A Fatal Grace

After a lunch of poached salmon and gigot d’agneau Clara and Myrna had split up to do their Christmas shopping. But first Clara was heading off in search of Siegfried Sassoon.

‘You’re going to a bookstore?’ asked Myrna.

‘Of course not. I’m going to have my hair done.’ Really, Myrna had grown quite out of touch.

‘By Siegfried Sassoon?’

‘Not him personally, but someone in his salon.’

‘Or his unit. I understand it’s the hell where youth and laughter go.’

Clara had seen pictures of the Sassoon salons and thought that while Myrna’s description was a little dramatic it wasn’t that far off, judging by the pouting, unhappy women in the photos.

A few hours later, struggling along rue Ste-Catherine, mittened hands grasping the ropes of bags overflowing with gifts, Clara was exhausted and pleased. Her buying spree had gone brilliantly. She’d bought Peter the perfect gift, and smaller items for family and friends. Myrna was right. Jane would be having fun watching her spend the money. And Myrna had also been right, though cryptic, about the Sassoon thing.

‘Nylons? Hershey bar?’ The lyrical, warm voice came up behind her.

‘I was just thinking of you, you traitor. You sent me out into the mean streets of Montreal to ask strangers where I could find Siegfried Sassoon.’

Myrna was leaning against an old bank building, shaking with laughter.

‘I don’t know whether to be upset or relieved that no one knew I wanted a dead poet from the Great War to do my hair. Why didn’t you tell me it was Vidal not Siegfried?’ Now Clara was laughing too, and dropped her bags onto the snowy sidewalk.

‘It looks great,’ said Myrna, stepping back to survey Clara, her laughter finally subsiding.

‘I’m wearing a tuque, you moron,’ said Clara and both women laughed again as Clara pulled the knitted pompom hat down over her ears.

It was hard not to feel light-hearted in that atmosphere. It was close to four o’clock on 22 December and the sun had set. Now the streets of Montreal, always full of charm, were also full of Christmas lights. Up and down rue Ste-Catherine decorations glowed, the light bouncing off the snowdrifts. Cars crawled by, caught in the rush-hour snag, and pedestrians hurried along the snowy sidewalks, occasionally stopping to look in a bright shop window.

Just ahead was their destination. Ogilvy’s. And the window. Even from half a block away Clara could see the glow, and the magic reflected on the faces of the children staring up at it. Now the cold vanished, the crowds, elbowing and nudging moments before, disappeared; even Myrna receded as Clara approached the window. There it was. The Mill in the Forest.

‘I’ll meet you in there,’ Myrna whispered, but her friend had gone. Into the window Clara had climbed. Past the enraptured children in front, over the pile of clothing on the snowy sidewalk and right into the idyllic Christmas scene. She was walking over the wooden bridge now, toward the grandma bear in the wooden mill house.

‘Spare some change? L’argent, s’il vous plaît?’

A spewing sound cut into Clara’s world.

‘Oh, gross. Mommy,’ a child cried as Clara tore her eyes from the window and looked down. The pile of clothing had thrown up, the vomit gently steaming on the crusted blanket wrapped round him. Or her. Clara didn’t know, and didn’t care. She was annoyed that she’d waited all year, all week, all day for this moment and some bum on the street had vomited all over it. And now the kids were all crying and the magic had gone.

Clara backed away from the window, and looked around for Myrna. She must have gone inside, Clara realized, and already be at the big event. It wasn’t just the window that had brought them to Ogilvy’s this day. A fellow villager and good friend, Ruth Zardo, was launching her latest book in the basement bookstore.

Normally Ruth’s slim volumes of poetry were slipped to an oblivious public following a launch at the bistro in Three Pines. But something astounding had happened. This elderly, wizened, bitter poet from Three Pines had won the Governor-General’s Award. Surprised the hell out of everyone. Not because she didn’t deserve it. Clara knew her poems were stunning.

Who hurt you once so far beyond repair

that you would greet each overture with curling lip?

It was not always so.

No, Ruth Zardo deserved the prize. It was just shocking that anyone else knew it.

Will that happen with my art? Clara wondered as she swooshed through the revolving doors into the perfumed and muted atmosphere of Ogilvy’s. Am I about to be plucked out of obscurity? She’d finally found the courage to give her work to their new neighbor, CC de Poitiers, after she’d overheard her talking in the bistro about her close personal friend, Denis Fortin.