The Devil's Making Read Online Free

announced. Then a dramatic middle aged woman in a pink crinoline and lace mob-cap decorated with girlish ribbons appeared, and made me welcome, in an Irish accent on which genteel vowels had been superimposed. A Mrs Larose, whose poor dear husband was recently deceased. He had been a French ‘homme d’affaires’ in her words (pronouncing the ‘h’ of homme and the ‘s’ of affaires). She swiftly negotiated a stiff price: 16 dollars, or £4 a week without meals. ‘Such awful, terrible weather it is. You’ll be so tired. How is Home?’ she gushed as she herself undertook to show me my room, up a narrow staircase. It is just as in England, with a brass bedstead, wash-stand, wine-coloured carpet of indifferent floral design but at least clean. The walls, papered in the inevitable motif of incessantly repeated flowers, are slightly crooked as if the building were comfortably old, although nowhere in Victoria could have been built more than 15 years ago. The window looks out onto Broad Street and a row of wooden shacks which proclaim themselves to be the offices of an insurance broker and a real-estate agent, alternating with taverns.
    Although I was dying to settle in, wash my hands and face, and find the water closet to relieve myself after that bumpy journey on the cart, Mrs Larose lingered in the doorway and after a few more polite questions about ‘home’ – meaning England where I wondered if she had ever been – began to tell me (Yes!) her life story. At least the more recent part. The purchase of the hotel. The late Mr Larose’s final decline and dementia from a venereal disease … Yes, she told me that! ‘Of course once I knew, I could never sleep with him,’ she said, ‘it became a marreeyage de conveeniaunce.’ She is a great Francophile. Even Mr Larose’s disease came with him from France, certainly not – and here she lowered her voice as if speaking of the dead, although she had sounded quite cheerful, even excited, speaking of the really dead Mr Larose – from a filthy Indian. He had nothing – rien! – to do with them. And the venereal disease – with French politeness, I found myself supposing – had refrained from attacking her although of course she had ‘been with’ her husband for many years while he must have had it – dormant (pronounced in the French way) of course – without knowing about it. ‘I’m so sorry you’re not a doctor, Mr Hobbes’, she burbled, ‘We so much need good doctors in this Colony. They are mere horse doctors, as I hope you are not misfortunate enough to find out. They don’t understand the agonies of mature women!’
    Of course I ended up apologising for not being a doctor. I was bewildered, as usual, with women. I hoped she wasn’t flirting with me. But no, there was no sidling towards me, she remained respectably in the doorway. She was simply a raving chatterbox, like a landlady at home (Oh God, I shall get the habit of calling England ‘home’) but with a total lack of inhibition. Eventually I made motions towards the wash-stand and she left.
    *   *   *
    My first meal in Victoria: breakfast at Ringo’s restaurant – recommended to me by Jeroboam as he set me down at the Argyle. Ham and eggs, muffins with butter and jam, two glasses of coffee. All for 35 cents. Ringo is a carbon copy, as it were, of Jeroboam, and although he did not exactly tell me his life story, he let me know proudly that he had been one of the first Negroes in Victoria, before the Civil War, as a runaway slave. I sat on, browsing through the last few editions of the British Colonist. Victoria is in political ferment. There are indignant editorials about the horrifying prospect of annexation to the U.S.A., and the salvation promised by confederation with Canada. An election is coming up in which a Confederation Party led by