“You and Reenie?”

“Reenie’s boyfriend came—Ron Hincks—the one she’s going to marry. He kicked it down. And Father was lying on the floor. He must have been there for at least two days, the doctor said. He looked awful.”

I hadn’t realized that Ron Hincks was Reenie’s boyfriend—indeed her fiancé. How long had that been going on, and how had I missed it?

“Was he dead, is that what you’re saying?”

“I didn’t think so at first, because his eyes were open. But he was dead all right. He looked…I can’t tell you how he looked. As if he was listening, to something that had startled him. He looked watchful.”

“Was he shot?” I don’t know why I asked this.

“No. He was just dead. It was put in the paper as natural causes—suddenly, of natural causes, is what it said—and Reenie told Mrs. Hillcoate that it was natural causes all right, because drinking certainly was like second nature to Father, and judging from all the empty bottles he’d downed enough booze to choke a horse.”

“He drank himself to death,” I said. It wasn’t a question. “When was this?”

“It was right after they announced the permanent closing of the factories. That’s what killed him. I know it was!”

“What?” I said. “What permanent closing? Which factories?”

“All of them,” said Laura. “All of ours. Everything of ours in town. I thought you must have known about it.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“Ours have been merged in with Richard’s. Everything’s been moved to Toronto. It’s all Griffen-Chase Royal Consolidated, now.” No more Sons, in other words. Richard had made a clean sweep of them.

“So that means no jobs,” I said. “None here. It’s finished. Wiped out.”

“They said it was a matter of costs. After the button factory was burned—they said it would take too much to rebuild it.”

“Who is they?”

“I don’t know,” said Laura. “Wasn’t it Richard?”

“That wasn’t the deal,” I said. Poor Father—trusting to handshakes and words of honour and unspoken assumptions. It was becoming clear to me that this was not the way things worked any more. Maybe it never had been.

“What deal?” said Laura.

“Never mind.”

I’d married Richard for nothing, then—I hadn’t saved the factories, and I certainly hadn’t saved Father. But there was Laura, still; she wasn’t out on the street. I had to think of that. “Did he leave anything—any letter, any note?”

“No.”

“Did you look?”

“Reenie looked,” said Laura in a small voice; which meant that she herself hadn’t been up to it.

Of course, I thought. Reenie would have looked. And if she had in fact found anything like that, she would have burned it.

Besotted

Father wouldn’t have left a note though. He would have been aware of the implications. He wouldn’t have wanted a verdict of suicide, because, as it turned out, he’d had some life insurance: he’d been paying into it for years, so no one could accuse him of having fixed it up at the last minute. He’d tied up the money—it was to go straight into a trust, so that only Laura could touch it, and only after she was twenty-one. He must already have distrusted Richard by then, and concluded that leaving any of it to me would have done no good. I was still a minor, and I was Richard’s wife. The laws were different then. What was mine was his, to all intents and purposes.

As I’ve said, I got Father’s medals. What were they for? Courage. Bravery under fire. Noble gestures of self-sacrifice. I suppose I was expected to live up to them.

Everyone in town came to the funeral, said Reenie. Well, almost everyone, because there was considerable bitterness in some quarters; but still, he’d been well respected, and by that time they’d known it wasn’t him shut down the factories for good like that. They’d known he’d had no part in it—he couldn’t stop it, that was all. It was the big interests did him in.

Everyone in town felt sorry for Laura, said Reenie. (But not for me was left unspoken. In their view, I’d ended up with the spoils. Such as they were.)

Here are the arrangements Richard made:

Laura would come to live with us. Well, of course she would have to: she couldn’t remain at Avilion all by herself, she was only fifteen.

“I could stay with Reenie,” said Laura, but Richard said that was out of the question. Reenie was getting married; she wouldn’t have time to look after Laura. Laura said she didn’t need to be looked after, but Richard only smiled.

“Reenie could come to Toronto,” said Laura, but Richard said she didn’t want to. (Richard didn’t want her to. He and Winifred had already engaged what they considered to be a suitable staff for the running of his household—people who knew the ropes, he said. Which meant they knew Richard’s ropes, and Winifred’s ropes as well.)

Richard said he had already discussed things with Reenie, and had come to a satisfactory arrangement. Reenie and her new husband would act as custodians for us, he said, and would oversee the repairs—Avilion was falling to pieces, so there were a lot of repairs to be done, beginning with the roof—and that way they would be on hand to prepare the house for us whenever requested, because it was to serve as a summer abode. We would come down to Avilion to go boating and so forth, he said, in the tone of an indulgent uncle. That way, Laura and I would not be deprived of our ancestral home. He said ancestral home with a smile. Wouldn’t we like that?

Laura did not thank him. She stared at his forehead, with the cultivated blankness she had once used on Mr. Erskine, and I saw we were in for trouble.

Richard and I would return to Toronto by car, he continued, once things were in place. First he needed to meet with Father’s lawyers, an occasion at which we need not be present: it would be too harrowing for us, considering recent events, and he wanted to spare us as much as possible. One of these lawyers was a connection by marriage on our mother’s side, said Reenie privately—a second cousin’s husband—so he’d surely keep an eye out.

Laura would remain at Avilion until she and Reenie had packed up her things; then she would come in to the city on the train, and would be met at the station. She would live with us in our house—there was a spare bedroom that would suit her perfectly, once it had been redecorated. And she would attend—at last—a proper school. St. Cecilia’s was the one he had picked, in consultation with Winifred, who knew about such things. Laura might need some extra lessons, but he was sure all of that would work out as time went by. In this way she would be able to gain the benefits, the advantages…

“The advantages of what?” said Laura.

“Of your position,” said Richard.

“I don’t see that I have any position,” said Laura.

“What exactly do you mean by that?” said Richard, less indulgently.

“It’s Iris who has the position,” said Laura. “She’s the Mrs. Griffen. I’m just extra.”

“I realize you are understandably upset,” said Richard stiffly, “considering the unfortunate circumstances, which have been difficult for everyone, but there’s no need to be unpleasant. It isn’t easy for Iris and myself, either. I am only trying to do the best for you that I can.”

“He thinks I’ll be in the way,” Laura said to me that evening, in the kitchen, where we had gone to seek refuge from Richard. It was upsetting for us to watch him making his lists—what was to be discarded, what repaired, what replaced. To watch, and to be silent. He acts like he owns the place, Reenie had said indignantly. But he does, I’d replied.

“In the way of what?” I said. “I’m sure that isn’t what he meant.”

“In the way of him,” said Laura. “In the way of the two of you.”

“It will all work out for the best,” said Reenie. She said this as if by rote. Her voice was exhausted, devoid of conviction, and I saw that there was no further help to be expected from her. In the kitchen that night she looked old, and rather fat, and also defeated. As would presently appear, she was already pregnant with Myra. She’d allowed herself to be swept off her feet. It’s dirt that gets swept, and it’s into the dustbin, she used to say, but she’d violated her own maxims. Her mind must have been on other things, such as whether she would make it to the altar, and if not, what then? Bad times, without a doubt. There were no walls then between sufficiency and disaster: if you slipped you fell, and if you fell you flailed and thrashed and went under. She’d be hard put to make another chance for herself, because even if she went away to have the baby and then gave it up, word would get around and people in town would never forget a thing like that. She might as well hang out a sign: there’d be a lineup around the block. Once a woman was loose, it was seen to that she stayed that way. Why buy a cow when milk’s free, she must have been thinking.