One such afternoon — spent committing lies halfheartedly to paper — was passing with morbid slowness when his bell jangled. It was the end of the first week of May, and he’d just spent an entire weekend without going out of doors, so evidence of the world beyond his windows was something of a revelation. He was in a shirt and long drawers, with the curtains drawn on his own funk, and he now opened them to see Claudia Rowe standing in the street, having stepped back from the stoop where she’d rung the bell. Hallam snapped the curtain shut, and the bell rang again. He pulled on pants and swished a mouthful of water around to rid his breath of the smell of stale tea, and rushed down the stairs to the street door. He stood behind it, his mind empty, believing he could actually hear her breath through the door. The bell jangled once more in his room above him.
“Miss Rowe?” he said, opening the door, and he shot a glance down the street in the direction she must have been walking. “How did you get my home address?”
“There is the city directory, Mr. J.G. Hallam.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Mr. Ennis says he hasn’t heard from you since our friendly meeting. You’ve broken off with him?”
“No.” Hallam was aware that the longer they stood in the door, the worse the encounter would appear. He stepped aside and brought her into the foyer. “He hasn’t sent word for more supplies, so I presume he has what he needs for the time being. You’ve seen him?”
“Just to say hello.”
“I see.”
They stood in a tortured silence. He wasn’t sure what etiquette demanded of him: would one behave differently if an unexpected visitor was not someone one had seen naked? If unintentionally? He waited for the inevitable door to fly open on the main floor or one above, and for a neighbor to see him with this unfamiliar girl. “You formed the wrong impression of me,” she said.
“How so.”
“For one, I’m married.”
Hallam stared at her.
“I should say I suppose myself still to be married. My husband was employed by the Atlantic Telegraph Company and went early last fall to set up some lines that would connect Fort William to Toronto. But he vanished in November. It was six months on Friday.”
She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t.
“Six months means he’s deemed dead by the county coroner,” she said. “I suppose it was a good thing he had life insurance. But they won’t pay it, will they? Because there’s no body and no witnesses that can vouch he’s dead, and even if he is, they don’t have proof it wasn’t a suicide, even though I tell them he would never have taken his own life. Do you understand?”
“Mrs. Rowe — Mrs. Rowe, I don’t know what to say.”
She continued, explaining that no authority would take possession of her particular case, how her letters went unanswered, and she pushed him into the hall, walking toward him, her hands now freed from her sides and moving through the air angrily. “I have a husband, Mr. Hallam, who by law is half-alive and half-dead, and I am powerless and friendless and have nowhere to live and nothing to eat and it is the street for me if I don’t figure out what to do —”
She had set her jaw just enough to prevent tears from pouring down her face, but her whole body was shaking. Hallam’s face reddened not only because of the horror of this nearly weeping woman in the vestibule of his tenement but because he’d fixed a picture of this woman in his mind so uncharitable that it was hard to correct. He’d seen her as one of the myriad hangers-on who would do anything to cadge a meal or a cigar, not as someone who had lost everything. It was beyond his powers to imagine how his cruelty must have hurt her, and he felt profoundly ashamed. Without another thought, he led her upstairs to his unkempt room and put a pot of water on to boil.
She collected herself in silence, sitting in the chair he’d been in only moments earlier, staring out of the window, where he’d spent aimless nights, alone, scribbling his fantasies home. When the pot boiled, he filled a silver ball with fresh leaves and steeped something strong for her. He thought of adulterating it a little with whiskey, just to pacify her, but he thought better of it, knowing firsthand that her system was already too receptive of such balms. She held the hot cup in her hands. As he passed it to her, she covered one of Hallam’s hands with her own, and her touch was waxy and cold, even though it was a true spring day outside.
He pulled along a stool and sat near her, at the side of the desk, his breath coming in nervous rags. He sent his mind back to recall all the harsh things he said or suggested when he dragged her from Ennis’s house that afternoon.
“You must accept my apology,” he said. “I imagined your circumstances somewhat differently.”
“You thought I was a whore in training,” she said.
“I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Yes, you do.” She drank gingerly from the cup, her hands shaking only a little now. “At last you know I’m a widow. Well, I am enough of a widow to take on his debts.”
“Is there nothing the company will do for you?”
“It is through them that the policy was purchased! They garnished the monthly fee from his wages, but now that there are no wages to be paid they have kindly offered to continue accepting payment on the policy. Should their ‘terms’ be satisfied, they will need to have the policy in good standing, which in plain English means that if I am so fortunate to recover my husband’s body one day, I will have to have paid into the policy right to that bloody moment!” She was splenetic now, but Hallam held his tongue, hoping her mood would spend itself, although he could scarce but imagine a crowd of curious neighbors gathering in a knot outside his door. “So either I save my eight shillings a month and forfeit my right,” she continued, “or I pay on until such time as they admit what everyone seems to accept, or they decide the case is closed and the terms unsatisfied. It’s only a matter of choosing when I am to lose everything: now or later.” She took another deep draft of the tea. She seemed immune to the heat and swallowed without moving the liquid around in her mouth. Perhaps all of her was numb. She sat with her eyes closed over the steam, letting it soothe her, and when she opened them she allowed herself a look around Hallam’s living space, taking it in over the rim of her cup and then sending him a sideways glance. “You weren’t expecting me,” she said, smiling.
He cleared his throat rather than laughing. “I don’t expect anyone.”
She peered down at the rag plugs in the floor. “Those are a unique way to stop the drafts.”
“They’re bolt holes,” he told her. “There was machinery in here before I took the room. A man who printed tracts.”
“What came of him?”
“He stopped paying the rent.” She nodded, her eyes still taking in the room. The curtains were drawn, and she put her cup down and leaned across the desk to shift one open and look out, then let it fall again. An arrow of light pierced the room as she did, and then vanished. “You might as well open them if you want,” Hallam said. “I doubt your presence here is much of a secret anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and then she did open them, standing to do so. She pulled a strand of hair out of her mouth and pushed it over her ear, then turned to the room and saw it in all its murk. The late-afternoon light probably showed the place to what advantage it had, but he was aware that no amount of light could have made it homelike. He remained where he was as she stepped farther into the room, looking back once to mark any objections Hallam might have had. But he remained silent, and she went over to the stove and held her hand over it, then peered into the dry sink, at its dirty contents. She came back toward the center of the room, briefly scrutinizing the bed. She stood against the wall opposite the window and held her arms apart, her palms facing together. “One machine here,” she said, and then she shuffled sideways, turning and keeping her arms stiffly out. “Another one here.”
“I imagine.”
“Where did he sleep?”
“Perhaps the floor.”
“That couldn’t have been very nice. Although back at home, in England, I knew a preacher who slept on his own pews. Maybe the discomfort reminds them of something.”
“I think most of them sleep in beds,” he said. He found himself watching her carefully, as if he’d encountered a nearly domesticated animal in his flat, a marten or a raccoon. Best to keep one’s distance. Mrs. Rowe remained on the other side of the room, taking in the small cloth-covered crate he used as a bedside table, his slippers pushed neatly under the bed, a drinking glass on the windowsill. He saw it all as he imagined she saw it, following the line of her vision to all the forlorn objects of his own life, but when he brought his eyes off the glass and back to hers, she was looking directly at him.
“Pretty cozy, though,” she said.
“Yes.”
“One could never have fit two people in here with all that machinery.”
“Well, no,” he said, and thought to mention that he knew some married couples in the building with rooms just like his, but before he could form the words her meaning was borne in on him like a blast of heat, and he realized why she had come. She stood with her arms at her sides, and there it was, in the open between them.
“Mrs. Rowe,” he said. “I wish there was some way to show you I’m not a complete brute, but . . . I can give you . . .” He thought for a moment, trying to appear as if he were calculating something, rather than reining in his flailing mind. “I have to spare perhaps —”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want money. I want to know what it means that you cared about what I did with myself. An utter stranger. Hundreds of women in this city fall to all sorts of predation. Some of them live very well on it. Will you ferret them all out and save them from their worser instincts?”
“I felt . . . involved . . . somehow, in your case.”
“Why did it matter to you?”
“I suppose it was because it was my supply of silver that was allowing him to abuse you in that manner.”
“I was not being abused.”
“Of course, yes. And I see now that I was overzealous. It was wrong of me to presume to —”
“You can’t withdraw your concern now.” She still stood across from him, her arms folded over her chest. He felt surprised to imagine that he was now in her space. “Not when you are being asked to make good on it.”
Unwelcome heat seared his face and sped down to his stomach. “It’s not that,” he said. “It’s only that it was your business, and I would have done well to assume you knew it better than anyone.”
He expected that she would counter him with a new assertion of his obligations, but instead he saw that her face had softened, or fallen even, and her expression was one of complete despair. He turned away again from her startling nakedness. She spoke quite plainly now. “I’m here to throw myself on your mercy. I need your help, your good graces. And in exchange I offer you my friendship.”
“My God,” he said. “Look around, Mrs. Rowe. Judge for yourself. And what about Mr. Ennis’s mercy?”
“You’ve seen his rooms. They’re even worse than yours. And do you think he has mercy in him?”
“You know him better than I do.”
“But I feel I know you better than him.” She came back to the desk and removed the same cloth purse she’d dropped his contribution into the previous month, and drew out a small roll of paper money. This she placed on its end on the desk. “I entrust you with my entire life savings. My husband’s bank saw fit to allow me to empty his account. Be rid of her, they thought, there’s no more where that came from. There’s six pounds there.”
“You could pay rent on a room for almost a year on that, Miss Rowe. Mrs. Rowe.”
“And then face death in the middle of winter? You take that money up front and we’ll enter into an agreement. A companionable arrangement. You need help in here, and I need sanctuary. I’ll come and go in darkness if you like.”
Having entered now into a conversation he would not otherwise entertain the merest thought of, Hallam felt compelled to speak to her proposal, but another part of him wanted to grab her by the shoulder and march her down the stairs. Her tone of voice — one that suggested that only the details needed working out — could have been applied to the most absurd petitions, such as suggesting they rob a bank or burn the customs house to the ground for the sheer thrill of it. You needn’t answer her directly, he told himself. She may have laid the grounds for one conversation, Hallam, but you lay the grounds for another.
“I’ve read of confidence men, Mrs. Rowe, and probably their tricks aren’t restricted to their sex.”
“I have to believe in you as well, that you’ll treat me honorably. You said I shouldn’t place my faith in men. But I think only an honest man would say that.”
“I’m not worried about my own behavior. I’m married with two daughters.”
“You have two girls.”
“Yes. But, that, that is not the point, Mrs. Rowe. The point is, I am not a bachelor, and even if I were, it wouldn’t be correct — you must understand what I am saying?”
The light was fading now, and the lamps had come on, and he imagined she was visible to anyone who cared to look in. “I’m someone’s daughter,” she said at last. “Would you be the kind of man you’d wish one of your own daughters on if ever so unhappy a fate as mine visited her? Would you want her to find a man like you?”
“If she had to find anyone. But if he were sensible —”
“If he were heartless.”
“What about your parents, Mrs. Rowe?”
“An ocean away.”
“It sounds as if you have enough savings to afford the passage back.”
“Would you go back if there was a chance your life was going to return to you?”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Are you advising me to give my husband up for dead?”
“I thought you said you’d —”
“Is that what you’d have me do? Lose faith entirely?”
He stopped speaking.
“Shelter me for your daughters’ sake, Mr. Hallam. I am in a world that has no use for me on my own, and doesn’t care what happens to me. It’s not aware of my beginnings, the hopes of my family, the future I wanted. But you are sensible of it. I’ll sleep on the floor. I’ll work for you in your shop if you like. And we can, at night, trade books and . . . and even discuss them, civilized conversations about things that interest us. I have a good mind. I’m a fine conversationalist. And if you are, eventually, displeased with the arrangement, you can turn me out and keep my savings.”
He listened to these words, this desolate argument, but what he could not defend himself from was how she looked in his room, standing before him in a filthy coat that hung shapeless on her and did not reach her feet and the gray stockings poking out of black shoes, one foot pointed awkwardly away from the other. She had dressed as if she had come to fill a position, and his heart was breaking at the sight of her. “Do you really think I would keep your money?” he said almost inaudibly, but she had heard him, and it fired her courage.
“No,” she said firmly. “I know you won’t.” She picked up her teacup and finished drinking, then took it to the dry sink and poured some cold water into it, scrubbed it briefly, and put it down on the countertop. “I have some hand towels in my things. I have a roll of clothing and other items with a neighbor. You might think of keeping a warm pot of water on the hob for the dishes.”
“It wastes fuel.”
“Your home is neglected, Mr. Hallam. You are neglected. I can help you.”
Hallam nodded at her, feeling weak and sick and fallen. It would be a sin to agree to her request, but so would it be to send her back to the street. And had he not been sworn to protect the well-being of others? He saw that, once he understood exactly what was being asked of him, he could not refuse her. Given the chance to provide succor, one must do it: the alternative is not much more than murder at a remove. He had, it was true,
recoiled at the mere horror of an erotic photograph, but would he seriously consider sending another human being back into the elements?
Even so, this sensible, moral justification only masked that he’d been offered a solace of his own, and once he was done arguing with himself he would see the conclusion was foregone. Her offer of company, even if it were only to be the sound of another human being breathing in the darkness, was not a boon he could refuse. If it meant the sacrifice of his good name, his future hopes, then so be it. He was too lonesome to turn her away.
So he sent her to collect her worldly things, and despaired.
FOUR
AS IF BECKONED by a strange gesture of hope, the spring came in earnest the week after Mrs. Rowe moved into Hallam’s rooms. It was hard to believe, after a winter such as they’d had, that the cold was not somehow still invested just below the surface, and that anything that tried to grow would hit its head against the underside of the earth. And yet all the incipient charms of the city were suddenly manifest. The smell of sweet-grass in empty lots, the honeyed air, the lovely breezes off the lake. And where before the city had seemed a subterranean nightmare of hidden faces and hushed voices, Hallam now nodded at his fellows in the street and received the most friendly time of day in return from them. Perhaps because English winters were not as cruel, never before had he encountered spring with such a sense of gratitude, and this sense was shared by everyone else who survived the winter of 1856. He found himself laughing unaccountably as he walked down King Street. The warm light inspired people to have their joyful faces photographed for posting home, and more than once he came to the shop to find a note tucked in behind the handle asking for his services at one or another location. Bryant had kept his word, and to Hallam’s even greater surprise, discharged his percentages as promised on a biweekly basis. Sometimes he even made deliveries (or Mrs. Rowe made them) to hotels or private homes where one of his photographers was so busy he could not meet at his regular place of business or the shop to take delivery of a much-needed silver salt. And his earlier fears of the nitrate lasting too long did not figure either, as the need for silver salts in exposing paper positives exceeded the need of simply sensitizing glass plates. If one or two paper pictures were affordable, then why not three or four? Silver was not going out of style.
Consolation Page 17
