To All Appearances a Lady

by Marilyn Bowering

  I have no answer to that, and so I say, instead, to myself, “Get hold of yourself, Robert Lam. Get hold.”

  I take the Chinese coin from my pocket. It shines dully. I lift it to throw it out into the water, for it has brought me no luck, but it slips between my fingers.

  When I bend down to search for it, I find instead a glistening fist-sized object in the grass. It is a whale’s eardrum. And so, naturally, I hold it to the side of my head to listen.

  —

  The gambling debt. The fine for drunkenness. The workingmen’s association blacklist. Robert Haack was back where he had started some months earlier. At home in the Johnson Street ravine, with the companionship of his chastened dog, Charlie, and recently shamed in front of the woman he loved.

  It was love he now thought about. For in that worst of all moments, when he’d been seen with his hand thrust up a dog’s anus, he had known that he and India belonged together and never should part. There had been a shock, a physical jolt, as if love had progressed beyond their control in spite of his absence. It was chemistry run wild, irrational, unstoppable.

  And he was certain that what he’d felt, she’d felt. And he did not want it to stop. He wanted to find her and ask her to marry him. He wanted a home, a family. He wanted to work and be happy. He wanted to take her with him to a new life in San Francisco. He wanted his life to turn out well, as his mother (the teacher) had told him it would. He wanted a happy ending.

  So what was he to do about it?

  Robert shook out the piece of canvas he had held over himself and Charlie to keep off the rain. He spread the canvas on the ground to dry. Charlie at once sank down upon it.

  Robert Haack sighed. Somehow he had to straighten out his life. He had to show India he was the man she thought he was. Then he could go to her with something to offer. Not empty-handed like this, hungry like this, soaking wet and on the verge of a cold. With his clothes in rags and his hair unkempt. Not like a beggar.

  He took off his hat and began to swat at the flies, which had risen from the dust the instant the rain had stopped. There were problems to be solved. There were difficulties to overcome. There was the matter of money, for instance.

  Slowly, Haack let the thought that had been in his mind all along rise to the surface. The seed that Smiling Jimmy had planted had finally germinated. Time and distance had done it. Plus the need for money. And the need for love. There was a way, if he were willing to risk it. Smiling Jimmy had made an offer to go into business.

  But no, no, no. It was impossible. There was his conscience to deal with. There were promises to his mother and others. There was Charlie to consider.

  Charlie rose unsteadily to her feet and slurped at Robert Haack’s face. He had seen her grow weaker. He had no money with which to feed her. A man and his dog. The bond between them. He remembered Smiling Jimmy’s face as he’d kicked at Charlie’s belly. After Charlie had bitten him.

  No. He could not do it. No.

  And wouldn’t the risk be too great? But if he didn’t risk it? Were his dreams to end here, like this? Besides, India was sure to understand once he’d given his reasons. And it wasn’t her opium factory anyway; it belonged to Sing Yuen.

  And so Robert Haack left the Johnson Street ravine behind, and also left behind (for obvious reasons) his dog Charlie, and went to call on Smiling Jimmy. For it was clear to Haack that he needed a partner. For while he could gather intelligence, such as the timing of opium shipments, the speed of manufacture of the raw material, the details of the Tai June defences, he knew nothing about the considerable undertaking of distributing and selling the drug. And there was loading to do, and transporting to a suitable beach, and finding a boat and crew—not to mention an ideal hiding place—and there was navigating the straits at night. These matters, Haack thought, could best be handled by Smiling Jimmy, a former skipper himself, who had run up and down the coast in all manner of ships. Whose idea it had been in the first place.

  And so, suppressing the counterarguments, most of them to do with his feelings, Robert set out for the Dallas Hotel where Jimmy lived.

  Thus, as it had to, the enterprise advanced. A decision balked at on a mountaintop but taken because of love, became timetables and schedules, movements of guards, availability of wagons, trustworthiness of stevedores. It acquired a shape and momentum, a force of its own.

  Haack and Jimmy met in the Metropolitan, where Robert lived once again (thanks to a loan from his partner), and worked on their plans. Or they met at the Dallas Hotel, and drank at the bar, with not a word exchanged between them as to import-export. Or sat outside on the hotel’s benches, while the sun, pale as a handkerchief, suffused the sky then shrank, and rain spattered down like paint on the bathing pavilion.

  New brides gazed out at them from smart bay windows, and new husbands polished windowsills with brand-new shirtsleeves. And if Jimmy and Haack didn’t become close friends, well, they grew used to each other, and even Charlie learned to let Jimmy pet her.

  Spring. As it changed to summer. And the weather settled.

  While Robert Haack watched the Tai June factory from morning till night, and saw India arrive each day at noon and depart at six. And wondered what she was thinking. And wondered if she were thinking of him. And daydreamed.

  While Smiling Jimmy took care of his share of the work. He gathered up charts. He found a boat, and a crew who, if they had known where the job would take them, would have refused it. He arranged for sale and distribution of the drug in the States.

  In short, all was done that had to be done, and the date for the robbery of the Tai June factory was selected and marked.

  Calendar time. Pocket-watch time. While the sun went up and down like a martinet. And there was nothing to do but wait.

  And talk.

  And so Robert Haack, destined to speak when he shouldn’t, and to remain silent when it was vital he speak, told Jimmy about his love for India. How they had met, where they had walked, what they had done. What his plans were for her. The whole kit and caboodle of the relationship.

  “But what,” asked Jimmy, not unintelligently, “does a woman like that see in you?”

  Robert was taken aback. It hadn’t occurred to him quite that way. “Why, Jimmy,” he answered, “it’s not the seeing that counts, it’s the feeling. We’re like two halves of a peach. I don’t know why it’s so, but we fit.”

  “Oh,” said Jimmy, “so it’s like that!”

  “No, no,” said Robert. “I mean, she’d do whatever I wanted, but you don’t ask a woman like that. Not without marrying her, anyway. Aw, it’s personal, Jim. I can’t say it, even to you.” And Robert Haack blushed.

  “She’d do anything, you say? You’re sure she feels like that?”

  “I’d stake my life on it,” Robert Haack said.

  Which was a mistake. For there are some words that, once said, can’t be taken back. Not when men have to trust each other. Not when a man’s word is his bond. Not when what is said is what you want to be true.

  And who could blame Robert Haack? He had said no more than any man might.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Jimmy a few days later, less than a week before the planned robbery, “if things are as you say they are with your young lady, and certainly I’ve no reason to doubt it, in fact if I had any doubts at all we’d not be partners, I’ve been thinking, I say, that we can simplify our project.”

  “What do you mean, Jim?” asked Haack uncertainly. “We’ve got it all worked out now, there isn’t anything more to do.” He was rather hoping to avoid the subject of India. He feared he had been indiscreet.

  “You can always make improvements, my friend Robert,” said Jimmy Carroll. “That’s one thing you learn with experience. Experience, as they say, is the best teacher, and experience is telling me there’s an important factor here we’ve missed.

  “Let’s say,” he continued, ignoring Robert’s glum appearance, “that we didn’t have to break into the factory at all. That we
could walk up plain as you like and unlock the door. Wouldn’t that be safer? Wouldn’t that be the sensible course to take, if we had the choice? Why be caught in a robbery when all we have to do is borrow some keys? See what I mean?”

  “I’m not sure that I do, Jim,” said Robert carefully. He was examining a sheaf of drawings—location of locks and bars on windows, schedule of guards—as if it were the first time he’d come upon them.

  “You could,” said Jimmy suggestively, “just take them.”

  “I’m sorry, Jim,” said Robert, “I still don’t see…”

  “Don’t be stupid, man,” said Jimmy impatiently. “Go to see her, take her out to eat, take her to bed. Whatever is necessary. Just bring back the keys!”

  “Oh, no!” said Robert in a thin, shocked voice. “I couldn’t do that! It wouldn’t be right! She trusts me! She thinks I’m her friend!”

  “Friend be damned,” said Jimmy, “you said it was more than that.”

  “Well, it is,” said Robert.

  “Then what’s the problem, boy?” asked Jimmy, squeezing Haack by the shoulder. “You said she wouldn’t let you down. She’d do anything you wanted, you said.”

  “That’s not what I meant!” cried Robert Haack desperately.

  Jimmy released his grip on Haack’s shoulder. His eyes narrowed. His face looked more than ever like a well-sharpened hatchet. “You wouldn’t have lied to me about this woman, would you, son? You know what I think of liars. I can’t stomach them. I’d as soon see a man dead as have him lie to me.”

  “Oh, no, Jim,” said Robert. “I told you the truth. I swear I did.”

  “Then that’s all right,” said Jimmy sweetly. “You just remember that I’m your friend. You’ve not got so many of them in this old town as you could afford to lose one. There are a lot of men who’d like to see you go down, if you catch my meaning.”

  Robert placed the sheaf of papers on the bed. “There’s just one problem, Jimmy,” he said turning to face him, although his hands were shaking. “If I took her keys she’d know it was me that had them. I’d get the blame for it. I’d go to jail. Who knows what I’d have to tell them if they made me? You know what they’re like. You’ve said so yourself.” Haack thought, with a sense of relief, that this was a clinching argument.

  “That fine girl! That woman who loves you, who’d give you her life! Why, she wouldn’t let the man she worships go to jail! Not for a minute. If there’s one thing I know, my friend, that’s women. She’d go to blazes herself before she’d turn you in.”

  Robert rubbed his hand on his forehead where the sweat had broken out.

  “Don’t worry so much,” said Jimmy. “This’ll make things easier. Besides, you’ll enjoy it,” he said with a wink, “and she won’t feel a thing.”

  When a man like Jimmy Carroll, who had spent his life as a smuggler, who knew the ropes, who had been (for the most part) successful, appears to be simple, to believe, word for word, what his partner has told him, and when the subject his partner has talked of is love; and if this apparent credulity appears a few days in advance of a well-planned robbery and means a change of plans for that partner, and if the idea of burglary is abandoned in favour of keys, then it is time for that partner, Robert Haack, to look after himself. To harbour no illusions about his future. To think deeply about what he is involved in, and with whom. To wonder why a man like Jimmy Carroll needs him.

  In other circumstances, with his mind free of worry, with affairs between himself and India settled, with no concerns as to how he was going to present himself, these self-preserving instincts might have made their appearance.

  But as it was, once he grew used to Jimmy’s suggestion, Robert Haack quite welcomed it. It meant he would have to see her at last and explain himself, reveal his hopes, and begin his real life.

  And so, when he should have been figuring out what Jimmy was up to, instead he went shopping, buying new shoes, a suit and shirt, plus a hat. And getting his hair cut. And standing in front of the mirror in Mrs. Lush’s rooming house, trying out phrases. What he should say first to India. What she might say back. Where it would go from there.

  Poor Robert Haack, so immersed in the mist of lies he had told himself that he was lost.

  —

  I must have fallen asleep, for when I awaken the tide has floated the dinghy. A fog, thick as snow, has rolled down from the mountains and piled up in the inlet. I can see the stones beneath my feet, the rope that leads to the floating dinghy, but very little else. My feet and hands are tingling but are no longer numb. I stand up.

  “Fan!” I cry. “Where are you?”

  “Out here, Robert Lam,” she answers faintly. “On the Rose. You’d better get out here, the wind’s coming up.”

  “It can’t be, Fan,” I tell her. “The fog’s too thick, there’s no wind at all.”

  “Maybe where you are,” she shouts, “but not out here. The barometer is falling, and I think we’re dragging anchor. I can’t see you, either, the shore has vanished. Hurry up!”

  I am shivering in my shirtsleeves. The wet folds of the fog surround my body. I clench my teeth to prevent them from chattering as I step into the sea in pursuit of the dinghy. I pull it in by the painter and climb into it. Now where? For already, only ten or fifteen feet from shore and carried by the tide, I have lost my bearings.

  “Fan!” I cry. “Keep shouting. I don’t know where you are.”

  “Here!” she cries. And “Here, here, here,” the mountains echo.

  “Again, Fan. Keep shouting.”

  “I’m here, I’m here.”

  Her voice seems to move in circles around me, and I feel the keel of the dinghy scrape a rock.

  I swear and rummage in the bow of the boat for a life jacket. If I can find it I can blow the whistle attached, listen for echoes, and at least know where I am in the channel.

  But there is no jacket. I must have taken it out. “Fan!” I call again. This time there is silence.

  I row the dinghy and try to think. Cachalot is a narrow inlet, lying approximately east to west. I can feel the first breath of wind on the back of my neck. It has to be a southeaster, despite the fog, tunnelling down through the valleys. If the Rose is dragging anchor, as Lam Fan says, then the wind should move her north and towards the entrance. And the dinghy is being carried west on an ebbing tide.

  But before I have it worked out, the squall hits, dumping the dinghy’s nose in the water, wrenching the oars from my hands, and tearing the fog into shreds. I scramble for the oars and manage to rescue one. The dinghy is sinking fast, but ahead, just ten feet away, is the Rose, pulling on her anchor and riding the wind and waves like a thoroughbred.

  “Help, Fan, help me!” I cry through mouthfuls of water. “Throw me a line! For pity’s sake, help!”

  I scrabble at the water with my oar, inching the dinghy onwards. “Help, Fan, please help me!”

  “You’ll have to help yourself, Robert Lam,” she cries, “there is no one else.”

  And so I do. Calling on tired muscles for further effort, making use of the force of the wind and water to drive the half-sunken dinghy a few feet forward, until I can reach out for the anchor chain of the Rose and pull myself up. Refusing to give up hope.

  And so, muscles spasming in pain and desperately afraid of falling, I finally flop over the stem and onto the deck. Where I lie for some minutes spitting out water and laughing. Each breath I take hurts my ribs. But I can’t stop laughing.

  “Start the engine, Robert Lam, we’re far too close to the rocks!”

  I do what I’m told.

  —

  We have run out of Cachalot Inlet, the Rose’s engine purring and humming, and down Kyuquot Channel about three and a half miles to Volcanic Cove. It is just big enough to take us and is sheltered from all winds but northerlies. The storm has blown itself out, and we are basking in the rays of a pale, weak sun.

  I have a stern line out: the cove is so narrow that without it we’d swing into shore.


  “How’d you find this place?” asks Fan.

  “Genius,” I answer, lying on the deck with my eyes shut. I open one eye to see her face screwing up to a question.

  “I looked at the chart, Fan,” I tell her. “It was marked as an anchorage. I don’t think that’s cheating.”

  “Oh!” she says, as if surprised.

  “I’m not as dumb as you think,” I say.

  We rest while a deer stands still at the top of the cliff and watches us. “There is just one thing I want to know, Fan,” I say. “Were you afraid like I was?”

  “Me?” she says. “Of course not, Robert Lam, I have you to take care of me.”

  I smile to myself, then sleep.

  —

  And so my mother, waiting for Robert Haack to come to his senses, knowing he was embarrassed by the scene she had stumbled on, eager to help him but not wanting to interfere, asked herself questions.

  Did she trust him? Would she want to live with him? Was she willing to have children? How much did she like her life as it was, and would she be willing to change it? Her dreams about him became vivid and frequent. So that she woke up thinking Robert Haack was dead, that he had killed himself or been murdered; or that they were making love. For she was a woman in her thirties, and if not quite experienced then no innocent, either: for she and Fan had seen life as it was in the streets of Hong Kong.

  My mother, a woman like and unlike others of her generation. Who had had no mother to protect her. Who believed in reform as taught by her father. Who wasn’t afraid to take a chance with appearances. Who had an inquiring mind, yet knew how to look to her heart for answers.

  The pink skin showed above Robert Haack’s ears, where he’d just had his hair cut, as he stood with his derby in his hand in front of the door of the Fisgard Street house in which India lived. He was dressed in a blue worsted lounge coat and trousers. The trousers were pegged over black town boots, the jacket was single-breasted with rounded fronts, four buttons and five pockets, and around the small stand collar of the shirt, Robert had wrapped a sailor’s tie. To say he had taken pains with his appearance would not be enough; in fact, he felt so unlike himself, as if the costume had defeated his personality, that he kept patting the cloth to reassure himself that he was inside it. Mrs. Lush hadn’t helped: catching a glimpse of him as he’d come down the steps of the Metropolitan, she’d burst into laughter. He could hear that laughter still.