“The true spirit of womanhood is on the verge of self-awareness, and the day will surely come when the fierce power of love will cast off the chains and shrouds of the patriarchs.”
The Window Maker
Dearest Christopher,
You asked before I left Barkerville if you could come visit me once I had settled in Victoria. I expect you will want to press your proposal of marriage—an offer earnestly tendered by one who knows who I am and what I have been… or at least, one who thinks he knows. As you can well imagine, I am uncertain what to do. I don’t doubt for an instant your sincerity. Nor do I doubt your capacity to love and forgive. But before we pursue this passion, I think it only fitting to tell my whole story, and to set things in order by saying: I long to embrace you, but reject the notion of or my need for forgiveness… yours or anyone else’s.
If that shocks you, I apologize. If it turns you from your purpose, I hope we can at least remain friends, if not lovers and companions. But I must not shrink from the truth; I must reveal what I was and have become as a result of recent events in Barkerville, and most particularly, as a result of my conversations with you. No matter what the outcome of our present exchange, I will be forever grateful for your having imparted a spiritual impulse that still glows within me. I will forever love you for that; even if I eventually marry another; even if I grow old and withered beyond years as a spinster.
My story begins in Kingston, Ontario, in 1847. You know some of my history—just enough to trace your way back to my inception. What I am about to reveal are those incriminating details that would certainly have me thrown into prison if they were known by the authorities and, quite possibly, see me hanged. I am entrusting you with this information because, as much as you love me, I have come to love you in a way I never imagined possible, and which I will never betray by keeping from you the whole truth before we seal any bond.
I was a happy child. My father, Thomas Armstrong, was a stern, unrelenting sort. But my mother, Margit, held his dour, scolding personality in check with her determined gaiety. He was a preacher—I won’t cast a slur by naming his denomination or church. Suffice to say his sermons were of the fire and brimstone brand, and he viewed children as the devil’s spawn, imps needing a strong, punishing hand to impress morality and Christian piety upon them. Mother would not allow him full rein though. She stood between him and us girls, arms akimbo, face red with fury, ready to kill rather than see us abused. And because he feared her, and needed her, Father backed down more often than not.
How they met and why they married is beyond my comprehension. But they did, and this precarious state of affairs lasted until my twelfth year. In 1859 Mother died of cancer. At first this catastrophe drew the family together. My sisters, brother and I put a dread bordering on hatred aside, and rallied round Father. Mother, as she lay shrivelling away in her sickbed, had urged us all to get along. “Especially you, my dear,” she said one day near the end, when we were alone in her room. “As the eldest child, and the most sensible, you have a responsibility to temper your father’s anger and encourage your brother and sisters to a reasonable obedience.” I couldn’t conceal my doubts. “I’m afraid, Mother,” I said. And she made no reply.
Corporal Punishment
At first, after Mother died, things seemed to be unfolding according to her wishes. Father, during his convalescence, had become a muted version of his obstreperous self, almost as if Mother’s ghost remained about the house and he did not know how to chastise us without offending her. The community of the faithful rallied to him, and eventually Miss Sangster, our housekeeper, shifted more and more into Mother’s role, preparing meals, readying us for school each morning, welcoming us home in the afternoons. Mother’s spirit abided within her, she was so gentle and happy in her ministrations of us children. And as long as she was in the house, Father’s behaviour adhered to the strictures Mother would have permitted.
But in the evenings things began to change. Slowly at first, but with quickening intensity, the fire and brimstone broiling his innards began to affect his attitudes toward us and his mode of disciplining. Stern warnings over the minutest transgressions escalated to shouts, then to harsh punishments—confinements to our rooms, extra chores, written assignments intended to expiate sins and cultivate ‘moral intelligence.’ There are lucid moments in life when you know you have lost your balance and are about to fall. Oddly, there’s sometimes a sense of having escaped gravity just prior these toppling events, an instant of weightlessness before you realize you are about to tumble down the stairs.
Corporal punishments began about four months after Mother died. Hattie, my youngest sister, who would have been eight at the time, brought home a less than satisfactory report card from school. “A fallow mind is where the devil plants his seed,” Father admonished. Then he imposed a strict regimen of extra study and homework to be carried out by her and supervised by me. “I won’t!” Hattie shouted. “I won’t do it.” Before she had even finished her second rebellious utterance, Father’s hand swooped down and struck her on the cheek. And when I jumped up to prevent him from striking her again, he knocked me over with the back of his hand. I knew in that instant all the weeks of restraint lay shattered on the kitchen floor, along with Hattie’s chair, which had been knocked over in the kerfuffle. We had indeed toppled over the brink into a terrifying void. Father hovered over our blasted paradise, a bird of vengeance and retribution; Hattie, Rose, Robert and I became small feral creatures, scurrying about in the underbrush.
Out of sight—Out of my mind
If it were simply a matter of keeping out of sight and out of mind, and doing what we must to avoid Father’s wrath, I probably could have survived what remained of my childhood and adolescence. But after that inaugural instance of abuse Father looked for every opportunity to chastise me in particular. “You are the eldest, Anna,” he admonished, “and it’s up to you to take the place of your mother with respect to Hattie, Rose and Robert.” Rather than giving me the respect such a station would seem to deserve, though, he seemed determined to do all he could to undermine me—to destroy me, actually. He never again resorted to the impulsive violence he had inflicted on Hattie and me that first afternoon. Father’s abuse was regimented, planned, insidious, and focused for the most part on me, his eldest daughter. I was to keep the others in line, and if they transgressed, it was my fault and I had earned the strap, or confinement to my room, or interminable lectures.
Only later would I come to realize he was not only trying to destroy my spirit and force my submission to his will; he was also dismantling day-by-day, piece-by-piece any residual respect or affection he had for me. Methodically, almost deliberately, he had set about recasting me as an evil in his presence, a being that deserved to be beaten and cast off. I was being transfigured inexorably into an object of hatred that could be subjected to the most disgusting and degrading forms of abuse—acts so heinous no decent man could ever perpetrate them upon any woman, let alone upon his own girl-child.
What I have described so far and the horror of what I am about to reveal cannot exonerate me. I know what the consequence of my crimes must be, Christopher, if they ever become known. But being guilty under the law is not the same thing as feeling guilty inside. Shocking as this may seem to you, even after you have heard my story through all its unseemly episodes, I do not feel guilty at all; nor do I believe there is a God in heaven or priest on earth who has the right to condemn me. If there is a God, he created a world where such evil as I have endured is not only possible, but quite commonplace, and I would rather be damned then forgiven by such a god for my acts of survival and—I own it—vengeance.
Father began visiting me in the night, ostensibly to encourage and admonish in more thoughtful, gentle terms than he’d had time for during the day. I shrank from him during these conversations, because I knew something was wrong with his being there, perched on the edge of my bed, in the separate room that had been allotted me as ‘the eldest.’ The touching began as a squeeze of the shoulder or a pat on the thigh—ministrations of affection that froze me, because I knew they were false. His gaunt features appeared to me as ugly as a vulture’s; his hands, claws fastened to my flesh. “You remind me of your mother,” he once said. I wanted to scream; “YOU ARE MY FATHER!”
But our hope that what is bad will not get worse, if only we can look the other way and believe in some other outcome, prevents us from shrieking truth. So I accepted his palpably devious, utterly evil intentions as if they were genuine expressions of fatherly love. When does a caress become less than innocent? A kiss expressive of desire rather than familial love? A touch invasive rather than assuring? I needn’t go on. You understand where all this tends. He raped me! My own father raped me! And I didn’t cry out even then; I cried silently and kept his secret from the first to the last disgusting ejaculation of his degraded ‘love’—I lived in fear and shame and hatred. He committed this crime repeatedly thereafter, and never once did he miss delivering his hellfire and brimstone sermons to his devoted flock, warning them against breaking God’s sacred commandments. I blushed for him, the inferno raging in my soul burning through my very flesh so that I thought my Sunday clothes might ignite, turning me into a bonfire.
Imagine how that would have been interpreted by his scrubbed, sanctimonious followers!
Disgusting as this almost nightly torture was, I would have borne it silently to my grave had it not been accompanied by his perverse hatred, which blossomed in all its awful deformity the day after his first night of incest. He hated me! Despised me. As soon as he’d had his way, he began insulting and abusing me assiduously throughout the day; then coming to me at night seeking gratification and a tortured form of absolution. It was impenetrably sick, his behaviour. Insane! And from the first it only got worse, and worse, until it became tragically obvious there was no ninth circle of hell we could stop at—only an infinitely harrowing descent that must end in some form of death.
The Demented Child
By the time I marked my thirteenth birthday, I had been beaten and twisted into the secret role of abused wife to a carnivorous husband who was also my father. I couldn’t flee. How far could I get before the authorities picked me up? Where could I go? What could I confess to? And what about my sisters, Hattie and Rose? Was even Robert safe from Father’s depredations? So, I suffered his nighttime visits and daytime rants stoically, my sole occupation being the preservation of my sanity and will… that and planning for the day when I could escape.
Of course, a person cannot continuously be exposed to the kinds of physical and verbal assaults I was and not be irredeemably altered. I stopped going to school because I couldn’t bear being in the company of children who didn’t have to make a pretence of laughing and smiling; or who could mock their elders happily, without the edge of bitterness and hatred that stiffened my body and steeled my voice whenever I was forced to talk of my father and the useless coterie of adoring followers who wished to commend him. Father demanded I go back, because my sudden transformation from a top student to a taciturn truant raised eyebrows and questions. He whipped me, but I resolutely refused, and even allowed myself the slightest suggestion of a smile when he gave up and shouted the epithet “Imbecile!” at me.
From that day I looked for any opportunity to embarrass him publicly. I snickered at his sermons. “Thou shalt not commit adultery!” he thundered one day from his pulpit and I laughed out loud, causing a ripple of consternation through the congregation. No-one questioned Father’s image as a paragon of virtue and patient suffering, of course. They tut-tutted over his burden and redoubled their support for the widower saddled with a demented child. When I stopped going to church, they understood why I was being ‘ministered to’ at home and many, I am sure, agreed the devil was taking revenge and testing my father’s piety through me. I played the role to the best of my ability. I took to stealing from the local shopkeepers, because it shamed him to have a daughter who was not only stupid, but was also a thief. I went for long walks, not returning until well after supper, sometimes even after dark, and escaped through the window when he tried to lock me in my room.
He would have had me committed, I’m sure, but then how would he satisfy his lust? And what might be discovered if I was interviewed by a psychologist? And who would he find better than me to abuse with his bestial devotions? So rather than put me away, he revelled in the praises earned as the father of such a ‘difficult child.’ I laugh now at the gullibility of his flock. How, in God’s name, could they not see through his lies? I still find it hard to believe no-one sensed anything out of order in his impeccable credentials, anything that might lead them to question the true lineage and species of the man who claimed to be my father… no one, that is, except our housekeeper Mrs. Sangster, who didn’t so much suspect him as resolutely believe in me and wonder at the cause of my altered state.
A testament of lies revealed
Moira Sangster was a gentle, trusting soul, not likely to be persuaded that her minister and employer could be anything other than a fine, upstanding man. Nor, at first, did I give her any reason to suspect. To all intents she was a member of our household, which made her an even greater risk as far as I was concerned. But, bless her heart, she could not keep from wringing her hands over my state and looking for opportunities to encourage me. She never believed for a moment that I was beyond redemption or unworthy. And her love saved me in the end.
Over time, I came to trust her. In a guarded way at first, but more so with each kind word and occasional hug she inflicted. She made it seem churlish of me not to have faith in her unwavering cheerfulness and affection. I came to know with a certainty that goes beyond words that Mrs. Sangster was a genuine angel, a soul disposed to love and happiness, but capable of righteous fury. This trust she instilled through her assiduous ministrations, until I finally made up my mind to confide in her, or rather, to let her discover the ghastly truth that went on in the parsonage when no-one was there to witness it.
When Father’s sinfulness and lust were first visited upon me, I began keeping a journal. I spared no detail in this book of mine, recording his sins and my complicity. I wrote in a tight hand as tersely as I could but, even so, the record soon overflowed the pages of my first notebook, then another, and another. These I concealed at the very bottom of my bottom dresser drawer, only making entries when I was certain no-one would come upon me. They were never intended to be read by anyone—it was as if I was writing to exorcise my tortured thoughts, get them onto a page where they could be sealed away forever. I had no need to reopen the booklets myself once they were full.
Mrs. Sangster cleaned all the rooms in the house, including mine. Father had long since abandoned any hope that I would be his char as well as his mistress, and sensed that if he pushed me, he risked exposing his own crimes. So he left me to my ‘indolence’ and ‘waywardness’, content to warn bluffly about the wages of sin. Had I the courage and experience I do now, I could have turned the tables on him. I could have made him suffer and pay for his perversions. But I was afraid. I needed someone else to know and—I dared not think it—to act on that knowledge. So, I began placing my journal on my bed during the day, when no-one but Mrs. Sangster and I were in the house, in the hopes that she might come across it when she was cleaning. This went on for some weeks. I would listen to her hustling about when she was doing the upstairs rooms, hoping for the tapping of her footsteps and shushing of her broom to stop for a while at the side of my bed; disappointed when she kept right on about her business.
Then one day, having invited me for a cup of tea in the kitchen, Mrs. Sangster said, “Let me ask you, dear, if I left a letter lying open here on the table for a day or two, would you read it under the assumption that it was intended for that very purpose.” I nodded, and so did she. “I thought as much,” she said.
Next day her footsteps did stop in my room, and the silence elongated into what seemed an eternity. I sat at the kitchen table, my head bowed, blushing to think of her up there reading what no one would dare imagine, taking in what she might interpret as the ravings of a mad girl. Then her footsteps sounded resolutely as she got up from my bed, stumped out of the room and down the stairs. She appeared in the kitchen doorway, my notebook in her hand, her face red with fury. I got up and backed away, knocking over my chair. Then I saw the tears glistening in the corners of her eyes, tears brimming over, and I knew she had accepted what she’d read as the truth and that she realized her whole conception of my father and his household was nothing but a testament of lies. “You poor girl,” she whispered, approaching cautiously. “You poor child!” Then she clutched me in such a fierce embrace I could hardly breathe, and we both wept.
“Get your coat on,” she said at last. “We have to go.”
I didn’t ask where.
For the next two months I stayed with Mrs. Sangster and her husband George while she and a select group of church elders ‘worked things out.’ “He will never touch you again, my dear,” was all she would say. “Or your brother and sisters. Of that you may be sure.” Beyond that, I cannot guess what ‘working things out’ meant. I did catch occasional snippets of conversation between Moira and George. Apparently, father had threatened to throw her out of our house when she returned that first evening to inform him where I was. “As soon as you do, I’ll know where to go, sir,” she replied tartly. George went round next day and collected the things I would need during my stay, including my journal booklets at the bottom of my bottom drawer. These I have kept in the valise George brought my belongings from home in. They have never been removed since, and have accompanied through all my travels.
Betrayal
From what I subsequently overheard a ‘reconciliation’ was to be achieved between Father and me, with Mrs. Sangster staying on as his ‘housekeeper’ and my guardian while the reunion was ‘facilitated’. From that moment, I began plotting my escape.
How could they have conceived such a plot? They must have judged me a lunatic! Or a cow that could be kicked and whipped one moment; then lie down in a field afterward to chew its cud with no recollection of the crimes that had been committed against it the next? Did they truly believe whatever lies Father had concocted to save his skin? Did they take my journal entries as the fictions of a deranged, teenage girl?
I bottled up my outrage when Moira sat me down and delivered this verdict officially, but she sensed my disgust and tried to placate me. “The sins of your father will be atoned for in a higher place, my dear,” she said. “In the meantime, we must do our best for you and your siblings. I have argued strenuously on your behalf, but other voices have prevailed. It’s your word against his, and he has managed to persuade the church fathers of his presumed innocence—revenge and punishment cannot be our objectives. For the sake of you, your brother, and sisters we must try to put aside what we cannot forget and use the time allotted to secure a safe future for all of you.”
“I will never return to that house! I’ll go to the police.”
She sighed. “And do you think the police will come to a different conclusion? That they will take your word over his?”
Astounded, I looked at Moira pleadingly.
“And what will become of your brother, sisters and yourself if the sins of you father are exposed? The church might be forced to dismiss him, but what then? Where will you live? How will you survive? Who will watch over you?”
“Can’t I stay with you? I can do chores, work to bring in some money. I would love you like a daughter.”
“You are a daughter to me, child. And to George.” Moira took my head in her hands and looked into my eyes adoringly, until I understood how saddened she was—how broken hearted. “But we need you to be brave for the sake of your brother and sisters. I know it’s a terrible obligation to put on you, but we need to tread carefully. And you know George and I will always be here—that our hearts as well as our door will always be open to you.”
Words cannot begin to express my revulsion at the prospect of being ‘reconciled’ with my father. I never wanted to see him again—shunned the very thought of him. I felt like a sparrow that had taken refuge under the Sangster’s roof from a predator, and could not find its way out again. Their coaxing confused me. Their efforts at repatriation threatened. Under Mrs. Sangster’s tender, watchful eyes I struggled to conceal my terror—and my guilt. For I knew I would have to betray them because they were betraying me with their best intentions.
The pawnbroker
Desperate people do desperate things. That’s a hard lesson I have learned over the years. I needed to get away from Kingston; I needed money to get away; the Sangsters had an antique, baroque clock proudly displayed on their drawing room mantle. No ordinary timepiece, it had been handed down through the family from ‘times immemorial’ Moira said. I thought it an exceptionally ugly artifact, but she was ‘sinfully’ proud of it, and never tired of repeating that “it has kept time in our family for over a century, my love, and will still be ticking when time will be a thing of no consequence to you or I!” She delighted on being teased about her fondness for this ‘monstrosity’ as George judged it for my benefit, making us all laugh even as Mrs. Sangster put on a show of having been affronted.
This, I took off the mantel and wrapped carefully in a blanket. I had no doubt it would fetch enough at the pawnbroker’s in town for me to buy a train ticket from Kingston to Toronto, and leave me with plenty to rent a room until I could find a suitable job in that bustling city, where I intended to disappear. I had concocted this desperate scheme and refined it in the days leading up to the first meeting I was to have with my father. Even if it failed, I reasoned, the attempted flight would demonstrate for all the impossibility of any reconciliation; it would prove to them that I would do anything to avoid living under his roof again. Had I known the new levels of depravity this strategy would lead me into, I might simply have run off with no plan at all, trusting myself to fate. But I was innocent enough to mistake a plan for something that might actually come true.
George, a drayman, had left for work early that morning; Moira trudged off to my father’s house not long after. Neither would be home before that afternoon. They would instantly notice the clock was missing and discover my note in its place. I apologized for my flight, but said I could not face being in the same room as my father and had no other means of getting away than ‘a temporary act of thievery.’ I promised to pay back whatever it cost to redeem their family heirloom and to leave them the pawnbroker’s ticket so they could recover their clock. In the meantime, I thanked them profusely for their kindness and prayed for forgiveness. On these terms I snuck out of their house into the brisk dawn of my last day as a citizen of my native town, my first as a refugee and eventual social pariah.
Up to that moment, I suppose I could portray myself as the victim of my father’s lechery and of a society that refused to look at the truth of my situation. You may well ask, Christopher, how I metamorphosed from a creature in flight into what society would surely judge a sexual predator in her own right. What follows won’t excuse my life—and again, I ask for no excuses and am only prepared to give up my profession for the love of you. But the Second Act of my seemingly unseemly story will explain how the work begun by my father was completed by men and complicit women in the world at large.
Lugging my valise in one hand and the Sangsters’ antique clock under my other arm, I arrived at the pawnbroker’s shop downtown just before opening. I rapped on the window persistently until the owner—a rumpled, rough looking fellow, balding, wrinkled and grey—looked out and, seeing it was a young woman and not a burley thief, opened the door a crack. “Come back after nine,” he barked.
“Please!” I pleaded. “I need to catch the train to Toronto and won’t have time to transact our business and get to the station before it leaves. Could you open up a bit early?” He eyed me suspiciously, as a fish might sniff at a baited hook, then glanced up and down the street as far as he could see. “Quick! Get in!” he ordered, removing the chain from the door, hustling me inside, then locking up again. He beckoned me around the counter at the back of the shop, behind the iron grill where his office was located. “Don’t want people to get the wrong idea,” he grumbled, ushering me through.
“What have you got, there?” he demanded, eying the parcel under my arm.
“It’s a clock.” I put down my valise and placed the Sangsters’ clock on the counter, unwrapping it carefully and standing it up for him to inspect.
“Shouldn’t carry it on its side like that,” the pawn broker said. “Might have damaged the workings.” He bent over to inspect the clock more closely. “I suppose you think it’s worth a small fortune,” he said without looking up.
“I know it’s an antique, and that it’s in perfect working order, and that people have often remarked upon it as a fine piece of workmanship.”
He grunted. “Strange bit of baggage for someone young as you to be carting about, isn’t it?”
Flummoxed, I told him my parents had given it to me to pawn because we couldn’t afford a ticket to Toronto, where I had been offered a position.
“What kind of position?”
I couldn’t think what to say. “Please, sir,” I answered after a moment’s uncertainty. “I just want to complete our transaction and be on my way. What can you offer?”
Enraged
The pawnbroker looked up from the bench, his ugly, bloated face split by the most hideous leer I think I have ever seen. “I can offer not to grasp you by the scruff of your neck and drag you off to the police station this very moment,” he replied.
I almost fainted. Could feel the blood draining out of my face and my knees buckling. Never in my young life had I seen such malignant evil manifested through the apparatus of human flesh and bones—it was as if the devil himself spoke through this minion’s mouth and saw through his eyes.
“What else have you got to sell?” he demanded.
“I beg your pardon!”
He stood up and faced me, still grinning. “Stolen merchandize isn’t worth anything to me,” he said. “I will dispose of it for you, but I’ll need to be paid for my troubles.” He placed his hand on my shoulder, as if imparting a confidence to a friend. When I shrank from him, his grip tightened.
“I have nothing to sell,” I parried, as angry now as I was frightened. “I’ll take my clock and go.”
The villain laughed. “There’s always something a pretty, young thing like yourself can sell,” he said. “Something you can sell over and over again until you’ve worn it out and must then consider an honest way of making a living.” He grabbed me with both hands now, and glared like the beast of prey he truly was. I struggled, but he was too strong and began pawing me where we stood, his foul breath upon me, his rough beard rasping my cheek. I shouted, squirmed and managed to break free. But there was nowhere to run. “You’ll keep quiet if you know what’s best for you,” he warned, panting. “The police will hear your noise before anyone else, and I can always tell them what a struggle I had apprehending a thieving young whore who didn’t want to be caught.”
“Stop!” I shouted when he inched toward me again. He obeyed, taken off guard by the force of my command. Again, I found myself in one of those moments when everything in the balance added up to perfect equipoise. Time expanded, pushed back and outward by my fury and desperation. “Pay me first—enough to get me on the train to Toronto—and I’ll give you what you want.”
He snorted dismissively.
“Pay me or I will fight like a tiger. You may get me arrested, but you won’t get anything more without having your eyes scratched out.”
His grin turned into a scowl.
Grumbling, he turned from me, withdrawing a key on a fob from his vest pocket as he did. This he inserted into a safe under the counter.
As he opened the steel door and rummaged inside, I looked about for something, anything I could use to complete our transaction. Hanging by its strap at the end of the counter was a club, which I assumed he had there to ward off any assailants who might threaten. I lifted this off its hook surreptitiously and hoisted if over my shoulder in both hands, as high in the air as I could. He turned to look back at me.
“I’ll give you…”
He just had time to see the club descending and register a look of utter shock and terror before the blow landed, a dull, sickening thud that staved in his temple and sent him lurching sideways, his money scattered on the floor around him. Rather than being appalled by my act, I was enraged, a volcano erupting, unleashing years of pent fury. I hit him again, and again, battering his corpse until I was certain beyond any shadow of doubt he was dead. Then, exhausted and depleted, I dropped my weapon on the floor and took in what I had done.
I might have wept, had I allowed myself. But I had to get on with my business. I gathered up all the money I could from the floor and inside the safe, stuffing it into may valise. Then I wrapped the Sangsters’ clock in its blanket, and slipped out the back door.
Returning to the Sangsters’ house, I replaced their clock on its mantle—it worked perfectly once I set its pendulum in motion and moved the hands to the right time. I recovered my note, and fled, catching the very next train to Toronto.
While others in the car watched the scenery, or read their books, or minded their children, I wondered who or what I had become, dreading the future. I didn’t want to use the word, but had to confess I had murdered the pawn broker. Yes, he was a disgusting specimen, he had tried to rape me, I could even say he deserved whatever he got. But at my hands? In that fashion?
Over and over I saw him turn, his eyes widen, his move to shield himself and avoid the crushing blow; heard the sickening thump of the bludgeon, staving in his skull. I had killed him with no more dignity or mercy than you would accord a rat in a barn, then killed him again and again until I realized it wasn’t him I wanted to murder, but what he represented, and that I might kill again, now that my dander was up and appetite whetted. My fury abated, exhausted with my reenactments of battering a corpse, but my rage smouldered, banked like a fire in the pit of my soul, and the only real regret I could admit to was that the pig had died before I was finished punishing him for his sins. He deserved eternal damnation for his crime… so judged a young atheist, who had not so long ago killed the very notion of a god in her heart.
So who would exact the retribution I desired? Who atone for my ‘crime’, when I came to my senses? I felt I had been infected with evil, had become a dangerous cargo, aboard a chuffing train, destined for Toronto.
A fabricated history
These fevered thoughts were submerged in the bustle and hubbub of Union Station. Never having been there, I didn’t know what to expect and was taken aback by the size and seeming confusion of the place. Nor did I have any idea what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go. Naïve as I was, though, my experiences to that point had already taught me to be wary. And I was perfectly conscious of just how vulnerable I was, and all the more cautious in that knowledge. The pawnbroker’s money weighed heavily in my valise and I gripped the handle tight as I marvelled at the comings and goings of the station and the ceaseless activity on the streets outside. Toronto was not a place where people had time to care about a waif in their midst—not unless they became suspicious, that is, or sensed an innocent to be taken advantage of. I needed a place to stay; that much was obvious. But before that, I needed something more fundamental. I couldn’t put my finger on quite what it was and wandered the streets, trying to look purposeful, until I came across a little park that offered the opportunity for me to sit down and think—to consider what I might have lost and been looking for.
A flock of pigeons scurried about my feet, thinking I might have some crumbs to toss their way. I laughed. Oh, to be like them! Simply living, being, landing, and taking flight as fancy took me. They are innocent, I thought. Their existence was summed up almost entirely in the exact moment they lived: they took flight, weathered heat and cold, conceived and gave birth, and finally died without any history at all. They simply were what they were, unfettered by certificates, records, or laws inscribed anywhere but in their hearts and souls. They were utterly unaware of the joy they brought me, and as a consequence seemed perfect angels—harbingers of something that verged on ecstasy. “I can never be like you,” I said. I did have a biscuit in my pocket, which I had not eaten on the train. I broke it up as an offering. They swarmed in a body around my feet, cooing and pecking eagerly. “Unlike you, I need a story,” I said. “I must have some reason for being here in this city.”
It took me less than ten minutes to fabricate the history of Anna Armstrong, the first such alias I had ever devised. I laugh now to think how amateurish that inaugural disguise really was and how facile I would later become at recreating myself for various purposes. If you cross North America and ask after me at the many places I have been, you will meet a different Anna each time—a chameleon whose colours complemented or stood out from whatever wallpaper happened to be behind her. But I assure you, Christopher, I have never once forgotten the real Anna Armstrong, the Anna you are reading about now, and who will embrace you herself if we ever meet again.
My persona freshly adopted, I renewed the search for lodgings. A hotel was out of the question. Why would a girl, barely sixteen years old, be seeking a hotel room on her own? What kind of suspicions might be raised? No. A hotel could only possibly be a place of last resort, if that. What I needed was a room in a private home where I could quietly go about the business of rebuilding my life. Scanning the newspaper advertisements, the most affordable accommodations seemed to be in a neighbourhood referred to as The Ward, which just happened to be in close proximity to Union Station and the park where I had recreated myself. I jotted down some addresses and began making inquiries, eventually settling on an attic whose slanted view looked east toward the rising sun and a row of modest homes opposite. The owner, a widow of ancient vintage named Mrs. McPherson, eyed me doubtfully when I appeared on her doorstep. “What’s a lass like you doing, wandering about the city looking for a room?” she wanted to know. I explained that my mother had died four years earlier, and my father just a year before, and that I was using the last of my inheritance to establish myself in Toronto—that I needed to get a job and acquire some kind of position, which would make it possible for me to survive.
“And you have no other family?” she asked, her voice activated by concern more than judgment.
”I have two sisters and a brother who have been taken in by an aunt. But they have four children of their own and cannot afford to maintain us all, so we decided I should look for a position here in Toronto and send what I can back to them—they have been so good to us, so generous.” I daubed a tear from my eye—a real tear, so convinced was I by my own performance.
“Aah, it’s a hard old world, my dear,” Mrs. McPherson consoled. “Come in and have a cup of tea, and we can talk about renting you that room.”
You, I know, will understand and not condemn my deception, Christopher. But the world is not so broad-minded and isn’t the least bit concerned about my welfare. Men fasten onto our faults and use them against us. They label offenders with the word ‘liar’ as if that defines the objects of their disdain in some permanent way, as if lying is as simple as not telling the truth. It’s not, of course. I have learned by experience and necessity that getting ‘caught up in a lie’ is as nuanced and complicated as trying to sort out the supposedly ‘true facts’ of our existences. What mattered in this instance was the intention of my lying. Did I intend to harm Mrs. McPherson or take advantage of her? No, I did not. Did my lie misrepresent in any significant way the truth of who I was and the dilemma I found myself in? No, again. Was my lie worse than the evil truth I concealed from her? No, it was not. And my real story might have been hard for her to believe. Shouldn’t I have been able to find a place of refuge without lying?
I’ll let others judge that for themselves; for my part, I can only say I did what I had to in order to survive.
Hired on the spot
Having found lodgings, my next task was to find work. The pawnbroker’s money might see me through a few months, then what? I would be destitute and prey to all the social vices desperation exposes the downfallen to. I had to find some means of earning a living. Every day I read the advertisements in the newspaper, but young and inexperienced as I was, could not find work. It wasn’t until I’d almost used up all my reserves that I at last found a placement. The advert said, ‘Family seeks live-in housekeeper. General cleaning and household duties. Lodging provided plus salary.’ I replied and was invited to an interview a week and a half later.
Although she would lose her renter, Mrs. McPherson encouraged me: “They’d be fools not to hire you, my dear. I’d hire you myself if I wasn’t a poor widow with more bills than brains to her credit.” She patted me on the shoulder and smiled, her wizened face lighting up with love and admiration. I often wondered after that what Mrs. McPherson would think if she ever came to know ‘the truth’ about me. Eventually, as it turned out, she would hear my story—and then some. For, in getting to the end of this memoir, there will be much more to tell!
On the appointed day, I made my way to a neighbourhood called Rosedale. I took the omnibus as far as I could, then walked up from Yonge Street, having to ask my way several times to find the mansion of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Perkins. I had never been on a street like theirs, let alone inside a mansion on such a street. Their home eclipsed anything I had ever seen or even imagined. I wondered as I rang the doorbell if the faint jangling within could be heard in the farthest reaches of that house. Soon enough, however, footsteps approached, and the door swung open. “Yes?” a sharp-featured woman demanded, her tone making it clear she’d sized me up as an inferior.
“I’m here about the housekeeper’s position,” I said.
“Housekeepers enter at the back door, my dear. Walk round and knock there.”
Thus, I was introduced to Winifred Johnson. Our relationship deteriorated from that point onward. Disheartened, I made my way round the drive into a courtyard behind the house and knocked on the back door, which entered into the kitchen. A matronly woman in an apron with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows answered. “Hello!” she beamed. “Let me guess, you’re the new housekeeper.”
Taken aback, I laughed. “I’m here to apply for the position, yes.”
She ushered me in and invited me to take a seat at ‘the servant’s table.’ “The shrew will be down momentarily, I’m sure, to introduce you to her ladyship.”
Indeed, Winifred appeared soon enough and instructed me to follow her upstairs into the parlour, where Mrs. Perkins awaited. “You would do well to curtsy and keep your answers brief,” she warned. “Mrs. Perkins does not suffer fools gladly.”
In we went. I tried not to show it but couldn’t keep my eyes from widening when Mrs. Perkins rolled forward to greet me in her wheelchair. “Hello,” she said in a formal but not unkindly tone. “So, you are here about the housekeeper’s position?” I nodded and said I was. “Then tell me, what’s your name?”
“Anna, ma’am.”
“Anna who?”
“Anna Armstrong.”
Mrs. Perkins wheeled round, inspecting me as if I were a statue in a museum or a horse at a county fair. “Well, tell me, Anna, why should we hire you and not someone else?”
I was flummoxed by her cool directness but regained my composure quickly when she parked in front of me again. “I am honest, ma’am, and a hard worker, and have kept house since the age of twelve, after my mother died.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Please, no hard luck stories here. As you can see, I have a hard luck story of my own, and I do not doubt my fall from grace has been as long and hard as any you could describe. Carry on.”
Winifred’s Johnson’s chiselled features did not change, except for a slight puckering of the lips that signified gratification—the only kind of gratification she was capable of it would turn out.
“Well, then, I haven’t much of a story left to tell,” I hazarded. “Except to say, I’m a quick learner, and I am sure I would do a good job keeping your house.”
“You are quick-witted; I grant you that.” Mrs. Perkins allowed a thin smile. Winifred scowled.
“Do you have any references?”
My heart sank. Who could I refer her to? Mrs. McPherson was the only soul I knew in Toronto, and she knew nothing about me, except my concocted story, which I didn’t doubt Mrs. Perkins would see through in an instant. “Never mind. We’ll take you on your word if we must,” she said after a hard stare. “The final say rests with Mr. Perkins, however. Winifred, would you be so kind?”
Winifred grasped the handles of Mrs. Perkins’ wheelchair and pushed her out of the room. I followed. We crossed a foyer whose vaulted ceiling, marble floor, and grand curving staircase put to shame the architecture of any church I had yet visited. Winifred tapped at a door on the opposite side of this faux cathedral.
“Come in,” Arnold Perkins summoned, his voice deep and resonant.
Winifred opened this portal, hurried back to her station behind Mrs. Perkins’ wheelchair, and marched us in with an air of pompous dignity so absurd I could have laughed. Arnold was seated behind a massive desk at the far end of his ‘study.’ A large window behind him looked over the manicured greenery of Pendennis Hall, as the Perkins’ mansion was dubbed. I felt my own eyes widen, taking in the vast expanse of bookcases, the polished oak floors, and the coffered ceiling. Everything bowed in a perspective focused on Arnold’s desk.
“This, my dear, is Anna Armstrong,” Mrs. Perkins announced as she was wheeled toward him. “She has come to apply for the housekeeper’s position.”
He looked from her to me. “Is that so?” he said in what I took to be a benignly amused tone.
“It is so,” Mrs. Perkins responded in what sounded to me like a veiled reproach.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Anna Armstrong?” he asked, ignoring his wife’s annoyance and continuing in an affable manner. I curtsied, as Winifred had recommended, and said, “You have a very nice house, sir, and I would be honoured to keep it as neat and tidy as I possibly can.”
For a second, our eyes locked. He was a handsome man in his mid-forties, I would say. His hair was touched with grey, but his features were still taut and strong, with none of the flabbiness of middle age showing as yet. I took this in before glancing down, knowing he was studying me appraisingly from his own vantage. I shuddered inwardly, frightened and excited.
“Hah!” he boomed. “She’s hired!”
And that was that. The next day, I said a tearful goodbye to Mrs. McPherson on her sagging porch. “I love you, my dear, and would have you as a lodger any time,” she said.
“I love you too, Mrs. McPherson,” I replied, easing myself out of her embrace.
“Will you visit? Write?”
“Of course,” I promised. And I kept my promise too, posting her many cards and letters lined with cheerful falsehoods from places far away. But I’m getting ahead of myself, for this was not to be our last farewell.
A killing sort of kindness
Winifred Johnson, who judged me an ‘impudent young vixen’ from the moment of my interview, took charge of me when I entered Pendennis Hall. She showed me to my lodgings—a separate apartment above the carriage shed on the far side of the rear courtyard. “Why you should be treated to such palatial quarters, I cannot say,” she groused. But I had a feeling she knew every detail of every domestic decision made in the Perkins’ household and was putting on a show of envy for my sake. She took me on a tour of the mansion, lecturing all the while about the punishments that would be meted out for ‘laziness’ or ‘theft’. I bridled inwardly at her insinuations but had long since learned to conceal my feelings and didn’t afford her the pleasure of seeing me goaded. I gather she took it as a full-time occupation to boss and bully me, for I couldn’t look up from scrubbing a floor or dusting a mantle without her being there to berate me. “Have you never done a shred of housework in your entire life?” she complained once, inspecting the dining room table, which I had just polished. I bit my tongue. “Do it again, and properly this time,” she commanded, then watched. She never tired of these petty scenes and looked for every opportunity to enact them. I suppose she could have made life miserable for me, but knowing how miserable a being really could be, I accepted her barbs the same way you would the sting of a bee or nettle—as temporary, unavoidable distractions to be endured. If it wasn’t Winifred harassing me, it would be someone worse, I thought.
After a couple of weeks, I was called once more before Mrs. Perkins. “How do you like it here?” she wanted to know. “Fine, Ma’am,” I said. She harrumphed, shaking her head sadly. “Miss Johnson tells me you are a most reluctant pupil and that she has to either do your work over herself or get you to do it poorly a second time.” I blanched, shaking with anger. Mrs. Perkins noted this with a hint of a disfiguring smile. “I will try to do better, ma’am,” I said. “And so you should, my dear, if you value your station.” I told her that I did.
She nodded curtly. “There’s not many housemaids have their own private quarters, as well as meals and a salary; just remember that.” Her haughty rebuke was so much more cutting than Winifred’s pettiness, I could barely keep from protesting, and Frances Perkins was aware of that. She fixed me with an eye as hard and cruel as a lizard’s and smiled maliciously.
“I would gladly move into a room in the servant’s quarters,” I offered. “There’s no room available for you there,” she said. When I tried to suggest swapping my place with someone who had more seniority at Pendennis Hall, she cut me off. “Mr. Perkins wishes to see you,” she dismissed me. It was only later I learned from Janet Guilford, the cook, that Winifred herself had been shifted into the servants’ quarters from the apartment above the carriage shed. “She’s smarting over that, no doubt about it,” Janet warned. “But why would they have done that?” I remonstrated. Cook only shrugged and shook her head as if to say the matter was closed.
“Enter,” Arnold invited when I tapped at his study door. “Ah! Anna. How are you, my dear?” He was seated in a wingback chair next to a little coffee table and opposite a second chair. “Please, sit down,” he beckoned. “Do you like books?” he asked, having noticed my interest in his library. “Yes,” I said. “Perhaps you would like to borrow one sometime?” he said affably. “Feel free to browse whenever you’re cleaning or to simply come in and look. Just let me know if you do want to borrow a volume.” His kindness confused me even more than Mrs. Perkins’ meanness. Arnold laughed. “You needn’t look so surprised!” he assured. “Books don’t do anyone any good sitting on shelves, unopened, do they?” I shrugged by way of agreement. “What will Miss Johnson or Mrs. Perkins think if they see me taking a book out of your study, sir?” He smiled benignly. “I’ll let Winifred and Frances know you have my permission, then they’ll know what to think.” I thanked him.
“Now tell me, how are you getting on here at Pendennis Hall?” he asked. “Fine, sir,” I answered unconvincingly. “It’s never easy fitting in, is it?” Arnold consoled. “We humans are easily upset,” he said. “When someone new comes along, we immediately want to put them in their place. Time usually smooths things over, though, doesn’t it?” I agreed. “Time and a little friendly support, eh?” I looked puzzled. “I like you, Anna,” he confided. “It pains me that my wife seems to have been rather too stern and that she has been persuaded in this course by Miss Johnson. I am aware of it, believe me. But the worst mistake a person could make in such a circumstance would be to exacerbate the situation by trying to force anyone to change their opinion; the best response will be to lead by example. If I show you due respect and kindness, I think Mrs. Perkins and Miss Johnson may come round, don’t you?” I nodded. In truth, it seemed friendly advice from what I took to be a good man. Arnold smiled. “You’ll see,” he said. “Everything will turn out right in the end.”
Uncomfortable as I felt in this alliance with Arnold, it seemed the best course. So, even though I was made uneasy over the following weeks when he began seeking me out, inviting me to take him up on his offer of lending me a book, I took his approaches in good faith and judged my own doubts as an overreaction due to my own all-too-recent past experiences. I felt it was churlish of me—based on my fear and prejudice—to be suspicious of a kind and decent man who had offered to act as my intermediary. So, I didn’t put up even the polite rebuff that is the right of any young woman, including a servant girl. I did note that he was surreptitious in these approaches. They always occurred in trafficked portions of the house, where there was every possibility of a chance encounter, but they happened too frequently to be mere happenstance and too often when we were alone. I wasn’t naive enough to judge them entirely innocent, and he must have been aware of my suspicions. But Arnold was so smooth and circumspect that I continually set these doubts aside and allowed a familiarity to grow between us that was certainly improper. By degrees, we were becoming friends, and I can’t honestly say I didn’t know what the end result of our transgression might be or that I was averse to what seemed increasingly inevitable. Simply put, I was falling into something like love. The crowning irony of this tale of intrigue is that he was falling in love too. That certainly wasn’t part of Arnold’s plan!
Please forgive me, Christopher, for describing scenes that no doubt cause you pain. Unfaithfulness knows no tense, and the sting it causes those who trust us can be felt long after the acts themselves have passed into the realm of personal history. My affair with Arnold was an act of unfaithfulness that I must confess to, for you are the only man I have ever loved aside from him, and his was a deformed love, twisted and rotten to the core. In truth, I wasn’t being unfaithful to you, my dear. I had lost faith in the possibility of you when I accepted Arnold Perkins’ embraces. That I have offered myself up to many others since, you well know. But none of them meant anything more to me than the boundaries of good taste, genuine humanity, and good business sense dictated. They were clients whose needs I met with dignity and sensitivity in a profession maligned even by those who support it most ardently with their patronage. The hypocrisy of this old world knows no bounds! You are an honest man. You, more than anyone I know, will understand that a sin left unspoken between trusting companions constitutes a lie. I love your mind and spirit as much as your body, my friend, and I will not, for fear of losing you, hold back a single shred of evidence that might be raised against me. Nothing less than an attempt at perfect honesty and perfect love is good enough now.
I well remember the moment my illicit affair with Arnold was consummated—the greatest betrayals are triggered by the greatest risks, and I knew full well the risk I was taking when I at last agreed to borrow a book from him. He insisted on lending me The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot—a rather strange selection under the circumstances. When I returned it to him in his study, he invited me to sit and talk for a while. “Don’t be nervous,” he assured. “We won’t be disturbed.” I honestly can’t remember much of the nonsense we imparted during this interview. I was so flustered that I barely heard a word and hardly made sense in any of my answers. At length, he invited me to choose another book to replace the one I’d returned. “Thank you, sir,” I said, “but I don’t have anything in mind, and choosing would keep me from my duties far too long.” He waved this objection away. “Then I shall choose for you. Come,” he said. We scanned his wall of literature, which seemed to me the lunging shape of a gigantic wave about to crash in upon us. “Here,” he said. “I think you should read something substantial.” He handed me a copy of Emerson’s Conduct of Life. Our fingers touched as he passed me the book, and he didn’t let go, as I’d expected. Instead, he drew me toward him, as if the book were a cord, and kissed me adoringly on the lips. It was the gentlest brush of a kiss, a whisper of a kiss, but it resonated to the very depths of me and shook the foundations of my resolve, causing them to collapse utterly. We both knew in that instant we would be lovers. “I will come to you tonight,” he said. When I made to protest, he kissed me again, this time more firmly, and I did not resist.
Head held high
Licentiousness is not something I make light of, despite my history. If there is anything shameful or demeaning about the business of whoring, it is not the act itself but the lies and deceits surrounding it. Love-making is an art, and I have been a practitioner; infidelity is a matter of personal morals, not a habit I have either encouraged or condemned. Of course, none of my clients’ wives would agree with that equation. They would accuse me of having ruined their marriages through depraved, predatory sexual acts; that is the same as condemning a liquor merchant for selling spirits to an alcoholic. I was a businesswoman performing a service that society demands with a wink and condemns with a frown, as occasion warrants. I say this because Arnold was, without my knowing it, my first client, and his love-making was only a transgression in so far as it became an affair of the heart. It is necessary for me to explain my entanglement with Arnold in discomfiting detail, Christopher, for I was the one cheated and deceived in the exchange; he and Frances Perkins knew perfectly well what they were about.
He was a skilled and exciting lover; I have to give him that much. Unlike the men I have encountered since, he took pleasure delighting me in what he called ‘the act of creation.’ For Arnold, love-making was an art form, and I was a sensuous being to be brushed and sculpted into shapes of pleasure ending in cries of ecstasy. “Frances can no longer engage fully in the arts of love,” he lamented one night. Mrs. Perkins had been paralyzed below the waist in a riding accident—an incident too painful for Arnold to recount. “She was once as amorous and eager as you; the loss of this mutual pleasure—this shared passion—has embittered her. You must forgive Mrs. Perkins her cruelties, my dear, and understand they are occasioned by a deep sense of loss.” How could I not allow a tincture of compassion into the concoction we called love after that? How could I—a childish girl engaged in the roles of womanhood—possibly have known that Arnold was as skilled and subtle a liar and moral equivocator as he was a lover?
We continued this illicit affair without incident for some months, our assignations seemingly part of the domestic routines at Pendennis Hall. It was that vixen Winifred who disabused me of my stupid notions of secrecy. “We all know of your night-time duties, harlot,” she revealed one day, tacking this insult onto her usual chastisements, this time about my ineptness at polishing silver.
I’m certain now that she was instructed to denounce me in this blunt manner by her superior (in name and station only), Frances Perkins. “Do not think for a moment you have been elevated above your station, my dear, by performing extra duties after dark,” she concluded her rebuke. “I beg your pardon!” I said, shocked at her effrontery. “You know perfectly well what I mean and would do best to keep your mouth shut when anything you have to say can only accuse you.” Her face was marred more than usual by that subtly vindictive smirk of hers. If she thought I was going to be cowed by her insinuations, she was badly mistaken. “You dried up old prune,” I retorted. “What do you know of life except what a spinster can spy upon and twist into an accusation?” Enraged, her face reddened and bloated. “How dare you!” she shouted, stepping forward and raising her hand to strike me. She would have, too, but my fierce look stopped her in her tracks—that and the fact that I happened to have a butter knife in my hand. Instead, she glared at me for a moment, then stormed out of the room.
That evening, I was summoned into Arnold’s study. He was sitting at his desk, Mrs. Perkins beside him in her wheelchair. “Miss Johnson has made a serious accusation, Anna,” he said sternly. “She insulted me, sir. I lost my temper,” I explained. “Lost your temper!” Mrs. Perkins shouted. “You threatened her with a knife!” I couldn’t quite conceal my impulse to laugh, shaking my head in disbelief. “I was cleaning the cutlery, ma’am, and I happened to have a butter knife in my hand when she threatened to strike me. I never once made a violent gesture toward her.” Mrs. Perkins snorted in disgust. “And what was the grievous insult she hurled at you? According to Miss Johnson, she merely asked you to do a better job of polishing the silver, and you insulted her in a most outrageous and inexcusable fashion.” I looked pleadingly at Arnold. “I cannot repeat her insult, ma’am. If it must be spoken again, she will have to repeat it to you.” Her eyes widened in pretended rage, but I knew it was all show, that she was as calculating as a hawk about to fasten its talons into a field mouse. “Are you brooking even my authority, you impudent young hussy?” she steamed. “Now, Frances,” Arnold intervened. “Don’t ‘now Frances me’,” she cut him off with a glare. “I’ll not sit here and be insulted by my own housemaid! I leave it to you to do what must be done.” With that, she attempted to wheel herself out of the room, so impatient was she to be gone. Arnold assisted, navigating her wheelchair to the door and opening it for her. Winifred appeared miraculously, shooting me a triumphant grin—none of Satin’s minions could have contorted his face into a more malicious glare. Then she wheeled her mistress imperiously out of the room.
“Well,” Arnold said, returning to his desk with a sigh. “This is quite a fix, isn’t it?” I knew better than to offer him any opening. “What are we going to do, Anna?” Still, I made no answer. “It’s an utter shipwreck,” he said at last, sighing even more deeply. “I think it best that you return to your apartment for now, and I will try to make things up with Frances. Report to me tomorrow, and we’ll sort things out.” Even though the outcome was inevitable, I asked if I was going to be dismissed. “I don’t know what’s possible at this point, my love,” he said. “I will talk to Frances and see if I can negotiate some means of keeping you on, but…” he faltered, letting his thoughts trail off toward their own conclusions. “But what?” I insisted. “We must prepare for the worst, my love.” He got up and made to embrace me, but I spurned him, hurrying out of the room before anger burst into tears. That he was dissembling was as obvious to me as it was hurtful. He’d known all along what the outcome of our interview was to be and thought that any transactions afterward would be mere formalities, the tying up of loose ends. In that, he was mistaken.
My way to the courtyard and my apartment was through the kitchen. Cook intercepted me before I could leave, stopping me and holding me at arm’s length by the shoulders with her strong hands. “Are you all right, dear?” she asked imploringly. Everything spilled out of me. The whole sordid tale. As if she’d pried open a floodgate. “And you blame yourself? Don’t you dare!” she admonished. I looked up at her, confused. “You poor darling fool.” She shook her head sadly. “Do you not see what has happened here?” I didn’t understand. “Well, I shall tell you. Even if it costs me my position, I will not let them get away with such treachery. Sit down and steel yourself, love, for you need to have your eyes opened.” I took my place at the servants’ table, and Cook sat opposite. “This shall not be long in the telling, but then, neither does it take long to fall from a cliff.”
She paused a moment to gather her thoughts. “What is missing in Pendennis Hall?” she asked. The question puzzled me. “What does every laird—even an imposter of a laird the likes of Mr. Perkins—need to carry on his name?” My eyes widened. “A child?” I guessed. Cook nodded sagely and said not another word, merely holding my hands in hers and fixing me with kind, knowing eyes. “You have been lied to, my love. Lied to and abused by a couple of schemers who should roast in hell for what they have done to a perfect young girl such as you.” As she spoke, comprehension took hold, surging like fire through my veins. “That’s right, my dear,” she crooned. “You have every right to be fierce, but don’t be stupid too. Hold that anger close until it settles into a glowing resolve, eh? Don’t squander it.”
I crossed the courtyard in a daze and soon found myself packing my things into the same valise I had taken with me from Kingston. I would have left that night had it not been for Cook’s admonition. But slinking off into the dark would have been an admission of guilt and defeat, exactly what the Perkins wanted. So, I nursed my outrage and plotted, sitting in the wingback chair where I had so often read the books Arnold had loaned me, dozing intermittently and waking repeatedly to my sadness and anger until the sun rose, along with my resolve. I timed my departure so I would pass through the kitchen when the staff were at their breakfast. “Imagine,” Winifred taunted, “traipsing through here as if nothing disgraceful had occurred.” I stared at her, seeing her for what she really was. “You may have the last word, Winifred, because you’re nothing but bitter words and sour breath. I pity you and your pathetic, wretched life.” Her outraged retort barely registered as I strode out of the room through the grand foyer to Arnold’s study. I knocked and, when there was no answer, pushed open the door. Finding the room empty, I entered and sat myself down in the chair where I had first talked intimately with him and had since had many conversations. I waited, gratified a little by the commotion in the rest of the house. At length, Arnold nudged the door open and stepped into the room, taking up his accustomed place opposite me.
“I am sorry to see things end like this, Anna,” he said sheepishly. “I would like my wages, sir,” I countered. He produced an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. “I have included a letter of recommendation for you. I do hope you will use it.” I nodded curtly. “And is there any severance pay in this packet?” I asked, then waited for an answer. “Surely, when a person is being dismissed with no warning and no just cause, there should be a substantial severance payment included.” He frowned, partly confused and partly annoyed by my demand. “I am surprised, and I must say disappointed, Anna.” I laughed. “Then imagine how surprised and disappointed I must be, sir, to have been duped by you and Mrs. Perkins!” Now his brow creased with anger. “What are you talking about?” he blustered. “Oh, that Winifred is a mean one, sir. She will say anything and use any weapon to wound an enemy. Her greatest weapons are spiteful words, but true none the less for that.” He turned white with rage. “If you do not settle with me here and now, Arnold, I will get a lawyer and sue.” He laughed dismissively. “Sue me for what?” he wondered. “For the abuse I have been subjected to and the publicity I may get out of the action.” He scowled. “You won’t get anywhere with that, you schemer.” I smiled sweetly. “Perhaps not, but it would be easier to settle the affair with a payment you won’t even miss than to risk my trying, don’t you think?” Still, he balked. “Why, I hazard you would have a thousand dollars in cash right here in Pendennis Hall,” I said. Without uttering another word, he left the room and returned some minutes later. “Here,” he said, thrusting a wad of bills at me. “Now get out!” I took my time counting the money, then put it in my valise. “Shall I give you your letter of recommendation back, sir?” I said. “For I assure you, I won’t be using it.” He leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Get out, now!” he shouted.
Leaving, I walked for the very first time like the woman I would become—a woman serene and sure of her power, her ability to cope. I felt proud of what I had accomplished so early in the day and held my head high.
Madame Perdue
Mrs. McPherson gladly took me back in. “There’s always room for family, love,” she said. The attic room had been let, but she had another downstairs, which she kept in reserve for relatives. “Don’t you worry about it,” she admonished when I expressed concern that I was putting her out. “My kin hardly ever visit, and I hardly ever miss them when they don’t.” We laughed at this, sitting at her kitchen table, our gaiety intermingling, filling the room, overflowing out the window—laughed till our sides hurt. Such a silly little thing to be so uproariously amused by! “What will you do now, dear?” she asked when we had somewhat recovered. “I must find work,” I said. “Hopefully this time with an employer more honest and reliable than his lairdship.” We burst into laughter again—the sweet, innocent laughter of friends chattering nonsense, like sparrows on a branch. Or like two girls in a schoolyard, discovering what it means to be best friends.
I have never been happier than I was that moment with Mrs. McPherson. Suddenly, though, my heart clenched tight as a fist inside me, and I was overwhelmed. “What’s the matter, Anna?” Mrs. McPherson cried, alarmed by my tears. “I don’t know,” I blubbered. “I’m too happy, is all. Perhaps I don’t deserve it?” She understood my confusion and smiled. “Nonsense!” she scolded, taking my hands in hers. “No child of mine could ever be too happy.” She blushed, having said that, but didn’t for a second take her eyes off me, taking in every part of me with her penetrating gaze. She understood the things I had told her and even the things I hadn’t. It was a mother’s loving look, and I told her so. “Then call me mother, for if I’m looking at you that way and feeling for you as I do, it must be so.” There’s a difference between gaiety and joy: one’s a tickle, the other an inner welling exciting every nerve in a glowing spirit. “Mother?” I said, looking at Mrs. McPherson as if I hadn’t recognized her up to that very moment. She cradled my cheeks in her strong hands. “Yes child?” Then we leaned across the table and embraced—such an embrace that I am still warmed by it.
Once again, I found myself scanning the adverts for a position; once again, the heading ‘housekeeper’ caught my attention most often. I had been looking not much longer than a week when one ad in particular caught my eye: Wanted: Housekeeper & Companion. Vivacious, bright personality. Must enjoy cooking, cleaning & convivial conversation. Introduce yourself to Madame Louise Perdue, 89 Sayer Street. Afternoons only. The tone of the ad appealed to me. How could anyone who placed such a strange summons be anything but interesting—enough so, at any rate, to warrant an ‘introduction’ and a bit of ‘convivial conversation?’ I showed it to Mrs. McPherson, but she was not amused. “I don’t trust people who don’t speak plain,” she groused. “Oh, Mother,” I larked, “stop being such a worrywart. If there’s anything untoward, I’ll say a pleasant goodbye and keep looking. It can’t hurt to visit.” She grumbled something about a flame not stinging till your finger’s already burnt and got on with her chores. “You be careful,” she called after me when I said goodbye and headed off to meet my mysterious Madame Perdue.
I don’t really know what got into me that day. The sense of the ad was perfectly transparent. I’m sure you must have an inkling of what I should have expected, Christopher. But I wanted to confirm these guesses and find out a little more. I strode up Dundas with purpose. So what if it was only a housekeeper’s position I was applying for? So what if I might find myself in the presence of a dubious personage at the far end of my little adventure? This Housekeeper & Companion situation might be part of my larger vision—a vision for the time being consisting of nothing more than a spirited young woman out to make a future for herself in a world that tried to dupe and trip her up at every turn. So far, I had always been able to recover my balance. If I couldn’t boast of anything more accomplished, at least I could take pride in that.
89 Sayer Street turned out to be a tidy brick manor set in the midst of a small, manicured lawn and garden. It breathed a genteel sort of aura—like a woman who has dressed herself up and perfumed herself with a purpose. It’s a fine balance, that—the tipping point between tasteful and gaudy—and I must say Madame Perdue sashayed rather close to the line in that regard. In other words, she had achieved a sort of exaggerated harmony with the rhododendrons, roses, trellises, pathways, and clipped greens surrounding her gaily painted house. If I ever own a home, Christopher, I will want to achieve the same delightfulness with a different purpose. My white picket fence will be an ornament designed to keep the children in, not a boundary to gently guide the curious on their ways.
You could tell at a glance that this was landscape and architecture inspired by a woman—a particular sort of woman. I swung open the gate, surprised that its latch worked so precisely and that it pivoted so effortlessly on its hinges. You can tell so much about a person when you suddenly notice what you are not noticing, when you realize that even the little things in their domain function perfectly, offering not the slightest impediment to your favourable impression. I found myself wishing she wasn’t quite so competent, quite so considerate, because I feared I would like immensely whoever had created this miniature paradise. Especially since she had established this fragrant garden of delights in the midst of The Ward. To the left and right of Madame Perdue’s establishment, tenements tilted and mouldered like rows of decaying teeth. I could only imagine the squalor and indecency that afflicted the inhabitants of these shabby barracks, crammed full with the city’s poor—those our upstanding citizens like Arnold and Frances Perkins could find no earthly use for in their greedy, selfish version of our new order.
I took courage and stepped jauntily up to Madame Perdue’s bright red door, rapping firmly to announce my arrival. The portal opened abruptly, and a narrow sprite of a man stepped into the frame, admiring me with laughing, slightly mocking eyes. “Oh! Look at you!” he said. “You must be one of the hopefuls.” I couldn’t help but smile. “Ronald, simply invite the guest in, please!” a voice shouted from within. “Yes, My Lady,” he shouted back without taking his bemused eyes off me. “And enough with the tiresome gallantry, sir. That tone was threadbare before you even met me.” He pursed his lips in a prim smile and bowed, gesturing me over the threshold with a sweep of his arm. No matter his was an exaggerated formality, it thrilled me just the same to be treated with such comic dignity. I can’t remember having been more elevated by a greeting and instantly adored Ronald. “Chivalry is not dead,” I thanked him, adopting as regal a tone as I could muster. “No, indeed. It is resurrected,” he said grandly, parading me into the drawing room, which was just to the left of the front door.
What a spectacle greeted me there! “Madame,” Ronald announced, “I would like to introduce you to…” He looked at me pleadingly. “Anna Armstrong,” I informed him. “To Anna Armstrong, a person of impeccable character and fine wit.” I couldn’t help laughing out loud. “You dolt!” Madam Perdue cried. “You forget yourself, Madame,” he remonstrated. “What have I forgotten about myself?” He sighed like a frustrated teacher. “Your place of honour, dignity, and benevolence at the head of this fashionable establishment, Madame.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she groaned. “Come and sit opposite me, honey. You may go, Ronald. Thank you.” He put on a startled look and asked where she wanted him to go. “Wherever there’s something needs doing. Lunch is not long off, and this impeccable, witty person might want a sandwich and a cup of tea before too long, don’t you think?” His eyes widened even farther. “I don’t dare think, Madame, for thinking leads to contradiction and contradiction to argument, and argument to…” She cut him short. “Yes, yes. Please go.” He turned stiffly and marched out of the room. “Don’t mind Ronald,” Madame Perdue confided, turning her lambent blues on me. “He’s a dear, but a dreadful nuisance at times.” I assured her that I felt warmly welcomed by her man, which provoked a quick, mysterious smile. Madame studied me, and I her. It was as though we were looking into a mirror and finding not ourselves but somebody who might have been our selves inside the glass—a mirror you wanted to peek behind to see if there was, in fact, a whole other universe back there.
Madame reclined elegantly on a pink divan. Never had I been in the presence of a creature like her. There are people in this world who are convergences. Ghosts, whose bodily form is a mere representation or symbol of infinite, shifting possibilities. These beings can change in an instant from one form to another, so you never quite know who you are dealing with—a tigress, or a lamb, or a mother hen—unless they want you to. Only they know who they really are at any given moment. Madame Perdue was one of these. A goddess! She was beautiful in every sense: her face was a perfect composition of knowing eyes, aquiline nose, and aristocratic lips; her body shapely as a Grecian urn. She wore a pearl-white dress bedecked with lilies from neck to bosom, then coloured dashes, which could have been the lilies’ tears, descending through the hourglass of her waist into the broad expanse of her hips. There, they were eagerly received by brightly flowered vines reaching up in a riot from the dress’s hem. Her hands were quick and expressive as swallows’ wings, imparting meanings that had to be sensed rather than interpreted. I won’t even attempt to describe the felt and gossamer hat that perched upon her impossible coiffure.
“Tell me about yourself,” she said. And before Ronald returned with sandwiches and tea, I had told her everything there was to know, except the one incriminating act that might place my possible situation, even my life, at risk. “And you want to remain a housekeeper?” Madame Perdue said after Ronald had placed our lunch on the coffee table and left the room. She put on an astonished look. “I have no training in any other occupation,” I said. “Do you mind if I speak of things seldom mentioned, and never with any degree of honesty or understanding where the starched and sanctified congregate?” I raised my own eyebrows, realizing even as I did so that I was imitating a gesture Madame herself used to register surprise. We both smiled at this saucy bit of flattery. “No,” I said. “I don’t mind.” She leaned forward, our foreheads almost touching. “You do know of the bestiality and brutishness of the male species,” she began. “I’m not saying all men are bastards, my dear, but there is an irreducible proportion who feel it is their right to bully and even rape women—to go so far as to abuse their own daughters.” She stared so intently that I felt Madame Perdue’s spirit mingling with my own, warming me with an almost chemical reaction. “Until now, you have seen these tendencies of the male species as abhorrent, repulsive. And so they are in those cases where the drive perverts and tortures its victims, turning them into monsters. But these are exceptions, not the rule, my sweet. The rule is that most men are driven by an urge that seeps into almost every other thought they are capable of. They are drunkards, my dear, and a woman of business can make a good living off their addiction. You know what kind of establishment I run here, don’t you?” I nodded. “Well, then, you can be a housekeeper in my employ as long as you want, and I will pay you well for that service. But any time you wish to elevate yourself above such drudgery and acquire skills that will never be out of fashion, I assure you that your looks and intelligence could make your fortune. Honestly, I have never met a woman more beautiful than you. I would keep you for myself, make a daughter and companion of you, my dear, but that would be selfish. Instead, I am prepared to become your mentor and protector. So, if ever the time comes when you want to learn more about a profession always slandered but never undervalued if offered to the right clientele, you let me know.” When I made to answer, she shushed me. “I won’t speak of this again, my dear, unless you ask me to. In the meantime, you are hired as my housekeeper, assuming you still want the position. I cannot promise to look upon you with anything other than an affection that borders on adoration, for I have inclinations of my own as debilitating as any love-stricken man’s. Will you accept the housekeeper’s job on these conditions?” We shook hands, Madame Perdue gripping mine softly, then tickling my wrist and palm gently with her elegant fingers as she let go. As much as Mrs. McPherson, but in oh-such-a-different way, I realized then that she loved me and would never do anything to injure me. Over time, I would learn she felt the same way, although perhaps less intensely, about all her ‘girls.’
Refuge in the House of Ill Repute
Thus, began my employment with Madame Perdue. We were happy with the arrangement, and I didn’t feel the need to speak again of her ‘better offer.’ Mrs. McPherson was none-the-wiser about the type of household I kept neat and tidy or for whom; all she knew was that I went out each morning and returned in the afternoon generally as cheerful as I’d left. But unlike the heavenly paradise you promise, Christopher, our earthly Edens are subject to blights, decay, invasions, and destruction. Nothing is forever. Since my arrival in Toronto, I had been in correspondence with Mrs. Sangster and, through her, with my sisters and brother. I urged her to keep my letters secret and to ask my siblings not to mention to Father the fact that I was communicating with them. This injunction was necessary on two grounds: first, I worried how my father would react if he knew Hattie, Rose, and Robert were receiving letters from me; second, I did not want him to learn of my whereabouts through these letters. But one of my siblings, I won’t say which, began sharing my correspondence with Father, and although he did not have an address, he was able to piece together through my descriptions that I was living in Toronto, Mrs. McPherson’s name, and even the general vicinity of her house. With the help of a detective, he used that information to track down my exact location, and even that I was in the employ of Madame Perdue.
Mrs. Sangster had no idea this subterfuge had taken place, nor did I until there was a sharp rap on Mrs. McPherson’s door one morning as I was getting ready to leave for Madame Perdue’s. We were in the kitchen finishing breakfast. “Goodness,” she murmured, hurrying out to answer what sounded like an urgent summons. “Hello,” I heard her say. “Does Anna Armstrong live here, Miss?” my father asked, his preacher’s voice booming down the hallway. Shocked, I reacted on instinct. Before Mrs. McPherson could return to announce my visitor, I fled out the back door, through the yard, out the gate, and into the back lane. In a panic, I made my way to Madame Perdue’s, my stumbling steps barely able to keep pace with my racing heart.
Mrs. McPherson recounted later how Father had flown into a rage when she told him I must have left. He threatened to enter the house and look for me until she said she would summon the police. He demanded to know where I had gone; she ordered him off her property and slammed the door shut. “I’ve never seen the likes of him,” she related afterward, still shaking with indignation. I had no choice but to tell her the truth about my history—that he was my ‘dead’ father and the reason for my flight from Kingston. Her indignation turned to outrage. But she understood when I said I could no longer remain her lodger. “I shall always be your daughter, though,” I added, cradled in Mrs. McPherson’s arms. “Yes, my dear. You always shall,” she said.
Next day I packed my valise, gathered the few possessions I had acquired into a trunk, and shipped myself to Madame Perdue’s, where I took up residence in a back room. “My little bird has come home to roost,” she said happily, flitting about, making sure I was comfortable in my new ‘nest’. “And believe me, chick, no falcon shall descend upon you without feeling the wrath of ‘ton mere’,” she added fiercely. “I already have a mother,” I told her, explaining the relationship between myself and Mrs. McPherson. “Ha! A woman cannot have too many mothers,” she dismissed this quibble with a wave of her hand. “Even if her mothers can never be friends.”
Until then, I had not spent a night at Madame Perdue’s and only had an inkling of what went on there. I knew, of course, it was a brothel—or ‘a house of ill repute’ as it might have been alluded to in the press should the authorities have decided its presence had become inconvenient and ‘action’ needed to be taken to ‘clean up’ the neighbourhood. If I couldn’t laugh at the bald-faced hypocrisy of these moral judgments, I would choke with fury. Not once in my time there did I see the authorities—any authority—move to clean up the squalor and hardship of The Ward. Not once! Never did I see a politician or policeman shed a tear while stroking the hair of an urchin whose filth, hunger, and cold are the price we pay for rich men’s profits. Nor have I ever met a grubbing capitalist who cared for his staff with the generosity and sensitivity Madame Perdue showed her girls. Eccentric as she could be, she was an angel. I would prove to be her downfall, however, and her utter forgiveness can never absolve the guilt and shame I still bear on behalf of her and her ‘family’.
I couldn’t stay hidden in my room all night while Madame Perdue entertained her guests. The music and laughter from her parlour percolated through the walls of my little cell. How could I read, or write, or meditate, or sleep when the enticements of conversation, singing and gaiety summoned me from my solitude each evening. “Of course you can join us, my sweet,” Madame said when I complained of my plight. “And you can remain a housekeeper-only as long as you want, if that is your choice. No girl of mine ever has to accept the advances of a gentleman; and no girl of mine would please me so much with her company every evening as you. So come!”
I know what people think, Christopher. I know that even you might blame Madame Perdue for my ‘downfall.’ This could not be farther from the truth. There are, of course, men who lure and coerce young girls into an occupation society abhors in one breath and demands in the next; prosecutes with one hand and pays with the other. Madame’s house was not of that ilk, and I was certainly no ‘victim’. Before I ever engaged any of her clients—and she hand-picked the clients who were at first allowed to approach me—I spent many a happy evening socializing and conversing with them as guests in her parlour, a parlour notorious throughout the city for its civility and refinement. True, I did learn to accept drinks from gentlemen, to flirt and flatter in good fun, and even to tempt for the sole purpose of disappointing. But I did not learn to become a prostitute in Madame Perdue’s parlour—that part of the profession I learned later, upstairs under her protection.
Upstanding citizens are so shocked at the very thought of prostitution that they slap a label on it as if they were marking a crate of rotten oranges. I will tell you without embarrassment, though, that the art of prostitution is as subtle and complex as the practice of medicine, or law, or psychology. To become a ‘high class’ prostitute requires talents that go beyond what a paying customer expects to achieve on a bed; Madame Perdue’s girls were not brutes to be had and left with some coins on a table, I assure you. And their clients were not beasts, accustomed to coming and going with a grunt and a groan. Forgive me this bluntness, my dear, but I have to say again: I do not ask anyone’s absolution or blessing when it comes to what is now my past. No, not even yours. For the most part, I enjoyed my career as a prostitute—sometimes revelled in it. I refuse to make apologies, even if I must be circumspect from now on when I speak of it.
Those are my terms if we are to have a future together as man and wife, my love. I know I risk rejection by laying them clearly on the table before you. I am perhaps not the woman you thought I was, but you will know from this brief history that I am honest and a friend, even if I am arousing anger and contempt by being forthright.
The end to end all endings
There is one more catastrophic incident I must tell you about that occurred during my time with Madam Perdue. Some months after I had moved into her establishment and began partaking of her nightly entertainments, who should step into her parlour but Arnold? I saw him before he saw me, and for an instant thought of fleeing down the hall and back to my room. No! I told myself. Hold your ground. I happened to be at the piano, where I’d been playing happily. The sudden faltering in my performance—so like a skipped heartbeat—drew Madame’s attention immediately, and she followed my startled gaze to the newcomer in the room. As I resumed my piece, she signalled calm with a minute inflection of her sensuous hands, then beckoned Ronald from across the room for a quiet word. She knows, I told myself. Unbeknownst to me, she had been waiting for this moment and watching for it every night since I’d started attending her soirees.
No sooner had I resumed my melody than he recognized me. His eyes almost started out of his head, so surprised was he to see me there. He flushed redder than a lobster, frozen and confused. For a second, I thought it would be him, not me, who fled. But he summoned his resolve and decided to stay. After I’d finished playing and had settled onto the very divan where Madame had first greeted me, Arnold approached. “May I?” he asked. I gave a sullen nod, and he sat beside me. “Anna,” he faltered. “Can I apologize for what happened?” How? I bridled. What kind of apology could help me forgive or forget his very nature? “You may,” I flashed, “but it won’t do much good.” He sighed, as if to say I was being unreasonable. “Some things can’t be fixed. Sometimes broken bones mend crooked, and you get angry every time you remember the deformity or feel its enduring pain.” He frowned. “I tried to do the honourable thing once all hope of carrying on had been lost,” he pleaded. “Honourable,” I mocked. “Please Arnold! I’m not your dupe any longer. What could be honourable about buying a woman off after you had used her so faithlessly, and you and your partner decided it was time for her to be gone? What could be honourable about that?” He looked down at the carpet. “I loved you,” he declared in a whisper. “You know that, don’t you?” Pathetic as he appeared, I couldn’t pity him. “You used me!” I parried. “Perhaps we can renew our relationship, and I can make amends,” he said hopefully. “Here,” he added.
Before I could express my outrage, Ronald was standing in front of me. “Are you all right, Anna?” he asked. “Who are you to interrupt?” Arnold complained. “I’m talking to the lady, not you sir,” Ronald said. I didn’t know how he dared sound so dangerous, slight as he was. But this wasn’t the flighty, teasing Ronald I’d come to delight in. He’d become a peregrine falcon, waiting only for his handler’s signal. “I suggest you go talk to some other lady,” he instructed. “I choose to talk to this lady, sir,” Ronald objected. “I believe the lady does not wish to speak to you.” Saying this, he met my eyes. I nodded. Once. “I must ask you to please leave, sir,” Ronald persisted. “And not to return to Madame’s again.” Shocked, Arnold bolted upright. “What?” he demanded threateningly. In an instant, before Arnold could even register surprise, Ronald had his arm twisted behind his back and was frog-marching him out of the room, oblivious to Arnold’s strenuous protests. From the commotion out of doors, I took it Arnold had been thrown down the front steps. Ronald returned a moment later, not a feather ruffled. He winked at me, then resumed his place next to the window.
With that, I thought my affairs had been neatly put in order. I had avoided my father’s intrusion and decided to become more circumspect in my correspondence with Mrs. Sangster and my sisters and brother; Ronald had rebuked Arnold in memorable fashion, which I must admit I enjoyed even if I didn’t applaud. Soon after this last event, I decided the time had come for me to fully participate in the society and activities of Madame Perdue’s establishment. My initiation—although I will spare you the details—turned out to be almost seamless. It was a graduation of sorts, really. From encounters where I had been abused in the most dreadful ways imaginable to relations that were respectful and usually pleasurable. Indeed, I discovered the satisfaction of giving pleasure thereafter. Not only sexual, Christopher. That’s the thing about a properly run establishment: the experience is about so much more than mere sexual release, even though that becomes a sort of excuse for everything else, like the vanishing point in a painting.
If you think of my colleagues in the trade as slaves, you are sorely mistaken. Doubtless there are hundreds of shoddy brothels, run like torture chambers or abattoirs, for every proper salon, but they are denigrations and perversions of an ideal, just as a pig sty is a horrific adumbration of a fashionable restaurant. At Madame Perdue’s, we were ministering practitioners of a sort, and Madame herself was the one who arranged everything—a shrewd sophisticate who had a keen sense of the dramatic and a flair for the comic. Yes, the gentlemen paid, but does payment make a prostitute of a barber? Of course not. It’s the spirit of the thing that counts—the humanity surrounding the mere act of providing a service. It’s only when we treat each other as brutes and commodities that we prostitute ourselves. Ask yourself honestly who it is that wants us to behave in such a heartless, mindless manner, and you shall discover who the real pimps and whores of this world are. Of course, I hadn’t articulated these thoughts—call them excuses if you wish—when I began in the trade. All I knew was I had found my place. I loved and revered Madame; made friends with the other girls; and was respected by my clients. I had every reason for staying, learning the business, and aspiring to become a businesswoman myself someday—a vision Madame encouraged me in without the slightest hint of jealousy.
All this came crashing down not three months later. It seemed an ordinary Saturday night. Business was brisk, and the clientele cheerful. The parlour buzzed with conversation, punctuated by laughter. Ronald was at the piano, supported by a chorus of jolly singers. Some couples had already slipped upstairs to put a finale on their evening’s amusements. I was taking it all in, feeling happy and lucky. I had barely reached this serene state when there was a sudden crash, the front door burst open, and a troop of police constables stormed the house. Another squadron broke in through the back door. Pandemonium ensued. One gentleman crashed through the parlour window, landing in Madam’s side yard, where he was detained by police who had surrounded the house. I heard shrieks and shouts from upstairs.
Madame, standing in the centre of this cyclone, watched the proceedings with knowing dignity and calm, allowing herself to be arrested and removed from her own home into a waiting paddy wagon. She searched for me as they were marching her out, fixing me with an imperious gaze, as if to say, This is how one behaves. This is how it should be done. I had never admired her more than in that glorious moment, maintaining her poise while allowing herself to be escorted from her rightful place as if she was the Monarch of the World and her captors, nothing more than thugs in uniform! What a display! One of the shoddy ruffians tried to intimidate her with a mocking sneer; she merely glanced at him, and he ended up blushing, swallowing his own laughter like bitter medicine. Burn in hell! I thought. Burn in hell, you stupid bastard. When my turn came, I gave them the information they required and tried my best to imitate Madame Perdue as I was led away.
What followed was a tedious night spent in custody while the police churned through the bureaucracy of laying charges, setting dates for court appearances, and so on. One by one, we were processed and released. My turn came. I suffered the routine with an affected nonchalance, doing my best to behave the way I thought Madame would under the circumstances. “There is someone waiting for you in the lobby, Miss,” the officer said as I was on my way out. “Who?” I asked. He shrugged, as if to say, You’ll see. Could Mrs. McPherson have found out about the raid? I blushed to think it, not for shame about my occupation but for not having had the courage to tell her the truth. Surely Arnold hadn’t got wind of my arrest and was thinking it might offer him another opportunity to make ‘amends?’ I didn’t know anyone else in Toronto outside Madame Perdue’s circle. Could the Women’s Temperance Movement have sent someone down to preach at me? Please, God, no! I prayed.
We entered the lobby, and there, before me, stood my father. “How…?” I bottled up my outrage. “So, this is the type of living you’ve run off to, eh? Well, we’ve put a stop to that,” he sneered. Confusion gave way to utter fury. I wrenched myself free of the policeman’s grasp and flew at him, a harpy of nails, fists, teeth, boots, shouts, and curses. He stumbled backward, falling to the floor. I was on him like a she-wolf, going for his throat, pulling his hair, scratching at his eyes. “Get off!” he bellowed. “Rapist!” I shrieked. “Get her off!” he wailed. The policeman had to call for assistance to pry me off. I would have killed him had they not intervened. “You’ll burn in hell!” he damned me, getting to his feet as I wrestled in the policeman’s grasp. “Charge me!” I challenged. “Charge me with assault, you disgusting old goat, and let’s have the truth come out!” He turned and fled as I was dragged back to the cells ‘for my own good.’
After that, I had no desire to remain in Toronto. Clearly, one hundred and fifty miles and a lifetime’s experiences were not enough to keep off the memory of my father. Madame Perdue understood. “I have friends in the west,” she said when I told her my intentions. “Gold diggers, in a figurative sense,” she smirked. I laughed. “I shall write them and provide you a letter of recommendation.” She dismissed my heartfelt thanks with a wave of her magician’s hands. “Goodness, you’d think a letter from me was going to get you a job at the bank.” Madame laughed. “I don’t want a job at the bank,” I assured her. I think the highest honour I have ever received was the tears Madame shed on my shoulder as we embraced. “Wherever you go, dearest, you are my child.” She smiled when I reminded her what a well-mothered orphan I had turned out to be. Then she frowned and held my cheeks in her palms. “I love my girls, Anna,” she said. “But you, I love as a mother.” Her hands trembled as she said this, and that murmuring touch resonates inside me still. Mrs. McPherson, too, held me close to her bosom, almost crushing me with her love. I didn’t have the courage yet to tell her all, but I revealed enough for her to guess at my true occupation. She didn’t ask to know more. I still write to Mrs. McPherson and to Madame Perdue. They are dear friends and family now, although my blood relatives in Kingston will never meet them.
That is my story, Christopher. The rest is a series of adventures that add nothing to the main theme. I arrived in Victoria and worked there for a spell, and was then drawn to Barkerville upon the invitation of Madame Blavinsky, whom you know. Then I met you, and our shared history began. If you still love me in the way a man loves the woman he wants as a companion for the rest of his life, I will be the happiest of women. Especially knowing you love the real me and not an imposter. I have suspended my career and will give it up utterly if you do want to marry me, Christopher. But I will never deny my past, should anyone want to know about it. That comes with me; it is a part of who I am.
Your true love
Anna Armstrong
September, 1872
Chapter 3 Christopher’s Letter >
Episodes: Chapter Header | Corporal Punishment | The Demented Child | A testament of lies revealed | Betrayal | The pawnbroker | Enraged | A fabricated history | Hired on the spot | A killing sort of kindness | Head held high | Madame Perdue | Refuge in the House of Ill Repute |The end to end all endings