Settlement. Ann Birch

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СКАЧАТЬ to say that surely Franklin’s charting of the Arctic seaboard was scarcely more arduous than my trek across the Atlantic to this godforsaken town. But I survived, Robert. I thank you for asking.”

      Her husband smiled. “Still the jokester, dear Anna. We must talk further at dinner.”

      He picked up the newspaper that had engaged his interest and began reading. Anna counted slowly to ten in English, French, and German. Then she closed her eyes for a few moments, trying to shut out of her vision the strangling vines on the wallpaper and the snow collecting on the inner ledge of the ill-fitting window.

      “Dinner, master.” Mrs. Hawkins set a platter of sausages and a dish of boiled potatoes on the buffet. “And I made a nice bread pudding for you, ma’am, in honour of your homecoming.”

      “One of my favourite things. Thank you. That will be a treat.”

      The woman smiled, her lined face transformed into prettiness. She went again belowstairs.

      Robert forked sausages onto his plate. “Sir Francis asked me to extend a welcome to you. He said that he looks forward to meeting you at the soirées at Government House. Lady Head arrives in a few weeks.”

      “One of the men I spoke to today on the boat from Niagara called His Lordship a nincompoop. Was he right?”

      “I can have no opinions. And I must caution you, Anna. While you are here, I ask you to keep clear of any expression of contention.”

      “While I am here? What do you mean, Robert? You see this as a temporary arrangement, do you?”

      “Please do not pounce on a stray phrase. Of course, I want you to stay.”

      “I know you need me to lend credence to your pretence to have a normal married life. That’s what you had in mind when you asked me to come across the sea. But I have nonetheless hoped for more. Some warmth of welcome. Some sympathetic discourse.” She laid down her fork and pushed her plate away.

      “You are right, Anna. I want to rise from Attorney-General to Vice-Chancellor of the Province. You are an essential part of my plan. We must try to get on together. I shall do my best to be a good husband. But I doubt, my dear Anna, that you have come across the sea solely for altruistic reasons.”

      “So let us lay down our cards. In the twelve years we have been married, we have lived apart for almost eight years, and during all that time, I have been reliant on my own resources as an author, but—”

      “Ah yes. You want money.”

      “The writing business is uncertain at best. I have been lucky with my books so far, but who knows how long the reading public will stay with me. So here it is, Robert. I shall need three hundred pounds a year to maintain myself and to provide for my parents and my unmarried sisters. My poor father has suffered a stroke.”

      “Three hundred pounds!” Robert’s normal pallor disappeared under a pulsing wave of crimson.

      “You will be able to afford it. I learned some facts before I left England. The salary of the Attorney-General is twelve hundred pounds a year including fees; the salary of the Vice-Chancellor is twelve hundred a year, not including fees. Your income will more than double. You’ll be a rich man. I ask for a mere three hundred.”

      “Never. But as long as you stay with me, I shall give you an allowance suited to your status as Chancellor’s wife. Some of that may certainly be dispatched to your family. If you leave, you are on your own.”

      Robert poured another glass of wine, then another and another. Anna spooned some of the bread pudding onto her plate. The rest of the meal passed in silence.

      As they parted for the night, Robert stopped outside his bedchamber. “I promised you a pleasant little house, Anna. Alas, it is not ready. The carpenters and bricklayers took a month off for the hunting season. You can’t hurry the hoi polloi in this town.”

      “Never mind. This place is just fine. The street is no doubt named after London’s best prison.”

      “Would you like me to come to your bedchamber for a while?”

      “Perhaps we are both too tired. Let us rest for tonight.”

      In her bedchamber, Anna found that Mrs. Hawkins had left two flickering candles. By their light, she removed her dress. Her husband had not noticed her white arms and hands in the new gown. Perhaps he had once found her physically attractive, but that had been long ago.

      She remembered his letters during their courtship. They had been delightful, full of warmth and passion. She had fallen in love with those fine words on that beautiful linen-fibre paper. But whenever they met in person, his conversation was strained and impersonal. She had broken off their engagement once, then changed her mind. If he had not been successful and well connected, would she have married him, knowing his cold, reserved demeanour?

      Her friend Ottilie von Goethe had asked her once if their marriage had been consummated. Yes, it had been consummated. A grim word, but the right word. It suggested the completion of sexual congress without any of the joy or desire a married woman had a right to expect. In the early days, there had been caresses which had led to gropings and perfunctory encounters, but there had been no northern lights, no shooting stars.

      Once she had found on his desk a poem of fourteen lines written to him by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s son, Hartley. In length, it seemed to be a sonnet, but she remembered the unorthodox rhyming couplet which formed its beginning. And the even stranger content:

       Thou art my dearest love. O Rob! Sans thee,

       A vast and woeful wasteland my life would be.

      “How dare you poke into my private correspondence?” Robert had said, coming into the room as she held the poem in her hand. She had put it aside hastily, but now, as she remembered it, she recognized a truth she had long tried to suppress.

      She took from her portmanteau the pocket of otter fur that Ottilie had given her on a fine summer morning in Vienna, as they drank coffee in lodgings overlooking the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. She held its softness against her cheek now, feeling its warmth and a hint of Ottilie’s scent.

      “It’s so pleasant, so pretty,” she had said to her friend, “but what is it?”

      “It’s a foot muff, my dear Anna. I understand there will be a frozen lake in that faraway place to which you seem determined to go. No doubt when you are there you will travel in a calèche all by yourself with only the horse to talk to. Keep your poor cold toes tucked inside the muff while you discuss oats and harness.”

      Sitting down now at the pine table that must serve as a desk, she put her cold toes into the warm fur. Perhaps she could find release by recording her day’s disappointments in her journal. Better still, she would write a letter to Ottilie. She would begin, “Dearest Ottilie: Here in this forsaken outpost, by that frozen lake you warned me about in July, I long for your overflowing high spirits and joie de vivre.”

      She took the inkwell from the top of the bureau and set it on the table. Then she saw that the ink had a thin layer of ice over it.

FOUR

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