Reckoning of Boston Jim

by Claire Mulligan

≈ ≈ ≈

  “How’d I dare do it?” the Dora woman stared at Boston, as if he were to have some idea, some reply. The sun was behind her now. At least three hours had passed since she had given him back his pouch with the money. She took her bonnet off. Filaments of hair wavered ’round her head, caught in some imperceptible breeze.

  “I’d seen the dead ones, nudging up against the wharves. You get just a glimpse of a shoulder like, or a hand, or a bit of skirt. The water ain’t where people are belonging. Cobblestones is where we belong. So how’d I dare get on that ship? I hardly believed this island were real. So, how’d I dare? Where’d I find the courage?” She waited, round-eyed, for a reply. Boston said he did not know and felt that brief lurching, as he always did when ships were mentioned, the watery deep. That was when he should have left. But he could not, not with her voice wrapping ’round him like twine.

  Why, the thought of that fine man on his knees, telling her to join him in the British Columbias, that was where she found the courage. His beseeching gaze drew her on like a horse in harness.

  Mr. Haberdale the Younger tried mightily to deter her from the voyage. She would be worked to death in the vilest of conditions. She would be sold into a brothel. She would die of ship fever.

  “You must, that is, you truly must not go. I care for you, I mean, I adore you, that is to say I love you, truly.” He gripped her hands. His face contorted, became uglier yet. And then, actual tears. It was a most unfortunate sight. He asked her to marry him. Yes, he would descend to it to please her. He loved her that much.

  “But it were too late. I was already decided. I told him he would soon enough find himself a nice radical lady who wore bloomers and spectacles and was pleased to spend her time in low coffee houses. Ah, I was cruel, and I felt bad enough right after. But it were like he saw someone else and not me at all.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  A fine spring day. Sixty-two women and girls walk two abreast through the parish of Wapping, past the leers and hat doffing of the sailors and watermen and sack sellers, past the mute glance of a mud lark or two, their kettles sprouting bits of wood and iron. They walk past shops that sell telescopes and compasses and coppery instruments meant for measuring stars and wind and the angles of waves. She told Boston this as if he had no familiarity with sextants, chronometers, and quadrants, though he had traded such devices before. Four years ago he found a ship’s compass half-buried in the sand of a lengthy shore. Near the compass was a mast speared upright and nearby that, a drowned man. Boston traded the compass for a month’s worth of bacon and lard. He was thinking of telling her all this, but she was still speaking of the shops, the endless shops. Of slop sellers with their dreadnoughts and pilot coats, of shops reeking of tar and festooned with ropes. Some shops had true windows that showed a ghostly version of herself inside. How easy, then, to imagine herself with a neat cap and folded hands and saying “Yes, assuredly, sir, whatever you wish. Please, may I direct your eyes.”

  Mrs. Farthingham, shepherding them from the rear, tells Dora to fall into line. She is a Hussar’s widow, is hefty-shouldered and kindly-eyed and possessed of a voice that can carry cross oceans. Dora easily forgives her abruptness. Has a harder time being charitable to Mr. Scott, the head chaperone. He is a sour-faced, untidy man with a wayward eye that forces him to look askance. It is unnerving, as if he is perpetually suspicious, as if he is about to accuse them of following him and plotting misdeeds.

  “And then we were on the docks. Oh, Mr. Jim, the people watch the comings and goings at the harbour in Victoria like it were their sole entertainment, but the London Docks, it’s where the whole world is coming and going. I saw blacky men and Chinamen. I saw a bird green as lime squawking on a man’s shoulder. And then a whole gang of giant men with hair pale as a fairy babe’s. They were wearing great blue coats and smoking pipes bigger than their fists.”

  Such clanking and groaning and shouting. Barrels stacked as high as a house. Vast warehouse doors with bolts thick as a man’s leg. Odours of spices and coffee so strong one could live on the smell alone. Odours of rum so strong it seems there are underground rivers of it. And the vessels! Crowded all against each other as far as she can see. Masts high as Cathedral spires. Sails cloaking the sky and copper glinting and cargo swinging and gay flags cracking in the breeze.

  They huddle near the dock gates while Mr. Scott exchanges gestures with a warden. The man holds out his hands to show his helplessness. Mr. Scott returns. Announces: “You cannot board until nightfall. The superstitious malarkey of sailors holds that spinsters are bad luck on board a ship. Thus it is best you not be seen parading about and causing trouble.” Mr. Scott looks at them, askance as usual, as if pondering whether the sailors might be not far wrong.

  They are directed to the benches outside a warehouse that is pungent with the smell of hides. The men waiting there for a chance at labour stand reluctantly so they might sit.

  “I’ve never been to London before. I’m from a farm in Wiltshire,” one Miss Joanna says. She has a large nose, a too-broad brow. She begins a jerky sobbing. Poor thing, Dora thinks, to be so homely and so alone. To comfort Miss Joanna, Dora tells of her own past, her family’s lovely drapery shop, her days as a seamstress, now forever behind her. She speaks of the unsuitable Mr. Haberdale, of the suitable young man there on his knees in the brumous street, the absolute certainty that happiness awaits her, and awaits Miss Joanna as well. Dora’s words are a success. Miss Joanna’s sobs trail off. She begins looking about with great interest, then finds the courage to wander off and study a pile of tusks, and all before Dora can speak of the Antipodean twins. Dora turns instead to Mrs. Farthingham, but she is scanning the harbour with such a determined cast to her features it seems she might be seeing beyond the clamorous, seething wharf and so into their future.

  They wait until singing from the public houses overtakes the shouts of the day labourers. In the dimming the vessels have become behemoths nudging against each other and muttering conspiracies. Dora’s courage seeps away. “Look at our cargo of helpless women,” the ships groan and creak. “What fools they are. What fools.”

  A cloud-striped moon is high overheard. Now they are allowed to approach the Tynemouth. The silhouettes of sailors shift and point. Keep a distance. Two lanterns shed a muzzy light over the plank.

  “March across as if you are on a large plain, my dears,” Mrs. Farthingham says.

  “Don’t dawdle. Don’t look down,” Mr. Scott adds.

  Some of the women whimper. Not so Dora. She follows Mrs. Farthingham’s example, holds her skirts high and plants one foot firmly before the other until she is on the deck. Helps coax the others across, watches the heaving aside of the plank, has barely time for a second thought before they are herded down the narrow hatch. At the suggestion of the Immigrant Ladies’ Society Dora has left her hoops behind. She feels insubstantial with only layers of petticoats, and thoroughly unfashionable, but she is thankful for her decision now, watching as a mortified woman is squeezed through the hatch like dough being squeezed into a mould.

  In the hold, ship’s lanterns sway over bunks that are shielded from each other by grey canvas curtains. At the far end is a long, ridged table, and then their trunks. It will be a five to six month journey the secretary to Miss Burdett-Coutts warned her. Five to six months. Five to six months. It is a desperate refrain that Dora tries hard to keep at bay.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  “All accounted for, Mrs. Farthingham?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We have assigned bunks so as you do not quarrel. We will not abide quarrelling. You will have two meals a day and a draft of lime every other. You are to keep yourself clean and off the drink. You are not to fraternize with the other passengers. You are not to fraternize with the crew. You will be allowed out on deck in chaperoned groups of fifteen each. Each Sunday you will attend a service given by Reverend Holt. You are expected to be models to your sex. You are . . . now, what is that? Crying? Do I hear weeping?
”

  The weeping drops to a whimper. Dora cranes her neck and spies the four Grinstead orphans huddling behind the skirts of the older girls. One of the orphans is pressing her fist against her mouth. Her eyes are dark and large, an endless well for the tears pouring forth. The other three orphans hush her furiously. None of them seem more than twelve. All of them are miserable and thin, but none more so than this sobbing girl.

  Poor child, Dora thinks. She nods at the girl and puts her finger to her lips, then suddenly wails out “Oh, me, ah!” and buries her face in her hands. The other women stand back as if fearing contagion.

  “You’re the weeper, then. Now what in God’s name are you going on about. . . . What? I cannot understand you. What nonsense is this, woman?”

  “Oh, me poor aunt, sir. Oh, I miss her so. Oh, she’ll be so lonely.”

  Mrs. Farthingham pats Dora’s shoulder. “There now, have some courage.”

  “You are not being held here against your will.” Mr. Scott says. “You may leave and return to your aunt. The anchor is not to be hoisted for some hours yet.”

  “Ah, no, see, me auntie she’s pa, pa, passed on. She’s with the angels. Oh, gracious!”

  “Then how can she be lonely?” Mr. Scott demands.

  “Oh, ah, because she’ll have no one to put flowers on her grave, gravestone, see.”

  Dora’s hands are wet with real tears. It seems she might be able to convince herself that she truly does miss this phantom aunt. It seems she might be able to convince herself of just about anything.

  Mr. Scott throws up his hands and continues his instructions. Dora looks over once more. The Grinstead orphan is staring at her with mouth agape. She is not crying; indeed, she is now nearly smiling.

  “What’s your name, love?” Dora whispers.

  “Isabel Lund.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Dora takes to seafaring as if she’d been born to it. She does not retch and keep to her bunk as so many of the other women do. She can barely wait to be on deck each morning. Ah, the wind! It smells like some-thing pickled and delicious. It smells enormous, if that were possible. And what sights! Flying fish and spouting whales and birds with wings wide as sheets and all under a sky constantly shifting in shape and size and character as if part of some vast cosmorama.

  “Are you not afraid?” the other women ask.

  “Not a mite,” she says. How can such a great vessel crack apart? And Captain Gringshaw—thick-armed and mutton-chopped, ablaze with brass buttons—isn’t he the very picture of a captain? And look at the sailors swarming in the rigging, alike in comfort there as the gulls. When the ship plunges into troughs of waves she thinks of a swing in Hyde Park. What a delicious, shivery fear! That brief closeness to the sky. That swooping back to earth.

  “You must have sea water in your veins,” Mrs. Farthingham says with admiration.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  A month out, the ship is afflicted with calm. The sails hang limp and the sun stretches hot on the deck. The sailors mend the ropes and slather metal rails with white lead and tallow. They keep their distance still, but the voyage has been blessed with enough good omens to balance out the women’s presence. Porpoises have hurled themselves before the prow. An albatross followed them for a week. And so the sailors now wave to Dora and the other women when Mrs. Farthingham’s watchful eye or Mr. Scott’s walleyed one is momentarily elsewhere. The male passengers are becoming friendlier as well. They raise their hats and call out good day. For them, however, it isn’t a fear of bad luck that makes them keep their distance, but a fear of their wives. Ah, well and so, Dora can understand the wives’ thinking. For what sort of women would send themselves off to a foreign place to be taken up by miners and ne’er-do-wells or any man with a roll of banknotes? The several who hope to be governesses are acceptable enough, modest in their habits, books often in hand. But what to make of the Misses Finch, Hutchins, and Law? They saunter out on their chaperoned promenades in low-cut dresses and wink at honourable husbands, at not-so-honourable seamen. They make, in fact, no great pains to conceal their former, unmentionable profession. Just as unseemly is the Widow Dall. Two score and six and she has buried three husbands already. “I’ll be onto number four, soon as I set foot,” she says. “I’ll outlive a hundred men.” On several occasions she has been reeling drunk. When Mr. Scott or Mrs. Farthingham demand to know the source of her inebriation, she insists she is as sober as a judge she once knew, then laughs uproariously.

  As for Isabel, she, too, has taken to the sea. Her cheeks are flushed with colour. Her dark hair has gained a thickness and sheen. In all she is possessed now of a curious, elfin beauty that others remark upon and that Dora is becoming quite proud of, as if she had a part in working such change. At dinner they sit side by side and giggle over the sliding plates, Isabel in awe, as usual, over the abundance of bully beef and hard tack. At night they share the same bunk, often whispering until hushed. Dora tells Isabel of her family’s sad fate. Isabel tells Dora of the orphanage. Cold and grey. Grey and cold. She doesn’t recall her parents. Her life is a slate, waiting to be chalked upon.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  One night Isabel whispers: “Would you like a daughter, Miss Timmons?”

  “What is that? Ah, well and so. Many daughters, hundreds and thousands of them.”

  “Let me be your daughter. Oh, do.”

  “Surely so, you are like a daughter, or a sister. When we are settled in the colony we will see each other often. We will go for ices. We will go shopping on a Saturday.”

  “You will not let them marry me off to an ugly old man.”

  “Issy, love, they’re Christians. They’d not marry you off so young. They’ll arrange a situation for you. Hasn’t Mrs. Farthingham said so? You are to stay with a kind family in a fine house. Aren’t the other orphans excited? You should be as well. In time you can choose whoever you like, from a hundred suitors, all handsome young men to be sure.”

  “I don’t want to go into a situation. I want to stay with you. I’ll work hard. I’ll be a great help to you.”

  “Hush, now,” Dora says, though she should have said: “Oh, for certain. We’ll all live together and be like a family.” But she will have trouble enough shifting for herself in this new colony, never mind taking care of another. Later, once the lamps are out, she hears Isabel softly crying. Her back is turned. It is a memory Dora will have to bear.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  They sail through past the Bay of Biscay, the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, the weather holding fine. “Mark my words all. If this continues we’ll arrive a month ahead,” Captain Gringshaw announces. He inspects their quarters and asks how they are faring, nodding at their requests for more air, for better food. He gives seashells to the Grinstead orphans. Isabel’s is particularly beautiful, is round and flat and bears the image of a many-pointed star. She accepts it with reverence, shows Dora how it fits perfectly in the palm of her hand.

  The Captain is gallant to Mrs. Farthingham, but growing cool to Mr. Scott, takes him aside one day and can be seen shaking his head and pointing at an imaginary list. Soon after, Mr. Scott no longer draws the lock on the hold at night. But it is not just Mr. Scott’s suspicious nature that likely irks the captain. Mr. Scott is growing more disreputable by the day. Untidy is no longer the word for him: slovenly, perhaps. Stains have blossomed on his trousers. His hair is uncombed, his hands grimy. And his eye. Is it possible it is more wayward than ever? “I’ll be finding it in me soup next,” the Widow Dall says, glaring after Mr. Scott as he makes one of his many daily rounds.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Boredom begins to afflict them all. Mrs. Farthingham orders a battle plan. The women are to help with the mending of the sailor’s clothes. Short plays are to be put on; the governesses are to give readings. They read through Mansfield Park, David Copperfield, and Vanity Fair. Dora cannot bear to miss a chapter, likes Thackeray’s Becky Sharp best of all.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. She is most unpleasant. In
deed, she is the villainess of the story,” says Miss Katherine Paul, one of the governesses.

  “But I like the part where she’s leaving school. She’s so brave. She’s like us going off to who knows where. Trying out her fortune.”

  “The unpleasant part comes later, I assure you.”

  Unpleasant is a favourite word of Miss Paul’s. She is a plain woman with thin hair and a constant sniffle. Mrs. Farthingham has put her in charge of improving the reading and writing skills of the women.

  “Learning can be unpleasant,” she tells Dora. And then later: “I have never had a more unpleasant task than teaching you to read.”

  “Ah, my mother tried as well. But the words, they crowd together when I’m looking at them. They switch places even. It’s like they’re playing tricks on me.”

  “You are being ridiculous again. You must simply apply yourself.”

  “Here, let Isabel read. She’s doing so well, she is. She’ll be a scholar soon enough.”

  The governesses work so hard that Dora feels that she, too, must do her part to alleviate the tedium. She tells the other women about the drapery, about Mr. Haberdale the Younger and his peculiar wooing. She tells them stories of her own devising and stories she has heard through others. The women listen and nod. “Thank goodness this is a long voyage. Or you might never get through all your stories,” says Miss Joanna dryly. Dora agrees. She is full of stories, full of a numb kind of hope.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  “Have you ever been feeling that, Mr. Jim? As if the future were a fine carriage waiting for you. All you need to be doing is step into it.”

  Boston said that he’d never been in a carriage, fine or otherwise, not adding that he’d also never dwelled on the future, that the past filled his mind enough.

  “Ah, well and so,” the Dora woman said and slapped at a gnat that was troubling her neck.

  The jail is quiet now. The boy Farrow is no longer crying. The Dupasquiers are no longer laughing over cards. Even the snoring has subsided. No, he has never dwelled on the future, never thought past the next trapping season. But now he has no choice, what with his obligation to the Dora woman. Why would anyone dwell on the future? The future—unlike the past, unlike the present—is mutable and can expand to an infinity of choices. It is as vast as an ocean, and as deep, and is inhabited by every unknown thing.