“Put the book aside. Keep it in readiness so that I may point out to you what has struck me about it, what would be my dream, what picture now haunts me. I would fondly dream of the repose of St. Anne’s Hill, after the toils in which I am engaged… .”
“The wish you express, how often I have expressed it to myself! Yes, my dear, I will not forget it, even if I have to carry it with me to the spheres beyond….”
“How gladly I would give my position to someone else, if someone else would take it. Unfortunately I feel the coils tighter every day around me. How I wish I could take you to the beach and rest there for hours. I would see you again as childishly happy as I once saw you in the little square here. But this is not and cannot be my lot… .”
“Time itself would be nothing if it brought our share of the blessings that are due to us, that are within sight, yet unattainable… .”
Unattainable. He wrote the word himself, plain as day. For a long time she glossed over it, willfully overlooked it. But now she remembers it with appalling clarity.
What, then, is attainable?
When she first knew him in Arthabaska, Wilfrid was just a young country lawyer. He still had to learn which piece of silverware to pick up at her dinner parties, the proper way to eat an orange at table. She taught him all the etiquette that a gentleman of the world needs to know. She taught him how to eat, how to discriminate among wines, how to dress fashionably and with taste, how to conduct himself among the English elite with whom he must mingle to succeed in Ottawa. Along with elegance in dress and manner, she inspired him with her love of things English, nurtured by her days in London. Now, having arrived at the pinnacle, is he casting her aside because he no longer needs her?
Her immediate answer is no. Although his need for her tutelage is over, his need for her inspiration and ideas and vibrant conversation remains as pressing as ever. Wilfrid can talk to her in ways and on subjects that he can’t talk to Zoë, or anyone else. When he’s alone with his Émilie, he can be himself, without censure, without reproach. His spirit needs oxygen to breathe and soar and aspire to its limitless possibilities: she provides that oxygen. His mission requires help in steering a course through the perilous shoals of politics, especially among the English, above all among the Aberdeens and their household: she can provide him with that too. And his manhood demands the completion of a family. None of this can Zoë give him. In all these roles, the piano teacher is constitutionally, completely, hopelessly inadequate. Useless.
Now that she’s in Ottawa, Émilie will find new ways to make herself indispensable to him. And in the process she’ll grow closer to him: closer in ways they’ve never known before. She’ll share his power.
She breathes deeply, rises from the edge of the bed, seats herself with dignity at the escritoire. She takes hotel stationery from the drawer and dips the hotel pen into the little inkwell and begins writing to him, her custom down through the years, her bridge across the abyss.
After two sentences she slowly puts the pen down. Finally she weeps.
Like a courtier spreading his cloak before her feet, the caretaker scatters sand down the icy front steps of Notre-Dame. Zoë, snug in her sealskin coat, descends gingerly to Sussex Street, each stair melting into a sandy blur before her eyes. She reminds herself it’s all right: she can see better at a distance.
Winter has arrived in Ottawa, and that much, at least, feels right, familiar. Zoë loves the exhilarating, ice-blue sky, the long sharp shadows thrown by a sun down low to the horizon. Safely arrived on the sidewalk lined with orderly snowbanks, she looks up at the cathedral. Its twin spires piercing the heavens are a grander version of St-Christophe, her own parish church high on the hill in Arthabaska.
Attending morning Mass has become her ritual since moving to the capital. Setting out for the cathedral lends purpose and comfort to her days, which yawn emptily ahead until Wilfrid returns from Parliament Hill at six. She misses Mass only on days when they’re entertaining, and she has to oversee arrangements in the Russell’s private dining room: they’re still living at the hotel.
But she hasn’t yet warmed to any of the Ottawa priests, much less to the austere Bishop Duhamel, known for his opposition to Wilfrid. She can’t imagine confessing to them, as she did to Father Suzor at St-Christophe, her shameful fantasies: gouging Émilie’s eyes, breaking her nose so it spouts blood like a whale, knocking out her ugly teeth. Father Suzor, who heard her confession for years, took it all in stride, gently reassuring her that the Lord understands the nature of temptation and loves us all the more when we’re tempted to sin but bravely resist. Courage, patience, acceptance, perseverance were Father Suzor’s counsel: above all patience, for God blesses those who wait without complaining. While remaining steadfastly loyal to her husband, she must offer up her pain to Him who sees and understands. The greater her suffering, the more stars would gleam in her crown.
Zoë sets off on her frigid walk back to the hotel. A bitter wind stings her cheeks, floods her eyes with tears. She won’t take a carriage. Wilfrid never exercises, and she has to get enough for both of them.
If the House of Commons was sitting, she’d go and occupy the seat reserved for her in the front row of the visitors’ gallery, directly above Mr. Speaker—an office Wilfrid has awarded to the literary James Edgar, in lieu of a cabinet post. To her great surprise she actually enjoys the fractious, theatrical spectacle as it unfolds in the pit below her feet, she who once had no use for politics. Watching Wilfrid in command of the unruly House, and by extension the unruly country, allows her to be more useful to him in their bedtime conversations. She’s forming opinions. Wilfrid says he finds her observations of men and motives helpful. But the first session of the new Parliament is over, its main purpose to vote the monies necessary for carrying on the public service, and in the process to display Wilfrid’s new government to the nation. Like a peacock, Zoë thought at the time, displaying his feathers to the female.
Doggedly she proceeds along St. Patrick Street, up Parent and into the By Ward Market. Her gloved hands press her fur collar against her cheeks. The market streets are much quieter in winter. In warmer months they’re crammed with the wagons of merchants and Jewish peddlers and market gardeners, the sidewalks crowded with customers lined up at fruit and vegetable stands shaded by giant umbrellas. Even now, with their doors closed against the cold, the little shops release their pungent smells of cheese and fish and freshly stuffed sausage into the air. The sidewalk is cluttered with discarded wooden crates. She has to squint to navigate around them.
Three sleighs stand side by side facing Lapointe’s, steam rising from blankets on the horses’ flanks, the occupants inside shopping for the day’s catch. Zoë enters, quietly taking her place in line. She needs to order lobster and oysters for Saturday night’s dinner party. Rather than let the Russell’s chef order her meats and seafood, she buys them herself to ensure quality and freshness, and to get the best price.
She likes being inside the shop’s sharp briny warmth. When M. Lapointe sees her, he makes the usual pleasant fuss, bypassing the other patrons to serve her first, and in French. His handlebar moustache reminds her of Émilie’s husband, Joseph. Lapointe asks in a conspiratorial whisper who’s on the guest list this time, and Zoë teases him by mentioning only the Clerk of the House and the Parliamentary Librarian. Lapointe’s eyebrows narrow in disappointment until she relents, adding the names of prominent newspaper owners from Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa, and several cabinet ministers, all with wives. He licks the tips of his moustache and orders his boys to crate up his best crustaceans for delivery to the Russell House, care of M. Desjardins, the chef. As she leaves, the other customers turn to stare.
Trekking across Sappers Bridge