The Red Velvet Horse (Siren Publishing Allure) Read Free

word, moved to a respectable boarding house overlooking the beach in English Bay.
     
    It is an idyllic spring in British Columbia, and everywhere I look, there are bright yellow broom flowers, trees swollen with cherry blossoms, and scented magnolias.
    My new lodgings are run by a Mrs. Muirhead, who although a staunch Presbyterian, is nevertheless of a fairly cheerful disposition.
    But alas, this most agreeable existence cannot last as my small financial resource is rapidly dwindling. And it is, therefore, with the utmost reluctance that I must seek employment.
    I manage to secure the position of seamstress at a small tailoring establishment on Granville Street. The hours are long, but not as lengthy as if I was a maid.
    The shop caters to a select group of privileged Vancouverites and is owned by a Mr. William Rudge, a craggy-faced gentleman, who has a perpetual drip hanging from the tip of his long beaked nose.
    And so, life settles into a predictable pattern of work, home, and church with very little time left over for recreation. Although when the weather is fine, I pack a picnic basket and go to the seashore, which after all, is only a few yards away.
    At present, I travel to work by tramcar, but plan to buy a bicycle once my financial situation permits the expenditure. For this is such a popular mode of transport in the city that six-foot-wide cycle-paths run between the gutters and wooden sidewalks on many of the busier streets.
     
    Spice had jumped up on April’s lap while she was reading and competed with the papers for attention. “I love you best,” she assured him. She had now reached a point in the document so scarred with age, it was virtually unreadable. “Time to call it a night,” she said.
    But then her interest was captured by the next entry:
     
    Midsummer’s Day 1898––I continue to form a strong attraction to the conductor on the Robson Street tramcar. Feeling at once disappointed if he is not on the tram, and relieved as well. He is tall and dark-haired, no more than three and twenty with the most compelling green eyes. It is not only his good looks, which entrance me, but his extreme pleasantness of manner as well.
     
    * * * *
     
    “I want to get a better sense of the world Hannah knew.” April glanced around the Green Man Bistro, packed with the lunchtime crowd. “The type of house she lived in, the clothes she wore, and how Vancouver looked then.”
    “The City Archives would be the best place to start,” Holt advised. “The shop won’t be busy this afternoon, it’s only Monday. Why don’t you go over there now?”
    Old maps of Vancouver lined the walls, and April scrutinized them for a while before moving onto sepia-tinted photographs of city streets whose only resemblance to the present were their names.
    Men looking very formal in suits, ties and trilbies, walked beside long-skirted women wearing high-necked blouses, opulent hats, and carrying parasols.
    So this is how Hannah would have been dressed, April mused. She thumbed her way through a stack of prints until she reached one of a tramcar at the intersection of Georgia and Granville Streets. There was a conductor standing on the running board on the open-sided car to collect fares. He looked very smart in a navy-blue uniform and peaked cap.
     
    * * * *
     
    His name is Tom. I heard the driver call him that as we rounded the corner of Robson and Burrard Streets, almost knocking over a careless cyclist who veered right onto the tracks.
    And oh, how I hugged this new knowledge to my fluttering breast with the utmost satisfaction, as images of those sparkling green eyes and thick dark hair cavorted across my mind’s eye.
    Tom…Tom…my own darling Tom…
    Then I ruminated on how a name at once so ordinary, could suddenly be transformed into pure magic.
     
    A lapse of several months followed this blissful observation. April wondered if the relevant pages had been lost, or if Hannah had simply not put pen to paper again