Rose (15 page)

“What was your mother’s name?”

“I think we’re getting off the point here.”

“You had a point?”

“When I started. Rose, you’re a bit like a crosscurrent, aren’t you? There’s no straight sailing with you.”

“Why should there be?”

Blair realized it wasn’t going to be quite as simple as he had thought.

Rose said, “Now you’re back, does Wigan seem smaller than you remembered? Or has it become a Garden of Eden?”

“I don’t remember. Rose, Wigan is like Pittsburgh
plunged into eternal darkness, does that satisfy you? It is not the Garden of Eden; it is either a city sinking into a volcanic pit or the rising outskirts of Hell. Does
that
satisfy you?”

“You’re blunt.”

“You asked.”

“Actually, Liverpool is the outskirts of Hell,” she said.

Blair shook his head. “Rose. Rose Molyneux.” He could see her in Hell, laughing, wearing a garland. “Let me get back to Maypole.”

“You have preachers in California?”

“Oh, yes. Bible thumpers pour over the Sierras. Every fanatic in America ends up in California. You said that Maypole wanted to preach at the mine.”

“Maypole would preach at rugby games, at pigeon races, at pantomimes. You like rugby?”

“From what I understand, it’s like watching men run around in the mud chasing a pig, except there’s no pig. Is that all Maypole wanted, just to preach to you?”

“He preached t’all the girls. I was just one more dirty face t’him.”

“No, Rose. He had a special interest in you.” He laid the photograph on the table. “This was in John Maypole’s room.”

Rose was so visibly surprised that he wondered whether she would tilt to outrage or confession. Instead, she laughed. “That stupid picture? Have you ever tried t’pose with a shovel? That card is for sale everywhere in England.”

“Men are strange,” Blair admitted. “Some men like pictures of undressed women, some men like pictures of women in pants. The Reverend had only one picture, though, and it’s of you.”

“I can’t stop someone from having a picture of me. Flo saw a book about you. It called you Nigger Blair. Why do they call you Nigger Blair?”

“The penny-dreadful writer is a low form of life. I can’t stop them and there’s no controlling them.”

“All the same, they don’t come into your house and ask all about your personal life like they’re the police when they’re not. What are you? I’m still not clear on that. Why should I talk to you?”

“I’m just doing a job for the Bishop.”

“That won’t do.”

Blair found himself at a loss. So far he’d learned nothing and this girl, this
pit girl
, was in control.

“I’m not police, not Maypole’s cousin, not a mines inspector. I’m a mining engineer and I’ve been to Africa, that’s all.”

“Not good enough.” Rose stood. “Bill and Flo are waiting for me.”

“What do you want to hear?”

“Considering your first visit, you know more about me than I do about you.”

Blair remembered opening his eyes to the sight of her bathing. He conceded the point. “Such as?” he asked.

“Any reason t’talk.”

“A reason? Maypole may be dead—”

When Rose stood and started toward the parlor, Blair grabbed for her arm. She was too quick and he only caught her fingertips, which were rough and black from sorting coal, though her hand was slender. He let go. “I have to get back to Africa.”

“Why?”

“I have a daughter there.”

Rose smiled, triumphant. “That’s better,” she said. “Is the mother white? Or is that why they call you Nigger Blair?”

“In the Gold Coast, it’s women who pan for gold. They use pans painted black and swirl water around. Usually in riverbeds, the same as anywhere in the world except that they don’t have quicksilver to draw the gold. Still,
they get an amazing amount. My job was to map the rivers, determine how navigable they were and find out where the gold was washing down from. The trouble is that the Ashanti don’t trust the English because they aren’t fools. Is this boring you?”

Rose topped his tea with gin and sipped some from her cup; her lips turned red from the hot drink. “Not yet,” she said.

“The Ashanti capital is Kumasi. Orange-earth country, ferrous soil. Outcroppings of rose quartz. Very pleasant. Huts and guava trees and banana. The king’s palace is the one big building. I stayed with Arabs because they’re traders. Gold, palm oil, slaves.”

“Slaves for America?” Rose asked.

“Slaves for Africa. That’s how anything is harvested, how anything is carried. By slaves. This Arab traded gold and slaves. He had a fifteen-year-old girl who had been captured in the north. She had unusually fine features. They thought she’d bring a good price in Kumasi. Obviously she wasn’t being sold to carry bananas. But she cried. She cried all the time. Usually Africans accept their fate. They beat her, but not too much because that would damage the goods. She went on crying, and finally the Arab told me he was giving up and was going to sell her back to the raiders, who could make her their entertainment on the way south. That didn’t sound very nice, so I bought her. You’re sure this isn’t boring you? Maybe you’ve heard this kind of story before.”

“Not in Wigan,” Rose said.

“I set her free. But how was she going to get home? How was she going to live? Unless I took care of her she’d have to sell herself back into slavery. I hired her as a cook—tried to teach her how to cook, how to clean. There was nothing she could do and I was afraid to leave her on her own in Kumasi, so I married her.”

“Did she ever stop crying?”

“At about that point, yes. I don’t know how legal the marriage was. A mixture of Islam, Methodist, Fetish.”

“Was the Arab there? The trader?”

“Oh, yes. Best man. Anyway, she took being a wife very seriously and insisted on my taking it seriously: otherwise she said she’d be ashamed. Other people would know, and that would make her no better than a slave. So she got pregnant.”

“Was it yours?”

“Oh, without a doubt. A brown girl with green eyes? The Wesleyans said I had stained the white man’s reputation. They closed down their mission. Maybe if they’d had women they’d still be in Kumasi.”

“You chased the Wesleyans out?”

“In a way.”

“You’re better than the Devil.”

How much of this did Rose understand? Blair wondered. Did she know where the Gold Coast was, let alone what an Ashanti looked like? Or seen a nugget of gold in her life? He had started talking about Kumasi only because she was about to go and he didn’t know what else to say. Now that he’d started on this disastrous course, on his disastrous life, it was hard to stop.

“I was never an explorer in the Gold Coast. There are Ashanti roads, caravans, toll collectors, unless you insist on cutting your way through the bush. There are lions, but the real dangers are worms, mosquitoes and flies. I was three years with the Ashanti. They were curious and suspicious because they couldn’t quite figure out why a man wanted to look at rocks. The Ashanti think you find gold where there are giant baboons or smoke or a particular fern. I was looking for quartz reefs and diorite. Making maps and delivering them to the coast and the mail boat so they could be brought to Liverpool and then to here. But there was a war last year. Also dysentery. In Africa every disease hits like the plague. My wife died. The girl survived.”

“Did you love her, your wife?”

Blair couldn’t tell if Rose was serious or not. He did see despite the low light that while each feature of her face was individually perhaps too bold, as a composition they had balance and her eyes were as bright as two candles.

“No,” he said. “But she became a fact through perseverance.”

“So why did you leave?”

“I had to go to the coast because I had run out of medicine and money. However, the funds that were supposed to be waiting for me at the district commissioner’s office had been diverted to help celebrate the arrival of a distinguished visitor from London who had helped incite the war. I especially needed the money because I had squandered the Bible Fund on my porters, the men who carry my gear. They walked as far as I did, and carrying ninety extra pounds. Anyway, I was found out, which made me worse than a criminal in the Gold Coast.”

“A black sheep?”

“Exactly. So I am here to rescue my fortunes, to please my patron, to carry out this small mission and be reinstated.”

“Where is the little girl?”

“With the Arab.”

“You could have stayed.”

Blair contemplated his cup; at this point, it was less tea than gin. “When a white man slides in Africa, he slides fast.”

Rose said, “You were finding gold. You must’ve been rich. What happened t’that?”

“That went to paying for the girl. The Arab does nothing for free, but he’s a relatively honest businessman.” He raised his eyes to hers. “Now tell me about John Maypole.”

“Th’Reverend didn’t know when t’quit. He was at us when we walked t’work and at us when we walked back.
T’share our burden, so he said. But he grew into an irritation. Then after work he was at the door.”

“Your door especially,” Blair said.

“I told him I was pairing with Bill Jaxon and it was best for him t’stay away. Bill didn’t understand at first, but they got on. Maypole was a boy. That was why he was so moral; he didn’t know any better.”

“You saw a lot of him?”

“No. I’m Catholic. I don’t attend his church or his do-good clubs.”

“But he sought you out. The last time anyone saw him, the day before the fire, he met you at Scholes Bridge. How far did you walk with him?”

“I was walking home and he followed me.”

“You were talking, too. What about?”

“I might have teased him. He was easy to tease.”

“As he was talking to you he pulled off his priest’s collar. Do you remember why?”

“I don’t remember him doing that at all. Ask me about the blast, I remember
that
. The earth jumping. The smoke. Maybe it blew Mr. Maypole out of my head.”

“But the last time you saw him, you just went home?”

“I was seeing Bill.”

“Have you ever seen Bill fight? Pretty bloody.”

“Isn’t he fooking glorious?”

“Fooking glorious?”

“He is,” Rose said.

He thought of her watching Bill fight, the sound of wooden soles on naked flesh, the gore smeared on skin. How did Bill and Rose celebrate afterward? An interesting choice of words, “fooking glorious.” And they talk about savages in Africa, he thought.

“Did Bill Jaxon ever threaten Maypole?”

“No. The Reverend only wanted t’save my soul; he didn’t have any interest in the rest of me.”

“That’s what you keep telling me.” Blair turned the
picture on the table for her to see better. “But that’s not a picture of the soul.”

Rose studied it more closely. “I extra washed, and then I get t’studio and they wipe that muck on my face. I look like an Irish potato farmer.”

“You look ferocious with that shovel. Dangerous.”

“Well, I never touched a hair on Reverend Maypole. I don’t know why he had a picture of me.”

“I like the picture. I even like the shovel. It’s far more interesting than a parasol.”

“Gentlemen don’t cross the street to meet a girl twirling a shovel.”

“I’ve crossed jungles to meet women with plates in their lips.”

“Kiss any?”

“No.”

“See!”

As coal collapsed it sent a shower of sparks up the chimney. Rose stared at the grate. She was small for moving steel tubs, Blair thought. Her face was as delicate at rest as it was wild when animated. What sort of life did a creature like her look forward to? Gin, babies, beatings from a man like Bill? This was her all-too-brief flowering, and she seemed determined to make the most of it.

“I should be getting on t’Bill and Flo,” she said. “I don’t think he likes you.”

“Bill didn’t mind Maypole.”

“Bill likes t’rule the roost. Maypole let him.”

“Well, they played together.”

“You’d have thought the rules of rugby were laid down by Christ t’hear Maypole preach.”

“What did he preach to girls?”

“Chastity and higher love. Every mother had t’be the Virgin Mary. Every girl who sported was Mary Magdalene. I don’t think he ever had a real woman.”

“Now, I’m not a gentleman—”

“We all know that.”

“—but I have the feeling that for a man like Maypole, there was nothing more attractive than a woman in need of saving.”

“Maybe.”

“Did he ever call you Rose of Sharon?”

“Where did you hear that?” The question was so casual that it stood out like a half-driven nail, a small slip.

“Did he?”

“No.”

“You said he never had a real woman. You don’t count his fiancée, Miss Hannay?”

“No.”

“You’ve met her?”

“I don’t meet the Hannays any more than I’ve been to the moon. But I’ve seen the moon, I have an opinion about it. Have you met her?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think?”

“She’s thin on charm.”

“Thin on everything, but she has money, clothes, carriages. Going t’see her again?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Sounds like you can’t resist her.”

“Compared with you, she’s a thorn, an icicle and sour wine.”

Rose watched him silently from across the table. He would have liked to see her face clean. He’d seen her bathe, but what he remembered was her body within a glowing sheath of water. He hoped the image didn’t shine from his eyes.

Rose said, “You have t’go.” She added, “You’re not so sick as you say.”

Later, at his hotel, Blair asked himself if he was crazy. He had hidden the reason for his return to Africa from everyone with a right to know: Bishop Hannay, the Royal Society, even the innocuous Leveret, and now he
had blurted everything to a girl who would spread this most irresistible of stories to all the pubs in Wigan, whence it would quickly work its destructive way to Hannay Hall. What a combination he had given her—slavery and racial mixing! The tragedy of the young black wife. The poignancy of a white father and his half-caste issue, set against the barbarism of an African jungle and the rapaciousness of Arabian traders. England itself would go to war to save that child if she were white. What was he thinking? To impress a coquette like Rose Molyneux by telling the truth?