Wild Rose (56 page)

When the brief ceremony was over, grandmother said, “Now you will leave this house. Do not return, ever.” Sophie said, trembling a little, “May I get my things.” Grandmother nodded once.

Sophie ran from the room, up the stairs, propelled by glee. It was only when she was in the room that she realized how little she had that was her own: her missal, her rosary, some toiletries, several books that she would leave behind, a few dresses, undergarments, and shoes. Even the one suitcase in the back of the closet wasn’t hers, but belonged to someone else in the family and had been there as long as she could remember. But she had a large cloth laundry bag and into this she rapidly stuffed the few things she was taking with her.

She hadn’t been gone ten minutes and hurried back down the stairs to find her husband –think of that! My husband! – still standing by the fireplace, Antoinette sitting on the edge of the settee – and no one else in the room. In the doorway, she stopped, looking across the room at him, as he looked back at her. All her life she would remember that mutual gaze, that moment when they had recognized that they were now linked together, now and forever. She had gazed with love at him, near adoration, she would recall, but he had been tentative, appraising, then his native cheerfulness returning, he had broken into a grin, and come across to where she stood, lowered his head to hers and kissed her hard and long with Antoinette sitting right there. Soon, she thought, they would be laughing over how they had fooled the old priest into giving them what they wanted, had wanted all along, and been forbidden.

“When I left my house tonight,” he told her, “I didn’t think I would come back a married man.” How she had laughed at this as he helped her onto the back of the plow horse he had ridden into town, he getting on in front of her and she shoving the stuffed laundry bag between them so as not to frighten the horse with it bobbing and slapping against its side. When the heavy front door of the old house had closed behind them for the last time, Sophie felt such relief and happiness, even as they were encompassed by darkness, and then by the chill of the night in those coldest hours before the dawn.

“Where will we go?” she whispered, pushing herself against him.

“Home,” he said. “To the farm. There is nowhere else.”

“Will they take us?” This hadn’t occurred to her before. If not, what would they do?

“Of course they will take us,” he said, scorn in his voice, and she was aware that he had been humiliated by what had happened just now, and further, not only by the priest. That he was only the dirt beneath her grandmother’s once aristocratic feet, and he knew it, and hated grandmother for it.

All the way to the Hippolyte farm she clung to Pierre, leaning against his back as well as the laundry bag would allow, and thought of how she loved him and how happy they would be. Or maybe she thought only of Pierre and the warmth of his body against hers.

At the farm Pierre wakened everyone shouting that he was now a married man. His father and mother leaped out of bed, she still in her nightclothes, his father having paused to pull on trousers and to put felt boots on his feet before he followed his wife from their bedroom. His older brothers, both bigger and taller than Pierre, came thudding slowly down from the attic where they slept, looking sleepy-eyed at their ebullient brother and assessingly at Sophie before giving her copies of Pierre’s grin and coming forward to take her hands and give her brotherly kisses on both cheeks. His sisters came out pulling wraps around themselves and kissed her too, although Marie-Ange was of course not there, nor Violette who was missed most of all by Sophie.

Madame Hippolyte said, surprisingly, “There is no help for it. My dear, you will be my daughter too,” and cried, although Sophie wasn’t sure why she was crying, perhaps for the loss of Pierre? Or for some secret dream she had for him? But her mother-in-law said briskly to the sisters, “Both of you, into one bed now, give your new sister-in-law a bed, and Pierre, you…” Here she hesitated, “Go up with your brothers. Take a quilt.” When he looked askance and his brothers looked at each other and chortled, she said, angrily, “For tonight, that’s all. We will sort that out later.”

But Monsieur Hippolyte brought out a bottle of his homemade brandy and was setting out glasses and calling for everyone to come around and drink a toast to the newlyweds, and everyone did, and there was much laughter and muttered good wishes, and Sophie drank some too and was surprised at how hot she suddenly felt, and gay. The girls went to bed then, and Sophie would have too, but Pierre said, “No, stay. We have to talk a little.” She pulled up a chair and sat next to Mme Hippolyte whose head had begun to nod.

“Now,” M. Hippolyte declared, “We don’t want to hear the story now,” as Pierre opened his mouth to tell his parents what had happened.

“I can guess all too well,” Mme Hippolyte said, and crossed herself and muttered a prayer.

“We must decide what is to become of you. Have you any plans?” he asked his son, and Pierre, laughed a little, looking at his hands cupping the small glass as he pushed it back and forth between his palms. M. Hippolyte reached out and filled it again. The room was quiet, only the fire crackling in the stove, and Mme Hippolyte’s heavy breathing as she fell asleep at the table, her head falling forward causing her to wake again. In her exhaustion Sophie was beginning to think that perhaps they had made a mistake by allowing the priest to marry them so quickly. Could she have refused? She wondered if perhaps Pierre had been going to refuse and leave her there alone, but he had not, and now they were husband and wife and nothing could undo that. A thrill of happiness went through her.

“I made no plans to be married so quickly,” Pierre admitted. “So I don’t know…”

“You know there is no land for you,” his father said. “I can maybe help you get a little. Plamondon is thinking of selling that bit over by Harris’s. We could go see him in the morning.” The Hippolytes, Sophie knew from her grandfather, had had this bit of land for seventy or so years, but year after year seemed not to better themselves by buying more. So many children, her grandfather had said, sighing, four sons, shaking his head.

“It is so little,” Pierre pointed out. “We couldn’t feed ourselves on it, and there is no house, we’d have to build one.” The two men were silent, Pierre staring into the distance as if calculating, his father gazing into the blackened, unlit hearth.

He stirred at last and said, smiling, “But we had nothing,” speaking to his wife, “when we married.” She shrugged, not smiling. “Not a sou or a louis,” she said, “Only the muscles in our backs.”

Sophie sat up straight. “We could go West!” her excitement bubbling up so that she spoke louder than she had intended. Both the men looked at her. Mme Hippolyte cried, “No!”

Pierre and his father turned from Sophie to gaze at each other, a man’s look it was, assessing, evaluating, considering together in silence.

“We could,” Pierre said. “We could have free land if we went West.” His father spread his arms, hands open toward them as if to show they were empty, that he knew nothing about the West.

“You need tools, machines, animals, you need money to go…” Mme Hippolyte said, “On this place there are how many bits and pieces of this and that that we don’t use anymore, or that are broken but could be fixed. My old butter churn that leaks…”

“I have some money,” Sophie said, thinking of grandfather’s few louis or sous Guillaume had said grandfather had left her in his will.

“You will need to go soon if you go,” M. Hippolyte said. “You have to plow, get a crop in or you will starve all winter and they say the winters are bad, very bad,” shaking his head slowly. Better you wait until next spring, non? Spend the winter getting some money in the woods, and you,” he turned to Sophie, “can stay here with us.”

Sophie could feel blood rushing to her face, it was all she could do to suppress a loud
no!
She turned to Pierre whose eyes were fixed on the table, as if he were deep in thought. She ventured a timid, “I would like to go now?” Pierre lifted his head and gazed thoughtfully at her. She suspected he wasn’t seeing her at all.

“I think now, too,” he said slowly. “I have saved some money from working for Fournier. I can make a little more before we go.”

“Relatives will help when they know,” Mme Hippolyte said. She kept looking at Sophie out of the corner of her eye. She thinks I have money Sophie thought. She thinks…that I cannot do this; that I am too weak and foolishly brought up to go West and be a pioneer. She wonders if I know enough – how to make butter, how to sew, how to grow things.

The West loomed large over the scarred and chipped kitchen table. How many years had the table sat there for generation after generation of Hippolytes? Someone had made it, some clever
habitant
. It was not grandmother’s heavy carved and polished table that had come all the way from France a hundred years earlier.

Could she do it? Everyone said it would be hard, although she suspected that she had no idea how hard it would be. She found she didn’t care. To have a new life in a new place; this was what she had dreamt of.

“Show me how to make bread and pies,” she said to her new mother-in-law.

“You don’t know? But there is no time!” the woman said, throwing out her hands as her husband had done.

“How long?” Pierre asked his father.

“Fast,” he replied. “Very fast. Two weeks?” Pierre looked taken aback, for an instant regret or something more profound Sophie couldn’t name swept across his features before it vanished.

“Yes,” Sophie said. All eyes had turned to her. “Two weeks and we are gone from here.”

That was how it went, to everyone’s surprise. A brother went to the town and ascertained how one went West, by what train, how long, how much money would be required. Pierre and his father and uncles and cousins went about the farm and the countryside gathering the essential tools and making repairs, while Sophie worked from morning until night in the kitchen, and out in the barn learning how to milk a cow, how to separate the milk so she could make butter, a few basic skills at sewing, the one craft about which she knew a little.

“Quand les enfants…”
Mme Hippolyte began, then shook her head and went on punching down the bread dough. “She doesn’t even know how to make pickles,” she wailed to the kitchen wall one afternoon, went to the stove and stood over it
holding her head in both hands. Sophie glanced over her shoulder, and said, grimly, “I will learn.” She wanted to add, if everyone can do it, she certainly could, but felt it unwise to say so.

During all of this she and Pierre slept apart. There was barely time to speak to each other and no place to do so in private. But more than once at night they had crept out together to the barn where they climbed into the hay loft, and where she had once been told by his sister that her great uncle was a suicide, there in the straw Pierre initiated his bride in lovemaking, leaving her speechless and sore and filled yet, with mixed wonder and delight.

And then, the Hippolytes and the neighbourhood having done what they could to prepare the young couple for their adventure, it was time to go.

~

The next morning when Sophie rose
the sun was already shining on Bone Pile and she realized that both she and Charles had slept in, and she with so much work to do. She decided to let her child sleep as long as he needed to, but got out of bed herself, washed, and dressed. She found herself thinking about the letter from André, and was surprised at how very warmly she felt toward him this morning. I’ll wait until he is settled in Calgary, she decided, brushing her hair, and then I’ll write to him, just a simple letter, and began mentally to compose it.

Cher André,

I was so happy to hear from you. For five years I have seen no one from home, nor heard much from anyone, not even from my brother Guillaume. Your letter was like a drink of cool water on a hot day. And to think you are here, in the West.

She thought that perhaps she was being too forward, mentally erased that line, then put it back: She would be truthful; she would find and tell the truth about her own feelings.

You will know of my disaster; I am sure everyone back home knows. How one pays for the folly of one’s youth! But here I am, and there you are, or soon will be, and perhaps we will meet in person one of these days before too long. I hope so.

What else should she say? That she would perhaps be in Calgary in a few months and would call on him? But she had no idea if that was true or not, and perhaps it would be too forward in any case. Then she considered how to end the letter finally settling on,

Your friend,

Sophie Charron Hippolyte

Satisfied, she smiled to herself, deciding to write the letter while it was fresh in her mind, and perhaps even mail it to the address he had given her so that it would be waiting for him on his arrival. She didn’t allow herself to think beyond the moment when he opened it and read it, and knew she no longer spurned his advances. Perhaps she should add,
As you might expect, I have grown up since those days in my grandparents’ parlour.

Then she remembered that, while she stood brushing her hair, watching over her sleeping child, thinking of her long-ago scorned suitor, Pierre was down the street, only a few houses from her. Once again it seemed that she had spent the brief hours of sleep absorbing this knowledge because now when she thought of him she felt none of the panic she had felt the night before, nor any of the desire for him that had so plagued her since his departure. She felt nothing at all, until she remembered that he had surely come to oversee the birth of his child, and stopped brushing, pulled her hair back quickly and tucked it into its usual chignon, deftly pushing in the hair pins without bothering again to consult the mirror.