To All Appearances a Lady

by Marilyn Bowering

  We stand, the two of us, as my arms go around her in turn, like mother and son. Like the mother and son we never were. I can feel the trembly beating of her heart in the region of my stomach. For the second time in several days I begin to weep. These sobs, however, don’t tear me apart like the others. They bring me joy, and relief.

  —

  It is not easy, when a man has been cut off from his fellows for seven years, and when he finds that even when he gets out of jail he is still not wanted by them, and that old scores remain to be settled, and that the blacklist stands, for him to make a new life. So it was for Robert Haack.

  It is even more difficult if, with a little money to tide him over burning a hole in his pocket, he cannot find a home in the respectable suburbs, and must camp where he is when the sun goes down while he thinks of a way to alter his circumstances: afraid to ruin his chances by a single misstep. For so much depends on what he does. Including my mother’s future life.

  It is difficult, nay, nigh well impossible, under these conditions, with no one to help him, for him to pass by saloons, night after night, and not go in. To hear laughter emanating from doorways and to have no part in it; to have no one to talk to—for even the stray dogs have been taken away from the city by the hordes of prospectors.

  Robert Haack, on one of these lonely nights, footsore from his tramping up and down the streets, and weary and discouraged in spirit, paused outside the Commercial Hotel. He was hungry and cold, but most of all he was lonely. He listened to the tinkling of glasses as if it were music; he heard chairs scraped back as more rounds were ordered; he heard actual music as a piano began to play a tune that he knew. Men’s voices and women’s laughter. The sounds of humanity. He peeped—surely no harm would come if he only looked—inside.

  The room was golden with lamplight. Mirrors reflected happy smiles. The colours of the women’s dresses ranged through the rainbow. Just inside the doorway, on the edge of the cigar smoke with which the room was encircled, there was an empty table. Robert Haack crossed the threshold and sat down at it.

  He remained there quietly sipping his beer. There was no one in the hotel that he knew. He gazed about him with an expression of longing. A man, one of a party of five at a nearby table, catching his eye, called out to him and suggested he join them at cards.

  There were more drinks, a bucket of steamed clams to eat, a singsong around the piano as the evening wore on. These were all innocent pleasures, and all the more to be savoured for being so long denied.

  But would he never learn: was it a thirst or a demon that ruled his throat? For the end of all this apparent innocence was a new appearance in court.

  Robert Haack to the court: After leaving the Commercial we went to the Bee Hive and then walking on Cormorant Street, and hearing the sound of gambling found ourselves opening the door of number eighty.

  Prosecutor: Did it not occur to you that this was no gambling house, but a private dwelling? Had you no conception that you were not welcome?

  Robert Haack: If you’ll pardon my saying so, the trouble was one of drink. And then there were so many Chinamen throwing stones I couldn’t tell what was happening. [Laughter in the court]

  Prosecutor: Well, why did you run from the police?

  Robert Haack: It seemed to me that it is very seldom that the police arrive without arresting someone. [Laughter]

  Prosecutor: Indeed, and that would be a matter, I am assured, with which you have had some experience.

  Robert Haack: I cannot deny it. But anyone passing would’ve done what we did. We heard the sound of dominoes and went in. The door was open.

  Prosecutor: Let the court take note that not only has this man an extensive police record, and that he has not been long out of jail, but that this so-called “gambling house” is directly across from the police station itself!

  —

  It is a sad story, not any less moving for being so public. Robert Haack, with his future all mapped out, with the best of intentions, had made a mistake and found himself again in prison. But for two weeks only this time, and that because he could not pay the fine and damages of one hundred dollars that the judge had assigned.

  Poor Robert Haack: who took one step forward and two more back. Yet this seeming hardship had one desirable effect. It brought him, through the columns of the British Colonist, which reported the case, to the notice of his former friends, Sing Yuen and Lam Fan. It gave him another run at his desired fresh start.

  A man with a goal in mind; more than a goal, a sense of mission, which is, not only for his own sake, but in homage to the memory of his meeting with the now dead author, R.L. Stevenson, who had favoured him with a vision, to retrieve my mother from wherever she had been hidden. And once she was found, and as he’d intended from the very beginning, to make her his wife, and to go with her to live in San Francisco, his previous home.

  That is, if he could get together the necessaries, the funds, the needed contacts, and so forth. That is, if he had some luck and knew where to look.

  For as for money and luck, there is never enough of them. And as for contacts, whether he has any left, he intends to find out. And as for who they are and what their sentiments might be regarding him, the first indication arrives at once in an envelope, presented to him as he is let out of jail at the end of two weeks.

  He opened the envelope. He took out the paper inside it and read it. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he wiped them away with the tips of his fingers. He folded the paper up. For the paper was nothing that he’d expected. It was an invitation from Lam Fan and Sing Yuen, who had been alerted to Robert Haack’s whereabouts through the newspaper account of his trial, to the funeral of Lam Fan’s uncle, the herbalist, Lum Kee.

  It was a shock (although death comes to us all). It was an icy hand travelling his spine, a midnight blizzard through which three figures—himself, India, and Lum Kee—wended their way searching for a missing person, Lam Fan. It was rooftops caked in snow and icicles depended from gutters. It was an opium den and the workingman, Henry McMullen, found inside it. It was years and years ago; and it made him think about what we can’t afford to lose and yet abandon anyway, and how we hurt others and hurt ourselves and wait too long to ask forgiveness. For Lum Kee had been a good man, a kind and helpful friend, who had continued to send Haack letters and medicines while he’d been in jail; and who had begged, time after time, for anything he could tell him about the whereabouts of India: for Lum Kee, alone of all India’s friends, had refused to believe that she was dead.

  This herbalist, this student of medicine, had been convinced that all would turn out well in the end: not only for India, but for all of them. He had believed and worked and never given up on anything as long as he lived. He was that kind of man. Honourable, faithful, and kind.

  —

  “Is that you, Robert Lam, who I hear, if I’m not mistaken, praising optimism?” says my stepmother, who stands beside me as we speed, from roller to roller, south. Past Florencia Bay where the brig Florencia sank and towards the light—a red lantern on a white concrete building—erected to the north of the end of Amphitrite Point. “Can it really be you, who have looked at the worst of things as long as I’ve known you, espousing these sentiments, these noble characteristics?”

  “It’s only what you’ve always preached yourself, Fan,” I say to her. “It must be rubbing off at last.”

  She glances at me suspiciously. “Lum Kee has become your model?”

  “I’m perfectly sincere, Fan,” I tell her. “You’ve been right all these years. It is important to stick to what you believe in, to be truthful with yourself no matter what anyone else thinks.”

  “I know you’ve changed, Robert Lam,” says my stepmother. “Believe me, I’d be the last to deny it. Still, I’m surprised.” She peers at me concernedly. “You should ease into it, if you’re going to be a saint,” she says. “Too much change all at once can throw you off. You run the risk of going too far, becoming someone you aren’t.”r />
  “What, Fan!” I cry in mock astonishment. “Now that I’m the man you want, taking your advice, an optimist, as you say yourself, you say I’ve gone too far. Make up your mind. Which is it you want? Robert Lam as he is, or Robert Lam as he was?”

  Disconcertingly, she appears to give the matter some thought. “All in all,” she says, “there’s no going back. But not everything you’ve always done is wrong. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath. You can’t be more than human, Robert Lam. No one can. Not you, not me, not anyone. We have all made mistakes and will continue to make them….”

  “Not any more, Fan. I’m a new Robert Lam.” To my chagrin she takes what I say at face value.

  “Still thinking only of yourself,” she says disappointedly. I feel a flush stain my cheeks.

  “That’s unfair, Fan. I was only pulling your leg. You don’t have to remind me that I can fail. I’m used to it. But I am trying to do my best. Surely that’s what counts.”

  “I meant only,” she says calmly, “to remind you that there are others in this world. Many men and women—and I include myself—carry heavy burdens of guilt and suffer from them.”

  “You, Fan? What have you ever done but smoke a little opium?” My words sound crude to my ears even as I utter them. The face that she turns to me now lacks all expression. It is the impenetrable face of a stranger. Closed by my clumsiness. What’s more, she is right. I am selfish, and I am undone by my pride. And the assumptions I’ve made. That my guilt and my remorse are more important than the burdens of anyone else. All people must have their secrets, their private hurts and injustices. Why can’t I allow Fan hers?

  “I apologize, Fan,” I say. “Please forgive me if what I said was offensive. I am still the fool I always was.”

  “At least some things never change,” she says dryly, dropping the mask of blankness, which has frightened me. “I shall be thankful for that.”

  I take two deep breaths. One for gratitude that I have her back, and one for luck. A solid black fist of clouds has suddenly blotted the horizon. “We’re almost past Amphitrite Point,” I say. “Why don’t I make us both a cup of coffee?” I don’t like the look of the weather coming in. If we want something hot in our stomachs we had better get it now before I empty out the kettle. The last thing we need is boiling water on the stove in a storm. “Take that old jacket of mine and put it on. It’ll be cold once it starts to rain and blow.” Already our gentle roller-coaster ride has assumed a new motion. The waves are breaking up. Moving as quickly as I can, I stow loose items. One test failed, a new one coming up.

  Fan sits close to the exhaust shroud and shivers. I drape the jacket over her shoulders. She is smoking a cigarette. She puffs, coughs, and puffs again. “Don’t sink the Rose before you get us home, Robert Lam,” she says.

  —

  Robert Haack buffed his shoes and stuffed newspapers into the soles, which he had worn through by walking the streets of Victoria looking for lodging and employment. He brushed his threadbare coat clean of dust and dandruff. He put on his ancient brown hat and proceeded to that Fisgard Street address where he had last stood, seven years before, so full of hope. A man about to commit a robbery; a man longing to see his future wife.

  He raised his hand to knock, trembling slightly with anxiety—for it was just so he had been placed when his life had fallen apart—as the door cracked open a notch and the fabric of a woman’s dress was painted brightly in a strip of sunlight. The maid—for that’s who it was, a girl Haack didn’t know—showed him into the parlour, where there were tables laden with food and drink. The food—roast duck and sweetmeats—was, so far as Haack could see, untouched. The other guests stood quietly, or talked among themselves, sipping ceremonial liqueur from tiny china cups. They spoke softly of Lum Kee’s goodness and his skill at treating ailments. They recounted stories of the many people he had helped: new immigrants, students, and crib girls who had run away from their owners. He had been a man, it was agreed, who had lived a life of effortless virtue.

  Robert Haack could not settle. There was no one in the room that he knew well enough to speak to, although present were many leading businessmen and dignitaries. He gathered, from what he overheard, that Lam Fan would inherit Lum Kee’s property and carry on the business. She was, apparently, so deeply distressed by her uncle’s death that she could not attend the funeral. Sing Yuen was in the room next door with Lum Kee’s coffin, and the arrival of the hearse was momentarily expected.

  Haack examined the heavy velvet curtains, which were lightly drawn against the afternoon light. He lifted up and put back several books and ornaments that lay on several tables. He dusted off a horsehair chair and sat down upon it. He stood up. He started to light a cigarette, then thought better of it. There was the sound of horses’ hooves as the hearse arrived at the portal. Then Sing Yuen, in a black business suit, came in and shook hands with all who had gathered.

  “Would you mind staying on when the others have left?” he whispered to Haack as he took Robert’s hand. “My wife wishes to speak to you.”

  Lam Fan? But why on earth would she want to see him privately at a time like this? He waited nervously as the funeral procession lined up. He watched them, through a parting in the curtains, as they started off down the street. He stood in that darkened room and twisted his hands fretfully as the clip-clopping of the horses’ hooves grew ever more distant.

  A servant came into the room to remove the comestibles, and Robert was smiling at her when Lam Fan entered. He rearranged his expression more suitably.

  Only half-awake because of the quantities of opium she had smoked to steady herself, and stricken with conscience because she had promised Sing Yuen she would not resort to it, Lam Fan, with her hair twisted into a knot on top of her head, and with her nails freshly painted, and in full formal dress, seemed to Robert not to have aged at all. Although there were lines of strain crisscrossing her forehead.

  He coughed discreetly, for he could not tell if she had seen him. “I know perfectly well where you are, Mr. Haack,” said Lam Fan to my mother’s future husband. “You need not lurk in the shadows. Come forward, please.”

  Haack did as he was bidden, and Fan motioned him into one of the chairs that he had so recently quitted. He shifted his weight back and forth uncomfortably while Fan settled herself nearby. There was silence for several minutes.

  The servant returned with tea and poured a cup for each of them. Haack blew on his and drank it. Lam Fan did nothing.

  “You wanted to see me?” said Robert Haack finally. For he feared that Fan was drifting away permanently inside herself.

  She sat up straight, and for the first time looked him full in the face. Haack said, “I’m sorry about your uncle. I didn’t know he was sick or I would have come to see him. He was a very fine man.”

  “Yes,” said Fan. “He was.” Then she sighed. “It is not your fault you were out of touch with Lum Kee, Mr. Haack. He often talked of you. He would have liked to see you again before he died, but we did not know where to find you. It was only because of the newspaper report of your recent misfortune that we were able to reach you. Although by then it was too late.”

  Haack turned his teacup over and examined its markings, embarrassed.

  What is it she wants? he wondered. He was just as glad, when it came to it, that they hadn’t found him in time to have that last interview. He did not see how he could have stood it. He felt bad enough to have failed Lum Kee as it was. Lam Fan’s head drooped to her chest. “Ah,” said Robert, feeling desperate, worried that Fan wouldn’t come to the point, that he’d never know exactly why he’d been summoned, “there were one or two items concerning your sister that we discussed. Of course I told your uncle all I could at the time. But I heard something while I was in jail, that I think we should start to investigate….”

  Lam Fan’s head came up with a snap. “Investigate, Mr. Haack? Would you turn up all that grief again for nothing? We tried every means we had to trace my sister
. You assured us that you knew nothing, absolutely nothing, that could help us. You’re not about to tell me, when my uncle died sorrowing that he hadn’t done enough to find her, that you weren’t telling the truth!”

  Haack, taken aback, cried, “Oh, no! Of course not! It’s just that I have reason now to think that she might be alive. Starkey said that Smiling Jimmy had said…”

  “My sister is dead,” interrupted Fan, her face hardening. “My uncle is dead. We cannot bring them back.”

  “No, I agree, of course not,” said Robert Haack, retreating, who had planned, in the case of India, if it were at all possible, to do just that.

  “It was a long time ago,” said Fan. “No, Mr. Haack, I did not ask you here to talk about my sister.” There was another pause, during which Robert felt more than ever puzzled. Not about India? What other connection could he possibly have to this woman?

  “There is something else that concerns me,” said Lam Fan. “It does not matter to me whether you understand it. It is a matter of conscience and of importance to me alone.

  “Before I tell you what it is,” she continued, “let me remind you of certain facts. And let me first assure you that I bear no grudge over the past. I accept that whatever happened was an accident. I know that you cared for my sister and would never have knowingly hurt her.”

  Robert nodded vigorously.

  “On the other hand,” said Fan, “there is still the matter of the robbery of my husband’s factory. For that you owe him very much money. As well there is your indebtedness to Yong Sam. He has come to see us already to remind us he has first claim on your income. Do not think he will ever forget it.” Fan stopped to let this news sink in. Haack slumped dejectedly, although it was, in truth, no more than he’d expected.