Death in the Age of Steam

by Mel Bradshaw

  “She should thank you, Isaac, for letting him bleed,” said the lawyer. “I can’t imagine how you bore it—but then I’ve never been on a deer hunt.”

  “It wasn’t the least like a deer hunt,” Harris affirmed. “And I’m not sure I did do right to let him bleed in William Sheridan’s bedroom.”

  “A fitting enough place,” said Theresa. “Besides, it’s All Saints Day. The ghosts are gone.”

  “Really, Theresa?” said Small. “I didn’t know you held these quaint beliefs.”

  “Perhaps I don’t,” she rejoined with a smile, “but neither do I believe it was up to Isaac whether Henry lived or died. You disarmed him, Isaac. You prevented his escape. What was most required you did. Tell us, though, could you also have performed a ligature of the femoral artery? No? From what I saw, nothing less would have stopped the bleeding.”

  Harris felt steadied. Less and less seemed to stand between him and the new life with Theresa. He would need employment, of course, but nothing exalted. Last time, in waiting to be made cashier before he contemplated marriage, he had waited too long.

  As the three friends were leaving the hotel, Theresa spied a patroness of the new Toronto General Hospital, with whom she stopped to a exchange a word.

  “Before I forget,” said Small, handing Harris an envelope, “this is from York Foundry. I believe you are being offered a position.”

  Here was a happy opportunity, thought Harris, though—with Conquest poised to cast its first rail—far from a sinecure. He perused and pocketed the letter.

  “Your atheism distresses certain of the directors, but for some reason they do not consider your departure from the Provincial Bank a sign of unsteadiness.”

  Harris inferred that York Foundry had got wind of his futile attempt to protect their confidences from Newbiggins. Murdock had perhaps said something. Not feeling at liberty to resolve Small’s puzzlement, Harris covered a smile by asking whether the lawyer had taken quite all his old clients to Matheson.

  “Not quite. I haven’t seen Esther myself since returning from Montreal, but my personal affairs are still rather untidy.”

  “Spare me the particulars,” Harris entreated.

  “Between the two of us, I believe I now share a mistress with the inspector of police.” An amorous glint came into Small’s grey eyes. “It’s intolerable, but that thieving young tigress Nan Hogan has me between her paws.”

  Theresa’s return mercifully redirected conversation to the imminent probate of her father’s will. When Small left for his new office on King Street East, she rather less felicitously suggested stopping in to see what the villa she was inheriting would need to make it habitable.

  New carpeting and floor in the bedroom, Harris grumbled to himself. It seemed soon to him, barely twelve hours since the removal of Crane’s body—far too soon to be again pushing open the kitchen door and climbing the fourteen noiseless steps to the main floor. He insisted they not go higher.

  In the front parlour, Theresa began pulling dust sheets from the furniture, starting with the pianoforte and a modern easy chair. The sight of the chair, ornately carved and heavily fringed, seemed to make her tremble. Into it she sank, covering her lowered face with her hands. Her inclined neck looked terrifyingly delicate with its lovely dark mole to the left of the nape. She wept softly at first. Presently she cried in strong, keening wails that shivered Harris to the core.

  He touched her shoulder, then knelt before her and caught her in his arms as she, falling forward, threw hers about him. She cried more quietly, but for a very long time. She was at home. No one could see or hear. She was far from Harris, even as she pressed her moist cheek to his shirt front, far inside one of many private griefs. Part of her had disappeared again. He knew helplessly that, even though she gave herself to him, there would always be these times when she went from him, and he would be left wondering whether to search or wait.

  “Was it your father’s favourite chair?” he asked at last.

  “No.” Theresa finished crying and cleared her throat. “I can’t explain. The chair has no closer connection to him than does anything else.”

  With these words, her arms tightened around Harris. Her tears flowed again. Through her plain wool bodice he felt her rib cage heave. His knees were numb with kneeling, as must hers have been, yet neither could bear to move.

  Eventually, through the curtained south windows, march music drifted from the Esplanade.

  “What’s that?” Theresa asked in something like her normal voice.

  “Conquest Iron Works,” said Harris. “Your new neighbours.”

  “I had forgotten.” She tore off her black bonnet and tried to push the hair off her forehead. “I detest factories and steam engines,” she said, “don’t you?”

  Harris hesitated. He meant to fight Conquest’s fire with York’s, to match forge with forge, to bring ore from Lake Superior and build the new iron age. Despite specific misgivings, of an aesthetic nature mostly, he believed in industry. He believed in employment opportunities, a shrinking world, affordable goods widely distributed. One could not detest the entire tenor of one’s age—but then he knew that behind her words Theresa had something much more specific in mind, the career of industrialist Henry Crane.

  “How do they make us better or healthier?” she insisted.

  “We were bad enough before steam,” said Harris. “Look at MacFarlane and his cholera brig.”

  Theresa squirmed a little. “To think he’ll be knighted!”

  Harris regretted not having asked Crane about the future Sir George, whose confidence on board the train subsequent events had so conveniently justified. Crane was gone now, Hillyard indisposed, and MacFarlane’s title would have to be borne with.

  “Perhaps,” said Harris, “the fundamental evil is haste. Henry could not wait for Conquest’s fortunes to improve, and George could not wait for the quarantine.”

  “You were too patient in the old days, Isaac.” Theresa disengaged herself altogether from his embrace, the more thoroughly to look him over. “I like you better now.”

  The marching bands had reached the new iron works and fallen silent. Now they struck up an infectious Offenbach polka.

  The music on top of Theresa’s gratifying avowal restored feeling to Harris’s legs. On an impulse, he rose and extended his arms to Theresa where she sat, her skirt a wide black pool on the green and yellow carpet. Its sylvan pattern of twisting branches and curling leaves throbbed with delicious life.

  “Do you mean for us to dance?” she asked in amazement.

  Harris smiled and tried to catch her hands.

  “Well, say it!” she insisted, a challenging sparkle in her large, green eyes. “Don’t leave me in any doubt about your intentions.”

  “Wicked, I assure you. Come here.”

  “I haven’t for years. I don’t think I can.”

  “You can.” Harris would leave her in no doubt. “Theresa, I’m asking you for this dance . . . and all the rest.”

  He led her to the unobstructed centre of the room. Side by side, they hopped and stepped forward, then back, to French music played by Toronto Protestants and Catholics for a Yankee venture. Behind drawn curtains the half light was theirs alone. Harris counted out the time.

  “One—two—three—four.”

  “Like this!” Theresa cried, finding her way. She swayed into the music with a supple grace unknown among the polka dancers at the Peninsula Hotel. “Tell me, Isaac,” she said. “Would you have looked inside Etta Lansing’s shack if I had not called out?”

  “Etta Lansing and her great scimitar of a knife were protecting something in there. I couldn’t have left without finding out what.” In a sense, he had not found Theresa at all, but had allowed her to find him—and knowing she had wanted to find him felt damned good. “Face to face now,” he said. “I step back with you pursuing, then reverse.”

  “The music has stopped,” she pointed out.

  “No matter.”

&nbs
p; When they stopped at last, it was to kiss. Her fingers encircled the back of his neck. His cradled her slender black waist. Each returned the eager pressure of the other’s body through all the petticoats and skirts, the trousers and drawers, the plackets and flies.

  If the bands had started up again, they didn’t hear.

  Author’s Note

  Characters appearing in these pages are fictitious, and none should be identified with any actual person, living or dead. Streets and places, on the other hand, are depicted as faithfully as possible. Their names reflect 1850s usage; some have changed over the decades since.

  Acknowledgements

  A novel in a new voice can never have too many friends. It is a great pleasure to acknowledge here some of the people without whom Death in the Age of Steam might never have reached your hands. Invaluable early encouragement and advice came from Carol Jackson, Bonnie Laing, Robert Ward and Greg Ioannou. Through the Humber School for Writers Correspondence Programme, I had the great good fortune to develop the manuscript with Paul Quarrington, and to profit from his wise and sympathetic coaching. Parts of the novel were also supportively critiqued by George Fetherling and Austin Clarke. Both were made accessible by the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, and both gave more than duty required. The opportunity to work with these three authors has been an honour.

  I’d like to say a special thank you to two technical experts. Professor Roger Hall of the University of Western Ontario helped me with the historical details of pre-Confederation Canada, while Patricia Cooper vetted the manuscript with the keen eye of a horse owner. Both prevented me from committing many errors, and neither can be blamed for those—few, I hope—that remain. I know I made no mistake in entrusting this novel to my agent, Tina Tsallas of Great Titles Incorporated, for she introduced it and me to RendezVous Press. Working with publisher Sylvia McConnell and editor Allister Thompson has been a joy. Finally, I would like to thank my family, who never once told me I was wasting my time by writing—or even thought it.

  Photo by Brett Newsome

  Mel Bradshaw was born in Toronto, Ontario, and took his B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of Toronto. He continued studying philosophy—mostly ethics and aesthetics—at New College, Oxford.

  Between degrees, he spent two years forgetting winter in Southeast Asia. Under the auspices of Canadian University Service Overseas, he taught English in northern Thailand and did odd jobs in Jakarta, Indonesia. He has also travelled to Zambia, Iceland, Poland, and points between. He now lives in his native town, devoting as much time as possible to reading and writing.