Don Gutteridge - Desperate Acts

“Good gracious!” Rose barked at the sightsuddenly before her. “You can’t wear your corsets under it!You look like you’ve jammed a chemise over a suit of armour!”

The sharpish lumps and angles, used to girdleClemmy’s own lumps and angles, not only spoiled any slimmingeffects of the frock, they had succeeded in protruding beyond it inseveral places.

“Oh . . . but I couldn’t take my corsetsoff!” Clemmy cried, adding acute distress to her general state ofanxiety. “They – they hold me together!”

Rose – who was a talented dressmaker and agood-hearted soul, but no diplomat – eyed the rents in the costumewhere rents were not expected, and replied, “But I spent a dozenhours making this thing so you wouldn’t have to buttressyourself with whalebone!”

“Well, how was I supposed to know, eh? Iain’t no mind-reader!” Clemmy’s rejoinder was meant as a reproof toone she considered to be a member of the labouring class, butquickly wilted into a whine, and finished up as a sob.

“Now, now, woman, there’s no need to getupset. Here, I’ll try to remove the costume without ripping it anyfurther. Then I want you to go back behind the screen, strip downto your undergarments, slip on the chemise I left for you in there,and come back out here so I can see if the damage can berepaired.”

Clemmy felt that the mollifying tone in thedressmaker’s voice barely outweighed the imperative nature of theserequests, but she acquiesced rather than appear too uppity with thehired help.

Minutes later, she crept out from behind thescreen with both arms folded across her drooping bosom, and walkedover to the low fitting-stool with mincing little steps in order tominimize the undulation of her liberated body-parts.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll soon have youlookin’ like a goddess.” This kind remark came not from Rose butfrom her employer. Beth Edwards had just arrived with Charlene andMaggie in tow.

***

It didn’t take Beth long to work her natural charmon Clemmy Crenshaw and her “delicate nerves.” While Rose pluckedand pinned and re-pinned the costume, now beginning to “flow” aboutthe ungainly figure within it, Beth engaged Clemmy is a casualconversation that included much talk about the proper way to raiseyoungsters and keep a busy household afloat, interrupted from timeto time by gurgles of approval from the youngster herself. Havingraised four of her own to thriving adulthood, Clemmy felt she wasable to maintain the high ground in the dialogue, and Beth was notabout to deny her this meagre pleasure.

The upshot was that Rose was soon able todeclare the costume almost fit for public display, and Clemmy didnot recoil from the image of Hermia she was coaxed to view in thelooking-glass held up by Beth.

“With a proper hair-do and a little tiara offlowers, you’ll do fine,” Beth said with only slight exaggeration.Now, if the woman could be persuaded not to paint her face with amop, there was legitimate hope for her stage debut.

At the door, Beth said that she would bringthe reworked costume to Clemmy’s house for the final fitting at teno’clock Tuesday morning. This pleased Clemmy very much. As theproprietor of a successful business, Beth Edwards was a candidatefor Clemmy’s roster of approved people – even if she did drop the“g” off her “ings.”

“I’ll have some tea ready, Mrs. Edwards, an’we can carry on with our chat. Bring little Maggie, if youlike.”

“I’ll need to ask her first,” Bethsmiled.

***

Monday afternoon saw the opening of the Legislature,a parliamentary session that would one way or another determine thefuture of Upper and Lower Canada. The presence of a new governor,Charles Poulett Thomson (soon to be Lord Sydenham), who had broughtwith him not only extraordinary executive powers but a keen mindand intricate knowledge of the workings of British government, hadstirred the passions of Upper Canadians in ways they thought theyhad exhausted. The galleries were packed. Hundreds stood outside inthe chill November wind off the lake, waiting for word on thecontents of the Speech from the Throne.

Inside, after the pomp and ceremony of theopening protocols, the tall and impressive figure of GovernorThomson rose to speak in a voice that was deep, authoritative, andvery much vice-regal. In a straightforward manner he discussed thepolitical impasse and economic stagnation that the fruitlessstruggles of the past decade had produced. Then he announced whateveryone present more or less knew: both the Upper and Lower House- the Council and the Assembly – would be asked to approve theUnion Bill already accepted in principle by the Mother Parliament.They would be asked to endorse the following: first, the merging ofthe two provinces per se ; second, an equal representationfrom each province in each of the two legislative chambers; third,the granting of a permanent and sufficient civil list (to providethe executive with a talented, committed and continuing cadre ofcivil servants); and fourth, that the provincial debt of UpperCanada (£75,000) be charged upon the joint revenue of the unitedprovinces.

Much of the groundwork for the successfulpassage of these terms through the Council and Assembly had alreadybeen laid. Governor Thomson had shamelessly appealed to the senseof loyalty to the Queen that animated the appointed Councillors,while simultaneously threatening them with the loss of theirlucrative, lifetime sinecures (to be reviewed now by eachsuccessive governor – including the present one). Robert Sullivan,Baldwin’s cousin and law partner, had worked up an anti-Frenchspeech that, as chairman of the Legislative Council, he planned todeliver the next day with a nice blend of guile and eloquence.Meanwhile, the Assembly would move into committee-of-the-whole anddebate the bill clause by clause. Here the deftly orchestratedscheme of the Governor and the Reformers had borne fruit, for thedozen or so moderate conservatives they had been importuning hadagreed to vote in favour of union and its terms.

What neither the Governor nor Robert Baldwinknew, however, was that the murder of a common blackmailer wouldsoon threaten to bring their carefully constructed strategycrashing down.

An elderly maid with a wall-eye answered the door ofthe Crenshaw residence on York Street at five minutes to ten onTuesday morning.

“Whaddya want?” she said, intensifying hernatural scowl. “Tradesmen go to the back door!”

Beth smiled as if she had reason to. “I havean appointment with Mrs. Crenshaw. I have her costume here, an’she’s invited me to tea.”

The maid squinted at her with her good eye.“Ah. Then you must be Miz Edwards. I was told to take ya into thesitting-room.” She stepped aside to let Beth enter the crampedvestibule. “But you won’t be gettin’ no tea!”

With that cryptic remark the woman turned andbegan to trot off down the narrow hallway, her heels sending uptiny puffs of dust from the carpet. Beth determined that she was totry and follow – or be left stranded.

At the end of the hall, the maid stopped, andthen rapped smartly on a door, as if banging on it would frightenit into opening. She waited ten seconds and thumped again, uppingthe volume.

“Perhaps she’s not in this room,” Beth saidhelpfully.

“She’s in there alright.” And with thiscertainty in view, the maid flung the door aside and stepped backso that Beth could survey the interior of a modest lady’ssitting-room.

Pink damask curtains were drawn across theonly window, rendering the room dark and gloomy. Beth could justmake out the silhouettes of a sofa and two chairs, and a sideboardtoo massive for the space assigned to it. A trio of candles intheir sconces were burned almost to the wick.