Wild Rose Read Online Free Page B

soared backward and downward where space opened waiting for her to connect to…what?… Something. How grave and enormous, tingling with minuscule points of light that place. Must she be hungry, thirsty? No, in the face of such enormity she felt only awe.
    Already Antoinette had produced a jug of hot water, was pouring it into the basin, the welcome sound of it splashing as it met the bottom of the china basin with its sprays of mauve flowers up the sides, the noise causing Sophie to click back to the morning and the chilly room, to Antoinette finished pouring, now readying the bar of soap, the Turkish towelling. Demurely, pensively, her hands lying loose on her lap, she waited for the scrubbing, while outside, their neighbour, Monsieur Allemande’s fierce black dog that all the children were frightened of began to bark, the sound moving as he ran. The dog was loose!
    “Antoinette!” she cried, pulling away from the cloth as it scrubbed at her face as though she had overnight dipped it in tar when she had only been sleeping. “Le chien –” Before Antoinette could reply an angry male voice could be heard shouting as fiercely as the dog barked, but not so piercingly, so that Sophie couldn’t make out the words. The barking subsided.
    “No breakfast today,” Antoinette sang, pulling Sophie’s nightgown off over her head, then beginning to scrub her. “Today great things will happen. Today you will receive the Host for the first time. Such a holy day.” On and on she went, while Sophie stood, beginning to shiver although the window was closed. Grand-mère had said it was May, no more fires in her room. Now a heavy towel was draped around her and she grasped it where it fell on each side of her thighs and pulled it tight across her legs and then her shoulders. To her surprise, Antoinette kissed her on the top of her head, she felt it as an airy glance that stirred her night-loose hair, then the hairbrush tugging, the pulling, setting her scalp tingling, and finally, the lovely long silky shshsh of the brush through its thickness, and the coiling and tight pinning. Finished, the maid stood back, gazing down at Sophie, her eyes wide, her mouth held in an ‘O’ waiting for Sophie to fill in what came next.
    “My dress!” Sophie remembered, and would have rushed to the wardrobe to look at it again, but the door to her room opened and grand-mère stepped inside, her black taffeta skirt swishing crisply back into place as she halted. She stared grimly down at her abruptly subdued granddaughter, then to the similarly cowed maid.
    “Vite,” she said to Sophie – grand-mère did not raise her voice – or smile, “Dépêche-toi!” To Antoinette she said, “We must go shortly. I will put on the veil when we are about to leave. Bring it downstairs.” She went out, closing the door smartly behind her, she did not slam doors either, a glitter of jet beads at the shoulder as she vanished into the hall. Already Antoinette was sliding on Sophie’s stockings, pulling up her frilly white drawers, patting her tummy as she buttoned all in place, reaching for vest and then the petticoat and then – at last! The dress!
    Antoinette opened the wardrobe’s door with a flourish, reached in to grasp the mass of white silk and tulle, it expanding as she brought it forward, Sophie’s eyes fixed on it, her heart tripping quickly. The maid held it up to herself for a second as though she remembered when she had first donned her own white dress so many years ago. But no, Antoinette had already told Sophie she had not had so pretty a dress. “You are a rich little girl,” Antoinette had admonished. “For you, the best; for me, a farmer’s daughter, a handed-down dress.” But she didn’t seem angry, although when Sophie asked her grand-mère if she was a rich little girl, grand-mère had washed out her mouth with soap. But when, at dinner, grand-mère told grand-père , he laughed, and the next day took her away to his store, the