Consolation

by Michael Redhill

  “This is to thank you,” he said. “For pointing me in the right direction.”

  “Oh, don’t put the blame on me, Mr. Hallam. If you’ve lost your mind, that’s on your ticket.” He rotated the bottle label side up in his hands and read it carefully. One of those bottles would realize two shillings — three if the local supply appeared to be dwindling — at a cost of ten bob each, all in. “Your father threw you to the wolves, didn’t he?” said Ennis.

  “He couldn’t have known. He thought Toronto was trees and rivers with Londoners wandering in the clearings. He didn’t know the only person in the entire place to offer me his hand would be an Irish picture-maker.”

  “You’ve fallen.”

  “I have.”

  Mr. Ennis offered him his free hand, and the two men shook. “Here the true adventure of your life begins.”

  TWO

  Dearest Alice,

  I imagine by the time you get this, the worst of your winter will be past. So it is here as well, with the sun out for longer periods every day and even birdcalls beginning in the trees! Tell Jane I have seen chimney swallows and purple martins, and the golden-crowned thrushes are coming back and bringing the best of spring. There is not yet enough industry in this little town to convince the birds to nest elsewhere, so we live in our little brick houses beneath an aviary.

  I am busy with the shop, building clientele and meeting my business neighbors. I expect at this rate that we will be able to plan for next year before the end of the summer. I mean to write my father and give him some of the fine details, but for now, when you next see him, pass on news of my well-being.

  I will write you and the girls a longer letter very soon. For the time being, I am enclosing a little picture made of me by one of the city’s talented photographists. I trust I am neither too fat nor too thin for your liking. I am wearing my father’s topcoat in it. I am a Hallam family man here, and before long you and the girls will come to join me and we will have a house in town and a cottage by the lakeshore with horses to convey us one way and the other.

  How I miss you! I cannot say, my dears,

  Jem

  The coarsening of his character had begun the moment he made landfall in Toronto, but now, almost ten months later, he could feel the gold of his self more adulterated every day. He thought worriedly, man’s nature is such that the purifying agents of church and marriage are the only countervails against his welcoming misuse of his spirit and his body. Man is a creature of dirt and woman is one of air and God is the element in which they are co-tempered. Toronto was a city of men. Men built the edifices and waited for other men to fill them. Men such as himself came without their women, without their families, and felled trees or dug holes, conjuring an English village in the woods. What women there were came to serve, or had arrived with brave expressions on their faces to be with their men, to plant themselves on this naked soil and start their families. They came in their dresses and walked in the mud. Some laughed at their predicament, many went mad. The asylum out in the western part of the woods, above the garrison, was filled with their weird mirth and their weeping. And on Sundays, those who had kept their minds intact assembled at church and listened to a hopeful message. Bless and keep those who are far from home.

  But being a man alone in this church society meant one of three things: you had lost your wife and were trying to find a new one; you were a bachelor and looking for your first; or you were alone in a strange country while your people sat by their fire trying to remember what your voice sounded like. Those in that last category were by far the most numerous, but they were the ones for whom nothing could be done. He was one of those for whom there was no point in making introductions, no point in bringing home to supper; his habit of taking his meals in the company of laborers meant he was not suited for dinner parties. Perhaps this wasn’t true, and Hallam knew a great many men who would have given their eye teeth for some gentleness and some conversation about home, but with a sour smell in the air and resources dwindling, entertaining was something people had begun to ration. If it meant bringing together a man and a woman who might increase the town’s numbers (and therefore its shoeless feet, its hatless heads, its unfilled stomachs), then this was a worthy goal. Those laborers and forward scouts would be left to fend for themselves, and Hallam knew that keeping their company (and swelling it) meant they would all become common. There was another category of woman in Toronto, as well as men who had lost their wives, and more who were abandoned. In this respect, the little town was already worldly.

  To keep the scent of civility on him, and to see those who were, in his mind’s eye, still his kind, Hallam continued to attend the church at St. James’s. And although many of its congregants knew he had been ruined in business, he was a welcome member of the flock. The Cockburns and their constituent attended the kirk of St. Andrew’s just up the street, but he was lucky not to run into them, and now that the sign of the mortar lay on one of his cabinets like a discarded shield, he liked to imagine that they had moved on to the next pressing threat. Before long, Mr. Taylor and Sam Ennis’s intuition on matters economic seemed to be prescient: the papers told of a general decline in fortunes throughout the United States, especially in the north, and however the north suffered, so would they. There were whispers of Fenian troubles brewing in Massachusetts (which made Mr. Ennis laugh mockingly; he referred to the Fenians as a file of drunken gits), and, as in 1837, editorials recommended that the local populace keep their powder dry. It was the first time Hallam thought of the Cockburns as rifle owners, and he felt relieved anew that he had changed course. Before long, he was certain, the wisdom of his decision would be borne out.

  On a bright Sunday at the beginning of May, Hallam left services and went up Church Street, thinking to take a sandwich into Moss Park and sit awhile trying to identify the spring birds. He’d been present the previous year for the southern migration and it had given him the sensation, for all of September and October, that he was being left underground by canaries. Now, despite the tenacious cold, the birds were coming back. To belong in a place, one must hear the homecoming of birds: they suggest, in their innate wisdom, that wherever they alight is a place worth being in. For Hallam, the sounds of birds pressed the sky higher into the atmosphere; they made manifest the existence of a world above. Their reappearance brought relief.

  He walked in his heavy boots up Church Street, past the kirk and the New Mechanics’ Institute, with its imposing granite pilasters and handsome windows, and he would have continued if not for a voice that came from the west. A man in a flapping mantle held his hat down as he crossed the street and hailed him again, calling him by name. The wind seemed to pick the word up and dash it against the face of the Institute. The man was one of Hallam’s customers, the photographist Mr. Peter Bryant, of West William’s Street, by St. George’s Square. He owned one of the pleasant houses on the side of the square and catered to the very well-off, making colored photographs by means of hand-mixed colors, a technique Ennis called bastard painting. Mr. Bryant gripped Hallam’s forearm and caught his breath. “Excellent to find you,” he said, gasping a little. “You were at St. James’s?”

  “Yes. Reverend Merrifield spoke on the importance of modesty.”

  “He is an excellent man.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” said Bryant, “I was intending to stop by your store, but you are so little there, I thought I might have some luck if I came over to your house, but here you are!”

  “Yes, here I am, as Abraham sayeth to the Lord.”

  “Haw, yes! Well, this is what I mean to ask of you. I understand that you have an interesting arrangement with Mr. Ennis, do you not?” Hallam, caught off guard, stared dumbly at the man. “Of course you do, but no matter. I find the terms excellent and should like to subscribe myself.”

  Hallam found his voice. “I extended an offer to Mr. Ennis which is part of a business arrangement between himself and me, Mr. Bryant, but I’m afraid it is not
generally available, as I’m sure you understand.”

  “Well, no, of course not, sir. But I am not all of your clientele and given that my purchase of last week was sizable, I think it would be more than reasonable for you to furnish me with a return of a portion of my funds in exchange for a percentage not unlike Mr. Ennis pays you. You know I have a large and loyal custom.”

  Hallam stood with his arms at his side. He had known Ennis for less than two months and already he regretted entering into “business” with a man possessing an Irish mouth. It was a half-hour walk to Ennis’s studio, but Hallam was certain he could make it in fifteen.

  “And glass is expensive, as it turns out,” continued Bryant. “The nitrate lasts a long time, though. You sun the bath once a week and flush out the filth, but you always need new glass. You’d be surprised how many people purchase their negative along with the prints. You can black it and put it in a frame. It looks just like a daguerreotype.”

  You should have bought up all the bloody glass in New York! thought Hallam. Indeed, but if he had, they would have started to make photographs on air with the use of saliva and gun cotton and then he would be in the same position.

  “You know what my terms are with Mr. Ennis. I cannot refund half of your order.”

  “I imagined you would say that. Then let’s compromise and say a third.”

  He recalled his earliest lesson from Mr. Ennis in negotiating. “A compromise would be a quarter, I believe.”

  “Let’s be fair,” said Mr. Bryant, his tone changing minutely. “You want to ensure my business survives so I may continue patronizing yours. It will be a painless transition.”

  “Not if Kaufmann comes to me, and Sullivan, and Tullamore. All they have to do is ask for a third of their money back and I’m ruined.”

  “Have they asked you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if they do, and it will ruin you, then say so. But my request will not ruin you. So I expect you will grant it, and in turn I will pledge my ongoing business to you. It’s a changing world, Mr. Hallam. You can’t expect your best customers to accept your worst-customer terms just to suit your account books, can you, hey?”

  Of course he would give Bryant his money. He would give Sullivan, Tullamore, and anyone who asked for it his money as well, and then the city could auction his stock at pennies after they’d lowered his emaciated body into a hole in Potter’s Field. “I cannot pay you all the money at once, but you will have it if you insist on it.”

  The chummy glow returned to Bryant’s face. “You must come and see my new studio! I have an enlarger now that works through a hole in my house! Sunlight and a mirror — I can make you a picture of your eye as big as a pullet. Come see!”

  “I don’t need a picture of myself, I know what I look like. But thank you.”

  Mr. Bryant tossed his hands in the air, lighthearted and pleased with himself. “You can cash the offer whenever you like.”

  “From whom are you purchasing your glass, if I may ask?”

  “Mr. Whelan has lately laid in a good stock of it. I’ve reserved a fair order for myself.”

  Hallam’s neighbor on King Street. He held his tongue. Tomorrow or Tuesday, Whelan would be depositing money in the bank that was right now in Hallam’s pocket.

  HE SPED PAST Osgoode Hall and on into Ennis’s neighborhood. He rehearsed his outrage: How dare you and I am fatally exposed, a tidy phrase he thought would cut Ennis to the quick. I extended my goodwill to you and now the silver-blued wretches of this town will line up at my door seeking a partner in their miserable businesses! He feared that to passersby he looked faintly mad, his hands rising and falling with his unspoken monologue.

  He calmed himself and breathed out, shook his head. Twenty minutes earlier he had been contemplating a picnic in the park and now he was ruined. Bloody Ennis! Bloody Bryant! And to accentuate the insult, he was now in a part of town a man of his standing should never have called familiar, but it was now. He rarely took this walk in such clear daylight, which made his presence here seem even more furtive. On one side of the city, Toronto was still the little British hamlet with treed avenues and good shops, but the well-wrought illusion of a town growing at a regular rate burst apart once one came east of College Avenue. That wide avenue, with trees growing in the middle, had been based on the Parisian model, but as a boulevard it marked a hard barrier between the accustomed-to-having and the never-did-have. Although Osgoode Hall rose above the street like a vision out of Araby, below it were the roughest kinds of log huts. The fug of creosote and human effluvia floated over the whole place. Mr. Ennis was farther west than this, where the concentration of unhappy humanity was not as dense, although, Hallam knew now from witnessing it, it was as unhappy. At night, many of the little abodes west and south of Osgoode Hall became disorderly houses or gin dens, and worse festered there. He knew Mr. Ennis to be a patron of some of those businesses. It would have been fair to say that if one were a denizen of Portland Street below King and one wished to buy an apple, it would take a walk of at least a mile to get it, but at all hours a glass of rum could be easily had. One could stick out a hand in the middle of the street after nine in the evening and be certain a most illicit treat would fall into it. Very little of the local fermentation was bottled at Gooderham’s, or came to shore on a steamer. Most of it was of the same provenance as Ennis’s gullet-burner. Homemade spirits and a homemade economy allowed neighborhoods like this to carry on. Mr. Ennis, with his still and his photography, was a veritable captain of industry here, and some of the recent immigrants to the area had nicknamed him padrone.

  Many of those who lived in the ramshackle houses were still snoozing away their mornings while churchgoers in the better part of town had filed out for their lunches. Hallam passed through the dark country below to Brock Street and knocked on Mr. Ennis’s private door. He steeled himself to begin speaking the moment the door opened, but getting no answer, he fell back into himself and went to the other side to enter the foyer, where he pushed the door open to Ennis’s studio. Here was the smell of woodsmoke, as Ennis had a fire going in the little stove he kept for tea. But he was not at home. Rather, a young woman stood by the stove, warming her hands. Red sparks flew up from the open hob. On seeing Hallam, she withdrew her hands, as if he’d caught her stealing Ennis’s personal store of heat.

  “Hullo,” he said, peering around. Mr. Ennis’s set was not present; rather, his shapeless mattress had been brought in and was draped with relatively clean white linen. “Is Mr. Ennis here?”

  “Is he expecting you?” She spoke in the clear, clean tones of a Londoner. She would have been perfectly at home on King Street, or in his local in Camden Town. She would be here having a picture made for her parents, he thought.

  “He’s not, but he wouldn’t be surprised to see me. He’s doing your portrait?”

  “He is.” She took a chair near from the wall and brought it back to the stove. “He said he’d be back in ten minutes. He went to get me some medicine.”

  “Oh,” said Hallam, worried that he and Ennis had passed in the street. “Did he say where?”

  “One of the neighbors. I have a cough.” She demonstrated for him. It was a wet cough, with a rattle under it. He took off his gloves and tucked them under his arm. He realized the color of her face was not from the heat of the fire.

  “I’m an apothecary. If you don’t mind —” He gestured to the chair, and she sat in it. She turned her face to him. Her eyes were a fawn brown, but from close up they were polished tigerwood. He thought perhaps she was sick with something more than a catarrh. “If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’d like to touch your hand.” She held it out and he put his own hand under it, judged its weight. It was thick, heavy with edema, and the skin was pallid. “How long have you felt unwell?”

  “Some days. Mr. Ennis has been most helpful.” Her voice, he realized now, was from somewhere farther north than he’d originally thought: she was speaking more slowly than she might usually,
dulled by her illness.

  “You’re from Manchester.”

  “Bath,” she said.

  “Oh, I see. Yes, Bath. You need some lozenges. I can make some up for you.”

  “I have no money, sir.”

  “You are a friend of Mr. Ennis’s. You can pay when you’re able. I will make you a capsicum gargle. Not very pleasant, but it will restore your energy.”

  She smiled, but then her gaze went past him to the door and the smile broadened. “Sam,” she said, rising. “Did you get it?”

  “I have it right here. Hello, Jem Hallam. You’ve met?”

  “We have,” Hallam said, straightening and remembering his purpose. “Nice to make your acquaintance,” he said to the woman.

  “Claudia Rowe. Late of Bath. Pleased to meet you.” She held her hand out and he took it again. “Mr. Hallam is going to make me some cap — a gargle,” she said to Ennis. He had proceeded to the mattress, and she followed and eagerly sat. As if aware that Hallam had come to talk, Ennis held up his hand, that official gesture of his. He took from inside his coat a pipe, which he put in her open mouth and lit. She took a deep draft and lay down.

  “Well, yes,” said Hallam. “Tobacco has excellent restorative qualities. More women should smoke it; it reduces hysteria and is good for the organs.” Miss Rowe held the smoke, her eyes closed, and exhaled. Ennis took a draft of it as well. The smoke was oily, and black. “Oh,” said Hallam, catching its sweet fragrance. “Oh.”

  “Will you take some, Mr. Hallam?”

  “No. I will not. Mr. Ennis, I’d like a word —”

  “You may have many when our pause fumée has concluded, sir!”

  “You must be very cautious with that. It’s addicting,” said Hallam.

  “We are doing portraits,” Ennis said, smiling joyously at him. He removed the opium pipe from Miss Rowe’s reach. “That’s enough. We don’t want you dropping off.” He rose from a crouching position and went to his camera, and Hallam crossed the room to meet him there, his attention divided between his reason for coming and what he’d found on arriving. “You’ve been to church?” said Ennis.