Louise Penny: Still Life (Three Pines Mysteries)

Jane had picked up her pace, wishing her stout legs longer. Then she’d seen Olivier do the most extraordinary thing. As the boys screamed and hauled off handfuls of mulch, Olivier had slowly, deliberately, gently taken Gabri’s hand and held it before gracefully lifting it to his lips. The boys had watched, momentarily stunned, as Olivier had kissed Gabri’s manure-stained hand with his manure-stained lips. The boys had seemed petrified by this act of love and defiance. But just for a moment. Their hatred triumphed and soon their attack had re-doubled.

‘Stop that!’ Jane had called firmly.

Their arms had halted in mid-swing, instinctively reacting to a voice of authority. Turning as one they’d seen little Jane Neal, in her floral dress and yellow cardigan, bearing down on them. One of the boys, wearing an orange mask, had lifted his arm to toss at her.

‘Don’t you dare, young man.’

He hesitated just long enough for Jane to look them all in the eyes.

‘Philippe Croft, Gus Hennessey, Claude LaPierre,’ she’d said, slowly and distinctly. That had done it. The boys dropped their handfuls and ran, shooting past Jane and tripping up the hill, the one in the orange mask laughing. It was a sound so foul it even eclipsed the manure. One boy turned and looked back as the others careered into him and shoved him back up du Moulin.

It had happened only that morning. It already seemed like a dream.

‘It was hideous,’ said Gabri, agreeing with Ruth as he dropped into one of the old chairs, its faded fabric warmed by the fire. ‘Of course they were right; I am gay.’

‘And,’ said Olivier, lounging on the arm of Gabri’s chair, ‘quite queer.’

‘I have become one of the stately homos of Quebec,’ Gabri paraphrased Quentin Crisp. ‘My views are breathtaking.’

Olivier laughed and Ruth threw another log on the fire.

‘You did look very stately this morning,’ said Ben Hadley, Peter’s best friend.

‘Don’t you mean estately?’

‘More like the back forty, it’s true.’

In the kitchen, Clara was greeting Myrna Landers.

‘The table looks wonderful,’ said Myrna, peeling off her coat and revealing a bright purple kaftan. Clara wondered how she squeezed through doorways. Myrna then dragged in her contribution to the evening, a flower arrangement. ‘Where would you like it, child?’

Clara gawked. Like Myrna herself, her bouquets were huge, effusive and unexpected. This one contained oak and maple branches, bulrushes from the Rivière Bella Bella which ran behind Myrna’s bookshop, apple branches with a couple of McIntoshes still on them, and great armfuls of herbs.

‘What’s this?’ .

‘Where?’

‘Here, in the middle of the arrangement.’

‘A kielbassa.’

‘A sausage?’

‘Hummuh, and look in there,’ Myrna pointed into the tangle.

‘ The Collected Works of W. H. Auden,’ Clara read. ‘You’re kidding.’

‘It’s for the boys.’

‘What else is in there?’ Clara scanned the immense arrangement.

‘Denzel Washington. But don’t tell Gabri.’

In the living room, Jane continued the story: ‘... then Gabri said to me, “I have your mulch. This is just the way Vita Sackville West always wore it.”’

Olivier whispered in Gabri’s ear, ‘You are queer.’

‘Aren’t you glad one of us is?’ a well-worn and comfortable jest.

‘How are you?’ Myrna came in from the kitchen, followed by Clara, and hugged Gabri and Olivier while Peter poured her Scotch.

‘I think we’re all right,’ Olivier kissed Myrna on both cheeks. ‘It’s probably surprising this didn’t happen sooner. We’ve been here for what? Twelve years?’ Gabri nodded, his mouth full of Camembert. ‘And this is the first time we’ve been bashed. I was gay bashed in Montreal when I was a kid, by a group of grown men. That was terrifying.’ They’d grown silent, and there was just the crackling and muttering of the fire in the background as Olivier spoke.

‘They hit me with sticks. It’s funny, but when I think back that’s the most painful part. Not the scrapes and bruises, but before they hit me they kind of poked, you know?’ He jabbed with one arm to mimic their movements. ‘It was as though I wasn’t human.’

‘That’s the necessary first step,’ said Myrna. ‘They dehumanise their victim. You’ve put it well.’

She spoke from experience. Before coming to Three Pines she’d been a psychologist in Montreal. And, being black, she knew that singular expression when people saw her as furniture.

Ruth turned to Olivier, changing the subject. ‘I was in the basement and came across a few things I thought you could sell for me.’ Ruth’s basement was her bank.

‘Great. What?’

‘There’s some cranberry glass—’

‘Oh, wonderful.’ Olivier adored colored glass. ‘Hand blown?’

‘Do you take me for an idiot? Of course they’re hand blown.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want them?’ he always asked this of his friends.

‘Stop asking me that. Do you think I’d mention them if there was a doubt?’

‘Bitch.’

‘Slut.’

‘OK, tell me more,’ said Olivier. The stuff Ruth hauled up from her basement was incredible. It was as though she had a porthole to the past. Some of it was junk, like the old broken-down coffee makers and burned-out toasters. But most made him tremble with pleasure. The greedy antique dealer in him, which composed a larger part of his make-up than he’d ever admit, was thrilled to have exclusive access to Ruth’s treasures. He’d sometimes daydream about that basement.

If he was excited by Ruth’s possessions, he was positively beside himself with lust after Jane’s home. He’d kill to see beyond her kitchen door. Her kitchen alone was worth tens of thousands of dollars in antiques. When he’d first come to Three Pines, at the Drama Queen’s insistence, he was reduced almost to incoherence when he saw the linoleum on Jane’s mudroom floor. If the mudroom was a museum and the kitchen a shrine, what in the world lay beyond? Olivier shook off the thought, knowing he would probably be disappointed. IKEA. And shag carpet. He’d long since stopped thinking it strange that Jane had never invited anyone through the swinging door into her living room and beyond.

‘About the mulch, Jane,’ Gabri was saying, his bulk bending over one of Peter’s jigsaw puzzles, ‘I can get it to you tomorrow. Do you need help cutting back your garden?’

‘No, almost done. But this might be the last year. It’s getting beyond me.’ Gabri was relieved he didn’t have to help. Doing his own garden was work enough.

‘I have a whole lot of hollyhock babies,’ said Jane, fitting in a piece of the sky. ‘How did those single yellows do for you? I didn’t notice them.’

‘I put them in last fall, but they never called me mother. Can I have some more? I’ll trade you for some monarda.’

‘God, don’t do that.’ Monarda was the zucchini of the flower world. It, too, figured prominently in the harvest market and, subsequently, the Thanksgiving bonfire, which would give off a hint of sweet bergamot so that it smelled as though every cottage in Three Pines was brewing Earl Grey tea.

‘Did we tell you what happened this afternoon after you’d all left?’ Gabri said in his stage voice, so that the words fell neatly into every ear in the room. ‘We were just getting the peas ready for tonight’ - Clara rolled her eyes and mumbled to Jane, ‘Probably lost the can opener.’ - ‘when the doorbell rang and there were Matthew Croft and Philippe.’

‘No! What happened?’

‘Philippe mumbled, “I’m sorry about this morning.”’

‘What did you say?’ Myrna asked.