Free Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood Page A

Strawberry Thief design, and a chandelier entwined with bronze water-lilies, and three high stained-glass windows, shipped in from England, showing episodes from the story of Tristan and Iseult (the proffering of the love potion, in a ruby-red cup; the lovers, Tristan on one knee, Iseult yearning over him with her yellow hair cascading—hard to render in glass, a little too much like a melting broom; Iseult alone, dejected, in purple draperies, a harp nearby).
    The planning and decoration of this house were supervised by my Grandmother Adelia. She died before I was born, but from what I’ve heard she was as smooth as silk and as cool as a cucumber, but with a will like a bone saw. Also she went in for Culture, which gave her a certain moral authority. It wouldn’t now; but people believed, then, that Culture could make you better—a better person. They believed it could uplift you, or the women believed it. They hadn’t yet seen Hitler at the opera house.
    Adelia’s maiden name was Montfort. She was from an established family, or what passed for it in Canada—second-generation Montreal English crossed with Huguenot French. These Montforts had been prosperous once—they’d made a bundle on railroads—but through risky speculations and inertia they were already halfway down the slippery slope. So when time had begun to run out on Adelia with no really acceptable husband in sight, she’d married money—crude money, button money. She was expected to refine this money, like oil.
    (She wasn’t married, she was married off, said Reenie, rolling out the gingersnaps. The family arranged it. That’s what was done in such families, and who’s to say it was any worse or better than choosing for yourself? In any case, Adelia Montfort did her duty, and lucky to have the chance, as she was getting long in the tooth by then—she must have been twenty-three, which was counted over the hill in those days.)
    I still have a portrait of my grandparents; it’s set in a silver frame, with convolvulus blossoms, and was taken soon after their wedding. In the background are a fringed velvet curtain and two ferns on stands. Grandmother Adelia reclines on a chaise, a heavy-lidded, handsome woman, in many draperies and a long double string of pearls and a plunging, lace-bordered neckline, her white forearms boneless as rolled chicken. Grandfather Benjamin sits behind her in formal kit, substantial but embarrassed, as if he’s been tarted up for the occasion. They both look corseted.
    When I was the age for it—thirteen, fourteen—I used to romanticize Adelia. I would gaze out of my window at night, over the lawns and the moon-silvered beds of ornamentals, and see her trailing wistfully through the grounds in a white lace tea gown. I gave her a languorous, world-weary, faintly mocking smile. Soon I added a lover. She would meet this lover outside the conservatory, which by that time was neglected—my father had no interest in steam-heated orange trees—but I restored it in my mind, and supplied it with hothouse flowers. Orchids, I thought, or camellias. (I didn’t know what a camellia was, but I’d read about them.) My grandmother and the lover would disappear inside, and do what? I wasn’t sure.
    In reality the chances of Adelia having had a lover were nil. The town was too small, its morals were too provincial, she had too far to fall. She wasn’t a fool. Also she had no money of her own.
    As hostess and household manager, Adelia did well by Benjamin Chase. She prided herself on her taste, and my grandfather deferred to her in this because her taste was one of the things he’d married her for. He was forty by then; he’d worked hard at making his fortune, and now he intended to get his money’s worth, which meant being patronized by his new bride about his wardrobe and bullied about his table manners. In his own way he also wanted Culture, or at least the concrete evidence of it. He wanted the right china.
    He got that, and