Wild Rose (47 page)

“I’ll just sleep over here,” Adelaide announced, and began pushing the two armchairs so that they faced each other. Seeing this, Sophie went into the bedroom and took one blanket from her bed and brought it back for Adelaide, who accepted it in silence, throwing it out over her extended legs, letting her head loll back, and closing her eyes. Sophie stood looking at the two guests, first one, then the other, but for only a second, then went into the bedroom, checked on Charles who appeared not to have moved, and went to bed herself.

For a long time she didn’t sleep, puzzling over the relative calm of Adelaide and Lily, who seemed only mildly perturbed, nor surprised by what had happened to them. She wondered too what had happened to her that she had been the only one of the women of the town to be overcome by a mere house fire. She did not think she knew why she had been so wholly out of control, why the sight of it leaping high into the night sky had so overwhelmed her. Yet she couldn’t find it in herself to be embarrassed by her emotion; it puzzled her too much. Vaguely she remembered the great fire the town had built every June to celebrate
la fête
and how when she was still a child it had so frightened her. But then, she told herself, after all, she was ill that time. It was a fever she had. She even wondered, for a brief moment, if maybe she was the only one there who had reacted in the reasonable way, if all the others, by the hardness of their lives, the suffering they had endured, had been blighted, were no longer able to be fully human. Or was it only because they so hated the prostitutes?

Then she thought for the first time, in astonishment at herself that she hadn’t to this second even consciously been aware of this, that if anyone found out she was or had been sheltering two prostitutes, she would be shunned by everyone. Worse, her reputation that she had struggled so hard to preserve would be utterly ruined and that, for Charles’s sake, she would probably be forced – just as the prostitutes were – to leave Bone Pile for a place where no one would know her. She would be tainted forever.

Morning came, hard and cold. It was difficult to remember that last night a fire had raged yards from where she lay on Harry’s bed. Her small son who had stirred earlier and she had brought him into her bed, was still deeply asleep nestled against her body. She had been reluctantly about to extricate herself from Charles to stir the stove and add wood, but the room seemed unusually warm. She remembered then that she had guests, that doubtless one of them had roused herself when the cold grew too much, to build up the fire. She lay still even longer, thinking
how she could stay abed this morning at least until Charles woke, but the presence of the two women in the other room troubled her; she didn’t know how to behave or what to do to keep their presence a secret. Or if she really needed to.

They had come to her because they did not believe anyone else in the town would give them sanctuary; they must have believed that worse insult than fire would happen to them if they gave themselves over to the villagers. She tried to grasp this: What would that be, for the women would hardly take to them with pitchforks, surely? Having the fallen women in their power at last they would scold, berate, insult, demean them directly or indirectly. They would hold them for the police to come and take them away. They would say that Lily must have set fire to the house because she was angry with Adelaide, or deluded or mad or simple and vicious. Anyway, Sophie thought, they would go to the men for help, not the women. She did not want to think what the men might do. But surely the men would not hate them as the women did? All the power in the town lay with the men, except for Adelaide herself, who frightened the women, although she wouldn’t, in the end, frighten the men. There was nowhere to hide in the town, nowhere where they would not freeze to death, nowhere where they wouldn’t soon be discovered. She lifted her arm carefully from under Charles’s head and slowly began to push the covers back from her side of the bed, trying not to wake him.

“No one will come round before noon,” she whispered to Adelaide when she woke as Sophie lit the lamp she had placed on the centre of the table. “But that is when I start serving dinners, and it would be unusual if nobody came then.” Now she was pouring water from the pail by the stove into the coffee pot. Thanks to Adelaide’s tending the fire during the night, Sophie hadn’t had to break through the usual layer of thick ice on the top. She whispered so as not to wake Lily with whom she did not quite know how to deal. Now she measured coffee into the pot of water, closed the lid, set it on the cook stove, turned back to her guest who was extricating herself slowly, with some effort, from the blanket she was tangled in. The odour of stale sweat rolled across the room and engulfed Sophie before dissipating. Some other sour smell rode on it and she thought, the woman has her menses, was revolted, then ashamed.

“You could go outside now,” she suggested. “It is still dark; no one will be about.” Adelaide gave no reply. “Or you can use my chamber pot, in the other room.” Adelaide was straightening her clothing, pushing at her hair. She muttered a reply Sophie couldn’t make out. She began to spoon raw oatmeal into a pot she had filled with water and set on the stove. Before too long there would be porridge. How hungry the women must be and ever since the day she had come into Bone Pile with Charles in Campion’s buggy she had vowed she would never let anyone be hungry if she had the strength to lift a finger or a crust of bread to give away. Yet how she dreaded, for reasons she didn’t try to understand, the moment when the girl Lily would wake, sit up, begin asking for things, or… She shook herself; she was still a child, children needed care and generosity. She would at least try, and set her shoulders firmly, unaware that her mouth had gone into a tight line until she felt the prickling in her lips and loosened them.

Lily stirred, though there was still not a sound from Charles.

“You awake then,” Adelaide said, and Sophie thought that despite the willed harshness of the tone, she detected a note of – something – some warmth, she thought, and was faintly surprised. Lily merely grunted. “Say good morning to our mistress,” Adelaide went on, as if making a joke, and Lily said to Sophie’s back, “Good morning, Mrs.” Her voice was high and soft, a little girl’s voice, and Sophie, struggling with the coffee, the oatmeal, the cook stove’s heat, the horror of the night, at the sound had to catch herself hard not to cry. She turned rapidly, smiling.

“Good morning, Lily. I hope you were able to get some sleep my dear.” That ‘my dear’ surprised even her. Ah, so I choose to be the mother, she thought, amused. In the richly spreading lamplight she was touched to see the guileless smile that had settled on the girl’s face. Adelaide went to her, sat beside her as a mother would do, touched her cheek gently, then fingered Lily’s lank hair, tsk, tsking softly.

“Can’t do nothing with it,” she remarked, as if she were telling the girl she loved her. So much so that Sophie turned her back to them and began to take bowls and cups from the shelves and place them on the table. She could hear the two of them stirring about behind her, the floorboards creaking, fabric slithering and brushing against the furniture. At last she glanced over and saw they were about to go outside. A snuffle followed by a chirping noise came from the bedroom. Charles. When she returned with him to the kitchen, the women were outside. She was helping Charles use the chamber pot when they came back in shivering, blowing on their hands, taking off their cloaks and hurrying to the stove to warm themselves.

“Who dat?” Charles inquired, pointing, then lifting his face up to his mother’s.

“They are friends,” Sophie told him cheerily. He was, after all, quite used to strangers being in the house with them, although not so early in the morning.

“Oh,” he said. “I’m done now,
maman
.” She lifted him, began to clean him, then dress him in warm clothing to counter the freezing air in the room.

At breakfast Adelaide said, “We thank you for not sending us out. For not rushing off to get the preacher or somebody to take us off your hands.” Sophie didn’t know what to say. She lowered her head in embarrassment, thought of replying
anybody would
, but knew that was not true. Could it be that I am a good person, she wondered, then laughed at herself. Circumstances was all it had been. Had she not done things with Harry – and she a married woman.

“You said someone would come for you today?” Adelaide nodded, not speaking.

“Who will come? How would anyone know to come for you?” She felt she had earned the right to ask such questions, but immediately regretted this because she could feel sudden anger coming off Adelaide, low, maybe always there, just a little released now. She wanted to say she was sorry for asking, but would not. Lily was eating her porridge loudly, as if she hadn’t had food in a year, and yet, how thin she was.

“Slow yourself down,” Adelaide growled to her, and she subsided at once, and began to eat daintily so that Sophie had to repress laughter.

“Look,” Adelaide said finally and Sophie did not doubt who she was speaking to. She was careful not to meet Adelaide’s eyes, it not occurring to her until now that such women might be dangerous –
could
be dangerous. “Look. I run a business. You see? A business. It takes money to get started in a business. Did I look like I had money on that train?” She was silent then, in what seemed to Sophie to be a final way, as if all had been explained. She wanted to ask more, but didn’t dare. She thought as she sipped her coffee, ate a little porridge, attended to Charles’s needs. Adelaide was telling her, she finally divined, that someone, a man of course, had given her the money to build her brothel and furnish it; it would seem that that man would now come and take her and Lily away to another place where, she supposed, he would set her up in business again. But who was the man? Well, she sighed, I will soon know. And what kind of man would it be? Clearly, a villain, someone so evil that he would make his money off destitute women’s despair. She shuddered.

“I’m still chilled from last night,” she said, by way of explanation when she felt Adelaide going alert at that shudder.

“Funny that,” Adelaide said. “Coulda sworn it was hot.” Sophie laughed as the safest thing to do.

At her usual hour she dressed her little boy warmly, bundled up herself, and left to take Charles to Mrs. Wozny as she always did. She heard one of the women put the inside door bar down as she walked down the icy path, and the thought that perhaps they wouldn’t let her back in again crossed her mind before she dismissed it. At least I could go to any house and would be taken in, she muttered angrily.

“I am not well today, Mrs. Wozny,” she said, holding her scarf over the lower half of her face so that the woman couldn’t get a good look at it and be suspicious. “I am not going to open my café until five or so, if I feel better by then. But you know how much attention Charles needs and I think I should rest for a few more hours.”

~

One of them must have been looking out the window
because before she even knocked she heard the bar going up and the door creaked open slowly. She slipped in quickly, pushing it shut behind her using her back, reaching to pull down the scarf and unwind it from her head. But someone sat staring at her from across her own table. A man. For one second, before her eyes adjusted to the poorer light after the brilliance of the sun on snow outside, she thought it was Pierre, and gasped and froze. He moved. It was not Pierre after all, it was Walter Campion.

“Mr. Campion,” she said, about to say she wouldn’t be cooking, then realizing the futility of this for was he not already in the room? Was he not staring across it at Lily sitting quietly on the sofa and did not Adelaide sit across from him, both of them with steaming cups of coffee?

It took a minute for her to adjust to the idea that Campion was the owner of the burned-down brothel. Fury swept through her, she could feel her face getting hot despite the cold sweat that broke out on her brow, before she could think a single clear thought. She remembered him proposing to her that she could run his house – her own house – and what he might have hoped to get from her. She had begun to shake and trying to hide it, turned her back as she took off her outdoor clothes and hung them up. How she had teetered on the edge of the abyss and knew it only dimly, or hardly at all. Under control now, she turned again.

“You have had a business reversal,” she said, tightly, her voice clear, not even trying to hide her contempt. The hotel in Garden City he wanted her to run. Was she to go unwittingly into a brothel? Provide the clients and prostitutes with good food? What a desperate fool she was.

“That there is business,” he said, either not perturbed in the least by her tone, or hiding it well. She was, after all, just another woman. “I thank you for taking in my lady friends last night. I appreciate that. I suppose you could say we all owe you a debt.” He seemed amused, she was surprised he didn’t guffaw at his own words.

“You owe me nothing,” she told him, then refrained from saying more.
I was happy to do it. No Christian would refuse; they would have frozen; I am happy to have been of service?
In fact, she didn’t know what she thought about it, only that she was not happy. “I didn’t see a rig out front.”

“Left it at the livery barn. It’ll come soon. Then we’ll all be going. I’ll take some of that porridge, by the way,” he told her. She debated for a fraction of a second, then got a bowl, took it down, filled it with porridge, put a spoon beside it, and set it in front of him, then sat down herself. Adelaide was on her left with her back to Lily who sat motionless on the couch, and Campion on her right.