A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [81]
From that day on “Badger” was the name that his grandfather used, both when he spoke to Maurice privately and when he called to him from a distance as he often did when returning to the house for his evening meal. Sometimes he had a treat for the boy, a candy he had purchased at the island store, or one of the baker’s sticky buns, and no amount of scolding on the part of Marie could dissuade him from letting his grandson devour these sweets right before supper. The boy, for his part, followed the old man everywhere he could. He trailed around after him, from room to room, down the road to the office, sometimes even into the old man’s private chamber. “Badger, be gone!” was a teasing command that was often heard booming through the house. Sometimes the boy, anxious for the morning reunion, would be up at dawn, standing by Joseph Woodman’s bed, waiting for the levee. On one of these occasions, Joseph Woodman leapt from his bed and, still clothed in his nightgown and cap, chased his squealing grandson all over the house. It was obvious to Branwell, Marie, and Annabelle that the old man had come, quite quickly, to love the child and that this love was to be, at least for the time being, the bond connecting all the adults in the family.
Marie resumed her duties in the house with much enthusiasm now that her legitimacy afforded her the status of junior mistress rather than that of servant. Golden soufflés with one perfect crack down the middle and beautiful cakes with fruit slices arranged to represent bouquets emerged often from her ovens along with the more ordinary daily fare. She slept in Branwell’s room now in a brass double bed bought for the couple by Woodman Senior in a moment of weakness that could only be viewed as a complete surrender to the very turn of events that he had taken such pains to prevent from happening.
On certain quiet afternoons Marie and Annabelle would retire to the old bed in the attic in order to talk, just as they had done when they were young girls. Their conversations mostly concerned Branwell. His virtues and his shortcomings, his various infirmities, and his mysterious inability to express himself continued to absorb them. Various theories about what he was thinking or how he was feeling were articulated, mulled over, dissected. Several conflicting conclusions were drawn, then reversed the next day or the following week. Branwell, unaware of all this, and thinking about nothing in particular, was, in fact, happier than he had ever been in his life. He went—albeit somewhat unwillingly—each day to the office and, once summer came, even more unwillingly out on the river with the rafts, but his marriage to Marie pleased and calmed him and made his tasks easier to manage, though the idea of painted hallways remained in his imagination.
Still, both women tended to believe that, underneath it all, Branwell was tortured. This made him more mysterious, more interesting. Long, speculative discussions about what might be torturing him took place in the attic while Branwell was yawning in the vicinity of account books or while he was stretched out on a cot gazing at the temporary ceiling of a moored raft. He wasn’t tortured, he was just bored by duty. He wanted to embellish stark hallways with turquoise landscapes. Eventually he confessed his desire to his wife, who, in turn, brought up the subject with Annabelle. “It’s what he is meant to be doing,” Annabelle apparently announced, this time to a sympathetic listener, “and, in time, I expect, he’ll be given his chance.” Marie agreed and told Annabelle that she wanted pure contentment for the man who had made her so happy that even now, when she woke beside him each morning, she could hardly believe her good fortune.
Annabelle, whose domestic work had all but disappeared now that Marie was back, took up the thankless task of educating her little nephew until it