by Terry Griggs
The game of hot cockles was in full swing.
“Percival!” the blindfolded man bellowed. “Unhhh. Archibald? Anhhh. Jesus fucking Christ! Ufff.”
I won’t meet him tomorrow, Grif told himself. The man was up to no good. Even beneath the caricatured impression of danger Fenwick had given him, he sensed something else, truer, darker. On the other hand, he knew he would show up. Not so much because he was a man of his word—hadn’t he proven otherwise?—but because he was deeply curious to know what that word might be.
CHAPTER FOUR
a scream
Grif sat up abruptly, pulled out of sleep, and listened. He wasn’t sure whether it had come from somewhere within the boarding house or from within his own head—a scream, high and sharp, a briefly sustained note of pure terror. He did dream sounds sometimes: the peal of a bell, a door banging shut, phantom voices whispering, laughing. The place seemed quiet enough, hosting only the usual creaks and groans a house is allowed to make for bearing its human cargo without complaint through the long day. No indications that a woman was suffering some indignity within. All was silent, even in the room next door where earlier its occupant, a lumber man, had been planing the already thin walls with a snore as rough as a ripsaw.
Outside, he could hear the shush of the water in the bay, the inevitable dog barking in the distance, a cart being driven up the street, one of its axles squealing—but not screaming. It was not out of the question that he had made the noise, that he was its author. The very moment of waking he had been dreaming that a bird, black and glistening, was emerging from his mouth, being born.
All those nights outdoors he had slept warily, provisionally, light as mist on the ground. He was tuned to danger—wild animals, roving thugs. Lord knows, something might have dropped out of the heavens and pressed him flat as a tattoo onto the earth. Feeling safe enough between these walls, he had let sleep plunge him under. But how foolish he’d been and, more to the point, how stupidly piss-eyed. The only thing he remembered doing before crawling into bed was lying on the floor for what seemed like hours, puzzling over a pamphlet he had discovered flush up against the chamber pot. It was an advertisement for a club that was about to open in Owen Sound called the Young Men’s Christian Association: “Our object is the conversion to Christ of all young men and the strengthening and development of those who love His cause, in all Christian powers and graces. Also, the social and mental elevation and improvement of young men by such secular means and appliances, which though wholly secondary, are still important objects in the scheme of our organization.” Powers and graces, he had mused, powers and graces, before retching into the pot and wiping his mouth with the pamphlet.
It occurred to him that he was still wearing his new clothes and shoes. He jerked his hand up quickly to touch the pocket where the journal lay, a tic he had developed, like an old gaffer repeatedly seeking the reassurance of his purse. Not lost. Grif traced its outline with relief. Earlier in the day, while fingering his lapel and murmuring something about the shiny coats of clerics, Fenwick had slipped a crisp bill into his pocket. What did the man want—his own bridal night with Grif? Coming from him, the money hadn’t seemed like a gift, more a reverse form of theft, something more interesting than generosity anyway.
Grif did not like being beholden, but after Fenwick left, he took the bill out and gazed at it with such raw admiration you’d think he’d never seen money before. He let it pull him right out of the tavern and through the streets like a planchette in hot pursuit of a spirit, and where it brought him—and what it bought him—was a tenancy in this room that almost broke his heart with its spare and simple welcome: a spindle bed covered with a patched woollen blanket, a jug and basin on a small washstand, a drugget on the floor, a hook on the wall. (No mirror to harass him with his own sorry image.) Why had he ever wanted more? He could live here forever like a monk in a cell, penitent to the point of erasure. He had no need of gaudy word-encrusted prayers. No need of marriage and the noisy clattering cascade of goods attached to it—silver mustard pots, necktie cases, clocks, buggies, cigar jars—or of the jumble of duties and responsibilities that fell upon a man and buried him in a suffocating avalanche. Such a fate would make anyone scream.
Fenwick had assured him that his marriage would most certainly have been dissolved by this time—Unconsummated, did you say?—and that Grif’s fear of the law on his heels was nothing more than vanity. His bride’s momentary shame would have been promptly extinguished by the family’s enormous relief at having gotten rid of him, and so fortuitously, with no blame falling upon them. Grif’s claim on Avice’s memory even now had to be tenuous; she would very likely be enjoying a restorative tour of England or the Continent, his debonair replacements waiting in the wings to whirl away with her heart. The rate of a husband’s decay in such circumstances was phenomenal: from his stature as a titillating piece of gossip, Grif would shortly dissolve into a dark secret, then into a forgotten one. Soon, to his former and fleeting mate, he would be nothing at all, not even enough dust to get up her nose.
Naturally, Grif had been consoled to hear that this might be the case. Yet it had also bothered him a bit and made him shift uncomfortably in his seat. It was like hearing tell of your own death, then looking carefully at yourself and not finding much evidence that it wasn’t so.
As he settled back in the bed, a pre-dream image drifted into his mind of a woman’s face, mild and gentle, wearing the slight dash of a smile. He then saw a wooden staff raised and the face smashed open, leaving behind a gaping and jagged black hole through which a cold wind hissed.
A dreadful thought possessed him. What if a man were to wake up one morning with a woman’s voice instead of his own. The utter humiliation of it—would he dare speak again? What if he woke up with Avice’s voice alive in his throat, and when he spoke, it berated him endlessly. Her accusations would flow out of his mouth like venom, would splatter onto his chest like spilled acid.
He shuddered, and very softly, and hoarsely, said aloud, “Eeeeeeee.” Sounded familiar; the tone was right. He tried again, this time louder and deeper, with an exaggerated manliness: “EEEEEEE.” Then, as if a disgruntled mate were addressing him, he said to himself, “Shut up, will you, and go to sleep.” Advice he wisely and swiftly followed.
Why Fenwick had chosen the dock for their assignation was a mystery that would come clear, Grif supposed, when he found him. If he found him. Grif was late, and the place was packed. He didn’t think there could be a busier spot in all of Owen Sound, with one steamer arriving and another preparing to depart. The harbour was dotted with tugs, sailboats, fishing boats. The dockside was even busier, and traffic on the land just as thick. Wagons jammed the road as passengers spilled out of them to join the milling throng on the dock. Children streaked through the crowd, dogs, a chicken on the loose; a young man barged through carrying a skeletal white-haired woman in his arms who was dressed in purple satin from toe to bonnet as though rigged out in her own coffin lining.
It was a carnival of apprehension and excitement. Hoots, shouts, shrieks, braying both animal and human. Deckhands were loading cargo onto one of the boats: mailbags, crates of flour and sugar for the northern settlements and the lumber camps, horses and cattle, all sensible beasts, and sensibly terrified. He was aware of the fear in people’s voices, too, although it was less straightforwardly expressed, diverted into chatter or a strained, shrill laughter almost painful to hear. True, these steamers did have a bad habit of catching on fire, and you wouldn’t want to be dwelling on that if you were a passenger or had a loved one on board. In his search for Fenwick, the man’s inscrutable features hidden somewhere in this crowd, he glanced into many faces more readable, several taut with worry, even premature sorrow. There were families gathered here who were about to be broken open by a great distance, a wound of space inflicted that would never be healed. So much talk about the sanctity of home and family, yet the truth was, people couldn’t stay put, couldn’t wait to leave. Fr
ee land out west, gold in the Yukon, factory jobs in the city. Material betterment might be the excuse, but restlessness was the drover.
For a time Grif was wedged between two stout fellows, one sniggering to himself, the other quietly weeping—both solid as bookends. Being stuck, he took the opportunity to gaze up at one of the steamers, the Northern Belle. She was a beauty, too, with her burnished brass and fancy mouldings, decorative as a birthday cake. And he thought, why not line up for his share, his serving of the journey? Fenwick had insisted that he was a free man … insofar as that is possible, he had added. Philosophy aside, this boat could further that freedom, stretch the bounds of what was possible. It was what he wanted, wasn’t it: to stoke the fire in his breast that his impulsive departure had ignited? He had to go forward, on and on, and dare not look back where he knew she was standing, staring after him, granite-eyed and unforgiving. He did not believe that she was to be found in Europe enjoying a tour of forgetfulness. She was at his back, always at his back, waiting, like death itself.
Someone tugged firmly at his sleeve and it made him jump; a shiver ran up his arm. His stout props, Comedy and Tragedy, seemed to have melted away, and he turned expecting to see Fenwick (not that he really wanted to see him any more). His brief travel reverie had him almost convinced, and he could see himself stowing away in the belly of this boat, living on crumbs that fell through the cracks and the odd rat. No wait—he would work his way across the lakes, disembarking at the Sault with a pocketful of honestly earned wages, then head out west where there was plenty of land and space under the stars to lose yourself in. A prairie sky renders a man practically invisible.
It was not Fenwick but a young woman standing before him, very pretty, if somewhat pale and agitated, and wearing the most alarming hat. A madwoman’s hat. It was wide-brimmed like a picture hat but made of bones wired together, wrapped in a gauzy material and decorated with flowers, tassels, a stuffed finch and a sprig of cedar. He couldn’t help but stare. The thing was like a bad dream she might be having, exhibited on the exterior of her brain. No wonder she looked troubled. Avice’s hats had all been trim and stylish, functional as punctuation, a brisk nod to convention without being subsumed by it. Everyone in possession of a head, whether lively or dull, required a hat, but this was cause for concern.
“Do excuse me,” she said, sanely enough, unclasping her fingers from his sleeve and sizing up Grif’s own incongruous appearance: two jackets, the outer hardly a match for the flashy boater he was wearing (purchased only that morning, for he had been shopping, not sleeping in). The hat was pushed back on his head, rimming it like a halo, and giving him an open, innocent look, an approachability. Certainly he was the most handsome man in sight, and Amelia Kennedy did have a reputation among her friends for being a desperate flirt. “I am so sorry to bother you, but I need some assistance. You see, my boat is about to leave and I have all these to get aboard somehow.” She gestured helplessly at a leaning tower of hat boxes. “I can’t find a steward anywhere. Fred was supposed to be here to help me. Fred, my brother. And—oh dear, it’s no use, I am going to miss it.”
She is very pretty, Grif thought. I wonder whose bones she’s wearing on her head, he also thought, while smiling gamely at her.
A boat whistle sounded, a throaty, resonant blast that made Captain Peter Campbell—“Black Pete”—of the Northern Belle stop to listen, fingers lightly grazing the dark beard that foamed around his face. How he loved that sound. It excited him like a woman’s hot hand sailing up his back, and the Echo’s whistle did have a lovely tone, so pure she might sing in a church. Which is about all you could say for her—a ship of slight construction, its wheelhouse built too high, fitted with the wrong kind of propellers for lake navigation. Besides which, the boat was mismanaged, understaffed and overloaded with freight, driven more by the company’s greed than by skill or any concern for its passengers.
Standing on the hurricane deck of his own ship, he watched a young couple race past on the dock below, weaving through the crowd, then up the Echo’s gangplank. Honeymooners, most likely. He shook his head and snorted, “Hats.” The young man was running blind, struggling with a slithering, cascading armful of boxes, while the girl, her skirt hitched to keep up (fat ankles), chattered non-stop and directed the fellow as if he were a dumb beast. Captain Campbell leaned over the railing slightly and narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t quite tell what she was wearing on her head, but it looked suspiciously like a chicken carcass. With dressing. His own hat he sometimes cinched to his head with a length of rope when he raced Basset’s City of Midland up to Collingwood. But his hat was never screwed on so tight that he couldn’t see what was happening on his own ship. In fact he was downright omniscient, with the capacity for wrath that can accompany the all-knowing. More than once he had found it necessary to throw a passenger overboard, his luggage following, for smoking in a stateroom. A steamer can keep afloat only so much human stupidity. He knew that he would never be the dictator of these waters, but on them he managed well enough. It was said that he had the luck of the devil—twenty years a skipper and still breathing air—but he thought what he had rather was the devil’s good sense.
He wondered if the captain of the Echo was sober enough today to read his barometer. And he wondered too, not without sympathy, where that young couple might find themselves this night. In heaven or hell? Both were distinct possibilities.
Captivated or captured? Ruefully, Grif had begun to ponder the distinction as he placed the last of the boxes in Amelia Kennedy’s room. He tried to edge out the door, but she held him fast, pinned to the spot with a non-stop monologue. He couldn’t tell whether it was simply nervousness that made her rattle on—fear of travel, or water, or a woman’s well-founded anxiety about travelling alone. She might simply be a compulsive talker, a bleeder of words, her mouth a gash in her face through which her whole being poured. He was not so charmed as he had been at first.
He marvelled at the amount of information she imparted in so short a time: her father’s gout, her mother’s needlework, her brother Fred’s accident involving the tuba, her sister’s confinement, a distant cousin’s engagement to a military man, which was, even to her it seemed, of distant interest. He was almost beginning to feel like an intimate of this family, a suffering member yearning to escape its claustrophobic banality. She filled him in on her various likes (glove sets, hat brushes, magic pencils) and her dislikes (mourning pins, conversation tubes, vest chains made of hair), confided her spiritual ambitions (trite) and her secular ones, which included the present venture. The hat boxes represented neither an obsession with her appearance nor with the joys of haberdashery itself, but were a professional investment. She was a milliner en route to Fort William to work for a Mrs. Dorcas Small, although only temporarily, as it would not be long, she assured him, before she had her own shop and several girls working for her. Admittedly, her confidence was as remarkable as her hat, and probably as skewed, for he couldn’t quite see the ladies of Fort William gliding into their church socials or at-homes adorned in femurs, twigs and paws—however fitting were the headdresses of savages for those rigid and chilly rituals.
There was something to be said for reticence in a woman, for a seemly reserve. Indeed, there was a great deal to be said, and he didn’t doubt that she would get around to it. He longed to place his fingers on her plump lips to staunch this flow of pointless, useless chatter. He wanted to halt this promiscuous clacking of her tongue; surely that organ was pure muscle, strong enough to lift and hurl the whole of the language in one try. Instead, inching backwards, one hand behind him, he groped for the handle of the cabin door. Ever since he stepped on board this boat, he had felt uneasy, troubled. He noted how shabby it was, and dirty, with garbage banked in corners, its brass smudged and filmy as if mauled by an army of grubby-fingered two-year-olds. Not only that, but it rode too low in the water for his liking, and he figured there was no point in adding further ballast.
“Excuse me, Miss Kenne
dy,” he interrupted, “but I really must—”
And then she screamed. “Ohhh, did you see it? Behind the bed, a rat, oh, not in my room, a rat, do something, please, get it out!”
But it wasn’t a rat. Or rather, it wasn’t the rat that contained the truth of the matter; it was her scream. It was the same scream that had woken him during the night, the high, sharp cry that had slit open sleep and dream. A premonition it must have been, a warning that he had left undeciphered and unheeded. If that rat carried the bad news about this boat in its verminous heart, then Amelia Kennedy’s scream carried a bleak certainty. Finally she had told him something worth knowing.
He scrabbled clumsily at the door, flung it open and ran, hoping he could rely once again on his cowardice to save him. He tore along the deck but it was no use, he was too late, the Echo was already steaming twenty, thirty yards from the dock. He stared into the churning water, wondering whether it would buoy him up if he leapt in, or would he hit bottom like an anchor? What chance did he have? He couldn’t swim. Surely someone on the shore would see him go overboard and rescue him. But no one was watching. Already backs were turning away, eyes redirected inland. There were no lingering goodbyes or wistful looks following in the wake of the Echo.
Except one. There was one, a man on the dock standing alongside a medium-sized wooden crate, and he was waving at Grif, shouting out. He was trying to tell him something. Fenwick. Lord, it was Fenwick Nashe. He had found Grif after all. He was waving his arms strenuously, and shouting loudly, with urgency, his face knotted with effort. Grif strained to hear, but the boat’s whistle kept blowing and blowing, as though a madman were in control of it, annulling all other sound, dispersing Fenwick’s words like smoke.