Scarlett (56 page)

The trees in the square looked somehow thicker, the grass greener than the day before. The sun was warmer, too. Scarlett felt the quickened optimism that always accompanied the first hint of spring. Today would be a good day, she was sure of it—in spite of her grandfather’s birthday party. “Walk up, Pansy,” she said automatically, “don’t drag along like a turtle,” and she set off at a brisk pace along the packed sand-and-shell sidewalk.

The sound of hammering and men’s voices shouting at the Cathedral building carried clearly through the still, sunlit air. Scarlett wished for a moment that the priest would take her on another tour of the site. But that wasn’t what she was here for. She turned into the gate of the convent.

The same elderly nun answered the doorbell. Scarlett readied herself for combat.

But, “The Mother Superior is expecting you,” said the nun. “If you’ll follow me…”

Scarlett was almost dazed when she left the convent ten minutes later. It had been so easy! The Mother Superior agreed at once to talk to the Bishop. She’d send word, she said, very soon. No, she couldn’t say just when that would be, but certainly within a short time. She herself would be returning to Charleston the following week.

Scarlett was euphoric. Her smile and her eyes were so bright that the grocer in the small shop on Abercorn Street nearly forgot to charge her for the bow-bedecked box of chocolate candies she selected for her grandfather’s birthday present.

Her high spirits carried her through the final preparations for the birthday dinner that engulfed her when she got back to the Robillard house. They began to dim slightly when she learned that her grandfather would actually come to table for the six courses of his particularly favorite foods. Her spirits plummeted when the aunts informed her that she wasn’t allowed to eat many of the delicacies that would be served.

“Flesh is forbidden during Lent,” said Pauline sternly. “Be certain that no gravy touches the rice or vegetables you eat.”

“But be careful, Scarlett. Don’t let Père notice,” added Eulalie in a whisper. “He doesn’t approve of fasting.” Her eyes were rheumy with sorrow.

Brooding about missing out on the food, thought Scarlett unkindly. Then—I don’t blame her. The aromas from the kitchen were making her mouth water.

“There’ll be soup for us. And fish,” Eulalie said with sudden cheerfulness. “Cake, too, a beautiful, beautiful cake. A true feast, Scarlett.”

“Remember, Sister,” warned Pauline, “gluttony is a sin.”

Scarlett left them; she could feel herself losing control of her temper. It’s only a dinner, she reminded herself, just calm down. Even with Grandfather at table with us, it can’t be all that bad. After all, what could one old man do?

He could, Scarlett learned at once, refuse to allow anything other than French to be spoken. Her “Happy Birthday, Grandfather,” was ignored as if she hadn’t said it. Her aunts’ greetings were acknowledged by a cold nod, and he sat down in the huge throne-like chair at the head of the table.

Pierre Auguste Robillard was no longer a night-shirted, frail elderly man. Impeccably clothed in an old-fashioned frock coat and starched linen, his thin body looked larger, and his erect military bearing was impressive even when he was seated. His white hair was like an old lion’s ruff, his eyes were hawk-like under his thick white brows, and his big bony nose looked like a predator’s beak. The certainty that it was a good day began to ooze out of Scarlett. She unfolded the huge starched linen napkin over her lap and knees and braced herself for she knew not what.

Jerome entered, bearing a big silver tureen on a silver tray the size of a small tabletop. Scarlett’s eyes widened. She’d never seen silver like that in her life. It was encrusted with ornamentation. An entire forest of trees circled the base of the tureen, their branches and leaves curving upward to surround the rim. Within the forest there were birds and animals—bears, deer, wild boar, hares, pheasant, even owls and squirrels on the limbs of the trees. The lid of the tureen was shaped like a tree stump covered with thick vines, each vine bearing clusters of miniature, perfect ripe grapes. Jerome placed the tureen in front of his master and lifted the lid with a white-gloved hand. Steam poured out, clouding the silver and spreading the delicious aroma of shrimp bisque throughout the room.

Pauline and Eulalie leaned forward, smiling anxiously.

Jerome took a soup plate from the sideboard and held it next to the tureen. Pierre Robillard lifted a silver ladle and silently filled the bowl. Then he watched with half-hooded eyes while Jerome carried the bowl and deposited it in front of Pauline.

The ceremony was repeated for Eulalie, then for Scarlett. Her fingers itched to grab her spoon. But she kept her hands in her lap while her grandfather served himself and tasted the soup. He shrugged eloquent dissatisfaction and dropped his spoon into his bowl.

Eulalie let out a strangled sob.

You old monster! Scarlett thought. She began to eat her soup. It was a velvety richness of flavor. She tried to catch Eulalie’s eyes so that she could show her aunt that she was enjoying the soup, but Eulalie was downcast. Pauline’s spoon was in the bowl, like her father’s. Scarlett lost all sympathy for her aunts. If they were going to be terrorized this easily, they deserved to go hungry. She wasn’t going to let the old man keep her from her dinner!

Pauline asked her father something, but because she was speaking French, Scarlett had no idea what her aunt had said. Her grandfather’s reply was so brief, and Pauline’s face so white, that he must have said something very insulting. Scarlett began to get angry. He’s going to ruin everything, and on purpose, too. Oh, I wish I could speak French. I wouldn’t just sit and take his nastiness.

She kept silent while Jerome removed the soup plates and the silver place plates and set down dinner plates and fish knives and forks. It seemed to take forever.

But the planked shad, when it came, was worth the wait. Scarlett looked at her grandfather. He wouldn’t dare pretend that he didn’t like this. He ate two small bites. The sound of knives and forks was terribly loud when they touched the plates. Pauline first, then Eulalie, gave up with most of their fish still on their plates. Scarlett looked defiantly at her grandfather over each forkful that she carried to her mouth. But even she was beginning to lose her appetite. The old man’s displeasure was souring.

The next dish revived her appetite. The potted doves looked as tender as dumplings, and their gravy was a rich brown river over puréed potatoes and turnips molded into light-as-air nests for the meat of the tiny birds. Pierre Robillard dipped the tines of his fork into the gravy, then touched them to his tongue. That was all.

Scarlett thought she would explode. Only the desperate entreaty in her aunts’ eyes kept her silent. How could anyone be as hateful as her grandfather? It was just plain impossible that he didn’t like the food. It wasn’t too hard for him to eat, even if he did have bad teeth. Or none at all, for that matter. She knew he liked tasty food, too. After she’d buttered and gravied the pap he was usually served, his plate had gone back to the kitchen as clean as if a dog had licked it. No, there must be some other reason he wasn’t eating. And she could see it in his eyes. They gleamed when he looked at her aunts’ pitiful disappointment. He’d rather make them suffer than enjoy eating his dinner. His birthday dinner, too.

What a difference between this birthday feast and the one for her cousin Patricia!

Scarlett looked at her grandfather’s skeletal ramrod body and his self-satisfied impassive face, and she despised him for the way he was tormenting her aunts. But even more she despised them for tolerating his tortures. They don’t have a shred of gumption. How can they just sit there like that and take it? Sitting silently at her grandfather’s table, in the gracious pink room in the handsome pink house, she seethed with loathing for everything and everyone. Even herself. I’m as bad as they are. Why on earth can’t I just speak up and tell him how nasty he’s acting? I don’t have to talk French to do it, he understands English as well as I do. I’m a grown woman, not a child who mustn’t speak until spoken to. What’s wrong with me? This is downright silly.

But she continued to sit quietly, her back not touching the chair, her left hand in her lap at all times. Just as if she were a child on her best company behavior. Her mother’s presence was unseen, not even imagined, but Ellen Robillard O’Hara was there, in the house where she’d grown up, at the table where she had so often sat as Scarlett was sitting, with her left hand resting on the starched linen napkin across her lap. And, for love of her, for need of her approval, Scarlett was incapable of defying the tyranny of Pierre Robillard.

She sat for what seemed an eternity, watching Jerome’s stately slow service. Plates were replaced again and again by new plates, knives and forks by fresh knives and forks; it seemed to Scarlett that the feast would never end. Pierre Robillard consistently tasted and rejected each carefully selected and prepared dish that was offered him. By the time Jerome brought in the birthday cake, the tension and misery of Scarlett’s aunts was palpable, and Scarlett herself was barely able to sit still in her chair, so urgent was her longing to escape.

The cake was coated in glossy swirled meringue that had been sprinkled liberally with silver dragées. A silver filigreed bud vase on top held curling fronds of Angel Hair ferns and miniature silk flags of France, the Emperor Napoleon’s army, and the regiment in which Pierre Robillard had served. The old man grunted, perhaps with pleasure, when it was placed before him. He turned his hooded eyes on Scarlett. “Cut it,” he said in English.

He hopes I’ll knock over the flags, she thought, but I’m not going to give him that pleasure. As she accepted the cake knife from Jerome with her right hand, with her left she quickly lifted the shining bud vase from the cake and put it on the table. She looked directly into her grandfather’s eyes and smiled her sweetest smile.

His lips twitched.

“And did he eat it?” Scarlett asked dramatically. “He did not! The old horror managed to get no more than two crumbs on the tip of his fork—after he scraped off that beautiful meringue as if it was mold or something else horrible—and put them in his mouth like he was doing the biggest favor in the world. Then he said he was too tired to open his presents, and he went back to his room. I wanted to wring his scrawny neck!”

Maureen O’Hara rocked back and forth, laughing with delight.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Scarlett said. “He was mean and rude.” She was disappointed in Jamie’s wife. She’d expected sympathy, not amusement.

“But of course you see, Scarlett. It’s the roguishness of it all. Your poor old aunts plotting their hearts out to please him, and himself sitting in his nightshirt like a wee toothless babe, plotting against them. The old villain. I’ve always had a weak spot in my heart for the deviltry of a rascal. I can see him now, sniffing the dinner to come and making his plans.

“And don’t you know he’s got that man of his sneaking in all those wonderful dishes for him to eat his fill behind his closed door? The old rascal. It does make me laugh, the clever wickedness of him.” Maureen’s laughter was so contagious that Scarlett finally joined in. She’d done the right thing, coming to Maureen’s never-locked kitchen door after the disastrous birthday dinner.

“Let’s have our own piece of cake, then,” said Maureen comfortably. “You’re in practice, Scarlett, cut it for us; it’s under that towel there on the dresser. Cut some extra slices, too, the young ones will be home from school before long. I’ll be brewing some fresh tea.”

Scarlett had just seated herself near the fire with cup and plate when the door flew open with a bang and five young O’Haras invaded the quiet kitchen. She recognized Maureen’s redhaired daughters Mary Kate and Helen. The little boy, she soon learned, was Michael O’Hara; the two younger girls were his sisters Clare and Peg. All of them had dark curly hair that needed combing, darklashed blue eyes, and grubby little hands that Maureen told them to wash at once.

“But we don’t need clean hands,” Michael argued, “we’re going to the cowshed to play with the pigs.”

“Pigs live in the pigpen,” said tiny Peg with a self-important air. “Don’t they, Maureen?”

Scarlett was shocked. In her world, children never called adults by their first name. But Maureen seemed to find it nothing out of the ordinary. “They live in the pigpen if no one lets them out,” she said with a wink. “You weren’t thinking of taking the piglets out of the pen to play with, now, were you?”

Michael and his sisters laughed as if Maureen’s joke was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Then they ran through the kitchen to the back door that led into a large yard shared by all the houses.

Scarlett’s eyes took in the glowing coals on the hearth, the shiny copper of the tea kettle on the crane, and the pans hanging above the mantel. Funny, she’d thought she would never set foot in a kitchen again once the bad days at Tara were over. But this was different. It was a place to live, a happy place to be, not just the room where food was prepared and dishes washed. She wished she could stay. The static beauty of her grandfather’s drawing room made her shiver inside when she thought of it.

But she belonged in a drawing room, not a kitchen. She was a lady, accustomed to servants and luxury. She drained her cup hurriedly and put it down in its saucer. “You’ve saved my life, Maureen, I thought I’d go crazy if I had to stay with my aunts. But I’ve really got to go back now.”