The Cruellest Month (51 page)

A barbecue was fired up and the villagers took a break for beer or lemonade, burgers and sausages. Gamache took his beer and stood staring over the hill, into Three Pines. It was quiet. Everyone was here, old and young; even the ill had been helped up and given lawn chairs and a brush so that all souls of the village touched the Hadley house and broke the curse. The curse of anguish and sorrow.

But most of all, loneliness.

The only people not there were Peter and Clara Morrow.

‘I’m ready,’ Clara sang from her studio. Her face was streaked with paint and she rubbed her hands on an oil rag, too soiled to do any good.

Peter stood outside her studio, steadying himself. Breathing deeply and saying a prayer. A begging prayer. Begging for the painting to be truly, unequivocally, irredeemably horrible.

He’d given up fighting the thing he’d run from as a child, hidden from as the words chased him through his days and into his dreams. His disappointed father demanding he be the best, and Peter knowing he’d always fail. Someone was always better.

‘Close your eyes.’ Clara came to the door. He did as he was told and felt her small hand on his arm, leading him.

* * *

‘We buried Lilium on the village green,’ said Ruth, coming up beside Gamache.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She leaned heavily on her cane and behind her stood Rosa, growing into a fine and sturdy duck.

‘Poor little one,’ she said.

‘Fortunate one, to have known such love.’

‘Love killed her,’ said Ruth.

‘Love sustained her,’ said Gamache.

‘Thank you,’ said the old poet then turned to look at the Hadley house. ‘Poor Hazel. She really did love Madeleine, you know. Even I could see it.’

Gamache nodded. ‘I think jealousy’s the cruellest emotion. It twists us into something grotesque. Hazel was consumed by it. It ate away her happiness, her contentment. Her sanity. In the end Hazel was blinded by bitterness and couldn’t see that she already had everything she wanted. Love and companionship.’

‘She loved not wisely but too well. Someone should write a play about that,’ said Ruth, smiling ruefully.

‘Never work,’ said Gamache. After a moment’s silence he said almost to himself, ‘The near enemy. It isn’t a person, is it? It’s ourselves.’

Both looked at the old Hadley house, and the villagers working to restore it.

‘Depends on the person,’ said Ruth, then her face changed to surprise. She pointed to the woods at the back of the old Hadley house. ‘My God, I was wrong. There are fairies at the end of the garden.’

Gamache looked round. There at the very back of the garden the brush moved. Then Olivier and Gabri emerged, dragging cut bracken.

‘Ha,’ laughed Ruth, triumphant, then her laughter died and she was left with a small smile on her hard face. ‘
Behold, I show you a mystery
.’ She nodded toward the villagers working on the old house. ‘
The dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
’

‘
In the twinkling of an eye
,’ said Gamache.

‘Ready?’ Clara asked, her voice almost squeaky with excitement. She’d worked non-stop, racing the arrival of Fortin. But then it had become something else. A race to get what she saw, what she felt, onto the canvas.

And finally she had it.

‘Okay, you can look.’

Peter’s eyes flew open. It took him a moment to absorb what he saw. It was a huge portrait, of Ruth. But a Ruth he’d never seen. Not really. But now, as he looked, he realized he had seen her, but only in passing, at odd angles, in unsuspecting moments.

She was swathed in luminous blue, a hint of a red tunic underneath. Her skin, wrinkled and veined, was exposed down her old neck and to her protruding collar bones. She was old and tired and ugly. A weak hand clasped the blue shawl closed, as though afraid of exposing herself. And on her face was a look of such bitterness and anguish. Loneliness and loss. But there was something else. In her eyes, something about the eyes.

Peter wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to breathe again, or need to. The portrait seemed to do it for him. It had crawled inside his body and become him. The fear, the emptiness, the shame.

But in those eyes, there was something else.

This was Ruth as Mary, the mother of God. Mary as an old and forgotten woman. But there was something those old eyes were just beginning to see. Peter stood still and did as Clara had always advised and he’d always dismissed. He let the painting come to him.

And then he saw it.

Clara had captured the moment when despair turned to hope. That instant, when the world changed forever. That’s what Ruth was seeing. Hope. The first, new-born, intimation of hope. This was a masterpiece, Peter knew. Like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. But while Michelangelo had painted the instant before God brought Man to life, Clara had painted the moment the fingers touched.

‘It’s brilliant,’ he whispered. ‘It’s the most wonderful painting I’ve ever seen.’

All the artsy descriptive words fled before the portrait. All his fears and insecurities vanished. And the love he felt for Clara was restored.

He took her in his arms and together they laughed and wept for joy.

‘The idea came to me that night at dinner, when I watched Ruth talk about Lilium. If you hadn’t suggested the dinner, this never would’ve happened. Thank you, Peter.’ And she gave him a huge hug and kiss.

For the next hour he listened as she talked a mile a minute about the work, her excitement infecting him until they were exhausted and exhilarated.

‘Come on.’ She poked him. ‘Up to the old Hadley house. Grab a six-pack from the cold room; they’ll probably need it.’

As he left he peeked into Clara’s studio once more and was relieved to feel just a hint, just an echo of the crippling jealousy he’d felt. It was going, he knew. Soon it would disappear completely and for the first time in his life he’d be able to be genuinely happy for someone else.

And so Peter and Clara made their way to the old Hadley house, Peter carrying a case of beer and a tiny shard of jealousy, which started festering.

* * *

‘Happy?’ Reine-Marie slipped her hand into Gamache’s. He kissed her and nodded, pointing his beer down the lawn. Henri was playing fetch with an exasperated Myrna, who was trying to get someone else to throw the ball to the tireless dog. She’d made the mistake of giving him a soiled hot dog and now she was his new best friend.

‘
Mesdames et messieurs.
’ Monsieur Béliveau’s voice bellowed over the gathering. The eating stopped and everyone gathered at the porch of the old Hadley house. Beside Monsieur Béliveau stood Odile Montmagny, looking very nervous, but sober.

‘I read
Sarah Binks
,’ Gamache whispered to Myrna, who joined them just as Ruth sidled up. ‘It’s delightful.’ He withdrew it from his jacket pocket. ‘It’s a supposed tribute to this Prairie woman’s poetry, except the poetry’s awful.’

‘Our own Odile Montmagny has written an ode to the day and to this house,’ Monsieur Béliveau was saying as Odile shifted from foot to foot, as though she suddenly needed to relieve herself.

‘But
Sarah Binks
was my book. I was going to give it to her.’ Ruth grabbed it from his hand and used it to gesture toward Odile. ‘Where’d you get it?’

‘It was hidden in Madeleine’s bedside table,’ said Gamache.

‘Madeleine? She stole it from me? I thought I’d just lost it.’

‘She took it from you when she realized what you were going to do with it,’ hissed Myrna. ‘When you told Odile she reminded you of Sarah Binks she thought it was a compliment. She worships you. Madeleine didn’t want you to hurt her, so she hid it.’

‘This is a little something I wrote last night while watching the hockey game,’ said Odile. Nods greeted this insight into the creative process, this natural affinity between poetry and the playoffs.

She cleared her throat.

‘
A cursed duck pecked off his ear,

And his face grew peaked and pale;

“Oh, how can a woman love me now?”

Was his constant and lonely wail;

But a woman came and she loved the man,

With a love serene and clear –

She loved him as only a woman can love

A man with only one ear.
’

A silence greeted the last word. Odile stood uncertainly on the porch. Then, to his horror, Gamache saw Ruth move through the crowd, the Sarah Binks book clutched in her hand and Rosa quacking behind.

‘Make way for the duck and the fuck,’ yelled Gabri.

Ruth hauled herself onto the porch and stood beside Odile, taking the younger woman’s hand. Gamache and Myrna held their breaths.

‘I have never heard a poem that moved me so much. That speaks so clearly of loneliness and loss. Using the man as an allegory for the house was brilliant, my dear.’

Odile looked confused.

‘And like the blighted man the old Hadley house will be loved again,’ Ruth continued. ‘Your poem brings hope to all of us who are old and ugly and flawed. Bravo.’

Ruth slipped the book into her tattered sweater as she embraced Odile, who looked as though she’d found heaven on the battered porch of the old Hadley house.

Peter and Clara arrived, carrying a welcome case of beer. But they stopped just short of the house. Gamache watched and wondered what they’d do. More than any villager the old Hadley house had haunted Peter and Clara. And now the two stood outside the buzz of activity, and stared. Then Clara bent down and lifted the ‘For Sale’ sign. Using her sleeve she wiped the worst of the mud and dirt from its face, then she handed it to Peter, who thrust it into the ground. The sign stood upright, clean and proud.

‘Do you think anyone will buy it?’ Clara asked, wiping her hands on her jeans.

‘Someone will buy it and someone will love it,’ said Gamache.

‘
But a woman came and she loved the man, With a love serene and clear – She loved him as only a woman can love A man with only one ear,
’ Ruth quoted, joining them again. ‘Ridiculous poem, of course. But still…’ She limped off to join Odile, giving kindness another chance. Little Rosa waddled behind.

‘At least Ruth now has an excuse for the quacking,’ said Clara.

In the bright sunshine Armand Gamache watched as the old Hadley house was brought back to life, then he put down his beer and joined them.