A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [86]
Branwell had immediately laid down the last of his money in order to purchase a ticket home.
In Branwell’s company now, and moving considerably faster than he was because of the snowshoes on his feet, was Ghost, who just that morning had announced that he would soon be stabling horses for a hotel situated on a sandy point near water. Branwell had done his best to discourage him, had made a prediction himself of no room, no board, no money, but Ghost was not to be put off. “One does not argue with destiny,” he told his new friend, “for destiny always wins one way or another. I see horses again in my future. There were horses in my past as well, but since the railroad their numbers have diminished in these parts. I’m your man for horses.”
Branwell, who was moderately alarmed, realized that it had been a mistake to tell Ghost that there was no railway in his County and therefore many horses. “You won’t find any bears there,” he said now, hoping to settle the matter. “There may be horses, but I’ve never seen a bear.”
“No bears here either,” Ghost said. “No forest, no bears … that’s the way it is. Used to be bears, and there used to be horses, but it all went to hell around here faster than you could say knife.” He pulled from his pocket a train ticket that he claimed to have found late one night on the barroom floor and looked at it closely. “Only good until Toronto,” he said. “After that I’ll be in the baggage car. I’ll meet you at the other end. Did I tell you I saw a woman in my future too? And I saw plenty of good food … interesting food, not just your ordinary grub.”
Poor Marie, thought Branwell. She wasn’t likely to be happy about this, though he did recall that the previous summer she had said that they needed someone to look after the state of the stables and the visitors’ horses.
Annabelle was destined to witness her father’s decline and fall, his body weakening, his mind beginning to shed parts of the past. As if he no longer had any use for them, he sometimes forgot that he had married and sired children, but more often he forgot that his wife was dead. Annabelle wondered if perhaps this was because her mother had been so indistinct, so listless, that absence seemed a permanent quality of her character even when she was alive. “Where is that woman?” her father would ask. “Down with a migraine again?” When reminded of her death, he appeared to be surprised rather than shocked or grief-stricken. “Well, I’ll be bogged!” he would exclaim. “Why on earth didn’t anyone tell me?” On the rare occasions when he remembered Branwell at all, he forgot that his son was no longer in residence. “Out on the rafts, I suppose,” he would say when Branwell’s name came up. Or, more suspiciously, “Upstairs in bed with that Irish girl, I’ll wager.”
Her father also failed to recall that not one serviceable tree remained in the vicinity of the tributaries and rivers that flowed into the Great Lakes and that, in consequence, his business was all but defunct. At least once a week he would rise much earlier than Annabelle, don his suit coat and hat, and depart for the office. Sometimes she found him in the sail loft angrily insisting that the long-gone sail master show himself and account for the lack of sails. Sometimes she found him standing, small and confused, under the gorgeous cathedral ceiling of the huge, vacant shed in which parts of his ships had once been constructed. It hurt