Consolation

by Michael Redhill

  “You haven’t.”

  Ennis laughed. “Just as you were, then,” he said to Miss Rowe.

  “I ran into Mr. Bryant this morning,” he said. “The picture man on St. George’s Square. I gather you know him.”

  Ennis brought his gaze around, his eyes swimming red. They reflected him like a pair of shined doorknobs. “A fine fellow.”

  “Yes. He wants me to refund a third of his money. Can you imagine why?”

  “Poor stick. I knew his business was faltering.”

  “No, Mr. Ennis, his business is quite fine. But he is a little put off paying full price for my goods. Strange, that.”

  Ennis frowned. Hallam couldn’t tell whether it was at the conundrum or the way Miss Rowe was sitting. “Ah,” he said at last. “I have been a little Irish, I see.”

  “I won’t be the only supplier of silver salts in this town forever, Mr. Ennis. I cannot cut deals with every person who comes with his hand out. Do you see what you’ve done?” Hallam followed him around the back of the camera. “He’s investing in glass, and he thinks I must subsidize it now by refunding him a third of his chemical costs. My salts, Mr. Ennis, at a third off! Does that sound familiar?” He was trying to keep his voice down, but he was upset at Mr. Ennis’s seeming lack of interest in these troubles.

  “It may not be as bad as you fear,” Ennis said. “Is that comfortable?”

  Miss Rowe called out that it was.

  “Will you be my light man, Mr. Hallam?”

  “What?”

  “We will solve the problems of the world once we are done with Miss Rowe here. Who is getting cold, I imagine.”

  Hallam was calculating the loss. “If I give Bryant back even a quarter of his funds, and the others insist on following his example, I will lose on the order of twenty pounds! And then I must wet-nurse these men and collect their fees and check their logs — it’s an utter disaster. Are you even listening to me?”

  “Jem, you’re going to make yourself sick with worry like this. Give the gentleman what he asks and stay on him to make sure he’s fair to you. Tell him the terms are secret and any communication of them will render your arrangement null.”

  “I see. And are you pledging yourself to this as well?”

  “Hand to heart,” said Ennis. “From this point on I will be as quiet as the grave. Now, the light?”

  “Fine,” Hallam said, “I will hold you to this.” It was a sound idea, he had to admit. He would even prepare paperwork for Bryant obligating him to keep the terms private. “Yes,” he said again, relieved somewhat, “but if the situation worsens, I’ll hold you responsible.”

  “There will be nowhere I can hide,” said Ennis. Hallam turned from him to put the reflecting board in place under the skylight (and such a pure, fresh light it was that came down from on high), and directly in the line of his sight as he turned was the milk-scented Miss Rowe sitting before him, without a stitch of clothing on her, and stretched out in the fashion of a Renaissance bather. He brought the white board up in front of his face instantly. “Mr. Ennis?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “It is pure daylight in here. I don’t think you need my assistance, but thank you for your advice.” He put down the reflector and made for the door. He thought he could feel Miss Rowe’s skin sending off heat like a miner’s lamp behind him.

  “Stop, please,” said Ennis. “Stop now. You’re being foolish. How do you think some of the world’s best-loved paintings were made? From memory?”

  “You are not painting, Mr. Ennis. You are making a picture.” He spoke over his turned shoulder. “Miss Rowe, you are already unwell. Raw air will do nothing to improve your condition.”

  “If you will direct the light toward me, sir,” she said, “I’ll be able to warm up some.”

  He stood between them, unmoving but trembling, and Ennis stared at him as if his eyes were a camera rendering Hallam on a silvered plate. The image, perhaps, was the reluctant face of a trapped animal, its snout narrowing in disbelief.

  “You are left alone to fend for yourself in a strange country,” Ennis said at last with a broad, open gesture. “Allow yourself some beauty.”

  “It’s all right, Mr. Hallam,” said the soft voice. “I’m not embarrassed.”

  He spun toward her and her skin flashed behind his eyes, but he did not look away. “You’re not! Well, this is an excellent advance for you then!”

  “It’s only a human body,” she said.

  “Miss Rowe, you are alone in a room with two grown men. Either of us could do you ill, and one arguably already has, and if you chose afterwards to relate your misfortune to the police, it would be our words against yours. Who would they believe? Two businessmen, or a woman who has thrown off her clothes for supper?”

  She pulled the linen over her lap but made no other effort to cover herself. “If what’s in store for me is further humiliation, then let me have it. I’ve resisted it before to no effect. Why resist it now?”

  This country is marvelous soil for despair, Hallam thought. Are we all marching down a narrowing corridor to the same place? He took off his overcoat and threw it toward the woman. “If you won’t cover yourself, I will,” and proceeding to her, to ensure her shame was hidden, he said to Ennis, “You are indiscreet in more ways than I had thought.”

  “I have fallen in your eyes, Jem. This is a sad day.”

  On the mattress Miss Rowe was like a shot bird; the weight of his overcoat was almost too much for her to bear. “Look at her! She’s half dead. Get up.” He pulled her to standing by her shoulders, and instinctively she held the coat tightly around herself.

  “I won’t be paid,” she said quietly.

  “I will pay you whatever he owes you.”

  “I work for what I —”

  “Stop speaking.” Hallam pulled her toward where her clothes lay in a heap by the stove. Luckily, they would be warm. He put them into her arms and pushed her through the muslin curtain. “Dress yourself and I’ll take you back to your house.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Mr. Ennis. “Her house is a half-burnt-out shack on Niagara Street.”

  “And this is your idea of charity, then? You will seek an advantage no matter what it costs others!”

  “I have a stove. And I pay for her modeling.”

  “Modeling.”

  “Photography is going to be an art form, Mr. Hallam. There are people who want to be transformed by it. Mrs. Arnold, whom you met earlier, has been Cleopatra in here, as well as Mrs. Nightingale.”

  “But she has not been forced to humiliate herself for you, for your money.”

  “I was not forced!” shouted Miss Rowe behind them. “And he never came closer to me than where he is right now. I am here of my own free will.”

  This left Hallam unhappily silent. He simply took her under the arm and led her out into the afternoon, directing them south. Behind, Ennis called from the doorway, “Whom are you saving, Mr. Hallam? You are separating us both from our suppers. Is that your calling now?”

  He pushed on past hearing. If he was going to take Ennis on over any of this, he’d be certain to do so when the larger man was not so medicated. Perhaps the smoke had lent him a shamelessness that would fade when he sobered. He could hope. “I’ll take you home,” Hallam said to the young woman who now stood at his side, appearing even more tired in the clear early spring light.

  “You’ll take me to England, will you?” The air had revived her somewhat, and now for the first time she appeared to be hearing directly; the filter of the drug had evaporated.

  “Would that I could snap my fingers and transport us both to safety,” he said. “But since that is not in the offing for now, I’ll see you home to Niagara Street.”

  She gestured with her hand to show the way, but Hallam held his out as well, as if they were two very English sorts of gentlemen standing before a door. When she went ahead, he thought it best to follow somewhat behind so that no one could connect them in any way beyon
d that they were on the same street. As it was, King Street was nearly empty, and the angle of the road passing south gave an aspect on the lake that made it seem as if they could have been walking off a cliff. The lake often had this kind of presence in the city, a visual primacy that made one feel encroached upon, even if — especially if — a person turned his back on it. Clippers, cutters, and screw steamers gathered in the harbor basin, aiming themselves in a seemingly random way at the shoreline, as if they would smash into each other and then just make it to land. Steam and smoke knotted the air as they approached, and a busier sight than the lakefront could not be had, generally, in the city. He had to admit that, in the more temperate months, it even gave the city the aspect of a going concern.

  But here, as if warned of their presence, not even the impoverished denizens of Brock Street bothered to show their faces in their windows, and Hallam continued on with his charge without witness.

  Miss Rowe’s swayback gave her an easy lope that was attractive to look at, but Hallam made an effort not to. All women with their youth so manifest (Alice was but twenty-four) had a ruddy health about them that could not easily be broken by self-abuse or poverty, and Claudia Rowe possessed a kind of unimpeachable vitality. The city had examples of Irish waifs so pitiful in their circumstances, and yet so beautiful — despite the grime, the gray-green teeth, the shabby clothing — that it moved him to despair to think their maker would mock them and yet still leave them the vain gift of their looks. It was not so for men, and a man like Samuel Ennis was a good example of what effect hard living could have on such a body.

  Miss Rowe took him on a similar route to the one that he ‘d walked the first night he’d been at Ennis’s studio. The tenor of Ennis’s parting with Mr. and Mrs. Arnold that late afternoon took on new meaning now, as it seemed clear in retrospect that he and Mrs. Arnold had set a separate appointment for the following day, not just so he could show her the results of her sitting with her new, rich, and ugly husband, but so that she could trick herself up in the garb of a courtesan or a squaw or a pioneer wife. For all Hallam knew (and he imagined the scene with a shudder of revulsion), Mr. Ennis had a makeshift stake for tying his Joan of Arcs to, and God only knew what he did for those with a leaning toward Héloïse.

  “You must be careful with unmarried men in a city where so much is unsettled,” he said to the back of Claudia Rowe’s head. “There is no safe place for a woman who is alone.”

  “So I’m unsafe right now?”

  “You must presume so, yes. I know you are safe, but you do not. And you’d be inviting catastrophe to think otherwise. As you clearly already do.” She had nothing to say to that, so he carried on berating her. “Who taught you to be so incautious?”

  She turned sharply and Hallam had to stop to avoid walking into her. “Necessity. And who taught you to presume so much?”

  “I make no presumptions about the behavior of men.” She gave him a disgusted look and continued walking.

  “My house is coming up,” she said. In front of them stood a line of broken-down shacks, any one of which would have been unsuitable to live in. They were black from tar as well as fire, and a couple sported the mockery of already-charred ladders leading to their roofs. The worst of the row lacked a full corner, as if a giant with a cleaver had simply hacked it away. A sheet had been draped over the missing corner (the burnt remains of which lay under a peaceful cover of the last of the snow), and this, of course, was Miss Rowe’s home.

  “Is this really where you live?”

  “I’m thinking of putting in a carriage house.” He could not laugh for her, even though it would have been a welcome kindness, he was sure. She looked at the sorry thing, and Hallam tried not to fix his mind on the image of her going into it and wasting whatever fuel she had within to heat it, heat that would only be sucked out through the gaping hole in the side and distributed amongst the stars. “What was Mr. Ennis going to pay you?”

  “Four bob. And I would have stayed warm for the whole afternoon without burning a stick of my own wood.”

  “I’m a meddler.”

  “You’re English. We think we know what’s best for everyone. We sweep in to clean up and leave everyone to fight it out in better clothes.”

  He reached into his pocket and took out what he had — two shillings — and folded them into her hand. She gave no modest show of refusal. She took them and put them into a cloth purse. “Please promise me you’ll spend that on food or firewood.”

  “You have no business pretending to be my father. If you were so good with money yourself, I doubt you’d be availing yourself of Sam’s business.”

  “Fine then. I will express my desire as a wish that you will not smoke those coins.”

  She laughed quietly. “I own this house. Could I have spent my money any more foolishly than on a house put together with fire starter? A single match could transform any of these little huts into signal flares that would burn for a week at a time. Slow and steady: you could watch everything you own slowly melt.” She stood square to him, as if issuing a challenge to contradict her unhappy logic. “If you want, you can have your money back, but I won’t make you any promises.”

  “No. You’re right.”

  “In your honor, however, I will spend some of it on a proper meal and a room for the night at Mrs. Chesley’s on Adelaide Street. She takes only women and only cash. I will have a healthy serving of boiled ham, a hot bun, and a cider. How’s that.”

  “I approve,” he said. “And I won’t even offer to walk you there. I’m sure you know your own business.”

  “Sirrah,” she said, bowing slightly, then rising with a mock sweep of her arm. Hallam tilted his hat to her, earnestly as he could, and continued on his way. But he was pleased to hear, after he’d walked some distance, “Thank you, Mr. Hallam,” said just loudly enough so that he knew she wanted him to hear it.

  THREE

  TORONTO WAS A city that sopped up one’s dreams; at night, abed in his anonymous flat, Hallam drifted through the silent, colorless landscape of the deepest kind of sleep, a dead sleep. Dreams had once brought him news of an inner heart, and he was reassured to think that his spirit carried on with its work in an absurdly colorful underworld, the regulations of which only it knew. Awake, he would recall them wonderingly, never so wild a man as he was in his dreams. That anyone had it in him to be another person struck him as miraculous. But in Toronto, he did not dream, he was no one when he slept. Drugged or hard-won, when he came out of these featureless sleeps, it was as if he’d spent his night locked in an empty vault.

  Because now there was no point in going out every day (there were no customers to see after and no inventory to keep track of), and because the rains and intemperate bursts had all but ended by the beginning of May, Hallam stayed at home with his windows open. He’d broken off all contact with Ennis, knowing the man to be flush with supplies (enough, he thought sourly, to take a naked record of the whole city), and he tried not to think how he’d handle himself when next called on for reprovending. He made the rounds to his empty shop once in a while to ensure all was well, and took iodine and silver salts to his other accounts. Although the rent on the shop was steep, he thought of it as insurance against his father discovering what he’d done with it. Perhaps there would come some as-yet-undiscovered purpose it could be put to, at some point in an inevitably happier future. It was not legal to offer it as a residential property — a pity, since he could have rented it out ten times over. He tried to picture the place as a pub, or a little hotel, but no matter how he imagined it, the shop would not be transformed in his mind. It could be nothing else to him but a charnel pit for his hopes.

  He tried to batten down his wandering mind by going to the bookstalls in the market a couple of times a week to exchange reading materials. He finally read Cervantes, and was cheered by the image of the old Spaniard attacking his windmills. In his mind, Quixote chopped at a murderous windmill on Toronto’s own shoreline. He had the poetry of Ch
arles Sangster (a Canadian) thrust upon him, as well as Moby Dick, by the author of Mardi, a book he’d enjoyed, but after those two recommendations he gave that particular stall a wide pass. There were copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin everywhere, that favorite of abolitionists, anti-abolitionists, escaped slaves, Negro workers, angry northerners, angry southerners, and so on, and the fact that it was everywhere to be seen in preread condition suggested that no one found it particularly satisfying. Although in more than one place Hallam was told to read it for its depictions of Canada, as if having the place of his imprisonment described to him by one who had never been so detained would be enlightening.

  He continued to write letters to Alice, but he finished few of them and mailed none. They lay about, half written and full of lies too egregious for sending, and were increasingly about his so-called leisure time. He gave the impression that to tell her any more about his business would simply be repetition of past letters, but all was well, and things were picking up and so on. To his father, Hallam’s lies were somewhat more careful. He’d found stock closer to home, he told him, a half-truth, but the stock was not what his father would have expected. The elder Hallam wrote warm letters back, in that rambling verbiage that brought his voice so rawly to Hallam’s mind that it hurt. His father had made Alice a gift of handsome new luggage in the New Year, telling her she would have need of it by the fall. To move to smaller lodgings, Hallam thought sourly, where the suitcase would probably be the finest of the house’s furnishings. Hallam envied the thought of his father with those two plump little girls sitting on his lap being fed sugar cubes while Alice loaded up his plate again with stew and potatoes. All of them, all the while, imagining the spread of the Hallam name in Canada. Alice’s letters he, at first, left unopened and unread in a pile on the windowsill. And then he simply stopped picking them up at the post office altogether.