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“Tch,” said the aunt.
“Yes,” said Quoyle. “And the minute I locked it she stopped screaming and picked up the cracker box and took out two crackers. Cool as a cucumber. Now tell me that’s normal. I’d like to hear it. As it is I’m wondering if she shouldn’t go to a child psychologist. Or somebody.”
“You know, Nephew, I wouldn’t rush to do that. I’d give it some time. There’s other possibilities. What I’m getting at is maybe she is sensitive in a way the rest of us aren’t. Tuned in to things we don’t get. There’s people here like that.” Looked sidewise at Quoyle to see how he took that. That his daughter might glimpse things beyond static reality.
But Quoyle didn’t believe in strange genius. Feared that loss, the wretchedness of childhood, his own failure to love her enough had damaged Bu
“Why don’t you just wait, Nephew. See how it goes. She starts school in September. Three months is a long time for a child. I agree with you that she’s different, you might say she is a bit strange sometimes, but you know, we’re all different though we may pretend otherwise. We’re all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differentness as we grow up. Bu
Quoyle exhaled, slid his hand over his chin. A feeling they weren’t talking about Bu
The aunt ate her fish, a tangle of bones on the side of the plate that the waitress called the devil’s nail clippings.
Walked back to the shop. As they came along the sidewalk, through the window he saw the part in Mrs. Bangs’s black hair as she bent over a chair seat prying out tacks with a ripping chisel.
“So,” the aunt said. “It was good to talk about this. It’s a shame, but I’ve got to stay in late tonight. We’ve got to tack off the banquettes. We’ve got to be done with the lot by next Tuesday, finished and installed. If you’ll pick up the girls. And don’t worry about Bu
But that had not stopped Guy. She had been Bu
“Yes,” said Quoyle, lightened and rived by a few seconds of happiness. Well, he would wait and see. Anything could happen. “Will you have supper in town or shall we have something for you?”
“Oh I’ll just get a bite here. You go ahead. You’ll need to get some milk and more ice for the cooler. Don’t get all fussed over nothing.”
“I won’t,” said Quoyle, “good-bye,” leaning toward the aunt’s soft cheek, faintly scented with avocado oil soap. She meant well. But knew nothing about children and the anguish they suffered.
16 Beety’s Kitchen
“The housewife’s needs are multifarious but most of her
requirements are not peculiar and most of what she requires is
to be found in the general classifications.”
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
A FINE part of Quoyle’s day came when he picked up his daughters at De
The hill tilting toward the water, the straggled pickets and then De
The house was hot, smelled of baking bread. But Quoyle loved this stifling yeast-heat, the chatter and child-yelp above the din of the television. Sometimes tears glazed the scene, he felt as though De
De
“Make us some tea, mother.”
The water faucet gushed into the kettle. A smaller kettle steamed on the white stove. Beety swept at the kitchen table with the side of her hand, set out a loaf of bread. Wi
Sitting at the kitchen table with children in his lap, eating bread and yellow bakeapple jam, Quoyle nodded, listened. De
The tablecloth was printed with a design of trumpets and soap bubbles. De
“Seems like he’s marked. He’s the one had a fright, eight, nine years ago. Turned his hair snow-white in a month. He was out fishing, see, with his brother near the Cauldron, and see this limp old thing lying in the water. He thought it was a ghost net, you know, broke loose and come up to the surface. So to it they goes, he gives a poke with his hook, and dear Lord in the morning, this great big tentacle comes up out of the water-” De
Bu
“I never learned nothing about fishing from Dad. He loves fishing-but he loves it for himself. He tried to keep me away from it, tried to keep all of us off the water. It had the effect, see, of Jesson getting in with Uncle Gordon’s crowd, and me just wanting to be on the water. Oh, I wanted to be a carpenter, right enough, but I wanted to fish, too,” he went on dreamily. “Proper thing. There’s something to it you can’t describe, something like opening a present every time you haul up the net. You never know what’s going to be in it, if it will make you rich or put you under the red line, sculpins or dogfish. So I wanted to fish. Because the Buggits are all water dogs, you know. All of us. Even the girls. Marge is a sailboat instructor in Ontario. Eva’s the social director for a cruise ship. Oh, you can’t keep us off the boats. But Dad tried his damndest.”
“He was afraid for you.”
“Yes, that. And it’s like he knows something, like he knows something about the Buggits and the sea. Dad’s got the gift. He knew when Jesson’s boat went down, just like he knew where to go to find me when the Polar Grinder was damaged. I’ll never forget the time with poor Jesson. You know, Jesson was Mumma’s favorite. Always was, from the day he was born.”