water out of the cabin and turned off the pump. Then I sat down again at the table and read the next paper. It was a newspaper clipping, fragile as dust, from the British Colonist, Victoria, January 16, 1900.

  Robert Haack Dead

  A Former Resident of the City

  Comes to a Bad

  End

  About 14 months ago, Robert Haack, former member of the Workingmen’s Protective Association, once accused of crookedness in certain fiduciary matters, and connected in this city with instances of rowdiness and ill-fame, was deported to the United States from which he had come.

  The town has recently been astonished to learn that Haack left a wife and some $4,000 of indebtedness behind him. In a short time the ill-omened Haack was heard of at San Francisco, where with his ill-gotten gains he purchased a fifth-rate boardinghouse on the waterfront called the New Swanston House.

  Under Haack’s management, the New Swanston soon became a notorious place of resort for the bad of both sexes and all classes. Occasionally a well-to-do guest was induced to take up his abode there, and on three or four different occasions complaints were heard that guests had been robbed overnight of valuables, though Haack always professed innocence. Indeed he had conceived the strange impression that he had been a friend of the late Scottish poet, Robert Louis Stevenson, with whom he shared Christian names, and would tell anyone who could be compelled to pay attention, that he had once possessed a poem in the poet’s handwriting. One night a stranger put up at the New Swanston, and after depositing with Robert a well-filled purse, got into an argument of a literary nature with his host. The next day the strange guest died suddenly. There were rumours that the man had been poisoned so that Robert might possess himself of the wealth that had been deposited in his unsafe safe. But nothing came of the rumours, except this—the money was never found. Shortly afterwards a man was murdered near the hotel. In a day or two another of the guests showed symptoms of poisoning, but did not die; and the police, becoming satisfied that the proprietor of the New Swanston was a dangerous citizen, gave him forty-eight hours in which to leave town. Robert went to Monterey, but did not stay there long as he was out of money. He then went to Los Angeles where he “put up a job” to slay a man, but the intended victim learned of the plot, which it is not clear that Haack intended to carry out, and the man shot him dead.

  Robert Louis Lam, named after Robert Louis Haack. What’s in a name but history, and this name, my name, meant (among other things) desertion, robbery, and murder. As well (I checked through the clipping to be sure) as a peculiar connection to a dead Scottish poet who also, coincidentally, possessed the same Christian names. I wondered about this husband of my mother’s who had had so few virtues. Could my own father, whoever he was, have been in worse circumstances than the consistently crooked proprietor of the New Swanston?

  I put the clipping down. I checked the weather, which had remained unaltered. I changed my socks and boots and hung the wet socks up to dry. I listened to the creaking of the Rose at anchor, thinking for a moment that I heard light footsteps.

  Without Fan how would I ever learn the answers, for without her I could not even frame the questions. I knew so little. I had almost nothing with which to start. I’d lived my life to this point without knowing about my family, and it had made no difference. For whatever I had become I had made myself. I owed nothing to anyone. And I could not help my name nor who had used it, or misused it, so long ago.

  When you find yourself telling yourself lies, and you are a middle-aged pilot on the road to retirement, sitting out bad weather in a stripped-down troller, with no one to talk to but yourself, and with your conscience uneasy as it unravels neat scenery; and the view through the porthole is a blank, and you wish and don’t wish for your stepmother’s ghost, then if you are to remain the man you’ve made yourself, you change direction. For there is no one saner than a mariner at work, and few less so when he is idle. And if you cannot navigate ahead, you turn around. Or plot a new course, or change destination. You adapt.

  For what matters (I concluded) is not what the past contains, for it is only a threat if you imagine it. Nothing on paper could harm Robert Lam if it was only the facts.

  —

  I spent three hours working on the engine, cleaning the lines, adjusting the spark plugs, checking item by item all the repair work that had been done. When my back ached from bending, and I was covered in more grease than I’d seen since I was an apprentice, I stripped off my clothes and dove off the deck of the Rose into the milky waters of the cove. The cold took my fatigue at once, and I surfaced and dove again to the bottom, where the faint glitter of abalone shell promised bait for fishing.

  But it was not just abalone that I brought up with me. When I cut the shells loose with my knife, I uncovered a spoon. It was nothing valuable, not even silver, and it had an odd looped handle, like on a child’s spoon, but it was big enough to take an adult’s fist through it. I towelled and dressed, put the kettle on to boil, and, with the spoon on the table beside me, sat down to read the last of the papers in Fan’s tin box.

  My mother’s name, India Thackery, was written at the top of another newspaper clipping in Lam Fan’s handwriting, and printed above the headline was the date, January 30, 1900.

  Drowned Woman

  The body of a Caucasian woman has been recovered from the waters off Clover Point. An informant reports that the woman, while out walking, two days ago, seemed to slip on the rocks, whence she fell into the frigid waters of the ocean. Our passerby ran for help. When he returned with a rope and another good Samaritan, the two were able, with some difficulty, to cast the rope out to the woman who had been buoyed up on account of her voluminous skirts. She seemed, our witness said, to understand what was required of her, although they heard her speak no words nor utter any cry for help. It was a calm day, and our rescuers were confident of a happy outcome to the incident. Alas, the woman, in the extremity of her situation, slipped the rope around her shoulders, instead of beneath her arms. When her new friends drew her in and lifted her onto the rocks, they found that the rope had encircled the woman’s neck and that the poor female was quite dead.

  To all appearances, she was a lady.

  Friday is an unlucky day to set to sea. It was the day we’d sailed from Freetown in the Silverbell with thirteen merchant ships in the convoy, and not one of us made it safely past the Canaries. Sparks was playing the piano—”I’ll be seeing you in apple blossom time”—when we went down. And Robert Louis Lam, called “China” behind his back, was a forty-one-year-old second mate.

  I had just left the saloon to visit a sick apprentice when the torpedo struck us in number-five hatch; and the next thing I knew I was in the water. The sea, where oil had spilled, was on fire. The Silverbell was listing but afloat, and men were falling or leaping over the side of the ship into the water. I saw the periscope of the submarine as it came up to take a look at the damage, and I watched the free French escort vessel, coming to our rescue, steaming straight for it.

  I cried out loud, and I cried not for Lam Fan, nor for Sing Yuen who had been the only father I’d known, but for my mother. And when the sub dove and nothing happened, and the Commandant de Boques picked us safely up out of the water, I believed that my long-dead mother had heard me and answered.

  I wanted to call for her again now. I wanted her to save me from unhappiness, from self-doubt, from the empty destiny that seemed to be my fate. I sat at the table with my head in my hands, and the full weight of loneliness, which I had not allowed myself to feel before, descended on my shoulders. I was a fifty-seven-year-old o
rphan. And with the only family I might have had on paper before me.

  And so I turned back to that ending, which should have been a beginning, the only entry in my mother’s diary for 1900, when I, her son, was but a few months old. And I vowed to find out, however I could, what had happened. For if life was unfair, still it had its rules, and a mother did not easily abandon her child. Yet before taking her walk, before venturing out into the January cold, before her accident, my mother had written: “I cannot think that the world will continue to be so cruel. I washed and dressed the baby, kissed him goodbye, and gave him to Lam Fan.”

  ONE

  When navigating the inner waters of British Columbia, it should be constantly borne in mind that many of the minor passages have only been roughly examined; detached boulders from the broken shores and pinnacles of rock are still frequently found. Whenever, therefore, a broad and clear channel which has been surveyed is known to exist, there is no justification in using, without necessity, one of more doubtful character, even if there be some saving in distance.

  BRITISH COLUMBIA PILOT, VOLUME I

  Although the usual route for smaller vessels going into the Strait of Georgia from southern Vancouver Island is by following inshore channels, avoiding the strong tidal streams of Haro Strait, I was taking the main sea lanes: up Haro Strait and thence into Boundary Pass westward of Patos Island. There were several reasons for this. I was still interested, despite my recent discoveries, in the project I had set out in the Rose to do, and I had more chance of sighting whales on my way in the deeper waters. Moreover I knew the coast and was not afraid of the heavy tide rips and eddies that kept some sailors in the less turbulent approaches; and it was safer, in any case, in fog or thick weather, to take the wider passages. Although I would miss out some of the former whaling ports (at Deep Bay and Hornby Island), which I had marked on my map as possible anchorages, I could make up lost time, using the strong tides to assist me, on my journey as a whole. The unscheduled stop at D’Arcy Island had taken a day from my calendar. There was no leeway: I had to be back on the job at the end of the month.