None of the women in the house had any enthusiasm for the holiday. They were not making cookies or new decorations for the tree. The tree had been set up mainly for the pleasure of the boarders, and the Christmas dinner was prepared only for their sake. George, living at his uncle’s house, would have afternoon dinner with his mother, sisters and Josephine’s parents; then spend the evening with Simeon’s family. Ellen and Flora would eat the boarders’ meal, only in the kitchen.
Sunlight slanted through the frosted parlour windows, broken and made lively by crystals. Flora hesitated. Do something nice. With whom?
“I could stay here,” Flora said. “We could…”
Josephine looked up, attempting a smile. “I’m all right, Flora. Take my skates, we have the same size feet. Or you could go to the hill with a sled. They’re hanging on the wall in the back shed. You could walk along the river. You could go into the shops.”
She put out a hand, as if to be shaken, but slid her fingers around Flora’s own and brought them to her cheek.
“There’s nothing you can do for me,” she whispered.
Flora untied her apron and dressed for the cold.
As she passed the barn with skates hung over her shoulder, she heard a tap on the window of Jasper Tuck’s workshop. She saw him, dim behind the frosted pane, beckoning; so she went into the barn, unslung the skates and sat on the edge of a chair. Warmth emanated from a small wood stove set on a slab of stone.
“Saved this for you. Don’t think there’s anyone else could do it.”
“Why not? You could.” A bit of cheek, in her words, to cover how he set her akilter.
“My fingers are too big. See.”
He had laid out miniscule windowpanes, a jar of paste and a fine brush on a table. She could not resist the little windows with their empty muntins. Like playing with the toys she had never had. Making something that had no plain use. He leaned over her, showing her how to set the panes. She felt his solidity, like a horse—a contained energy. He unscrewed the jar of paste, made sure she understood; then settled back at his own workbench.
Mr. Tuck was making a replica of the house across the street—gables, veranda with matchstick railings, tall downstairs windows. He was attaching its gingerbread trim with tiny tacks. He held his mouth in a tender grimace, almost feminine, as he rapped gently with his ball-peen hammer.
“Is it hard to go back to real carpentry?”
He sat back, adjusted his vision to take her in. “What do you mean?”
“During the week. When you got to use an ordinary hammer and ordinary-sized shingles.”
His jaw crept out and he looked out the window at snow unspooling from a high drift. His eyes hardened.
“I guess it would, yes. As you said. But I’m not working right now. At carpentry. I got no work. So I got to sell these, see.”
He seemed irritated, whether at her or something else she could not tell. She worked at the windows in silence, waiting for his mood to pass. She could be skating. She pictured the rink, the music, the laughter.
Flora dipped the brush into the paste, drew a bead along the wood. Another bead, and two more. She held her breath, set down the brush, gently picked up a square of glass and eased it down onto the glue. Tapped it with a fingertip, felt it settle into the paste. Done, perfect. She set another pane, and then another, until the grid of sticks, the pieces of glass became a window. A thing to enclose a house, to repel wind and rain, to keep its inhabitants safe. She sat back, astonished. She picked up the brush to begin another.
“You should make little people,” she ventured.
He had resumed his careful tapping. “You’re a funny one, you are. Little people.”
“Why not? Like a doll’s house?”
“This ain’t a doll’s house though, is it. This is a replica.”
“Sorry.”
“Aye, you should be. Sorry.”
Was this teasing, she thought, not liking his tone, or testing? Or something else, dangerous? She had never spent time with a man. Perhaps this is what they were like. The windows and dusty walls of the workshop shut away the brisk air she had been enjoying when she had started off down the lane. She wished she had not answered his beckon.
“What was it like, up north?”
“Up north where?”
“Here. In New Brunswick. You told Mrs. Galloway. Where you came from.”
He ran his finger over the tacks to make sure they were flush with the wood.
“Cold,” he said, after a pause. “It was brutal cold up there. Nothing much to do. So I came south to find work.”
A log settled in the stove.
“You’re a one with the questions today. What was it like over there? In England?”
“Cold,” she said, impulsively, trying to match his teasing tone, never having played such a game. “In the winter. Cold and damp. I was in a workhouse, you know.”
“Were you, now.” He stroked his cheeks, pulling down his eyelids so his eyes showed their meaty red, like Sailor in a melancholy mood.
She felt his gaze settle on her. Coals shifted in the wood stove. She determined to leave as soon as she had finished this one window.
“Got no people, then,” he said. The sentence hung, as Josephine’s words had, earlier. Do something nice…
She wiped the paste from the brush, abrupt. “I have to go.”
She gathered up her skates and let herself out of the barn. Ada had told her that men could sense when you had begun your bleeding. That they always knew when you had become a woman.
—
Two days before Christmas, Josephine brought a letter into the kitchen. She paused in the doorway.
Maud stirred a saucepan whose contents slapped and bubbled. Ellen stood at the table with her hands on her waist, observing Flora as she came from the stove carrying a small
