The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood [186]
Already my childhood seemed far away – a remote age, faded and bittersweet, like dried flowers. Did I regret its loss, did I want it back? I didn’t think so.
Laura didn’t stay inside. She rambled around the town, the way we used to do. She wore a yellow cotton dress of mine from the summer before, and the hat that went with it. Seeing her from behind gave me a peculiar sensation, as if I were watching myself.
Winifred made no secret of the fact that she was bored stiff. She went swimming every day, from the small private beach beside the boathouse, though she never went in over her depth: mostly she just splashed around, wearing a giant magenta coolie hat. She wanted Laura and me to join her, but we declined. Neither of us could swim very well, and also we knew what sorts of things used to be dumped into the river, and possibly still were. When she wasn’t swimming or sunbathing, Winifred wandered around the house making notes and sketches, and lists of imperfections – the wallpaper in the front hall really had to be replaced, there was dry rot under the stairs – or else she took naps in her room. Avilion seemed to drain her energy. It was reassuring to know that something could.
Richard talked on the telephone a lot, long distance; or else he’d go into Toronto for the day. The rest of the time he diddled around with the Water Nixie, supervising the repairs. It was his goal to get the thing floated, he said, before we had to leave.
He had the papers delivered every morning. “Civil war in Spain,” he said one day at lunch. “Well, it’s been a long time coming.”
“That’s unpleasant,” said Winifred.
“Not for us,” said Richard. “As long as we keep out of it. Let the Commies and the Nazis kill each other off – they’ll both jump into the fray soon enough.”
Laura had skipped lunch. She was down on the dock, by herself, with only a cup of coffee. She was frequently down there: it made me nervous. She would lie on the dock, trailing one arm in the water, gazing into the river as if she’d dropped something and was looking for it down at the bottom. The water was too dark though. You couldn’t see much. Only the occasional clutch of silvery minnows, flitting about like a pickpocket’s fingers.
“Still,” said Winifred. “I wish they wouldn’t. It’s very disagreeable.”
“We could use a good war,” said Richard. “Maybe it will pep things up – put paid to the Depression. I know a few fellows who are counting on it. Some folks are going to make a lot of money.” I was never told anything about Richard’s financial position, but I’d come to believe lately – from various hints and indications – that he didn’t have as much money as I’d once thought. Or he no longer had it. The restoration of Avilion had been halted – postponed – because Richard had been unwilling to spend any more. That was according to Reenie.
“Why will they make money?” I said. I knew the answer perfectly well, but I’d drifted into the habit of asking naive questions just to see what Richard and Winifred would say. The sliding moral scale they applied to almost every area of life had not yet ceased to hold my attention.
“Because that’s the way things are,” said Winifred shortly. “By the by, your pal got arrested.”
“What pal?” I said, too quickly.
“That Callista woman. Your father’s old light o’love. The one who thinks of herself as an artist.”
I resented her tone, but didn’t know how to counter it. “She was awfully good to us when we were kids,” I said.
“Of course she would have been, wouldn’t she?”
“I liked her,” I said.
“No doubt. She got hold of me a couple of months ago – tried to get me to buy some dreadful painting