Wild Rose (12 page)

“He’s hungry, that little one,” Mrs. Emery said. “We got to be friends,” she said. “Or this ain’t going to work. I help you, you help me. Now we got to get supper on the table.” She pulled herself to her feet. “First I’ll show you your room and then you give me a hand in the kitchen. Supper’ll come that much faster.”

Charles quieted and in her arms again, Mrs. Emery moving into the hall, even exhausted as she was, Sophie saw herself in a new town, somewhere she had never been before, where no one knew her or what had happened to her. In her desperation, imagining herself walking smartly down the main street in the sunshine, smiling at the ladies she met, wearing a handsome new dress, her wide-brimmed summer hat with its bright ribbons setting off her dark hair. Even as she patted Charles’ back and murmured soothingly to the exhausted child whose weight seemed to have doubled, tripled even, over this long day, even as she saw the childishness of her vision, she couldn’t suppress a small surge of excitement. To re-create herself, she, Sophie Charron Hippolyte – what a thought! But Pierre hovered there, a shadowed presence still around her, and alone, she would have cried out,
Pierre, come back to me
, even as she wondered if she would ever find another lover, another husband, to take his place.

But then, they were mounting the stairs, both of the women as if they carried the weight of the world on their backs, she thought only of the hours of work ahead and then food, and bed, and Charles asleep so she could think.

Chapter Five

Introibo ad Altare Dei
I

I will go unto the altar of god

I
t seemed to Sophie that Sunday
would never end; it seemed this way every single Sunday since she was old enough to remember. First, Mass, then lunch, then grandfather to his study, grandmother to her room to rest, and Sophie to her own room where she was supposed to read religious books or tracts, whatever grandmother might have found for her, or the nuns sent home to her grandmother so that Sophie might learn from them. She was sometimes so bored by her reading material that she fell asleep at the desk that had been her father’s and was now growing too small for her, her head resting on the open pages. When she was younger, she had spent her Sunday afternoons playing with her doll that
oncle Henri
had brought from Sherbrooke for her that grandmother, unaccountably, had not taken away.

“Naughty girl!” she would scold the doll. “You have dirtied your dress. No supper for you!” But then she would relent, and hug the doll to her chest, and kiss it all over its face, and feed her an imaginary supper, carefully, bite by bite. “How good it is, yes? I have cooked it just for you,
ma petite Lilie
,” and so on. But now she was too old to talk to her doll, at eleven she was not sure she should even have a doll, and had with great reluctance put her precious Lilie away into a box Antoinette had given her that sat under her bed. Sunday afternoons became even longer after that. She supposed she should tat;
grand-mère
was teaching her to tat. How she hated tatting, yet at some point this afternoon she would have to do some work on the doily she was making or grandmother would scold her and make her do twice as much before she would even let her go to bed.

Unless she was very lucky, and once in a long, long while she was, grandfather would announce at lunch that he was going visiting in the country this afternoon, and she was to come with him. Off they would go down country roads, the birds singing in the trees beside them as they trotted along, the buggy wheels spinning in delight, or so it seemed to Sophie, and at the end of the rutted lanes, a farmyard with its low whitewashed or stone cottage sitting under trees, its rickety log outbuildings, its yard full of animals and children. On such excursions he would send Sophie out to play with the children of the house. He didn’t chide her to look after her dress, or not to step in manure and dirty her boots, nor force her to sit in another room while he and the grown-ups talked. She longed for such days, if he had said nothing at lunch about such a trip, she found herself listening for his footsteps on the stairs. How long had it been since the last time?

The afternoon dragged on. She read her tract so as to be able to tell grandmother she had, then read it again in case grandmother asked her questions about it. If she couldn’t answer them, grandmother would send her from the table, or she would not let her have dessert, or scold her fiercely in front of grandfather, Antoinette, and whoever else might be around. Sometimes she punished her as the nuns did, sending her to kneel in the corner and say her rosary. But then she thought, soon it will be dinnertime and I can go downstairs and perhaps I will be allowed to help Mme Gauthier in the kitchen. It was not that she liked kitchen tasks, but only that then she was doing things, moving around instead of stuck sitting at her desk. In the kitchen she could sometimes even sing a little, if she wasn’t too loud about it and grandmother heard and made her stop. One did not sing on Sundays, except in church, although singing didn’t seem to bother Mme Gauthier.

Finally, judging by the noises down below, it was time for her to make her slow, careful way down the stairs and into the dining room where the table would be covered by the thick damask cloth with its frayed hem and two large, faded spots that nothing Antoinette tried ever succeeded in fully removing. The table would be set with heavy silver cutlery elaborately engraved with
fleurs-de-lis
and an initial Sophie had always found unreadable and wondered about until Antoinette told her it was a “T” from her grandmother’s family name, and the thinnest of porcelain dishes trimmed with gold, while lamps radiated a steady yellow light, the flames not daring to flicker. Even then the room with its heavy velvet curtains was gloomy as always, whether morning or evening, winter or summer. Grandfather would begin with a mumbled grace, then there would be silence broken only by grandmother’s sharp orders to the cook, or the cook’s little granddaughter Manon, who sometimes came to help, or even Antoinette after she had returned from her Sunday afternoon visits to relatives. Sophie’s gratitude at having escaped her room never lasted very long, for in moments after arriving there she would be longing to escape the dining room.

Grandfather’s fork clinked against his plate and grandmother’s head snapped up: Eating should be silent. But she said nothing – if it had been Sophie who had clinked her fork, she would have been reprimanded or sent from the table. Grandmother even scolded fierce Mme Gauthier if she made too much noise in the kitchen, but Mme Gauthier only banged her pots and pans more loudly, knowing grandmother needed her to cook the meals. Tonight the vegetable was mashed turnips. Sophie did not like mashed turnips, but went on slowly putting forkful after forkful into her mouth, trying to swallow without gagging. There could be no question but that she must eat every bite, unless grandfather said she didn’t have to.

As Sophie contemplated the diminishing mound of the pale, now watery vegetable on her plate so absorbed in the task before her that she had heard nothing, both grandmother’s and grandfather’s heads went up, then turned toward the kitchen as the door opened and Antoinette stepped into the room. Before grandmother could speak Antoinette said, “Madame, a gentleman is here to see Monsieur.” She was twisting her hands in front of her in a way Sophie had never seen before.

“Now?”
grandmother hissed, as if such an outrage were entirely Antoinette’s fault.

“Monsieur,” Antoinette said, turning to grandfather, pleading.

Letting air out heavily through his nose, he asked, “Who is it, Antoinette?”

“It is Plamondon, Monsieur Plamondon,” correcting herself. “It is…” she hesitated, “It is …” and, astonishingly, began to cry. Grandfather rose abruptly, even grandmother’s face showed alarm, her fork going down to her plate, Antoinette, apron at her face, pushing the door open to go back into the kitchen, grandfather rising to follow her, then stopping, calling into the kitchen, “Send him in, send him in!” then returning to his place at the head of the table, composing his expression as if there had been no alarm, no astonishment.

Plamondon, Sophie knew, was an
habitant
who farmed the land that belonged to Sophie’s
oncle Henri
who was grandfather’s younger brother. Now he stood before them, ignoring Sophie, ignoring even grandmother, not even greeting them. He held his hat at his waist, his large, greying moustache quivering as his lips worked, no sound emerging; unaccountably, his face seemed to be wet, yet surely it was not raining. A calamity, obviously, to bring him here now, in such a state, the two elders waiting for his message. Grandfather’s face was changing again, the colour rising in it, as if he were coming to some understanding as he stared at the farmer in his rough Sunday clothing. As silently as possible Sophie set her fork down on her plate and waited.

But this tiny gesture did not escape grandmother.

“Leave the table, now!” she commanded. Tears sprang to Sophie’s eyes at the suddenness of this, but forcing them down, she rose, not looking at her grandmother, and went out of the room, grandmother saying to her retreating back, “To your room and stay there.” But once in the hall, having shut the door behind her, she moved more slowly. M. Plamondon was speaking, she could hear the halting rumble of his voice, a sound from grandfather of wordless consternation, a sharp cry from grandmother. Her astonishment at hearing the latter rose goose bumps on her arms and sent her rapidly down the hall to the stairs which she rushed up despite knowing she was never to do so, closing her bedroom door behind her, standing, frozen, in the centre of the room, her heart thudding so hard it stopped her from catching her breath.

What had happened? She went to her window, saw people passing by on the way to evening Benediction, saw them noticing Plamondon’s stout workhorse tied to one of the trees that lined the road in front of her house, and was not too upset to fail to notice the people noticing the horse and cart, knowing to whom the rig belonged and wondering, no doubt, what it was doing here early on a Sunday evening. She went back to her door, without making a sound, opened it and listened. Nothing, then voices, her grandmother’s, her grandfather’s, then grandfather rushing through the hall below – she knew this by the sound of his footsteps although she couldn’t see him, and behind there was a lighter tap of grandmother’s steps – opening the front door, going rapidly out, shutting it loudly behind him and grandmother standing still for a moment, then going back down the hall into the dining room, calling, “Antoinette! Antoinette!” Grandmother did not call; it was rude to call aloud. It was a peasant habit.

She hurried back to her window. Grandfather was getting into the cart to sit beside Plamondon as the
habitant
swung himself up, his whip in his hand, turning the
équipement
, and off they went out of the town toward the west, out of her view. After that she waited and waited for someone to come and tell her what she must do, Antoinette especially, who would explain to her why grandfather had rushed off like that. Later, she heard her grandmother and Antoinette going into the
salon
, where they seemed to be moving furniture. Impossible! What were they doing? But still no one came, no one told her what she must do. When at last it grew dark and neither Antoinette nor grandmother had come to prepare her for bed, she undressed, put on her nightgown, knelt to pray, and climbed into bed herself. And still no one came.

Somewhere in the night she was wakened by muffled thumps in the
foyer
below and male voices she didn’t recognize. At first she was confused waking from so deep a sleep, thinking that there had been loud voices in the night before, first her own door closing, her pillow damp–why was her pillow damp? Grandfather and grandmother speaking loudly – but no, that was some other time, all shadows, out of which nothing clear emerged, Antoinette had said it was a dream, and this was now: Plamondon had come to the house, grandmother was angry, grandfather had run to the cart… She got out of bed, moved on tiptoe out of her room, and crept as close to the stairs as she dared, stopping well back so as not to be seen from below, saw the heads of three men, one was Plamondon – the fourth she realized was grandfather himself – manoeuvering a long wooden box in through the outer door, on the other side of which was only the blackest of nights, not a star shining – how it took her breath away to see the vastness of night intruding into their dwelling that way – turning the box with difficulty, grunting, muttering, taking very short steps crushed as they were into so small a space, and disappearing inch by inch into the
salon
with it. At the sight of the box they were moving, and both grandmother and Antoinette’s heads appearing below her as if they had been in the
salon
and had come out so that the box might go in, she rushed backward into her room forgetting even to be quiet, climbing into her bed, pulling the covers up high over her head.

Then Antoinette was in her room, forgetting even to open or close the window, her eyes reddened, her face pale. She didn’t speak, but pushed back Sophie’s covers so that Sophie sat up reluctantly and swung her legs over the edge of her bed as she always did.

“Is it morning?” She knew it was morning, and was puzzled by such a question coming out of her own mouth.

“Yes, it is morning. We must get you ready for school.” They began Sophie’s
toilette
in silence. Then she remembered, pulling away from the hair brush.