“I still cannot believe it’s all mine.” Grace ushered her out of the room and closed the door. “Come upstairs, I have something else to show you.”
“Do we have to climb all those stairs again?” Aoife asked. “We’ve already seen the bedrooms.”
“A few stairs won’t hurt you. Now, go on.” Grace gave her a small push ahead of her.
Aoife tutted but obediently climbed past the two floors of guest bedrooms, then up to where the staircase narrowed to a hallway where the roofline sloped, requiring them to walk in single file.
Aoife passed through a door at the far end into a freshly painted, white attic room with a sloping roofline. “Well, what do you think?” Grace pirouetted in the center of the room which offered twelve feet by twelve feet of useable space between the eaves.
Aoife crept slowly forward. “It’s an empty attic. What's it for?”
“Empty, yes. But it’s been made watertight, plastered and painted. The workmen built in the cupboard at the end to follow the slope in the roof as no furniture would fit.”
“As I said, what’s it for?”
“I had intended this room for a live-in chambermaid. There’s also a small bathroom and water closet next door to avoid them having to go downstairs. I rather thought it would be perfect for you.”
“For me?” Aoife's eyes widened. “You want me to live with you here?”
“When it's finished, why not? This white paint is a little stark, but I have plenty of wallpaper. I ordered far more than I needed, but I was so keen to get started, I didn't think. You'll need a bed of course, a dresser, chair and a rug to soften these floorboards.” Aoife had hardly said a word thus far, but her eyes sparkled from unshed tears. “I planned to move in at the end of next week. Why not come with me? If you want to, that is.”
“Of course I want to.” Two fat tears slid down Aoife’s cheeks. “It's so kind of you, Grace.”
“Good, because I thought for a moment you didn't like the idea.”
“Don't be daft.” Aoife’s bottom lip quivered, and she swiped a hand beneath her nose. “I've been so scared, Grace. After leaving Marysville I burned every bridge I ever had and didn’t dare think of what would happen to me when I walked all day and slept in hedgerows at night.”
“No more hedgerows,” Grace said softly.
“Why can't I stay here right now?” Aoife’s wide brown eyes roved Grace's face. “I don't want you paying Mrs M for my keep longer than you have to. I'll be fine sleeping on the floor until the bed comes.”
“But there are builder's materials all over the place, and there's the dust. It's not healthy. I intend to have the whole place cleaned before I move in.”
“I’ve slept in worse. Leastways it's bright and warm here.” Aoife wandered to the gable window. “I love that little turned around oval window.”
“Elliptical.” Grace smiled. The window had been one of the features that attracted her to the house. “I saw how nervous you were on your way here after being inside so long. Are you sure you want to be on your own when the workmen leave for the day?”
“I don't mind being inside. The nights aren't too cold now and summer is on its way. I could also keep an eye on those laborers. Make sure they aren't slacking. I'll like it here, honestly. It will be the first place I’ve stayed in that’s all my own.”
“You’ve never had your own room before, Aoife?”
“Hah! I’ve never even had me own bed!”
“I'm afraid you don't have one - yet.” Grace had to admit it might be useful having someone on the premises to keep an eye on things. “The construction work is done, it's mainly wallpaper to be hung and the painting completed. The gardening company started work today and the foreman will need instructions.”
“Just tell me what you want, and I'll make sure they’re not taking liberties.”
“I'll make this room more homely for you, a curtain for that window might help.”
“No, please leave it. I don't need the dark to go to sleep, and I like to wake up early and see the sun come up.”
“All right. If that's what you want. We'll go shopping tomorrow. There are quite a few things you're going to need. More clothes for instance until the ones I sent for arrive.”
Together they pored over Eaton’s Catalogue for an hour that morning like excited children planning for Christmas. The cost of the final list horrified Aoife, but Grace insisted she needed to be appropriately dressed if she was going to deal with paying guests.
“I'll pay you back, Grace. Every cent. I promise,” Aoife insisted.
“I know you will.” Grace had been about to tell her it didn't matter, but Aoife's pride would never have allowed it.
They returned to the ground floor and wandered into the garden, where the trellis she ordered was being arranged by gardeners into intimate alcoves for tables and chairs beneath gazebos. The flowerbeds had been laid out but the plants had not yet arrived, so the garden was a patchwork of green and brown. “I wanted a fountain to go in the middle where the pathways meet, but I haven’t found one I like.”
“We’ll have to take another look in that catalogue,” Aoife said, her air of melancholy completely lifted. “There’s everything else in those pages. Why not that?”
They sat side by side on an old wooden bench Grace planned to have removed, its layer of paint having faded and peeled a long time ago. Their companionable silence was broken only by birdsong, the occasional clop of hooves from the street and a muffled sound of banging from the house as the laborers continued their work.
“Aoife,” Grace said finally. “You do understand, I'm not giving you the room so you'll work for me? You’re my friend, not an employee.”
“Why not?” Aoife sat with her arms wrapped around her drawn up knees. “Working as a chambermaid isn’t much different to being a tweenie. And I was the best they ever had at Falkener street.”
“I’m sure you were. But you didn't come to Canada to be a housemaid.”
“I can’t go back to Liverpool, even if I could scrape up the fare. I owe money to the Salvation Army for my passage over. I’ve no idea how I’m going to pay them back.”
“You don't have to fret about that. We’ll sort out what you owe. Although I’m not sure what sort of wage I can offer, not until I have some guests to stay.”
“I’ll work for bed and board. The house is looking grand, even if it isn't finished. Guests will be queuing outside when you open.”
“I sincerely doubt that but having half the rooms filled would make a good beginning. And we'll be working together in the early days as I’ll have to do a lot of the chores myself.”
“It will be wonderful, I know it will. What are you going to call the place?”
“I've toyed with all the conventional names like, Belle Isle House, which is too ordinary and MacKinnon Towers, which is too pretentious, but nothing has really appealed so far.”
“What about, ‘Grace and Favor’?”
“Grace and Favor,” Grace mused. “I like that, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate. It means free, and I'm hoping to make a good living here.”
“I doubt anyone who books in here will think it’s free,” Aoife scoffed. “Anyway, isn’t ‘grace’ another word for kindness and ‘favor’ means 'service’?”
“How did you know that?”
Aoife shrugged. “I like to read. In my last place, the master let me borrow the odd book from his library on my day off.”
“You are full of surprises, Aoife.” That name might also become a talking point among the locals. “Grace and Favor it is. Now,” she twisted on the seat to face Aoife. “Are you ready to tell me what happened in Marysville?”
Chapter 16
“It's all over and done with.” Aoife ran a fingernail across a fold in her dress with fierce concentration. “Don't do no good to go over it.”
“You had a good reason to run away. I saw the state you were in when you arrived. I've seen how you brood at times, so I thought it mi
ght help to talk about it.”
“If I do, will you promise never to mention it again?” She raised her eyes. “Ever?”
“Of course I won't. Cross my heart.” Grace made the sign with her hand and eased closer, lowering her voice. “It was really bad wasn’t it? And don’t pretend it wasn’t I saw the bruises, remember.”
“Humiliating more like.” Aoife turned toward the window, where a shaft of morning sunlight highlighted the freckles across her nose. “The Salvation Army lady put me on a train to New Brunswick with a bunch of other girls going into the country. At Saint John station, this handsome man was waiting for me. He was really kind and so pleased to see me.” Her voice hitched and she blinked away tears. “I thought of all those nights in the back scullery in Falkener street reading his letters. They made me believe something good was going to happen.”
“What changed?” Grace handed her a handkerchief.
“Nothing, not then.” She dabbed at her face and sniffed. “He took me to a cart where this other man waited and put my bag in the back. I thought he must have been the driver as he didn't say a word. It wasn't until we were out on this country road when the younger one tells me his name is Seth.”
“So who was the other man?”
“He was Cole.”
“Oh dear, you must have been very disappointed?”
“It was a shock, mainly because Cole behaved as if I wasn't there. It didn't sit right what with all those letters he wrote me, but I thought maybe he was shy and didn’t know what to say in front of Seth.” She tugged the handkerchief between her fingers. “We left the town behind and were out in the country without a soul in sight, me squashed on the seat between them. I thanked Cole for all his letters, and that's when Seth explained to me that Cole couldn’t read or write. Seth wrote every one of them. As a favor, he said.”
“Oh dear. That wasn't a good sign.”
“Looking back, I should have jumped off the cart and walked back to the station right then, but I thought, no, perhaps Cole won't be so bad once we get to know one another. I could even teach him to read if he me wanted to.”
“You were prepared to stay?”
Aoife shrugged. “Why not? Close up he were all right. Older than I had imagined, maybe thirty-five.”
“Positively ancient.”
“I'm nineteen, so it is to me,” Aoife bridled. “Anyway, he wasn’t bad looking close up and he had all his own teeth.”
Grace hid a smile behind her hand and waited for Aoife to continue.
“We drove for two days through some of the most beautiful countryside I've ever seen, camped at night under the cart and cooked bacon over a fire by the roadside in the evening. It was an adventure, of sorts. Cole hardly said a word, but Seth was chatty enough.” She blew her nose noisily on the handkerchief. “We reached Marysville, which was when Seth told me I would be going the rest of the way with Cole. I tried to ask how far away that was, but he grabbed his bag off the back and walked off.
“We travelled for a whole day, with Cole not saying more'n three words to me. It was almost dark when we arrived. That’s when I knew I'd made one helluva mistake. It were nothing but a one-room shack on an open prairie with a scullery tacked onto the side and a privy out back. Though they call them outhouses here.”
“I know they do. What happened then?”
“I found out he had four boys.”
“Four? Did he tell you he had children in the letters?”
Aoife shook her head. “They weren't children neither, but big strapping lads too, with no table manners. I’ve seen pigs eat neater from a trough than those boys.” She wiped a hand beneath her nose. “They were quite nice to me, but their dad ruled them like a gang of skivvies. The youngest couldn't have been more than twelve. I felt sorry for them.”
She swiped a hand beneath her nose.
“If they were big lads, Aoife it means Cole was probably more than thirty-five.”
Aoife shrugged. “Probably. I didn’t care by then. ”
“You all slept in the same room?”
“There was a curtain down the middle, but you could have heard a mouse snore. The two youngest slept up in the loft but there was no wall, just an open platform.”
“I gather Cole expected you to cook and clean for all of them?”
“Didn't take me five minutes to know that's why he wanted me there. I asked Cole when the wedding would be, and he said they do it different in New Brunswick. What with there being few churches and such. That all we had to do was swear an oath in front of his boys and some old bloke he called the reverend, but he didn't look like any minister I ever saw.”
“That doesn’t sound right. Did you believe him?”
“Did I hell, I refused, but that was when he took a belt to me.”
This came as no surprise to Grace, having seen the damage on Aoife's back, but nevertheless, hearing her say it was a shock.
“What could I do?” Aoife shrugged. “I had no idea where I was or how to get to the nearest town. I held out for three days but finally gave in and swore his stupid oath. There was no register or nothing, and the reverend didn't wear a cassock either, just some old black suit. He smelled of whisky and kept slurring his words.”
“That couldn't have been legal,” Grace said.
“Which is what I said, but all I got for my trouble was a sore ear.” She rubbed the side of her head in memory. “More of a cuff really, but it hurt a lot.”
“A man should never hit his wife.”
“It weren’t him - it was the reverend who hit me. Cole just stood there.”
“That's outrageous! And of course Cole was cruel. What do you call allowing this so-called minister to beat another man’s wife? Not that I think you are his wife.”
That she couldn’t be legally tied to this man was the one redeeming feature of Aoife’s experience.
“It weren’t that bad. When my dad had six pints in him he had a stronger arm.”
“Did you have to- I mean, did he-?”
“I know what you mean, and you’re joking aren’t you?” Aoife laughed. A harsh, scornful laugh filled with contempt. ‘When he tried that, I taunted him. Told him I'd left better ones than that back in Liverpool when I was working the streets.”
“You made him think you were a prostitute?” Grace gaped.
“Why not? Worked too as he shrivelled that quick, I-”
“I can work out the rest for myself, thank you.” Grace grimaced.
“I learned from another maid at my last place that most men don’t want to be compared between the sheets with another-”
“Aoife,” Grace interrupted. “Enough. What did Cole do then?”
“Nothing. But he laid it on heavier with the belt after that. Maybe I should have been a bit nicer?”
“No, you should never give into that sort of abuse. You were brave to hold out. I don't know how you stood it.”
“I didn't, I took off the first chance I got. Which wasn't easy.”
“How did you get away?”
“I had a little money tucked away I didn't tell him about, but there were few chances to get any more. The tight-fisted git charged all his supplies to an account at what he called the mercantile.”
“The general store,” Grace supplied. “Many things have different names here.”
“So I found out. He kept those boys of his poor, too, as they never had any money either; to stop them running away, I imagine. Cole kept chickens, so I sold a few eggs he didn’t know about to a neighbor. I did some of her laundry too and kept the money. I say neighbor, but it took me a half hour to walk to their farm. A nice woman who seemed to understand what I had got myself into. She said I was the third girl she’d seen there in the last year.”
“The man was a monster,” Grace muttered. “How did you manage to leave?”
“One morning, I waited until Cole and the boys went off to work in the lower meadow, packed me belongings and made my way to the nearest made-up road. Took me a day a
nd a half to reach Marysville hitching rides in carts or walking. I got lost a couple of times. This country is so big, with miles and miles of open road between towns. I spent the night in a boarding house, but I knew my money wouldn't last long, so it was ditches and barns from then on. I kept heading east and one cart dropped me off at Moncton Station. I hid in a baggage car and got as far as Sackville before I was kicked off by a guard.”
“You said you packed a bag, but you didn’t have one with you yesterday.”
“I fell asleep and some hobo stole it. Not that there was much in it. I found an old chap at the station who took pity on me. He said he was going as far as Port Elgin where I could get a ferry to the Island. I didn't tell him I had no money for the ferry, but I went with him.”
“That was very dangerous,” Grace said, but at Aoife's sideways glance, added, “I’m sorry, I understand you didn’t have much choice.”
“Exactly. I tried to sneak onto the boat, but they guard those things too well. Then I got talking to this lad on the pier; told him I'd been robbed, which was true. He said his dad had a fishing boat and he would take me to Prince Edward Island. He took me to a beach near a place called Victoria.”
“How did you know you should come to Charlottetown? This isn't exactly the Isle of Wight. I think Victoria is over twenty miles from here.”
“The fisherman said it was the largest town, so I hoped this was where you would be. I walked all day and started to make the rounds of the boarding houses asking after you. I almost gave up until Marge told me you were staying at Mrs M’s.”
“I'm so glad she did.” Grace sighed. “My goodness, Aoife, what a time you've had of it.”
“If I’d wanted to be a housekeeper and skivvy, I would have stayed in Liverpool. Working in a big house I got paid every quarter.”
“What exactly did you think being a farmer’s wife was all about?” Apart from the physical abuse, farming was never going to be easy.
“I dunno.” Aoife shrugged. “I dreamed of a little wooden house with a veranda, painted light blue with a garden, lots of flowers and a duck pond. I imagined I would wave my husband off in the morning sunshine, throw grain for the chickens then tidy the house. Maybe kill a chicken for supper. I've done that before. But it wasn't anything like that.”
Envy the Wind Page 18