Rose (36 page)

The girls begged, “Be an angel, Daddy, be an angel!”

Battie reentered the shed. Dark smells of boiled beef and burned dripping drifted across the yards. From the direction of the street, calls to tea vied with the tin horn of a rag man. Battie reappeared with a line of doves perched on each black outstretched arm. As he let his arms drop an inch, the doves fluttered, giving the illusion that he was taking wing.

“You just caught her. She was going,” Flo said.

“Going where?” Blair asked, but the big girl ducked inside the kitchen door, leaving him on the step. How he had gone from Battie’s yard to Rose’s he wasn’t sure. He seemed to have dream-walked and found himself at her back door. It opened again with Rose on the threshold, a shawl round her shoulders, the velvet ribbon at her neck, a hat on red hair that was half pinned and wild.

“The siren herself,” he said.

“Did Bill see you?” She looked over Blair’s shoulder.

“I don’t know. We’ll find out. There’ll be kisses for you and kicks for me.”

She brought her eyes down to him. “ ‘Siren’? I don’t remember singing for you.”

“Well, I was coming here anyway. I am Odysseus shipwrecked. Dante stuck in the ninth circle of Wigan, looking for a glass of gin. My feet led me.”

“I don’t think it was your feet.”

“I get your meaning,” Blair admitted.

“My meaning is I don’t need your condescension.”

The blue color cast on her was more than an effect of the night. She had half washed after the day’s work, leaving carbon dust like kohl around her eyes and a faint metallic shimmer on her brow. Rose Molyneux, the muse of industry, with a sooty sheen made visible by the pale skin underneath.

“If you want me, say so,” she said.

“If you put it that way, I do.”

“One minute. Then you’re gone.”

“Then I’m gone.”

He had graduated to the rank of company because she took the gin into the parlor, perched on the edge of a chair and gave him the settee. She was unwilling to light a lamp that might show him to the street, so they sat in the dark except for the glow cast by the fireplace. Though there were no goblets of gold, she could have reigned at Darius’s table, alternately giving the king kisses and taps. She made her own rules. Where Flo had gone, or how two girls managed a house alone when every room in Scholes was stuffed with lodgers, he didn’t ask. She flavored the gin with tea; that was her nod to etiquette.

“You found Reverend Maypole?”

“I’m getting to know Maypole, but I haven’t found him.”

“How’s that, getting t’know him?”

“From his journal.” This was the first Blair had told anyone. “It’s full of notes and thoughts. It’s full of you. It’s interesting, seeing you through two sets of eyes.”

“Different sets of eyes. You’re nowt like him.”

“What was he like?”

She gave him the full pause and let him hang for a moment.

“Good.” In the shadow that hovered around her, the fire lit only her eyes.

“Rose, I don’t even know what you really look like. I haven’t seen your face clean except that first night, when I was too addled to notice. You’re always in the dark or decorated with dust.”

“It’s dark when I leave work, and if you have skin in Wigan you wear coal. Should I wash my face for you?”

“Sometime.” He sipped his gin and looked around the room. England was giving him the ability to see in the dark. Pasteboard photographs were stacked by a viewer on the sideboard. He leaned back to pick out the gilt title of
Every Gentlewoman’s Guide to Poetry
on a shelf. In a carpetbag were balls of red and orange yarn.

Rose said, “Flo makes her own hats and knits her own shawls.”

“I remember. But we were talking about you.”

“We were talking about the Reverend Maypole.”

“His obsession with you. The night before he disappeared, you were walking up Scholes Lane with him and he pulled off his collar. I’m still wondering what that was about.”

“I’m still saying it never happened.”

“Maypole wanted to go down into the mine.”

“Is that so?”

“He was a pilgrim. He had the Hannay pit confused with the Slough of Despond. He thought you were some kind of angel.”

“I won’t be blamed for what men think.”

“But why would he think that?”

“Find him and ask him. That’s what you’re paid to do.”

“Actually, no. What I’m discovering is that Maypole doesn’t matter, dead or alive, found or disappeared. Not to the Bishop. What matters to him is Charlotte. When she gives up her engagement to Maypole, the Reverend can rot and Hannay wouldn’t care. He’ll pay me, send me on my way and I’m done.”

“You sound pleased.”

“It’s a relief if I don’t have to find a body. Sometimes I think I’ve just been hired to drive her crazy.”

“Can you do that?”

“I seem to do it without even trying. She’s cold, though. There certainly wasn’t any passion between her and Maypole—not on her part.”

“Maybe she didn’t want passion. Maybe she wanted a marriage where she was free.”

“Well, she won’t have that with Rowland. I didn’t believe it when I heard about an engagement to him. They’re first cousins. I thought that was frowned on.”

“Not for them, not for nobility.”

“Well, it’s what Hannay wants.”

“And Charlotte?”

“At least she’ll be rid of me.”

“You’ll be sad t’see the last of her?”

“Hardly. Anyway, she’s as good as sold.”

“ ‘Sold’? That sounds African.”

“It is. Here’s to the upper classes.” He touched his glass to hers.

Rose watched him as she drank, then took off her hat and let it drop to the floor. Not exactly a commitment to stay. A gesture of her own royal interest, Blair thought, the same way Charlotte once dropped shears into a pocket of her skirt.

“ ‘An angel’?” She allowed a smile to suggest itself.

“Well, we can’t help what men think.”

“And himself a pilgrim? In the ‘Slough of Despond’?”

“The Slough of Despond, the Valley of Humiliation, the Hill Difficulty. What pilgrims need is some bouts of dysentery, malaria and yellow jack.”

“Said he like a devil. You’re living up t’your reputation.”

“Or ill fame.”

“Rowland’s the one with the great reputation, isn’t he?” Rose asked.

“Oh, his reputation is glorious. Explorer, missionary, humanitarian. He took some troops and a guide and found a slave caravan in the Gold Coast. There were a dozen raiders with about a hundred captives from the north on their way to Kumasi. Men yoked together to stop them from escaping. Women and children, too. Rowland started picking off the raiders one by one. He’s a hell of a shot.”

“Served them right.”

“When the raiders hid behind the captives, Rowland had his men shoot the captives, too, until the raiders tried to run and he finished them off. The rest of the captives were overjoyed about going home, but Rowland insisted they keep going to the coast so they could report to the governor and ask for British protection. It’s a glorious story, isn’t it?”

“It is.” Rose refilled his glass.

“When the chief objected, Rowland shot him and named a new chief. So they went on to the coast. The guide released the women and sneaked them off at night. Rowland kept the men yoked, but every day a few escaped, and he shot some to keep the rest in line. About twenty made it to the governor on the coast to beg for English care, which is why Rowland’s reputation has such shine. I was the guide, so I enjoy the darker, more African version of the tale.”

“And he’s t’be the next Lord Hannay?”

“It seems that way.”

There was a masklike quality to Rose’s face, only betrayed by the glint and roundness of her eyes. “Maybe you’re just envious,” she said, “because you don’t have a name like Hannay.”

“Rowland and Hannay. He’ll have two names. Why shouldn’t I be envious?”

“Blair isn’t a Wigan name.”

“Blair was the man who took me when my mother died.”

“You don’t talk about him.”

“He was a gold miner who wore a beaver coat and a bowler hat, confused Shakespeare and the Bible when he was drunk, and was silent when sober. I don’t know why he took me when we got to New York, though I’m sure the shipping company was happy to have me off their hands. I think I was like a stray dog to him, and as long as I didn’t cry too much or cost too much, he’d keep me. At that time, people with nothing to lose were going to California. He went and I went with him.”

“And struck it rich?”

“Not quite. He was a good enough miner, but it was as if he lived under a dark star. He staked a creek claim when he should have filed for the hillside, and filed for the hillside when he should have dug on the flat. Scientific principles stood on their head to spite him. Quartz led to gravel banks, and when he sold the gravel banks a flood would wash the gravel off a mother lode. That was a good time to steer clear of him. But I wouldn’t see him for months at a time, once for a year.”

“A year? How did you live?”

“There were Chinese in the camp and he paid them to feed me. For a long time I thought my name in Chinese was ‘Hih!’ Then I found out it meant ‘Eat!’ ”

“He was mean t’leave you.”

“I didn’t mind. The Chinese were a big family, and the big brothers were explosives experts for the railroad. They were my idols. Then there were the crib girls across the road, which was a Home for Women Who Fall Hourly. It was fairly entertaining, and Blair was okay as long as I returned his books to the shelf after I read them and made him coffee when he was drunk. He gave me and the dog equal attention.”

“Did you love him? Blair, I mean.”

“Sure. I loved the dog too, and to be fair, I have to say the dog was more lovable than Blair or me. The old man took me to the School of Mines the last time I saw him,
and then he went back to California and blew his brains out with a Colt.”

“You’re hard.”

He could be harder. He had never pressed her on the issue of her house rent, how she and Flo managed on the wages of pit girls. The money came from somewhere, and Bill Jaxon—with bets won on purring matches—was a likely source. Blair realized that he was willing to preserve the illusion of her independence and the unreal quality of the house because he was afraid that one wrong word would drive her away.

“So you’re going to be Mrs. Bill Jaxon.”

“Bill thinks so.”

“Bill’s still hiding outside my hotel. He’d make a good newel-post.”

“Do you envy Bill?”

“A bit.”

“What I mean is, he’s real, isn’t he? You’re some creature from the papers. From the shipping news.”

“I am.”

“Sprung from nothing, you say.”

“Self-created out of my severely limited social exposure to Chinese, whores and miners.”

“No home.”

“Always moving, out of place,
sui generis
.”

“Is that Latin for lonely?”

“Miss Molyneux, you could have made a lawyer.”

She topped his glass. “What do you call your daughter, the one in Africa?”

“Ah. Her mother and I went around on that. She wanted something English and I wanted something African. We compromised on something biblical.”

“And what was that?”

“Keziah. It means ‘Rainbow.’ From the Book of Job.”

“It’s a beautiful name,” Rose said.

“A beautiful girl. We’re pretty far from Reverend Maypole.”

“I hope so.”

An unbidden image of George Battie and his two girls came to mind. Blair had assumed plainness in Battie’s life, and out of a black hole George had scooped up doves.

“You’ll be leaving us soon,” Rose said. “What do you miss most about the Gold Coast, the women or the gold?”

“Hard to say.”

“Why’s that?”

Blair picked up the orange ball of yarn from the bag, pulled free a foot of wool shot through with brilliant aniline dye, and tied the yarn into a series of knots. “They’re hard to separate.”

“Knots?”

“Women and gold.”

He cut the knotted yarn with his pocketknife, slid the shawl off Rose’s shoulders and tied the yarn around her upper arm. In the light of the fire, with her skin shadowed by coal dust, the bright yarn stood out.

“From top to bottom, a headband of royal purple and golden cloth, necklaces of gold filigree, breastplates of gold threads, armlets and bracelets of glass beads and gold, a skirt of pink, black and gold thread, and anklets of amber beads and golden wires. We’ll simply have to use our imagination.”

He cut another length of yarn, knotted it and tied it to her other arm, then cut and knotted more and tied them around her wrists.

“Some of the gold is gold thread and some of it is cast. Some into chains, some into shapes of disks, bells, shells, seeds, cocoons.”

He untied and slipped off her clogs and tied yarn around her bare ankles. He helped her stand. “Completely covered,” he said.

Her dress was cotton with a vestigial print and shell buttons, as many split as whole. He undid the buttons
carefully, not to break them, and revealed a chemise of thin muslin. He slipped his fingers through the shoulder loops and slid the dress and chemise down.

With longer yarn he tied thicker knots. “Think of a mass of golden necklaces with amulets and Dutch glass beads so heavy that with every move they sway. Strings of golden talismans and animals, and in the middle, large as a lump of coal, a golden nugget.”

“My hair?” she asked.

“Your hair’s already gold.”

She had a single petticoat of muslin, the meanest cloth of all. She stepped out of that and spread her arms. Someone could look in the window anytime, Blair knew. If they squinted, they could see. He tied a final strand around her waist as a golden belt and stood back.

“Am I naked?” she asked.

“To someone else. Not to me.”

He carried her upstairs. He sensed that she wanted no man who couldn’t do that much. Their faces and mouths pressed together, he tasted gin and salt and coal dust that made him take the steps two at a time. She held him and wrapped around him like a knot. Then they were in bed, his face hot against her belly. Wrapped in gold. She arched and stretched across the bed so that they traveled together and as one.