Still Life (3 page)

Three Pines wasn’t on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back. And Thanksgiving, in early October, was the perfect time. The weather was usually crisp and clear, the summer scents of old garden roses and phlox were replaced by musky autumn leaves, woodsmoke and roast turkey.

Olivier and Gabri were recounting that morning’s events. Their description was so vivid everyone in the snug living room could see the three masked boys picking up handfuls of duck manure from the edge of the village green: the boys lifted their hands, the manure sliding between their fingers, and then hurled the stuff at the old brick building. Soon the blue and white Campari awnings were dripping. Manure was sliding off the walls. The ‘Bistro’ sign was splattered. In moments, the pristine face of the cafe in the heart of Three Pines was filthy, and not just with duck poop. The village had become soiled by the words that filled the startled air: ‘Fags! Queers!
Dégueulasse!’
the boys screamed.

As Jane listened to Olivier and Gabri, she recalled how she had emerged from her tiny stone cottage across the green and, hurrying over, had seen Olivier and Gabri come out of the Bistro. The boys had roared their delight and aimed at the two men, striking them with the manure.

Jane had picked up her pace, wishing her stout legs longer. Then she’d seen Olivier do the most extraordinary thing. As the boys screamed and hauled off handfuls of mulch, Olivier had slowly, deliberately, gently taken Gabri’s hand and held it before gracefully lifting it to his lips. The boys had watched, momentarily stunned, as Olivier had kissed Gabri’s manure-stained hand with his manure-stained lips. The boys had seemed petrified by this act of love and defiance. But just for a moment. Their hatred triumphed and soon their attack had re-doubled.

‘Stop that!’ Jane had called firmly.

Their arms had halted in mid-swing, instinctively reacting to a voice of authority. Turning as one they’d seen little Jane Neal, in her floral dress and yellow cardigan, bearing down on them. One of the boys, wearing an orange mask, had lifted his arm to toss at her.

‘Don’t you dare, young man.’

He hesitated just long enough for Jane to look them all in the eyes.

‘Philippe Croft, Gus Hennessey, Claude LaPierre,’ she’d said, slowly and distinctly. That had done it. The boys dropped their handfuls and ran, shooting past Jane and tripping up the hill, the one in the orange mask laughing. It was a sound so foul it even eclipsed the manure. One boy turned and looked back as the others careered into him and shoved him back up du Moulin.

It had happened only that morning. It already seemed like a dream.

‘It was hideous,’ said Gabri, agreeing with Ruth as he dropped into one of the old chairs, its faded fabric warmed by the fire. ‘Of course they were right; I
am
gay.’

‘And,’ said Olivier, lounging on the arm of Gabri’s chair, ‘quite queer.’

‘I have become one of the stately homos of Quebec,’ Gabri paraphrased Quentin Crisp. ‘My views are breathtaking.’

Olivier laughed and Ruth threw another log on the fire.

‘You did look very stately this morning,’ said Ben Hadley, Peter’s best friend.

‘Don’t you mean estately?’

‘More like the back forty, it’s true.’

In the kitchen, Clara was greeting Myrna Landers.

‘The table looks wonderful,’ said Myrna, peeling off her coat and revealing a bright purple kaftan. Clara wondered how she squeezed through doorways. Myrna then dragged in her contribution to the evening, a flower arrangement. ‘Where would you like it, child?’

Clara gawked. Like Myrna herself, her bouquets were huge, effusive and unexpected. This one contained oak and maple branches, bulrushes from the Riviere Bella Bella which ran behind Myrna’s bookshop, apple branches with a couple of McIntoshes still on them, and great armfuls of herbs.

‘What’s this?’

‘Where?’

‘Here, in the middle of the arrangement.’

‘A kielbassa.’

‘A sausage?’

‘Hummuh, and look in there,’ Myrna pointed into the tangle.

‘The Collected Works of W. H. Auden,’
Clara read. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘It’s for the boys.’

‘What else is in there?’ Clara scanned the immense arrangement.

‘Denzel Washington. But don’t tell Gabri.’

In the living room, Jane continued the story: ‘… then Gabri said to me, “I have your mulch. This is just the way Vita Sackville West always wore it.”’

Olivier whispered in Gabri’s ear, ‘You are queer.’

‘Aren’t you glad one of us is?’ a well-worn and comfortable jest.

‘How are you?’ Myrna came in from the kitchen, followed by Clara, and hugged Gabri and Olivier while Peter poured her Scotch.

‘I think we’re all right,’ Olivier kissed Myrna on both cheeks. ‘It’s probably surprising this didn’t happen sooner. We’ve been here for what? Twelve years?’ Gabri nodded, his mouth full of Camembert. ‘And this is the first time we’ve been bashed. I was gay bashed in Montreal when I was a kid, by a group of grown men. That was terrifying.’ They’d grown silent, and there was just the crackling and muttering of the fire in the background as Olivier spoke.

‘They hit me with sticks. It’s funny, but when I think back that’s the most painful part. Not the scrapes and bruises, but before they hit me they kind of poked, you know?’ He
jabbed with one arm to mimic their movements. ‘It was as though I wasn’t human.’

‘That’s the necessary first step,’ said Myrna. ‘They dehumanise their victim. You’ve put it well.’

She spoke from experience. Before coming to Three Pines she’d been a psychologist in Montreal. And, being black, she knew that singular expression when people saw her as furniture.

Ruth turned to Olivier, changing the subject. ‘I was in the basement and came across a few things I thought you could sell for me.’ Ruth’s basement was her bank.

‘Great. What?’

‘There’s some cranberry glass—’

‘Oh, wonderful.’ Olivier adored colored glass. ‘Hand blown?’

‘Do you take me for an idiot? Of course they’re hand blown.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want them?’ he always asked this of his friends.

‘Stop asking me that. Do you think I’d mention them if there was a doubt?’

‘Bitch.’

‘Slut.’

‘OK, tell me more,’ said Olivier. The stuff Ruth hauled up from her basement was incredible. It was as though she had a porthole to the past. Some of it was junk, like the old broken-down coffee makers and burned-out toasters. But most made him tremble with pleasure. The greedy antique dealer in him, which composed a larger part of his make-up than he’d ever admit, was thrilled to have exclusive access to Ruth’s treasures. He’d sometimes daydream about that basement.

If he was excited by Ruth’s possessions, he was positively beside himself with lust after Jane’s home. He’d kill to see beyond her kitchen door. Her kitchen alone was worth tens
of thousands of dollars in antiques. When he’d first come to Three Pines, at the Drama Queen’s insistence, he was reduced almost to incoherence when he saw the linoleum on Jane’s mudroom floor. If the mudroom was a museum and the kitchen a shrine, what in the world lay beyond? Olivier shook off the thought, knowing he would probably be disappointed. IKEA. And shag carpet. He’d long since stopped thinking it strange that Jane had never invited anyone through the swinging door into her living room and beyond.

‘About the mulch, Jane,’ Gabri was saying, his bulk bending over one of Peter’s jigsaw puzzles, ‘I can get it to you tomorrow. Do you need help cutting back your garden?’

‘No, almost done. But this might be the last year. It’s getting beyond me.’ Gabri was relieved he didn’t have to help. Doing his own garden was work enough.

‘I have a whole lot of hollyhock babies,’ said Jane, fitting in a piece of the sky. ‘How did those single yellows do for you? I didn’t notice them.’

‘I put them in last fall, but they never called me mother. Can I have some more? I’ll trade you for some monarda.’

‘God, don’t do that.’ Monarda was the zucchini of the flower world. It, too, figured prominently in the harvest market and, subsequently, the Thanksgiving bonfire, which would give off a hint of sweet bergamot so that it smelled as though every cottage in Three Pines was brewing Earl Grey tea.

‘Did we tell you what happened this afternoon after you’d all left?’ Gabri said in his stage voice, so that the words fell neatly into every ear in the room. ‘We were just getting the peas ready for tonight’ – Clara rolled her eyes and mumbled to Jane, ‘Probably lost the can opener.’ – ‘when the doorbell rang and there were Matthew Croft and Philippe.’

‘No! What happened?’

‘Philippe mumbled, “I’m sorry about this morning.”’

‘What did you say?’ Myrna asked.

‘Prove it,’ said Olivier.

‘You didn’t,’ hooted Clara, amused and impressed.

‘I most certainly did. There was a lack of sincerity about the apology. He was sorry he got caught and sorry there were consequences. But I didn’t believe he was sorry about what he did.’

‘Conscience and cowardice,’ said Clara.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Ben.

‘Oscar Wilde said that conscience and cowardice are the same thing. What stops us from doing horrible things isn’t our conscience but the fear of getting caught.’

‘I wonder if that’s true,’ said Jane.

‘Would you?’ Myrna asked Clara.

‘Do terrible things if I could get away with it?’

‘Cheat on Peter,’ suggested Olivier. ‘Steal from the bank. Or better still, steal another artist’s work?’

‘Ah, kids stuff,’ snapped Ruth. ‘Now, take murder, for instance. Would you mow someone down with your car? Or poison them, maybe, or throw them into the Bella Bella during spring run off? Or,’ she looked around, warm firelight reflecting off slightly concerned faces, ‘or we could set a fire and then not save them.’

‘What do you mean, “we”, white woman?’ said Myrna. Myrna brought the conversation back from the edge.

‘The truth? Sure. But not murder.’ Clara looked over at Ruth who simply gave her a conspiratorial wink.

‘Imagine a world where you could do anything. Anything. And get away with it,’ said Myrna, warming to the topic again. ‘What power. Who here wouldn’t be corrupted?’

‘Jane wouldn’t,’ said Ruth with certainty. ‘But the rest of you?’ she shrugged.

‘And you?’ Olivier asked Ruth, more than a little annoyed to be lumped in where he secretly knew he belonged.

‘Me? But you know me well enough by now, Olivier. I’d
be the worst. I’d cheat, and steal, and make all your lives hell.’

‘Worse than now?’ asked Olivier, still peeved.

‘Now you’re on the list,’ said Ruth. And Olivier remembered that the closest thing they had to a police force was the volunteer fire brigade, of which he was a member but of which Ruth was the chief. When Ruth Zardo ordered you into a conflagration, you went. She was scarier than a burning building.

‘Gabri, what about you?’ Clara asked.

There’ve been times I’ve been mad enough to kill, and may have, had I known I would get away with it.’

‘What made you that angry?’ Clara was astonished.

‘Betrayal, always and only betrayal.’

‘What did you do about it?’ asked Myrna.

‘Therapy. That was where I met this guy.’ Gabri reached out and patted Olivier’s hand. ‘I think we both went to that therapist for about a year longer than we had to just to see each other in the waiting room.’

‘Is that sick?’ said Olivier, smoothing a lock of his immaculate, thinning blond hair off his face. It was like silk, and kept falling into his eyes, no matter what products he used.

‘Mock me if you will, but everything happens for a reason,’ Gabri said. ‘No betrayal, no rage. No rage, no therapy. No therapy, no Olivier. No Olivier no—’

‘Enough.’ Olivier held up his hands in surrender.

‘I’ve always liked Matthew Croft,’ said Jane.

‘Did you teach him?’ asked Clara.

‘Long time ago. He was in the second to last class at the old schoolhouse here, before it closed.’

‘I still think that was a shame they closed it,’ said Ben.

‘For God’s sake, Ben, the school closed twenty years ago. Move on.’ Only Ruth would say this.

When she first came to Three Pines, Myrna had wondered whether Ruth had had a stroke. Sometimes, Myrna knew
from her practice, stroke victims had very little impulse control. When she asked about it, Clara said if Ruth had had a stroke it was in the womb. As far as she knew, Ruth had always been like this.

‘Then why does everyone like her?’ Myrna had asked.

Clara had laughed and shrugged, ‘You know there are days I ask myself the same thing. What a piece of work that woman can be. But she’s worth the effort, I think.’

‘Anyway,’ Gabri huffed now, having temporarily lost the spotlight. ‘Philippe agreed to work for fifteen hours, volunteer, around the Bistro.’

‘Bet he wasn’t happy about that,’ said Peter, getting to his feet.

‘You got that right,’ said Olivier with a grin.

‘I want to propose a toast,’ said Gabri. ‘To our friends, who stood by us today. To our friends who spent all morning cleaning the Bistro.’ It was a phenomenon Myrna had noticed before, some people’s ability to turn a terrible event into a triumph. She’d thought about it that morning, manure under her fingernails, pausing for a moment to look at the people, young and old, pitching in. And she was one of them. And she blessed, again, the day she’d decided to quit the city and come here and sell books to these people. She was finally home. Then another image came back to her, one that had gotten lost in the activity of the morning. Of Ruth leaning on her cane, turning away from the others, so that only Myrna could see the wince of pain as the elderly woman lowered herself to her knees, and silently scrubbed. All morning.

‘Dinner’s ready,’ Peter called.

‘Formidable. Just like dear Mama.
Le Sieur?’
Jane asked a few minutes later, bringing a forkful of mushy peas and gravy to her mouth.