Wild Rose (41 page)

Her ruminations were blotted out by the memory of the intense pleasure they had shared, the joy of it, and the – she knew no other word for it – the feel of the
rightness
of it. When Harry had helped her move the table from Mrs. Emery’s to his house, and then some of the pots and dishes she had managed to get together for her kitchen, they had walked briskly, not speaking or looking at each other, hadn’t touched hands or bumped shoulders, or made any attempt to steal so much as a kiss. She couldn’t have said why. Maybe it was only that now people were, indeed, watching, and both of them knew that to show the slightest sign of real interest in each other would confirm to the townspeople what was now only a suspicion.

She was scrubbing the floor when Mrs. Emery came into the kitchen. “Harry Adamson’s out front. Come to say good-bye.” Sophie dried her hands on her apron, untied it, threw it over a chairback, nervously patting her hair, and followed Mrs. Emery out to the street. Harry was seated on the wagon holding the reins but with both hands as if he meant to depart at once, but when he saw Sophie emerging from the house he tied them loosely and climbed down. She thought he seemed tense, there was a tamped-down eagerness in his eyes, as if he couldn’t wait to be off. It reminded her of Pierre; she had often seen that look in Pierre’s eyes, and had always glanced away from it.

“I’m dropping off my team and wagon at Williamson’s,” he told them. “They’ll look after ’em in return for using them now and then. I’ll catch the train at Swift Current.”

“How far you going?” Mrs. Emery asked.

“I hear there’s lots of work for a carpenter in Winnipeg. If I can’t find anything there, I’ll keep moving east.”

“I didn’t know you are a carpenter,”Sophie said, not quite meeting his eyes, although, perhaps she had known.

“A rough one,” he replied. “I knocked up a bar on the inside of the door of my house. Gives you a little protection. Woman alone…” He shrugged.

Sophie said, “But surely –”

“Too much drunkenness in town, Mrs. Hippolyte. I don’t like to say it, but there is, and with that house…” He tossed his head toward the end of town where the livery barn sat next to the new house with the askew windows. Mrs. Emery interrupted, “Now, don’t you worry none, Sophie. You can sleep nights with the door barred.”

“Thank you,” Sophie said, staring down at the boardwalk, her hands at her waist, primly clasped.

“There’s elements about these days. Social evils that seem to find us even out here.”

Sophie wondered what she was referring to, and where that expression ‘social evils’ had come from, but decided against asking. Drunkenness, she supposed. And ‘social evils’ from the preacher, Oswald. She didn’t know why exactly she’d taken a dislike to the preacher, wondered if it was only her Catholic sense of superiority to all such misguided upstarts who “invented their own religions,” as grandfather had once said, meaning that the Roman Catholic Church was the first and only true church. For the first time ever she found herself wondering if that was true. Of course it was true.

“I put my old hammer and some big nails on that shelf. You hear any trouble, you bar the door, then you pound those nails down into the window frame so the windows won’t open. You can pull ’em out later.”

He stood there, staring down at her, until Mrs. Emery said, “Well, Godspeed, Mr. Adamson. I must get back to my work.” She bustled back down her sidewalk and into her house. Neither Sophie nor Harry watched her go.

“If Hippolyte comes back…”

“I would not be afraid of him,” she said, surprised.

“You don’t know,” he told her. “Maybe he’d want money, or –”

“Have you heard something?”

“Not a word, but if I do on my travels, I’ll send a letter to Mrs. Emery.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And even if you don’t, please send us a letter so we’ll know you are all right. We’ll worry, otherwise.” She thought she detected a faint flush in his cheeks, and wanted to move close to him, to press her body against his, to have again what they had shared. She thought, too, she could feel his desire.

They stood looking into each other’s faces, until he murmured, “People are watching,” holding his head low so that she could barely hear him. Still, they stood.

“I will look after your house,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“I know you will.” Silence. “I have to get on my way or I won’t make it to Williamson’s before dark.” They both looked up at the sky, and then to the western horizon. A long, smoothly-rounded bank of pale grey cloud had settled there, motionless. “Snow coming,” he said.

“Au revoir
, Harry,” she whispered. “Until spring.”

“Until spring,” he said, climbing back onto his wagon. “Better get somebody to fix up the dirt banked around the house. I forgot about it. Floor will be too cold for the boy if you don’t.” She nodded, waited until he said, “Giddup,” and the team began to move away before she too, turned and went slowly back inside.

And yet, his departure failed to cause her much pain, because she began at once to plan establishing her business, a task that occupied her mind so fully that for long stretches of time she didn’t think of him at all. Evenings, after Charles was asleep, and as it grew too cold and the arrival of snow made walking on the prairie difficult, she would go to Harry’s house and scrub and clean, just as she had been doing all day, and try the furniture this way and dissatisfied, move it back again. She arranged the pots and pans, she played with Harry’s cook stove so she would
know exactly how to work it, and despite the expense, kept a fire burning in it at all times so that the house didn’t freeze so badly that it would take it several days to get warm again.

She discussed with Mr. Kaufmann, the storekeeper, where she might get supplies, swearing him to secrecy even as she knew that probably everyone in town knew exactly what she was up to. He ordered flour, sugar, coffee, tea and other staples for her, small quantities to get her started, since she hadn’t the money – until her business was actually running – for more than for the first couple of weeks. With the names he suggested to her in hand, she went to this neighbour and that, offering to buy home-canned foods – vegetables, canned beef and chicken – enough to get her started, and to hire small boys to take care of chopping her firewood and bringing in a regular supply of water. She made arrangements with the butcher for meat from a frozen beef carcass, and if there had been a baker, would have made arrangements there for bread, pies and cake. There being none, she added that task to her own load. Some day, I will be in a town where there is a baker and the baker will do the bread, buns, pies, cakes, puddings, and cookies for me, she vowed. Night after night she counted her pennies, figured ahead to costs she saw no way to meet unless her business actually began to bring in money, the business she couldn’t seem to get herself to start. When she wasn’t adding and subtracting, she was muttering over how she would price things, what was too much, what was not enough, what people could afford to pay.

The day came in mid-November, when the house was more than ready, and every item she owned except her and Charles’ night clothes were neatly stored in Harry’s bedroom. She had only to walk from Mrs. Emery’s house with Charles at her side, go inside, and close the door behind her. And yet she hesitated, and held off, and said to Mrs. Emery that she would move in the next day, it being such a cold night and besides, tomorrow was a bread-baking day and Mrs. Emery needed her. At last Mrs. Emery grasped her by the shoulders – they were facing each other in the kitchen, both of them still wearing their aprons, their day’s work finished – and forced a surprised Sophie into a chair.

“Now you listen to me,” she said. “I been watching you day by day for weeks now. You done everything to get that house right and ready, you got food, water, fuel, and I don’t know what all else and there ain’t nothing – nothing! – to keep you here in this house any longer. Tomorrow you go!” Sophie began to laugh and cry at the same time, digging in her apron pocket for a handkerchief, her nose running.

“I’m afraid,” she gasped, finally.

“Don’t you think I know it? That’s why I’m after you,” Mrs. Emery said, her tone exasperated, but with something less harsh under it. “After breakfast tomorrow I am walking you over there, and then I’m going down to the Kaufmann’s and every other store on main street and I’m telling them you’re business is open. You hear me? By noon tomorrow you’ll be cooking for ten.”

Mrs. Emery made two more trips over to Adamson’s house the following morning, once carrying two loaves of bread she insisted Sophie take, and the second time, two pies. After she was gone the last time Sophie found five dollars on the counter as well and would have run after Charlotte, but thinking, surely I have earned five dollars above room and board for Charles and myself, stopped herself. As she gathered the coins though, she remembered taking money from Frank Archibald and from Harry that first day in town, how she had suffered over it, and thought of giving it back – giving it back! – when she was desperate and penniless and with a hungry child! Grimly she pocketed Mrs. Emery’s gift – What gift?
I have earned this a thousand times over
, and was only faintly ashamed at how hard she had become, knowing it was money Charlotte could barely afford.

By the time she had finished cooking, serving, and cleaning up after the noon meal for, not the predicted ten, but four curious townspeople and one stranger, she had to face the fact that she couldn’t keep Charles underfoot. She had spent the several hours stepping carefully past him as he sat on the floor playing with the wooden horses Monsieur Roche, long returned to Québec, had given him, and of which he never seemed to tire, especially since Sophie had made him a half-dozen paper men to ride them, while she rushed back and forth from stove to table or into the back room which she also used as storage. He would be stepped on, or fallen on, she would spill boiling water or hot grease on him when she was in a hurry, she would be too busy to notice when he got too close to the stove and he would be burned.

There was a Mrs. Wozny who, some weeks earlier, had come to the boarding house looking for work, and been turned away by Mrs. Emery who couldn’t afford to hire somebody for a wage. The woman’s husband had died, she’d left the homestead to her grown sons and moved into a shack hastily thrown up by them, and had at least six younger children with her who prevented her from moving into the boarding house as Sophie had, to be paid in room and board. Now she was taking in laundry and doing housework for Mrs. Archibald – whatever might bring in a few coins each day. She wasn’t an ideal caregiver for Charles: barely speaking English, uneducated, and staggering already under the burden of so many children. But it would be only over the noon hour, surely Sophie could counteract any bad influences during the much longer time she had with him, and when the weather was bad, her café would be empty, she could keep Charles with her and would save the day’s cost.

Mrs. Wozny had shown no sign of surprise when she opened the door to Sophie and when Sophie had made her inquiry, answered, “Fifteen cents a day.”

“Ten cents,” Sophie said, to which Mrs. Wozny replied, “Them older girls do it.”

“If the children care for him then it is worth only eight cents.” Mrs. Wozny was stirring a kettle on the stove, cabbage soup, judging by the smell, and at this she turned her head to look over her shoulder at Sophie. Sophie stared back, trying not to blink.

“We do it. Eight cents,” Mrs. Wozny agreed. “Start tomorrow. My girls help Mrs. Archibald today.” For a long second Sophie looked at the other woman, across the gulf that separated them, of background, of birth, of education, of customs.

“No,” she said, “I’m sorry. I will pay you ten cents a day.”

The winter began in earnest, snow piling up outside the door, and Sophie had to add a new expense, this one to pay her boys who brought her water and coal and chopped her wood, to shovel the walk and steps into the café. In the days since she had served her first noon meal for five, she had eight at the noon meal until everyone in town had satisfied his or her curiosity, after which attendance had dwindled enough that she had been terrified that she’d made a mistake. The spectre of moving back into Mrs. Emery’s stared at her, this time without the twenty-five dollars. Then, slowly, the business began to grow again as more people from elsewhere heard about it. Since then she had never had fewer than two, and had finally instituted two sittings at noon because she couldn’t accommodate more than eight at a time and often had ten looking for a meal then.

Even as she smiled, and dropped the occasional remark into the conversation, she was calculating. Noons, charging forty cents a plate including coffee, she averaged around four dollars. Morning tea or coffee, and cake or pie, sometimes brought in as much as two dollars and afternoon tea did better. She served an evening meal only for those who had nowhere else to go. On her best days, she brought in ten to twelve dollars. Even with all the worrisome expenses involved, she calculated that by spring if all continued to go well, she would have perhaps a hundred dollars put away, if she was lucky, a little more. But wait, out of that she had to pay Harry Adamson rent, surely not more than five dollars a month. It was a shack, after all, not a proper house. When she thought that Mrs. Emery had practically to push her out the door before she could find the courage to take this step, she had to laugh. Never again, she told herself, as she lay exhausted in Harry’s bed at night, would she be so unsure of her own judgement. Then, thinking of Pierre, who was never far from her mind, she qualified: at least, not when it comes to business.