Wild Rose (50 page)

She did not know what to make of it. So hard a taskmaster, the church she was born into, full of the greatest of gifts, at the same time the harshest and most implacable of tyrants. Her great-uncle Henri’s grave all alone under the beech tree in a farmer’s field, forever denied the glory of the church to which, as far as she knew, he had been faithful.
It was a forced marriage
, she told herself angrily, then blew air out through her nose, because she had so wanted it and had acquiesced in it. Was she not now bound by it? And yet, all around her were people who lived as she did, no differently, no more sorrow than she had, who had never set foot inside a Roman Catholic Church. What was to be made of that? That all she had been taught was a lie? Foolishness?

But this line of thought frightened her so she forced it away to fix her mind on the immediate problem: Find a place to move to before Harry returned. But another, even more unwelcome thought intruded: that she had betrayed Charlotte. Her friend, in her true extremity of need had begged her for help, and she had refused. The woman who had taken her in when she was destitute, had no one to help her, and she with a small child. And yet Charlotte hadn’t said this to her, hadn’t accused her of hard-heartedness. Now she wondered why not: Because of course, nobody understood better than Charlotte Emery how hard it was for a woman in the West, and how if she were to survive without a man, she must harden her heart, set her eyes and her mind on her own survival.

But wait, she thought. Couldn’t there be some sort of compromise? She and Charles could move back into the boarding house and do the work for a while, just until Mrs. Emery found a buyer. She considered, dreading this solution with all her being. To fall backward into slavery: no, she couldn’t. She would bank on fortune saving her, that something would come along, quickly. If it didn’t, she could still change her mind.

But to refuse to help a friend in need! We even spent Christmas there at her house with the boarders who also had nowhere else to go. She gave Charles and me mittens she had knitted herself. With those fingers knotted with rheumatism. Then she thought, but I slaved from morning until night there for months, for no pay, just room and board. She took me in, yes, but she needed me as much as I needed her. Surely I owe her nothing. But she couldn’t convince herself of this, any more than she could convince herself to help Mrs. Emery by taking over her business.

A week passed in the same way as always, people coming and going, she cooking, taking Charles to Mrs. Wozny’s and bringing him back again, the extreme cold finally beginning to lift a little, people growing cheerier knowing winter would, after all, end. But with it came the worry again that soon Harry would be back and she still had no place to go. There was no help for it; she would have to take Mrs. Emery’s offer. With that realization, her stomach dropped, she had to sit down, a wave sweeping through her of such despair as she hadn’t known since the day she realized that Pierre had gone for good. She sat this way for a while, there being a lull between customers, and faced the fact that she had no alternative, none that she could live with, combined with her fear that once there, she would be unable to leave again, she would grow old in the service of that misbegotten house. She had a vision then, that one day the countryside, still largely empty, would be dotted with such monstrosities, the product of lies, vanity, and foolish dreams.

~

One afternoon she was wakened
from her usual short nap between cleaning her place from the lunch service and beginning preparations for the supper service by a steady rapping on her door. Rousing herself, she called, “Who is it?” and without waiting for an answer, “I’m coming.” When she opened the door a woman she knew only by name stood there wrapped in a heavy dark red mantel that she had pulled over her hair as well.

“May I come in?” She was shivering.

Sophie opened the door wide and stepped back. “By all means,” she said, puzzled. “I know you are Mrs. Roberts,” Sophie said.

“Yes, yes,” the woman said, as she unwrapped herself and stamped snow off her boots. “We have never been properly introduced, and I’m sorry to say I’ve never taken advantage of your hospitality.”

“Please, sit down,” Sophie said, pulling back a chair. “I’ll make us tea.”

“No, no, please don’t bother,” Mrs. Roberts said. “I know I’ve interrupted your rest period and I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’ve only a few minutes. I have a proposition.” Sophie simply stared at her. Mrs. Roberts laughed, embarrassed. “I am sorry to sound so mysterious. It is only that I have a house to rent and I would like a reliable, decent tenant…”

Sophie gasped, raising a hand to her throat, then quickly lowering it. “I’ve heard nothing of this,” she said, surprised. “What…house?”

“My father’s,” Mrs. Roberts replied. “Humphrey Gowland. Do you know of him?”

Everyone knew of him, in fact, although few any longer paid any attention at the mention of his name. He had been one of the first of North-West Mounted Police who had come West in 1874 and when he had mustered out, had taken his land grant and started a ranch. In no time at all he lost it through gambling and from then on had gone from one scandal to another, adding drinking and womanizing to his gambling addiction, until in his old age, ill and an alcoholic, he was reduced to bare existence in a shack in Bone Pile, with his widowed daughter living next door and bringing his meals to him.

“Oh, no,” Sophie said.

“Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Roberts replied. “He has died, and I want to rent his house while I decide what I must do next – after we bury him properly of course. Which can’t be until spring.” No explanation of this was required; Sophie knew the ground was frozen too hard for any burials until the spring thaw. “The Mountie has taken his…corpse…and stored it with another until then; in spring he will be buried in the Mounted Police cemetery at Garden City, and in the meantime, I have been cleaning and cleaning…” She swallowed, halting, as if she had at last run out of her admirable clarity and was overcome by all that had happened.

Sophie said, haltingly, “How very hard for you. I am so sorry. But…” She wasn’t sure how to carry on. Surely it was crass of her to simply declare she would rent the house when he had just died? And yet…

Mrs. Roberts appeared to have regained control. “Yes,” she said, crisply. “It is too bad. It is very sad. But” – here she paused, drew air in through her nostrils loudly, and went on. “But the house can’t be left empty. If mice and rats don’t move in, then some scallywag will and I’ll have to locate the Mountie to get him out again. I would be grateful if you and I could make a bargain – about rental, I mean. I need someone reliable and decent.”

“How did you know I was looking for a place?” Sophie asked.

“Mrs. Kaufmann told me.”

There was a brief silence, then Sophie said, “I would need to see it, I suppose.”

“We can see it right now if you wish,” Mrs. Roberts said.

She supposed that Mrs. Roberts would have made an effort to keep the shack from disintegrating, washing sheets with her own wash, she supposed, carrying over food on her own dishes and bringing them back to clean them. What was to be done with such men: Heroes in their day, losing it all as soon as their strength and prowess began to weaken, as if they had nothing else to live on but their daring, their fearlessness. She wanted to feel contempt, but what she really felt was instead a kind of wonder, that men could be so different from women, at least, she thought, not knowing whether she should laugh or not, Western men. It must be, she considered, that the men who came West are of a certain type, remembering old Sam Wetherell. Even Pierre… But look at Harry Adamson. But she would not. She would get to work with the moving, having already known that no matter how bad the Gowland shack was, she would take it. A little dirt did not frighten her. Mrs. Emery’s situation touched her, but
I must save myself, as she saved herself
, and tried to push out of her mind what she saw as her own selfishness.

Nevertheless, having inspected the Gowland shack and agreed to rent it, she went that evening with Charles to the Emery house, knocking loudly, but then entering without waiting for Charlotte to come to the door. She found her friend lying on the settee in her shabby
salon
that was also a common room for all her boarders, none of whom, thank heaven, were there this evening. Charles sat down on the rug and began to play with his wooden trains. Mrs. Emery’s eyes flew open when she realized she had a visitor, and widened when she perceived it was Sophie.

“Don’t move,” Sophie said, hastily. “I just thought I would drop by.” She realized then, by the alert expression on Charlotte’s features, Sophie thought that Charlotte was hoping she had come to say that she had decided to take her offer.

But Mrs. Emery made no comment about it, and said instead, “I’ve been hearing that your husband is in Garden City.”

“Where did you hear that? Sophie asked, drawing back, although of course she had heard it too, although it seemed to her that she had not, or that she had dreamt she had heard it.

“Light that lamp, will you?” Charlotte asked, pointing to her parlour kerosene lamp, its base painted with pink flowers that sat on the round oak table in the corner. Sophie did as she was asked and the three of them were bathed in its warm gold light, shadows seeming to grow from it in the corners of the room. It looked to Sophie as if all of it – the plain pump organ in the corner that nobody played, the faded, dark-framed pictures on the wall of no one she recognized, nor she supposed did Charlotte know them either they being relics of the rancher Quinn’s family, the porcelain knick-knacks crowding the dust-laden surfaces – all had been coated in aspic, that she was back in eastern Canada, about to sit with her grandmother to do the hated needlework.

Carefully, Charlotte worked herself to a sitting position. Charles made roaring noises on the threadbare carpet with his train, thumping it down once or twice. She thought how he had never seen a train; was there one in one of his picture books? She sat in an armchair, awkward because the springs were gone and she sank farther than she had expected. Recovering herself, she remarked, “The days are lengthening at last.”

“Can’t come soon enough,” Charlotte grunted.

“Have you found anybody to buy your house?” A red-streaked sky could be made out through the sheer curtains, a last reflection of the sunset behind the house.

“I did what I had to do,” Charlotte answered. For a long moment Sophie was silent.

“What was that?” she asked, finally. Charlotte raised her head, appeared to be staring at Sophie although Sophie couldn’t see her eyes behind her glasses that had become opaque shields.

“I have sold to Campion.” Sophie drew in her breath, at once shocked, while well aware that this was because of her refusal to help her friend. Shame flooded her. Charlotte went on. “All of it, lock stock and barrel. Everything.”

“What will you do?” Sophie asked, stunned into whispering. Mrs. Emery shrugged, spread out her hands, palms up, set them down on her lap again.

“He’ll give me enough money so I can go someplace else. Don’t have to watch what he’ll do with it. No houses here,” she added. “Except old Gowland’s shack and I’m not cleaning up no old fella’s mess. Go to Garden City, maybe. I have to decide soon.” Sophie wanted to say something to acknowledge the other woman’s fate, if that is what it was, but what else would it be? But she couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound false, and her pity – she was afraid of her own pity, what it might make her do, that she did not want to do, that she knew would be the worst possible thing for herself and Charles. So she hesitated, moving her fingers nervously on her lap, glancing over to Charles as he played on the carpet, then back at Charlotte.

“I have taken Gowland’s shack. I’m moving there as soon as we can get it ready. It isn’t very clean, but it has enough furniture that Charles and I will manage.”

“Harry’ll be back soon.”

“I have to move before he comes.”

Mrs. Emery studied her. “Why? Ain’t you on the lookout for a new husband?” She laughed a little as if she knew she was being offensive, trying to cover this in a joke.

“Husband,” Sophie echoed, as if she’d never thought of such a thing. Charles was blowing air loudly through his lips, then made a high-pitched “Woooo,” sound, imitating a train’s whistle. He must have learned it from the Wozny girls. “I think I would like to marry again, but nobody has asked me, and having made a mess of things once, I am going to be very careful before I make such a decision again.” She was faintly surprised by her own answer, having refused ever to allow herself to consciously think about marrying again because of her belief that as long as Pierre was alive, she could not. She thought again of Campion’s offer to her on that day that she could barely bring herself to think of, when she had first come to Bone Pile without money or friends or anyone to help her.
I was strong then
, she told herself.
I can be strong now, too
, but she swallowed with difficulty to keep down the lump that was rising in her throat, then stood quickly, going to Charles so Mrs. Emery wouldn’t see her emotion.

“You knew when you refused me I would have to go to Campion.” Sophie’s back was to her and although she had halted, she kept her back to Charlotte.

“Yes,” she said, lifting her head as if high above the house there was a noise only she could hear, and she was listening hard for it. “Yes, I knew it.” She wanted to say,
I refused Campion and survived; couldn’t you?
But knew she was being unfair, Charlotte was old and ill, as she felt Mrs. Emery was being to her, even though she was young and strong. She wanted to say good-bye, she wanted to maintain all civilities as she had been taught to do, but emotion overcame her, and she couldn’t speak for fear of crying, and Mrs. Emery had turned her face away from Sophie.