Gold Digger. Vicki Delany

man was his hero. He stepped off his stool and puffed up his chest. “Please, Constable. Control your language in the presence of my mother.”

      Sterling and I exchanged a look, both of us stifling an inappropriate burst of laughter. I’d been on the verge of reprimanding the constable for saying “whorehouse” in my son’s hearing.

      “That was most inappropriate. Please accept my apology, Angus.”

      My son sat back down. A slice of toast with a thin scraping of butter and a single bite taken out of it lay on the table in front of him. He mumbled something and returned to his cold food, trying to hide his embarrassment.

      We don’t have a kitchen per se in the Savoy—this most certainly isn’t a restaurant. But when punters on a losing streak feel the need to break for food, Helen, or one of the bartenders if she’s not here, can whip up something quick enough. Beside the wood stove in the pokey back room that doubles as a broom closet, we keep a kettle and a few cups and plates, a frying pan and toasting fork and supplies of potatoes, bacon, beans, jam, bread, tea and canned milk.

      Helen pushes food on a not-at-all-resisting Angus whenever he shows up.

      “I’d better get back to the docks,” Hamilton mumbled. “There might be something important requiring my attention.”

      “Fiona.” Graham glared at me and tossed his head towards Hamilton, heading reluctantly towards the door.

      “Mr. Hamilton,” I called, in my lightest, friendliest voice. “Thank you so much for bringing that unfortunate letter to my…our…attention.”

      The man plopped his tortured hat onto his head and turned the full force of his smile onto me. His teeth were badly stained, and several were broken almost to the gum line. “My pleasure, Mrs. MacGillivray. My pleasure.” The smell of rotten teeth and the remains of breakfast wafted towards me.

      “Offer him something,” Graham whispered.

      I ignored him. I can be gracious without anyone’s help, thank you very much. “If you’ll drop by this evening, Mr. Hamilton, perhaps around nine, Mr. Walker and I will be happy to offer you the hospitality of the Savoy.”

      He almost fainted, the poor man. Barely recovering his equilibrium, he backed out the door, bowing and scraping like a eunuch at the Sultan’s court.

      Graham laughed and slapped my arm. If an officer of the law hadn’t been present, I would have slapped him back, right enough. “Now that I’ve done my good deed for the day, I’ll be off. See you later, Fiona, Constable.”

      Sterling touched the brim of his hat. His eyes had far too much spark in them to be accounted for by the thin northern sunlight pouring in through the dirt-encrusted, narrow windows of my seedy bar. “Mrs. MacGillivray. Angus.” He followed Graham out.

      “That was nice of you, Ma,” Angus said. “To invite Mr. Hamilton to stop by.”

      I turned on him. “How many times do I have to tell you? Don’t—call—me—Ma.”

      Angus tossed back the last piece of toast. “Everyone says that.”

      “Well, you won’t. It’s…it’s…uncouth. Lower class. Even well-bred Canadians don’t talk like that. Do you hear me?”

      He shrugged and bounced off his stool. I grabbed my son by the front of his shirt. “Do you hear me, Angus MacGillivray?”

      For a slice of time he loomed over me, dark and threatening. I saw his father in his face, and I released the shirt and stepped back, my heart pounding with emotions spinning out of control. But my son’s eyes looked back at me, filled with a deep blue that, until I saw the open sea for the first time, I had only ever seen in my own father’s face. They shone without malice, without lust, loving and innocent. As my father’s eyes had always looked.

      And still did, in my dreams. I buried my head in my hands. Angus touched my shoulder, lightly. “I’m sorry, Mother.”

      I brushed away the tears, pushed aside the curtains of memory, and smiled at my son. “Perhaps you could drop by Mrs. Saunderson’s place later. See if she needs any help with the children.”

      “Certainly, Mother.” He walked out the door, from the back looking exactly like a man, albeit a skinny one.

      Out on the street, a wagon driver shouted at his horses to get themselves out of the mud, a woman yelled that she’d been cheated, and a couple of drunks called to my boy asking if this place was open. Most of the houses of entertainment in Dawson operate twenty-four hours a day, but when Ray and I first bought the business (my share coming from the last of the money from the sale of some stolen jewellery), I’d insisted on more civilized arrangements.

      I like to keep an eye on my property and can’t do so all hours of the day and night. At the Savoy, the bar and the gambling rooms shut down when the dance hall closes at six in the morning, and they open again for business at ten.

      We never seem to have trouble drawing the customers back, although I’d been warned that once out the door, they wouldn’t return.

      I pulled my watch out of the folds of my dress. Ten o’clock, and no one here to serve bar.

      “Mornin’, Mrs. MacGillivray.” Sam Collins walked through the doors. “Nice day out. Hope it don’t keep the customers away, eh?”

      “Good morning. It seems that nothing keeps the customers from our door. Ray’s running an errand; he’ll be back soon. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

      Angus chafed at my insistence that he speak properly at all times. Who in Dawson, other than the odd toff and women such as me, trying to keep themselves respectable, bothered with how anyone spoke? Some of the richest men in town could barely string an intelligible sentence together. And some of the educated ones, such as Joe Hamilton, judging by his speech and handwriting, couldn’t afford to have a rip in their coat pocket repaired or enough hot water for a bath.

      In all of this wild, untamed town, dropped down just a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle, where the only thing that anyone cared about was the amount of gold in a man’s pocket, never mind how it got there, the way my son spoke mattered only to me. But no one knew better than I the importance of education and proper speech.

      I climbed the stairs, sat at my desk, settled my skirts around me, picked up my pen, opened the big ledger, and began to do calculations.

      I’d told Sam to let me know if Jack Ireland came in. Time, I thought, to have a quiet word with the newspaperman.

      Chapter Seven

      Men were pouring into the Savoy when I set off for home to have the evening meal with Angus. I stood on the step to catch my breath. It had been a fine day, warm and sunny, but the wind was picking up.

      Joey LeBlanc strolled down the centre of the street, not bothering with the boardwalk or duckboards, the hem of her ragged skirt dragging through the mud. She looked me straight in the eye, and her lip turned up in a sneer, which didn’t bother me in the least. I’ve crawled my way up in the world, and more than a few times I’ve acted outside of the law without caring a fig, but I never deliberately hurt anyone who had even less than I in order to ease my way. Joey might look like a slightly-better-dressed Whitechapel street urchin, but her heart (if she owned such a thing) was as black as a Yukon winter’s night. Rumour said that she’d killed her husband in a knife fight in St. Louis after he damaged a piece of the merchandise.

      “Nice evening, Mrs. MacGillivray.” Sam Collins came out of the Savoy to stand beside me as I watched Joey pick her way through the mud. He was heading home for supper with his wife, Margaret, as he did every evening.

      “It’s going to be busy tonight.” “Yes, ma’am.” He scratched his nose. Like many of the bartenders in Dawson, Sam had grown his fingernails long, so that when he weighed the gold dust in the scales set up on the velvet cloth on the mahogany counter, the residue could collect under his nails. At the end of the night, he might,