Wild Rose (33 page)

Mrs. Emery said, as she grunted away at the mangle’s handle, “Heard the noise last night, did you?” For a second Sophie couldn’t think what she meant. “That one is heading for trouble,” she went on, pausing to push her hair back from her face and to straighten her glasses, pushed crooked by her efforts. “I heard there’s talk of running her out of town.”

“What?” Sophie said. “Is that legal?” And then laughed, a quick, sharp sound.

“The Mounties will send her away quick enough if she upsets things too much.”

“Where would she go?” Sophie wondered aloud, thinking back east? Into the United States?

Mrs. Emery said, “To the next town, I reckon. Maybe to a city. Calgary, maybe.”

“Such a hard life,” Sophie grunted. “Always on the move. My turn.” They switched places, Sophie beginning to turn the mangle’s crank.

“She’ll be lucky if something worse don’t happen,” Mrs. Emery said darkly, grunting.

“What?”

“Burn her out,” Mrs. Emery said. “I’ve heard of it done. Them kind, you don’t want them in your town. They attract the wrong kinda people. So bad for the children.” At which Sophie had to restrain herself from laughing. As if anyone even noticed what the village children, few as they were, saw or knew. She thought ruefully of her days on the homestead, cooking meals for Pierre, making biscuits for him and carrying them out to the field where he laboured, resting with him in the shade of the binder or the plow while he ate and Charles played nearby. What an innocent I was, she thought. To live in such happy peace and only a few miles away the world was busy with its mischief. And I knew nothing of it.

Over the last few days Mrs. Emery’s rheumatism had been acting up and, after they had finished cooking and serving the noon meal, Sophie saw how reluctantly she took money from the coffee can in which she kept it to go buy yeast for the bread making that would begin the next morning early. She insisted instead that she would go.

“You rest,” Sophie told her, although she hated going into the general store, feeling that everyone stared at her and whispered about her as soon as she was out of hearing, and sometimes before. Maybe today they would have the party to think about and her own shame would seem too mild to remember.

Before she left the house, she put Charles down for his nap, and for once he had fallen quickly into sleep. She glanced in the mirror, rearranged some of her hair pins to catch the long ends that had come down during her morning’s exertions, untied her apron and placed it neatly over a chair back, and went quickly down the stairs and out onto the street.

In a hurry, but afraid of turning an ankle, she kept her eyes on the rough patch of dried mud she had to cross to reach the main street then, without raising them, stepped up onto the boardwalk, almost colliding with a woman, who, she saw as she drew back, apologizing, “I’m so sorry,” was Mrs. Archibald. A few steps behind her a thin young girl of perhaps fifteen in a pretty but badly-fitting dress stood, her hand over her mouth as if to suppress a giggle.

“No harm was done,” the older woman said, pleasantly enough. “Fortunately, I saw you coming. It’s Mrs. Hippolyte, isn’t it?” She gave the name its proper French pronunciation.

“Yes, I am Mrs. Hippolyte,” Sophie replied, then, recovering, “How nice to see you, Mrs. Archibald.”

“I hope you are well,” Mrs. Archibald said, “And not working too hard – there,” glancing in the direction of the boarding house. Sophie knowing by the glance that Mr. Archibald had told her of Sophie’s near-refusal to be her maid, deflected by Mr. Archibald’s decision that Sophie’s child made such a role impossible. How far she had fallen, to be so patronized.

“Mrs. Emery and I share the work,” Sophie said. “I hope that you are well.”

“Oh, I am,” Mrs. Archibald replied. “This is my new…helper…Lily. Say hello Lily.” Lily, admonished, dropped her hand from her mouth, nodded shortly at Sophie, muttering a greeting. Far too nervous, Sophie noted, and wasn’t that a bruise on her forearm, just below the ruffled pink sleeve of the dress that might have been charming on Mrs. Archibald, but on Lily was clumsy, calling attention to some quality in her that utterly refused the pinkness and the ruffles? And a certain – for want of a better term – deviousness in the way she couldn’t seem to meet Sophie’s eyes?

“We must go on,” Mrs. Archibald said to the air over Sophie’s shoulder. “When I’m well enough, I enjoy a short walk, but I must say that even though it is fall, I find the sun too hot.” Without looking directly at Sophie again, murmuring, “Good afternoon,” she walked on past her, Lily following, with that same half-amused, half-anxious expression on her face, as if she couldn’t quite believe where she had found herself, and couldn’t decide whether she liked it or not. But Sophie was in too big a hurry to consider this, and several days would pass before she even thought to mention the encounter to Mrs. Emery. Mrs. Emery though, already knew about the girl Mr. Archibald had found to help his wife.

“Some old farmer passing through looking for land left her behind,” she would say. “Said she was no good for work, and he’d had enough of her. Even though she was his daughter,” this last indignantly. “I would have taken her, but –” meaning that with Sophie there was no room left for the girl. Or possibly, that, sizing her up, she had concluded as Sophie had, that the girl might be more trouble than she was worth, despite her obvious need for rescue. “Oh, you know, Sophie,” Mrs. Emery would tell her, “It was more than him beating her, I hear. People talk.” This last a phrase she often used to explain where she picked up information.

Sophie hurried on to the general store, seeing no one else, and was greatly relieved to find herself the only customer, bought the yeast cakes quickly, and scurried back to the boarding house as if she were a fugitive. She was out of breath as she opened the door, and had been clasping her hands so tightly as she rushed through the town, that when she took the yeast cakes out of her bag, discovered that she had cut small crescents into her own palms with her nails. Gazing at them, she felt nauseous. She could not live like this, although what precisely she meant, wasn’t clear even to her. No, she told herself. She must find a way out of this boarding house, and then, out of this town. She must. She would.

She had at last found an island of privacy. The first time, not long after she had come to the boarding house in August, had been an impulse, that quickly grew to a habit and then to a need. Every evening, sometimes as late as nine, but the second Charles was safely asleep, regardless of how exhausted she was, she left the house to go walking on the prairie. Sometimes she was gone only half an hour, once nearly two hours, but usually an hour was sufficient before her fatigue, so deep that she couldn’t sleep, at last passed into something more natural, allowed her muscles to loosen and begin to ache, then her eyes become heavy with the need for sleep that took her back to the boarding house and her bed. She was sure she’d never been so tired on the homestead. Or was it only that she shared it with Pierre? That they helped each other and understood that their labours that so tired them would one day transform their world into prosperity?

She had walked out of a stuffy prison replete with the odours of stale cooked food, of coal fires, and carbolic cleaning fluids, into a fresh, free one. And calm rose from the land itself that as she walked, seeped into her too. If it was still early, the little prairie birds would rise away from her to skim the grass, whistling their delicate songs, so that, listening to them, for a little while she could forget her plight. Even the howling of wolves and coyotes far out on the darkening plain failed to deter her. She walked on a line parallel to the town, able all the time to see its few lights shining through windows and screened doors, but far enough back to be lost in the shadows herself, taking pleasure in knowing the villagers couldn’t see her. She walked slowly, breathing in the fragrance of the grasses, feeling them prickling her stocking-clad ankles, and welcoming the slight give of the earth underfoot. She stayed away from the pile of bones, feeling still that something emanated from it that was not benevolent, and never failed to wish someone would haul them away.

She paused often, to stand motionless, feeling the warmth or the coolness of the night air on her skin, listening to the wind soughing through the grass, or coyotes or wolves calling in the distance, sometimes a nighthawk softly whooping. More than once she had known an animal was nearby, heard it scurrying away in the grass, or the soft pat of its rapid footfalls as it retreated from her. Then, slowly, as she walked, stood, breathed in deeply, her muscles unclenching themselves, she would begin to remember what it was to be herself, grateful that she could still find that place where she recognized who she had always been. After that, she would feel able to return to the village and the boarding house, and her servitude there.

Yet the problem remained: How would she provide for herself and Charles? All the ideas would present themselves to her once again, beginning with a job elsewhere, running through trying to buy the boarding house, and ending with the one she found the most difficult of all – starting a café. During the day, whenever it crossed her mind, she would move to another job to distract herself from it. She would think about it later, but when she fell into bed after her walk, she dropped instantly into a deep sleep, too exhausted even to dream. Sometimes on her evening walks, though, she would imagine her café as already accomplished, a large, brightly-lit room with white-painted walls, rich, dark wood trim, pale rugs on the floors, flowers on the tables, and the steady murmur of voices of her well-dressed patrons, this latter always breaking into her imagining, making her laugh at herself.

Another two weeks passed and September had come and was gone, and although the October days remained clear and warm, the evenings had begun to be chilly enough that she had to wear a shawl on her evenings walks. One evening just as she was about to turn back for Mrs. Emery’s house, she heard hoofbeats coming from the west through the falling dusk. She looked nervously over her shoulder and quickened her steps toward town. Almost at once a horse and rider emerged, throwing aside the shadows like a cloak being left behind. The rider pulled up his horse alongside her, laughing, and saying, “You gave me a turn, Mrs. Hippolyte. I almost ran you down.” Although she couldn’t make out his features, she knew by his voice it was Harry Adamson. As he spoke he dismounted, and holding the horse by the bridle, he pulled it around so that its hind quarters were facing the village and she could stand where she was in safety from any errant impulse the horse, intent on the barn and feed and water, might have.

He leaned toward her in the dusk, the horse’s head silhouetted against the glowing sky just behind and above his right shoulder, and she caught the horse’s smell of grass and clean sweat, and then something that she recognized as Adamson’s perspiration. Rather than stepping back as she would surely have done in full daylight, she made no move, but pulling the shawl more tightly around her shoulders against the growing chill, looked into his face, which she could barely make out in the shadow, as he looked into hers.

“You did startle me,” she said, her voice softer than she had meant it to be.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Neither spoke for a second until Sophie said, “I was going back.”

“I’m glad to see you,” as if she hadn’t spoken.

“We should – walk – someone might see us.”

“No one can see us in this poor light,” he told her. He moved a step closer to her, until she could feel the faint warmth radiating from his body, and smell the dust in his clothes, and grease from working with machinery. He had taken off his hat; now he lifted it to shoulder height, which was where her head reached, and turned it to use as a screen as he bent to brush her lips softly with his. She had wished to resist, had thought that she should have known such a thing would happen, but when it did, his lips gentle against her mouth, instead she found herself responding, and raised her right hand to touch the rough cotton of his shirt where it lay against his chest.

He stepped back, she lowered her hand, and he his hat. He said, “I am – I…”

“No,” she said. “I…”

“I think maybe –” he said, “That – both of us…”

“We have…” They laughed into each other’s faces, and she thought with a pang, followed just as quickly by one of anger, of Pierre.

“Let’s walk,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, realizing how coquettish she sounded, and wishing perhaps she hadn’t, although her choice of tone had been deliberate, just as her lack of resistance to that unseemly kiss must have been – mustn’t it?

But he walked her back only part-way, leaving her at the point where any villager gazing out a window to the west would have been able to make out who the two figures walking with the horse were. He said, glancing over his shoulder to the village and back at her, “I’ll leave you here. Good night.” She replied only, “Good night, Mr. Adamson.” And he, “You might call me Harry when we’re alone out here.” And she, “Please call me Sophie.” But he didn’t answer her, and had soon become only a moving shadow, circling to reach his house from the south, until even it melded with the night, and she was alone.

After she had undressed, bathed sketchily in the basin of water she had heated in the kitchen and brought up to her room, and climbed into bed beside her child, she found that sleep wouldn’t come. She had responded to a man, more, she hoped, than he knew – her entire body had responded to him, her reaction taking her by surprise and upsetting the equilibrium she sought that took her out onto the land in the first place. She and Pierre had had an intense physical relationship and in her anger and her pain at his rejection she had thrust away any memories of it, all desire – or so she thought – murdered by the violence of his actions.
I am still a woman
, she whispered to herself,
my body remembers it all
. It occurred to her then that if she couldn’t marry again, and Pierre never returned to her, she would have to do without this thing between men and women. For the rest of her life. But she was still young, she thought, it isn’t fair. There was no answer for that, no one to beg mercy of, no way around this that she could see. While one half cursed herself for responding to Adamson, the other half was filled with desire that would not be stifled.