The Cruellest Month (2 page)

‘I admit it seems obvious,’ Peter laughed, cutting into his golden
croque-monsieur
, the melted Camembert barely holding the maple-smoked ham and flaky croissant together. Around him anxious parents buzzed, trying to bribe crying children.

‘Every wild animal within miles must have been in the village last night,’ said Ruth, slowly swirling the ice cubes in her Scotch. ‘Eating Easter eggs. Foxes, raccoons, squirrels.’

‘Bears,’ said Myrna, joining their table. ‘Jesus, that’s pretty scary. All those starving bears, rising from their dens, ravenous after hibernating all winter.’

‘Imagine their surprise to find chocolate eggs and bunnies,’ said Clara, between mouthfuls of creamy seafood chowder with chunks of salmon and scallops and shrimp. She took a crusty baguette and twisted off a piece, spreading it with Olivier’s special sweet butter. ‘The bears must have wondered what miracle had happened while they slept.’

‘Not everything that rises up is a miracle,’ said Ruth, lifting her eyes from the amber liquid, her lunch, and looking out the mullioned windows. ‘Not everything that comes back to life is meant to. This is a strange time of year. Rain one day, snow the next. Nothing’s certain. It’s unpredictable.’

‘Every season’s unpredictable,’ said Peter. ‘Hurricanes in fall, snowstorms in winter.’

‘But you’ve just proved my point,’ said Ruth. ‘You can name the threat. We all know what to expect in other seasons. But not spring. The worst flooding happens in spring. Forest fires, killing frosts, snowstorms and mud slides. Nature’s in turmoil. Anything can happen.’

‘The most achingly beautiful days happen in spring too,’ said Clara.

‘True, the miracle of rebirth. I hear whole religions are based on the concept. But some things are better off buried.’ The old poet got up and downed her Scotch. ‘It’s not over yet. The bears will be back.’

‘I would be too,’ said Myrna, ‘if I’d suddenly found a village made of chocolate.’

Clara smiled, but her eyes were on Ruth, who for once didn’t radiate anger or annoyance. Instead Clara caught something far more disconcerting.

Fear.

   TWO   

R
uth had been right. The bears did come back each Easter in search of chocolate eggs. Of course, they found none and after a couple of years gave up and instead stayed in the woods surrounding Three Pines. Villagers quickly learned not to go for long walks in the woods at Easter, and to never, ever get between a newborn bear cub and its mother.

It’s all part of nature, Clara told herself. But a niggling worry remained. Somehow they’d brought this on themselves.

Once again Clara found herself on her hands and knees, this time with the beautiful wooden eggs they’d substituted for the real thing. That had been Hanna and Roar Parra’s idea. Coming from the Czech Republic they had no mean knack with painted eggs.

Over the winter Roar whittled the wooden eggs and Hanna handed them out to anyone interested in painting them. Soon people from all over the Cantons de l’Est were taking eggs. School kids did them as art projects, parents rediscovered latent talents, grandparents painted scenes from their youth. Over the long Quebec winter they painted and on Good Friday they started hiding them. Once found the children exchanged the wooden bounty for the real thing. Or at least, the chocolate thing.

‘Hey, look at this,’ Clara called from beside the pond on the green. Monsieur Béliveau and Madeleine Favreau went over. Monsieur Béliveau stooped down, his long slender body almost bending double. There in the long grass was a nest of eggs.

‘They’re real,’ he laughed, spreading the grass to show Madeleine.

‘How beautiful,’ said Mad, reaching out.

‘
Mais, non
,’ he said. ‘Their mother will reject them if you touch.’

Mad quickly brought back her hand and looked at Clara with a wide open smile. Clara had always liked Madeleine, though they didn’t know each other well. Mad had lived in the area for only a few years. She was some years younger than Clara and full of life. She was also a natural beauty, with short dark hair and intelligent brown eyes. She always seemed to be enjoying herself. And why not, thought Clara. After what she’d been through.

‘What sort of eggs are they?’ Clara asked.

Madeleine made a face and put up her hands. Not a clue.

Monsieur Béliveau again folded himself in a graceful movement. ‘Not chicken.
Trop grand.
Maybe duck, or goose.’

‘That would be fun,’ said Madeleine. ‘A little family on the green.’ She turned to Clara. ‘What time’s the séance?’

‘You’re coming?’ Clara was surprised though delighted. ‘Hazel too?’

‘No, Hazel’s refused. Sophie gets home tomorrow morning and Hazel says she has to cook and clean,
mais, franchement
?’ Madeleine leaned in conspiratorially, ‘I think she’s afraid of ghosts. Monsieur Béliveau has agreed to come.’

‘We must be grateful Hazel has decided to cook instead,’ said Monsieur Béliveau. ‘She’s made us a wonderful casserole.’

It was very like Hazel, Clara thought. Always caring for others. Clara was slightly afraid people took advantage of Hazel’s generosity, especially that daughter of hers, but she also realized it was none of her business.

‘But we have a great deal of work to do before dinner,
mon ami
.’ Madeleine smiled radiantly at Monsieur Béliveau and touched him lightly on the shoulder. The older man smiled. He hadn’t smiled a lot since his wife died, but now he did, and Clara had another reason to like Madeleine. She watched them now holding their baskets of Easter eggs and walking through the late April sunshine, the youngest and tenderest of lights falling on a young and tender relationship. Monsieur Béliveau, tall and slim and slightly stooped, seemed to have a spring in his step.

Clara stood up and stretched her forty-eight-year-old body, then glanced around. It looked like a field of derrières. Every villager was bending over, placing eggs. Clara wished she had her sketch pad.

There was certainly nothing cool about Three Pines, nothing funky or edgy or any of the other things that had mattered to Clara when she’d graduated from art college twenty-five years ago. Nothing here was designed. Instead, the village seemed to follow the lead of the
three pines on the green and simply to have grown from the earth over time.

Clara took a deep breath of the fragrant spring air and looked over at the home she shared with Peter. It was brick with a wooden porch and a fieldstone wall fronting the Commons. A path wound from their gate through some apple trees about to bloom to their front door. From there Clara’s eyes wandered around the houses surrounding the Commons. Like their inhabitants, the homes of Three Pines were sturdy and shaped by their environment. They’d withstood storms and wars, loss and sorrow. And emerging from that was a community of great kindness and compassion.

Clara loved it. The houses, the shops, the village green, the perennial gardens and even the washboard roads. She loved the fact that Montreal was less than a two-hour drive away, and the American border was just down the road. But more than all of that, she loved the people who now spent this and every Good Friday hiding wooden eggs for children.

It was a late Easter, near the end of April. They weren’t always so lucky with the elements. At least once the village had awoken on Easter Sunday to find a fresh dumping of heavy spring snow, burying the tender buds and painted eggs. It had often been bitterly cold and the villagers had had to duck into Olivier’s Bistro every now and then for a hot cider or hot chocolate, wrapping trembling and frozen fingers around the warm and welcoming mugs.

But not today. There was a certain glory about this April day. It was a perfect Good Friday, sunny and warm. The snow had gone, even in the shadows, where it tended to linger. The grass was growing and the trees had a halo of the gentlest green. It was as though the aura of Three Pines had suddenly made itself visible. It was all golden light with shimmering green edges.

Tulip bulbs were beginning to crack through the earth and soon the village green would be awash with spring flowers, deep blue hyacinths and bluebells and gay bobbing daffodils, snowdrops and fragrant lily of the valley, filling the village with fragrance and delight.

This Good Friday Three Pines smelled of fresh earth and promise. And maybe a worm or two.

‘I don’t care what you say, I won’t go.’

Clara heard the urgent and vicious whisper. She was crouching again, by the tall grass of the pond. She couldn’t see who it was but she realized they must be just on the other side of the grass. It was a woman’s
voice speaking French but in a tone so strained and upset she couldn’t identify her.

‘It’s just a séance,’ a man’s voice said.

‘It’ll be fun.’ ‘It’s sacrilege, for Christ’s sake. A séance on Good Friday?’

There was a pause. Clara was feeling uncomfortable. Not about eavesdropping, but her legs were beginning to cramp.

‘Come on, Odile. You’re not even religious. What can happen?’

Odile? thought Clara. The only Odile she knew was Odile Montmagny. And she was –

The woman hissed again:

‘
Each winter’s frostbite and the bug

That greets the spring will leave its mark,

As well as sorrow on the mug

Of infant, youth and patriarch.
’

Stunned silence fell.

– a really bad poet, Clara completed her thought.

Odile had spoken solemnly, as though the words conveyed something other than the talent of the poet.

‘I’ll look after you,’ said the man. Clara now knew who he was too. Odile’s boyfriend, Gilles Sandon.

‘Why do you really want to go, Gilles?’

‘Just for fun.’

‘Is it because she’ll be there?’

There was silence, except for Clara’s screaming legs.

‘He’ll be there too, you know,’ Odile pressed.

‘Who?’

‘You know who. Monsieur Béliveau,’ said Odile. ‘I have a bad feeling about this, Gilles.’

There was another pause, then Sandon spoke, his voice deep and flat as though making a huge effort to smother any emotion.

‘Don’t worry. I won’t kill him.’

Clara had forgotten all about her legs. Kill Monsieur Béliveau? Who’d even consider such a thing? The old grocer had never even short-changed anyone. What could Gilles Sandon possibly have against him?

She heard the two walk away and straightening up with some agony Clara stared after them, Odile pear-shaped and waddling slightly, Gilles a huge teddy bear of a man, his signature red beard visible even from behind.

Clara glanced at her sweaty hands clutching the wooden Easter eggs. The cheery colors had bled into her palms.

Suddenly the séance, which had seemed an amusing idea a few days ago when Gabri had put the notice up in the bistro announcing the arrival of the famous psychic, Madame Isadore Blavatsky, now felt different. Instead of happy anticipation Clara was filled with dread.

   THREE