Dead Cold (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2)(11)

‘They’d formed a division especially for Catholics, mostly Irish like Daddy and Québecois, of course. He’d never talk about the war. They never did. And I never asked. Imagine that? Did he want me to, do you think?’ Kaye looked at Em, who was silent. ‘He told us only one thing about the war.’ Now she stopped. She looked around and her eyes fell on her fluffy knitted hat. She reached out and put it on, then looked at Em, expectantly. No one was breathing. They stared back, waiting to hear more.

‘For Christ’s sake, woman, tell us,’ Ruth rasped.

‘Oh, yes.’ Kaye seemed to notice them for the first time. ‘Daddy. At the Somme. Led by Rawlinson, you know. Fool of a man. I looked that much up. My father was up to his chest in muck and shit, horse and human. Food was infested with maggots. His skin was rotting, sores all over. His hair and teeth were falling out. They’d long since stopped fighting for king and country, and were now just fighting for each other. He loved his friends.’

Kaye looked at Em then over to Mother.

‘The boys were lining up, and told to fix bayonets.’

Everyone leaned forward slightly.

‘The last wave of boys had gone over a minute or so earlier and were mowed down. They could hear the screams and see the twitching body parts that had flown back into the trench. It was their turn, my father and his friends. They waited for the word. He knew he was going to die. He knew he had moments to live. He knew he could say one last thing. And do you know what those boys screamed as they went over the top?’

The world had stopped turning and had come down to this.

‘They crossed themselves and screamed, “Fuck the Pope.”’

As one the friends recoiled, as though wounded by the words, by the image. Kaye turned to Clara, her rheumy blue eyes searching.

‘Why?’

Clara wondered why Kaye thought she’d know. She didn’t. And she was wise enough to say nothing. Kaye dropped her head as though it suddenly weighed too much, the back of her thin neck forming a deep trench into her skull.

‘Time to go, dear. You must be tired.’ Em put a delicate hand on Kaye’s arm and Mother Bea took the other and the three elderly women walked slowly out of the bookstore. Heading home to Three Pines.

‘And time for us to go as well. Need a lift?’ Myrna asked Ruth.

‘No, I’m here to the bitter end. All you rats, don’t feel bad. Just leave me here.’

‘Saint Ruth Among the Heathens,’ said Gabri.

‘Our Lady of Perpetual Poetry,’ said Olivier. ‘We’ll stay with you.’

‘There once was a woman named Ruth,’ said Gabri.

‘Who was getting quite long in the tooth,’ said Olivier.

‘Come on, let’s go.’ Myrna dragged Clara away, though Clara was quite curious to see what they’d come up with to rhyme with ‘tooth’. Mooth? Gooth? No, probably better if it’s an actual word. Being a poet was harder than it looked.

‘There’s one quick thing I need to do,’ said Clara. ‘It’ll just take a minute.’

‘I’ll get the car and meet you outside.’ Myrna rushed off. Clara found the small brasserie in Ogilvy’s and bought a panini and some Christmas cookies. She also bought a large coffee, then headed for the escalator.

She was feeling badly about the homeless person she’d stepped over to get into Ogilvy’s. She had a sneaking, and secret, suspicion that if God ever came to earth He’d be a beggar. Suppose this was Him? Or Her? Whatever. If it was God Clara had a deep, almost spiritual feeling that she was screwed. Getting on the crowded escalator up to the main floor Clara saw a familiar figure descending. CC de Poitiers. And CC had seen her, she was sure of it.





CC de Poitiers gripped the rubber handrail of the escalator and stared at the woman getting on at the bottom. Clara Morrow. That smug, smiling, self-righteous villager. That woman always surrounded by friends, always with that handsome husband, showing him off as though it was more than some freak of nature that she’d landed one of the Montreal Morrows. CC could feel a rage building inside her as Clara approached, looking so wide-eyed and happy.

CC gripped harder, willing herself not to launch herself over the sleek metal divider and onto Clara. She balled up all her rage and made a missile of it and, like Ahab, had her chest been a cannon she’d have fired her heart upon Clara.

Instead, she did the next best thing.

Turning to the man next to her she said, ‘I’m so sorry, Denis, that you think Clara’s art is amateur and banal. So she’s just wasting her time?’

As Clara passed CC had the satisfaction of seeing her smug, arrogant, ugly little face crumple. A direct hit. CC turned to the baffled stranger beside her and smiled, not really caring whether he thought she was nuts.

Clara got off the escalator in a dream. The floor seemed a very long way off and the walls receded. Breathe. Breathe, she ordered herself, a little frightened that she might actually die. Murdered by words. Murdered by CC. So casual and so cruel. She hadn’t recognized the man next to CC as Fortin, but then she’d only seen pictures of him.

Amateur and banal.

And then the pain started and the tears, and she stood in Ogilvy’s, the place she’d been yearning to enter all her life, and wept. She sobbed, and lowered her precious presents to the marble floor, and placed the sandwich there and the cookies and the coffee, carefully, as a child places food for Santa. Then she knelt there herself, the final offering, a tiny ball of pain.