WINTER WONDERLAND (16 page)

‘I used to stay on in the studio after the shoot, asking questions, watching and learning; then I started assisting, and one day I got my first commission,’ he shrugs. ‘It is my love.’

My eyes flick to Annique, who is looking on with admiration.

‘Did you ever model?’ I ask her.

‘One campaign,’ she takes a sip of water. ‘For my ex’s company. That is how we met. My first and last job.’

I wonder if I’m detecting regret in her voice but then she adds. ‘But for me, a tour guide is best.’

Better than jetting between Paris, New York and Milan?

‘Modelling is a lot of judgement and a lot of introspection. I like to look at the beauty around me, in the buildings, in the landscape. I like to see people’s faces light up when they first see my city.’

‘Like the view from the Hilton?’ I think of my own reaction.

She nods. ‘It is a privilege to share this place with visitors.’

I believe in her job satisfaction. And she’s certainly a people-person. So naturally charming in her every interaction, chatting and laughing with the waitress when she comes back with the bill.

‘We will have our dessert elsewhere,’ she whispers for our ears only. ‘Something very particular.’

We’re about to leave when Gilles excuses himself to go the bathroom.
Finally!

‘Annique,’ I hiss, motioning for her to meet me halfway across the table. ‘You said there was more to Jacques’ story … ?’

‘Oh yes.’ She sighs. ‘Apparently one of the hardest things for Jacques was not just losing his best friend but also his second family … ’

‘Second family?’

‘Well, now this I heard directly from Lucy.’

‘You did better than me,’ I note. ‘I couldn’t get anything out of her the other day.’

‘Well turns out she used to work with Mason – my ex – there on the island so … ’

‘ … a trust was established.’

‘Actually, a mutual dislike of my ex.’

‘Oh.’

‘Anyway. She said that Jacques used to be so close with Rémy’s family – the boys had grown up together and Jacques was inside their house every Sunday into adulthood, even when his friend moved to Montreal to join the riot police.’

‘Riot police?’ I repeat. ‘So he survived all manner of clash and conflict only to lose his life joy riding?’

‘I think that’s what must have blown the mother’s mind. She was always worrying about him when he was gone and so when he came home she thought she could exhale for a moment and it really caught her unaware.’

‘And she holds Jacques responsible?’

‘It sounds that way – immediately after the accident he sold all the snowmobile machines and equipment and tried to give her the money but she would not accept a penny and she has not spoken a word to him since.’

All I can think is, there has to be a way to reconcile them. Maybe if they had a mediator? Or perhaps a neutral party could test the water, see if perhaps time had mellowed her a little and really the rift was nothing more than a habit now.

‘It’s so sad all round,’ Annique sighs. ‘Apparently Rémy had just met a new girl too. Life is messed up sometimes.’

‘Ready to go?’ Gilles is back.

As we make our way out of the restaurant and up Rue Saint-Jean, I pay little attention to the boutiques and focus instead on sending a discreet text to Laurie:

‘Totally random but can you try and find the surname of guy named Rémy who died in a snowmobiling accident on the Île d’Orléans about a year ago? He was in the police. Probably aged between 30-40. I’m trying to find his family.’

‘Anything for you Sherlock.’

My heart is beating a little faster. I know this is a delicate undertaking and any approach from me could be most unwelcome, but it has to be worth a try. I’d feel so much better leaving for Montreal if I knew the mother had extended the olive branch to Jacques. It would surely mean so much to him.

‘
Alors!
’ Annique comes to a halt. ‘I think the boutiques are a little more chic on Le Petit Champlain but that is in Lower Town and it is nearly four p.m., so what I think is nice right now is to introduce you to a world of maple syrup.’

Before I can question how this qualifies as shopping, Annique shows me every feasible maple product from maple coffee to maple mustard, even maple exfoliators and lip balms.

Like I don’t already stuff my face with enough sugary items.

Les Delices de L’Érable – or Maple Delights – is also a gelateria and café, with every cake, sorbet and beverage sweetened with maple syrup.

‘Which has fewer calories than honey,’ Annique tells me.

‘Really?’

‘It really helped me to lose weight,’ she insists. ‘And it has potassium and calcium and magnesium!’

‘So, in a roundabout way, it’s healthy!’ I decide as I point to my pastry of choice and then add a book entitled ‘Cooking with Quebec Maple Syrup’ for Laurie.

‘Upstairs they have a quaint little Maple Syrup Museum.’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ I say, I mean, how much does anyone really want to know about maple syrup beyond its taste?

But then she adds, ‘You know Jacques is part of the co-op that produces maple syrup for Quebec?’

‘I did not know that.’

‘The work is seasonal so he runs the dog-sledding business in the winter and does maple-syrup tapping in the spring.’

Suddenly I want to know everything there is to know.

‘I’ll just take a quick look,’ I say, heading for the stairs.

I’m up there half an hour.

It turns out that maple syrup was first discovered by the Amerindians who would cut a V-shape in the tree with their tomahawks and then insert concave pieces of bark to collect its sap. Most modern-day tappers use a high-tech tree-tubing system that runs the sap directly back to the sugar shack, but part of me hopes Jacques does it the old-fashioned way – with a wooden spout and a metal bucket and a horse-drawn sled. I can just see myself out in the woods in a jaunty headsquare, gingham shirt and denim capris, or perhaps luring Jacques back home with wafts of orchard fruit pie, served
à la nude
– in bed with two spoons.

When the season is over it would be the summer and we’d go swimming in the lakes and have big sprawling picnics with our friends. Come the autumn we’d drive down to Vermont and stay in rustic-elegant B&Bs and watch the leaves change colour before our very eyes. What a life that would be! Naturally I’d end up writing one of those
Year in Provence
-type books entitled
Miss Maple Syrup Pie
or
Becoming Québécoise
or
I Married the Wolfman
, and it would become a bestseller and we’d offer themed tours and I’d read sample chapters to the person riding in my sled and we’d have a little café serving homemade goods …

I try to stop my mind racing but on it goes:

Gilles would do portraits of all the dogs and these would line the walls of the farmhouse reception. For our annual Christmas card he would somehow get all the dogs to look his way just as the camera clicked.

It’s all too wonderful and then some contrary part of me says, ‘But what if he wants children?’

To which I reply, ‘I think he has enough on his hands with the dogs.’

‘Are you talking to yourself?’ Annique interrupts my wild imaginings.

‘Oh! I was just, um, this is all so fascinating!’ I bluster. ‘I had no idea it takes thirty-two litres of maple sap to make one litre of maple syrup!’

‘Amazing isn’t it? Here – I bought you a cup of maple syrup tea to try.’

‘Oh thank you.’

‘I just found out that Gilles has a sweet tooth!’ She looks thrilled. ‘He’s on his third maple mousse!’

And then my phone pings this message:

Rémy Walker. Family live in Wendake about 20 minutes from Old Town Quebec. Mother, Johanna Laframboise, works at restaurant called La Traite.

I look back at Annique, my heart a-flurry. ‘You know our plans for tonight?’

‘Yes, we watch the parade—’

‘I was wondering,’ I cut in. ‘If Gilles could cover that and you and I might go to dinner. Just the two of us.’

‘You had somewhere in mind?’

‘La Traite.’

‘La Traite?’ she repeats. ‘At Wendake?’

‘Yes, you know it?’

‘The food is meant to be exceptional. But this has to be tonight?’

‘Actually, yes, the sooner the better. And there’s another thing – I would like you to translate for me.’

‘Okay.’

‘When I speak to Rémy’s mother,’ I gulp. ‘She works there, at the restaurant.’

Now she looks uncomfortable. ‘Well, I don’t know if that is possible … ’

‘I understand that this may seem like interfering in someone else’s business and there is a risk of upsetting two people who have already suffered enough. But I can’t help thinking it could start such a positive chain reaction – she gets back in touch with Jacques, that’s two people who feel better right there, not cured,’ I hasten to add. ‘Not absolved of grief but at least a tiny bit comforted, a tiny bit healed. And then Sebastien feels confident that his brother will be all right and he can get back to his life in Montreal… ’

‘It’s not that,’ Annique replies. ‘I just don’t know if I am going to be able to translate. Do you know what tribe she is?’

‘Tribe?’

‘If it’s Huron-Wendat I can help you because they speak French, but I don’t speak Cree or Iroquois or Algonquin.’

My brow furrows.

‘La Traite is part of the First Nations hotel. Everyone who works there is what you would call Indian.’

‘So Rémy’s mother could be, for example, Mohawk?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wow.’ Now I am hesitant. I feel I need to be more respectful than ever but I’m not sure what this might mean in practical terms. ‘Do you think we should still go?’

‘Well,’ Annique appears to be giving the matter much consideration. ‘I have been hearing great things about the maple fondue, I’d love to try it.’

I smile and reach for her hand. ‘Thank you. I really appreciate this. Why don’t you go home and get a few hours’ rest? We could meet again at eight p.m.?’

She looks grateful. ‘That would be most welcome.’ And then she turns back to me. ‘Do you have any idea of what you are going to say to his mother when you see her?’

Now it is my turn to pause. ‘No,’ I reply in a small voice.

‘Well then, I want you to visit this one last shop on your way back to the hotel.’

She writes down the address and hands me the piece of paper. ‘It might help get you in the right frame of mind … ’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The drive to Wendake is dark and full of trepidation.

What if I’m doing the wrong thing?

What if my approaching Madame Laframboise prompts some kind of freak-out or meltdown? What if she loses her job because a random stranger caused her to collapse in a heap of tears on the restaurant floor?

‘I meant to ask,’ Annique interrupts my frettings. ‘did you get a chance to visit Le Sachem?’

‘I did,’ I confirm. ‘I think that’s the first time I’ve seen a dream catcher outside of a New Age store.’

I found it almost surreal to be handling authentic moccasins (made from butter-soft suede) and rough woven rugs and Hiawatha dolls with leather-laced braids. My cousin had one of these as a child and I remember thinking she knocked spots off pale, stick-like Barbie with her beautiful big dark eyes and fringed dress.

Even after visiting Harricana earlier in the day, I wasn’t prepared for an entire wall of trapper hats – coyote, fox, muskrat, racoon, beaver and pure white rabbit: they had them all. There was even a pair of drop earrings with a fluffy bauble of mink at the end.

But the thing that stopped me in my tracks was the way a parent, a dad, dealt with his toddler when he nearly toppled the stuffed bear.

Instead of yanking his son away and bundling him out of the shop in an angry huff, he knelt by his side so he was at eye level and then softly said, ‘Remember we spoke about this – you must treat everything around you with care and respect.’

‘Care and respect,’ the child repeated.

My jaw dropped. No wonder everyone here grows up to be so genteel!

All I ever got was the ‘If you break anything, it’s coming out of your pocket money’ speech.

Even in all my imaginings about having a well-mannered child I never thought about introducing the concept of respect before they could even spell it. That’s deep.

‘Did you buy anything?’ Annique asks.

I tell her that if my grandmother was still alive I would have got her one of the little white bear ornaments, seemingly etched from a gritty salt block, with an onyx fish in its mouth. I did buy a box of herbal tea for Laurie because the name gave me a giggle – nothing wrong with
Chief’s Delight
or
Warrior’s Brew
but
Teepee Dreams?! –
I think the marketing department might want to rethink printing the word ‘pee’ alongside ‘dreams’.

And then I got a selection of the incense sticks for myself. I actually lit the maple one before I left the hotel and wafted it over me in lieu of perfume because apparently Amerindians use it for ‘meetings’ on account of it producing ‘a warm ambiance as it purifies negative elements in the air’.

I don’t mention this to Annique, though, in case she thinks I’ve lost the plot.

‘Wendake!’ Annique confirms our arrival by pointing to a stop sign printed with both French ‘
Arrêt
’ and Huron ‘
Seten
’.

I had prepared myself for a rundown community offering only the most basic living conditions, but it turns out that the Huron-Wendats are one of the most prosperous First Nation tribes in the country.

‘And why is that?’ I want to know.

‘Well, they were always into trading whereas other tribes’ skills, like hunting, have proved less profitable over the years.’ And then she turns to me. ‘Did you know that the Mohawk have such a good head for heights that they are always the first choice for any skyscraper building projects?’

‘I did not,’ I smile, fascinated. ‘Oh look – they even have a beauty parlour!’

The sign has a Victorian style to it and the wooden building, complete with front porch, is positively chintzy.