A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [89]
The natural talents that Marie had first begun to show evidence of in Mackenzie’s kitchen on the island had now blossomed to such an extent that her culinary accomplishments were acquiring a reputation. Her lemon meringue pies and decorated cakes, for instance, were famous as far away as Toronto and Montreal, and her sauces for fresh lake trout were discussed well into the winter. The guests gorged themselves three times a day in the pale blue dining room while the darker blue of the Great Lake swell heaved beyond the panes of a multitude of windows and the Tremble Point lighthouse shone on a sandbar islet offshore.
There were walks in the evenings along the sandy shore or inland through a wood of flickering poplar and birch, then into a meadow filled with daisies, black-eyed Susans, and the soft blue flowers called bachelor button. Later, Ghost would be called in from the stables to dance and sing. (Marie, though fond of Ghost, was superstitious, and insisted one had to go out to the stables, in daylight, to have one’s fortune told.) Even one or two of the guests could be persuaded to entertain: Mr. McIntyre, a bank manager from Grimsby, might sing a song, one of the young ladies might play the old piano (which could never be kept in tune because of the humidity), and inevitably someone would recite a poem by Mr. Tennyson. If this took place during the summer of 1889, just after the great poet had published “Crossing the Bar,” one of the company would inevitably deliver the mournful lines and everyone’s eyes would fill with tears. Everyone’s eyes, that is, except for Annabelle’s, if she happened to be in residence on her yearly visit. She considered the laureate to be a pretentious romantic and therefore she had always disliked his poetry. One June evening she announced to the guests, all of whom had removed their handkerchiefs during a shoe salesman’s particularly sensitive recitation of “The Lady of Shallot,” that, in her opinion, the girl in question was a simple-minded infant who had undoubtedly died of starvation rather than a broken heart since, beyond a brief reference to barley, there had been mention of neither food nor drink in the story, unless one took into account her name, which, if Annabelle remembered her French correctly, had something to do with onions. This had shocked the gathering so thoroughly that Branwell had found it necessary later in the evening to upbraid his sister in private concerning her frankness.
“What can it possibly matter to you what Tennyson says or doesn’t say about romance?” he asked. “Why would you care enough to state your case so vehemently?”
“Well, what would you have me say?” she reportedly replied. “That his ‘Lady’ made the right decision? She should have stuck to her loom, or, better still, she should have gone outdoors into the fresh air and got some exercise. Reaping barley with the other early reapers would have been a much wiser choice than dying for the likes of Lancelot.” In truth, she thought that the line “only reapers, reaping early in among the bearded barley” was quite beautiful, but she was far too stubborn to admit this.
She wondered, suddenly, how her brother saw her at this moment. As an aging, ill-tempered spinster, undoubtedly, an eccentric maiden aunt. Allowing such a thought to form in her mind increased her irritation in any number of ways. She decided she would spend the following day away from the Ballagh Oisin and asked Branwell to hire a carriage and driver for her so that she could make a tour of the County. She travelled along shore roads near bays and inlets filled with fishing boats, moved slowly down the main streets of several towns