Wild Rose (42 page)

She was wakened one night from the shallow sleep of the truly exhausted by the noise of pounding on her door. Without pausing to light a lamp, she stumbled from her bed into the other room, where the few cracks in the cook stove let flickers of light into the room, lifted the curtain, and peered out to see
a bulky male figure swathed in a buffalo coat and hat with low
ered earflaps, raising his fist to pound again, then falling into one of the snowbanks piled at each side of the door. She could hear his curses clearly through the thin wall as he fell, then struggled to push himself back onto his feet, and raised his fist to pound again. She had dropped the bar Harry had built for her before she went to bed, and now she wondered if she should get his hammer and nails to secure the window, then
realized that he had only to raise his fist to break the frost-covered
glass if he really wanted in.

But even as she debated, not really afraid, the drunk gave up and crunched and squeaked his way, falling and pushing himself up again, back down the icy sidewalk in the general direction of the other end of town. She supposed he wanted a meal – she hoped that was all he wanted – and hoped also that someone would let him in before he froze to death. Then it occurred to her that he was almost certainly going to Adelaide Smith’s house, where he had probably gotten drunk in the first place. Maybe he had gone outside to relieve himself, and his drunken condition confused his directions, and had been pounding on her door thinking it was Mrs. Smith’s.

Other than the drunk, no one else had bothered her, and with her business’s success, she soon began sleeping well at night, rising only to add a lump of coal or more wood to the fire, and at once falling back into sleep.

~

She was just emerging from the back room
carrying potatoes in her apron, when the door opened, letting in a wash of freezing air that swept through the main room and penetrated even into the bedroom. A male voice, which Sophie recognized at once as Constable Lewis’s, boomed, “Any grub in here? I’m a starving man.” Her other guests offered greetings, and one of the men, too loudly for the small space, said, “Shut the door, Constable. You’re freezing us.” Another said, “It’s so cold out there I do believe hell has frozen over,” causing everyone to laugh, as if the sally had never before been dreamt of, much less offered. Having been one herself, she was sympathetic to these homesteaders, who alone so much, when they met in groups, were infected with a giddiness that made the slightest attempt at humour seem hilarious to them. Or was it that their lives were so hard that they grasped at relief as a drowning man clutches a straw? She had seen a female homesteader break into tears when it was time to leave this tiny café to start the long, cold journey back into solitude.

“Yes, indeed, Constable,” she said, referring to his request for grub, and putting a lilt into her voice.”Today it is roast beef –
for a change!” Everyone laughed again, because it was always roast beef, unless it was stew, or except on the rare occasion when someone would sell her either a pair of live chickens, or a jar or two of home-canned chicken.

She didn’t like that look that passed between Mrs. Hartshorne and Mrs. Murphy, when the Constable entered. It was because the Constable, who had only recently replaced the bad-tempered Constable McMann, was single, handsome, and a known ladies’ man. She felt a small, unpleasant shock, that even in her own house she couldn’t behave as she chose without people watching her and telling others what they had seen. This was followed by a twinge of anger, quickly suppressed.

Her seven customers had turned back to their heaped dinner plates and the Mountie sat at the one with only three people. The conversation fell back to a normal level as Sophie served his plate and set it in front of him from across the table, thus avoiding getting too close to him, giving him a quick, imper
sonal smile as he lifted his head to thank her, turning back to the stove at once. She concentrated on her work, re-filling the kettle, pulling it forward where the heat was the most intense. In that small space it wasn’t easy to avoid passing by him too closely, but she did her best, wanting to avoid the rush of feeling that came over her if she caught his tobacco smell, or the pomade he put in his hair, or whatever it was that emanated from him as a male that was less easily named. Sometimes in the night she twisted in her bed, and groaned aloud with longing, and was shamed by this. Always, Pierre came first into her mind at such moments, and then Harry Adamson.

Lewis was probably looking for a bride, but surely he knew she couldn’t marry, so there could be only the one reason for his so far fairly inoffensive pursuit of her. She felt no attraction to him beyond that not so nebulous desire, and so avoided him even as she smiled at him, and used that lilt in her voice that seemed to charm all the men so that they would come back, a lilt that spoke of femininity without complexity, of angelic good nature, of a desire to please.
I have to survive
, she told herself, and if
le bon Dieu
gave her a pretty face, she would make good use of it. She knew there was a place where she was ashamed of this, but she did her best never to look at it.

It was her few women customers who brightened her days, people she could talk to rather than listen only, who understood how hard she worked, and what she suffered. But there was no denying that the men had the more interesting conversations, and it was from them that she began to learn something about the very world in which she had lived with Pierre for four
years in isolation on the homestead. The men who passed through the town even during the worst months of the winter came to consider whether Bone Pile would be a good place to start a business, but went away again quickly when they discovered that no one expected the railway to reach the town for another year or two. Most of them, though, were looking for land to buy, in order to sell it again for profit when the time was ripe. She had even heard that a few were intent on getting together blocks of land so as to be able to drive up the price of any quarter. She supposed that Walter Campion would be one of those. She had heard too that they were all of the opinion that the railway and the Hudson Bay Company both owned far too much
land and were setting too high a price on it, unimproved as it was, and that no matter what scheme they tried, the sections set aside for schools, whether used or not, were untouchable. It hadn’t occurred to her that one might complain about government decisions. But who was government, she asked herself, but men – and men who had never been West themselves, although there was the Territorial Council, she now knew, but had no clear idea of what they did, beyond what she overheard in her café.

And yet, she would remember how it was on the prairie, the distinctive, faintly peppery smell of it, how the long grasses whispered and rustled in the steady wind, and then the perfect stillness of the early morning and the evenings when the only sound was the birds calling so sweetly to one another, as if it was their work to pull down the curtain on the day. How often she and Pierre paused to search the infinite layers of sky, looking there for what they did not know, how it vaulted over them, without beginning or end, yet reassuring in its constancy. They lived their lives only from sun up to sunset and from one day of work to the next, most day-night cycles punctuated by the indelible passion of their bed, yet their eyes always fixed on their goal of some day being the sole owners of a profitable farm. More than once when no one was around, she had wept and wailed aloud for all that she had lost, even as another part of her scolded that such emotion, left over from her childish years in the French village she’d come from, was a luxury she couldn’t allow herself.

Now she listened carefully, trying to understand the ways in which the things she heard from the men in her café might be applied to enhance her own situation. She began to feel in some obscure way that she had an entire part of herself – of her mind, and maybe even her heart – that had never been opened and that she was slowly, carefully prying open that closed door, affording her a glimpse of a wider world beyond even the bold act of coming West, or of some other dimension that was also filled with possibilities.

Glancing over her shoulder as she poured hot water into the empty roasting pan, she saw that her customers were ready for their dessert. Hurriedly she gathered their soiled plates, stacking them in the small space under the cabinet to the left of the sink, and rushed into the back room to bring back Saskatoon pies. She cut them rapidly, put the slices on plates, and began handing them around.

“You need a bigger place, Mrs. Hippolyte,” Mrs. Hartshorne declared, frowning when Sophie bumped the arm of one of the bulkier of the men, who had to bend to retrieve a fork that had fallen from the last plate she was now lifting.

“Or some help,” Mrs. Murphy offered comfortably, as if didn’t
they all need more help and wasn’t such a thing never available?

The itinerant farrier and the silent woman who travelled with him who looked to Sophie to be Indian, were pushing back their chairs. She dried her hands on her apron, and went to her cash box in the bedroom, into which she dropped the coins the farrier had left. Every afternoon she took any profit to Frank Archibald who kept it for her in his safe, the best she could do until a bank came to town. Next, Jake Ambrose rose, the livery barn owner, the scent of horse wafting from him, borne to her on the freezing draught from the departure of the farrier and his woman. Then two men, strangers to her, speculators, she guessed, rose to go.

As she squeezed back again, the space not so tight now that five places had been emptied, she glanced quickly at Constable Lewis’s plate. Was she mistaken or was he eating unusually slowly? But then the two farmers’ wives began to stir as if they were getting ready to leave. Hastily, not wanting to be left alone with the Constable, she said, “Ladies! Allow me to offer you another pot of tea.” The two women, flustered by the unexpected suggestion, looked at each other, smiled, and awkwardly reseated themselves. As Sophie brought the teapot to the stove to refill it, she noticed the Constable’s moustache twitching. He began to wield his fork with more speed. “Do have more pie,” she said sweetly to the women, at which point Constable Lewis stood noisily, threw coins onto the table by his plate, and went to the door.

“Constable, no tea?” she asked.

“I have no time for tea today,” he said, clamping his hat onto his smooth black hair, and went out without another word, closing the door unnecessarily loudly, causing the two female customers to stare at it.

“Why Mrs. Hippolyte,” Mrs. Hartshorne said daringly, “I do believe the Constable wanted you all to himself!”

“He will have to try harder than that,” she told them gayly, rushing to set the pie on the table along with a serving tool.

“At least he ain’t a married man,” Mrs. Murphy said, waiting her turn for the pie.

“I hear he has other vices,” Sophie said. “They say he –” she twisted her torso away from the dish pan to whisper the word over her shoulder, “gambles.”

“No!” Mrs. Hartshorne declared. “Such a terrible vice that one be. You are better off without him, my dear,” she added, popping a forkful of pie into her mouth.

“Better off without a husband at all,” Mrs. Murphy said. “Baby followin’ after baby.” Even from the other side of the table Sophie could feel Mrs. Hartshorne’s disapproval of this comment.

Mrs. Hartshorne inquired, “Have you seen the woman yet?”

“Which woman?” Sophie asked.

“Calls herself Mrs. Smith.”

“I passed her on the street once,” Sophie said. “She’s not very friendly.”

“Hah,” Mrs. Hartshorne declared. “She is too friendly for anyone’s good.” Mrs. Murphy put her hand over her mouth to hide her laugh. She said, “Talk is that that Reverend Mr. Oswald that comes through now and again? Gives a service in Mrs. Archibald’s parlour until he raises enough money to get a church built? Talk is he will drive the hussy out of town.” The only sound was Mrs. Hartshorne sipping her tea. “Of course, he is a Methodist,” Mrs. Murphy added. “I am Presbyterian myself.”

“Well, you must know, Mrs. Hippolyte,” said Mrs. Hartshorne, “about the girl Lily.” Sophie nodded. “That woman promised her fancy dresses, some money of her own in her pocket, a little fun. What kind of fun do most girls get out here? It’s just work and more work.”

“She’s ruined,” Mrs. Murphy said, comfortably. “No decent man would have her now.”

“I heard,” Mrs. Hartshorne told them, lowering her voice, “That Mrs. Oswald and Mrs. Archibald went over to see Mrs. Smith.”

“Whatever for?” Mrs. Murphy asked.

“Hard to say, but I think maybe to try to get Lily back?”

“You’d think all that would be Constable Lewis’s job.”

“If you ask me,” Mrs. Murphy said, colour rising in her cheeks, “That Constable Lewis is a little too friendly with that Adelaide Smith himself.” Mrs. Hartshorne gasped.

“They should of taken Mr. Oswald,” she said firmly. “He’d of set them two straight.”

Sophie couldn’t stop herself from asking, “So what happened?”

“All I know is that they came back out again in a hurry, and they didn’t look none too happy.” Mrs. Murphy laughed out loud at this and Sophie, picturing it, would have too, except that she kept thinking about what Mrs. Emery had said might have happened to Lily, and found herself shuddering.

“They will find a way to remove her, I have no doubt,” Mrs. Murphy said. “This can’t go on. There are children here.”