Sarah Canary (31 page)

‘I don’t understand,’ Adelaide said and she really didn’t. ‘I am being accused of smuggling on board in Port Gamble a man who was later pulled onto the
Pumpkin
clinging to a canoe?’

‘The
Lotta White.’
Captain Wescott corrected her. ‘You’re not being accused of anything, Mrs Byrd. I am merely asking you for access to my own cabin.’ He brushed the top of his hat with the side of one hand and adjusted an epaulet, apparently still unable to look at her. ‘Possibly you’ve never heard of Jimmy Jones, skipper on the
Jenny Jones?’
He paused to let Adelaide agree that she did not know of this man. Adelaide refused to give him the satisfaction.

After an awkward moment, the captain continued anyway. ‘Well, I wouldn’t expect a lady from the East to know of him, but he’s rather famous in these parts. Jimmy was thrown into prison in Victoria for debt and his schooner was seized. She was a flea-ridden vessel, but all he had. He caught up with his creditors and the
Jenny Jones
in dock at Steilacoom. He’d escaped from prison by dressing as a woman. All the riggings - bustles, bonnets, and veils. ‘I’m sure he looked a picture. But he stole back his own ship while the crew was ashore and made it all the way to Mexico. You tell a steamship captain in these parts there’s a man dressed as a woman on board his ship and he’s just as likely to believe you.’

‘Are you quite finished?’ Adelaide asked. ‘Because the point I was making is that the man arrived
after
my companion and I were already settled into the cabin. Your story is as preposterous as it is irrelevant.’

‘It’s not preposterous. It’s absolutely true,’ said the captain. ‘Jimmy’s a lecturer now, like you. I’ve heard him myself. Or at least he was a lecturer until he spoke at Seabeck. Just before his speech, one of the local wags gave him a drink. Jimmy was never known to turn down a free drink. Only this one was doctored with ipecac and cascara. The mill towns take their entertainment rough, as I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you, Mrs Byrd, if you are, in fact, Miss Dixon.’

‘The point I am making . . .’ Adelaide began again, speaking slowly since no one here with the possible exception of Emmaline appeared acute enough to follow her otherwise. But she was not able to finish. Mrs Maynard snapped her sentence in two.

‘Oh, you’re very cunning,’ Mrs Maynard conceded. Fury had blotched her cheeks and made her voice shake. ‘I noticed that at your lecture. Always an answer for everything. I told Captain Wescott not to underestimate your cunning. But the truth is, if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve no reason not to let the captain search his own cabin. Do you?’

‘This is a matter of principle. You wouldn’t understand.’ Adelaide regretted every moment of pity she had felt for young Mrs Maynard. Certainly she had faced charges such as these before. She expected the approbation of her own sex no more than she wanted the approval of men. Which was lucky since she never got either. But it was galling to remember that she had been comforting this woman only a short while ago. She heard herself adopting her public voice again. ‘I will set principle and dignity aside, Captain Wescott.’ She reached past the captain, brushing over Emmaline’s head, flattening one of her cat’s ear bows, to retrieve her handkerchief from Mrs Maynard’s bosom. She pulled it free with a snap. Mrs Maynard recoiled from her hand as if she expected Adelaide to strike her. Adelaide had not stopped speaking. ‘I see you are determined to look and that no appeal to courtesy or decency will dissuade you. When you have satisfied yourselves as to the injustice you do me, I will accept no apology. And I will entertain no further intrusions.’ She backed into the cabin, sweeping her skirts aside with one hand.

Lydia had rolled around, facing Captain Wescott, following him with her large dark eyes as he came into the room. She shifted onto her back, showing them all her famous profile. Adelaide could hardly breathe. ‘Has everyone seen enough?’ she asked.

Mrs Maynard crowded into the cabin behind the captain, who was behind Emmaline. One more person could not have fit into the tiny room. ‘It is a man,’ she insisted, but somewhat uncertainly.

‘I don’t think so.’ Captain Wescott also did not sound sure. He took a step forward to the bed, treading on Adelaide’s used menstrual rag. He bent over to look at it curiously, unwrapped it with the toe of his shoe. Adelaide was hot with embarrassment. The captain reddened like a boiled lobster. The
Pumpkin’
s whistle sounded on deck, a continuous blast like a teakettle. ‘Madam, I am deeply sorry.’ He straightened up and addressed Lydia. ‘The way we have disturbed you. In your condition. There is no excuse for it. I can only assure you I was concerned for the safety of my ship. And her passengers. And that I deeply regret this whole episode.’

‘She is a man,’ Mrs Maynard insisted, whispering through her teeth. ‘Look at her.’ But even as Mrs Maynard spoke, Captain Wescott took her arm and piloted her firmly through the door backward. She continued to accuse Adelaide as she retreated. ‘Doesn’t the Redpath agency handle your engagements? And isn’t Redpath’s business manager missing? Vanished with a great deal of money. I read it in the papers.’

‘I’m not with Redpath,’ Adelaide said. Of course, she was much too scandalous for the Redpath agency. ‘I handle my own career.’

Captain Wescott pushed Mrs Maynard farther out into the corridor. ‘Emmaline!’ Mrs Maynard called back. ‘Come away from there.’ Emmaline remained in the cabin, staring at Lydia. At the sound of her mother’s voice, she turned and smiled inexplicably at Adelaide. An unforced little girl’s smile. Perhaps slightly conspiritorial, but perhaps purer than that. Adelaide had always told herself that she didn’t want children. Such a bother. Such a responsibility. Far too bestial. She reached over and straightened Emmaline’s ribbons. The truth was that the prospect of child-bearing had always filled Adelaide with terror. It was painful to admit that she lacked the ordinary courage of her sex. But it would be even more cowardly not to face the truth of the matter.

‘Good-bye,’ said Emmaline. She ran away from Adelaide, her shoes tapping lightly and then more lightly down the corridor in the direction of the passenger cabin and her mother.

A crew member arrived just outside the cabin door. ‘There’s food missing from the galley,’ he reported to Captain Wescott. ‘Cheese and bread. And whiskey.’

A second crewman ran up from the other direction, shouting. ‘We spotted him up by the bridge!’ He reached the captain, paused to catch his breath. ‘He swung down the companionway and headed toward the stern. One of the passengers says he went back over the side. We can’t see anything in the wake.’

‘Search the stern,’ Captain Wescott said, sending the crewmen back off on a run. To Adelaide’s surprise, he did not follow. He stood there a moment, rotating his hat nervously in his hands. ‘The
Columbia
lost an Indian deckhand off the stern once,’ Captain Wescott offered. Adelaide was not interested and would not pretend that she was. ‘Nobody missed him. He was dragged in the wake for three days but was recovered when she docked in Olympia. Hungry, but otherwise fine.’ The more Adelaide refused to answer, the more embarrassed the captain seemed to become. Adelaide was still embarrassed herself, so this seemed only just. ‘Well,’ said Captain Wescott. ‘I had better go see to this.’ He put his hat on his head. ‘I am sorry, Mrs Byrd. I hope someday you’ll believe that.’ Adelaide closed the door.

Lydia rose and stood at the porthole. Nothing could be seen but water and the horizon. Adelaide had already looked. Adelaide picked up the newspaper. She tore a long strip to rewrap her rag in, then noticed the words
a Palm
at the top. She placed the strip back on the little desk, matching the torn edges. Now it read
a Palmer.
Adelaide had to retrieve the bloody section on the floor to piece together the entire article. Lydia Palmer had been captured six days ago while attending a performance of
Love’s Hidden Heart
in Sacramento.

Adelaide was surprised at how little surprise she felt. What were the odds, really, that she, Adelaide Dixon, would be so lucky as to find the fugitive no one else had been able to find? A woman who couldn’t hold an audience, was afraid to have children, was afraid to fall in love. A woman who didn’t even sleep with men often, although once was more than enough as far as most people were concerned. Still Adelaide had magnified it. She had found that people would come to be scandalized when they wouldn’t come to be instructed. So she had made a lie of her sexual past in the service of great truths, and the truths were still true and the truth was still great, but Adelaide herself was only one small lie.

Adelaide looked at her fingertips, smeared with blood and newspaper ink. Adelaide might tell a lie, but she was a great believer in seeing the truth. And the truth was that she hadn’t done this only for her work. The truth was that Adelaide was afraid, and perhaps she was the only woman in the world who felt this particular fear. She had never heard another woman say it. Adelaide was afraid that if she ever once allowed herself to feel the full range of her sexual desires, that this would be a need too great for any man. That these desires, once allowed to come to life, would never be silenced or satisfied again. Adelaide had read Darwin’s
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
to find the answer to one question. Why were men’s sexual needs so easily accommodated, when women’s were so difficult? She knew what a minister would tell her, if she asked him. She had hoped for something new from Mr Darwin. But Darwin didn’t talk about women’s needs at all.

Some tiny hold on reality had prevented Adelaide from telegraphing her triumph ahead to San Francisco, as would have been a more sensible course of action if she had really captured Lydia Palmer. So Adelaide wasn’t surprised and she wasn’t disappointed and she wasn’t angry. She was just tired. She had been emptied out like a bottle.

The Alaskan Wild Woman had the hiccoughs. They were a noisy and arrhythmic variety. Who in the world was she? Poor crazy woman. What was Adelaide to do with her? She couldn’t return her to Harold, who had been clearly terrifying and mistreating her. Perhaps B.J. knew where she belonged. Hadn’t he been looking for her, too?

Adelaide locked the door behind her and went back to the boiler room. Past the sheep with their black, heart-shaped faces, past the wardrobes, past the grandfather clock whose pendulum was wrapped in an Irish blue quilt and whose hands were frozen, one on top of the other, at midnight.

The boiler room glowed. She knelt beside B.J. ‘Look,’ he said. He held his fist out to her, then withdrew it. ‘Well, I can’t show you. If I open my hand, it will get away. But my blanket has fleas. I’ve caught one.’

‘Where did you find the woman?’ Adelaide asked. ‘Who is she?’

‘Chin found her. In the forest. Her name is Sarah Canary. Have you ever seen a flea dressed up like a bride or a groom?’

‘No,’ said Adelaide. ‘Can you take her home?’

‘If you tell me where. Chin and I would do it.’

‘I would do it, too,’ said Adelaide. Of course she would. ‘I was hoping
you
would tell
me
where.’

‘Ask Chin,’ B.J. suggested. ‘And keep her away from Harold. Harold is looking for her. Have they found Harold?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Adelaide. ‘Not the last that I heard.’ She wanted sympathy suddenly. She had been alone such a long time. Or perhaps she was frightened by her own emptiness and wanted a respite from it. A friend, however temporary. To be taken medicinally. ‘The last I heard, they were accusing
me
of dressing Harold like a woman and hiding him in my cabin,’ she told B.J., thinking how very brave it was of him to come in a canoe through a storm only a lunatic would face to rescue an ugly woman who couldn’t even thank him. It was almost romantic.

‘Dressing him like a woman?’ B.J. repeated. ‘All in black? And then putting him with other women in black like yourself and Sarah Canary? So no one would notice him? I heard a story like that once. Only instead of women dressed in black, it was purloined letters. Except for that, it was the same story. Have you ever seen trained fleas? A flea circus? Like they have in England?’

‘I saw some fleas once who were dressed as little soldiers. They shot off a little cannon and raised a little Union flag,’ said Adelaide. ‘In a carnival. Of course, the fleas aren’t really trained. No one could train a flea. They’re just hopping about. They’re just trying desperately to escape. I thought it was too much like the real war to be entertaining. I thought it was too much like life.’ Something in her answer distressed B.J. Adelaide could see it in his face. She wanted to reassure him, but she didn’t know what she had said.

‘There she is, Tom,’ said the Chinese man. Adelaide turned. His breathing had normalized, his color improved. He looked less stiff. He was warmer; Adelaide felt his forehead.

‘Oh, he’s much better,’ said Adelaide, hoping to please B.J. with this news. But the look the Chinese man gave her was startling, a look perhaps of defenseless joy. A look as if, of all the faces in the world, hers was the one he had most wanted to open his eyes and see. Adelaide smiled at him involuntarily. ‘Mr Chin,’ she asked gently. ‘Who do you think I am?’

‘An enchantress,’ Chin answered. His voice was weak from fever and rough as a frog’s.

‘Delirium and shock,’ Captain Wescott opined sadly. Adelaide did not know when he had entered the boiler room. He was standing behind her, looking down on the Chinese man, shaking his head. ‘Absolutely starkers.’

Adelaide removed her hand from Chin’s head. ‘Have you found Harold?’ she asked tartly.