The Scandalous Mrs. Wilson

by Laine Ferndale

  “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the pool’s edge. Owen lowered himself gingerly into the water. The water from the hot springs truly was hot, almost painfully so, and it fizzed strangely against his legs. Its mineral odour was even stronger up close. Mrs. Wilson sat down on the stool behind him and lowered her feet into the water next to him, her knees pressed together demurely to one side of his torso. Even in the warm room, the pressure of her legs against him felt warmer.

  But despite the outlines of bare arms under sheer blouses, the scene was incongruously chaste. The girls looked more like nurses than light-skirts. And looking around the pool, it was difficult to feel titillated. This rag-tag assortment of miners and loggers certainly didn’t seem like the type you’d want to share a bath with. Even when submerged in water, they looked grimy. Their tanned hides were mottled by coarse hair and scars of various vintages, gnarled blue veins, and folds of skin where the muscle was receding and the flesh hung loose. They sat hunched in the steaming water with their eyes closed, like a bunch of scruffy tomcats warming their fur in the sun.

  As if he wasn’t warm enough, he felt a hot, damp towel lowering into place around his neck. The dense curtain of steam made him feel as if he were inside a dog’s mouth.

  “To soothe your shoulder and neck muscles,” the low voice behind him explained. “Please relax and let me know if you feel any discomfort.”

  He tried to make a convincing show of relaxation, but he was quite busy ignoring the sensation of a beautiful woman hovering inches away from his body and, of course, studying the scene for clues. The lady attendants bustled about in near silence, providing tall glasses of cool water beaded with condensation, helping men in and out of the pool, pouring water over their heads. They moved in and out of slices of sunlight left by the narrow windows, the light showing flashes of the outline of their limbs and limning their hair with gold. They did not look like nurses after all. With their white uniforms and clean faces, they looked like girls on their way to their first catechism. Perhaps the facade of purity was all part of the show.

  The clients smiled and joked with the girls in a brotherly way. He watched the women’s hands, waiting for them to make contact with a thigh, a groin, but they stayed primly above waistlines. The men actually seemed more interested in talking to each other than flirting with the staff. On the far side of the pool, a man who was missing the three outermost fingers of his left hand was holding court.

  “So he’s fresh out of school, this fella, probably never even seen a rock that wasn’t in a test tube. Greener than grass. So I says to Slim, let’s have a bit of fun with ’im.” The pale, smooth scar tissue on his hand shone where the light hit it. Only his thumb and pointer finger remained. The rest of his hand looked like it had been rubbed away with an eraser. “So we go into the office and say, ‘Hey there, you’re the new guy, Jenkins. How’s it going?’ He’s this nervy, twiggy little man. Scrawny little moustache. Couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. So Slim says, ‘welcome to the crew. How’re you settlin’ in?’ and so on. And this young fella’s just squirming in his starched collar. Probably never been that close to a body doin’ honest work for a living—”

  “Or smelled one,” a growling voice chimed in.

  “Three weeks up at camp and we were ripe that day,” the man agreed, chuckling. “Well, you can tell he wants to get back to his lists and numbers, but casual as anything, I sidle up to the pot of hydrofluoric they got there to assay the samples, and I lean my hand against it.” He splayed his damaged hand against the cedar floor of the bathhouse to demonstrate. “And just as soon as he glances my way, he squawks, ‘Watch out!’ I yelp, grab my hand, and start waving it around, screaming, ‘My fingers, my fingers! They’re gone! Oh Lordy! You’ve dissolved ’em!’” The other men hoot and clap. Even the lady attendants are smiling. The man chuckles at the memory of his own cleverness.

  “Should have seen how white he went. Could practically see right through him. Hah! ‘Welcome to the neighbourhood,’ I says.” He rubbed one knuckle, its scar tissue puckering like a poorly mended dress, and turned to Mrs. Wilson. “Miz Wilson, I should be charging you for providing entertainment for these fellas.”

  She smiled. “I should be kicking you out for disturbing the peace. Not every customer wants to hear your stories. Do you, Mr. Wister?”

  “Aww,” said the miner. “I’m just providing some local colour for the town folks. Ain’t that what he came up from the fancy city for? A little communion with the common man?”

  “Now, Ted ...” Mrs. Wilson said, a note of warning in her voice.

  “It’s fine,” Owen said. “You have a real way with words, Mr. Ted.” In truth, he was taking mental notes. He couldn’t help thinking of how well the man’s story would go over with his young audience. You could have a boy of eleven or twelve—orphaned, maybe—who tries to get work at a mining camp and meets all sorts of characters. And there’d be a mining explosion ... the old miner who took him under his wing was missing ... the boy would have to risk danger in the mine ...

  “How is that water feeling, Mr. Wister?” Mrs. Wilson asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he answered absently. “Wonderful.”

  “Go ahead and submerge yourself to your neck,” she said, standing. “We’ll start with ten minutes of exposure.” Her voice was clinical and precise. Owen slid into the fizzing water. Nils was clearly wrong. The pill bug wasn’t the closest thing to the lobster in these parts —he was.

  Thus far, the main baths were a disappointment. He had been sweating like a sinner in church for more than twenty minutes, and he hadn’t seen even a hint of scandal. Maybe the real action took place in the private treatment rooms. Or maybe it only happened on certain days. Or between the hours of two and five, like afternoon tea.

  Still, the room lacked that tang of physical electricity, that expectant atmosphere that promised something more was about to be revealed. A short time later, Mrs. Wilson returned with a water glass. He hauled himself back onto his bench and drank, enjoying the sensation of the cold water tracing a path down his throat and into his stomach. She pressed her hand to his neck. Her palm was cool and dry, and the unexpected touch made him startle.

  “You’re getting a bit overheated,” she said. When she removed her hand, he could still feel its imprint dissolving into his hot skin. “It’s common for first-time clients unless they come from a hot, humid climate. Drink more water, and I’ll get you a cool towel.”

  Owen took another sip of the water and leaned back against the wooden sides of the pool, enjoying the cadence of the men’s banter and the fizz of the water against his limbs. The springs were good for relaxation, no doubt. They just didn’t seem to be good for his budding journalistic career.

  Mrs. Wilson returned with an icy towel that she draped over his head and down his shoulders. The chilly water streamed down his back before mixing with the spring water. “This will help you handle the heat more readily,” she explained. She was beginning to perspire, he noticed. Her cheeks were flushed and her forehead damp. The gauzy blouse clung to her arms. Through the fabric, he could just make out the blurry outline of freckles.

  “Thank you,” he said, trying to give the impression that he was entirely accustomed to being waited on hand and foot. All the bankers he had known cultivated an atmosphere of boredom intended to make you feel insignificant. If she was going to pretend that this was some sort of quasi-medical treatment, then he could pretend, too. He was Mr. Ross Wister of the Toronto Wisters. A trader of stocks, and bonds, and whatever other imaginary nonsense wealthy men bought and sold.

  “I’ll let you soak for a few minutes longer,” she said. “Call if you need anything.”

  When she left once more, Owen slid closer to the knot of regulars. It was hard to initiate manly contact with a damp towel draped over your head like some kind of nun’s habit, but he had wasted enough time sitting quietly. He was, after all, here to work.

  “The girls here certainly are pretty, eh?
” he said, giving Ted a conspiratorial wink.

  Ted nodded. “Yup.”

  “Yep,” agreed another man.

  “Sure wouldn’t mind getting to know some of them,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d know how to arrange that ...”

  Ted’s shoulders visibly tensed. The other patrons stopped their own conversations to stare at him. “Mister, I think the heat has gone to your head,” he said. “Better get yourself a few more cold towels.” With that, he stood up. Water sluiced down his wiry body as he grabbed a towel and limped off.

  Just then, Mrs. Wilson returned. “Let’s get you out of the water,” she said. “Towel dry, get changed, and when you’re ready, meet me in room six.” The men remained aggressively silent, and Owen took the well-timed opportunity to retreat.

  Chapter 7

  As she changed into a fresh smock, Jo wondered if she had been mistaken about her newest client. He seemed bored by the attendants, bored by the treatments ... and by her. She wasn’t sure which Mr. Wister was more unsettling: the one skulking around her windows in the dark of night or the one working so hard to ignore her. Maybe he was with the Temperance Society. Did prohibitionists have covert agents? Or perhaps he was simply annoyed with her over the knife-throwing incident this morning. He had seemed in such good spirits then ...

  She studied herself in the warped glass of the vanity mirror. The humidity had frizzed and tangled her curls so that her hair looked like a bird’s nest. She brushed it out and began to pin it back until there was more metal in her hair than there was in the Yankee Girl Mine. On a whim, she added a tortoiseshell comb that Albert had given her as a wedding gift. He had bought it in Vancouver and had worried that she might find the style old-fashioned. A fifty-year-old man living in the middle of nowhere did not have an eye for ladies’ finery, he had nervously explained, but the salesgirl had assured him that it was the very best quality. And he thought it would accentuate the lovely color of her hair, if he might be so forward in saying so.

  Recalling Albert’s boyish stammering made her feel a pang of bittersweet affection for him. Not the passionate grief of lost love, certainly, but she had been fond of Albert and his big heart. He was such a sincere, good man, and for a year she’d felt secure in the life they had made together. She tried to remember the kind crinkle around his eyes when he smiled.

  Best to focus on the task at hand. Albert would be pleased about what she had done with the place. He might not have approved of the lady attendants, no matter how chaste they might be, but he had always told her that even the best establishments ran on compromises. She turned her head in the mirror, admiring the seams of amber and gold that wove through the comb. It wasn’t vanity, of course; Mr. Wister needed to stop seeing her as a young woman with tumble-down hair who let him chuck knives in the dining room, and start seeing her as a respectable, prosperous business owner.

  She straightened her shoulders. There, that was better: hair in place, clothing starched and crisp, a facade to fortify her when she felt her confidence slipping. If Mr. Wister really was working for the Society Ladies, she would show him that Wilson’s offered service superior to all the other bathhouses put together, and she didn’t have to break any laws to do it. Let him take that message back to Mrs. McSheen.

  When she entered the treatment room, Mr. Wister was standing shirtless, looking out the window at the springs. In her four years at Wilson’s Bathhouse, she had seen all manner of backs. The soft swaybacks of men who had dined on goose and jellied eel their whole lives. The hard, wiry backs of working men who seemed to have their life stories scarred into their skin. Mr. Wister’s back certainly didn’t belong in a leather chair, making deals over claret and meat pies. He was lean and slightly tanned, broad shoulders tapering down to a trim waist. Muscular, but not in the hard-bitten, ropy manner of someone who made their living through hard labour. Where had he come from?

  “It’s quite a view, isn’t it?” she said.

  He startled and half turned towards her. “Oh,” he said. “Yes.” Good Lord, the man’s front was just as fine as his back. Jo squashed the thought before it could make its way to her face. She saw shirtless men every day, and there was absolutely no reason to come over missish about this one. He was another customer, the first of a dozen she needed to tend to today.

  “I’m sorry if I was rude this morning,” she said abruptly. “It’s just that you caught me off guard. I didn’t expect you to come to breakfast after last night.”

  Mr. Wister reddened faintly. “Ah, well. I’m sure I’m the one who should apologize. I got all turned around. I’m sorry that I startled you.”

  Jo smiled brightly. “Well, now that we admit we both behaved badly, let’s have a fresh start, shall we?” She extended her hand, and after a moment of hesitation, he took it. Something about the firm grip of his warm palm, or maybe the way he looked her straight in the eye as he shook on their truce, made the hair on the back of her neck rise.

  She retreated into formality. “Hello, sir. I am Josephine Wilson, proprietress of this establishment.”

  He sketched a brief, equally formal bow, amusement in his blue eyes. “And a good day to you as well, ma’am. I am Ross Wister, lowly customer.”

  “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she said. “Now, lie down on your stomach, and we’ll begin to fix what ails you.”

  He did as he was told, easing himself onto the tin-topped treatment table and shifting about to settle his weight. Ilsa bustled in with a damp towel and a bowl of mint-scented oil, filling the room with the sharp green odour. Jo nodded her thanks, but Ilsa paused to shoot an exaggeratedly admiring glance at Mr. Wister’s back stretched out in front of her. Jo rolled her eyes and silently jerked her head towards the door. Ilsa left, grinning.

  Time to get to work. She laid the towel across that distracting back and set the bowl down on the little table by the window. “We’ll begin with massage. I will apply warm oil to loosen your muscles and mint to ease any tension,” she explained. He made a noise that sounded like assent.

  Jo poured a palmful of the liquid and rubbed her hands to coat them. In truth, her massage “technique” was cobbled together from bits and pieces she’d learned from Albert and bathhouse attendants past and present, plus a few flourishes thrown in from magazine illustrations of Turkish bathhouses. Experience, however, had refined the motions into a smooth, practiced routine.

  She drizzled more salve into the hollow of his lower back, then used her palms to sweep it upwards in half-circles towards his shoulder blades. Mr. Wister tensed, then gradually relaxed into the rhythm of her hands. She moved across his skin’s topography in widening arcs, noting the tension eddying in the muscles, the strange pockets where the body held pain. It was odd, she’d always thought, how easy it was to track where a person hurt.

  She felt a small, particularly knotted, tight node of muscle at the base of his skull, where the hair was shaved close. The hairs rose almost imperceptibly as she brushed her fingers over the spot. She did it again, just to feel the shush of hairs yielding to her sensitive fingertips. Mr. Wister’s back rose and fell with his deepening breathing. She was close enough to him to detect his shaving soap and sweat beneath the pungency of the salve. She leaned forward and pressed her thumbs, hard, into the knotted muscle.

  “Umph,” was all Mr. Wister said, and she briefly thought he was falling asleep. But no, his body didn’t lie. She could feel it when men settled into sleep on her table. Their muscles slackened, their arms hung lower. But Mr. Wister was alert, his pulse rapid beneath her fingertips. Perhaps too rapid. Well, at least he was paying attention.

  “I want you to take a deep breath,” she said, surprised at the low crackle in her voice. “It’s important to remove the source of the tension.”

  She leaned forward and pressed her thumb into the knot. “Breathe,” she reminded quietly, close against his ear. “Just keep breathing and let me do all the work.”

  When she released the knot, he sighed. His shoul
ders sank. She skimmed her fingernails slowly, lightly down along his spine. Now, why had she done that? The movement was not a part of her routine. This man’s smooth, lean back was not particularly special, after all, even if it did exhibit some distracting contradictions.

  As she leaned forward to dig her palm into another knot, a rebellious lock of hair came loose and brushed across the small of his back, as if painting it. Mr. Wister shuddered like a horse twitching off a fly. Though she knew hair had no feeling, the gesture made her scalp tickle. She was suddenly aware of the tortoiseshell comb digging into her temple.

  “Sorry,” she murmured and tucked the strand back into place.

  He didn’t acknowledge her apology. She drizzled another thin line of green-tinted oil between his shoulders and moved her palms in small circles, kneading the warm salve into his skin, willing it into his muscles where it would melt away the hard little knots. All the nerves in her hands felt charged, probably tingling from the mint. She tried to focus, to enter that pleasant state in which her own thoughts and worries disappeared into the single-mindedness of work, but for the next quarter hour, her concentration eluded her. The strange sensation in her hands and her loosening hair were distracting. The air in the room felt increasingly thick, as if the humidity of the bathhouse had permeated the door.

  “I think,” she said, finally, “that should have you taken care of for today. Are you still comfortable?” Mr. Wister made a vague assenting noise deep in his throat. “Excellent. I’ll rinse you down, and you can be on your way.” She turned to the basin of cold water by the window and proceeded as efficiently as she could. Final ablutions complete, she turned to the window once again and spent more time than was perhaps strictly necessary to soap and scrub her hands. Mr. Wister rose, donned his shirt and tie, and exited the room without a word.