The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [152]
Besotted
Father wouldn’t have left a note though. He would have been aware of the implications. He wouldn’t have wanted a verdict of suicide, because, as it turned out, he’d had some life insurance: he’d been paying into it for years, so no one could accuse him of having fixed it up at the last minute. He’d tied up the money – it was to go straight into a trust, so that only Laura could touch it, and only after she was twenty-one. He must already have distrusted Richard by then, and concluded that leaving any of it to me would have done no good. I was still a minor, and I was Richard’s wife. The laws were different then. What was mine was his, to all intents and purposes.
As I’ve said, I got Father’s medals. What were they for? Courage. Bravery under fire. Noble gestures of self-sacrifice. I suppose I was expected to live up to them.
Everyone in town came to the funeral, said Reenie. Well, almost everyone, because there was considerable bitterness in some quarters; but still, he’d been well respected, and by that time they’d known it wasn’t him shut down the factories for good like that. They’d known he’d had no part in it – he couldn’t stop it, that was all. It was the big interests did him in.
Everyone in town felt sorry for Laura, said Reenie. (But not for me was left unspoken. In their view, I’d ended up with the spoils. Such as they were.)
Here are the arrangements Richard made:
Laura would come to live with us. Well, of course she would have to: she couldn’t remain at Avilion all by herself, she was only fifteen.
“I could stay with Reenie,” said Laura, but Richard said that was out of the question. Reenie was getting married; she wouldn’t have time to look after Laura. Laura said she didn’t need to be looked after, but Richard only smiled.
“Reenie could come to Toronto,” said Laura, but Richard said she didn’t want to. (Richard didn’t want her to. He and Winifred had already engaged what they considered to be a suitable staff for the running of his household – people who knew the ropes, he said. Which meant they knew Richard’s ropes, and Winifred’s ropes as well.)
Richard said he had already discussed things with Reenie, and had come to a satisfactory arrangement. Reenie and her new husband would act as custodians for us, he said, and would oversee the repairs – Avilion was falling to pieces, so there were a lot of repairs to be done, beginning with the roof – and that way they would be on hand to prepare the house for us whenever requested, because it was to serve as a summer abode. We would come down to Avilion to go boating and so forth, he said, in the tone of an indulgent uncle. That way, Laura and I would not be deprived of our ancestral home. He said ancestral home with a smile. Wouldn’t we like that?
Laura did not thank him. She stared at his forehead, with the cultivated blankness she had once used on Mr. Erskine, and I saw we were in for trouble.
Richard and I would return to Toronto by car, he continued, once things were in place. First he needed to meet with Father’s lawyers, an occasion at which we need not be present: it would be too harrowing for us, considering recent events, and he wanted to spare us as much as possible. One of these lawyers was a connection by marriage on our mother’s side, said Reenie privately – a second cousin’s husband – so he’d surely keep an eye out.
Laura would remain at Avilion until she and Reenie had packed up her things; then she would come in to the city on the train, and would be met at the station. She would live with us in our house – there was a spare bedroom that would suit her perfectly, once it had been redecorated. And she would attend – at last – a proper school. St. Cecilia’s was the one he had picked, in consultation with Winifred, who knew about such things. Laura might need some extra lessons, but he was sure all of that would work out as time went by. In this way she would be able to gain the benefits, the advantages . . .
“The advantages of what?” said Laura.
“Of your position,” said