Wild Rose (38 page)

Women had come, the wives of neighbours, and
la sœur Marie-Joseph
to take charge, and they had relieved Sophie and grandmother of the necessity of washing the body. She remembered she had been surprised that grandmother had not insisted, how instead, seemed to have felt it a reprieve not to have to do a task that seemed, ever so faintly to Sophie, to revile her. For herself, she felt only fear at the idea of washing grandfather’s cold, stiff limbs. But she wondered then if grandmother and grandfather had ever loved each other as she and Pierre did, tried to picture them as a newly-married couple. She thought, if I were to marry that Chouinard, this too, is how it would end. Her rebellion, for that brief moment, seemed fully justified.

When morning came, the house began to fill with grandfather’s business acquaintances and his friends as well as all their many relatives, people whom they rarely saw otherwise, as well as the store clerks, and the leading citizens. Food appeared on the doorstep and through the backdoor into the kitchen. If grandmother noticed, she said nothing, not even her usual curse,
We are not peasants!
Every now and then
M. le curé
led all of them in prayer. She would remember after how it was that she had moved about like an old woman, her every step hurting her, as if she were recovering from a hard fall. At last, toward evening, the Hippolyte family arrived, Pierre included. By then the room upstairs where grandfather’s body lay was crowded with people, grandmother in a fresh black gown sitting in silence beside him, and people went up and down the stairs speaking, pausing only to cross themselves, as they did so. Madame and Monsieur Hippolyte had gone up the stairs and the girls had gone to help with the food in the kitchen, the three other brothers were outside on the grass where
habitants
were smoking their pipes and speaking soberly to one another.

“What will happen now?” Pierre asked her, having found her alone in the sitting room across from the
salon
where the senior relatives were perched on the hard furniture in stiff silence, as Antoinette served them tea, the women dabbing at their eyes now and then with thin hands holding lace handkerchiefs. “How pale you are. How cold your hands…”

“The funeral…” she said, aware how high and thin her voice sounded, not her own voice at all. “He will go into the graveyard…” She almost began to cry again at this, but managed to stop herself. The brandy, hours ago, had flushed her body with an unwelcome, cloying heat, then she had grown sleepy and for half an hour, as surely the doctor had meant her to do, had drifted in and out of consciousness, then had wakened again and ever since had felt dry-mouthed, her brain bathed by a faint, steady ache.

It was then that it struck her how hard it would be to live in this house without grandfather, even though it occurred to her now that she didn’t think that what she felt for him was exactly love – when had he ever been close enough to her for her to feel anything but his authority, his innately gentle but wholly interior nature – he who had controlled grandmother’s worst instincts whenever he noticed them at work, he who provided an anchor for them all. And the business, who now would run it? It struck her then that grandmother would not let her go to Montréal, that she would have to stay all the long winter, alone with her.

Pierre held her hand, he gazed into her eyes, she could see how he wanted to hold her and kiss her as he kissed her in the garden in the middle of the night when there was no one to know or to see. She was filled with distaste for this in him, wondered how he could even feel such emotions for her in her presence at such a
moment, when she had just lost her grandfather who had been a part of her life ever since she could remember, whether there had been love or not on either side. What seared inside her and would not go away or stop was the suddenness of it, the relentlessness of it, the world thrown utterly into disarray. Pierre’s kisses would bring no comfort, belonged in some other part of life, were at such a moment blasphemous. What was it she needed now? It was to have things, as unsatisfactory as they were, to go back to that way.

But he did not speak of their plan to marry, nor mention his rival,
that Chouinard
, spoken by both of them with such disdain
as if the actually worthy suitor was no better than a hardened criminal. In years to come Sophie would laugh uncomfortably about this. Pierre went away with his family finally, not seeking her out again, nor trying to speak alone with her. Later, remembering her anger at his wanting to kiss her, and then how well he had behaved at the end – although that too had angered her – she could only press her lips together and shake her head at her own young girl’s confusion at this sudden death and all that it threw into doubt.

Guillaume came from Montréal as soon as he could, not waiting for the train that did not run until a day later, mud-splattered, exhausted, and without his young wife Claire who was too near giving birth to make so rough and fast a trip. Hector would follow later, he told them, but by the way grandmother had turned away, Sophie knew that Hector would not come at all, although she didn’t know why not. At this, she wanted to hold her head in her hands: Secrets! No more secrets, please God.

The funeral, the burial in the stone-walled graveyard far from his younger brother’s grave in the field, the reading of the will, the hastiness about the store which, grandfather had written must now be sold, Guillaume and
le notaire
in constant, steady conversation, Guillaume’s anxiety to return to his wife and the child who might even now be born, Sophie herself thrust into the job of managing the household with the help of Antoinette and Mme Gauthier, waiting patiently for the moment to ask Guillaume to take her home with him immediately. Pierre was always on her mind, but they had made an agreement: she would go to Montréal for the winter, he would go into the woods to earn money. In the spring they would be married, the thought bringing now no glee, no emotion at all. He didn’t come for three days, and she oscillated between dying for the sight of him, for the sound of his voice, and being glad he wasn’t there as one more thing she would have to manage when she was already managing so much, and filled with grief, and anger, and sorrow, underneath which ran in cold silence, an undercurrent of sheer terror.

At last only two days were left before Guillaume was to leave, the notary had departed to draw up documents, to advertise for the sale of
Charron frères
, the doctor off to care for other patients, the relatives gone away to tend to their farms and businesses wherever they might be, or in one or two surprising cases, to collect the rent from
les habitants
who occupied what had once been their
seigneury
. Grandmother now spent hours in the bedroom she had for fifty years shared with grandfather, emerging only for daily mass and to visit the kitchen where she seemed about to give orders, but never did, save to demand tea. She didn’t speak to Sophie, nor look at her, communicating only with a gesture, her eyes turned to some distant, hard place. Sometimes, it seemed to Sophie, her eyes took on a confused look, they would move about the room slowly, as if she were trying to orient herself, before, gradually, they returned to that new darkness.

Sophie had been waiting on the stairs for over an hour, when Guillaume, who had been gone nearly all day, where she didn’t know, opened the front door. It took him a second, in the gloom, to notice her on the stairs, and he appeared at first startled before he made out that it was his younger sister.

“What are you doing sitting there in the dark?” he said, as if he had spoken reflexively, his mind elsewhere. He was taking off his hat, resting his gloves inside it, setting the hat on the bench by the door. His movements were slow and deliberate as if thoughts fully occupied him so that he hardly noticed what he was doing. He was now the head of the family, only he could override grandmother’s wishes.

“You are too thin,” he said, as if much had been going through his mind concerning her and this emerged first.

“Take me with you. Please.” He put his arm around her shoulder, guiding her gently across the hall, into the parlour where he sat on the sofa, patting the spot beside him to indicate she should sit there too. She did as he asked, but as if in warning, told him in a rush, “I am going to marry Pierre Hippolyte in the spring. I will not marry M. Chouinard.” He raised an eyebrow, thoughtfully searched her face with his eyes, then looked away, across the room, holding still for a moment while she, in turn, held her breath. He breathed deeply in through his nostrils, turned back to her, this time resting his eyes on the sofa and not on her at all.

“Spring is too soon after grandfather’s death,” but he muttered, didn’t seem insistent, sighing instead.
“Ma chère petite sœur
, he is a poor choice.”

“Why?” she cried, loudly enough that he put a hand over her hand where it rested on her knee. She knew very well why he was a bad choice – he had no money, he had no land, she would have to learn to work. Anything better than this non-life, she thought, and then that she wouldn’t be alone anymore. “I
will
marry him; he loves me. “

“Yet you want to come to Montréal on Wednesday.” He seemed genuinely perplexed.

“We have plans, Guillaume,” she faltered. She told him how Pierre would earn money all winter in the woods, and not exactly meaning to, she told him also how she dreaded being alone with grandmother, how she didn’t want to marry without ever seeing Montréal. He smiled gently at her as if she were only six years old, “You, in the city,” he said, shaking his head. “But everyone knows country life is far better than city life.” Hadn’t she been hearing this since she was a child? The joys of the country; the cleanness of it; cities dirty and vice-ridden, full of the poor, of typhus and cholera and small pox…

“I don’t care!”

“You’re too young, too inexperienced in the world to know what is best,” he said, and now he was firm, frightening her just a little. “There is nothing for a young girl like you in the city. It isn’t safe.”

“But I have heard of girls from the farms who go to the city and do very well!” He shook his head, his mouth grim.

“You cannot imagine,” he said.

“They are free!” she cried, and was surprised at what had come out of her mouth. He stared at her, some small light dawning in his eyes, as if he was coming to understand something about her that hadn’t before occurred to him. But then he dropped his eyes and said, grimly, “Free to be abused, to take up drink, to…”

“I would never do that!”

“You do not know what you would do, or what might happen to you there.” But his voice had dropped, his words slowed at this last, as if he felt perhaps he had been arguing on the wrong tack, or that argument at all was useless.

Responding to his change in mood, she said, “But you and Claire would take me …about…wouldn’t you?” She faltered now, was trying not to let her tears fall. “I cannot stay here,” she told him, her voice low. “I would work,” she offered. “I would care for Claire and the baby –” He shook his head, no, speaking gently.

“You will have a better life here. And grandfather has left you a few
louis
. Not much, but a little money of your own so that you won’t be utterly dependant on our grandmother. Look about for a better husband. Don’t marry someone only to escape. You should consider André Chouinard. He is a pleasant young man, and he does very much want you.”

“But, it is Pierre whom I love!”

“Sophie, don’t marry that Pierre, no matter how handsome he is.” He smiled at that. “He is penniless and too fond of having a good time. I wouldn’t trust him with you.” Before she could speak, he went on in a more gentle tone. “There is land with Chouinard, his father has made some good investments, and André has some education. Is Pierre even able to read and write?”

“He is!” She declared, angry, although she had never seen this in practice.

“You have all this winter to think about things,” he said. “Don’t do anything hasty, Sophie, promise me.” She knew he was afraid she might run away with Pierre.

“Without grandfather I will be dead by spring if I stay in this house,” she said, petulant, so that he laughed. “I will not marry before spring,” she told him. Both of them knew very well that
l’abbé
Deschambeault would refuse to marry Sophie and Pierre, especially if Guillaume told him of his disapproval. She didn’t know what grandmother would do. Disinherit her, of course, but pooh on that.

“Sophie…” He paused again, before going on. “Dear to me though you are, I will not consent to your marriage to Pierre Hippolyte.” He paused. “Never, Sophie. I mean it. And if you are foolish enough to run away, I will see to it that you are brought back and the marriage annulled. Such a man will destroy your life. Believe me.”

She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t believe what her beloved brother had just said to her. He went on, “I will speak to Pierre Hippolyte myself, before I leave. There will be no marriage.”

But only days later, when the funeral was over, and grandfather lay in his grave in the cemetery, Sophie torn between continuing sorrow at his loss and happiness because tonight she would finally, once again, meet Pierre in the garden of her grandmother’s house, she was walking slowly on an errand for her grandmother to the store that had been theirs when she saw coming toward her, André Chouinard. Startled, she almost stopped and looked across the street in hope of rushing there before he saw her, but no, even as she considered an escape she realized that he had noticed her, that she wouldn’t be able to avoid him.